A/N: Hey guys! I'm sure most of you have realized that this chapter was hella late, and I can't apologize enough for making you wait. I also thank you for your patience. My internet was out for a good portion of the night, and when I was finally able to post I was out of the house for most of the day, so now that I'm finally home I can FINALLY POST GDI
Anyways, thanks for the patience, and I hope you enjoy the chapter! It might undergo an edit at some undetermined later time just because writing this chapter gave me a lot of trouble and I'm not 100% happy with it, so my plan is to—at some later time—review it to see if I'm still unhappy with it, and if I am, it'll be fixed. It'll most likely be a very minimal edit with word usage and descriptions of things so don't worry about a complete rewrite of the chapter!
Anyways, thanks again for your patience guys, and starting next week we resume our regularly scheduled programming with a posting every Friday c:
Please follow my Tumblr (thecoolkidsbasement) so you can get updates on the story like my wifi being out (=_=") or any other issues so you're not sitting around wondering where I am in case something like this happens again! Thanks for understanding!
Happy reading, happy writing!
~TheKonfessionist signing out
Butch sloughed his way back to his apartment, loosening the zipper of his jumpsuit to pull apart the stiff collar and he aired out his skin as it stuck his undershirt to his body. His feet dragged behind him, his body felt heavy, he was groggy and fatigued, he just wanted a damn drink but with the radically enforced water rationing, a cold shower or glass of water wasn't a currently accessible solution to the malfunctioning temperature control. Today was the worst it had ever been from what he could remember of the recent past, which was right before the chaotic exit of the Parkers—and back then the temperature would at least pendulum back and forth between being hot and freezing, but currently it would stay boiling hot for hours and then return to a somewhat normal degree before fluctuating back to being boiling hot. There was no reprieve from it, and today he was just constantly sticky and the halls felt muggy.
Today, Vault 101 was a sweltering tomb, and such a thought suffocated him more than the heat itself could.
Fuck this, he grumbled inwardly as he finally caved and took off his leather jacket amidst his anxiety. He could feel the material peel off from his soaked back before the arms were tied around his waist lazily. The tousle of hair that styled the front of his pompadour was a drooping curl in the heat, the armpits of all his jumpsuits were stained, and he was constantly having to pat himself dry.
If the temperature control wasn't going to be fixed any time soon than he was going to have to find a different place to sleep at night. He didn't particularly enjoy waking up in a hot sweat when he had the meager allowance of three 2-minute showers in a week, and the thought of having to wait for his next shower another day from now caused a garland of curses about somebody's mother to string forth from his mouth.
Long before any of the water rationing was put into effect, Butch showered every single day. He took pride in his self care, to the point where it was probably obsessive, Paul had once said while giving him a hard time, but the truth of the matter was a shower stall was the only place he could go unbothered. They were the last enjoyment he had in his now meager and uncertain life, and other than getting his next meal of the day, or his head hitting the pillow at night, showering was the only other thing he could look forward to; the time spent between those three things was simply spent waiting for one of them to happen.
They all were such simple and stupid things to look forward to, but shit, what else was there to do? What else did he have to look forward to?
Him not losing anything or anybody else?
Wally being put in a cage like the animal he was?
The door opening so he could leave this wretched place?
Fat fucking chance to all of the above—and so, with very little to look forward to or to do, he kept himself busy enough. Every day he followed a schedule and found chores to complete and errands to run for Lucy or his mom because he needed a distraction. Butch want something more than just waiting.
Every morning at 8 AM, he would go and stand in line to collect the daily food rations, and it was barely enough between him and his mom for the day. Thankfully, stealing an extra packed meal from the diner handouts or jimmying open a food dispenser was no big deal... it was the drinking water that wasn't easy to swipe. It was regulated directly through an appointed Security guard that controlled the tap, and most days that guard was Wolfe, who was Allen Mack's best friend, and the fucker was a prick about his job.
By 9:30 AM the rations would finally be boxed up and he'd be on his way to the clinic to deliver to the girls their daily portion. It was enough food for two meals and enough water for drinking and cleaning Christine's burns. While he was there, Butch would check to see how Amata was healing and see what Lucy needed. He would get his errand list, see that Amata would be doing fine because she was getting back to her old and naggy self, he and Susie would viciously argue because she had a stick up her ass and he always felt like picking a fight, Lucy would break them up, and then he'd be on his way back to the living quarters with his own rations.
The rest of his day from then onward consisted of looking after his ailing mother before doing Lucy's To-Do List—and his mom's constant need for care was exhausting on all facets of his well being. She was still too ill to do much of anything herself so he prepped her meals and forced her to eat, he'd refuse to let her go back to sleep until she drank her water (because dehydration was the last thing she needed, especially with her profuse sweating from her withdrawal fevers), and he bathed her with a sponge and a bucket of some of their drinking water rations. She was too weak to stand for a shower let alone even get out of bed on her own.
Butch hoped that it'd all be worth it, soon. He hoped that the years of shame and broken promises she put him through would be worth it if not, at the very least, forgivable. The Tunnel Snake understood why she was the way she was, weak and helpless and too trapped in her own emotions to be able to move on from his dad's death, but he also understood that to linger and self-medicate wasn't how she was going to heal.
Butch was ready to put it all behind him and to finally have a meaningful relationship with his mom. These days, it was the only thing he could smile about, and he would gladly give up those last few things he looked forward to; the meals, the showers, and the sleep if she would get better right then and there.
As of late, he actually thought about moving them out of the apartment and somewhere else—somewhere bigger, that would be closer to both the ration checkpoints and the infirmary, and further away from the temperature core than theirs.
Winona's old apartment just so happened to be a perfect fit for his needs. Looking after his mom and playing errand boy for Lucy weren't distractions that lasted long enough, and because he was still dogged in finding a clue in cracking the infirmary's safe, he spent sparse hours over the last two days tidying up the place; he picked the garbage off the floor, he scrubbed the insults off the walls, he taped sheets over the broken windows, and Butch suspected that in another couple of days—when he could drag out the broken furniture and move in their own belongings—he could carry his mom over into their new place.
The Tunnel Snake doubted anyone would care about the relocation. The living quarters were a mess anyway, as survivors moved wherever they pleased after losing their assigned homes to the roaches, explosive fires, or any other threat. They didn't have time for the Overseer to file the appropriate paperwork and cross his T's and ink his approval stamps, especially now when he seemed far too busy hiding out in his office to fix anything at all. He was playing Hide the Sausage with his thumb, and he was apparently playing it well, because it was lodged so far up his ass he had no hope of getting it back. Security was also hiding out, per Overseer's orders, and Butch only ever saw them around when some trivial matter seemed to be getting out of hand, or if Wolfe needed reinforcements at the water tap.
The Overseer was still the only person that pissed Butch off enough that not even the stifling heat could deter his rage. The guy was still trying to rule over the hopeless masses while refusing to allow them to leave, and the frustration Butch felt was close to reawakening something he hadn't felt in a long time. It was an almost completely forgotten desire—one of Vault 101 wasting away into the earth like it should've done a long ass time ago.
He remembered a striking conversation he had with Winona months ago, shortly after they were paired up to be married, and the discussion was about the longevity of the vault over a couple sodas in an empty billiard room at 3 in the morning. She made the observation that without them, without the residents, who did constant upkeep and maintenance over the last 200 years, the vault probably would've corroded and wasted into the earth as a forgotten relic of the pre-war world; Butch agreed with her strongly on the matter, but never revealed that the thought of Vault 101's violent collapse filled him with glee. It was nothing but a place of pure ruination for many generations, and it hadn't done any of them any favors in the long run. He wanted to see it drowned with concrete. He wanted the reactors to explode so the halls would be uninhabitable. He wanted the roaches to be so numerous that they had no choice but to flee.
Thinking about outside again gave him a chill.
What's it like out there, Parker? Butch thought to himself, almost gruffly, as he wiped the sweat that beaded down the back of his neck. Sometimes I wish you dragged me out with 'ya, girl.
Butch turned into the living quarters just as all the lights shut off at once and he was stopped in place, looking up and down the darkened hallway. It was another scheduled black out, which the Overseer was strictly enforcing as of two weeks ago. He announced over the intercom that whole sections of the vault—the unimportant sections—would be temporarily shut off some days without warning, to conserve as much energy as possible.
He rushed on ahead to his apartment to be with his mom. If she woke up already, he didn't want her to panic at the sudden lights out.
"'Ma? You up?" He called into the apartment as he threw his jacket on the coffee table carelessly. He supported himself against the nearest wall to pry off his boots, as he was too tired to bend over and undo the shoe laces properly, and wiped his dewy face once again.
The apartment was hotter than normal and the air was suffocating, as if it was pushing back against his lungs, in refusal of letting him breathe. The Tunnel Snake stalked off toward his mom's bedroom in damp socks that left perspiring footprints behind him as he crossed the living room tiredly. Coming closer to her door, he heard an odd sound on the other side—sounding almost strangled, guttural, intensely struggling—and when he opened the door he heard the unmistakable sound of his mother choking. Rushing into the bedroom in alarm, the first thing he saw was her feet kicking up against the floor from the other side of the bed from him, as if she had fallen off of it, with her sweat-soaked sheets pulled down with her.
"'Ma! Mom!" Butch cried as he leapt across the room to his mom and gaped in horror; her eyes were rolled deeply back into her head as it bucked against the metal floor repeatedly, her arms were contracted against her body stiffly, and her back was arched high off the floor as she violently convulsed with blood pouring from her mouth. He dropped to her side and found himself unsure of what else to do to help her but try and keep her head from hitting the floor another time—which made a hard, almost twangy crakking sound each time it struck the metal.
"Help! Somebody help!" He yelled back out of the bedroom and into their empty apartment. "Help us, God dammit! Please!"
Looking back down to his mother helplessly, he sat down beside her and tried to pull her over to him as carefully as he could—allowing her to ram her head back on his lap and into his stomach where her almost combative struggling could be cushioned. His hands danced about her head, unsure of whether or not he should directly hold it still with how hard her breathing was, as if she wasn't getting any air into her, and he was afraid that he would hold too tightly or hurt her more. Butch had never felt so incompetent, so unsure of how to help her, as he saw momentary clips of health class back in grade school run through his head; he remembered all the times he spent trying to balance his pencil on the tip of his nose during instructional slides on performing CPR; throwing paper airplanes around the room to see how close it could reach Brotch's desk, and they were made out of the notes he was supposed to fill in on how to help someone who was choking; the times he spent sleeping off nauseated hangovers at the back of the room during tests on what to do when someone around you was having a heart attack.
Did his mom need CPR? Was she choking? Was it a heart attack? Why hadn't he paid attention to the course? All he could think about was the desperation, the anger he had towards himself for not listening to Brotch's lessons, because maybe, in this moment, he would've known how to help his mom instead of watching, in tearful horror, as she was possibly dying right in his lap.
This was Paul all over again.
This was him failing another person, who was important to him, that needed him, all over again.
If she died, Butch knew he would never recover. He began crying and quietly pleading to her.
"Don't you God damn leave me!... Don't you die on me like this, 'ma—it ain't fair! It ain't fuckin' fair! Help!" He screamed as loud as he could as he kept holding his mom to him, his voice cracked and broken amidst his sobbing and he sounded so weak. "Please! PLEASE! Someone—! She's gunna die!"
Butch looked back down to her as the blood from her mouth splotched his jumpsuit from her jerking, but soon her lurching movements were becoming softer and softer, slowly, over the long and torturous seconds, until she went completely still in his lap and her eyelids snapped shut over her rolled back eyes. He looked upon her in fear, his shaking hand finding her sweaty, clammy cheek to pat it with some force as he tried to wake her up.
"Mom? Mom? Wake up—!" He pleaded desperately and held her closer, pulling her in against him with an arm under her body to keep her and her head upright, his legs bent awkwardly under her with how he sat under the floor. His tears struck her face. "'Ma, please—don't you fuckin' leave me! Mom! Mom—!"
Her eyes finally opened drowsily, rolling about the room with her brow slowly crinkling as if confused before settling on him in a bleary stare. Her breathing was hard and uneven, still sounding mildly choked as she took in each ragged breath, and he felt her warm hand come to touch his wet cheek.
"Ba- Baby, why're yoo cryin'?" She slurred quietly through the blood still in her small mouth, her tongue looking swollen. "Butchie, wha- whazz wrong—?"
Butch only wheezed in relief as all words were lost on his tongue. He clutched her tighter to him, absolutely refusing to let her go with his trembling hands latching onto the back of her sweaty jumpsuit, as he buried his face into her shoulder and openly wept. He felt like he lost all control over himself as he was unable to stop sobbing. Soon, Butch felt his mom's hard breath against his greasy hair, her heartbeat strong and rapid against his ear on her chest, and he felt her hands settle on his back to hold him with murmured words of comfort.
"Luckily, seizures are rarely life-threatening. Most fatal injuries from them occur during the seizure rather than because of the seizure."
Butch stood outside the clinic with his back against the hallway wall, listening to Lucy's best diagnosis with a bowed head. His eyes were trained on the toes of his boots, tracing the flecks of his mother's blood that blackened upon drying on his jumpsuit, and he couldn't lift his chin to the old woman that stood before him. His heart wouldn't sit still inside his chest as it bounced around his rib cage, feeling almost out of rhythm as he kept playing through his head the image of walking in on his mother convulsing on the floor as if she were being possessed.
He couldn't stop feeling that, despite the reassurance that her life wasn't in danger, that he almost lost her. They once talked about seizures during the health course, he remembered that much... but again, instead of paying attention like he should have, he, Wally and Paul found the jerking fits to be funny. Now that he saw it in person and just how terrifying it was, it was one of the most awful things he ever experienced. It ranked right up there with the way Paul looked, all bloody and pockmarked and bitten up by the roaches when Butch saved him.
"Wasn't a heart attack'er nothin'? 'Cause of her drinkin'?" Butch asked quietly with his elbows on his knees and his hands clapped together, still refusing to look up at Lucy.
"...Sweetheart, do you really want the truth of the matter?" She inquired somberly, as if she pitied him, and he only gave a small nod amidst the familiar shame he felt at her tone of voice. "What she had was called a grand mal seizure. I think it was caused by the fact that she quit drinking cold turkey—and her withdrawals have been very stressful on her body. Coupled with this scalding heat and her dehydration, I'm sure it didn't do her anymore favors."
"How's she dehydrated? I made sure she drank water every day!" He exclaimed, bewildered and almost resentful of his mother; he could deal with the shaking, the disorientation, the refusal to eat, the aggressive mood swings, the sweating and having to bathe her or take her to the bathroom—but the seizures?
It was supposed to be over. You're tricked into thinking that when addicts stop being addicts that they're immediately better, but no, his mom was only getting sicker and he didn't think he would ever be getting her back at this point.
Butch was furious. He was angry and he felt cheated.
"With the amount of drinking water we've being allowed right now, even a healthy person would be dehydrated... coupled with this unbearable heat, I've already had two people come in for heat stroke just this morning! She has hyperthermia, meaning that her body temperature is much higher than normal—a symptom of her withdrawals—so she's sweating out more than she's drinking." Lucy explained calmly. "We found some IV bags and we're re-hydrating her now, so hopefully that helps some... they always get worse before they get better."
Butch pressed his face into his hands with the heels of his palms stubbing his eyes and he shook his head wordlessly. This wasn't something he wanted to hear right now.
"What other symptoms has she had?"
"...Dunno. Nausea, I guess? She acts—... different a lot, always barkin' at shit and angry all the time over small stuff... calls me by my old man's name, sometimes."
"Hallucinations are common in alcohol withdrawals." Lucy gave him a kind smile that was meant to be reassuring but it only showed how exhausted she looked from the busy morning. "Let's hope that this is the worst before the getting better part. We're taking care of her now, so if you want to head home, just know that she's in good hands—"
"Lucy?" A small voice came from the infirmary's open doorway. When the two looked over, they saw Amata stepping out while readjusting the makeshift sling that held her once broken arm. "Christine's asking for you."
Lucy gave one last look to Butch as if to ask for permission to leave, and he gave a meek nod just to be polite before she whisked herself away back into the clinic and left the two young adults alone. Butch regarded Amata with a quizzical glance under heavy lidded eyes when she didn't go back inside after the old woman, but instead came to stand beside him. She pressed her back against the cool metal wall and swallowed visibly in relief with her head bowed back and her eyes shut, looking as if it was the closest she had come to being comfortable in the last week with her hair done in a thin, loose braid to hide her scalp injuries. She was sweating just as much as the rest of them were—even though the infirmary was considerably cooler than the living quarters currently were.
Minutes of silence passed between them before Butch took a crumpled, almost empty pack of cigarettes from his jumpsuit pocket and tapped out a single stick, placing it between his lips. When his lighter followed from the same pack, and he flicked it in a struggle to ignite a flame, the sound made Amata open her eyes. She didn't look at him, but rather stared ahead at the wall ahead of them both before clearing her throat to speak.
"I'm sorry... about your mom." She began stoically. "Sounds like she's going to be okay."
"...Yeah. We'll see 'bout that." He responded impassively as he puffed at his cigarette until it had a good light and he took a drag, cocking his head back to exhale the plumes of smoke toward the ceiling.
"What happened to her?" Her deep brown eyes turned up to meet his face in a curious gaze.
"Lucy thinks it's'a seizure."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"...That sounds serious."
"Yup."
"...Well, I'm glad to hear that she's fine—"
"What're you doin', Almodovar?" Butch finally lifted himself away from the wall to look down at her with his lit cigarette dangling limply from his mouth. "Why the fuck do 'ya even care?"
Amata's dark brows curled tightly over her eyes as a slight tension captured her jaw and it pursed her mouth. Her eyes carried a deep fatigue as she seemed to be thinking about slinging a sour response back at him, but instead she only sighed and shook her head, looking back ahead at the wall in front of them.
"Your mom should've gotten help." She replied.
"You're fuckin' blamin' her—!" He began to yell and her face softened in surprise, as if what she said was taken wrong.
"That's not what I meant," Amata responded quickly. "I'm saying we should have helped her—the vault should've helped her—instead of gossiping and turning their backs on her when she obviously had a problem."
"...What're you drivin' at, princess?" He weakly snapped without any of the fuming acid he felt inside. Not only was he not use to anyone but himself showing genuine concern over his mother, but he was use to her being like some public plaything; she was always treated as fodder for the old hens that liked to gossip—like she was the reason why he was a no good delinquent with an attitude problem—she was the resident addict in a broken family that set the bar for "well, at least our family isn't like theirs", while everyone tried to avoid making eye contact with the Mack Madhouse for obvious reasons.
Amata's concern made him more uncomfortable than it made him mad... and he realized it was because she was being genuine.
"...Growing up, my father—the Overseer—always talked about unity. He talked about coming together to accomplish a common goal while working as a flawless, cohesive unit... but then I'd watch him turn away anyone that was different. Anyone that was an outsider that had no place in his obsessive need for perfection, like those people were nothing but a burden... a liability. I watched him deny help to those of us who needed it most and ignore the fact that he had all this power at his disposal to help them."
Butch frowned the more and more Amata explained herself, his cigarette now burning down, forgotten, between his fingers as he listened silently.
"I think if we helped those people instead of ostracizing them, we wouldn't be here." Amata went on quietly as if guilt ridden, like she had some hand in the breaking down of the vault, and looked on into the open infirmary door. Lucy was bustling about to help the few people that tottered into the clinic that morning—those who had heatstroke and were dehydrated, she mentioned—while Christine watched over the old woman's shoulder attentively and tried to make mental notes of the work.
"So we could'a been one big, smiley, happy family?" Butch responded with mock sarcasm and he was shot with a dry expression of a tight mouth and a quirked eyebrow.
"If we actually had worked together, maybe your mom wouldn't be sick like this—or could've at least gotten the treatment that she needed... maybe so many people wouldn't have died. Maybe Winona wouldn't have been forced to leave, maybe my father wouldn't have done that to Jonas—" Her eyes turned sad as her mouth slowly drew shut, like whatever she wanted to say next (which had sparked a small, almost easy to miss flame of anger inside her) quickly died out, like she thought better of saying it at all. "...The door could have been opened. We could've had a chance in understanding that we're not meant to live down here like this for very much longer... we could explore and establish relations and rebuild again."
"...So, lemme git this straight—" He began in a serious tone, realizing that this wasn't a time for him to be his typical smart ass self, even though Amata gave him a lot of Campfire Kumbaya material to work with. "You wanna open the door?"
"Doesn't everyone?" She deadpanned. "At least, anyone that understands that we're not going to survive much longer like this... especially with the Overseer hiding up in his office like he is. He's too scared to come out."
"Why's that? You been talkin' t'him at all?" He asked with his cigarette burned down almost to the butt, and he tapped it off to take one last, long drag of it before his thumb scratched the sharp edge of his brow.
She shook her head almost somberly with her eyes downcast. "I haven't seen him since—... well, since Winona escaped. He had Freddie and I dragged away but we managed to escape the guards in the confusion."
"...You were there?" He asked faintly with his eyes keenly on her face. "When she got out?"
Amata nodded. "Yeah, I was. We opened the door together—she and I. Freddie was there, too, and we tried to keep the guards distracted from her so she could run... feels like the only thing I've done right these last few weeks and I still feel like shit about it."
Butch nearly blinked at her cuss, having very rarely ever heard the prim and proper daddy's girl use such crude language, and found that it reminded him of the first time Winona told him a dirty joke.
"Wait until you hear my joke about a virgin on a water bed."
"...Get the fuck out, I've gotta hear this one."
"It's called a cherry float."
It couldn't get him to smile this time around.
"Listen, Butch," Amata glanced into the infirmary again to make sure that everyone within hearing distance was too preoccupied to pay the two young adults any attention. She then took his arm and led him further down the hall, and spoke even quieter. "I'm only trusting you with this because I know you probably want the door open as badly as I do, and if Winnie could trust you—"
"Wait, wait, what?" He balked in surprise and was only met with a dubious look.
"C'mon, this isn't a time to play dumb. I know she was hanging out with you behind my back those last couple of months before everything went to hell—and even though it's beyond me why she'd try and be friends with you, I trust her judgment." Butch grimaced and opened his mouth to counteract her slanted insult but she continued talking over him. "I want to get the door open and you're going to help me."
"Princess says what now?"
"We have to figure out a way to get my father to open up the vault. If we don't, we're all going to die down here, and I don't want it to reach that point when he finally realizes that he's doomed us all." She shook her head as a dark countenance overtook her slightly freckled face. "I had Freddie talk to his dad for us. The reason why we haven't seen Security around these last few days? They're guarding the door. The Overseer thinks some of us are going to make a run for it and the guards were authorized to use lethal force on anyone that got too close. The atrium's a red zone."
"So we ain't blowin' our way outta here is what you're sayin'."
"No explosions," She responded quickly with a a stressed tone. "And in the past, talking didn't help, either. I've tried to convince him before with a sound argument and it didn't change anything. Instead, he only got angry and invoked the Procreation Law."
"Wait—I ain't breezin' over that last bit, he did that 'cause of you? 'Cause you tried t'get him to open the door?" Butch grimaced with a bitter expression curling his upper lip in a weak sneer.
"Winnie was going to try and talk to him but I thought I had a better chance—look, that stupid Procreation Law doesn't matter now!" She exclaimed in frustration. "We can't use force to get the door open because we'll either get locked out if we succeed or killed if we fail, and I couldn't get through to him before, but things have changed since then. Things are more unstable now, so I want to try and see if we can get through to him again."
"You ain't goin' up to his office lookin' like this, we'd never get 'ya back down here if he had anything t'say about it." He reasoned frankly and gestured to her yellow bruised face, her mending arm, and her messy hair.
"It won't be me talking to him this time around."
"...You don't fuckin' mean me, do 'ya?"
"God no—" It was the first time Butch had seen Amata smile in a very long time, and he could tell that her perfect teeth were trying to hold back a laugh. "I have a plan. It's not a good one—hell, it's probably the worst one I've ever had—but it's the only thing I've got."
"Your bad plan's probably the only plan anyone around here's got," He admitted in a small grumble and flicked away the burnt down filter of the cigarette he didn't get to fully enjoy. "So what're you thinkin', Almodovar?"
"Lucy! Lucy—!" A terrified shriek came from further up the hall. It startled the two out of their conversation, and as they looked back to see who the speaker was, they watched Susie careening like a malfunctioning Mr. Handy from around the corner.
Soon, she was barreling towards them in a full on sprint. The closer she drew near, the redder her face looked between the intense running and struggling to hold back tears in her wide eyes, which were like those of a deer in the path of an oncoming train—though she looked twice as panicked and fearful. Shoving past Butch and Amata on her way to the clinic, she ignored the two yelling after her as she continued screaming out for Lucy desperately.
"Watch it!" Butch exclaimed as he stumbled back into the wall.
"Susie, what's happened?" Amata cried, having enough sense to get herself out of Susie's way before the other girl could do it herself.
"Lucy! Help! He needs help—!"
The old woman had no choice but to abandon her current patient—Chip Taylor—in her alarm, and she ran out of the clinic to meet Susie in the hallway, where she skid on her heels to an abrupt halt that almost had her tripping over her own scrambling feet. She bent forward with her hands on her knees, and with the way her body shook, it looked like it was the only way she could keep herself upright as she attempted to get some air back into her.
"Susie—Susie, calm down, dearie, and tell me what happened!" She insisted. "I can't understand you!"
Susie choked brokenly as she was finally overtaken by the tears she tried to hold back, her body swaying slightly as if she were close to dropping to the floor from having exerted herself, and Lucy tried to help her stay upright as Susie held a hand to her aching side, looking like she was in pain.
"I- It's Fre- Freddie's dad," She wheezed airily, sucking in breath between every few words. "The- There's been an accide- dent."
The infirmary felt like it was encased in an invisible box, holding in a palpable air of sorrow as some people sniffled amongst themselves with mournful tears and dead stares of shock, though no one spoke. There were no exchanges of comforting words, questions as to what happened, or even something wordless and bleak dangling in the space between everyone—it was a thick exhaustion that clouded them over at losing another resident.
But this person wasn't just any resident.
It was Herman Gomez; the guy who volunteered to be in the Security program not because he failed his G.O.A.T. exam, but because he felt that he could do more for Vault 101 and the children as a guard compared to being a credit accountant; he was the guy who spent his free afternoons coaching the baseball team for years, and only quit because there weren't very many children left who were interested in competitive sports; he was giving to his neighbors with a well known motto of "only look in your neighbors bowl to see if he has enough, not to see if you have more". The only bad thing anyone could say about him is that he probably didn't relax enough. All his good deeds and kind intentions went unrewarded because he thought it was his responsibility to do all that he could for the vault.
Despite the friction that occurred between him and Butch from when he was a trouble-making child, he could acknowledge that Mr. Gomez was probably the best guy around... but now, he was gone.
It was God damn surreal.
Butch looked out from the office where he sat on the floor beside his resting mother on a grounded mattress, checking to make sure her IV was still dripping before getting up to his feet and walking out into the main room. Lucy sat on a doctor's stool in a far corner where Amata stood with her, and the old woman's wrinkled face carried an expression like her will had been crushed, her narrow eyes filled with self condemnation. Amata's jaw was hard set and her own eyes were twinkling and wet from the sparse tears that littered her bruised eyelids, trying to sniffle as quietly as possible and she wiped her face with her good hand with her face turned away from everyone, making sure her grief went unseen. The two looked like they were comforting each other as Amata retook the elderly woman's hand in her own after drying her own eyes, and the hold looked tight and white knuckled.
He looked away, unable to bear the sight any longer. He knew that Lucy was blaming herself because out of all the people she treated since becoming the unofficial doctor of the vault, Gomez was the only person she lost; she was able to treat the extensive injuries Amata received from her brutal assault by Wally, and was able to slowly heal Christine's burns while ensuring they'd never get infected... something about it made the Tunnel Snake think that she could overcome the impossible, but it was a fall down some stairs that had shattered her astounding record of treatment.
Looking onward from the two in the corner, he saw Susie and Christine loitering near the infirmary's front door. Susie was holding herself, due to the fact that her injured cousin couldn't offer her any physical comfort, and she looked skittish despite the teary absence in her eyes. Christine's own face was puffy and red from sobbing, but her cries were as silent and strangled as the clinic itself felt.
Butch had never seen a more hopeless crowd of broken people before.
Soon, he saw Freddie Gomez run past the front window and the door opened, startling Susie out of whatever numb revere she was able to slip into. He looked haggard and disheveled, like he was barely able to put the right boots on each foot before leaving his apartment—and the ex-gang leader felt a surge of fury for the other man before forcing it to cool in the pit of his stomach.
Now definitely wasn't the time to beat his face in.
"Susie!" He cried as he stumbled into the clinic, looking around wildly in his panic from face to face that stared back at him with heartbroken expressions. "Where's dad—? Where is he? I've gotta see him—!"
"Freddie," She began tentatively as she circled behind him. He whipped back toward her, not seeming to comprehend the sorrowful look in her eyes as she took his limp hand from his side to gather it into both of hers.
"...Susie, where's my dad?" He asked again in an apprehensive voice that was slowly being overcome with dread as realization struck him.
Her hold tightened on his hand, silently saying that she wasn't going to let him go—even if he tried pulling away.
"I—... Freddie, I'm so sorry—..."
Freddie's face fell immediately and he wouldn't move, seeming crushed by that cage of sorrow as it rushed in from all corners of the clinic and encased him with formfitting bars that would never release him. Susie immediately embraced him in an overbearing hug that he barely had the mind to return, his arms unable to wrap fully around her, and his knees momentarily buckled from under him as the weight of his disbelief overtook his body. She instinctively held him up on his feet until he could stand on his own, and he buried his face into her shoulder to muffle the sounds of his anguished, stuttering cries.
His girlfriend only held him tighter and in a weepy mutter repeated over and over again how sorry she was and that there was nothing they could've done for his dad's injuries—that they were just too late to help him.
Butch looked on, remembering only his vaguest of memories from when he was a kid, when his old man died; he remembered being pulled from class one day by a Security guard and escorted to the Overseer's office, and his mom was already sitting at the Overseer's big desk. She turned back when the door opened to see him, and he remembered how sunken her eyes looked as her swollen eyelids were rimmed with uncontrollable streams of tears, and she rushed out of her chair to pick Butch clean off his feet to hold him tightly. He remembered being frightened because his mother looked so scary then—he never saw such a look on her face before—a look of pure despair—and the memory of walking into that office never left his memories.
Other than his dad's funeral, and how full it was with all the people that came to give their condolences, his mother's broken hearted face was the most vivid part of those memories. He remembered sitting in the cafeteria with her that same night, eating mac 'n cheese while she only had a beer, and she watched him wordlessly from across the table with a hand upholding her jaw and her eyes still puffy.
She told him he had an accident.
Butch didn't know until he was older—old enough to understand death better outside of "dad's not coming home anymore"—where he was told that he fell down a flight of stairs and hit his head pretty hard on the bottom.
He turned away to shut the door to the back office... he didn't want his mom hearing any of this, and having it reopen such wounds that never fully healed if she happened to wake up.
"Something's not right," Amata whispered at his side once the door was shut and he turned to face her, unsure of what she meant. She was staring back at Susie and Freddie at the front door with a suspicious gaze. "Something just—... isn't right."
"Waddya mean?" He inquired with an equally quiet whisper.
"...I don't know... I don't know, Butch. Lucy told me that Mr. Gomez was at the bottom of a flight of stairs in maintenance, going down to the reactor level—and I'm not accusing Susie of anything—but what was she doing down there?"
Butch looked askance to the mentioned girl and watched as she continued to console Freddie by stroking his hair and rubbing his back, and still speaking soothing words of comfort while trying to choke back her own growing tears. Her eyes were heavy as if rimmed with contrition, looking almost guilt ridden, and when she noticed that Butch and Amata were staring at her while quietly talking amongst themselves, she ducked her face away—as if to hide, showing a small look of fear, as if the two had the power to look clean through her—and buried it against Freddie's neck just to keep from making eye contact with them again.
Amata and Butch looked back to each other skeptically, as the look in Susie's face only seemed to confirm the suspicion in her inquiry.
Now that's a good question, Butch thought with a frown. A damn good question.