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Tom feels awful. It takes a long time, and a lot of effort to get his eyes open. Something is beeping to his left, which is weird because that's not where he keeps his phone, so perhaps he's fallen asleep and dropped it in the bed somewhere? He tries to grope for it, but he can't move his arms. Before long, he has to give up. He is so tired.
It isn't his phone alarm, he realises belatedly. It's a slow, steady beep, like groceries through a checkout, maybe. Or a heart monitor. He stirs, his eyes rolling back when he tries to open them. The room seems oddly bright; the light sears the thin place between lids. He shakes his head, trying to wake himself up, or tries. It doesn't move far, maybe an inch either way. He isn't in his own bed, he thinks blearily. The sheets are too thin and rough, the mattress is the same.
The noise persists; he feels fucking wretched. Weak and exhausted. He forces his eyes open.
It's a hospital room. The noise is a heart monitor. Tom doesn't have to cast his mind back, because the full memory of it just drops on him, like someone has just let it go from a great height. He is suddenly wide-awake and paralysed with horror, glued flat on his back in a narrow hospital bed. His heart monitor kicks up, distressed. He notices the stickies on his chest, the wires. His arms have been laid neatly by his side. There are matching bandages on his forearms, and wires coming out of his left hand. There is one of those big, grey clip things on his left index finger.
The feeling is crushing him, crushing him; squeezing the air out of him. His chest hurts. He makes a couple of choked noises, a wash of cold sweat breaking out over him. The heart monitor is going wild; he thinks any moment, it's going to give out. There is something stuck in his throat, he thinks. Was he intubated? Does he have a tube in his throat? It feels locked and hard, like there is something jammed into it.
He looks wildly around the room, because it's all he can do. He doesn't have the breath to speak, or the energy to move. It's like, if he can see an escape, maybe things will be okay? The sky outside the window is dark; it's lit only by the bare, brilliant white flourescents. Everything in the room is clean and white and sterile. There is a picture on the wall, a faded print of a vase of flowers; inoffensive and bland. He sweats and shakes and waits for death.
Nobody can maintain that level of panic forever. The longer he lies there, the more it ebbs away, leaving him limp and overwrought. He is still anxious, but at least his pulse has come down to a steady throb.
He can hear the noise of the hospital; voices and footsteps, dimly through the door. He lies there. He ought to press the button for the nurse, but he doesn't have the strength to search for it, even if he wanted to talk to anyone at all. As the terror goes, all that's in its wake is resignation. He did not kill himself. He is not dead. He will be going to prison. He will be going through a messy, very public divorce. And everyone on this shitty planet will be laughing at him.
Well, maybe not everyone. Admittedly, there are people who have probably never heard of him, or the Roys. But everyone who matters.
He has no idea what time it is. There is always noise of some kind from beyond the door, and the sky remains dark outside the window. He doesn't know where his phone is, even if he could move his arms to reach for it. He can move his fingers, stiffly, but he cannot feel them at all. They must have him on some powerful painkillers.
Eventually, the door opens. It admits a thin girl in a brown uniform and a cap, holding a black trash bag between her gloved hands. Parked outside Tom's hospital room, there is a cart loaded with mops and wipes and sprays. She checks the bin, but finding nothing, she turns around to leave. She jumps when she sees Tom watching her.
"Oh!" She says, her hand leaping to her chest. "I'm so sorry, sir, I didn't realise you were awake."
Tom says nothing. He has nothing to say. What is there to say? 'Yes, I am awake'? She can see that perfectly well herself. She stands there, smiling expectantly, but when Tom does nothing, it starts to falter. "Sir?" She asks, "are you okay?"
No, Tom thinks, obviously I'm fucking not, or I wouldn't be in hospital.
"Do you want me to get someone?" She asks, managing to feign concern. Tom closes his eyes. He doesn't want to speak to anyone ever again.
After a while, she leaves. She says, "okay, have a good night, sir," and she goes out, closing the door behind her. But she must tell someone, because after ten or fifteen minutes, the door opens again and a nurse comes in. "Hi there," she says, a big, comforting smile on her big, comforting face. She's short and round, even her hair is round, in loose, controlled grey curls around her head. She must be approaching sixty, he thinks. Retirement age.
"I guess you're feeling pretty groggy," she continues, checking his monitors assiduously, "and that's really normal for what you've been through. A doctor will come by to talk to you tomorrow, but until then, I want you to just lie there and rest, you hear me?"
As if he had a choice.
"You want anything to eat or drink?" The nurse asks blithely. "You want to sit up?"
Tom wants to go back to sleep. Almost more than anything. He closes his eyes. He almost forgets the nurse is there, until she touches his forehead with the back of her hand, a gesture so motherly it makes his throat tighten, and he's suddenly fighting back tears.
"You don't feel like you're running a fever," the nurse says thoughtfully, "but are you feeling okay, physically? Not nauseous, dizzy, headaches, nothing like that?"
Tom shakes his head tightly, afraid to move too much in case he jiggles a sob loose. "Just tired?" She asks sympathetically. He jerks his chin. "Okay," she says, "you just rest. You put yourself through a lot." And she sneaks out and closes the door as if he's already asleep again.
*
The doctor does come by in the morning. She's sharp and severe-looking, a pointy, beaky nose, fussy little glasses, hair pulled back. She looks like she'd give him a sound beating for something as frivolous as slitting his own wrists. "Good morning, Mr Wambsgans," she says gently. She has a lovely voice; deeper than he would have expected from such a skinny woman, smooth and solemn, and Tom finds himself wanting to cry again. He closes his eyes.
"I understand you must be very tired," she continues patiently, "but please, try to stay awake for the time being." Where is her accent from? Some European place. Italy, maybe. Greece.
She shines her little penlight into his eyes and makes notes, and then she asks him questions. "You seem to be okay physically," she tells him gravely, "although you lost a lot of blood. Two transfusions we have given you, Mr Wambsgans."
Tom Tom wishes he could tell her without speaking. He hates his stupid fucking surname. He hates his stupid fucking self, but at least 'Tom' is only one syllable, and gets itself out of the way quickly.
Her fussy glasses are on delicate gold chains around her neck, with miniscule pearls every so often, like Rosary beads. She takes them off with one thin hand and lets them fall on to her flat chest. "But I am very worried about your mental state, for obvious reasons. I am going to arrange to have someone from psychiatrics come down to speak with you, assess your situation, see how we can help."
She folds her arms over her metal clipboard and clips her pen back into her breast pocket. "Is there anything I can do for you, Mr Wambsgans?" She asks seriously. Tom shakes his head. He hears her sigh. "Very well," she says eventually, "I hope we can get you well again. I will be back when you are a little more recovered to talk about the state of your forearms. Until then, please continue to get some rest."
Instead of leaving immediately, she hovers by his bedside, as though she is hoping he will thank her. I never asked for your fucking transfusions, Tom thinks savagely, you should've given them to someone else instead of wasting them on me.
After a while, he hears her footsteps, and then the door. He is alone for the rest of the day.
*
The psychiatrist doesn't come until the following afternoon. Tom knows it's afternoon, because he has been watching the sun travel all the way across the room since dawn that morning. That, and an orderly came by with the lunch he didn't choose and hasn't eaten. It's still on the table, and the smell is making him feel sick. He has pushed it as far away as he possibly can, but he feels so weak that his arms tremble when he lifts them. The heavy-duty painkillers have worn off, and his wrists are throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Maybe if he asked they would give him morphine, but he doesn't want to ask anyone anything.
Besides, he kind of likes the pain. It's something to focus on, if nothing else.
The psychiatrist is a young man, younger than Tom, which immediately makes Tom's lip curl. What the fuck do you know, little boy, he thinks angrily, when your hair's still wet from the fucking womb? Gonna tell me what it was like sliding out of your mom's vag?
"Hi," the child-doctor says.
Hey, Doogie, Tom thinks sardonically. He closes his eyes in disgust.
"Is it okay if I call you Tom?"
Tom listens to his wrists burning. Throb, throb, throb. "Okay, then," the Boy says patiently. "Tom it is. Tom, obviously you've been having a really tough time lately, and we want you to be able to cope when you leave the hospital. Can I ask what events led up to you attempting suicide?"
You can ask, Tom's inner voice sounds like it's singing and laughing and stabbing at the same time. It's light and it's airy and it's fucking vindictive and horrible, the worst parts of him are laughing at this kid whose only crime is trying to do his job-- you can ask anything you want, and then you can suck my dick.
"It's okay, Tom, just take your time," the Boy continues obliviously. "What was going through your mind right at that moment? Why did everything seem so hopeless that you would believe that suicide was your only option?"
Tom can't fall asleep again, he's too wide awake, and he can't answer this boy because he never wants to hear his own stupid fucking voice ever again, so he just lies there with his eyes shut, thinking the most terrible, obscene shit he can come up with. He's sure his face is turning red, and bits of him keep twitching with absolute blinding fury, but he will not engage. He will not engage. He does not want to be made better. He does not want to talk to this boy. There is no lie, no platitude, nothing in the world this boy can say or do to help him, even if he wanted to be helped. And nobody can force him to speak.
It feels like it takes hours, but Tom lies there, perfectly still, and performs the psychiatric equivalent of 'no comment'. Eventually, the boy has to leave.
Other doctors come to talk to him, sometimes. Nurses, and so on. The female doctor from that first morning comes back, Dr Pappas, who takes him for x-rays and reaction tests to make sure he hasn't damaged any tendons by slicing into his wrists. He has, as it turns out, caused some damage. So after that, plastic surgeons come to talk to him.
He does not speak. They take out his catheter so he has to get out of bed to use the bathroom. Well, that's fine, it's not far away. Sometimes he eats, if he feels like it, but the smell of food mixed with the smell of hospital turns his stomach, more often than not.
They begin to tell him, if you will not eat, we will be forced to put a feeding tube into your stomach. If you will not talk, we will be forced to have you committed. To Tom, it feels more like, well, who's forcing you? Who's forcing you, he thinks angrily, why are you fucking bothering me with this, when all I want is to be left in peace?
*
One day he wakes up and Greg is there. Tom is curled on his side, and Greg, the stringy fuck, is barely fitting into the chair at his bedside, right in his eyeline. He's sort of slumped, and he's clearly here from work, because he's wearing one of the suits Tom bought him, but his tie has been yanked loose, and his hair isn't quite as gelled back as it ought to be. His pale blue shirt sleeves are rolled up over his elbows, and his jacket is over the back of the chair. Careless, Tom thinks, sloppy. He always has been, the useless little peasant.
He must have moved, or perhaps Greg merely sensed eyes on him, because he glances up from his phone and meets Tom's eyes. Tom flinches. "Tom!" Greg yelps, like the idiot he is. "Hi! You're awake! How are you, like, feeling, or whatever?"
Tom stares at him. Nothing annoys him more than being spoken to as soon as he wakes up. Greg knows this.
"Aw, sorry," Greg settles down into his chair again, "you just woke up. I know you hate that shit."
And he goes back to his phone without another word. Tom watches him, his pale, gormless face lit up with blue light, completely erasing his chin. It catches on his heavy, broad cupid's bow, though, because his stupid mouth is hanging open, slightly. Sometimes, Tom thinks that if Greg's mouth were on a girl, it would be the prettiest mouth he has ever seen. His eyelashes are quite long, and he's looking down, so they look longer still, their fringe uplit by the phone screen. Tom likes Greg's stupid face, despite all of its shortcomings. It's an open, honest, innocent face.
He's so painfully young, Tom thinks bleakly. He's really still got his whole life ahead of him. It really goes by in a blink. Tom had been tall and skinny, once. It's not to say he's fat now, but he used to be as willowy as Greg, with his watercolour eyes huge and startling in his face. People used to take second looks at Tom in astonishment. And maybe, if he were still Greg's age, maybe he could see a way out of this, in the future. Maybe he would think, yeah, okay, a few years in a minimum security, maybe just a few months, with good behaviour. But when I get out, I'll still be young and vital and active, and people will still look at me and then double take, sometimes.
He remembers distinctly, because it was the first time someone other than a close family member had ever said anything that hurt him, right down to the quick, like striking at the centre of a tree; he remembers his first long-term girlfriend saying to him, as they hovered on the cusp of break up, Tom, stop staring at me with those fucking pathetic eyes, I fucking hate the way you look at me.
Greg has pathetic eyes. Sometimes he looks at Tom, and Tom just wants to gather him up and rush him out of the whole horrible business at Waystar, which really pisses him off, actually, because why the fuck should Greg, of all people, have someone do that for him? Certainly if Tom had had someone who had babied him like that, he would still be as soft and pathetic as Greg is now. Even though Tom knows he is soft and pathetic, he has a shell like a fucking bomb shelter. Sometimes he can forget that he's cowering inside himself, it's so good. No, it's better to let Greg get a few corners knocked off him. Teach him to be tough.
"You're staring at me, dude," Greg says, without looking away from his phone. Tom does some panicky deliberation; is it better to pretend he wasn't staring? Better to shut his eyes? Turn his back on Greg completely? And then Greg flicks the lock button on his phone, and smiles awkwardly at Tom while he shoves it into his pocket. "Are you ready to be talked to?" He asks.
Tom's lip curls angrily, and his annoyance only deepens when Greg's awkward smile turns into a grin. "Whoa, guess not." He says amiably. He tilts his head back and looks up at the horrible suspended ceiling tiles. "This place is kind of a dump," he remarks, as though commenting on the weather, "I'm surprised you're in here. I tried like, every other fancy hospital. I guess they shoved you in here because nobody would expect it."
He looked down at Tom again, unsmiling. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," he says shamefacedly. He looks away and scratches at the back of his neck. "I swear, Tom, I did, like, try. But first you just didn't turn up to work, so I thought okay, well, he's going through some stuff, but then after like, three days, I was kind of like, okay, well, now I'm getting a bit worried. But Shiv wouldn't answer my calls, and it just seemed like nobody knew where you were. So all of a sudden I'm shitting myself thinking, oh, Greg, he's on the run, you're the scapegoat buddy--" He broke off. "Sorry. I didn't mean to make it all about me.
"Anyway, so I couldn't get hold of Shiv, and Kendall just told me to fuck off, and who am I meant to ask, Logan? I mean, I'm your assistant, so I should've known, but I was just telling everyone you were like, on a yoga retreat or some shit. Eventually I realised I was an idiot and I just went over to your house, and the maid told me point blank."
God, how had they managed to keep this quiet? Shiv Roy's husband, about to be arrested, chose suicide instead of going to prison with dignity? Tom supposed Greg was right about being where nobody would expect him to be. But what about when the ambulance had come to the apartment? Or had there even been an ambulance? Tom didn't remember anything at all after realising he was starting to feel dizzy. It ought to have been a media shitstorm. But it wasn't. And Shiv ought to have been here, playing up the grieving almost-widow for sympathy, but she wasn't. So just what the fuck was going on now? What decisions had been made about his life without him during his absence from it?
Now, Greg looks at Tom, and now, his pathetic eyes were full of pity. "So I guess you're, um, feeling pretty bad," Greg, king of the stupid motherfucking understatement, says seriously to him. At his hospital bed. Where he is recovering from attempted suicide. It's almost laughable. Tom almost wants to laugh. This baby-faced man-child asked him to take the fall and go to prison for him, and Tom agreed. Now he sits at Tom's bedside and says, 'I guess you're, um, feeling pretty bad'?
"I didn't know what to bring," Greg adds, "I thought you'd already have flowers, and even if you didn't, it's like, what would you do with them? But I brought some because I couldn't think of anything else. I did go to a florist, though, so I could get you the ones you like. I remembered from the wedding." He shows Tom the bouquet he's brought, and they are, they really are, Tom's favourite flowers. He doesn't think even Shiv would remember his favourite flowers, or that she'd even believe he had any. Would anyone? And he hasn't commented on the fact that the only other flowers in the room are the ones in the drab picture on the wall.
"Grapes, too," Greg finishes proudly, as if he hasn't done something simultaneously deeply touching and cartoonishly naive. He lifts them out of the bag and jiggles them a bit before he puts them on Tom's little hospital table, beside the bottle of water and the meal he hasn't touched. "Hey, you're not eating?" He asks, nudging the cover on the plate nosily. "It looks okay, man. Maybe I can get them to heat it up for you again?"
Tom stares at him, hard. Greg flops limply back into his chair, his mouth twisting. Just go, Tom thinks bitterly. Just go. He closes his eyes so that Greg can pretend to believe he's asleep, and sneak away guilt-free.
He jumps, actually physically jumps when Greg's large, cold hand suddenly slides into his own. He's curled up on his side, and his hands are tucked almost under his chin, half-hidden under the blankets, so it wasn't an obvious gesture for Greg to make. When he opens his eyes, he sees Greg leaning over in an uncomfortable-looking position, but with such an earnest expression, even Tom cannot bring himself to kill it by jerking his hands away. Instead, he shuts his eyes again, tight, so that he doesn't have to watch that earnestness falter into resignation and disappointment when he doesn't respond. So he doesn't have to watch Greg take his hand back and say, 'okay, great, see you when you get out of prison, I guess'.
It has nothing at all to do with wanting to hold Greg's hand more than he's ever wanted anything in his life, possibly.
Greg squeezes his hand, and Tom expects him to let go. But he doesn't. He doesn't and doesn't and doesn't, until Tom thinks that maybe sixteen hours have passed, and Greg has been holding his hand this whole time. He opens his eyes, just enough, and sees Greg, still looking like he's in an uncomfortable position, and he's scrolling through his phone again, but he hasn't let go. His hand is just holding Tom's, loosely, growing warmer all the time it's under Tom's blankets.
"Guess you're not feeling like talking," Greg murmurs, without looking up. "Uh. I can't help but feel like this is probably my fault. And I shouldn't, I shouldn't have asked you to go to prison for me."
Which is true, but Tom can't help but notice that Greg does not follow this up with, 'I will come clean about it and take the fall with you'. "That was really shitty," Greg continues, obliviously. "Um. But Tom, I had, like, no idea things were this bad."
His thumb strokes back and forth over Tom's knuckles. "I genuinely don't know what I would do without you, Tom," Greg tells him seriously. He's looking a bit too intently at his phone, and he hasn't scrolled it in all the time he's been talking. Tom squeezes back, just a little, because he gets it. He does get it, even though he hates it; he knows if he had a fucking old man dangling on a rope, he would do the exact same thing.
Greg suddenly grips his hand like he's afraid Tom is going to be the one to let go, and although he locks his phone, he still doesn't look at Tom. He takes long, slow breaths with his eyes almost closed; looking down at the shape Tom's knees make under the hospital sheets.
Tom suddenly recalls Greg on the yacht, his long, thin body, the way he drank that champagne and said, 'it's not my favourite', like he ever had a favourite champagne. Looking at him, at his profile, and his small nose, his long eyelashes, cast down to his glass. His pale chest, with barely a hair on it. God, he's so young.
Who would Tom be, if he could go back to being Greg's age? Who would he be if he were still in his early thirties and could still see the little person cowering inside him; see that person and ache for him instead of hating him and beating him down every second--every second that fucking person keeps leaping up his throat and trying to get out, who would he have been if he'd been even a little kind to that person, at Greg's age?
Even if Tom wanted Greg like that, which he doesn't, he just wants--wants Greg to--he wants Greg--
"My hand is going numb in this position," Greg mutters, and Tom loosens his fingers. Whatever he wants Greg to do, Greg is about to--
Greg slides off his chair, without letting go. He slides off his chair, and kneels beside Tom's bed. Tom stares at him in astonishment. "I guess this is going to be pretty uncomfortable, too," he says, but he doesn't sound mad about it. In fact, he gives Tom a small, nervous smile. He pushes their hands back, gently, until, clasped together, they touch Tom's chest, where his heart is. "Still beating," Greg says softly, and withdraws them again, to a safer distance.
Tears are suddenly cascading over the bridge of Tom's nose and into the pillow under his head, and Greg makes a distressed noise, lines drawing themselves across his smooth face when he frowns. He gropes with his free hand for his jacket, over the back of the chair, and, kneeling on the floor of Tom's hospital room, in designer pants, he dabs gently at Tom's face with his expensive silk pocket square, absolutely ruining it. "Oh," he keeps saying, quiet and wet, "oh, oh, oh."
He puts his head on the pillow, facing Tom, and carefully dabs each tear. He does it with focus and concern. Tom doesn't look away, though Greg's eyes flicker over his face constantly. Tom looks and looks, two pathetic-eyed men together. He interlocks their fingers and pulls Greg's hand back towards his chest, cradling it close to his body, as if it is a comfort rag he will be allowed to keep. "It's gonna be okay, Tom," Greg tells him.
It probably isn't. Tom's nails dig into Greg's skin. It probably isn't going to be okay at all, but maybe if he never lets go of Greg's hand, he won't be fucking flung off the earth to spiral into the endless abyss of space. It's weird, one of the many weird things he says and Shiv looks at him like he's crazy, but sometimes he feels like he's just going to float away, be blown like a dandelion clock, a will o' the wisp. Sometimes he wishes someone would just lie on top of him to anchor him to the ground, and Greg might have done it, once upon a time, if he'd asked.
He shoves the points of Greg's knuckles hard into his own chest, hard enough that he can properly feel it. So much seems to just stay on his skin, like he never feels warm all the way through, though he knows the air around him is warm. Emotions, too, they just don't get all the way down. It makes everything feel so unreal. Cutting his wrists, now that had been real.
But so is this. So is this.
The overwhelming sense of terror seeps back in, and for some reason, it kind of feels like a relief, before it becomes a problem. Tom shakes helplessly, he just--can't--catch--his--breath--! The tears have clogged his throat and he feels there's absolutely no way out, he's going to die right here, right now, and yeah, that's kind of what he wanted, but not like this--
"Fuck, fuck, Tom, what do I do? Should I call a nurse?"
Greg is truly shit in a crisis. He rockets up from the floor, looking around wildly as if a nurse is about to burst out from a cupboard or something. Tom clings desperately to his hand, so hard that he's hurting himself, and Greg starts yelling, like an idiot, "help! Help! Can I get some help in here?!" He shovels Tom upright as much as he can with one free hand and one kind of club he shoves harder into the centre of Tom's chest for balance, leaning him forward to make it easier for him to breathe. His broad palm lands square on Tom's back, the most anyone has touched him in about six months.
Nobody comes. The seconds tick by, and Tom is pulling in harsh, congested-sounding breaths, holding Greg's hand to his chest. Greg gives up shouting and just drops to Tom's side again, his eyes huge with panic as he says, "it's okay, Tom, it's okay, just try to breathe, try to breathe--"
Which does not particularly help at all.
Then Greg puts his free hand on Tom's cheek, holds his head up and looks into Tom's eyes with determination. "You're going to be okay," he tells Tom fiercely. His hand is so big it takes up the whole side of Tom's face. His thumb is right below Tom's eye, his fingers are behind Tom's ear.
Tom clutches Greg's hand and wails.
He never usually makes a noise when he cries. Any time he accidentally lets slip and cries in public, someone always inevitably uses it against him. He stifles his stupid voice again, curling tightly in on himself, shaking and shaking, he feels so fucking cold.
The thing is, Greg is the worst. He's just like the rest of his shitty family, from whom Tom can see no escape except death. But he's kicking off his shiny leather shoes and climbing into Tom's hospital bed (deepy unhygienic), and he draws Tom closer with one arm while his hand is still clutched to Tom's chest. Tom hates him, just as he hates Shiv and the rest of the family, his life, and himself. He thumps a fist into Greg's shoulder, and then he clings to Greg's collar and screams.
This is how it feels to be held by someone bigger than you. This is what it's like to be held by a man. Tom feels like he's been wondering about it his whole life.
Greg will absolutely let him go to prison. But perhaps Greg is also the only person on the Goddamned planet who will hold him while he cries, talk to him about prison when he's freaking out, touch him like he's a real person, and Tom will do anything, anything at all for that. That's all he ever wanted in the first place, when he thinks about it.
How fucking pathetic.