Jesse Joe Hartley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
slowsouthernstyle) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2023-05-27 04:09 am
slowsouthernstyle) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2023-05-27 04:09 am
"That's what you get when you confuse your stomach with your heart."
Who: Jesse Hartley, Brandon Blake and Merlin Blake (with Peyton Kingston and Miles Morrison briefly)
What: Big Brother Backup
Where: First up, Brandon and Merlin's place, Upper East Side, NYC
When: After this and this
Brandon met Jesse at the door of their penthouse apartment so he didn’t need to ring the buzzer. Merlin was awake but Wes was asleep at the other side of the apartment and possibly Noah also, but Brandon had lost track of their coming and going over the past couple of frankly stressful as fuck days.
“I’m so sorry for waking you up and getting you out of bed,” Brandon murmured, giving Jesse a hug after closing the door behind him. “I should’ve said more in the texts but I’m not even exactly sure what’s going on. He’s been a bit all over the place, which is my fault for being a dumbfuck. I don’t know if it’s just today he’s had the stomach pain or longer and he was just trying to ignore it. You think it could be his appendix?”
Jesse gave Brandon’s back a reassuring pat. “One option, yes. Or it really could just be as simple as constipation. That’s why it was just better for me to give him a quick check before dragging him to the hospital where you could end up having to wait many hours before being seen if they ascertain it’s not urgent. What did he mean when he said ‘not pooping’?”
Brandon rubbed his head and took Jesse’s coat to hang on their coat rack. “Constipation can make you puke? I guess I’m rusty on those particular logistics when it really, really hasn’t been my problem since I first started chemo. He said he thinks it’s almost a week since he went to the bathroom. At first, he thought it was just stress but stress for him usually means the opposite problem. His flare-ups have a pretty common pattern. Some pain, farting enough to super-power a jacuzzi, the trots, off his food for a bit. Then it eases off. This is different. When the pain started to get bad, he said he felt like he was going to be sick. Then he was but he thought it helped a bit. He thought it might be because he hadn’t been to the bathroom and then it kind of felt like he needed to fart. Pretty sure being gassy doesn’t make you throw up, though. He was just uncomfortable and miserable. He slept for a little while but when he woke up, the pain was making him feel sick. He’s been throwing up every half hour or so, if not more, since and I think he’s got a fever but I can’t find our friggin thermometer. This place is practically a mini hospital since I was sick but when I need to actually find something, that shit is invisible.” At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped, raking his fingers through his hair.
“So, no jacuzzi skills this time around?” Jesse asked, digging around in his messenger bag to find his medical supplies he packed to be able to assess what might be going on with his brother. “Constipation can make people feel sick or vomit if it’s significant enough. Merlin’s IBD predisposes him to it, though.”
“Not from him, anyway. If there has, it hasn’t been when I’ve been lying with him.” Brandon analysed Jesse closely for any signs he should be starting to really freak out here. “He took some laxatives. They did nothing.”
Jesse drew his lips together and put his hand on Brandon’s shoulder. “I think we’re looking at a hospital trip, buddy. Significant pain and nothing much moving down there could be indicators of something more mechanical than just inflammatory. Especially with vomiting and fever. It’s been a few hours since he indicated the pain was worse than usual?”
Brandon started up the spiral stairs to their bedroom, nodding. “It was late afternoon. He slept for a few hours, woke up again around ten and puked all over the bed. At one point, he was on the toilet doubled over in pain just trying to get some relief but had no luck beyond throwing up again. We tried a warm bath but he couldn’t get comfortable, he just wanted to keep curling up in pain. The heatpad hasn’t helped at all either. You’ll be able to tell if he needs to go to the hospital? What will they do?”
“Do some scans, run some tests. If it’s his appendix, we need to get him there ASAP for surgery. It might be more complicated than that. Ulcerative Colitis can have complications. He’s okay for me to just go in?” Jesse asked, pausing on the stairs up to Brandon and Merlin’s bedroom.
Brandon nodded. “Yeah, just head up, dude. He should be in bed. If not, in the bathroom. He keeps trying to go but even that was getting more painful.”
Jesse stepped into the large room that was a generous space on the landing of the loft with luxury trendy black, white, and grey interior decorating. Definitely more suited to a single bachelor but they had made it work since they got married and Wes subsequently moved in with them. It was a huge enough home to accommodate them all. Merlin was curled up in a ball on his side, a plastic blue mixing bowl sitting near his knees. He could immediately see from his pallor how unwell Merlin was. It was surprising he wasn’t blending into the walls. “Hey, buddy. I hear you’re feeling pretty rough, huh? You okay if I have a bit of a check of your belly? Brandon’s worried about you. Better to be safe than sorry, yeah?”
“Sorry, baby. I didn’t know what to do,” Brandon murmured apologetically, standing by the bed and stroking Merlin’s hair.
“What the fuck, it’s, like, ass-crack o’clock in the morning… night. Jeezus, I don’t even know,” Merlin moaned weakly, uncurling gingerly to give Jesse access for whatever he was here to do it. He didn’t have any real protests by this point. Earlier, sure. He was convinced whatever was going on with his guts was simple and would resolve itself but rather than easing off, the pain consistently became more intense to the point he found himself wishing for a bout of explosive diarrhoea just to get some relief. He never thought he’d find himself thinking that, or moaning it to his husband doubled over on the toilet almost weeping in pain. Considering that, he wasn’t really surprised that Brandon called in backup. Merlin would absolutely have done the same thing. “Please tell me they’re not going to stick a camera up my ass again. Wait. No. I take that back. Let them do it. Gimme all that awful crap that makes you shit through the eye of a needle. I’ll take double.”
Brandon shared a glance with Jesse and drew his lips together with a look that clearly said, ‘Yeah, he’s been like this all night’. “Whatever this is, I don’t think he’s experienced it before. At least, not this bad,” he tried to elaborate to Jesse but other than the pain and the fact he had been throwing up and seemed to have a fever, Merlin hadn’t been able to explain much more of what he was feeling.
“Try and lie on your back if you can, buddy. I need to feel your belly but it’ll probably hurt. Just try to tell me where it feels worse.” Jesse took his thermometer out and checked Merlin’s temperature via his forehead. He preferred to keep this type at home because it was the easiest way to check Jace for any fevers if he was out of it after a seizure. “Temperature’s up but still low-grade. I think we need to keep an eye on it, though. Could be an infection somewhere. Can you explain the pain to me?”
With some help from Brandon, Merlin awkwardly twisted and flopped onto his back, trying to take it slow so it didn’t hurt but basically every movement hurt so there was no real smooth way to achieve it. “It’s, like, low down and comes in really bad waves. Then when I throw up, it slows down a bit but comes back a while later again. I just want to go back to sleep but I can’t.”
Jesse rubbed his hands together so they weren’t too cold and gently palpated his stomach. “So, below your belly button? Is it like a sharp or shooting pain? Or more like crampy pain? Your belly definitely seems swollen, buddy.”
“Yeah, below it. It kinda radiates all over but that’s where the worst is. Crampy. Twisty. Just gets worse when the bad waves—ow! Fuck!” Merlin shrieked as soon as Jesse touched the spot it was hurting the most, pushing his brother’s hand away.
“Sorry! I’m sorry. It’s okay. I’ll stop.” Jesse apologised, pulling Merlin’s tshirt back down over his stomach.
Brandon winced at Merlin’s shriek, smoothing his hair back off his sweaty forehead. “Definitely swollen. He’s wearing a super old pair of my trackpants where the elastic’s all worn out. He couldn’t handle anything else around his stomach.”
Jesse took Merlin’s hand so he could check his pulse at his wrist, waiting while he counted the beats before asking anything further. “How long has it been feeling like this? Just a general ballpark of when it started to go from feeling just like your usual troubles to more abnormal than usual?” He took his stethoscope out of his bag. “And nothing going in or coming out now? When was the last you remember for both?”
“After lunch yesterday it got worse. But it was after we had a fight and Bran had too much o drink, so I thought it was just my gut doing its stress thing. Only, it wasn’t the usual stress things and I never really puke with it. So, when I did, it started to feel weird. Literally, nothing coming out and usually, like, I could take part in the Fart Olympics. Especially when I’m stressing…” Merlin rubbed a hand over his face and felt for Brandon’s hand to take, his words trailing off.
“He hasn’t eaten since lunch the day before yesterday. We had Thai from our favourite place but we shared the same thing. It was just veggo, there was no meat. When I asked, he said he hadn’t had an appetite. He barely picked at the lunch but we had a lot on our minds at the time. He’s been drinking water and Pedialyte but I don’t think much has stayed down the last few hours. It was before that. But I’ve taken the drinks away now like you said to do,” Brandon reported, another wave of guilt hitting him that he was too busy sleeping off a hangover when Merlin began to feel unwell. It was making him realise that now he got losing his shit over a possible relapse out of his system, he had to try to deal with this better so Merlin didn’t have to shoulder all his shit alone.
As Jesse was wrapping the blood pressure cuff around his arm, Merlin felt another wave of bad pain begin to set in. He started to breathe more deeply through the nausea, tapping Jesse’s knee urgently. “Gotta throw up.”
Brandon grabbed the bowl and crouched down beside the bed to hold it for Merlin while he tried to throw up but there was hardly anything to come out. He rubbed his back and looked up at Jesse, concerned. “He needs to go the ER, yeah? Is it his appendix?”
“Possibly. But I suspect if it is, it’s secondary inflammation to a main cause. I think it’s probably more related to his ulcerative colitis from the location of the pain. But it could be any number of things, so yeah, sorry, buddy. We need to take you to get checked out. If something is going on in there, the longer you leave it, the worse it’ll get.” Jesse got up and ducked through to their en-suite, wetting a face cloth and bringing it back for Brandon to wipe Merlin’s face once he was done. “Are you okay to drive, dude, or do you think you might still have some booze in your system? If so, might be best if we call an ambulance.”
“I can drive,” Brandon confirmed, shooting his brother-in-law a sheepish look. It was probably only a matter of time before Jesse and/or Damien interrogated him about his fuckery. “Seriously, it’s okay. I made myself so sick, it’s impossible any booze is left in me. The only thing is, I tend to attract attention in public places. Do you think it’d be a long wait for someone to see him?”
Jesse patted Brandon’s shoulder. “I’ll call ahead and make some arrangements. We’ll be able to sort something out. Just try to wear something you might blend in with because he’ll have to be triaged and the ER can get a bit chaotic. Just take it slow. It’s going to be painful to get him moving.”
That definitely turned out to be an understatement, one that would ultimately culminate in Brandon nearly punching a fan at the hospital and Jesse feeling like he needed a hit of something for his nerves. Merlin had been in too much pain to even stand up from the bed and kept doubling over to guard his stomach when they tried to move him. By the third attempt, he was leaning so much in against Brandon to hold himself upright that he threw up all down the front of Brandon’s sweatshirt and started crying because the pain was so bad yet still trying to apologise to Brandon for throwing up on him. That was all still in the bedroom and enough for Brandon to decide they were calling for an ambulance without even needing Jesse to gently advise him it was for the best. He thought taking Merlin to hospital himself in their car would be the best way but Merlin’s pain was too advanced. They just needed to get him there the swiftest and most comfortable way for him as possible.
That plan of action wasn’t without its challenges. After changing out of his vomit-covered clothes and into something clean so he could ride with Merlin in the ambulance, Brandon completely forgot to do anything about concealing his identity. Now that his hair had grown back and he hadn’t had it cut since it had, he was pretty easily recognisable as the face from that tv show that was once considered a cult show with a small yet passionate audience and ended up growing to a global phenomenon thanks to Brandon doing nude sex scenes and frequently having his bare bum on show. The fans were no less passionate than they were in the first season, only now they had exponentially grown in quota. The show was based in New York City too, so it had always been a bit of a hub for fans, who swooped on the place to do tours of all the locations in the show in hopes of spotting any of the stars, especially Brandon. He was used to the whole circus but he had gotten lax being out of action so long with his leukemia battle. He was off his game but that was even more so when his husband was unwell and Brandon had felt a weird but strong sense of anxiety beginning to take hold of him in not knowing exactly what was wrong with Merlin.
Jesse followed to the hospital in a cab, telling Brandon he would pack Merlin a few things in a bag because they would definitely at least keep him in a night to treat whatever it turned out to be. The cab he took got stuck in traffic and seemed to catch every red light at every junction possible, even though it wasn’t a far distance. When he arrived at the Emergency Room, Merlin had been taken for a CT scan, so he had a chat with a nurse college he sometimes worked with on one of the wards while he waited for his brother to be brought back to the ER. He found out that Peyton, Tori’s big brother, was the doctor who had done Merlin’s initial examination after he was triaged and after ordering Merlin be given some morphine for the pain and something to try to ease the vomiting, sent him straight around for a CT scan. By the time Jesse got to the hospital, Tori was already tied up with another patient so Jesse hadn’t been able to get any further updates directly from him.
A while later, raised voices and a commotion nearby caught Jesse’s attention and because he worked there, it was reflexive to rush to it to see if he could help. He got around the corner in time to hear Brandon shouting, “I fucking said no! Will you just get the hell out of my face!”
Whoever he was yelling at was flanked by four or five other people probably in their mid to early twenties. “C’mon, man! I’m seriously your biggest fan! It’s not like I’m asking you to chop off your arm and give it to me. Just one selfie! Please?” a male voice demanded.
“One selfie, Saxon! You do it for everyone else.” Another voice. Female, this time.
Jesse hurriedly approached the group just in time to see one of the males grab Brandon and try to shove his phone in his face. He made it just in time to intercept as Brandon shook the guy off him and went to take a swing at him. “Brandon, no!” Jesse grabbed Brandon’s arm before his fist could make contact with the demanding fan and his sidekicks and put himself in between Brandon and the other guy. Miles came running from the other direction and shoved the male fan backwards just as a couple of security guards arrived on the scene.
“You said you’d fucking take care of this shit!” Brandon snapped, pulling away from Jesse’s hold with a glare at him before he stalked off down the corridor.
Jesse held his hand up to the fan, who was shamelessly looking extremely offended by the fact Brandon had responded how he did. It took all of Jesse’s self-control not to thump the dude himself. “This is a hospital, not a mosh pit. You need to respect the privacy of patients and their loved ones. There are seriously unwell people here getting help and it’s not a place to accost anyone and make demands of them. I’m sure you understand how inappropriate it is to do what you just did in a hospital. You need to leave and be grateful no one is pressing charges for assault.” He turned to the security guards, who were shielding Jesse from the group. “Can you have them all escorted out and ensure any photos they took of anyone against their will are deleted? I don’t care why they’re here, they can wait outside. Thank you.”
He raked his fingers through his hair and waited until the hospital security officers had moved the group on and then turned to Miles, both one of Jesse’s nursing colleagues and close friend on account of the fact he was Liam’s ex. “What the hell happened, dude? I called ahead and spoke to Veronica to tell her Brandon would be coming in with Merlin via ambulance and to have extra security so no one bothered him.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. That was the extra security and they were monitoring the areas near Merlin’s bay to make sure no one was lingering. It’s just a madhouse here tonight. Merlin’s just been brought back from Radiology. Brandon urgently needed the bathroom and he must’ve just been heading back when the fans passed him in the corridor and approached him. It must’ve just happened really quickly. I was watching the entrance of the bay for Brandon returning but Merlin started vomiting again, so I was helping him,” Miles explained, his soft Scottish lilt coming through a little stronger with his frustration. “Who the fuck even does that, approaches any celebrity for a selfie in an ER corridor, let alone one who has publicly stated he’s had cancer? Sorry, Jess. Your request wasn’t ignored. It’s just one of those nights.”
Jesse nodded, forcing himself to calm down now he knew that it wasn’t a fact that his head’s up that Brandon would be coming in being ignored, just that the ER could be a madhouse more nights than not. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry for snapping. Was Brandon feeling unwell?”
“I don’t know for sure. Sorry. He doesn’t look well. He was definitely stressed and tense with how long Merlin’s CT was taking. But beyond that, he wasn’t saying much. He just excused himself to go to the bathroom and apologised that it couldn’t wait. With the GvHD, we can’t fault him that.” Miles put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder with a little pat. “You okay? You can come through to Merlin. Tori’s coming back to talk to him once he finishes with the other patient. Merlin’s having a rough go, aye?”
“You don’t know the half of it, bud. He’s hungover. Long story. They’re both having a bad day. Things are full-on. His nerves were already shattered stressing about Merlin. The last thing he needed was anyone shoving phones in his face and demanding selfies. Merlin’s allocated to you?” Jesse asked, heading in the direction of the bay he had been told Merlin was in.
Miles nodded, falling into step beside Jesse. “We’re just waiting for them to tell us what bed he’s going to and what the test results say.”
“Jess.” Peyton came up behind them both, hanging his stethoscope around his neck. “Are you coming in while I chat with Merlin and Brandon? Merlin said you were on your way. I just heard that there was a security incident. Is Brandon okay?”
Jesse patted the backpack he had over his shoulder. “Just brought Merlin some things. It seemed pretty inevitable that a say would be in order. I think it might just be best to let Brandon take the reins until Merlin’s settled in his room. Things have been really stressful for them both these last few days. It can be overwhelming when your other half’s sick. Brandon’s got this. Can you give me a quick summary of what we’re looking at? I’ll need to let Damo and their folks know, so Brandon can just focus on Merlin. Damo probably can’t get here, Liam’s gone down hard with gastro bug that’s going around.”
Peyton gestured to the nearby vacant bay so they could step out of the corridor. “I heard they were one down in surgery. Liam had to go home sick. Tori and I both had it a couple of weeks back. Turned out to be noro. Horrific. I wasn’t sure if it might be what we were facing with Merlin but it was pretty clear we were looking at appendicitis or a blockage with lack of bowel activity. I’ve just requested a surgical consult.” He brought Merlin’s CT scan images up on the iPad he was carrying and showed Jesse. “It’s a stricture in the large bowel that’s caused a functional obstruction, likely from the ulcerative colitis. From what he reports, he’s been symptomatic on and off for the last month or two. I’d say there’s been some lesions and inflammation in this section of his bowel that has gradually worsened. I think the plan will probably be to pop an endoscopic stent in along with gastric decompression, fluid therapy, and bowel rest with preoperative antibiotics. Then they’ll move on to bowel prep for a lap strictureplasty later in the week. He’s really miserable and in a lot of pain but he’ll be a lot more comfortable once we can get the treatment ball rolling. Everything will start to settle quickly. Sure you don’t want to come in while I talk to them?”
Jesse shook his head with a tired smile. “It’s okay. Brandon’s got this. Let him know I’ll be around if he wants company while Merlin’s in theatre being stented. He’s going to stress. Merlin’s not great with anaesthetic. Just let them know I’ll contact Merlin’s family. I’ll be here if they need anything.”
#
It was the early hours of the morning and Brandon found Jesse sitting in a quiet waiting area near the surgical unit, scrolling on his phone. He sunk down beside his brother-in-law on the sofa and offered him one of the two coffees he just bought. “I owe you an apology,” he told him, trying to stretch his aching back muscles a little as he nursed the grande disposable cup in his hands. It took him a few moments until he got the balls to meet Jesse’s gaze sheepishly. “A big one. Which is why that’s the second cup I bought you because my brain is so fried, I auto-pilot bought caffeinated for both of us, despite the fact you’ve been my brother-in-law long enough that it’s shameful I forgot.”
“Not at all,” Jesse insisted, offering Brandon a sympathetic smile as he sat. “Not only do you not owe me an apology, it’s okay to forget insignificant facts when you’re stressed and worried. Not to mention sleep-deprived. Trust me, I’m a nurse and a shift worker. I can say that with expert confidence. You should’ve kept the other cup for yourself. You’ll probably need a second. But if you want to close your eyes for a bit and nap, I can wake you the moment they let us know he’s back.”
Brandon shook his head emphatically. “No, I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. What happened wasn’t your fault. I knew you kept your word, they told me when we arrived in the ambulance. I made you feel like you couldn’t be there when the doctor was telling us what was going on and I never want you or Damien to feel like you’re not welcome to be there when he needs you. I’m really sorry, Jess. You’ve both done nothing but be there for us unconditionally.” He looked at the other sofa and as tempting as it was, he scrunched his nose up. “I couldn’t sleep. I’m too— I just couldn’t sleep.”
“That’s not why I didn’t come through to the bay, buddy. I knew you had it in hand. I know what it’s like to be in your shoes with something like this and back in mine and Jace’s early days, his family subconsciously didn’t trust me to take care of him. Actually, no. That’s not fair to say. It was never that they didn’t trust me. It was just that they didn’t know how to let someone else care for him because he had been precious cargo for them for so long and I don’t think they knew me well enough to have faith that I had the care and skill to care for him how he needed to be. It really hurt me a the time, mostly because I was a qualified Clinical Nurse Specialist, so I did actually have the skill. It caused problems when we spent our first Thanksgiving together at his family’s place in Chicago and he had a huge seizure. I was pushed out of the way and it wasn’t fair of them to do when Jace had chosen me and trusted me with his care. Just like Merlin has for you. Something you also know as well as anyone is that the last thing you want when you’re feeling that sick is multiple surplus bodies around you, even if they’re trying to help. I completely respect your capable hands with Merlin as his husband and as a person who has been through serious illness. If it was vital I be there, I would’ve been. But it wasn’t. Even being a cancer patient, you wouldn’t have needed me to explain the medical stuff. You got this. Plus, Peyton’s an excellent doctor. You couldn’t have gotten better hands for him to be in than Tori’s big brother. Tori lost his little sister to leukemia, remember?” Jesse searched Brandon’s face for a moment, wondering what it was he just stopped himself from saying out loud. “What is it? Something specific troubling you? Miles said you had to rush to the bathroom urgently. Was it because you were stressing out? I’m happy to answer any questions if that would help.”
Brandon’s forehead furrowed and eyes were narrowed a little as he listened, though mostly because the fluro hospital lights were bright and making his eyes sting with how tired he was. “That’s awful. I mean, I know the Turners would never have knowingly wanted to make you feel awful but I can see why it would’ve. They didn’t even give you a bit of the benefit of the doubt with all your qualifications? Having said that, he’s the baby of the family and it would’ve been hard adjusting. I remember you both saying you were each other’s first serious relationship. It was all new. I felt a bit out of my depth with Merlin in the early days. I wanted you all to know you could trust me not to hurt him, when I wasn’t even sure I trusted myself not to. Even Evan, though? He would’ve worked with you. Still, I am really sorry. I wasn’t pissed at you, I was freaked out being accosted by fans again. It’s been a hot minute. I’m rusty and off my game. Plus, I didn’t think here in the middle of all places it would happen. Oh, shit, that was Tori’s brother? I didn’t even put two and two together. I know Merlin knew him, which was a relief but I didn’t realise.” He wondered if he was being painfully obvious or it was just because Jesse was so in-tuned to the feelings of others and observant. “I think I had I had a panic attack.”
Jesse had a mouthful of the decaf latte Brandon had gotten for him. “Especially Evan. Predominantly Evan, even. It was always going to be a massive thing for him to let anyone else step into a carer’s role with Jace. It worked itself out. He realised what he was doing and we had a big heart-to-heart. He had to see I meant my word and wasn’t just doing it all to get in Jace’s pants, so to speak. The Turner family are all worth their weight in gold. I truly lucked out with in-laws. I know how hard it was to let me in. What makes you think it was a panic attack? Was it because you were worried what the doctor might say of Merlin’s condition?”
“I lucked out with in-laws too.” Brandon smiled gratefully at Jesse and sipped his coffee. It was a bit too strong for his liking these days and he wanted to take it easy in case it didn’t sit well on his stomach. Eating and drinking could still be a bit of a minefield for him these days. Figuring out what he tolerated and how much was still a work-in-progress. There were a lot things he used to have without issue that made him nauseous or went through him with the speed of an F1 champion. The very unglamorous side of illness. Even as a wealthy celebrity, he was still very human with this side of things. “When he was being examined, I just started to feeling really anxious and sweaty, shaky. My heart was thumping so bad, I was conscious of it pounding in my chest and I was feeling dizzy. I wasn’t sure if I was about to pass out and started to feel sick so I ran for the bathroom and threw up. Once I did, it eased off and I started to feel better. I was coming back from the bathroom when the fans passed me in the hall and jumped on me. It was… Peyton made a comment about looking for something on the scans but that even anything benign can cause trouble in the GI tract. Suddenly, I started freaking out it might be cancer. Proverbial kryptonite for my emotions. I’m glad Merlin was feeling too sick to realise I was losing my shit.”
“Will you let me give you a quick check over, just to make sure it definitely was only anxiety? I don’t want to get on your back while you’re stressing but best to just be safe than sorry, yeah? That aside, though, buddy, this is definitely what we call a trauma response. Sure, it’s likely anxiety triggered a panic attack as soon as you were conscious of that fear but it’s because what you went through with your health was traumatising. Health anxiety can be crippling. It’s bad enough for people who haven’t been through a serious illness and traumatic treatment but when you have, it’s not possible to just tell yourself you’re being silly and there’s nothing to worry about. You know there is absolutely plenty to worry about. Just go easy on yourself. It’s natural to be fearful when the person you love is sick enough to warrant a trip to the ER with something unusual. Plus, you’ve got that side order of heaping guilt because you had a fight and you’ll be realising he was probably already feeling pretty ordinary when it happened. Try not to beat yourself. That just takes energy you don’t have. Do you want a hug? You look like you need one,” Jesse offered, noticing the way Brandon was bouncing his leg and fidgeting with his coffee cup, despite being obviously weary.
Brandon didn’t actually realise how much he needed a hug until Jesse was offering it and he was once again struck by Jesse’s sweet and calm gentleness that he had experienced the first night he ever met him. Jesse had spotted how sick he was back then and hadn’t hesitated in taking care of him and letting him be positioned right back in Merlin’s path when he wasn’t sure he would ever see him again. He accepted the hug and closed his eyes, trying not to get too emotional. It was true, his nerves were completely shot and he let exhaustion win out and start to get teary, he wasn’t sure he’d have the energy to dial it back again. Merlin needed him to keep his shit together at least a little and he already accidentally lost it a bit at Jesse in the ER. “Okay, I won’t be a stubborn bitch and say no to checking me over. Just bear in mind, I’m still kinda hungover. Not that I’m making excuses. We both know what triggered my fight with Merlin, I’m sure…”
“I think it was a lot of different factors that triggered your fight, buddy. But ultimately, you were just trying to protect him or shield him from more pain. Not actually something you can truly achieve in a marriage. Unless there’s no functioning marriage to speak of, and I know that’s not the case here.” Jesse patted Brandon’s back and stood up. “Follow me. I don’t want to examine you in the hospital corridor where anyone can walk past. From what Merlin told Damo and me, he seems to think you’re pretty convinced of a relapse. Has it been anything in particular that makes you think that? Or is it just fear alone at play? Which is very real in itself. Beau had crippling anxiety about relapse before he actually did. It nearly cost him his entire relationship. In fact, he turned down Austin’s original marriage proposal because he was so phobic of thinking about the future in case it jinxed him.”
Brandon was lost in his own thoughts as he let Jesse lead the way to a small private consult room up the hall, pausing at the nurses' station they passed to let them know he was borrowing an obs trolley for a bit. The benefits of being on the hospital payroll. Brandon knew Jesse was highly regarded as a nurse here he had personally seen it in action many times. He sat down on one of the armchairs and wearily rubbed a hand over his face and ran his fingers through his hair. With a helpless shrug, he finally said, “I just know, Jess. I just know. But I’m not going to make the same mistakes this time as I did last time.”
“Mistakes?” Jesse asked, holding the sphyg cuff up so Brandon could give him an arm to check his blood pressure and clipped the pulse oximeter to a finger on his other hand.
Brandon pulled his arm out of the sleeve of his sweater to give Jesse access to it. “I waited way too long to see a doctor the first time. Then even after I saw one, I put a pile of the important tests off because I had work commitments in Australia and the UK. I just didn’t think anything was seriously wrong. I thought I was invincible. At the same time, I wasn’t well. It felt like I was running on empty but I just thought I needed a holiday.” He snorted at himself, shaking his head. “We were heading into a filming break, so I just kept telling myself I’d rest then. I was barely eating anything decent, mostly living on Red Bull and cigarettes. When I did eat, it was junk food on the run. This time, I want to follow medical advice to the letter and work with an across-the-board medical team be able to sustain it this time. I want to work. Which I know Merlin is terrified about and pretty much what caused things to arc up between us. It’s different this time. Everyone knows. I’m not nearly on death’s door. With help, taking care of myself properly, I want to be able to work until the doctors advise otherwise. It’s not like the writers are going to write in Saxon having cancer or anything but they have an excellent plot arc for him that covers not just the changes in my physical appearance but slows his character down significantly, it follows how he deals with that. I just… I… need to get back to being something more than the ‘cancer patient’,” he tried to explain, making quotation marks with his fingers.
Jesse listened intently, nursing his stethoscope in his hands and waiting before taking Brandon’s blood pressure. This was only partly because he wanted to give him a quick check physically because he didn’t seem to be feeling great and there was always the chance that panic attack wasn’t just a panic attack in someone with a complex serious medical history like Brandon’s. Mostly, it was because he clocked that Brandon needed someone to talk to. It didn’t matter what he needed to talk about. It would help, if nothing else, to debrief after the significant argument with Merlin. “You need to get back to being you.”
“A bit of a broken and damaged me, but yeah. I did the denial thing about my health on and off throughout the whole time I was at my worst. It wasn’t good for me and it wasn’t good for Merlin. In fact, I think it caused issues along the way he definitely could’ve done without but he just had my back no matter what. Unconditionally. I’m not just saying all this because he’s so sick now. It’s not an afterthought. He’s been my main thought all the way since we learned the transplant was working. I don’t want cancer to rule our lives anymore. If it’s happening again, I want it to just be that lingering pain in the ass we have to deal with but isn’t in the driver’s seat of our life. It’s just a passenger. Him being so sick is just underscoring that even more for me. I’m just…” Brandon paused with a frustrated sigh, going back to rubbing his eyes tiredly. “He didn’t tell me he was feeling sick because all my shit was taking over again and that pisses me off. Not at him, at myself. I thought I was dealing with everything and next thing I know, I’m losing my shit and my husband is so sick, his guts have basically grind to a complete halt and he’s more worried about my hangover because I severely underestimated the potency of booze for me now. I want to take care of him like he’s taken care of me. You get this, yeah? Or am I just talking shit? Is it really just epic delusional to want to try to get back to living and not just surviving?”
Jesse nodded emphatically and put his stethoscope in his ears. “Very, very much get it, buddy. Jace and I had to go through these learning processes with our relationship too. That yearning to want to take care of each other is so natural when you love someone and in a healthy relationship, especially when physical health is compromised. But you also have to give yourself some breathing space. You nearly died. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s okay to need time to work out where life is headed next now you still have it. There’s going to be teething problems and, sure, that can sometimes mean arguments or getting upset and frustrated with each other. And if that’s happening, it’s easy to go into this protective space where you try to deal with this one to protect them or spare them from hurting. Have you been able to talk to Merlin about some of this? Before he became unwell? Don’t beat yourself up about the booze. Our bodies can be complete assholes sometimes, doing inconvenient crap at the worst possible times. We’re only human and you’re a human who survived your body nearly entirely giving in and literally having to regenerate.” He had a closer look at Brandon’s arm after he unwrapped the cuff, noting a faint rash on the inside of his wrist, and then checked his temperature. “Did Tara say when your test result would come back? Merlin mentioned you were holding off on something for a few days?”
“The bone marrow biopsy and lumbar puncture. I know that freaked him out too but Tara said it would be okay for a few days. By then, she would have the bloods back to know how she wants to proceed anyway. It’s only because they were both pretty painful last time and I had a couple of commitments I didn’t want to cancel if I didn’t have to. I realise this is going to sound so fucking wanky when I say it but yeah, one was a promo photoshoot because I wanted to get it out of the way while I’m still feeling okay and not looking like death or losing a bunch of weight again. I had a lot of things lined up before I started to have days where I was getting signs that felt like a relapse and I couldn’t shake that sick feeling of dread. I’ve got a temperature, haven’t I? I can feel it in my face.” Brandon looked over at the door, wondering how Merlin was going with his procedure. It was only a simple band-aid fix for now. After a few days of treatment, he would have a laparoscopic surgery to fix the stricture in his bowel causing all the problems. It would probably be a miserable few days for him. Brandon wouldn’t leave his side. “We talked a little. We were making some headway when he finally admitted he was feeling sick and felt like he was going to be sick.”
Jesse checked the thermometer reading and then tucked it back into his bag and found a strip of pills stashed in the side pocket. “Just a low grade fever. Acetaminophen. It’ll bring it down a lil’. I know you’ll probably put those things on hold now Merlin’s not well and needs you. So, maybe seeing as you’re already here at the hospital and need to wait out his treatment, you could ask Tara if she could do the procedures to get them out of the way? Limbo’s never an easy place to be and I think you’ll feel better having the answers. Or maybe not better but at least not like it’s in the driver’s seat of a really terrible rollercoaster ride you can’t get off. I can talk to Tara about arranging it, if you’re too exhausted. Unless you wanna wait until Merlin can be there with you but that could delay things even more now.”
Accepting the blister pack of pills, Brandon tapped it softly against his palm and then looked up at Jesse gratefully. “How did I luck out and get such great in-laws? Fuck, I was never that great at the family thing and I’ve got to be honest, when Merlin offered to marry me, I was worried I’d still be so family-challenged when you all accepted me into your life unconditionally. But seriously, Jess, there’d be never enough I could do to show my gratitude to you all. Especially you, for knowing when I maybe need some guidance figuring things out. You just never do it in an intrusive way. I think you’re right. I should just get the tests done and confront the inevitable. I’m definitely postponing shit until Merlin’s feeling better. I don’t know how long it’ll take him to recover from this? There’s nothing I want more than us to find a rhythm in our marriage where we’re both able to do what we love and be on the same page with everything. In spite of illness. It’s not like we haven’t got good role models with it.” He popped a couple of the pills into his mouth and washed them down with a swig of his coffee. “If you think they could get the tests arranged quickly and could talk to Tara, that’d be great. My brain feels like mush.”
“I’ll give her a call after seven when she’ll start her shift. I stop taking anything by mouth after you finish that coffee though, in case they need you fasting for any procedure. Finish it first, though. You need to have something other than booze in your system for the last few days,” Jesse advised and patted Brandon’s arm gently, seeing that he was starting to think himself in circles again. “It is a lot, buddy. It’ll be a few weeks before Merlin’s back on his feet. Even by a laparoscopic abdo surgery, it takes a couple of weeks for the insides to settle down. Then he’ll be right as rain. It’s time you can both take to rest and wrap your heads around everything. Did you get to the point at your checkup appointment with Tara of discussing treatment?”
Brandon nodded. “One of the treatment options is, like, a top-up of bone marrow from Merlin directly into me. A, um… lymphatic infusion? No. That wasn’t it but sounded something like that. All the same sort of risks and processes as the original transplant. Honestly, it was so rough on Merlin that I don’t want to put him through it again. Especially not now, when he needs to be well to recover with his own disease that has obviously gotten worse since he was diagnosed. At the very least, it’s been a bad flare-up. Will it settle again after the operation he has? Do you know much about all this? There’s a couple of other treatment options too. Some drug called interferon. Or, of course, more chemo, which is inevitable or looking at a second bone marrow transplant. Tara also said something about my nuts but I think by then, my brain was already checking out because it was information overload. Merlin was asking all the questions and I just wanted to wait until we knew either way. It was too fucking much, you know? Could that be what she was about to tell me? It’s a relapse but also there’s a risk it’s caused some secondary cancer in my nuts?” With a soft growl of frustration, he pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “See why we had a fight? It was just a fucking lot to deal with.”
“Donor Lymphocyte Infusion. Stem cells taken from the original donor and infused directly back into the patient after a relapse. I don’t think Tara meant a secondary testicular cancer or she would’ve examined you for tumours there. There is a way leukemia can manifest in the testes or central nervous system when it relapses, though. Like an inflammatory process. It’s a complicated area of medicine that I only have very surface-level knowledge of so definitely ask Tara more about it. Relapse can manifest differently than the original presentation. Plus, as she probably explained, you catch it early and the treatment might be much less invasive or aggressive. That’s why confronting it is your best bet.” Jesse’s phone started to ring and he took it out to check who was calling. “This might be Recovery letting me know he’s back.”
Brandon watched Jesse take the brief call. “He’s out? Is he okay? Was it okay? What did they say? When can I see him?”
Jesse put his phone back into the pocket of his trackpants and zipped it up. “It went well. Very straightforward getting the stent situation and no complications at all. They’ve got him in Recovery but as expected, there’s some postoperative vomiting. They’re giving him some medication to combat that and keeping him a little longer than they usually would but once he’s a little more awake, they’ll bring him back to the surgical unit. Do you want to head to his room and wait for him there? You weren’t with us last time he had anesthetic but he was pretty miserable and bitchy, so just be prepared.”
Standing, Brandon hitched Merlin’s backpack with the few things Jesse packed for him over his shoulder. “I can’t spite him that. It’s horrible when you’re feeling awful and sick, being poked and prodded from all angles. I’m happy to cop it if he is. In sickness and in health. I meant those words more than any other I’ve uttered in my life. I hate that he doesn’t do well with anesthetic but I know these couple of procedures are vital to sort his guts out. Now I wish he really could’ve just done a huge fart and felt better, like he said. If only things were that simple, eh? If all life’s problems could be solved with a huge satisfying fart.”
Jesse smirked, shaking his head. “Why am I not surprised he said that? He’s been a champion farter his whole life. Even when he was tiny, he used to beat Damo and me in fart games. But they won’t let him out of here until he’s back on form in that sense. C’mon, I’ll wait with you until he’s back, then make myself scarce. You can rest your eyes for a bit until he is.”
“Are you sure? You don’t have to. He’d want you there,” Brandon insisted.
“It’s not a lil’ family gathering for tea or a Sunday roast. You remember how it feels. The less people the better. I’ll give Tara a call and pop back a bit later.” Jesse gave Brandon a hug. “It’ll be okay. Just focus on you two for the time being.”
LOG, COMPLETE
What: Big Brother Backup
Where: First up, Brandon and Merlin's place, Upper East Side, NYC
When: After this and this
Brandon met Jesse at the door of their penthouse apartment so he didn’t need to ring the buzzer. Merlin was awake but Wes was asleep at the other side of the apartment and possibly Noah also, but Brandon had lost track of their coming and going over the past couple of frankly stressful as fuck days.
“I’m so sorry for waking you up and getting you out of bed,” Brandon murmured, giving Jesse a hug after closing the door behind him. “I should’ve said more in the texts but I’m not even exactly sure what’s going on. He’s been a bit all over the place, which is my fault for being a dumbfuck. I don’t know if it’s just today he’s had the stomach pain or longer and he was just trying to ignore it. You think it could be his appendix?”
Jesse gave Brandon’s back a reassuring pat. “One option, yes. Or it really could just be as simple as constipation. That’s why it was just better for me to give him a quick check before dragging him to the hospital where you could end up having to wait many hours before being seen if they ascertain it’s not urgent. What did he mean when he said ‘not pooping’?”
Brandon rubbed his head and took Jesse’s coat to hang on their coat rack. “Constipation can make you puke? I guess I’m rusty on those particular logistics when it really, really hasn’t been my problem since I first started chemo. He said he thinks it’s almost a week since he went to the bathroom. At first, he thought it was just stress but stress for him usually means the opposite problem. His flare-ups have a pretty common pattern. Some pain, farting enough to super-power a jacuzzi, the trots, off his food for a bit. Then it eases off. This is different. When the pain started to get bad, he said he felt like he was going to be sick. Then he was but he thought it helped a bit. He thought it might be because he hadn’t been to the bathroom and then it kind of felt like he needed to fart. Pretty sure being gassy doesn’t make you throw up, though. He was just uncomfortable and miserable. He slept for a little while but when he woke up, the pain was making him feel sick. He’s been throwing up every half hour or so, if not more, since and I think he’s got a fever but I can’t find our friggin thermometer. This place is practically a mini hospital since I was sick but when I need to actually find something, that shit is invisible.” At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped, raking his fingers through his hair.
“So, no jacuzzi skills this time around?” Jesse asked, digging around in his messenger bag to find his medical supplies he packed to be able to assess what might be going on with his brother. “Constipation can make people feel sick or vomit if it’s significant enough. Merlin’s IBD predisposes him to it, though.”
“Not from him, anyway. If there has, it hasn’t been when I’ve been lying with him.” Brandon analysed Jesse closely for any signs he should be starting to really freak out here. “He took some laxatives. They did nothing.”
Jesse drew his lips together and put his hand on Brandon’s shoulder. “I think we’re looking at a hospital trip, buddy. Significant pain and nothing much moving down there could be indicators of something more mechanical than just inflammatory. Especially with vomiting and fever. It’s been a few hours since he indicated the pain was worse than usual?”
Brandon started up the spiral stairs to their bedroom, nodding. “It was late afternoon. He slept for a few hours, woke up again around ten and puked all over the bed. At one point, he was on the toilet doubled over in pain just trying to get some relief but had no luck beyond throwing up again. We tried a warm bath but he couldn’t get comfortable, he just wanted to keep curling up in pain. The heatpad hasn’t helped at all either. You’ll be able to tell if he needs to go to the hospital? What will they do?”
“Do some scans, run some tests. If it’s his appendix, we need to get him there ASAP for surgery. It might be more complicated than that. Ulcerative Colitis can have complications. He’s okay for me to just go in?” Jesse asked, pausing on the stairs up to Brandon and Merlin’s bedroom.
Brandon nodded. “Yeah, just head up, dude. He should be in bed. If not, in the bathroom. He keeps trying to go but even that was getting more painful.”
Jesse stepped into the large room that was a generous space on the landing of the loft with luxury trendy black, white, and grey interior decorating. Definitely more suited to a single bachelor but they had made it work since they got married and Wes subsequently moved in with them. It was a huge enough home to accommodate them all. Merlin was curled up in a ball on his side, a plastic blue mixing bowl sitting near his knees. He could immediately see from his pallor how unwell Merlin was. It was surprising he wasn’t blending into the walls. “Hey, buddy. I hear you’re feeling pretty rough, huh? You okay if I have a bit of a check of your belly? Brandon’s worried about you. Better to be safe than sorry, yeah?”
“Sorry, baby. I didn’t know what to do,” Brandon murmured apologetically, standing by the bed and stroking Merlin’s hair.
“What the fuck, it’s, like, ass-crack o’clock in the morning… night. Jeezus, I don’t even know,” Merlin moaned weakly, uncurling gingerly to give Jesse access for whatever he was here to do it. He didn’t have any real protests by this point. Earlier, sure. He was convinced whatever was going on with his guts was simple and would resolve itself but rather than easing off, the pain consistently became more intense to the point he found himself wishing for a bout of explosive diarrhoea just to get some relief. He never thought he’d find himself thinking that, or moaning it to his husband doubled over on the toilet almost weeping in pain. Considering that, he wasn’t really surprised that Brandon called in backup. Merlin would absolutely have done the same thing. “Please tell me they’re not going to stick a camera up my ass again. Wait. No. I take that back. Let them do it. Gimme all that awful crap that makes you shit through the eye of a needle. I’ll take double.”
Brandon shared a glance with Jesse and drew his lips together with a look that clearly said, ‘Yeah, he’s been like this all night’. “Whatever this is, I don’t think he’s experienced it before. At least, not this bad,” he tried to elaborate to Jesse but other than the pain and the fact he had been throwing up and seemed to have a fever, Merlin hadn’t been able to explain much more of what he was feeling.
“Try and lie on your back if you can, buddy. I need to feel your belly but it’ll probably hurt. Just try to tell me where it feels worse.” Jesse took his thermometer out and checked Merlin’s temperature via his forehead. He preferred to keep this type at home because it was the easiest way to check Jace for any fevers if he was out of it after a seizure. “Temperature’s up but still low-grade. I think we need to keep an eye on it, though. Could be an infection somewhere. Can you explain the pain to me?”
With some help from Brandon, Merlin awkwardly twisted and flopped onto his back, trying to take it slow so it didn’t hurt but basically every movement hurt so there was no real smooth way to achieve it. “It’s, like, low down and comes in really bad waves. Then when I throw up, it slows down a bit but comes back a while later again. I just want to go back to sleep but I can’t.”
Jesse rubbed his hands together so they weren’t too cold and gently palpated his stomach. “So, below your belly button? Is it like a sharp or shooting pain? Or more like crampy pain? Your belly definitely seems swollen, buddy.”
“Yeah, below it. It kinda radiates all over but that’s where the worst is. Crampy. Twisty. Just gets worse when the bad waves—ow! Fuck!” Merlin shrieked as soon as Jesse touched the spot it was hurting the most, pushing his brother’s hand away.
“Sorry! I’m sorry. It’s okay. I’ll stop.” Jesse apologised, pulling Merlin’s tshirt back down over his stomach.
Brandon winced at Merlin’s shriek, smoothing his hair back off his sweaty forehead. “Definitely swollen. He’s wearing a super old pair of my trackpants where the elastic’s all worn out. He couldn’t handle anything else around his stomach.”
Jesse took Merlin’s hand so he could check his pulse at his wrist, waiting while he counted the beats before asking anything further. “How long has it been feeling like this? Just a general ballpark of when it started to go from feeling just like your usual troubles to more abnormal than usual?” He took his stethoscope out of his bag. “And nothing going in or coming out now? When was the last you remember for both?”
“After lunch yesterday it got worse. But it was after we had a fight and Bran had too much o drink, so I thought it was just my gut doing its stress thing. Only, it wasn’t the usual stress things and I never really puke with it. So, when I did, it started to feel weird. Literally, nothing coming out and usually, like, I could take part in the Fart Olympics. Especially when I’m stressing…” Merlin rubbed a hand over his face and felt for Brandon’s hand to take, his words trailing off.
“He hasn’t eaten since lunch the day before yesterday. We had Thai from our favourite place but we shared the same thing. It was just veggo, there was no meat. When I asked, he said he hadn’t had an appetite. He barely picked at the lunch but we had a lot on our minds at the time. He’s been drinking water and Pedialyte but I don’t think much has stayed down the last few hours. It was before that. But I’ve taken the drinks away now like you said to do,” Brandon reported, another wave of guilt hitting him that he was too busy sleeping off a hangover when Merlin began to feel unwell. It was making him realise that now he got losing his shit over a possible relapse out of his system, he had to try to deal with this better so Merlin didn’t have to shoulder all his shit alone.
As Jesse was wrapping the blood pressure cuff around his arm, Merlin felt another wave of bad pain begin to set in. He started to breathe more deeply through the nausea, tapping Jesse’s knee urgently. “Gotta throw up.”
Brandon grabbed the bowl and crouched down beside the bed to hold it for Merlin while he tried to throw up but there was hardly anything to come out. He rubbed his back and looked up at Jesse, concerned. “He needs to go the ER, yeah? Is it his appendix?”
“Possibly. But I suspect if it is, it’s secondary inflammation to a main cause. I think it’s probably more related to his ulcerative colitis from the location of the pain. But it could be any number of things, so yeah, sorry, buddy. We need to take you to get checked out. If something is going on in there, the longer you leave it, the worse it’ll get.” Jesse got up and ducked through to their en-suite, wetting a face cloth and bringing it back for Brandon to wipe Merlin’s face once he was done. “Are you okay to drive, dude, or do you think you might still have some booze in your system? If so, might be best if we call an ambulance.”
“I can drive,” Brandon confirmed, shooting his brother-in-law a sheepish look. It was probably only a matter of time before Jesse and/or Damien interrogated him about his fuckery. “Seriously, it’s okay. I made myself so sick, it’s impossible any booze is left in me. The only thing is, I tend to attract attention in public places. Do you think it’d be a long wait for someone to see him?”
Jesse patted Brandon’s shoulder. “I’ll call ahead and make some arrangements. We’ll be able to sort something out. Just try to wear something you might blend in with because he’ll have to be triaged and the ER can get a bit chaotic. Just take it slow. It’s going to be painful to get him moving.”
That definitely turned out to be an understatement, one that would ultimately culminate in Brandon nearly punching a fan at the hospital and Jesse feeling like he needed a hit of something for his nerves. Merlin had been in too much pain to even stand up from the bed and kept doubling over to guard his stomach when they tried to move him. By the third attempt, he was leaning so much in against Brandon to hold himself upright that he threw up all down the front of Brandon’s sweatshirt and started crying because the pain was so bad yet still trying to apologise to Brandon for throwing up on him. That was all still in the bedroom and enough for Brandon to decide they were calling for an ambulance without even needing Jesse to gently advise him it was for the best. He thought taking Merlin to hospital himself in their car would be the best way but Merlin’s pain was too advanced. They just needed to get him there the swiftest and most comfortable way for him as possible.
That plan of action wasn’t without its challenges. After changing out of his vomit-covered clothes and into something clean so he could ride with Merlin in the ambulance, Brandon completely forgot to do anything about concealing his identity. Now that his hair had grown back and he hadn’t had it cut since it had, he was pretty easily recognisable as the face from that tv show that was once considered a cult show with a small yet passionate audience and ended up growing to a global phenomenon thanks to Brandon doing nude sex scenes and frequently having his bare bum on show. The fans were no less passionate than they were in the first season, only now they had exponentially grown in quota. The show was based in New York City too, so it had always been a bit of a hub for fans, who swooped on the place to do tours of all the locations in the show in hopes of spotting any of the stars, especially Brandon. He was used to the whole circus but he had gotten lax being out of action so long with his leukemia battle. He was off his game but that was even more so when his husband was unwell and Brandon had felt a weird but strong sense of anxiety beginning to take hold of him in not knowing exactly what was wrong with Merlin.
Jesse followed to the hospital in a cab, telling Brandon he would pack Merlin a few things in a bag because they would definitely at least keep him in a night to treat whatever it turned out to be. The cab he took got stuck in traffic and seemed to catch every red light at every junction possible, even though it wasn’t a far distance. When he arrived at the Emergency Room, Merlin had been taken for a CT scan, so he had a chat with a nurse college he sometimes worked with on one of the wards while he waited for his brother to be brought back to the ER. He found out that Peyton, Tori’s big brother, was the doctor who had done Merlin’s initial examination after he was triaged and after ordering Merlin be given some morphine for the pain and something to try to ease the vomiting, sent him straight around for a CT scan. By the time Jesse got to the hospital, Tori was already tied up with another patient so Jesse hadn’t been able to get any further updates directly from him.
A while later, raised voices and a commotion nearby caught Jesse’s attention and because he worked there, it was reflexive to rush to it to see if he could help. He got around the corner in time to hear Brandon shouting, “I fucking said no! Will you just get the hell out of my face!”
Whoever he was yelling at was flanked by four or five other people probably in their mid to early twenties. “C’mon, man! I’m seriously your biggest fan! It’s not like I’m asking you to chop off your arm and give it to me. Just one selfie! Please?” a male voice demanded.
“One selfie, Saxon! You do it for everyone else.” Another voice. Female, this time.
Jesse hurriedly approached the group just in time to see one of the males grab Brandon and try to shove his phone in his face. He made it just in time to intercept as Brandon shook the guy off him and went to take a swing at him. “Brandon, no!” Jesse grabbed Brandon’s arm before his fist could make contact with the demanding fan and his sidekicks and put himself in between Brandon and the other guy. Miles came running from the other direction and shoved the male fan backwards just as a couple of security guards arrived on the scene.
“You said you’d fucking take care of this shit!” Brandon snapped, pulling away from Jesse’s hold with a glare at him before he stalked off down the corridor.
Jesse held his hand up to the fan, who was shamelessly looking extremely offended by the fact Brandon had responded how he did. It took all of Jesse’s self-control not to thump the dude himself. “This is a hospital, not a mosh pit. You need to respect the privacy of patients and their loved ones. There are seriously unwell people here getting help and it’s not a place to accost anyone and make demands of them. I’m sure you understand how inappropriate it is to do what you just did in a hospital. You need to leave and be grateful no one is pressing charges for assault.” He turned to the security guards, who were shielding Jesse from the group. “Can you have them all escorted out and ensure any photos they took of anyone against their will are deleted? I don’t care why they’re here, they can wait outside. Thank you.”
He raked his fingers through his hair and waited until the hospital security officers had moved the group on and then turned to Miles, both one of Jesse’s nursing colleagues and close friend on account of the fact he was Liam’s ex. “What the hell happened, dude? I called ahead and spoke to Veronica to tell her Brandon would be coming in with Merlin via ambulance and to have extra security so no one bothered him.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. That was the extra security and they were monitoring the areas near Merlin’s bay to make sure no one was lingering. It’s just a madhouse here tonight. Merlin’s just been brought back from Radiology. Brandon urgently needed the bathroom and he must’ve just been heading back when the fans passed him in the corridor and approached him. It must’ve just happened really quickly. I was watching the entrance of the bay for Brandon returning but Merlin started vomiting again, so I was helping him,” Miles explained, his soft Scottish lilt coming through a little stronger with his frustration. “Who the fuck even does that, approaches any celebrity for a selfie in an ER corridor, let alone one who has publicly stated he’s had cancer? Sorry, Jess. Your request wasn’t ignored. It’s just one of those nights.”
Jesse nodded, forcing himself to calm down now he knew that it wasn’t a fact that his head’s up that Brandon would be coming in being ignored, just that the ER could be a madhouse more nights than not. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry for snapping. Was Brandon feeling unwell?”
“I don’t know for sure. Sorry. He doesn’t look well. He was definitely stressed and tense with how long Merlin’s CT was taking. But beyond that, he wasn’t saying much. He just excused himself to go to the bathroom and apologised that it couldn’t wait. With the GvHD, we can’t fault him that.” Miles put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder with a little pat. “You okay? You can come through to Merlin. Tori’s coming back to talk to him once he finishes with the other patient. Merlin’s having a rough go, aye?”
“You don’t know the half of it, bud. He’s hungover. Long story. They’re both having a bad day. Things are full-on. His nerves were already shattered stressing about Merlin. The last thing he needed was anyone shoving phones in his face and demanding selfies. Merlin’s allocated to you?” Jesse asked, heading in the direction of the bay he had been told Merlin was in.
Miles nodded, falling into step beside Jesse. “We’re just waiting for them to tell us what bed he’s going to and what the test results say.”
“Jess.” Peyton came up behind them both, hanging his stethoscope around his neck. “Are you coming in while I chat with Merlin and Brandon? Merlin said you were on your way. I just heard that there was a security incident. Is Brandon okay?”
Jesse patted the backpack he had over his shoulder. “Just brought Merlin some things. It seemed pretty inevitable that a say would be in order. I think it might just be best to let Brandon take the reins until Merlin’s settled in his room. Things have been really stressful for them both these last few days. It can be overwhelming when your other half’s sick. Brandon’s got this. Can you give me a quick summary of what we’re looking at? I’ll need to let Damo and their folks know, so Brandon can just focus on Merlin. Damo probably can’t get here, Liam’s gone down hard with gastro bug that’s going around.”
Peyton gestured to the nearby vacant bay so they could step out of the corridor. “I heard they were one down in surgery. Liam had to go home sick. Tori and I both had it a couple of weeks back. Turned out to be noro. Horrific. I wasn’t sure if it might be what we were facing with Merlin but it was pretty clear we were looking at appendicitis or a blockage with lack of bowel activity. I’ve just requested a surgical consult.” He brought Merlin’s CT scan images up on the iPad he was carrying and showed Jesse. “It’s a stricture in the large bowel that’s caused a functional obstruction, likely from the ulcerative colitis. From what he reports, he’s been symptomatic on and off for the last month or two. I’d say there’s been some lesions and inflammation in this section of his bowel that has gradually worsened. I think the plan will probably be to pop an endoscopic stent in along with gastric decompression, fluid therapy, and bowel rest with preoperative antibiotics. Then they’ll move on to bowel prep for a lap strictureplasty later in the week. He’s really miserable and in a lot of pain but he’ll be a lot more comfortable once we can get the treatment ball rolling. Everything will start to settle quickly. Sure you don’t want to come in while I talk to them?”
Jesse shook his head with a tired smile. “It’s okay. Brandon’s got this. Let him know I’ll be around if he wants company while Merlin’s in theatre being stented. He’s going to stress. Merlin’s not great with anaesthetic. Just let them know I’ll contact Merlin’s family. I’ll be here if they need anything.”
It was the early hours of the morning and Brandon found Jesse sitting in a quiet waiting area near the surgical unit, scrolling on his phone. He sunk down beside his brother-in-law on the sofa and offered him one of the two coffees he just bought. “I owe you an apology,” he told him, trying to stretch his aching back muscles a little as he nursed the grande disposable cup in his hands. It took him a few moments until he got the balls to meet Jesse’s gaze sheepishly. “A big one. Which is why that’s the second cup I bought you because my brain is so fried, I auto-pilot bought caffeinated for both of us, despite the fact you’ve been my brother-in-law long enough that it’s shameful I forgot.”
“Not at all,” Jesse insisted, offering Brandon a sympathetic smile as he sat. “Not only do you not owe me an apology, it’s okay to forget insignificant facts when you’re stressed and worried. Not to mention sleep-deprived. Trust me, I’m a nurse and a shift worker. I can say that with expert confidence. You should’ve kept the other cup for yourself. You’ll probably need a second. But if you want to close your eyes for a bit and nap, I can wake you the moment they let us know he’s back.”
Brandon shook his head emphatically. “No, I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. What happened wasn’t your fault. I knew you kept your word, they told me when we arrived in the ambulance. I made you feel like you couldn’t be there when the doctor was telling us what was going on and I never want you or Damien to feel like you’re not welcome to be there when he needs you. I’m really sorry, Jess. You’ve both done nothing but be there for us unconditionally.” He looked at the other sofa and as tempting as it was, he scrunched his nose up. “I couldn’t sleep. I’m too— I just couldn’t sleep.”
“That’s not why I didn’t come through to the bay, buddy. I knew you had it in hand. I know what it’s like to be in your shoes with something like this and back in mine and Jace’s early days, his family subconsciously didn’t trust me to take care of him. Actually, no. That’s not fair to say. It was never that they didn’t trust me. It was just that they didn’t know how to let someone else care for him because he had been precious cargo for them for so long and I don’t think they knew me well enough to have faith that I had the care and skill to care for him how he needed to be. It really hurt me a the time, mostly because I was a qualified Clinical Nurse Specialist, so I did actually have the skill. It caused problems when we spent our first Thanksgiving together at his family’s place in Chicago and he had a huge seizure. I was pushed out of the way and it wasn’t fair of them to do when Jace had chosen me and trusted me with his care. Just like Merlin has for you. Something you also know as well as anyone is that the last thing you want when you’re feeling that sick is multiple surplus bodies around you, even if they’re trying to help. I completely respect your capable hands with Merlin as his husband and as a person who has been through serious illness. If it was vital I be there, I would’ve been. But it wasn’t. Even being a cancer patient, you wouldn’t have needed me to explain the medical stuff. You got this. Plus, Peyton’s an excellent doctor. You couldn’t have gotten better hands for him to be in than Tori’s big brother. Tori lost his little sister to leukemia, remember?” Jesse searched Brandon’s face for a moment, wondering what it was he just stopped himself from saying out loud. “What is it? Something specific troubling you? Miles said you had to rush to the bathroom urgently. Was it because you were stressing out? I’m happy to answer any questions if that would help.”
Brandon’s forehead furrowed and eyes were narrowed a little as he listened, though mostly because the fluro hospital lights were bright and making his eyes sting with how tired he was. “That’s awful. I mean, I know the Turners would never have knowingly wanted to make you feel awful but I can see why it would’ve. They didn’t even give you a bit of the benefit of the doubt with all your qualifications? Having said that, he’s the baby of the family and it would’ve been hard adjusting. I remember you both saying you were each other’s first serious relationship. It was all new. I felt a bit out of my depth with Merlin in the early days. I wanted you all to know you could trust me not to hurt him, when I wasn’t even sure I trusted myself not to. Even Evan, though? He would’ve worked with you. Still, I am really sorry. I wasn’t pissed at you, I was freaked out being accosted by fans again. It’s been a hot minute. I’m rusty and off my game. Plus, I didn’t think here in the middle of all places it would happen. Oh, shit, that was Tori’s brother? I didn’t even put two and two together. I know Merlin knew him, which was a relief but I didn’t realise.” He wondered if he was being painfully obvious or it was just because Jesse was so in-tuned to the feelings of others and observant. “I think I had I had a panic attack.”
Jesse had a mouthful of the decaf latte Brandon had gotten for him. “Especially Evan. Predominantly Evan, even. It was always going to be a massive thing for him to let anyone else step into a carer’s role with Jace. It worked itself out. He realised what he was doing and we had a big heart-to-heart. He had to see I meant my word and wasn’t just doing it all to get in Jace’s pants, so to speak. The Turner family are all worth their weight in gold. I truly lucked out with in-laws. I know how hard it was to let me in. What makes you think it was a panic attack? Was it because you were worried what the doctor might say of Merlin’s condition?”
“I lucked out with in-laws too.” Brandon smiled gratefully at Jesse and sipped his coffee. It was a bit too strong for his liking these days and he wanted to take it easy in case it didn’t sit well on his stomach. Eating and drinking could still be a bit of a minefield for him these days. Figuring out what he tolerated and how much was still a work-in-progress. There were a lot things he used to have without issue that made him nauseous or went through him with the speed of an F1 champion. The very unglamorous side of illness. Even as a wealthy celebrity, he was still very human with this side of things. “When he was being examined, I just started to feeling really anxious and sweaty, shaky. My heart was thumping so bad, I was conscious of it pounding in my chest and I was feeling dizzy. I wasn’t sure if I was about to pass out and started to feel sick so I ran for the bathroom and threw up. Once I did, it eased off and I started to feel better. I was coming back from the bathroom when the fans passed me in the hall and jumped on me. It was… Peyton made a comment about looking for something on the scans but that even anything benign can cause trouble in the GI tract. Suddenly, I started freaking out it might be cancer. Proverbial kryptonite for my emotions. I’m glad Merlin was feeling too sick to realise I was losing my shit.”
“Will you let me give you a quick check over, just to make sure it definitely was only anxiety? I don’t want to get on your back while you’re stressing but best to just be safe than sorry, yeah? That aside, though, buddy, this is definitely what we call a trauma response. Sure, it’s likely anxiety triggered a panic attack as soon as you were conscious of that fear but it’s because what you went through with your health was traumatising. Health anxiety can be crippling. It’s bad enough for people who haven’t been through a serious illness and traumatic treatment but when you have, it’s not possible to just tell yourself you’re being silly and there’s nothing to worry about. You know there is absolutely plenty to worry about. Just go easy on yourself. It’s natural to be fearful when the person you love is sick enough to warrant a trip to the ER with something unusual. Plus, you’ve got that side order of heaping guilt because you had a fight and you’ll be realising he was probably already feeling pretty ordinary when it happened. Try not to beat yourself. That just takes energy you don’t have. Do you want a hug? You look like you need one,” Jesse offered, noticing the way Brandon was bouncing his leg and fidgeting with his coffee cup, despite being obviously weary.
Brandon didn’t actually realise how much he needed a hug until Jesse was offering it and he was once again struck by Jesse’s sweet and calm gentleness that he had experienced the first night he ever met him. Jesse had spotted how sick he was back then and hadn’t hesitated in taking care of him and letting him be positioned right back in Merlin’s path when he wasn’t sure he would ever see him again. He accepted the hug and closed his eyes, trying not to get too emotional. It was true, his nerves were completely shot and he let exhaustion win out and start to get teary, he wasn’t sure he’d have the energy to dial it back again. Merlin needed him to keep his shit together at least a little and he already accidentally lost it a bit at Jesse in the ER. “Okay, I won’t be a stubborn bitch and say no to checking me over. Just bear in mind, I’m still kinda hungover. Not that I’m making excuses. We both know what triggered my fight with Merlin, I’m sure…”
“I think it was a lot of different factors that triggered your fight, buddy. But ultimately, you were just trying to protect him or shield him from more pain. Not actually something you can truly achieve in a marriage. Unless there’s no functioning marriage to speak of, and I know that’s not the case here.” Jesse patted Brandon’s back and stood up. “Follow me. I don’t want to examine you in the hospital corridor where anyone can walk past. From what Merlin told Damo and me, he seems to think you’re pretty convinced of a relapse. Has it been anything in particular that makes you think that? Or is it just fear alone at play? Which is very real in itself. Beau had crippling anxiety about relapse before he actually did. It nearly cost him his entire relationship. In fact, he turned down Austin’s original marriage proposal because he was so phobic of thinking about the future in case it jinxed him.”
Brandon was lost in his own thoughts as he let Jesse lead the way to a small private consult room up the hall, pausing at the nurses' station they passed to let them know he was borrowing an obs trolley for a bit. The benefits of being on the hospital payroll. Brandon knew Jesse was highly regarded as a nurse here he had personally seen it in action many times. He sat down on one of the armchairs and wearily rubbed a hand over his face and ran his fingers through his hair. With a helpless shrug, he finally said, “I just know, Jess. I just know. But I’m not going to make the same mistakes this time as I did last time.”
“Mistakes?” Jesse asked, holding the sphyg cuff up so Brandon could give him an arm to check his blood pressure and clipped the pulse oximeter to a finger on his other hand.
Brandon pulled his arm out of the sleeve of his sweater to give Jesse access to it. “I waited way too long to see a doctor the first time. Then even after I saw one, I put a pile of the important tests off because I had work commitments in Australia and the UK. I just didn’t think anything was seriously wrong. I thought I was invincible. At the same time, I wasn’t well. It felt like I was running on empty but I just thought I needed a holiday.” He snorted at himself, shaking his head. “We were heading into a filming break, so I just kept telling myself I’d rest then. I was barely eating anything decent, mostly living on Red Bull and cigarettes. When I did eat, it was junk food on the run. This time, I want to follow medical advice to the letter and work with an across-the-board medical team be able to sustain it this time. I want to work. Which I know Merlin is terrified about and pretty much what caused things to arc up between us. It’s different this time. Everyone knows. I’m not nearly on death’s door. With help, taking care of myself properly, I want to be able to work until the doctors advise otherwise. It’s not like the writers are going to write in Saxon having cancer or anything but they have an excellent plot arc for him that covers not just the changes in my physical appearance but slows his character down significantly, it follows how he deals with that. I just… I… need to get back to being something more than the ‘cancer patient’,” he tried to explain, making quotation marks with his fingers.
Jesse listened intently, nursing his stethoscope in his hands and waiting before taking Brandon’s blood pressure. This was only partly because he wanted to give him a quick check physically because he didn’t seem to be feeling great and there was always the chance that panic attack wasn’t just a panic attack in someone with a complex serious medical history like Brandon’s. Mostly, it was because he clocked that Brandon needed someone to talk to. It didn’t matter what he needed to talk about. It would help, if nothing else, to debrief after the significant argument with Merlin. “You need to get back to being you.”
“A bit of a broken and damaged me, but yeah. I did the denial thing about my health on and off throughout the whole time I was at my worst. It wasn’t good for me and it wasn’t good for Merlin. In fact, I think it caused issues along the way he definitely could’ve done without but he just had my back no matter what. Unconditionally. I’m not just saying all this because he’s so sick now. It’s not an afterthought. He’s been my main thought all the way since we learned the transplant was working. I don’t want cancer to rule our lives anymore. If it’s happening again, I want it to just be that lingering pain in the ass we have to deal with but isn’t in the driver’s seat of our life. It’s just a passenger. Him being so sick is just underscoring that even more for me. I’m just…” Brandon paused with a frustrated sigh, going back to rubbing his eyes tiredly. “He didn’t tell me he was feeling sick because all my shit was taking over again and that pisses me off. Not at him, at myself. I thought I was dealing with everything and next thing I know, I’m losing my shit and my husband is so sick, his guts have basically grind to a complete halt and he’s more worried about my hangover because I severely underestimated the potency of booze for me now. I want to take care of him like he’s taken care of me. You get this, yeah? Or am I just talking shit? Is it really just epic delusional to want to try to get back to living and not just surviving?”
Jesse nodded emphatically and put his stethoscope in his ears. “Very, very much get it, buddy. Jace and I had to go through these learning processes with our relationship too. That yearning to want to take care of each other is so natural when you love someone and in a healthy relationship, especially when physical health is compromised. But you also have to give yourself some breathing space. You nearly died. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s okay to need time to work out where life is headed next now you still have it. There’s going to be teething problems and, sure, that can sometimes mean arguments or getting upset and frustrated with each other. And if that’s happening, it’s easy to go into this protective space where you try to deal with this one to protect them or spare them from hurting. Have you been able to talk to Merlin about some of this? Before he became unwell? Don’t beat yourself up about the booze. Our bodies can be complete assholes sometimes, doing inconvenient crap at the worst possible times. We’re only human and you’re a human who survived your body nearly entirely giving in and literally having to regenerate.” He had a closer look at Brandon’s arm after he unwrapped the cuff, noting a faint rash on the inside of his wrist, and then checked his temperature. “Did Tara say when your test result would come back? Merlin mentioned you were holding off on something for a few days?”
“The bone marrow biopsy and lumbar puncture. I know that freaked him out too but Tara said it would be okay for a few days. By then, she would have the bloods back to know how she wants to proceed anyway. It’s only because they were both pretty painful last time and I had a couple of commitments I didn’t want to cancel if I didn’t have to. I realise this is going to sound so fucking wanky when I say it but yeah, one was a promo photoshoot because I wanted to get it out of the way while I’m still feeling okay and not looking like death or losing a bunch of weight again. I had a lot of things lined up before I started to have days where I was getting signs that felt like a relapse and I couldn’t shake that sick feeling of dread. I’ve got a temperature, haven’t I? I can feel it in my face.” Brandon looked over at the door, wondering how Merlin was going with his procedure. It was only a simple band-aid fix for now. After a few days of treatment, he would have a laparoscopic surgery to fix the stricture in his bowel causing all the problems. It would probably be a miserable few days for him. Brandon wouldn’t leave his side. “We talked a little. We were making some headway when he finally admitted he was feeling sick and felt like he was going to be sick.”
Jesse checked the thermometer reading and then tucked it back into his bag and found a strip of pills stashed in the side pocket. “Just a low grade fever. Acetaminophen. It’ll bring it down a lil’. I know you’ll probably put those things on hold now Merlin’s not well and needs you. So, maybe seeing as you’re already here at the hospital and need to wait out his treatment, you could ask Tara if she could do the procedures to get them out of the way? Limbo’s never an easy place to be and I think you’ll feel better having the answers. Or maybe not better but at least not like it’s in the driver’s seat of a really terrible rollercoaster ride you can’t get off. I can talk to Tara about arranging it, if you’re too exhausted. Unless you wanna wait until Merlin can be there with you but that could delay things even more now.”
Accepting the blister pack of pills, Brandon tapped it softly against his palm and then looked up at Jesse gratefully. “How did I luck out and get such great in-laws? Fuck, I was never that great at the family thing and I’ve got to be honest, when Merlin offered to marry me, I was worried I’d still be so family-challenged when you all accepted me into your life unconditionally. But seriously, Jess, there’d be never enough I could do to show my gratitude to you all. Especially you, for knowing when I maybe need some guidance figuring things out. You just never do it in an intrusive way. I think you’re right. I should just get the tests done and confront the inevitable. I’m definitely postponing shit until Merlin’s feeling better. I don’t know how long it’ll take him to recover from this? There’s nothing I want more than us to find a rhythm in our marriage where we’re both able to do what we love and be on the same page with everything. In spite of illness. It’s not like we haven’t got good role models with it.” He popped a couple of the pills into his mouth and washed them down with a swig of his coffee. “If you think they could get the tests arranged quickly and could talk to Tara, that’d be great. My brain feels like mush.”
“I’ll give her a call after seven when she’ll start her shift. I stop taking anything by mouth after you finish that coffee though, in case they need you fasting for any procedure. Finish it first, though. You need to have something other than booze in your system for the last few days,” Jesse advised and patted Brandon’s arm gently, seeing that he was starting to think himself in circles again. “It is a lot, buddy. It’ll be a few weeks before Merlin’s back on his feet. Even by a laparoscopic abdo surgery, it takes a couple of weeks for the insides to settle down. Then he’ll be right as rain. It’s time you can both take to rest and wrap your heads around everything. Did you get to the point at your checkup appointment with Tara of discussing treatment?”
Brandon nodded. “One of the treatment options is, like, a top-up of bone marrow from Merlin directly into me. A, um… lymphatic infusion? No. That wasn’t it but sounded something like that. All the same sort of risks and processes as the original transplant. Honestly, it was so rough on Merlin that I don’t want to put him through it again. Especially not now, when he needs to be well to recover with his own disease that has obviously gotten worse since he was diagnosed. At the very least, it’s been a bad flare-up. Will it settle again after the operation he has? Do you know much about all this? There’s a couple of other treatment options too. Some drug called interferon. Or, of course, more chemo, which is inevitable or looking at a second bone marrow transplant. Tara also said something about my nuts but I think by then, my brain was already checking out because it was information overload. Merlin was asking all the questions and I just wanted to wait until we knew either way. It was too fucking much, you know? Could that be what she was about to tell me? It’s a relapse but also there’s a risk it’s caused some secondary cancer in my nuts?” With a soft growl of frustration, he pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “See why we had a fight? It was just a fucking lot to deal with.”
“Donor Lymphocyte Infusion. Stem cells taken from the original donor and infused directly back into the patient after a relapse. I don’t think Tara meant a secondary testicular cancer or she would’ve examined you for tumours there. There is a way leukemia can manifest in the testes or central nervous system when it relapses, though. Like an inflammatory process. It’s a complicated area of medicine that I only have very surface-level knowledge of so definitely ask Tara more about it. Relapse can manifest differently than the original presentation. Plus, as she probably explained, you catch it early and the treatment might be much less invasive or aggressive. That’s why confronting it is your best bet.” Jesse’s phone started to ring and he took it out to check who was calling. “This might be Recovery letting me know he’s back.”
Brandon watched Jesse take the brief call. “He’s out? Is he okay? Was it okay? What did they say? When can I see him?”
Jesse put his phone back into the pocket of his trackpants and zipped it up. “It went well. Very straightforward getting the stent situation and no complications at all. They’ve got him in Recovery but as expected, there’s some postoperative vomiting. They’re giving him some medication to combat that and keeping him a little longer than they usually would but once he’s a little more awake, they’ll bring him back to the surgical unit. Do you want to head to his room and wait for him there? You weren’t with us last time he had anesthetic but he was pretty miserable and bitchy, so just be prepared.”
Standing, Brandon hitched Merlin’s backpack with the few things Jesse packed for him over his shoulder. “I can’t spite him that. It’s horrible when you’re feeling awful and sick, being poked and prodded from all angles. I’m happy to cop it if he is. In sickness and in health. I meant those words more than any other I’ve uttered in my life. I hate that he doesn’t do well with anesthetic but I know these couple of procedures are vital to sort his guts out. Now I wish he really could’ve just done a huge fart and felt better, like he said. If only things were that simple, eh? If all life’s problems could be solved with a huge satisfying fart.”
Jesse smirked, shaking his head. “Why am I not surprised he said that? He’s been a champion farter his whole life. Even when he was tiny, he used to beat Damo and me in fart games. But they won’t let him out of here until he’s back on form in that sense. C’mon, I’ll wait with you until he’s back, then make myself scarce. You can rest your eyes for a bit until he is.”
“Are you sure? You don’t have to. He’d want you there,” Brandon insisted.
“It’s not a lil’ family gathering for tea or a Sunday roast. You remember how it feels. The less people the better. I’ll give Tara a call and pop back a bit later.” Jesse gave Brandon a hug. “It’ll be okay. Just focus on you two for the time being.”
LOG, COMPLETE