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When Bobby Nash woke that morning, he knew that the day would be awful, and not just because of how the dinner with Buck went the night before. He still wanted to kick himself for how he had told the younger man that he was the one holding him back from coming to work because Buck's face had been so devastated. The younger man was right to say that Bobby's actions were a knife to the back when you looked at it from Buck's perspective, especially since Bobby had not talked to Buck about any of it beforehand. Or after for that matter. Also, how he had gone about things was not the best, even though he had done it to keep Buck safe as the younger man seemed intent on disregarding his doctor's orders.
The other reason why he knew that the day would be awful, was that today was the anniversary of his family's death and those were always hard. He had hoped to be working today, as he normally was every year, but somehow this year, he wasn't and he so wished he was, because then at least he would have some distraction.
He got up early with Athena anyway, because he wanted to have breakfast with her and planned on calling Buck later to apologize for being an ass and tell the younger man why he had done what he had done in the hopes that Buck would understand and that maybe they could find a way to move past this. Buck, however, was not answering his phone, for which Bobby could not fault him.
About an hour after Athena had left the house, Bobby's mobile rang and he sprinted over, hoping it would be Buck calling back. It wasn't. It was the Chief's office and Bobby got a sinking feeling in his stomach just looking at the number.
"Bobby Nash speaking," he answered the phone after swallowing heavily.
"Come into my office right now," the Chief replied, not bothering with any pleasantries before hanging up. Bobby looked at the device. The Chief had sounded more than mad and Bobby had no idea what this could be about. It was just what he needed on top of everything else today. He sighed and got into his uniform. The way the Chief had sounded, this was official business, so he had to look official, too.
Half an hour later, Bobby made his way through the hallways of headquarters and up to the Chief's office. The secretary took one look at him and just waved him through, not bothering to phone ahead. Bobby took a deep calming breath before he entered the office. His gaze fell onto the two occupants and widened when he recognized Eddie's aunt. He had no idea what the woman wanted here, but the glare she was sending him made him feel like a naughty boy that had hurt someone dear to her and Bobby didn't need three guesses who that was. It was widely known that the Diaz family had all but adopted Buck. He just wondered what pull the woman had to be in his Chief's office.
"Nash, this is Josephina Diaz, our Chief Representative of the Union," Chief Alonzo introduced and Bobby felt his stomach drop. Of course, he had heard of Josephina Diaz, everyone had, but he had never met the woman, he thought, until now because until now, nothing his station had been involved in was bad enough to warrant her to step in. Not even his own suspension. He had no idea that Josephina Diaz was Eddie's aunt Pepa as Diaz was a very common last name in LA.
"Mrs. Diaz," Bobby greeted. He noticed that she neither stood, nor offered her hand and that was fair. If this was about Buck, he would be pissed in her shoes as well. Athena had warned him that all of this could bite him in the ass, and backfire spectacularly. It seemed that today was that day and what a fitting one it was. "Chief, I assume this is about Buck?"
"Looks like he's not as dumb as we thought," Pepa said snidely, causing the Chief to hide a smirk in his coffee cup. Bobby noticed that he didn't have one and had also not been asked to sit yet, both very much power plays on the Chief's part.
"This is about Buckley," the Chief confirmed, ignoring Pepa's jibe. "And about the fact that you seem to be trying to get him killed. I wanted to hear your reasoning for lying to the brass about the man's field readiness."
Bobby could only stare at the Chief in puzzlement at the man's words. He wasn't trying to get Buck killed. Quite the opposite! He was trying to keep him from harm and having to face death a fourth time in under a year! Or was it the fifth? Or sixth? He had no idea how often the tsunami should count and if Freddy Costas should count twice, once for blowing up the ladder track and once for preventing them from helping the injured firefighters with his little homemade suicide vest.
"Me?" Bobby asked frowning because of this, "Trying to get Buck killed? I don't! I love him like a son! I want him to be safe, which is why I told everyone that wanted to hear it he wasn't ready to return to full duty and convinced him that the brass was hesitant to have him back in the field!"
"Boy, I don't wanna be your son if that is how you treat them," Pepa muttered and the Chief threw her another glare.
"What do you mean?" Bobby asked, wondering why the woman was so hostile toward him. Yeah, he had lied, but he just couldn't understand what her problem was. She should be grateful that he was keeping a member of her family safe.
"I mean, that the solution you found to keep Buck safe was the one solution that is the most likely to cause him even more clots and chances are that the next time, he won't be around people when he throws them, or they won't be in his lung, but somewhere else in his body!" Pepa snapped, not bothered by the Chief and his desire to lead the conversation at all.
"What?" Bobby frowned. "No! When he's not walking around and training the whole time, he can't overwork himself! That's what caused the clots in the first place. This is much safer!"
"You haven't read a word of what his doctors wrote to you, have you?" the Chief asked, his eyes wide.
"I did!" Bobby denied. "I read the assessment of the ER doctor after the embolism. He said that Buck overdoing things is what led to the embolism. That and that he was not hydrating enough!"
The Chief frowned at those words and shuffled through the papers in front of him, clearly looking for something. The more he looked, the deeper his frown got.
"I can't remember reading anything from the ER," Pepa said, frowning, too.
"There's nothing here. Did you get this via e-mail? And why didn't you put it into Buckley's file?" Alonzo asked.
"Yeah, I still have it in my e-mail account," Bobby nodded and pulled out his phone to look up the mail. "And I didn't add it to Buck's file because I thought this would hinder his coming back because it showed that he wasn't careful with his health and pushing too far too fast."
Pepa pursed her lips, while Alonzo was quite unhappy as well, but they both could understand the reasoning.
"Should I send it to you, sir?" Bobby asked once he had found it and Alonzo nodded. A moment later, his inbox dinged and he opened the mail. Pepa stood and moved around to be able to see his screen to read through the attachment over the Chief's shoulder and both their frowns deepened with every minute that passed.
"What about the other e-mails from his doctors?" the Chief asked. "The ones that came after this one. Did you read them?"
Bobby looked a bit sheepish at that, but he breathed in to steel his nerve and admitted, "Not really. I just thought they would be more of what the ER doctor said. His assessment was pretty thorough in my eyes."
"So let me get this straight," Pepa said, keeping herself forcibly calm. "You based your recommendation on the words of an ER doctor that clearly needs a refresher on the treatment of blood clots and lied to everyone because of that?"
"No!" Bobby denied loudly, before reigning himself in and continuing much more quietly. "I saw how much Buck was constantly pushing himself to get back to work before he was ready and I took that this as a sign from the universe that he should calm down and take a step back! What happened to him was traumatic and he should have taken much longer to heal completely before even considering coming back. I thought with the fire marshal job he could still work with the department, but he'd be much safer and heal from all that happened!"
"None of what you said was contrary to what I said even though you denied it," Pepa shot back. "You lied to everyone, Buck included, about why he could not come back to the job he loved because you decided that he needed to take a step back. And instead of talking to him about that like an adult, you lied. Because you knew, that Buck would not see things your way, because why should he? He's been cleared by three different doctors as well as the department's, and it's been found that it was not his fault that he developed the clots. The hardware in his leg is the cause. He actually did everything to the letter of his doctor's orders, including drinking enough while training."
"Then why isn't he talking to a psychologist if he's doing everything by the book?" Bobby shot back. "He should! He nearly died! Over half a dozen times he nearly died!"
"The reason Buckley is not talking to a psychologist is his own," the Chief replied calmly as Pepa had briefed him on the fact that they would need to talk to Buck about that because Eddie had hinted that there were Reasons, capital "R", there, but that it was not something to be discussed over the phone. Her next stop would be Eddie's house so that she could speak to Buck about that and their next steps. She had, however, wanted to talk to Nash first, because she wanted to figure out if they would need to lay criminal charges against the man with how his recommendations had gone directly against the recommendations of Buck's doctor. She also wanted an investigation started as to why Buck was put on a desk job in the first place as the idea should have been killed on several levels with his history.
"Does it have anything to do with the fact that he slept with the last one he saw?" Bobby asked and both Pepa and the Chief's eyes widened at that. "I mean it was unprofessional, but he calmed down a lot on the sleeping around front after that."
"What do you mean by that?" Pepa inquired, her voice forcibly calm at the captain's words.
"I shouldn't have said anything," Bobby winced. He really didn't want to make things worse for Buck, but it seemed as if that was all he was capable of.
"No, you started talking about it, you finish it by telling us all that you know," the Chief replied, his eyes narrowed. "That's an order, Nash!"
Bobby swallowed heavily. He just hoped that they would all get out of this and that the blowback against Buck wouldn't be too bad.
"When Buck had the first loss on the job," he started, desperately wishing for at least some water because of how much he was talking, "he wasn't handling it well. He froze when I needed him on the ropes the next time, so I gave him the card of one of the department's therapists, Dr. Wells. Buck made an appointment with her and saw her once. He was a bit subdued afterward and I heard through the grapevine that he slept with her. Chim likes to tease Buck about it. He really did calm down after that when it came to fucking around on and off the job. I swear!"
"Yeah, I would calm down a lot when it comes to sex after I was raped as well," the Chief said, dry as Sahara sand, making Bobby gape at him. "Pepa, I want that woman investigated yesterday!"
"He wasn't raped," Bobby denied aghast at the implications.
"Oh no?" the Chief asked. "So he slept with the woman before you sent him to her?"
Bobby frowned at the question. He wasn't sure, but from Chim's words, he had gathered that it had, in fact, happened during the session, which was why he felt that Buck had acted unprofessionally.
"I'm not sure," he said because of that and it wasn't a lie as Buck had not talked to him directly about it. He really didn't want to put the younger man even more in the line of fire.
"Let me make one thing clear. If he slept with her before his session, she should have recused herself from being his therapist due to a personal connection. Any other time, it was rape, because there clearly was no year between him seeing her and the sex," Alonzo snapped. "Buckley was in no place mentally to consent. She will be reported to the police as she broke the law."
Bobby's eyes widened at that. That was not something he had considered and he should have. It was another instance where he had let Buck down. Add in the fact that he had not reigned Chim in for always bringing it up again and he felt sick to the stomach so he had to swallow several times to keep the bile down.
Fuck, he wouldn't fault Buck for not wanting to come back to the 118. He himself wouldn't want to come back to a captain and station that let him down as they had.
"As for you, Nash, you will be suspended for a month without pay for lying to the department. After that, you will go to sensitivity seminars and a few law classes as to what are reportable transgressions and I strongly recommend you fucking read the other doctor's reports on Buckley," the Chief snapped. "You should count yourself lucky that Buckley hasn't thrown another clot and that Diaz involved his aunt. Your actions opened this department up to being sued to hell and back and you as well. You might still face legal action for your part in this. Dismissed."
Bobby saluted and left, his mind swirling with all that he had learned. He resolved to read all the emails Buck's doctors had sent the moment he came home. Once that was done, he would call Buck again and if the other man was still not answering, he would leave a voicemail to tell him how sorry he was for all the ways he had fucked up. He would also tell Buck that he understood if the younger man couldn't trust him anymore and that he would do anything to regain that trust or help him to move forward with his life. Even though it broke his heart to lose Buck and Eddie both as he was sure that when Buck left, Eddie would as well.
It served him right for all that he had done.