The hospital was chaos. Doctors and specialists and nurses were running around in full suits with gloves over their original gloves and masks pressed firmly over their faces. Folded up turnouts were being carried at arms’ length away and taken somewhere Tommy didn’t follow. Monitors were wailing in the background.
Tommy didn’t know how a whole area that was supposed to cleared of civilians could be so busy. His own turnout coat felt like it was dragging him down further and further away as he swam upstream trying to find him; trying to find any of them.
The sound of his name had him jerking to a hard left and even though Buck’s voice did what it always did, made the tightness in his ribs ease away, the sight in front of him almost took him out at the knees.
“Evan!” Tommy breathed, his boots almost too heavy to carry him across the way where Buck was standing beside a bed and an isolation bubble separating him from the world.
He spotted Hen and Chimney around the corner, each fine or pacing in their sections as a nurse tried to get them to get back in bed.
Tommy used the time it took him to cross the distance between them to scan Buck head to toe for any signs of injury. His hair was wild as if he’d been clawing his fingers through it and he couldn’t tell if the redness around his nose was from an irritant or the fact that he’d probably been scrubbed within an inch of his life by the hospital staff. There was no mistaking the red rings around his eyes though.
Tommy’s stomach clenched. He always hated when Buck cried.
“Tommy!” Buck called again, his chin wobbling as he pressed his palms against the plastic.
“Baby?” Tommy breathed, lifting his hand to cover Buck’s. He could almost pretend he felt the warmth of his palm. “Are you… should you be up? What—”
“They won’t tell us!” Buck’s voice warbled through the panic that had to be choking him if whatever the hell they were exposed to hadn’t.
“What?” Tommy shook his head, still too caught up in the chaos to be able to jump on Buck’s train of thought just yet.
“Bobby and Eddie.” Buck got out and Tommy could see in his periphery Chim and Hen both inching closer to their side of the isolation bubbles, trying to give them a bit of privacy but also desperate for more information too. A single tear slipped past Buck’s resolve and every inch of Tommy ached to rip down the plastic so he could take him into his arms.
Buck’s hand pushed even further into where Tommy’s mirrored his like he wanted that too. But they couldn’t. They still had no idea what the 118 had been exposed to on that call. The rumors had run rampant from anything to drugs to anthrax to it all being a false alarm. But none of it felt like a false alarm. Not with the way the hospital was humming at an intensity Tommy hadn’t felt since the first wave in 2020.
“They were in the direct line of exposure,” Hen said and Tommy shot her an apologetic look that she waved off.
His heart was trapped on the other side of a bubble and trying desperately not to fall to pieces. He didn’t think anyone could blame him for his tunnel vision.
“Eddie started showing signs of immediate respiratory distress and Bobby…” Hen trailed off and Tommy felt a cold chill slide down the sweat along his spine.
He’d never seen her so rattled.
“Cap went down,” Chimney finished for her. All the air in Tommy’s lungs fell out of him like he’d taken a sucker punch to the gut. “We haven’t seen them since we got here.”
“And they won’t tell us anything!” Buck added, his eyes wild and distressed.
Suddenly, it all started to click into place like dominos falling in perfect synchronized rhythm.
He knew when he started dating Buck that the team was a permanent fixture in his life, none more so than Bobby and Eddie. Tommy had only worked under Bobby’s captaincy for a year and back then he’d been distant. Kind but distant. But at some point along the way, he’d opened up and the distance between Bobby and the crew had become almost nonexistent. Buck and Eddie were a package deal. Buck needed Eddie like he needed air and vice versa.
To find out that those two people were worse off than the rest of them and there was nothing they could do?
Well it was a miracle they hadn’t clawed their way free yet. And as much as Tommy wanted Buck, safe and in his arms, he knew he needed to stay right where he was. The last thing he could handle— or that Bobby and Eddie would want— was for Buck to go rogue. If he got worse, and Tommy was putting a lot of faith in that if, Buck needed to be right where he was with medical attention watching his every inhale for a single misplaced wheeze.
“Tommy,” Buck croaked out his name as the redness in his eyes deepened, the blues in his eyes going glassy. “I can’t—”
Tommy shook his head and held up his hand again.
Without even blinking, Buck mirrored his hand with his own.
It wasn’t enough. Anything short of being able to bundle Buck in his chest and try to shield him from the worst of the world would never be enough. But it had to be.
Buck’s breath hitched and Tommy could see the unraveling start.
“Breathe baby,” Tommy said lowly and Buck let out an exhale that only marginally managed to ease some of the tension in his shoulders. “Let me see what I can find out.”
He had no idea where Bobby and Eddie were in the building. Hell, he didn’t even know if they were in the same hospital. But for Buck? He wouldn’t stop until he found them.
