I Keep On Wondering Why 28 Nov 2025 Tommy
“Call it.”
Tommy stepped back, gaze tracking the warzone of their efforts—detached respirator, Foley catheter abandoned on the floor, a BAE catheter still draped over a thigh, and so, so much fucking blood—before he ripped his gaze away to the clock on the wall.
“Time of death: 0417,” he announced, swallowing down the self-loathing and disappointment to honor her send-off. It felt important—it always had, to Tommy—to mark that last moment with something powerful, something real. He couldn’t give her much of anything, had failed her in every way, but he could give her a moment that was entirely about her, a last cannon salute for her life.
Mrs. Sappal, who came in before his night shift even started, was finally able to rest. He hoped it was peaceful. She’d been so nice when she was lucid.
“I’ll talk to her husband,” Dr. Hagen said, peeling his gloves off.
“I should,” Tommy swallowed, rolling his shoulders back once he’d stripped off his gown and, with it, the short delay on the self-loathing. He’d been given lead. The ritual was important. He had to accept responsibility, barring every it’s not your fault and there’s nothing you could have done.
“It’s okay, kid. She was my patient. Go take five minutes, then grab her chart and we can talk about what happened.” Hagen finished with a nod, satisfied with his own plan. He glanced back at Tommy for half a second before knitting his brows and gesturing to his own face, “Clean up. You got some blood on your cheek,” he said with a fond smile before heading out of the trauma bay, leaving Tommy standing alone in the carnage.
—
Hagen found him in an empty exam room, sat on a stool with his head in his hands, staring down at Sappal’s chart laid out on a gurney. It was the first time Tommy was able to sit down and really look at it. Hagen had pulled him off frat boy sutures and threw him on point to handle the emergent surgical intervention—fucking mistake that was—but this, the record of her brief time in the ER, was like reading a Stephen King novel.
In a sick, twisted way, her chart took his mind off her loss. Tommy knew what this was—or, he thought he did. God, he hoped he was wrong.
“Run it down,” Hagen instructed, impersonal, but not unkind.
“68 year-old female, fever, tachycardia, severe cough. She came in after moderate emesis, hemotypsis, and acute mental status alteration. Despite intervention, her condition worsened and culminated in rapid, sudden pulmonary hemorrhage and death,” Tommy listed with military precision, well-practiced after three years. He dragged his hand down his face.
“Jesus. Surgery is a scary place to do your training.”
Tommy snorted.
“Differential?” Hagen asked, softer, then, laced with a respectful smile.
“I—” Tommy stopped short, as if not saying it made the thing not real.
“S’okay. Spit it out,” Hagen nodded.
“Hanta, maybe? But it was so fast. Ebola, Marburg—the end of the world?”
“Hedging my bets on the last one,” Hagen sighed.
“We need to lock down that trauma bay until it’s sterilized. Why was she even still down here? Why wasn’t her blood screened?” Tommy asked, shaking her chart, a little frantic. She’d been there for hours—nearly twelve when she died. He knew those were zebras, but fuck, they were pretty obvious zebras.
Hagen just shrugged. “No beds, no doctors. I already sent out her labs for ELISA. Rush. I just—I can’t think of a hemorrhagic fever that kills in hours. Can you?”
Tommy swallowed and shook his head.
“Alright.” A breath, then, “Alright, good work, Noah. We did what we could. Keep reading between your cases, let me know if you find anything. I’ll—I’ll get on the phone with Devon,” Hagen turned for the door and Tommy nodded, flipping the pages over on Sappal’s chart. He stood, his lip slipping between his teeth, running over every step just one more time in his head. Some rational, annoying part of his brain knew she was too far gone to do anything, but the larger part of him, the self-loathing part that fancied itself a God, felt like he must have done something wrong or didn’t try hard enough. Like it must have been his fault.
“Noah?” Hagen turned, halfway out the door. Tommy looked up and Hagen’s eyes cut through him with something that made his heart jump into his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said, like they weren’t a resident and an attending, like Tommy hadn’t known him for all of two weeks, “I shouldn’t have brought you onto that case. You were amazing, though, really. Don’t know many doctors who can embolize an artery in under an hour. Thank you.”
Tommy felt his cheeks warm. He nodded. Hagen tossed him a smile, cut with something blue, something searching, before walking out.
—
Over the next two hours, two more people rolled in coughing up blood.
Devon was already on her way.
Hagen tried to keep him off the first case—Breiner—but didn’t have enough hands to keep him off Turner when she showed up to triage. Besides, Turner only came in with a fever and the tiniest red tinge to her mucous. Could be anything. Horses, not zebras, even if two zebras had already traipsed through the ER that morning.
He wasn’t even supposed to be working that shift. He was supposed to just be waking up, stretching lazily into the sunrise, the most difficult choice of his morning being whether to use hazelnut or caramel syrup in his coffee, and now he was sending off rapid blood screens and trying desperately not to think of the big, scary O-word.
“Have you done any traveling recently?” Tommy asked, scribbling as he went. Eleven hours into his double and even he could see his handwriting had gone to absolute dogshit—even more than it usually was. Dana was going to kill him.
“No,” Turner said quietly, rolling her head back onto her pillow. “I have a trip to Spain booked for next month, though.”
“Fun! First time?” Tommy asked. He slid his hand over the woman’s wrist and pressed his middle and index fingers to her radial pulse.
“Yeah, first time out of the country, actually,” Turner fought through a cough to say it, her face flushed and shining with sweat.
“That’ll be great, much more fun than being stuck here,” Tommy smiled. He felt the irregularities he’d first heard with the stethoscope thrumming under his fingers, persistent little b-b-bmps that shouldn’t have been there.
“Oh, it could be worse,” she flashed him a grin, her long, dark hair curtaining the pillow as she tilted her head to look up at him. Tommy reeled the tiniest bit, a surprised little smile creeping across his face, his ears going hot.
“Aw, cute, you’re a blusher,” she rasped, coughing a little harder. She was stunning, a bit older and a knockout and, hey, if flirting made her feel a little better, who was Tommy to stop her?
“A friend of mine says God made me a terminal blusher, otherwise I’d have been a menace,” he laughed as he reached for the heart monitor. He needed a clearer picture of this arrhythmia. Separating horses from zebras.
“Please, I can tell you’re a menace just fine, with or without the blush,” she laughed.
Then, without warning, she lost all her color and her eyes went bleary and distant.
Tommy knew that look.
He lunged for the emesis basin, but it was too late. She pitched forward and vomited with an honestly impressive amount of force, the bulk of it hitting his jaw and neck before sliding down the front of his scrubs. Tommy grabbed the basin and slid it under her chin before stepping back, not wanting to drip all over her gown and bed.
She gasped and choked, “Oh, my God, I’m so s—”
“Please don’t apologize,” he laughed, holding his arms out wide from his chest, as if the additional surface area could keep him from tracking it everywhere. It was sour and acrid and getting unsettlingly cold on his skin. “You wouldn’t believe how normal this is. I’m gonna go get cleaned up. Another doctor’s gonna come in and check your heart out, okay? Be back soon.” He tried to keep his tone light and humorous and genuinely unbothered. He knew she must be mortified and he really did not want her to be. Mortification was not good for healing.
He left with a smile, even if she refused to look at him, and emerged to a gaggle of nurses turning, pointing, and snickering. Hagen, coming out of another patient room, glanced and grinned. He shrugged, tilted his head, let everyone know Ms. Turner needed EKG leads, and walked off for the lounge where he kept an extra pair of scrubs in Clay’s locker.
—
Changed, quickly scrubbed down, and feeling surprisingly refreshed and ready for another twelve hours, Tommy buried a cough in the crook of his elbow—damn cold fucking hospital—and pushed out into the ED.
Which had promptly turned into a crime scene.
Staff seemed to have doubled in the quick thirty minutes he took to clean up and throw on a sweater under new scrubs. He ran his hand through his hair, still damp where he needed to wash away flecks of vomit. Dr. Devon, tiny as she was, seemed to tower above it all, orchestrating with an eerie calm.
Plastic sheets started to go up in trauma bays, separating them into two or three little rooms. Doctors from all over the shift schedule geared up in polypropylene and full masks, while medical supplies started pouring in from places Tommy didn’t even know they had.
A lovely purr of adrenaline and excitement passed through his gut. He could catch a mid-double nap in an hour or two. Right then, he was ready to be in the thick of it, front lines, serving the community, making a little history.
He jogged up next to Devon, smile already tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“So, what are we dealing—”
She stepped back, which made Tommy stop cold. Hagen stood next to her, pale and refusing to look at him.
“What?” he asked, wrapping his arms over his stomach.
Then, quick, titanium clinking he would know anywhere. He turned to find Clay already rushing up to him, all business and singular focus, the picture of a man to trust in a crisis, brows knit together and mouth pressed in a hard line. Before Tommy could smile and greet him, Clay barreled into his personal space and pressed a hand to his forehead, brushing his hair out of the way to do it.
Tommy flinched back, “What are you—”
“Are you feeling okay?” Clay asked, dropping his bag to grab the side of Tommy’s head and keep him in place.
“I’m fine,” he laughed, grabbing Clay’s hands to put them back at his sides, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
No one answered him right away, but Clay was staring hard (harder than usual), which made him laugh a little and tilt his head, glancing over at Devon and Hagen for a little help.
“Dr. Devon said—” Clay started, but she cut in.
“We’re implementing Outbreak protocol,” she reported with a breath and a glance around. The saying of it made it real and that was tough, Tommy got that. “I’ll brief the ED in a second, but—Just got word from the CDC. There are a few cases of a new hemorrhagic fever cropping up on the east coast and, now, it looks like here. We still need to send samples out for antibodies to confirm, but I’m not taking any chances. It runs hot and fast and the best thing we can do is early intervention. We’ve already had two deaths—”
“Two?” Tommy cut in, turning towards Ms. Turner’s room.
“Breiner didn’t make it,” Hagen clarified, running a hand over his mouth.
Devon set down her clipboard, rested one hand on the counter and the other on her hip, and looked right up at Tommy, pinning him down with a bizarrely pointed seriousness. “It spreads through fluid contact. Blood, mucous, and bile.”
“Sure, so, the PPE,” Tommy answered, nodding, not really needing the coaching she seemed hellbent on giving. It made sense, even if it all felt a little sci-fi and surreal.
“And quarantine,” Annie added, looking at him like he was missing something. He cocked his head, already grinning with the obviousness of that. Of course there’d be quarantine. You don’t even learn that in med school, you learn that while you’re home alone late at night as a kid, watching a scary movie that you definitely shouldn’t be watching at that age. That was basic.
Unsatisfied with Tommy’s reaction, for whatever reason, Annie sighed, her mouth askew with some thought before she finally stopped hiding the ball and came out with it.
“Noah, have you come into contact with any symptomatic patients’ bodily fluids?”
He made a face, first, truly not remembering, then he sputtered.
Oh.
So that’s what this was.
“Wait, no,” he tried.
“We have to be safe,” she said, not budging.
“We don’t even know if those patients were infected!” he laughed. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t actually some sci-fi movie, this was his life they were talking about.
“And what if they are? I can’t just let you walk around—”
“I’m fine!” he argued.
“We don’t know that,” she tossed right back, unflinching, “Blood and bile. You came into contact with both.”
“Dr. Hagen—”
“I never got any on me,” he said, still not looking at him.
“Okay, fine, but I didn’t get any in my mouth or—”
“I’m sorry, Noah, but this isn’t a debate or a negotiation.”
That flew through Tommy and made something hot and angry kindle in his stomach. She touched something raw. Chief or not, Tommy did not like being backed into a corner.
“So, what? You’re just gonna lock me up? On a hunch?” he asked, his temper dangerously frayed, his jaw clicking when he clenched it.
“Hey,” Tommy heard from behind him, a warm hand sliding against the back of his arm, “It’s just until we know you’re okay. You didn’t do anything wrong, we’re just worried.” Tommy turned, ready to snap, but then he saw the way Clay looked at him, recognized the way he cut right to the root of Tommy’s anger and excised it like a brutal cancer. Tommy simmered for a moment, staring Clay down, just waiting for his body to do the rest, but, instead, he deflated, his eyes falling to the floor.
“C’mon, I’ll even give you your own room,” Devon tried, a little lighter, but Tommy didn’t want to look at her.
He was fine. They were going to pen him off for nothing, for some ridiculous hunch that maybe a microscopic amount of blood or puke had found its way inside him, and even then, that maybe he’d been infected with some insane new virus. He felt his face flush as his temper, still stoked, flared in brief, tiny flashes as he chewed on the idea of being quarantined, the unfairness of it, the helplessness of it.
“This was supposed to be your day off,” he grumbled, quiet, tugging on the end of Clay’s scrub top. He’d taken the shift for Clay and now they were both stuck in that hellhole at the mercy of yet another apocalypse. The anger turned into something sticky and ugly, something like envy or grief for the nice, slow morning they could have had, the morning that never existed.
Even still, Clay grinned. “Yeah, there were easier ways to get me to come and see you.”
That soothed something. Tommy smiled, swallowing down an itch starting to form in the back of his throat.
“Fine.”
—
As he tapped at his glass window, Tommy imagined the signs at aquariums and zoos warning visitors against the act, which, honestly, made him tap even harder. With some cranky maliciousness, he hoped his tapping would spook the fish currently sitting at central in their stupid scrubs with their stupid jobs stupidly ignoring him.
“Hey! Ms. Turner needs her IV changed!” he yelled, pointing at her room across the hall and choking back the cough it caused, tapping and tapping and tapping.
“I am going to soft-restraint you to that bed, Thomas,” Clay threatened (the entire government name was absolutely crazy and wildly uncalled for), rounding the blind corner to stand as-near face-to-face as the glass (and height, little asshole) would allow.
“I’m f—”
“Say you’re fine. I dare you.”
“I am!”
“You’re drippin’ sweat.”
And that—was true. Tommy was practically drenched, his sweater abandoned and his scrub top sticking to his neck and chest. His hand came up to his wet hairline, fingers slicking his long, sweat-damp hair back, save a lock, just off-center, that never laid how Tommy wanted and sprang rebelliously back towards his forehead.
“Well, it’s hot as fuck in this fucking room. A/C’s not working in here,” he scoffed. It couldn’t be a fever. He felt fine.
“Bullshit,” Clay frowned, arms coming up and crossing over his chest. He had all the swagger and command of the golden boy of the ED, the heir apparent, and—Tommy wasn’t too proud to say it—the best doctor in their cohort. It suited him. He’d earned it. But, right then, Tommy didn’t want Doctor Bennett, he wanted Clay. “Actually, might be a good time to start you on an IV. I’ll finally get my lick back for Bitegate.”
Tommy had it in him to go a few more rounds of “I’m not sick,” / “Yes you are,” but he settled for an angry huff and kicking at the steel baseboards near his feet. Clay did deserve his lick back, but it was supposed to be for something that really mattered—not over this overblown paranoia.
“Stop pouting and get in the bed,” Clay teased, softer then, that same sparkle in his eyes as when he stole a hoodie from Tommy’s closet or found his favorite cereal stocked in the pantry. Tommy glanced up, more to really drive home the pouting, and found Clay tipping his head just slightly, wearing that little smile he had the day they met, the little smile that began the slow but inevitable unraveling of everything Tommy envisioned for his own future. The powerful and imposing Doctor Bennett veneer fell away and there he was. His Clay.
Before Tommy could let that little smile tug too hard on his heart—could let it get Clay anything he wanted—distant, mechanical screaming cut through the moment, making both their heads snap in its direction.
“Bed, now,” Doctor Bennett ordered before jogging off in the direction of the noise. Tommy watched as long as he could until Clay disappeared down another hallway and left him to his aquarium glass tapping.
—
He finally accepted he might be a little sick when a familiar lurch crawled up his gut. He broke out in a cold sweat—separate and distinct from the fever—and tried, with the kind of calm determination only five-star generals and sorority girls had, to swallow it down. But, with the same inevitability as war and one-too-many lemon drops, he rushed to the waste bin in the corner and puked up his two granola bars and energy drink, until there was nothing left, until he was painfully dry-heaving and spitting the taste from his mouth.
Could still just be a stomach flu, though.
He managed a few more discrete, private rounds of dry-heaving and washing his mouth out in the sink until Carol, in full plastic regalia, came in with fresh, cold water bottles.
He said, “You make a very cute space—hrk.”
They had two instant, simultaneous realizations. Carol turned, clocked his pallor, and realized she hadn’t imagined the sound, while Tommy turned and realized she was standing smack-dab in the middle of the shortest path between him and the waste bin.
Rather than bowl her over, he reached for the emesis basin he’d once been too proud to grab and curled over it, facing away from her. After rounds of this, every heave felt like a hot-poker to his gut, his oft-dormant and underutilized abdominal muscles now over-strained and begging him to stop. By then, he was barely producing anything other than red-tinged bile.
Plastic crinkled and he felt a tiny spacesuit hand rubbing small circles on his back. It was nice, fruitless as it was.
“When did that start?” she asked, simple and quiet. He loved her deeply for not trying to pretend with him.
“Maybe half-an-hour ago,” he choked out, still trying to catch his breath. He tilted his head back and squeezed his eyes, ever-so-gently trying to stretch the cramp from his stomach.
“I’ll let Bennett know,” she said before squeezing his shoulder and turning for the door.
He nodded and was overcome with a strange sinking feeling. Like shame. Like he’d failed.
—
Tommy was still up and pacing, his beloved emesis basin tucked into his elbow like a newborn—and attached to a sparkly new infusion stand equipped with saline and antiemetics—when the body aches started. It was manageable at first, an errant cramp here and there making him cradle and wince and groan. He’d stretch until it dissolved, then continue walking along the glass windows of his isolation chamber, tracking movement, itching to get out and fucking help.
Then, in one violent onslaught, the aches escalated in earnest.
It started at his chest, his pectorals seizing so tight it felt like they were trying to tear away from his ribs, then his abs, already tender from the emesis, his arms, his sides, his thighs, his calves, every muscle and tendon catching ablaze in horrible, meticulous synchronicity. He clenched his jaw, his lashes fluttering closed as he bit down on a sob threatening to rip its way out of him. He hoped, against his better judgment, that it was just another wave that would come and go. He trained his thoughts instead on the imaginary chart he was keeping for himself: rapid-onset inflammation caused by exponential white cell activity to fight off infection. It helped to keep his mind busy and working, but only just; eventually there was nothing left to catalogue and the feeling screamed for attention.
It was harrowing at first, then, swiftly, excruciating.
When he opened his eyes, the room tilted. He aimed for the bed, even stubborn as he was to stay on his feet, but stumbled and missed, his shoulder crashing into the wall instead. He hissed, the shock of it clattering through his jaw and spine, the emesis basin abandoned and left to fall wherever it may, and his body sagged as soon as it had something to support it. Slowly, he drifted to the ground, his feet giving out once his center of gravity pitched far enough, and he ended up on his side, curled away from the door. He stared at the wheeled base of the infusion stand, taunting him a few inches from his face; he was a little impressed, actually, that it hadn’t come down with him. He used it to calculate which side he’d fallen on—left. Left was good. Left would help slow the arrhythmia.
Time meant less in seconds and minutes than it did in cramps, in his knees drifting up to his chest, in breaths hard-won, rather than existential givens. He laid there until his body found an adequate stasis, the roaring pain ebbed into a dull ache, and he figured it was better to just stay there than it would be if he tried to move again. Eventually, he heard the slide of the door and the soft, swishing sound of legs brushing against each other from inside a plastic suit.
“Tommy?” he heard, more swishing sounds, then, “Jesus, Tommy!”
Clay, in a full sterile suit, dropped onto his good knee and rolled Tommy over onto his back, which forced his limbs away from his center. Every jostle was agony, the stretch of being laid flat set every angry nerve ablaze once more. He strained against it, his eyes screwed shut, the air forced out of him in a long groan.
“Y’see what happens? I told you to stay in bed!” Clay scolded, though the heat of it was dampened by the clear plastic shielding over his face. His hands drifted over Tommy’s abdomen, fingers palpating along soft tissue turned taut by cramp and effort.
“I was fine until you moved me,” he grumbled back, gasping for breath the moment the initial pain started to ebb.
“You’re on the floor.” Clay looked like Tommy was actively aging him a decade.
Once his body figured out they weren’t going to try moving anymore, it relaxed gradually, his breathing normalizing, despite the soft wheezing. Although the ache persisted, the abatement of the worst of it was nearly euphoric. Dopamine started to pulse languidly through his body, tingling and relaxing, as if he’d been thoroughly and ruthlessly worked out.
“Like I said, I was fine,” Tommy grinned, lazy and glowing.
Clay, unfortunately, was not also benefiting from a microdose of pain-addled dopamine.
“Stay there then, if you’re so fine,” he snapped, shifting his weight as if he were going to try to get up. As quick as he could, Tommy reached out, his hand going way past Clay’s sleeve on the first try before he tried again and caught his forearm. His arm muscles wailed from the effort, but Tommy could think of nothing worse than Clay storming out, angry at him, a fuming little spaceman.
“I’m kidding, I’m sorry, don’t be mad at me. I’m sick and pathetic.”
Clay glared down at him, his jaw set in that way it got when they disagreed on a course of treatment or when Tommy lied about how much he’d eaten in a day. They were locked like that for a moment, rage meeting desperation, until Clay finally softened, degree by degree, the icy fury in his pretty hazel eyes melting away to something warm and devastated.
“I’m not mad, you just—” he sighed, the sound of it echoing behind his face shield. It fogged up the tiniest bit, making Tommy giggle. Clay leveled a look at him for the transgression, but Tommy couldn’t find it in himself to look admonished. Clay cared and that made him happy. (And there wasn’t any time to unpack that, so he let the feeling stand). “You’re not gonna’ get any better if you don’t listen to me. I need you to listen to me. Alright?”
Clay’s eyes got so shiny and green when he was mad.
“Alright,” Tommy replied, so soft he almost couldn’t hear himself.
“I’m serious,” Clay pressed, his gloved hand coming down to Tommy’s rattling chest.
“I know,” he whispered.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Clay huffed through his nose, the corner of his mouth twitching nearly imperceptibly, if not for the little dimple in his cheek that gave him away.
“Let’s get you into bed, then.”
—
Tommy managed a maybe-twenty-minute nap, uneventful and blissful and not nearly enough, before the coughing became a real problem.
Clay cycled in on another hourly check-up, right in the middle of Tommy, sat up in bed and curled over his own lap, coughing like his lungs were trying to claw out of his body. He walked up close, the soft clink of his prosthetic punctuating his steps under the crinkle and swishing of all the plastic. That felt achingly normal, like if Tommy closed his eyes he could pretend he had a boring-old cold in bed at home and Clay was bringing him soup. It was nice.
“How ‘bout you tell me you’re fine now?” Clay jabbed, even while his hand came up to rub consoling little circles between Tommy’s shoulder blades.
“Fuck you,” he wheezed, wincing as he straightened, every vertebrae grinding and scraping against each other, like his muscles were doing fuck-all but ripping away from his body. The new pain-killing additions to his infusion stand pharmacy had yet to kick in. Or they weren’t strong enough. Tommy was going to have words on his patient satisfaction survey.
“Buy me dinner first,” Clay grinned. Tommy moved to lay back down and huffed—enjoying the joke, despite himself—but even that sent a prickling through his chest. It rattled when he exhaled. He could feel his body start to realize it wasn’t getting enough air.
“Fuck, it hurts,” he groaned, trying to force his shoulders into a position where it didn’t feel like he was starting to drown from all the mucous.
“That’s why we’re starting O2,” Clay said simply, reaching for the nasal cannula Carol dropped off earlier.
“Can’t you just turn my lungs off for a second?” Tommy grunted, rubbing the heel of his palm against his sternum, like it could dislodge all the wet and sticky coating the inside of his chest.
“Yeah, just let me grab my wrench. What kind of a question is that?”
“A dead serious one. I hate this.” It sounded more like a whine than he meant it.
Clay made a noise, something between dismissal and understanding, before reaching again, but this time over Tommy, to hook the cannula under his nostrils and wrap the tubing behind his ears. He stepped back to admire his work and Tommy stared up at him through his face shield. Something flashed across Clay’s face, something Tommy couldn’t read—a rarity between the two of them—before he schooled it back into place, nodded, and patted Tommy’s knee.
“You still hate orange jello?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.
Tommy made a face and Clay turned and chuckled, his prosthetic clinking and plastic swishing as he left.
—
He cycled through consciousness and sleep in quick succession while he was left alone, slipping further and further into a thick, scary fog of confusion.
He had vivid dreams between waking, dreams that would bleed into the real world before sense returned to him. He dreamed of the one and only time he was too sick to go to school. He was in the fourth grade. By then, he should have known better. He knew the routine, knew his spot in the house, but when his mother touched his head and told him he could stay in bed, he hoped. He wanted so badly for it to be like in the cartoons, where the mom would feed her baby soup, wrap them up tight and warm, rub their back and let them cry. But when Mom said he could stay in bed, she meant just that. He laid there, alone, until he was too hungry to sleep, then creeped down the hall to find the house completely empty. He was too tired to be scared, too miserable and congested. So, he opened one of the pop-tab cans of soup from the pantry and drank it right there. He was still too small to reach the bowls or microwave. He never stayed home again after that. He would rather put his head down in social studies and try not to sniffle too loud.
When he woke up in his bed, he swore he could still taste the lukewarm chicken broth, the sharp metal of the can, and the congealed droplets of fat clinging to the edges.
Then, sleep. Wake. Sleep—dream. Every time he woke, less and less made sense. He was forgetting—forgetting so much. Thinking so much.
He woke from one dream with a crystal clear thought—he needed to say something. He had no idea what it was. He tried to remember.
But it was too quiet and his empty stomach started to cramp with a new pain. No more nausea thanks to the antiemetics, but he could feel his glucose start to tank, his body starting to cannibalize itself to gather energy to fight off the fever.
The lights had sound. A buzzing. It wormed about the room. It distracted him from remembering.
The room had too many corners.
He brought an arm up to cough into his elbow—terrible choice and his shoulder muscles let him know it—and when he pulled it away, he clocked the little specks of red tucked neatly into the thin skin just over the joints and musculature.
Fuck.
Mrs. Sappal, Mr. Breiner. Ms. Turner. Him.
There was something he needed to say before he left. If he’s going to leave. When he’s going to leave.
God it was so important.
He racked his fuzzy brain and could think of soup cans and hay bales and horses, but not the thing he needed to say.
Then, the trill of a Code over the loudspeakers at Central. People rushed by behind the glass, none of whom he recognized.
He knew where they were going.
He hated that he knew that and not what he was going to say.
—
He felt a crinkly, plastic hand on his shoulder, bringing him out of another dream.
“Clay?” He mumbled, flinching as he rolled his head, his eyebrows knit with disorientation. The lights were so bright. The hand on his shoulder wasn’t quite right.
“Nah, just me,” he heard, a voice he couldn’t quite place. Tommy fought valiantly and managed to squint past the light to the spaceman hanging above him.
Tommy squinted. Who the fuck— oh.
Hagen stared down at him with a complicated and confusing look on his face, one Tommy didn’t have the interest or energy to dissect.
“How is everything?” Tommy asked out of pure habit, as if he were obligated to be polite. He swallowed and it fucking hurt.
“I should be asking you that,” he laughed. His hand was still on his shoulder.
“Peachy. Never been better,” Tommy hummed, his voice completely shot from all the coughing. Hagen laughed again, which made his mouth twitch. He might be dying, but at least he was still funny.
“Do you need anything? Feeling up for a snack?” Hagen asked, the hand on his shoulder drifting upwards. Tommy, for all he loved tactile comfort, really did not like that.
“Cl—Bennett’s bringing me something, I think—maybe. I coulda’ dreamed it,” he laughed, trying to shift away. Moving, at least, wasn’t such a harrowing ordeal with the stronger dose of painkillers. Still, even if he couldn’t feel it much, his body was stiff and wouldn’t move like he wanted.
“You and Bennett, huh?” Hagen sighed, finally taking his hand back. “I thought so. Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“He’s the best,” Tommy nodded, eyes drifting closed, “I have to tell him something. I keep forgetting what it is.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, kid.”
—
When Clay finally came back, he had a cup of green jello and he was quiet. Tired. It was supposed to be his day off. Tommy just wanted to talk to him. About—about anything. Maybe it’ would make the difference, for either of them.
“It was Turner, wasn’t it? The code?”
Clay didn’t answer.
Maybe he shouldn’t have asked—maybe he was dreaming asking at all—but he was this far in. May as well.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“That’s not going to happen to you,”
Ah.
“Clay—”
“It’s not.”
Talk about something else—make the difference some other way.
“I needed,” Tommy said, swallowing hard and wincing, “I needed to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I can’t—I can’t remember.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, it was really important,”
“You can tell me later. Right now, you should sleep.”
“But—”
“Sleep, Noah. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Okay.”
—
Tommy woke again to his monitor screaming.
He couldn’t breathe.
Or, he was breathing, but all wrong, all short and shallow. Hyperventilation. His body was panicking that it wasn’t getting enough air. His heart pitter-pattered against his ribs, fluttering off-rhythm. It wasn’t the end. He knew that, somehow. But it was a warning flare of something much worse to come.
Then, hands everywhere, checking and moving and hovering in their crinkling, crinkling, crinkling. He tried to draw in something full, but his wheezing still cut through the room, his sweating making the pillow cold under his head.
Suddenly, his cannula was pulled off his face and something else, something big and plastic, nearly fit itself over his nose. Tommy reached up and grabbed the hand holding the full oxygen mask before it came down over him completely. There were so many important things to say. He couldn’t—he needed more time.
“Tommy, stop, you need—”
“Lockbox. Closet shelf.” Tommy could barely manage a word or two with every breath. “Right corner. My will. Fabian—Fabian will. Help you. Hospital has. My AMD. You shouldn’t. Didn’t want. You making. Decisions. By yourself.”
“Stop—”
Tommy had only guessed it was Clay when he started, but fuck was he glad he was there. He had something to tell him, he’d find it. He would. But first—
“I took. Care of it. You don’t. Have. To do. Anything,”
“Stop talking, I need to—”
“I have. To tell you. You need. To know. I—”
“Okay, okay, fine, I got it!” Clay snapped and Tommy flinched, releasing Clay’s hand.
Fever-struck and delirious, Tommy dropped his hand and looked to the wall. His head swam, the over-saturation of carbon dioxide a scratchy weighted blanket over his brain. That old and familiar truth that kept him alive for three decades resurfaced, swaddling him in his bed, wrapped up and protected from all the hurt. He shouldn’t have said anything. He shouldn’t have stayed home from school. Clay slipped the mask over his face.
He didn’t deserve to need anyone.
“Tommy?”
He didn’t deserve care.
“Hey.”
He couldn’t remember the right thing to say. Always the wrong thing. He didn’t—
“Thomas. Eyes on me.”
He hesitated. Then, he blinked hard and looked up.
And he saw Clay—his Clay—staring down at him through the plastic with that look that flayed him open, took him apart and rebuilt him into something so much better—and—he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t.
“You’re mine, y’hear me? I ain’t lettin’ anything happen to you.”
Why? Why make the effort? What was the point?
“Nice, deep breath, Tommy.”
Tommy listened—Clay had asked him to listen— filling his chest as much as he could, his mask fogging up when he exhaled with relief.
“There you go. That’s good,” Clay praised. The best feeling in the world.
“I needed to tell you something,” Tommy whispered, his lashes getting heavier and heavier with the relief of being able to breathe again.
“Tell me when you’re better,” Clay whispered back and Tommy nodded as best as he could through the heavy fog of painkillers and sudden, all-consuming exhaustion.
—
As the hours ticked on, consciousness became more and more theoretical. He was either dreaming of soft beeping and far-off intercom announcements, or he was actually awake and experiencing them, and it wouldn’t have really mattered either way. He was still in that bed. He still couldn’t open his eyes. He was still going to die.
Until Clay—and Tommy knew it was Clay—rested his gloved hand on Tommy’s forehead, stealing just a fraction of a second from the tick-tocking time bomb coursing through Tommy’s veins, crashing against white blood cells, taking apart his DNA. For that, Tommy was awake. He focused, really focused, and managed to push just the tiniest bit into the touch, the whole of the universe narrowing right there, the crashing of heaven and earth, a cacophony drowned out by the crinkle of traitorous fucking plastic. He hated the plastic. He wanted—he wanted skin. Hot, tacky, alive skin. Even as he burned from the inside out, even if the plastic felt so good and cold, he would trade it in a heartbeat for the sticky scorch of Clay’s calloused palm. Just one last time.
God, he was going to die without Clay ever touching him again.
What did he want to fucking tell him?
“Been a while since you shaved,” Clay murmured, his fingers drifting over Tommy’s temple, down towards his cheek. His voice felt so far away, so fake, garbled and distant behind his face shield. The scrape of the plastic gloves against his coarse, prickly stubble sounded more real than Clay’s voice, so real it vibrated through his teeth.
“Do you like it?” Tommy asked, though it didn’t feel like him. His own voice sounded fake, too, gravely and thin, swallowed up by the mask strapped to his face. It didn’t feel like him, but Tommy agreed with whoever was asking; he wanted to know, too.
Even if he was too tired to open his eyes, he could see—he could dream the way Clay’s sharp, crooked incisor poked out from behind his lip when he snorted, his nose wrinkling, his eyes exhausted and—and maybe a little fond of Tommy’s vanity. At least in the dream, Tommy could pretend it was fondness.
“Doesn’t matter what I like,” Clay answered, which wasn’t satisfying at all. He didn’t get it. He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand that that was all that mattered.
Is that what he wanted to say?
He tried it. “Yeah, it does.” No, not quite right, but he kept going. “I’ll never shave again, if that’s what you like.”
Everything went so silent and still, Tommy thought he’d fallen asleep again. And then—
“Get some rest. I’ll be back to check on you in a little bit.”
The silent stillness fell over him again, but this time, he meant it. He’d do anything Clay asked. He’d listen.
—
There were voices, far away, singing a litany of words he’d once written on index cards and poured over for hours in a shitty little dorm room, words that meant near-nothing to him now. Large strangers, spacemen encapsulated in white, hovered around him, adjusting this, moving that, never quite breaching through the swirling fog of his hypothetical consciousness.
Tommy found some strength to open his eyes, gathered from far corners in his body, all trained on the thin, purpled skin just above his long lashes, because he felt like he needed to, like he was meant to. Something wanted to be seen—or demanded to be seen.
Past the blur of strangers in white, the scrape of latex, the burn and buzz of the fluorescents, in the far corner of the room, was a man. He stood there, without a sterile suit, just a navy cardigan, hands in his pockets, face slack with a severe kind of indifference and eyes so blue they were no longer beautiful, but deeply unsettling.
The man, or the world (there didn’t seem to be much difference in that moment) flickered, and, for a breath, something else eclipsed him—eclipsed the entire room, in a way that made no sense for the space—a thing made of eyes and war and hope.
“Who are you?” he asked, his tongue heavy and slow, his dry lips cracking and splitting with the effort.
Tommy heard his name—heard someone familiar call his name—and felt plastic fingers in, around, or maybe nearby his hair, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the man in the corner. If he did, the man—the thing with eyes and war and hope—might take it for weakness, might use the opportunity to strike. Or, maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Tommy wasn’t worth the effort. He wouldn’t make very good prey at the moment, anyway, all disease-ridden and tasting of antiseptic and half the hospital’s pharmacy.
“Do you need help?” Tommy asked, a little louder. At that, the man rolled his unsettling eyes—blue like a lake Tommy loved, once. Maybe he couldn’t understand him. He felt something tap his oxygen mask, nudge it, pressing harder and harder until he realized it was his own limp, numb fingers trying to move it aside.
Crinkles and plastic engulfed his hand, sickeningly smooth and cold. “Leave it, Tommy,” he heard and flashes of hay bales and horses trotted through his mind.
Suddenly, the man was at his bedside, standing right next to the white suit holding his hand. Tommy stared, wondering—feeling as if they were the last two people on earth. Except—no, this wasn’t a person, not with the eyes and war and hope.
“You’re going to die,” the man finally spoke. His voice was everywhere, everything. It was disgusting and soothing all at once, like a womb or a coffin.
“I know,” Tommy whispered back, a surrender. It took so much air to say it, air he didn’t think he had.
“Who are you talking to?” the hay bales and horses asked from inside the white suit. There was an urgency to it, a panic. Tommy wanted to soothe it, tell it he wasn’t leaving, but he also didn’t want to lie.
“Are you ready?” the man tilted his head slightly, not really curious, more like he was testing, as if Tommy was a child struggling with his math homework.
“I don’t think so,” was what came out first, then Tommy thought of his grandfather, how he hated indecision. “No, I’m not,” he amended. There were people who still needed him—no, indecision—there were people he still needed.
The man turned elsewhere in the room, brief and sharp, conversing with something else, another predator, maybe, before he finally turned back. He seemed to sigh, his entire being shuddering with it, as if reality bent with his annoyance.
Tommy let out a little laugh, which disintegrated into a wet, weak cough.
The plastic around his hand tightened.
The man tilted his head to the other side, this time actually a little curious.
“I think I know how you feel,” Tommy rasped.
The man’s face didn’t change from his severe indifference, but the air around him shimmered.
Then, Tommy’s eyelids became impossibly heavy and his mind drifted to hay bales and horses, to clear blue lakes and chocolate chip pancakes, the silent stillness punctuated by crinkling, crinkling, crinkling.
—
A punch to the chest. His monitors started chirping, then screeching. The silent stillness shattered and fell away. He coughed, once, twice, then it wouldn’t stop, pennies in his mouth. Something huge and wet flew from somewhere near his heart. It slapped against the oxygen mask, bright red and viscous, and slid back down toward his cheeks in pools. Under the violent tremors, the bone-deep cold, he genuinely wondered if it was a piece of his lung.
Then, the flood.
His body jackknifed from the bed, every muscle screaming agony, the painkillers unable to dampen the feeling of every sinew practically sloughed from his bones. The force sent his skeleton hanging over the guard rails by pure instinct, trying to force liquid from his lungs.
He was drowning, he realized, when he tried to inhale and drew in no air. Just pennies, just hot, wet, blood.
Everything hurt in a way it hadn’t before, not even when he tried to worm out of his own uncomfortable skin. His body, deprived of its single essential need, began a slow, excruciating descent, parts beginning to shut down in quick succession, every organ on fire and desperate to claim what little air his blood had left before he was completely drained.
He heard someone yelling behind glass, screaming, really, voice cracking, and he wanted to scream back.
The pressure in the room changed before something tugged against the line taped to his arm. Tranexamic acid, his brain unhelpfully supplied, a singular, lucid thought leaping to the forefront of his mind, maybe the last he’d ever have. Doctor Ying, his respiratory medicine professor, would have been delighted.
Then his oxygen mask was ripped from his face, his shoulders pulled back down to the bed. He fought, weak and ineffective, against the blood collecting in his throat when he was forced to lay down. He panicked, thrashing as much as he could, like trying to pull himself to the surface. He was drowning quicker this way. He felt himself writhe for what felt like an eternity, fighting and fighting and fighting the inevitable, then, plastic flitted around his mouth, sucking away blood and—and any air he had left. No, no, no, he needed that. He threw his head to the side, hoping, without the suction, he might draw in just one—just one fucking breath. A latexed hand caught his jaw and guided it back to where he needed to be, strong and unquestionable.
“I know, I know, I’m right here, Tommy, I’m here, stay with me.”
And Tommy whined, which, for all he felt, could very well have been his last human sound, and it would have been worth it. It was simple and weak and completely involuntary. It was all he had to express the fucking relief of it. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Clay’s voice sounded so real, so close, so soft and sure, so with him.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is going to feel worse, but I need to,”
Something cool and hard slid against his tongue and pried his jaw down farther than it ought to go. He tried to pull his hands up to fight against it, but found he could do no more than twitch his fingers, all his strength sapped from the fight. His throat opened and for one, blissful second, he imagined filling his whole chest with air.
But his body was just too tired.
People don’t feel their own heartbeats, not until it leaps for attention, not until it falters. It’s terrifying. One skipped beat. One horrifying moment of knowing you’re on the edge of eternity. And Tommy’s heart—he felt it stuttering, losing momentum, losing interest.
Even with everything clear, with all opportunity, his body was giving up.
He was sorry that he never remembered what he wanted to tell Clay.
Before he could decide if he was giving up, too, something slid down his already sore, shredded throat, choking him in a brand new way. He gagged and coughed, but it only took one try before the thing holding his jaw open slid away and, a moment later, unbelievable relief, a chest full of air. He chased the feeling, gluttonous and ravenous, his body falling lax.
Fingers, then, hot and tacky and alive slid against his scalp.
It felt so good—it felt so good—that burning, stinging tears welled up on his lashes. He squeezed his eyes shut. He was done. He was done, it was too much, he was ready to be done, and yet, for as long as Clay held him to his body, just like this, he would stay. He would try his best to stay.
“That’s it. I’ve got you. Breathe for me, baby.”
And he did. He did. Because he’d do anything Clay asked. He’d listen.
He wanted to move. He wanted to tilt his head and feel Clay’s palm all over his face, cupping his jaw, holding him the way he did in his dreams, but his body refused to obey. Paralytics, maybe, or being so near the razor’s edge. It took everything and then some, but he managed to blink against the buzzing fluorescents above him, the world fuzzy and static for too long before he was able to focus and roll his gaze over to Clay, just beside him, over him.
And, oh, if Thomas could sigh.
It felt like it’d been days since he’d seen Clay like this, not all covered up by the spacesuit. He was so beautiful. A muscle in his shoulder, so big and strong, jumped every time he brought his hand back up and through Tommy’s hair, his thumb sweeping gentle arcs over his forehead. His curls glowed at the ends, lit by the too-bright fluorescents, wild and dark, dark, alive red, like light through thin skin. He had a surgical mask on, but those little divots in his cheeks peeked out from under it, giving away his huge, crooked smile—and his eyes, wet and shining and tired and so, so green, stared down at him like he meant something.
“Hi,” Clay whispered, choked and strained, “you scared me.”
God, he was there. He was real and—
Oh, God, he was there.
No suit, no protection, and the blood Thomas coughed up was drying on his cheek.
The monitor next to him started chirping, angry and terrified, screaming all the words Tommy couldn’t say with a tube down his fucking throat. Clay went a little wild-eyed as he looked for the issue, but Tommy was already struggling, the adrenaline crashing against the paralytics as he found a way to move his arm, like nails against a chalkboard or teeth on a metal fork. He raised his hand—the hardest thing he’s maybe ever done. The side of it landed against Clay’s chest and he pushed. With everything he had, he pushed him away.
He broke quarantine.
Now, Clay was going to die, too, and it was going to be all Thomas’s fault.
“What are you doing?!” Clay pressed, a little frantic, his hand starting to go for Tommy’s chest, where his hummingbird heart raced and raced to get Clay somewhere safe, away from him and this fucking plague. Tommy was too weak to do anything more than apply pitiful pressure, but, as the oxygen forced its way back through his body, as he found more and more life to draw from, he pushed harder and harder, Clay actually stumbling back a step from the surprising strength of it.
Good, he stared, feeling hot, prickling tears gathering at his lashes. Go away, get out, he begged.
I love you too much. You can’t do this to me.
Oh, he thought, that’s what he wanted to tell him.
“Tommy,” Clay breathed, that same funny look in his eyes, the one Tommy couldn’t read. He leaned down, coming fucking closer even as Tommy tried to push away, to wriggle in the bed, to do anything to put space between the best the world had to offer and the sick and death Thomas carried throughout his body, but he wasn’t strong enough. Clay pressed the cloth of the mask against the very edge of Tommy’s hairline, the line of his nose brushing against his forehead, the pressure of his lips an act of defiance against God and the predetermined.
Under the sharp, overwhelming scent of hospital and antiseptic, he smelled like hay and cedar. Earth and life.
“It’s gonna be okay. I promise. You’re safe, you’re okay, you need to calm down.”
No, no, no. No, it wasn’t—Tommy would never be safe or okay if Clay—if he made Clay sick like this. He felt his body become unmade by the panic and worry. His eyes searched the room, still looking for a way to save Clay when he spotted Doctor Devon staring at him through the glass window.
He’d grown up around gangbangers and bigotry. He knew from very, very young that his father couldn’t care less if he lived or died, that his mother blamed him for everything and nothing. He knew that look.
Through the glass, Doctor Devon hated him.
And she was right to.
