Chapter Six
A/N. It's been too long.
And then they get back to the waiting room and her family's gone. "Something's happened," she says unsteadily. "We were off having sex while she was dying."
"She might not be dead," he mumbles, but she's gone, running off down the hallway with her hair flying out behind her.
All these emotions circulating in the air around him. Prodding him. All this worry. The potential for more pain, yet again, and it's pain he can do nothing about.
He trudges after her.
Just outside of curtain 14 he finds Issy pacing back and forth, tugging her dark hair into a ponytail over one shoulder and then letting it go. She does this over and over and over again, and it is only when he taps her on the shoulder that her eyes clear and she notices him.
"Bobby," she says as a greeting. She says his name almost exactly like Alex—same infliction, but without the years of history and emotion behind it.
"Isabella." He can't call her Issy. "What happened?"
She blinks, and silent tears track down her face. "They're taking her off the respirator. I just…couldn't watch."
Bells go off of a monitor behind the curtain. He touches her elbow, feeling numb. "I'm sorry."
She gives him a strange look. "Sorry? They're taking her off because she can breathe on her own. That's good, Bobby. I just can't stand seeing the tubes come out of her throat."
At this point death is so confused and mixed up with life that it's taken on a substance of its own, something sticky and oozing and messy and consuming. Marjorie was dying, and then she was (is) living, and his mother was dying for so long that at the end even her life was a kind of death, really—and how he thought Eames was dying when she was kidnapped and how he couldn't do anything to save her but then she was alive and he is alive and everyone is alive just not for long because life always ends in death; death always finds its way, final destination, last stop, everybody off, goodbye goodbye goodbye.
Issy is crying harder in front of him. He reaches out and gives her a strange far away hug, because when someone is crying sometimes that's all you can do. She folds against him and hangs on.
He holds her steadily. Hopes she can't smell her sister on him. But she doesn't say anything or even pull away until Jack sticks his head out of the curtain, looking for her, and she goes back in.
This is a family moment, so he stays outside the curtain. Alone.
Everything's so silent.
There's no air moving in this hospital, no circulation; it's all just dead air lying deathly still on top of him in this smothering layer he can't fight his way out of.
All this death.
Is the same thing happening to him?
This fog he can't see out of.
This water and this time he can't swim to the surface.
And yet, Bobby, death isn't usually unprecipated. Life doesn't end without a reason (there is no reason in this).
His heartbeat suddenly seems to have taken over his body. He can feel it—thump thump thumpthump ththump thump pause thump thumpthumpthump pause .
The shaking starts, and then the fear. Swooping in to clutch him. Buzzing. Millions of prickly spore balls seizing in on him all simultaneously so he's electric and alive and dying and afraid.
Sit down sit down don't pass out.
But the ground's disappeared.
Least no one else is around.
Alone.
Fucking sick of this oh God oh Eames oh oh oh oh oh oh thumpthumpthump thumpmp thump THHTPTMHTPTPTMHHMMHTP
Spinning like weight in head only weight gone from rest of body utterly top head heavy going to spin cartwheels—
Going to start this motion head first feet over head again over and over head and over and feet and over and over and headover and over and over and over and over and feetover and over and over and over and over and over until what he doesn't know because motion is the pure point of it surely just to move to run to flee but can't because frozen and toppling sweat surfacing and—
"Bobby?"
—and stiff legs buckling and hello there's the ground—
"Bobby?"
Someone's crying.
Something crouches down in front of him, a compact block of feelings and steady central nervous impulses.
Something takes his hand (something's going to take him, take him away from this land and Eames and life itself).
thumP
"Bobby, listen. Can you hear me?"
Vaguely.
Like down a long hallway.
Fingers like lava.
Death dormant.
Waiting for the explosion.
Waves waiting.
Swim.
"Honey."
"It's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay. You're right here. I'm right here."
thump thump thump thumpthump thump thump thump thump
Breath great billowy clouds of ash.
Heat.
'S going to scorch Eames.
I fear heat.
I fear death.
I fear life.
I fear death.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
"It's okay, Bobby."
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Eames' hand in his.
He is sprawled back against the wall, propped up half-assed and ineffectually; his bones feel like liquid and his blood feels like metal and he feels like he's going to wobble over and melt down into the floor until the gelatinous mess that is him is going to seep away into the floor drain—and clog it, probably, stuff up the little drain holes so even in viscous death he will be trapped and there will be no escape—
thump thump thumpthump thump
Eames sits down on the floor beside him, sits so close she's on top of him, pretty much, and she puts her arms around him and he leans against her because his body isn't cooperating enough for him to stand up.
"Panic attack?" Eames guesses. Collapsed against her, he nods, then stops, because no, not really—clinical "panic attack" doesn't begin to sum up what this is and yet, and yet, he supposes it is.
She rubs his shoulder. He wants to cry—her fingers so steady and tethering against his arm.
Someone is crying.
He looks up to see Patrick hovering above him, tears tracking down his face.
Saw the whole thing.
Scared the hell out of him.
"It's okay, Pat," Eames says. "He's all right. Go back to your mom, okay? Just give us a couple of minutes."
Patrick gives him a terrible you-scarred-me-for-life look (what did I do? Did I scream? I bet I screamed. I bet I swore, reaching out staggering and pathetic and monstrous) and then disappears behind the curtain.
He breathes in, chokes on his breath, has a coughing fit where he's too tired to cough but he has to cough so it comes out weak and pathetic and he's pathetic, he supposes.
I'm sorry, Eames.
Everything.
So sorry.
He manages to look up. No one's there—just Eames holding on to him.
Comforting.
He was dying, and no one noticed save the five year old, and yet, and yet he wanted no one to notice (do you really want anyone to watch your death?), because there's nothing anyone can do.
Eames buries her head in between his neck and his chest and his shoulder. Soft skin. Heavy head. Gossamer hair. Fiery brains.
So sorry.
She lays her hand flat against his chest again, pressing her palm against his calming heart.
Eames.
She rubs her shaking hand up to his neck. He leans into her even more, soaking up the connection, the humanity of it all. He bends his head to her neck. His hand slips to her side, tugging her shirt up so he can rest his hand on firm exposed skin.
"Is your grandmother okay?" he murmurs, dragging his lips up and down her neck as he speaks (she's still alive I'm still alive 's okay). "She's breathing on her own and everything?"
Eames nods, tugging him closer. "Still unconscious, but off the respirator."
He responds to her immediately, tightening his arms around her. It's always like this, after. He wants to take Eames and go huddle up with her somewhere, block the rest of the world out and just soak up the one person he trusts. He just wants one time where he can let himself go and allow his wastedness to come to the surface, and allow her to comfort him. He wants to lay on his bed and close his eyes and feel the cotton of the sheets rubbing his cheek and Eames rubbing his back, and he wants to feel the quiet darkness in the room surrounding them, and he wants to drift off to sleep knowing that when morning comes he is going to be better and Eames is going to be there and they'll go out, for a bit, go get breakfast or something, and then just come home and be; they'll do something occupying but not strenuous-organize his books, maybe, working silently together with no need for questions and answers just needing each other always just needing each other-
But Eames needs to be at the hospital. And he needs to be able to take care of himself, because Eames is not going to always be there, once she sees how...broken he actually is.
"Let's go," Eames murmurs. "The doctor said she's going to be out for a while yet, probably until tomorrow. Let's…get you home." As if he were a project, something to be tackled and ticked off a list (got Goren home check). And he knows that he's an imposition, a big, blocky imposition, and yet he can't quite bring himself to push her away because he so desperately needs this on such a basic human level that to protest his fineness and insist that she stay here is unthinkable and yet it's what he has to do and-
She kisses his cheek and suddenly he's crying, silent tears slinking down on to her shoulder.
"Oh, Bobby." And she sounds like she's going to cry herself. "Let's just go, honey, okay?"
But he's crying harder, broad shoulders shaking, his fingers scrabbling at her back.
Too much this is too much I can't—
Eames produces some sort of a clutched sound in her throat and grips the back of his neck. "Come on, honey," she whispers. "It's okay. It's okay. Calm dow—it's okay."
Calm down.
That catchall of comfort when you cannot be comforted.
And he thinks, well, I would if I could, but it's not by choice that I'm sitting in the hallway sobbing.
But Eames is right; he should calm down.
He takes in a shuddery lung-stretching breath and lets go of her. Too ashamed to look at her.
And she doesn't look at him.
"Let me just go tell Issy we're leaving," she says quietly. "Will you be all right for a minute?"
He reaches out and catches her hand. "Stay. You…you should stay here. With your family." It's just words, words that he knows he has to say, but something in him breaks in the saying and he finds that he doesn't care anymore because everything's suddenly hollowed. No one tells you this in panic attacks-when they are over you feel almost post-orgasmic. Fucked out and wrung out and spent in every way imaginable. It feels almost...good. Maybe not good. Plateau-ish. You're shaky but tentatively balanced once more, until the next one, which you know is going to come again, but that is in the future and so for right now, in this single moment, you are almost something approaching okay.
"You're my family," she mutters. Still not looking at him. "My grandmother's still unconscious and probably will be until tomorrow. She won't know if I'm here or not."
I'm family.
In his experience, family brings heartbreak.
He staggers to his feet and grips the tilting wall. "Eames, please. I'll go. I'll go home, get some sleep—you can stay here with everyone in case she would wake up, and I'll be fine."
"Don't tell me what to do!" she snaps. "I said I'm coming with you, and I'm coming with you, okay, Bobby?"
He looks at her properly. She looks thin, ragged and worried and just beginning to come apart at the seams (oh, Eames), and mostly tired. A silence stretches out before them, vast and cavernous, and all he can think to say is, "I'm sorry."
"I need a shower anyway. Just—hang on a minute."
And she disappears behind the curtain, keeping one foot out in the hallway as if to say don't you dare run away Robert Goren I will chase after you because my heel is watching.
He stays in the hallway. He has no other options-claustrophobia enclosing again with that lovely realization but stave it off stave it off keep staving hang on hang on hangonhangonhanghanghanghang-
Eames emerges a minute later, wordlessly taking his hand and tugging him along after her until his body starts properly moving again.
"I told them you were sick," Eames says. "If they would say anything later."
"Noted," he says quietly, and for a terrible second she gives him a look, fire and heat and torture and helplessness.
"Not that you are sick, but…" her voice breaks. "I didn't know what else to tell them."
"It's okay."
Back to the caverns.
She takes him back to her house, unable to stomach the idea of going back to his tomb of an apartment, full of once pristine corners gone dusty and once organized books gone into disarray. He doesn't take care of anything anymore. Not his apartment, not the bodies, not himself. She takes care of the bodies now, at work, and of the decision-making. And she takes care of him as much as she can (as for the apartment, well…some things just aren't her responsibility).
He doesn't take care of her anymore, either. Not that she ever let him before. Once, maybe, the week after she was kidnapped. But that was it—other than their normal everyday looking out for each other; coffee brought to the other, a hand secretively gripped in the elevator when needed, unexpected kisses late at night when the other couldn't sleep. And that was how she wanted it. Two separate people, working together, in a relationship together, there for each other but still capable of independence. She had the two-into-one melding already, with Joe. She's not ready for it again.
But it's happening before her eyes. And not for the right reasons, if she's being perfectly honest. She knows he loves her, but that's not the reason he's letting himself slip off into her.
It's just that he can't do it anymore. She's picking up the slack, taking care of both of them until it feels like they are an old married couple, indistinguishable; whenever you think of one you think of the other as well.
Much like Marjorie and Frank, her grandfather. But Frank died years ago.
And Bobby is not going to die.
She's so tired. All these emotions. The promise for more emotions ahead, either way—if her grandmother wakes up, or if she doesn't. If Bobby gets better…or if he doesn't.
Bobby crawls into her bed and closes his eyes. Pretend sleep. She kisses his wet cheek and he doesn't flinch.
She gathers her clothes and goes off to the shower. Stands under the beating water crying so hard so fast it feels like she's spinning off into another plane, another dimension; until it feels like she is the shower herself and there's no need for the running faucet with the amount of water leaking out of her eyes.
Too much this is too much I can't—
And then she calms herself down and dries off and slips into bed besides her partner.
Something has to change.
She slides over to him and puts her arms around him.
Eyes still closed, he nestles closer to her. She is hit with a sharp stab of love, of tenderness; this big body cuddled up to her, this genius with the staved off emotions of a child interrupted and forced headlong into adulthood far too early. This man whose family put him through hell even in their deaths. Ridiculous and sincere and needy and guarded and funny and anxious and probing and in love with her.
I love him, she thinks, as she prays, Please don't let Patrick turn out like him. Let him be a child. Let him be loved. Let us protect him.
She has a thing for protecting people.
But she forgets about herself, sometimes. Look at her now: she forgot to protect her heart from this man—didn't think she really had to; he wasn't her type at all—and now she's hopelessly entangled up in him and yes, in love, and in so deep she's spending all this time worrying about him while her grandmother lies near death and just trying to wake up.
Eames stays awake until the very early hours of the morning when the sun's beginning to rise and then she passes out into a noxious doze, sick at heart even in sleep.
He sleeps, but it hurts him. He can feel himself lying in bed, passed out but still somehow aware, trapped in the night and his stiff and motionless body. Empty and diseased. Going to die, he thinks as he's—not exactly sleeping but gliding along on this cool cold blue plane of "sleep," icy and distant and full of unspoken words and unlived dimensions.
Time doesn't exist here. In the world, the real world, time is fucked out. Great gaping arcs splintering by as hours in fractions of seconds, while other seconds crawl by as slowly as lifetimes.
Sometime after the sun comes up he hears Eames get up and call Ross. Not coming in today, he hears. …was with me last night…my grandmother. …sick. Too sick to come in. …the case…Wheeler. I know. I'm sorry. Might need to use some vacation time for the both of us. …tell him. Right.
Spiraling towards full awareness.
But if he opens his eyes the world will explode.
The bed shifts as Eames slides back in beside him. The sheets tremble, because so is she.
Soon she dozes off again. She hasn't been sleeping, either.
What's it like to sleep normally? To yawn when ten o'clock comes, to brush your teeth, set the alarm, fall into bed…and drift off? To wake up easily when the alarm goes off at six?
He doesn't know.
Neither does she.
They've never known, and they probably never will.
He thinks about getting up. Maybe he could make breakfast. Bring it back to bed. They could—
Who is he kidding?
He stays in bed, eyes closed, until Eames gets up again.
"You really don't have to come with me today," she says quietly when he meets her in the kitchen. "I don't think"—she swallows—"I don't think being in the hospital is…helping you, any. Things seem to be getting…worse."
He is hit with another sudden pulse of love for her, feeling it through the grayness, fiery and cautious and worried and tired and trying to sort her way through what is right here.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm hugging you." He wraps his arms around her and brushes his lips against her cheek. "I'm…soaking up you because I won't be with you today."
Despite her earlier words about his not having to come with her, she tenses. "Where will you be?"
"I'm going out for a bit," he murmurs. "Just…to sort some things out. I just need to think, I think. Ha. That wasn't funny. I'm sorry."
"Are you going to be all right?" Her lips pressing into his shoulder, her words tunneling their way through his body straight to his heart.
"I'm fine, Eames. I'm just going to go for a run and then go into work for a couple of hours. I'll meet you back here after. I'll get takeout or something, and we'll have dinner together. No—I'll cook. And…we'll be normal."
Eames relaxes slightly in his arms. "Good, Bobby. That sounds good." The material of her shirt slides and rustles against him, a faint siswhsssh of cotton rubbing cotton. He thinks suddenly of the curve where her cheek melds into her neck, the soft bony angle of it. Bends to kiss it—and she's arching up to let him, maybe hesitant, not as easy and carefree as usual but still arching when—
If there is one more consistently angsty instrument in the history of modern technology than the telephone he doesn't know what it is (it's not ringing she's not going to call ever I'm going to die alone/oh why did she have to call now when I'm in the shower and the water's going to drip into the phone and God it's cold/it's three am why is someone calling me something must be wrong/I told him to call at five if she hasn't returned yet and now the phone's ringing)—he thinks all this in the blink of an eye (or maybe in the time it takes for the phone to ring exactly once), and then Eames is out of his arms and gripping the phone and blowing her hair out of her eyes as she closes them, preparing herself for whatever news is coming.
He watches her. Her eyes staying mute and chilly. He can't read her, when he can read everyone else. He never could.
"I'll be there," she says softly.
A/N. I went semi-colon happy towards the end; if it's ungodly annoying tell me and I'll do some more revising.