Chapter Text
Chris’s nightmares resurface two weeks after he starts lessons at the local pool.
It might be part of the healing process, Dr. Messa says, as Eddie paces a soft circle in his living room, Chris wet snores whistling past his ear. He hasn’t let Eddie hold him like this in years, announcing that he was too big to be rocked back to sleep, like a baby. I’m a big kid now, Daddy. I can sleep in my own bed. Now, it's a near nightly occurrence. He’s been easy enough to settle down, but there’s none of his usual stubbornness in the way he clambers for Eddie’s embrace the second he arrives, all snot-covered and tear streaked.
Tonight, had been particularly bad, an extra hour of hugging and hot chocolate and Eddie assuring Chris that if he needs to stop the lessons, he just needs to say the word. We’ll go at your pace, mijo. Whatever you need. I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you. But Chris doesn’t want to stop. He loves the water in the daytime. When the sun is shining and his favorite lifeguard lets him choose his color pool noodle and Eddie lingers by the gate to rub sunscreen into his face, Chris is happy as a clam. He giggles and forms mermaid alliances with the other kids in his class and whines when Eddie tells him it’s time to go home.
And then nighttime hits, and neither he nor Eddie can get a full night of sleep. Eddie hates this for his son, who has started flagging enough that his school has started to notice, and he hates it for himself. There’s a small traitorous part of himself that revels in the shifts he spends at the station where he can usually sneak in a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before the bell goes off. He hates thinking of any time away from his son as ‘better’ and he hates that he can’t stop the nightmares entirely, and he hates that right now all he can do is pace back and forth in front of his couch, on the phone with a therapist who should also be asleep.
“Is he still able to sleep afterwards?” Messa asks him. Her voice is pitched low enough that even if Chris were awake, he wouldn’t hear a thing. Eddie is simultaneously grateful to have found someone like her, with odd hours and a personal, emergency line that actually gets some response, and so upset that they’ve had this conversation enough times that she knows his son’s habits this well.
He hoists Chris higher on his shoulder to answer.
“Yeah, he’s sleeping now. It took a lot longer today than it has been. I just… should I keep letting him go? I know exposure therapy was what was recommended, but if it's making him this upset every night–.”
“You’re concerned. Any parent would be,” Eddie can hear the tell-tale sounds of shuffling papers in the background, a soft huff as Messa rifles through her files. “I still think exposure therapy is the best option here. Every time Chris has come to me, he’s talked about how much better he’s been doing in the water. Is he still having difficulty with bathtime?”
Eddie shakes his head as he runs a hand down his son’s back.
“No. No, it’s been better. He still won’t let me use the showerhead to rinse his hair, but he’s been doing really well when we just use a cup, says the noise isn’t as bad. He’s actually been looking forward to them recently, especially when we use the bath bombs you recommended.”
“Okay then. The nightmares and insomnia are pretty concerning, especially considering his CP, but if Chris doesn’t want us to stop, I think it would be a disservice to him to suggest it. We’ll give him a little longer to see if these nightmares continue, and if they do, we might need to start him on some sleep aids and prazosin. I’d like to get with his primary care to talk to them before we move forward. I know he doesn’t have a lot of daily home medications, but I want to make sure there’s nothing he’s currently taking that would react poorly with it.”
There’s another shuffle, the click of a pen, but all Eddie can focus on is the soft rise and fall of his son’s chest, the way his wet nose feels pressed against his neck. He shuts his eyes and does his best to mimic it, to center himself so he doesn’t throw something or break down in tears or –he glances at his bruised knuckles– something worse.
“Alright,” he says, taking in another breath and praying that’s what it will be. “Alright. Let's– let's do that, that sounds good. Prazosin is the same medication you mentioned last time? The one that’s had plenty of studies in children?”
“That’s the one. We’ll start him pretty low if we do, nothing too quickly, and his whole medical team will be involved. Chris has told me plenty how much he isn’t a fan of lab draws, so he might not be too happy as we increase his dose up to a therapeutic level, but if these nightmares don’t go away on their own, it should be a big help. Why don’t we set up an appointment for the end of the week, and we’ll discuss it then?”
Eddie eyes his calendar hanging up by the kitchen. It’s Tuesday, or possibly Wednesday depending on if they’ve crossed the midnight threshold yet. That would put their appointment two nights away, and would have Chris missing his swimming lessons, but at this point Eddie isn’t too upset by it. He wants Chris to have what he wants, to feel more comfortable in the water, but he can’t help the part of him that wants his son as far away from bodies of water as possible.
“We can do that. Would our usual appointment time be alright? I don’t want to have to pull him out of class early if I don’t have to.”
“That would be fine. We had a cancellation on Friday at your usual spot, so we should have plenty of time to discuss everything before the weekend. Oh, and Eddie–”
Eddie pauses, halfway to pulling his phone away from his ear.
“I’d suggest setting up a system of people who can help watch him overnight so you’re able to sleep. I know you want to help Chris, and you are, but you have a difficult job, both as a career and as a parent. Being so sleep deprived you can’t function isn’t helpful to either of you. Maybe, you can have that lovely gentleman who brought Chris in last month help? What was his name, Buck? Chris talks about him in our sessions very often, how safe he makes him feel when they’re together. It would be a big help to have someone he’s that close to take over for you when you’re gone.”
Eddie feels his tongue catch on the roof of his mouth, his eyes water, his chest hitch. Anger, sadness, he doesn’t know but the emotion snags hold of his stomach and nearly bowls him over. It takes a second to find his voice, to stop himself from doing what he wants to do and scream into the floorboards.
“Right. I… I’ll talk to him. Thanks, Dr. Messa.”
“Of course. I’ll see you and Chris on Friday.”
The call ends with a click that seems to ring out throughout the room. Eddie spends a second staring at his phone, debating whether or not this warrants waking his son to chuck it across the room, before deciding that throwing it down on the couch is the better option. It doesn’t matter in the end, his phone bounces off the cushions and lands with a clatter on the hardwood.
Chris jerks up, blinking owlishly in the dim light. Eddie only just resists the urge to curse. He swoops a hand over his son’s back.
“Sorry, mijo. I didn’t mean to wake you up. You want to go back to bed?”
Chris blinks at him again, eyes wide and more scared than Eddie will ever be able to forgive himself for. He fists a tiny hand in Eddie’s tee-shirt before asking:
“Can we go back to your bed? I don’t want to sleep alone.”
Eddie forces a smile and does his best to shove down the feeling of his heart breaking in two. His son comes first.
“Yeah, I think we can do that. What do you say we make a pit stop in your room and grab Dandy, and then we have a sleepover for the rest of the night?”
Chris brightens as he always does when Eddie remembers to snag his favorite stuffed lion. When he turns towards Eddie, his soft smile is just the slightest bit more cheeky.
“You know, most sleepovers have candy and popcorn, Daddy.”
“And you know, mijo, that you’re not allowed candy past nine pm. Besides,” –Chris screeches as Eddie flips him upside down, arm snug over his son’s chest– “How are you going to eat candy like this? It doesn’t seem very easy.”
“Daddy,” Chris giggles, kicking out with his feet. “I’m not doing this. You are!”
“I am? No, that can’t be right. My arm is free, see?”
He waves with the arm not holding his son.
“ Dad-dy! ” Chris whines. “You’re holding me with your other arm !”
Eddie makes an exaggerated face when he looks down.
“Oh! You’re right, I am.” He rights Chris as he gets to his bed, popping him on his mattress. “There we go, much better. You got Dandy?”
Chris lifts up the lion with a triumphant sound.
“Bueno. Alright, mijo. Now that we’re all in attendance, its time for this sleepover to commence.” He eyes his son, the way he’s playing but still slightly reserved. “You want to race me there, or would you rather we pull a Chris-Dandy Rocketship?”
There’s the slightest tug at his heartstrings when Chris doesn’t quite meet his eyes, instead choosing to hold out his arms.
“Rocketship, please?”
“Alright,” Eddie tugs his son and toy back up to his chest. “Rocketship it is.”
It’s the most subdued rocketship they’re ever done. Usually, the game is played with Eddie swinging them both back and forth wildly, darting from room to room with Chris making all the usual sound effects. Now, Eddie’s the one making the sound effects, soft and under his breath, as they cross the short distance to Eddie’s room. The bed itself is a disaster, covers thrown everywhere from where he had bolted out earlier, but Chris doesn’t seem to care, curling up on his side the second Eddie lays him down. Eddie drops down afterwards; arms open for Chris to come up and cuddle into them.
Within seconds, he has his arms full of a far-too quiet eight-year-old. He runs his hand down Chris’s back again, up and down, only pausing when Chris mumbles something at him.
“What was that, Chris?”
Chris curls further into his stuffed toy, but his words are louder.
“Are you mad at me?”
Eddie has half a mind to punch something, if only there was something to punch. He can go out and fight every backstreet brawl in the city, but it won’t fix this. There’s no retribution for it. No villain to fight, no monster to subdue, no one to pin this on. His son is suffering and all he can blame is a freak natural disaster and someone he’s legally not allowed to see.
And even then, he doesn’t blame Buck for this. For other things surely, for filing a stupid ass lawsuit, and taking his problems with Bobby out on the entire team, and for spilling secrets Eddie was certain would stay locked up and safe, but not about the tsunami. He knows Buck would have run himself into the ground if it kept Chris safe, did run himself ragged enough to get himself hospitalized after.
He’s mad at Buck for a lot but not this, and he’s never been mad at Christopher, no matter what his son is thinking. He reaches a hand down to tug lightly at Chris’s chin, until they can look each other in the eyes.
“I’m not mad at you, Christopher. If I look upset, it's not at you. I need you to understand that.”
Chris sniffs, tears welling up in his eyes.
“But I’m keeping you up, and you missed a day of work last week. I know the extra visits cost a lot of money. I heard you talking to bisabuela about how expensive they were.”
“Hey,” he taps Chris’s chin. “You let me worry about that, okay? I don’t want you to think about anything but feeling better. If this is what it takes to make you feel better Chris, then I’m willing to do it. I’ll make it work.”
“But what if it doesn’t work!” Eddie nearly jumps, as Chris works his hands under him to sit up. Big fat tears spill over his cheeks. He backs away from Eddie’s grasp. “What if I don’t work? What if my brain is stupid and scared like this forever?”
How long has Chris been thinking like this? Eddie reaches out to hold him, then stops himself at Chris’s sniff. His hands twitch in the air between them. Eddie’s the one who should feel stupid and hopeless and incompetent, but none of that will help his son.
“Your brain isn’t stupid,” Eddie starts, grabbing for the part of this conversation easiest to disprove. “You know what Dr. Messa says: these things take time. You and Buck went through a lot during the tsunami. It’s alright to be scared. It’s alright to have these nightmares. We’re going to find a way to help with them, but you needing help is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s my job to help you through something like this. I want to help you with these things because you’re my son and I love you.”
Chris rubs at his eye with a shaking hand. He’s still farther away than Eddie would like, but he stops moving away. His gaze is firmly anchored on the bedsheets in front of him.
“Even if it takes forever?” He asks.
“Even if it takes forever and one.”
Eddie doesn’t have the time to brace before Chris is back in his arms. He wraps his arms around him and holds as tight as he dares.
“You’re going to be just fine, Chris. I’ve got you. Whatever you need, you ask for, okay? I’ll make it happen. I promise.”
He dips down to whisper the most important part into Chris’s curls.
“Te quiero muchísimo, mijo. Nada cambiará eso.”
Chris nods against his chest. His damp nose, his tear-stained cheeks, press against Eddie’s tee.
“Alright, Daddy,” his small arms reach across to continue the hug. “I love you too.”
It takes Chris another thirty minutes to fall back asleep. He has two more nightmares that night, small, not as bad as the first, but enough so that he wakes both of them up. Eddie for his part maybe gets an hour of sleep in between. By the time he’s meant to be up, he’s already been up, not that any good has come of it.
He’s exhausted, but he refuses to move for fear of disturbing the finally peacefully sleeping bundle at his side. The only thing that gets him up is the sound of Carla’s key hitting the lock and even then, he waits until her voice fills the halls to extract himself from his bed. Thankfully, his son doesn’t stir other than to curl himself more fully around his toy.
Eddie greets Carla with a smile he doesn’t feel. She stares him down with a grimace he knows fits the mess of tears and snot coating his shirt.
“Sorry, Carla,” he says, rubbing a hand down his face. “I think I’m going to call Chris out of school today. He didn’t have the best night.”
She reaches out to touch his shoulder, gives it a soft squeeze.
“Looks like neither of you did. Is he still having nightmares?”
“Yeah. I talked to Dr. Messa. She’s going to fit us in on Friday, maybe start him on some medication to help.”
“My poor baby. I’ll get him something good to eat, and we’ll have a lazy day. Watch some cartoons. Maybe he’ll finally teach me how to play that video game he showed me last week. He in your room?”
Eddie nods.
“Yeah, he stayed with me last night. I’m sorry. I should have given you more warning you’d be needed all day, but my phone was in the living room, and I didn’t want to get up and wake him. He’s finally sleeping. I want him to try and get in another few hours before–” He stops himself, feels his face heat. “Sorry, I know you know what you’re doing I just–”
“You’re being a good father to that boy, is what you’re doing. Go take a shower, Eddie. I’ve got it from here.”
The smile that melts onto his face feels more real than it has in hours.
“You’re amazing, Carla.”
She shoos him away with a grin.
“If you go now, I’ll have enough time to make you a breakfast sandwich and coffee before you leave, and don’t say I don’t have to. If you pass out on your way to work, I’d be doing a disservice to that darling boy of yours.”
Eddie chuckles, rolling shoulders that are suddenly so much lighter.
“Thank you, Carla.”
He moves as quick as he can, sending off a text to Bobby that he’ll be a few minutes late, before stripping and shoving himself under the spray. He spends less than five minutes scrubbing the grime and sweat from his skin, before drying off and doing his best to look somewhat presentable. He knows there’s no way to hide the eye bags and sunken look to his face, but at least, he can make sure he doesn’t look like a complete mess.
He’s out in time to see Carla flip an egg and cheese onto a bagel, to-go coffee cup sitting beside it. His mouth waters at the sight, and he only barely manages to keep from downing it then and there through sheer power of will.
“I know it's been a little since you’ve had something good to eat first thing in the morning,” she says, and Eddie feels the smile slip off his face. He loves Carla, and the rest of the team, but the constant reminders of the absent space at his side is getting exhausting.
“I fed myself before Buck, Carla. Chris and I have been alright.”
“You do well by Chris, but cooking has never been your strong suit,” Carla says, unphased by his tone. “Besides, Chris loves every meal I put in front of him, but it's not my cooking he’s been asking for these past few weeks. It's just sad to see you boys without your missing piece, that’s all.”
“Buck made himself a missing piece all on his own. He didn’t have to file the lawsuit,” Eddie catches Carla’s disapproving stare, and feels his face flush. “Sorry. I’m acting like a brat.”
Carla shakes her head.
“I knew how you’d react when I brought it up. Now go, before your boss calls me wondering where you’re at.”
Eddie nods, gathering up his breakfast and making his way to the truck. He dials up Chris’s school as he’s driving down the road and gives them a lame excuse as to why his son is out today. He knows it’ll come up eventually, but for now, the less he has to hash out with his son’s school the better. That’ll be a topic to broach when he’s not running off Carla’s amazing coffee and a two-hour nap.
He hits the firehouse fifteen minutes later than he’s meant to, but in a much better state than he expected when getting up. He’s fed, caffeinated, and as long as their shift doesn’t run over, should be useful for the entire shift – a miracle that could only be construed by Carla’s wonderful hands.
The station is somehow quiet when he gets there, something that actually gives him pause as he rounds the corner towards the stairwell. While it's been quieter since Buck got put on leave, the station always has an energy to it. There’s always someone arguing, someone else teasing, a third person causing some unknown chaos in the back. It reminds him of being in the army, that feeling of camaraderie so infectious you find yourself pulled into every argument, bet, and game without fail.
And today, there’s an odd buzzing in the air that almost makes him falter. Eddie isn’t like the rest of his crew. He doesn’t believe in karma or bad luck. He doesn’t think certain words are going to doom them for an entire shift. But he’s learned how to trust his gut, and something isn’t right. It’s not exactly wrong either, Eddie doesn’t have the urge he usually has to take Chris and run, but it’s close.
He lingers for just a moment, long enough to finally hear Chim’s teasing tone from upstairs, before he lets himself relax.
You’re too keyed up, he thinks, as he makes his way up the stairs. You’re sleep deprived and it’s making you paranoid. It’s your team. You trust them.
You trusted Buck, some quiet part of him whispers before Eddie shuts down the thought entirely. Look where that led you.
It’s not the same. Buck’s being stupid. He can stop this. He will stop this. When he realizes how stupid this is, when he just talks to Bobby and the two of them put this behind them, when Eddie gets in one good punch and then hugs Buck for longer than he’ll admit to, maybe–
“Ouch, Diaz. Maybe you should have been more than a bit late.”
Chim stares him down from where he’s clearing the table, this disgusted look on his face like Eddie has done something to personally offend him. Hen, still seated with her books out in front of her, has a similar look on her face, if skewed more towards concern.
“Eddie, should you have even come in? You look like you’re about to keel over,” the wrinkle in Hen’s brow deepens. “Did something happen?”
“Of course something happened,” Chim points his finger from underneath his stack of plates. “He’s usually the most put together, and now he looks like Buck’s probie ass after he pulled some 1.0 shit.”
“Worse actually. I’m pretty sure Buck slept during that time.”
“Yeah, around,” Chim adds with a pop of his gum, as he drops the dishes off in the sink. “Notably, in a few too many places. With a few too many–” He cuts himself off at the glower Eddie sends his way, hands up in surrender. Under the table, Hen kicks at him with a hissed ‘too much’.
“My bad, my bad. Something must have happened though; you look like you haven’t slept at all. Is everything okay?”
Eddie feels like he should take more offense to the everything about the current situation, but really, all he wants to do is sit down and stay there. He musters up a glare that must not compete with the previous expression on his face because all he gains in return is a little motion from Hen that he reads as ‘well?’.
He sighs and drops into the nearest chair.
“Christopher has been having nightmares,” he says, and he doesn’t need to look up to know his friend’s expressions have deepened, sympathy and warmth seeping in through the cracks. “It's been pretty bad recently. He had a couple last night, and his therapist wants us to come in on Friday. Possibly start him on some meds to help.”
“Is it related to the tsunami?” Chim asks.
“Yeah. His uh, his therapist wanted to try exposure therapy. We started a little over three weeks ago, and it's been non-stop nightmares since then.”
Hen’s hand lands on his fist, pressing down until Eddie releases the death grip he’s got, then she slots her hand into his, soft and light. He won’t clamp down as hard on her and she knows it. Eddie appreciates it almost as much as he’s upset with himself for needing it.
“Have you talked about it with his therapist? Maybe he’s moving too fast?”
Eddie shakes his head.
“We spoke last night, but she and Chris want to keep it up. I mean, he does okay in the daylight, loves it actually. Yesterday, he and his friends created a whole new game based on beating each other with pool noodles. It’s just…”
“Rough at night,” Chim finishes, with a face that's about as pinched as Eddie has seen it. “That sucks. Maybe it’ll get better with time. He’s a strong kid, Eddie. We’ve all seen it.”
Eddie sighs, nods, shakes off Hen’s hand with a squeeze and a brief smile at both of them.
“Thanks. He’s handling it better than me, I think. I gave him the day off school today, figured he and Carla will spend it watching cartoons and playing video games. Maybe that will be enough to get him to sleep tonight.”
Eddie doesn’t have high hopes for it really. The three rounds of nightmares last night seemed to prove this wasn’t going away anytime soon. Still, his son has proven to him time and time again that he can take more than Eddie thinks he can. Like Chim said, he’s a strong kid.
A strong kid who needs his dad back, as awake and capable as possible. He runs his hands through his hair, psyches himself up the best he can. Maybe, if he gets everything he needs to do in the station done early, he can catch enough sleep so he’s ready for whatever happens with Chris when he gets back.
He stands with a nod to Hen and Chim.
“I’m going to see what Bobby needs done. Maybe we can have a few hours before the first call.”
Hen pats his hip.
“Maybe you can use those hours to get some more sleep.”
“I can’t just spend the first few hours after I get into work late asleep. I think even Bobby would have something to say about that.”
“Eh- we’ll cover for you. It’s like you won’t even be miss–”
Chim’s cheerful speech is interrupted by the screeching of the bell. Eddie only just resists dropping his head into his hands. Behind him, Hen and Chim release nearly identical groans.
“You try and cheer a friend, and look where it gets you,” Chim huffs, pulling himself up from the table. His hand claps Eddie’s shoulder. “We’ll get all the calls out early. Busy first part of the shift means a better last, right?”
Eddie forces himself to nod.
“Right.”
Wrong.
The shift is hell. There’s no other way to describe it. Twenty-four hours of nonstop, unrelenting, adrenaline-fueled hell. Every call they take, every scene they enter, every minute they spend outside the station is filled with some new horror that Eddie is going to spend the next few years attempting to scrub out of his brain. Car wrecks, building collapse, two separate house fires, a choking victim that scares his wife so much she goes into cardiac arrest while Hen is actively doing the heimlich. Eddie does twelve rounds of CPR that’s split up between four people. Bobby attempts to make them dinner three times before he gives in and orders pizzas none of them have the chance to eat. Chim tries to clear the air with a game of his aptly titled ‘shit-shift’ bingo and stops when no one laughs after they get a blackout.
Twice.
The last call is the worst. They’re nearing the end of their shift, and all of them are looking worse for wear. They haven’t had a break in hours, and everyone from Bobby to Lena is flagging. Their moods aren’t any better. Usually, they have Buck as a buffer, not to mention food and sleep, as a way to mellow out the tension from a rough shift.
Today all they’ve had is two granola bars a piece and a screaming match Eddie and Lena refuse to give up even in the truck.
“You can’t just jump into the scene, Bosko. You had no idea if it was safe, I had no idea if it was safe. You were looking to get us both killed.”
“I was looking to help that kid, Diaz ,” Lena spits. “Besides, I didn’t ask you to run in after me.”
The look Eddie sends her would send a lesser person running.
“I’m your partner. It's my job to run in after you.”
“Right, I’m your partner .” She rolls her eyes. “One you obviously don’t want–”
“Hey–!” Chim and Hen both start. They jerk up from their seats, despite how desperate they were to stay out of it beforehand, mouths open and ready to jump in.
“Alright enough,” Bobby snaps, voice a thunderclap despite the fact that he’s driving the truck. “We’re professionals and adults. We can’t show up to a scene in-fighting and expect anyone to trust us to do our jobs. Lena, you shouldn’t have entered when you did. The scene hadn’t been cleared by the police properly. We’ll speak privately on it later, but it's unacceptable for you to continue to make calls that put yourself or the rest of your team at risk.”
Lena’s usually proud shoulders droop. Eddie wants to feel vindicated, but then he feels Bobby’s gaze turn on him and promptly shuts his mouth.
“And Eddie, you’re right. Right now, Lena is your partner, whether that is by your choice or not, and you need to treat her like one. You shouldn’t call out your partner in front of the rest of the crew. You should also listen to her and her intuition, something that has been severely lacking in the way you’ve been behaving around her.”
He sighs, loud enough for Eddie to hear in the back. When he speaks again, the stern tone to his voice is gone, nearly nonexistent.
“Listen, I know this shift has been rough. I know the last month has been rough. We can’t turn on each other when all we want to do is keep each other safe. We’re a crew, a unit, and we’re going to act like one. Alright?”
They all flinch at the near aching question in the last word. Because it isn’t alright, not really, and Eddie and Buck wouldn’t be having this fight, at least not like this, and Lena shouldn’t even be a part of this, but she is, and they’re all reacting to her presence like they would a new wound instead of someone who is just as lost without her crew as they are.
“Alright Bobby,” Hen says. “We’re good back here.”
“Yeah,” Lena says. “Sorry for the noise, Cap. Next time my partner and I fight, we should duke it out on the mats instead of bringing the rest of you into it.”
She reaches out to tap a gentle fist against Eddie’s cheek, clearly joking. It doesn’t land, neither the joke nor punch, but Eddie forces a smile anyway. Lena isn’t a bad person. She isn’t a bad partner. She’s just… bad for Eddie, and they all know it, with the way the whole truck seems to sour.
“Right,” Eddie says, when the silence has gone on a bit too long. “We’ll keep it reigned in for the call, Bobby.”
The next twenty minutes of drive time are filled by Hen and Chim desperately trying to contribute good dialogue and energy to the cabin, bouncing off each other in between Bobby attempting to gain more information about the scene they were walking into.
Dispatch is talking to a kid, apparently, and is still having trouble trying to get any more information out of her around a shitty signal and her own hysterics.
“We’ll have to go in a bit blind,” Bobby says, as they pull down a long, lonely street, a single house on the end looming ominously. “It didn’t seem dangerous, but everyone, on your toes. I want this to go as smooth as possible so we can all get back to the station and rest.”
He catches Eddie across the chest as the others spill out, jerking his head to the side as a clear indicator to ‘stay here’.
Lena hovers for just a minute with them, eyes darting between Chim and Hen’s retreating figures and the scene starting to play out here. Before she can reach out and offer more, Eddie waves her on.
“I’ll be in. Just give us a minute.”
Lena’s huff echoes about the well-kept lawn. Under her breath, she whispers something that sounds like ‘partners’, before she walks off.
“Don’t take too long with him, Cap,” she calls, as she hurries off.
Eddie doesn’t watch her leave. When it's him and Buck on a scene, he always does. It’s instinct to put one eye on his partner until he’s out of sight, until Eddie has made sure he’s as safe as he can be, given the circumstances. He should owe Lena the same.
Should, but doesn’t. He can’t bring himself to watch her go. Neither does Bobby. It says something that shames and warms him to the core.
“She’s not Buck,” Bobby says, in a way that sounds as much like an excuse as an explanation.
Eddie’s lips twitch into something that’s not quite a smile, but it's as close as he’s gotten since the start of their shift.
“No, she’s not.” He tips his head to the house. “I can handle it though. It’s the last call of the shift.”
“Should be the last call of the shift,” Bobby corrects, because in theory they still do have a few hours left before they switch over. “Still, it's been a rough day. Do you need to sit this one out?”
“I can work, Bobby.”
“I know you can, but you don’t have to. There’s enough of us here to run anything short of a mass casualty, and you look like you’re about to fall over.”
Eddie shrugs. He can feel the pull of sleep, the bone-deep ache behind his eyes, but he’s not at risk of endangering the rest of the crew.
“Everyone looks like they’re exhausted. Like you said, it's been a rough shift.”
“But your bad day didn’t start with our shift.” He pins Eddie with a look before he can dispute it. “You’re not usually late. We knew something was wrong before you walked in. Is something going on with Chris?”
Eddie doesn’t even grace that with an answer. They both know Bobby’s not so much asking a question as filling in blanks. There’s a second, a beat of pause before Bobby continues.
“Nightmares?”
Eddie shuts his eyes through his nod. He wonders if Carla gave him a heads up or if the dark circles around his eyes were enough of a clue in. It doesn’t matter either way. There’s no quick way out of a talk with Bobby, and no easy way of dodging this talk if the nightmares continue, which Eddie is almost certain they will.
“Yeah,” he admits. “It was pretty bad, but staying out here won’t get me back to him any quicker. Won’t help me face him either.”
Bobby’s face goes soft.
“Eddie, you have nothing to be ashamed of if you sit this one out.”
“No.” He runs his hand through his hair. “But I need something to be proud of. I can handle it, Cap.”
Bobby searches his face, but whatever he finds there must pass muster. He squeezes his shoulder once and then lets him go.
“Alright. Let's go join our crew.”
Let's get this over with, Eddie translates, though he appreciates the feeling of Bobby dogging his steps behind him. It's not as flawless, as easy, as the feel of Buck having his back, but Bobby is a good portion of the reason Buck is the way he is now, both the good and the bad. There’s a familiar cadence to the steps, a one-two that Eddie’s missed more than anything.
It's not as good as the real thing, but it’ll do in a pinch. It helps Eddie to draw himself up more, feel more at ease in his uniform than he has in the last month. He bypasses the doorway without a hitch, rounds the corner, and feels every ounce of calm leave him instantly.
No one likes it when they’re called out for a kid. It puts this urgency into a call, this desperation to fix things they simply can’t fix in the field. Eddie has seen it in every one of his crewmates, from Lena’s earlier stunt to Bobby bypassing protocol to get some kid home safe. Chim and Hen just usually handle it in stride. They don’t ramble like Buck or falter like Bobby. They certainly don’t overcompensate like Eddie. Sure, the cases bring out the mom in Hen and turn Chim into a regular clown with the sheer number of glove balloons that litter the scene afterwards, but there’s a level of calm to both of them that always prevails.
Right now, there’s none of that. Oh, the job is done. Hen, Chim, and the kid between them all seem to know what they’re doing. There’s a vitals transport monitor already hooked up, and what looks like an IV already in place, but there’s something so wrong with the scene that it stands Eddie’s hair on end.
Neither of them are talking.
Hen and Chim aren’t Buck. They don’t ramble to fill space, or monologue to absorb time, but when there’s a kid on their stretcher there’s always some form of conversation. Kids, and often adults, need it. It's a distraction from whatever’s going on around them, something to hold onto while something else is falling apart. Eddie has seen them have a full-blown debate with a kid in between calling about an obvious case of compartment syndrome, discuss the pros and cons of Pokémon cards, all while Hen nearly twisted herself in knots to get a complicated IV in place. He knows their usual routines, the topics they draw from when they need to have most of their mind on what they’re doing, and the ones they pull out so that Eddie or one of the others can take over while they do something more complicated.
He’s never seen them go silent like this. Bobby must notice the oddity too, glancing around for the still absent Lena before turning his gaze back to Chim and Hen.
“Firefighters Han, Wilson,” he calls, jerking both of the paramedics' attention to him. “What’s the situation?”
Both Chim and Hen flinch, gaze darting between each other, before Hen sighs and opens her mouth to speak. The kid between them beats her to it. When he sees Eddie and Bobby, he seems to brighten, whipping a hand up to wave at them.
“Hi!” He chirps, though Eddie can see he’s still visibly short of breath. “I’m the situation.”
He giggles at his own joke, and it's all Eddie can do not to laugh with him, or thank him, or both. The tension in the room breaks just like that, with Chim snorting a laugh out through his nose and Hen visibly dropping her tight shoulders into a smile.
“Yeah, buddy,” Chim says, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “I think they see that.”
The kid rolls his eyes, as he peaks up through his bangs at Chim.
“I knooooow, but you and Miss Hen weren’t saying anything.”
“You didn’t give us time, Mason,” Hen chides. She risks a glance at the vitals machine, eying an elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and Eddie notes with concern, an oxygen saturation that is dipping in and out of normal range. “And you’re not supposed to be talking, which we both told you.”
“I’m supposed to ‘focus on breathing’,” Mason says to him and Bobby, complete with finger quotes that make a smile twitch at the corner of Eddie’s lips. “Otherwise, they’ll make me wear the stupid oxygen.”
“We might make you wear the ‘stupid oxygen’ anyway,” Chim quips, blowing a bubble with his gum that makes Mason giggle. “But not talking will help keep it off for longer, so you should ‘focus on breathing’ like we told you.”
Mason rolls his eyes again, but nods, taking a deeper breath in. He winces as he does so, tiny face scrunched up, and Eddie is forcefully reminded that he and Bobby have no actual idea what's going on. Hen thankfully seems to be in a better headspace, so while Chim rubs circles on Mason’s back, timing it almost perfectly to his breathing, Hen glances back up at Bobby and Eddie.
Her eyes are unbearably sad.
“Mason’s sister called 9-1-1. He started having some wheezing and shortness of breath earlier, was diaphoretic, coughing, and had some pleuritic chest pain. It had been going on for over an hour, and she’s not old enough to drive him to the ER, so she called us in.”
“Pneumonia?” Bobby asks, walking over to take a closer look at their monitors.
“Nope,” Mason chimes in. “I’ve got a clotting disorder!”
He might as well have dropped a bomb in the room. Its takes everything in Eddie not to flinch. All the symptoms, all the current signs, have one clear answer.
A PE. They’re looking at a potential PE.
Eddie drags in a breath through his nose. Behind him, he hears his captain do the same, Bobby purposefully working through the who and what this blonde-haired, blue-eyed bubbly child next to Chim reminds them of.
“Sounds like we need to get ahold of his parents,” Bobby says. His voice is stone, unyielding, but they’ve all known him long enough to hear the minute fissures threatening to break through. “Have we been able to?”
Hen shakes her head.
“They’re out of town,” she says, before her voice gains a harder edge. “For the whole month, apparently. His sister, Bonnie, is watching him.”
“She’s doing a good job!” Mason cries, ignoring Chim’s hushed, ‘breathe, Mason’. “She is, I promise! This isn’t her fault!”
“We don’t think it’s her fault, sweetie,” Hen says, as Chim says. “We heard you earlier, bud, I promise. No one’s blaming your sister. Deep breaths for us, ok?”
The look on Chim’s face is frigid, even as he softens his voice. Clearly, he doesn’t blame Bonnie. Their parents, however? Eddie couldn’t imagine leaving Chris alone without an adult for the evening, let alone a month. He knows what it's like to have a medically complex child. There’re things most adults can’t plan for, let alone a child who-
“Wait, you said his sister wasn’t old enough to drive. How old is Bonnie?”
Hen’s purses her lips.
“Fourteen. She’s upstairs with Lena, getting Mason’s records and trying to contact her parents, who she hasn’t been able to reach for nearly a week. Lena wasn’t having any luck when she was trying down here. The kid’s hysterical, Bobby. She’s been handling everything on her own for weeks now. Groceries, bills, everything. Her parents left her their cards, so everything’s paid off but…”
But she’s fourteen. That sort of stress, the idea of keeping track of a kid was insurmountable to Eddie when he was eighteen and had found his way to Chris through his own choices. He couldn’t imagine being younger than that and having that sort of stress thrown on you by your own parents.
Bobby sighs, drops his voice enough so that Mason shouldn’t hear them.
“We’ll get CPS involved on the way to the hospital. If they haven’t answered their daughter’s calls in that long, we might have more luck getting an answer on another line.”
Eddie bites his lip in an attempt to keep his cool. None of this situation, from the neglected kids to the embolism to the way Mason has Buck’s hair and complexion almost exact is something he can handle right now. He has his own exhausted kid at home that he wants to focus all of his attention onto, but he can’t because this kid and his whole situation is seconds away from fileting their whole crew open and spilling their hearts out on the tacky rug.
And then Lena and Bonnie show up, and somehow make the situation ten times worse.
Because if Mason looks similar to Buck, Bonnie is a damn dead ringer for Maddie. It's uncanny. She even does her makeup similar, a soft neutral eyeshadow that’s smeared from the way she’s obviously been crying, and takes down the stairs in a sprint the second she sees Mason. Within seconds, she has her brother in her arms, and all traces of the collected kid they’ve been talking to melts away as he bursts into tears.
“B-bonnie!” Mason cries, which only makes Bonnie hold onto him that much tighter.
“I’m sorry I took so long! I re-organized my room last month and I didn’t remember if I put the folders with my school stuff or yours and I–”
She curls around Mason, but blinks tear-filled eyes at Hen.
“I brought the folders; I promise Ms. Hen. I know we haven’t been able to get ahold of my parents, but I have everything we need. I have our insurance cards, and– and the credit card so we can pay– and all of Mason’s records, in case the doctor’s need them and–.”
“You did great, Bonnie,” Hen assures, with a face that looks anything but. Normally, they all have great poker-faces, but normally, they aren’t looking at their ex-crewmate and his sister’s doppelgangers.
Bonnie’s face crumples at the sight.
“I’m sorry,” she wails. Behind them, Lena places a hand on her back as she ends what seems to be an absolutely fruitless call. The look on her face is furious. The hand that settles on Bonnie’s face is as light as could be.
“Like Hen said. You’re all good, kid, but you’ve gotta let go of your brother. You’re gonna squish him.”
Bonnie drops her arms immediately so she can lean over and lay eyes on her brother, who, frankly does look a little worse than when Eddie initially entered the scene. He’s certain the crying doesn’t help with the symptoms. Already, Mason is breathing harder, small hands tangled in his shirt, as he braces against the pain. His breathing has changed from upset and tearful, to hysterical and hyperventilating, interspaced with coughing as he gets more and more distressed.
Chim hisses when he looks over, darts his gaze over to the monitor, and hisses again. He shoots Bobby a grim look before popping the fakest smile Eddie has ever seen on his face.
“Bonnie, kiddo, I’ve got to take another look at your brother. Why don’t you and Lena show Hen everything you found in the folders?”
His voice is soft and even, but no one in their crew misses the urgency in his voice or the quick circle he makes with one hand, a symbol Eddie learned to read within the first week of joining the crew.
We need to move. Now.
No one hesitates. Lena rounds the couch and snags Bonnie. Bonnie, now wide-eyed and horrified, snags the binders. The binders are given to Hen, who immediately drags Bobby, already on the phone with Children’s, over to look at them. Eddie jogs over to the empty space at Chim’s side and thumbs the oxygen tank up to two, as Chim wrestles the cannula onto a still sobbing Mason.
“I’m so sorry, buddy,” Chim says, as he levers the kid up to get a better breath. “I know you said you didn’t like it, but I really think we need it this time.”
“I don’t–” Mason starts to pull at the tubing before Eddie catches his hands in his. He’s smaller than Chris, but not by much, and the feel of his hands in Eddie’s is as familiar as it is heartbreaking. He looks like Buck and he feels like Chris and if not for the situation Eddie would have sat himself down on the hardwood and cried, or broke something, or both.
But he doesn’t have that luxury, he has a crew that's seconds away from panicking and two kids that already are. He forces himself to calm down, to ground himself on the here and now, on the kid crying in Chim’s arms.
“C’mon Mason, in through your nose. We’re not trying to hurt you, I promise Bu-bud,” Eddie says, barreling through his slip up. Not that there’s any chance Mason caught it. The kid’s too distressed, too upset by the pain and loss of his sister, to listen.
He jerks his head to the side, trying to lose the cannula, and when he just plants himself further into Chim’s chest panics even more.
“I don’t want it! I w-w-want my sister!” Mason cries, as Chim does his best to soothe him. Eddie sweeps his gaze back for Bonnie. Both of them being hysterical wouldn’t help, more than likely they’d feed into each other, but maybe if she’s calmer, her presence would help calm down Mason, and they could get this whole shitshow on the express train to Childrens. But no, she’s practically buried in Hen’s arms, sobbing into the front of her uniform. Maybe if they had time, he plop the two back together, see if that helped them both, but he doesn’t have much time to wait. If they don’t get the kid to a hospital and that clot moves, who knows where it could end up. He doesn’t want to cause the kid stress, but the more time they spend here, the less time they have in a place where they could do more than the preventative care his team is qualified to give.
And then Lena rounds the corner with the stretcher, and he’s never been more thankful for her in his entire life.
“Hen,” he snaps, and jerks his head to the stretcher. He sees the second she understands what he needs. In an instant, she’s loading up Bonnie, herding her to the back of the stretcher. Eddie doesn’t hesitate to follow. He bundles Mason up in his arms, Chim following the second he pieces together what’s happening, and drops him into his sister’s lap.
“Bonnie,” Eddie says, as the girl blinks dazedly at her sobbing brother. “I know this is asking a lot of you, but we think you can help Mason a lot. Could you try to keep him calm, so we can get him to the hospital safely?”
“I– What if I can’t? What if I don’t help at all?”
“That’s alright. We’ll figure something out. But,” he leans over to catch her eyes, thinks of the way even now, Buck leans into Maddie’s touch like he’s been starved of it, no matter how long it's been since they’ve seen each other. “I think you’ve done a good job of keeping him safe since your parents have been gone. I don’t think having you there would hurt Mason at all.”
Bonnie’s face screws up, lip wobbling, before she takes in a deep breath and scrubs her eyes with her hands. When she speaks her voice is put-on but steady.
“Mason,” she says, wrapping her arms back around her brother. “You need to breathe slower, like that last time in the hospital, okay? Here, we’ll practice together!”
She exaggerates her next breath, deep and even, and the entire room breathes out with her when Mason immediately leans back to join her. The stretcher-ride back to the truck is calmer than Eddie could have even hoped, easy in a way nothing else in the shift has been. Bonnie keeps up a constant string of babble, talking about anything and everything, as the crew loads them up as safely as possible. It's a tight-fit, all of them crammed together, with Hen and Bobby fielding calls in the front, but after everything today, it's almost uneventful.
There’s the chatter from Bonnie, and soft reminders to breathe from Chim, and Hen playing telephone from the back of the truck to the front, and Lena refusing to sit still in a way that makes the kids giggle and Eddie only just resisting the urge to lob his jacket at her head. Mason even starts to talk back, in admittedly short bursts, answering Chim’s questions when prompted and intermittently teasing his sister. By the time they reach the hospital, Mason’s vitals are looking more in line with when they first showed up than when they left, and while Chim refuses to let him pull off the oxygen, the change for the better is nice.
Handoff is no different. The kids are exhausted, so there’s not much fight when they’re greeted with not only a slew of nurses but a kind-faced social worker, who somehow seems more aware of their case than Eddie knows Bobby had the ability to make her. She smiles at them all, greets the kids with ‘call me Dolly, like the singer’, and wins over them with her ability to instantly recognize whatever cartoon monstrosity is plastered all over Mason’s shirt.
From then on its textbook. There’s no extra fuss, no sudden drama. There’s just a nurse walking Mason down to CT, and Dolly herding Bonnie to a table full of snacks, and a stack of paperwork Bobby can fill out with his eyes closed, and the sudden reminder that, for the briefest second, that kid filled the aching space at Eddie’s side.
And now, without so much as an extra word, Buck’s look-a-like was gone too.
It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does. Eddie can’t risk getting attached to a kid who, more than likely, is going to be whisked away by social services to somewhere far, far away from here, and yet here he is, lingering for just a bit too long after his team hoping to catch a glimpse of the kid, just long enough to say goodbye.
He doesn’t show, obviously. CT scans take a lot longer than the minute or two he’s able to afford without the truck pulling away without him.
Or more likely, Bobby sending Lena out to find him.
She’s still waiting for him when he pulls himself away, a soft furrow in her brow as she leans against the ambulance bay door. Behind her, he can hear the soft cadence of Hen’s voice against Bobby’s baritone, interspaced with whatever quips Chim manages to sneak in between them. It’s familiar, even if Lena herself isn’t, and even then, he appreciates the way she pulled herself aside to wait for him.
Lena isn’t Buck, but she’s not a bad partner. He gives her a nod as he passes her, and while it’s not the smile he sends Hen and Chim, it's warmer than how he’s been acting throughout the rest of the shift. When they load up, he even bumps her shoulder, something he’s previously done his best to avoid. Hen clocks it, because of course she does, and then kicks at Chim before he can say anything about it. He shoots her a look. She shoots him a look. Lena nestles her head in the corner of the truck and dozes, seemingly oblivious to the fight brewing right in front of them. Eddie watches fondly through half-lidded eyes and pretends he doesn’t know they’re playing it up for his benefit.
He stays that way for the half-hour it takes for them to get back to the station, although Hen and Chim stop the dramatics a good ten minutes in. Keeping tabs on his team is something that’s been engraved in him since the military. He’d been incessant then, put small, inconspicuous marks on his squad’s helmets so it was easier to keep count, and now he’s found a way to be even more anal about it. Because somehow, in the midst of LA, his crew has managed to be even more danger-prone than his old unit. They’ve survived natural disasters, and building collapse, and the world’s shittiest luck, and sometimes, Eddie doesn’t believe it.
So, he watches them, in a way that would be creepy, if he wasn’t aware of how his team sometimes does the same for him. He counts Hen’s breaths, and rolls his eyes when Chim over-exaggerates his, and on every stoplight, tips his head closer to the front to better listen for the soft click of Bobby’s rosary against the wheel. He only turns towards Lena once, when he’d gotten into a rhythm of checking his team and forgotten himself. His mind had been an endless slew until then, a nonstop train of Hen to Chim to Bobby, Hen to Chim to Bobby, Hen to Chim to Bobby, Hen to Chim to Bobby to Bu—
Eddie freezes, turned towards Lena with his partner’s name in his throat. She’s asleep, thankfully, but the misstep is obvious to anyone watching.
And his team is always watching.
Eddie jerks his gaze to the side of the truck in a desperate attempt to avoid whatever soft, pitying looks the two of them are sending him. He doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to handle that on a good day, and this has not been a very good day. Hen hooks her ankle around his regardless, silent, but only for the headset Lena still has propped precariously over her head. Chim forgoes all Hen’s subtlety and pegs Eddie in the chest with a pen, and when that doesn’t turn him back towards them, his other pen, and then his penlight, and finally, his own walkie-talkie. It bounces off Eddie’s chest and into the cabin floor, where it promptly breaks and scatters the batteries everywhere.
Chim stares, open mouthed, hand around his stethoscope where he was going to lob that too. He slowly shifts it back into his pocket. Lena, awakened by the noise, scrabbles against the side of the truck, trying and failing to understand what could have woken her up. Hen’s ankle jerks against Eddie’s as she tries her best to keep her cool. Eddie goes to say something, anything, Bobby opens the side of the truck.
Bobby stares out at them, face caught between confused and stern. A single battery rolls across the floorboards until it drops out of the vehicle to land with a clatter on the station floor. Bobby gestures vaguely to it, a silent, exhausted ‘the fuck’ that breaks whatever control Hen, Chim, and Eddie have.
Eddie bursts into laughter and across from him, hears Hen and Chim do the same. It’s the near-hysterical kind, the kind that burns on its way out and is closer to a cry than anything else, but still feels better than anything should right now. He tries his best to reign it in but loses the battle at Lena’s confused ‘what did I miss’ that’s drowned out by the way it makes Hen howl .
It takes a good five minutes for their laughter to die down. By that point, Lena has already given up trying to puzzle out their reactions and the makeup of Chim’s pockets scattered about the floor and excused herself to the showers. Bobby is leaning up against the truck, this expression on his face lighter than it’s been in weeks. It’s not the usual affectionate smirk, only Buck can draw out that, but its nice to see that sort of easy affection in place of the usual exhausted, lost look that’s been commonplace for the last month.
“Do I want to know?” Bobby asks, when he can finally speak above the giggles Hen keeps having to hide in her collar.
Hen shakes her head, still unable to get a word out. Eddie doesn’t feel inclined to help her. Chim gestures to them both to help him , and when they won’t, points at Eddie accusingly.
“He was sad!”
“So you… emptied your pockets onto the floor?”
Eddie turns his face into the side of the cabin in an attempt to get control. Hen lets out a sound like air being let out of a balloon.
“No!” Chim cries, but even he’s unable to get out another word without a peal of laughter. “I was trying to cheer up a friend, again, and it got me here again!”
“Sounds like karma,” Hen laughs.
“How is this karma? I was being helpful, and now I’m being laughed at.”
“You were throwing pens at me,” Eddie chimes, corners of his mouth twitching as he valiantly tries to keep a straight face.
Chim sends him a glare. Hen grins over at him like he just said the most brilliant joke she’s ever heard. Bobby stares out at them all, mouth parted slightly like he’s trying his best to come up with anything to say to that.
“None of you were even talking,” he finally lands on. “My headset was on, and none of you spoke once. How did this even happen?”
“Bobby, if we tried to explain it to you, we’d be here all day. Just,” Hen gathers herself up from her seat with more composure than either Eddie or Chim, stepping over the mess of Chim’s uniform scattered across the floor. “Just let me get up. I need a shower and a nap and some time away from kids who look far too much like our crewmembers. We’ve only got an hour left. Maybe we can all get both and let this hell shift end.”
“Here, here!” Chim cheers, getting up to stretch. “Why are we still here in this truck when we could be doing that?”
“I don’t know Chim,” Eddie teases. “Why are we here?”
He chuckles at Chim’s affronted face, but decides, amicably, to cut his friend some slack. He leans over in his seat to collect the pen and penlight within his reach and hands them over to Chim, who keeps up the faux irritation just long enough for Eddie to roll his eyes.
Chim snags it with a huff, dropping the collection back in his pockets, before holding a hand to help Eddie up.
It takes a second for Eddie to take it. Honestly, this is the longest he’s sat all day, and he’s beyond exhausted. He hasn’t slept for longer than three hours a night in nearly two weeks, and when he’s home Chris teeters between clingy and temperamental, excusable for an overwhelmed eight-year-old who has experienced too much loss in his short life and less so for Eddie himself who wants to do the same but can’t. He has to be strong for Chris, but he’s been anything but.
He’s weak. Weak for not being able to help Chris, and weak for missing his best friend somehow more than his almost-ex, now-dead wife, and weak for staring at Chim’s hand for an exceptionally long time before working up the energy to grab hold.
Chim pulls him up and then hangs on for longer than he needs to. His hand is smaller than Eddie’s, but strong and unyielding. He squeezes once before letting go, exactly as Hen had this morning.
“If you need us,” he says, and then tails off.
He doesn’t need to finish it. Eddie knows what he means to say. Buck may be the best thing the 118 has given him, but he’s not the only thing.
“Right,” Eddie scrubs at his eyes with meat of his palms and forces his voice through a crack they can all hear cut straight through the middle. “I know. I know.”
He does, really. Dr. Mara had told him to look for a support system, and Eddie’s doesn’t end with Buck, abuela and tia Pepa. It’s Hen who waits for him to exit the truck, despite making a fuss about wanting the shower, and Chim who claps him on the back before running off towards the kitchen, and Bobby who catches him just before the locker room, warm palm on his shoulder, as he stares down at him.
“You sure you’re alright, Eddie?” He asks.
Eddie shoots him a look. Despite what the team seems to think, he’s not that fragile and besides–
“Are you?” Eddie retorts. “That was—”
Crazy. Heartbreaking. A bit too on the nose for the last call on a Thursday morning.
“A lot.”
Bobby’s mouth twitches.
“I believe that's a bit of an understatement. Sometimes, I think God finds our lives a bit too amusing.”
Eddie leans himself up against the doorway. Careful not to put too much weight into it. If he spends too much time resting, he’s almost certain he’ll fall asleep.
“Isn’t that a bit sacreligious?” He teases. “Presuming God views our lives like some sort of a soap opera.”
“At this point, I’m running out of other ways to excuse it. Bonnie and Mason , a PE, and Bonnie looked–”
“Exactly like Maddie? I know. I was beginning to think the sleep deprivation was getting to me.”
Bobby chuckles, this soft, sad sound.
“I thought I might just miss Buck.”
Eddie shuts his eyes through the pain, breathes through the obvious hole this mess has blown through their lives.
“You’re missing an idiot,” Eddie says. “He’s doing this to himself, you know. This whole lawsuit is just keeping him away from us. If he had just waited, if he would just listen—”
Bobby wouldn’t wear this absolutely devastated look around, Hen and Chim wouldn’t have to compensate for whatever mess he and Bobby look like, He would have his best friend back, and Chris would be better.
Buck always makes things with Chris better. Buck always makes everything better, and just thinking it makes whatever anger Eddie has fizzle out in a single breath.
“But Buck’s not good at listening, at least not when it comes to his health, and I’m not good at staying angry with him.” He tips himself further into Bobby’s grasp. “I miss him too.”
“We all do, and I think this shift just proved it.” Bobby gives Eddie a soft shake. “Take a quick shower and sleep. We’ll wake you at shift change.”
“We might get another call.”
“And if we do, you’re man behind. Get some sleep, Eddie.”
He does. After taking the quickest shower he’s ever taken on shift, he gets a full hour of uninterrupted sleep that honestly makes him feel worse than if he hadn’t had it. He needs it though.
He hadn’t checked his phone before he crashed, and when he wakes there’s a good ten messages, two missed calls, and a final voicemail that Eddie wishes he wasn’t expecting.
‘I called Chris out again.’ Carla’s voice says through his tinny speaker, as Eddie does his best to pack his duffle with the phone caught between his shoulder and his ear. Faintly, he can hear the opening credits to How To Train Your Dragon playing in the background, but there’s none of the usual accompanying echo. Chris’s voice doesn’t ring out, slightly off beat. There’s no initial cheer.
This is Burk , Hiccup says, and for the first time since the damn movie came out, his son doesn’t answer.
Eddie feels gutted. The prerecorded Carla continues regardless.
‘I couldn’t get ahold of you before the start of school, and he needed it Eddie.
It was a pretty rough night.’
It’s been a rough night since the start, Eddie thinks, as he waves off the concerned looks of the rest of his crewmates also attempting to pack their bags. He ducks his way past the oncoming shift, bag over his shoulder, phone dug so hard into his ear, it leaves an indent. Behind him, he can hear someone start to follow, but whether its Hen or Chim he doesn’t know. The only thing he can focus on is the dial tone as Carla’s phone rings and rings. He’s seconds away from throwing away all decorum, and just calling up his neighbor and begging her to check on his son, when Carla’s voice plays over the speaker.
She sounds worn. There’s no two ways around it. The first sigh she takes is ragged and the second leads into something that could have been a sob if he didn’t know her better.
“Eddie Diaz,” she chides, warm in a way that Helena Diaz could never achieve. “You better be on your way home. Your boy needs a hug.”
“He’ll get one soon. I promise. I’m leaving the station in just a minute.” Eddie swipes a hand over his eyes, as he does his best to steady himself, to continue on with this conversation when every part of him from his voice to his hands to his heart is trembling at the thought. “Did he get any sleep, Carla?”
She sighs again, long and deep. Distantly, there’s another movie playing that her voice glides over, as the music swells and dips in tune, like some sort of a grotesque musical.
“Four hours, maybe. I think it was more exhaustion than anything else. After the second nightmare, he pretty much refused to go back to sleep. We’ve been laid up on the couch all morning.”
All morning? Chris hasn’t laid up since the time he caught pneumonia two years ago, and even then, he was begging to FaceTime his friends, or play his video games, or go to the zoo. His son doesn’t sit still for anyone, or anything. He didn’t sit still after the actual tsunami .
What was in these nightmares that they put his energetic eight-year-old down? And what did it say about him, that his caretaker didn’t call Eddie when his son was suffering so much?
He wants to ask as much, but his mouth refuses to make the sounds. All that comes out is a lone question, more desperate and gutted than it ought to be.
“You didn’t think to call me?”
“What would you have done?” Carla asks, tone gentle despite its weight. “I doubt you got much sleep yourself, and even if you did come home, you’d be doing the same thing as me. His appointment’s tomorrow, and unless he shows any signs his health’s in danger, we’re just going to have to wait it out.”
I don’t want to wait it out, Eddie wants to scream. I want my son better. I want my life better. I want this whole thing over.
But yelling at Carla isn’t the answer, and Eddie has pushed away enough people in his life to know it.
“You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry. I just… I want this over for him, Carla. I promised him that if he needed anything, I’d get it to him, but when it comes down to it, there’s nothing I can do. I don’t have a cure-all. Dr. Messa is hopeful about the medication, but what if that doesn’t work? He can’t keep this up. He’s going to get sick or hurt, and even if he doesn’t, I can’t keep calling him out of school every week.” He drops his back against the station wall. “I don’t know what to do.”
“The only thing you need to do, Eddie, is drive back here and hug your son.”
“Carla-“ he says, more of a sigh than anything. Carla doesn’t let him continue.
“No. I mean it. There’s not one thing you worrying yourself in circles is going to do for Chris. You want to offer him everything he needs? Fine. What he needs is you , holding him through this. Chris is having a very hard time right now, but he’s got a wonderful father looking out for him and concerned friends and teachers who I’ve fielding calls from all day, and the cutest stuffed lion in the world to help make him feel better. He’s going to be okay, and I think there’s very little you can do to make him feel better any faster. These things take time, Eddie.”
Everything recently has taken time. He’s thought of himself as a relatively patient person before all this, now, he feels like he’s walking in circles, waiting for any sign that this part of their lives is over. That they can all move onto something better. He just–
“I just don’t know how much of this either of us can take.”
“So let us help. I’m certain you’ve spent all day assuring your crew that you’re more than capable of handling this yourself, but you’re one man, Eddie. You can’t keep burning the candle at both ends; you’re going to fizzle out. If I know your people, and at this point I think I do, I know they’re just chomping at the bit to do something for you and Chris. Let them. It’ll do you all some good.”
Eddie lets out a hollow laugh.
“I think they have enough to worry about now. With the lawsuit hanging over us, the whole department is on edge.”
“Exactly. They need something else to focus on. They need someone to help, and you and your boy need an extra hand right now. There’s nothing shameful in taking what’s offered, especially when you’re lacking your usual right hand man.”
Eddie doesn’t even have the energy for anger. Anger at Buck is always coupled with some sort of unmatched, indescribable longing for Buck’s usual steady presence at his back, and his preciseness in the kitchen, and his ability to somehow know exactly what Eddie and Chris needed at any point of the day.
Anger at Buck is so intertwined with missing him that he can’t even muster either, just an empty hole where something else used to be.
“Alright, Carla. I’ll talk to them. I’ll be home in half an hour at the latest.”
“Drive safe, Eddie.”
Eddie sits for just a second, back against the wall, phone digging into his ear, staring off into nothing. There’s things to do, sure. He didn’t just lie to Carla. He needs to talk to his team. He needs to get in his car. He needs to drive home.
But first he needs to sit here and just collect himself. If he doesn’t, he’s probably gonna turn into some maniac at the first red light he hits. Or possibly cry.
Yeah no, cry is definitely gonna be it. He digs his palms into his eyes, pressing down until the overwhelming urge to burst into tears finally goes away.
Beside him, he could hear the soft crunch of gravel as whoever had followed him finally approaches. They nestle up against the wall next to him, a good foot between them to, presumably, give him space, or possibly to avoid him if he does decide to have a full blown breakdown.
“You need me to give you a minute?” Hen asks, when Eddie refuses to drop his hands away from his face.
“No, no. I–” Eddie gives a disgusting sniff in an attempt to pull himself together. “I’m good.”
Hen snorts.
“Right. Because you sound so good. ” He can hear the eyeroll in her voice, but when he finally turns to her, there’s nothing but sympathy and affection there. She holds out a coffee to him, complete with a stirrer on top and steam wafting out of the lid. “I messaged Martin from B-shift to get you one on the way over. You know he practically lives at that shop on Bowling, and I know he owes me from that time I covered for him last week.”
“And you decided to use that on a coffee for me?” Eddie asks.
“I decided to use it to help make sure my friend gets home safe, Diaz,” Hen retorts, as she shoves the coffee into his open hands. “You look like you’re about to fall over. Drink that, and if it doesn’t perk you up, I will drive you home and get your truck back to you later.”
“Hen,” he starts.
“Eddie,” she returns, uncaring or unheeding of the look he sends her way. “You’re exhausted. Your kid is sick. The least we can do as your friends is make sure you get home safe to take care of him.”
“I– thank you.” He takes a sip and feels it warm him from the inside out. “Really. You and Chim have been amazing through all this.”
“We’re just picking up the slack. If I had my way, we’d be playing second to your usual shadow, and we’d all be a lot happier for it,” she says, with this melancholy quirk to her smile. The look in her eyes is unfathomably sad, in a way that hurts to look at.
Sometimes Eddie forgets how much longer the rest of the team has known Buck. He just fit so well in between him and Chris that the year he spent in the 118 before Eddie feels almost inconsequential. But then Hen will say something like this, and he’ll remember that she, Chim, and Bobby spent twelve months watching Buck grow into the man that Eddie knows.
They’re all unsteady right now, not just him and Chris, and like Carla said, they all need something else to focus on other than their missing piece.
“I think I’ll take you up on that ride, Hen,” he says, and the soft blow to his pride is nothing compared to the way the sadness in Hen’s eyes practically melts away. “You’d think thirty minutes wouldn’t be that much, but honestly, I can barely keep my eyes open.”
“I noticed,” Hen says, reaching out to drag him away from the wall. “C’mon, Chim is going to follow us in your truck, that way it’s there in case you need it.”
Eddie can’t help but laugh when they round the corner and Chim is waiting there, not even attempting to look like he wasn’t listening in. There’s this knowing look on his face, this smugness that would make Eddie want to hit him if he wasn’t so incredibly fond of both of them.
“I thought you already left. How long were you waiting there?” He says.
Chim rolls his eyes with a pop of his gum.
“I was here long enough to get all of the ‘extra worrying’ you were so concerned I needed to do out of the way.” There’s air quotes around the extra worrying, done with enough flourish to make Hen laugh. He reaches out and practically rips the bag off Eddie’s shoulder, completely ignoring the ‘hey!’ Eddie gives to dig out his keys. “You need me to pick up anything before I drop it off?”
“Oh, I think Chris would like those donuts from Clancy’s,” Hen chimes in before Eddie can figure out how to make his mouth work through their whiplash of a conversation. “He and Denny talked about them all throughout their last playdate.”
“Donuts it is,” Chim chirps, depositing the bag back in Eddie’s arms. He spins the keys on his finger to point at Hen. “I think Clancy’s is by that one Chinese restaurant Maddie loves. They have the best egg drop soup. You think Chris can stomach that? I bet it’ll be easier than having to make him something when you get home.”
“It’s nine in the morning, Chim,” Eddie says, through an astonished laugh. “And you’re getting donuts!”
“Eh, one for breakfast, one for dessert, you know? Kids get the goods when they’re sick.”
Chris isn’t sick, not really, and Chim and Hen aren’t family, not in the way his parents would think was appropriate, but both feel true right now, standing in the shadow of the station. Somewhere inside, Bobby is passing off report to some other Captain, but Eddie wouldn’t be surprised if he opened his door later to find a casserole dish sitting on his porch, full of ingredients he’d never be able to get Chris to try but he’ll somehow love.
Eddie feels a little like laughing and a lot like crying and so lucky he can almost ignore the bleeding hole of Buck’s absence. His pride is sitting crushed in a corner under the sheer weight of his friends’ love, and for the first time since Shannon left him, it doesn’t feel like shame.
So he holds his tongue, tamps down the urge to tell Chim that he doesn’t need to do that, that Eddie can feed his own child. These people aren’t his parents. Right now, they’re not saying Eddie can’t provide for Chris. No one is waiting in the shadows, waiting for the best opportunity to swoop in and tell him everything he’s doing wrong.
They’re simply waiting with open hands, ready and willing to take and give everything Eddie needs from them, and Eddie, for his part, finds himself reaching back. It’s a hesitant, shaky thing, made even more obvious by the wound left by Buck’s absence, but he’s trying, and Hen and Chim know it.
“Alright,” Eddie says with a huff. He’s already feeling more drowsy just surrounded by the easy conversation, but that doesn’t stop a smile from growing on his lips. “But if you get it wrong, it's your funeral, man. Chris only eats egg drop soup if it comes with the wontons. If you bring it over without them, he’s going to go ballistic.”
Chim laughs as he jogs out to Eddie’s truck.
“Heard that,” he calls back at him. “One egg drop soup with wontons coming right up!”
“And donuts,” Hen yells, as she starts to lead Eddie to her own car. “And you better get one for me too, Han.”
“As if I’d forget your order, Wilson. Who gets maple bacon?”
“It’s the best flavor!”
“Yeah, for the elderly!”
Eddie thinks if Hen had anything to throw she’d have done it already, and it probably would have hit too. Hen is an excellent shot. But right now all she has is her own duffle and Eddie’s hand, both of which she refuses to let go of, so she just flips him off, before loading Eddie in the passenger seat.
If Eddie had more presence of mind, he’d be more offended at the way she helps to buckle him in like he’s Denny’s age instead of his own, but if he had more presence of mind, he probably wouldn’t have needed the ride anyway. Instead he finds himself drifting in and out the second his ass hits the carseat, only waking when Hen reaches over from the driver’s side -how did she already get over there- to pluck the coffee cup from his limp hand.
“Wha–” He says, some undignified snort, as he startles back into alertness.
Hen smiles at him, as she deposits the coffee cup into the cupholder. With her other hand, she reaches back behind into the backseat, rummaging for something.
“Go back to sleep, Eddie. I’ll wake you when we get to your place.”
Eddie doesn’t even think to argue. Within seconds, he’s pulled back under. The car rocks him gently. He doesn’t usually sleep well on car rides. Shannon was a horrible driver, or, at least she was as a teenager. Whenever they ended up taking her mustang instead of his old tahoe, he’d be awake no matter what time they ended up back in town because Shannon took every turn like a challenge and every speed limit like a recommendation. She used her car like it was meant to, racing others at every available opportunity and leaving the top down no matter the weather.
It was exhilarating at the time. Eddie remembers it fondly, seatbelt off, standing up in tunnels to scream at the top of his lungs, but it didn’t exactly leave much room for relaxation. As a result he usually found himself hyper-vigil in a car, even if he wasn’t the one behind the wheel. But right now he was so exhausted, he thinks he could have slept anywhere.
And while Hen wasn’t Buck, he’d walked into literal fire with her. He trusts her more than almost anyone else. There’s no need to keep his guard up.
For the first time in weeks, he lets someone else take control, if only for another twenty minutes, and falls into a deep, easy sleep.