Chapter Text
Dying. Holden Ford was dying. There was no other reasonable explanation for what he was feeling. He sprinted out of the room he was in as soon as he managed to get out of Ed Kemper's hug, and he felt like his heart was going to explode. Everything in his body felt wrong, he was definitely dying. His heart was beating too fast in his chest, he was having a heart attack, he was sure of it. He couldn't breathe, he gasped and oxygen didn’t seem to be able to reach his lungs. And last but not least, as a final warning, a way for his body to say "I give up": his legs gave out from under him. He only had the time to hold onto a bar on the wall before completely falling over.
He felt like he wasn't in control of his body anymore, like his soul was floating above him and he was doomed to just helplessly watch whatever was happening.
Then a nurse saw him crumpled on the ground and asked him what happened, but he couldn't put words together into coherent sentences. He could hear her, but her questions couldn't register into his brain. Oh God, he really was dying, wasn't he? She asked more questions and he just answered "I don't know" in between gasps and wheezes. He felt a hand checking his pulse, and he would've flinched if he had any energy left to do it. All of his’ was being spent on thinking he was suffocating.
"I'm dying" he said with what little strength he could muster.
"You aren't dying, you're in a hospital" the nurse tranquilized while calling for help, which would've been good if he could actually understand her.
Suddenly even the weight of his own head felt like too much, and he lay on the ground, something that would've disgusted him if he was in his right mind.
His vision was tunneling and there was a ringing in his ears. He couldn't hear his surroundings anymore, just the voices of people he'd disappointed over time. Bill saying his behavior wasn't sustainable; Wendy telling him his insights weren't the precious things he thought they were; the tickling principal accusing him of being paranoid; Ed Kemper's voice, asking if they were friends. That one was the worst, because the thought of Ed made him think of the hug and he felt so trapped and disgusted that he could pass out.
Great, so apparently he was dying and he managed to piss off everyone he currently cared about. And he also managed to make Ed Kemper think they were on hugging terms.
He felt hands trying to lift him up and immediately tried to break free, the all-encompassing panic he was feeling didn’t allow him to understand that they were nurses trying to help. His only thought was 'I have to get away'.
Despite his struggles, the hospital staff managed to lift Holden up to a gurney. He saw the ceiling rushing above him and heard voices around him.
"We need something to calm him down!" One of the nurses shouted, and after a moment he felt a sting in his arm and a mask being put on his face.
After what felt like hours of the horrifying feeling of dying, Holden welcomed unconsciousness as a blessing, and the world around him went dark.
_____
*1 hour and 9 minutes later*
Holden's eyes slowly opened up, and he couldn't remember when he fell asleep. Where was he? He looked around, trying to get his bearings. Why was he in the hospital?
And then, everything came back to him: the OPR, breaking up, visiting Kemper, the *hug*. Suddenly he heard a frantic beeping from the machines he was hooked to, and he couldn't breathe.
He started gasping and trying to get up, he just had to run, to get away, and then it would all be left behind. Three nurses appeared by his side in seconds, asking him to calm down and trying to keep him in bed. Holden thrashed and kicked and almost hit all of the nurses multiple times. They had to press a button, and suddenly the room was filled with more people and someone was putting something in his IV.
That managed to subdue the fight he
had in him, and they were able to put him back in bed. Holden felt confused and utterly helpless as his consciousness left him once more.
_____
*2 hours and 17 minutes later*
Holden's eyes opened up once again. His skin felt sticky with sweat as he took in his surroundings, and his limbs felt heavy as lead. He remembered he was in the hospital, though the details still felt a bit fuzzy.
His whole body was hurting now that the adrenaline had worn off, he could feel that he was wearing a hospital gown, and his eyes were struggling to focus. He tried lifting his hands to rub them and realized that he couldn't. Why couldn't he?
Holden lifted his head and saw that his arms were tied up to the bed. He was trapped, stuck, helpless. He felt like screaming for help as he struggled to rid himself of the restraints. He couldn't breathe and his eyes darted frantically around the room searching for help, for an exit.
Some nurses heard the struggle and were quickly by his side, checking his vitals and adjusting the medication.
"Agent Ford, you need to calm down, you're going to hurt yourself."
And he was trying to calm down, he really was, but he couldn't understand why he was tied up. What had he done wrong? He wasn't a criminal, he wasn't dangerous. He wasn't like the people he interviewed, was he?
It didn't matter. None of it did anyway. He looked around the room and couldn't see any familiar faces. No one there caring for him, worrying about him. He felt a suffocating loneliness as dark edges appeared on his sight, and he welcomed the embrace of unconsciousness like a long-lost friend. His only friend at that moment.
_____
*37 minutes later*
This time, when he woke up, Holden remembered what happened before he passed out and hoped that the last few hours had only been a horrible nightmare. However, he knew that wasn't the case when he opened his eyes and saw the restraints still keeping him bound to the bed.
Now he was able to register that his legs were also tied to the bed and he just couldn't understand why. As he was trying to come up with an answer, his exhausted and heavily medicated brain supplied him with the worst one possible: what if Kemper was involved? What if he knew someone from this hospital? What if he was somewhere watching him? What if he was waiting for the perfect moment to kill a completely immobilized Holden?
The agent still couldn't understand why Ed hugged him instead of killing him. Maybe he just wanted him to have the illusion that he managed to escape. Holden knew from personal experience now that Kemper knew how to make someone feel trapped when he wanted to.
Oh God, so that was it, he was going to die. He didn't have his gun, or anything as a matter-of-fact, to defend himself with. He didn't tell anyone he was here and they probably weren't interested in knowing anyway. He was going to die and he deserved it.
And no one would miss him or mourn him.
Sure, his mom would miss him, but they weren't as close, not anymore; his dad would be glad, Holden wouldn't be alive to keep disappointing him; Debbie would be happy they'd broken up before that; Wendy would be as neutral as ever and Bill would be relieved Holden wouldn't be there to screw up their work anymore. He would probably sigh upon hearing the news and think 'the kid got what he deserved'.
He was alone. Totally and completely alone, and there was nothing he could do about it. He had been reckless, selfish, self-absorbed and arrogant, and now he got what he deserved.
He accepted that as the truth, but the thought that he was going to die activated his fight or flight response. All of a sudden, he couldn't breathe again. Holden gasped and desperately tried to get the oxygen he needed, but his efforts were futile. The machine next to his bed started beeping, spots appeared in his vision as he thrashed and panted.
Holden could feel the sweat falling from his forehead, getting into his eyes, dampening the back of his hospital gown. It was all too much, he couldn't handle it. He could hear people in the room and his panic redoubled "leave me alone!" he wanted to shout, but no sound seemed to be able to leave his mouth.
“The medication isn't working, we'll have to sedate him!” One of the nurses said to the other. They messed with something in his IV and the world went dark once more in the marvelous day Holden was having.
_____
*3 hours and 5 minutes later*
He slowly woke up with a pain in his neck. His head was turned to his side and his body wasn't, which was a weird way of sleeping. Holden Ford opened his eyes and saw the restraints tying his arms to the bed and started hyperventilating.
His memory was a bit foggy and he didn't exactly know what was happening. What he knew was that he was stuck and had to get away. He started struggling against his bindings and after a moment five people from the hospital staff were around him, holding his arms and legs.
"Doctor, he's doing this again."
"Agent Ford, please."
"I'll handle it."
"Please."
Someone was holding his left arm and saying "agent Ford, I need you to calm down" in a voice that sounded like they had everything under control.
His eyes searched the room, not being able to focus on anything, and he could feel how his hair was matted to his head with sweat.
From the place where the calm voice came from, a lantern was lit in his eyes and with it the voice spoke again.
"Look at me. Breathe slowly."
The agent didn’t quite understand how, but he managed to take a few deep breaths that appeared to take some oxygen to his starving lungs, and his struggles subsided.
"That's it," the man with the calm voice praised.
"I need to know that you'll remain calm, and I'll release you."
Holden still wasn't fully coherent, but something in the back of his mind didn’t enjoy how that made him sound like a criminal. It felt like something he would say to the many killers he interviewed.
"Alright?"
The young agent shook his head affirmatively, it was all he could manage to do while focusing on his breaths and on the mission of getting the sweet, sweet oxygen to reach his lungs. The nurses looked at the doctor, a question in their eyes, and the doctor signaled for them to wait.
All of the staff in the room was looking at the FBI agent with expressions he couldn't quite understand. He didn’t know if they were looking at him like he was dangerous, a potential runaway, a lunatic, or if that was a pitiful look they'd give to a scared animal caught in a trap. Maybe it was a bit of both. But either way, having all of those eyes on him made Holden feel uneasy, and since he felt steadier he decided to break the silence.
"What is happening? Why am I tied up?" his voice was hoarse and barely above a whisper, it was all that his parched throat would allow him.
"You are restrained so you wouldn't hurt yourself or anyone else. I'll explain everything to you in a minute, agent Ford, but first I need to know who to call to come and get you." Even after the main crisis was averted, the doctor's voice still sounded calm and unfazed, like this was nothing new for him.
"Do I need that? I can go home by myself, I feel fine now."
"I don't feel comfortable discharging you if you're getting on a plane alone. Who would you like to call?"
Holden hated this. He felt like a little kid, having to call his mom to come and get him at school after one of the other boys hit him. Who could he call? His mom was an option, but she always came as a set with his father, and he was the last person Holden would like to see at the moment. Imagine how that conversation would go: "hey dad! I got sent to the hospital after a hug from Ed Kemper, like a nervous little child" no, that would be terrible, calling his parents wasn't an option.
He also couldn't call Debbie, she probably hated him right now. And after experiencing her cold behavior towards him on the day before that, he also wasn't eager to see her and explain that he was in the hospital. She hurt him as much as he hurt her, he supposed.
He didn’t have friends outside from work. He wasn't as close to Wendy, and even less close to Gregg. He didn’t want to do this, but it seemed like his only option was calling Bill. He didn’t think he'd understand it, but at least Holden would have a friend by his side. Come to think of it, he didn’t have a lot of friends, but he considered Bill his closest one.
He realized he got lost in thought when the doctor asked "agent Ford? Are you with us?"
He snapped back into the present, "yes, sorry. I know who to call."
A nurse got the telephone to him and released one of his arms so that he could make his call, and he called Bill's office.
He was scared of Bill not picking up, but he quickly did, "Bill?"
"Where the fuck have you been?" Bill asked roughly.
"I'm in the hospital, Bill, in Vacaville, California. I'm okay but I need someone to come pick me up. Could you please do it?" Holden didn’t like the pleading tone that came with his voice, but he just couldn't help it. He was feeling so tired and lonely, he wanted a friend to be there by his side.
When his call ended, the doctor said "well agent Ford, we'll adjust your medication and I'll be back soon."
He was already growing tired again, feeling the new dose of sedatives running through his system, and maybe he was a bit relieved that Bill was on his way. However, something was still bothering him, "can't you open these?" He asked as his eyes grew heavier, gesturing to the restraints keeping him from running away or hurting himself; he wasn't going to do any of that now, and they made him feel like a criminal.
"Soon agent, soon..." the doctor said as he patted Holden's shoulder, which made him flinch.
The doctor then left the room.
"Your friend will be here soon, you just have to wait a little bit," the nurse said cheerily, "if you need anything you can call me."
" 'm cold," Holden slurred as the medicine was now hitting him full force, and he could feel he was shivering.
The nurse laid a thin blanket on top of him and told an almost asleep Holden she'd be back soon to check on him.
‘At least someone cared,’ he thought as he was being pulled into a restless slumber.
_____
*6 hours and 43 minutes later*
Holden was surprised to see his father visiting him at the hospital. He looked down at his son and didn’t even need to say anything for Holden to know he was disgusted: his eyes said it all.
"Dad? What are you doing here?"
"I always knew you weren't fit for this." He said, which made Holden's eyes water.
His father scoffed "how could I have had such a crybaby of a son?"
Holden could feel his tears falling and no matter how much he tried, he couldn't stop them.
"This is all my fault, Holden."
That surprised the young agent, and he looked into his father's eyes.
"If I'd disciplined you hard enough, maybe you'd have turned out to be a normal son. It was all I ever asked."
A 'normal son'. That's all Holden ever wanted to be. He didn’t want to be like this: no social skills, easily overwhelmed, lacking the basic understanding of human relationships, getting obsessed with really specific things. He just wanted to be normal, to make his father proud and not worry his mom too much.
But Holden wasn't normal. Not when he was a small and quiet kid, easy to bully. Not when he was a teen fascinated by the FBI and famous killers. Not now, when he lived for his job and even then managed to screw everything up.
As he was thinking about this, the tears that were falling quickly turned into sobs, and Holden couldn't breathe.
He woke up with a gasp, his face still hot with tears. He looked around the room and saw someone at the door.
"Holden?"
"Bill?"
Holden tried to sit up to greet his friend and was very rudely reminded of the restraints keeping him in bed. Both men stared at them and Holden could feel humiliation blooming in his chest. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this, especially Bill, and he didn’t dare to look into his partner's eyes, keeping them trained on the damn restraints.
"What happened? Are you alright?" Bill asked, his tone almost worried.
"I'm fine, Bill. I came to visit Kemper because he named me as his medical proxy, and I think I passed out after that? I'm not sure..."
"You came to visit Kemper alone?" He sounded mad, but also a bit... worried? Holden wasn't exactly sure. "And what the fuck are these?" Bill pointed his head towards Holden's restraints and he looked up, still avoiding the older-man's eyes.
"I don't know, the doctor said he'd be here any minute to explain things." He sighed, his voice was lower now, "can you please remove them?"
Bill pinched the bridge of his nose, "you're not a criminal Holden, of course I can."
As he was unbuckling the wretched straps keeping his partner bound to his hospital bed, Holden took the opportunity to study his face, but his expression was unreadable.
Bill had every right to be mad at him, and while he did look a bit angry, his anger didn’t have the intensity Holden was expecting.
Having released his arms, Holden rubbed at his wrists. He could see raw red marks beginning to form in them from all of the frantic tugging, and felt the sudden urge to hide them beneath his blanket. As if hiding them now could erase what Bill had already seen, the humiliation and helplessness Holden felt.
Before Bill could question Holden further about what happened, the doctor came into the room and introduced himself to the older agent. He got him a chair and started explaining what happened to Holden.
"A panic attack is a miscued fight or flight mechanism. You think it's a heart attack, but the body is just sending oxygen to the organs that need it for defense. A lizard-brain evolution."
"That's about right." Bill replied as Holden stared ahead, trying to assimilate this information.
"I didn’t have a heart attack?" The younger agent asked.
"The panic was protracted. We finally had to sedate you. You'll wanna watch for panic disorder and repeat episodes." The doctor answered.
"It could happen again?" Holden asked with a helpless look in his eyes, one that said 'I don't know if I'll survive if this happens again'.
Bill sighed, patience seeming to be running thin, and asked the doctor what was the cause of the panic attack.
While the doctor explained that his job was treating the body, not the mind, Holden watched Bill closely, trying to understand what he was thinking. He was prepared to face his partner's anger, but this? It was disappointment that he could see in Bill's eyes, and he didn’t know how to deal with that. It somehow hurt even more that he'd imagined it would hurt.
The doctor gave him a script for benzodiazepine, in case it happened again. It didn’t escape Holden that Bill's reaction to that was something very close to disgust, as he asked "Valium?"
He was wished good luck by the doctor, Bill gave him a bag of clothes, sarcastically asked if he could still dress himself and left the room. And then Holden was alone, trying to gather the strength he needed to get out of his bed, that was damp with sweat.
He sat on the hospital bed and stood up on shaky legs. He didn’t know for how long he'd been lying down. The doctor told him his panic was protracted, but he could only remember the attack after the hug Kemper gave him. His memory was fuzzy for what happened after that, everything was a blur.
Holden dressed himself mechanically, going through the motions one by one, but not feeling like he was a part of his body. If he spent so much time lying down, why did he feel so tired? He didn’t know. What he did know, however, was that he felt ashamed. Ashamed for panicking, ashamed for getting a Valium prescription, ashamed for pulling Bill into this. He took a deep breath and took slow steps towards the corridor, where Bill was waiting for him.
As they were making their way through the hallway, Holden saw the room where he talked to Ed, and felt like he couldn't breathe again. But he couldn't panic, not here, not in front of Bill, not when he was so close to going home. He put his back to the wall and started taking slow and very deep breaths, leaning on the bar on the wall.
Then Bill saw that he stopped in his tracks and cursed under his breath. "What?" He asked, not so patiently or worried anymore. "What?" He asked again, and Holden lifted his head to look at him. "Get it together."
This made Holden continue walking, though he was holding onto the bar on the wall for dear life and still taking deep breaths, helping to keep his panic at bay.
_____
*45 minutes later, on the plane back to Quantico*
"Panic attacks, visiting Kemper? What the fuck?" Bill said, giving him what sounded like a scolding.
"I know."
"Why'd you go?"
"I don't know, Bill." Holden answered. "Sorry. There wasn't anyone else I could call." He said honestly, wishing he'd anticipated Bill was going to have that disappointed and disgusted look towards him and having just not called him.
"It wasn't a great time for me to leave work."
'It's not like I planned on getting a panic attack so severe it hospitalized me', he thought, but didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t want to upset Bill anymore than he already had.
"And you don't walk out on OPR. You get that, right?" He nodded.
"I'm assuming you wanna keep doing this, Holden, that it's not too stressful for you."
"Yes." He answered without hesitation.
"Then here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna take the weekend, get your shit together, and on Monday morning, you're gonna present yourself as able, responsible, and fucking professional. And no one needs to ever know about this...episode." Bill said this last part while eyeing Holden up and down, with a look that looked very much like disgust.
Holden knew Bill had every right to be disgusted at him, he was weak, he panicked himself into the hospital. But it still hurt not seeing any traces of the respect Holden fought so hard to gain in the eyes of the man he considered his friend, so he avoided his partner's eyes and swallowed.
"But from now on, it's my rules." Bill kept talking, "if I tell you to shut your mouth,
you shut your mouth. Nod your head if you understand." And he nodded, still not being able to look into Bill's eyes.
After the news that Shepard was retiring and asking about Ted Gunn, Holden spent the rest of the trip in silence. He was exhausted and just wanted to get home. He told Bill he'd be fine and finally got into his apartment building.
This was one of the few times when he wished he'd spent a little more time decorating his apartment. It seemed so cold, lonely and uninviting. It looked as empty as he felt.
He unpacked his belongings, shaking his newly-acquired bottle of pills and taking one. Just then he realized he wasn't exactly smelling nice. Maybe all of the hours he spent panicking at the hospital were the reason he felt so sticky and dirty with sweat.
Holden turned on the shower and set the temperature to as hot as it could go, hoping the water could wash away everything that was wrong with him. If only it could be so simple.
He put on a robe and jumped on his bed, glad to feel his familiar and comfortable bedsheets, and his warm blanket. He didn’t even bother eating, he wasn't hungry anyways. He was just exhausted, completely and utterly drained, and soon enough, Holden was asleep.