Fic: Threshold
Story: Threshold
Pairings: James Hathaway/Robbie Lewis, James Hathaway&Laura Hobson
Rating: Teen
Chapter: 2 of 3
It turns out it’s just so easy. If you yield to it enough and fall deep enough into that oblivion, there’s something on the other side.
And even as you get more distance from the ordinary world than you’ve ever had before, everything in it does that become much clearer at the end. There are all these noises that are gone so piercingly, head-thuddingly sharp and these clinically urgent discussions that no longer matter now.
Someone should tell those people that those discussions don’t matter.
You can leave all of that behind and this godawful feeling of utter helplessness that every fibre of Robbie’s being wants to turn away from. Even if he can’t rise enough to the surface to wake, there’s another way out of this odd limbo that has had such a grasp on him. Stilling his limbs, silencing his voice, weighing his eyes shut. He can leave by a back door. Just let himself be drawn right over the threshold and further away as the noises become more muted and all the unwelcome intrusions on his unresponsive body start to fade-
“Don’t you fucking dare,” says a voice low in his ear.
Oh, bugger.
===
It’s all gone calmer the next time Robbie finds himself tuned back in to the ongoing radio transmission that is James. And he can tell that it is just James again, there’s no feel of anyone else around his bed. The beeps and clicks have returned to their normal rhythm and volume. There’s that hum which is the floor-polishing machine. James has identified that sound for Robbie before. Must be late in the evening if that’s out in the corridor. And the nurses must be back at their station out there, too, because the muted flow of their voices is a distant sound, like a television in the next room.
And James is talking intently, just to Robbie, telling him what’s been happening.
“…so I wasn’t allowed back in to you for a while. I had to get Laura. They didn’t like it very much that I failed to leave immediately when they were resuscitating you.”
Is that what they think they were at? Feels like a ruddy elephant’s been stomping on Robbie’s chest.
“When I say they didn’t like it very much-they didn’t like it all. But someone needed to have a word with you. Although kindly don’t do that again. Laura had to have a word with them to get them to let me back in. She stayed a long time with us when she came back this evening, after you did that. Until she got called back into work.
Ah, no, she’ll be exhausted then too.
“She said she was just keeping an eye on me. That I don’t use up two decades of professional goodwill that she’s built up in the Radcliffe in one fell swoop.”
Why, what else has he been at?
“But I think she was keeping an eye on you. And they’re still saying they’ll call security to evict me if I pull another stunt like that. Pull a stunt,” he mutters to himself, offended. “I was only having a word. I couldn’t leave you to-”
And it all goes silent but for James’s voice, punctuated by the firm, steady unceasing sounds of Robbie’s internal rhythms translated into electronic code. It’s James who is becoming uneven. “Robbie. Come on. Please. Come on. I need you to-I can’t-”
Oh, God. If the lad goes and breaks Robbie’s heart that won’t help him rouse out of this. It’ll just send all of these machines haywire. It seems impossible that James can’t feel the reassuring pressure that Robbie’s heart and mind are sending back as James’s fingers grip his so hard. Almost hard enough for both of them. Almost. But Robbie’s whole will isn’t enough, he can’t seem to make any response that James can feel or hear or see.
“I won’t be going too far again,” comes James’s voice eventually, although his grip doesn’t ease one iota. “Not unless Laura’s here. In case someone needs to have another word.”
And he’s quiet for a little while until his hand suddenly tugs itself free of Robbie’s.
“Hold on. Speaking of favours that I had Laura persuade them into...” And there’s a welcome heaviness settling right over Robbie’s torso and legs, grounding him to the bed. And James’s hands are carefully lifting Robbie’s, one at a time. Then there’s the feel of James’s hands right on top of that new all-encompassing weight, adjusting and smoothing. “See. You’ll be warmer with this than a dozen of those light ones.”
The feel of it under Robbie’s still palms is so familiar. Wool worn soft. It’s Val’s blanket. She’d been a knitter. Right through one winter Robbie had come home so many nights after working late and found her working on it in the bright circle of her reading lamp in front of the television. Waiting up for him. She didn’t get too much time to work on it during the day. He’d teased her that by the time she’d finished it’d be too warm for it, and it was. But it had covered their bed the following winter and for years after. It had been something of theirs that Robbie had returned to using with relief after his time in more tropical climes. He still pulls it out as soon the year starts to properly turn.
“It’s a bit big for this narrow bed. But I knew that with a bit of tucking…I saw it neatly folded on your bed the first day of this, yesterday evening, when I went to feed Monty. It looked dead cosy. Laura’s taken over looking after him now, by the way. So I asked her to bring this.”
===
It’s strange the way that you wake to different tones and moods from him and you don’t know at first what’s prompted the change. When Robbie had drowsed off peacefully under that blanket, properly warm to the bones of him for the first time since this started, James’s voice had been falling into gentle undulations. Now Robbie seems to have returned to him at his most staccato defensive.
“I’m fine. I am taking care of myself. I slept fine.” It’s morning again? All the more recent memories are hazy sleep-befuddled ones. But they’re also of James’s hand holding his and of his voice murmuring halfheard things. Does he doze and somehow wake enough to mumble things at Robbie whenever Robbie rouses briefly to awareness? How’s he know to do that if Robbie can’t move to alert him in any way?
“You don’t look like you slept,” Laura says flatly. Oh, it’s another round of the Hathaway-Hobson debate. Laura, God help her, not knowing what Robbie now knows deep within, about the impossibility of James leaving him, must be back and mounting another assault on her campaign to preserve James’s health and sanity.
James carries on straight past that. “And I go home for a bit when you’re here.”
“You’re straight back here with your hair still damp from your shower.”
“And I leave him to eat when you’re here too. It’s not my fault that they won’t even let you drink a coffee in here-”
That appears to be a distinct source of bitterness. Robbie can only imagine.
“And yet they do in the canteen. Funnily enough. They’ll even let you eat there.”
“-and I go out for fresh air.”
“You go out for the length of a smoke break. And I wouldn’t call that eating. I’ve seen birds in my garden make a better meal than that. Something wrong with my cooking, sergeant?” Oh, she’s keeping him fed properly? Ah, Laura. “And I don’t mean you’ll get ill, I mean if you don’t go home and take a proper break, if you try to spend one more night in here, you’ll be strongly advised to know that my keycode gives me full access to ICU and I’ll come in here in the dead of night with the sharpest bone saw I use-”
“Oh, that’s just-”
“Or,” says Laura, considering. And she pauses. James has the sense to stay silent. Robbie can almost feel his sudden trepidation as the hand in his stiffens.
But that means he hasn’t let go this time when Laura arrived. He generally does when someone comes in-and with the constant comings and goings in this place, Robbie’s hand is gently relinquished and then firmly retaken umpteen times a day. There’s a feeling of soft wool against his knuckles now. James’s clasp must be lying part-hidden in the safety of the folds of the blanket.
“Autumn is a great time of year for spiders,” Laura muses.
“Great is not the word I’d use-I’d-why are you telling me that?”
“You find quite big ones in the garden this time of year. There was a fantastically intricate web from the fence to the log pile this morning in the dew. Imagine how it’d feel if one of them was dropped on you unawares while you slept-”
There’s a resounding silence. The grasp on Robbie’s hand tightens reflexively. Robbie wishes he could stroke those knuckles with his thumb. S’all right, he’d say, she won’t. Think about it, lad, course Laura wouldn’t. Although James’s ability to reason does seem to desert him when it comes to spiders.
“-on a makeshift folding visitor-bed that’s obviously too short for you and it’s killing your back, James.”
Ah, can’t have that.
“I sleep in the chair. Although now that you raise the topic, I do think something needs to be done about these furnishings.”
“You’re vastly overestimating the extent of my remit in this hospital, Hathaway.”
“I don’t know-the nurses have stopped trying to get me to leave. At all. Despite yesterday. All of them.” There’s a question in his tone.
Well, that’s Laura, isn’t it? She’ll do her everything in her power to persuade James to go and get some proper rest when she knows he’s past his limit. But she’ll equally make sure that no-one forces him to leave before he’s ready. And if he’s not ready-then it dawns on Robbie that he’s not going to be able to leave either. He’ll have to somehow find it within himself to fight his way up through this harder. He knows it with a surety that’s deeper than the aches in his unmoving muscles. He can’t leave James if he won’t let Robbie go.
So as he drifts back down again to the sound of James asking Laura questions from some of this research he’s read, he focuses on staying safely held in the clasp of that hand.
===
“If his scans show that he’s neurologically sound, then why are you testing for something that’s below the level of conscious control?” What’s James’s voice doing over there? And why’s he getting so angry? That’s not the kind of tone he’d use when arguing with Laura. He’s in a proper fury.
“What?” And who’s that new male voice? On James’s side of the bed?
There’s a protective hand on Robbie’s arm now from the other side of him. “That’s what you’re checking for, isn’t it? With the reflex hammer. You want to see if his foot will move. It’s a deep tendon reflex. And there’s no need to check for such a basic one.”
“There was a consultation this morning about your friend and you’ll find there’ll be a few of us in today carrying out assessments. And I appreciate your need to try and keep yourself informed as a manner of reassurance, but you don’t have the overall knowledge base to interpret the bits of research that you’re dipping into piecemeal.”
Who the hell is this standing right over Robbie? Some new doctor? Most of the staff in here talk to James in a kind-enough practical-sympathetic fashion. They sound like Robbie imagines his Lyn must sound when she’s in nurse mode. They seem to reassure James. This one’s manner is going to go down like a lead balloon.
And is that why Laura’s been keeping James in reading material-or guiding him to the better stuff? She’s been giving him an outlet? A focus for his fretting?
At some stage, there’d been something read to Robbie about heightened senses compensating for a lack of sensory input through the usual channels. You can tell me if that’s true when you wake up, James had said, interested. Well, there must be something to that, because Robbie could swear he can feel actual waves of silent hostility radiating off his sergeant now.
The unknown doctor seems oblivious to what has to be a death-stare from James. Must be worryingly unobservant for a doctor. “You’d be far better off turning your energies to accepting that the outcome for him carries uncertainty and that no amount of poorly-understood material will affect that, unfortunately.”
There’s a silence that stretches onwards. Then-
“C’mon, then, sir,” urges a low voice in Robbie’s ear. “Kick him.”
It seems impossible that Robbie’s laughter is purely internal when he can feel his foot jerk in response to the hammer touch.
===
That’s not the arrogant voice of the doctor from earlier. There’s someone else right beside Robbie and this voice-it’s the same voice from back at the start of this, in that small echoing room, that had been asking questions and was followed by all sorts of awful sensations of being manipulated and hearing what they’d do next, but no-one talking to you and no way to protest against it. It’s a voice that Robbie’s heard a few times since but never quite so close beside him, never while he’s been so acutely aware of the overwhelming need to just move away-
Then footsteps recede away from him and there’s a gentle touch to Robbie’s shoulder. “It’s James, it’s James…” that comforting voice soothes. “He doesn’t like that doctor,” he confides to someone else. “Every time he goes anywhere near him-What’s wrong?” he says in a very different tone.
“Nothing,” says Laura’s voice after a moment.
“What’s happened? Is it his stats, are they worse?”
“No. He’s fine.” But she’s having difficulty talking. Robbie wants to push himself more upright and reach out to her. What’s the matter with her? “The last time you said that. It just touched off-”
All he’d said was It’s James. He must say that all the time when he calls her on the phone looking for information for Robbie. Multiple times a day when they’re in the throes of a case and needing whatever she can give them thick and fast. He must start most of his calls to her with that exact phrase.
“-the way you said it.”
“Oh.” And there’s that sound of a chair scooting over the floor that Robbie’s now heard so many times. Usually as James returns to him after he’s allowed a nurse access to Robbie for their ministrations. “That’s all right,” says James’s voice, awkwardly. And then there’s the kind of soft-friction rhythmic sound it makes when he rubs Robbie’s arm.
Robbie gets a sudden mental image of James, his chair pulled close to Laura’s and one long arm around her neat frame, rubbing his free hand up and down her arm.
“Bad time of year,” he offers after a bit. Ah. To do with that, is it? “You could stay here tonight. If you like.”
“Would you go home, then?”
“No.”
Worth a try, Laura.
“It’s okay. Franco’s coming back late tonight, anyway.”
“Doesn’t he know that you wouldn’t much like being on your own this time of year?” James is trying, quite unsuccessfully, to suppress the indignation from his voice.
“He does, of course. His mother was quite ill, that’s why he was in Germany. They got a scare. She’s out of the woods now and he’s coming back.”
“Oh.” And that one little syllable tells Robbie that James is reassured of Franco’s credentials as a decent bloke. Robbie already is. He’d made it his business to be. And he should’ve remembered what this time of year would be like for Laura himself. Her friend being murdered on Hallowe’en night and kicking her whole nightmare off. Although there’s sod all he can do for her when he literally can’t lift a finger.
But James has it under control. There’s quiet between all three of them for a while, apart from that consoling noise of James’s touch. Robbie can nearly feel Laura coming back to normal under the awkward comfort of it.
“What did you mean, he doesn’t like that doctor?” she asks eventually, her voice carefully composed.
The sound of James’s hand stops. “Every time he hears his voice, he gets agitated. His heart rate on that monitor speeds up just a little.”
“It does? Dr Abbott? But he’s the one who-that means-”
Don’t. The vehemence of the thought takes Robbie by surprise. Don’t tell him I was awake in surgery. He thinks of the way that James’s voice had faltered when he’d reached that part about people feeling panicked, and he knows that James won’t be able to handle that.
“It means what?”
“That I think you’re right, James. He’s more aware than we thought. Distinguishing between one voice and another. And forming instant strong likes and dislikes. You know the way he does. Rather irrationally…”
What she’s mean-irrationally?
“Yes, I think so.” James is plainly delighted. That’s even made him smile. You can hear it in his voice. And it’s dead easy to picture the way his face falls into that familiar grin.
Good save, Laura.
“You can go and get some of that fresh air of yours now, James. Go on. I’m fine. And I’d consider it a personal favour if you’d eat something while you’re at it.”
There’s a silence from James in response. And then-
“Can you…Would you mind holding his hand now? I think it helps him-it helps him to know that someone’s here, that one of us is here.”
“Of course.” And just like that, he’s told Laura. That he sits here clasping Robbie’s hand. And she appears to be taking that completely in her stride. Huh.
As the sound of James’s footsteps fades away, his stride is more purposeful than usual this time. Is he in in dire need of a nicotine and caffeine fix? Or feeling renewed optimism from what Laura just said? Or maybe-maybe he’s relieved to have managed the admission that she’s somehow enabled him to make.
Generally Robbie can drift along fairly easily if he’s here when Laura takes over from James. She talks away, which is just dead nice, and there’s none of that confusing conflict. Because James himself makes an increasingly urgent pull of concern tug at Robbie’s centre, even while his ongoing presence and his voice are pure reassurance to Robbie and a different level of comfort altogether. He seems to know how to detect, and respond to, the odd surges of panic that overtake Robbie. Like with this Dr Abbott. He’d known from the heart monitor.
Robbie knows that the stimulation of the assessments could raise his heart rate in itself. Or so he’d been informed by one of James’s articles. But James is here so constantly that he’d noticed something different about the way that Robbie had automatically responded to tests done when this doctor was supervising as opposed to any other. Clever sod that he is. Feels like James almost is Robbie’s heart monitor at this stage of the game.
Laura doesn’t have that urgent need of Robbie that pulls him towards the surface of his thoughts even despite himself. She generally just lets him-
“Robbie.” And her voice is low and urgent as a smaller hand slips into his. Oh, she wants a word. “Look, if you were awake in surgery-I’m sorry, that’s awful. It shouldn’t have happened and I’m not about to let James loose researching what that would have been like. He’s beyond worn out-but if you were aware enough now to recognise Nick Abbott just from that then that’s good. They paged him back then for a neuro consult when they couldn’t rouse you. I’ll tell your own neuro consultant now, it’ll help them to know.”
And she falls silent. Then when she starts again, her tone has changed. “Why won’t you come out of this? If you were able to hear then, then you’re able to hear more than I really thought you could now. Robbie. Come on, now. James can’t take much more of this. He’s barely hanging on.”
She sounds like she can’t take much more either. He doesn’t want her upsetting herself any further when James has just calmed her. But there’s nothing he can do. It’s as well James will be back to her soon enough.
Both Laura and James seem to have moved beyond their normal ways of coping now. They’ve even stopped that arguing that had energised both of them a bit. That had given them an outlet. They seem to have finally reached the same place where they’re both just taking an exhausted comfort from each other.
===
“…It’s the middle of the night. Hallowe’en night. And it’s dead quiet really, for a hospital-”
Oh, he’s managed to stay for the night yet again. Robbie is oddly touched that even the threat of that spider still hasn’t done it.
“They all use their night shift voices-”
Is this James’s night shift voice? It’s a tad deeper even than usual. Softer. Sort of peaceful. It makes Robbie wish that James would just go the whole hog now and climb up and stretch out beside Robbie. Murmur away to Robbie beside him on this pillow. It makes you want to stroke his head gently until he drops off himself. Lend him a bit of peace, if you can. He needs that. There’s something in his voice underneath it all, something that’s not too good, despite all that he’s trying to channel into his words for Robbie.
James should have someone to comfort him. He’s bent his whole being and purpose to being with Robbie right through this and someone should be comforting him now. It should be Robbie.
“You always think of hospitals as busy places, don’t you? But the unit that you’re in goes so quiet that there’s almost an absence of sound-”
Well, amends Robbie, quiet but for the sound of one voice.
“And if no-one can hear me, am I really talking?”
Is he hallucinating?
“I mean-tree falling in the forest and all that.” Robbie appears to be privy to some Hathawayish stream of consciousness now. This should be interesting.
But there’s a brief moment of silence, and then-“You can still hear me though, can’t you? On some level. You always hear me in the end, even when I’m not saying much.”
Oh. Robbie struggles, hard, to make his fingers press back into that unyielding grip. As hard now as he first had in that operating theatre. Maybe even more so. But no longer driven by agitated panic, but by a pure need to get to James.
He wants to pull James’s worried hot head down onto his own shoulder and offer him that. And slowly bring his agitation into rest. Then draw him down onto Robbie’s chest, draw him into silence and let him sleep.
James’s hand is unfurling from Robbie’s now. Is he upset, is he leaving? But the clasp simply readjusts itself more firmly.
“I know you can hear me. I’ve still got you. And I’m still not going anywhere.” And he starts to talk on again resolutely about his research. “The cerebral cortex stays continuously active even in the absence of any external stimulus. So that means-” But his voice is wavering around the edges like he’s the one who’s fading now.
And something deep within Robbie must finally yield and let him struggle up to reach at last for James in all of his weariness and distress, because-
“Hathaway-” Robbie hears in his own voice. Or something like Robbie’s voice. The word comes out in a dry, rasped jumble.
James’s voice stops.
“James,” Robbie tries instead and somehow that’s easier. He swallows.
“…Sir?”
“Shut. Up.” He manages that more successfully.
“Sir?” comes James’s voice again in utter disbelief.
Then that hand is pulling away from Robbie’s, and that feels wrong now. Robbie’s eyes slowly blink open. His head turns reluctantly to let him see James on his feet right by the bed. James, his eyes on Robbie, is groping a hand towards the call buzzer. Robbie’s focus drifts up to James’s waiting, dazed gaze. Robbie fumbles his fingers at his blanket, aiming them after James’s hand. That warm hand. It’s Robbie’s to hold now, after all. He knows that.
And James abandons his blind attempts at locating the buzzer and drops down on the edge of the bed. His eyes, a burning blue declaration set in the pallor of his exhausted face, are seeking Robbie’s eyes silently. The sheer intensity of that gaze is forcing Robbie’s own lids to stay open now, despite the heaviness of each blink.
And Robbie finds that he can get his hand to follow, in a delayed fashion, after his wish and gets it up onto James’s forearm, achieving a tug at it. To get James even closer. Just for a few moments. Before James summons the medical staff and Robbie will lose hold of him for a little bit.
James’s eyes widen further at the touch. “That weakness you’re feeling,” he starts. But he’s having trouble drawing breath to say it. “That’s a common problem after a prolonged period of immobilisation. The causes of it aren’t clearly established-”
But his whole expression reaches to Robbie above the prosaic information he’s still valiantly delivering. It’s one of sheer wonder. He looks like he’s falling apart.
Robbie raises his other hand to place one finger on James’s lips. And James comes to a silent halt.
Better. That’s better, lad, Robbie would say if he could only get the words out yet.
But it’s possible to work his hand around to the back of the James’s neck and press him down towards him that last bit. James comes right in close, tilting his head in readiness to listen to him.
When Robbie’s lips instead find James’s warm, unresisting mouth in one firm press, James’s tired eyes drift shut. When Robbie releases him, he just drops his head right down onto Robbie’s shoulder. In complete silence. It’s a blessed relief to just hold him into quietude at last. To get your arm around him and hold him there into stillness and rest.
Because he’s speechless, Robbie takes in, in warm contentment. Utterly ruddy speechless.
Chapter Three.