Chapter 1: I'll Always Be With You
It was nighttime when Monica got the call.
She was cleaning up from the dinner rush at Alessandro's, working the late shift. All at once, the kitchen landline rang. The voice on the other end was barely able to identify himself as Joey. From his tone alone, Monica knew: something was wrong.
Like the mother hen she was, Monica was able to pry information out of her struggling actor friend a piece at a time: he and Chandler had left the apartment complex on Bedford Street and gone on a late-night grocery run. It was Christmastime, which obviously meant stocking up on a new twelve-pack of YooHoos, cookie dough, milk and the like. Monica wasn't about to suppose that the milk and cookies were for Santa Claus, but given Joey's child-like innocence, that couldn't be immediately ruled out.
Anyway, Joey and Chandler had been schlepping their groceries up the stairs to Apartment 19 when Chandler had begun to feel short of breath. Then he had doubled over coughing, complaining to Joey that he felt woozy, and of a rattling around in his chest. Joey, though scared, had shown incredible presence of mind to grab all the grocery bags, throw them just inside the door of the apartment and rush his friend to the ER.
"The docs aren't giving it to me straight, Mon. They think it could be pneumonia. Maybe a heart attack. Please, come. And hurry!"
By the time Monica hung up, she was in tears. She could feel herself hyperventilating, on the verge of a panic attack, enough that she felt short of breath herself.
Chandler… was he alive? Was he all right? Joey was with him, but did that mean in the room with him?
Monica had always been good in a crisis, but when said crisis involved her best friend… all bets were off, apparently.
She felt the uncontrollable urge to see Chandler, with her own two eyes. Touch him. Nothing else would assure her that he was OK and still breathing.
The terror now making her tremble was damn near debilitating. All that mattered to Monica now were Chandler's needs. What he wanted. What she could do to bring him back to health.
These thoughts were so instinctive, the ones that consumed her and which conveyed how she loved him -
Oh. My. God.
The epiphany was like a thunderclap, axis-tilting enough that Monica staggered into the large freezer door, shaken by how much she….
How much she was totally, completely, irrevocably in love with her best friend.
The fact was so incontrovertible, so ridiculously simple and self-evident, that it frightened Monica. She was still getting over her break-up with Tim, her now-ex… who also happened to be the son of her other ex. As for Chandler, he was no doubt still trying to get over Kathy.
Sure, she'd had a crush on Chandler when they had first met. After the toe incident, she had managed to parlay that into a genuine friendship, the best she had.
Monica loved Chandler too much to risk their friendship…. Yet she also realized that she loved him too much that she couldn't just not confess her feelings, especially now that he was in the hospital in as critical condition as Joey claimed. What if she never got another chance to tell Chandler what he meant to her?
With shaking hands, Monica locked up the kitchen for the night and hailed a taxi to St. Vincent's. She sobbed into her gloves most of the ride there; the driver was tactful enough not to ask questions.
Monica was still in tears when she pelted into the hospital waiting room. Spotting Joey huddled with her brother, Rachel, and Phoebe, she threw her arms around the struggling actor's neck.
"Where is he? Is he….?" She couldn't finish, overcome with a fresh round of weeping.
"He's alive," Joey rumbled, sounding dazed. "They've narrowed it down to pneumonia. The nurse should be here any minute letting us know if we can go back." Whimpering, Monica nodded wetly.
The nurse eventually waved them back. In a back room, there was Chandler, with a small oxygen tube on his face, which the nurse now took off so she could administer water to him. Monica flung herself next to his sickbed, crying anew.
"We're on watch for a possible heart attack, and are doing all we can to head one off, due to his symptoms," the nurse explained.
"Heart attack?" Monica glanced up, stricken.
The nurse nodded. "We're going to have to med-evac him to Buffalo. There are better resources there to monitor him…."
"Monica…" Chandler murmured, making her turn back, and wipe some clammy hair from his forehead.
"I'm here…" she crooned.
"Nurse Jade," a doctor poked his head in. "We have a chopper to Buffalo waiting on this patient."
Monica bit her lip. Buffalo was a full six-hour's drive away, and that was in good weather. With New York traffic in the middle of winter? Forget it! Right now, she was reluctant to let Chandler out of her sight, let alone anywhere that was six to twelve hours away from her.
She turned back to Chandler, struck by how he was gazing at her almost pleadingly. His hand reached up to stroke her face, and she turned her lips into his palm, pressing a fierce kiss there.
"Come with me?"
Monica wanted nothing more. If she had her druthers, Chandler wouldn't have to be separated from her. She looked to Joey for help.
"Going to Buffalo is his only chance. He could die from a heart attack if he stays here…." She nodded and gazed down at Chandler, pained.
"I'm needed here."
Chandler nodded. He didn't blame her, and would have said the same, were he in her position: Joey could hardly feed himself without help; the girls would be distressed, to say nothing of how out of his head with worry Ross would be. "Then… I'm staying with you." He had long ago given up his fear about dying. But dying alone? - that terrified him.
"No!…." Monica moaned. "You have to go…."
"But…" he searched her face. "I can't leave you…."
"Sssh…." Monica placed a finger on his lips. "You never will… No matter what happens, I'll always be with you…. forever." She bent, to whisper in his ear: "This belongs to you… and always will…."
And despite how there was a chance he might not feel the same, despite how her love for him still terrified her, Monica willed herself to be brave. She deeply kissed him goodbye, her lips caressing his, cradling his face in her hands. She shivered with delight when she felt Chandler kiss her back.
When they broke apart, Chandler sank back, exhausted. "Mon….i….ca….." he rumbled.
Monica beamed wetly and choked out a sob. She was certain their friends, her brother, were gawping at her from behind, but she didn't care.
Reluctantly, Monica let the paramedics rush the gurney carrying her beloved to the chopper. From the window, the group watched as it lifted off and sped away into the night.
Monica buried her face in her hands and wept.