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Tony receives the call at exactly 5:46 AM on Friday morning. A receptionist's voice is on the other end. She sounds young, vaguely bored. Says they'll be flying Rhodey (Mr. Rhodes, she says, all prim and proper, and he hates it, hates how foreign it sounds on her tongue) back tomorrow. Tony hangs up without a word—and really, what is there to say? He's straddling a fine line between anxiety and joy and he doesn't think he has any polite words to spare.
He spends the hours of 12 PM to 5 PM tinkering with throwaway pieces of machinery and writing long, passionate letters to Columbia Med that will never be sent detailing his anger and disappointment that it took a week—an entire week!—to treat Rhodey and get him back home. It's pitch dark when he startles awake again, having passed out face-down on a piece of crumpled paper spattered with sharp, jagged letters, four pencils poking at his face and hair. Stupid. This was all so stupid. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he certainly doesn't need Jarvis to remind him.
It's distraction, all of it. A way to keep his stunted brain from processing how devastated and nervous and sad he is, because Rhodey, good old Rhodey, his friend, his partner-in-crime, his... well, he can't say that, not now, not after all of this. His Rhodey is hurt, and it's all his fucking fault. God knows if he'll ever walk again, ever fly, ever live like he used to, and all because Tony just doesn't know when to stop.
A few hours later, he shoves a palmful of fat blue pills into his mouth and falls half-conscious onto his bed. He leaves Black Sabbath playing on the radio. Rhodey always loved them, loved the thick, smoky melodies. Tony doesn't particularly care for them, but he figures maybe it's time to stop caring about himself and just let it be.
"Mr. Stark."
Tony rolls over and groans like a wounded hog, rubbing a hand over his throbbing forehead. It's a member of his staff, and older man with a rather unsightly face.
"Mr. Stark," he says again, more forceful this time.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm up. What?"
"Mr. Rhodes is here."
Tony feels his heart stutter, and his throat suddenly closes up. He was supposed to pick Rhodey up. He was going to go and apologize, make a big show of it. He'd spent the whole evening planning it out before he'd chocked his body full of sleeping pills.
"I was—why did you... why did you get him? Why didn't you wake me up?"
"I tried. You wouldn't move. Mr. Rhodes called for you, so I sent a car."
Rhodey had called for him. For him. The sinking weight of guilt in his belly grows heavier, and he wishes he could snap his fingers and reverse the past... seven years or so.
"Where is he? Is he awake?"
"He's in the loft."
Tony doesn't think he's ever run faster in his life.
When he steps into the quiet living area, he feels his lips part softly on a silent gasp. Rhodey is in a wheelchair, looking pallid and sickly. But he's alive and smiling and alive alive alive—
He walks nervously over, desperately wracking his brain for something kind to say, something that won't make him sound like more of an ass than usual.
"You, uh, you look... good. Nice... shirt."
Idiot.
"You know, Tony," Rhodey starts, his eyes crinkling and cheeks creasing with a grand smile that Tony swears is magic, "you just don't know when to shut the hell up." His chest shakes with a gentle, secret laugh, and suddenly a week's worth of hard feelings melt away.
Tony bends down and wraps his arms around Rhodey's shoulders, nuzzling into his neck. He smells like a hospital, like pills and medication and stuffy rooms. Rhodey responds in kind, his limbs a bit shaky but firm nonetheless. He feels Tony's tears hot and wet through his gown, can hear his muffled sobs.
"I'm so sorry."