Chapter Text
Will was twelve when his father suffered "the accident."
Supper was over, the dishes washed and put away and Will was just settling down to work on a model at the kitchen table when he heard a 'boom' from the carport and a scream like a bobcat caught in a trap.
Bolting upright, Will sent his chair flying, jolting the table in the process and scattering his model pieces to the ground; he was never able to find all the pieces after that.
"Willy!" He had heard his dad's strangled voice calling out, tense and thin, "Call 911!"
Shaking, Will had pushed open the screen door and nearly tumbled down the two stairs when he saw only half of his dad lying on the dirty concrete; the rest was trapped under the body of the tireless truck he'd hitched-up to work on.
The boy's legs turned to rubber and nearly gave out under him when he saw his father's face; he'd never seen such fear and pain on anyone's face before, and seeing it now immobilized him.
"Willy..." his father said again, and Will saw how his chest heaved with the effort of that small utterance; Frank was barely able to draw breath as it was.
Panicked, Will stumbled around his father, tripping over boxes, paint cans, and outgrown toys as he went.
He ran to the next door neighbor who called an ambulance, but more importantly, saved his daddy's life.
"Just wait here, sugar," she had said grabbing a duffel bag which he later learned was her trauma kit, "Your daddy's gonna be just fine. I'm the best nurse 'round."
And though Will trusted her, he couldn't obey her.
Shaking from shock, he had snuck back to hover just outside the entrance of the carport. Crouching there, he hugged himself, with tears streaming down his face as he listened to the soft, crooning of the woman, and the whimpers and groans of his daddy.
The ambulance and paramedics arrived fifteen minutes later in a swirl of red dust.
Suddenly, the small house and yard were overrun with young men and women wearing clean, pressed uniforms and working and speaking with quiet authority.
In spite of his fright, Will was impressed by the emergency crews and felt comforted for the first time since he heard his daddy's cry.
Mercifully unconscious by this point, Frank Graham was wheeled to the ambulance on a gurney, bags of plasma and oxygen mask hanging and shaking around him.
With morbid fascination, Will watched as a patch of dark, red blood seeped through the blanket covering his daddy's legs ;months later this image still had the power to haunt his dreams.
Watching his father's stretcher pushed into the ambulance's bay, Will hung back, afraid.
"Go to my house, baby," his neighbor had said," stay with Chuck and the boys. I'm just gonna go with your daddy and get him settled."
Then she kissed his curly head and climbed into the ambulance. The doors were slammed shut in Will's face and the siren's wail made him cover his ears and hunch his skinny shoulders.
The ambulance peeled out of the driveway leaving everyone gathered in the yard enrobed in a cloud of fine, red dust.
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Four weeks later, Will's daddy had come home, driven by the same kind neighbor whom Will had been staying with. Though Will had been too young for visiting hours at the tiny municipal hospital, he had spoken with his daddy on the phone nearly every night, and together with the other children in the neighbor's household, and created many `Get Well Cards.'
Will barely recognized his daddy when he was carefully helped from the car to the waiting wheelchair.
In the month he had been gone, Frank Graham had shrunken in size, and his face was pasty under his faded tan.
But his brilliant smile had lit up his face when he spotted his son; holding out his arms to him, even though Will knew it pained him to do so.
And at that exact moment, Will felt what was in his father's heart; fear of abandoning the son who was his whole world, of not being strong enough, or smart enough, to protect Will from what he knew the world would throw their way.
Saddled with the, smothering weight of his empathy, Will Graham knew nothing would ever be the same again.