Eclipse

by AnnetheCatDetective

Summary:

For Jack Harrison, it starts with a ridiculous cryptid hunt outside Boston, before becoming the worst day of his life.

For Victor Ehrlich, it starts with the best day of his life, and quickly becomes the weirdest.

Notes:

So, the problem with crossing anything over with Buckaroo Banzai is, it's universe-breaking levels of over-the-top. For the purposes of this fic, the universe is mostly normal, if at times weird-- the Buckaroo Banzai team is brought WAY down in terms of fame/influence outside of normal in-field recognition, and the threats they deal with and things they accomplish are also brought WAY down into the realm of things that could conceivably happen in the world.

The problem with crossing anything over with St. Elsewhere is that eventually it's revealed that everything exists within the mind of an autistic boy. For the purposes of this fic, I'm him, and we can assume that St. Eligius and its doctors are, within their own universe, real.

The problem with crossing anything over with Transylvania 6-5000 is there are no problems.

Chapter 1: He's Pretty As A Picture

-JACK-

 

    At first, it’s like any assignment-- aside from last year’s trip to Transylvania-- slow and dull as hell. A few days in the Boston area on some kind of cryptid sighting. Although, he’ll give Boston this, it is lovely in the fall. 

 

    Just over a year… Jack still can’t quite wrap his head around it sometimes, he looks over at Gil by his side, always, and he wonders where he lucked out. In the just-over-a-year that he and Gil have been really living their lives as a couple, Jack’s gotten better at the psychic thing. He’s not great, but he’s better. He can only assume that his general repression of who he is as a person led to the repression of his… well, whatever it is. His thing with Gil, which he’s not fully comfortable calling ‘psychic’, but which he has to admit there’s not really a better definition of. Gil is good at it, but Jack is improving.

 

    He actually remembers his dreams now, at least the ones that Gil shows up for. He’s figured out how to find him. He’s recovered patchwork pieces of their past-- some of which he cringes over, and wonders what it is Gil ever saw in him. Some of which he’s glad to have back. 

 

    The world is still what it is. Inhospitable, even dangerous, to men like them. But… he’s learning how to navigate it a little easier. He’s let Gil take him to a gay bookstore, where his palms got a little sweaty and he had to think about breathing, but he didn’t actually panic and he bought a book. He’s let Gil drag him to family dinners with Mac and with Gil’s mother, who’s actually very lovely. Phyllis, he likes her, and she likes him, though she doesn’t seem any more aware than Mac is, about the relationship Jack has with their son. She’s happy enough with the knowledge that Gil has a friend who sometimes shows up in his wake to dinners, where he brings wine or bread or dessert and argues with Mac-- but not the kind of arguments they have at Sensation!, amicable ones. And Jack has taken Gil to meet his parents, albeit it as his roommate and friend from work. Now and then they have dinner there, too. They’re closeted, but they’re living. And if people who see them out together guess, well… so far it hasn’t been the end of the world. 

 

    Still, he does try and minimize the odds of anyone giving them trouble.

 

    “Why don’t you go get a cup of coffee, I’ll handle this?” He suggests, as they enter the bank. “It’s not going to take both of us to withdraw some cash.”

 

    It wouldn’t have taken a bank trip, either, if it wasn’t for the busted ATM, and the considering of the relative hassle between finding a different bank’s ATM and dealing with fees or just going into the local branch and talking to a human being for a minute, and deciding on talking to a human being. 

 

    “You want me to bring you one?”

 

    “You don’t have to do that.” He says, and he thinks about kissing Gil, just on his cheek, just soft. Something he doesn’t dare do out in public, but sometimes if he thinks about it hard enough, Gil picks up on the fact that he wants to. He catches the little flicker of a smile, the sense that Gil would appreciate it, or appreciates the thought. 

 

    “No trouble.”

 

    Gil gets directions to the coffee machine and Jack gets in line for a teller, and that’s when the shit hits the fan.

 

    Gil, Jack thinks, as loudly as he can possibly think, stay right where you are and don’t make a sound. He keeps thinking it as the four gunmen sweep through ordering everyone facedown on the floor. 

 

    There’s an incredibly pregnant woman struggling to get down on the floor at all, and Jack moves over to take her arm, freezing when a gun is pointed at him for his trouble.

 

    “What are you trying here?”

 

    “Nothing. Just, uh, just helping this nice lady here--”

 

    “Facedown on the floor, now!”

 

    “She’s going to, to give birth any, any second.” Jack holds a hand up, the other still on the woman’s arm, his eyes on the gun. “If we could maybe, just, if she could sit in a chair in the corner, facing the wall, not looking at anyone’s face. You know, a pregnant mother--”

 

    “I won’t tell you again--”

 

    “No, no, I know--”

 

    “Jack!”

 

    Oh no. For a moment he thinks he failed to send and then he thinks Gil heard him and came running anyway, that he knew he was in danger and came running anyway, but he doesn’t even have time to say ‘get down’ before two of the gunmen are firing, from two different directions, and for a single suspended moment, Gil is just… looking at him, his eyes wide with surprise, a red stain blossoming wider across the pale blue and white stripes of his shirt. One cardboard coffee cup in each slowly-loosening hand.

 

    And then he’s hitting the ground and Jack is taking the two long strides, falling to his knees at Gil’s side. There’s blood pooling under his head, too much of it, and Gil just looks up at him, mouth working soundlessly, eyes still wide open, focus drifting. 

 

    “Gil?” Jack whips his jacket off, presses it gently over the wound, not sure what will help, what will make things worse, desperate to do something, anything. “Gil, stay with me, stay with me, baby… No, don’t try to talk, don’t-- no, I’m right here, just stay with me.”

 

    He’s aware, in a distant kind of way, of the gunmen arguing-- one saying they’ve made everything worse for themselves, one crying that no one was going to get hurt, one of the two who’d pulled the trigger on the defensive, and h's aware, in a distant kind of way, that they haven’t shot him and maybe they won’t, but that doesn’t matter. Only Gil matters, cradling his head and finding more blood than seems right, his palm fills with it. 

 

    He’s aware, in a distant kind of way, of the sirens approaching. Of a lot of activity happening around the bubble he and Gil exist in. He’s aware, in a distant kind of way, that after they pull him screaming and crying from Gil, he’s put in the front seat of the ambulance, that he informs the people saving Gil’s life that he has no allergies that they need to know about-- just hay fever, and if he eats walnuts he gets a little mouth sore, so Jack always has to test brownies to make sure they’re walnut-free, but Gil’s got that sweet tooth so he always takes one, gingerly spitting walnut pieces into a napkin before his mouth can break out. And that the wrong kind of adhesive irritates his skin, he's sensitive.

 

    He knows everything about Gil’s medical history-- mostly uneventful outside of regular minor scrapes-- and his blood type. He has no trouble answering questions. No one asks who they are to each other, they just want to know the things that will save Gil’s life, and Jack doesn’t even have it in him to think about anything beyond that, beyond needing Gil to live. 

 

    He answers everyone’s questions in a hazy kind of fugue, the EMTs and then someone else in the hospital, as Gil is rushed away from him and he’s herded around. Someone walks him through getting some of the blood cleaned off, someone steers him to a chair. Someone puts a blanket around him and gives him a little paper cup half-full of tepid water, so it won’t splash out when his hand shakes. 

 

    He tells them what they need to know about Gil. Everything about his medical history, which he repeats from the top every time someone new approaches him. 

 

    That he gets anxious in new situations, that he’s anxious in most situations, that he doesn’t like needles, that his feet always get cold even though the rest of him runs warm.

 

    And then he’s on his own, and he can’t feel Gil, Gil is somewhere beyond his reach.

 

    A nurse asks him about contacting Gil’s family, and it hits him that that’s something he needs to do. There’s a bank of payphones, which he stares at helplessly for a long moment.

 

    “I, uh… yeah, I know the number, I can-- I know his folks, they… they’re in New York. I haven’t got, I haven’t got change for the, the phone, I haven’t-- I gave Gil my change, this morning, so he could-- Because he-- I gave Gil my change and I didn’t think about, I thought if I needed it back I’d ask him and…”

 

    “Come on.” She gives him a warm smile, takes his arm and urges him up. “You can use the phone at the nurse’s station.”

 

    “We’re from New York. We, this was a, this… we were here for work. His dad thinks he’s working.”

 

    She nods sympathetically, ushers him to the phone where he punches in the number for Mac’s office on autopilot.

 

    “Mac Turner’s office, you’ve got two minutes.” He answers it himself, gruff and harried but not unusually so. 

 

    “Mac… it’s Gil. It’s Jack, it’s Gil. Gil…”

 

    “What about Gil?”

 

    “They shot him.”

 

    “What? Jack, where’s my son right now?”

 

    “Hospital. Uh, um…” He looks to the nurse, she shows him the name of the place on a letterhead. “St. Eligius. He’s, uh, surgery, they… they took him right away but I don’t, I don’t-- We went into the bank, the ATM was busted. He went around the, the corner, to where the coffee machine was, and… and the, there was a robbery, he would have been fine if he’d stayed back where they couldn’t see him, they’d never have gone back there, but he--”

 

    “Hospital.” Mac sighs. “I’ll call his mother.”

 

    “St. Eligius. They’re, they took him into, um, surgery, he’s in surgery right now. I guess. I mean no one’s… no one’s told me he’s out of it, I think surgery takes… takes a long time, I don’t know. He’s in surgery right now. I don’t… I don’t know how long, um, I’ve been answering questions.”

 

    “We’ll catch the next flight over, I’ll call his mother and I’ll-- St. Eligius, we’ll take the next flight out. I guess we’ll… we’ll just take Gil’s hotel room while he’s in the hospital, maybe.”

 

    “Sure.” Jack nods. They have adjoining rooms, he’ll have to move Gil’s luggage over to the empty one, and then when Gil’s parents arrive, move it back to the one they’ve been using. “Sure. Well, I- -I’ll meet you here, I’ll be here. I can give you the room key.”

 

    “Yeah. Yeah, just… We’ll get there when we can. See you then.”

 

    “See you.” 

 

    He hangs up the phone in a daze, turns to the nurse.

 

    “He’ll be in surgery for a couple more hours at the least.” She tells him gently. 

 

    The last thing Jack wants is to leave the hospital while Gil is in surgery, but it’s more important that he be there when Gil gets out, he thinks, and there are things he needs to do. He thanks her and makes his way back to the hotel. Showers and changes into clothes that aren’t covered in blood, moves Gil’s luggage, gets ‘his’ room key. At least he can blame the neatly made bed on housekeeping rather than the fact that they never used it… not that he thinks the Turners are going to be in a state to ask those questions. Not now.

 

    When he gets back to the hospital, he’s directed to a different waiting area, and he settles in, and he waits.

 

-VICTOR-

 

    Dr. Sidney Zweibel is the number two neurosurgeon in the world, a prodigy, and his guest lecture is one of the high points of Victor Ehrlich’s life, somewhere between graduating med school at the top of his class and settling into his residency with people around him who maybe really like him at least mostly, and that time at Rincon when everything was pumping and he’d just been slotted, right in the pocket over and over again, no worries… Well, it’s somewhere up there. 

 

    And then Dr. Craig is naming Victor to assist him and Dr. Zweibel in an emergency surgery, naming him to be learning a very hands-on extra lesson right at Dr. Zweibel’s elbow, and Victor is over the moon, is ready to etch this day in his memory forever as a high point not to be easily matched.

 

    “Patient is Gil Turner, thirty-four.” Craig reads off the clipboard as Victor and Dr. Zweibel are scrubbing in. “We’ll be repairing two gunshot wounds. I’ll be handling the thoracic, Doctor Zweibel is taking point on the shot to the back of the patient’s head. Ehrlich, you’re to follow Doctor Zweibel’s instructions as carefully as if they were my own. More carefully, if you think you can manage that.”

 

    “Oh, I’m always careful following your instructions, Doctor Craig. I mean, I’ll do my best.” Victor nods. 

 

    He puts himself in the mindset as best he can. Lets the cool calm of the ocean waves sweep into his head and wash out all the unnecessary, unhelpful things, the stray thoughts or troubled emotions. Gil Turner, thirty-four, is something for him to fix. A broken object that Victor has the power to help repair, a task he’ll be calm and steady for. He separates the Gil Turner (thirty-four) he’s to operate on out from the idea of the man who has a life and a career or a family or hobbies or dreams, sets the thought of a real live human being in a box for later and focuses on the body alone. That’s all this is. Gil Turner, thirty-four, is a body. Repairing bodies is what Victor does.

 

    Dr. Zweibel strides into the operating theater and Victor hurries after him, with Craig on his heels.

 

    “Are you sure Doctor Ehrlich is the best choice to assist on this?” Dr. Zweibel asks.

 

    “I assure you, despite all outward appearances, Ehrlich is going to be your best bet for a capable assistant.” Dr. Craig says, which buoys him somewhat after the sting of having the world’s number two neurosurgeon question his ability at this stage.

 

    Then Victor sees the patient and understands. It’s not about his ability at all.

 

    It’s about his face.

 

-JACK-

 

    When the Turners arrive, it’s maybe two hours since Jack had called, which means they’d been lucky catching a flight, but Jack still hasn’t heard anything about Gil’s condition. They have this particular waiting room almost entirely to themselves, just the three of them and a lanky man in crooked glasses taking a nap in one of the chairs, rumpled overcoat for a blanket.

 

    “Jack!” Phyllis sweeps over and actually hugs him. “Any news?”

 

    “Um, no, no. No, he’s… I think still in surgery.” He rubs at one eye, shakes his head to try and clear it a little. 

 

    “That’s good news, isn’t it?” Mac says, with a desperate sort of false bravado. “If he’s still in surgery, he’s still… They’re still doing everything they can. So he’s fighting.”

   

    “Right.” Phyllis clutches her overnight bag and shifts to press closer to her husband. He’s dropped his own suitcase at his feet, puts an arm around her and claps a hand on Jack’s shoulder.

 

    “Uh, I’ve got, I’ve got your room key. And you know the hotel.” Jack hands it over. “Housekeeping’s probably been through s it’s… yeah. Whenever you need to get, you know, whenever you want to… Luggage.”

 

    “I’ll go.” Mac leans up and kisses his wife’s cheek. “You stay here in case there’s any news. Jack…”

 

    “Yes, Sir. I’ll, yes.” He nods, offers Phyllis a hand over to the chairs in one quiet corner. “Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea?”

 

    “Tea.” She flashes him a watery smile. “Thank you. Is there… is there anything we need to fill out?”

 

    “I handled the insurance information. I mean, it’s-- you know. We have the same insurance. So. I, uh… I told them about his allergies, but he’s not allergic to anything, you know. Medical. Just the rash he gets from the wrong kind of adhesive bandage, and even that’s not bad, but I let them know, and you know… it’s not like he’ll be eating walnuts in surgery, or… And his blood type.”

 

    “Do they need his social? Is that in his wallet?”

 

    “They have that.” Jack nods. If she wants to believe Gil’s social security card is in his wallet and that Jack doesn’t have Gil’s number memorized, she can. 

 

    “Thank you.” She pats absently at his hand. “We’re just lucky you were here, I can’t imagine if he’d been traveling on his own, or with someone else… I mean anyone else could have called the office but you know him.”

 

    “I’m going to go get you that cup of tea, and I’ll make sure the nurses know you’re here in case they do need anything else from you. And-- I just-- I just-- I’ll be here. Until… I’ll be here. So, whatever you need.”

 

    He breaks away, walks as fast as he can first to the nurse’s station to let the nurse on duty know the Turners have arrived, what Phyllis looks like and where to find her with any news or any questions, and then to the cafeteria, where buying tea gets him change should he need the payphone in the future. He doesn’t imagine he will, he doesn’t know who else he’d call. He and Gil have friends, but those friends aren’t expecting to hear from them any time soon and he hasn’t got the energy to talk to any of them about what’s happened, not yet.

 

-VICTOR-

 

    Gil Turner, thirty-four, has Victor’s face, his exact face. 

 

    If Victor put his glasses on Gil Turner, thirty-four, you wouldn’t even know the difference.

 

    Except Victor is in surgical scrubs and Gil Turner (thirty-four) is the guy on the table. 

 

    And there’s no time for someone else to scrub in in Victor’s place, so it doesn’t matter that operating on a man with his face is weird, he has to get okay with it fast because a man’s life is on the line.

 

    A man who looks exactly like Victor Ehrlich, down to the mole at the side of his chin. 

 

    At least while he’s working on him he’s not looking at his face at all, but he’s still so aware of the fact.

 

    The radio in OR 2 is on the fritz, but Dr. Zweibel sings softly to himself as he works, Marty Robbins and Dolly Parton, in a pleasant kind of voice. Dr. Craig mutters a ‘jeeze louise’ below his breath but it’s better than nothing but tense silence and beeping between orders. At least, Victor thinks. But then, maybe Dr. Zweibel could be any way in surgery and Victor would just be star-struck just to be near him.

 

-JACK-

 

    “I’m just glad.” Phyllis says, startles both Jack and her husband out of the long, quiet contemplation the three had been lost in since Mac’s return to the hospital. “I’m just glad you were here. You-- you take care of Gil, don’t you?”

 

    It’s not The Question, though it rubs up against it a little bit. 

 

    “I do.” Jack nods, as she takes his hand. “I try.”

 

    “Thank you.”

Chapter 2: There Were Times When I Could Have Strangled Her

Notes:

Yes, the chapter title is a line from Girlfriend In A Coma

-JACK-

 

 

    It’s ages before a doctor in surgical scrubs approaches the three of them.

 

    “Mister and Missus Turner?” He greets, and then stops short and stares at Jack. 

 

    They look alike, Jack registers the fact but can’t make himself feel any kind of way about it. The doctor has his nose, his mouth, his eyes… even his mole. Hair’s shorter and straighter, but it’s about the same color. 

 

    “Excuse me… are you the gentleman that came in with Mister Turner? The younger?” He clarifies.

 

    “That’s me.” Jack nods. “Jack Harrison.”

 

    “Well. That makes this… weird. Um, sorry.” He rubs at the back of his neck, adjusts his glasses before turning and deciding to focus on Phyllis. “Sorry, I’m Doctor Zweibel, I was one of the surgical team that operated on your son.”

 

    “Is he okay?”

 

    “He’s in the ICU, and I’m afraid right now you can’t go in, but there’s a window, if you want to be able to see him, and once he’s a little more stable, the staff here will be able to move him, and you’ll be able to sit with him.”

 

    “Can we--” Jack bites his lip, then pushes on. “Can we see him right now? Through the window?”

 

    “This way.” Dr. Zweibel nods. He glances at Jack and looks away quickly each time, but Jack doesn’t take that personally, given the face thing. “If I’d known-- well. Uh, still, still it’s for the best. I mean, better me than Doctor Ehrlich, under the-- Just, at least… Without an explanation, I wouldn’t want…”

 

    He never finishes the thought, about Dr. Ehrlich. He leads them down a couple of turns, to a wide, empty stretch of corridor, with a window onto Gil’s room. There’s equipment crowded in around him, he looks so small even with all his height. He looks so pale, so still. Gil, who’s always shifting around and rolling over in his sleep, just… lying there still, Jack can hardly stand it. 

 

    He presses a hand to the glass, his forehead, stares in at Gil. Everything feels wrong, he hadn’t realized how much he’d grown to feel Gil’s presence over the past year until he couldn’t find him. And now, Gil is lying right there, but Jack can’t feel him. Even asleep, he can always feel Gil there. He must still be heavily anaesthetized…

 

    “Oh, Gil…” He whispers. 

 

    “That one’s his heartbeat?” Phyllis points to one of the machines, the little line of mostly-even peaks and valleys. 

 

    “Yes. He’s pulled through all right but we want to keep a very close eye on him for now. I’m not sure about the team they’ll assign for his regular care, but you’ll mostly be seeing Doctor Ehrlich for the post-op, I’m afraid I have a flight to New Jersey in the morning. I’m only here as a guest lecturer, I was just in the right place at the right time to take point on the second bullet.”

 

    “Second bullet…” Jack’s chest feels tight, his stomach heavy. “How bad?”

 

    “Well, uh, it’s not good. But Mister Turner’s fortunate we got him as fast as we did, and that he was hit exactly where he was… The first bullet just missed doing any serious damage, and the second… well, it’s, uh--”

 

    “His head.” Jack swallows. “The back of his head. That’s… there was so much blood…”

 

    “But the good news is, if Mister Turner--”

 

    “Gil. Mister Turner is his father.” He points to Mac. 

 

    “If Gil does recover consciousness, he should be able to rebuild the neural pathways he needs around what was damaged. I mean I know there’s no such thing as good brain damage…” He says, and Jack’s shoulders jerk, just once. “But if there was, this would be it. Nothing vital has been damaged. Recovery would certainly be long and hard, and there are no guarantees at this stage, but… if he gets out of the woods, then there’s nothing to stop him making that recovery.”

 

    “He-- he’s still Gil in there?”

 

    “Should be, yes. These things are… I don’t want to make promises and then disappear. I’ll be staying in touch with the team here and arranging to fly back soon. In the meantime… Tonight, I’d urge you to get some dinner and some rest, and in the morning, Doctor Ehrlich will update you on Gil’s condition. Ah, word of warning…”

 

    “Yes?” Mac growls.

 

    “Well, hah… the way I seem to look an awful lot like your son’s, uh, partner? Doctor Ehrlich looks like Gil. I mean, it’s uncanny. He looks… exactly like your son.”

 

    Jack gives a non-committal hum, finding it hard to imagine. It’s enough of a coincidence for one of Gil’s surgeons to look like him, there’s no way the other looks like Gil. How could anyone? Dr. Zweibel could probably fool Jack’s parents, for a couple seconds. They’d ask him what he’d done to his hair, or what was with the glasses, he’d say something, and they’d realize he was just a very close lookalike. But… someone looking so much like Gil? Impossible.

 

    “Can you find your way back if I leave you to have some time?” Zweibel asks, and all three of them offer an affirmative. 

 

    “He hardly looks like himself, does he?” Phyllis sniffs. 

 

    She is the sort of person who is at all times exactingly, calculatedly correct. It’s something Jack found a little terrifying at first-- she’d been impossible to read beyond the WASPy veneer, the polite smile or the pointed lack of one, the stiff elegance and poise. The itch at the back of his neck from being around someone who people might describe as ‘old money’. And then once over dinner at the Turner house, he realized the two of them really weren’t so different-- they just had very different definitions of what ‘correct’ was. He played to his as hard as she played to hers… or he used to. And in her own home, with her family, she was still utterly poised and composed in front of company, but he could see a little more of the real person. The one who still bought Gil nice shirts sometimes for no reason beyond her being his mother, the woman who used to dry his tears and kiss his bruises, who didn’t always understand him but never told him he was too old for tears or kisses. The woman who’d wanted him to go to college close to home, who still greets him by reaching up to fix his hair before touching his cheek and giving him a smile so warm it breaks through that veneer.

 

    “Of course he looks like himself.” Mac puts an arm around her. Jack can see the two of them reflected in the glass, their worried frowns like ghosts overlaid with Gil.

 

    “I never did know what to do with Gil.” She admits. 

 

    “You did good.” 

 

    “But I never knew what to do with him. Tried to let him go and have adventures, boys are supposed to be able to go and have their adventures. Wanting to pull him close and wrap him in cotton wool to keep him safe.” 

 

    “Living with Gil’s like that.” Jack reaches out, squeezes her arm. “One minute you’re pushing him to get out of his comfort zone, then he gives you those big eyes and suddenly you’re tucking a blanket around him and asking him if he wants breakfast for dinner… pushing him away for being too clingy, then reeling him in because what else can you do with a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve like that?”

 

    She shifts to take his hand, to squeeze back. “When he was a little boy, he… I had to bring him to the emergency room once, with a fever. He was small and I was inexperienced, panicked over the silliest things… a couple more years of Gil being Gil and I learned that’s just what motherhood is like, and children are… supposed to get a little hurt, and bounce back quickly, it’s part of growing, but he was still so small and he’d never gotten that sick before. Sitting over him, this little boy in a big hospital bed. But it wasn’t like this, even in his sleep, even with medicine to help him sleep, he was always moving around. Making sounds. I sat over him all night, and he was never so still so long.”

 

    “Phyllie, he just came out of surgery. They can’t have people move at all during surgery, he’s probably… you know, he’s still drugged, to keep him from moving around. In the morning he’ll look more like himself.” Mac says, and then he turns a little, catches Jack’s reflection in the window and meets his eyes there. “Why don’t you ride with us back to the hotel? There’s a diner next door, we’ll get something to keep our strength up, get some rest, and be back bright and early?”

 

    “Oh, no--” Phyllis starts, though she quiets at a serious look from her husband.

 

    “We can’t stand in the hallway all night. Gil’s just got out of surgery and they’re keeping a close eye on him tonight, and we’re not doing anything but cluttering the place up. I don’t-- I don’t want to be in the way, if something goes wrong. If every second counts and shoving me out of the way takes even half of one, I-- There’s nothing we can do, I just don’t want to be in the way if they need to take care of him. You know? I don’t want to be in the way. So let’s take Jack, and eat something, and… and maybe we come back in the morning and they have some good news for us? Maybe they move him to a private room where we can actually sit with him?”

 

    “What if something goes wrong and we’re not here?”

 

    “What would we do if we were here? Except get in the way? Come on. You think about what’s practical, now, we’ve seen him and he’s all in one piece but if anything goes wrong… what would we do? Except clutter up the hallway? Get scared over something that turns out to be a routine thing just ‘cause we don’t know any better, too. So… so let’s go, and get some rest, so that when Gil does need us, we’re not dead on our feet?”

 

    “You go ahead. I’ll stay. Grab something down in the cafeteria, spend the night on a chair in the waiting room.” Jack shakes his head. “That way someone’s here, if there’s any change, but… not in the way.”

 

    “Come on, Harrison, you’ve waited up for us enough--”

 

    “He should have been safe.” Jack’s voice breaks. “He was at the coffee machine. This little half-room, there was a wall and a corner, he-- They never would have known he was there, if he hadn’t come running to me. The bullet they took out of his brain, that one was aimed at me. That man was going to shoot me in the face, and Gil… So I’m going to stay. I’m going to stay.”

 

    “You have the number for the hotel?”

 

    “Yeah. I’ll call the room if there’s any-- You two should go, he… he’d get on me if-- Jack, how could you let my mother sit up all night worrying, you know I’d never let your mother spend her night pacing around a hospital instead of going back to a nice hotel room, and… I couldn’t sleep tonight anyway. After the bank, I couldn’t sleep.”

 

    Mac stares him down a moment, then nods. “All right. We’ll take it in shifts.”

 

    “Maybe we should--”

 

    “Honey.” Mac shepherds Phyllis a few steps away, though Jack can still hear him clearly, could probably still hear him clearly from another room given Mac’s idea of sotto voce. “The boy doesn’t want to sleep. He’s had a gun in his face for Christ’s sake, he saw his best friend get shot, he’s not going to sleep tonight. Tomorrow, when we’re here, he can get some rest… when it’s not so fresh.”

 

    Jack doesn’t hear what she says in response, but Mac nods when she does.

 

    “Of course he is, come on. You know that. Honey, you know that. Jack’ll call if anything changes. We’ll take it in shifts.”

 

 

-VICTOR-

 

 

    Victor very nearly falls asleep in the shower, after the third-most harrowing surgery he’s ever performed, coming in after the patient who could have exploded and taken out his hands, and the woman who held him at gunpoint and could have killed him, but not too far behind.

 

    He’s on his way to on call when he spots Dr. Zweibel on the phone, busies himself doing nothing at the nurse’s station just so he won’t look like he’s obviously hanging around in hopes of a quick word. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting a quick word, he did just assist the number two brain guy in surgery, under… really weird circumstances, actually, and he thinks in his position it’s normal to want to, he doesn’t know, say goodbye and thanks for sharing your expertise.

 

    And okay, so yes, he’s aware that the man is attractive. Anyone could notice that. That he has perfect hands, a pretty face, that when he’d changed into scrubs you could tell he had an enormous dick-- which isn’t even his thing, really, but from an aesthetic standpoint he knows what bears appreciating. It’s not like Victor can have what he wants anyway so he might as well look when a man’s worth looking at. If it’s only ever going to be looking, he might as well look. 

 

    “--should heal up fine, but pulling the bullet out of the temporal-- Mm, well… Yeah, put him on, please.” He’s saying, and Victor sneaks a sidelong glance, watches Dr. Zweibel’s demeanor change entirely. “Tommy. Hey… Yeah… Well, uh, you, you know… Mm, still on schedule-- uh-huh, before you know it… Well, save it for me… Tommy, I’m still at the hospital… Yeah, oh, I will if you will… Tommy… No, I will… Yeah… I--” He sighs, deep and wistful. “Save it for me. Love you, too… bye.”

 

    Victor feels as if his world has fundamentally shifted on its axis. Dr. Zweibel, the number two neurosurgeon on the planet, who works with the number one neurosurgeon on the planet, who travels around taking tough cases and lecturing at teaching hospitals to students who aren’t much younger than he is, that man has a man named Tommy that he talks to on the telephone and says ‘love you’ to and grins and ducks his head over, says his name in flirtatiously scandalized tones, and…

 

    And he says it all like he’s not deathly afraid of people knowing. And maybe he isn’t, maybe when you’re number two on the worldwide stage and you were performing brain surgery with number one when most of the people you started med school with were still jockeying to be able to be in the OR to watch a gallbladder come out up close, you get to have a man that you say ‘love you’ to and no one can do anything about it because he’s indispensable.

 

    Victor would do anything to be so indispensable.

 

    Well, and to have a man who actually wanted to hear ‘love you’ from him.

 

    “Doctor Ehrlich!” Dr. Zweibel greets, having hung up the phone. Reaches out to shake Victor’s hand with a combination of nervous energy and genuine goodwill-- at least, it seems that way to Victor, but he’s aware he’s not good at reading these things. “That was, ah, that was some excellent work back there, I’m… That was some excellent work. It must have been difficult.”

 

    “You did the difficult part, I just did what I was told and then closed up after.”

 

    “Well-- I mean, that the patient, uh…”

 

    “Oh, has my face, yeah. That was… Yeah. Weird.”

 

    “I guess you’ll be handling the post-operative care.”

 

    Victor’s jaw drops. He hadn’t thought about that, but of course… Dr. Craig has a full enough patient list on top of everything else he does, of course Victor would be taking this one on. 

 

    “But, ah, don’t worry, I’ll arrange to be back, and I’ve left my contact information for you. So if there are any complications you can call me up at the institute and I can change my schedule if necessary.”

 

    “No, right, I’m sure it’s-- I’m-- Thank you, Sir.”

 

    “Please, all my colleagues call me Sidney. Well, some of my, some of my colleagues, ha, call me New Jersey, but Sidney’s fine.”

 

    “Oh, believe me, I catch a lot of flack around here for being from California.” Victor laughs nervously, riding the high of being called a colleague by one of the world’s foremost neurosurgeons. “I thought you were based out of New Jersey.”

 

    “I am. But not all the fellas are from there.” He shrugs. “You’ll do all right. I’ve seen three guys with, uh, with my face.”

 

    “Really? Wow. Did you ever have to operate on any of them?”

 

    “Well, no. But-- hard part’s over. Probably. The first was… a friend took me to see this lecture, up-and-coming guy in his field he was hot on, and we get there and he comes out and… I mean, wow. Just, dead on the same. Same face as me, height, hair color, everything. Dressed different, but that was it. Second was just a guy I passed on the street I think, and I stopped because I thought it was a mirror and I didn’t see my hat, only the other me kept going. And the third is, uh, the third is the, he came in with our patient.”

 

    “... What?”

 

    “Gil Turner’s partner, he’s got my face.”

 

    “Huh.” Victor says, and for the second time in a row he feels the world upend itself around him. Partner. Partner as in…? Partner as in this guy with Victor’s exact face has a boyfriend, a lover, a longtime companion, whatever you want to call it, and that guy looks like the number two neurosurgeon in the world?

 

    The number two neurosurgeon in the world, who also has a boyfriend-lover-longtime companion-whatever you want to call it, while Victor lives in paralyzing fear of anyone guessing he might be, that he could want, that he’s always been…

 

    He got married to keep people from thinking, and he’d thought they could make it work. Theoretically women have a lot going for them. He certainly doesn’t find them repellent! He’d had genuine feelings for Bobbie, if not all the right ones. It was just as well it didn’t last, maybe he’d have been miserable trying to make it work, but he… 

 

    He wants to be married, he wants to have kids, and you need a girl for that, even if you’d rather not. All that medical school, he can at least say he knows where babies come from.

 

    And no one wants a homo for a surgeon what with the crisis. They’d been ready to push Dr. Caldwell out.

   

    Well, Dr. Caldwell was heterosexual, which just goes to show you anyway, but still. After that, things just feel even worse. No one wants a scandal. Certainly no one would go to bat for Victor, if there was any chance he could reflect badly on St. Eligius. Hell, some people would probably jump at the excuse to get rid of him.

 

 

-JACK-

 

 

    “Wow.”

 

    Jack turns, startled, to see he’s not alone-- there’s a short man, stethoscope around his neck. 

 

    “Sorry?” He frowns.

 

    “Oh-- I just… I heard the guy looked like Victor, just…” He shakes his head, looks at Gil another moment and then turns away, seems to realize Jack is actually here for the man in the hospital bed. “I also heard the number two neurosurgeon in the world did the… So that’s-- that’s good news.”

 

    “Really? He didn’t say.”

 

    “Yeah, never met a humble surgeon before. It’s weird.” He says, before his expression falls into something sympathetic. “Hey… refua shlema. I mean, him, not you. You, too, if you need it.”

 

    “I-- Thanks, no, but-- Gil. His name’s Gil. Do you think-- I mean… Forget it. I just-- Sorry. Sorry, thanks.”

 

    “I’m just an ER doc, they rushed him through so fast all I saw was a blur.” Another shake of the head. “So there’s nothing I can tell you, except that I have to admit the guys who did the surgery are all the best. Even Victor, don’t tell him I said so.”

 

    Jack hums, turning back to the window, to Gil. Still so motionless in his bed, but at least his heartbeat looks steady on the monitor. For all Jack really knows about how a heartbeat should look… 

 

    “So. Who’s Gil?” The doctor nudges Jack. “Tell me about him.”

 

    “He’s a-- he’s a reporter. We were here for a story… for a stupid story. Not an important story, we don’t cover important stories. I wish we did, but we don’t. He doesn’t think he’s too good for what we do, but he is. He could go into an archive room or a library anywhere in the world and come out with the one thing he needs… you could ask him to find anything and he would. He, he’s got a knack… sometimes I wonder if it’s a, a sixth sense thing, with him. He can pull something and not know why he did it and then there’s the littlest piece of information he needed. He’s got no common sense, but he can find anything. And he’s a big kid sometimes, he-- he can’t watch scary movies, and he’s got a sweet tooth, and he-- He’s the most accident-prone person I think I’ve ever met, it’s just his luck, but he-- He is so patient. He is so forgiving. He’s kind, and he-- It should have been me.”

 

    “Hey, survivor’s guilt is-- I mean, not ‘survivor’, he’s-- but--”

 

    “No, I mean… those guns were pointed at me, and then he ran-- it should have been me. Except… if it was me, he’d have to be here, feeling like this, and--” He scrubs a hand over his face. And Gil couldn’t, though there’s no way he can explain that to a stranger.

 

    Jack would trade places with Gil in a heartbeat if he could, except that if he was lying in that bed and there was no guarantee he’d wake up, who would take care of Gil? Jack can take care of himself, little as he feels like doing so now-- Jack can feed himself, do all the little things that need doing, handle things with Gil’s folks, maybe bring the travel typewriter to the hospital and file some crap from the waiting room. But what would Gil even do if Jack wasn’t there to take care of him? Who would know how to cut through his anxieties, and how he takes his coffee? Who would remind him to eat and to put on a jacket? Who’d catch him before he could fall, smooth over his gaffes when he was embarrassed? Who would hold his hand, know that he wants his hand held the way lungs want air? Who would know all the little ways of keeping him, if anything happened to Jack?

 

    There’s a pat to his arm, some murmured sympathy, and he’s alone with Gil again. He stays there until his legs feel weak and his feet ache enough he notices them over the general ache of not having Gil, not being able to touch or to feel him, seeing him so still he hardly seems…

 

    Jack returns to the waiting room-- the man who’d been sleeping there earlier is flipping through a magazine, but he doesn’t seem to be focused on it.

 

    It’s funny, Jack thinks-- if asked, he would say the man looks like Dr. Zweibel, at least some. Similar hair, similar shape to the glasses, a little something about the face. And Dr. Zweibel looks like Jack to an uncanny degree. But Jack doesn’t think the man in the waiting room looks like him. It’s odd. It’s odd that there’s a doctor in the hospital who looks like Gil as well, apparently, which Jack has trouble envisioning. It would be strange to see two people who looked like them and weren’t. Disturbing, to see someone who looked like Gil talk to someone who looked like himself and… and just be two people who aren’t really anyone to each other. 

 

    He leans against the wall and stretches his legs out and closes his eyes, but he can’t find sleep, not real sleep. The image of Gil bleeding out onto the bank carpet yanks him back from the promise of peace every time.

 

 

-VICTOR-

 

 

    Victor had fallen asleep the moment his head hit the pillow in on call, but he hadn’t gotten much of it before being yanked out of it again by the sound of his name.

 

    Not someone paging him, someone in the room-- not to him, about him. Wayne.

 

    “You’re exaggerating.” Chandler says.

 

    “No, I kid you not, I saw the guy. Identical. They could be twins.”

 

    Oh. That. Well… if that’s what people talk about for a couple of days, it’s hardly the worst way Victor could find himself the topic of conversation. 

 

    “I’m just glad I’m back on ER rotation.” Wayne continues. “They’re not assigning me any cases like that one right now. I don’t think I could handle it.”

 

    “He looks that much like Ehrlich?”

 

    “You can go on up and see for yourself, it’s uncanny. You know a couple of the nurses, when they brought the guy in, they thought it was him.”

 

    “What did they say?” Victor asks, rolling over.

 

    “Holy Moses!” Wayne jumps about a foot in the air. “How long have you been eavesdropping, anyway?”

 

    “Well I didn’t ask you to wake me up, after five hours in the OR. That’s after rounds and an hour and a half out of a lecture.”

 

    “You’re barely into your shift.” He scoffs.

 

    “Five hours in the OR. You don’t know what it’s like. And on a guy with my face, I saw his brain. What did they say, when they thought it was me?”

 

    “You don’t wanna know.”

 

    Victor flops back onto the bunk with a groan. “Figures.”

 

    “I kid, I kid, one of them was really shaken up about it. But you don’t wanna know what Lucy said.”

 

    “I’m going back to sleep, Fiscus.”

 

 

-JACK-

 

 

    After some fitful dozing, interspersed with peering over at the nurse’s station silently willing someone to bring him any kind of news, Jack goes down to the cafeteria, finds something he thinks he can stomach. He needs to eat, keep his strength up, but the thought of most things just makes him feel sickish.

 

    Despite his lack of interest in food, he eats fast-- the idea of something happening when he’s not there drives him. He returns to the nurse’s station once he’s done, attracting the attention of one of the nurses on duty.

 

    “Excuse me, has there been any change in Gil Turner?”

 

    “Who’s asking?”

 

    “I brought him in.”

 

    “I’m sorry, but I can’t release that information to non-family. Are you family?”

 

    His jaw clenches, and he holds his tongue. Yes, he wants to tell her, yes, I’m his family, I live with him and I cook his meals and I wash his clothes, when I wash the dishes he dries them, I know what his nightmares are about and I know how to make him forget them, and I love him. 

 

    “His parents flew in from New York, I promised them I’d call the hotel if there was any change, so they could get some rest. I just want to know if I need to call them tonight or not.”

 

    She picks up a chart, flips through it and casts a lazy eye over the contents.

 

    “Well?”

 

    “Well what?”

 

    “Well, do I need to call the Turners about Gil or not?”

 

    “I’m sorry, but I can’t release that information to non-family.” She says, making it very clear that she’s not sorry in the slightest.

 

    “Listen, the Turners trusted me to stay behind tonight--”

 

    “Listen, if you’re not family, I don’t have to tell you anything. I’m supposed to just believe that his family even spoke to you?”

 

    “Yes, actually, because I was here with them and I spoke to them and I was with them when the surgeon spoke to us and I brought him in--”

 

    “Sir, if you raise your voice with me, I will have you removed.”

 

    “You can’t do that.” He rocks back on his heels, careful to keep his voice down. “You-- you can’t kick me out of the hospital, that’s--”

 

    “Then don’t raise your voice with me. And don’t ask me for things. You? You’re not family. You’re nobody. So sit down, shut up, and when Mr. Turner’s family comes in, you can ask them if they’ll let you know how he’s doing.”

 

    “I told them I would call them if there was any change--”

 

    “Well, you shouldn’t have done that, then.”

 

    “Please--”

 

    “Sir, let me make this perfectly clear. I will not be giving you any information. I don’t like you--”

 

    “I’m picking up on that, believe it or not.”

 

    “Nurse Papandrao!” A voice rings out from up the corridor, reprimanding, and Jack turns to see a man in a white coat… and a hawaiian shirt. 

 

    “What do you want, Ehrlich?” She leans against the counter, rolls her eyes at him.

 

    “I’d like to know if there’s been any change in my patient, if that’s not too much to ask.”

 

    “No. No change.”

 

    “Thank you.” He sighs. Glances over at Jack a couple of times, then past him towards the waiting area, then back to him. “You brought Mister Turner in?”

 

    “Yes.” He nods. This is Ehrlich? The one who’s supposed to look just like Gil? He’s as tall as Gil is… blond, wears his hair just a little different. Built… not so different, sure. But how anyone could say that means they look alike is beyond Jack. Ehrlich’s fine, he guesses. He’s no Gil. “Is he-- is he stable?”

 

    “Stable enough, we’re keeping a close eye on him anyway.”

 

    “Brilliant.” Nurse Papandrao snorts. “Just what I need, the pig playing nice with the homos.”

 

    “Okay, well, well I mean, should I ask Nurse Rosenthal if that’s how we talk about patients?”

 

    “This guy’s not a patient.”

 

    “I don’t-- I don’t care.” Ehrlich’s shoulders are up around his ears and he waves a hand, too agitated to be effectively dismissive. “I want my patient to be treated like anybody else, please, and if I have to go over your head, well, it won’t be very difficult. Do you know who’s been assigned to handle Turner’s long-term care and recovery? Does he have an internist?”

 

    “I haven’t heard anything.”

 

    “Great. Really don’t know what I expected!”

 

    “Take a hike, Ehrlich.”

 

    He frowns, then motions for Jack to return to the waiting area, follows him in. “I apologize for-- all of that. Are you, um… are you and Mister Turner-- That is to say, how are you related to-- or, what is your-- To Mister Turner?”

 

    “Gil. We work for his father.” He answers lamely. “And-- we live together. It’s just-- We travel for work, and-- And so I know his parents, I know his father. I mean, I called them, and-- I promised I’d call them if there was any change. They flew in today and it’s been a very difficult afternoon.”

 

    “All right, well… uh, I mean, you came in with him, and you know the family, I don’t see how it hurts anything just to tell you there hasn’t been any change. I mean if you weren’t with the family you wouldn’t know what it’s not a change from.”

 

    “Thank you.”

 

    “Um, and-- I guess once I figure out who else is assigned to take care of him-- I mean, I’m just the surgeon. Assisting. The real bedside manner stuff is gonna be someone else. If you wanted to file a complaint--”

 

    “I don’t.” Jack says quickly. He knows how it would go. “I think maybe it’s better if there’s no reason anyone has to hear that you helped me out, and if I go after her, she could get you in a lot of trouble for talking to me, without Gil’s parents around.”

 

    “Well… she could get me in a little.” Ehrlich shrugs. “But it’s fine. And I guess… well, you’ll probably find out with them, whatever… whatever the morning is like. But, just so you know, we-- I mean anything could happen, but… we’re not expecting him to regain consciousness anytime soon. So you’re… prepared.”

 

    “Yours is nicer than mine.” The other man in the waiting room says, as Ehrlich shuffles off. 

 

    “Hm?”

 

    “They don’t tell me anything. We’ve lived together about sixteen years, he goes out drinking with the guys from work and falls off a pedestrian bridge while everyone’s joking around, if he hadn’t been plastered he’d be dead instead of comatose, and I-- Sixteen years, I’m the one who takes care of him when he’s sick, sixteen years of splitting housework, splitting desserts, his ‘family’ shows up and I can’t even see him. Closest I got was an old friend letting me know how he looked when they were allowed in during visiting hours. Someone he hasn’t seen in five years, they can go in. I sit around the waiting room and hope today’s the day someone tells me anything.”

 

    “Gil and I--” Jack starts, the familiar denial halfway to his lips. He stops himself, takes a breath. “We’ve been living together since college. We… I don’t know what to do without him. I’ve been taking care of him for fourteen years. He’s… he’s my life.”

 

    It feels good to say it. He’s never said it. It would feel better under other circumstances, but just being able to say it like this… Sure, he’s been into the gay bookstore, but it’s not like he announced who he and Gil were to each other.

 

    “His family likes you?”

 

    “They do, mostly. They think I’m his roommate.”

 

    “The Marshalls used to, I think. I mean, before they saw the nude photographs, they… they cooled on me after that. But it’s not like I expected my mother-in-law to go into the master bathroom, or I wouldn’t have left my dick up on the wall.”

 

    “I’m pretty sure Gil’s father could walk in on us together and still have no idea.” Jack nods. Between not thinking anything of Gil bringing him home for the odd Sunday dinner, and the number of times he’s caught them in mildly compromising positions around the office, if he was going to suspect, he’d have suspected a long time ago.

 

    Instead of staking out his own corner, Jack sits with his new comrade in arms. It’s better than waiting out the night alone.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Nightmares and Dreamscapes