Chapter Text
The pain had started the day after the whole apartment collapse. Buck hadn’t thought anything of it really. It had been one of the worst calls since… since Bobby. It had been his most physically demanding call in a long while.
So yeah, Buck hadn’t really thought anything of the dull pain in his bad leg. It often hurt a little after long and challenging days.
So Buck tried his best to ignore it. It would probably go away by tomorrow or the next day. And he didn’t really have any plans to go and do anything active. Eddie actually had been able to move his plane tickets from yesterday afternoon to this afternoon. Although he wasn’t going back to Texas to start working with the El Paso Fire Department. He was going back to repack his things, figure things out with Christopher’s school, and move back to Los Angeles.
Eddie was moving back to Los Angeles.
Which again, he didn’t really even talk to Buck about.
And maybe it wouldn’t be a problem, maybe Buck would be looking forward to having Eddie back, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was living in Eddie’s house right now.
Eddie hadn’t even broached the subject of where he would be living when he and Christopher came back before they left for the airport this morning.
But Buck supposed that didn’t matter right now. Eddie wouldn’t be back for at least another week, he could deal with that conversation then. Today he was just going to take it easy.
And Buck did take it easy, he spent most of the day either watching a couple documentaries on Netflix he had saved and baking stuff in the kitchen. Only making a quick trip to the grocery store to grab some ingredients because he was bored.
Despite having taken things easy, his leg was still hurting when he woke up the next day. It wasn’t worse, but it was there. So Buck took things easy again. When it was still there on the third day, when he had to go in for his next shift, Buck took some tylenol, hoping it would dull it enough that he wouldn’t notice it while working, and for the most part, that worked.
A week after the apartment collapse, the pain was still there in his leg, although when Buck took the tylenol it did dull it mostly, and that was something. Usually tylenol did nothing to the phantom pains Buck had every once in a while since he broke it.
And then, after another week, Eddie and Christopher were back.
That was when Eddie finally had the conversation with him, though it wasn’t much of a conversation. More like Eddie told Buck he and Christopher were going to move back into the house, and Buck could sleep on the couch until he found a new place.
Of course Eddie used somewhat more flowery language that didn’t make it sound like he wasn’t giving Buck a choice. But as they parted ways, that was what it had felt like to Buck.
And finding a new place was a lot easier said than done. Even though Buck’s financial situation right now was a whole lot better than it had been when he first moved into the loft, it all made Buck recall why it had taken him and Ali so long to find the loft.
Real estate in Los Angeles was a nightmare. And unless Buck wanted to move into a place that looked like it might be condemned in a year’s time, as soon as he found a place he liked and email the leasing agent, he would receive a generic email back saying ‘Sorry, but this place has just been signed for this morning. But we wish you the best in finding a place!’
And in Buck’s entire time trying to find somewhere new, sleeping on Eddie’s couch did not help the pain in his leg at all. If anything, Buck was thinking that it was aggravating it. Buck told himself that he really needed to find another place to go to now. Or at least someone who had a spare guest room or something. He didn’t even care if they charged him for it at this point.
So where did that leave him?
Maddie and Chimney used to have a guestroom, though they had turned it into a nursery for the baby that was set to come any day now. So if he went there it would mean sleeping on another couch.
Hen and Karen… Buck didn’t actually know if they had an extra bed, he was pretty sure they didn’t. But he also felt like if he spent more than a night or two at their house it would be intruding too much.
If he was really desperate he could ask Athena. He knew from talking to May and Harry that she didn’t really like living in the big brand new house by herself. But he would hold that option in the back of his mind for now.
May was still living in a college apartment with two roommates, and Buck was pretty sure Harry was sleeping on the couch in their living room. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but the last time he talked to Harry that was what it sounded like. And Buck certainly didn’t want to intrude on the lives of three girls in their early twenties.
He should ask Ravi if any apartments he had were vacant, because searching for apartments on his own wasn’t giving Buck anything.
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By mid September, the pain in his leg had finally gotten bad enough that Buck couldn’t hide it anymore. He couldn’t force himself to hide the limp at work, and one look from Hen as he was walking into the station, it looked like she was about to drag him off to a hospital herself.
“Hey,” Buck said as he lifted an arm to wave at her as he tried to get to the locker room before she stopped him. He was unsuccessful as she began walking there at the same time, meeting her at the doorway.
“Hey yourself,” she said, as she turned her gaze down to his leg. “Why’re you limping?”
“Oh, it’s just, you know…” Buck tried to sound nonchalant about it. “Been a little sore.”
“Been sore?” Hen repeated, clearly not believing him. “And how long has your leg ‘been sore’?” she asked, the last two words in air quotes.
“Um,” Buck hesitated. “You remember that apartment collapse?”
Hen’s eyes widened. “The collapse that was what? Four months ago!” she didn’t look like she wanted to drag him to the hospital now. No, she looked like she was going to strap him to a gurney and take him there, and then, only if he was pronounced healthy would she shake him by the shoulders. “Please tell me you’ve been seen by a doctor in the last six months.”
Buck didn’t say anything, only giving her a sheepish smile. When she looked like she was about to yell at him, Buck quickly said, “It only really got bad in the last week or so. Really! Before that, it really was just a little sore.”
“That means you had at least a week to go see a doctor since it’s been hurting badly.”
And yeah, Buck really had no argument against that.
Hen sighed, crossing her arms and leveling him with a look. “Can you even walk without a limp if you really tried?”
Buck hesitated, eventually just deciding to be truthful with her. “No, not anymore.”
Hen lifted an eyebrow at the ‘not anymore’ addition. Then she turned to face the stairs leading up to the kitchen and day room. “And would you be able to walk up those stairs over there?”
Buck looked at the stairs, his stomach sinking. “Slower than I usually do.”
Hen looked back at him. “And what makes you think that you’ll be able to work today? What if we need to go running into a burning building?”
All Buck could do was shrug his shoulders. “I kind of haven’t thought about it that far.”
Hen shook her head beckoning him to follow her into the locker room. “Sit down,” she said, pointing at the open bench. “And roll your pant leg up, I want to look at it.”
Buck did as he was told. As he rolled his pant leg up, he wasn’t sure exactly what Hen was going to find from looking at it. Nothing looked different on the outside. There were the scars from the surgery six years ago after the fire truck explosion, but other than that, no cuts or bruises. Not even any bumps.
Hen looked at his leg, moving her head to the left and right. “Pull your other pant leg up,” she said. At Buck’s confused look, she said, “I want to see if there’s any swelling.”
Rolling up the other pant leg and looking at both legs, Buck noticed that there was some swelling, right under his right knee. Hen reached her hands out, hesitantly. “I just want to touch it real quick.”
Buck nodded, and tried to hold back a hiss as Hen pressed her fingers into the swollen bit of his leg. He wasn’t successful at holding it back.
Hen sat back afterwards though. “I can’t tell exactly what’s going on without an x-ray or something,” she began. “But what I can tell you - you need to see a doctor before you come back to work.”
“Really?” Buck asked as he rolled both of his pant legs back down.
“Yes, really,” she said. “What you have could be any number of things. Especially if what you say about the pain being there for months is true.”
Buck sighed, knowing Hen had a point, even if he hated to admit it.
“Stand up, don’t even bother getting changed now,” Hen said. “I’ll explain it to Chimney, you go call your doctor, maybe you’ll even get an appointment today.”
“Alright alright,” Buck said as Hen pushed him out of the locker room.
“Yeah, you can thank me later,” she called out to him as she made sure that he was walking out to the parking lot.
When Buck got to his Jeep, Buck pulled out his phone and called his GP. It had been a while since he had seen her. The last appointment was in February to get his annual FD physical completed. He hadn’t really seen her besides that for anything since about eight months after the lightning strike as she signed him off with a clean bill of health for everything.
Still though, she was the doctor who knew the most about him from a medical standpoint, so it made the most sense to try for an appointment with her first. And luckily for him, the receptionist said she had a cancellation for that afternoon and he could come in that day.
So great. Hopefully this really would just be declared an overuse injury or something. He’d be told to take two weeks off of work and working out or something. He would absolutely hate it, but he could deal with it.
Well, that would be the best case scenario, he told himself.
And knowing his luck, it wouldn’t be the case.
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Laying on the exam table of the doctor’s office, stripped of his pants completely so they could get a better view of his leg, Buck was decidedly uncomfortable.
The doctor looked at his shin, palpating the swollen part slightly, and Buck did everything he could to hold back a wince.
“And you don’t remember any trauma happening to it?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Buck said. “But you know that I’m a firefighter, it all started after a very rough call. Might’ve bumped into something.”
The doctor nodded. “Well, we're going to take some x-rays for it,” she said. “Just to rule out anything like a hairline fracture that has been slowly growing.”
Buck nodded, that made sense. If that was the case though it would suck. It would probably have been brought on by the original injury that happened almost six years ago now. Buck didn’t want to know what the recovery for that would be.
Probably another surgery.
He hoped he didn’t need another surgery.
Twenty minutes later, Buck was down in radiology to get an x-ray of his leg taken. He tried to get a look at the radiologist’s facial expression as they took the images, but the guy was good, kept his face completely neutral.
“Do you see anything?” Buck asked him as he got off of the table when they were done.
“The images are still developing a little, your doctor will tell you more.”
That told Buck exactly nothing.
Another fifteen minutes later, Buck was back and situated in his exam room when his doctor came back in. One look at her face as she knocked on the door before entering the room, and Buck knew that whatever she had to tell him, wasn’t good.