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In the red-blue lighting of a parking lot filled with emergency vehicles, Eddie watches Buck’s lips stretch out into a smile, and he thinks, with unfamiliar surety, that he made the right choice.
//
Abuela opens the door before he can even knock. It’s still strange, coming back to this house that he’s supposed to call home, now. He has to use the navigator to help him get here, not miss any of the turns that he hasn’t had time to memorize, yet. But Abuela is here, today, and Chris, and so it doesn’t matter to him where they are as long as it’s not in Texas.
Dutifully, he receives a kiss on the cheek before taking his shoes off.
“Mi cielo,” Abuela coos, like he’s still just five years old stomping through the yard to her doorstep. “How was your day?”
Eddie was prepared to lie. To her, his day would be fine either way. Now he realizes, the tension in his shoulders softening, just a tiny bit, that he doesn’t have to tell her anything other than the truth.
“It was good,” he says. He goes through the motions that will one day, hopefully, turn mechanic: the keys in the bowl on his right, put the bag on the floor, down the corridor to the door on the left behind which Chris is already asleep, magic courtesy of the woman who has raised three generations of children.
Through the gap, he watches his little chest rise and fall, his nose scrunched up as he snuffles. That is familiar: despair, light today, but not always, squeezing on his lungs. He’s missed many bedtimes, and he will miss many more.
Quietly, he moves to the kitchen, following the sound of his Abuela’s melodic humming. She smiles when she sees him come in, hands busy fixing a plate. Eddie could cry - it’s pozole. She motions for him to sit at the table.
“Chris said I have to make it,” she explains, bringing the bowl to him. “He loves his daddy. Didn’t want to go to sleep until I promised you’d be happy if he had a good night’s rest.”
“Gracias,” Eddie says, putting his palm to the ceramic to feel its heat. He could never thank her enough, he thinks, even just for existing. He tries the pozole instead, hopes that the gratitude shows on his face. And she does watch him intently.
Softly, she prods, “So? Saved any lives today?”
The smile breaks out before he can settle it. He can’t help it. It makes him a little proud, a little happy, thinking that he can help people somehow, that now he does.
“Yeah.” He can see - the doors closing behind them. White light. Blue latex splashed with blood. It feels like his biggest accomplishment of today, two minutes he spent back in that ambulance forcing his hands not to shake. But a story about a grenade is not what she needs to hear from him. “Guy fell on an air pump, we had to deflate him.”
“Dios mío!” she gasps, but her eyes are bright. “Was he fine?”
“Fine enough when they drove him off,” he shrugs. He thinks the guy will be okay, but it’s better to not try and guess. “Air was sure coming out.”
She nods wistfully. He can see her choosing which question to ram him next with.
“And are your coworkers nice?”
Nice. It’s nice that she cares about him getting along, he guesses. But — they are actually nice, too.
Bobby, his eyes creasing at the corners as he pat him on the shoulder. Hen, laughing loudly, infectiously. Chimney and his quick remarks. Buck.
Eddie was on a half-shift his first day. Twelve hours instead of twenty-four like everyone else. Take it easy, first. Don’t overdo it.
Buck sat with him in a dressing room while he was changing to head home. There was promise of dinner upstairs - he sat with Eddie, chatting him up about all the little intricacies of their station that Eddie just had to learn. His leg bounced wildly, something he was too passionate to notice. Eddie, on some weird instinct, almost reached out to squeeze his knee. He picked up his laces instead. He was not a touchy person.
It felt like coming off being hit in the sternum: his lungs expanding, his chest full of ache, but dulling. There was a chance that Eddie was wrong, that what he saw in Buck when he faltered at hurting Chimney, instead of Eddie, with his bared teeth and raised hackles, was not something that could be coaxed out with patience and trust. It paid off to believe it could.
For a split second, the pull for movement, the desperate panicked thing thumping always late, always missing, always gone through his blood eased into something he could breathe through. Buck looked so eager then to spend time together it didn’t feel like a waste.
“So, see you next shift?” he asked, watching Eddie check his bag. He did need to get going.
“Huh?” Eddie looked up. Buck, still in his uniform, still on duty, looked back at him, smile tilted just a little wrong. Or maybe not. Eddie barely knew the guy, and most of the shift Buck spent decidedly not in a happy mood. Still, it felt off. “Of course,” he said. “Why?”
Buck shrugged, like he didn’t know, himself. “Just something to say.” Then he sprang to his feet. “Come on, I want some of Bobby’s pasta and I can hear the last of it getting scraped. Oh,” he pointed in Eddie’s face. “That’s another thing. We need to unionize, man. Maybe we’ll stand a chance against Hen and Chimney if we pair up next time.”
Abuela clears her throat.
“They are nice.” Eddie offers. It’s as much as he can say, now.
///
Shannon watches him from the bed as he gets dressed. Jeans, henley, socks. Methodical. She’s in his old gray T-shirt he thinks he might’ve bought right when Chris got born, one leg peeking from under the covers. He can see sleep in her eyes.
“Don’t know how you do it,” she yawns. Her voice is almost all gravel, always is when she’s barely awake. “Get out of bed God knows when. I think I’d quit just because of that.”
“Well,” Eddie starts, pulls his bag out of the closet. “You get used to it.”
And it is a matter of habit, he thinks. It’s foggy, but he remembers snippets of being fourteen and complaining to Sophia and Adriana about being woken up early even on weekdays. He’s just learnt to accept it at some point along the way.
His phone starts vibrating on the bed table - one, two times, and then it’s a violent onslaught of messages Eddie knows means that everyone’s getting ready for shift.
“Pass the phone, please,” he asks Shannon.
“And you were grumpy about Chris’ school chat,” she laughs, gaze falling onto the lighted up screen as she picks up the phone. It keeps buzzing. ““Buck 118” is sending you a million messages, too.”
He grabs the phone from her. There are, true, many messages from Buck, separate from the group chat. He opens them first.
“gm eddie 😴🥱😶”
“bobby greenlit coffe run”
“what r we feeling today”
“classics or adventure 🧗🏼”
“hope you see this before i get to the coffee sjop cause I’m close”
Eddie’s thumb hovers over the call button - but he remembers suddenly that he’s not alone, turns to Shannon. Bathed in the harsh lamp light, she watches him, a curious look on her face.
They’ve seen each other before, she and Buck, at the station when she got fed up with the avoiding and the not talking and came to Eddie. But they haven’t spoken. And Eddie is trying to trust Shannon and let her in, but he doesn’t know how to share this with her. It’s fair of her to want Christopher, but maybe he doesn’t owe her them, the 118, yet.
Quick, he shoots back, “Dealer’s choice”, and pockets the phone. Buck introduced him to all of the “classics” he now likes, and even when he misses and orders something hideous on a whim, it’s still fun, to ostentatiously make a face, to tease Buck, to pass the coffee to Hen and Chim so the council can rate the concoction. So he trusts Buck to handle it for him.
“You have friends there,” Shannon says. There is a wrinkle between her brows that might be confusion or playing puzzle with his state of life.
“I mean, I knew that,” she says, swiping her matted bangs to the side. It sounds like she’s convincing herself and not Eddie. “And Chris keeps saying…But–you were smiling, just now.” He must not be, anymore. He sure can’t feel it. “It’s a nice smile.”
//
He has Christopher in his arms.
The worst, most horrifying minute of his life, when he thought that the next breath he takes might just well be the last one, because the body can’t function without a heart. And now he’s got Christopher in his arms, safe. It’s all he can focus on, for a moment. The weight of his small, bony form. Making sure that he’s not in danger.
Because Eddie walked around not knowing, not feeling that his child needed help. He checks Chris’ breathing again.
“Hey,” Hen’s voice comes, and it’s a physical thing, a gentle touch to his shoulder. She’s been here with them for a while. That spare set of hands looking Christopher over with him. Still, it startles Eddie when she squats down right next to him, her elbow bumping his. She caresses Christopher’s curls away from his forehead, soft, and when his eyes droop and his head drifts after her touch, sending Eddie’s pulse running, Chris passing out, she catches his gaze, steady.
“He’s tired,” she explains, and Chris sighs like he’s tucked into a couch arm after a long evening movie, when Eddie needs to carry him to his bed. Eddie feels the knot in his chest slam against his back, heavy, as it uncoils. Of course. “But he’s fine. He’s okay. You should take him home.”
She looks sure. In the set of her mouth, the slope of her brows. Eddie doesn’t believe in many things, but he finds that it’s instinct, to hear the truth in Hen’s words, to trust.
He looks back at Chris, his head tilted to watch Eddie through half-lidded eyes with hesitancy. Eddie is scared - but Chris has been scared for hours. He doesn’t deserve to be, anymore. Not when he doesn’t have to. Sure not because of Eddie.
“Okay,” he agrees. “Okay, yeah.”
Hen nods at him, a little proud smile tucked into the corner of her mouth. “Let’s find Bobby and figure out how to get you out.”
From the little corner he’d carved out on a little bench in between the tents, Eddie emerges out. The world is bigger than Chris, when he lets it be. And it slams back into Eddie with a ferocity.
No matter how hard he looks, in a sea of faces surrounding them, he cannot see Buck.
“Is Buck with Bobby?” Chris asks, suddenly urgent, because he’s been wanting to get to Buck from the second he heard the gasps, saw his body hit the ground from over Eddie’s shoulder. He saved me.
And Hen came to them, so that means she could leave Buck. But Eddie can’t see him, no matter how hard he looks.
He remembers the little puddles of blood on Athena’s porch. Buck left for the hospital, and it was still there, smeared by where his knee dipped into it when he was coming down. Carried further in the imprint of Maddie’s shoes. She’d run over so fast. Eddie, trained to react to immediate danger, a soldier, a combat medic, a firefighter, was a beat too late. There was no place for his hands on Buck’s body.
He wonders if he’s going to find Buck by a bloody trail, now.
“Maybe, I’m not sure,” Hen says. She’s looking at Chris, but her hand finds Eddie’s knee and squeezes tight. “We will ask about Buck, too.”
They find Bobby at the center of camp, talking to another captain. Phone in hand, he keeps sneaking glances at it.
Bobby halts the conversation as soon as he notices them approaching. Eddie meets his eyes over the heads of people. The shadows in his irises look like moving figures. Past that, wonder. He holds Christopher a little tighter.
“All fine?” Bobby asks, as soon as they’re in hearing range. Eddie nods. It’s turn to ask about Buck, who’s not here, next to Bobby, but Bobby looks only slightly shaken, not like he’s been dealt the news that Buck’s life is hanging on a thin thread, so Eddie just needs to find his voice and say the question out loud.
“Where’s Buck?” Chris asks, of course. “Is he okay?”
Eddie knows - he has been inside - that the hospital is filling rapidly. Empty halls now full of desperate, hurt people. If Buck’s there, getting help, he and Chris might not get to him. He needs to explain that to Chris.
“Buck is fine,” Bobby answers kindly, looking at all of them: Chris, Eddie, Hen. “Chimney is taking him home.”
It takes a moment for Eddie to understand. A beat too late again, he guesses. Between the moment Buck hit the ground and now, it didn’t feel like much time or reason for him to just slip away. But maybe he should’ve counted from when Buck was still standing, pale, hands shaking around the frame of Chris’ glasses.
It’s a harder thing to explain to his child: I think, buddy, the person you need right now is actually too scared to see you.
//
The officer shakes the phone in front of him.
“Your call?” he clarifies, side-eyeing Eddie.
Eddie, as respectfully and not pissed as possible, grabs the damned thing.
He knows who he wants to call. A question he has been asking since he’s been old enough to understand, watching movies and hearing “one call”. Who could he trust to see him, hear him without judgement? It’s a person he can’t trust to show up, right now.
He calls Lena.
//
“Oh, ask Buck if he has any plans,” Abuela says, enthusiastic, over the sound of running water. “Bribe him with my molletes.”
It’s a nice morning. Short, calm shift. Almost everyone’s gone already, but Buck’s still harassing Bobby for the casserole recipe in his office, and Chim’s still there, rotating countless photos of strollers in Eddie’s face.
“No, I know,” he bats, when Eddie reminds him that he’s missed this phase of caring for Christopher. His opinions on strollers are nonexistent. “But Hen’ll kill me if I show her one more, and Maddie will kill me if we don’t pick one today, and Buck will need a week of research to help me with this. You just need to look, here, okay, this one has the best reviews but there’s not much of them and this one’s the most popular one, but I think–”
Abuela saves him by calling. Eddie knows from the moment he sees her name that she wants to confirm lunch plans, as if Chris wasn’t bouncing off the walls all week talking about visiting his Bisabuela. He doesn’t expect her to invite Buck. They know each other, and they like each other, but they meet over Chris or Eddie or broken porches Eddie needs help to fix, on the last occasion. The porch, actually, might be what pushed them into a more free territory, if he had to guess. Abuela did hoard Buck into the house with them for the rest of the day. Loaded him with food and explained, in intimate detail, the plot of the book she was reading. Buck concocted a list of his favourite documentaries for her while Eddie was fixing the sink. They did start together, but then Abuela just–stole him. Chris got a kick out of Eddie’s put-upon indignation.
“I don’t know,” Eddie muses. “Should I invite my own competition?”
“Oh, please. You invite him yourself or I’ll call him. Then I will be your competition,” she laughs.
“You have Buck’s number?” Eddie turns away from Chim. He’s been watching Eddie, no pretences of privacy, and now he’s doing the eyebrow raise thing Eddie’d rather ignore.
“Of course I do, he is your best friend,” Abuela says, easy and nonchalant.
Through the glass panels Eddie is now facing, he watches Buck skip the steps on his way down, twirling a paper slip in his fingers. He smiles when he meets Eddie’s gaze, full blown, and Eddie has been waiting for him to get back by his side even though they weren’t planning to spend the day together. Just to walk out together, shoulders brushing, and get a proper goodbye to hold onto til the next shift. He wouldn’t be able to drive off without that.
Best friends were something Sophia and Adriana got, when they were growing up. Girls that’d come over after school, whose names their mother, Abuela, and even father, on occasion, knew. They’d be brought up in weekend and holidays plans, and they’d stay overnight whispering in the dark, and they’d know his sisters better than Eddie did, most times. Arms linked, walking together wherever one led the other.
Eddie watched them through it. He had friends, but the boy friendships - right - were different. He had Shannon - and they had kissed in the back of a bus one night, before her stop came up, and so they weren’t friends, just like everyone said whenever they saw them together.
He watches Buck dive into the room and “hey” Chimney but look at Eddie, at Eddie, at Eddie, and thinks, with a thrill, that he is Eddie’s best friend. Arms linked, and all.
“Abuela’s asking her new grandson to lunch,” he announces, not even trying to pretend bitter. It’s fun to see the blush spread across Buck’s face.
“A new grandson,” Chimney intones, and yelps when Buck swats at him. “What! I’m just repeating the words Eddie’s putting out!”
“You should be with my pregnant sister right now.”
“Are you going to answer that?” Eddie asks, feeling scandalously mischievous about the whole thing. He’s twelve years old again. “There are molletes, so you know the stakes.”
In a manner that Eddie should have predicted, Buck, instead of immediately agreeing, half-whispers to him, visibly nervous: “Is she serious?”
Eddie owes this minute of joy to Buck. He doesn’t want it to go unshared.
“He’s coming with us,” he tells Abuela. He looks at Buck. “We’ll get him ready and go pick up Chris, okay? Love you.”
“Good job,” she laughs. And, before she hangs up on him, “I love you. Don’t be long!”
Buck, close to a fish in expression, stands staring at Eddie. It’s astounding, the amount of doubt he still has in him when it comes to Eddie. If Eddie knew what it’d take, he would coax out all of it, and at once. Now he makes do with small, constant measures.
“Okay, let’s move, Buck. We’re on a clock,” he urges. Hand on his shoulder, he pushes Buck down onto a bench. The muscles shift under his palm, skin warm through the fabric of his T-shirt, tight. Buck has been bulking up lately.
“A new grandson,” Chimney repeats, from where Eddie’s forgotten about him for a moment.
Eddie grabs Buck’s bag and drops it in his lap.
“You - check your bag. You,” he turns to Chim. “Pick the first stroller and go see your wife.”
That seems to do the trick of rousing Buck from staring at Eddie. He whips his head at Chimney. “Wait. You’re picking a stroller?”
“I would not necessarily say that right now.”
Eddie ignores the glare. It’s rather Chimney’s own fault for being persistent.
“You didn’t tell me! Can I see?”
“I think the plans Eddie just made for you don’t really correlate with that, Buck. Very sorry.”
Eddie pauses. Buck seems frustrated and not upset. Eddie, who’s watched him through years of personal and natural disasters alike, by his side, always assumes now that he knows all his expressions enough to be fluent. But he did make the plans without really asking, and brought Abuela into it - Buck wouldn’t say no even if he wanted to.
“Are you actually okay with coming to lunch with us?”
Buck whips back to Eddie. For a second, it’s only blue - all that Eddie can see when Buck looks at him head on. Then his eyes are a part of an earnest expression moving with every nod.
“Of course, Eddie. As long as you want me.”
“Okay,” Chimney says, making the break for it.
//
Red is the wrong colour. Pain is the wrong feeling. Eddie sees and feels both, looking at Buck’s shaking face over him. Covered in blood.
From what he knows - panic, all around. And Buck looks so scared.
“Are you hurt?”
He gets it out. He needs to know. Buck’s answer is silent, fading in the dark.