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drabbles-mc · 1 year

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What Did You Do?

Richie Jerimovich & Mikey Berzatto

For Day 11 of @whumpril's 2023 Challenge: bedside vigil / "I'm right here"

Warnings: 18+, drugs/overdose, hospitals, language, angst

Word Count: 3.7k

A/N: I broke my whole entire heart writing this. Idk what else to say about it.

The Bear Taglist: @garbinge @narcolini @withmyteeth (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

When Richie showed up to The Beef and found the front door unlocked and walked in to see most of the lights already on, something felt off. It didn’t feel like the typical morning when someone else had gotten in before him. The door was open, the lights were on, but the restaurant was silent. Early morning prep wasn’t silent, especially not when Mikey was the one prepping.

Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, he called out, “Yo! Cousin!” He walked behind the counter and made his way towards the kitchen. “You good?”

Every second of silence that followed only caused the discomfort coming over him to intensify. He was fidgeting with his hands even though they were shoved in his pockets. Part of him wanted to call out for Mikey again, another part of him couldn’t force any more words out. He didn’t want to know what a second round of no responses would do to his increasingly erratic heartbeat.

Striding through the kitchen, Richie noticed that while everything was clean, it wasn’t set up like someone had come in early to prep. It was all still, everything packed neatly away from the night before. The light that was starting to flicker by the door to the walk-in, throwing an even more eerie vibe over it all. He shook his head as he made his way towards the office.

He reached up to knock on the door when he saw that it was ajar. There was a strip of yellow light creeping out through the small crack between the door and its frame. He stood there frozen with his hand raised for a moment, unable to shake the feeling of dread that was stopping him from knocking. Clearing his throat, he tried to shake the negative thoughts that he didn’t have any real foundation for in the moment.

Finally rapping his knuckles against the door, Richie forced out an uncomfortable laugh as he said, “You deaf or somethin’ now, Mikey? Jesus, I—”

The rest of the sentence died in Richie’s throat when he pulled the office door open. His eyes widened and he was fairly certain that his heart stopped for a solid few seconds as he looked at the scene in front of him. He saw the empty, bright orange pill bottle discarded on the floor, the lid nowhere to be seen, only for his eyes to travel up and see Mikey sitting in the office chair, completely slumped over the desk.

“Fuck,” was all Richie was able to say as he charged in and over to his friend’s side. Leaning in, Richie looked at Mikey’s face, the fact that his eyes were closed and mouth open slightly only seemed to solidify the worst case scenarios running through his head. He shook Mikey roughly by the shoulder.

“Mikey?! Mikey! C’mon,” he shook him again, “wake the fuck up!”

When he didn’t, Richie felt bile creeping up in the back of his throat. He paced for a moment as he tried to pick one of the million racing thoughts in his head to focus on. Running his hand back over his head, he finally got himself to spring into action. He was so far out of his depth, but even so he knew that trying to do something couldn’t be worse than sitting back and doing nothing.

With more difficulty than he expected, he moved Mikey from the chair to the floor, laying him plat on his back. Richie didn’t even realize the way that he was constantly muttering the word, “Fuck,” over and over again under his breath. He fumbled getting his phone out of the pocket of his track pants before dialing 911. He let the phone clatter to the floor before kneeling next to Mikey’s body.

Pressing his ear to Mikey’s chest, he felt tears prick at his eyes when he didn’t hear anything. He felt no beat, not even the slightest shift of a weak inhale or exhale. Interlocking his hands, he tried to remember where exactly he was supposed to put them to give compressions. All the fucking medical dramas his wife made him watch, he thought that he would’ve picked up a few pointers on how to do CPR.

“911, what’s your emergency?” a woman with an infuriatingly calm voice asked on the other end of the line.

Richie shook his head as he started trying to do his version of CPR. “I uh, I think my best friend might be dead.”

They went back and forth, the operator asking questions and keeping her cool in a way that both kept Richie sane and also made him want to scream at her. He even did, a couple times, but she took that in stride too. She coached him through everything that he needed to do, and somehow he managed to do it even though he was on the brink of combusting the entire time.

“Told him,” he muttered to himself more than the woman on the phone, “told him not to mess with those fuckin’ pills. Told him there were bad fuckin’ news.”

“Sir,” her voice cut through the noise in his head, “please, I need you to give me your address.”

He scoffed, a fresh wave of anger breaking through the tears. “I told you I’m at The Fuckin’ Beef,” he snapped. “How, how many places called The Beef do you know of?” It was easy to be angry, to take it out on the woman being forced to ask the questions, but the reality of it was that he was far too upset and scatterbrained to remember the street address.

“I understand, sir.” Again, she handled it with no attitude, no problem. “Emergency services will be there soon. Please stay on the line with me until they get there.”

The first responders basically had to fight Richie out of the ambulance. The only thing that finally got him to relent was telling him that the longer they stood there arguing, the longer it was going to take to get his friend to the hospital to get him the rest of the help that he needed.

“If I beat you fucks to the hospital…” Richie threatened as he stormed off to his car, hand shaking violently as he clutched his car keys.

Richie was driving down the road as quickly as traffic and stoplights would let him. He’d never used the horn so much in his entire life. As he was attempting to weave through other cars, he was also trying to get ahold of Carmy and Sugar.

He didn’t know what he expected from Carmy. The kid was states away doing god only knows what in some restaurant packed to the brim with rich, pretentious fucks. But this was about Mikey. He had to pick up if it was about Mikey. Or so he thought. Richie didn’t even bother to leave a message when he went to Carmy’s voicemail. That was a problem that he would sort out later.

He huffed as he scrolled to Natalie’s number in his phone. He hit the call button, hand shaking as he brought the phone up to his ear. It rang twice before he heard Sugar’s voicemail message in his ear. He groaned right through the beep that cued him to start leaving a message. “You gotta fucking call me back, Sugar. I’m serious. Call me!”

The rest of the way to the hospital he kept trying to call. He texted her saying to call him and that it was important. This wasn’t a conversation that he felt like having over text. It wasn’t really a conversation that he wanted to have at all, but especially not over text.

When he got to the hospital, he was practically sprinting through the hallways trying to find where he was supposed to go, or at least find someone who could tell him where he was supposed to go. For a few minutes he didn’t realize why it was so hard to see in the fucking hospital, but then he realized it was because he had too many tears in his eyes to be able to see past him.

“They brought my cousin here,” he said as he leaned over the nurses’ station counter. “You gotta let me see him.”

The woman was obviously tense, hoping that Richie’s worry and urgency wasn’t going to turn into something that was a problem for her. “When was he admitted?”

“I don’t—” He shook his head, dropping it into his hands for a moment. “Probably like five fuckin’ minutes ago!”

“Sir, I’m going to need you to—”

“And I’m gonna need you to let me in so I can make sure that he’s not fucking dead!” He pointed aggressively to the maze of walls on the other side of the main desk.

The woman that he was talking to took a deep breath, setting her shoulders back just a little as she geared up for whatever was coming next. “Sir. I need you to give me your cousin’s name.”

He deflated slightly at the question. “M-mikey.”

“Last name?”

“Berzatto.”

The woman nodded as she typed it in. Her eyes scanned the computer monitor in front of her and she let out a small sigh before she looked back up at Richie. “You can’t see him yet.”

“What?!”

She stood up out of her chair so that she was a little closer to being eye-level with Richie. There was still a decent gap between them, but she lessened it enough to prove a point. “They are working on your friend. When they’re done with the procedure and he’s stable in his room, you’ll be able to see him.”

“Pro…procedure? What fucking—”

“I can’t say anything more,” she said with a shake of her head, a bit of sympathy in her voice that hadn’t been there before. She gestured to the small waiting room. “I, or one of the other nurses here, will let you know when you can see him.”

Richie wanted to argue, wanted to continue on his warpath, but there was something about the look in the woman’s eyes that sucked all of the fight out of him. The events of the morning were all starting to catch up to him at once. So, instead of yelling and bickering, he simply nodded and tried to find a seat in the waiting room that was as far away from other people as well. He tried calling Sugar one more time, but instantly went to voicemail. So she either shut her phone off, or finally got sick of him and blocked him. Either one was equally likely.

Richie’s eyes were glued to the tile floors of the waiting room, one leg bouncing uncontrollably. He felt like his heart hadn’t slowed down at all since he’d gotten there even though he had been sitting as still as he could the entire time.

He didn’t notice that there was someone standing in front of him until they cleared their throat. Looking up, he saw the nurse from before standing there, arms hugging a clipboard to her chest. “You can see him now.”

It should’ve been a reassuring thing, to be able to see him, but for some reason it felt like Richie’s stomach dropped even more. Swallowing hard, he nodded as he rose to his feet. Running his hand down his face, he asked, his voice not sounding at all like his own, “Is he…did he…you know…”

She nodded, understanding exactly what he was asking based on his half-sentences. “He’s still unconscious, but he pulled through. I don’t know when exactly he’ll wake up, but you’re more than welcome to wait with him until he does.”

There was a tremor to the breath that he let out as he nodded. “Yea, yea. Okay. Thank—thank you.”

When the nurse dropped Richie off at the door to Mikey’s room, he found himself still hesitating to go inside. All he could think about was the sight of him slumped over the desk in the office. He knew that that wouldn’t be what he was walking into this time, but it was all that he could picture. After a few seconds of shaking his head at himself, he stepped in and saw Mikey laid out peacefully on the hospital bed. He was tucked in like he was taking a fucking nap, not recovering from an overdose on pills.

His voice was quiet and shaky as he walked over to the bed. “What the fuck, Mikey?” He shook his head, dropping down in the chair beside the bed. “What the fuck did you do?”

Richie only managed to sit in the chair for about twenty seconds before he had to get up and start pacing. He wandered around the room, touching everything that didn’t seem breakable or like it would cut off whatever life support wires and tubes they had Mikey hooked up to. He just knew that he couldn’t sit still, couldn’t just sit at Mikey’s bedside twiddling his fucking thumbs. He kept checking his phone, hoping to see either Carmy or Sugar’s name flashing across the screen. Each time he was met with an empty lock-screen.

On his umpteenth lap around the hospital room, Richie spotted the bag filled with Mikey’s belongings, everything that was on her person when they loaded him into the ambulance. Ripping the bag open, he dug around in search of Mikey’s phone, letting out a sigh of relief when he found it. Taking it out, he typed in the code to unlock it without even having to think about it.

As one final hail Mary, he dialed Sugar’s number. The relief in his chest was indescribable when he didn’t get sent directly to voicemail. After a couple rings, she picked up and answered with, “Thank god. Are you with Richie right now? Can you tell him to stop blowing up my fucking phone? I’m at work. He knows that some of us work, right?”

It was hard for Richie to speak past the lump in his throat as he said, “Hey, Sug.”

“Richie?” She sounded confused and annoyed for a moment, but then after a second of silence, her tone switched as she asked, “What’s going on?”

His legs finally gave way and he sat down. “It’s…it’s Mikey.”

“What the fuck is going on, Richie? What happened?”

“I’m at the hospital. He’s,” he coughed in an attempt to hide the emotion in his voice, “he’s okay but you really, uh, you gotta get down here.”

“Shit. Fuck. Yea, yea okay. I’ll…I’ll be there soon.”

“Alright.”

They didn’t exchange a goodbye, Sugar opting to just hang up the call. Richie kind of preferred it that way, really. All things being equal, that was the nicest exchange that the two of them had had in a long time. He tossed Mikey’s phone onto the bedside table, sighing as he let his face drop into his hands. He could feel the tears spilling over and he didn’t even have the energy to try and stop them.

He snapped his head up when he heard the rustling of sheets on the hospital bed. Fresh tears filled his eyes when he saw Mikey reaching up to rub his eyes. He blinked hard a couple times, confusion taking over his face as he looked at the IV tubes that were plugged into his arms.

“Shit,” Richie finally forced out, a smile on his face despite all the heaviness in his chest.

Mikey turned and looked at him, his face paler than usual and an expression on it that Richie couldn’t quite read. It was like Mikey was trying to be himself but he couldn’t quite swing it. No one would’ve been able to blame him for that.

“Richie?” his voice was gravelly, like the back of his throat had been scraped raw.

“Yea,” he said, not sure what else he was supposed to say in a situation like this, “it’s me. I’m, I’m right here.”

“Hey.”

Richie didn’t know what was more genuine, the smile on his face or the ache in his chest as he stared at his bed fried laid out in the hospital bed. He was glad Mikey made it, of course he was glad Mikey made it. But there was so much that needed to be done now, so many conversations to be had. And, for all the talking that the two of them did, Richie had the nagging feeling that this was one thing that was going to be tough to get Mikey to be straight about.

“What’d you do, Mikey?” he asked, quiet as he’d ever been.

“What?” Mikey tried to play it off, tried to flash his usual smile that would transition him from one topic to the next seamlessly.

“What do you mean what?” Richie shook his head. “Do you, do you know where you fuckin’ are right now?”

“I know, I know.” Mikey slowly tried to move himself so that he was sitting a little more upright. “I got, you know,” he coughed, “carried away. I’m good.”

“You’re not good, cousin. You,” the lump came back in Richie’s throat, “you were dead in the fucking office.”

“Richie—”

“No, Mikey.” He stood up out of his seat. “I’m not joking with you right now. We’re not just going to move on from this. I, I told you not to mess with those fucking pills and you—”

“You were right. That what you wanna hear?”

“No! That’s not what I wanna hear! I don’t give a fuck about being right, Mikey. You died! Is that, is that not clicking with you?!”

Mikey sighed, looking up at the ceiling for a moment before looking back over at Richie. “What do you want from me, Richie?”

“I want you to be real about whatever the fuck has been going on with you lately. I want you to, you know, I want you to at least pretend that you’re taking this seriously.”

Deep down he knew that Richie was right, but he wasn’t ready or willing to cop to that. He wasn’t ready for everything that was going to happen in lieu of admitting that things had spiraled way too far out of control. So he did what the Berzatto’s did best—avoided the fucking problem.

“When are they lettin’ me out of here?”

Richie sighed in defeat, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Didn’t get that far. Was too busy asking if you were actually going to wake the fuck up to worry about when they were gonna let you out.” He dragged his hands down his face. “Sugar’s gonna be here soon. You gotta…get right before you see her.”

“Get right?”

“Yea. You can’t be acting like this when she comes in to see you. She’s probably been crying her fucking eyes out the whole way here and she can’t come in and see you sitting in bed acting like an asshole who doesn’t care that he just OD’d. You better fake that shit, cousin.”

“Richie—”

“I love you, you know.”

Mikey’s façade faltered for a moment. “I lo—”

“But I’m really, I’m fuckin’ pissed right now. So I’m,” he shook his head, “I’m gonna go meet Sugar in the lobby, I’m gonna go back to the fuckin’ restaurant, and I’m gonna make sure the place doesn’t burn down while you sort the rest of this shit out.”

Mikey knew when he’d lost an argument, so he just nodded. “Alright.”

Richie stepped towards the door to his room, stopping to make an amendment to what he’d said. “If anything else goes down, you fucking call me, alright? Because I’m, I’m still here for you.”

Mikey knew that Richie wasn't one to lie, for better or worse, but he still found himself asking, “Yea?”

He nodded. “Yea.”

The two of them stared at each other for another moment before Richie finally let himself out of the room. He felt like he was walking out of the room with a completely different set of weights resting on his shoulders than when he’d walked in. As he made his way down the hall, hoping to run into Sugar before she blasted her way into Mikey’s room, his mind started to peel apart everything that had happened over the course of the morning.

Before he could spiral too far, he could hear Sugar’s voice as she spoke with presumably the same woman that Richie had talked to not too long before.

“I know that he’s here, so please, let me—”

“Sugar,” Richie cut her off, his voice devoid of any of the humor and sarcasm that it usually had when he talked to her.

Turning to look at him, it was the first time that Natalie ever looked anything besides annoyed about seeing him. She didn’t look happy about it, per se, but there was definitely something akin to relief on her face.

Striding over to him, she stopped right in front of him. Her eyes were red and puffy—he’d apparently made the right prediction about her crying on the way to the hospital. “Is, is he okay? Where are you going? What happened?”

Richie motioned with his hands for her to slow down. “He’s out of it, but he’s alright.”

“What happened?” she asked, the hurt look on her face saying that she already knew the answer.

“Pills.”

She shut her eyes tight for a moment. “Fuck.” Wiping the tears off of her face, she came back around to the other question she’d originally asked him. “Where are you going?”

“Restaurant.”

She scoffed, like she couldn’t believe that he was just going to walk away. “Are you serious?”

“What, do you wanna go cover it, Sug?” He sighed. “I don’t think he needs me right now anyway. You,” he gestured towards the hall where Mikey’s room was, “go and talk some fucking sense into him.”

She didn’t have it in her to get into addressing everything that he’d just said. Instead, she asked, “You talk to Carmy?”

Richie shook his head. “Neither of you fucks picked up your phones.” He huffed, staring up at the ceiling as he said, “This is why you don’t give toddlers fucking smartphones.”

Natalie shook her head, already pulling out her phone to text Carmy. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Right.”

Richie went to step by her when she reached out, gently resting her hand on his forearm to stop him. “Richie?”

He couldn’t hide his confusion at the soft gesture. “Yea?”

She gave a short nod. “Thank you.”

He took a deep breath, nodding as he told her, “Family, right?”

She let out a shaky exhale as her hand dropped back to her side. “Family, yea.”

#the bear #the bear fx #the bear hulu #mikey berzatto #michael berzatto #richie jerimovich #whumpril #whumpril2023 #whumprilday11 #bedside vigil #i'm right here #my writing #the bear fanfiction #fanfiction #drabblesmc

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em-writes-stuff · 1 year

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bedside vigil + “i’m right here”

@whumpril day 11

warnings: hospital setting, iv, bullet wound

hero, villain, doctor

700 words (!!!!!)

part one here | part two here

---

Hero blinks awake, fluorescent lights nearly blinding her. Monitors beep steadily around her and something whirred every few seconds. She jerks up, supporting herself with her elbows. Next to her, five cups of coffee are on the bedside table and…so is Villain.

His legs are drawn up to his chest and his chin rests on his knees. He’s snoring softly and for a second, Hero forgets who he is. She stares at him, eyes squinting under the harsh light and, maybe for the first time, she sees him. His beard is patchy with grey hairs and wrinkles are as plentiful as his scars. One of his eyebrows has a slit and she gets the impression he did that by himself.

He opens his eyes, pulling back into the chair and stretching his arms above his head with a yawn. “Hey,” he says, rubbing his eyes, “You’re awake.”

She pulls her legs to her chest and wraps her arms around them, resting her chin on her arm, “I’m awake.”

“Let me get your doctor.”

He stands up and grabs a few of the cups, rattling them before tossing them in the trash on his way out of the room. Hero closes her eyes for a second before opening them again and looking for her things.

The door opens again and Villain walks in with a doctor in tow, she smiles and stands in front of the bed, “Hi, I’m Doctor. I’ve been taking care of you. Do you need to call anyone?”

Shit. Sidekick’s probably worried sick right now. “How long have I been here?”

“About seven hours. I expected you to wake up earlier but I guess you’ve been running overtime. Plus the infection wouldn’t help with anything.”

“Infection?”

“Yeah, that bullet wound? Whoever treated it didn’t do a very good job. There was still some metal lodged in the muscle. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse.” Doctor says.

Hero squints at her, “I treated it. I thought I got all of it out but I guess I missed some.”

Doctor blinks in surprise and glances at Villain. He shakes his head. “Right,” she finally says, “Well then. You did a pretty good job for doing it yourself. I’d prefer next time you coming to me. Of course, it would be best if there wasn’t a next time.”

Hero nods along, “Yeah, yeah, sure. Where’s my phone?”

“All your things are in this bag,” Doctor says, pulling a bag out from seemingly nowhere and handing it to Hero. “Your phone should be in there with it.”

“Actually…” Villain says, reaching behind him for the windowsill, “I took a look. I know, I know, lecture me later. It was ringing like crazy about an hour ago so I answered it. Sidekick’s on his way. He told me he’d be here as soon as he could be.”

Doctor glares at him, “You know better.”

“It’s fine, he probably did the best thing honestly. Sidekick has a habit of going nuclear when he can’t find me. Did my parents call?” she scrolls through her calls and sighs when she doesn’t see either of their names. “That’s good.”

Villain and Doctor share another look and Hero clears her throat, “Well, I should probably get ready to go, do I need to stay?”

Doctor sputters and blinks in surprise, “You should probably stay here at least for a few more hours. I just dug metal out of your leg and the infection’s still clearing up. I’d recommend just…” she guides Hero back onto the bed and covers her with the scratchy hospital blanket, “Resting for a while.” her pager beeps and she curses, “Damnit, I have to go. Villain, please keep her here until she can walk on that leg without limping.”

He mock salutes and waves her out of the room with a gentle smile.

Hero stares at him and frowns, “What now?”

“I’m right here, and I won’t leave until you tell me to or Doctor makes me, so…it’s up to you.”

She keeps her eyes trained on him, eyes narrowing the longer she stares until she finally sighs and falls back into the bed, “You can stay. I’m not explaining everything to Sidekick.”

#whumpril #whumpril2023 #whumprilday11 #my writing #whump #whump writing #hero whump #villain caretaker #hero whumpee #tw hospital #bedside vigil #i'm right here #em writes #em writes stuff

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