Chapter Text
“He’ll be fine, Todd” Farah says for possibly the hundredth time in hour they have been sitting together on the hard plastic chairs in the hospital’s relatives waiting room. He isn’t sure if she’s saying it to comfort him, or more as a comfort to herself, but he doubts it’s doing much to help either way.
It’s been four hours since he left the tunnel system for the final time, limping beside the medics carrying Dirk’s stretcher with the shredded tie of the unconscious man held tightly in his shaking hands, but it feels like an eternity. Dirk had looked somehow paler once outside in the sunlight, his skin almost white in contrast to his dark hair and the red smeared across his cheek and staining his lips beneath the oxygen mask. The dark, awful bruising on his side, exposed when the paramedics had cut away his shirt to connect their electrodes, stretches from almost level with his belly button to just below the red and puckered scar on his shoulder and only helps to exacerbate Todd’s worried gut.
He hadn’t been allowed to follow Dirk into the ambulance, and it wasn’t as if he’d had much time to argue because it was only seconds after the bed had been wheeled in that the beeping of the heart monitor had morphed to a much less regular rhythm and then all he had heard before the doors had been slammed shut on him was an urgent yell about oxygen saturations and something about blood pressure. The ambulance had left seconds later, blue lights flashing and siren screaming, leaving Todd standing on the greying grass with the sounds of Dirk’s failing heart ringing in his ears.
By the time they had made it to the hospital, Dirk had gone from the ER, and only after a long and tiring conversation with a receptionist do they find out that he has been taken to surgery. She seems unable to tell them more, and in the end only helps in directing Farah to the surgical waiting room, and Todd back to the ER. He only goes because Farah promises to call him if she hears any news and because he realises that he’s unlikely to be allowed to visit Dirk when the time comes if there is still blood leaking from the semi-forgotten wound in his hair.
He’d sat in the waiting room, his head aching and nausea and worry swilling in his stomach, with Dirk’s broken and blood-stained phone turning over and over in his hands for what had felt like days before his name had been called and he had been taken to a consultation room where a doctor had glued his bleeding head and examined his throbbing knee and sent him for an X-ray. He had suggested a head scan too, because the length of time he was unconscious for is unknown and because he’s had “quite a serious fall”, but Todd had declined because the scan would have taken time he didn’t want to give and the doctor had relented because he had seemed aware enough to make the decision on his own.
The X-ray had taken longer than he would like, and the results of it show very little.
“Just bruised,” the doctor had said once he’d limped back to the consultation room. “You’ve been very lucky, you know?”
Todd had nodded numbly in reply because although he may have been very lucky, the man who had led him from the maze of tunnels, walking on despite his failing body, had not been.
Afterwards, he had found Farah sitting on a blue plastic chair, an unopened water bottle clutched too tightly in her hands. She had looked small, hunched over and her elbows resting on her knees, and her expression raw and anxious, a contrast to the confident outwards appearance she tends to hold. She glanced up as he approached and then, once he was seated, passed the bottle over. Todd took it, at first confused, but then realising that she has likely bought it for him, her brilliant mind remembering how long it had been since he had last had a drink despite the turmoil and worry of the past few hours.
“Any news?” he asked, although between the lack of calls and Farah’s expression he wasn’t hopeful.
Farah, as he had expected, shakes her head. “He’ll be fine though,” she replied, her voice shaky, “He has to be.”
~~~
“Family of Dirk Gently?” a soft voice asks, what feels like hours later, and Todd looks up to see a mousy haired woman in dark blue scrubs standing in the doorway of the waiting room. The surgeon looks exhausted, her blue eyes heavy and her ferry boat pattered scrub cap held limply in her left hand, and Todd’s heart sinks uncomfortably in his chest, fearing the worst. He stands and Farah stands too and the surgeon, realising who they are, heads towards them.
“Is he okay?” Todd asks, demands, before his brain catches up and realises what a stupid question it was to have asked. The surgeon smiles though, and Todd realises that her tiredness may not be due to Dirk’s surgery being hard, but because it’s getting on for two in the morning.
“We’re cautiously optimistic,” she says, with a warm smile and then asks them to follow her.
The surgeon takes them to a relative’s room, away from the noise and prying eyes of the waiting room, and there she tells them that Dirk is still in surgery and that another surgeon, one specialising in cardiothoracic surgery, is finishing the repairs to his ribs. Four of them had been broken, she explain, and a fifth one cracked, the damage likely caused by a hard impact on something round and solid (a boulder, Todd realises), shattering the bones and pushing the fragments into the delicate tissue of his right lung and his liver.
The damage by the initial fall hadn’t been too bad, and she regretfully explains that had he received medical treatment sooner, he would be in a much better position than he currently is. But instead, he had had to keep walking, and his liver had bled, and his lung had collapsed, his chest cavity gradually filling with blood and air as he walked, slowly suffocating him from the inside.
She tells them how he had been rushed to surgery soon after he had arrived in the ER, and how both she and the other surgeon had worked to stop the bleeding and repair the organs and stabilise his fractured ribs, and then, after a pause, quietly informs them that due to the number of times his heart had stopped beating as it should during the ambulance journey and his brief wait in the ER and his surgery and the abnormally low blood pressure and oxygen saturation his injuries had caused, they couldn’t be sure there wouldn’t be any effect on his cognitive ability until he woke.
“Brain damage?” Todd repeats, horrified. He realises Farah is pulling a similar expression to the one he feels he is wearing.
“It’s very unlikely, but I have to let you know there is a possibility.”
Todd can only nod, his voice will be a broken mess if he tries to speak.
“When will we know?” Farah asks, her voice carefully controlled.
The doctor gives them a sympathetic smile. “We’re going to keep him sedated for the next few days to give his lungs some time to heal,” she says, her voice soft, “so we’re unlikely to know anything until Wednesday at the earliest. I know it isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s what’s best for him, at the moment.”
“We understand,” says Farah, at the same time Todd asks if they can see him. The surgeon looks between them, her expression conflicted. Then she sighs.
“I shouldn’t, you’re not family, but if the door happens to be open when I show you out, I can’t really stop you looking in.” She smiles knowingly at them, and Farah lets out a breathy ‘thank you’. Todd can’t find any words at all.
The surgeon leaves them in the small room she has taken them to after that, going to check on her other patients and promising to return to show them out when Dirk has been taken to a room.
Todd collapses onto one of the chairs and rests his head back against the wall. His head is pounding and he’s beyond tired, both physically and emotionally, and, quite suddenly, the pain and exhaustion and stress and worry of the past 12 hours is all too much and his emotions boil over and he lets out a noise that’s much closer to a sob than he would like. Farah sits down beside him and takes his hand.
“He’ll be okay,” she says to him, giving his hand a squeeze. Todd nods and sucks in a shaky breath and wipes the rogue tear from his cheek with his trembling left hand.
~~~
The surgeon, Meredith, he reads from her newly acquired white coat, returns for them about half an hour later and leads them through the hospital to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Todd’s heart drops a little at the sign and Farah, seeming to somehow sense his internal turmoil, takes his hand again. They stop outside room 23, and the surgeon turns to face them.
“He’s still intubated, which means there’s a tube coming out of his mouth to help him breathe,” she explains gently, her kind, blue eyes sympathetic, “It might be a bit of a shock, okay?”
“We understand,” says Farah, and Todd nods, not trusting his voice. The surgeon smiles sadly and then pushes open the door and shows them into the room.
Dirk lays in a bed looking so small in comparison to the beeping and whirring machines that surround him. He’s flat on his back on sheets barely a shade whiter than his skin with a blue blanket pulled up to his chin and wires and tubes trailing from under his covers to the bags and machines beside his bed. Todd stares at the tube snaking from his mouth, held in place with pinkish tape and meandering down to a machine beside his bed that whirrs in time with the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest.
Todd, heart pounding, realises that although his skin is slightly less pasty and the blue tint has faded from his lips and the bleeding cut on his cheek has been stitched, he looks barely better than he had as they had exited the cave.
At least the beeping of the heart monitor is steady, Todd thinks.
He steps forwards and carefully takes Dirk’s bandaged left hand in his. There’s a tube heading into the back of it and the wrist is swollen under the wrappings. Dirk hadn’t mentioned his wrist hurting in the tunnels, and Todd heavily realises that compared to the pain his broken ribs must have been causing him, he probably hadn’t noticed. The hand is warmer than last time he held it though, and the beds of the finger nails are no longer that awful blue they had been before. Todd exhales shakily and runs his thumb over the knuckles of the hand held in his.
“You’ve got to be okay, Dirk,” he says quietly, aware of the two sets of eyes watching him but finding he doesn’t really care.
“He should be alright, given time,” the surgeon says kindly. Then she sighs, and when she next speaks, there’s an air of thoughtfulness to her tone. “He’s strong, you know?”
“How could you possibly know what he’s like?” Farah says, her tone suddenly tight and uncharacteristically harsh. The surgeon seems unfazed but her blue eyes are sad.
“Not many people could walk for seven hours with a punctured lung and lacerated liver, even if it was to save their friend,” she says softly, and Todd turns half angry and half startled by the honesty of her comment.
“How do you know about that?” Farah hisses, and the surgeon has the decency to look a little embarrassed.
“It was an impressive enough feat that most of the surgical floor already knows,” she says, simply, and then turns to look at Todd. “I’m sorry, Mr Brotzman, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Todd shakes his head and then looks back down at the unconscious form of his friend. “It’s true though,” he whispers, “I would have been killed by a rockfall if it wasn’t for him, and he kept walking even though he was dizzy and hurting and thought he was dying because he knew if he stopped he’d leave me stuck in a tunnel maze only he had a hope of finding a way out of. He put himself through agony of walking through those tunnels for hours even though he was sure he was going to die just because he didn’t want me to get stuck down there too.”
“Oh, Todd!”
Farah’s voice startles him and he turns, Dirk’s hand still held in his, to find himself being pulled into her arms. She holds him tightly and he finds his head falling to rest down on her shoulder. “You’re turning into Dirk,” she says with a sigh, “thinking you’re not worth the effort.”
Todd sniffles into the leather of her jacket, it feels sticky against his salty cheek. The angle is a bit awkward and he’s aware that his pulling a little on Dirk’s injured wrist but he can’t bring himself to let go of either of his friends. He vaguely realises they the surgeon has left and they are alone.
“He means so much to me,” he mumbles into Farah’s shoulder.
“I know,” she says softly as she rubs a hand slowly back and forth across his upper back. “He means a lot to me too.”
~~~
The surgeon returns shortly after she had left, a small box of tablets in her hand which she passes to Todd with the explanation that they were something prescribed to help him sleep. She gently removes them from the room after that, sending them home and telling them she will phone them if anything changes. Both Farah and Todd protest but the light haired surgeon is firm, partially because they’re not relatives, so really shouldn’t be there until Dirk can invite them, but also because they’re both, and Todd especially, looking more than a little worse for wear.
It’s Farah that gives in first, the logic of the situation overpowering her heart, and she convinces Todd to follow her to the car. They end up in Dirk’s apartment because it feels the place to go, and Todd, after a little convincing, swallows the two tablets from packet given to him by the surgeon and the dose of pararibulitus medicine he had missed earlier and crawls, still fully dressed, into Dirk’s bed. Between his exhaustion and the tablets he has taken, he falls asleep quickly, the ruined ice-cream patterned tie once again clutched tightly in his fist.
~~~
Two days pass and Todd stays in Dirk’s apartment. Farah stays too, sleeping on the sofa despite Todd’s protests and persistently cooking meals at regular intervals despite neither of them having much of an appetite because that is the sort of thing she does. Todd, with a little help from Farah, painstakingly mends the navy-blue, ice-cream patterned tie. The stitched line is obvious, not really helped by the black thread they had used when they couldn’t find any to properly match, but it should be hidden under his collar if he wears it again. Farah points out that it’s the thought that counts anyway.
They snap at each other despite the situation, both stressed and worried and overtired but too worked up to sleep and in need of some space but at the same time not wanting to be alone.
The phone stays silent.
Farah says it’s a good thing, insisting no news is good news.
Todd, illogically, disagrees.
~~~
On the third day, when Todd can almost bear it no longer, the phone rings.
~~~
Dirk is sitting up when they are shown into the room, or at least more upright than he had been before, propped up on the lifted head of his bed by a mountain of pillows. He’s still surrounded by machines and wires but the tube that had previously protruded from his mouth has been removed along with the pinkish tape that had held it there. There is a different tube taped to his face instead, this one much thinner and snaking over his ears and under his nose, supplying the extra oxygen his battered lungs need to function. He still looks pale and exhausted, the circles under his eyes dark in contrast to the rest of his skin, but his eyelids flutter open at the sound of the door.
He looks confused at first and his unfocused eyes blink lethargically, open but not really seeing, but then he seems to wake a little more and when his eyes finally focus on the two people standing in the doorway his pale lips slowly grow into a wide smile.
“You’re here,” he beams, his voice hoarse from the intubation tube but at least not the breathless wheeze it had been when Todd had last heard him speak. Todd’s heart does a funny little jump of pure joy. Dirk’s picks up a little too, the monitors that surround him displaying his emotions for all to see.
“Hey, Dirk.” Todd’s voice is soft with relief and he feels he ought to pinch himself because after spending seven hours watching his best friend slowly deteriorating in the caves and then see him looking so small and ill hours later, connected to tubes and machines and unable to breathe by himself, and then having to wait three more days with the awful knowledge that he might not be the same person he was before when he woke, has left seeing him awake and talking almost unreal.
But it is real, and Dirk is there, still connected to the tubes and wires and machines, and still looking small and ill and as though he would be unable to sit without the support of the pillows behind him, but also awake and talking, smiling up at him with too bright eyes.
“How are you doing?” Farah asks softly, recovering first, as she walks around to the right side of his bed. She touches his hand when she reaches him, not holding it, but more as though she is checking he is real too. Dirk rolls his head to look up at her. He looks dazed, drugged in fact, Todd realises, likely due to the sedatives still crawling through his system and the strong pain medication he has almost certainly been given.
“I’m…” he pauses looking conflicted and slightly confused and then sighs, “certainly doing a lot better than I thought I would be.” The words sound harmless and Farah smiles, patting Dirk’s hand gently, but Todd can’t help but think he’s referring back to their cave when he had seemed so certain of his death. It seems unlikely that Dirk, so drugged and dazed and unwell, would be making such a reference, he looks like he’s struggling to focus his eyes let alone his brain, but then his muddled gaze lifts and their eyes lock briefly before Dirk’s drops to his lap and Todd realises that those moments are exactly what he was talking about.
Todd swallows heavily.
Farah looks between them, seeming to realise she has missed something. She frowns thoughtfully.
“I’ll get us some coffee, shall I?” she says to Todd, her tone carefully casual, and he gets the feeling she’s offering them space more than she is coffee. Todd nods. “Would you like anything, Dirk?”
“Milkshake?” Dirk asks, sounding hopeful, and Farah sighs and rolls her eyes but says she’ll see before she leaves the room and the door shuts, and for the first time since Todd had left Dirk in the tunnel in search of help, they are alone. A look passes between them, not awkward, but unsure.
“I fixed your tie,” Todd says almost nervously and then takes it from his pocket for Dirk to see. Dirk reaches to take it, wincing at the movement, but his expression stays curious.
“You did this?” he asks, his voice soft, and then coughs roughly. A machine beside the bed, one with a tube running from it and snaking under his covers, gurgles alarmingly but he seems not to notice, his attention fixed on the tie. He’s running his fingers over the line of tiny stitches holding the two pieces of silky fabric together Todd had so patiently sewn, his expression caught somewhere between awe and delight and his eyes bright with emotion. “Thank you, Todd.”
“I think it’s me that should be saying thanks,” Todd almost whispers, “You saved my life.”
“Pft, poppycock!” Dirk scoffs gently, flapping a hand dismissively.
Todd frowns at him, “Dirk, I would never have gotten out of that tunnel without you!”
Dirk looks at him for a moment, eyes tired thoughtful, before he transfers the tie to his right hand and holds out the left for Todd to take. Todd grasps it gently, aware of the IV line trailing from the back of it and the splint that has replaced the bandage around the wrist. Dirk runs a thumb over the back of his hand and it takes Todd a second to realise that the man in the hospital bed is trying to comfort him.
“Okay, I did save your life,” Dirk agrees, sounding pleased with himself in a way Todd hadn’t expected him to. “But I wouldn’t have made it out without you, so in a way, you saved me too.”
Todd frowns, because although he had helped Dirk, holding him up when he was too tired and weak to stand alone, it doesn’t feel like it’s quite in the same league and he’s about to protest when Dirk continues. He’s frowning slightly, and his blinks are heavy but his eyes look more focused than Todd has seen them in a while.
“That isn’t what I meant,” he says, as though somehow reading Todd’s mind again. “My ability to act a holistic compass-” the corners of his mouth twitch at the term, “-might have saved you, but you saved me because you gave me a reason to keep walking even when it hurt and I thought it was dying anyway.”
“Dirk-” Todd starts, concerned, but Dirk shakes his head almost violently in protest.
“No, Todd, listen - it hurt, more than anything else has ever hurt before, and if you hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t known that me stopping would likely lead to your death too, I wouldn’t have fought so hard to keep walking and in all likelihood, I would have died down there in the tunnels, just as you would have done without me.” He pauses, looking a little breathless, then coughs and the machine beside his bed gurgles again. “So yeah, I saved you, but you saved me too, because if I didn’t have you, I wouldn’t have had a reason to keep walking. You gave me a reason to keep going, Todd, just like you always have.”
“Oh, Dirk, I don’t think you know how much you mean to people,” Todd says quietly, his heart pounding and unsure but his still hand clutching the smaller one holding his like a lifeline. “To me and Farah and Tina and Amanda and Hobbs, we all love you, Dirk. Hell, I Love you Dirk, more than anyone else in the world, and don’t you ever, ever forget it.”
A second passes, tired blue eyes thoughtfully holding Todd’s brighter ones, and then, after a second, Dirk sighs wheezily and gently pulls his hand away. Todd’s heart breaks a little as it leaves his grasp.
He watches, almost numbly as Dirk shuffles himself over on the bed, his expression tightening at the pain that pierces through the drugs at the movement, and at first he wonders what he’s doing, but then he pats the mattress beside him and suddenly his moving across the bed makes sense.
“You’re hurt,” Todd protests, because although he wants nothing more than to climb onto the bed, his friend is really quite seriously injured, still hooked up to machines and oxygen with four ribs held together with wire and screws and the holes they had previously punctured in his lung and liver only recently repaired.
“What if I don’t care?” Dirk says, tired eyes serious and gives a little one-sided shrug. Todd pauses, his heart conflicted, and then he sighs and kicks off his shoes and climbs on top of the bed, sitting beside his friend on top of the sheets. Dirk takes his hand again as best he can given the tight angle and his inflexible splinted wrist and then rests his heavy head on Todd’s shoulder. He sighs contently, sounding suddenly exhausted. He looks tired too, his eyelids drooping between heavy blinks. But despite his obvious exhaustion and the pain he must undoubtable be in, he looks happier than Todd has seen him in a while.
“This isn’t hurting you, is it?”
Dirk shakes his head lazily, and Todd realises he would be unlikely to admit to it even if it was. There’s a moment and then Dirk yawns widely.
“Why don’t you sleep?” Todd suggests gently, running his thumb over Dirk’s exposed knuckles. There’s a pause before Dirk sighs and nods into his shoulder. He’s about to leave again and let the injured man lay down when the hand holding his tightens its grip.
“Stay.”
Todd looks down and finds Dirk staring up at him with serious blue eyes and his protests crumble before they’re voiced. “Okay, I’ll stay,” he agrees quietly and Dirk sighs a tired ‘thank you’ before his heavy eyes drift closed.
~~~
When Farah returns, a coffee in each hand and a small carton of chocolate milk in her pocket, she finds both men asleep in the narrow bed, Todd perched tentatively on the edge and Dirk slumped beside him, his head still resting on Todd’s shoulder. They both look comfortable, as though they were meant to be sleeping in the same small hospital bed, one connected to machines and wires and oxygen with a chest held together by stitches and metal and the other holding him tenderly as though not wanting to hurt him but also not able to bear the thought of losing him again. And Farah realises, they probably are.