“Thank you, Lily,” Jeremy said to her.
“For a man who is over six feet tall, he looks so…small right now,” Chloe whispered.
Carter glanced at her, confused because he was used to being the tallest person in the room when comments like this one crop up, then looking back at Ethan and figuring it out. She was right, though. Despite Ethan’s tall and muscled frame, attached to all of the machines and wires, he looked suddenly small and frail. The pallor of his normally tanned skin was a stark contrast to how he normally looked, especially how he had looked the last time Carter had seen him when Ethan had been so angry at the whole situation. None of that anger showed on Ethan’s blank expression now.
“Ethan is strong,” Jeremy reminded her. “If anyone is stubborn enough to prove his own team wrong, it’s Ethan.”
Carter, seldom thinking through things very much before saying them, said “I don’t get it, he’s only been playing for his own team for… OH! Sorry.”
Jeremy managed to crack a smile at that. “He may have only realized his sexuality recently, but he’s worked at this ER now for over five years. He’s a workaholic, and has put basically his entire life into either this hospital or our business. At least, until you came along.”
“Sorry about that,” Carter said, seeming to withdraw inside himself a little more at the thought that he had disrupted things so very much.
“That’s not a bad thing,” Jeremy pointed out. “I don’t think being a workaholic is necessarily good for him. He’s internalized a lot that he’s seen here, and never talks about it. He’s a lot happier now, Carter.”
“Is he? All I can think about is what he said before he left. I’ve been spending the last few days convinced that he’s never going to speak to me again. I was trying to figure out whether I should just drive to Connecticut and spend a week drunk when the po-lice showed up,” Carter said, surprised that he was opening up so much about his personal experiences.
“I think the reason he left the house was because he was sure you were done with him after he got angry,” Jeremy replied. “But before all of this happened, yes, he was much happier. He talked about you all the time, and I’ve never seen him pay attention to sports before. No offense, Wayne.”
Wayne nodded as if he expected nothing less. Carter, on the other hand, felt the need to explain himself. “Not that anyone is asking, but the reason I said that his outburst was a red flag was because when my father was around, he was a violent man. He was always hitting people and breaking things. It left a scar. Just because a behavior is a red flag doesn’t mean throwing the whole man out, though. Just meant I needed to reevaluate some things, including my own actions.”
“Ethan isn’t a violent man,” Chloe said, her tone hard.
“Well, not usually. He has only used force once, and that was when a soccer player broke my arm on purpose. Other than that, even when Jasper almost killed me, he didn’t use violence at all. He broke the frame but I think he did that because of the photo and because he wasn’t thinking about how much force he used,” Jeremy commented. “I think to Ethan, though, a red flag does mean throwing the whole man out.”
The others settled down into seats while Jeremy explained to Carter some of their history together. Ethan had been the one who had pointed out red flags about Jeremy’s exes, and not just Jasper. It was simply with Jasper that Jeremy hadn’t listened to him, and it had almost cost him his life. Ethan had been carrying around his own guilt for a long time about that, because he felt he should have done more to talk his friend into better choices, even if it meant coming and forcing Jeremy to leave NYU.
“Ethan always said he should have demanded you go to KSU with us from the beginning. He’s mentioned over the years that maybe you would have met Jimmy sooner,” Chloe said wistfully.
Jeremy blew out a breath, deciding that despite wanting to let Ethan say it, it was possible that Carter needed to hear it now. “Look, I get why you feel the way you do right now. Arguments are hard, especially when it’s the first one and it’s over such a big event. I have never in our entire friendship seen him fall in love before, but he has for the first time in his life. One argument isn’t just going to make love go away. And if Ethan needs any of us right now, it’s you.”
Carter looked doubtful, like he was afraid to hope Jeremy was right. “I can’t help how Ethan feels about red flags, I can only tell it like I see it, but thank you all for your insight. We’ll see how he feels when he wakes up. I hope he wouldn’t let one argument ruin everything but…” he shrugged, at a loss for more to say. He understood where they were coming from but a lot of assumptions had been made, by everyone, and he felt that they really needed to be ironed out.
They didn’t get to iron it out that week though. In order to make sure everyone got sleep, went to work, and because Chloe and Wayne had kids, they took turns as to who was with Ethan during the day and the night. Chloe would come in the evenings to read to him, as it was something they had always shared, while Jeremy would tell him about what the cops and lawyers were doing about what happened to him.
Even Lily and some of the other nurses and doctors from the ER came up to see him and talk to him. He didn’t seem to have much reaction to anyone though. No twitches in his face or hands, and his eyes didn’t flutter. It felt like he wasn’t even there. Jeremy wouldn’t let himself break down over it unless he was alone with Jimmy, though Chloe was a wreck the entire time.
Carter split his time between working out and the hospital. He found a local branch of the gym he sometimes used at home and practically took up residence there. He checked out of the hotel because he tended to sleep on the couch in Ethan’s room at the hospital. At some point, Lily brought in one of the chairs that could recline into a bed so they could put it next to Ethan’s bed for Carter, because she thought that it would be better for both of them.
It was slightly over a week later, as Jeremy and Carter’s time at the hospital were in overlap. Jeremy had been reading out loud when Carter came in to lay down for the night, but Jeremy wanted to get through the rest of the chapter he was on. Carter nodded to Jeremy and settled into the chair/bed, certain that Jeremy’s voice wouldn’t keep him awake. Try as he might, though, it wasn’t Jeremy that kept Carter from getting comfortable. Despite his misgivings about whether he’d be welcome, he found he wanted contact with Ethan. Staying away from him out of respect for how he’d felt before was feeling more and more like a thin pretext to Carter, so he reached out and took Ethan’s hand in his own.
Jeremy was nearing the end of the chapter as Carter started to drift off to sleep, when Carter felt Ethan’s fingers twitch slightly, and an incredibly soft grunt came from him. Jeremy looked up at the sound, staring at his friend to figure out if he had imagined it or not. Ethan’s fingers shifted again, and his eyelids fluttered.