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Spencer hated hospitals.
Their lights were too bright, effectively dooming him to squinting the entire time. They used the strongest-smelling disinfectants ever made that burned his nose and made his eyes water. You were always waiting for something. Always anticipating a test, a release, for the worst and best news. There was always someone harassing nurses to come look at their minor ailment before tending to patients who were dying as the minutes ticked by.
His knee bounced nervously as he became one of the many waiting for something to happen. It was strange how getting to the hospital was one big rush, one massive blur of bouncing from a car, to train, to bus, but the moment he got there, he was at a standstill. He just had to sit and wait. He wrapped his arms around himself and then unwrapped them and sat up tall, then scrunched back over. He brought his hands to his chest, then shoved them to his sides before settling them on his thighs. He couldn’t decide if he should be the scared kid now or if he should be the adult he was supposed to be. What he wouldn't give to have someone else at the wheel for a while.
He sat back on the hard plastic chair, desperate to chew on his fingers but knowing they were filled with germs and he was currently sitting in a hotbed for antibiotic-resistant infections. A few people glanced his way, likely thinking to themselves how young and stressed he looked; maybe they were asking themselves if he was on his own or if someone was going to accompany him at some point. No such luck.
It was just him and his mum, although he could admit that Jason was slowly weaving his way into his personal life, but it wasn’t like he’d want to come sit with him in a Vegas hospital. Their relationship was purely business, and anything that seemed like kinship was just a side effect of the nature of behavioural analysis. They had things in common, building rapport, but not so much that he'd happily invite the older back to Vegas to meet his mother. Though, in all fairness, he'd never done that.
He finally settled on gripping the front of the plastic seat, bracketing his knees together with his arms, and rocking back and forth; the pressure on his fingers and the hit of his back against the backrest eased his nerves the most out of the options he'd cycled through. Occasionally, he’d tap his fingers against the plastic, but he didn’t want to make too much noise when others were waiting just as anxiously for answers. He also didn't want to risk moving his fingers slightly too far in one direction and accidentally touching a chewed-up wad of gum.
Despite his mum never being well, it hadn’t come to this point in a very long time, and he couldn’t help but blame himself for not being there. He’d gotten hooked on the independence, the joy of waking up and having to get himself and himself alone ready, and didn’t come home as much as he used to. Even if he spent a fraction of the time he took to find out more about Virginia and plan out his future life there, he would've caught this early. If he’d gone home when he was supposed to between semesters, he would’ve been there to see how sick his mum was getting. He would’ve been there to make sure she took her medicine. He would've been there to note when the cold became something more.
He would’ve been there when she collapsed in the supermarket.
She said she was fine. She said that she just had a sore throat and that she’d been taking medicine for it. She went as far as telling him the names of the chemicals so he could tell her what they were meant to do and assure her there was no possible poison. Why do all of that when she knew she was getting worse? Unless she didn’t know. Spencer wasn’t there to monitor the small changes anymore. Maybe he shouldn’t have put so much faith in her medication working.
When she missed his calls, he assumed that she was out or sleeping and waited for her to get back to him, but if he’d been closer to home, he would’ve immediately gone looking for her. He got complacent because he didn’t want to go back to being the caregiver as much as he loved his mum. He’d spent so much of his life putting her first, missing out on trips he’d earned because he couldn’t trust her alone and was willing to push off his college applications until she found something that worked for her. He made sure she ate before him; he’d done all the chores, though she would redo some of them to a lesser degree in episodes of clarity, and he handled the money. He laid out clothes in case that day was the one she wanted to change out of her pyjamas. It was nice to just worry about going to classes, what he wanted to eat that night and what he was going to wear in the morning. He should’ve known better.
Why hadn’t someone come to get him yet? Surely they should’ve called his name at this point. He was eighteen, a legal adult despite not feeling like one, so he should be in the room with his mother for whatever next steps there were. He stared at the door for a while, but nobody came through it as much as he willed them to. He sighed and went back to ruminating.
He’s eighteen now, and she was just getting worse. If Jason was right about him being a fit for the BAU, then he’d have to go to Quantico. He could be anywhere in the country the next time this happened, and he couldn’t drop everything to go see her when lives were on the line. He could move her closer, but the problem would remain the same, and she didn’t like travelling. She hated planes. It was why he was always the one to go home rather than the pair of them taking turns travelling to each other. She’d only seen pictures of his campus and dorm room. He couldn't join the BAU and look after her.
It wouldn’t be the first time Spencer thought about committing her, but before now, he couldn’t without risking his own stability. He was an adult now, though. There was no overly friendly CPS worker lurking to snatch him away, uncaring that he was the best person to look after his mum, ignoring that he was the only one to calm her down when she got bad. He couldn't entirely blame them. The older he got, the more surprised he'd been when he looked at younger kids and realised all he was doing at their age, but he was different. He could handle the pressure. He was just tired of constantly getting squashed by it now.
He didn’t really have the money for it, but he could scrape enough together to make it work. He could sell some books, some clothes, offer tutoring and get a part-time job until he could get to the FBI academy. They could provide the care that came from years of medical training and watch her every minute of every day.
If he let himself admit it, he knew she'd been getting worse. She rambled more on phone calls, she kept taking 'trips' that would have her drop off the face of the earth for a few days, and he would tell himself that she was finally getting better enough to enjoy all the stuff she hadn't been able to do for years. He convinced himself it was a mutual exchange, him living his life on campus and her reclaiming the years she lost in Vegas, but it wasn't.
His mum would despise it, though. She might never forgive him, but it was the right thing to do, and suddenly, he understood why CPS workers may not care that he was good for her. He loved his mum to death, and he’d do it all over again if he had to, but he couldn’t deny the scars he had, nor the childhood he didn’t get to enjoy. He'd always shatter at shouting, rely solely on himself for anything and never quite feel right. She could find some peace there, and he could visit when he found the time. He could make it work as he'd done for everything in his life when it came to her.
“Spencer?”
His head shot up, desperate for news and even more desperate to be led to his mother, but it hadn’t been a nurse who called him. Jason Gideon stood in the doorway for a moment, two coffees in his hands and a sympathetic look. He walked over, sitting beside him and basically shoving one of the cups into his hand. Spencer didn’t have much desire to drink it, but there was nowhere else to put it, so he just clung onto the styrofoam. To be honest, he was more getting over the shock of seeing Jason here, of all places.
“Have you heard much?”
“She’s still in the ICU. They said they would get me when she was ready for visitors, but I didn’t think to ask if they meant that they were asking her if she wanted to see me or if they were preparing her body,” he replied, cringing at the latter explanation he gave. She wasn’t dead. On a ventilator in the ICU with horrible pneumonia, possibly blood poisoning, but alive otherwise.
“How long have you been waiting?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t kept track.” It was difficult to concentrate on everything, yet it was hard to draw his focus away from the thought of putting his mother in a home after this. It wouldn't make him as bad as his father. He'd be putting her in the capable hands of adults with degrees, not ten-year-olds who read a lot. There was a lingering guilt of abandoning her that he couldn't shake. He didn't invest in his social life as he had invested in his education. If she stopped talking to him over this, he'd be alone.
“Have you eaten?”
“I’m not really in the mood.”
“I can grab you something from the vending machine.”
“What’re you doing here?” he asked, unable to continue without getting an answer.
It’s not that he wasn’t happy to have company, but it was this company that had him confused. He expected a nurse to be elected as his emotional support buddy or some sort of social worker who dealt with the mentally ill to come take a seat with a heavy sigh as if it sucked more for them to talk about the subject than it did for him to experience it. Not to mention, he was sure that he didn’t say what hospital he’d been heading to when he said his mum had been admitted to the ICU.
“Times like these are hard enough without being alone to face them.”
“How’d you know I’d be alone?”
“You’ve made it clear most of your family is estranged, and I’d hate to be the first to tell you that you don’t really have close friends,” Jason answered. He hummed. “Has this happened before?”
“My mum going to the hospital or having pneumonia?”
“You’ve already given me the answer to the first. You hate hospitals. Whenever I mention injuries I’ve experienced on the job, it’s not the injury you wince at, it’s the treatment after. The time I spend in hospital beds. Plus, a paranoid schizophrenic is going to be in a hospital from time to time.”
“Can- can you not refer to her like that?”
“Right, sorry, force of habit.”
“It’s fine, it’s just- people have this idea of what it’s like and- well, you get it. I know you get it. It’s just a sore spot, I guess.” He shrugged it off, feeling awkward for speaking up even if Jason seemed genuinely apologetic for upsetting him. “She’s been sick before because she hasn’t looked after herself.”
“Must be hard trying to care for her across the country.”
“She was doing fine, but that always happens. She does well for a while, and then she doesn’t, and I have to drop everything. I...I thought she was fine, but I know she wasn't. I think I didn't want to acknowledge it, because if I did, then I'd have to stop being selfish.”
"You're not selfish, Spencer. Far from it." He drifted his eyes to the side as he thought about it, but no, he could only conclude that he was indeed very selfish. A sorry excuse for a son.
“Could you give me some advice on something?”
“It’s what I’m here for.”
“I don’t think she’s okay on her own anymore, and if I do get that BAU job, I’ll be all over the country for days or weeks on end. I'd have to move to Virginia.”
“Have you changed your mind?”
“Not about the job. About committing my mum to a mental hospital,” he whispered. It felt downright dirty to admit, but he had to get an outside perspective on it. Jason knew how to handle his personal bias; it was important to remain impartial when working with a profile that could easily fall into stereotyping, so he had some confidence that whatever advice he was given would be the best for him and not the best for getting him the job.
“Is that something you’ve considered before?”
“Frequently. Usually in her episodes. The issue before was avoiding foster care, but now I’m eighteen, my worry now can just be paying for it.” As if that wasn't as detrimental.
“And can you?”
“I can make it work. I can pay enough to keep us out of collections until I get out of the academy and start working properly.” He started doing the mental maths of what deductibles were possible and whether their health insurance would cover certain aspects before Jason put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s going to die on her own, and I can’t be there for her anymore. It’ll be my fault if something happens.”
“Is this your fault?”
“I should’ve checked on her. I- I didn’t want to come home because I liked having to just look after myself, so I didn't look. I was being selfish.”
“I told you, you’re not selfish. You’re realising that the best for her is the hardest for both of you. If you ask me, it’s amazing you got this far without intervention.”
“I don’t think she’ll forgive me if I do it. I think- I think she might hate me for putting her somewhere she'll be monitored so closely. She hates the government, authority, and anyone who has power, really. I'd be putting her at their mercy with no chance to escape.”
“She will. She’s your mum. I’ve met mothers who have forgiven much worse.” He nodded and hoped that Jason was right.
Sure, some mothers forgave the children who committed horrible crimes, but others didn’t. A lot of mothers never forgave their children for much less. If this were the nail in the coffin for their relationship, that would be it for him. It’d just be Spencer against the world, which terrified him to no end.
“Family of Diana Reid?” a nurse announced. It felt like the final call for his decision, even though it was just a call to discuss his mother. He almost hated himself for being so sure in that second about what would come next. He stood up and anxiously watched Jason.
“Would- Are you able to stay?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”