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Heartbeat

Robert “Bob” Floyd x Fem!Reader

A/N: Did yall know that writing is exhausting? If it’s alright with you guys I’m going to take like a day (maybe, maybe not) I do have like 2 requests I have to fulfill but I also am running dry on ideas without reusing, so I’ll see you when I see you (probably in a few hours because I can’t NOT post, it’s a bad habit) - Scarlet 💕

Warnings: sudden medical emergency, seizure (graphic), blood (eyes/ears/nose), CPR, hospital scenes, ventilator use, brain death, organ donation, grief/loss of loved one, death of a main character, natural death, afterlife themes, emotional devastation

The sun was warm for a late afternoon in early fall, casting a golden wash over the backyard that made everything feel soft and safe. Y/N had been out there since morning—pacing the patio, stringing up lights, checking the grill temperature for the hundredth time. Everything had to be perfect.

It wasn’t just a cookout. It was a celebration. A homecoming. A miracle.

Bob was home.

The mission—whatever it had been, wherever the Navy had sent them—was still locked behind silence and red tape. She only knew what the others had whispered around hospital corners when they thought she couldn’t hear: that it was grueling. That it was worse than what they’d trained for. That they’d almost lost him.

But they hadn’t. He’d made it back to her.

“I still think you should’ve let me hire a food truck,” Phoenix muttered, handing her a beer as she slid onto one of the folding chairs.

Y/N snorted and opened the bottle with the edge of the table. “And let you upstage me on my own man’s welcome home party? Never.”

Phoenix raised her bottle in surrender. “Fair enough.”

Rooster was already flipping burgers at the grill, wearing an apron that said “Kiss the Pilot.” Hangman was hovering like he wanted to offer advice but knew better. Payback and Fanboy were setting up cornhole. Even Cyclone had sent a bottle of bourbon with a handwritten note that just said: “Glad he’s home.”

Bob was inside getting changed. He’d been quieter than usual all day—not withdrawn, just… slow. Tired in a way that hadn’t left him, even with the hospital discharge and the days of rest. Y/N had asked more than once if he was feeling okay, and every time he kissed her forehead and said the same thing:

“I’m good, sweetheart. Just taking it all in.”

She’d believed him. She had to.

When he finally stepped outside, fresh from a shower, dressed in soft jeans and a navy button-down, the backyard erupted in cheers.

He smiled.

It didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Y/N crossed the lawn to meet him, throwing her arms around his neck. His arms wrapped around her waist, and for a moment, everything else melted away.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

“I’m right here,” he said, kissing her cheek.

But when she pulled back, her gaze dropped to his right hand. His beer bottle was rattling softly against the glass of another as he toasted with Rooster. A barely-there tremble.

Y/N frowned. “Bob…”

He caught her wrist gently. “It’s nothing. Nerves. Heat. I’m okay.”

She wanted to argue. She didn’t. Not when everyone was watching. Not when this day was supposed to be full of light.

“Alright,” she said softly. “But you tell me if it gets worse. Promise?”

“Promise.”

⸻

Two hours later, the backyard smelled like charcoal and sunscreen and cheap beer. There was music playing from a Bluetooth speaker—some old country mix Phoenix had insisted on—and Payback had just knocked Hangman out of the cornhole tournament for the third time in a row. Bob sat in a lawn chair near the edge of the patio, half in the shade, watching it all like a man seeing his own life from a distance.

Y/N leaned down behind him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“You good, baby?”

He nodded against her shoulder. “Just… overwhelmed.”

“You deserve to be celebrated.”

His hand found hers, fingers steady now. “I don’t know what I did to earn all this.”

“You came back,” she whispered. “You came back to me. That’s everything.”

He smiled. This time, it almost felt real.

⸻

As the sun dipped low, Rooster stood on a chair and raised his beer.

“Alright, alright—shut up and raise your glasses!” he called.

Everyone turned, laughing and yelling as they clinked drinks together.

“This one’s for Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd—the only man I’ve ever seen fly through literal hell and come out lookin’ like he just came back from Sunday service.”

Laughter broke out. Bob flushed.

“But seriously,” Rooster said, voice turning sincere. “You scared the hell out of us. And we’re just—grateful. Grateful you’re home. We love you, man.”

“To Bob!” Phoenix shouted.

“TO BOB!”

The toast echoed across the yard. Y/N leaned down and kissed the top of his head.

Bob stood, sheepishly raising his own glass.

“Thanks, guys,” he started, voice soft. “I don’t… I don’t know what to say. I’m just really glad to be—”

He paused.

Blinking. Confused.

“—to be…”

His glass slipped from his hand. It shattered against the concrete.

“Bob?” Y/N’s voice cracked.

Then he collapsed.

His body hit the patio with a dull thud, limbs convulsing violently.

“OH MY GOD—”

“BOB!”

Blood spilled from his nose.

Then his ears.

Then his eyes.

⸻

“CALL AN AMBULANCE!” someone screamed.

Y/N was already on the ground, hands on his chest, sobbing his name.

He didn’t respond.

His eyes were wide and glassy. He wasn’t seizing anymore.

He wasn’t doing anything.

“Penny!” Phoenix cried, dropping beside him.

“I’m here,” Penny said, already starting compressions.

Payback knelt beside her, counting aloud. “One, two, three—keep going—four, five—”

“Bob, please,” Y/N choked, her hands shaking so badly she could barely touch him. “Baby, come back. Please—don’t do this, not now—”

The music was still playing.

Some love song she couldn’t even hear anymore.

The ride to the hospital was a blur of flashing lights and static.

Y/N sat in the back of the ambulance, wedged into a corner while the paramedics hovered over Bob’s lifeless body. One of them had cut his shirt open. Another was squeezing a bag over his mouth, oxygen pushing into lungs that weren’t responding.

His chest didn’t rise on its own.

His skin had gone gray.

“BP’s tanking—he’s bradycardic—”

“Come on, Bob, stay with me,” Penny said between chest compressions, her hair soaked with sweat. “You don’t get to leave now. Not like this.”

The monitor beeped erratically.

Y/N couldn’t stop staring at the blood smeared across his cheek. It had stopped pouring from his eyes and ears, but it stained everything—his shirt, the gurney, her hands.

She couldn’t cry.

Not yet.

She had to stay in it. Stay focused. Stay where he was.

⸻

They rushed him through the ER doors like a body on borrowed time.

Doctors shouted orders. A crash cart appeared. They pushed her back.

“Ma’am, you can’t be in here—”

“I’m his wife!” she snapped. “Don’t you dare ask me to leave!”

Someone placed a hand on her shoulder. It was Phoenix. Tear-streaked, silent, but steady.

“Let them work,” she whispered. “We’re right here. You’re not alone.”

But she was. She was so alone.

Because the man they were working on—he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t fighting. His body jerked with every shock of the defibrillator, but his soul felt like it had already slipped away.

⸻

Four hours.

That’s how long it took before someone finally told her anything.

Bob had been intubated, sedated, stabilized.

Sort of.

Y/N sat in a freezing hospital conference room, flanked by Phoenix and Rooster. She hadn’t changed out of the T-shirt she wore to grill burgers. There was blood on the collar. His blood.

A doctor entered. Mid-thirties. Pale. Serious.

“Mrs. Floyd?”

She stood so fast the chair nearly toppled. “What happened to him?”

The doctor took a slow breath.

“Your husband suffered a series of catastrophic complications stemming from injuries sustained in the attack he was recently treated for. We found three critical issues that were missed during his post-mission scans.”

Y/N’s breath hitched.

“First: a small subarachnoid hemorrhage. A brain bleed. It likely worsened over the last few days. Second: myocardial inflammation—an inflamed heart muscle, probably from stress and trauma. Third: a pulmonary embolism. A blood clot. It moved to his lungs.”

She stared. Shaking.

“So… what does that mean?”

“It means… his body’s been failing for days. And no one caught it. Including him.”

“No,” she whispered. “No, he told me—he promised me he was okay—”

“He didn’t know,” the doctor said gently. “Or he did, but… people hide pain. Especially men like him.”

Rooster turned his face away. Phoenix was openly crying.

Y/N stood frozen. “Is he going to wake up?”

The doctor looked at her with eyes that said everything before the words even landed.

“There is minimal brain activity. We’ve run the scans twice. He’s on a ventilator now, but he’s not breathing on his own. He’s in a coma. And based on everything we know… it’s unlikely he’ll come out of it.”

Her knees nearly gave out. Phoenix caught her. The room spun.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor added. “I know this isn’t the outcome anyone wanted.”

⸻

Y/N didn’t leave the ICU for two weeks.

She slept in a chair beside his bed. Washed her face in the bathroom sink. Brushed her teeth with a travel kit Fanboy brought her in a brown paper bag. Rooster brought clean clothes. Penny combed her hair. No one tried to make her leave.

Bob never woke up.

His hands never moved.

The only sound in the room was the steady hiss of the ventilator. Beep. Beep. Beep.

She read to him. Held his hand. Played the playlist they’d made together in the hospital during his last recovery.

She talked to him.

About their future. The baby names they hadn’t picked yet. The wedding they wanted to throw after the first courthouse one. The anniversary trip to Ireland.

“You promised me forever,” she whispered into his shoulder one night. “You can’t be done. Not yet.”

⸻

But he was.

After the 14th day, the doctors brought her in again.

“We’ve done everything we can,” they said gently. “There’s no brain activity now. And if—by some miracle—he were to wake up… he wouldn’t be able to see. To speak. To move. He wouldn’t know who you are.”

She stared at the floor.

“The machines are keeping his body alive. But this… this isn’t living.”

⸻

They suggested they take him off life support.

She said yes on the 15th day.

She signed the papers.

She gave them permission to take him to the OR.

Because somewhere else in that hospital—on the pediatric floor—a little boy was dying. And he needed a new heart.

Bob had always been an organ donor. Always said, “If I’m not using it, someone else should.”

She clutched his dog tags as they wheeled him away.

“You’re saving someone else,” she whispered. “One last flight, baby.”

———

OR Waiting Room

Y/N sat in the quietest part of the hospital she’d ever known. The surgical floor waiting room had floor-to-ceiling windows, but the sun felt too bright. The air was cold, sterile. Her hands were trembling in her lap, fingers tangled in Bob’s dog tags.

Across from her sat two strangers—a man and a woman, maybe mid-30s. Pale with worry. Hopeful. Scared.

The child was in surgery. A direct heart match.

Bob’s heart.

The nurse entered gently, her voice soft. “Ms. Y/L/N… the parents would like to speak with you. If that’s alright.”

Y/N nodded once, her voice gone.

They sat beside her. The mother’s eyes were already filled with tears.

“We wanted to say… thank you,” she whispered.

Y/N blinked at her. “You don’t have to.”

“We do,” the father added. “You gave our son a second chance at life. I can’t even imagine how hard it was to say yes to that.”

“It wasn’t,” Y/N said. “Not for Bob. It was what he would’ve wanted. But for me…”

She swallowed.

“It almost destroyed me. I almost said no.”

The mother reached out, gently touching her arm. “You didn’t. You said yes. You gave us our boy back.”

Y/N’s voice broke. “Can I ask a favor?”

The parents nodded.

“Anything.”

Her eyes filled. “When he’s out of surgery… when he’s awake… can I listen to his heartbeat?”

⸻

Recovery Room

The child was small. Fragile. But alive.

He blinked up at her with bright eyes—still groggy, still dazed—but smiling.

The parents stepped aside as Y/N knelt beside the bed. A nurse handed her the stethoscope.

She pressed it gently to the boy’s chest.

And there it was.

Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.

Her breath hitched.

Tears streamed down her face.

It was Bob.

Not his voice. Not his body.

But his heart.

Still strong. Still steady.

Still flying.

⸻

“You’re not gone. Not really. You saved someone else the way you always saved me. I’ll carry you with me, every single day. And now—someone else gets to carry you too.”

⸻

Fifty Years Later

Y/N stood at Bob’s grave, her back bent with age, her hair silver and soft around her face. She wore a long navy coat and held a bundle of sunflowers in her trembling hands. She knelt slowly beside the headstone, tracing the etched words with her fingers.

Lt. Robert “Bob” Floyd

Beloved husband. Loyal friend. Quiet hero.

She gave a tired smile.

“I never remarried,” she whispered. “Never dated. Never had kids. Didn’t want anyone else. You were it for me.”

The wind blew softly, curling around her.

“Giving that kid your heart… was the best decision I ever made. He grew up to be a Navy pilot, Bob. Just like you. I get letters from him every year. Photos. He flies with your wings.”

Her voice cracked.

“I’m not the only one carrying you anymore. You’re still out there. You’re still going on flights.”

She leaned her forehead against the stone.

“I love you, my darling. I’ll see you soon.”

⸻

One Week Later

She passed away in her sleep. Peaceful. Quiet. Alone—but not lonely.

Afterlife

The air was still.

Warm, golden light poured through the sky like honey, soft and endless, the kind that made everything glow just a little too perfectly to be real. A field stretched in all directions—tall grass swaying like ocean waves, the kind of peace no living soul could hold onto.

Y/N stood barefoot in a navy sundress, younger than she’d been in decades. Her skin unlined. Her breath easy. Her heart… weightless.

She looked down at her hands—no tremors. No time. Just stillness.

And then—

A familiar laugh broke the silence.

She turned.

Bob was standing a few feet away, right at the edge of the field, beneath a stretch of open sky that shimmered like a memory.

His hair was sunlit. His eyes were exactly the same. Blue and gentle and full of everything she’d waited a lifetime to see again.

He smiled. “Took you long enough.”

Y/N let out a shaky laugh as tears filled her eyes. “Had some things to take care of.”

He opened his arms, and she walked into them like she never left. Like no time had passed at all.

Her head pressed to his chest, right over where his heart used to beat—and somehow, still did. Somewhere in the world below them. Somewhere in a cockpit, maybe, chasing the clouds.

“I kept you alive,” she whispered.

“You always did,” he said.

She pulled back just far enough to look at him—really look at him.

“You’re still flying,” she murmured.

“So are you.”

He took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles.

And in that place where nothing could hurt them anymore—where no machines beeped, no tubes bound them to time, no blood ever spilled again—they walked into the sun. Hand in hand.

Finally weightless.

Finally home.

#soft grief

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