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After Tommy drives him and Lizzie back from the hospital, everything is silent. He hasn’t slept in days, and the adrenaline that had been keeping him going since he’d rushed his daughter to hospital now leaves him heaving in the toilet bowl. Not the master bedroom; no one has slept in there since the day of Grace’s funeral, when Tommy had wandered in, drunk and high, and passed out on her side of the bed, clinging to her pillow.
He thinks he might just sleep in Ruby’s room tonight.
He'd called Ada when he got in the house. Hadn't even told her; she’d known from his voice and the fact of him calling her so late in the night. She'd immediately promised to be round in two hours, and she was.
She’s rubbing Tommy’s back as he pretends he isn’t sobbing. The ritual of headaches after his head injury came back to him, as the seizures and lack of food or sleep catch up with him, leaving with him the beginnings of a migraine.
Ada recognises the signs, of course. She'd been with him in the months after the attack, looking after him as she was the only one he’d be vulnerable around.
Tommy’s already starting to recognise the signs of a seizure after only a few. He'd had them in the months after the head injury, and the doctors and everyone had worried it’d be trauma-induced epilepsy, but they’d stopped soon enough. Tommy can’t imagine why they’ve started again.
Trauma-induced, he supposes.
“Tommy?” Ada asks when Tommy hasn’t heaved or responded in a while. “Tommy? You awake?” That's when the seizure happens, taking Tommy away. Ada is shocked, but swiftly shifts back into familiarity, pushing her jacket she’d never had a chance to take off under his head to stop the poor thing smashing against the tiles, and she whispers soothing words she knows he wouldn’t accept had he been awake enough to hear them.
He doesn’t come to for a while; Ada supposes, on top of everything else, it’s completely drained him. Then he starts mumbling about Mosley and Jack Nelson, something about Michael. Then he whispers Ruby’s name then engages in something she can only describe as a conversation with what seems to be Aunt Polly.
Tommy starts to become aware of his surroundings when he sees the floor view of the side of the sink in front of him, from where he’s lying on his side, Ada’s jacket under his head. Fuck, it’s happened again. There’s a moment of peace before everything comes crashing back to him. He chokes on his breath and groans in pain as he remembers. Ada’s been crying, too. She's holding it together for him, he can tell. But it’s her niece too, he reminds himself.
Fuck.
Fuck, he thinks. How can he live without her?
Seeing her face the morning after the rally was what stopped him finishing the job. A reminder of her smile, her eyes and her beautiful voice. A reminder of what he’d lose.
“Tom? Can you hear me?” The migraine he’s been staving off for days is coming with vengeance, and when he’s feeling better, he’ll deny but what comes is a whimper. Then some sound that sounds almost like a ‘yes’. Ada drops her volume considerably, for which Tommy would thank her if he was able. “Let’s get you to bed, yeah?” Tommy hums. “Will it hurt to move?” Another hum. Nevertheless, Ada helps him into a sitting position, accompanied by a helpless Tommy making pained noises under his breath. Ada doesn’t know what’s hurting most: result of the seizure, the oncoming migraine, or the emotional pain of what’s happening.
That's a lie. Ada knows which hurts most.
Lizzie is on her side of the bed, awake, tears dried on her cheeks. She doesn’t comment on Ada practically carrying Tommy to his side of the bed but watches their movements. Tommy doesn’t appear to see her, or at least doesn’t acknowledge it. She gets him in bed and takes off his shoes, but knows jostling him around any more will only cause pain. She’s grateful for how light he was, but concerned. He clearly hasn’t been eating again, and she’ll have to talk with him about it when he’s less prone to situations like this.
Ada kneels beside the bed; Tommy’s practically catatonic. “I’m going to tell Frances you have a migraine.” She’s saying it more to Lizzie than Tommy. “And I don’t want you to worry about the funeral, either. I'll sort it all, okay?”
Tommy whispers a pained, “Okay.”