A/N: Another chapter for your reading pleasure. Enjoy! This is Dick's POV. I've fast forwarded a couple days, but remember time moves much slower in the present than it does in the other dimension. So happy everyone is enjoying this story still. Thank you so much for all the reviews, favorites & follows. I love all your theories & suggestions. Thanks to The Scarlet Letter, I ran with something you suggested! See, I do listen! (Sometimes!) Thank you to lateVMlover for being my grammar-girl on call. And a huge thank you to my ever patient & creative Beta who somehow doesn't seem too annoyed by the same 3 things I do every chapter. OH, and there's a potty-mouth alert in full effect. Apparently I can't write Dick without a plethora of colorful language. Go figure. Guess what? I still don't anything in the VM verse. I do love playingin it though...Thanks for reading. Enjoy!
Chapter 17—Team Mac
***Friday night, The Bar at Poseidon's Bistro in The Neptune Grand***
"To Mac, waking up and telling us all where we can stick it," Logan said, raising his glass in a toast to their fallen comrade.
Soberly everyone clinked their beer steins, except Veronica who clanked her stemmed wine glass, sloshing a drop of the white wine.
It was just shy of ten thirty, they'd been at the bar for over an hour drinking and just relieved to be away from the hospital, which had grown to become their home-away-from-home, something no one wanted.
Wallace reached out to grab the pitcher of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale sitting in the center of the bar top table and poured himself a refill. Dick was pleasantly surprised when he then poured a top off on his own half empty glass.
"Thanks man," Dick said, finding his manners. Contrary to what some people thought, *cough Ronnie cough* they weren't buried that deep down.
"No problem, you're buying anyway."
"True."
The truce he and Ronnie's bodyguard, and potentially future stepbrother, forged two days ago was apparently still in effect. He and Wallace had been talking more the past hour than they'd done the previous five years combined. Logan and Veronica didn't seem to realize they weren't on a private date, except to interject a brief comment here or there, or when it was time to order more drinks or a plate of Buffalo wings and other hearty snacks.
"Do you think the bolt will work?" Veronica's voice was soft. She was staring at her glass, tracing a finger around the rim. It was directed to everyone, evidently Logan's toast had clued her into the fact that she had chaperones there as well.
Dick shivered involuntarily thinking of the new hardware Mac was wearing in the quest to recover. "It looks like a science experiment gone wrong."
"I know," Veronica agreed, to his shock. "It's very Frankenstein-ey, which ironically is a book she loves."
"I know. She forced me to watch some remake of it," Dick interjected. "Then we had a Halo rematch chaser, afterward."
"It carries a high success rate," Wallace said reassuringly, trying to bring the subject back to Mac. "Plus, now they can drain the fluid pooling in her brain."
"Look at you, taking Mac-a-pedia's place," Dick said.
"I looked it up yesterday. It might be her best chance." The word last, though left unspoken, hung overhead, an invisible specter haunting their thoughts.
Though the results hadn't been as hopeful as they'd wanted on Mac's last set of CT scans, the whole group was surprised the day before when her team of doctor's announced they were going to implant an ICP monitor (AKA bolt) in her brain. The doctors were getting less and less patient with the drug induced waiting game they'd been playing.
Impatience in a doctor was a scary thing.
"I think it will work," Logan said confidently. Then he reached over and grabbed a couple wings from the big platter in the center of the table. He placed them on his appetizer plate, and then licked the orange sauce from his fingers.
Veronica spooned some of the bleu cheese dressing from her plate onto Logan's. She'd tried to take a few dollops from the ramekin earlier and ended up with most of the contents of the too-runny sauce pooled on her plate.
"Thanks babe."
Dick and Wallace exchanged raised eyebrows at Logan's term of endearment for Veronica.
"It has to," Veronica said in response to Logan's earlier comment. Her tone was plaintive. "It just has to. I can't…" Her voice trailed away.
Lose her. Dick didn't need Veronica to complete that sentence, no one did. They all knew what she was thinking; it was what they all were tryingnot to think. Yeah, he wasn't exactly teaming with friends and family himself, and Mac was the only other person in captivity who understood the complicated morass of feelings Cassidy stirred up in him—the guilt, grief, anger, longing, love and loss. She understood because she felt them, too.
They were in the same fucked up club.
Club fuck up.
Even if she labeled their friendship as pseudo, it was still more real than anything else in his life, exception being Logan, that pathetic lovesick dude who was drowning in Ronnie again, and a life preserver wouldn't save him now. Nothing would. Nope, Dick was sidelined now watching from shore, and there was nothing else he could do but watch.
Logan put an arm around Ronnie and held her tight.
Dry-fucking-drowning.
"She has too much left to do with her life. She's not going anywhere. It's just one more challenge for Mac to overcome, that's it." Dick said. It just kind of spewed out. His tone was forceful though, not usually a description anyone used for him, but he felt confident in what he was saying.
"That sounded almost profound," Veronica said, sounding surprised. "That's means deeply philosophical."
"Thank you for the education." He really sold it by accentuating his gratitude by extending his middle finger. A gesture she inspired a lot in him.
"Guys…" Logan started.
"Don't include me in that, I'm not the one who is always condescending," Dick said, addressing Logan. Then he turned to Ronnie, "and I even know what the word condescension means and everything."
"We're all on the same side here," Wallace interjected.
"Team Mac," Dick said in a faux-cheerleading voice.
"Team Mac" they all echoed, clinking glasses again in another toast.
"Team Mac," Dick repeated, this time without the snark.
"I don't think you're stupid, not really. Mac keeps telling me there's more to you than I remember from Neptune High," Veronica admitted.
"You guys talk about me?" Dick was pretty sure he wasn't doing a good job of covering up his hopeful tone.
"Once," Veronica backpedaled, "it was only that one time."
"When?"
"It was Spring Break. Mac came to Palo Alto for a couple of days. I showed her around campus, tried to recruit her for next year, but she shot that plan down pretty quickly. She didn't talk about you guys much, and of course, being Mac, I couldn't get any good dirt out of her," Veronica reminisced. "She knew I wasn't coming to Neptune, so she came to me instead. I was resolute in not setting foot back into Balboa County, but then, well, plans change." Her voice got soft at the end as she seemed to be remembering the phone call she got a couple days ago that changed her resolution. "Your best friend gets injured, and suddenly nothing else matters."
As she spoke she shredded a Poseidon's Bistro napkin until nothing else was left but black and gold confetti.
"How's everyone doing? Can I get you more beer, or another order of wings, perhaps?" The waitress asked, in an obligatory chipper voice. She was a tall blonde teetering in her unnecessarily high stiletto heels, wearing the standard uniform of low-cut gold sweater and short black skirt.
"Yes, and yes," Dick affirmed.
"And another glass of the house Sauvignon Blanc," Logan added.
Veronica smiled her agreement and appreciation.
"Great. I'll be right back," the waitress said, flashing a parting smile at everyone.
Dick grabbed the last three wings on the platter since they had some hot, fresh ones coming soon. Before tucking into them though he reached over and slathered them in the smattering of dressing left on Logan's plate. He smirked in return of the look of disdain Veronica shot him. He refrained from reminding her that she was the one who had taken all the dressing to begin with.
He took a bite, the bleu cheese taking some of the zing from the spicy sauce coating the wing. Then he took a big drink of his beer to further cool his mouth.
"This has been the slowest week I've experienced in a long time," Dick said. The last time, well time, moved so slow was the week Cass died. Grief, pain, and worry had this way of screwing with time, making it go so slow in the moment, and speed by in retrospect. It was a mindfuck.
"I know," Veronica agreed. "Although, the drive here went by so fast, but everything else since I drove by the Welcome to Neptune sign slowed down."
"I hear the governing body of Neptune is talking about changing the sign to read: Welcome to the Hellmouth." Wallace teased.
"That would be truth in advertising," Logan agreed.
They started sharing stories about being Neptune survivors that supported the widely-held theory about Neptune sitting on a Hellmouth. Nobody came up with any counter arguments; Dick suspected that wouldn't be possible anyway. Their reminiscing and story sharing was interrupted by the arrival of more drinks and their wings.
Veronica reached over to take a few more wings, and then she started to take one of the ramekins of sauce when Dick shook his head.
"You still have a puddle of it on your plate, Mars."
"What are you, the bleu cheese dressing police?"
"Well, yeah, I guess. I just think we all have equal rights to the stuff. You've had more than your share from the last batch. Use that, and let the rest of us divide the new dressing."
She didn't reply, but Dick took it as victory when she retracted her hand away from the dressing container and contented herself with the sauce still on her plate.
"You can call me lieutenant," Dick added.
"No," Veronica said dismissively, further accentuating what she said by waving her hand. "I really can't."
"That's what's wrong with this world these days, no respect for governing officials."
"Only those who are self-appointed, and carry nothing but a made up title," Veronica quipped back. "You can't really be trying to have a serious political conversation stemming from a conversation about bleu cheese dressing."
"You can if the subject is Neptune politics."
"See, Hellmouth," Wallace added. "I'm just a transplant. I came to your strange land fully formed."
"Just drink your beer," Logan said. "All of you," he added, in a tone that sounded like he was addressing Kindergartners. "Eat your wings, drink your beer."
"The 'shut up' part was implied," Dick supplied.
"Yeah, I got that," Veronica said. "Thanks."
They all worked their way through the wings and the other pitch of beer. Having fully exhausted the subject of dressing and subtext-y Neptune politics, they went back to surface subjects, once again tip toeing around the one topic that their thoughts never strayed far from, Mac across town in Neptune Memorial fighting to survive. They'd been living it all week; this change of scenery was a nice diversion, one born of necessity. A group of friends drinking together, it was a heartbreakingly normal cap for a Friday night that began anything but normal, in the depressingly blue ICU waiting room.
Just shy of midnight, Wallace made his leave, insisting he was fine to drive. Finally, at Vee's insistence, he let the bellhop call him a cab. Once he was safely on his way to his mom's house, the three of them headed to the bank of elevators. Dick smirked at the artful way Logan had arranged for Veronica to stay over in the penthouse.
Making an internal bet with himself, Dick wagered that when he woke up the couch that Logan offered to sleep on would be cold and empty.
His confidence in the belief was underscored even more when shortly after retiring to his room for the night—especially to get away from any more reuniting—he left the safety of his territory to get a Gatorade in preparation for the next morning. He opened the door with a flourish and cleared his throat to make his presence even more known. Evidently it didn't pierce the sound barrier enough though because a quick glance over at the couch had him averting his eyes and all but running to the bar and back. Logan appeared to have lost his tongue inside of Ronnie's mouth. No wonder he kept all snark to himself, the dude was rendered speechless. Literally!
Dick slammed the door and muttered 'get a room.' He was pretty sure no one heard any of that, they were only tuned into each others' radio frequencies.
When he drug himself out of bed before eight o'clock Saturday morning, blurry eyed and dragging, the couch was uncreased, not a pillow was missing. He programmed the Keurig brewer for a big, strong cup of coffee. After that kiss he'd reluctantly witnessed the night before, it didn't shock him in the least.
He grabbed the cup before the machine had finished its last gurgle, and watched a drop land on the tray. He also took one of Logan's organic yuppie cereal bars from the basket on the bar. He opened the wrapper and took a bite as he walked back to his room to get ready for surfing.
Originally he'd planned to ask Logan, but was too chickenshit to interrupt the slumber party still going on. Maybe it was his imagination, but Dick was fairly certain he'd heard moaning coming from behind Logan's shut door.
He finished his breakfast and changed into a wetsuit as an episode of Scooby Doo played for background noise. He smiled involuntarily as onscreen Velma started filling some gaps in the latest mystery. Ryan had told him about his special nickname for his older sister; Dick would never look at the geekiest member of the Scooby gang the same way again.
After grabbing a beach towel and a change of street-legal clothes from his dresser so he could go straight to the hospital afterwards, Dick turned off the TV and left the suite.
The drive to Dog Beach from the hotel was less than ten minutes.
The waves were coming in high this morning; it was definitely going to be a good surfing day.
He got on his board and paddled out to the open expanse of the Pacific Ocean to the place where new waves were born.
The feeling of insignificance that surfing always kicked up in him was a welcome diversion today. It did a bang up job of putting his life into perspective, though what was weighing him down these days were outside of his own narrow lens.
Logan was spiraling back into old addictions, and there was no stopping it. Veronica would run back to her new life at Stanford the second that Mac was on her way to recovery, and once again the blinders that lovesick dude wore would fall off leaving him shattered—again. History was a sadistic bitch who liked to wallop you over and over again with the same lessons until you were huddled in a corner bleeding.
Sure, they seemed happy now; Ronnie needed the comfort Logan excelled at providing. It was just a mirage though, he was certain of that fact, but a love of intact body parts inspired Dick to keep that assessment to himself.
Lining the board up at the edge of a wave, Dick rode it back a few feet until it was about to crest. Using his well-tuned surfer's instinct, he gracefully sprung up onto the top of his beloved board, balancing his arms and legs as he made his way towards the sand.
Once that ride was complete, he grabbed his board again and headed back out for a new wave. This time though, Mac invaded his thoughts. She had been making herself at home in his headspace, so that was nothing new. It was easier to spare some thoughts for Logan and Ronnie though, less painful. Fear for her was taking on a life of its own, but that was not the only fear he had when he thought of Mac. He was also scared of his own motives for camping out in the waiting room. True, they were friends in their own right, but he didn't want to face how un-friend-like his thoughts were getting. He could bullshit himself around Logan, Wallace, her family and Ronnie. However, the ocean was his church, his temple; it was the one place where honesty ruled. Selling lies to himself took too much energy, energy he needed out here to stay safe, stay alive.
He was terrified he'd lose her before she even got the chance to tell him to go away, that she didn't really care about him in that way. He could take that, it would hurt badly, but it would be survivable. To lose her to death, however, would not be. Well, physically it would be survivable, but not really, not internally where things really counted.
He made a concentrated effort to picture Mac the way she looked Tuesday before the accident, when she noticed him right before the baseball went off track. Her after shots were just too terrifying, those wires and tubes, the breathing apparatus doing work she wasn't cable of doing on her own. Monitors, Leeds, wires, the ceaseless beeps of machines keeping her tethered to this life.
He hopped up on the board as another big, surf-able wave came to life. He rode it back to shore.
He caught a few more waves, but not nearly as many as usual. Today, he was just eager to get back to the hospital.
Dick grabbed his towel and change of clothes from where he'd stashed it on the sand and went into the public restroom. He took a quick shower; just to wash off all the sand that had collected, and then changed into his khaki shorts and his Sarcasm is My Super Power tee-shirt he knew Mac would appreciate.
When he arrived at the hospital waiting room—his new home away from home—with a cardboard carry-all laden down with to-go cups of coffee, it was only fifteen minutes into visiting hours and the regular gang of Mac well-wishers were already gathered. Minus the senior Macs and Ryan, who he suspected were probably visiting with their daughter and/or sister.
On one of the side tables was another bag of donuts, probably Mr. Mars' contribution again. It was a habit he was getting used to. The bald guy was doing a great job keeping them in pastries. He probably got a discount from his cop days or something. His stomach reminded him that coffee and a yuppie breakfast bar before surfing wasn't a filling breakfast.
Dick grabbed a glazed long john from the white sack, keeping one eye on Veronica, but she was too busy whispering in Logan's ear to grab her taser or make a snarky comment.
He drank his coffee and worked on the donut, wondering how long it would take those two to notice someone else taking up mass in their orbit.
"Where were you man? I looked for you when we were getting ready to come back here, but couldn't find you." Logan said, finally looking up. His gaze landed on the tray of coffees, so he reached over Veronica to grab two of the paper cups. He handed one to her, while keeping the other for himself.
"Surfing."
"By yourself?"
"Well, you were otherwise occupied. I value my body parts too much to interrupt," Dick explained.
Wallace spotted the coffee just then. He grabbed a cup and a powdered donut and took them back to his seat. "Thanks," he directed at Dick.
"No problem, dude. How's your head? Should I have brought some hangover cure? Logan and I have practically patented the orange Gatorade and
Advil cure."
"I may not have your practice, or Logan's, but I'm not a lightweight when it comes to drinking either," he said, his voice full of censure.
Dick just held his hands up in mock surrender.
Ten minutes later, the senior Macs and Ryan filed back into the waiting room. They warmly greeted everyone and helped themselves to breakfast.
Mrs. Mac smiled wanly but insisted that Cindy was looking better and she was confident they'd be rousing 'sleeping beauty' shortly. Dick could still smell the faint odor of cigarettes still clinging to her jeans and tee shirt. He hoped she truly believed that, but couldn't help wondering how much was a front.
The round of visits to Mac's room started again.
Veronica took the first turn.
Ladies first.
To pass the time, and send a message, Dick started teasing Logan about the cold couch despite his promises from the previous night. Wallace pretended to be engrossed in one of the Wired magazines Ryan had tossed aside, but he would peak over the top periodically, eyebrow raised.
"We mainly just talked."
Dick didn't say a word, he didn't need to, his skeptical look said more than a thousand words ever could. There was a lot of wiggle room in the way Logan said 'mainly.'
"She's upset," he elaborated.
"We all are," Dick's tone came out more snappish than intended. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Wallace nodding in agreement
"I comforted her, that's all," Logan continued to justify.
"In the way only you could," he translated.
"Hey, a gentleman never kisses and tells."
He made a show of looking around. "Yet I don't see any of those around here."
"Nope, none of those are here," Wallace affirmed.
"You don't need to tell, anyway. I witnessed the kiss first hand." Dick admitted.
"You did? I didn't hear you. We thought you went to bed."
"A bomb could have gone off en suite and you wouldn't have heard a thing. Ronnie had your tongue. I just had to grab a Gatorade."
"Wear a bell next time."
"Try kissing her in your own room," Dick rejoined.
That conversational thread was shut down when Veronica, the comfortee herself, came back into the room. She backed up Mrs. Mac's assessment that Mac was looking better, wires and shit notwithstanding.
Dick nominated himself to go next.
He stood in the doorway of room 5 in the ICU and waited patiently—well, as patiently as he was capable of, which in fact wasn't very much at all—as the day nurse, who he didn't like as much as nurse Tara, finished hooking more bags to Mac's IV pole. Nurse Cheyenne or something like that.
By now he knew the name of each component of her drug cocktail, some were designed to keep her sleeping; others were more to relieve the pressure on her brain. There was also an antibiotic that had just been added to the mix because of that minor in-suite procedure she'd had the day before to further reduce the swelling that had been pressing in on her delicate "processing chip," as he'd begun to think of it. That was a very Mac thing, to his mind.
"Alright, I just need to check her reflexes, and then she's all yours again. Just remember, keep it short and sweet, as always. You know the bylaws by now, I'm sure." Nurse Cheyenne said, turning briefly to look at him before returning her focus to the wiring on Mac's head. It was the first time she'd acknowledged him in the entire three minutes he'd been waiting.
"Thanks," Dick replied. He watched the nurse walk over to the end of the bed and move the blanket so Mac's right foot was exposed. She took some kind of dull tipped implement and poked her foot.
Involuntarily he fisted his hands, hating the idea of anyone hurting her further. He watched the nurse's face carefully, but he couldn't tell from her schooled expression what exactly she was hoping to see, and whether or not she got the desired response.
She gave Mac's big toe a squeeze and then tucked the blanket back over her still frame. "Okay, she's yours for the next ten minutes," the nurse said as she gathered her supplies and was about to turn to leave, when she paused. "Well Cindy, have a nice visit with your good looking friend here. I should have such cute friends." Then, with a parting wave, the nurse left the room.
Okay, maybe nurse Cheyenne wasn't so bad, either.
He could just picture Mac's eye roll. He missed that simple gesture that she did so well, she had it down to art.
"Tara, your other nurse, the night one, thought we were dating at first," Dick said after he'd positioned himself in the chair by her bed. "I told her we weren't. She keeps saying you're lucky to have me. See, an endorsement from someone else, a stranger I'm not paying off." He smirked. "Of course, you may have some serious competition from Cheyenne there. You missed it; she was totally checking me out."
He got silent for a minute, but reached out to stroke Mac's non-wired hand.
"Or maybe not, maybe you are more aware of things than we thought. You know, this would be the perfect time to sit up and argue with me. I miss that. I miss a lot of things when it comes to you. Although they are keeping you drugged on purpose, so you won't just sit up and argue. I know that, but it seems wrong somehow. You here is wrong."
Dick balled and unballed his fist a couple of times, trying to get his emotions in check. It was time for a subject change.
"You're missing the continued saga of Logan and Ronnie. Riveting drama right there and I get a front row seat. Woohoo! Lucky me," Dick said dryly. "I got to witness them kiss. They had no idea I saw it either. The dude wears blinders for your bestie there. Those two, I swear. Bet you got more of the story from Veronica than I'll ever get from either of them. I don't need to know."
He gently grabbed the hand that he'd been petting so it was firmly sandwiched by his much bigger hand. He gave it a soft squeeze. There was no return gesture. He didn't expect one, not really, but still, in a way, he kind of did think she'd do something, give some kind of response.
Dead air radio silence of the worst kind.
"Are you in pain? I keep asking that, everyone keeps asking that, I'm sure. Are you tired of that question? It's kind of dumb, isn't it?! Of course you are—you'd have to be. I think that's the worst thing though, not knowing what you are experiencing. Did it hurt when Cheyenne poked you on the foot? Yup, we're on first name basis, she totally checked my butt out, I'm telling you."
He took a deep breath, and briefly let go of Mac so he could stretch on the exhale. Then he grabbed her hand once again. Honestly he wasn't sure if it was more that he was tethering her to this life by holding her hand, or if it felt more like she grounding him.
"Talk about pain, I stepped on a jellyfish a couple years ago. That hurt like a whiny motherfucking bitch baby. Excuse my language, but yeah, that mo-fo stung. We were surfing, my boys and I.
Did you know you're supposed to pee on a sting? Really, I'm serious. Look it up and shit. Logan was supposed to pee on it but he has like this shy bladder, couldn't perform so I had to pee on my own foot. Don't tell the whiny dude I told you that, though, it was supposed to be some secret to the grave, bro shit. What happens in ICU bed 5 stays in ICU bed 5! Got it?"
He shook her slack hand to seal that deal.
"Okay, the lights in your room are pretty dull, that's a given, no one gives a crap about ambiance, natch, but I think there may be something to that rumor I keep hearing that you look better, some coloring is back on your cheeks. I mean yeah, you even make that fugly hospital gown work, but yeah, I think you're going to beat this."
Dick swallowed hard.
"This being a really bad head injury, of course, you are scrappy as hell, Mackster, so keep fighting. Okay? Fight hard for that whole room of people out there who need you back. I need you back. Just come back to us all. I'll come back later."
He leaned down and softly kissed her forehead. As he did it though, a brief glance at the bank of monitors behind her head showed a spike on one of them. He wanted to believe it was her heart rate responding to the kiss. That was probably a fairy tale, but he wasn't opposed to the occasional illusion.
…TBC
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