Chapter Text
Ilya has never seen Yuna hollander in anything less than business casual attire. It’s the safest thought his mind can focus on as she and David burst through the doors of the private waiting room dressed like they rolled out of bed and blindly threw on the first clothes they could find.
Thinking about anything more—like why they look like that— is sure to send him to his knees. Like a coward, Ilya takes the easy way out and looks down and away from their bloodshot eyes and their faces that are once again screwed up in fear for their only son.
“What happened?” Yuna begs, going to Ilya in an anxious whirl.
His gaze cant lift from her hand that’s found its way into his.
Where the warmth of her touch aims for comfort, it just makes shame curdle his stomach even worse.
“He had an allergic reaction,” Marleau explains gently when it’s clear Ilya wont be able to tell them to their faces how he failed Shane again.
It’s David that breaks the stunned, pressing silence that follows. “But how? He hasn’t had a reaction in years…”
Ilya cant be here for this. Not again.
He shrinks from Yuna’s hold, starting up a frantic pace along the back wall as if he could find a way to knead his thoughts into a more uniform cadence with his steps.
It’s been almost thirty minutes since they brought Shane back. There should be news by now.
Unhelpfully, his brain fills in every differential diagnosis that could’ve sent Shane’s stability backpedaling. There’s a million options to torture himself with.
As if summoned, a Doctor eases open the door that connects to the hectic thrum of the ER behind them.
There’s no shock at the five figures that stand at attention with her arrival. Instead, the Doctor gives them a collective nod hello. “I’m Doctor Minde,” the woman introduces herself, motioning them to the chairs, “I’ll be Shane’s primary care Doctor while he’s here.”
“How is he?” Yuna cuts in, stumbling until her knees find the back of a chair. Having came closer, Ilya’s just near enough to catch her elbow to guide her down in a gentler fall.
He stays standing, hovering at the outskirts of the group, so sure he’d burn out of his skin if someone pushed him down to join their huddle.
“Shane is stable,” the Doctor nods with a small smile. “His oxygen levels are still a little concerning, but so far we haven’t had any biphasic reactions.”
“Biphasic,” David repeats, his head shaking, “What does that mean?”
“A secondary reaction,” Ilya clips out, unable to wait another second. “Why aren’t his oxygen levels coming back up? It’s been thirty minutes. You said there was no secondary reaction after the Epi was administered. Have you started steroids? Albut—” his mind blanks on the rest of the drug name— “The lung drug. What have you tried?” For a second he considers yanking the chart from her hands to read the worst of it for himself.
Seemingly used to operating in the heavily tense atmosphere of the ER, the Doctor puts up a placating hand. “We do have a treatment plan in place,” she soothes. “But Shane’s oxygen levels are stubbornly hovering in the high eighties right now. Believe it or not, that’s an improvement from when he first arrived.”
Ilya nearly bursts a blood vessel at the reading.
“That’s a percentage,” Marleau explains to the Hollanders. “Typically any reading under ninety four is when there’s cause for concern.”
“Yes,” the Doctor agrees. “Shane was in extreme respiratory distress when he arrived. But like I said, those numbers are starting to climb in the right direction. To help his lungs, we have started him on a corticosteroid and he’s already done two assisted breathing treatments with Albuterol. We also have him on a pretty high dose of antihistamines and the highest rate of oxygen we can run.”
It means Shane wasn’t getting better on his own. He needed intervention.
Thankfully, Yuna asks what Ilya’s been begging to. “When we can see him?”
“He’s mostly asleep, thanks to the antihistamines,” Dr. Minde apologizes, “but you could see him for a couple minutes.”
“A couple minutes?” Ilya echoes, suddenly struck, knowing now with certainty that there’s something more the Doctor’s not saying.
If everything was fine, Shane would be in observation for hours. There’s no reason to allow them in for only minutes at a time.
“Yes,” Dr. Minde nods, taking the seat across from Yuna and David, and sinking Ilya’s stomach deeper into a gnawing pit. It’s never good news that’s given like this, face to face and with the Doctor’s sympathetic smile turned a touch sour.
Ilya’s knees get so weak he’s forced to sit as every drop of anxious energy drains from him. It’s him that grips onto Yuna this time, needing something to ground himself with. “What’s wrong?” Yuna asks, looking between Ilya and the Doctor and picking up whatever silent exchange has passed.
“Shane is doing well right now,” Dr Minde repeats, like a reminder. “But I do think he should have a chest X-ray done. With his oxygen levels not bouncing back as quickly as we’d like, I think the imaging could give us little more information on how we could best treat him.”
“Meaning?” Ilya chokes out, wanting it straightforward.
Dr. Minde turns her attention to him, giving it to him straight like the shot he nearly begged for when she first entered the room.
She doesnt pull the punch, seeming to have picked up on his medical knowledge. “We want to rule out a pulmonary edema or acute respiratory distress syndrome.”
Ilya’s jaw clenches, his fingers involuntarily squeezing too tightly around Yuna’s. It feels like too often he ends up here, considering the worth of his life without Shane there to harbor him.
The Doctor turns her gaze back to the Hollanders, giving it to them in simpler terms. “We’re looking for fluid that may have entered Shane’s lungs while he was in active anaphylaxis. I think that could explain why we’re having so much trouble getting him back to a stable, baseline stat.”
“So what would his treatment look like then?” David asks apprehensively, as if scared to hear the answer.
Again, “Shane is stable,” the Doctor reminds them, “But that would mean he gets transferred up to the ICU tonight. He’d be put on multiple medications to help take the strain off of his heart and lungs and he’d be given more intense breathing assistance.”
“Like a ventilator?” Yuna chokes out, horrified.
“That is an option,” Dr. Minde offers carefully, “and I know that sounds scary, but it would just be to help him breathe a little easier. Right now, we’re not there yet. There’s no reason to assume that his situation will get to that extreme. We’ll do the testing and keep monitoring him, but it’s important to remember that he’s here in the best hands and that we’re prepared for it, if it comes to that.”
The Doctor’s words leave a new kind of weight in their wake. The room nearly drops with it, everyone processing and silent as valuable minutes tick by.
“I want to see him,” Ilya speaks up, finding it hard to find his voice.
A second later Yuna and David aren’t even a step behind him, each of them crowding up as the Doctor leads them out into the busy ER.
“We’ll watch the doors, Boss,” Barrett offers, him and Marleau both posting up with steadying squeezes to Ilya’s shoulders as he passes them.
He cant even find it in him to croak out a thank you.
For almost an hour now he’s had his breath held uncomfortably in his chest. That breath rushes out of him now as the exam room’s frosted glass door is whirled open.
“Shane.”
Nothing could’ve prepared him for the bundle of his body, buried in sheets and wires and lost in the haze of medications being pumped into him.
With his lips nearly blue and eyes heavily lidded, Shane barely reacts to the the immediate cover they surround him in, with Ilya on one side of the bed and his parents on the other.
“We’re here Shane,” Yuna is saying to him, but Ilya’s so lost in his own mind that he can hardly register their words. One of his trembling hands buries itself in Shane’s hair while the other forcefully intertwines their fingers as if that would stop him from being taken away.
Brutally hostile Russian spews from Ilya’s mouth, with promises and threats intertwined like their fingers, all under the premise of love.
His only comfort is knowing that Shane latches onto Ilya’s mother tongue like a life vest most days, using it to soothe away his own ramble of thoughts.
There's no loving words returned. Whatever antihistamine they have Shane on is strong enough to leave his eyes lazily tracking them without the strength to speak back.
It leaves David coming closer. “Shane can you hear us, buddy?” He asks hopefully, rubbing hard at Shane's chest where his labored breaths are pushing at his sternum.
The oxygen mask around his mouth fogs, like he’s trying to speak, but Ilya shushes him gently. “Save your breath,” he whispers to him, feeling a traitorous tear leak down his face when Shane’s head lolls in his direction.
Warm eyes track him, but get caught on Ilya’s tear, and suddenly Shane is fighting, trying to sit up with a fervor that feels futile up until it leaves him weening weakly back into the sheets a second later with a painful, wet cough.
Ilya knows in that instant exactly what the X-ray will show.
If he had gotten Shane help sooner…if he had sat him forward as his mouth filled with salvia and swelled along with his throat— there’s a million thoughts that run through his head. None of them are helpful.
“Rest,” Ilya begs him, running soothing fingers through his hair. “All you have to do is rest, Shane, alright? Let the medications help you. You’re okay. You’ll be fine.” He’s trying to convince himself with every word that leaves his lips.
Shane’s now rosy-cheeked from the exertion from the few minutes spent with them, with sweat dotting his forehead and his hair a mess from their hands. He furrows his eyebrows and listens, focusing hard on making his chest rise in an unnaturally even cadence.
“There you go,” David whispers to his son, squeezing tight around his arm.
Ilya chokes his own kiss into the back of Shane’s hand.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” a transport nurse gently cuts in, stepping fully into the room after a few quick knocks. “I’m here to take him up for his X-Ray.”
Every drop of blood in Ilya’s body resists the idea, screaming at him to drag Shane closer.
He settles instead for dragging his body over Shane’s to pull his gaze to his. “I love you, Malyish, okay? I love you.” With careful hands he lifts the oxygen mask crowding Shane’s face up just enough to seal their lips together for a second of peace.
When he pulls back Shane is smiling, his eyes still closed as he seems to bask in the relief of Ilya’s touch.
Yuna and David take their turn the second Ilya pulls back, still gripping onto Shane’s hand like a lifeline.
He doesnt let go until the last possible second, when holding on any longer would drag him faithfully along with the gurney.
They’re not even allowed a minute to recenter themselves in the empty room. Another nurse comes in to direct them back to the private waiting room on the outskirts of the chaos of the ER. “Someone will be by soon. I expect they’ll be taking Mr. Hollander straight from his X-Ray up to a room upstairs.”
To the ICU, Ilya fills in, knowing the stress Shane’s heart and lungs are under cant go on unassisted for much longer.
Shane’s young. He’s strong. There’s no reason to think their treatment plan wont work or that he wont respond to the meds, and yet that’s all Ilya can prepare himself for.
He finds a chair and sits himself in it, buying his face in his hands and counting his breaths.
With sickness, there’s nothing for him to fight and he’s never done well with just sitting by, being essentially useless.
He makes up for it by getting to his feet a second later to call the lead detective on Shane’s case.
At least then he can feel like he’s doing something.
***
Shane watches the lights on the ceiling move past him in a dizzying sequence that just makes him feel even more outside of himself.
He wants to sleep, but sleep is hard to find when the nurse at his side is making small talk that he tries desperately to follow. He doesnt want to be rude, but it’s getting more and more difficult to hang onto consciousness.
“You’re really out of it, aren’t you, sweetie?”
That, at least, he can nod back to.
He feels like sleep is tugging at him, weighing his body down into the bed. It would be nice if it weren’t for the panic digging its claws into his chest as his brain warns him over and over again that it’s not getting enough oxygen.
He gasps involuntarily, for what feels like the thousandth time, but it does nothing to fill his lungs anymore than his previous attempts.
His body and brain both know he's drowning, but knowing it doesn't help make it any less true.
“I know it’s scary,” she soothes, walking him down another hall. “But once we get these test results back we can start you on some new meds and get you some better breathing assistance, alright?”
“Okay,” he tries miserably, but there’s not enough air to push the word out of his throat.
“Dont worry hun, I hear you.” They come to a stop at another door.
Shane rests his head against his shoulder, letting it hang there against the pillow as a weird shuffling and a surprised huff of air sounds from behind him before a louder clatter.
He prays no one has recognized him.
Instead, a nurse with a mask and scrub hair-covering bends down over him. “Hi Shane,” she says brightly. “We’re going to get you transferred to a wheelchair now.”
Just the thought of moving his body makes him groan out a pained plead. He doesnt think he could sit up if he tried.
“I’ll do all the work, don’t you worry.”
True to her word, she eases him up, then gets his legs off the gurney, plants his feet, and lifts him under the armpits with just enough struggling strength to twist his much heavier body onto the waiting chair.
“Just a pinch here, Shane,” she warns, and like fire ants biting down his arm, three of his medication ports are removed.
Shane looks down at the blood that spreads over the wounds with wide eyes, looking back up at her with panic that she unapologetically turns away from.
“Almost done, Shane.” It sounds mocking to his ears.
He has to stop his head from tipping forward as she bunches up a blanket in his lap and pulls it up and over the spreading mess of red blood and clear IV fluids from the lines that she throws carelessly back onto the gurney.
Something’s not right, but Shane’s mind cant place exactly what’s wrong with the drugs still coursing through his system.
It’s not until the wheelchair starts moving and Shane manages to glance back, over his shoulder at the discarded hospital bed, that understanding covers him in a sick, clammy hue.
From behind one side of the gurney, the nurse’s unmoving legs lay still against the cold sterile tile.
It’s all Shane can see before a hand reaches forward and pushes his face back towards the front. “Let’s look straight ahead, Shane.”
The voice rings clearer now that adrenaline is pounding through his body in a desperate fight against every medication that’s slowing his mind.
“Amanda—” He tries to breathe out her name but the words betray him, still uselessly stuck with the air in his lungs.
Passing a fire alarm, he grabs desperately for it, but it’s no use.
She catches his arm easily, digging her fingers in until pain registers beyond his medicated veil.
“Stay still now, Shane. We’re almost there.”
Where, he wants to ask, but daylight blinds him with the next set of doors they go through. Covering his face does nothing to stop the white burst of light that takes over his vision and leaves him pliant for what might come to be the most important thirty seconds of his life.
In the end, it doesnt mater. He’s too deep under, too out of breath, to do anything more than let himself get unceremoniously dragged and transferred one last time, to the back of a waiting van.
The door slides closed on him with a finality that feels heavy as he lays there, sprawled in a sprinter van with no way to save himself.
’Dont let yourself be taken to a secondary location,’ Ilya’s voice sounds, screaming through his mind.
A weak hand stretches out in response, reaching for the door handle.
He wonders if he’d have the strength to pull it open, but he doesnt even get that far before the lack of oxygen catches up to him.
Ilya fills Shane's last thoughts as his eyes roll back and his head falls heavily to the matted flooring.
Unconsciousness is at least kinder than reality.