No smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance

by BitchyGallaghers

Summary:

It’s been two weeks since Bradley found out that he won’t be going to the naval academy, two weeks since he found out why. He packed up his shit and cut Maverick out, so now he’s faced with figuring it out on his own. He takes the first job he can get, just trying to get the bills paid — working the night shift in an inpatient psychiatric ward for adolescents. And for the second time in fourteen days, his whole world is going to change.

It’s two minutes to midnight, and Bradley’s staring at swimming text on a page and trying to remember how to unclench his jaw. He’s exhausted, has slept maybe ten hours in the last forty eight, but there’s no danger of him dozing off. There’s an eerie quiet of too many people breathing in sync, the sterile fluorescent lighting bright enough to induce a headache even in a well rested man, and even though it was eighty degrees this afternoon, this hallway is air conditioned to the point of freezing — but that’s not why. You could burn down all of Los Angeles with the anger in Bradley’s chest, could bend steel with the tension in his fists.

Two weeks. Fourteen days and Bradley’s world is unrecognizable. Like he glitched into a parallel universe where he was never born and now has to build a life from scratch. Like if he glitched out of this one, no one would even know. 

Bradley’s been eighteen for a handful of months, and — look. He knows he’s been babied his whole life, his mom and Maverick and a whole slew of uncles deluging him in a persevering love for a man he can’t remember. And sure, when Bradley grew up and developed a personality of his own, they liked him well enough, too. He’s always had someone at his little league games, lunches packed for him, handholding when he needed to get his driver’s license or pass statistics or change a tire for the first time. And his mom was a force of nature the way she loved, fiery and unquestionable. When Maverick wept beside him, both of them crumpled in hospital chairs, clinging to each other’s hands like they were out to break bones — he didn’t need to say anything. Carole was Pete’s family even before she was Bradley’s. It wasn’t even a question that Bradley would move in with Iceman and his family, his kids just a few years younger, and that Maverick would be there just to be there as often as he possibly could. 

But necessity is the mother of figuring out a whole bunch of shit no one ever taught him to do. In two weeks, he’s got his own shitty apartment with three roommates he’s never met in a city he’s never been to, a cheap mattress on the floor and most of what he owns still in suitcases and a handful of boxes. He can feel a fist around his windpipe every time he thinks about what Maverick did to him; he hopes Pete feels the same thing tenfold when he realizes that Bradley took all the photo albums with him. Part of him wants to take scissors to each one with Maverick’s smug fucking face in them. 

But the shitty apartment still charges him five hundred a month plus his share of utilities, and what he had socked away to fix up his dad’s bronco is not going to cover it for long. So within a week, he also has a shitty job to go with it. Financial caution won out over waiting for something he’d really like — the night shift charge nurse at the hospital was willing to hire him on the spot after three interview questions. He can pass a drug test, he’s not a felon, and he’s earned a high school diploma — so recently the ink’s still wet — so he’s exactly what they’re looking for.

It was only after his onboarding that they told him their only opening was in the inpatient psych unit. And it took three days on the job before one of the nurses let it slip — he was the only male applicant, on a floor full of five foot nothing nursing students and psych techs that wouldn’t tip the scales at a hundred and thirty pounds. When they have to restrain an aggressive patient, which happens a couple times a week, it takes four of them, bare minimum. Bradley’s still got stubborn baby fat on his cheeks, but he’s tall like his dad and broad in his shoulders, built from hours in the gym when he thought he was preparing for basic. The thought that he’s there just as muscle to be used against someone who’s scared and disoriented makes him sick if he thinks about it too long. Gotta pay the bills somehow, though. The thought of going home, facing Uncle Ice and whatever Maverick is to him now, certainly makes him sicker. 

He’s balancing everything in his head — paycheck, groceries, savings, rent, scholarships, bus fare, what books and tuition will cost in the fall. He remembers Maverick encouraging him to apply to the UC schools, ‘just in case,’ and it makes him want to hit something, makes him want to chew glass. The ROTC recruiter at UCLA is so excited about him. Bradley’s not really excited about anything, but he figures an aeronautics degree won’t hurt his chances when he reapplies in four years. 

And that’s why he’s staring at a physics textbook, absorbing nothing of the free body diagram in front of him, in between the NOC shift skin checks. Tatiana, who has been doing this job since before Bradley was in middle school and going through a pack a day since before Bradley was born, did the entire adults unit before she went on her smoke break; all he has to do is not fuck it up with just the twelve bed adolescent wing. His alarm buzzes, bringing him back to the present and letting him know that it’s time to make the rounds again. They’re at capacity this week, so he peeks in each of the six rooms, two beds against opposing walls. He’s scanning for heads, feet, hands — whatever’s poking out of the blanket, making sure everyone’s accounted for. Two, four, six, ten, eleven — and an empty bed. He fully walks over to it, looks behind and underneath, and starts to panic. Where the hell is this kid? He checks the names on the door; the missing patient is Jess, a tiny little dark haired thing. 

He doesn’t know the clients well, usually asleep by the time his shift starts and barely waking up when he clocks out, but he remembers Jess; she checked in voluntarily and arrived in the middle of the night on his third day on the job. She was dry eyed and shaking like a leaf; her mom was sobbing, tears an endless stream down her face even as she signed the intake paperwork. She wrapped her kid up in a bone crushing hug before she was ushered out of the lobby doors. 

The unit isn’t big and, as a great comfort to Bradley in this moment, is locked from the inside with codes on all the doors. So there aren’t a ton of places that she could be. He checks the bathrooms, the dining room, the rec room — and there! Right by the window, curled up on a bench and partially obscured by the curtains, is the unmistakable silhouette of a scrawny tween. He lets go of the breath he’s been holding. He keeps his voice low, partially to not wake the other sleeping kids, but mostly because he’s afraid to spook this one. “Jess?” A moment’s hesitation, a few shuffling steps forward. “You need something?”

He has to get closer to hear any kind of response; when he does, it’s nothing more than wet sniffles. Shit. Bradley’s not good with little kids, not warm and fuzzy in the slightest, and his first instinct when kids cry is to find someone else to handle it. But Tatiana has ten more minutes on her break, so there’s no one here but him. 

“Uh.” God, he sounds so stupid. He needs a fucking script to make it through this minefield of a conversation. “Are you okay?” A slight movement, unmistakeably a shaking head. He cringes; obviously she’s not. He hesitates, remembering how overbearing his extensive collection of adults seemed to him when he was that age. “Is it ok if I come sit by you?”

The sniffling stops for just a moment. And then there’s a tiny nod. He puts a few feet between them, puts his back to the wall so he can still see down the hallway. He swallows, nervous to even look this kid in the face. Thank god for the shadows; while it’s well lit in the hallway, where the night staff do their work, the rec room lights will stay off until tomorrow morning. Bradley’s sure it’s all over his face how out of his depth he feels. “What’s, um. Did something happen?” 

There’s a very long silence. Bradley lets it hang, not for any purpose besides a lack of anything else to say, but it gives this kid space to fill. Finally, finally, she speaks. 

“It’s my birthday tomorrow.” She squints at the clock in the dim glow of the streetlights outside, five minutes past midnight. “Well, today, actually.”

It tumbles out of Bradley’s mouth before he can stop it. “Well, happy birthday.” As soon as he hears it, he could smack himself on the forehead. 

But it startles a watery laugh out of this kid. “Thanks, I guess.” Another sniffle, and then her stick skinny arms come up to wipe wet streaks from her face. “You’re kinda weird.” 

Bradley chuckles at that. “Yeah.” He grasps at something to say, anything to stop this kid from crying again. “How old are you turning?” It’s supposed to be an innocuous question, but it rips a breathless sob from the bottom of her lungs. Shit. He picks at a hangnail until it bleeds, then wraps his hands firmly together, every muscle taut with a tension that will only relax when the tears stop. 

“Thirteen,” Jess manages between heaving breaths. Thirteen. Bradley’s biggest concerns five years ago were making the school baseball team and whether or not he’d get taller than Maverick. He can’t even imagine spending his thirteenth birthday in a psych ward. 

“I, uh.” He resolves to always have lollipops and hard candies in his pockets moving forward; he wants to give her something. And this whole thing would be so much easier if they weren’t talking. “Are you in high school?”

She snorts. “Middle school. Eighth grade next year.” She’s unimpressed by his math skills, his knowledge of what ages and years of birth line up with what grades. 

“And how’s middle school?” He tries once more for something casual, easy. 

“Oh, you know.” She shrugs. “Sucks.” 

Bradley laughs under his breath. “Yeah. Sucked when I was there, too.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, like a million years ago.” 

Bradley’s drawing in an exaggeratedly offended gasp before he knows it.  “How old do you think I am?” 

She fixes him with a look. “Twenty five?” 

He gives a genuine laugh. “That’s not even old.” Twenty five seems eons away. Part of Bradley doesn’t even think he’ll make it that long. His dad didn’t, he realizes. It hits him like snow down the back of his shirt, and he tries to hide a shiver. 

Jess turns up her nose, unconvinced. “That’s twice my age!” And that’s fair. But it’s also brought the conversation back to her birthday, bringing with it the same inexplicable somberness. 

“I’m sorry.” It rolls awkwardly out of Bradley’s mouth like a car with axles out of alignment. “That you’re here on your birthday.”

“My birthday is why I’m here.” She looks at the floor, voice whiny and miserable; there’s a rising part of Bradley, one he’s never known, that wants to give her a hug, pat her on the back. He’s just been through hours of child abuse reporting and sexual harassment trainings; he’s not about to come closer than a foot to this kid, but the tug in his fingers is there. 

“How come?” It feels like she wants to talk about it; it feels like she needs an invitation. 

“My dad died when I was six.” Bradley just stares. “Logging accident.” She looks up, and Bradley can see the city lights beaming through the window reflected in her wet eyes. “He’s been gone now longer than I ever knew him.” 

Holy fuck. He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud until Jess giggles, then pastes on an exaggeratedly serious face. “You said a bad word,” she admonishes sternly.

“Sorry,” Bradley mumbles, holding up his hands to show that he’s properly chastised.

But for real, holy fuck. This kid just sounded petulant like a six year old, but now she’s speaking with the wisdom and baggage of someone decades older than she is. The weight of what she’s saying, what it means to her, is unbearably heavy; Bradley wants to shoulder some of it with her. They’re both of them in a club that no one ever wants to be in, but Bradley only has bits and pieces of Goose; he was only two when he died. Where Bradley carries around a glowing phantom with him, constructed almost entirely out of other people’s stories, Jess has real memories, raw and fond and painful. 

“What was he like?” His voice is a kind of soft he can’t remember it ever being before. 

Jess looks out the window, thinking. “He was gone a lot. But he would always bring flowers and then take us to Krispy Kreme’s when he came home. He liked the gross jelly ones.” She hiccups, tears forming anew. “He always saved bees out of the pool. And he read me Lord of the Rings every night.” And now she’s crying in earnest. “I never finished it, after he — after —“ 

Bradley wants to bury his head in his hands. Feels like everything he’s tried has just made it harder on this poor kid. He wills Tatiana to come back and rescue him, like if he just wants this kid to be okay bad enough he’ll magically develop telepathic abilities. He racks his brain; what would he have wanted to hear from a stranger after his mom died? Not a damn thing, he realizes. So he just sits with her, listening to her breaths slowly calm, feeling heat well up behind his eyes. 

When she quiets, he cautions a look over at her, desperately trying to project the inexplicable care he feels and not the anxiety that whatever he’s doing isn’t enough. She’s already looking his way. “Why are you sad?” Fuck. His eyes are wet in a way he had thought he could disguise — this kid is way more observant than he would have expected from someone her age, and not shy about voicing what she sees. 

“I just —” he scrambles for something to say. God, there’s gotta be some kind of class on this, something where a wise guru tells him how to not put both feet in his mouth. “I’m just sorry. I, uh, I know how it feels to lose someone and it sucks.” He chuckles darkly, feeling that empty rotting feeling rise up in him again. It’s been years and it still bowls him over with how intensely he misses her. “It sucks and it doesn’t stop and there’s no way around it.” 

Jess’s eyes are like dinner plates, the redness in her sclera surrounding her dark irises on all sides. “You lost somebody?”

Bradley swallows a lump in his throat. Not that it goes anywhere. “My mom.” He nods jerkily, the wetness in his eyes not going anywhere. And they sit in silence for another minute, on more equal footing. Bradley doesn’t realize that their breaths had synced until she inhales sharply to speak. 

“Do you ever just —“ and then she stops. Bradley nods are her, looks at her with what he hopes is encouragement. “Do you ever just want to talk to her, just one more time?” Her voice cracks on the last syllable, more sob than sentence. 

“Yeah.” Bradley breaths out slow, wanting so badly to keep it together for this kid. This whole conversation somehow feels both like a kick in the stomach and also like something heavy’s been removed from his chest. “All the time.” He latches onto that, an idea forming. “What would you want to say to him?”

She doesn’t even need to think about it. “That I miss him.” She wipes away a trail of snot with her fist, and for some reason it draws a burst of affection from somewhere behind Bradley’s ribs. “That me and mom get along better now.” And then she giggles a little bit, just on the edge of hysterical. “That Angela, my sister, she has a boyfriend now and he’s soooo bad at Mario kart.” And Bradley laughs too, louder than he ought to in a wing of sleeping children. When the humorous moment passes, he speaks again. 

“What do you think he’d say to you?” Jess starts, like she’s never thought about it. In the last couple of weeks, Bradley’s thought about what his mom would make of him, of his upended life, constantly. 

She starts slowly when she speaks. “He always told me he was proud of me. Every time we talked on the phone.” She takes a shuddering breath. “Do you think he’d still be proud of me?” 

Bradley doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t need to. “Of course.” He doesn’t know this kid’s story, hasn’t read her chart, but he knows one thing. “You came here. You told someone.” She stares. “When you needed help.” 

Her brows furrow a little, like she’s just turned a geometry problem sideways and now the pieces are starting to come together. “Yeah. I guess.” She glances at the clock again. “I bet he’d also tell me it’s past my bedtime.”

Bradley chuckles again. This kid is funny. “Yeah, probably.” He feels a little braver. “Should we get you to sleep? Don’t want you to be too tired on your birthday.” 

She nods slowly, stretches her limbs. “Yeah, okay.” When she gets up, Bradley’s struck again by how small she is, how he cranes his neck to look down at the top of her ruffled bed head. It tightens something in his lungs. They pad soundlessly down the hallway, her in her little blue socks and Bradley in rubber soled boots, toward her room. She’s passing through the door when something jumps out of Bradley’s throat. 

“You gonna be okay?” She hesitates for a moment, and then nods, cautious and hesitant. 

“Are you gonna be here tomorrow night?” She squints at him like he’s done something suspicious. 

“Yeah.” He works Tuesday through Saturday, and picks up extra shifts as often as he can. 

“Okay,” Jess says with a level of finality, with a tiny little smile. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow night and you can tell me happy birthday again.” And for all that he’s been on pins and needles this whole conversation, he finds that he’s actually looking forward to it. He smiles and offers her a fist bump, the barest point of contact he’ll allow. 

“Sure thing.” She yawns, the hour and the energy expended crying getting to her at last. “See you tomorrow.” She clambers into bed and Bradley walks back to his station, hoping he’ll have enough time to dry his eyes before Tatiana gets back. But he’s barely found the box of tissues when he hears a voice that makes him startle.

“You’re pretty good at that.” Tatiana melts out of the shadows, the fluorescent light shiny against her dark brow; Bradley has no idea how long she’s been there. Her voice is smoky and cool. When he recovers from the initial shock, he processes what she’s said. 

“What?”

“You heard me, kid.” And without any further explanation, she strolls back to her station down the hall and starts doing her charting. The rest of his shift passes in relative peace; his next skin check finds Jess snoring along with the rest of them, and he and Tatiana barely exchange six words in as many hours. The sun is starting to trickle in the windows when he clocks out just after seven. 

Bradley holds it together on the bus ride home, nine stops feeling like an eternity. He holds it together as he trudges up the stairs, fiddles his key into the lock, nods at his roommate as he passes through the hall the way to his bedroom. He’s barely got the door shut behind him when he sinks to his knees.

In fifteen hours, Bradley will arrive early to work and Jess will tell him all about how her sister visited with a coloring book and a king size snicker’s bar, and her therapist brought in red velvet cupcakes. Between skin checks, he’ll pull up his class registration and see if he can swap physics 101 for intro to psychopathology, calculus for survey of counseling fields. He’ll order a copy of The Two Towers online, pittance of a paycheck be damned. Tomorrow morning, he’ll email his supervisor to see if they have any positions available to work the day shift; it’ll leave less time for schoolwork, he knows, but it’s worth it, to spend time with those kids when they’re awake. He’ll leave work with something light and glowing in his chest, straining behind his ribs. 

But right now, he crawls on to his mattress like he’s hiking Everest. Memories of his own — of Carole teaching him to make pecan pie, of his uncles laughing over some tall tale about Goose, of riding between Pete’s legs on the Kawasaki when he was still tiny enough to fit — entangle with proxy images of Jess watching glaze fall on fresh donuts and drifting off to sleep as Sam and Frodo leave the shire. He doesn’t realize he’s crying, silent and breathless, until he feels a wet patch bloom on the pillow beneath him.

He thinks about calling Pete. He doesn’t reach for the phone. 

It’s an ugly game he’s been playing all week, falling asleep imagining what he’d say to cut Maverick into pieces, how to make him feel as low and small and hopeless as Bradley felt when he found out about his papers. Bradley certainly knows what it feels like to dredge up old wounds, knows enough of Maverick’s weak spots to target them with brutal accuracy. He knows that he’s all Pete has left just as much as Maverick is all he’s got, too.  

But for the first night in fourteen days, he thinks of something softer. How they cried together to the silent sound where a heart monitor used to be. How they stood together at the funeral, how if he wasn’t there then Bradley would have been standing there alone. How Pete’s always made sure that Bradley eats his vegetables and gets his checkups and walks on the inside of the sidewalk, furthest from traffic. 

He doesn’t reach for the phone. It’s too fresh, too raw. But, he thinks, someday he might. He falls asleep with his jaw relaxed and his breathing easier than it’s been for a long while. When he wakes, he’ll start to unpack. 

 

Notes:

Remember how the first two parts of this were fun sexy little meet-cutes? I apologize for the bait and switch. I hope y’all enjoy this, albeit in a different kind of way.

Also, this is not meant to be a blueprint for processing grief — Bradley is eighteen and dumb as hell and has no training. He is written to make mistakes here on purpose. His heart is in the right place and he’s gonna get better with time and practice.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Grief Counselor Bradley Bradshaw