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“Oh good, you’re all here,” said Buck. “Boy, do I have a story for you!”
Hen was excited—this was the best possible way to start her shift. Even though it’d been a few weeks since she’d gotten back from Texas, some days it still felt like the exhaustion from the wildfires was still seeping into her bones. But if she needed something to wake her up, then caffeine and high-energy Buck would definitely do the trick.
She’d just climbed the stairs with Eddie in tow to find Buck in the kitchen, pouring them all mugs of coffee. At the sight of him, she remembered what Chimney had said the day before about keeping secrets, and . . . she wasn’t proud of it, but she was kind of hoping some juicy family drama was about to unfold.
It was just that Karen always had better coworker gossip than she did. They all knew way too much about each other.
Hen poured cream into her coffee—Buck had, predictably, fixed Eddie’s coffee to his exact liking, and left Hen to prepare her own—and raised her eyebrows. “More Buckley family drama?”
“You’re not gonna believe this update,” said Buck, nearly bouncing with it. “You might want to sit down for this one.”
Hen followed Bobby over to the table, exchanging a confused glance with Eddie. She expected that he’d already know whatever Buck’s news was, but it looked like he assumed Chimney had updated her. Interesting—it must be something really good if they saved the gossip to tell in person.
They took a seat and Buck leaned in front of the balcony like he was holding court. Hen couldn’t wait to report back to Karen—she could pick up a bottle of wine on the way home and they could order Chinese food and be grateful that at least none of their familial drama included emotionally repressed WASPs.
“So,” Buck started off, waiting until all eyes were on him. “At dinner the other night, my parents brought out their hundredth present for Maddie—apparently, they made her a baby box when she was born, full of all these old keepsakes. Sweet, right?”
She, Eddie, and Bobby all nodded hesitantly, because it was the kind of question that felt a little like walking into a trap.
“Cut to me—a grown adult—yelling at them for never making one for me,” Buck went on, laughing. “Like, full-on yelling,” he rolled eyes at himself, “as if it matters if they still have my old baby shoes.”
“Well—” Eddie started, but Buck interrupted.
“Hang tight, I haven’t gotten to the good part yet,” he said. “Okay, so, I threw my hissy fit and stormed out. Then, yesterday I go to Maddie’s to apologize, and we’re looking through her baby box, and I see this picture—”
Here it comes: the secret, Hen thought. But there was less glee in it; Buck’s voice was starting to sound a little jagged.
“It’s a kid on a bike, and I thought it was me, right? But on the back, it’s dated three years before I was born.” He waited a beat, like he expected them to start guessing. “Turns out, I had a secret dead older brother!”
Hen’s mouth dropped open.
“I know, right,” said Buck, tone nearly manic. “That was my expression, too. Yeah, turns out Daniel was eight years older than me, and he died of cancer when I was two. And my entire family just decided to never mention it. And why, you might ask?” Buck went on, with the air of a magician about to pull off his final trick. “Possibly because they had me, in the middle of all that, so I could be a genetic donor!”
He met their astonished faces with an exaggerated bow. “It didn’t work, obviously,” he said, gesturing to the empty space around him, as though his dead brother would otherwise be in the room with them.
“So, now I know why my parents were the way they were—I mean, I was basically a latchkey kid, unless I was injured,” he gave a sardonic laugh. “God, I was such a little shit. You have no idea the kinds of stunts I would pull—I was always crashing my skateboard, falling out of trees, trying to jump off the roof . . . they probably wanted to kill me for how many times I made them go back to a hospital.”
“This explains so much about you,” said Eddie.
“It’s a miracle you even survived childhood,” said Hen.
“It’s a miracle he survived yesterday,” corrected Eddie.
“It was the only way I could get their attention,” explained Buck, and there was something a little sad in it. “And now we know why! They never wanted another kid. They just had me for parts – defective parts, as it turned out.”
Okay, scratch that. It was a lot sad. Buck was talking about his own existence like it was a mistake.
“Hey, that’s not on you,” said Eddie, looking around to Hen and Bobby for help. If she was at a loss here, she imagined Eddie was even worse—he’d probably never once thought anything about Buck’s existence other than thank god for it.
“I doubt they would agree.” Buck’s chipper tone had taken a disturbing turn—this was not fun gossip. This might be the very foundation of Buck’s personhood. It was one thing if the Buckleys were absent parents; it was another if they actually resented Buck for being born.
Hen wondered how Buck defined a latchkey kid.
“Have you talked to them about it?” asked Bobby. She wondered what he was thinking about—the grief of parents who lost their kid, or the luck of ones who still had any left alive.
“What am I gonna say?” asked Buck. “Hey, I’m really sorry about your dead son but can we just talk about me for a minute?” He said it sarcastically, as if it was an outrageous thing to ask, to as for his parents to care about him. The idea of Denny ever feeling that way about her and Karen flashed through her mind, and she felt pained just imagining it.
There’s a reason he feels alone, Chim had said.
“Daniel wasn’t their only son,” said Hen. “You matter too, Buck.”
“Sure,” he agreed dismissively. “Just not to them.”
Hen didn’t have to meet Eddie and Bobby’s eyes to know they were thinking the same thing. They all knew Buck had a reckless streak, that he was the first to disregard caution and run headfirst into danger. But she thought—they all thought—he was an adrenaline junkie. An overconfident kid who thought he was invincible.
His behavior looked much darker in this new light. Unless I was injured, he’d said. What kind of lessons had he learned from that? What did it mean about the way he risked his life and threw his body around, if he really, actually grew up believing he didn’t matter?
What would he be like, now that he knew the truth?
“Sorry I’m late, Cap,” Chim called from behind him, coming up the stairs. Hen understood now, why he hadn’t texted her any updates about the dinner. “Can we talk in private?” he asked Buck.
Buck gave that terrible laugh again, and Hen felt it in her stomach. “No need, they—they all heard the story,” he said, gesturing to his depressed audience. Karen was going to kill her for this mess.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Chimney said, sounding wrecked. From his body language, it was obvious the gravity of the last twenty-four hours was weighing heavily on those in the Buckley family orbit; he looked much more shaken up than Buck did. She realized Chim’s tone was the one that made sense given the circumstances; it made Buck’s cheerful attitude look even more unstable. “Believe me, I wanted to—”
“I get it,” Buck interrupted. “Maddie put you in a tough spot,” he said, and it might have been the first time she’d ever heard him talk about his sister in that tone. “She does that.” And then he left, leaving Hen, Bobby, Eddie, and Chimney in an awkward silence.
Then Eddie said, “what the fuck, Chim?”
He rubbed his hands over his eyes and pulled out a chair at the table next to Eddie. “God, you have no idea how awful—” he started. “You know, a week ago everyone was all, there’s no deep dark family secret! Our parents are a little distant and that’s all you have to worry about!” He slumped backwards. “Maddie told me three days ago. About Daniel. She told me not to tell Buck,” he said, cutting a guilty glance at Eddie.
“So you didn’t?” asked Eddie, more than a hint of accusation in his voice.
“I don’t know!” cried Chim. “Maddie is the mother of my child. I don’t know the rules for this kind of stuff! I’ve never been in the middle of an actual soap opera before!”
“It’s a lot for anyone to handle,” Hen defended. Chimney struggled with keeping even fun secrets, so the last few days of this must have been a special torture for him.
“They’re so awful to him,” Chim said, chagrined. “Like, I know why my father prefers Albert to me. But at least I had my mom. But for Buck to have grown up like that? And to never know why they treated him that way?” He sighed. “I was just at Maddie’s, she’s a mess. She told her parents after he left and they reamed her out. As if it was okay to ask their eleven-year-old daughter to lie about the existence of her dead brother!”
“Has she talked to him?” Hen asked.
“No—apparently he just walked right out of the apartment after she told him, and he hasn’t been answering her calls.”
Eddie made a pained noise; Hen was surprised Buck hadn’t gone over to his house after all of this came out. Truthfully, him not involving Eddie was probably a sign of how not okay Buck was with all of this.
“There’s no way—” started Eddie, then stopped. “You’re telling me—they really just act like he’s a reminder of their dead son?”
“Honestly, it explains a lot,” said Chim, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table. Hen pushed her coffee towards him—he looked like he needed it more than she did. “I was wondering why they were so warm to Maddie and then so . . . cold to him. When they got there, they greeted him like he was, like, an old neighbor. They call him Evan, they didn’t ask him a thing about his life. Oh! And when they brought out Maddie’s baby box, Buck was all when do I get mine? And they just gave this look like, obviously he doesn’t have one. And then their dad goes, Maddie, we never would have thrown out your stuff. It’s deranged!”
At this, Eddie rose from the table. “I’m going to go find Buck,” he said. As if any of them would have thought otherwise.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Bobby said when it was just the three of them left at the table.
“He’s right,” Hen agreed, knowing Chim needed to hear it. “There’s no easy way to navigate that situation, and only the Buckley parents are responsible for that.”
“Yeah well, it feels like I am, too,” sighed Chim. “It felt like letting him walk into a 5-alarm fire blind, no blueprints, no backup. You don’t do that to your team.”
Bobby patted his shoulder. “We’re all moving blind here, Chim,” he consoled. “We just have to make sure Buck knows that he does have back-up. He has us.”
And it made Hen think of something—the lawsuit. Buck’s tooth-and-nail fight back to the 118 made so much more sense now, when she could see how weak the ties were that he had, outside of them. She thought of Buck’s obsessive commitment to his physical therapy, the painful arbitration process that had seemed so extreme at the time, the amount of money he’d turned down in exchange for a spot back on the team. She understood now, what he’d stood to lose.
Later, after Hen lets Buck go in the factory fire, she thinks: I should have known.
-----
Hen had just finished restocking the ambulance from last night’s call when she saw them. It was easy to clock the couple as Buck’s parents—his mom’s bright blue eyes, his dad’s hair styled the same way his was—and even if she hadn’t, she would have pieced it together with context clues. They radiated the energy of East Coast rich people with emotionally distant children.
She was intrigued. They were antagonists in Buck and Chim’s stories, but Maddie clearly loved them, and Hen had her own experience with flawed parents and their questionably forgivable behavior. Plus—there had to be a reason they were there. She stepped down from the back of the ambulance and walked over to intercept them.
“Hi,” she said, catching their attention. “Can I help you?”
“Ah, yes,” said Buck’s mom, darting nervous eyes to look up at her husband. Her general vibe seemed to be uneasy and a little judgmental—basically, the polar opposite of Buck.
“We’re looking for our son, Evan Buckley,” his dad, stiff and formal. He reached out a hand. “I’m Philip, and this is Margaret,” he gestured to his wife.
“I’m Hen.” She thought of Chim saying they call him Evan. “Buck is due back soon. We have a kitchen upstairs, if you want to wait.”
It was a test—she wasn’t going to tell them anything about Buck’s hospital visit if they weren’t going to stick around until he returned, but they graciously agreed and followed her upstairs. Eddie was in the loft, scrolling his phone on the couch, and he shot them a questioning glance as Hen led them to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.
“Do you work closely with Evan, then?” Margaret asked. Out of the corner of her eye, Hen saw Eddie spring up from the couch and walk over. Subtle, that boy was not.
“Yeah,” said Hen, scooping coffee grounds into the machine as Eddie joined her on the side of the island opposite to the Buckleys. She threw him a bone. “Me and Eddie,” she nodded at him, “we’re on A shift with Buck and Chimney.”
“Chimney?” Philip asked.
“Oh—a nickname for Howie. Don’t ask,” said Hen.
Eddie stepped forward and reached over the countertop to shake their hands. “Eddie Diaz. Buck and I are partners.”
Hen almost snorted; she wondered if he had any idea how that sounded. Then again, all three of them were so heteronormative that she doubted they even registered the implications.
“Where is Evan?” Margaret asked. “Is he out on a call?”
“No,” said Eddie. “He had to stop by the hospital so they could check him for smoke inhalation. It’s standard policy after you’re in a burning building without a mask for any period of time.”
“Oh—he—he went in to fight a fire without his mask on?” Margaret had that special mom-skill of slipping critical undertones into seemingly harmless questions. Hen suspected Eddie had set her up for this.
“He went in with a mask on,” Eddie said, looking pleased at the opening. “We had a big factory fire last night at a hand sanitizer company. Buck stayed in the longest, to pull the last victim out. The guy had gotten stuck under debris and had been in there too long without air, so Buck gave him his mask. We’re not supposed to take them off for anything, but the victim probably wouldn’t have made it otherwise. That’s Buck for you,” he said, making eyes at Hen. As if the two of them stood around, singing Buck’s praises in their spare time.
She was so on to him.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s Buck for you.” The coffee machine beeped, and she poured two mugs for them. She contemplated not offering them cream and sugar, but it seemed too petty a revenge to bother with.
“I stand by what I said before,” said Philip as she put out the sugar and turned to grab the cream from the fridge. “This seems like a very dangerous job. I mean, when we heard about how he was injured when that firetruck exploded—” he looked at his wife in concern. He trailed off, and Hen realized she was very interested in the end of the sentence. What was their reaction when they heard about their son being crushed by a ladder truck? She certainly didn’t remember seeing them in LA.
“That must have been hard,” said Eddie, barely keeping his voice neutral. He nabbed the cream for his own coffee before either Buckley could use it. “To have to wait for news while you were all the way in Pennsylvania.”
“It was,” said Margaret, oblivious to Eddie’s passive aggression. “I can’t handle it when my children are injured.” Eddie met Hen’s eyes and they both silently agreed to let that comment pass unremarked on. “Have you been working with Evan since he started, then?”
“I joined about a year after Buck,” Eddie said, using a spoon to stir his coffee. “On one of our first calls, we disarmed a grenade together. A guy had accidentally shot it into his own leg. I was in the military, so I had experience.” Eddie clearly meant business here, if he was purposefully bringing up his time in the army. “But Buck just stepped right up to help. I served with guys who were less cool under that kind of pressure.”
Hen filed this bullshit away under things to tease Eddie about later, and instead let herself just be impressed by the way Eddie was already navigating the antagonistic in-law dynamic.
“He was actually on the news a couple weeks ago, for that huge train derailment,” offered Hen, getting in on the fun. “Two victims were stuck in the last car, which was wedged about eighty feet up,” she used her arm to demonstrate. “Buck scaled the outside of it for an extraction, so we wouldn’t have to choose between saving two victims. He had to convince Bobby to let him.”
Next to him, Eddie made a noise of assent in his throat that came out more annoyed than anything else. Hen, well aware of the Abby factor, hid her smile behind her mug.
“Wow,” said Philip, exchanging a look with Margaret. “We had no idea he was so . . . capable. Bobby—that’s your captain, right?”
“That’s him.”
“I thought I remembered,” said Margaret “He’s the one who called us when everything happened, with the truck.”
Eddie leaned forward, bracing his hands on the kitchen counter. “Buck is basically Bobby’s right-hand man. Kind of like his protégé,” he added, eyes flicking to Hen.
“Oh yeah,” agreed Hen, looking directly at Philip as she said her next words. “Buck really takes after him. He also taught Buck everything he knows in the kitchen, so now we’ve got two master chefs running around here.”
“Really?” Margaret really had to stop with the tone of surprise. Hen was starting to see how Baby Buck had figured out that he had to pull stunts to get her attention—this woman was not picking up on any subtleties. “Evan, cooking? I never thought I’d see the day.”
“His pulled pork tacos are a favorite in my house,” Eddie said, his face softening. “My son loves helping him in the kitchen.”
“Buck’s always been good with kids,” said Phillip, his tone managing to sound a little fond and a little dismissive; the way owners talked about their dogs—he looks cute, but he’s a troublemaker! “It’s because he’s a big kid himself.”
Hen opened her mouth to say something—maybe how Buck was always the one they trusted to keep kids calm during calls, or that he was Denny’s favorite person at 118 barbecues—but Eddie beat her to it.
“Half the time I can only get Chris to eat his vegetables if Buck’s the one who made them,” said Eddie, something sharper in his tone. Hen could see him growing frustrated with how easily the Buckleys were still dismissing their praise.
“That’s nice of you and your family to include him so much,” said Margaret. “We know how he can be.”
“He saved my son’s life,” said Eddie, loudly. “He and Christopher were both there when the tsunami hit last year. On the Santa Monica Pier. But Buck kept him safe. We’re the ones who are lucky to have him.”
“Buck was in that?” Philip interrupted, astounded. “I remember reading about that—he never said—”
It was interesting, the way Eddie talked about that day. She knew the full story—how Chris had fallen off the firetruck and had gotten separated from Buck; how Buck had spent hours searching, desperately; how for a few terrible seconds, Eddie had feared the worst. But Eddie said it with conviction, and he made it all sound so simple: Buck kept Chris safe. That was the only part of the story that mattered.
She also noticed he left out the fact that Buck had been on blood thinners at the time, only a few weeks out from his embolism. But she understood why he didn’t mention that—it was the same reason she’d hesitated before disclosing that Buck was in the hospital. It was the only way I could get their attention, Buck had said. They weren’t going to hand the Buckley parents any ammunition to feed into Buck’s savior complex. They’d already done enough damage.
“Oh my,” said Margaret, putting her hand over her heart. “You must have been terrified.” She seemed to have no problem extending sympathy to a fellow parent. “And knowing it was just Buck alone with your son that day?”
Margaret had closed her eyes to sigh dramatically, so she missed it, but Hen could literally see Eddie’s hackles rise at the way she said just Buck.
“Actually, I didn’t even know they were in danger until I got them both back,” he said, his tone severely polite. “Because I was on shift that day. But I would have known he was safe with Buck. There’s no one I trust more with my son.”
Hen watched him crow, feeling unexpectedly warm towards him. Most of the time, she wanted to smack both Eddie and Buck upside the head until they had some realizations; but sometimes she saw this, the bone-deep strength of their friendship, and it made her think about how, even platonically, their bond really was something special.
“Really?” Margaret asked, eyes flicking up to her husband in surprise. What level of cluelessness had this woman reached that she wasn’t picking up on the death glare Eddie was giving her?
“Growing up, we couldn’t even trust Evan to keep himself alive, let alone anyone else,” offered Phillip, as if they would appreciate that explanation for their surprise.
She thought of how they had found Buck in the factory the night before, maskless and exhausted and still throwing his whole body into saving someone else. We can’t trust him to keep himself alive either, Hen wanted to say. I wonder why that is, do you think?
“I do,” said Eddie, who was starting to look agitated. Hen was torn between running interference and seeing how this played out; Eddie looked like he was about three seconds away from laying into the Buckleys and honestly? They had it coming.
“I would trust him with anything,” Eddie said, picking up speed. “Buck always has my back. I even filled out the paperwork, so that if anything happens to me and I can’t—” he broke off, seeming to realize where he was, who he was talking to. “If I can’t—if I can’t pick Chris up from school, he’s on the approved list,” he ended, somewhat anticlimactically. Hen had a suspicion he meant to say something else.
“I think—I think that’s them, back,” Eddie continued, before anyone could respond. He looked out over the balcony where Hen knew full well he couldn’t actually see out the garage doors. Though knowing the two of them, Eddie might have had some sort of internal Buck sensor. “I’ll just go let him know you’re here,” he said, beating a hasty retreat.
The Buckley parents watched him go and turned to look at her. She was absolutely not prepared to field any questions about what was going on with the two of them, so she was honestly relieved when Margaret just said, “it’s so nice to hear how fond he is of Evan.”
Phillip nodded. With this level of obliviousness running in his family, Hen was starting to see how Buck could also believe he and Eddie were run-of-the-mill best friends.
She had to get out of here before she lost her ability to politely nod and smile at these two. “Hmm,” she agreed, and then poured the remaining contents of her mug down the sink. “I just remembered that I have to finish stocking the ambulance in case another call comes in. Will you be alright waiting up here?”
“Yes, of course, thank you,” said Margaret, painfully sincere.
Hen retreated down the stairs and ran right into Eddie, who was pacing by the open bay doors. No Buck sensor, then—just an escape.
She raised her eyebrows at him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just—Buck and Bobby both haven’t texted yet.”
“No news is good news, right?” Hen offered.
“Yeah, but. . .” he trailed off, tapping his phone on and off again, and then putting it back in his pocket with a sigh. He looked back up at Hen and said, “his parents are insane, right? I mean, what the hell was that?”
“Come on, Eddie,” said Hen. “You and I both know that being a parent doesn’t make you a perfect person.”
“No,” Eddie agreed. “But—it’s Buck. The way talk about him, it’s like he’s some trainwreck. Honestly, he should be a trainwreck, if that’s what he grew up with.”
Sometimes Hen forgot that Eddie never saw Buck as a probie—never saw the way he would act out and talk back and sleep around. The way he always seemed hungry for something. Buck gave a lot of credit for his growth to Abby, but it honestly, it was Buck who had done the work. Buck, who had grown up enough to know how to be there for the people he loved.
She thought about it, the way Buck had changed over his first year with the firehouse. He had always been in motion, like he was full of wells of unspent energy, possessed with a drive for something. But in light of the recent revelations, she realized it wasn’t until Abby that it took shape: love. Attention. Devotion. The kid had been starving for affection and just needed somewhere to direct it.
They’d all razzed him for sleeping with anyone who looked at him long enough, but when Abby came along and he found someone who needed more from him, hadn’t he changed tact at top speed? He’d reformed himself and stepped into her very messy situation with a level of care and commitment that no one expected. She and Chim had been alarmed at how quickly he went from picking up women on calls to living like a ghost in Abby’s apartment, happy to stay on the off chance that she’d remember he was waiting for her.
Hen had liked Abby well enough when she met her, but she didn’t fuck with the way she left Buck behind. Maybe Hen wasn’t one to throw stones when it came to messy ends of relationships, but still—anyone with eyes could see that Buck had been head over heels. And from what she saw, Buck was mostly a fun distraction for Abby during a difficult time.
She could imagine what a woman like her saw in a guy like Buck—she knew what he looked like, what he acted like. She watched him plan dates around Abby’s schedule, heard him ask Bobby for advice, saw him focus on her with a singlemindedness that made a horrible kind of sense after meeting his parents.
And she’d walked away like it was nothing
But then Eddie arrived. Eddie, a single father with a cute kid and no support system. Hen didn’t want to start throwing around words like transference, but she couldn’t help noticing how Buck’s affection and support quickly found its new target. As if everything he’d learned from Abby had been training for this exact situation.
She knew that Buck found Carla for Eddie, that he drove Eddie around when he had car trouble, that he took Chris out to the zoo when Eddie needed a day to himself. Selfless behavior that he hadn’t learned from modeling after his parents, that was for sure—more likely it was from years of trying to make himself lovable and indispensable.
It was enough to break her heart. Except for that this time, she knew Eddie did find Buck lovable and indispensable. She could see it in the way he made fond eyes at Buck every time he yammered on about something they were all tired of hearing. She could see it in the way he triple-checked Buck’s harness on rope rescues and voted with him on takeout decisions and only ever seemed to get mad at him for not being around. In the way he so clearly wanted to defend Buck, now.
She looked at Eddie, pained at the thought of Buck growing up in a house where he felt unwanted, and she wanted so badly to say something to make him realize what was going on here. You know how you want to fight Buck’s parents and wrap him in a hug and take him home with you and never let go? There’s a word for that.
But it wasn’t her place to start Eddie on any paths towards awakenings that he needed to work out in his own time. So instead she just said, “I know, Eddie.”
He didn’t look appeased. “That shit he pulled last night—what if he keeps doing it? What if he—?” He trailed off, looking anxious at the very thought of Buck’s behavior getting any more reckless.
“Eddie, it’s all fresh right now,” she reminded him. “He’s had a rough couple of days. But no matter what, he knows we’re there for him, right?”
“Right,” said Eddie, nodding seriously, like she’d given him a task. “Right, yeah, I just—”
But he trailed off. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw why—Bobby was back with Buck. Like most times when Buck appeared, Eddie forgot to pay attention to anyone else.
“Bye, then,” she said, but he was already walking away, heading to meet Buck. To make sure he was okay and felt supported and had a heads up that his parents were there, the way a good partner should.
Hen pulled out her phone to text Chimney, who had managed to avoid the whole situation because of latrine duty, though she suspected he was mostly hiding. She could be a good partner too, though, and she knew just what would make him feel better.
Want to give the Buckleys a flat tire?