#911 missing scenes

Even though Maddie was a former nurse and a dispatcher, her introduction to death was that it was a tedious and unsparing bandit, not just stealing life, but spirits too.  She’d watched her brother slowly disappear as the cancer invaded.  First, it was his effervescent kid energy, then his hair, and then most of his adorable personality.  

She’d never thought it could be so savage and so sudden.  Buck had been clinically dead for nearly seven minutes before they’d managed to restart his heart.  But now he’d gotten the chance to fight, and the grim reaper might not have been prepared for the tenacity of Evan Michael Buckley.  

You don’t get him, she raged.  You don’t get another brother of mine. 

Maddie couldn’t be here–keeping watching beside a hospital bed–without thinking of Daniel, even if it felt like a betrayal to what Buck was going through now.  While her parents seemed to resent having to raise a child that didn’t seem to measure up to the son he was tasked to save, for Maddie, Buck was a shot of head-spinning, heartwarming joy.  As a baby, he was a tornado of giggles and sticky hands and brilliantly blue eyes.  He bypassed crawling and started walking at nine months and scaled bookshelves and banisters before he could talk.  

Evan was a fearless dynamo that made Maddie remember what it was like to laugh so hard her stomach ached and her eyes watered.  Buck was the reason for living after Daniel died and her parents completely shut down.  “I wouldn’t trade you,” Maddie confessed between the beeping and clicking of machines.  “Not for anything.”  

Buck’s brows knit together in a light frown.  There was a chance he might be awake tomorrow.  After just waiting to see if his lungs could function properly, Maddie wasn’t rushing any milestones.  “I’m okay.  I’m just tired.  Of handling THEM.  And worrying about Chim–he’s letting the guilt of you going up that ladder eat him alive.”  Maddie palmed the top of Buck’s head and smoothed the furrows out his brow with a soft swipe of her thumb. “If you’re okay, I’m okay. Just rest.  I’m not going anywhere.”  

As the night passed, Maddie rested her head in her palm, content to trace patterns on Buck’s forearm, pick with his blankets, and have pieces of one-sided conversations.  After a nurse came in to check Buck’s vitals and IVs, she cried a little just to release some of the pressure, pillowing her head in her arms and letting the mattress muffle the silent sobs and sniffles of her heartache and cautious relief. 

A hand awkwardly bumped her shoulder, blunted fingers tangling in her hair.  For a moment, she’d thought Chimney had ignored her threats to get some rest or face bodily harm and came back to the hospital, but the hand was too big, its movement weak and clumsy.  

She lifted her head to gaze into the fiercely blue eyes of her little brother.  They were barely open, hazy from drugs, and a light with confusion and pain.  “Buck?  Can you hear me?”  

His throat ravaged from a week of intubation and ventilators, and he instinctively knew better than to try, but his hand rocked back and forth in a pitifully beautiful version of patting her back.  Trying to comfort her.

Lightheaded with relief, Maddie bent down to kiss his forehead and hold him the best she could.  “You’re okay, Buck.  I bet you’re pretty confused, but I’ve got you, you’re okay,” she gasped as she pushed the call button.

Awareness filtered in with an appreciated delay because it was only then that Buck flinched, body stiffening from what had to be tremendous pain.  Scraped, raw sounds escaped his throat, and she shushed him, backing away as the medical staff entered the room.

She braced herself against the wall of the hallway, and shook out her relief as Buck’s literal team of doctors all conducted their assessments and made sure he was comfortable.  When Maddie was finally able to re-enter his room, Buck seemed to be asleep again.  She didn’t move until Buck did, opening his eyes and turning to gaze at her, chin trembling.  He was terrified, a little boy in need of big sister reassurance.  “Everyone is fine, just worried about you.”  

Buck weakly lifted a bandaged hand and gestured to his chest.  

“I bet it hurts, huh?  Some of your ribs are broken and your sternum is bruised, but you’re getting better.”  Tears dribbled down Buck’s cheek, and he opened his mouth, trying to speak but unable to make a sound.  The ticking on his heart monitor noticeably increased, providing the sounds of his agitation.

“I’ll tell you more when you’re a little more with it, but you’re doing so good.  Keep doing that.  I’ll be here.”  

Buck closed his eyes and sighed.  He wiggled on the thin mattress and panic flashed through Maddie as she thought he was in distress, but he wasn’t writhing in agony or trying to get comfortable, he was shimmying to one side of the bed.  Without hesitation, Maddie toed off her shoes, lowered the safety rail, and carefully eased onto the bed, mindful of the cords and tubes and IVs.  She curled against him as gently as she could, resting her cheek against the ball of his shoulder.  “Okay?” 

Buck hummed a yes, more out of it than in.  

“I love you, Buck.”  

He rested his head against hers, and managed a barely audible “love you, too” before he was out.  There were people to call, and good news to deliver, but Maddie needed time with just her brother to feel the shaky but even rise and fall of his chest and hear the strong beat of his heart.  She needed to lay with him to offer him full-body comfort the way she did as a child when storms raged outside of their windows and literal ghosts haunted within. She needed her Buck.

She heard the echo of screaming giggles in the suddenly chilled air behind her, and got a flash of light brown eyes and a snaggle-toothed smile.  Daniel, not Buck.  

As she slipped into slumber herself, Maddie got the profound feeling that two of the Buckley kids had watched over their little brother.