Chapter Text
Helpless.
There isn’t any other word for it, Buck thinks, sipping on a lukewarm coffee; Eddie brought it up for him, from the cafeteria when he stopped by before his shift, and it’s an okay coffee. It’s whatever. But Tommy, Buck thinks– knows – , would’ve gone across the street to the little coffee shop on the corner and bought a latte. He would’ve bought one of the banana breads that Evan likes, slipped it into his pocket and pulled it out later when he’d declared himself hungry. Every single visit since that first Halloween, when Denny was the one in that hospital bed, has been virtually the same – until now.
Is this how Bobby felt? In the chair beside his hospital bed, that night four years ago. Rain bucketing down on the carpark outside and rosary beads laced between his fingers. Weeping and praying and clinging to hope as the lightning raged on in some sort of twisted soundtrack, is this how Bobby felt? Maddie? The rest of the 118?
The chair is stiff and too-upright; Buck has his legs slung over one plastic arm of it, a spare pillow that a nurse gave him sitting behind his back so he’s face toward the head of Tommy’s bed. There’s a side-table to his left, stacked up with barely-touched meals from the cafeteria downstairs and things people brought to occupy him. Sudoku books and puzzle magazines and the novels he keeps in his locker at the station. His earphones and a packet of mints and a phone charger he’s yet to even touch.
He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t want distractions, he doesn’t want things to occupy him; he wants his fiancè to sit up in that godforsaken bed, to push the sheets down and stand up and press a kiss to Evan’s lips and hold him and tell him, in that honey-warm voice, we’re okay, mi tesoro, like he does. That’s all that Buck wants.
There’s a quiet rap of knuckles on the doorframe, followed by Chimney and Maddie’s faces; Chimney looks a little worse for wear, eyes red at their corners, surrounded by an exhaustion deeper than missing sleep. Maddie’s brow is creased with worry, and she’s in her red work blazer, the little silver dispatch pin on her lapel – she worked overnight, Buck remembers, from yesterday to today, but she would’ve wanted to bring Chimney in for visiting hours.
He seems to be holding up the worst of them all. Not that Buck is in a place to judge.
“Any news?” Chimney murmurs quietly. He pulls a chair up to the other side of the bed, reaching out to pat Tommy’s knee; sometimes Buck forgets how long they’ve known each other, how integral their friendship was. Until Tommy and Evan started dating, from what he can tell, it was fairly distant; but since the night of the cruise ship, they’ve grown that much closer. It’s nice– normally, it’s nice.
Buck swallows around the lump in his throat. “Not really. We’re just playing the waiting game. His advance directive gives us two weeks, but I’m the primary, so if– if I want, I can extend that.”
“It’s only been five days, Buck,” Maddie says severely. She rests a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently; it’s comforting, a reminder of something distant and nostalgic. “There’s nine more before you even have to worry about making that decision.”
Buck doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t respond; they sit in the silence for a moment, just the clunky air noises of the ventilator accompanying it. It’s early morning, outside, but little sunlight reaches the room, and Buck turned the rest of them off last night – so the whole place is dim, the light that is weeping in glancing off Tommy’s skin, serving only to make him look a little emaciated.
“I spoke to Sal yesterday,” Evan offers, voice dry. “He’s in Seattle at the moment, visiting family. Said he, uh, couldn’t get a flight back until tomorrow night, so– so he’s coming by on Saturday morning. He’ll– he’ll be here ‘s soon as visiting hours start.”
“That’s good.” Chimney’s voice sounds plastic, like he isn’t sure what to do with himself. Like he isn’t sure what to offer as comfort, like he’s halfway to grieving and stuck on the borderline; watching from the outside. Buck can feel the same painful sting in his own chest.
Maddie talks, for a while. Provides dry anecdotes, courtesy of Josh, and passes on the well-wishes from the friends over at dispatch; she tells Buck that Hen and Karen will be stopping by in the evening, Bobby and Athena bringing dinner for them all. She reads the charts hanging off the end of the gurney, and she reports that if she were Tommy’s nurse, she’d be damn happy with his results.
Buck doesn’t respond to any of it. Chimney gives weak hums.
“Well,” Eventually, Maddie breaks out of the chain of rambles, attempts at conversation and eventual clouds of silence, shifting forward in her seat and grabbing Chimney’s shoulder. “Jee, um. May was watching Jee for us, but she’s got class in an hour, and with the traffic…”
“Yeah. I’ll call if anything changes.” Buck says weakly; he swings a leg down to sort-of hug them both goodbye, Chimney patting him on the shoulder. It’s a goodbye and a reassurance all at once, but it just makes Evan feel a little more unsettled. Fear coils around every bone in his body, locking him up and keeping him awake, dragging him out across days of this. Of hours in this chair broken only for bathroom visits or when one of the nurses insists he goes for a walk.
The 118, all of them, have tried to drag Buck home; to shower and eat a meal, or even just to change his clothes and breathe air that doesn’t taste like sterilised death. They’re all yet to succeed. The risk of leaving Tommy’s side, of abandoning him and missing him waking up – or worse, returning to the hospital and having no bedside to sit at – is too great. Too consuming. The anxiety of it floods his body, pumping in his bloodstream.
He’s helpless. Buck is so completely, ridiculously helpless here that it almost makes him want to laugh. If he wasn’t sitting in the Intensive Care Unit he very well might – as it is, he just sits there.
Waits. Waits for the time to go by and for the life to bleed out of the room, waiting for the man who is supposed to be his husband, soon, to even hold enough wits about him to acknowledge the world. To squeeze a hand or breathe on his own or, for the love of God, just exist. Exist as more than whatever shell he seems to be right now.
A little part of him considers praying – but he doesn’t know what god he’d be calling on, let alone if there’d be an answer. Would anyone listen, if he called on the universe? Should he try regardless? Is a prayer, too, like everything else, helpless?
Buck’s clinging to bare bones, now; and anything, no matter how little faith he has, could be the key. So he bows his head, and he closes his eyes, and he breathes out words that sound less of a prayer and more of a plea.
⋆⋅☆⋅⋆
A week after the accident, Tommy codes.
Buck doesn’t really understand it; a few hours after it happens, when Maddie’s sitting on his one side and Sal is on the other, a doctor comes in to explain it.
She said the stress on his body pushed him into cardiac arrest. She said the ventilator had already raised the risks, and he’d been still for so long that his blood had clotted; she said they were lucky to catch it when they did, and she said that now they knew, it shouldn’t impact his odds at recovery. She said that Tommy wasn’t really worse off than before.
Buck doesn’t believe her.
Or maybe it was all just so awful to begin with. He isn’t sure.
It’s a hours days later when a stranger knocks on the doorframe; the door’s wide open, but Buck’s been waiting for Maddie to come in with some lunch, so he doesn’t even turn to look. “Hey, Mads. His doctor said his bloods are looking really good, everything’s fine; if he’s going to wake up, it should be in the next twenty-four hours. After that… they’re not expecting much.”
“Sorry. Um, you– you must be his boyfriend. Husband?”
The voice is starkly familiar, and Buck hurls around in his seat, gripping the arms. Shock floods his chest, pressing into the back of his throat. He tries to let logic win over, but it’s hard – and he feels, briefly, like he must be hallucinating.
Because the man standing in front of him, beyond the SWAT-emblazoned shirt, the gun holster on his waist and the fact he looks a little younger – maybe just like he’s a little less worn down – is Tommy’s spitting image. The hair is styled almost the same, and the man has clearly kept a gym routine that withholds nothing. He’s all broad shoulders and fluffy brown almost-curls, ducking his head like he isn’t sure if he belongs here.
He looks exactly like Tommy.
But he’s not. He can’t be.
“You’re…”
“Rocker. Um, Donovan– Donovan Rocker.” The man would have to be Tommy’s height, maybe even a fraction taller, but he looks small standing in the doorway. “Tommy’s brother?”
“I knew he had a brother,” Buck turns back to the bed, settling in a little lower. “Didn’t realise you guys were twins. He doesn’t talk about you much.”
That was a little rude. Buck hadn’t meant it like that.
This is just, really, another one of the things Tommy didn’t really tell him. Another part of his story that, if he doesn’t wake up, might not get told. There’s whole years of his life that he’s barely touched on, with Evan or with anyone, and there are so few people who have been in his life long enough to remember them. There’s pieces of his life, his identity, that Buck is watching circle the drain – and yet they’re faceless. He hasn’t a clue what they look like.
This part, though; this part just looks like Tommy. Exactly like him.
And it hurts.
Donovan hums quietly. He doesn’t move from the doorway, standing stock-still, watching. One hand sits in the loop of his belt, the other against the doorframe, and his breath is a little shaky. Buck throws back a short glance, gesturing toward the seat next to him. “Come sit down.”
Rocker follows the instruction, perching delicately on the edge of the seat. He looks so uncomfortable, and there’s definitely tears in his eyes – with the way he wipes them away, roughly, though, Buck thinks it’s best not to comment. He knows how guys like that feel about showing their emotions on their face so easily. They don’t want to be seen emotional, because it fractures the image. The resilience, the strength.
Tommy’s like that sometimes. Not often, but sometimes.
“You were kind of right, by the way,” Buck murmurs. He doesn’t look over at Rocker – it’s almost more painful to feel, for a split second, like Tommy might be awake. So he focuses on the sleeping figure. “I’m his fiancé. Evan Buckley, people call me Buck.”
“Does Tommy?” Rocker asks.
Buck’s taken by surprise. “What?”
“Does Tom call you Buck?” He repeats, and Buck can feel his stare. “I mean, I’ve just been going by Rocker since I was in middle school. But Tommy always called me Donovan, even if nobody else did. I mean, other than Mom, obviously. But Tommy’s always been like that, I guess. He doesn’t really use nicknames, not unless you really want him to. Unless you ask.”
Tommy shifts in his bed. That’s been happening a little – the nurses say it’s normal. One night, he’d laughed; a reflex movement, but one that spun around in Evan’s head for hours, still sitting at the back. He feels like it haunts him, the sound completely void of any joy – just laughing, for near to a full thirty seconds, until he just fell quiet again.
Tommy stills. Buck sighs.
“Is he going to wake up?” Rocker murmurs; he sounds the way Buck feels, small and weak against this insurmountable beast. They’re big men, and in very macho careers – the Special Weapons And Tactics t-shirt hugging Rocker’s frame is enough to prove that – but this? This is something they can’t beat.
This is something that is turning them into mere children. Fearful and afraid, against the monster under the bed, who seems to be watching them all the time.
“We don’t know.” Buck murmurs. “We can hope, but we don’t know. He coded, um, about six hours ago. They said the next twenty-four are critical, so… I don’t know. We just have to wait and see what happens.”
The words are hollow, the same ones that Maddie’s been repeating near incessantly since Tommy came in here. That hopelessness will only make it worse, that they have to keep their heads high; but it’s a hard thing to do, when the world feels like it’s falling apart. It’s a hard thing to want to keep hope when the reason you do, the reason you always have, is inches from the cliff edge.
“He’s all I’ve got,” Rocker says quietly. “That’s fucking tragic, isn’t it? My brother that I haven’t spoken to since high school is the most important person in my life, but it’s true. My wife– soon to be ex – she always said I seemed lonely. I guess I didn’t realise how much I’d missed him until I heard what happened. Some patrol sergeant said his name at a training exercise the other day, and it just…”
“All fell apart.” Buck finishes for him, barely a whisper.
“Yeah.”
They sit in a silence far too companionable for the short time they’ve known each other, chairs inches apart. Buck listens to the sound of the ventilator, finding himself breathing in it’s timing,
Tommy shifts again, this time more insistent, and Rocker straightens up. “Wait, is he moving?”
At first, Buck wants to brush it off. Wants to wave it away, dismiss it the way the nurses have every other movement, because it’s probably nothing. It’s probably just the reflex movements, the little involuntary things that a body does in a coma. It would probably just get Buck’s hopes up to shatter them all over again.
Except Tommy twists a little, and raises a hand to his mouth. Rocker calls out into the corridor for help.
And Evan, finally, starts to cry.