Chapter Text
If there’s one thing Lucky was absolutely sure of right now, it’s that he was hurting.
He wasn’t talking about the minor wrist sprain, or the occasional twisted ankle. These were distracting at worst, annoying at best, but the pain always ended up fading into the background, strong-armed into surrender by his willpower; because if there’s one thing Lucky didn’t have, it’s time to rest and whine.
Except apparently, he did, now, because all these doctors at the hospital told him the same thing: we will need you here for an extended stay. Healing takes time.
Time! As if he had it! As if there wasn’t a game next week, and the playoffs, and then maybe nationals, and—
But Dr Four-Eyes had stood her ground. She was stronger than she looked, for someone so frail, and at some point, Lucky had understood that she wouldn’t budge, no more than he would, and so he had… let it go. Not given up! Only a pause to gather his thoughts, ignore the ones that displeased him, and rest. He needed rest. He was quite tired, now that he thought of it.
Except he couldn’t sleep, because his shoulder hurt. And he couldn’t understand why. Dr Four-Eyes had told him, in a few words, about his rotator cuff (what’s that? It sounded like a made-up name for a body part that was, for him, vastly annoying) being wounded, severe tear in the muscle, yada yada yada, all nice and peachy, all words his brain hadn’t computed at the time because, alright, nice, give him some painkillers, except they weren’t working, and he had told them, it’s not working, and the nurse – nice nurse, slight accent, not from here maybe? Eh, who cares – had just said she would fetch the head of the medical team because they needed his authorization to give him something stronger, and then she had disappeared.
And now he was alone. Just him and the four bland walls of what Doctor Four-Eyes had called, with a tired, thrilled, your new home! Well, his new home sucked, sorry to say, and it hadn’t been that long since he had been admitted but he was already bored out of his mind. And hurt. But mostly bored. Or mostly—
Lucky gritted his teeth and begged his mind to stop. working. Maybe this hospital was someone’s idea of his personal hell. They had wheeled him here like some kind of infirm, left him there to rot, and apart from the quick steps passing in front of the room’s door here and there, nobody was stopping to give him the time of the day. He had been given strict instructions to rest, don’t move, and for him who was always used to prance around, to fiddle something with his hand, or to chew on gum to settle his nerves before a big game, this was, plainly put, agony. He wanted to pace the room! He wanted to do something with his ten fingers, he was injured, not useless! But you just have to rest, Dr Four-Eyes had said, her big eyes not hiding how she couldn’t grasp why he was so pent up, aren’t you tired? And of course he was! But he was frustrated even more. So. They kind of cancelled each other out.
Footsteps sounded. Lucky perked up, as usual, but this time he had the foreboding thought this person was here for him. Instinct, maybe, or the stupid belief that there was some intent in these steps, some finality in the way these heels clicked against the floor.
He was proven right when someone knocked impatiently at the door. Heart erratic and shoulder throbbing in exalted pain, Lucky stood up straighter. The words stayed lodged in his throat; not that the other waited for his assent to barge in.
Lucky came face to face with a man. Auburn hair. Face hidden behind a clipboard. White coat swaying in his suite, and Dr Four-Eyes close after, balancing what seemed like a hundred papers in her frail arms. He paid her absolutely no mind.
Because.
Because.
“Oh shit,” he said.
“Mr Jonronero,” Gabe Edega intoned in the passionless voice that had lulled him to sleep more than once, “welcome to Middlesea Hospital, Multifocal Atrial Tachycardia wing. I am Dr Edega, head of—”
“I know who you are!” he hissed, nearly strangling himself with the words. “Jesus!”
Dr Four-Eyes looked at them successively, her brows furrowed. She was trying to guess very quietly, Lucky figured out, how they knew each other; and if her new patient hated her boss so much that he would dive and tackle him here and there, busted shoulder be damned.
“I am Dr Edega,” Edega began again, completely unbothered as he flipped a page of his stupid clipboard, “head of the medical team in charge of your case. I hope you will enjoy your stay among us—”
“I think I need a transfer,” Lucky said to Dr Four-Eyes, who jumped; remembering, perhaps, that people could see her, or not used to be addressed so directly with her boss in the same room. “I need a transfer so bad. Or a new doc. Whatever is quicker.”
“Hum—”
“The current Multifocal Atrial Tachycardia team is on an indefinite hiring pause,” Edega said dryly.
“I wasn’t asking you.”
“He’s right, though,” Dr Four-Eyes piped up. She clicked on the tip of her ballpoint pen several times in quick successions and moistened her lips. “Right now, your options are a bit…” Edega jerked his head once and she fell silent.
“The nurse has told me about your request for stronger painkillers. On a scale of one to ten, how would you evaluate your pain?”
“An eleven,” Lucky said. “Twelve since you walked through the door.”
Edega flipped another page. “We will put you on morphine for the time being. Dr Paige will handle the necessary accommodations. Tell her about any complaints you may have. Have a nice day, Mr Jonronero.”
Lucky watched him leave, incensed, his fists clenched in his linens. “Have a nice day”? As if I could! The fucking prick. His accident this morning, and now him this afternoon? Was there someone he had pissed off recently and whom had cursed him as retribution? God deciding to take him down a notch as a trial of will? His mother would have crossed him twice for thinking such untoward thoughts; and once more for cursing the Lord’s name in vain, as she loved to say, but honestly, he thought, fuck her. Fuck everyone. Fuck, most of all, fucking Gabe Edega.
“Hum.”
He blinked and stared at Dr… Paige, the jackass had said, Dr Paige, who lingered even though duty probably called her elsewhere, and took small steps toward his bed as if approaching a startled animal.
“You shouldn’t… do that,” she said, taking his huge hand in hers, and gently unclenching his fingers until they were lying flat and still on the bed. “It puts pressure on your muscles. They risk cramping.”
He looked at her, silent. She cleared her throat and took the folder she had jammed under her armpit.
“I need to go over some details of your medical chart with you, if you don’t mind?”
He blinked. He needed to say something, anything, that would make their meagre conversation less awkward.
“Sure.”
…Eh, would be enough.
“Great! So.” Opening the folder, she stared at the first page. Stared at it once more. Her eyes slowly travelled from the words on the sheet to him.
“For full transparency,” she said, “it appears we have the… wrong name written there.”
Lucky felt his throat close. The wrong name was a loaded term that encompassed, in two small words, everything he needed to know. His first instinct was to curl on himself, to make himself the smallest ball possible, and to pray the world would come to an end here and now. Forget the earth swallowing him down. He needed the whole world getting nuked to oblivion by aliens. With everybody dead, nobody would remember Wrong Name Jonronero, nor his pathetic failures.
But he caught her glance, and the only thing he saw was infinite patience. The only thing Dr Paige did was pushing her glasses up her long nose, and smile at him. Her hand was still near his.
“What…” His turn to clear his throat, around the ball lodged there. “What, uh, which name do you have?”
Dr Paige held his gaze.
“The wrong one. I’m penning you under as Lucky, is that alright with you?”
“Lu— Yeah, yeah, uh, sure, yeah.” His laugh sounded weak even to his own ears; still, he persisted forward. “Maximo kinda, uh, kinda sucks, to be honest.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know, I am named Ada, after all.” She scratched ‘the wrong name’ meticulously, until – he could only guess – there remained only a black spot in its place; then she wrote briskly, in this cursive only doctors seemed to possess, clicked on her pen and beamed at him.
“There, all done! I suppose you have, hum, medication? If you could disclose…”
“Do I have to do it? Like, right now?”
Dr Paige blinked, then shook her head. Was she this accommodating with all of her patients? Or was he the only difficult asshole in the whole ward?
“The next question is even more delicate, though,” she said, folding her hands carefully together. Her face had the dreading look of someone who knew they were setting foot into uncharted territory, and would have preferred not to.
Then the composure shattered, and she deflated entirely. For the first time, Lucky noticed the dark circles under her eyes.
“Is there something I need to know about you and Dr Ed—”
“No.”
“Great! That doesn’t sound suspicious at all.”
Lucky would have pinched his nose in frustration – as his mom had been wont to do when he brought back bad grades and scrapes from playground scuffles – were he not sure to miss Dr Paige’s warm hand next to his – yes, it was kind of pathetic, really –, who was one of the only doctors in his life that wasn’t looking at him like a freak, or an interesting case of medical ethics.
So he simply closed his eyes, threw his head back, and groaned his despair to the ceiling.
“Because,” Dr Paige said above his moan, unperturbed, “there’s some sort of doctors shortage right now, so your options are kind of limited. If there is a case of… personal disagreements, for us to be aware of, it would be best if we could be prepared, so as to anticipate any unpleasant situation.”
“He was— it was a fling. Just a fling. Nothing more, nothing less. We can be professional about it.” His smile was bitter, and his words even more so when he added: “I won’t sue your hospital, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Dr Paige furrowed her brows. Her eyes, enhanced by her glasses, looked comically large.
“I have the well-being of my patients at heart, not the hospital’s, and even less my superiors’.” She patted his hand. “However, I trust your judgment, Mr Jonronero. Everything is duly noted. Now, do you hear? That would be the nurse, and your new painkillers.”
As if on cue – had they rehearsed it beforehand? – the end of a trolley poked its nose in his room, soon followed by the same nurse as before. Thankful for the distraction, Lucky let himself go against the stiff pillow; when the first drop of morphine finally quieted the pain in his shoulder, he allowed himself to close his eyes and go to sleep.
He hadn’t exactly lied, to Dr Paige; firstly because it would be idiotic, secondly because, in some ways, even he didn’t know the entire truth.
The truth was that they – his teammates, him, the team, them, anyway – had gone out for drinks. Training was over. They felt confident, for once in their life, that the world was in the palm of their hand, and that whoever stood in their way didn’t stand a chance.
Certainty, as Lucky would personally learn later on, had the making of a great enemy, and of an even deadlier foe.
But for now, they were drinking. Getting rowdier as the minutes flew, and enjoying the hell out of themselves. Nights out were a rarity. Coach preferred them fresh for the day and so forbad all sorts of leisure activities, an ask most of the youngest players often struggled to accommodate.
Lucky wasn’t one of them. He despised the taste of alcohol, despite his high school friends’ attempt to introduce him to the festive land of parties. Perhaps they should have done so with less cheap booze; as it stood, the only thing they’d accomplished was make his tastebuds wary of anything with an ounce of alcohol, and so he preferred to let his teammates enjoy themselves in peace, happy to sip at his juice while leaning on the bar. Sometimes, he felt like the father of older-than-him teenagers, or the minder of very rambunctious college kids letting loose after their midterms; but always watching from the bleachers.
“Luckyyyyyy,” someone said on his right. A large arm draped over his shoulder, and he found himself trapped in the drunk embrace of the pitcher of his team, Mark, fetid breath and all. “Luckyyyy, you should join uuuuus.”
“Yeah, yeah, right.” He wrinkled his nose. “Man, how much did you drink?”
Mark raised his nearly empty glass to eye level, brought it even closer when his vision failed him, then shrugged.
“Dunno.”
“Too much, then.”
“We’re here to! Drink! Dance!”
Lucky threw a distasteful glance at the crowd.
“No, thank you.”
It was a combination of teenagers pretending their hardest they were adults; adults pretending their hardest they were teenagers; both groups largely failing at their tasks, and knowing it very well. Here and there he could see the heads of his teammates, poking amongst the shapeless crowd, all too happy to let themselves be carried by whatever music was blasted across the bar.
“You’re no fun,” Mark whined. “You suck, Lucky.”
“And yet, here you are.”
He tried not to take the words at heart, and largely failed. The words of a drunken man weren’t the most reliable testimony of his mind, but sometimes – such as tonight, as he let his gaze wander on the dancing people – he wondered what the hell he was doing here; with a big unknown on what the ‘here’ was, exactly.
Mark, however, wasn’t finished.
“But you are! You just…” He made a vague gesture with his hand. The ice cube tinkled in his glass. “You just are soooo moody. Always keeping to yourself. Thinking you’re better than us.” There was now the smallest amount of venom in his voice. Lucky was suddenly deeply aware of the arm across his shoulders, of the hand possessively wrapped around it, almost to the point of pain.
He should have shaken it off. Physical contact was a touchy subject with him, wary as he was of people palpating him left and right for the stupidest reasons. Oh but you look so strong, I just had to check!, or the obligatory Medical check-up requires a thorough examination of doctors, who had… left enough of an impression on him, that he was happy not to see any more of them until he was on his deathbed.
“But Mark,” he said, because he didn’t know when to shut up, “I am better than you.” He put his glass down, with perhaps more force than necessary, and slipped out of his teammate’s embrace. “Sorry. I’ve got places to be.”
The first hit of fresh hair on his cheeks was a godsend he spent several seconds savouring. You often didn’t realize how hot and packed a place was until you escaped. In his relief, Lucky vowed never to set foot in a bar like that again; knowing very well, too, that he would fail to uphold his own bargain, because he was that desperate for the smallest drop of human contact.
“If you need to throw up, do so far away from me.”
Lucky opened his eyes on the paved street and looked to his left. There was a man there, smoking lazily, his face obscured by the light of the nearby streetlamp. He had gravel for a voice, and the loose shape of someone used to such places.
“I’m… alright, thanks?”
“Still.” There was an exhale of smoke, followed by an even lazier: “Puke elsewhere.”
“I won’t puke. Jesus. The only thing I drank is an orange juice.” He blinked. “…Why am I justifying myself to you?”
The stranger shrugged. The stub of his cigarette lit with the drag he took. Lucky tried to examine him more closely; but the shadows on his face were impenetrable, leaving everything to his imagination, of which he had exactly none.
“So.” He wracked his brain for something to say and ended up with: “Come here often?”
“No.”
“Well, aren’t you a joy to be around.”
Somewhere, his mother was clutching her chest, wondering where, exactly, she had failed in his education. Lucky could have given her a thousand moments in his life for which she would never have taken any responsibility. Besides, the stranger didn’t seem to mind; worse, he even snorted, a sound between a scoff and a dry laugh, and Lucky smiled, emboldened by his success.
“I could return the compliment. I saw you at the bar. Awfully alone, are you?”
There was a gentle cruelty in his voice. Lucky dug his fingers in it and held on tight.
“What do you want, I suck at parties. Hey,” he said, taking a step closer, then another, and another, until he could breathe the smoke in his lungs and taste it on his tongue, until he could imagine that the forms he saw on this obscured face were dressing the portrait of a normal man and not one hiding in the shadows. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Aren’t we?”
Lucky rolled his eyes. He held back untoward words that people usually took offense at, and said:
“You know what I mean.”
The hand holding the cigarette stilled. For a few seconds, Lucky thought he had misread everything; that his forwardness, far from being welcomed, was going to earn him a slap and some curses for good measure.
But the stranger breathed in a way that rattled his whole body, and said in the same flat voice that inflected his every word:
“I am not a… deeply traditional man.”
Lucky looked at where he guessed his eyes were. His own were upholding a challenge and a plea woven together. Bet you couldn’t take me home, please. But more than that, there was an understanding passing through the two of them, of two men riddled with the same different bodies.
“I’m not, too.”
The stranger crushed his cigarette under his heel.
“Lead the way.”
Funny, Lucky would think later when reminiscing on the hazards of life, how such a small sentence could turn his whole world on its axis. But then, life was made of tiny nothingness like this one: unpredictable, unexpected; and deeply, deeply, devastating.