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“Ravi!” Buck called out, before a caught tore up his throat.
He tried to sit up and look for the younger man, but the half a building pressing down on his back kind of made that difficult.
Scratch that. It made it impossible.
“Ravi, can you hear me?”
Buck tried to curb his panic.
Just because Ravi wasn’t answering him didn’t mean that anything was wrong.
Ravi and the man they’d found in the building had been ahead of him, after all.
Maybe they’d been ahead of the collapse.
Maybe they’d made it out.
“Ravi!”
God, Buck hoped they’d made it out.
He didn’t think he could take losing someone else right now.
Not with Bobby gone and Eddie leaving to go back to Texas in a few hours.
Buck raised a shaking hand to his radio and pressed down on the button. “Mayday, mayday, this is firefighter Buckley, can anyone hear me?”
There was no answer. Not even static.
No.
No, no, no!
Fuck!
His radio was broken.
Buck was buried under half an apartment building’s worth of concrete and rebar, and his radio was broken.
And it wasn’t even just that he couldn’t hear them, if there was no static, that meant they couldn’t hear him either.
He was trapped.
Well and truly trapped.
“Ravi!”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“Ravi, can you hear me!?”
Oh God, he was going to die down here.
There was half a damn building on his head! They’d never be able to find him.
He was going to miss Jee’s first day of preschool and Denny’s talent show next week, and Eddie’s flight, and— shit.
Eddie.
Eddie and Chris were leaving to go back to Texas in 4 hours!
Buck wasn’t even going to get to say goodbye to them.
Would they even know what happened to him?
Would Eddie land in Texas to a bunch of texts and voicemails telling him that Buck was gone?
Christ, Eddie was probably going to think that Buck was avoiding him.
They’d only just fought the night before and Buck had slunk out of the house this morning before either Eddie or Chris had gotten out of bed.
Eddie was probably going to think that Buck wasn’t coming to say goodbye because he was mad or being petty.
Actually, knowing Eddie, his first assumption was going to be either dramatics or selfishness.
Because Buck had been making everything about himself again the last time they’d spoken, not that he’d meant to, but he was hurting and they were leaving and he lashed out and he felt really bad about it now.
When Eddie found out what happened, he was going to blame himself.
He was going to think that their argument had something to do with Buck being reckless or something and that’s not it at all.
The building had come down too fast.
There weren’t any indicators.
It was falling before Gerrard had even started calling for an evacuation.
But Eddie wouldn’t know that, because Ravi and Buck had been the only firefighters left in the building, and Ravi had been a good 30 to 40 feet ahead of him. Maybe even 50.
No one would know what really happened to him.
No one would know that his being trapped wasn’t due to an error or distraction.
And because they wouldn’t know, Eddie wouldn’t know that this wasn’t his fault.
He’d blame himself.
Fuck, Eddie was going to blame himself, and Buck couldn’t let that happen, but there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it either because he had no way of moving an entire apartment building off of himself.
“Help!” Buck called out as loud as he could. “Can anyone hear me? Help!”
Not that he was as loud as he wished he could be.
Having hundreds of pounds sitting on your back kind of limited the amount of air you had available for shouting.
“Help! I’m down here! Help!”
Buck heard shifting rubble above him.
Thank God.
Someone was coming to get him.
“Hel—!”
Suddenly, the whole damn pile shifted and bits and pieces of the building started raining down all around him.
Buck covered his head with his arms as best as he could, but he was pinned at an odd angle, and he couldn’t cover everything.
A large chunk of broken concrete struck just above Buck’s left eyebrow on the way down, and he knew that he now had even less time than before.
He could feel the sizable cut left behind by the concrete and he knew head wounds bled a lot.
He didn’t exactly have a lot of that to spare at the moment, considering the amount of other injuries he probably had where he was buried under the debris and just couldn’t feel it due to the adrenaline.
The entire building— or what was left of it— was shaking and rumbling around him.
Buck hadn’t really thought that there would be much of the building left to fall, but here it was, metal clanging on stone, stone crashing on itself, both striking Buck as they fell.
Buck knew he was crying out, he could feel it in his throat, but he couldn’t hear it. Not over the din around him.
The weight on top of Buck shifted with the rest of it, and suddenly it was even harder to breathe now than it had been before. Not that it had been all that easy to begin with.
Gradually, the shaking and roaring tapered off, and Buck’s ears rang in the silence.
God, that had been terrifying.
Buck wasn’t sure, but there was definitely a possibility that he’d pissed himself.
…Which wasn’t necessarily a great thing, since that could be a sign of a spinal injury.
And, well, come to think of it, he couldn’t feel his legs all that well, but that could just be because he was being compressed by half an apartment building.
Buck let out a shaky breath.
Obviously, the building was unstable.
No one was going to be able to come in and even try to find him if the remaining bit of structure could come down at any moment.
Eddie was going to lose him.
He was going to be just another death Eddie had to hear about over a phone call.
There was nothing Buck could do to get himself out of this situation.
There was no way for him to call for help or let anyone know where he was.
“Fuck,” Buck wheezed. “I’m so sorry, Eds. I’m so sorry.”
Tears tracked down through the dust and grime on Buck’s face.
Eddie was going to be devastated.
Eddie was going to think back to that fight and remember that the last conversation they had contained him calling Buck selfish and he wasn’t ever going to forgive himself for that.
After everything they’d been through, everything they’d faced together, this was how it would end.
No.
No, Buck couldn’t let it end like that.
“Help!” Buck’s voice was croaky and hoarse, and not at all as loud as he was trying to make it, but at least there was sound. “Someone help me!”
He didn’t want to die down here.
He’d lived a lot of his life alone, he didn’t want to die that way.
Buck tried to maneuver his arms into a position where he could maybe leverage something, anything, but it was no use.
He was pinned at too awkward of an angle, and there was just too much doing the pinning.
“I’m alive down here!” Buck grasped a length of rebar in one gloved hand, and started whacking it down on any dusty surface he could reach, sending up a racket that would hopefully catch someone’s attention.
There was some more shifting material above him, and for all Buck knew it was another collapse, but he kept hitting the rebar on things anyway, hoping, praying that someone would hear him.
“Hey!” Buck cried out, voice breaking in his desperation. “Hey!”
Dust rained down in his little pocket of space as things continued to shift, and he knew that one wrong move by his possible rescuers could send everything crashing down and leave him in a worse situation than he was already in.
But it was a risk that had to be taken.
“I’m here!” Buck called. “I’m down here!”
Buck could hear muffled voices over the clang of his rebar now.
Yes!
Someone was coming to save him!
“I’m right here!”
One of the muffled voices got closer, until Buck recognized it, and his heart skipped a beat.
Eddie.
It was Eddie.
“Eddie!”
“Buck!”
Eddie couldn’t be that far away now, but Buck couldn’t tell what direction he was coming from.
“Buck, keep making noise, let me know where you are!”
Buck smacked the length of rebar down harder on the concrete in response, grunting from exertion.
Soon, the shifting rubble started to reveal cracks of light in front of him, and then a hand emerged through a gap.
“Eddie.” Buck could have cried in relief.
In fact, he was pretty sure he already was.
The hand withdrew through the gap and Eddie’s dirt-covered face appeared in front of it.
“Thank God, you’re okay.” Eddie let out a shaky breath. “When the news said you got buried in here, I thought…”
Buck let go of the rebar and let it clatter to the floor of the space.
“I’m sorry, Eddie, I—”
“Hey, no.” Eddie cut Buck off, voice gentle but admonishing. “None of that. This isn’t your fault. Gerrard never should have sent you guys in here in the first place. Any decent captain would have seen how many code violations this thing was packing.”
Buck rested his head down on the dust covered floor. “I-I-I shouldn’t have made it about me. I know you don’t want to go back, I shouldn’t have—”
“We can talk about that later, Bud.” Eddie’s voice was full of concern, even though Buck could tell he was trying to hide it. “Are you hurt?”
Buck let out a shaky breath and slowly nodded his head.
“I-I’ve got a head wound, a-and probably some broken ribs. Possible spinal injury too.”
Eddie’s eyes widened. “A spinal injury? Are you sure?”
Buck closed his eyes. “My legs are pretty numb and I, uh…” Buck bit his bottom lip for a few moments, before quietly admitting, “I pissed myself, Eds.”
Eddie ran a gloved hand over his face. “Alright. Okay. That’s— okay. Just sit tight until I get a big enough opening to get to you.”
“Even if you can get in here, how are you planning to get a building off of me?”
Eddie shot Buck a sharp look. “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll figure something out.”
“Without destabilizing it even more and getting anyone else hurt or killed?” Buck asked.
Eddie’s lips thinned. “I’ll figure something out. I’m not leaving you here, Buck, so don’t even try.”
Buck’s lips twitched. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Eddie nodded his head sharply as if to say ‘good’, and then started moving massive chunks of concrete out of his way.
Eddie and Buck both watched the structure around them for any sign of further collapse, but Eddie managed to create a sizable hole in the wall without incident.
He scrambled through the opening into Buck’s space, and immediately started shining a penlight in his eyes.
“I don’t think there’s a concussion.” Eddie said slowly. “If there is, it’s a mild one.”
Buck allowed Eddie to turn his head a little to the right so that he could get a good look at the left side of Buck’s forehead.
“Definitely going to need stitches. Probably going to scar. But it’s not life-threatening.” Eddie concluded.
“Great.” Buck said with a pained smile. “Now that we’ve got the important stuff out of the way, how are we getting me out of here?”
Eddie’s trained eyes roved over the debris on top of Buck, and he chewed his bottom lip in thought, before speaking into the radio on his shoulder.
“Chim, Ravi, I need airbags and cribbing send down the line.”
“Copy that.” Chimney’s voice replied.
Moments later, a rope dangled down in front of the opening Eddie had made in the wall, two airbags and some wooden blocks in an improvised harness on the end of it.
Eddie placed the airbags on either side of Buck, then spoke into his radio again.
“I’m going to need a C-collar and a backboard too. Buck thinks he’s got a spinal injury.”
There was silence for a few moments, and then Hen’s shaky voice responded. “Copy. I’m sending them down now.”
A red basket soon appeared, lowering into the narrow space with a yellow backboard and a C-collar in it.
Eddie put the C-collar on Buck, then positioned the backboard in a way that it would, hopefully, be easy to transfer Buck onto it.
He then spoke into his radio again. “Let me know when everyone’s clear.”
It was less than a minute before Chimney replied. “We’re clear.”
As soon as Eddie had the confirmation, he pressed down on the control pads and started to inflate the airbags.
The structure groaned around them, and small bits of debris hit the floor at Eddie’s feet, but all in all, everything was holding together surprisingly well.
And then came the tricky part.
Eddie slid the cribbing in next to the air bags to help them support the heavy load, then started gently pulling Buck out from under the pile.
When he was out in the open, Eddie could see several wounds that Buck hadn’t mentioned, but most of them were minor.
The slight crook to Buck’s lower back was anything but.
“Shit.” Eddie hissed, then put a hand up to the radio on his shoulder. “Hen, Buck was right about the spinal. I’m going to need you to be ready when I get him up there.”
“Copy that.” Hen replied.
“You’re going to be okay.” Eddie told Buck in his most gentle tone, the voice he normally reserved for patients who were probably not going to be okay.
Buck frowned up at Eddie, but decided not to call his friend out on it.
If it comforted Eddie to let Eddie think he was comforting Buck, Buck wouldn’t shatter the illusion.
Eddie gently slid Buck onto the yellow backboard, then used spare pieces of cribbing to create a makeshift ramp up the side of the basket, and slid the backboard up it.
Once Buck was settled into the basket, Eddie climbed in and crouched over him, before tugging three times on the line to signal them to pull him up.
Everything after that was a bit of a blur for Buck.
He remembered clinging to Eddie’s hand, and all-but forcing the other man to ride to the hospital with him.
He remembered Eddie kissing his forehead in the back of the ambulance and telling him that everything was going to be alright.
But he didn’t remember anything else until he was blinking his eyes open in what he recognized to be a room in the ICU at Cedar Sinai.
And, God, it didn’t say good things about him that he could pick out the ward and what hospital he was in without having to be told.
He definitely spent too much time in hospitals.
“Hey.” A voice said softly.
Buck frowned.
That… That wasn’t the voice that he had thought he was going to hear.
It was Maddie.
And, as much as Buck loved his sister, he was hoping to hear Eddie.
But then… Eddie had to go back to Texas.
After rescuing Buck, he probably still had enough time for he and Chris to catch their flight and…
Buck swallowed thickly, then looked away from Maddie without saying a word.
Eddie was gone.
Eddie was gone.
And this time, who knew if he was ever going to come back?
A tear ran down Buck’s face, and he made no move to wipe it away.
“Hey,” Maddie cooed. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Are you in pain?”
Yeah. Yeah, he was in pain. But not the kind of pain that the handy dandy med pole next to his bed could help him with.
Buck didn’t say any of that though.
He just stared at the door to the ensuite bathroom, his bottom lip wobbling as Maddie carefully wiped away his tears.
Eddie was gone.
What did any of it matter when Eddie was gone again?
Doctors walked in and out of his room, doing physical assessments and trying to engage him in conversation, but Buck made no move to respond to them.
“Are you sure this isn’t from his head injury?” Chimney had asked one of them worriedly.
“It isn’t. Whatever is going on with Mr. Buckley is likely purely psychological.” The doctor had replied.
Not that the doctor’s answer made Maddie or Chim look at him any less worriedly.
Hen and Ravi came by to see him too, but, just as Buck suspected, no Eddie.
And he didn’t even have the heart to ask why, when he was sure he already knew the answer.
Eddie went back to Texas.
Eddie left.
And that had been hard enough to handle the first time, but now Bobby was dead, and Buck… well.
He might not have been responding when spoken to, but he heard everything they were saying. He heard when the doctors had told Maddie that there was a chance he wouldn’t walk again.
He’d had a spinal injury, of course he knew that chance was there.
And maybe he could have handled that if it was just that, though he was sure he would have still had a hard time with it, but… with everything else on top of it…
Buck couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t.
He’d lost so much in such a short time.
Too much.
He wasn’t okay and he didn’t think he ever would be, because everyone left.
Eddie and Bobby were gone now, who would leave next?
Maddie?
Hen?
Chim?
No. No, Buck couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
Even when the doctor came back in later and assured Maddie that the swelling around Buck’s spine had simply thrown off their scans, and he would be fine.
Truthfully, he didn’t know how long he sat there, just staring at that door.
It could have been minutes, it could have been hours.
He knew it wasn’t a full day, because neither Maddie nor Chimney had left to so much as use the bathroom, but he didn’t know how long it actually was before there was a body stepping between him and the ensuite bathroom door and a hand gently landing on the side of his face.
Buck’s brow furrowed and his eyes darted up with the intention of looking away quickly, but then they’d met Eddie’s, and he found himself trapped in that gaze.
Eddie.
Eddie was here.
Eddie was supposed to be back in Texas.
He’d had plane tickets booked for him and Christopher and everything.
Why was he here?
Eddie’s eyes crinkled with a soft smile when he saw Buck looking at him. “There you are.”
Buck blinked slowly up at him. “Texas… y-you…”
Eddie scoffed. “Buck, a building fell on you. Did you really think we were going back without making sure you were okay?”
Buck swallowed and looked away.
Right.
They were just making sure he was fine, and then they were going to leave.
Eddie was probably just here to say goodbye.
“Hey.” Eddie’s hand slid down to his jaw, and he turned Buck’s head back so that Buck had to look at him. “I know it’s not ideal… but… you know we’re coming back, right?”
Yeah. He’d heard that before.
Everyone always said they were coming back.
Well, not everyone. Bobby hadn’t. But, some part of Buck had wanted to cling to the belief that he would, anyway.
Even now, when Bobby was buried in some nondescript cemetery in Minnesota, Buck couldn’t force himself to let go of that.
But Eddie… Eddie was alive and he actually did have the ability to come back, not that Buck really believed he would.
Too many people had made that promise.
Abby.
Tommy.
Maybe even Daniel, though Buck would have been too young to remember.
Maddie had too, and though she had come back eventually, she was still gone from Buck’s life for 15 years, with the exception of the day she’d given him the Jeep.
Buck knew Eddie might think he was going to come back, but that didn’t mean he really would.
Eddie must’ve seen the disbelief on Buck’s face, because his expression took on the same exasperated look from the night before.
“Seriously, Buck? We’re only going to be gone a week.”
Buck frowned. “You… w-what?”
Eddie’s eyes widened, and his face slowly turned an interesting shade of red. “I knew I forgot something. No wonder you got so upset last night. Buck, Chris and I are only going to Texas long enough to pack up the house, then we’re coming home.”
“Home?”
Eddie’s eyes softened, and his thumb gently stroked along Buck’s cheekbone. “Yeah. Home.”