#jockett

He kicks his fridge and it rattles ominously, a bottle inside falling over and rolling around to be picked up much later down the line, when he has the ability to concentrate and he’s not dangerously close to falling and hitting his head on the tile floor. Logically, he knows he should go to bed. Sleep it off. Pop an aspirin and some orange juice in the morning, maybe get some fluids in before his shift starts, and carry on with his life like the pain he’s been trying so hard to suppress hasn’t suddenly taken him over in a tidal wave.

His phone shows three missed calls when he fumbles to plug it in. He didn’t even hear it go off. Two from Dr. Manning. One from Dr. Choi. There’s tons of texts. All of them can be dealt with in the morning, and not as he curls up alone in his queen sized bed, still dreaming of what it felt like to have his husband holding him through the night.

When he left New Orleans, he didn’t bring his wedding ring with him. He buried it with its match in the casket. The only real memories he brought with him, he can’t bear to look at, so they stay boxed up in his closet for the hypothetical day in the future that he’s able to handle it. Deep down, he doubts that day will ever come.

Luckily, the amount of booze in his system and the exhaustion of the day catch up to him once there’s a pillow beneath his head, and he’ll be able to sleep without dreaming, if what he experiences can even be called that. They’re closer to hell than to anything that could be compared to the softness evoked by the thought of a dream. Nonetheless, he gets nothing of the sort when he closes his eyes for the night. Sleep brings no rest. 

His hangover is best described as hellish when he crawls out of bed to the shrill alarm. His head throbs, almost as bad as the sensation of his chest being torn apart by grief that has never even begun to fade. As he makes his way slowly to the bathroom, fighting the urge to vomit, he seriously debates the merits of staying home as opposed to going to work. Dr. Manning will ask him questions, and the patients who need his attention will only bring more hurt to his attempts at recovery. 

They wouldn’t want him to stay home.

With a grimace, he takes two aspirin and brushes his teeth to rid himself of the taste of stale liquor and sleep. Cold shower running down his back. No more sweat left on his sticky skin, only bags under his eyes and a faint tremor in his palms that he’ll have to eliminate before he gets back to work. Surgeons need steady hands. He forces himself to breathe deep until they stop shaking.

Going about his morning routine is like walking through molasses, ever so slow in the mire when he chokes down coffee and double knots his shoelaces. Traffic isn’t significantly better or worse than usual. He parks, goes inside. The flask in his locker offers him a small sip to numb him just a little more. There’s no real, physical evidence of the day before left in the hospital. That one little girl who Dr. Choi treated has been transferred to the ICU, and the other patients have been sent home or to recovery. Part of Crockett wants to go check on the kids from yesterday, but he can already tell that he’ll break if he does. They survived this.

He shoves his backpack into the locker with slightly more force than necessary. No one knowing provides a certain loneliness, but if he told them- the pity, the pushes to go home or to therapy or both- he just can’t handle it. Maybe his grieving process isn’t normal, but it’s working well enough for him. He’s still upright on his own two feet with a job and an apartment, which has to be worth something.

“Good morning, Dr. Marcel,” Noah says brightly, tablet in hand with the charts of the morning. “I was going to do a consult in six, did you wanna join?”

Normally, he would say yes. Noah needs his guidance to learn, and Crockett wants to teach him- there’s something so innocent and child-like in him that reminds him of someone he used to tuck into bed at night. Today, he can’t. 

“Why don’t you do that one yourself, I’m not on the clock for a few more minutes and I’ve got something to do first.”

“Oh- okay. Everything alright?”

Crockett waves him off and goes into a treatment room, drawing the curtains and sitting on the bed with his legs crossed, arm out. He can insert his own IV, has done it plenty of times before and put a decent share of other things into his blood for less medicinal reasons. That part is no one’s business but his own. With the IV kit in the cart and an improvised rubber glove tourniquet, he starts himself on a bag of fluids and closes his eyes, willing it to give him some energy.

A darker part of himself, one that rears its ugly head on the worst of days, reminds him that he has access to things like morphine and oxy and xanax, any number of ways to calm him, but he can’t bring himself to do it. They’d be disappointed in him for that, too. 

Eyes shut, breathing slow,w, he lets the fluids drain into his body to replace some of what he’s lost before spending a long moment going through the motions of removing the IV, applying pressure, disposing of the used equipment, and pasting a neutral look on his face. No one needs to know about why he’s here in Chicago or the way he wants to collapse to the floor and shatter into a million pieces. 

Noah’s still with the patient, talking them through whatever procedure is on the table, so Crockett has a moment longer to take a deep breath and put himself together. At least, he had hoped so, but then Dr. Lanik is beside him, watching him with that almost-concerned expression usually turned toward Dr. Halstead’s latest bullshit.

“Dr. Manning is worried about you.”

He dutifully pretends not to have heard, and studies his nails. Short and clean, like always. Much more put together than the rest of him, he thinks. His scars are hidden beneath the crisp fabric of his scrubs, torso and legs. Plastics did a good job with his face. They told him his nose broke in the crash, but by the time he woke up, it had almost fully healed. He never noticed a difference.

“Crockett.” He slowly raises his eyes, meeting Lanik’s. “We’re all worried about you. Clearly, yesterday hit close to home, and-”

“It didn’t-”

“You have bourbon breath and your hands are shaking.”

When he looks back down at his hands, they are, even though he swears they weren’t seconds ago. Lanik’s hand cups his shoulder as he walks him to the doctor’s lounge, nudging him to sit down on the squeaky couch while he himself remains standing over him, imposing.

“I had a sip this morning, not even a shot. I’m not drunk, if that’s your concern.”

They spend a long moment staring at each other before Lanik sits beside him and picks up Crockett’s left hand. It’s not a clinical touch, but one strangely gentle, as though Lanik feels he’s holding something delicate. Up close, there’s still a faint tan line on his ring finger, where a symbol of a union used to sit. A gentle touch brushes over it, blue-green eyes soften.

“It’s okay to talk about it, ‘Kett.”

At the shortening of his name, Crockett rips his hand away and stands up. Too familiar, too painful, too much. He can’t deal with it. He adjusts his shirt and walks away in hopes Lanik won’t follow, just in time to see Noah approaching with another chart. The patient needs surgery and it’s one Noah isn’t too familiar with yet, so Crockett has to be there to help him, guide him, assist him. He’d rather be at home, but there’s no choice. Scrub in. Steady his hands. Don’t think about them, don’t think about the children from yesterday, don’t think about Lanik, and he’ll be alright, he tells himself. He has to be.

By the time the surgery is over, he just wants to go home, crawl under the covers and sleep. Dr. Charles might be able to give him something to put him at peace enough to avoid nightmares without giving himself alcohol poisoning, if he asks. It would be awkward, though, and he knows that will come with questions and urging toward counseling. 

Even now, though, when he shuts his eyes, he remembers too well. The music playing, Crockett’s hand on his husband’s leg while their daughter chittered away in the backseat about her ballet class that day. A recital was coming up. Crockett even had the day off so he could be there to see her. 

He desperately opens his eyes, but he still remembers the sound before it’s replaced by the ding of paramedics bringing in a patient. Stab wound to the abdomen, not too severe but not great either. Crockett can focus on that, does focus on that for as long as he’s able because he refuses to lose a patient today.

By the time that one is stitched up, there’s a car accident victim in her mid thirties, free fluid in the belly. It’s worse. But he does his job and he saves her too, the way doctors in New Orleans didn’t, with a promise to her waiting family that she’ll make a full recovery before they know it.

“Crockett,” he hears at the end of his shift, his flask already halfway to his mouth in the doctor’s lounge. Lanik is leaving for the day as well, hanging up his coat and cracking his neck while he watches out of the corner of his eye. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Never better.”

“Why don’t I- I-”

He turns to look at Lanik, waiting for him to just spit it out already so he can go home and drink himself into a stupor. Crockett is tired of being here today. He’s extra tired of the way everyone stares at him and tip-toes around him all of a sudden.

“Let me buy you dinner, at least.”

He doesn’t mean to laugh, but it comes out of his mouth anyway. “I’m flattered, but I’m not looking for something like that right now.”

“Not as a date,” Lanik immediately corrects. “Just to talk. You look like you need it.”

Despite his first instinct being to refuse, Crockett does need to eat at some point, and this is a good way to make sure he remembers to before he gets drunk or otherwise incpacitated. Then there’s the puppy eyes Lanik is giving him, the outstretched hand, and it’s so difficult to say no to him. It was hard to say no to them, too. 

“I guess I can make the time.”

Lanik smiles and offers him a ride, to the restaurant and then back to the hospital for his car, provided he’s sober enough for it. They wind up at a family owned greasy spoon diner, with bitter coffee and sweet pancakes, a homely air as the radio plays on the overheads. They don’t serve alcohol. Crockett pours a decent amount from his flask into his coffee mug, despite the disapproving look it earns. 

“Should I be worried?” he asks idly as Crockett puts his flask away again.

All he can do in response is laugh dryly. No one worries about him anymore, not seriously. If they do, it’s only in the context of his capabilities as a surgeon, not his personal life or emotions. While alcohol hasn’t improved the taste of the terrible coffee, it makes him feel at least somewhat better to know that he’s on his way to a decent night’s sleep.

“Tell me about New Orleans,” Lanik says finally. “What was it like? Working there, living there?”

To find a memory that doesn’t hurt won’t be easy, but just brushing him off would be rude, and Crockett was raised better than that- he was raising his child better than that. His shoulders rise in a half-shrug, grasping in his mind for something to say.

“Hush puppies,” he blurts out.

“Hush puppies?”

Crockett puts his index finger and thumb together to make a little ball. “They’re this big, kind of like little savory pancakes. We deep fry them. Sure, they’re not super healthy, but I had those for breakfast all the time, and after long days at work. My-” his voice catches. “My family and I would make them on Sunday mornings.”

“What’re they made out of?”

“I use cornmeal, some flour. And milk and eggs. You gotta add onions and garlic and seasoning, though, give it something to- to cling to so it isn’t bland.”

He hasn’t made them since he came to Chicago. Not since before the accident, really. Every time he’s tried, it’s turned into tears over a hot stove and a distinct sense of loss that runs deeper than anything else manages to get. Just talking about them again is more than he’s done. 

There are tears clinging to his eyelashes, just reaching his cheeks, that he doesn’t notice until Lanik reaches across the table to wipe them away for him. Slow. Careful. “It’s okay.” He doesn’t pull his hand back, instead cupping Crockett’s face. Some piece of him that craves being loved again leans into the touch.

“Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

He ducks his head and takes a few long pulls of his spiked coffee. His heart is beating fast. Too fast. It tells him to think about the contact and to lean forward and to ask for a night where the bed isn’t as cold, but that’s too much of a betrayal to seriously consider. Crockett forces himself to pull away. 

The pancakes are cold by now, but he eats them just for the sake of getting something into his system. Passing out at work because he hasn’t been eating would only add to the humiliation of how he’s visibly falling apart in front of them after a tough day that everyone else handled in stride. They weren’t as affected by the outbreak either. He’s willing to bet he’s seen worse than them, living in the deep alleys of New Orleans and helping those who so often died on the table from another stab wound, another bullet into soft flesh, but since coming here, it’s like he’s become a child again. Fresh out of med school, not used to the horror yet. He needs to get a grip, although that’s much easier said than done.

Even though dinner was offered by Lanik, Crockett still pays his fair share and tips generously before they leave. Home. Drink. Bed. Try not to cry. He has a routine that it’s easy to stick to if he wants to survive in this post-love haze that has sunk into his very bones.

“Come home with me,” Lanik says. “Again, it’s not- not a flirting thing. I’m just worried about you, and- and I get the feeling you could use the company.”

Refusal would be easy and simple. Crockett is better off dealing with his pain in solitude, and he has bourbon at home, and sometimes if he shuts his eyes he can still remember the way it felt to be held through the night. But he doesn’t want to be alone, at the same time, and this offer is the most intimacy he’ll have felt in ages, so he accepts with his head down and his jacket pulled tightly around his body. 

Lanik lives nearby, with a cozy apartment and a pull-out couch he offers. It’s not as comfortable as his own bed, but the covers are warm and he forgets how to breathe for a moment when Lanik fluffs the pillow beneath his head and brushes an errant strand of hair out of his eyes.

“I’ll be in my room at the end of the hall,” he says gently. “Bathroom is on the left.”

“Thanks.”

“Goodnight, Crockett.”

He burrows deeper into the blankets. “Goodnight, Dr. Lanik.”

“Jimmy.”

“Jimmy,” Crockett amends, and shuts his eyes. 

Sleep comes surprisingly easy, but it is not restful. Without an aid to empty his thoughts, he’s given memories that start off so sweet and perfect. Cradling his little girl in his arms, singing her a lullaby while his husband sets up the changing table. Her first night home from the hospital, oh-so-small, face shiny pink and hand so small that it could barely close around Crockett’s thumb. He’s happy, they’re happy. A first day back at work and crying because he misses her, getting worried the first time she got the flu, driving her to ballet class, buying her new shoes. 

He remembers hearing her scream, in the instant between the crash and the silence.

Going fast, not fast enough. Someone else ran the light. Passenger side, going fifty miles per hour into the crumpling metal door where there was a father playing with the radio and a rambling little girl, catching the brunt of it while the driver’s airbag exploded into his face. She had time to scream in pain. The body beside Crockett was silent. His daughter cried. 

“Daddy, it hurts,” he heard.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” he heard.

“Daddy, wake up,” he heard.

His ears were ringing. Blood on the side of his face, nose throbbing, a deep ache in his chest where debris decided to pierce the skin. One of his legs was numb. He drifted in and out a couple of times, listening to crying and sirens. The last thing he heard was the silence. Dead silence around him. Nothing in the air. Nothing.

The room is dark when he wakes up, painfully so, and the sound that claws out of his throat. Raw, animal, feral and loud to the point that it hurts as he dissolves into sobs that shake his entire body and sound like dying things trying to break through his skin and swallow him whole. He cries like he’s never cried. While he can’t breathe and his world crumbles, there’s a presence that comes beside him.

The lights turn on, he can feel the yellow against his eyelids. A dip in the mattress marks a new weight, an arm around his shoulder and a hand on his damp cheek. Speaking, but nothing that Crockett is able to hear. Or process, is a better word. There’s too much and not enough around him to survive upon when he’s just absolutely overcome with the pain of what’s happening to him and has happened. It’s the past, the present, the future. His life and death. Every cell of his body is screaming while he just cries against a bare chest and his hair is stroked by a disembodied hand.

“Breathe, Kett. You’re okay. Just breathe for me.”

He falls asleep again, somehow, still crying but held.

When the morning truly comes, his face feels slightly sticky with what’s left of last night’s tears, and there’s a steady heartbeat against his cheek. For a moment, it’s peaceful, until he inevitably remembers that the heart does not belong to the love of his life and he’s not familiar with the scratchy sheets beneath him. Panic takes over for a moment, that he found his way to a drunken one night stand even though he swore to himself he would never betray the love he once felt. But then, the memories of the night before hazily filter into his mind. A diner meal and the briefest mention of hush puppies. Coming to Jimmy’s and sleeping on the pullout couch. The nightmare.

He leans away from Jimmy and buries his face in his hands. This was a mistake, and all he wants to do is go home and lay in bed, never get out of it again because he simply doesn’t have it in him. The opening up thing, he tried it last night. Just enough to be certain that it doesn’t work.

Beside him, his host stirs to life. One sharp inhale, a heavy exhale. “Kett?”

“Stop calling me Kett.”

When he swings his legs over the edge of the fold-out, he knows he’ll call out of work tomorrow. He has today off. Tomorrow, he’ll say he’s sick. And maybe by then, he’ll either be feeling better or have figured out a way to push the grief down to a tolerable level again. If he was a praying man, he’d already be on his knees. 

“Are you okay?”

It isn’t even worth it to answer. He hails an Uber on his phone, trying to remember if he still has something to drink at home or if he should take the ride to the hospital to get his car for grocery shopping. Pints of ice cream and cheap whiskey to fill in the cracks where he’s splitting apart. 

“Please, talk to me.”

Crockett doesn’t remember taking off his shoes, but they’re next to the door and fight him a little when he tries to slip them on. Eventually he gets them onto his feet, though, and throws open Jimmy’s door with the sole intent of isolating himself from whatever excuse for an outreach stole the night before.

“I know how you feel, I-”

“You have no idea,” Crockett growls, hand so tight on the knob he thinks his fingers will break, “how I feel. You cannot even begin to understand how I feel. And if God is merciful, you never will.”

He slams the door hard enough on his way out to splinter it slightly. It’s a strength he didn’t know he had. But he pretends not to notice as he goes to the curb to wait for his ride. Only a few minutes, according to his phone.

When he first got out of the hospital, having built up the strength to do basic tasks like bathe and dress himself again, he had almost given up. In a single instant, he lost the only two people who mattered to him in an accident where he sat at the wheel. Survivor’s guilt is more potent when the survivor was in the driver’s seat physically, not just metaphorically. That first night when he got home, he looked at the painkillers prescribed for the still healing incision. The whole bottle in his palm seemed so easy. He very nearly did it, too, because there was nothing left to live for.

The only thing that stopped him was the picture of his daughter on the mantle, and he couldn’t do it when he didn’t even know where she was buried.

Once he was eventually cleared for return to work, he went for a day. Everyone knew, and they treated him like a child, and wouldn’t even let him do his job. That’s why he came to Chicago, to get away from it and from everyone who knew, but it’s somehow made everything both better and worse. 

There’s a hanging ceiling fan, unbelievably sturdy, in Crockett’s living room. He knows how to tie a noose. It would be simple, and put an end to all his suffering for good, and by the time anyone comes looking for him, they would simply be too late to do anything. No more nightmares. And, if the churches are to be believed, he’ll be reunited with his family, which he’s wanted more than anything. What he wouldn’t do to hold them again.

His Uber driver honks, apparently having arrived already, and Crockett forces himself to get up and into the backseat. Home will solve everything. He’ll figure out what to do next, and whatever happens, happens. If his life ends, if he drinks away the nightmares, if he lays in bed until his body turns to dust- he doesn’t care anymore. Any attempt at conversation on the driver’s behalf falls flat.

Like it’s waiting for him, there’s a half-empty bottle on the counter with a smooth glass neck practically made for Crockett’s hands. Bitter, painful taste in his mouth. He doesn’t mind it, welcomes it even as he goes to his own soft bed. They’d be disappointed. Not that it matters, because he can’t feel anything except pain right now, and he’d rather they be disappointed than out of his reach entirely. All of his memories of them have been tainted by the accident. 

It would be easiest to just die already, he thinks, as he crawls under the covers. Finally, his suffering would come to an end. It would be over. At long last, it’ll be over. He’s almost calmed by the idea as he drinks and drifts off to sleep. Through the day, through the night, through the rest of his life, if he can.

He doesn’t know exactly when he starts to drift off, just that he does and his phone’s shrill alarm wakes him up, telling him he’s needed at the hospital. The ED needs him to come be a surgeon, and people will ask questions if he doesn’t go, but the mere idea of facing the world again makes him want to die. Even a phonecall seems too much. His hands shake far more than they should when he emails Mrs. Goodwin of his absence, and promptly shuts his phone off.

His chest aches as he chugs what’s left of his liquor and lets the bottle fall to the floor. Everything just… hurts. There’s not a single blood vessel, a single cell in the entirety of his body that doesn’t feel like it’s falling to pieces like ashes in the wind. He should have died, all those months ago, with his daughter and his husband and the driver of the other car, as opposed to this survival that’s a poor excuse for life. The time spent learning to walk again, stumbling over his words because his brain was rattled around, staring at graves whose funerals he never attended- it’s a waste.

Face buried in the pillow, missing the scent of his love’s cologne, he wishes to just die. Even if he doesn’t kill himself, which would take a courage and energy he lacks, he would rather be dead than live like this anymore. 

Then it comes to him- he could walk into traffic. No one ever stops for jaywalkers in Chicago, and it would be nearly poetic to die the way he should have so long ago. Crockett forces his legs over the edge of the bed and wonders if he’s about to do this. If this is what he’s been reduced to. A once brilliant, confident, borderline arrogant surgeon who was also a father, now a drunkard going to make someone else take the poor excuse for his life. 

Before this moment, he never really understood psych holds; he trusted patients to make their own decisions, and he would normally trust his own, but he understands how he’s a danger to himself. He’s aware of it. He knows he’s going to die. But he doesn’t care, craves it even, and if he was anywhere near Med, they’d have him committed before he could even blink or explain why it’s imperative that he leave this all behind. 

Barefoot. Hair mussed. Still in scrubs from two days before. He walks out of his little condo complex where a busy street is racing with cars on either side, surpassing the forty speed limit by as much as they feel necessary to get where they’re going. He usually hates having such a busy road so close to home, but now, he’s grateful. 

He takes a deep breath and waits for the traffic to have no stops, no gaps, nothing but rushing vehicles. And he jumps into the fray.

It doesn’t hurt, is the thing.

There’s the impact. The sound of bones breaking, brakes screeching, people screaming. He hits his head fairly hard on the asphalt, or at least he thinks so, because everything is wet. He can’t move. The sky overhead, grey with clouds that seem ready to spill, reminds him of clean sheets and an arm over his face, of making hot chocolate for three when it snowed. His eyes seem stuck open, hard to shut.

Hands on his face, on his chest, and he’s excited to see finally see them again.

At peace with the world, with himself, with his death, the world goes fuzzy around him and disappears. 

When he wakes up again, the first sound he makes is a croaky “No,” difficult to say with how raw his throat is. No. No, he doesn’t want to fucking be here. They should have let him die. His eyes seem stuck together, not that he particularly cares, as he starts trying to take stock of his body. Moving it. Struggling. He can wiggle his toes, so he isn’t paralyzed. His fingers move fine on one arm, but on the other, they’re stiff, and the limb is heavy from the elbow down. His head is pounding, and his chest aches, and he should have written a DNR or something before he did this so that he wouldn’t have had to continue to live, let alone like this. He can’t do months of recovery and pity again, and he has nowhere else to go. 

There’s a palm against his cheek, and for a moment he pretends it’s that of his husband, but he can’t when the voice accompanies it. “Can you hear me?” It’s Jimmy again, at his bedside, overstepping boundaries and refusing to let him just put an end to all of this already.

“Go away.”

At least he’s not being touched anymore, but he can tell that he’s not alone. They likely won’t be releasing him any time soon, not when whoever called 911 undoubtedly reported that he just threw himself in front of a car that obviously wouldn’t have had time to stop. It’s blatant, and it should have worked, but he’s here and his monitors remind him of the heart still stubbornly beating in his chest. If he could, he’d reach in and remove the thing himself. Bloody and raw, like he feels, and then as he dies, he’ll be free to rejoin his family at last. 

By some miracle, he pries his eyes open, and spends a few long seconds adjusting to the bright fluorescent lights attacking him. The sheets are clean, and the room he’s in suggests he wasn’t in a coma for weeks, like after the accident. His stiff arm is wrapped in a heavy dark blue cast, from his wrist to his elbow, securing itself over his thumb and showing off a little bit of cotton placed to protect his skin from the harsh plaster. 

Jimmy still sits at the bedside, watching him as though waiting for a complete meltdown, which doesn’t exactly feel too far off. Crockett reaches for the water bottle at the bedside with his good arm, fumbling with the cap with his teeth to get it open. His broken arm is like dead weight. Once again, he tries to move his fingers. They slightly obey. Not to the extent he thinks they should.

“Do you want me to bring your doctor in, to explain your injuries?”

Crockett grabs the cannula off his face and discards it, even if he notices the change in his ease of breathing almost immediately. He weakly bats Jimmy’s hand away when he reaches to replace it, and ignores the words of protest. All he wants is to get out of this place. He unclips himself from the monitors, and fumbles in the drawer beside his bed for a cotton ball to place against his arm when he carefully removes the IV of God knows what. The rational doctor in him figures fluids, painkillers, and antibiotics, but the father and husband in his mind doesn’t care. 

“Wait, you need to lay down-”

“I’m going home.”

Jimmy is in front of him, hands out, as Crockett struggles to put his weight on his legs. They’re weak. He remembers this feeling, and he hates it. But it’s fine, he’ll be able to walk before he knows it, he tells himself. Just keep moving. 

“Crockett, stop. Don’t make me do this.”

“I’m leaving.”

“You’re on an involuntary hold.”

That doesn’t surprise him, but he doesn’t really care, either. All that matters is getting the fuck out of here, so he pushes Jimmy out of the way with as much force as he can muster to continue his not-so-daring escape, holding a cottonball against his inner elbow and stumbling more than walking. He must look like a mess. It doesn’t matter. As soon as he’s out of this hospital, he’ll do it again, and maybe this time, the cars will actually kill him like they should have so long ago. 

But of course, halfway down the hall, there’s security latching onto him and picking him up off the ground, in spite of his kicking feet and arguing with them. He’s in full presence of mind, and he doesn’t want to live. He wants his family back.

“Just let me die!” he screams at them, struggling to get out of their iron grips. “I don’t wanna be here! Let me go!”

Everyone stares at him. Each nurse and doctor on the floor, Jimmy included, as he’s returned to his bed and secured with the soft restraints so that he becomes a prisoner in this sterile little hospital room. As a nurse gives him a fresh IV, and Jimmy resupplies the oxygen, he wonders if maybe he did in fact die, all those months ago, and this is the hell he must endure.

“I want a DNR,” he says stiffly, tugging with little conviction against his restraints. “And a DNI.”

“You’ve been deemed non-decisional, by Dr. Charles when you came in.”

He makes a frustrated sound from deep in his chest. “I wasn’t even conscious.”

“Multiple people saw you try and kill yourself, and that stunt you just pulled didn’t exactly help.”

Crockett squeezes his eyes shut and clenches the fist he’s able to. When will it end? He needs it to end, finally, and yet he’s buried in their forced care and he wonders if they’ve tried to call his family. His emergency contact used to be his husband, and he doesn’t think he updated it. That number would have received no answer. If they even tried. He wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t, because no one who has someone to call would have done what he just tried. 

“As soon as I’m released,” he says slowly, “I’m just going to do it again. Can’t we get it over with already?”

Jimmy’s face is soft and small, a child’s innocence and worry written into every wrinkle, when he leans forward and places a hand on Crockett’s cast. “We’re not going to let you kill yourself. You have a future. People care about you, and-”

“And I’m done living.”

With that, Jimmy presses his lips together and seems to consider it for a moment, before he stands up and tosses a comment over his shoulder that Crockett’s doctors will be in momentarily to talk about his recovery. Doctors, plural. If he had to guess, he’ll be seeing one for his main care, and one to try and convince him that dying won’t make the pain stop, even if Crockett’s pretty damn certain it will. One cannot grieve when they are gone and reunited with their family.

Dr. Charles and one of the GPs in the hospital join him, Dr. Charles hovering near the door while the doctor approaches to test his body, see if it’s working. She makes Crockett wiggle his toes and squeeze her hand, shines a light into his eyes and makes him follow it without moving his head, until she’s satisfied that he hasn’t sustained much brian damage. Then she reviews his injuries with him.

“You did sustain three rib fractures, but they’re minor and should heal on their own, so long as you don’t do anything too strenuous. The oxygen is to help keep your sats up even though you’re breathing shallower than normal. We also treated a half-inch depressed skull fracture, and a subdural hematoma, but we’ve got the bleeding under control and you should heal fine from that. In the accident, you also suffered a traumatic dislocation of your left knee with ACL damage, which we’ve repaired surgically, and we expect you to make a full recovery.”

Crockett raises his eyebrows and looks at his cast covered arm. Now, the doctor won’t meet his eyes. 

“Your arm was an open fracture with a lot of debris from the asphalt and road surface. We were able to reset it with an internal fixation and grafted skin from your right thigh. Dr. Lanik told me you’ve already shown some movement in your left arm, and that’s a good thing-”

“What aren’t you telling me?” he interrupts. 

She clears her throat. “There was significant damage to the muscle tissue and nerves in your forearm and wrist. Now that you’re awake and lucid, we’ll be able to make a better determination of what that will look like for you long-term.”

What she doesn’t say is the most important thing. They don’t expect him to be able to use his arm the same way again, which means losing the one thing he still has left. Had left. Trying to save people the way the doctors in New Orleans couldn’t save his daughter. Another reason he should have just died, if not in the first accident, then the second. 

“Do you have any questions?” She asks.

“Can you bring me the paperwork to sign a DNR?”

She hesitates, and that’s when Dr. Charles pulls up a chair and asks for the chance to speak to him alone. No paperwork, then, just a conversation to try and convince him that this isn’t the answer. As if he deserves to live, especially with even his career taken from him too. 

Crockett stares at him, almost daring him to speak. For a moment, he thinks he’s managed to silence the doctor with nothing but a glare, but then Dr. Charles asks him how he’s doing today, like he’s just a child. He just wants to sleep and never wake up.

“Dr. Marcel, can I um, can I ask you how long you’ve been feeling this way?”

He looks at his broken arm. A drink would be stellar, to cut off some of the pain threatening to tear him apart. The question isn’t so simple, and even if it was, he definitely wouldn’t be answering. He doesn’t want help. 

“I took a look at your file, and it shows that you were in a car accident in New Orleans a while ago, before you came to Chicago, was that an accident, or-?”

“Shut up.”

“I also uh, was able to get ahold of your sister, Elodie? She’s coming up from Louisiana, said her flight should be landing at O’Hare within the hour. You know, she’s really worried about you.”

The last time he talked to his sister was before he got out of the hospital after the accident. She came to check on him, and he had been awful to her. It was the grief and the pain, but he hasn’t had the chance to apologize. Perhaps he should, since he’s here for now. He’ll have the chance to do so when she arrives and cries at his bedside, asks him why he did this, holds his hand and prays for him. Just like when they were kids and he got punched for mouthing off to the school bully. They were close, when they were young. Even when they were older, before Crockett lost everything.

“You know, I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

“I don’t want your help, and I don’t want to talk to you.”

Dr. Charles sighs. “You know you’re on a psych hold. We can’t let you leave until we’re sure you’re not going to hurt yourself, and I just don’t see that happening if you don’t talk to anyone.”

“I want to talk to my husband and daughter,” he says simply.

Then he watches confusion and concern flit over Dr. Charles’ face, trying to figure out how to make that happen because he didn’t know Crockett had a family. The key word is had. Crockett misses them more than anything in the world, and if they were still here, he certainly wouldn’t have done what he did today, and he would still be at home in New Orleans, in their little house, cooking dinner each night with leftovers packed for lunch. He misses helping their daughter pull on her tights for church on Sunday mornings and tying his husband’s tie. He wants to have all of it again. 

“Can you tell me why you tried to kill yourself?”

“I want to talk to my husband and daughter.”

At that, he ignores everything else that Dr. Charles attempts to say to him, shutting his eyes and turning away until the man finally leaves and he’s left to cry in peace, unable to do something so simple as wipe his own eyes. This isn’t a life worth living. His husband would have understood, and would have signed a DNR for him.

He doesn’t know how long it takes for visitors to return, but he feels even worse when they do. Jimmy comes in first, checking that Crockett is awake, followed by Elodie, who looks a mess. Her makeup is smeared remnants of mascara beneath her eyes, and her usually put-together outfit has been replaced with rumpled sweatpants and a tee shirt. She looks the way his heart feels when she lunges forward to wrap her arms carefully around him. 

“You can’t do that,” she says, the tears too evident in her shaking voice. “When they called- Kett, you can’t- what if you had died?”

And he doesn’t have the heart to say that’s what he wanted, but Jimmy meets his eyes and looks just as broken in a different way. He nods at Crockett and cocks his head toward the door before leaving, mouthing that he’ll come back later. Not that it really matters. If he tries really hard, he can probably convince Elodie to sign a DNR and get him released AMA, and then he can peacefully die in his home without the hospital’s intervention. So simple, it seems.

Elodie cups the back of his neck and presses their foreheads together, just like when they were kids under a blanket fort, hiding from the rest of the world. She doesn’t cry loudly, but it makes his heart jerk in his chest until she sits beside him and rests a hand over his cast.

“Mom and Dad couldn’t make it, but they’re worried too. And I- the doctor said your arm was in bad shape.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Crockett says.

He means to keep his voice the same as always, but she hears the pain in it. She’s too good at it, when she considers the way he doesn’t even twitch at her gentle prodding of his fingers. The sensation of touch is there, but like it’s through plastic and not really on his skin.

It seems like Dr. Charles didn’t tell her the intention he had when he walked into the street, the smallest of miracles he can breathe deep into his chest in response to the emptiness inside of him. Elodie is the sort of sister who will stay here, not run away now that she’s seen that he’s alive, which means she’ll have to know that he died when he was within her reach, a grief he wouldn’t wish upon her, but is a necessary part of the process if he is to rejoin his family.

She tells him to rest, which he does only because there is nothing else for him in this hospital room. He’s biding his time until they let him go, at which point he’ll happily repeat the process as many times as it takes for him to finally ascend from his broken body.

When he wakes up again, she’s gone, and Jimmy is beside him again, typing on his laptop as though he’s relaxing in the cafeteria as opposed to keeping sentry’s watch over Crockett. It’s both sweet and irritating at once. He bites his tongue. 

“You do have to talk to someone,” Jimmy says without looking up. “You tried to kill yourself.”

“Everyone keeps saying that to me like I don’t know.”

His sigh can only be described as irritation, which is fair. Crockett looks at the soft restraints on his wrists and flexes them, as though it’ll set him free. “Did Elodie go home?”

“She’s staying at a motel, I told her to get some rest and I’d stay with you.”

“Do you have a thing for my sister, James Lanik?”

Jimmy just stares at him. He looks tired. “First of all, I’m gay. Second, you have to stop deflecting. Everyone’s really worried about you. You don’t need- there’s reasons for you to live.”

It’s a fair statement that Crockett has said to patients, to Elodie before. But even if there’s some reason, maybe a handful, to stick around, they don’t outweigh how badly he misses his family. His family, who he suddenly remembers, wouldn’t have wanted this for him. The dam breaks. The tears start, and the shaking that comes with each gasping breath when his body is struggling around sobs, and he just hates that he knows they’d want him to live but he simply can’t stand to continue on without them. 

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s gonna be okay, Kett.”

Jimmy holds his good hand, like he really does believe in the future, and kisses his knuckles.