Upping the Ante – Chapter Three – emersli1

Reading Time:
7 Minutes

Eddie stood in his kitchen and wondered what to do.

As he went through the familiar motions of breaking an ice pack to activate it, his brain was spinning.  Should he tell Maddie everything?  Should he excuse himself and call Buck?  Should he wait for this evening or risk interrupting him at work?  What about Chris?

And what would happen when Howard Han posted bail?

Taking a deep breath, Eddie gathered the ice pack in one hand and his tablet in the other and moved back into the living room.

Maddie looked small and tired, sitting there on his sofa.  Remembering her comment about being able to finally rest, he made one decision preemptively.  Maddie Buckley wasn’t going to be alone for a while.

Handing her the ice pack, Eddie tried to pull his thoughts into alignment.  “OK Maddie, I’m going to tell you what’s been going on while you’ve been out of touch.”  He figured that was the place to start, anyway.

“A couple of days after you entered the hospital, Bobby invited Buck to dinner.  Buck planned to ask Bobby to speak up for him to the brass.  He’d requalified.  All his doctors had signed off.  He was more than ready to come back.”  Eddie wanted to make sure she understood this part.  Before he contacted Buck, he wanted to make sure Maddie had accepted all the facts.

At this point, she just looked confused.  “If his doctors had signed off, what was the hold-up?  I mean, I think I’ve made it pretty clear I’d rather he found a less dangerous job…but therapy is helping me recognize that that is a me problem.  And if he’s requalified…”

“Bobby lied to the brass.  Told them Buck wasn’t ready.  And then lied to Buck, telling him the brass had decided to bench him and would make the call on when he was allowed back.”  Eddie watched her closely.

Maddie puffed up with sheer indignation.  “He did WHAT?  How could he?  Evan TRUSTED him!  It must have broken his heart.”

“It did.”

Eddie thought back to that night.  Buck texting long after bedtime and asking to talk to Chris.  The way he’d looked the next morning, standing on Eddie’s front porch at the crack of dawn.  Broken.  Or broken-hearted anyway.

“So Buck came over, and we discussed the situation.  The union wouldn’t help.  A transfer wasn’t possible.  Even moving to a different fire department wasn’t really an option without Bobby’s recommendation.  Buck says when the other fellow holds all the cards, the only thing you can do is switch the deck.  So that’s what he decided to do.”  

“Switch the deck?  Hmmm… Evan really has grown up, hasn’t he?  That’s a very mature perspective in what must have been a moment of great emotional upheaval and betrayal.  Will you tell me what he chose?”  Maddie held the ice pack to her cheek as she talked.

Eddie reached behind the sofa and pulled out their decision board.  “Buck chose five different possibilities to explore.  Then the three of us worked through them together.”  He turned the board so that Maddie could see it.

“FEMA makes sense.  And the Corps of Engineers.  I don’t quite understand where the Environmental Scientist and Wildlife Conservationist come in.  And what in the world made Evan think he should consider ATF?  Has he ever even fired a gun?”  Maddie sounded puzzled rather than disapproving, so Eddie didn’t take offense.  But he was a little confused.

“I thought Buck sent you postcards every time he changed jobs?  Did you not get the one about joining the Navy?”  How could she ask if he’d ever fired a weapon?  What did she think the Navy did?  Synchronized swimming?

“No.  I never got anything about enlisting in the Navy…”  Maddie’s voice trailed off as she racked her brain.  “Wait…about, maybe six months after he left, he sent me a postcard about swimming with the seals or something.  I thought he was working on some sort of vacation tourboat, you know, where the tourists pay big money to go out and ‘experience sealife’…like shark cages and whale watching.  But he actually meant…”

Maddie’s voice dropped almost to a whisper.  “Oh my God, he joined the SEALs.  Eddie…is my baby brother a SEAL?  My Evan?  The most cheerful, sweet, big-hearted person I know?  Except for Christopher, of course.”

Eddie understood her confusion, but…”You know, SEALs are just people.  Humans, just like you and me.  Modern media gives them a certain image, but no one could live that image 24/7.  Actually, that’s why Buck rang out.  He’s a Navy veteran…just recently got out of the Reserves… he served on a submarine before being pulled for the SEALs.  But when push came to shove, he wasn’t able to shut it all off the way Special Forces have to be able to do.”

Maddie looked both proud and relieved.  “I can understand that.  Sometimes working in the ER…well, I’ll just say triage can break your heart.”

Eddie thought of some of the decisions he’d had to make in theatre.  “Tell me about it.  And I agree with you about law enforcement, but as I told Buck, it wasn’t my place to make that decision for him.  He made the decision to strike off the ATF mostly because he wasn’t sure about stake-outs, or shoot-outs.”

Nodding thoughtfully, Maddie considered the board.  “So…the animal science job.   And the environmental science one…those would require college degrees, wouldn’t they?  Did I misread another postcard?  Did Evan finish college somewhere along the way?”

Eddie smiled.  “That’s actually what his final choice came down to.  He wanted to finish his degree.  All he was lacking was twelve hours of internship.  In December, he’ll graduate from Moorpark with his degree in Animal Management.  And he’ll switch over to Washington State to do his last twenty-one hours of Zoology to complete his BS.”

“Oh, that’s so wonderful!  I’m so proud of him!  Formal education is really complicated for Evan.  He must have worked so hard to accomplish all of this.  And Washington State…I guess he chose environmental science then?  I can see that.  He wouldn’t have wanted to go too far from Chris.”  Maddie shot him a playful look.

Eddie blushed.  “Well, distance from family was the deciding factor, but there were others.  Buck is in Yreka, working with the CDFW on Chronic Wasting Disease.  In deer and elk populations.”

Maddie looked thoughtful.  “And how did Bobby react to all this?”

Eddie shrugged.  “Honestly, I doubt he knows.  Buck wasn’t getting any contact from anyone on the team over the last couple or three weeks.  Just a few group texts from Hen about the IVF thing.  So Buck and I decided to just keep it quiet.  My last shift at the 118 was pretty rough, but other than that…nobody’s asked.  I don’t think anyone but you has even noticed he’s gone.”

“Your last shift?  Are you leaving for Yreka too?”  Maddie looked as though she were mentally resigning her job and breaking her lease.

“No.  Chris is in the planning stages of his next surgery.  We really can’t change insurance and doctors and everything at this point.  I changed houses.  I’m at the 89 now, under Captain Martin.  It’s a good fit.  And Buck’s internship is only two years.  Then we’ll see where he winds up permanently.”  Apparently Maddie was just assuming that wherever Buck  went, Eddie and Chris would follow.  And it’s not like she was wrong, but…

“And right now Buck is working a four day/three day alternating schedule.  He’s coming up on a four day break starting tomorrow morning.  He’ll be flying in about ten o’clock.  Yreka allowed him the chance to be around more for Chris.  And we have solemnly sworn to two videocalls per week, allowing for cell service.”  Eddie wasn’t sure how much more he should say without Buck’s explicit approval.

“Do you think he’d be willing to see me?  Just for a few minutes?  I really…”  Maddie sniffled.  “I really just need to see him.  And there’s something I need to tell him.  Now might not be the best time, but I swore to myself I wasn’t lying to him anymore…not even by omission.  And then… well, whatever happens, happens I guess.”

Now Eddie was back to being alarmed.  This conversation was giving him emotional whiplash.

“Maddie, if you’re feeling… desperate… I can call him now.  He’s almost certainly at work, but I was planning on texting anyway to see what he wanted to do…”  Eddie didn’t want to interfere with Buck’s job, but if it had been one of his sisters?  Yeah, he’d want to know.

Maddie looked hopeful.  “If,  if it wouldn’t be too much trouble… I don’t want to get  him in trouble with his boss…”

Eddie nodded.  “Well, we’ll see what Buck has to say about it.”

Your sister is here.  We got it all wrong.  She could be in danger.  Should I call?

Three minutes later, a call came through.  It was from Buck, so Eddie answered it on his tablet.

“What the hell do you mean, she could be in danger?”