Chapter Text
--10:17 AM (6 hours after the shot)--
the icu’s visiting hours ended forty minutes ago. henry spencer doesn’t care. he pushes past nursing students who haven’t been lectured on a father’s desperation, eyes trained on room 112. shawn’s a fighter. henry knows this because he raised his son to be one. so why is he this anxious?
finally, an attending doctor rushes over to him, half-jogging through a sterile hallway. “sir, you can’t go in there.”
“tough shit. my son was shot.” henry’s voice does not waver. it does not break under emotion. he will not allow it to.
“i know this must be very hard for you, but he just got out of surgery. right now your son needs rest,” the doctor says. henry looks to the nametag. doctor philbin. usually knowing these things brings henry some sense of comfort or control. he still feels just as powerless.
“i thought my son was dead. now look the other way, or this won’t be pretty, philbin.”
and with that, doctor philbin swallows and walks towards the students. henry stares at the door. his palm reaches the handle, but makes no movement as it rests there. he takes a breath. he turns it, and pushes forward.
the first thing he notices are the bruises. a necklace of purples and yellows from where shawn’s captor had desperately kept him silent. next the cut on his cheek from the impact on the windshield. and then his right arm, in a sling now, resting near the bullet hole. his left is marked by an iv of type o blood. he’d lost so much. henry had stared for too long at the initial pool in the gravel. and the stains in that car’s trunk. that damned car shawn should never have allowed himself to get pushed into.
henry wants to blame this on shawn. on the recklessness of confronting a criminal by himself, or his refusal to officially join the force. but he can’t. he knows it’s all the times he drilled shawn on the number of hats in a room, or taught him to catch a liar in their web that lead to this. to the entry and exit wounds that will never leave. to the rehabilitation therapy that will surely follow in order to regain his range of motion.
shawn had passed out before the ambulance arrived. henry held him the entire time, stone-faced and silent. but now no one was watching. it was just his son, sleeping, haloed by fluorescent lights, and the steady heartbeat copied by the monitor. the rhythmic beeping seems to fill in the hollow spaces of the room. henry steps closer.
even with the morphine being pushed through his veins, there are still tears nestled in shawn’s eyelashes. henry holds shawn’s hand. his hatred of hospitals grows every time he watches his son almost die in one. he sits down in the uncomfortable plastic chair with outdated 80s upholstery.
“dad?”
henry’s retrospection is replaced with shawn’s voice. weak, slurred, almost asleep somehow. the anesthesia is only slowly releasing its grip.
“yeah shawn?” henry asks.
“i’m sorry.” any sense of snarkiness in his voice is gone. but henry didn’t expect any. he knew the morphine had a way of melting shawn’s usual smartassery, of stripping away his sole coping mechanism. there was no humor here. just a death narrowly avoided pressing down on their shoulders.
“it’s okay, son,” henry says. there is nothing comforting about his expression. only worry and hypotheticals of an imagined funeral.
“did you call mom?” shawn asks.
“she’s flying in from rhode island. she’ll be here around midnight.”
“that’s a long way,” shawn says.
“yeah,” henry says. he won’t blame shawn for not contributing much to a conversation right now. it’s a wonder he’s even talking. it’s really a wonder he’s alive.
“where’s gus?” shawn asks.
“in the waiting room,” henry says. “it’s not visiting hours yet.”
shawn doesn’t say anything. he’s barely holding his head up, and henry can’t tell if the pain or the morphine is to blame. he attempts to use his good arm to push himself into sitting. he winces in pain and falls back onto the pillow.
“it’s okay shawn. rest,” henry says. shawn gives a barely noticeable nod. his eyes close. henry doesn’t let go of shawn’s hand.