Chapter Text
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.
Richard Bach
Eddie stared at his ringing phone, contemplating if he could just ignore it. He had arrived home only a couple of minutes ago from taking Christopher to school, and Carla was waiting for him so that they could talk about some paperwork that had to be filled out. The first time they had met, Carla had told him she was red tape’s worst nightmare, and it hadn’t been a lie. Ever since then, Eddie hadn’t dared to fill out a single piece of paperwork concerning Christopher’s care on his own.
He sent Carla an apologetic smile, as he raised the phone to his ear. “Good morning, Mom.” Ignoring her would only lead to more grief than taking the call right away, as much as he didn’t want to talk to her at the moment.
His mother ignored any kind of pleasantries, as Eddie had expected. An unexpected call from her was never anything good. “When were you planning to tell us that Christopher has been hurt? Where is he now, Edmundo?”
“At school.” Eddie frowned. “Chris is fine. What are you even talking about?”
“You want to tell me Christopher is fine after he was caught up in that tsunami last week?” Helena asked enraged. “I’m asking again, at which hospital is he right now, Edmundo? Your father and I will catch the first flight we can!”
“Chris wasn’t hurt in the tsunami. And even if he was, that’s no reason for you to come here and barge into our lives without any notice! You can just stay in Texas! How do you even know Chris was in Santa Monica that day?”
It had been eight days since that horrible day and the realization in the middle of the night that he could have lost both his son and his best friend.
Somehow, all Christopher had taken home from that day were nightmares and a couple of scratches. The nightmares were something that Eddie didn’t know yet how to handle but talking about possible therapists for Christopher was part of why Carla had waited for him when he had come home.
“I saw the video! I’ve had to see your immature and reckless friend endanger my grandson’s life, and you didn’t even have the decency to call and tell us yourself that Chris nearly died a week ago!”
“What video?” Eddie asked flabbergasted.
Helena huffed. “Don’t tell me you haven’t already watched it! The link is all over every social media post out there surrounding the tsunami!”
“That’s nothing I’ve paid attention to, Mom,” Eddie ground out between clenched teeth. “I’ve spent a good part of the last week working in the destruction it left behind. I have no interest seeing even more of it in my free time!”
He took a piece of paper, scribbled down ‘video, Chris&Buck, tsunami’, and held it out for Carla while nodding at his laptop with his head. She read it and stared at him wide-eyed before she nodded hastily and turned to his laptop.
“You should have called us right away to tell us that Christopher was caught up in that mess! You can’t keep it from us when he is hurt!”
“I didn’t even know Chris and Buck had gone to the pier, and even if I had known, there was so much to do, calling you would have been the last thing I would have thought of,” Eddie said. “Chris wasn’t hurt. Buck saved him from the initial wave and…”
Helena interrupted him, “And then he was so busy playing hero for the camera that he forgot all about him and let Chris be thrown back in the water! Chris should have never been at the pier! That’s no place for a child like him.”
“That’s thankfully not your decision to make anymore,” Eddie muttered.
He wondered what exactly the video was showing that his mother had found. Neither Christopher nor Buck had talked much about the tsunami, and Eddie hadn’t prodded, hoping that at some point they would start to open up to him if he gave them the time they needed. All he knew was that at first, they had been able to stay together, that the truck of the 136 had been involved, and that they had been separated when the water had started to recede.
“I told you that you would drag Chris down with you!” Helena continued as if she hadn’t heard him at all. “You should have never taken him away from his home! Do you see now what kind of danger you are putting him into?”
Eddie huffed out a mirthless laugh. “Oh, right. Because I’m responsible for a natural disaster and for our warning systems failing.” He inhaled slowly and closed his eyes. “I don’t want you here, Mom. Neither you nor Papi are welcome in my home or my life right now. I’ve my hands full with Chris and Buck and work. Stay in El Paso!”
He was still rattled by the argument he had had with his parents after his badge pinning ceremony. It had been infuriating how they had behaved after Shannon’s funeral, but as always Eddie’s protest had been stuck in his throat. He had always had a hard time standing up against his parents in a face to face confrontation, which was one of the many reasons that he had eventually chosen to move far away from them. It was so much easier to ignore their expectations when they didn’t question him about it every single day.
They hadn’t gotten the memo, though, and after the celebration for the end of his probationary period, they had tried again to tell him what the best course of action for him and Christopher would be.
Eddie didn’t even know why, but for the first time in all of his life he had pushed through the barrier that had always been surrounding him when he talked with his parents and told them exactly why he would stay in LA and never come back to El Paso. It had been liberating, but also infinitely exhausting. The last thing he needed right now was to deal with them and their expectations.
“You can’t leave Christopher with strangers in a situation like this! He needs to be taken care of by family!” Helena said. “Of course, we are coming to LA to take care of him.”
“It’s not your decision to make who I leave Chris with,” Eddie said. “I thought we had established that you needed to start listening to me!”
“And we have all seen what it leads to when you decide who Christopher should stay with while you are caught up at work.”
There had been a time when the tone Helena was using would have cut deep, but now it only made Eddie angry. “I really don’t care anymore what you think about me or my life choices, Mom. And I wish I had learned that lesson a long time ago. You coming here will only mean more stress, not only for me but also for Christopher. So, just don’t!”
Helena huffed. “I don’t think you have any idea about what’s stressful for your son and what’s not. That you didn’t call us immediately to tell us what had happened to him is proof enough of that, don’t you think? He needs his family around him to deal with this additional trauma your carelessness caused.”
“You knowing about the tsunami has nothing to do with what Christopher needs,” Eddie spat. “He doesn’t need you hovering above him, especially not now. I’ll say it one last time, Mom: I don’t want to have you here!”
“Who is taking care of Christopher when you are at work?” Helene asked.
“Buck.” Eddie pursed his lips. “What you said about him earlier is so far from the truth it’s not even funny anymore. There is no one I trust more with Chris than him. Because I’ve seen how much he’ll fight for my son. He is loyal and dedicated, and he loves Christopher.”
“He is a stranger!” Helena nearly shouted.
“To you, maybe.” Eddie opened his eyes again and stared out the window. More than thirty years of experience and he still didn’t know how to deal with his parents. “I need to go, Mom. I can’t stop you from doing whatever you want, of course, but I won’t change Chris and my plans to include you.”
He hung up on her before she could say anything else because he didn’t know how to end the call any other way. Eddie rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers and tried to push the anger away he felt about her intrusion. He felt whatever that video was she had talked about was much more important than her overbearing reaction to it.
“Are you alright?” Carla’s soft voice shook him out of his stupor.
Eddie shook his head. “They’ll still come here and demand to spend time with Chris. When I moved here, I was just overwhelmed with everything they did, but I used to believe that they meant well and were just trying to help. That they weren’t aware that they were overstepping. I have come to hate their attitude since then.”
Carla nodded without saying anything. They had talked at length about his parents and how they had handled their care for Christopher. Many things Eddie had only learned long after their move to LA when Christopher had finally started to be honest with him about the things he hadn’t liked concerning his grandparents.
“Did you find anything?” Eddie asked.
“Yes.” Carla sighed deeply. “There are several clips that all seem to come from a three-hour-long video that was posted in full the evening after the tsunami. I think I found the one that’s focusing on Buck’s heroics. It is … Someone in one of the houses filmed the flooding, and they were in the right place to get everything that was going on at the firetruck Buck and Chris used for shelter. At least that’s what I get from the few seconds I watched.”
Eddie took a deep breath as he sat down beside her. “Okay, let’s see how bad it is.”
Carla put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you want to see this?”
“No, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to see this.” Eddie shook his head. “But I think I have to. I need to know what exactly my parents are going to throw in my face, and I need to know what kind of footage is out there about Chris.”
“Just remember that they got out of this alive and healthy,” Carla said, squeezing his shoulder. “They are safe now.”
Eddie closed his eyes. “Yeah.”
He swallowed, chasing away the image of Buck, battered, bruised, in torn clothes, and with so much desperation in his gaze as he had stood in front of Eddie that night a week ago. He would never forget that shattering desperation he had felt himself for that moment before he had spotted Christopher, and he could not even imagine how Buck was dealing with it that he had endured that same emotion for all these hours he had searched for Christopher.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said and reached out to start the video Carla had opened.
Eddie shuddered as he saw the water rushing through the streets, ignoring the “Holy shit!” from the person filming. He had been glad from the very beginning that he hadn’t witnessed this part of the catastrophe, it had been hard enough to see the streets filled with water, but then Eddie had been too concerned with doing his job to register the horror of it all.
“Look there!” another voice called out and suddenly there was a hand in front of the camera, pointing somewhere that wasn’t in the picture at first. The camera turned and Eddie bit his tongue until it hurt as he saw two figures in the water. At this moment they were unrecognizable, but they were nearly at the firetruck with the big 136 on top of it that stood unmoving in the flood, and he knew enough to know that it had to be Chris and Buck who he saw being dragged under the water repeatedly.
Carla gasped when Christopher, still only recognizable because of his yellow shirt, was suddenly catapulted out of the water and on top of the cab of the truck just seconds before a debris field rushed by the truck. Buck vanished under it, and even though Eddie knew he couldn’t have been hit by it, he let out a relieved sigh when Buck shot out of the water and climbed up on the truck himself.
There was a cut, and then they saw Buck gather the hose and go on an insane climb over some cars and other debris that had been trapped behind the truck. For a moment Eddie had no idea what Buck was doing, or why he was doing it, and the two guys filming all of it didn’t have any idea either judging by their comments that Eddie barely took notice of.
“Damn, Buck!” Eddie muttered as he watched him jump back into the water and swim to the tree on the other side of the street. It became finally clear then what Buck was doing, and Eddie thought it was the idea of a genius, if only Buck hadn’t risked his life again to install that lifeline. The first person saved out of the water by it was a woman with dark hair. Eddie shook his head as he saw Buck clearly instructing her to keep a lookout for Chris, while Buck remained in the water, shimmying along the hose to save everyone the water brought along.
Eddie had lost all sense of time when the next cut came, showing the truck, and even some of the surrounding debris fields that seemed to be stuck, filled with people. All in all, there had to be nearly twenty people aside from Buck and Chris, huddled together, watching warily. Suddenly there was a commotion and Buck grabbed Chris, sat him on the edge of the truck with his back to the water, but Eddie didn’t know why he was doing that until one of the men filming whispered, “There are bodies in the water!”
Carla grasped his hand and Eddie wanted to do nothing more than to hug Buck and thank him for all that he had done for Christopher. At that point they had been on the truck for a little more than two hours, and Eddie suspected Buck had spent at least half that time in the water while saving people. He had to be exhausted and overwhelmed, but he was still so attuned to protecting Christopher from as much of the horror surrounding them as he could.
There was another cut, and Buck was now sitting on the edge of the truck beside Christopher, an arm wrapped around him, when the water started to recede, and Eddie nearly stopped the video because he knew what had to come next. He was barely able to breathe as he kept watching.
One of the people on the truck was thrown off when the surge going in the opposite direction jerked the truck, and Buck wrapped his arms around Christopher, still being careful of having Christopher’s back turned to the water. A little while later Buck turned his head, some of the others on the truck leaned over the edge on the other side, clearly looking out for something. Then Buck left Christopher sitting on the side of the truck, lying down on the roof of the cab, and pushed half his body over the edge, reaching out his hands, probably to someone on the other side of the truck.
Debris hit the truck then, rocking it violently, and Christopher slipped from the edge, falling back into the water. Eddie didn’t want to see his son falling back into the water, and so he focused solely on Buck, who froze nearly immediately, before he scrambled to his knees, turning around. He called out for Christopher, and it was the first time any noise from the truck traveled far enough to be caught on the video, though it was still impossible to understand what Buck was shouting. Buck called out for Christopher a couple of times, and then he jumped back in the water.
The video went on for another minute before it ended, but Eddie didn’t register anything else that had happened. He had to forcefully remind himself that both Christopher and Buck were safe, that they had both survived with only minor injuries. He had been aware all along how big of a miracle it was that neither of them had been severely injured, of course, but that video had rammed home the fact how huge of a miracle it really was. Realistically neither of them should be alive, and still, they were.
Eddie had to fight against the urge to get Christopher from school, drive to Buck, and hold onto both of them for a long time to come.
“I can’t believe…” Carla whispered. “Knowing they were there and seeing it are two very different things.”
“Yeah.” Eddie swallowed. “I mean, I saw how exhausted and … beaten up they were at the end of that day, but neither of them has talked to me about it much yet. Chris spoke about their fire truck, and that Buck saved people, but that was all.”
Carla nodded. “Chris said to me he doesn’t want to talk about it. And Buck was a master of deflection the one time I spent a little bit more time with him last week.”
“I think losing Chris is all that’s stuck in his head at the moment,” Eddie said. “I’ve lost count of how often he has tried to apologize for it.”
“I can see how he got that idea,” Carla said with a frown. “It wasn’t his fault that Chris fell, but Buck did sit him on that edge, and…”
“To protect him from seeing the bodies in the water!” Eddie bit out, suddenly overcome by the anger that had been pushed away when he had talked to his mother. “Buck did everything in his power to protect Chris from all the horror going on around them!”
Carla watched him with raised brows. “I know.”
Eddie closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. I … My mother called Buck immature and reckless, posing for the camera, and I just know she’ll use this moment to … Did I tell you they wanted me to give custody of Chris to them not too long before we came to LA?”
Carly nodded slowly. “You did mention it in passing, but you never elaborated.”
“She told me I would drag Chris down with me, whatever that even means. She tried to blame Buck and me that Chris was caught in the tsunami. She also thought Chris was in the hospital, because of course, a child like him wouldn’t end up anywhere else after a natural disaster.” He had always hated that description his parents had used for Christopher over and over again since he had been diagnosed with CP, but he had only started to understand where that reaction came from since he was away from them and their constant input and criticism.
“Without knowing anything else, that’s a valid conclusion to make about every single person that was caught by that wave,” Carla said. “Everyone who got out of it alive is a miracle, and it’s an even bigger miracle for everyone who didn’t need a hospital afterwards. At least her first thought wasn’t that Chris was dead.”
“I’m still trustworthy enough to inform her about that, even if I’m not trustworthy enough to inform her if he is in the hospital,” Eddie muttered.
Carla chuckled. “After what you told me about your last meeting with your parents, would you really call them if Chris had to stay in the hospital for anything?”
“No.” Eddie shrugged, not feeling sorry about that at all. “At least not as long as he was still there. Dealing with them is a distraction I wouldn’t need at such a moment.”
Carla raised her brows. “I think they understood that.”
“But they don’t understand that I don’t want to have them here.” Eddie gritted his teeth. “I need to talk with Buck. I need to warn him about my parents. And make him understand that seeing this only reinforced my opinion about him saving Chris.”
“We still have to go through the forms for which I’m actually here, and you need to at least look at the list of therapists for Chris. The sooner you make a decision there, the better,” Carla said. “But there is also more than this video I found, and I think both Buck and you need to look at it.”
Eddie frowned. “I have a feeling I won’t like this.”
Carla shook her head. “I don’t think it’s bad exactly. There is a Facebook group dedicated to finding out if Buck and Chris survived, and they seem to gather all videos and pictures they can find with either of them in it. There seems to be a connected group, but as far as I could tell that’s a private group for those Buck saved while he was on the truck.”
“How much more than this video can there be?” Eddie asked skeptically.
“A lot.” Carla shook her head, her laughter sounding as incredulous as Eddie felt about it. “There are shots of the pier from before the tsunami, with Buck and Chris in the background, to begin with.”
She changed the tab in the browser and Eddie didn’t know how he felt about the assortment of pictures and videos all dedicated to Buck and Christopher. It was a relief that in most at least his son’s face was blurred out, but there were so many of them, and they painted a picture of pure horror for him the later in the day they had been taken.
“Some of the people on the truck seem to have had a working phone even after all that water. It’s crazy how many people thought they needed to take pictures after what they had been through after the water had gone away again. There are only a handful of pictures of Chris after the truck, and all of them are full of comments of relief, but there are a lot of pictures of Buck helping people. And the comments in those are all full of eyewitnesses reporting that he constantly asked for the boy he had lost, and they are asking if he found him in the end.”
Eddie shook his head. “This is insane!”
“Agreed. But it’s a good thing we learned about this now, before people start showing up searching for Buck,” Carla said. “I know his online presence is a concern for Buck, and maybe the wish to be able to thank him is what is driving this group, but I think we all know that it could turn ugly easily enough.”
“That would be a reminder of bad memories all over for Buck,” Eddie whispered.
He had only heard stories about the catfish situation, but he knew how much it had affected his friend. They’d had some heartfelt conversations during the last couple of months; in the dark of the night, after long, exhausting hours of PT following his surgeries after the truck, when Buck had bemoaned the fact that he wasn’t part of the daily life in the firehouse anymore, and when he had shared his fear of being forgotten by the others. Buck had spoken twice about the pain it had caused when those women had shown up and no one, not even Abby, had stopped for even a second to listen to him. They had all assumed he had led on those women, and when the truth had come out, it had turned into a joke among their friends.
Eddie sighed. “Though, maybe seeing all of this will remind him what he accomplished that day. How many people are alive today because he was there to save them? I don’t think he is remembering even one of them because his head is so stuck on losing Chris and searching for him.”
“Let’s take care of the paperwork,” Carla said. “And while you are with Buck, I’ll go through all of these comments to make sure we know what the situation is.”