Chapter Text
Everything was slipping away. It didn’t take long after the first cut. The knife was sharp, probably too sharp for a kitchen. His tools were always in top shape. He used force like it was the glass, cutting so far the nerves were shot. He tried to pass the knife to his other hand, but it couldn’t grip. He sent signals to his hand to wrap around it, but they barely grasped the handle. He finally got it between his thumb and pointer, holding it by sheer determination more than anything else. As the blade touched his right wrist he watched the tiny stream of blood emerge from the new crack on his arm.
Maddie’s face flashed before him, patching up a wound from a bike accident when he was a kid.
He tried to press harder, but she stayed in his mind. He kept staring at the little stream of blood, wondering if he was willing it to fall or hoping that somehow, miraculously, it would close back up and leave his skin untouched as before. The knife faltered in his grip and he sunk back, dizziness taking over.
Eddie looking up at him from a stretcher, his eyes frantically searching Buck’s blood-covered chest. “Are you hurt?”
He stayed trained on the vision of Eddie’s memory, dancing in front of him until it was joined by others: Maddie, Bobby, Christopher.
He dropped the knife.
His flung his arm out of the tub, splashing blood across the otherwise pristine room. It searched for something, for anything. For help. Was his phone there? Who could he even call?
Would it even matter?
He tried to raise himself out of the tub, but any remaining strength in his body was sapped out through his wrist. Calling out for help was useless. The walls of the loft were thick. He closed his eyes.
The noise that came next felt like it was from a dream. It thumped through the walls of his brain dully. He tried to respond, he was pretty sure noises came out. He tried to make them sound like ‘help.’
The door burst open and light poured in. It must still be light outside. He felt himself getting lifted from the tub. It was cold outside of the water. He felt himself talking but didn’t know what he said. His eyes struggled to see anything in front of him, but he was pretty sure it was an angel.
……
The incessant beeping of some awful machine woke him up. Wherever he was it was cold, the kind of cold that aches through your bones no matter what you do. He recognized the feel of the scratchy fabric all over his body as cheap sheets. He tried to pull them closer, but his arms felt too heavy. They were the coldest of his whole body, almost like they were submerged in ice. He realized pretty quickly that he was shaking.
How did he get here?
Was it a call maybe, he hit his head and now he was in some kind of weird cold cave? No, there were sheets. He tried to clear his mind, but everything felt muddy. Sounds started to come in next, high and loud. They were frantic, crescendo-ing around him too frequently to keep up. He shut his eyes even tighter. He could feel himself trying to scream but couldn’t tell if anything was coming out.
He fell asleep again.
……
It wasn’t as cold this time, or as loud. There was still quiet beeping coming from somewhere. His head felt foggy. It didn’t take long before an intense burning feeling started in his left wrist, seizing his arm and echoing up through his chest. He coughed like the pain was filling his lungs and he needed some way to get it out. Noises filled his head all over again before they subsided and he went blissfully back to sleep.
……
The last time waking up he opened his eyes first. The all-too-familiar sights of a hospital room filled his vision. The monitors, the cheap sheets, and one empty visitor chair pushed up at his feet. This room was different than any he’d been in before. Most didn’t have windows, but if they did the window was at the foot of the bed. This room had high paneled windows, letting in a narrow ray of light in from the top of the room but too far too look out of.
Too tall for anyone to reach and too narrow for anyone to jump out, he realized.
Everything came back to him in a blur. Saying goodbye, writing his note, driving to the loft. How had anyone found him? His memory went dark as soon as the door to the loft opened.
He tapped his right hand against the top of the mattress anxiously until he found a loose thread. Pulling it slowly unraveled it and gave him something to do. Something to focus on other than how he got here. His right arm was wrapped in so many bandages he couldn’t even see how it looked. It didn’t feel painful and he wanted to believe that was a good thing, but the flashes of memories of burning pain that came to his mind every time he looked at the pristine bandages had him worried.
He was thirsty. There was a coffee cup on the floor by the empty chair so he figured someone would be back soon, probably whatever hospital staff they had making sure he didn’t do anything crazy. He wanted to hit the call button and ask for water, but as soon as he did the room would probably be full of strangers asking questions he didn’t want to answer. Facing someone he didn’t know asking about whatever he did sounded so hard he thought about just trying to go back to sleep. Instead, he resigned himself to playing with the loose fabric until inevitably someone came back in and started talking to him.
He heard the door open and prepared himself. The hinges were soft, but in a silent room with nothing but monitors to hear it wasn’t easy to miss. He turned his head, figuring at least he could greet them. He turned slowly, his neck feeling oddly stiff on his head. Instead of scrubs, he saw dark jeans and a gray henley. He processed the henley, the one he’d seen a on a million Saturdays and a million afternoons clocking out from the firehouse. The threads were worn down and it had a little chocolate stain on the corner of the left torso, and despite that it had never been thrown away. His eyes snapped up, soreness forgotten as he looked directly into the face of his best friend. Eddie’s hair was hanging loosely by his face, almost wavy from how long it was getting by the side of his face. Eddies’s rich brown eyes shifted from a knit of concern into bewildered as soon as they met his own.
“Buck!” The sound of something hitting the ground echoed in the room as ran in, letting the door swing closed on its own. A pleasant bitter smell filled the room and Buck realized he must have dropped a coffee.
“Eh.. mm. Eddie,” he tried to return. His throat was scratchy and weak. Eddie seemed to pick up on this and grabbed a water bottle from somewhere behind the monitor. He held the straw to his mouth and watched him drink before pulling the chair closer and sitting next to him.
“Sorry about coffee,” he said as he finished a long sip. Eddie broke into a smile.
“I don’t care about coffee,” he said. They didn’t say anything for a while. Eddie just sort of watched him, his eyes filled with that funny thing all over again. Buck looked away.
“Sorry,” he managed. His head was all the way towards the wall now, trying not to let any tears come out. He didn’t deserve to cry.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Eddie said, his warm hand handing on Buck’s shoulder. “Hey, look at me.” No use denying him. He was nothing if not insistent. “Nothing.” Buck nodded back, now looking at his face.
“Okay.” He hated how weak his voice sounded.
“Is it okay if I call the doctor?” He asked. “They’ll just come in and check a few things, but they can leave you alone right after. I promise.” Buck nodded again, wondering how feeble he must look. Eddie smiled and hit the call button. Buck felt his thumb rub up and down his shoulder and he closed his eyes.
The doctor came in quickly and checked a few things, mostly just reading the monitors. He asked Buck to do some sort of vision test, which felt weird but okay. Boiler-plate stuff.
“How would you rate your pain on a scale of 1-10, Mr. Buckley?” She asked politely.
“Buck is fine,” he managed, his voice not fully recovered despite the water. “And 0. I don’t feel any pain.” She looked up from her clipboard.
“None?” Eddie asked, having stayed firmly planted in the chair. Buck shook his head.
“On your left arm, any pain there specifically?” The doctor asked again.
“Nothing there. I feel okay, actually,” he said, sort of hoping they’d just leave.
“What about other sensations? Is it cold? Tingling?” Something about the questions was making him upset.
“No, it doesn’t feel like anything.” She frowned and made a note on his chart. “I’ll be right back,” she added as she headed for the door, adding to a now-growing sense of disappointment.
“Leave me alone right after, huh?” He said to Eddie, trying for a joke. Eddie’s face was all over the place, his eyes seemingly searching the floor for an answer.
“Buck, I don’t want to upset you,” he said. “But can you feel this?” Eddie’s eyes gestured down at his arm. Buck followed along the bandages, expecting to see some sort of peak of red or maybe an odd-angled turn. Instead his heart rose and fell too fast as he realized that since they’d been talking, Eddie hadn’t just had his hand on his shoulder. His other was delicately wrapped in Buck’s exposed fingers, starkly white even against the bedding. Buck tried to move them, wanting so badly, even with all this and even as much as it could give him away, to curl back.
They didn’t move.
Panic started to set in as he kept pushing them, willing his knuckles to bend and do something, anything. He could hear Eddie’s voice saying something to him but his brain was locked on trying to push down the joints in his hand.
“BUCK!” The loudness snapped him up and he looked at Eddie, realizing when he moved his head that his eyes and his face had fully filled with tears. “Buck, it’s okay. It’ll be okay.” He closed his eyes as he felt Eddie’s hand, which must have left his own without him noticing, wrapped around his body in a hug. He sobbed into his shoulder, lacking the strength or self-control to stop himself.
He fell asleep like that before the doctor came back in.
……
When he woke up this time there were hushed voices coming from the corner of the room. There was still light in the room, but it was lower and softer now. He must have been out a while. It didn’t take him any time to remember where he was this time. He looked down at his hand right away, sickened by the pale white of his finger tips. He tried to extend them out and back, just a simple stretch. Nothing moved. The world didn’t crash around him as much this time, instead he just deflated slowly as he kept pushing, using all his might to try anything to get them to move.
“Buck?” The quiver in the voice made his heart shatter. He looked up and realized the voices belonged to Eddie, still in the gray henley, and Maddie. Maddie was sitting in the same single chair with Eddie crouched next to her. He turned his head around to look at Buck before glancing back to Maddie. She had started to get up on her own, but Eddie reached out his arm. She wasn’t in a hospital gown anymore, but she could still only be a few days out from the baby.
“The baby. Okay?” Buck managed, the memories of little Kevin crying through the window of the hospital nursery coming to him. He hadn’t gotten to see him, they were running tests. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t asked Eddie the first time he woke up. He couldn’t help but think about how much he’d already failed his nephew, especially now keeping his mother away.
“He’s good,” Maddie said, smiling as she caught up to his bedside. Eddie followed her with the chair, letting her sit back down. “Already up half a pound. Chim has him in the waiting room if you want to meet him in a bit.”
“Half a pound?” He asked. Maddie just looked at him, relief mixed in with her grief.
“Buck,” Eddie started. “You’re out of the woods now but you lost a lot of blood. You’ve been out about a week.” He nodded, less surprised than he thought he would be. New dread filled him though as he looked at his favorite two people and realized how much of their lives they must have put on hold just to stay here and watch him. Maddie was sitting here with a new baby outside, and Eddie had either had to split apart from his son again or pull Christopher from school.
“Don’t freak out,” Maddie said, starting to go for his hand but at the last second adjusting to touch his shoulder. “We want to be here. Everyone does, they’ve been cycling in and out.”
“Christopher most of all,” Eddie chimed in. “We love you Buck, we all do.” Maddie gave Eddie some kind of look Buck couldn’t read.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to hold back his tears again. He wanted to make it at least a few minutes awake this time before completely breaking down.
“What did I tell you last time,” Eddie said. “Nothing to apologize for.”
“We’re the ones who are sorry,” Maddie said, her own tears in full force. “I had no idea, Evan I’m so sorry.”
“Please, no Maddie,” Buck managed back. “Not you. Not anyone’s fault. My fault.”
“I’m your sister. I should have known. If I wasn’t so busy, maybe…” she trailed off and Buck wished he could grab her hand and squeeze it, but his arm refused to listen once again.
“I didn’t want anyone to, I don’t think,” he said quietly. No one responded. “I just mean, I think I was pretty lost in it.”
“Are you still?” She asked, He could have sworn she looked exactly like she did that day in the hospital so many years ago when he asked her to leave Pennsylvania with him. Before Doug did his worst, before two kids and a million lives ago. He couldn’t lie to her.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Maybe we should get the doctor back in here,” Eddie said, delicately patting Maddie’s shoulder. “We have to make some plans. All of us together, if that’s okay with you Buck.” All he could do was nod and bite back the tear that had resurfaced.
……
The doctor ran him through a bunch of tests again, some with Maddie and Eddie in the room and for some with them in the hallway. She asked about his arm a bit, but mostly about how he was feeling and whether he’d do it again. He felt like he was in some kind of purgatory. By the end she must have written pages of notes on the clipboard. Eddie and Maddie practically pushed their way back about a minute after the doctor left.
“How are you feeling?” Eddie said, leading Maddie to the chair once again.
“Okay,” he said, not knowing how to say overwhelmed in a way that wouldn’t make them want to leave. As guilty as he felt, he wanted to keep looking at them. “You guys should be with your kids. I’m okay.”
“I might have to go home soon,” Maddie said, admitting it like it was a confession. “Kevin’s a ravenous kid.”
“Lucky for you though, I’ve got nowhere to be. My ravenous kid just got to the waiting room with a pizza. Doctor said its okay for you to have some too for a late dinner, if you’re ready.” Buck felt his spirits rise, really rise.
“You’re okay with me seeing him?” He asked.
“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before,” he answered back, amused. “Yes, Buck, I always want you to see Christopher. Kid misses you like crazy. Seeing you when you’re passed out isn’t the same. Plus he’s almost caught up to you in that book. I’m pretty sure he wants to ask you a bunch of questions about Massachusetts?” Buck smiled.
“It’s set there. Concord, during the Civil War.”
“That makes more sense. I thought he was thinking about a trip or something.” Eddie looked between him and Maddie. “We’ve never been up there. I think he thinks you Pennsylvanians will know better.”
“Well if you boys are having dinner, how about Eddie heads down to get Chris? I can have Chim bring in Kevin for a quick hello before we go. If that’s okay, Buck,” she looked at him. He couldn’t comprehend that they wanted him around their kids, as if he could be any kind of role model after, well, after all this.
“Yeah, yeah I’d like that,” was all he managed. Eddie reached over and squeezed his shoulder before turning, stopping on his way to the door to hug Maddie. She smiled up at him before grabbing her phone and firing off a text, presumably summoning Chim up to whatever floor they were on. Once the door was closed behind Eddie, Maddie looked at him again, renewed focus.
“Are you really okay, Evan?” He met her eyes, unable to read them.
“I really don’t know,” he said, trying so hard to be okay as he pushed the words out. It was like his brain focused all his energy on these tasks, on being okay or on moving his fingers, and it just couldn’t make the signals work no matter how much he tried.
“We’ll figure this out,” she said. “You have to believe me. We’ll find you the right doctors and treatments, okay? I promise.” She held her pinky out to him, extending her arm across him effortlessly to connect with his right hand. He smiled at her. He believed she meant it. That was enough, for now.