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Jem would like to make it very clear that she never disliked the 118 and their family bonds and all that.
But, it wasn’t helpful when they all crowded her space when one of their own was shot.
-Really it wasn’t ‘her’ space but the hospital is shared and they didn’t stop and think about that when the large number of them filled up the entire hallway while being quite loudly anxious.
Yes, their friend was shot, and that is a horrific thing to happen to anyone, especially while they are working in emergency services.
It didn’t help that there was tension about whether firefighters were safe to have around with the LAFD-targeting shooter on the loose, when there they were, parading around in their boldly-labeled uniforms.
Truly, above all the frustrations she has with their assumptious attitude around being free to use the hospital halls as they pleased, Jem was really impressed. There were so many of them, showing support while sitting on edge, just waiting for something to progress in his state, confirming that he will recover.
The entire lot of them were many more than the zero who were currently with the patient she was attending to. It hadn’t even been 40 minutes into her shift when Olive’s family left.
Jem didn’t judge them, not everyone can stay at their loved ones’ hospital bedsides for a multitude of different reasons and she wouldn’t wish the experience upon anyone. If they had stayed the family would be watching their beloved member in a stage six medically-induced coma. Olive’s family would have to sit in the uncomfortability of the feeling of not-knowing, left to imagine the worst, such as the bone-chilling sound of a flatline beep ringing, anytime they leave the room.
Nurse Jem remembers distinctly that she was called to check on her patient when the majority of the firefighter group dispersed, it seemed like they had come to the same realisation.
They talked about leaving the hospital to get some fresh air from outside and acted like a pack as they made their way down the hallway.
One of them didn’t leave, a blonde boy with a defining red mark above his eyebrows looked stunned, completely frozen. He barely moved in his seat as if motion would send some unwanted curse upon his best friend while he was grasping for life in the room behind him.
An older man in the group tried to reason with him to get him to leave but he snapped back, the blonde guy seemed determined to stay.
Jem didn’t major in psychology, but she does know quite a bit about people's reactions to injuries, and early grieving, and the kid with the birthmark was acting according to what many psychologists would predict.
The older man persisted but was eventually forced to give up when his—in a well-cited assumption—wife took him away, saying that ‘Buck’, who the nurse worked out to be the boy who couldn’t bring himself to leave, was welcome to come to their place anytime but that she needed to get back and tell their children about what had happened.
The older man agreed to leave his employee due to the nature of the circumstances, probably knowing that he couldn’t convince stubbornness.
As they left, Jem felt drawn into the scenario that she had watched unfold, even so, she didn’t let herself follow through the strong temptation to interfere, to meddle, just a little bit.
Jem told herself to leave it be, she had work to do. Olive had shown signs of waking up and she had to focus and do her best to create a good environment, one that would make her want to keep fighting through the next stages of her injury. One that her family could be at her side in.
—Actually inside the room as opposed to the common area of a hallway, that as EMS, they should know just as well as anyone, if not better, that it needs to be easy to move through, for safety.
Alas, Jem looked back at Buck and saw the crumbling man and knew that the good thing to do was to interact with him and offer help.
She casually wandered out of the room she had been working in and took a few steps until she was standing right in front of Buck, so close she was invading the average person’s personal space, and definitely breaking rules about social distancing.
Her presence was quickly noticed.
Buck tipped his head up, “Hello ma’am,” he cleared his throat, “Can I uh-help you?”
“Hello, my name's Jem, but, uh, I’m the one who works here,” Jem said, mildly unamused.
“Oh- uh.. Am I doing something wrong?” Buck asked. His voice had grown slightly stronger than before but his volume and tone were significantly more broken than she had pictured from a firefighter. But, that image was her predicting them on normal, not friend-is-in-the-hospital type stressful, days.
“Well actually, uh- yes, this hospital can’t have people sit around for too long in spaces where lots of people pass,” Jem explained, “a Covid safety precaution.” She didn’t feel the need to elaborate that she was telling him this out of her own—not petty, because if there were more of them, there could have actually been a problem, maybe—grievances.
“Oh, god, I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t know, it’s fine but, that’s not why I came over.”
“Oh, okay, um, why did you come over?” Buck questioned and turned his head down again just as his eyes started to water.
“It's not healthy to stay here forever,” Jem breeched, they were hard words to hear for all loved ones, and Buck seemed to be no different.
“I haven’t been here that long,” dismissed Buck. Jem had seen it all before, it's hard to go home when your partner is in the hospital, the constant anxiety doesn't let up. Only when you see them smiling again, on their feet, is it common for most lovers to finally unpack all of the stress they felt earlier.
“10 hours, 47 minutes and counting,” Jem refuted as she stared down at her watch, “And before you ask, I clocked in for my shift just as you lot showed up.” It wasn’t entirely true, her shift had started before the arrival of the fire crew but she didn’t wish to explain why she knew they all entered and hogged the hallway for 10 hours and 47 minutes.
“I understand what it’s like to be in your shoes right now, seeing someone you love need help and feeling helpless, but you need to let yourself unpack so you can start to heal and be dependable when he’s better.”
Jem saw her words reach Buck as he tilted his head to take in her opinion.
He didn’t fight it.
“Should I go tell Chris?” Buck asked.
Of course Jem had no idea who ‘Chris’ was but due to context he could only be a few things, a child, pet, relative and a child was the most logical of the possibilities.
“He deserves to know,” probably, if he’s made into their conversation about the firefighter he has to be very important.
Buck looked to have lost his optimistic train of thought as he turned to see his friend once again, “But what about Eddie-,” he started.
“Someone has to tell Chris, don’t pass your responsibility onto someone else,” Jem fought. Of course parents have the responsibility to their child but she knew she wasn’t being very fair, shaming him about not leaving, but she hadn’t thought logically, reaching the end of a 12 hour shift, “it’s your duty.”
Buck fully connected with her words and at last, left. Leaving the hallway clear once again, which was not her main motivation to help Buck out, she really did care about the poor guy and the fear of watching your partner on what could be their deathbed. However, were the clear, empty hallways a minus? Of course not.
Jem would like to reiterate that she didn’t hate or dislike any of the 118, but, there are standards to hospitals which are important to keep up, so…
Not even 20 minutes later, at 11 hours 4 minutes and counting, another person walked through the hallway, assisted by a fellow Nurse in Jem’s department, walking to the same room that had the same ‘Eddie Diaz’ that she had just cleared of its storm of visitors.
The nurse walked the woman into Eddie’s room and lingered for a while before he eventually exited.
As soon as Jem saw him emerge from the room, she rushed over.
“What happened, who’s that, how’s he going?” Jem interrogated her co-worker.
“Geez, do you want to switch patients?”
“No, she’s shown signs of waking up, I can’t leave her now.”
“Why are you so interested in a random man in the LAFD,” he asked, confused, before altering the seriousness in his tone completely, “do you know something about the shooting?”
“No,” Jem replied, “I talked to his boyfriend, who was standing and eventually sitting outside of Eddie Diaz’s room for hours waiting for him. So, I told him that he needed to let himself unpack everything that had happened. It's better for them in the long term so that when Eddie Diaz wakes up he can lean on his boyfriend.”
The other nurse scoffs, “Why do you always interfere—wait… boyfriend?”
“Yes and they’ve got a son too, whom the boyfriend was really worried about,” Jem explained further, “LAFD can date their same gender.” She added, frustrated with her coworker for the conservative assumption that he knew much better than to make.
“That’s not what I meant,” the other nurse replied, getting an eyebrow raise from Jem. “They’re not dating.”
Jem choked on air, “wait- what?” she was completely dumbfounded because what did he mean they’re not boyfriends.
“The woman, who I just brought into Diaz’s room, is his girlfriend.”
Girlfriend? He liked girls? That is not what Jem picked up from the fire crew when they went around and shared their favourites of, what they dubbed as, ‘Eddie’s anecdotes.’
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” the other nurse responded.
Jem sighed, “Man that Eddie guy must have sucked.”
“First, that’s horrible, he could be dying and two he works as a public servant, how bad could the guy be?” Her colleague argued.
“He’s cheating on his girlfriend,” Jem said solemnly, “he and his coworker obviously have something going on there.”
“No, he’s straight,” the nurse replied in a serious tone, similar to what their training taught them to speak like around each other, but, what was hardly even acknowledged as an expectation.
Jem felt like she was covered in dust because of the insane accuracy or lack thereof of her gay-dar. Something Jem prided herself on—her and her girlfriend always teased each other when one of them guessed a sexuality really far off of the person’s in question, so, she was fortunate that only her colleague heard her shock because she would never live it down. As well as that she had a great read on people, learnt from her profession.
“I have to go, but I see you have a lot to process so we can chat after shift.” The other nurse explained.
“Yeah-…Let’s.”
It was as if everything Jem ever knew was suddenly questionable, and that, as a nurse, was a scary thought.
——
The next time she saw Buck visit Eddie she looked for clues that explained what she missed about their sexualities.
-She was being very professional when she soon resolved that she was going to request to work on Diaz.
Okay.. maybe it wasn’t her most professional decision because she did, in fact, want to play sleuth, but something inside her was so intrigued at it all.
What she found was, well, there was not one single heterosexual explanation to the pair.
Jem felt the overwhelmingly strong feeling of joy take over her when finally, after a long month of waiting, distressed family members calling and steady monitor beeps, Olive woke up.
The anticipation for exactly that is why waiting is hard, but when Jem walked into the room to see Olive’s family beside her, the life gleaming in her opened eyes at last, made her remember just why she became a nurse.
But of course that meant that she had time in her shifts that wasn’t dedicated to Olive, so, she was approved in her request to help Eddie Diaz, she had met the people who visited most frequently anyway.
-Well she met Buck, the apparently platonic, best friend of Diaz.
Buck was a frequent flyer at the hospital, if there were points for his visitation, Buck would be ready to cash in for the highest level of prizes.
It took some time to get onto a friendship basis with Buck as they only saw each other so much and while he was dealing with the fact that his ‘best friend’ was in the hospital.
“Hey! Buck! How'd it go?” Jem asked the first time she saw him again after they’d met, smiling, as she saw Buck walking down the hallway.
“What? Oh- oh, uh , not well-,” Buck said as he shrinked his chest to make himself look smaller, looked down ashamed and began to pick around the edges of his fingernails.
“What happened?” Jem grew concerned, she really did want to help Buck and Eddie, they seemed to have a lot of things that they needed to solve…
“I lost it,” Buck admits, “I broke down, in front of Chris, and I just looked so weak the moment he needed someone to be strong.” So Chris is definitely the child, their child? Jem was left to guess the other pieces for the Diaz and Buckley story.
“I’m sure it’s fine, he sounds like an intelligent kid he’ll understand,” Jem reassured Buck. The line of work firefighting is no light career so she deducted that Chris was likely very mature for his age.
“Intelligent or not I needed to keep my cool, that was my job,” Buck explains frustratedly, “I said that I’d help out and take care of Chris but I just lost it.”
His face tenses in annoyance, he peers back down to see his thumb bleeding. Jem watches him squeeze his fingers while he clenches his other fist. Buck looked to be using the pain of his aching finger to vent.
“You can’t put that all on yourself, it’s not fair,” Jem reasoned.
“It’s what I promised to do.”
“You’re a first responder and so is he, you both know the difficulty in fully living up to your word.”
There was no argument to be made, Jem was right. Still, there was a look of guilt across Buck’s face that Jem couldn’t miss.
Buck continued to visit, and the more he did, the more she got to know him. A week later, Jem was on break, scrolling through various news stories, when she found a video of Buck.
It showed him climbing a tall crane structure in broad daylight, sun shining onto the buildings around him—only highlighting the many different angles a bullet could reach him—and causing bright glowing points to reflect from the glass.
She choked on her food upon seeing the footage. She had seen him the day before with a regretful look on his face but she hadn’t realised he was struggling to the point where he acted life-threateningly reckless.
Jem clicked off of the video swiftly after she watched Buck suddenly halt in between climbing steps as she worried that his sudden stop was the result of an injury.
“Hi Jem,” Buck greeted her, the next day, when he had come to visit Eddie Diaz again.
“What were you thinking?” She exclaimed, walking up to him.
“Oh so you saw it too.”
“Everyone saw it. You’re lucky that the LAFD-targeting shooter was one of the later viewers to your daring rescue,” Jem responded, “and that they would have seen it through a screen.”
“Yeah. I know. I’ve already heard all of this from my captain and girlfriend.”
“What would compel you to do such a thing?” Jem questioned Buck, her worry rising in her voice.
“I just,” Buck started to say but didn’t finish his explanation. “I don’t want the people I love to get hurt or be in danger when I can do something to stop it. To fix it.”
Buck’s smile had fully flipped, in its place a deep frown formed as he explained his actions.
There was something wrong with Buck. He had some fixation in his mindset to fixing everything, even what couldn't possibly be helped by him, such as his best friend’s medical state.
He seemed to be tying his value and his worth to what he did to save other people.
Jem couldn’t be the person who helped him but she could refer Buck to someone who could.
“I’m going to go check on Eddie, Ana said there was good news.”
“Buck wait—” Jem tried to get out before he entered Eddie’s room but he had rushed in before she could say anything.
——
Buck left with his head down, passing Jem with purposeful speed.
He had been in the room with Eddie for half an hour before Jem watched her colleague enter to kick him out so Eddie could get some rest.
When Jem walked in herself Eddie was once again asleep like he’d been time after time when she watched over him.
Jem remembered seeing Eddie on the news after he’d been shot.
Horrific scene. Shot in the middle of a road as his team seemed to be getting ready to leave the emergency they’d helped—Further digging by some curious reporters found that the 118 was responding to a call to help a kid. It was sick. Everything about it was disgusting but to think that someone would shoot a first responder as they saved a child?
It sent shivers down Jem’s spine.
And then reports of more firefighters being shot came in and the public’s anxiety surged.
So no, Jem never disliked the 118, really. She was just another concerned citizen about the shootings and what the LAFD’s looming presence meant for the safety of her and everyone in the hospital.
——
After what felt like a lifetime’s worth of worry—or at least what should be—and countless visits from Buck at the hospital, the shooter was caught and the LAFD getting shot was no longer a concern.
Jem noticed a significant shift in Buck’s confidence when he returned after the arrest was announced.
Jem noticed the look of guilt on Buck’s face when he watched Eddie hooked up to machines for survival, slowly receding as he continued to visit Eddie frequently, but now able to talk and act like how Jem imagined they did before the incident.
On a side note Jem was losing her mind as she listened to the ridiculous interactions between the pair. It was little details like random unexpectedly obscure facts they shared about each other—which sure their shifts have them insanely close, but there’s a limit—and the tensions they had in their voices, with audible yearning for the other that had her praying for both whoever Buck was dating and Diaz’s poor girlfriend ‘Ana.’ Who seemed really sweet in Jem’s brushes with her but who was either really oblivious or in denial about her relationship.
The topic of Buck and Eddie Diaz had made its way into her discussions during her breaks and there was also no doubt in any other worker’s minds that they had no hetero explanation, everyone saw it, aside from them, apparently.
Diaz was healing well at least, he had been regaining strength and was approaching the next stages in his recovery.
Buck was acting more chirpy as well, although Jem was still concerned about his unaddressed purposeful recklessness. But, she knew that Buck wouldn’t listen to her, and if she kept being on good terms with him, she could see her worries play out or fan out firsthand and interfere, need be.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last.
Barely an afternoon later, Jem watched another member of the 118—whose uniform read: ‘Nash’, he was the 118’s captain and who Jem recognised as the older man who tried to convince Buck to leave and get rest—be wheeled to a room, not far from Eddie Diaz’s, after being shot and trapped in a fire.
As it turned out they had, in fact, not caught the sniper, but found out their theory was wrong in interrogation while the 118 responded to a call, newly unprotected, and ‘Captain Bobby Nash’ was shot as a result.
“You okay?” Jem asked as she saw Buck sitting in the same hospital seat he sat in when she first talked to him.
“I thought I could stop my team from getting hurt,” Buck chuckled at himself in a defeated tone, “but they did anyway.”
“It’s not like you could have done anything,” Jem tells Buck, “you know that right?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make watching it happen any easier.”
“Being a first responder is dangerous, you don’t need to worry, they have to be tough for the job,” Jem points out, she then sighs, “but I get it, the lack of control? Forced to be a bystander and see it unfold exactly how you would never want it to?”
Buck turned to face Jem as she finished what she was saying. Jem sees his eyes become heavier but he blinks Jem’s sentences away.
When dry-eyed he takes in a deep slightly congested breath, “okay so-,” Buck swings the mood of the conversation, while peering down at his watch, “I should probably let Eddie know that he’s good to leave now.”
“I’ll get the discharge papers for him,” Jem replies, quickly shooting out of the seat beside Buck, “and his meds, tell him I’ll bring them by in 5 minutes.”
“Okay.”
Jem watches Buck walk into Diaz’s room and goes to gather the items, only to realise that she had prepared them earlier.
She hears the pair talking and decides to leave them be for the promised 5 minutes.
Jem knows she shouldn’t eavesdrop on purpose in order to respect their privacy and she knew that she had other tasks she should complete but…she found herself standing next to the room—protected from sight by curtain in case they turned around to face the front—to listen into their conversation.
“Which you survived,” a voice that Jem recognised as Buck’s said. She had missed what he was responding to so Jem was left confused about the context of Buck’s reassurance.
Another voice, who was presumably Eddie Diaz, let out a short sigh as he said, “after that.”
“It got me thinking, you know, what would happen to Christopher if I hadn’t?” He questioned, “so, I went to my attorney and changed my will.”
Jem was pretty sure that he was referring to another near-miss of death as there would have been no way for Eddie Diaz to have reached out to an attorney in the hospital, while recovering from a gunshot.
But the thought of Eddie Diaz having two near-experiences of death reminded her why she helped people after they were brought to the hospital.
She was confused at his mentioning of the lawyer, why was he telling Buck that he changed the guardiancy of Christopher when it would have had to be a unanimous decision between the two.
“So someday,” Eddie started, “if, I, uh, didn’t make it. Christopher would be taken care of. By you.”
So Christopher wasn’t the responsibility of Buck?
Huh.
It made no sense to Jem whatsoever, but she was finally beginning to realise nothing about ‘Buck and Eddie’ made sense to her—or her girlfriend when Jem vented her frustrations after date nights—the way Buck talked about Chris made the thought Jem had about the firefighters sharing him as their kid feel confirmed. Only she was now hearing it be debunked.
The shock was apparently mutual—although from different places—as Buck exclaimed, “what?” Caught completely off-guard.
“It’s in my will, that if I die, you become Christopher’s legal guardian.” Eddie Diaz explained further, his voice laced with care, despite being the one coming out of hospital.
Jem would like to reiterate that there was no hetero explanation to the pair.
“Uh…I mean, h-how, how does that even work?” Buck asked, like Jem, trying to grasp the concept himself. He laughed as he continued, “don’t you, don’t-don’t you need my consent?”
That was another side to the whole thing that Jem hadn’t even considered. How could you put someone in your will as the guardian to your child and they don’t know until you tell them, god-knows how much later?
“My attorney said you could refuse.”
“You know I wouldn’t.”
“Nah, I know you wouldn’t.”
Jem heard the two firefighters agree. The more she heard of their conversation, the more she thought she was going absolutely insane. Eddie Diaz baby-trapped his ‘best friend’ with his kid.
Also, the more she listened to, the worse she felt for Ana, the—official, but debatable—romantic partner.
“I mean he-he has grandparents, other family,” Buck reasoned.
“Yeah,” Eddie Diaz chuckled, “after Shannon left, they all tried to guilt me into giving Christopher to them. It’s not what I wanted then, it’s not what I want now.”
Jem wondered what their expressions were because all she could do was imagine from behind the curtain what the reactions they had to each other were. Most likely something that acting coaches would show to their students auditioning for a romance film.
“If,” Buck emphasised, “it came to that, w-wouldn’t they fight for him?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie replied in a tone showing utter surprise at Buck’s question. “Maybe. Probably. But no one will ever fight for my son as hard as you,” he continued, “that. Is what I want for him.”
Jem felt herself smile, there was something infectious about love—whether they realised that was the emotion behind their words or not—and how it makes a person feel. Jem made a mental note to call her girlfriend after shift and spread the feeling.
There was a long pause in between Eddie talking about his son and the next words spoken by one of the two.
“Well, you said you did this last year, why are you just telling me now?” Buck asked, his words confirming to Jem that Eddie Diaz had in fact had at least two near-misses with death, in the span of only two years.
“Because, Evan,” Eddie started, a new seriousness in his tone as he brought up—what had to be—Buck’s birth name, “you came in here the other day and you said you thought it would have been better if it had been you who got shot.”
Jem felt a chill reach her heart that had been previously warmed. She didn’t know Buck had told Eddie that but what hurt was that even from the little Jem knew about him, she wasn’t surprised that he had.
“You act like you’re expendable,” Eddie sighed, “but you’re wrong.”
The beauty in the reaffirmation that Buck mattered caused Jem’s eyes to tear up slightly, so, if she entered the room and lied, acting like she had just gotten bad news as a cover story to why her eyes were heavier than average, she could not be held responsible.
——
Jem gave the meds and discharge papers to Buck and Eddie, and saw them off.
“Thanks for all you’ve done,” Buck said to Jem as he began to walk through the door and out of the room.
“I haven’t done that much,” Jem told him, “you’re who helped him by taking care of his kid.”
“I love Chris, I would spend time with him regardless of whether he was able to or not.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s glad that you feel that way,” Jem explained, “goodbye Buck.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way but I hope to not have to see you again,” Buck responded, “I mean- like- not where you work, because someone I love is in the hospital again.” He rushed out in an effort to fix his unintentionally rude statement.
“No, don’t worry, I knew what you meant,” Jem laughed.
“I’d be happy to see you again, you’ve been really nice, just not in the context of being a visitor in the hospital,” Buck continued to word-vomit.
“Buck?” Eddie asked from where he was patiently waiting outside of the room.
“Yep- sorry Eddie,” he called out, “I have to go, see you around, just hopefully not in a stressful situation at the hospital.” Buck finished as he ran out to Eddie.
Jem watched the pair leave the hospital together and smiled as she saw Buck put his arm around Eddie’s shoulder.
She just couldn’t help but notice that Eddie’s girlfriend wasn’t the one to pick him up.
——
As it would turn out, Jem did see Buck again, in the hospital, just not in the context of him being a visitor.
For a year, Jem swore she had seen him around the hospital, usually at the front rushing a victim from a call through the doors to get them immediate assistance. She probably had seen him here and there—it was more likely that she had than not due to the nature of both of their jobs—but they never interacted with each other so she wasn’t sure.
There was one time within a year since she last saw them that she heard of a Buck and Eddie sighting where she worked.
An ambulance pulled up outside the hospital—she had later heard from her colleague that the vehicle was a 118 fire engine—inside, a hostage situation between two firefighters and two prisoners had been unfolding.
Jem couldn’t see the commotion as she was busy helping a high-priority patient but was told that one of the firefighters—a blonde man—ran outside yelling ‘Eddie’ after hearing a gunshot.
It was very clear to Jem who the firefighters had to be. There’s only so many coincidences that can be excused before the only logical explanation is the assumption.
She was honestly glad that she hadn’t seen them properly for over a year as it meant that hopefully things were going well for Buck, Eddie and their team.
She hadn’t really met Eddie and she and Buck had a short-lived friendship but she remembered them and wished the best for their lives.
Jem wondered how their ‘friendship’ was going and if they stopped denying the homo-erotic subtext lying beneath all their conversations. Jem also still prayed for Ana and her wellbeing, when she thought back to ‘Buck and Eddie’ as her and Eddie’s break-up was inevitable and was likely to be very messy.
She hoped that Eddie would let Ana down much easier than she did her high-school boyfriend upon her own realisation about her sexuality
Alas it had been just over a year since she had interacted with anyone from the 118 or affiliated with the crew, when at the end of a dry thunderstorm, she broke her streak of no-contact.
From the room she had been working at—fortunately on the ground floor—Jem heard the noise of pouring heavy rain grow louder in an instant. The sound of a gurney being pulled through the emergency room hallways along with hustling from various nurses that Jem worked with, took over everywhere in the hospital that was remotely close to the front.
“We’ll do our best,” Jem heard one of her colleagues say in a rushed voice to give preface to the whole situation.
“Do more!” A voice exclaimed back at her. Just hearing the two words Jem heard spoken by the fireman, she knew that it was Eddie Diaz who’d yelled out.
The same Eddie Diaz from over a year ago, which would mean that the 118 were back.
Jem worked for 2 more hours before she was able to go on break.
For 2 hours she worked, trying to focus, while coming up with her own theories as to what had happened.
Jem had not been assigned to help out someone staying long-term at the hospital, so she resolved that she would ask to be part of the team helping whoever the 118 brought in—someone presumably really important to the crew due to the agitation in Eddie’s voice—as she knew some of the members.
“Firefighters from station 118 brought a victim through here, no?” Jem asked the front desk as she started a paid 30 minute break.
“Yes, one of their own, why?” The receptionist, Bea, questioned back at Jem.
She choked a bit hearing that another one of the 118 members were injured, already, after barely a year since Eddie had been shot.
“What room?” Jem inquired further.
“ICU 014, why?” Bea pressed Jem for an answer when Jem looked as she was about to leave.
“I’ve helped out with someone on their team before, I was going to request that I could again.”
“I’ll put the request through, but if needed, you will have to focus on working on the floor again because we don’t have enough staff ready for patients in the ER,” Bea explained.
“Thanks,” Jem said as she turned towards the hallway leading to the ICU, “I will, don’t worry.”
——
Jem wasn’t sure what she was expecting in going to ICU room 014, but what she found there was unsurprising.
As they did when Eddie was shot, the entire crew and many non-firefighting family members, stood outside the room—and inside the room, which showed real growth—watching their friend lie in a bed attached to machines.
Jem paused her walking as she noticed the man in the bed to be Buck.
Jem’s presence was relatively quickly noted by the visitors there for Buck.
“Is everything okay?” A man asked Jem, seeing her reflection appear in the room’s glass window.
“Pardon?” Jem questioned before realising that the arrival of another nurse would make it seem like something had gone wrong, “oh, yes. I heard that one of the 118 was struck by lightning and I wanted to see who.”
“Oh,” the man, who Jem had now—miraculously, really— remembered to be the older man who tried to persuade Buck to leave the hospital, responded. “Have we met you before? Because you mentioned you came here for the 118.”
“Probably briefly, I helped Eddie Diaz when he was shot but you were injured yourself right? So you were probably in your own hospital room while I was on shift,” Jem explained.
“Ah, I see,” the man, Captain Nash, said, “I’m surprised you remembered that I was injured, over a year ago, despite never meeting you.”
“I’ve got exceptionally good memory, helps as a nurse,” Jem told him, “also, Buck informed me thoroughly about the event, I’m sorry it happened, it sounded horrible that someone could be so angry at first responders for saving people.”
“Of course he did,” Nash chuckles, “Well I recovered a while ago, it’s him that’s in the ICU.”
“As I said to him over a year ago about you and your crew, he’s tough.”
“Oh I know, he’s fought more than a lightning strike before, I just hope that he’ll fight as hard this time.”
Jem wanted to add something to their conversation but couldn’t muster up some words before Nash turned to face the firefighter again. She was stuck on what he’d said about Buck fighting worse than lightning. She knew firefighting was dangerous—they were going to emergencies to help save people while they were dying, danger is a given in a job as such—but she didn’t expect multiple people from one shift in one station to have multiple near-misses of death. What could be worse or more dangerous than getting hit by a lightning strike, causing damage to major organs?
She stayed, looking through the window, for a while longer before she left to use the rest of her break to get some rest.
——
Jem returned to room 014 on her next shift after she got permission to switch with one of her colleagues working on Evan Buckley—his full name, that she could’ve pieced-together the two names she’d heard him be called to make—assigned to help if there are complications with the next decided on steps in taking him from his medically induced coma.
The doctor took over most of the responsibilities and relayed messages to Buck’s family while Jem routinely checked on him, to give the doctor the information she collected.
Jem met many family members and 118 members during her shift.
The captain of the 118, Bobby Nash stayed around his employee’s room and the general vicinity of the hospital for the longest. Jem often found him sitting in one of the seats at the foot of Buck’s hospital bed, silently praying for the firefighter as he clutched a chain of wooden rosary beads.
Another member, who was called ‘Chimney’ by his friends, stood outside of the room for a long while before the same friends that called him Chimney pressed that he had to ‘pace himself’ and take a break.
One firefighter from the 118 looked over all the medical devices that were being used on her friend, and questioned Jem about his state several times as Jem came to check in. Jem quickly noticed that she was really intelligent and had extensive knowledge on medical procedures.
And then there was Eddie.
He and Jem only crossed paths so much as he had his son with him for a while and couldn’t visit the room that Buck was in.
Before Christopher arrived at the hospital however, Eddie had been practically glued to Buck’s side, his chair in front of one of the many machines monitoring his friend, until Jem was forced to tell him that he had to move for Buck’s safety.
“There’s no reason for you to remember me as it was a while ago and you were recovering from a serious near-fatality,” Jem started to say as Eddie sat down in one of the chairs at the foot of the bed—newly vacant because the 118 captain had been practically dragged out of the room by his daughter—and shifted himself closer to his ‘best friend’. “But I was the nurse who worked on you after you were shot.”
Okay- so, yes Jem realised she made a mistake in the lack of her carefulness in broaching the subject of his near death experience, but she didn’t know if there really was a more careful way to bring up someone’s brush with death.
“Oh,” Eddie said, his tone showing that he barely registered Jem’s words, “thank you.” He told her before focusing on Buck again.
“No that’s not what I meant- but, uh,” Jem took a deep breath before she started to explain, “he did the same as you are doing now. Staying for a long time, fixated on his state.”
“Oh,” Eddie repeated, turning his head to face Jem for the first time, “huh.”
“It’s not sustainable, you have to take a break,” Jem furthered.
“You say that as if I haven’t heard the same speech from everyone I know,” Eddie responded as he looked back at Buck.
“No, I know you have. Buck had too, but he didn’t listen either,” Jem laughed, “he was unbelievably stubborn.”
“Sounds like Buck,” Eddie smiled, running his hand along his face and through his hair, “but he did eventually, obviously.”
Subtly reminding Jem that he won’t stay forever, but that he wanted to for longer.
“Yeah, after your son was mentioned,” Jem said pointedly, “a slight guilt-trip on my part.”
“How do you know I have a son?” Eddie asked, growing concerned.
“I didn’t…Buck talked about Christopher and I made an assumption from there,” Jem reassured Eddie, her explanation was mostly true. She did hear about Chris and she did assume that he was a child but she thought they both shared him and was only given confirmation about the kid through her eavesdropping on their private conversation.
“Ah, of course,” Eddie replied, “that tracks.”
“Yeah we talked about a lot of things, you and Chris were definitely what he mentioned most frequently though,” Jem added, “oh and animal facts.”
Eddie didn’t say anything more, he just chuckled in reminiscence.
“But one thing I learned from talking to him back then was the importance of also checking in with the visitors of patients,” Jem explained.
“Oh, don’t worry I’m fine,” Eddie replied before Jem could ask.
“It would be a lot easier if you firefighters stopped denying that you have emotions.”
It was a very blunt exclamation but also very true.
“He said the same thing, didn't he?”
“As did your captain,” Jem told Eddie, “if you’re going to lie, you should improve your acting skills,” she said in faux remorse—overacting herself—shaking her head as she spoke, attempting—though met with unsuccess—to try and shift the mood. “Seriously, you need to give yourself a break and time to work through your feelings on this situation.”
She wasn’t reaching him, Eddie Diaz was a very emotionally constipated individual.
“Do something else, see your son, you have to get yourself to a state so that he can count on you when he wakes up.”
“If he wakes up?”
For a moment it seemed as though the depressing question took shape and cast a shadow across the room. As everything, for a moment, seemed darker.
“He will.”
Jem knew very well that she couldn’t promise anything, so did Eddie. But sometimes hope is enough.
Jem watched as Eddie pulled out his phone to check a notification.
“Carla texted me, she said she’ll bring Chris here,” Eddie read out, “I should go wait at the front for him.”
Jem waved him off, “ See you Eddie.”
——
Jem was helping another patient while they took Buck off of life support and everything seemed to go forward from there.
A few days after he took a breath by himself, he woke up. Surrounded by his family, in a room filled with get well balloons picked up from the various gift shops in the hospital.
Buck was kept in the hospital for an additional 8 days after getting transferred out of the ICU, before he was able to go home.
He remembered Jem when he first saw her as she completed a routine checkup.
Buck was visited by many members of the 118 throughout his stay, his sister came as often as she could, his captain saw him multiple times and Eddie, of course, came by seven out of the eight days with Christopher.
On his ninth day in his new room, Jem found herself once again giving discharge papers to Eddie as he arrived to take Buck home.
Jem never hated the one 118, what she did dislike though, was the undeniable feelings in the air between the firefighters being ignored.
Because no, she was not crazy—which she would like to make very clear in case her girlfriend found out about the fact that they had still not gotten together, and started to make fun of her without seeing them just look at each other—‘Buck and Eddie’ were very, painfully obviously more than friends.
And now that they were both single—confirmed by Buck when Jem had asked a question that was entirely unrelated to Eddie—Jem knew that it was truly only a matter of time.