Odds of Death (Ode to Life)
*SPOILERS FOR S03E02*
[AO3] Nancy worries about whether T.K. will live, and Carlos is there to support her.
The situation wasn’t ideal; Nancy knew that, but ideal meant little when everything was falling apart. She’d settle just for vaguely good. Besides, she’d never been opposed to a good lie for the greater good. Tricking Carlos into coming to the hospital wasn’t her best work, but someone had to do it. T.K. and Carlos were stubborn, and no one else wanted to get involved. “It’s none of our business,” they said. But Nancy knew that when you found a family, you didn’t give up just because things got a little complicated. Sometimes, families had to be cobbled together with spare scraps. What they all had was worth fighting for, and with T.K. and Carlos not talking, everything felt wrong. If nothing else, they needed closure. Because it wasn’t fair to break everyone apart.
And if she was being honest with herself, she wasn’t just trying to get T.K. and Carlos back together in whatever capacity that happened. If she could just shove them back together so easily, she would have done it already. What she wanted was a friend, and with T.K. being unavailable for friend duties, her first thought had been Carlos. Being loyal to a fault, he probably would’ve come if she told him she needed him there, but admitting that she needed him would be admitting how serious the situation was, and every time she thought about that, it was hard not to cry.
In the end, she knew that if anything happened, Carlos would want to be there. He would regret it if he didn’t, and Nancy knew what it was like to live with that regret, the thought that you weren’t there for someone in their last moments. She wished she could go back in time and say something better the last time she spoke to Tim.
But the hardest part of the whole thing wasn’t the lie; it was the truth, having to watch Carlos put down the pen and look up with what T.K. called his cow eyes (see? Those two were so disgustingly cute together, which is why it’s so stupid that they couldn’t work out whatever dumb shit had come between them). She almost wished that she could let him believe that T.K. was up and talking, not doing well but still very much alive. He could have let his rage burn instead of seeing the frozen horror paralyze all other feelings.
Life was at a standstill when someone was closer to death than life. You couldn’t yet grieve, and hope felt like an act of masochism. When someone told you a loved one was dying, they didn’t say it lightly. Nancy thought that was especially cruel, having someone tell you that you shouldn’t believe, that the math doesn’t work in your favor. She couldn’t escape that feeling of carrying the tiny percent in your hands as the bigger percent starts nibbling at your feet.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Carlos later, when they were sitting in chairs, feeling tired and frantic. “I know that was probably a bad surprise.”
“It’s fine, Nance.” Carlos didn’t look at her.
“This sucks.” Understatement of the year.
“How does one person get into so much trouble?” Carlos asked bitterly.
“You’re the one who asked him on a date after you arrested him.”
“I didn’t arrest him.”
“Whatever. You had him in handcuffs.”
“He was charming.”
“Don’t I know it. It’s hard to stay mad at him for long.”
“Want to know what made me change my mind?”
Nancy nodded.
“He was so honest that night. I saw it in his eyes, and then in his words. It was only for a second, but I saw beneath all those defensive layers, and there was something there. It was something I knew I would regret if I didn’t explore.”
“He’s stupidly sweet, sometimes.”
“Yeah, he’s just one of those people that makes you want to be in their orbit, but when you get too close, it burns.”
“Is that what happened to you?” She wasn’t saying it because she cared that much. She was too sad to be curious, but she wanted to give Carlos the opportunity to get it off his chest.
Carlos shrugged. “I don’t know. It all got so messed up, and it fell apart.”
“Yeah, I know how that is.”
“What happened today?” Carlos asked gently. Nancy had been replaying what happened in her head without stopping, but she still had a lot of questions, which made it harder to remember because guilt chiseled at memory, taking it from a slab of marble to a grotesque rendition of your own face.
She shrugged. “That’s a loaded question.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it,” and it wasn’t okay. None of this was okay. She should have said something more when T.K. had insisted on using tools for purposes they were never intended to be used for. But if they hadn’t done that, the little boy probably would have died. Even fantasy can’t give her a reprieve from her own mind because her what-ifs are all horrifying in different ways.
“One minute T.K. was there, and then he was just gone.” That was how it had been with Tim. Look away for one moment, and someone could go from living to dead. “And then we found his naked in the snow, and he wasn’t like himself.”
Carlos’ nose scrunches at that thought. “What was he like?”
“Agitated, confused, and then he was quiet. We couldn’t find a heartbeat or a pulse, and I thought we’d lost him.”
“That must have been terrible.”
Nancy nodded, sniffling a little. “I should have noticed he wasn’t okay earlier. I should have thought that he might not be okay.”
Carlos took her hand. “You couldn’t have known, Nance.”
“That’s easy to say when death doesn’t follow you,” she said louder than she intended.
“I know,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “I know.”
She cried against his shoulder. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Keep loving him, even when you tell yourself it’d be easier to stop. Let yourself process the pain. Don’t give up before it’s over.”
“You didn’t give up, Carlos,” Nancy said, wiping her eyes.
“What if I did? What if I kept trying?”
“Nothing would be different. T.K. would still be in there, and we’d still be out here.”
“But he would’ve known how I feel—felt.”
“He knows how you feel. Everyone in Austin knows how you feel about him.”
“I thought if I focused on work, it would get better.”
“Yeah, because capitalism is a known antidepressant,” Nancy said dryly.
“It’s late,” Carlos told her. “You’ve had a long day. Maybe you should get to sleep.”
Nancy shook her head and took a sip of her coffee, “I’m scared to wake up to a nightmare worse than this one.”
Carlos swallowed. “Yeah, me too.”
“Do you think he’s going to die?” Nancy asked. She wasn’t sure why, and she regretted it as the question sank between them.
Carlos bit his tongue, took a breath, and said, “How many chances does one person get?”
Nancy looked at Carlos. “Your odds of getting struck by lightning don’t change after you get struck by lighting.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like flipping a coin. Just because you’ve flipped heads eight times in a row doesn’t make you more likely to flip tales the next turn just to even things out. You’ve still got a fifty-fifty chance.” There were no defying the odds; there was only the odds going in your favor.
“It sounds like you’re using a faulty coin.”
“Well, in life, all things aren’t equal,” Nancy said.
“Is that supposed to be reassuring?”
Nancy shrugged. “I guess it just is,” because as much as she wanted to talk herself into believing that T.K. would live, there was no way to know. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try.
