Work Text:
December 2022 / January 2023
He made it out of surgery, and that should be enough. The surgery had... complications, but that’s not too bad, right? The camp fam have dealt with nothing but complications their whole messy lives. They can deal with this. He ran the race, he’s steps from the finish line. All he needs is to just wake up...
It’s been three days. Three days without movement, three days without improvement, three days, even, without a machine breathing for him.
And then, the doctors pose the question, the one they were all secretly holding their breaths for, “does he have a signed agreement for if there’s no signs of improvement?”
The answer is yes, of course he does, he’s Ben, he wouldn’t leave anything to chance. But the camp fam still shake their heads and tell them to wait.
Two more days.
Ben and their hope is wasting away.
The doctor tells them she called Ben’s mother, and the orders she gives, through a horrified, shaking voice, are, “if there are no signs of improvement within 30 days, he would like to be removed from life support.”
The room sits in the loudest most agonizing silence they’ve ever suffocated in.
“But— we got him out of there,” Sammy chokes out.
“We saved his life,” adds Kenji. “That has to have been enough, right? After all that...”
The doctor shakes her head, a well-worn expression of sorrow written into her wrinkles. “If he wakes up, he’ll be in a lot of pain. He probably won’t remember any of you. What little time we can give him will be spent 24/7 in a hospital.”
“So no matter what we do, Ben’s gonna—” Kenji bursts.
The doctor nods, her lips pressed into a wordless grimace. “I think it’s time for you to get ready.”
“No," Brooklynn says, scared and defiant, her arm outstretched to defend him. “We’ll wait the 30 days.”
They wait.
They wait for every single one of them, praying for a miracle they know deep down Ben wouldn’t want. He died in glory, saving his friends, and fighting through a battle of survival until he physically couldn’t anymore. He wouldn’t want this. They know.
Still, they watch the clocks with dread, trying to work out some way to make every moment with Ben count. Just in case. They whisper him everything. Just in case. Time crawls closer, closer, closer, like a dinosaur chasing them, closer, closer...
They had 30 days to prepare, but by God when the doctor comes, do they put up a fight. They scream and threaten and tell the doctor to go away and never come back. Like the camp fam could live in limbo like this forever, waiting for the next disaster to hit them.
“He doesn’t deserve this,” Brooklynn sobs, bent over Ben’s bed. “He doesn’t.”
“I know," Darius manages to say. “I know. We’re there.”
And they all know it’s true. He deserves to breathe without a machine doing it for him. He deserves to feel the rush of air on his face and the buzz of adrenaline in his veins, instead of the constricting monotony of the same four walls.
“He deserves to be happy,” Kenji says, every word soaked in tears. “Even if it’s not with us.”
When the doctor returns, they don’t put up a fight. They cry and sob and tremble, but they let it happen.
Kenji clings onto Ben’s hand and sobs that he’s not ready. Yaz kisses Ben’s forehead a million times like she wants her lips to remember it. Darius stands in the corner, frozen and struggling to breathe. Brooklynn and Sammy can’t stop crying, clinging to each others’ backs because that might ease the pain. It doesn’t.
The doctor is gentle and patient as they go through the process of switching off Ben’s life support. Then they leave, saying, “I’ll let you say goodbye,” and no four words have ever devastated them more.
The camp fam all hold their breath with him, waiting. Waiting, watching his breaths get shallower and shallower until—
He flatlines, and they all break down, awful wailing sounds wrenching from their mouths. They scream and sob until their throats ache, and cling to each other like they’re the life rafts that save each other from drowning at sea. They stay that way, legs crumpled on the floor, for hours, like part of them was ripped off and they were left to bleed to their slow agonizing death.
(Maybe then, they would all be together.)
30 days of waiting. And a lifetime more of days without him.