Duct Tape + Hospitals
But Rosie Calais
for the June 2022 MacGyver Flashfic Writealong ( )
June 11 Prompt: (a photo of duct tape flowers)
Fall, 2012 - Argentina
Mac peels the end of the roll of duct tape free and stretches it out, measuring it along the length of his arm before ripping a strip loose. It immediately tries to spiral around and stick itself together, but he catches before it can make itself into an unrecoverable clump and lays it flat, smooth side down, on the windowsill, before glancing at the bed to see if Jack is awake yet. No surprise: he isn't.
He folds the ends of the tape strip to hide the stringy edges and begins to fold it lengthwise. Halfway down the strip, it finally gets away from him and folds over on itself, making a wrinkled, sticky mess of one half. Mac curses under his breath, a cuss he's picked up from Jack, and wads the mess of his work into a ball and lobs it toward the garbage can.
He doesn't even realize he's crying until a tear trickles down his cheek.
He and Jack have both had minor injuries before. One time toward the end of their tour, Jack sprained his ankle and was laid up for a week. A few months ago Mac sliced up the palm of his hand while scavenging for parts and needed five stitches and a tetanus shot. But those were nothing like this. Now they're in a hospital in Buenos Aires after a tight exfil, and Mac doesn't know what to do.
Jack would know, but Jack's been unconscious or sedated for two days.
The hospital won't allow real flowers in Jack's room, so when he found the duct tape and paperclips in the bottom of his bag, his restless hands started crafting flowers. He's ruined as many as he's finished, but it's keeping his hands busy and giving his eyes something to look at other than Jack's bruises and bandages and slack features. It's keeping him from falling apart.
So he pulls another strip loose and starts over.
#
Summer, 2016 - Italy
Mac wakes to the sound of Jack cussing softly, and opens his eyes to see his partner wrapped up in a strip of silver duct tape. It's stuck to Jack's right hand and the table simultaneously, and wrapped around his wrist like a snake.
There's a fluted white vase half-filled with misshapen silver-gray flowers next to him.
"You're gonna have to show me how to do this, hoss." Frustration fills Jack's tone. "It turns out it ain't as easy as it looks."
There's something over Mac's mouth and nose, and he tries to life his hand to investigate. That's when Jack looks over and really sees him. "Woah, woah there, hoss. Let's not touch." He hops up and grabs Mac's hand, ignoring the dangling strip of duct tape, leaning over so he's right in Mac's field of vision. "It's good to see those eyes open, bud. How you feeling?"
Mac's reply is a grunt, but Jack just squeezes his hand. "Nevermind, you don't gotta say anything yet. You're on so many drugs you probably can't feel your own eyebrows anyway." Jack reaches down to tug the strip of duct tape loose from both of them. "I'm just glad you're finally awake." He gives Mac a smile but there's something strained about it, something not quite right.
Mac wets his lips and gathers his strength. "Nikki?"
Jack's smile wavers at the corners and he squeezes Mac's hand harder. "Let's worry about you for now, okay?"
Jack might be a professional liar, he might be able to fool anyone else, but they've had too much honestly between them for too long, and Mac can hear what's missing in his reply. He draws in a shuddering breath and squeezes his eyes shut as the smile drops off Jack's face.
"I'm sorry, bud," Jack says. "I'm so sorry."
#
Summer, 2021 - Taipei
The room Mac wakes in is like any hospital room anywhere, but in his hazy, dragged state it takes him a minute to find the date scrawled on a whiteboard in his room and orient himself.
Five days. That's how long it's been since the latest oh-so-easy mission went bad enough that Matty wouldn't risk flying him home.
Desi's asleep on the bench under the window, her legs tucked up in a way that makes her look small, and snoring in a way that suggests she did break her nose after all.
Mac is considering whether he should wake her or not when he spots the vase sitting on the end of a counter. It's a slim white cylinder, nothing special in itself, except it's holding six gray duct-tape flowers.
"Desi," Mac hisses. "Desi. Wake up."
She wakes with a start, raising her head and blinking at him blearily. "Hey, Mac."
"Did you make those?"
She follows his pointing finger to the vase of flowers and her brows draw together. "Nah, they came yesterday. Somebody dropped them off at the desk."
"From Bozer?" He's grasping at straws now. Bozer would've sent a teddy bear. Riley has taken to sending paper bouquets that arrive flat and pop up into a 3D display. The duct tape flowers are Mac's thing. There's no one else who would've made these.
Except Jack.
But Jack's dead.
"Nah," Desi says. "I asked around. Nobody admits to sending 'em. Maybe it just got sent to the wrong room." She brings him the vase and watches while he examines it. The flowers are clumsily made, but they're constructed the same way he's been making them for the last few years, with scalloped edges and paperclip stems.
Just the way he taught Jack to make them.
Jack's dead, he reminds himself. But there's no one else who would have sent these. No one else who would have made them exactly like he does. Jack had to have made these flowers.
He doesn't say that to Desi, who already looks like she thinks he might have gone crazy, but he pulls one of the flowers aside and holds it out. "Put this in my bag, will you? We're taking the rest with us when we leave." He sets the vase on the table by his bed and leans back into the pillows, exhausted and aching, but filled with a certainty he hasn't felt in awhile.
"Sure thing," Desi says, long ago resigned to his madness. He hears her unzip a bag.
"And don't let anybody touch the rest of these." His voice is a tired mumble already. "Promise?"
"I promise." She pauses, frowning as if she senses something's off with him and isn't sure what. "You okay?"
Mac smiles, the first real smile that's crossed his lips in awhile. "Yeah, I really am."
A/N: The story I originally wrote for this prompt was 3500 words when I decided I'd have to completely rewrite it to be a flash for the purposes of the flashfic writing challenge. I may rework and finish the much-longer original version sometime, but I was really happy with how well this works as flash!
