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Walking through the familiar hospital hallways, Buck made his way to the room number the nurse had given him. Luckily, he knows most of the nurses in the paediatric wards, ever since the baby in the pipe, he has been volunteering here on his days off, reading and playing with the kids as well as doing skin to skin with any abandoned babies that needed it if the nurses didn’t have the time. It also helped that he works at the 118 and is known to be a family friend of sorts; his friendship with Athena was tenuous at best, and he hopes it stays that way after this. He wouldn’t fault Athena if she blew a gasket about this; he was crossing a major boundary with this one, but he knew he could really help. Better to ask for her forgiveness if and when it might be necessary, than for permission that she definitely won’t be giving.
He rounded the corner and saw that the room he was looking for was empty of any visitors; it seemed like his luck was holding out for once. He walked the short distance and knocked on the slightly opened door, waiting for permission to come in.
May was sitting in her pajamas, which Athena must have brought from home, on the bed, staring at the wall. Her hands were playing with the fabric of the blanket in her lap. Buck gave another quick knock. “Hey, can I come in?”
May looks towards him. “Did Mom send you?”
“Ah, no, actually, I overheard Hen and Chim talking and came straight after my shift without anyone being the wiser, and I'll probably end up getting a lecture from her when she finds out.”
She actually smiles a little at that, and gestures for him to come in. He leaves the door open a crack and sits in the chair by her bed.
May looks at him as if she’s expecting him to start asking the same questions or start on the same spiel as everyone else has probably been doing since she woke up. But that’s not what he came here for.
“So..” he starts, and he can see that she’s holding herself as if waiting for the mental hit, like she knows this was coming. “Since I came straight from shift, I don’t have anything with me, but I promise to bring anything you’re craving with me next time so we can eat while we watch some bad daytime TV”.
She blinks once, twice, like she can’t quite compute what he just said and needs to rerun it in her head. She goes to start talking, opens and closes her mouth a few times before shaking her head and giving a quiet laugh.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Athena standing in the crack in the door, hopefully she won’t barge in and will let them be. He keeps his focus where it’s needed on May.
“You’re not joking, are you? You actually want to spend time with me and bring me whatever I’m craving on your time off? Why? Don’t you have better things to do than waste your time with a stupid teenager you barely know just because she tried to kill herself.”
By the end of her tirade, she’s looking at her blanket and not at him, so he ducks his head to try and catch her eye, but it doesn’t work.
“May, can you please look at me?” Slowly, she lifts her head and looks at him, tears in her eyes.
“You are not stupid for trying to kill yourself”. Her breath hitches at that, and the tears start to flow down her face. He places his hand palm up on the bed between them, and she grabs it with both of hers. He squeezes her hands before continuing.
“First of all I would love to get the know the amazing young lady you are regardless, but I also tried to kill myself so though I might not know your exact circumstances I do know what you’re going through to an extent and to be able to support you right now is the most important thing I could be doing with my time in my opinion. But I’m not going to push if you don’t want me here, just say the word.”
May holds onto his hand that is still in both of hers harder, not giving him a chance to leave. “No! Please stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere, and I have a day off tomorrow, so I can be here tomorrow too with snacks if you want.” He grabs the tissue box from the bedside rollaway table next to him with his free hand and passes it to her.
She grabs the tissues and starts to clean her face. “Yeah, that would be great actually.”
“Awesome, so what are we watching?” He passes her the remote and brings the chair closer to the bed, and faces it towards the TV.
They flip through the channels until they land on some baking reality show and watch the episodes together, still holding hands. Once a new show starts up, and Buck is just about to suggest they look for something else, he looks towards May and sees that she’s contemplating something.
He squeezes her hand. “You know you can ask me anything, right? If I’m not comfortable talking about it, I will just let you know.”
She seems surprised by that, but after a few more minutes, she finally asks, “How old were you?”
“Well, my first real attempt was on my tenth birthday.” She would probably be breaking his hand with how hard she was squeezing it if she were stronger. “But even before that, I would get injured on purpose to get my parents' attention, as that would be the only time they would pay me any attention. So, I was basically self-harming from about the age of four or five.” He lets her sit with that for a moment.
“Wait, you said your first time? You tried more than once?”
He sighs and runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah, I tried a few times over my teenage years, including running my motorcycle into oncoming traffic, and a drug overdose, which was the last one when I was around eighteen. That’s when I finally got the help I needed, thanks to a friend and his dad.”
May is crying again by now, and he isn’t far from it himself.
“How.. how did you..” He can see that she’s struggling with wording her question, but he thinks he knows what she wants to ask.
“How did I make it till I got help? How do I cope?” she nods.
“Well, I have good coping and bad coping, the bad, which, since I’ve gotten help, I don’t do as much, is self-harming, which can manifest in a few ways. The good coping, though, now that’s the fun part. My big sister used to love to sing, and so we could do something together, I taught myself to play the guitar. So now whenever everything is too much, I grab an instrument because now I play several and just play my feelings out. I even have a cover band with some friends from my travels that ended up in L.A., and we jam sometimes.”
“And that friend and his dad that I told you about, that got me the help I needed? Well, I keep in touch with them, so if I ever need help again, I know someone will be there to give it.”
She’s stopped crying by now, but does start to yawn, which causes them both to laugh.
“When you come tomorrow, would you bring your guitar? I would love to hear you play.”
“I would be honoured to play for you, now get some rest and text me in the morning what I should bring snack-wise.” He starts to get up but stops. “Would it be ok if I give you a hug before I go?” She nods. “Yes, I would love one, actually.”
He hugs her tightly and doesn’t let go until he feels her do so first, and makes his way outside to the hall. “See you tomorrow,” He calls out before closing her door, not at all surprised to find Athena waiting on the other side.
What he wasn’t expecting was to be enveloped in a hug by the Mamma bear herself, instead of receiving the lecture of all lectures, she just squeezed him tightly and whispered a quiet “Thank you” before going into May’s room.
The next morning, Buck arrives with a guitar slung across his back, carrying doughnuts and coffee for the nurses, and hot chocolate and a variety of snacks for May and himself, as promised. He knocks lightly on the door before coming into the room. May is up and waves to him from her perch on the bed. Athena is sitting in the armchair on her other side, reading, and then puts her Kindle down. “Hey, Buck, what do you have there?”
He puts the snacks on the rollaway tray, hands May her hot chocolate, and sets the guitar against the wall before sitting down in the same chair as yesterday.
“Just keeping my promise to Mayday here, brought us some snacks for the day and hot chocolates. I also have some doughnuts that I brought to the nurses, and I figured I'd get us some as well. I would have brought you some coffee, but I didn’t think that you would still be here.” He grabs the pastry box and hands it over to May, who grabs a chocolate sprinkles and puts the box on the bed.
Athena leans to look in the box before getting a simple glazed. “I might just use your visit to take my leave and go home to shower and change, and I haven’t had a chance to do that in a bit. I will come back with some home-cooked lunch we can all enjoy.” She wipes her hands on a napkin she pulls from her nearby bag, then puts her Kindle inside. She gets up, kisses May and hug goodbye, and surprises Buck by doing the same with him before leaving.
“I think my mom just adopted you, does that mean I should start calling you big bro?”
He laughs, “Only if I get to call you little sis.” he gets a napkin thrown at him, but May still laughs.
They settle in with their snacks, and like the day before, they channel surf until they land on something that catches their interest. They spend a couple of hours like that, joking and making catty comments about whatever they are currently watching, when May mutes the TV and turns to Buck, “Would you mind playing something for me?”
Buck grabs the guitar and takes it out of the case. “It would be my pleasure to play you something. Do you have anything in mind?”
“No, whatever you feel like.”
He starts checking the strings and makes sure everything is in tune before he begins to play and sing.
🎶I'll never ever try to fix you
I’m never ever gonna quit you
Anytime that your sun won't shine through
I will sit in your shadows with you
I'll never judge you for your problems
Even if you never ever solve them
Even when there’s not a thing we can do
I will sit in your shadows with you
Sometimes a silver lining's only blinding
Sometimes a friend's advice just makes it worse
Sometimes the best intentions feel like prying
When no one knows
No one knows how much it hurts
Anytime, anytime that you're not okay
I will shut, I will shut my mouth and say
I'll never ever try to fix you
I'm never ever gonna quit you
Anytime that the sun won't shine through
I will sit in your shadows with you
I'll never judge you for your problems
Even if you never ever solve them
Even when there’s not a thing we can do
I will sit in your shadows with you (with you) 🎶
May grabs the box of tissues and dries her eyes. “Ok, wow, you didn’t mention anything about how you could sing like that!” She slaps his arm for good measure, just to make sure she got her point across.
“Hey, hey, there is no need for violence! And I am not that great, my sister Maddie, or should I say our sister,” He winks and chuckles as she rolls her eyes but laughs all the same, “is a much better singer than I am.”
“Then she must be extremely talented, and I hope I get to hear her too someday.”
“She is, and I really hope so too. Ok, any song requests now?”
But before May can respond, Athena comes in with lunch. “As much as I enjoy a good show with my food, how about we continue this after we eat?”
So, Buck packs the guitar back in the case, and the three of them sit around May’s bed and enjoy Athena’s homemade food. They chat about the calls Buck had on his last shift, what they watched this morning before Athena and Buck clean up in the rooms little sink and pack up the tupperware she brought.
They sit back down, each in their seat, and Athena gestures towards the guitar. “So you're going to keep playing?”
Buck smiles and gets the guitar out of the case again. “Gladly, but this time, how about you give me some suggestions on what I should play?”
He adjusts the guitar as May and Athena think of songs, each one asking for a song in turn. He plays whatever song he knows without issues and even sings along, and the ones he doesn’t know, he looks up the chords and does his best with them. They spend several hours like this, as the time goes by, the grant ladies are just trying to stump Buck by throwing out the most outlandish and obscure songs they can think of, which causes them all to laugh. Because, of course, he doesn’t know any Disney songs, but give him something like “In Quest of the Unicorn" by Jonathon Round, and he doesn’t even need to look it up.
It's getting late, May already had her dinner from the hospital, and Buck has to be up early the next day. “Ok, this is going to be the last one, and for this one, I will need both of you to stand and join me here on the floor.”
Athena raises her brow and shares a look with May, but they both decide to go with it and get up and join Buck in the small area of space between the bed and the door.
“Ok, Buckley, what are you up to?” May crosses her arms across her chest as she waits to see what he has planned.
“Well little Grant, my master plan was to get your ass out of bed which I did.” He laughs as she smacks him, and Athena tries to hide her smile. “But for real, I just thought we could all use a little stretch and maybe some release, and there is nothing better in my opinion than dancing it out, so I hope you will join me.”
Before they can reply, he jumps into the song and starts dancing around the small space with his guitar while singing along. After a small beat, both Grant women join in, and all three are dancing around the cramped hospital room, singing and laughing.
🎶
We're all bored
We're all so tired of everything
We wait for trains that just aren't coming
We show off our different scarlet letters
Trust me, mine is better
We're so young
But we're on the road to ruin
We play dumb but we know exactly what we're doin'
We cry tears of mascara in the bathroom
Honey, life is just a classroom
(Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
We're all here
The lights and noise are blinding
We hang back
It's all in the timing
It's poker
He can't see it in my face
But I'm about to play my Ace (ah)
We need love
But all we want is danger
We team up
Then switch sides like a record changer
The rumors are terrible and cruel
But honey, most of them are true
(Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
'Cause baby, I could build a castle
Out of all the bricks they threw at me
And every day is like a battle
But every night with us is like a dream
Baby, we're the new romantics
Come on, come along with me
Heartbreak is the national anthem
We sing it proudly
We are too busy dancing
To get knocked off our feet
Baby, we're the new romantics
The best people in life are free
🎶
Buck ends the song, swings his guitar to his back, twirls May, and dips her, before pulling her back up, both laughing. Athena, looking on with a smile, some dampness to her eyes, grabs both May and Buck into an impromptu group hug.
Once they separate, Buck starts to gather his things, and May goes to sit on the edge of her bed. “Hey, Buck? Would you be up to teaching me the guitar?”
Buck looks up at her with a smile. “Of course!” May smiles back, her shoulders slumping in relief that he agreed and didn’t make fun of her asking.
He stands up with his bag and guitar, leaving the snacks for May. “So I have a 48 starting tomorrow, but after that I have three days off, from what I hear, by then you should be back home.” he winks at her. “How about you think of a few songs you like and won’t mind hearing a lot that we can work on to start, and I will meet you at yours for lunch on my day off after I get a nap in?”
She hesitates, “Are you sure that’s how you want to spend your day off? Don’t you have better things to do?” Buck can see May start to shrink in on herself, and Athena gearing up for a fight. “What could be better than hanging out with my little sister?” He sits down next to her and puts an arm around her shoulders “Seriously Mayday if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be, no body asked me to come and no one is making me stay, I genuinely like hanging out with you and it would be a lot of fun for me to teach you how to play.”
She’s crying now, and Buck just pulls her in for a hug until she calms down. When she pulls away, Athena gives her the tissue box from the bedside table. She swipes at her eyes and blows her nose. “Well, you better be ready for some girl pop on repeat then.”
He laughs, gives her another quick hug, “looking forward to it.” He says before getting up, hugging Athena one last time, and heading out.
After taking a quick nap, Buck showered and headed to the Grant house, making sure he had his guitar and the cupcakes he bought at the bakery by the station after his shift. He was a little early, but he figured he could always help Athena with lunch or hang out with May.
He parks and gets out of his Jeep, taking out the guitar and cupcakes. Not even halfway up the driveway, and the front door opens, showing Athena. “What do you have there, Buckaroo?”
“Just some cupcakes, couldn’t show up empty-handed.” He hands her the box as she ushers him towards the dining room table.
“May is napping right now, and Harry is at school, so you’ll have to do with me.”
“Your great company, and you know it, anything I can do to help with lunch?”
“Maybe later, do you want anything to drink? I have some lemonade.”
“Lemonade would be great, thanks.”
She pours each of them a glass and sits across from him at the table.
“I’m glad you’re here early because I wanted to thank you again” before Buck can say anything she puts her hand up to silence him “let me finish first” at his nod she continues “we didn’t get off to the best start” he snorts at that and even Athena laughs a little “and that was partly my fault, no don’t give me that look, I should have handled the situation better and anything I had to say to you I should have either told Bobby as your Captain or taken you aside and said so calmly and not shouted at you in the middle of the ER intake parking”
Buck takes that in, and he doesn’t really know what to say. In hindsight, he knows that he handled the situation poorly, although, from a regulatory standpoint, he was correct. Before he contemplates too much, Athena continues.
“I think we both moved on from that, regardless, and have gotten on better footing since. But I still didn’t expect to see you at the hospital with May, and it really means so much. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile a real smile in a very long time. I don’t know how you even got her room number or heard that she was there,” He blushes and gives a sheepish smile, “but I’m forever grateful that you have.”
“Well, funnily enough, the two things kind of connect together in a way, umm, but I will say I am also sorry for my own behavior on that first call we had. It’s a bit of a touchy subject for me, and it was my first call related to it, so I wasn’t ready for how badly I would be affected by it; I should have handled it better, and I will in the future.” He can see that he raised Athena’s curiosity, and figures he'd better just get it all out there before she goes looking.
“I was a savior sibling, made for spare parts for an older brother with leukemia. He died after a bone marrow transplant from me didn’t take, my sperm donors basically acted like I didn’t exist, and worse, they completely erased my brother, who died. We even moved towns apparently, I was the only one, so I don’t remember this, but I read the files about it when I joined the SEALs.”
“I have an older sister who is 9 years older, she’s in an abusive relationship, she refuses to leave, and has been since high school. She basically raised me until she left for college, and the only way for me to get attention was by getting hurt. So, I would injure myself a lot, climbing and jumping out of trees, skateboarding.”
“After Maddie, my sister, left, it got worse because they ignored me even more, and my only positive attention was gone, so that was when I first tried committing suicide. I had leftover pills from a broken leg, I ended up throwing them up, and my parents thought I was hungover and grounded me for it.”
“I started cutting frequently and eventually rode my bike into oncoming traffic. Was sent to the hospital Maddie worked at, and she gave me her Jeep and some money and told me to get out. I tried to get her to come with me, but she wouldn’t. I started traveling the country, and even found some really good people along the way that are still with me to this day.”
“When me and a friend got to NYC we were both in a bad place, we met another kid at a club that was having issues and ended up overdosing with him. We were very lucky that his dad was a firefighter and found us in time, he got us the help we needed, and let us stay with them while we got it. I owe him my life.”
“So, when I heard Hen tell Chim about May during shift, I knew I might be able to help, so I went to the hospital after shift. By chance, it was the same hospital where the baby in the pipe ended up. I have been volunteering at that pediatric ward since that call, so the staff know me well, and that’s why they gave me the room number.”
To say that Athena is floored and fuming is an understatement to say the least. How could anyone treat this young man so terribly that he tried to end his life multiple times? She just couldn’t grasp that, and that they were his parents or supposed to be anyway. She can see why someone throwing away their child, quite literally, would be a sore spot for him, and she really can’t blame him.
She gets up and takes the seat beside him, then proceeds to hug him as fiercely as she can. “Thank you for sharing all of that with me. You are so strong and should be so proud of all you’ve been through. I do want to know more about what you do at the hospital, if you don’t mind sharing.”
He smiles at her as he lets go of the hug; they both know that she’s giving him the chance to change the topic, and he appreciates it.
“Always happy to talk about it, it actually started when I went to check on the baby, she ended up in the system and getting adopted, but until then she was in the hospital and needed skin to skin, and they were understaffed, so I volunteered to help.” He blushes again. “So I still help with that, along with feeding and changing as needed, but especially babies that were abandoned. I also read or play to the hospitalized kids or ones that come for longer treatments like chemo.”
She thinks of all the things she’s heard about Buck from Hen, all the himbo and dumb blonde jokes. She thinks back to her first encounter with him, and how she never thought to look beyond the surface of a hotheaded probie who had something to prove. She regrets not taking the time to get to know him better until now. She is very thankful that he took the time he did for May, and that such a kindhearted person is in her and her children’s lives.
She puts her hands on his cheeks, “Buckaroo, you are one of a kind,” leaning in to give him a forehead kiss. “Now, how about we get started on lunch?"
When May got up from her nap and Harry returned from school, they all had lunch together, then moved to the living room, where Buck started teaching both Grant kids how to play the guitar—asking both for a few of there favorite songs so that he could bring up chords and have them try and play them.
“Don’t worry about not getting it on the first try, especially you, Harry. This guitar is a bit big for your hands. I’ll get you a smaller one next time. It’s about having fun with it, if you aren’t enjoying it, then we can try a different instrument or something else entirely. So don’t feel bad or like you owe me if it’s not for you.” Both May and Harry smile at him, nod, and are back at trying to get their respective songs down. He laughs and bends down to help Harry get his fingers in the right place.
He ends up staying for dinner, and from that day on, comes over once a week for a Grant family dinner, regardless of the guitar lessons with the Kids.