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“It should have been me.”
Chim isn’t even aware of speaking until the words are already out of his mouth, echoing strangely in the noisy ER.
“No,” Eddie says tightly. His arm is heavy around Chim’s shoulders and his expression is twisted up like he’s trying to bite back something terrible, but he shakes his head anyway. “No, it shouldn’t.”
“It was supposed to be me,” Chim repeats numbly. “I was supposed to be the one up the ladder, I was going to be—”
Eddie knows this, of course. He was right there, clipping Buck’s line with that dumb fucking cowboy joke, Buck’s brilliant smile, Come on, Chim, it’s me, I’m always keeping track.
Those might be the last words Buck ever says to him. Might be the last words Buck ever says to anyone.
“It wasn’t supposed to be anybody,” Eddie snaps, but he doesn’t let go of Chim as Bobby pulls him in from the other side, as Hen crashes into them. She’s crying. Chim can’t tell if Eddie or Bobby are, as drenched as they all are from the downpour. His own eyes are as aching and dry as they were on that rooftop more than ten years ago when he watched Kevin vanish forever into a sheet of flame.
This isn’t the same. Buck’s heart was beating when they passed him into the doctors’ hands. Chim broke three of his ribs doing chest compressions in the ambulance to no avail, but his heart was beating when they took him away, so right now, until further notice, he’s fucking alive.
They linger like ghosts in the cramped waiting room, waiting and hoping and dreading to hear more. Bobby’s got his hands clasped, his eyes closed, his lips moving in a silent prayer; Hen is staring blankly at the far wall, her cheeks wet but her eyes dry. Eddie is hunched over in a corner with his forehead resting on his closed fists, praying or crying or just avoiding everyone’s eyes, it’s not clear which.
Chim knows his job here. Like he’s always telling Hen, he’s the comic relief. He’s the one who grabs coffee, cracks a joke, makes everybody feel a little bit better. He wants to do it now. He wants to be that guy. He just can’t. It feels like his jaw has been wired shut. He can’t shake himself loose from the memory of Buck’s cold, wet skin beneath the heels of his hands, the horrible crack of bone. Buck making cocky jokes at the base of the ladder. Buck hanging like a rag doll in his harness, haloed in the floodlights and the pouring rain.
He still hasn’t managed to make himself sit down by the time the doctor comes in some interminable time later. “Family of Evan Buckley?”
Eddie surges to his feet first, but Hen and Bobby are right behind him. They crowd together, shoulder to shoulder, like that’ll brace them against the news. Hen squeezes his hand tightly. On his other side, Eddie is pressed close enough that Chim can feel him trembling.
The doctor glances at the tablet in her hand, then back at them with an expression of practiced calm that they all know from the inside, from dealing with desperate families on the job. Chim briefly imagines the sight they must all make, wild-eyed and soaked to the bone in their smoke-smelling turnouts, but he can’t bring himself to care.
Bobby, of course, is the one who finds the courage to speak. “How is he?”
“He’s been placed in a medically induced coma. He’s stable for now, and we should know more within the next twenty-four hours.”
It’s—something. Better than his worst imaginings, at least, but Chim didn’t realize until right now how much he was hoping to hear that Buck came around, that he’s sitting up in his hospital bed right now cracking jokes and flirting with the nurses, that they’ll be able to see him and hug him and yell at him for scaring them so damn much.
That they’ll be able to bring him home.
“I see,” Bobby says, with admirable calm. “Thank you.”
The doctor offers them a tired smile. “There are some things I’ll need to discuss with his healthcare proxy. I have an Edmundo Diaz listed here?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says roughly. He doesn’t sound surprised. Chim wonders if Buck actually asked him about this, or if it was another one of the many, many things that those two never talked to each other about. “Yeah, I’m—yeah. That’s me.”
“Mr. Diaz, I’m Dr. Hakeem. If you could step over this way with me…”
She draws Eddie away with a gentle hand on his elbow, lowering her voice. Chim could probably overhear what they’re saying if he tried—can probably guess for himself, quite honestly—but his entire head feels like it’s been taken over by static.
Buck’s heart stopped. Buck’s alive, but he’s in a coma. His heart stopped, but he’s not dead, not yet. He exists right now within an unspeakable liminal space. Schrodinger’s brother, Chim thinks, and almost chokes on a laugh even though it’s the furthest thing from funny. He wonders if this was how Hen felt when she was tied to a chair and watching him flatline under Jonah’s hands. This hollow, helpless dread.
“I—I have to call Karen,” Hen says finally, and sinks into a chair like her bones have collapsed, fumbling for her phone.
“Maddie,” Chim says out loud. The hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach grows teeth. She’ll be sleeping right now. He can’t wake her up to tell her—
He has to tell her.
“I can call her,” Bobby says gently, because Bobby has never met a weight that he was unwilling to shoulder. But Chim shakes his head. This one is his.
“Thanks, Cap, but I got this.”
Bobby squeezes his shoulder and lets him go, and Chim digs his phone out. His hands are shaking so badly that it takes him three tries to unlock it, and then he stares at Maddie’s contact for so long that his screen goes dark.
He has not got this.
Before he can let himself think about it anymore, he unlocks his phone again and hits ‘call’, then presses it to his ear as it begins to ring. Maddie will be sleeping now, but she keeps her phone on, and it’s set to always let his calls through, for—well, for exactly this reason.
He never calls this late. She’ll know right away that something’s wrong.
Sure enough, Maddie answers on the second ring.
“Chimney?” she asks, and he can already hear the banked fear in her voice, just in those syllables. He’d give anything right now to be able to soothe it.
“Maddie. You need to get Jee-yun and come down to Cedars-Sinai right now.” It comes out terribly steady. Maddie lets out a strangled little noise, a sob. Chim takes another breath. His lungs expand. His heart beats. He feels very distant from it all. “It’s Buck. There’s been an accident.”