TRIGGER WARNING: suicidal ideation, discussion of suicide attempt.
A/N: If you're drowning, please reach out!
Hotline number: 1-800-273-8255.
You matter and your life is worth living!
Disclaimer: All my knowledge of emergency room procedures in this story comes from Google.
Someone was rubbing his hand. There were words but he couldn't make them out.
His brain felt numb.
What had happened?
He had drowned.
He tried to swallow but his mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton.
He opened his eyes.
He was in a dimly-lit place.
It smelled clean. Sterile. Hospital-like. But also that perfume that Linda…
Linda! O God, where was she? Had she left him, given up on him? Had they committed him to the psych ward? Was he dead?
He couldn't move his left hand.
"Linda!" His voice didn't sound like his.
"Right here, Danny." Something rubbed his left shoulder.
"Where…what?"
"What do you remember, Danny?" a gentle, yet firm voice asked. It sounded like…
"Doc?" he croaked.
"I haven't left you, Danny. I promised I wouldn't."
"Water," he whispered.
Someone lifted him to a sitting position, held a straw to his lips. He swallowed, once, twice, three… Then the straw was gone and his stomach was flip-flopping. "More."
"You need to take it slow, Danny. You haven't eaten in close to twenty-four hours. You've had two bags of IV fluids, so you're well-hydrated."
Then why didn't he need to….?
O crap. They'd put a catheter in.
"Where…?"
"Open your eyes and tell me where you are." Doc again.
He opened his eyes. Small room. Medical equipment. "Hospital?"
"Good work, Detective. You're in a private ER room."
He didn't know the ER had private rooms.
But of course they had to.
Deluxe rooms for depressed patients who'd tried to off themselves.
He tried to move his left hand but it wouldn't move. Had they tied him down?
"Take it easy, Danny, you have an IV in that hand. They wouldn't listen when I told them you were left-handed."
He blinked. Linda sat by his left side. She'd been crying.
Doc was on the other side.
He tried to sit up, but he moved too fast, and a wave of dizziness crashed over him. Then nausea.
Linda helped him sit up, shoved a basin under his chin, and he retched.
He threw up every ounce of water.
His hand was throbbing. That was weird. He frowned when he realized it was bandaged.
"You scraped your hands up pretty good on the wall."
He tried to take a breath, but the pain was filling his lungs like water. "I can't…it hurts…I can't breathe!"
Doc was holding his shoulders. "Yes, you can, Danny. It feels like you can't breathe, but you can. You're having a panic attack. Match my breathing. Nice and slow."
He took a gasping breath. "Doc…what…?"
When the wave passed, he leaned back. Doc let go, and he shuddered. "Don't…go…"
"I'm here, Danny. I'm just moving my chair. Can you tell me what you remember?"
"I left your office, and I…I couldn't breathe. So I bolted. I needed air. I was…trying to…outrun the pain. And I got to the roof and I could finally breathe."
"Do you remember me coming up on the roof?"
He nodded. "You…stayed. You didn't leave me. You asked lots of questions."
"What happened next?"
"You…got me to come downstairs. Then Linda…Linda!" He looked around wildly.
She was still there, and she rubbed his arm. "I'm here, Danny. I haven't left."
"Linda hugged me, and…I fell, and…you got me in Dad's car… Why was Dad there?"
"I asked Linda to call him. What do you remember next?"
"You all brought me to the hospital." He shuddered. "They kept asking me questions. Questions, an IV, they wanted me to pee but I couldn't, more questions, paperwork."
He frowned. "You got angry, Doc."
"I did. But not at you. Do you remember why?"
"Linda…they wanted Linda to leave." He couldn't breathe.
Her hand on his shoulder. "Breathe, Danny. I'm right here."
Doc said calmly, "Some new intern thought 1:1 patient contact meant you could only have one person in the room. The third time he tried to get her to leave, I chewed him out. You started to hyperventilate and your blood pressure went through the roof, so they gave you Ativan. It's a sedative, good for anxiety—which you've been showing a lot of in these past few hours. Feeling like you can't breathe."
Anxiety. So now he had anxiety. In addition to suicidal tendencies and depression and PTSD. Great. Just f-g great.
"How are you feeling now?"
"I'm scared." He blinked. Where had that come from? Must be the drugs; he felt foggy.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Danny. Can you tell me what you're scared of?" Doc's voice was gentle, like he was talking to a scared child.
"I don't…I can't…the pain…"
Doc's hand was warm on his shoulder again. "Yes, you can, Danny. You just did. You're scared of the pain, right?"
He nodded. "I can't take it anymore…I don't want to die, but I can't take the pain…"
His lungs were bursting and there were black spots dancing before his eyes.
He held his breath.
A monitor beeped, and Linda stood up, did something to it. Sometimes it was good being married to an ER nurse.
"Breathe, Danny!" Doc said, and shook him gently.
He let out a shaky breath. "What time is it?"
"It's a little after 5 a.m."
"How long…?"
"We've been here for about 7 hours. You've been asleep for the past…"
"When can I go home?" he interrupted.
"The doctors are going to want to talk to you again, go over some plans. Then we'll figure out the next steps." He felt the panic rising again. "All of us, together, Danny. You, Linda, your dad, me, Erin and Jamie if you want."
"Detective Reagan, you're awake!" an overly cheerful voice said, and a doctor walked into the room.
"Danny. You can call me 'Danny,'" he muttered. It's not like he was a detective anymore.
It was another three hours before they gave him his discharge papers. Phone numbers to call, warning signs to look out for.
He'd agreed with the plan to stay at his dad's house (again) for several days or longer. Linda had called in to work; and Jamie was at his dad's. He knew they were suicide-proofing the house—"making sure it's safe for you," his dad had said.
He was on sick leave for at least two weeks; then he still had to finish his four weeks on modified—assuming he didn't get a "Please Don't Show Your Depressed Face In My Precinct Again" letter from Gormley—or worse, his father.
He had an appointment with Doc scheduled for the following day.
Linda was in charge of his medications—keeping them in a locked pillbox where he couldn't get them, in case he decided to do something stupid again. From taking no pills to an anti-depressant two weeks ago, now he had the nausea med, plus something "as needed" for anxiety. Which, considering that he'd had two panic attacks since waking up from the earlier one they'd drugged him for…was still a bunch of f-g crap.
The nurse came in with the wheelchair, and he looked up at Doc. He wasn't sure he was ready for this—ready to go back out into the world.
"I'll be right behind you, Danny. I'm not leaving."
He was cold, so cold. He wanted to sleep, but he also needed to wash the hospital smell off him. "Can…can I take a shower?"
"You should eat," Linda began, but Doc shook his head and she fell quiet.
"You can, but someone needs to be in the room with you. You understand why that is?" He nodded, and Doc went on, "Who do you want that to be?"
"L…Linda?"
"Of course. Let's go get you some clothes."
Someone—he assumed Jamie—had gone over to their house, packed several bags of clothing, and brought them back to his dad's.
He found his warmest USMC sweats, dug through the duffel bag until he found socks. Why was he so damned cold?
There was something in one of the socks, and he frowned.
He pulled it out.
It felt like…no, it couldn't be.
He unfolded the piece of paper in which the object was wrapped. It was his badge, with a note taped to it.
The note had a rough sketch of the badge, signed "Frank Reagan, PC," and his dad's handwriting.
Danny,
I'm breaking protocol giving this back to you, but I know you'll give it back to me when you come downstairs. This is my promise to you that you will get this back.
I love you, son.
~Dad.
How could his dad have such faith in him after…?
Tears pricked his eyes, and he rocked back on his heels. A cry broke from him, and then Linda's arms were around him.
"Danny, what's wrong? It's okay, babe, it's okay. Just let it out."
He shook his head. It wasn't okay, nothing was okay.
He couldn't let it out; he'd already cried more times in the last four-odd weeks than in the previous nine years combined.
He tried to breathe but his lungs were filled with water. He was going to suffocate.
He couldn't tell her how incredibly not-okay it was, because if he opened his mouth, he would scream. Except he couldn't scream. He'd just swallow more water and his lungs would burst.
He crumpled in a heap on the floor, his head in her lap.
"You're safe, Danny. Let it out."
He couldn't. Why didn't she get that?
His lungs were bursting, straining for air, but it wasn't safe to breathe.
"Breathe, Danny."
She rubbed at his back firmly.
And then the suffocating, choking pressure in his lungs broke, and pain—the pain he'd tried to run from last night, on the roof—the pain he'd been afraid of since he walked onto that Army base thirty days ago—hell, the pain he'd been afraid of since Iraq—hit him in the chest like a wave.
He gasped for air.
He clenched his teeth, his fists, every muscle in his body to try to keep back the sob, but it broke free anyway, and then another, and another—each sob threatening to tear his soul from his body.
He flinched when Linda tightened her grip on him. She was rocking him back-and-forth like she'd rocked the boys when they were tiny.
A howl of utter anguish split his eardrums. Had that been him?
It didn't matter, and he clung to Linda.