Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Don't Know When ❯ One-Shot

Title: Don't Know When
Author: Sylvia Spivey (SS.)
Warnings: OOC and angst
Summary: Duo is in an accident.
Note: I wrote this in January 2003, after my brother came close to dying. This fic has none of the elements I usually like in my stories.

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The chill wind whirled through the white shirt and thin slacks while Heero walked. It lifted his chocolate locks and threw them in his face, covering his eyes as he watched the sidewalk recede under his shiny shoes with each step. A hard day, on top of a depression that had tagged his heels for months. Mou … sometimes all the weight of the world seemed to sit on his shoulders. And all it took was one old onna to buckle his knees under the burden.

"Smile," she had said as she slowly passed in the other direction. She moved smoothly, sliding over the sidewalk, white and wizened. "Smile … it's only going to get worse."

* * *

The ceiling. Heero was tired, but being awake, got up again. He had a schedule. Things to do. It never ended. Giant gears ground on invisibly, a cocked up clock that shoved him onward with every slight shift of the second hand.

He stood, shook off the last vestiges of sleep efficiently, checked his cell phone for the time. A voicemail icon, pale gray on the green screen, held his gaze for a moment. Poor reception. Caller had probably gone straight to voicemail. Heero punched in his password, put the phone to his ear.

Quatre's voice, breaking over his name. It was wrong. Something was wrong with Quatre's voice. It's Duo, it whispered. The hospital, emergency room. Heero hung up. His chest hurt, he couldn't breathe. It's Duo, his mind echoed. It's Duo.

* * *

The hospital was clean and cool, pale grays and greens and whites. Heero waited at the front desk, asked for directions to the ER in a professional, clipped tone. Walked, hard-heeled shoes hitting the hallway in military precision.

The waiting room faced the double-doors of the emergency room. The dawning light dimly lit the white walls of the waiting room. Quatre and Trowa sat, separated by an empty chair, hands in their laps. Quatre's eyes filled with tears that threatened to spill.

Heero sat in the chair between them. He said nothing at first. The story spilled from Quatre, punctuated by a pause. Heero heard all impassively, and asked for a pen and paper. Time of accident: approximately 2:00 a.m. Cause: driving under the influence, second offense, arrested while in emergency room, released in Trowa's custody. Vehicle insurance: none. Medical insurance: none (speak to medical social worker). Injuries: cut chin (will need plastic surgery), broken collarbone, three broken ribs, collapsed lung, ruptured bowel.

Duo was scheduled to work today. Heero pulled his phone from his pocket, called Duo's work and spoke to his supervisor. The car was taken to a salvage yard. Heero spoke to the answering service, and got scheduling information. There was nothing else to do, at the moment.

* * *

Heero imposed order, internal and external. He returned calls from Duo's supervisor, explained Duo would need a leave of absence, promised to call when the doctors gave them a date. Then he set up an appointment at the salvage yard to get Duo's personal belongings out of the car.

Quatre and Trowa drove him there. They peered in through the fence. The car was unmistakable. It was almost unrecognizable. It was buckled upward in the middle, preventing the doors from being opened. The dash pressed the steering wheel forward, the cracked stereo wrapped around the shifter. The front end was crushed, the windshield a million myriad cracked pieces of a whole. The engine looked as if it had spilled out the front, been picked up, and been dropped back in. The roof of the car was sliced open on three sides from where the jaws of life had to be used to get Duo out.

It was amazing Duo had lived. The drivers side window and door panel were smeared with his dried blood. The tow truck driver told them that they had found the car on its side. Duo had hit a giant steel signpost so hard that it buckled around the car. The impact was hard enough to send the battery shooting 20 feet down the highway. Heero listened impassively. They rooted through the twisted metal and broken glass to find anything that belonged to Duo. Rollerblades. Tools. Hockey stick, but it was broken. Cigarettes. Trowa threw the cigarettes back into the wreckage, and put the other items in his truck.

It turned out that the DMV hadn't transferred the title, even though Quatre was sure the paperwork had been sent in. The car couldn't be salvaged until the yard received proof of ownership. Luckily, the previous owner had been one of Quatre's sisters. Heero wrote down the name and number of the form needed, and Quatre called his sister to have her sign it and send it overnight.

Heero had to return home. He called Quatre from work on his break the next day. The owner of the salvage yard insisted he could only take cash, and that there were two tow trucks used instead of just one, bringing the total for the tow and three days storage to over $500. After managing to get in touch with the driver they had spoken to before, Quatre and Trowa paid the previously-discussed $250.

* * *

Another day, and Duo was moved out of the intensive care unit into the orthopedics ward. Quatre and Trowa arrived at the hospital after working late, just as the nurses were preparing the move.

Heero, Quatre, and Trowa had already discussed ways to keep anyone aside from them from seeing Duo. All telephone calls were blocked, and the hospital would not be giving out any information about Duo. However, this meant that the room number had to be passed on by word of mouth, so Quat and Trowa were at the hospital until nearly midnight when the move was completed.

Heero and Quatre talked on the phone each day during Heero's breaks. Quat and Trowa were pulling long days, commuting to work and spending most of the rest of their time at the hospital. Quat gave Heero a daily update. Duo was feeling a bit more like himself, as Quatre had recognized the hint of a smirk on his lips. The morphine drip helped the pain, but a side effect was itchiness and forgetfulness. The nurses told Quatre and Trowa that Duo would be in the hospital for a while. Heero guessed two weeks at least.

Heero was upbeat while talking to Quatre; he could hear how tired the boy was. In the meantime, Heero applied for a promotion at work. He would be needing the money. His mind listed and relisted options for getting Duo out of the environment he was in. It was the people he knew, it was the town he lived in, but it wasn't Duo. Was it?

Heero knew that Duo had a self-destructive streak. And an addictive personality. But it hadn't occurred to him before that Duo might have a real problem, the kind of problem that had to be addressed by therapy. A psychologist met with Duo, Quat, and Trowa. Liability precaution for the hospital; they had to ensure Duo was not suicidal. Heero didn't think he was suicidal. Depressed though.

Maybe it was a shared trait. Heero had been low himself recently. And Duo had been through a lot, a hell of a lot this year. His engagement to Hilde, broken off. The "transitional girl," as Quat dubbed Duo's next girlfriend, told Duo that she was pregnant. But when Duo decided to propose and help to raise the child, the girl told him the baby was not his and left him. And Duo had been jobless for over a year. Although he said he was looking, he just seemed to cruise from one escape to another. Drugs. Alcohol.

Maybe Heero had been wrong to assume Duo could work things out. They were very different people. They handled things in different ways. Heero tended to rationalize, search for reasons, and list solutions before picking the most valid one. His way of dealing with his depression was to analyze it and attempt to take care of it on his own. Quat used to tease them, Heero had book-smarts while Duo had street-smarts. Heero was a thinker. Duo was a doer. Maybe Duo had been trying to cope all along, in different ways. Heero began to research therapy options for Duo.

* * *

A week passed quickly. Heero boarded the train, exhausted from work and not looking forward to his drive to the hospital. Duo's catheter would come out today, along with the tube in his lung and the tube emptying the waste from his stomach cavity. Nothing was worse than seeing Duo the way he was now ... so detached, so quiet. Watching the streetsigns slide by the window, Heero remembered the old woman's ominous warning. "Smile … things are only going to get worse." He shuddered.