Chapter Text
Jack had lost his ability to feel self conscious and embarrassed around the same time as he lost his wife. Something broke in him that day and he lost the ability to give a shit what others thought of him. Probably the only good thing that came out of that.
He felt like he should feel self conscious when he walked into the skateboard shop at eleven am on a random Wednesday, fresh from his therapy appointment. His homework for the week was to reclaim something from his childhood. He wasn’t sure why he immediately thought of skateboarding, but it was the first thing that popped into his mind as soon as his therapist mentioned it.
It wasn’t that he had been some expert, but it had been something he’d been doing with his ragtag group of friends whenever he couldn’t stand being at home. Which was often. He had stopped sometime during high school and he couldn’t really remember why.
Unsurprising, the store was completely empty, apart from a bored looking store clerk who was scrolling on her phone behind the register. When the door chimed, she flinched and hurried to put away her phone, immediately plastering on a customer service smile.
“Hey, can I help you?” She said as she got up and started making her way towards him. This was probably the most excitement she’d had all day.
“Yes,” Jack cleared his throat. “I’m looking to get back into skateboarding. I haven’t stood on a board in about thirty-five years. And I still had two legs back then.”
He was wearing shorts and his prosthetic wasn’t exactly hidden. He wasn’t sure what reaction he expected, but he didn’t expect the clerk to absolutely light up, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
“Oh man, that’s fantastic,” She said with a grin. “We’ll get you all kitted out, get you back on that board. And don’t worry about the leg thing, have you heard about Oscar Loreto Jr?”
And that was that. They spent almost two hours together and she helped Jack pick out what he needed. She was a damned good saleswoman and he walked out of the store having spent about twice as much money as he had intended. But he was an attending doctor, his wallet could handle it.
Excitement rippled through him as he walked, holding onto his newly purchased items. He was going skateboarding. It was a lovely day, the sun was shining, he had a few days off from work and Robby did too. Oh, he couldn’t wait to tell Robby about this. Jack smiled to himself and he felt happy. Properly happy, for the first time in god only knew how long. Probably since he lost his wife.
He was acing his therapy homework.
The skatepark was more or less empty. A few teens smoking and lazily rolling around were there, probably ditching school. They didn’t even acknowledge him as he plopped his skateboard down and sat down on a bench. He spent a few minutes looking up videos of people skateboarding with prosthetic legs and watching their tutorials. It didn’t seem that hard.
Jack pocketed his phone and stood up, grasping his helmet. As a kid, he’d never used a helmet and rolled his eyes whenever someone did. But as an ED doctor, he’d seen the aftermath of skateboarding accidents where the patient wasn’t wearing a helmet. So he was going to wear a helmet.
He could feel the teens watching him as he carefully stepped on the board. Even though it had been over three decades since he last did it, the muscle memory was there. It took a while to adjust to the prosthetic. But eventually he got into it.
He spent the next hour just skating around, getting familiar with the board again. It was all coming back to him. What a lovely way to spend the afternoon. At some point, the teens left and he was left alone in the park.
Then, disaster. He was just lazily rolling around when suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something large and brown charge towards him. He barely had time to register what was happening before the dog charged right into him, knocking him off balance.
It felt like the fall went by in slow motion. He landed unfortunately and he could feel his leg snap as his knee twisted. Pain shot through him and he cursed loudly as he fell onto the hard concrete.
Jack’s head was spinning and he had the wind knocked out of him. He forced himself to take a deep breath and take stock of the situation. With a groan, he pushed himself up on his elbows. His knee was clearly dislocated and while there was no obvious deformity of his lower leg, the pain told him that it was most likely broken. At least his prosthetic seemed intact.
“Oh my god, I am so sorry!”
Jack looked up as an older couple came hurrying towards him. The man caught the dog by its collar. It was wagging its tail and seemed completely unbothered. At least it hadn’t been injured in the collision.
“He never runs away,” The woman said as she looked down at him.
“Well, he did today,” Jack pointed out, grimacing at the pulsing pain in his leg.
“I’m going to call 911,” The man said. “You just stay down, sir.”
“I don’t really have a choice,” Jack muttered. “You don’t have to call an ambulance, I’ll call a friend to pick me up.”
“We’ll pay for it, of course,” The woman assured him.
That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the closest hospital was PTMC and Jack could think of about a million things he’d rather do than be brought to his own damn ED on a stretcher after a fucking skateboarding accident.
God was punishing him. He must have done something heinous. Was it the frequent sodomy? Jack didn’t know what it was, but he was being punished for something. He felt heat crawl up his cheeks as the sounds of the sirens grew closer. Apparently he had slammed into the concrete so hard that it rebooted his ability to feel embarrassed.
His heart sank as the PTMC ambulance turned around the corner and carefully drove into the park. Jack closed his eyes and tipped his head back, silently praying that it wasn’t one of the paramedics he knew. But no such luck, as the ambulance came to a stop and Crowe jumped out of the passenger seat. When she spotted him, her face split into a wide grin, looking like the cat that got the canary.
“Well, well,” She grinned and grouched beside him. “What have we here?”
The couple looked at each other, probably shocked at the way the paramedic spoke to him. They couldn’t know that they knew each other.
“Crowe, I will pay you to take me to Presby,” Jack pleaded. “Or West Penn. Please. Whatever you want.”
“No can do, bossman,” Crowe said as she looked at his leg. Stars exploded in front of Jack’s eyes as she reached out to touch it, the pain making him feel sick. “This needs a tier one trauma center.”