I've just finished watching Episode 02x21 of Riverdale and this little drabble came to mind. Hope you like it!
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"HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!"
Everyone at the hospital, staff and patients alike, made way for the desperate man who left a trail of his son's blood as he rushed across the emergency room. When the nurses came at last to his assistance, he was almost reluctant to let go of the young man he carried in his arms.
"I'm right here, Jug," F.P. promised as he clutched the boy's unresponsive hand between both his own. "I'm right here, alright?"
The stretcher rushed away and with it the King Serpent, clutching onto Jughead's hand for dear life as though fearing he would never get a chance to hold onto it again if he ever let go.
"Sir, you need to wait out here."
"The hell I do, that's my son!"
"Sir, we can't allow you back there—"
More nurses came to their colleague's assistance, holding onto the man's arms in an attempt to release their patient from his vehement grasp. However, the harder they tried to restrain him, the more violently he would try and fight them off of him, making sure (without being entirely sure as to why that was of the outmost importance) he never let go of Jughead's hand.
A sensible hand landed on his shoulder; it was weight all too familiar to F.P. although he hadn't felt it in quite some time.
"F.P., you gotta let him go, you gotta let 'em do their job," whispered Fred Andrews with a patience that made the Serpent all the more furious, especially because he knew he was right, which was why he refused to look anyone in the eye when he finally loosened his grip and allowed the stretcher to be rushed through the doors leading out of the waiting room.
Desperation clutched at his very core; F.P. felt as if he was being choked from the lungs by an invisible, unbearable force. All he could hear was Jughead's heartbeat, which had been echoing inside his brain since the moment he had pressed an ear to his chest to make sure he was still alive, and he closed his eyes, praying to a deity he had long abandoned that it wouldn't stop.
"Look what they did to him, Freddie," he muttered, eyes fixated through the glass holes on the door and on the face he couldn't recognize from the blood dyeing every inch of it. "Look what they did to my boy..." He exhaled the last word, having all but run out of air as the clutch in his chest tightened.
His curled his hand into a quivering fist and brought it up to his lips as he tried to remember if there had ever been a time in which he had been subdued to such a level of pain. Fred's hand had not released his shoulder.
"Look what they did to my boy," he repeated in a broken whisper, suddenly recalling every time he had stared into that man's impertinent, condescending, intrusive eyes after he had gotten to his nerves for the zillionth time and forgotten that despite how much too mature for his age he was, in the end, that's all he was: a boy. His boy.
Jughead's entire life came flashing before his eyes. From the moment he had first wrapped his hand around his finger and past the one when it had —having still been too small for F.P.'s grasp— slid out of his own and disappeared into the crowd.
That day, F.P. remembered, he had experienced the exact same clutch in the chest, grabbing onto his hair as he turned on his heels time and time again in search for the child, wondering how he could ever be so stupid as to allow him to let go of his hand, how he could ever believe that such a hangover as the one he was experiencing wouldn't cloud his ability to look after him even for one afternoon. He remembered, also, whispering those exact same words ("my boy") over and over again after having found him at last as he sighed in relief, cradling the back of his raven head which at the time fit into the palm of his hand.
"I want 'em dead, Fred." By then, he had already reached into his pocket to retrieve his knife. "I want each and every one of those sons of bitches to pay for what they did, I'll cut 'em up one by one!"
Thankfully, Archie had made it through the Emergency Room's main entrance right on time to help his father restrain the gang leader, keeping him from making the worst mistake his rage could have possibly concocted.
"F.P., stop!"
"Don't screw with me, Fred, if that was your boy in there—!"
"Then you would be the one talking some sense into me!"
The struggling came to a halt, but both Andrewses kept a hold onto the man's leather jacket just in case.
"I don't wanna be the bearer of bad news, F.P.," Fred went on as he shook his head. "I'm not gonna be the one to look that boy in the eye and tell 'im his father didn't make it back from a fight he knew he could not win. I couldn't live with myself, Jughead couldn't live with himself. And right now, that is not what he needs, he needs his dad. He needs you to be the first person he sees when he wakes up." He drew his attention to his breath. "And you need to be sober when he does."
F.P. was still visibly furious; his eyes were bloodshot, his face still flushed and his breathing heavier than normal. However, Fred had known him long enough to be able to tell when the message had hit home. He released him at last and Archie, trusting his father's instinct, followed.
"Mr. Jones, Jug's gonna be okay." He knew it wasn't much too reassuring, but at the same time he couldn't stand back and provide no support at all. "He's the toughest guy I know, alright? He can pull through this, I know he can."
"He's like his old man," Fred added with the faint hint of a supportive smile he could barely managed to pull off because, deep down, his heart had also shattered at the sight of Jughead's seemingly lifeless body. "Won't go anywhere if they're kicking him out the door, not if he's got a say in it."
Please, let his heart keep beating, F.P. thought to himself as he came to his sense at last, enraged and altogether devastated but with his priorities sorted now that Fred had helped sort out his judgement, Please, let it keep beating. The sound echoing in his ears was deafening but at the same time reassuring. He ran his hands through his hair, paying no mind to the fact they were still stained with the teenager's by then dried up blood.
"Mr. Jones?"
Having been blinded by wrath a minute before with revenge as the sole thought crossing his mind, the Serpent had failed to see who else had come through those doors together with Archie while Fred tried to hold him back. Even though he hadn't turned around to face her just yet, he knew such an angelic voice could only belong to one person.
He held his arm out to Betty, because while he had a lot of absence to make up for, he knew Jughead well enough to know that her piece of mind would be his son's number one priority, that he would want her comforted and reassured that everything would be okay, even if he was not around to ensure it himself. He knew all too well he had inherited the Jones' undying devotion to blondes belonging to that family in particular and he knew what he would want his own old man to do if they were teenagers again in the shoes of their children.
"It's alright, kid," he reassured the young lady as she stepped into his embrace, allowing him to wrap his arm around her shoulders. "He's gonna be alright, you'll see..."