Chapter Text
The hospital is gray, but a bright gray, with strong halogen lights beating down on everything. It reeks of lemon disinfectant and drugstore flowers. He should have been out of here fifteen minutes ago, but the hospital sucked him back in like a whirlpool. Okay, Wheels says to himself as he stands in front of the wall map. I'm on the third floor, and the stairs are over there— is that the way I came in? The wall map says he's in the trauma ward, somehow, so he treks down the hall, back the way he came.
On the right side of the hall is a room that has a little plastic sign: McKAY, SHANE. The door is open, but what's behind it? So far all he's heard are rumors. He got mugged and beaten after the concert—the thugs broke his femurs for five bucks in change. No, he got kidnapped by terrorists and barely escaped with his life. No, he got run over by a train. Wheels knows which rumor is true. It's the one said in hushed tones at the edge of the hallways. He was stupid, they say. He only had to do acid once. Now he's here.
Wheels holds his breath and peeks in. Shane's in bed, eyes closed, hooked up to wires and tubes and who knows what else. Bruises cover his face, or at least the part of his face not hidden by his respirator. To the side of the room are a few chairs. Spike is sitting in one, staring at nothing in particular. Besides the baby she's holding, she's alone. She looks tiny.
He raps on the door frame. The sharp noise rings through the silence. Spike glances up after a second. "Can I come in?" he asks.
"Uh, sure, I guess. I was going to leave soon, but I think visiting hours are still going on." She could be talking about the weather.
He sits next to her. The baby is lying in her arms asleep, splayed like a starfish. "I haven't seen you around at school," she says. "I didn't think you heard about— about Shane."
"I got wind of it." The beeps of the heart monitor help fill the silence.
"It's nice that you came by to see him, then."
"I didn't really," he says. He doesn't know where to look. He can't look at Shane. Shane doesn't even look like himself, just like a hunk of meat. Then again, Spike's impossible to face. Her eyes are bright red. "My grandmother wanted me to talk to a shrink. A grief counselor type person." He shrugs. "So I was here anyway."
"Oh, Dr. Lewis? I think he's supposed to come by later." She sniffles a bit. "They don't know what's going to happen with him. I thought maybe if I brought Emma to see Shane, he might...might wake up to see her. I don't know." She sniffles a bit more and turns away.
Wheels runs through a few potential stale lines he could give her. Nothing new could help anyway. He decides on, "It could happen." Wow, what a way with words, Wheels, he thinks.
"It won't." She sighs, and the hard edge of anger comes into her voice. "It was so stupid of him! What's going to happen if he dies? I mean, we didn't love each other, but he still had a daughter to think of! I don't know if I'll be able to support Emma any more. I know his parents won't help me. And Emma won't have him in her life. What if I have to give her up?"
"No!" Emma stretches a bit and makes a little annoyed squeak. Spike shushes her and huddles up against her. In a lower voice, he says, "Don't give her up."
"I just don't know what I'm going to do."
"It'll be okay," he says, and hesitantly puts an arm around her shoulder. "Emma's lucky to have one parent there for her."
"I guess."
"No, I mean it. It's important. She'll know someone's on her side all the time. Someone who really wants her. You take care of her, you feed her, you give her what she needs—"
"Wheels?" Spike half-smiles.
"Yeah?"
"You're hugging me."
"Oh, sorry." He drops his arm.
They sit for a while, silent, listening to the heart monitor. It's cold in the room. He wonders if it bothers Shane. There's nothing he can say. Spike hugs Emma like a teddy bear. Grade seven seems so far away, back when the worst thing they had to deal with was getting dates to the end-of-year dance.
"I don't know why he did it," Spike says in a small voice.
Wheels shrugs, drained. There's no answer. "He was high."
"I thought high people were just supposed to sit around and laugh at stupid stuff."
"That's pot. I don't know what acid does."
"Why would it make you want to jump off a bridge if you didn't already want to?" she says so quietly he can barely hear her. "Why would he want that?"
"You don't know that he jumped," he says. His attempt to sound gentle fails. "He might've fell."
"But he could have jumped, too." She sighs and holds her head in one hand. Emma slumps into her lap. "I should have let him spend more time with Emma. They never got to see each other. What if that was what did it? What if— what if he really wanted to die? How could I be such an idiot?" She clenches her jaw.
"Hey, come on," he replies. He feels like he's treading water—helpless and not going anywhere. "You didn't push him, right?"
She eyes him suspiciously. "Right."
"Then it's not your fault. He chose to go to the concert, he chose to do acid. He might've jumped, he might've fallen, but either way you didn't do anything."
"I guess." She wipes her eyes on her sleeve. "I don't know."
"You don't have to know," he says. Even though not knowing is driving him crazy. Not knowing is exhausting.
Spike attempts a smile, but only says, "What time is it?"
Wheels checks his watch. "Six forty-five." He should care that he's late. Grandma will.
She winces. "I have to call my mother."
"There's a phone over there." Although he wouldn't want to use it either: it's on Shane's bedside table, six inches from his limp hand.
"I tried. It only makes calls within the hospital. Here," she says, plopping the sleeping Emma into his arms. "You hold her. I'll be back in five minutes."
He hasn't held a baby since his aunt had one, and that was back in elementary school. He tries to cradle her the way Spike was doing, with Emma lying down over his arm. Emma's head flops to one side. That doesn't look right. He tries to gently reposition her and ends up more or less throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, her head lying on his shoulder. This seems better, he guesses, although he can't tell if Emma likes it or even notices. She still looks asleep. And she's drooling on his shoulder.
He can't help but look at Shane and wonder what it would be like if he were there. If he'd been tripping and jumped off that bridge. Who'd come to see him? Grandma and Grandpa. Joey and Snake. It's a short list, but Shane's has got to be shorter. He's not disliked, exactly, but he's not popular either. Quiet. Nice enough guy. And now he's here. One dumb mistake, and now he's here. Poor bastard.
And Spike's right: what if he dies? At this point it seems almost like a "when" instead of an "if." If or when he dies, his injuries won't even bother him any more. He'll be dead. That's it. But his parents and all the kids at school will remember it forever, the time Shane dropped acid and destroyed his future. And Spike, especially—she might not like him, but she must need him, at least some, for whatever he does for the baby—
The baby in question starts to cry. Wheels swears under his breath, then mentally swears at himself for cursing in front of a baby. Okay, she doesn't smell weird or anything— maybe she's hungry? Did Spike leave a bottle? Does Emma even still eat from a bottle? When do babies stop doing that? He hoists her up higher on his shoulder and pats her back, all the while trying to look at his watch. He half-hums, half-sings under his breath as he gets up and starts to pace with her.
"Are you singing 'Everybody Wants Something' to my daughter?" Spike's standing in the doorway.
He smiles. "Joey's rubbing off on me." He gifts Emma back to Spike. "I don't think she likes me much."
"She's just hungry," says Spike as she repositions the baby again. "Get me her bottle out of the diaper bag— it's under my chair."
He finds it underneath several sets of crisply folded baby clothes. "Here."
"Thanks." As she rests Emma against her hip with one arm and holds her bottle in the other hand, she says, "My mom said she can't drive me home. Some kind of 'wedding hair emergency.'" She rolls her eyes.
"I can walk you home," says Wheels, even though he doesn't know where she lives.
Her smile is weak. "That'd be nice. When do you need to be home?"
He checks his watch again. "Ten minutes ago. I'll call my grandma," he says as an afterthought.
Grandma doesn't seem to mind much that he's late because she's so overjoyed that he called to check in. Her exact words are, "Derek, you're turning over a new leaf." To him, it seems like a stretch.
Spike shows him the right way out of the hospital, and once they know how to leave, it's pretty easy, save a stroller-related mishap with the stairs.
"I haven't seen you much since the funeral," Spike says as they step out into the dull light of evening.
He exhales sharply. "Yeah."
"It's too bad. Everyone's been missing you."
"Yeah, well," he says, "not everyone." He shoves his hands in his pockets.
"Did you really run away from home?"
"I didn't run, I hitchhiked."
She looks at him like he has two heads. "Why?"
"I wanted to see Mike— uh, my birth dad. Stupid, I know." He braces himself for the usual litany of mistakes. There's so many she could point out.
But she doesn't lay into him, even though she probably should. "It's not stupid. Well," she says, "hitchhiking was stupid. But I get wanting to see your dad."
"Do you...?" he starts, but cuts himself off before he says something dumb. Again.
"Yeah, sometimes I wonder about mine. Mom doesn't talk about him much. I never met him." She grabs the stroller a little tighter and looks down at Emma, who's apparently trying to shove her fist into her mouth. "Did you end up seeing yours?"
He looks out onto the quiet street, down onto the sidewalk, at his shoes— anywhere but at Spike and the baby. "Yep."
"How'd it go?"
He could explain it to her. If he wanted to dig it all up, he could recount the entire thing with Mike from the very start. How everything he ever said was a lie, designed to shove Wheels out of his life as fast as possible. But that'd be long and ugly and pointless. "He sucks."
"I'm sorry," Spike says quietly.
"Not your fault. It's his."
She looks at him for a long second. "I hope Emma—” Emma, who's still drooling contentedly down the front of her clothes, doesn't seem to hear her name. "I hope Emma gets to see Shane again."
"He'll pull through." He sounds more confident than he feels. Shane has to pull through, right? He can't die.
"I hope so. But... That grief counselor. Is he good?"
"Yeah. Yeah, he's fine." He can't exactly be good under the circumstances, but the counselor definitely isn't as bad as he could be. "I thought it'd be like the optometrist's. You know, 'Which picture makes you feel worse about your dead parents? One or two?'"
She laughs bitterly. "I've never been to the optometrist."
"Yeah, and you won't need a grief counselor either. Which street's yours?" he asks, standing at the intersection.
"Straight ahead."
They trudge along. Her neighborhood is a good long walk away from his. Grandma would be tearing her hair out if he hadn't called. "Here's my building."
"Uh, should I walk you in?" He's never walked a girl home before.
"That's okay." She leans over the stroller. "Can you wave bye-bye, Emma?"
Emma babbles at him and flaps her hand. Wheels can't help but smile.
"Wheels?"
He steps toward her.
She stands on her toes and pecks him on the cheek. "Thanks."