Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"Come on, come on, pick up."

Zane isn’t normally this impatient, but he fucking hates hospitals. He hates how they smell, he hates all the crying, and he especially hates needles. He tries not to focus on the fact that he’s already been here for almost three hours, and that it still might be a while until they can find Ilya a bed somewhere, and instead sends a quick prayer out into the universe for his call to finally get answered.

It does. Mèsi Bondyé (Thank God).

“Hello?”

“Jane?” Zane blurts out in shock.

He can’t help it; it’s not the kind of voice he was expecting. Said voice immediately closes off.

“Who is this? How’d you get this phone?”

"It’s Zane Boodram. From the Centaurs," he answers, making an executive decision to table that for now. He's an ally, but more importantly, he has priorities. "Listen, man. I'm really sorry to call you like this, but Ilya gave me his phone, and I don't know who his emergency contact is, and I figured since I see you guys text all the time, you'd probably know who to call; Ilya's in the hospital."

Silence.

"Hospital? Why's he in the hospital? Is he okay?" the other voice asks desperately, all caginess forgotten.

"Physically, yeah. But mentally?" Zane sighs. Fuck. I wish Cassie were here.

"I don't think he's been okay for a while, to be honest with you. I didn't realize it was this bad until I swung by his place after he skipped two straight days of practice."

The front door had been unlocked, which should've been his first clue. He doesn't mention that, though. Or the mess. Takeout bags cluttering the counter, dirty dishes crowding each other in the sink. In the master bedroom, rumpled clothes in piles on the ground, a bed with barely any sheets on it, and there in the middle of it all, Ilya. His Captain had been swaddled half-heartedly in the duvet, staring at nothing as silent tears blotted the fabric. Zane remembers thinking, He looks so small, and that's when he realized something was very wrong.

"I got him to call his therapist, and she told him to come in immediately. We're at The Ottawa Hospital now, the Civic Campus. He was admitted around six o'clock. I spoke with the doctors, and they said that they're just waiting for a bed to open up for him at one of the inpatient programs."

"Inpatient?" Zane hears in an impossibly small voice before the speaker is audibly muffled. A tiny, panicked "Fuck!" squeaks through.

There's another silence, and then the voice comes back, saying, "Okay. Okay, but you said he's physically okay, right? They didn't need to like, pump his stomach, or anything?"

Zane swallows. I really wish Cassie were here.

"I didn't see any pills, or anything. And they did a drug test during intake, but the doctors didn't seem worried he'd hurt himself. They just said he seems sad."

As if that wasn't the understatement of the fucking century. Zane honestly doesn't remember which silence had been worse; the one at his grandmother's burial, watching her casket get slowly lowered into the ground, or the one on the twenty-minute car ride to the hospital that afternoon. It was unnerving how silent Ilya had been. Zane wasn't used to it. He was used to loud chirps and even louder I love yous. He didn't know the ghost that had haunted his own corpse in the passenger seat.

Another silence.

Zane begins to wonder if this hospital has really shitty service before the voice comes back again, rattling off, "Sorry, I was buying a ticket. My flight should land around eleven. I'll call my parents; they live there, so they'll get there before I can."

"Sounds good. I'll hang around 'til they get here, catch them up."

"Okay. Okay. Fuck, thank you so much, Bood. I'm so glad he's not alone right now. You're a really good friend," the other voice chokes out.

"Of course, man. That's my Captain."

They exchange phone numbers and the call ends.

If I wish Cassie were here again, would she appear? Like Beetlejuice?

Zane tries to find some comfortable way to stuff his huge body into the vinyl-covered waiting room chair, hoping he's not settling in for another three hours when he feels his phone vibrate. He crams an arm between his body and the armrest to fish his phone out of his back pocket, and sees he has three new messages from an unknown number:

What the fuck?

Ilya wakes up in rust orange scrubs and immediately wishes he hadn't.

The bed's too small, the TV, nestled in its plastic, protective prison, is still playing The Big Bang Theory, and he really has to piss. He sits up, fumbling blindly to his right for the call button to get the nurse, who will then allow him the privilege of leaving his sad, tiny room to use the bathroom across the hall while she watches through a square window in the door. But Ilya supposes he should probably get used to the lack of privacy, now that he's gotten himself committed.

The overnight nurse is nice enough. She has a perky ponytail with a voice to match, like a cheerleader. She happily offers to change the channel for him once he's done washing his hands (the remote is another privilege locked behind the nurses' station), but Ilya declines. He's tired.

He's been tired for months. Maybe for years, but Ilya chooses not to look into that for now. No, he'll have plenty of time for thinking about all that shit once they finally find a bed for him. Lucky me.

And that makes Ilya stop in his tracks, because isn't he? He's lucky he has teammates who care enough about him to drag his sorry ass here. If Mama had been given this chance, would she still be here?

He tucks himself back into bed after that.

Today fucking sucked, and he just wants it to end. The first couple of hours were the worst. Ilya (and by association, Bood) had been dragged around to multiple departments. One had wanted a blood sample, another had wanted a urine sample, one had asked for his health insurance card, and every person he'd spoken to had said, "Hey, Ilya. So what brings you in today?"

I wake up and wish I didn't. I go to sleep hoping I don't wake up. My brain is broken. I'm broken. The man I love doesn't want to be seen with me. I gave up everything to be with him. And I'm so lonely I think it's killing me.

In the end, he'd settled on repeating, "I'm just tired," and resorted to half-assed, one-word responses for the rest.

He doesn't remember what time it'd been when he'd said bye to Bood. The nurses had asked Ilya to put all his belongings into a plastic drawstring bag tagged with I. Rozanov and his new patient identification number (it had pained him to take off Mama's crucifix, but it had been nonnegotiable; it was a choking hazard). The one allowance they had made was letting Ilya give Bood his phone. If Ilya wasn't allowed to keep his phone, someone needed it to tell people where he was.

So Bood had pocketed his phone, pulled Ilya into his massive arms and squeezed him tight. He had pressed a kiss to the top of his head and mumbled, "I love you, man" into his hair, like they were preparing to hop the boards for a line change and not like they were standing in the middle of The Ottawa Hospital's Civic Campus. Ilya had numbly returned the gesture before letting the nurses gently guide him into a wheelchair. And then they’d brought him here.

He'd been asked to change into the ugliest scrubs in the world, handed his clothes and shoes over to be put with the rest of his belongings, and then he’d tried to get some sleep.

He's about to try and get some more when there's a soft knock at the door. Ilya groans. Ебать! (Fuck!) Can this fucking day just end already?

"Hi, Ilya. Sorry to disturb you," it's the perky nurse again, but this time there are two men in paramedic uniforms behind her. The one chugging coffee from a double-stacked Tim Hortons cup has scruffy red hair, while the other, manning the stretcher, has a long, thick braid that almost reaches his waist. "They were able to find a bed for you over at the General Campus, and these guys are here to drive you over. Do you need to use the bathroom again before you go?"

Not really, but Ilya says yes anyway. He hopes the three of them aren't watching through the window as he splashes water on his face to try to make himself feel clean. He washes his hands in a pathetic attempt to stall further. He avoids his own gaze in the mirror.

"I'm good," Ilya says, which isn't fucking true, obviously, but the paramedics just nod and start to lower the stretcher. The perky nurse helps Ilya sit down before handing the bag with his belongings over to one of the paramedics and adds, "I hope you feel better soon, Ilya."

I fucking doubt it.

"Alright, buddy. Let's get you strapped in and we can go."

The two men chat aimlessly as they have Ilya fold his arms up to his chest and strap him in. Tim Hortons tucks a hospital blanket around him once the stretcher is raised and says, "It's pretty cold out, but the box is warm. We won't let you freeze."

He grins at him, and then must see something on his partner's face (Ilya can't see; he can't turn around from where he's strapped in) because he grabs the front of the stretcher, wishes the perky nurse a nice shift, and then they're off.

If Ilya had been able to see himself and feel anything at all besides numb, he imagines the picture they make on their way to the ambulance bay must be a funny one. Ilya was only a couple of inches taller than them when they had all been briefly standing, but he's definitely heavier. Muscle and fat weigh the same, and he has a lot of muscle.

It takes a second for the paramedics to find their groove in transporting an NHL-sized patient, but they find it. Ilya's mindlessly reading all the departments' names they're passing by when a shock of cold air hits him. They've reached the bay.

They wheel him over to one of the ambulances, exchanging pleasantries with the other paramedics they pass by. Tim Hortons stays by Ilya while his partner heads into the cab to start the ignition.

"Any song requests? Asin's a pretty tolerable DJ; he'll play anything," Tim Hortons asks as his partner, Asin, comes back and the two of them start opening up the back doors.

"No, it's fine. I'm pretty tired," Ilya replies. He clutches the blanket as well as he can with his arms bound to his chest because fuck, it's cold.

"No problem, buddy. We'll get you warmed up in a sec."

They hoist him in quickly and efficiently. Tim Hortons tucks another blanket around him as Asin shuts the back doors and heads back behind the wheel.

"Should be around twenty minutes before we get to the General Campus, maybe fifteen at this hour. If you want to take a quick nap, I'll wake you when we get there."

The lights turn off, the engine revs. Ilya's already nodding off.

I hope I don't wake up.