It was all very Hollywood movie like.
Everything turned to a blur before his eyes, maybe it was the tears that sprung to his eyes or just the shock messing with his mind, he didn't know.
But he couldn't really see much through the blur as Asher was pushed into the Intensive Care Unit, leaving Cailen standing with nothing but the wall to hold him up because his legs certainly weren't doing the trick.
He was vaguely aware that he may have screamed, that he had drawn somewhat of a crowd, people all staring at him wondering what his problem was but he didn't care about them.
He cared that Asher, his husband, the man he loved, was lying unconscious on a gurney in the ICU when he was supposed to be at home, cleaning the flat or watching television.
He didn't care if he was making a scene, he didn't care that his knees had given out, buckling underneath him as he slid to the floor, face buried in his hands.
He was vaguely aware of Madeline's warm hands on his arms, her perfume filling his nose, and her voice in his ear telling him to calm down, that he was panicking the patients, but he didn't care.
He just didn't care.
*****
Do you know that feeling you get when you think there is one more step but there isn't and your foot stomps down and there's that rush, like your stomach feels like it jumped into your throat and your heart stutters until you realize what's happened?
That's kind of how Cailen felt at the moment except, it wasn't quite clicking in his head what had happened and that feeling wasn't going away.
His heart was beating erratically, and not in a fun way.
It felt like someone was holding it in their hands, squeezing it and only letting go when they could tell Cailen couldn't take it anymore but then they would squeeze again, and Cailen couldn't find his breath.
It's just...
Asher was supposed to have quit.
He told Cailen as much this morning, had promise that he would talk to the chief, so why was he in the ICU right now?
Why had he been at that fire? Why had he been knocked unconscious?
He wasn't supposed to have been there, Cailen just didn't get it.
He didn't understand and he couldn't begin to wrap his head around it right now as he sat in a crumpled heap on the floor of the hallway in the hospital.
People were still standing around him, more people gathering to see what the commotion was but he couldn't get a grip on himself, he couldn't.
He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he couldn't do anything but wonder how?
He couldn't even cry anymore.
At some point, Cailen had stopped crying into his hands, fairly quickly actually.
He stopped fighting Madeline's attempts to calm him down.
It wasn't by choice, he didn't mentally decide that he couldn't be having an emotional breakdown in the hallway of a hospital when he was a nurse that worked there.
No, he didn't do any of the breathing exercises he usually walked the relatives of critical patients through, he didn't think about the fact that crying in the hallway of the hospital won't help anything, he didn't do any of that.
He just kind of stopped crying, he stopped shaking, his body just kind of shut down and the tears that had sprung to his eyes stopped almost immediately after they came as he tried to find his breath.
He thinks it was all too much for his body to deal with, the way it felt like someone was squeezing his heart, the way he couldn't catch a breath, the shaking of his body as he cried into his hands and tried to wrap his head around the scene he had just witnessed.
It was just too much so his body just stopped.
It just stopped and left him to try and pick himself off the floor.
He couldn't pick himself off the floor in the end so two nurses came to his side, Jaime and Paul, and hooked their hands under his arms to pull him to his feet.
Madeline instructed them to take him into a room down the hall but Cailen had other plans.
They didn't honestly expect him to sit by and wait to find out what’s going on, did they?
Cailen had to help, he had to be in that room to make sure Asher would be okay.
It was his job to take care of him, not theirs, and he wasn't going to leave Asher's life in someone else's hands who didn't care about him the way he did, who wouldn't fight for his survival like he would.
Once he was on his feet, Cailen shrugged out Jaime and Paul's grip, heading for the ICU but then a pair of hands were on him again.
"No!" Cailen shouted, trying to untangle himself from the pairs of hands trying to grab him. "I have to- Ash, he's- I need-" Cailen tried to say but his thoughts were too jumbled.
Why was Asher in there? He needed to see Asher.
Why wasn't he at home? What was going to happen to him?
Why didn't he quit this morning? He needed to help Asher.
"Cailen, honey, you know you can't go in there." Came Madeline's voice from beside him, her voice soft and soothing, the one she used on hysterical relatives.
She wasn't the one holding him back, Cailen assumed Jaime and Paul were responsible for that.
"But Asher, he-"
"I know Cailen, but we have to let the doctors look after him. You're no good to him like this." She said calmly, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder.
Cailen could tell she was upset as well, Asher and she weren't exactly close but they have met a couple times and she had always been fond of their relationship.
"They'll take good care of him, honey. He's going to be fine."
Cailen knew she had no way of knowing this, he knew that, but her words seemed to calm him down and Jaime and Paul were able to lead him away with the promise of Madeline coming to see him in a bit.
Jaime and Paul led him to an empty hospital room down the hall, letting him lean on them because he felt like he might collapse again.
His knees felt wobbly and like they might give out so he was thankful when they helped him up onto an empty bed. They kind of just stood there for a moment, both seeming unsure of what they should do or say.
Jaime was a little younger than Cailen because he had just started at the hospital, Cailen thinks maybe twenty three.
Paul was Cailen's age and they often spent their lunches together if they could manage to get them at the same time. They weren't great friends but they enjoyed talking to each other and complaining about whiny patients.
"Thank you." Cailen mumbled, looking to his lap because he could tell they were unsure if they should leave him alone.
He couldn't believe they were treating him like a mental patient, carrying him to a room and being too worried to take their eyes off him. He supposed he had kind of freaked out there but he couldn't help it and he didn't need constant supervision.
"I'll be fine, I- I'm sorry." Cailen apologized for the way he acted but he was unable to feel embarrassed at the moment.
He was unable to feel anything at the moment if he was being honest.
"It's okay, Cailen." Paul said, sending Cailen a small smile. "He- he's going to be fine. Probably just a couple of burns." He added and Cailen knew he was trying to make things better so he bit his tongue and just nodded.
The truth was that he wasn't making things better because Cailen knew it was more than 'a couple burns', Madeline said he had went into respiratory arrest and he had third degree burns, plus whatever else he hadn't let her say.
"Thank you... You can go, I kind of just want to be by myself." Cailen said, not wanting to be rude but also not being able to care much.
"Are you sure? I can stay and talk if you want?" Paul offered but Cailen shook his head.
"No, you have work to do, go, please." Cailen said, knowing he was probably going to start crying at some point and he didn't want an audience for that.
"Alright, just press the button if you need anything." Paul said, referring to the emergency button beside the bed.
Cailen wouldn't be pressing it.
Cailen watched them leave, he watched as Jaime closed the door and sent him a sad smile over his shoulder. Cailen tried to return it but he knew he didn't succeed at all and watched as the door clicked shut.
Once Cailen was alone, he let out a breath and stared at his feet dangling over the edge of the bed.
He couldn't get the image of Asher passing by on that gurney out of his mind.
Asher had looked...
Well, Cailen didn't want to think about what he had looked like because he knew he was just unconscious. That was it.
He refused to think that Asher was anything but okay but the image of Asher lying there, his skin blackened from soot, his arm an angry red with blisters running up it, his eyes shut and body limp...
He couldn't help but think of the worst case scenario and that had him shaking again.
Cailen tried to remember all he'd learned in nursing school about the degrees of burns and respiratory arrest.
Second degree burns were very painful but with the proper treatment, are easily treatable. Asher's arm and hip would be sensitive for a few weeks but with time, they would heal.
Third degree burns are much more serious. Second degree burns only affect the first and second layer of skin whereas third degree can go as far as the muscle and bone. There wouldn't be any pain in Asher's leg but that's because he's burned away the nerves.
Still... Burns were easy enough to deal with, they might scar but that didn't matter so much considering the other possible outcomes.
Respiratory arrest was another story entirely.
Cailen knew that respiratory arrest occurred when oxygen levels became less than six percent. He also knew cardiac arrest and death were a high possibility at this percentage as well but he refused to think about that at the moment.
He knew if treated right away, the possibility of survival without permanent damage was fairly good, but at three minutes, chances of brain damage became a great risk and at five minutes, the chances of surviving at all were less and less.
He didn't know how long it was before someone got to Asher but he had to hope it was fairly quickly.
That's all he had right now- Hope- and he was finding it quite difficult to grasp.