Chapter Text
If there was one thing Bobby could count on from his team, it was having almost heart attacks on a far-too-regular basis. For a while, it was usually courtesy of Buck.
The problem was, however, that over the years it had stopped being just Buck. In fact, since the bombing incident, Buck had probably given him close to the least amount of grey hairs. Considering Chimney had rebar through the skull, being stabbed, and being kidnapped and tortured by a serial killer under his belt, he was really only competing with Eddie and his bullet wounds, getting buried alive, and being held hostage by escaped convicts.
Sometimes it was baffling that they were all still alive.
The point was, though, that while Buck would always have his impulsive tendencies, it was the things he couldn’t control that always seemed to cause the most problems. The bombing, the pulmonary embolism, the tsunami—all of it hadn’t been the kid’s fault. The worst thing about that, was that every time Buck ignored his instruction and pulled a risky move on a call, he was usually perfectly fine, not to mention his ideas were usually more effective during rescues.
Bobby knew Hen tended to fall more in line with himself, more often being the worrier than the one causing others to worry, but that did nothing to assuage the emotional pain she’d sustained alongside everything their family had been through.
On the bright side, he’d be a silver fox before long with the trajectory they seemed to be on. Athena hadn’t commented on his increase in grey hairs over the course of their relationship, but it was really only a matter of time.
In the end, he didn’t know why seeing it all play out right before his eyes made everything so much worse. Other members of their team had come just as close to death, if not closer, but he’d never had to witness it. With Chimney’s car accident and the stabbing and Jonah’s torture, he’d only ever seen the aftermath. Buck was the only one who had to witness Eddie getting shot and, subsequently, witness the hostage situation, and when the well collapsed, no one could see him down there freezing and struggling to breathe. Even during the earthquake when they’d spent hours not being able to find out if Hen had survived her fall, he hadn’t seen her.
Until now.
Until he watched Evan Buckley crumple like a marionette with its strings cut, dangling from the end of the ladder completely unmoving.
Time stood still, those first few seconds. Maybe someone had screamed, he wasn’t sure, all he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears as he forced himself to hold back the part of his brain that wanted to abandon all protocol and go after his kid.
Ultimately, he was snapped out of his shock by Hen letting out the most gutted, terrified sob right beside him, her hand flying to her mouth. His hand shot out in an instant to stop her from doing exactly what he wanted to do himself.
“Cap— Cap, we gotta’ get him,” she sobbed desperately, tears mixing with the rainwater on both of their faces.
“We can’t,” Bobby spoke before he let himself be swayed. “It’s not—“ his voice cracked. “it’s not safe.”
The devastation on her face broke his already splintering heart.
“Bobby—!”
His head snapped up across the lot to the other ambulance, currently being loaded with one of the victims they’d rescued. Chimney was standing in the open back doors, hanging from the top of the doorframe as his gaze snapped back and forth between the ladder truck and where Hen and Bobby stood at the other ambulance.
“Don’t go anywhere!” He yelled back, not wanting to risk anyone else until they knew it was safe. “Get as many people inside the cabin as you can!”
Chimney was generally pretty good about not ignoring Bobby’s direct orders unless it was truly desperate, but his stricken look at where Buck’s prone body hung from the end of the ladder said all Bobby needed to know to prove he wasn’t just considering it.
“We’ll get him, I promise!”
Promises were big.
If there was anything that could stop any one of them from doing something, it was a promise from their captain that he’d take care of it.
His hand shot up to the radio on his shoulder, “Dispatch, this is Captain Nash with the 118, we need backup and another RA unit as soon as possible.”
He could’ve sworn he only looked away for a split second just to make sure no one else had been hurt.
It had to have been less than a minute or two since the strike, and already things were falling apart. He looked away to try to refocus Hen on prepping a backboard and anything from the ambulance they might need when they got him down, when all of a sudden her gaze wandered and her expression turned to horror.
He really did not have the capacity for more things to go work, but as usual, his team had other ideas.
“Cap!” Chimney’s voice rang out through his radio. “Holy shit— Cap, Eddie’s on the ladder!”
Of fucking course he was.
Honestly, he should’ve seen that coming a mile away.
Note to self, the next time one of the boys is in danger, priority number one is to restrain the other one from going after him.
Considering he had to physically drag Buck away from trying to dig Eddie out of the well with his bare hands, he really shouldn’t have been surprised that common sense was nowhere to be found. He was gripping his radio with more force than necessary before he even comprehended what to do.
“Diaz! What the hell are you thinking!” He knew exactly what the younger man was thinking, but that didn’t mean he liked it.
Either Eddie was purposefully ignoring him (very possible) or he simply had a one-track mind that didn’t leave room for anyone but Buck (also very possible) because not only did he continue his ascent, he sped up.
“Why am I not surprised,” he grumbled under his breath, racing around to the engine and retrieving a megaphone. “Eddie! You’re no good to him if you get yourself killed!”
It wasn’t like it mattered, the younger man was practically at the top of the ladder already with his hands around the rope holding up Buck’s deadweight.
In his periphery, he could see the ambulance reversing across the rain-slick pavement towards the ladder truck as Hen parked and ran around to open the back and pull out a stretcher. Chimney immediately followed, assembling EKG machines and preparing everything they would need once they got the kid back to the ground.
They all were doing what they needed to do to save Buck and Bobby was just standing there. Not only was he just standing there, but he was yelling at everyone that was trying to help his kid and telling them to stop.
He’s your kid, you’re supposed to do anything to keep him safe.
His brain was screaming at him to make sure no one else got hurt. All of his captain’s instincts were to minimize the damage, but logic didn’t account for letting Evan Buckley become collateral damage. His head might’ve been acting like a captain, but his heart wanted his kid. His heart just wanted to hold his kid and keep him safe.
His feet carried him to the end of the ladder truck before he could talk him out of it.
“Eddie, I need you down and out of the strike zone before the next strike, let’s go!”
The younger man seemed to listen to what he was saying, staring terrified down at his captain as he nodded shakily.
“Chim, I need you on the controls. Release as much slack on the rescue rope as your can and then get down, copy?”
“Copy Cap!”
Oh, how lucky he was that he had a team so ready and willing to put themselves at risk of so much danger to save one of their own.
As soon as Chim made it onto the top of the engine, he was cranking like it was an Olympic sport, unspooling the rescue tether as Eddie held unflinching to the weight in his hands. In some strange way, it reminded him of the night in St. Paul so many years ago. The way he’d forced his way into the blaze, blundering recklessly as flames licked his arms. That night, he couldn’t feel anything but the pounding heartbeat in his ears demanding that he find his family. His lungs were full of smoke, but he ran at a sprinter’s pace. His hands were scarred with burns, but he could pound on his apartment door without a single flinch of pain.
He watched Eddie hold up Buck’s entire body weight in his bare hands, gently lowering him to the waiting stretcher below, not risking a single jolt of aggressive movement to his partner’s already fragile form. His arms held up two hundred pounds of muscle and dead weight like it was nothing. Sure, he knew the younger man was strong and Bobby had seen how much he could bench press, but it was something else entirely without any weight distribution.
He held Buck’s life in his bare hands.
It was somehow too soon but not soon enough when Buck was finally within arms reach and he could grip the younger man by his turnout coat and refuse to let him go.
“We got ‘im, Eddie. Get down from there!”
A few other bodies surrounded the gurney, helping ease the unconscious man onto the gurney as they released him from his harness.
Hen was ready and waiting with an EKG machine, not hesitating for a second to start on compressions. Chimney was at her side in an instant, wordlessly taking over compressions as Hen started checking his vitals and running fluids.
“Come on, kid. You got this,” Chim huffed as he worked, putting his whole body weight into doing CPR. “Come on. I’m not calling Maddie and telling her I gave up on you, so you better not either.”
Oh fuck, Maddie.
Okay that was gonna’ have to be a problem for later. There was no way he would be able to focus if he thought about the inevitable conversations with their loved ones that would come as soon as they reached the hospital.
Bobby’s gaze was locked on his kid, on his slack expression and the angry red lines running up and down his torso. He looked so young.
“Come on, son, we got you. We got you, it’s gonna’ be okay,” he spoke, speaking it into truth. If he said it enough times, maybe it would be true.
He was sure Hen and Chimney were calling out important information, but all he could hear was the steady shrill of the heart monitor flatlining. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to hear anything else.
Until there was another strike and all of them jolted like a bomb went off.
Sparks flew from the ladder truck, the sound of heat and electricity coursing through metal was unlike anything any of them had ever heard, but the undeniable sound of a body hitting the unforgiving steel frame of their engine made Bobby’s heart lurch.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hen breathed, horrified and devastated. “Bobby—Bobby you’re gonna’ have to get him, we can’t—”
‘Get who?’ he almost asked, before his common sense took over and he felt sick for what was probably the tenth time in the last five minutes. His head snapped around so fast he felt it pop.
Eddie was laying on his back on top of the ladder truck, an arm and a leg hanging loosely over the edge as his helmet, likely knocked off with the force of the strike, sat useless on the ground below.
He saved your kid, now save him.
He was climbing up on top of the truck before he could stop himself.
“I need another gurney and two sets of hands, now!”
His hand felt for a pulse, focusing all of his efforts on getting some feeling back into his hands so it would actually mean something. Three agonizing deep breaths later and he felt a faint thump-thump under his fingers and nearly collapsed in relief.
In one swift motion, he propped the younger man against his front, holding him up with one arm as he descended the ladder up the side of the truck and deposited him onto the waiting gurney.
“Cap! How’s he looking?”
Hen’s panic traveled past all of the blood roaring in his ears, pleading for even a shred of good news.
“I got a pulse, he’s not breathing,” he radioed back, not trusting the strength of his voice to be able to overpower the thunderous rainstorm. “What about Buck?”
No answer was all the answer he needed.
There was no good news.
“We’ve only got one bus, cap! We can’t afford to take two trips, we’re gonna’ have to squeeze ‘em both in.”
There was a sort of whiplash in the way a fond memory of the two young men and their general lack of personal space at any given moment pushed its way to the front of his mind as if to remind him that if either of them could, they’d probably be begging him to go together regardless.
“I’ll drive, just make it work!”
Seeing the two of them lying side by side, twin Lichtenberg fractures across their skin, was something out of a horror movie. He was sprinting for the front of the ambulance before he even gave himself the chance to consider how helpless he felt knowing he was about to speed to the nearest hospital without even knowing if either of them would survive the drive there.
Less than two minutes after they started the engine and turned on the lights, Hen and Chim called out that they were secured and for him to drive—!
Maybe he didn’t see the back of the ambulance, didn’t see the sweat dripping down Chimney’s forehead as he became more and more desperate in his compressions, didn’t see the way Hen’s usually steady hands shook as she prepared to intubate knowing their friends—their family— might never take another breath on their own, but it sure as hell felt like it with the way every worst case scenario swarmed his brain.
From where they were positioned, Chim laser-focused on Buck and Hen locked in on Eddie, neither could afford to look anywhere that wouldn’t indicate the two younger men’s responses to their efforts.
They didn’t see Eddie, flitting between regaining consciousness and letting the pain drag him back under, twitching his fingers towards the man beside him and the cold, limp hand that hung off the other gurney between them. Two fingers curled around one of Buck’s, a sad excuse for holding, and as soon as he felt their skin meet, Eddie gave up the fight to come back to consciousness.
Luckily someone that was on the scene must’ve radioed the hospital and told them to be prepared for two incoming trauma patients, because as soon as Bobby pulled into the emergency room entrance, a small group of nurses was at the ready behind the ambulance, wheeling both of his boys towards the glass doors before he even had a chance to register that they’d actually made it to the hospital.
Never go beyond the glass doors.
Well, if there was anything they’d all learned in the last five years with their team, it was that there was no force that could keep any of them from running in after their family.
His two paramedics skidded to a stop as both gurneys disappeared past the emergency room and towards the trauma surgery wing and all Bobby could do was shatter. His knees gave out, slamming into the linoleum as his forearms quickly followed leaving the man doubled over himself with a distraught, guttural, breath of air.
—————————
Maybe it was lucky that, apart from Eddie, the 118 seemed to be full of believers in the cosmic, supernatural mysteries of the universe. Fate, jinxes, curses, soulmates—he was always the odd one out questioning their interest. Maybe he’d been surrounded by believers for long enough that the universe just decided to step in and give him a nudge.
A nudge, of course, in the form of 300 million Volts of electricity.
Somewhere, distantly, the fact that— the likelihood of being struck by lightning is actually only one in 13,200, isn’t that crazy?— lived in the recesses of Bobby’s subconscious memory from Buck’s amusing hyper-fixation on natural disasters after the tsunami. Did you know it’s a myth that lightning never strikes the same place twice? There’s this place in Venezuela called Lake Maracaibo that gets lightning strikes three hundred days a year, can you believe that?
There was nothing he wouldn’t give to hear his kid summarize the highlights of his nightly Wikipedia binges just one more time. To see the joy and fascination on his face when he knew something the others didn’t. The pride that made him bloom when Eddie— always Eddie—urged him to keep going with questions and unwavering rapt attention.
It was the only memory keeping him afloat.
By the time the waiting room was filled with everyone who was even adjacent to their 118 family, it became almost embarrassing to think about what went down. That they’d all mounted a massive metal ladder in the middle of a thunderstorm and decided to just…hope for the best? Conductivity was, like, middle school science, if they were being generous. Look, logically Bobby knew none of them would blame him for it. They were up there for a rescue, it was the only safe way to access the upper floors of the building, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have sent anyone up there otherwise. A few years ago, he wouldn’t have even been surprised if Buck did it for fun out of some morbid curiosity.
And maybe it was all some cosmic joke. Maybe Eddie was being punished for not believing in the supernatural, or maybe Buck’s whole “Bad Luck Buck” schtick was more literal than any of them realized. Maybe it was fate. Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In that moment, all Eddie really knew was that his place was on that ladder. His job was to save his partner, to get him to safety, even if that meant putting himself in the same danger without hesitation. There was no one who could’ve talked him down off that ladder, not even his son. They had an understanding—that they wouldn’t leave Christopher without anyone to take care of him—but when it came down to his instinct on a molecular level, there was no keeping them apart. He was willing to pay that price the moment his hands hit the rungs.
It didn’t end well, to put things simply.
While the 118 and their extended family had seen more tragedy and danger than most people could even imagine, there was always something about the hospital visit at the end of it all that proved everything would be okay.
If they made it to the hospital, they’d be okay.
Beyond that, it was rare for more than one of them to wind up hospitalized at the same time. Even if multiple of their family members had been caught up in an emergency, chances are only one of them would wind up in a hospital bed at the end of it all. Small mercy. When Jonah kidnapped Hen and Chimney, only the latter found himself in the hospital afterwards. When Buck and Christopher were swept up in the tsunami, Christopher made it out with nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises. Even during the dispatch fire, when Bobby and May had nearly been trapped, May had walked away with nothing more than smoke inhalation compared to her stepfather’s broken and bruised ribs.
Their family hadn’t been torn between two hospital rooms since Maddie and Chimney’s stint almost five years prior.
Almost immediately after the whole 118 family piled into the Cedars Sinai ER waiting room, Bobby and Athena headed straight for the floor supervisor to request for their boys to be placed together in a double room both for the sake of their families and the fact that the two men wouldn’t want to be apart from each other either. Bobby and Athena had been told that the staff would do their best, but that it was more important to wait until they’d both made it out of surgery before worrying about the recovery process.
No one in the waiting room liked that answer.
The unspoken if they make it through surgery was loud and clear.
The hours spent with bated breath and instant coffee were far from unfamiliar, but the helplessness that lingered was. There was nothing any of them could do, not even in the ambulances on the way to the ER. They all just held their breath, waiting for a doctor to call for their family to share the news.
“Sometimes I really can’t believe the things they do for each other,” Chimney eventually spoke up, breaking the tense silence as all heads snapped to look at him. Even Maddie, who was curled up against his side with Jee-Yun in her lap, seemed confused. “Think about it, every time something bad happens, it’s like they both go full-Buck on steroids.”
Karen leaned over to her wife, likely for clarification about what the hell he was talking about.
“During the engine bombing, Hen and I literally had to restrain Eddie to stop him from running to where Buck was pinned despite the fact that there was a literal suicide bomber claiming he’d release the trigger if anyone came near him,” he started, brushing past the wince Bobby pulled at the memory. “When the well collapsed, Buck literally started digging with his bare hands as if he’d be able to claw his way through thirty feet of mud to get to Eddie. And not to mention the sniper, I mean—” he gestured exasperatedly. “Buck willingly threw himself under the 133’s ladder truck to drag Eddie to safety despite the fact that he was reliving arguably the worst thing he’d ever been through. It’s like they’re trying to give us all an aneurysm.”
Look, no one was surprised by the fact that Chimney was prone to talk and ramble about everything and nothing when he was worried, but hearing it said out loud was like it all became real.
“I don’t even know why I was surprised when I saw Eddie on the ladder,” he chuckled, dragging his hands down his face. “I mean, god—where else would he have been?”
A bombing that led to Buck being crushed by a thirty-ton ladder truck, thirty feet of mud that trapped Eddie underground with no choice but to rescue himself, Buck and Christopher being in the worst possible location to get hit by a tsunami, a sniper in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, and now they’d been struck by lightning?
“I’m starting to think I might not believe in karma anymore,” Athena admitted with an exhausted sigh, relaxing further under her husband’s arm. “Because there is no damn way those boys did anything to deserve any of this.”
The hours crawled by at a snail’s pace, stretching into the early hours of the day, a silent reminder that they wouldn’t be returning home when the sun rose and their 24-hour shift came to an end. It went unspoken that no one was looking forward to the calls that would have to be made when the time came.
“Will you stay here with them while I go tell Christopher?” Maddie spoke softly, watery, red-rimmed eyes looking up at her boyfriend. “I don’t…I don’t want to risk scaring him, but somebody needs to tell him what happened.”
Chimney smiled, pulling her close to press a kiss to the crown of her head.
“I won't budge,” he promised. “We’ll figure it out. He’s a smart kid and, unfortunately, he’s probably at least a little bit used to these conversations.”
Even though it may have been true, saying it out loud did nothing but make his partner cry. Her lip trembled as more tears threatened to spill out. Along her cheeks were clear streaks of makeup in the outline of her years, mostly smudged and smeared from how painfully she’d broken down upon hearing the news.
“God, I don’t know how Evan managed to do this after the shooting,” she cried, burying her face in her hands. “I’m… I’m terrified, Howie.”
His hand rubbed soothing strokes up and down her back, unable to do anything to ease the harsh reality they were all staring down.
It was somewhat beautiful, in a way. To see them all there.
Some were in pajamas, some were still in their waterlogged uniforms, and they were all there at a mere moment’s notice. They had all dropped everything when their family needed them. Now they were all there to lean on each other.
Even if it was terrifying, and thinking about what had happened was enough to make any one of them sick to their stomach, they made a beautiful little family. A family that was missing two of its most important boys.
“I hate when they’re right about things that nearly get them killed,” Bobby ultimately spoke through a gruff exhale, only audible to his wife pressed against his side.
She hummed in question, prompting him to explain.
“You’ve seen the news reports and you’ve been on enough of our calls to see how they operate, but…” his fist clenched where it sat on his thigh before releasing as soon as Athena placed her hand on top of his. “But they’re right. They have this sixth sense or something, I swear.”
Athena chuckled fondly, intertwining their hands.
“And I try to be mad about it, ‘cause every time they pull their little stunts I feel like I’m gonna’ have a heart attack.” His huff of a laugh was a weak attempt at humor. “But then they’re right and every time I wonder when the time is gonna’ come that we don’t get lucky.”
His wife reached up to turn his head towards her.
“Your boys are fighters, Bobby,” she spoke softly, fond reverence all over her face. “And they’re always gonna’ fight for their family just like you do.”
Just because she was right, didn’t mean he had to like it.
“I swear, when Eddie got up on the ladder I just about dropped to the ground and wept.”
Her reassuring smile was barely more than a twitch of the corner of her lips.
“All I could think was, ‘they’re gone, they’re both gone, and you can’t even get to them’ and I’ve never…” he dragged his shaking hands down his face. “I’ve never come so close to losing it on a call and that was before we had either of them down.”
She knew all too well how badly the helplessness affected her husband. He’d spoken about how hearing her being attacked over his radio had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life, how finding out that Harry had been kidnapped and he couldn’t do anything to find him had haunted him for months, and that watching Buck choking and drowning in his own blood in their backyard had stopped him from going out there for weeks.
While she had to admit that she was grateful he hadn’t gone after them and risked himself too, she knew the consequence of his choice to stand by.
Bobby leaned back, his head knocking against the wall behind his chair as he looked up at the ceiling.
“I really wish I could be pissed at Eddie, ‘cause what he did— God, it was so stupid,” he fumed. “But he was right, I mean, if we’d waited to get him down…”
If we waited to get him down, Buck would’ve been dead and there wouldn’t have been anything any of them could’ve done.
“And I want to hate him for it, I really do.” His fingers idly twisted the ring around Athena’s fourth finger. “Because the alternative is accepting that I have to put my team in danger just to survive something they can’t control.”
He had let them fall headfirst into danger more times than he ever thought forgivable. That call? That was just another strike to add to his record.
“I know it feels like it’s all on you,” Athena spoke softly. “And I can’t force you to believe me when I say this, but there are dozens of other captains in the LAFD that wouldn’t have even done half of what you did for your team tonight. You can’t control a natural disaster, Bobby, you just can’t.” Her hand reached up to curl around his neck, her nails gently scratching the short hairs at the back of his head. “And you can’t let it control you either.”
Her deep brown eyes were boring into his soul, imposing so much love and sympathy that he almost dared to believe everything was okay, even for just a moment.
“You know, I bet Buckaroo’s gonna’ thank you for trying to get Eddie to come down from there,” she added with a fond smile. “Because that boy is too much like you for his own good. You put yourself in positions where you think the only option is to choose who gets to be safe and who faces danger, but he knows as well as you do that protecting the team has to come first.”
“I can’t—” he spoke, his voice hoarse and faint. “I didn’t stop him. I gave up fighting and told him to stay up there—he might not make it and then it’s on me.” His chest heaved with uneven gasping breaths. “I saw him get struck. I knew what would happen if there was another strike, and just because I didn’t send Eddie up there to go after him, doesn’t mean I fought to save him. I don’t…I don’t know how he could forgive me for that.”
Athena made a wounded noise, moving closer until she was practically in her husband’s lap, coaxing him to give in to her comfort.
“It’s my job to keep them safe,” he cried, his voice cracking painfully. “And I chose not to. I made that choice even when I knew what could happen.”
She just had to let him cry it out until he gained even a little bit of rational thought. Her hands stroked up and down her husband’s back as his tears soaked the shoulder of the bathrobe she threw on over her pajamas when she ran out the door to be with her family.
“Bobby,” Athena mumbled after a few long minutes without trying to dispel the guilt from her partner’s mind. “Look at me, honey.”
The distraught man pulled back just slightly, his eyes red and swollen against the darkening bags under his eyes.
“You could’ve threatened him at gunpoint and Eddie still wouldn’t have come down from that ladder.” She kept her voice even and smooth, speaking slowly as she pressed every ounce of emphasis into her words. “I know that, you know that, and nobody knows that better than Buck. In fact, if you only told him about the first strike, he’d probably predict every single thing that happened afterwards perfectly ‘cause he knows that boy and he’s gonna’ be mad at Eddie, not you.”
He shook his head, trying to resist, but her grip was steadfast.
“I promise you, okay?” Her hand came to rest on his cheek, tilting his gaze to meet hers. “I can feel it in my bones. Anyone with eyes would be able to tell just how much you do to keep that team of yours as safe as they can be.” Her lips curled into a fond smile. “Just because Eddie’s too damn smitten with that boy to learn a little self-preservation doesn’t mean you abandoned him to get himself killed.”
His brow furrowed in confusion, which only brought out a faint chuckle from his wife.
“Honey, I know you did not just look at me like that,” she teased softly. “You think he’d put his life on the line to save someone who’s ‘just a friend’ when he’s got a kid to come home to? Not a chance. Those two might not know it, but they are a kiss away from being as married as we are.”
Look, he was observant in the field, he needed to be to direct a large team in chaotic scenarios, but when it came to reading people and their emotions, it was a crap shoot.
“If—If one of them doesn’t make it—”
“Shh. Don’t go there. Don’t go there while we’ve still got hope to hold onto,” she refuted, shutting down the doom spiral. “Whatever happens, we’re gonna’ get through it. Whether there’s a turn for the worse, or we’ve got to put up with both of them complaining through physical therapy—we will be there and we will handle it together. As a family.”
She nodded towards the rest of the waiting room, filling almost every seat with coworkers and spouses and partners and children and people Athena didn’t even recognize.
“Just give them a chance to fight first, okay?”
Bobby took a few deep breaths before giving an almost imperceptible nod.
“Give them a chance to show you how hard they’re gonna’ fight to pull through this.”