Fading

Author: Clarity Scifiroots
Fandom/Pairings: The Dead Zone – Johnny/Bruce
Request: lizzypaul's "coming out" challenge
Disclaimers Apply
Misc. Notes: Most of the intro scene is from the beginning of a fic I started last September; some of the conversation between Sarah and Bruce at the hospital was in my Dead Zone fic I posted on June 4.
Notes for Timeline: Set shortly after the end of season 3, although in my 'verse it ended a little differently so that Rebecca really isn't factoring into the matters. (Basically—focus on the Stillson issues from the last episode, and Johnny's recent brain scans. Let's picture more support from Bruce than from Rebecca, okay?) Johnny and Bruce are already together.
My Fifth June Fic! (just barely it's 11:26pm)

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Bruce arrived at the mansion in under fifteen minutes, miraculously evading getting ticketed. The window of his Cruiser was already rolled down as he pulled up so that he could enter the pass code quickly. The gates opened too slowly for his tastes.

He had tried for an hour to get a hold of Johnny by home phone and cell. Something was wrong. Johnny hadn't planned anything for the morning; as far as Bruce knew the only thing scheduled for the day was their dinner later that evening. Bruce had been calling to change the time since he had a little extra work he wanted to get done at the office. He had the feeling that those plans would be canceled.

Anxiety urging him on, Bruce jogged up the front steps and unlocked the doors with suddenly trembling hands.

"John!" he shouted upon entering the hallway. He shouted the man's name a few times more as he turned slowly in place while considering which direction to start to go.

He tried the kitchen first. Nothing but the noticeable absence of any breakfast preparation. Bruce felt his heart beating in his throat. He felt sick. Something was terribly wrong, he could feel it.

"Johnny!" he shouted.

Bruce ran back to the hallway to reach the steps. He barely recognized when he was running on flat flooring again. The bedroom door was closed, which Johnny only did at night. For a few moments Bruce entertained the thought that maybe Johnny was just catching up on some sleep after recent stresses and hadn't gotten out of bed yet.

The doorknob turned with unexpected ease under his white-knuckled grip, and Bruce stumbled slightly upon entering. His eyes scanned past the abandoned pillows and rumpled sheets to lock his gaze on the lump of a body curled over at the foot of the bed.

"Oh, God," Bruce muttered under his breath. He ran forward and crouched so that he could check for a pulse. "C'mon John! C'mon, man!"

There was a faint trace of a heartbeat that pulsed too slowly under Bruce's fingertips. He bounced back up to his feet and struggled a bit with vertigo as he searched frantically for the phone. His heart was racing in his chest as unnamed fears made themselves quite visually known in his mind.

The phone call he made was a blur he quickly forgot. Bruce kneeled by Johnny's side as soon as he reassured the emergency operator that he was trained in first aid and could handle the situation until the ambulance arrived.

"John, you need to wake up! This is not cool. Don't give up now, man."

One hand kept busy by monitoring Johnny's pulse while Bruce's free hand stroked carefully over the blond strands of his lover's sleep-mussed hair. Although he was not consciously aware of it, Bruce murmured prayers thought to be long-since-forgotten from childhood.

How long had Johnny been like this? Bruce cursed himself for not staying over last night, he knew how much stress Johnny had been feeling lately with the combination of Rebecca's problems with Stillson added on top of his own issues concerning the man, the toll his visions had been taking on his body, and the tedious and stressful sessions at the hospital as they tried to find a reason for it all.

"God, John, I'm sorry..." Bruce breathed, fear gripping his insides and trying to crawl up his throat. The relief of hearing the ambulance sirens rushing closer was immeasurable. "Hold on for me, man, just hold on."

----

Bruce somehow managed to pull himself together enough by the time they reached the hospital that he could call Sarah and let her know what was going on. She joined him within thirty minutes of his call after begging a neighbor to look after J.J. until Walt got back from work.

"Bruce... will he be alright?" she asked quietly from her seat in one of the waiting room's chairs. Bruce was pacing back and forth anxiously in front of her.

He stopped and looked at her as if he'd forgotten she was there. Sarah clasped his forearm to anchor him. "What do you think? You're more familiar with... with his visions."

Shakily Bruce sat down in the chair next to her and sighed wearily. "But nothing like this."

They sat in silence for a time. Again it was Sarah who spoke first. "I'm glad..." she said, "that you guys... worked things out." She smiled shyly. Bruce stared at her in shock. Sarah chuckled softly and shook her head in amusement. "For heaven's sake, why do you look so surprised?"

Bruce frowned. "We never agreed to tell anyone—"

Sarah laid her hand on his shoulder. "Believe me, you didn't really need to. Of course, I don't know exactly when it happened, it's just that we started to notice it eventually."

"We?" Bruce muttered, looking a little pale.

Sarah studied him quietly for a few moments. "Yes. A year ago Dana made a passing comment. I'm not sure whether she was trying to get under my skin or if... Well, in any case, I started to wonder if there was any truth to what she claimed to have seen. When I looked for it, I saw it, too. And eventually Walt had to ask if Johnny had ever..." She snickered, probably at the memory of how her husband had tried to broach the subject gently.

"Really, Bruce, we've just been waiting to hear it from one of you." She smiled kindly and it almost reached her eyes. "I was frustrated with Walt's obvious relief, you know, but then I couldn't really blame him because... I was relieved, too. After Johnny woke up I wasn't sure he'd ever really get close to anyone new... You remember how I had to egg him on to try any dating." She got a faraway look in her eye. "I guess I hadn't even thought to start looking at his friendships."

Silence reigned for long minutes. Finally Bruce managed a croaked, "Thank you."

Sarah reached out to hug him tightly. "It'll be okay... it has to be," she murmured. She straightened and glanced at him questioningly. "Is that new doctor being called in?"

"Yeah, I think so," Bruce said, running a hand down his face. He hurt all over as if his skin was too tight and threatened to tear. "Damnit, I wish they'd bring some news!" Sarah's hand squeezed his shoulder just a little too tightly, betraying her own anxiety.

"I think you should know he talked to me about possibility of brain surgery," she said softly. Bruce stared at her with a muted expression of surprise. She winced visibly. She, too, had been stunned when Johnny told her he was considering it; somehow that triggered a sense of despair inside her that had been absent since the early days of the car accident that had led to his coma.

She couldn't meet Bruce's eyes when she continued after a shuddering breath, "He said he doesn't want to be stuck like he was before...He asked me not to leave him in a coma again." Her voice was thick with congestion and a few tears escaped her eyes.

Bruce felt the bottom drop out from under him. His stomach twisted into tight knots that he didn't even begin to know how to untie. He clenched his jaw, fighting back distressed tears of his own.

"I should have realized how serious things were getting," she said desperately, overwhelmed by fear and not a little bit of guilt. "I've never known him to be so fatalistic... Oh, God—" she bit back a quiet sob. Instantly she felt Bruce's arms wrap around his shoulders. He rocked them both back and forth as they waited in mutual worry for a report on Johnny's condition.

----

"Mr. Lewis?" Sarah and Bruce both looked up at the approaching nurse. The woman looked them over for a moment and then nodded, motioning them to follow her into a small private room with a round table and a few chairs lining the walls. "Dr. Jaeger will be with you in a moment," she informed.

Sarah sank onto a slightly more comfortable chair than she had been waiting in before. Bruce stood straight-backed, his heart pounding heavily against his ribs.

Dr. Jaeger showed up in about ten minutes. He appeared to be primed for action and slightly distracted, as if he would rather not have to make this report.

Sarah spoke before Bruce could; "How is he? What happened?"

Dr. Jaeger straightened, looking a little more focused. "It appears that Johnny had another seizure that incapacitated him, much worse than the previous occurrences." The doctor paused to consider what his last two and a half hours of examination had yielded. "I spoke with Johnny before about the dangers his condition was leading to. The area of his brain where his 'visions' seem to register is flaring up right now and hasn't stopped since we started taking scans." He met Sarah's gaze to press the importance of his next words. "In my medical opinion the only good option right now is to proceed with the operation in attempts to remove the damaged part of his brain that has been causing all of this pain."

Sarah glanced helplessly at Bruce, but he didn't know what to tell her. He thought about all of the visions Johnny had told him about—and the vision he hadn't seen, but Bruce had during the funeral for Bruce's father. He thought about the mess with Stillson and the apocalyptic visions that had been haunting his lover for nearly two years. He remembered with crystal clarity the recent weeks when Johnny would curl into a ball and claw helplessly at his head in unimaginable pain.

"Yes... I agree." Sarah's voice seemed far away.

Bruce came back to the present as Dr. Jaeger nodded at them reassuringly and offered the clipboard he had been holding with papers for Sarah to look over and sign.

"We have access to top-notch technology here," he said, almost proudly. "I'm cautiously confident that we'll be able to help him out. If you'd like, there's a smaller lounge where you can wait more comfortably."

Sarah handed back the clipboard with shaking hands. Bruce watched silently, feeling detached from the world. He only wanted to see Johnny, know that he was all right.

"I'm going to have us start right away. We'll keep you appraised of the situation." He shook Bruce's and Sarah's hands before he left.

Bruce tensed at Sarah's gentle touch but breathed through the tension. She watched him with worry. "Let's go to the smaller lounge and get some coffee, okay?" she suggested. Bruce felt despair at the resigned look in her eyes and remembered that this wasn't the first time she had to wait like this. He resisted a shudder and let her lead him away.

----

Walt called Sarah later in the day to find out what was happening, and he promised to pass the news onto Purdy, who was under house arrest for interfering in Rachel Caldwell's murder investigation by writing a fake suicide note for Mike Kennedy.

Sarah got Rebecca Caldwell's number coaxed out of Bruce to let her know what was going on but couldn't get an answer. She left numerous messages on the woman's machine and couldn't access voicemail on her cell number.

When the sun began to rise slowly as the new day dawned, Sarah called her own house and quietly asked Walt to look into Rebecca's whereabouts. Maybe Sarah had honed her own instincts in the past few years while being around Johnny and his visions because she felt almost physically sick with dread when she thought about the other woman.

----

"He made it though the surgery just fine," Dr. Jaeger said when he appeared later that morning. He had thankfully changed out of his operating room wear before coming out, but Bruce could still see faint hints of red—Johnny's blood—here and there as if the doctor hadn't taken the time to wash well, yet. "We're going to monitor him carefully as he recovers to make sure things go well. He'll be in a lot of pain and probably won't be coherent for a few days, yet."

He nodded decisively, obviously relieved that he had accomplished the difficult surgery. "He's in recovery right now and I can spare a few minutes for one of you to visit." He looked at Sarah expectantly.

Her eyes widened in surprise and quickly protested. "Uh, no, that's all right, Bruce can go in. I'll..." she motioned toward her cell phone wordlessly.

Bruce gripped her hand in thanks before standing and following the doctor through the swinging doors leading to recovery.

"A nurse will let you know when it's time to leave," Dr. Jaeger said. He paused momentarily in the hall and seemed to study the dark man more carefully. "I had thought Ms. Caldwell..." He flushed slightly. "I'm sorry, that's none of my business." He beat a hasty retreat.

Bruce shook his head tiredly, too concerned about Johnny to wonder about Jaeger. The room was dimly lit so as not to startle any recovery patients who were waking from their drug-induced sleep. Bruce found Johnny quickly and sat on the chair to the side of the bed in relief. Immediately he reached for a pale hand laying on the sheets and stroked his thumbs gently over the smooth skin.

"Thank God, John..." he murmured in a slow exhale of air. He could feel his body begin to tremble as he finally began to ease the tension that had lingered with him since Johnny had gone into surgery. He lifted the pale hand to his lips. "We're gonna be okay..."

He breathed in measured beats, making himself relax as he looked over his fragile-looking lover. Large pads of gauze had been placed over the wound necessary for surgery and long bandage strips had been wrapped tightly around Johnny's head to keep the pads in place. Bruce brought one hand to Johnny's face and stroked his cheek cautiously.

"I'm right here John," he said quietly. "You just take it easy and heal up. We're gonna be okay," he repeated, this time beginning to really believe it.

Thank you, God. He leaned over and brushed his lips against his lover's cheek. For a moment he thought that familiar blue eyes were staring back at him with warmth.

Fin

I know this seems to end rather abruptly. I'm hoping to continue with this at a later date and make it into a longer story. I also want to say (unless it somehow wasn't obvious ;;) that I know nothing about brain surgery. Er... I've had an MRI done before, but that's like my extent of experience with anything remotely close to what's going on with Johnny. I'd really appreciate it if someone could direct me to a place where I could learn a bit about the basics surrounding brain surgery—i.e. like how long an operation might take, the sort of pain a patient's expected to have during recovery, and how long the recovery process is. I guessed at all of that here, but would like to be accurate eventually. P