Chapter Text
The girl recoiled from the light like it had gouged her eyes. Even injured as she was, she had the strength to toss in the stretcher and shield her face. Or maybe it was just the new kick of adrenaline that came with being pulled from familiar pain and unleashed into a world that was larger, brighter, and much more populated than what you had grown accustomed to. Despite the cloud cover and the rain that hadn’t stopped since that morning, it was too much.
Harvey remembered it well. Blinking in the light, so painfully bright that for hours, it had seemed like his good eye wouldn’t survive its assault on his senses. He read it on her like it was inked into her skin. There was an urge to return to the place where it wasn’t so impossibly overstimulating. Cruel hands aside, that hole began to feel familiar. He bit the inside of his cheek a bit too hard. The pain and copper on his tongue re-anchored him.
She couldn’t have been older than her mid-teens. His stomach clenched. The smell of blood and the familiar feeling of that prison was enough to make him feel woozy coming up the stairs, but this was what truly made him regret having lunch before that call had come in.
I’ll kill them.
The thought surfaced among the shaking nerves and nausea like some great creature breaching the surface of the sea. There was an initial jolt at something so unbidden leaping forward to announce itself. Yet, it eased into certainty. There was a truth to the thought that he would have second guessed if it had come as any part of a measured train of consciousness.
Should it have been such a surprise? Mild-mannered Harvington rarely reared his head anymore. He faced the world with a scowl designed to keep the untrustworthy at bay, and a certainty in his step that he often didn’t feel in his bones. He felt it now though. That, goddammit, it was about time for someone who deserved it to bleed.
“You’ll have to stop there, Harv.”
It was the sound of the voice that made him realize that he was standing at the back of the ambulance and about to step in. He took a step back, locking eyes with the woman who had spoken up.
“Jill–” he started.
The paramedics inside the vehicle drew the doors shut. They thumped with a finality that assured him that the decision was made. The panicked sounds of the patient were muffled by the wall between her and himself.
“It’s a liability,” she said. “You know that.”
Harvey clenched his teeth. Everything in him wanted to argue, but for what? For a fight he was never going to win. Jill was understanding. She’d proved that to him time and time again when they’d worked together with fund raising, but she was also professional. If she said no, the answer was hell no.
“I…” He took a deep breath. “Yeah. Right.”
She walked to the passenger’s side and looked back at him, ponytail flipping as her head turned. “Follow if you’re worried,” she said, then hopped up and disappeared inside.
Watching the ambulance peel out of the driveway, lights flashing and siren screaming, he winced and stepped to his own car. A necessity, perhaps, but he couldn’t imagine that ungodly noise was having a calming effect on the girl. It never did.
“They probably won’t let you in,” the Chief said.
He shut his door and glanced at him through the partially open window. “Problem for later, Knox,” he replied.
He followed the wailing vehicle, tires kicking up a wave of standing water as he skirted around the curb.
Toby was around her age by now. Maybe a little younger. Time passed, and despite the sporadic contact, he never forgot how old the boy was. Never forgot to send something for his birthday either. Shared custody wasn’t on the table for very long. Eun-mi was nearing the end of her rope with him, and he didn’t trust himself to be present given his mental state. A good call considering how long it had taken him to get himself together.
Toby was never unhappy to see him. That much was something to be thankful for, that even with monthly visits and him entering high school this year, he was still happy to see his father. Harvey wished he could hazard any guess as to why. He wasn’t exactly super-dad or anything. Just another flavor of absent father, too fucked up to function. Safer to engage with from the other side of a screen with messages written in acronyms that Harvey Googled and then pretended he’d known all along. Promises not to tell Eun-mi that he’d used the word “shitty” to describe his math class, and the notion that when Toby got his license next year, he could drive by himself to see his father.
Harvey had dreaded the day when his son was old enough to understand what had happened to him, and how it contributed to his parents no longer being together. Sometimes he wished that Eun-mi had allowed Toby to grow up hating him so he’d never have to talk about it with him. Somewhere out there, there was a world where he’d become an empty outline of a male figure that his son never had to see and resented for that.
He still dreaded the day that Toby wanted to talk about all of this.
“The girl,” he said to the man at the front desk.
He didn’t have to elaborate. What other girl would he have been talking about with that intense look in his remaining eye and a deep frown on his scarred face? A glower, perhaps, but serious times called for no pleasantries.
“ICU,” the receptionist replied. “Family only.”
“And her family?” he prodded.
“Too soon to say anything,” the receptionist said. “And even if I knew–”
“None of my business,” Harvey muttered, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. The receptionist was just doing his job. As on edge as his nerves were, he could hardly blame the man. “Got it. At least tell me if Jill’s still here.”
“I…?” he started.
“Paramedic,” Harvey said. “Never mind. I’ll text her.”
He slunk back into the waiting room and lowered himself into a chair, leaning his cane beside him. He fished his phone out of his pocket.
If he hadn’t been forced to adapt, he couldn’t have fathomed the amount of lifestyle changes that his missing hand would impose on him. Texting was one of them. Text to speech helped, but having a private conversation was a matter that left him fumbling with one thumb, or setting the phone in his lap and pecking at the keys with one finger.
“Are you still here?”
The antiseptic scent of the building turned his stomach. It was such a cold necessity, one he’d become familiar with during his own extended stay. Places for the sick and injured fought so hard to assert a veneer of comfort over the cold need for sterilization and practicality. They usually failed miserably.
It hadn’t been long before he’d been ready for his own bed. His own home. Hell, even sheets that weren’t the consistency of paper. The home he returned to hadn’t been much warmer.
Toby and the girl looked nothing alike. He could tell as much from the shock of red hair
that had emerged from the basement, which was about as opposite of the dark locks that his son had inherited from both he and his wife as one could get. He remembered Eun-mi insisting on dying his hair for years, until the boy finally started an argument about how going to school with pink hair was getting him shoved in the middle school hallways. The texts after Toby had gone to his friend’s house and redyed his hair its natural color had been sullen and sneakily sent from the bathroom with a phone that he wasn’t supposed to have, but still with a small sense of satisfaction that he’d gotten away with something.
Harvey had been proud then. There was nothing like a brush with death to remind you that life was too short to care about how other people wanted you to look and act. It was what kids should have been doing at that age. Getting in mischief. Getting in petty troubles and finding out how they wanted to look and act. Who they wanted to be.
He didn’t have that option anymore. There were only so many scars he could cover. The pink hair seemed like a waste of effort for something that would fade and wash away eventually. He couldn’t remember who’d started that in the first place, him or Eun-mi. At the back of his mind was the nagging feeling that it had been her.
He’d reached out and crawled his way up the sheer face of a cliff to be where he was now, but at the end of the day, when his options were to adapt or die, even that was decided for him. He was doing this because it kept him breathing. If it kept others breathing with him, all the better.
The heavy truth that sat with him in that waiting room was that the girl in the ICU was going to end up more like him than his son. She’d have scars that she could apply as much makeup to as she liked, and yet still, somehow something would always slip through. Maybe she’d keep her hair cut like he did, not for any kind of aesthetic preference, but rather to cover the worst of the burn scars just so he could leave his apartment without eyes following him, asking the question that everyone wanted to know, but were always too scared to ask.
What happened to you?
His phone buzzed.
“Still here. On my way.”
He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. The high of the chaos was wearing off. The familiar ache began to creep into his eyes, a nagging reminder that he never got enough sleep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his reflection without the tired bags under his eyes. Then again, he often tried not to see his reflection.
“I’m going to find bad coffee. Meet me there.”
The coffee was awful. He’d never been in a hospital that had good coffee. The cheapest brand, sometimes with grounds slipping in through the filter, and he was pretty sure they were serving him decaf and lying to him. Bastards.
“How’s the coffee?” Jill asked, pulling out the chair across from him and sitting down.
“Is it even coffee?” he asked, scowling at drink like it had personally offended him somehow. He had half a mind to give up on it and toss it in the garbage.
Jill looked as tired as he felt. Her hair escaped her ponytail in long, free-flying strands. The front of her shirt had smudges of dirt on it, likely caused by desperate hands either clinging or fighting as she helped unload the ambulance. She slumped back in her chair, face tilted to the ceiling, and sighed.
“You didn’t want me down here so you could complain about coffee,” she said.
Harvey took a deep drink from his cup, hoping that the too-acidic aftertaste would ground him enough to speak coherently.
“Why this?” he said, his voice lowering to an exhausted mutter. “I mean, why is it ever this, but, you know, why this?”
She shook her head. “People like that like to stomp the ones who seem weaker than them,” she said. “It’s not right. It’s not fair. But give someone an inch with no fear of apprehension and…well, you’d know better than me.”
He did know. People like this didn’t do these things because they needed something. They did it because they could. They did it because when given the option to do anything they wanted without fear of consequence, they were the type of animal that would always choose violence.
“She must feel alone in there,” he said, unsure of whether he was talking to her or himself. “I did.”
Jill uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. “You care,” she said. “A lot. And sometimes a lot is just enough.”
He gave her a small half-smile. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t. It might be easier to get some sleep.”
She shook her head. “And I say thank God for people who give a damn,” she said. “When you leave, you’re going to think about this. I know you will. I see it on your face.”
“How could I not?” he asked.
“You’re a dad,” she said.
Harvey was silent for a moment. He turned and threw his cup into the garbage, finally giving into the urge, ignoring the way its contents dribbled over the white tile as it arced and landed with a dull thunk at the bottom of the bin. “Yes,” he said. “I mean, no. I-It’s not about–”
“You should take it,” she said, expression straight and serious with a knowing glint in her eye.
“Hm?” he said.
“Her case,” Jill said. “If it means that much. If you’re that worried.”
“I don’t kn–” he started.
“You’re not gonna stop thinking about her,” she cut him off. “You worked for years to get licensed to help people with this kind of thing, and you do. There’s a reason why they call you to help with and consult on retrievals. Seeing her recover, being the one to help with that, it might be good for both of you.”
He lowered his gaze to the table. “It’ll take forever for her to be released from intensive,” he said.
“Then ask early,” she said.
This again. The illusion of control. That flashing thought that he could always say no. The lure of an option that didn’t exist just to make him feel like a good person who decided to help on his own. It was never an option. He wouldn’t say no. It was as predetermined as choosing to live when he could’ve died.
“I’ll ask,” he said.
“Always knew you would,” she said. She stood and grabbed her bag from the back of the chair. “I’m gonna go grab some real coffee. You can come with. Or you can go home and get some rest. Otherwise, stop haunting the waiting room like a ghoul. Nothing’s going to change today.”
“Yeah…” he said. “I’ll try to rest. Thanks.”
“A good man,” she said, turning from the table and exiting through the glass double doors, leaving him to sit there in silence for another few moments before he pried himself from his seat and exited the building.