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When Buck woke up in the hospital, he didn't remember much at first. His mind was hazy, like his brain had turned to molasses to slow every thought. His body didn't really feel like his, all fuzzy like he wasn't truly connected to it. But it didn't take long for the pain to set in, even if it was muted by whatever painkillers that they had him on.
And that's when it sunk in. Memories flashed through his mind at a dizzying speed. Being on the truck, the explosion. Pain so intense it was blinding, almost completely whiting out the world around him. His leg-
"Evan?"
Buck's head turned towards the voice, eyelids a little heavy as he met the worried gaze of his older sister. "Mads?" His voice was raspy, didn't sound fully like his own.
Maddie's eyes were wet as she reached up, smoothing his hair back in a soft comforting gesture. Buck couldn't help but lean into it, just like he had as a kid when he'd feel sick and Maddie would push his hair back and check his forehead for a fever.
"You seem a little more with it this time," she said, eyes searching his face like she was double checking that was true. This time? "You've been in and out a little bit since the surgery."
"Surgery?" Buck echoed, still trying to think through the fog in his head. It was getting a little easier with each moment. Of course he'd had surgery—his leg had been crushed by a ladder truck, after all. He wondered what they had done to it. Maybe he'd just needed something to support the bone as it healed.
Something flickered across Maddie's face, an expression that made Buck nervous. There was a sorrow there, but also some kind of apprehension that he couldn't make sense of. She dropped his gaze, like there was something she didn't want to tell him.
"Maddie—"
Before he could actually ask anything, the door of his hospital room opened, and Bobby was walking in with two cups of coffee. Not shitty hospital coffee, it looked like he had gone to the shop down the street. Bobby's face brightened the moment he laid eyes on Buck, propped up slightly in his hospital bed with his eyes open.
"Hey, Buck. Nice to see you awake," Bobby greeted in that soft paternal tone that made something in Buck's chest ease, like there was nothing that Bobby couldn't fix. Bobby handed Maddie one of the coffees and stood beside her chair next to Buck's bed.
Maddie wrapped both hands around the coffee, but Buck didn't miss the way she still wouldn't meet his eyes. But Bobby grabbed his attention again before he could linger on the thought.
"How are you feeling?"
"Out of it, kind of," Buck admitted. "They must have me on the good stuff. There's still-" His gaze finally flicked to his leg as he got ready to mention the pain that he could feel, even if only distantly. But the words died in his throat.
His legs were under the white hospital blanket that covered him from the chest down, but something was visibly wrong. His right leg looked normal, he could visually trace the outline from his thigh to his knee to his calf and all the way down to his foot. But his left leg… His eyes darted to the top of his thigh and traced down, like if he started over it could change what he saw. But it didn't.
A little under his left knee, it just… stopped. There seemed to be nothing under the blanket, and it just lay over the hospital bed, flat and uninterrupted. Distantly, Buck could hear the beeping of his heart monitor pick up as he tried to force his brain to work, to make sense of what he was seeing.
"Evan?" Maddie tried to get his attention, voice shaky with the start of tears.
Maybe he was dreaming. But no, he was in pain. People couldn't feel things like pain in dreams. Maybe he was hallucinating? He had to be hallucinating. His leg wasn't gone. No way.
"Buck." Bobby's voice was firm but not unkind in a way that finally drew Buck's attention, an instinct from the last few years of working with Bobby as his captain. If Bobby wanted his attention, it was usually important.
When Buck looked up at Bobby, still lost in his thoughts and trying to make sense of what he'd just seen, cold dread settled fully in his stomach. Bobby was looking at him with something almost like pity, and a sadness that would only make sense if… if this was real. If Buck's leg really was—
"You're gonna be okay, kid," Bobby said, gentle but steady as he reached out to grab Buck's shoulder in a comforting squeeze. Buck's heart monitor was picking up even more, his mind reeling as he tried to make sense of this.
Okay? How could he be okay? He was quite literally missing a piece of himself.
"Why—" he started, his voice croaky and breaking off. Buck cleared his throat and tried again. "My leg, it's gone."
He probably sounded like an idiot, stating the obvious like that. But Buck wasn't exactly operating at his normal speed considering the painkillers and now the shock in his system. Everything felt even less real than it had when he first woke up.
"They had to." As she spoke, Maddie reached out and grabbed Buck's shaking hand with her own, gently wrapping her hand around his and giving in a squeeze. "They had no choice, it was too badly crushed."
Buck's free hand moved to the edge of his blanket, and he swung it off to the side before either of them could stop him. He stared at where his leg ended, wrapped in bandages. He felt like he couldn't breathe.
By the time a doctor and nurse came in a few minutes later, Buck was fully lost in a panic attack, heart pounding so hard that he couldn't hear the voices of anyone around him. His chest felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with pain, and everything to do with blinding panic. Maddie's hand had his in a death grip when he tried to tug away, so instead his free hand went to try and pull the bandages away, as if that would somehow change anything.
The doctor grabbed that hand, and said something that couldn't penetrate the fog in Buck's brain. His eyes darted around the room, feeling trapped like he was pinned under the truck again. Buck's eyes landed on the nurse just in time to see her finish pushing the contents of a syringe into his IV line.
It didn't take long for him to slip back into a peaceful oblivion.