Author's note:
Hey everyone!
Thank you all so so so much for being back, for reading and reviewing. There is only one more chapter left, so I hope you are ready.
I am sad BUT I am also existed because I have a surprise for you (well, it is only a surprise if you are not following me on twitter). I am working on a new story (no title reveal, sorry guys). First chapter up tomorrow.
Well, I guess there is no need for me to say during which episode this chapter takes place. (2X15, BTW)
If you want to chat, follow me on twitter SurreraFeels. I don't bite, I swear!
OK hope you enjoy and leave me your thoughts!
It hurts her to watch another woman finding comfort in the arms of the man she loves.
Even now, even as the world is falling apart around the members of her station, even when it seems like Vic is about to crumble up and vanish from existence, the sight of Robert holding another woman in the broad daylight sparks that petty thing inside her, which she is not proud of.
Ripley's sister can try and find a little fraction of solace in Robert in front of the little crowd in the waiting room, yet she cannot try and take away some of his pain caused by the fact that his very best friend is dying.
Andy is sick of the rules, fed up with the constant need to care what other people think of her or how they will react to the way she behaves. She makes the decision to be there for him, regardless of the personal price she would have to pay, yet stays put in her seat.
"Vic, if you want to go sit with him, now is the time." Jennifer says.
Andy looks back at Vic, who fidgets with some weird object she can't identify. "Somebody else go, I can't. I am not ready, I can't." Her friend refuses, and Andy wants to get up and pull Vic all the way to Ripley's hospital room by the arm. She wants to put knock sense into her, tell her that she will regret it with every remaining breath she takes for the rest of her life, if she won't speak how she really feels. Tell the man she loves goodbye before she has to keep it inside of her forever.
And yet Andy keeps silent, because she knows. She has been where Vic is not too long ago, and even though the outcome was different, those few moments of uncertainty feel exactly the same.
She knows that Vic has to make the decision herself. She will have to take every step to the chief's room by herself, and her heart will get heavier with every step she takes, like someone is piling up weights on top of her rib cage. Yet she will have to keep walking.
There is no one who can do it for her. They can all just be there, support her, stand by her. But they can't walk that path to him for the last time.
And then there is a surge of shame going through Andy. She spent too many days being angry at Vic, resenting her. If only she knew her friend had so little time to spend with the man she loves, she would have left that turnout room soundlessly, taking Sullivan with her. She would have smiled at her, and closed the door, letting Vic and Ripley enjoy each other in every moment they had left.
Life is funny that way. It is so rare to actually know that your last kiss, your last smile, your last time, was the final one.
Most of the time, you just believe that there are a million moments more to mend what is broken. To confess your true feelings. To share another kiss.
"It's OK." Andy hears Sullivan reassuring Vic, and closes the door behind him.
He is going to say goodbye to his friend one last time.
She is not sure what she is doing, her legs walking before her mind has a second to order them what to do. In a blink of an eye she follows him in quick steps, meets him just outside of the room. He peeks inside, and she can see worry written all over his face.
"I used to sneak glances inside the room when you were lying in a hospital bed at Grey Sloan." Andy startles him. He jumps up just a bit, too immersed in his own thoughts to notice she had followed him.
"I know. I saw you standing there, watching me like a hawk." She is sure he would have smiled at her if they were only in a different situation, where smiling did not contradict everything he feels as much. "And what convinced you to finally get inside?" Robert asks, applying pressure on the doorknob, then releasing it.
"Well it took me a week. And a team of three very relentless surgeons I am lucky enough to call my friends. But I am afraid you don't have this amount of time. And you will have to do with just me as a friend."
"I am just afraid that he doesn't want to see me. I have been treating him in an unfair way for so many years. Pinning the blame on him for something that only God had the power to undo".
"If things were the other way around, who were the people you would want around you?" Andy asks. They haven't broken eye contact since the moment she stopped by the door, and she can see sadness in his eyes again, the kind that appeared the only time he talked about his late wife.
"You." Robert answers confidently, without giving it a thought. "And Ripley. I would have wanted to make amends."
Andy places her hand on top of his, and they press together. The door cracks open slightly as she reassures. "I am right here. Just look outside if you need to find courage."
He nods at her, and steps into the room.
Robert stands in the middle of the room uncomfortably, looking around, trying to think about what to say to his best friend one last time. To his surprise, Lucas breaks the heavy silence first.
"Tell Herrera I can see her trying to eavesdrop. This room has windows, and she is not invisible yet." Luke says. His voice is raspy, the constant cough taking a toll in his vocal cords. He looks as if he had aged twenty years in an hour, like time has finally caught up with him, and then some. He is pale, a ghost, a man for whom every breath is a struggle. His eyes are red, bloodshot, yet Robert can't believe Luke cried. Not even on his own deathbed.
Robert shrugs. "I think she just tries to make sure I won't bail out of here before everything is set and done between us."
"Well I have nowhere better to be." Ripley promises. There is a deep layer of sadness wrapping the entire room, choking them as he says "The women of this station." one last time.
"You have no idea, Luke. You have absolutely no idea."
Robert grabs the chair standing next to Ripley's bed, trying to make himself more at ease in the situation that agitates him.
It wasn't supposed to end like that. Their friendship should not have reached it's finish line so early. For some reason, even after Claire has died and Robert cut Lucas out of his life completely, he always imagined them finding each other again in a later stage of their lives, growing old as neighbors, sitting together at the front yard, drinking scotch and reminiscing about the good old days.
"I wasted so much time and energy being angry at you." Robert confesses, putting a reassuring hand on his friend's. It is ice cold, a total contrast to his warm palm.
"You don't need to apologize, Sully. Everything is forgotten and forgiven. A lot of water has flown under that bridge since." He reassures. ""Did she listen to my messages, does she know I wasn't trying to…" Luke starts to say before Robert cuts him short.
"She knows everything she needs to know. She knows this is goodbye. She is just not ready to say it."
"Can I ask you for something, one last time?"
"Anything. Everything." Sullivan answers, and he catches a glimpse at his best friend watching Andy pacing back and forth outside of the room.
"Take care of her." He gestures toward the door with his head, barely able to make even that simple move without it paining him. "Be happy again. You deserve it, even if you don't believe it yourself ." He is stopped by a fit of heavy coughing, that shakes his body and burns his lungs from the inside out. It takes him a while, but he continues, even if it is a bit weaker than before. "Love her. Let her in. This life is short and unexpected, and if she is the real deal, if she is your second chance, don't waste another day."
Robert is about to respond, about to say that he doesn't think he has it in him to love her the way she deserved to be loved, to care for this magnificent woman the way she deserves to be taken care of. But how can he deny a man of his last, dying wish?
"Take care of her." Luke asks again. "Take care of the both of them. Let Vic know it is more than fine to grieve, but I want her to move on and be happy again. Even if it is without me."
"I promise." Robert says, as tears well up in his eyes, yet he doesn't shed them. "I am not ready to say goodbye."
"Like so many times in this life, I have to teach you how to do everything." Lucas whispers, his voice barely audible by now. If Hughes wants to see him one last time, she has to hurry up, and Robert has to cut things short.
Too short. He has a thousand more things to tell his best friends. A thousand more burgers to share. A thousand short tales telling the story of how he fell in love with the firefighter still waiting outside the door for him. And he never got to hear how Luke found himself in Hughes' bed. He is sure Ripley has a thousand words to say about that too, or maybe ever more.
"Don't say goodbye. There is nothing good about goodbye anyway. Say something else. I am sure there is something better on your mind."
"I will just say... We are good."
"We are good." Ripley answers with the same words. "Will you send her in?" He asks his best friend.
Robert nods as he makes his way to the door. He glances at the chief one last time, then turns his head away.
His commander. His best man. His only friend. His person.
"There are many more things on my mind, but I will tell you all about them when I see you again." Robert presses his hand on the doorknob, and opens it to the inside of the room.
He doesn't look at his best friend again, but he hears the words "When I see you again." mumbled to his direction.
Then he closes the door behind him, and his world will never be the same.
Andy doesn't speak, just takes his hand in hers and squeezes it with enough force for him to understand the meaning. She is suggesting he transfers some of the anger, and the sadness, and the hurt he feels, to her. She is offering to support him, to be someone he can lean on, because right now his own back might fail him.
They walk hand in hand the length of the hallway, neither of them opens their mouth. The only sound is their squeaky footsteps on the floor that was just washed, and from time to time a call for one random doctor or another. It takes everything each of them has to disconnect from each other once they reach the door to the waiting room, but they both understand this moment does not belong to them.
"Hughes." Robert calls her friend's name as they both enter the room, Andy closing the door behind her. She can't understand how he is keeping himself together, composed and representative, even at this moment.
She is once again at owe by the amount of strength this man has in him, emotionally and mentally. And maybe after you bury the woman who was your whole entire world, your everything and anything, you develop another layer of thick skin to defend you from another tragedy.
"He is asking for you."
"I can't." Vic refuses.
Andy has to do something. "Vic, a word?"
Vic can do nothing but nod, and Andy has to practically drag her all the way to the nearest restroom, for them to have some kind of privacy. Vic leans against the door, and she can see her friend's legs can barely support the weight her shoulders were forced to carry so abruptly.
Andy knows she has to make it quick, convey her message in a way that won't leave Vic any room for doubts. From the little she has managed to see through the small window to his room, Ripley doesn't have enough time for Vic to deliberate.
"Remember the time, not long ago, when you and Maya had to physically lift me up because I couldn't bear the thought of losing someone that I care about deeply?"
Vic nods. Andy can only imagine how hard it is for her to speak right now, yet her eyes remain dry.
"Now it is the time I do the same for you. Vic, you have to go see him. You told me back there, near the aid car, you told me that you understand. And even though I didn't know what you meant at that exact moment, I know now. And I understand, too."
"I just don't know if I can do it." She confesses, finally able to speak how she feels, even if those are only a few words, and each and every one of them pains her endlessly.
"You don't have to do it alone." Andy touches Vic's arms softly. "Take Travis with you, he understands better than anyone else can. But you should go now. Run, before it is too late."
Vic doesn't say anything in return, just opens the door widely and disappears. Andy hopes and prays she will make it in time.
She would have gone with her, but Vic has someone to stand beside her. There is someone else whose person she ought to be, and something she has to do.
As she enters the waiting room once again, Robert sits on the edge of an old couch, his head between his hands, his back slumped in despair. She immediately reaches her hand for him to take, for once not thinking about the fact that they have a small audience watching everything they do.
He lifts his head up immediately to her presence, and interlaces their fingers without a second thought.
"Not here." She mouths soundlessly.
She takes him out to the hallway, crowded to the brim with firefighters and police officers. They are all talking softly, paying their respects to their dying chief, yet somehow it still feels like they are stuck in a beehive. They make a turn right, then a left, until they reach the same closet Andy pushed Vic into not too long ago. They both stand in front of the sign numbered 252, their hands still held together tightly.
"What is this?" Robert asks as Andy pushes the door open forcefully, just to make sure there is no one hiding inside there. Meredith did warn her about the meaning of these kinds of places inside hospitals.
"This is a yelling closet. Or a crying closet. Or whatever you need to do closet."
"I don't need to do anything." Sullivan refuses. "I am fine, really."
"Robert." She says his first name. A name once reserved only for the intimate moments when she was lying half on top of him, their bodies pressed together tightly, as she was sharing her hopes and dreams with a man she then believed could only satisfy her body.
Today, however, his name is filled with sadness, and it feels strange coming out of her mouth. "I thought the same thing when my dad was first diagnosed with cancer. And when I saw my friends taking you into surgery, not knowing if I am going to ever talk to you again. But it helped me, you know. To have a place where I can give freedom to my feelings, and not have anyone judge me."
"I don't know." He hesitates.
"Please." She almost begs, her voice soft. "If you won't do it for yourself, then do it for me. I will be right out here waiting for you. Take all the time you need."
He nods his head, and Andy thinks she might have to say something more to convince him that this will do him good.
She can't see it coming, but he is pulling her into the supply closet and closes the door behind them.
"I can't be alone right now." He says as he slides to a sitting position against one of the walls. She doesn't say anything, in doubt the plain words could provide him any kind of consolation. Andy sits right beside him, her knees tucked into her chest, her arms crossed on top of them.
"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks, even though she can assume the answer on her own. He was never the one to do the majority of the talking among them.
"No." He stays silent for a long while before asking "Can I hold you?"
"Why? Are you afraid that me holding you for a change will hurt your manhood?" She tries to lighten the mood.
Andy doesn't expect the sincere answer coming from him. "No, I just sometimes forget how well you fit in between my arms."
"Like I was made to stay right there." She manages to bring the tips of her mouth up just a little bit as she looks at him. She doesn't have to move a lot to be seated in front of him, and he wraps his arms around her immediately.
She can't help but feel that as long as he holds her, as long as it is just him, and her, and the sterile hospital supply, the universe cannot harm either of them any further.
He places his chin on the crown of her head, and tightens his grip around her body.
Neither of them knows how long they have been sitting there, the only sound to somehow tell the time is the ticking of a clock she can't see from the way she is positioned, and the constant beating of his heart as her ear is pressed against his chest.
It doesn't matter though. If it has been a minute, an hour, a day. She is more than willing to spend every moment in her life being his comfort, his escape.
In his arms. It is not a half bad way to go.
He places a soft kiss at the top of her head, and she can feel him breathing in her scent.
"I probably smell like sweat and coffee beans." She protests quietly, yet she doesn't dare to move, doesn't dare to make the slightest action that will shift the delicate balance they have finally found.
"Which happens to be my favorite kind of perfume you use."
Robert kisses the top of her head and breaths her in over and over again.
Andy lifts her head up to tell him to cut it out, to scold him and convey the point that she could really use a shower after the long day that they have had. Or maybe it was more than one day already. She lost track of the time long before they entered this closet, which seems to be a wrinkle out of space and time.
As she looks into his eyes, she can't ignore the silent tears streaming slowly down his face. She has never seen a grown man cry before. They usually do it in private, where no one can see them, where no one can shame them for letting their feelings show.
Yet he trusts her enough not to hide it. He is crying over his best friend, and she is there to see.
"Hey…" She whispers as she reaches a thumb to his face to wipe a fat tear away. She holds his face between her hands, and in an instance she knows what is coming, can feel that vibration in the pit of her stomach.
He lowers his head down and kisses her.
The kiss is salty, tastes like tears and death and sadness. It is comforting, filled with slow passion and a big wave of relief that floods her after finally doing the one thing she desired for so many weeks. They kiss softly, and they kiss and they kiss.
And who knew her lungs could hold so much air and her heart could hold so much love.
It is a kiss that lingers, a kiss not meant to end anything, but a kiss meant to be the start of something new. A kiss meaning to lead them a million different directions.
A kiss where the both of them can find some kind of solace, and another kind of home.
As she pulls away from him, he places another soft peck on her lips, and she knows they are done for now, but never completed. He goes back to holding her, the tears haven't subsided completely yet. No amount of love she can shower on him will erase the sorrow of losing his best friend just after finding him again.
Even if he is still eaten from the inside out by the sadness and regret, there is a surge of new hope inside of him to fight all the darkness, and bring back the light.
And for the first time, he is sure he has it in him to fulfill the promise he had made to his best friend.
He hugs her inside of the supply closet for what feels like forever, but at the same time no time at all, her entire body moving as his chest rises and falls with every breath he takes.
When Maya opens the door, she doesn't seem surprised to see them holding onto each other for dear life. Her best friend lingers for a second, before saying the thing they knew was unavoidable, but still dreaded the most. "He died at 5:43, a half hour ago." When nobody moves, she continues "Vic is headed back to the station, and she needs us, Andy."
"Go, your friend is waiting for you." Sullivan prompts.
"Are you sure you are going to be alright?" Andy asks, even though she is already up on her feet, whipping tears she doesn't know to whom they belong to off of her face.
"I will. I just stay here for a minute. I will be on my way back to the station right after you." The two female firefighters exit the small room, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
It might sound crazy, but when he closes his eyes, he can almost see his best friend again.
"It's been a long day without you, my friend
And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again
We've come a long way from where we began
Oh I'll tell you all about it when I see you again."