#emwt

Doctors make the worst patients, something that everyone knows, but is shown most aggressively in Will after breaking his ribs in that car accident and drowning in his own pain and blood. The pressure valve is a quick fix. But by the end of the shift, Will needs a chest tube, and his cold hands are slick with sweat when he grabs onto Connor’s wrist and begs him not to do this. 

“Connor. I don’t wanna feel it. I want to go home.” He punctuates his words by spitting up more blood into the little plastic dish Monique holds in front of his face. “I can’t.”

“Let us help you.”

He doesn’t say no, but keeps his grip on Connor’s arm while Elsa pulls the little tray closer. She’s going to do this. Connor knew Will would need more reassurance than he could give while performing the procedure, and it’s good practice for her as well. In a calm voice, he reminds her of the steps when she hesitates. 

“There you go, right between the ribs. Monique, give him another mil of morphine?” 

Elsa waits for it to go in before she makes the incision, but even so, Will hisses through his scarlet-stained teeth and lets his other hand find purchase on Connor’s arm. He holds on tight. Almost too tight. But at least he still has the strength for it. That’s a good sign. Connor says as much while Elsa inserts the tube, which causes an outpouring of blood onto the tile floor. 

“Hang blood for him, please. And ice, when you get the chance, for the swelling? Thanks.”

As Elsa tapes the tube in place, Connor pushes Will’s hair out of his face and dares to press a kiss to his hairline. It feels much like crossing an invisible line on this thing between them, but he does it anyways out of a desperation to prove that someone cares, someone wants him to live, someone thinks of him beyond his reputation and his failed relationships. 

Of course, before Connor can actually say a word of it, Will’s head falls back against the pillow and his blue-tinged lips fall open. His stats are dropping. Connor curses and calls Monique back, just in time to push etomidate and sux to intubate him. Those soft lips, the ones Connor has always wanted to kiss, now part around a plastic tube connected to a bag that must be manually pumped to breathe for him. It’s not fair that this happened just when it all seemed to be over. 

Of course it had to be Nile. Of every one of them to get caught trying to take down these assholes, of course it’s her. So young in comparison to the rest of them, so naive and inexperienced and frightened that it hurts, her eyes wider than they have any right to be. Andy wishes she could tell her it’ll be okay. 

“What do we do, Boss?”

Nicky has his sniper rifle aimed at the man’s head, but they all know what’ll happen. He will pull the trigger and blow Nile’s brains out across the polished floor of the museum, leaving her in bloody pieces to try and come back together again. The other hostages will be safe. But not her. Any of the others, and Andy might not hesitate, but Nile is just still such a child that it terrifies her to think of such a gruesome death as a point-blank shot through the skull.

“Through her chest. Make it quick.”

He looks up at her with the same terrified gaze. “Andromache-”

“It’ll be a lot better than his bullet through her skull, Nicky. Or what he’ll do if he gets her alone. You’d be saving her.”

Without answering, he turns back to his rifle. A moment later he fires. Andy watches through her own scope as the man collapses as well, the bullet having ripped straight through Nile’s soft stomach and into his own. Booker and Joe enter then, finishing the piece of shit off with a bullet to the skull, and then picking up Nile in their arms to get her to safety. While Nicky packs up his rifle, Andy finds her way back down to street level to meet up with them. This was her choice. She killed Nile, even if Nicky pulled the trigger, and it’s so much worse of a choice now than it was when they first met and Andy was just trying to get her to calm down and acknowledge what she was. This Nile that she has killed is someone whose favorite foods Andy knows, who sleeps with a small stuffed bear, who has nightmares of Quynh more nights than she doesn’t, who trusts her so deeply that Andy knows she’s going to devastate her by being too human. 

Nile is awake but still blood-soaked when they meet up next to their getaway car, stumbling along while Booker and Joe support most of her wait and she holds a hand to her wound. “Remind me not to get sniped,” she says. She sounds breathless. “Fucking hurts, and it blows you up inside.”

“I found what I think was her kidney a couple feet away,” Booker supplies. 

For the first time in centuries, Andy nearly vomits. But instead, she pulls Nile close and helps her get into their car. Nicky rejoins them a few minutes later, and won’t look at any of them. It’s Joe who murmurs comforts to him as Nile begins to fall asleep against Andy’s shoulder as if she didn’t get her killed. 

A couple hours later, near the end of their drive, Nile wakes up and pries off her shirt where the blood has dried it to her skin. Andy gives her a jacket to stay covered for the remainder of the journey and opens her mouth to apologize, but nothing actually passes her lips. 

It comes with the territory, his psychiatrist once said. On his bad days, his symptoms will be harder to manage, and perhaps ones he doesn’t often deal with will come back to haunt him. He figures that it’s because he’s been off his meds for six days, still trying to figure out how to get them covered by the new insurance with Austin FD and unable to just dish out the cost of it to keep himself in check. Six days doesn’t seem like long. It feels like an eternity, though. 

He’s moved out of his father’s house, finally, and wound up in Carlos’ to start to build their lives together. Carlos doesn’t know about the medication issue- not yet, anyways- because TK knows he’d start pulling at his savings and asking to borrow money and that’s not fair to ask for. He can’t and won’t ask for that kind of money from someone, especially not someone so intimately close, even if he trusts them. It’s the same gateway that his father used to make him feel guilty and indebted. 

By the time Carlos comes home from his shift, TK has reached the point of terror that he doesn’t know how to calm down anymore. He’s made three different dinners just in case none of them are good enough (because he knows that if he fails, they’re both going to suffer for it), and cleaned all the windows so that everyone knows he’s doing what he’s supposed to. While Carlos greets him and kicks off his shoes by the door, TK arranges the plates on the table. 

“I made dinner,” he announces. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted, so I made fish, uh, and a cobb salad, and I tried steak-”

Carlos rests his hands on TK’s shoulders. They’re heavy. But they don’t restrain or push or pull, and he has this look on his face like he’s waiting for TK to run away from him. “I want you to look at the plates again, sweetheart. Tell me what’s going on?”

He looks down at the plates again. It’s hard to tell exactly what he’s looking at, but it’s not the dishes he thought he made, and glancing back behind him reveals the kitchen to be in complete disarray. He failed. Then the tears well up, unbidden, as if to remind them both that he’s an idiot and he’ll get them killed. 

“What are you talking about?” Finally, Carlos’ eyes narrow and he seems like he knows. “TK, when was the last time you took your meds?”

Then he’s gone, looking through the cabinets where most of the spices have been opened and/or spread across the countertops as opposed to left in place. TK’s empty bottle is still there so he could pretend. Carlos looks over it and frowns. 

“This ran out a week ago.”

TK shrugs and tries to tidy the plates up. The sooner he gets this clean, the less severe the punishment for his failure. He’ll fix it. He tells Carlos as much while he stacks the dishes to wash them, intending to repair his mistakes, when he realizes that he had made it so they could see him and be proud. That means they saw the failure. His hands shake so badly he nearly drops the dishes, but still, he tries to bring them to the sink. 

When he drops them more than sets them peacefully down, Carlos stops him again and holds his hands so gently in his own warm palms. “Take a deep breath, TK. It’s okay. I’ll clean up. Why don’t you go take a shower?”

The next time that Nicky comes to, he’s still blind and deaf. He struggles a little before Nile pulls the couch closer to the warmth of the fireplace. He must be cold- that’s what every website she went to said, alongside the importance of burn wards for victims like Nicky to help them stay warm and heal in a sterile environment to prevent infection. For now, they just have to do the best they can. There are bandages folded under him, of course, but that will only do so much. Besides that, he’ll need those bandages checked and changed often so they don’t fuse with his healing skin. 

“I got into contact with Booker,” Andy says when she comes back. “He’s going to bring some serious supplies. Hopefully we can get Nicky through this until then.”

“Why isn’t he healing?”

Joe throws some wood from outside into the fire to stoke it warmer. “It’s a big injury. It’ll take time. Just so you know, Nile, he’s only alive because he is healing, it’s just very slow.”

Then he takes up a twin vigil with Nile, looking over Nicky’s body. He moves often, seemingly unable to just relax, only stilling for a brief amount of time after each dosage of morphine. Nile has to assume that it’s because he’s in pain, but she cannot give him morphine more often when she can’t guarantee he won’t overdose on it, no matter how much she wants to relieve his agony. Joe left her in charge of the painkillers for this exact reason; he doesn’t think he could be so rational about it. She doesn’t blame him. 

Some four or five hours later, he checks the fire again as it dies down and Nicky begins to shiver. Nile watches him build it up again, to the point that he isn’t careful enough and burns the curve of his thumb. Of course it heals quickly, leaving only a moment of pain, but it was enough for Nile to smell the singe of his skin. Evidently, it was enough for Nicky as well. He cries out and struggles to sit up. 

“Nicky, Nicky, it’s alright! I’m alright!”

Joe tries to soothe him, a futile endeavor when Nicky cannot understand him, but one that is impossible to neglect when they all feel so helpless. He nearly tries to cup Nicky’s face, or holds his hand, before remembering that he cannot touch the raw flesh where skin used to be and pulling back. It seems to cause him pain as well to be unable to comfort him. As he sags back against the couch, burying his face in his hands to try and hide his tears, although his shoulders still shake with the force of it. 

If only there were words of comfort that could actually help, or a single thing Nile could do to speed along Nicky’s healing. Unfortunately, all they can do is wait. The pain will last, as will the guilt, and the haunted look in Andy’s eyes as she takes in the way the light reflects off the wet-looking surface of what had once been Nicky’s kind and capable hands. 

Nile busies herself with research for as long as she can stay awake. Everything from skin graft research to the typical amount of it takes for someone to heal from full body burns. She considers the idea of grafts for perhaps too long, no matter horrific the idea of it is- one or all of them would have to donate the skin to Nicky, and hope it takes. But then again, the grafts would speed up the process, and for all she knows, Nicky’s body will reject or grow over the grafts eventually. 

“Stop thinking so hard,” Joe says to her as the sun rises through the window. “You’ve done enough, Nile. More than.”

“Just focus on my voice, Nicky. It’s okay. Just listen to me. I’m here.”

Listening is all he can do. The restraints keep him from moving. There is nothing besides antiseptic to taste and smell. Worse, however, he is no longer able to see because the cruel doctor wanted to find out if eyes could be regrown with the same patience as a cut limb or broken bone. This is pure pain. Pure fear. He can hear Joe, but nothing more.

“It’s going to be okay. You’ll be okay. I’m right here, I promise, just breathe.”

He tries to breathe but he can’t see. And the doctor won’t stop touching him. Her latex gloves are cold and wet with blood against his skin, feeling his face, daring to dip her fingers into the empty space in his skull where his eyes used to be. It hurts. All these sensitive nerves not meant to see the light of day are now exposed, touched, hurt. Damaged.

“You do have beautiful eyes,” she says as she continues to explore. “Do they regrow the same color?”

If he could move, he’d bite her. Instead he must stay still, and wonders if she has an inclination toward lobotomy, like an asylum in the fifties that tore so much away from them both. This experimentation is not their first rodeo. It is, however, the cruelest. She removes her hands only to return with something sharp. God, it hurts. He screams.

“Relax. I’m trying to observe the regrowth.”

So he’s healing, then. He almost doesn’t want to, afraid she’ll simply repeat the process.

“Nicolo, respirarti. It’s going to be okay.”

It’s not going to be okay. It’s going to hurt, it will never stop hurting, and he has to wonder just how awful things will get before the others come to rescue him. Will she do this to Joe? He tries to ask but his mouth feels filled with blood, and even once the doctor is done poking around his face, his sight remains missing.

Crockett is one of many wandering these streets, looking for shelter as they wade in the flooded neighborhoods. It’s been days. His mother is still missing, his sisters out of the city probably desperately calling to find out if they’re alright. There are so many people displaced and hurt and scared, and he wishes he could help them- he really does. But the skin is peeling off his legs from submersion in water, and there’s still dried blood crusted down the side of his face, making it near impossible to think clearly. Some part of him recognizes it as a head injury. The rest is just focused on moving. Keep going. Keep moving. Eventually, he’ll find shelter that’s safe. Somehow. 

There’s a young woman to his left holding a baby to her chest, walking slowly. She looks like she’s been dipped in mud. She’s shivering. He means to reach out to her in comfort, but unfortunately, the best he can do is stumble vaguely toward her before his legs give out and he winds himself sitting in the water. It’s only six inches deep or so. But this far down, his butt against the concrete below it, it feels like an insurmountable current trying to drag him back where he just spent an eternity trudging away from.

He’s just too tired to stand up again. This hurricane is going to be the death of him and at this point, he has no choice but to accept it. The water drags him away, slowly, and he relaxes into it and allows himself to float. What had been a warm end of summer week turned into this cold, murderous thing from a tropical storm they were all told would not be as awful as it turned out. 

It carries him for what feels like miles before he slams against the side of a building on a sharp turn, and simply grabs onto it because he doesn’t know what else to do. Everything hurts. He hurts. Crockett is going to become another statistic, he knows, but then he hears a siren-like sound and a bullhorn-amplified voice. 

“New Orleans Fire and Rescue! Call out!”

Someone out there wants him alive. 

“Fire and Rescue! Call out!”

He musters his strength to yell back, “I’m here! I’m alive, help me!”

“Hold on, sir, we’re coming to you. What’s your name?”

Faintly, he can hear a motor. It’s a rescue boat. He realizes he’s reached water up to his chest now, should he try to stand. He doesn’t, of course. The water is already threatening to scrape him along the cinder block wall and sweep him out to the sea once more. 

“Crockett.”

Silhouettes rise at the edge of his vision, finally. “Okay, Crockett. Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.”

They arrive. And carefully, they bring him into their rescue boat and check him over for every injury spread along his body. There are cuts and bruises from debris in the water, the blood on his head, the sores on his legs. He probably needs help. Others probably need it more. A man in a yellow turnout coat wraps a foil-lined blanket around his shoulders and cradles his head until Crockett finally feels enough at peace to fall asleep. 

There’s something wrong with the stars. They have been a near constant guide over Yusuf’s decades, and more recently Nicolo’s as well, but he finds that when he looks up to their million eyes tonight, he doesn’t recognize the patterns that should exist between them. There is no familiarity, and he realizes quite suddenly that it has been days since he stared up, uninhibited, at the night sky to decipher its meanings and plot their course. Yes, they have followed the road, but there is no guarantee it has been straight in its guidance to the port city of Alexandria so they may continue their search for the women in their dreams in the far continent across the Mediterranean, where Nicolo came from once upon a time. 

“Yusuf?” Nicolo prompts in this strange mixture of languages they have been forced to adopt to communicate. “All okay?”

“The stars are wrong.”

Nicolo nods like he understands, but Yusuf isn’t sure he does. Nonetheless, he stares up at them, willing them to make some sort of sense no matter how out of sorts they seem to his suddenly childish and naive eyes. There must be something, somewhere, that he can recognize enough to figure out which direction to go at least when the sun rises once more. He believes it comes up in the sands of the east, but there is no guarantee it’s an exact angle to follow. 

He nudges Yusuf’s shoulder again and points at something. “Genoa,” he says, but his voice lilts in suggestion of a question. Then he points somewhere vaguely off to the right. “The Holy Lands.”

Genoa is where Nicolo is from, if memory serves, placing them with their faces to the north and Alexandria still lurking far out of reach Southwest, down and away from the lives they once held. To think, lost in a place he recognizes to be more of a home to him than Nicolo, it was this crusader who still has smears of blood caught on his cheek every day that guides him where they must go. In the past five years they have become tentative allies. Suddenly Yusuf trusts him. He trusts him when his own senses fail. 

So he orients himself among these new stars and faces the direction they must go, stating “Alexandria” when Nicolo turns those soft ocean eyes upon him. Their eyes meet with a gentle understanding that seems typical of soulmates at the altar and the devotion said on one’s knees to the sunny sky. 

As they set out their bed rolls for the night, Yusuf knows that when he is lost, he will not have to fare it alone.