The wordcriticalwent through Hudson like a physical blow.
He was aware, distantly, of the grief in the room—for Marsh, for all of them. The specific weight of losing someone you’d trusted your life with. He felt it too, somewhere underneath everything else. He would feel it properly later. Right now there was only one thing on his mind.
Elliot.
“I need to get on that medevac,” Hudson said.
“Captain, you can’t?—”
“I need to be on that flight, Major. I need—” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “Please.”
Okafor searched his face. Then he nodded once. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Hudson remained in the middle of the ops room while the world moved around him—people on frequencies, someone already pulling Marsh’s file—and tried to breathe.
Getting to the military hospital in Germany proved to be a battle. It took two whole days that Hudson would never get back.
The first person who told him “no” was a lieutenant in the medical administration who explained, with genuineapology, that only immediate family was permitted to accompany injured personnel on the medevac flight. Hudson had shot him a look and said, very carefully, “Define immediate family,” and the lieutenant had said spouse or next of kin. Hudson had told him he understood and walked straight out to find Okafor.
Okafor had listened. Then he said, “I need you to define it officially. Your relationship to Shaw.”
“Partner,” Hudson said in a heartbeat. “Elliot is my partner.”
Okafor wrote it down without comment. “Let me make some calls.”
The calls took eighteen hours. Okafor made every single one without being asked, working through the night. Forms, approvals, someone at Landstuhl who needed authorization from someone above Okafor’s pay grade.
Hudson had spent most of the eighteen hours in Elliot's quarters, replaying their last conversation on a loop. The kiss Hudson hadn’t expected, right there in the open. The date invitation. He’d backed away. Smiling. Elliot’s mouth had done the corner thing.
When all of this is over and everyone is safe.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and waited.
Hudson openedhis eyes at 0400 and scanned the bed.
He did this every hour or so—checking, confirming. It never hurt any less.
The right side of Elliot’s head was thoroughly bruised. It had changed color over the days, moving from purple toward yellowish at the edges. He had a long cut above his right ear held together by too many stitches. His handsrested on the blanket, the scarred knuckles visible from where Hudson sat. He was so still, Hudson had to look away.
A doctor had explained things to him when he first arrived. Traumatic brain injury, induced coma, swelling that needed time to resolve. Cautious optimism but no guarantees.
All they could do was wait.
Like that wasn’t its own kind of torture.
“Hey,” Hudson said, to the room, to Elliot, to whoever was listening. “It’s been almost six days and I’m running out of things to say, which you know is not something that happens to me very often.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking about the restaurant. For our date. I’m thinking French. I know that’s predictable but I figure you’ll have opinions about the menu and honestly I want to listen to you have opinions about the menu.” His throat tightened. “I also just—I need you to come back, okay?”
The monitors kept their rhythm. Hudson’s heart didn’t.
He pulled the chair closer to the bed and took Elliot’s hand in his. It didn’t really feel like his hand—too cold, too motionless—but Hudson didn’t know how else to feel close to him. He held it tight.
Bending his head, he rested it on Elliot’s arm. Tentatively. Tracing the tattoos with his free hand.
His eyelids fluttered shut.
Hudson woke to a small hand on his shoulder. He jumped, sitting up straight, eyes snapping to the clock on the wall. 0700. Three hours of sleep.
He turned around to find a small woman with silver hair pulled back neatly, and dark eyes that moved over him with a thoroughness that was immediately familiar. She looked like Elliot.
