wickerpark | [Elisha & Hadyn] Don't say goodbye, say goodnight

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[Elisha & Hadyn] Don't say goodbye, say goodnight

The years hadn't always been kind, but they were good enough. It started a while ago, he guessed, the swollen ankles and feet. He always chalked it up to just getting older. It came with the shortness of breath, and he felt light headed from time to time. He figured it was all just...getting older. And nothing ever came up during his physicals.

So he kept doing what he always did. He ran every morning, two miles, as he listened to NPR streaming on his phone. He came home, showered, kissed Elisha good morning and they shared breakfast. After coffee, and a few hard to deny suggestions of staying home...Hadyn would leave for the hospital. He had given up Emergency medicine, and just ran the pediatrics department at Laurie. It gave him more '9 to 5' hours, and let him enjoy his new found empty home, sharing it with Elisha.

But today was different. Today something was wrong. Hadyn made it half a mile into his run before he started gasping for air. His head felt as if it were spinning, and he limped his way home. It took him five minutes to get his front door open, and he stumbled into the house. He reached up to his chest, wincing and groaning.

"Elisha," he called out, hearing the man in the kitchen. "Elisha!" The next thing he knew, his legs and body seemed to give out.

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He frowned when he heard the door open - Hadyn didn't run that fast anymore - and he'd already started for the door when he heard Hadyn call out. There was a panic in his voice that he hadn't heard since they had kids living at home, and he sped up his steps to get there faster. Something was wrong.

He didn't get there fast enough, though, and his eyes went wide as he saw his husband collapsed in the hall, not moving. "Hadyn," he said, his voice rising as he fell to his knees and shook the other man's shoulder. No response. He shook him again before he thought to check his breathing.

Then he reached into his pocket to dial 9-1-1.

He was breathing, for the moment, but he didn't stir. He didn't wake as the paramedics arrived and took his vitals. They loaded him into the ER, and hooked him up to oxygen...and gave Elisha the news no one wanted to hear, 'your husband is in cardiac arrest'.

The ER wasn't much more help for Elisha, though at least they corrected one thing- He wasn't in cardiac arrest. Not...yet. He was on the cusp, and likely would have gone into cardiac arrest if he'd kept running. Or if he hadn't had luck on his side this time. But that left them both with one problem to face- why he was on the brink of cardiac arrest.

So he'd been admitted. And he had regained consciousness.

"Hey," he said as the latest round of drugs started to wear off. "You planning to spend the night?"

It was, to be over dramatic about it (something, frankly, that he excelled at) like having the world come crashing around him. There'd been nothing he could do, either, except wait. And make calls.

The first to his aunt Jennifer, who was the one who did the most work with the medical endowments - because if his younger husband was going into cardiac arrest, he damn well was going to have the best cardiac specialists he could get. Then there were the kids. Izak and Sarah were easy to get a hold of, though calming them down once he told them what was up was more of a job. Ty was harder to get a hold of - since he wasn't allowed a cell phone at the Academy. But after several phone calls and finally adopting the commanding tone he'd learned at his father's knee - and promptly forgotten - he got the Academy superintendent on the phone, and convinced a man used to commanding the equivalent of college students that he was going to get Tyler Kagan on the phone immediately.

Then, of course, he had to talk Ty down from coming home too. Hadyn wasn't in immediate danger.

"Well, you always used to tell me such great things about the food at Northwestern," he said dryly. "I just have to try their special jello for myself."

Their children had never had to face the idea that one of them could be sick. Honestly, all of them were more than a little concerned, Hadyn imagined. Hadyn certainly was scared.

"Better late than never," Hadyn said with a soft smile as he reached out toward Elisha as he groaned. His heart rate seemed normal enough as he laid there, but he knew it could all just...be a matter of time. At least until the test told them what was wrong.

"When do they start the test?" He asked, feeling tired and sleepy. "Do you think I could get some water."

Elisha smiled a little as he fielded another text message from Izak. Izak was the most like Hadyn of their three, and in some ways the closest to him. He could sense the panic in the extremely technical questions his son was firing off.

Questions Elisha certainly couldn't answer, but he knew that wasn't the point.

"They did a few while you were...out," he said softly as he stood up to pour Hadyn a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. Hadyn had a private room because...well, obviously he did, and Elisha was going to give him a look if he made a single comment about Elisha throwing his money around. If there was a time for all of it to do any good, after all, it damn well should be now.

"They'll be waking you up early tomorrow for a blood test," he said as he helped Hadyn adjust the bed and handed him the water. "Then, I think, an echo. Dr. Oduwole said he'd be in after they're able to look at the results of those." Marcus Oduwole was the undisputed best cardiologist in Chicago, according to Aunt Jen, who knew these things. He'd called Elisha personally while Hadyn was still unconscious.

He wasn't going to argue, he thought as he drank the water. Hell, he hardly even noticed that he was alone. But none of this was something he wanted to deal with in a way. It was easier to handle parents of sick, desperately sick children than it was to deal with the fact that he was the sick one. Hadyn wasn't even sure he'd registered what had happened yet.

He'd come to, briefly, in the ER. The sudden panic of the situation caused his heart rate to go flying. The emergency physician had tried to explain it, tried to come him down...before he gave up, and gave Hadyn a small dose of sedative to calm him.

Ever since he'd been bouncing in and out of wakefulness.

"Oduwole?" He asked after a moment, after finishing his water. "He's a good man, does...does consults for us sometimes." And that generally meant that the situations were dire. Hadyn tried not to think of it that way, though. He wanted to just awesome it was a panicked husband who demanded the best. It made him want to panic less.

To be fair, Elisha was a panicked husband demanding the best. Oduwole had also reassured him - multiple times - that Hadyn wasn't in immediate danger, but he'd kept mum about everything else, telling Elisha that he wanted to wait and see what the tests showed.

"He seems nice," Elisha said. "I talked to him a bit tonight. He said there's no immediate danger." The fact that Elisha hadn't been so scared about Hadyn's health since...well, since Dominic Novak had tried to strangle the life out of him and the doctors at St. Joe's had made some pointed comments about Hadyn's weight, that was just adding to the stress.

"Izak and Sarah are flying in tomorrow morning," he said. "I delayed them as long as I can. "Ty's gotten leave from the Academy approved and he'll be coming in in the afternoon. So you should enjoy this while it lasts. We're going to be descended upon."

"I suppose it was too much to ask for them to wait..." For what, Hadyn didn't know. But he would have like to have known what he was facing before his bed was surrounded by worried children looking on expectantly.

The rest of their afternoon was slow, the constant beeping of his heart monitor keeping them company as they watched TV. And then Hadyn had to say good bye, though he wished that was a rule they could...and would break. How long had it been since he'd slept in an empty bed?

When morning came, so did all the test. Followed by his children....first one, then the other. And then Oduwole came in with that look on his face. "Izak, Sarah..." Hadyn said, forcing them to look up as they talked. He nodded his head toward the door. When they didn't move, he repeated himself with a little more demand.

"Hadyn," Oduwole said with a smile as he came forward and took his hand, then Elisha's. And he paused, looking down. "I got the results back from the test, and it..." He went through the technical portions of the explanation. His heart was enlarged, nearly twice what it should have been. His blood pressure, as a result, was too low. It was why he continued to pass out from time to time.

And when Elisha asked what all that meant, it was Hadyn that answered him. "It means....I'm in the....the early stages of Heart Failure." He said, calmly as if he were just another Doctor in the room. "He means Heart Failure."

And Hadyn took a deep breath, even as Oduwole explained the options, the treatments. There was no reason either of them had to expect a shorter life span for Hadyn.

Elisha wasn't a doctor, but his move back home to Chicago twenty some years before had been precipitated by his father's first heart attack. His father, he thought, who was now 85 and still at it. He clung to that knowledge as he sank down in the chair next to Hadyn's bed, and as Dr. Oduwole stepped out in the hall.

He could hear Sarah and Izak pacing in the hall, he thought. He hoped that the doctor would keep them outside yet, if only for a few minutes.

"Well," he said in a voice that was a bit raw and flat from shock - he would have expected this of himself, as the older of the two of them, not Hadyn. "Well, I think you're finally going to give up the cigarettes."

They certainly needed the moment, the time. Oduwole had said he was going to put Hadyn on the transplant list, though he didn't think they had too much to worry about. It was the early stages. Heart failure could be managed for many years, but it was best to be on the list as early as they could be. It could take years to get a heart.

"Yes," Hadyn agreed softly as he coughed a little. "Yes, I....I think I am." Hadyn agreed, sitting up enough to swing his legs over the side of the bed and staring at the floor as he took a deeper breath.

"Come here," he said, gently as he smiled at Elisha. "This...just means you get to spoil me, you know. It is not so dire that I...might fall over tomorrow." So long as he stopped running, stopped smoking, kept himself from getting overly emotional, so forth. As Elisha closed the gap between them, Hadyn smiled and leaned against the man. He was going to have to tell their children, he thought.

"I never thought much of those vows, you know. 'In sickness or health'. I see....I see people struggle every day with it, but I used to think- never, that will never be us." He said softly, pulling away from Elisha just a little as he looked at the man. "It's what I get, really, tempting fate." A tear slipped down the side of his face, but he smiled despite it. "You have certainly spoiled me, Elisha Kagan. With love. With happiness. For all the good, for all the fights, the bad, all of it...I have never doubted your love, never. I just hope I gave you half of what you gave me. Even if you deserved so much more."

Hadyn laughed, a sad sort of laugh, as more tears fell against his cheek. "What did I ever do to deserve you? Mm? How did I get so lucky."

"I think you ran smack into me and dumped coffee all over my shirt," Elisha said. "At least, that's how I remember it going."

He squeezed Hadyn's hand snd leaned forward to kiss him lightly. "I do love flattery, you know that," he said. "But let's not pretend I'm perfect because we're scared. You're going to be fine." If he had to finance any potential treatments himself, Hadyn would be fine. "We'll both live to an even older age and continue to gross out the kids well into their adulthood. I can't possibly do that on my own."

"I did, didn't I?" Hadyn said with a laugh. "I kept you from your pizza, and art handing duties." He mused it over as he watched his husband.

"I'm not pretending," Hadyn promised though, as Elisha pulled away from a soft kiss. "You're perfect for me, and you know that. Every little annoying habit, every tick. I love it all. Yes, yes I even love fighting with you. So you had better make sure I grow very old with you." Because he didn't want to leave any of that, not at all.

Still, speaking of their kids, Hadyn sobered a little. "We should tell them, together. After Ty arrives. It would be easier to explain it all at once."

He was still frequently keeping Elisha from pizza, he thought, but that was neither here nor there.

As for the kids, though, Elisha raised his eyebrows and looked towards the door. Izak and Sarah were likely to storm the gates if they were left in the hall much longer - they'd raised children who weren't afraid of being assertive in pursuit of what they wanted. Still, if you couldn't benevolently manipulate your children, what reason was there to keep on going?

None, obviously.

He opened the door. "We are dying..." He began, and paused significantly. "To get some rest. So you two are going to go out to O'Hare to pick up your brother." He tossed the keys to Izak. "Don't wreck my car."

He denied him his pizza out of love, really. Love for things that did not come covered in grease. Still, he smiled softly at as Elisha dealt with Izak and Sarah.

"But...You...He can get a cab," Izak protested before groaning and giving up on the argument. He was clearly not going to win, just based on the way Elisha's shoulders were set.

"A cab, he says..." Hadyn said with a laugh. "He'll be the worse you know." Izak knew the science, he knew the medical presentation, the statistics. Of their children, Izak had been the one that followed him. "Sarah the most likely to cry..."

Ty. Ty would be the most practical of their children, he suspected. And he would keep his fears to himself, maybe he would ask Izak questions. He'd hold Sarah as she cried, if she cried.

Getting to his feet, Hadyn pulled his IV and heart monitor with him as he moved to the window. He felt...off balance, but that could have just been from a lack of food. "What do we do now?" He asked as he stopped at the window and looked out.

"He could take the train, too, but its not going to happen," Elisha said dryly as he came back in the room. "Also, I should warn you now that our princess is carrying a bag that I'm fairly sure retails higher than any piece of artwork I've ever sold, so brace yourself. No palpitations allowed."

He eyed Hadyn for a moment before crossing the room to join him. "Izak will immediately become an expert. Just as you would, if it was me attached to the IV pole. Sarah, I think, is already bracing herself for the worst." She had a streak in her, Elisha thought, that reminded him of Jordan - even though there was no blood between them. As for Ty...

Well, their youngest had always had what his daddy called a stiff upper lip. Like his own mother, honestly. Hadyn was probably right there.

"We do what you would tell any patient to do," he said, reaching out to squeeze Hadyn's hand. "We listen to the doctor. We decide on what the best thing to do is. And we take each day as it comes." Because Hadyn would be fine, he told himself. Any other option simply wasn't allowed.

"Oh...That's a bit much." He said softly as he looked at Elisha. He'd long ago lost the fight to be practical, except with maybe Izak. Tyler was a little hit or miss. Practical in some ways, not so much in others. Sarah...Sarah was her other father's daughter, no doubt.

"You know...patience was never my strong suit." Hadyn said as he turned into Elisha and leaned against him. "We take each day as it comes," but....but he worried. He wasn't sure what he had Elisha's optimism. Maybe it was because he was so tired, and had been for so long.

"Eventually..." he started, before his thoughts drifted off. His concentration just wasn't what it used to be.

It was less practicality and more unnecessary frugality - but that was an argument they'd had throughout the twins' teenage year. It certainly wasn't something they were going to get in now.

He also wasn't going to get into the fact that his optimism...was mostly on the surface.

"You should do that resting I told the kids you were going to do," he said gently. "It won't be long until our interrogators are back. And...your brother. He's on a plane back from L.A. It's going to be busy the rest of the day."

"I'm scared, Elisha." Hadyn said softly, even though he knew it was rational to feel that way. He knew the science, the medically sound thought and the outcomes. He knew that life would change and that they would change. Now every second was going to be precious because...it could be the last. "I haven't been...scared like this in so...long." He felt his body shaking from it, the emotion of it. And for all his knowing, for all his understanding that grief and fear was normal... he didn't know if he could face it.

Turning, he leaned into Elisha and wrapped his arms around his husband. He needed Elisha in a way, he realised, he hadn't needed him in a long time. He needed him to not let him give up, and he felt guilty for that. For putting that burden on the man he loved.

After a while, he stepped back, and let Elisha help him to the bed again. He felt helpless and weak, but like much of his day- he rationally understood why. It didn't mean he liked it. But he slept after a while, one hand clinging to Elisha as if he needed that security in order to allow himself to rest.

"I know." He was terrified. When - eventually - he did go home, the night would be spent maintaining the façade of optimism for the children, for Hadyn's brother, and for Greg when Greg emerged.

And he knew he had to keep it up for Hadyn, too. This was the closest he'd seen his husband to giving up in...in years now. It'd been a long time since he'd had to be strong this way.

"Get some sleep," he said. "I'll be here."

Some time later, when he heard the hushed sound of his children's voices outside, he looked over at Hadyn; he hadn't stirred and there, was, he thought, no reason to wake him for this.

He closed the door silently behind him as he stepped outside to speak to their family.

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[Elisha & Hadyn] Don't say goodbye, say goodnight

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