@911week day 7: "that's what family is for" + family
Here’s the thing about loneliness: it can come calling whether or not you’re alone. This is something Eddie is intimately familiar with.
He returns from Afghanistan, and he is never alone. He’s surrounded by family, first his parents in El Paso, and later, when he moves to LA, he has Tía Pepa and his Abuela.
And of course he has Christopher, the light of his life, whom he loves more than he’d ever known it was possible to love. So much that sometimes he doesn’t know how his body can contain it all, how it doesn’t spill out of his every pore.
For a long time, Eddie thinks this is enough. He’s content with the fact that his world mostly revolves around his son, and he doesn’t have a problem with the fact that his world is mostly one person.
But he gets lonely, sometimes. He craves the company of someone who is around because they want to be, and not just because they’re dependent on him.
Then he feels guilty, because of course Christopher loves him. Of course Christopher wants to be around him. He doesn’t doubt that for a second.
But he craves adult conversation, a sounding board; he craves someone he can rely on. Sometimes, he is tired of always being the one who is relied on.
And sure, he can depend on Abuela and Tía Pepa. But even though he knows they would do anything for him, it isn’t the same, because every time they help him out is veiled in a thin veneer of disappointment in himself, and he can’t quite tease out whether it’s because he’s disappointed that he can’t handle it, or if he’s disappointed that he needs outside help, because he doesn’t have a partner he can depend on.
He is not alone, but he gets lonely.
Then Eddie joins the 118, and it’s like he’s been fighting to keep a rowboat upright in the middle of the ocean, and suddenly he’s rowing gently up the river. The waters are calm, and he no longer feels like he’s barely staying afloat.
Every member of his team has a role to play, but there’s no denying that the biggest difference is Buck. Buck, who slots himself into Eddie’s life so seamlessly that sometimes Eddie can’t even remember what it looked like before him. Buck, who goes from a peacocking, insecure new coworker to the closest partner he’s ever had so fast Eddie practically gets whiplash.
Sometimes Eddie thinks it’s like he’s a house where no one’s lived for years, where dust gathers in the corners and the air is heavy with damp, and Buck walked in and threw the curtains wide open to let the sunlight in.
Buck knows what Eddie needs before even Eddie himself does, whether it’s a tool on a call or an introduction to Carla, the greatest gift he’s even been given. And whatever Eddie needs, Buck doesn’t hesitate to give it to him. No caveats, no questions asked.
Eddie can’t remember anyone ever doing that for him before.
Christopher gets attached to Buck faster than Eddie’s ever seen him take to a new adult, and honestly, he can’t blame him. His son has good taste. It must run in the family.
Eddie never consciously makes the choice to treat Buck like Christopher’s other parent. Looking back, he honestly can’t even tell when he started. He just knows that he looks up one day to see Buck at his kitchen table, helping Christopher with his science homework, and it hits him, all at once.
It’s not the fact that Buck is spending his free time on fifth-grade science. It’s not the fact that more and more, he’ll talk his parenting decisions through with Buck, not just to get a second opinion but to get Buck’s opinion, specifically. It’s not even the fact that Buck is the first adult he’s met who treats Christopher like a real person, fully-formed, with agency and with thoughts that are worth listening to.
No, what makes him realise how deeply Buck is integrated into their lives is the way Christopher treats Buck. How Christopher never hesitates to go to Buck with anything, whether it’s science homework or that one memorable time he’d somehow managed to call an Uber and run to Buck. How effortlessly Christopher plays him and Buck against each other, immediately turning to one when the other says no to anything, just like Eddie remembers doing with his own parents when he was young. How Christopher never thinks it’s strange that Buck picks him up from school sometimes, because of course they’d take turns doing that.
Christopher sees Buck as a parent figure, and once Eddie realises that, who is he to argue?
In hindsight, Eddie thinks, maybe this is why it takes him so long to understand that he is in love with Buck. So much of his emotional landscape is already wrapped up in Buck, it’s easy to miss a new plant that takes root and blooms, until it has grown so tall it eclipses everything else.
But eventually it does grow, and he does notice it, and it settles around him like the warmth of a familiar blanket. Because of course he’s in love with Buck. He might not have known it at the time, but it feels like the natural conclusion, the destination they’ve been heading to all this time.
In the back of his mind, Eddie wonders if maybe this realisation should be momentous, earth-shattering in some way. But the truth is much closer to the opposite: it doesn’t shatter his earth so much as it puts it back together.
Eddie doesn’t think Buck is on the same page, yet—or maybe he is, if the soft way he looks at Eddie sometimes is any indication, he just doesn’t know it yet. But that’s okay. Eddie’s in no hurry. He’s waited his whole life for Buck to come along; he’ll take Buck in any form he can get, and any form that may come after.
Buck might be wising up, though. Because after Eddie is shot, Buck takes over everything without hesitation, without question; there’s no need for questions, because their lives are already so intertwined, his and Christopher’s and Buck’s. There are no questions to be asked, because everyone already knows the answers.
And when Eddie gets out of the hospital—when he’s staring recovery in the face, weary and wary yet completely unafraid, because he knows Buck will be by his side—he tries to thank Buck. For all of it.
Buck only scoffs, rolls his eyes a little in that way Eddie knows Buck only does for him. “Eddie, that’s what family’s for,” he says, like it should be obvious.
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9-1-1 Week 2021 | Day Seven
Favorite Voiceover → Survivors
Carl Sagan said, "Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception." When your life, when the world feels like a never-ending emergency sometimes just making it through the day can be a struggle. We collect scars. Physical and psychological reminders of what we've been through, of who and what we've lost. But maybe those scars can do more than memorialize our past traumas. Maybe they're also a testament to the fact that we're still here. We are exceptional. We are survivors. And we move forward.
an emergency is the absence of choice. the randomness of the world, the crazy chaos of life, robbing us of our safety, our illusions. but in those moments of darkness and fear, we call out to the light up ahead, to the people we love. we steal back that choice and we choose each other. we choose friendship and family. we choose hope. we choose joy. we choose to live. so when the ground shifts beneath our feet and the storms rage around us, it’s all these people that provide relief. and offer shelter. this is how we save ourselves, by saving each other. because nobody, not anybody, has ever been saved alone.
Day 7: Favourite voice over ⤳ 2x18 This life we choose
“So when the ground shifts beneath our feet and the storms rage around us, it’s all these people that provide relief. And offer shelter. This is how we save ourselves, by saving each other. Beacause nobody, not anybody, has ever been saved alone.”
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↳ An emergency is the absence of choice. The randomness of the world, the crazy chaos of life, robbing us of our safety, our illusions. But in those moments of darkness and fear, we call out to the light up ahead, to the people we love. We steal back that choice, and we choose each other.
