Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Harvey isn’t stupid. He isn’t dumb. Mathematically, he knew this day would always come. A boy on a bike in New York traffic was always a stupid idea. He knew that.

But it wasn’t supposed to happen now.

He shouldn’t be sitting here waiting.

“Harvey…” Donna trails off, and Harvey knows he can detect a hint of uncertainty. And he doesn’t blame her if she thinks he’d brush her off in a refusal to see her empathy, because he would. And in the years of knowing each other, he can guess exactly what she would say next, and frankly, he agrees. He had never cried this much when his father passed.

Choosing to ignore her, he croaks out, “What’s the time?” His voice is shaking, and he isn’t ashamed to ever say that is it because of the circumstances.

He knows the time. He didn’t need to ask, not when he had asked the question two minutes ago and an hour ago just to avoid any conversation Donna wanted to start. The watch on his left wrist notified him at the top of each hour with a faint beep , and his smartphone tucked into his pant pocket was always available to answer the question. As tempting as it is to grab the chair he’s sitting on to destroy the loudly ticking clock that hung on the wall over Mike’s head, Harvey worries about the glass shards.

There is nowhere for Harvey to give soothing rubs over—to reassure himself that Mike is still here—unless he untucks the hospital sheets that sheathes Mike’s bandaged body beneath it. The arms that rest above the blankets have too many protruding tubes taped onto the skin; it is a stark reminder every time Harvey holds the boy’s hands that he isn’t just sleeping.

Mike’s face looks terrifyingly small against the white sheets and white pillow. His shoulders have thinned out; though he was never the muscular type to begin with. The IV that drips into his arm isn’t helping him keep up much of his appearance.

The doctor gave him a year and then a tentative one-month extension. Either Mike would wake up within that time, or he would never wake at all.

Harvey has spent too many hours and too many nights thinking about what Mike, a man who forgot nothing, could’ve been distracted by that morning as he biked to work. He reaches for Mike’s arm—the one with fewer tubes attached—and runs his fingers gingerly over the pads of the boy’s fingers and palm. Harvey traces over the skin that the bike’s handlebars must have touched, and he wraps his other hand around Mike’s to close Mike’s fingers around his own.

“Harvey, go home,” Jessica told him over a year ago. He lied and said he would, but he had been coming back to this exact hospital room every day, practicing the same routine and counting down the seconds. 

Harvey pushes his chair back a little bit to lean forward, rests his head gently on Mike’s, and closes his eyes. 

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There is no time for anything. Mike has already hastily put on his suit—he can smooth down any wrinkles he has on the elevator ride up to Harvey’s office after he gets to work. The toaster isn’t toasting his pieces of bread fast enough, and he’s stupidly waiting next to this junk of an appliance with a slice of beef in his hands and a piece of lettuce he’d just ripped off the lettuce head. Forget even washing the lettuce; he doesn’t have the time.

What else…, he muses to himself, tapping his foot on the ground when he realizes he’s not wearing any shoes, and he better hope he won’t need to take his shoes off later because this pair of socks have holes in it.

He stuffs the slice of meat and piece of lettuce in his mouth and decides he’s going to have to eat his sandwich separately if the toaster is going to take its time cooking that damn piece of bread. He stumbles to put his shoes on and grabs his bag.

Ding! The toaster finally calls out.

Mike huffs, and chews the meat and lettuce in his mouth, before grabbing the piping hot slices of bread, picking up his keys, and stumbling out the door.

He gets on his bike without much issue, although he can barely breathe with how dry the bread is and how difficult it is to bike across the city without choking to death.

He turns a corner here, and then another just to get onto the main road. Then he’s off like a classic New Yorker, whizzing between the cabs as he passes one red light after another. 

It’s 7:06, and typically, he’s out the door by 6:45 AM. He needs to start buying batteries to replace those on his shitty alarm clock because risking his life when he should be by Harvey’s door in fifty-four minutes while the commute takes fifty-five is like asking to risk eight of his nine lives just to hand a file in on time.

The bike is an old one from his dad. His grandmother had taken the time to teach him how to ride one. She may not have said it out loud because he had never asked, but he knew she would be greatly opposed to him getting a driver’s license. 

A bike isn’t too bad anyhow. This wasn’t San Francisco where it was just a hill after another. Yes, it was nearly an eighteen-mile commute back and forth, but traffic would be ruthless on a car. He didn’t even have anywhere to park it.

Maybe he should have been paying more attention or taken out his wired earbuds because the next thing he knows he’s taking a left turn directly into oncoming traffic. The lady is looking up at the rearview mirror and applying her lipstick before she even notices what is going on.

Mike attempts to swerve, but the crash happens too fast, and soon he’s flying off his bike and tumbling about ten feet away, right into the path of more oncoming traffic.

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“It’s 7:29,” Donna says quietly. She had begun coming over daily too, just to accompany Harvey.

Harvey doesn’t move.

He knows Mike was hit sometime before 8 AM because according to the other associates, he hadn’t even been that late. He had asked around the office if anyone knew what happened to Mike, and one reported that Mike’s clothes near the elbows and the knees looked in bad shape when he arrived.

“Well, I noticed when he came in that he looked unusually messy. And he was out of breath, so I just— I joked around and asked who was the lucky lady and if he had used protection—” The associate stammered under Harvey’s gaze. You know—like in… assuming he had… y’know?”

This was just fucking childish. “I’m not hearing the part where my question was answered.”

“Sorry, sorry. Right. Well, he, um… he looked at me, and I noticed that he looked a bit irritated, so I thought, oh maybe he didn’t sleep well. Then he told me he ‘got in a car accident’ and to ‘stop irritating him because he had work to do’. He seemed fine, otherwise.”

And then the associate before him had the audacity to fucking shrug . It took everything within Harvey not to grab the man’s shoulders and shake him for not reporting Mike’s unusual state to him sooner.

It took a week for him to pick up the phone and call the doctor in charge of Mike’s care to tell him about his newly acquired information.

The assigned doctor didn’t take too long to answer his call. It was almost like he knew what Harvey was about to say because his first question was “Tell me what happened.”

“He got into a car crash.”

“I figured. Do you know the time frame of when he crashed?”

“Sometime between 7 AM and 8 AM. Although, I’d assume he was hit when it was closer to eight o’clock,” he responded.

The doctor made a sound as if in approval. “Well, thank you for this information. If you are to come back and visit Mike today, I would love it if you could stop by my office at around 5 PM to discuss his treatment plan and to set up a payment plan.”

Harvey had glanced at Donna when he responded. “I’ll be there.”

He wished he hadn’t.

“Now, I would like to reassure you that Mr. Ross looks to be on the path of recovery. There is, however, a small hiccup, and it’s the reason I brought you in here.” The doctor pointed at the chair by his desk and motioned for Harvey to sit.

“Is he alright?” Harvey asked worriedly.

“He’s in capable hands. He has… he’s fallen into an induced coma. In a case like this, comas happen, but all patients cannot survive without some sort of ventilator.”

“A ventilator,” Harvey echoed.

“Typically, the patient wakes on their own after three or four days. But, Mr. Ross, unfortunately, fell into a coma. Even so, most will exhibit signs of becoming conscious around the one-week point. But every case is different; some people wake at the four-week point.”

“And what if he doesn’t wake then?” he found himself asking. “I’ve heard of those sorts of things happening. Cases that span years.”

The doctor gave him a look, before answering, “Well, yes. It’s not… common, but it does happen. When that occurs, we typically bill the patient weekly as the treatment goes on.”

“Is there any possibility I can pay on his behalf?”

The doctor blinked. “Well, yes. The hospital’s billing department would process claims with Mr. Ross’s insurance provider first. Once the insurance has paid its share, the hospital would then bill Mr. Ross, however, you may pay the remaining balance on his behalf.

After a pause, the man continued. “I can give you an estimate, based on all treatment Mr. Ross has received so far, if you’d like.”

He nodded, so the doctor continued. “Well, the life support Mr. Ross needs is called a mechanical ventilator, which costs about $1,500 a night. Because he is on life support, he is to be placed on the highest level of the ICU: level three. That is $10,000 per night. Nursing care adds another $2,000; physicians take $1,000. Then there’s the miscellaneous lab work, medication, and medical supplies, which total to another $2,000. That makes a daily bill add up to $16,500.”

Harvey tapped on his fingers in mental calculation as the doctor pulled out a calculator. For just a  one-year stay that meant—

“Without any physical therapy or additional scans, that makes the price for a year equal $6,022,500.”

Harvey would’ve liked it so much better if the doctor just leaned back into his office chair and offered him a smug grin, where he was at least justified in taking out his frustration with a well-deserved punch. Somehow, hearing the number added more weight than words.

“And the insurance?”

The doctor flipped through a few pages of the paper before verifying the answer with a scroll on his computer. “Mr. Ross’s insurance covers eighty percent, so you only need to cover the other twenty percent out of pocket.” The doctor leaned forward to punch numbers into his calculator. “And that is $1,204,500 that you will be paying.”

“Is there a limit to how long Mike can stay on life support?”

“There is no limit. However, you will need to note, that if situations like that arise with Mr. Ross, there is a point in which his muscles become weak from the lack of exercise, and not even the machine can help after a certain extended period. And that causes issues. Issues with his heart, issues with his lungs, issues with organs. Now, people can stretch on the usage of ventilators for as long as they’d like, but if the patient isn’t progressing, it becomes a question of whether prolonging the death of their loved ones is ethical or not.”

In short, the doctor had projected that if Mike wasn’t going to wake, he had a year before organ failure was going to catch up to him. 

“Since he lacks the capacity to make his own decisions about his treatment, and he has appointed you as his health care agent, you have the medical power of attorney over every medical decision regarding his care. I would love if you could sign the treatment plan here.”

Essentially, the treatment plan offered this: a year on life support with monthly payments so that he may stop anytime if Mike woke, and if he woke, months of physical treatment to render him healthy enough to live his usual life. At around each six-month point, until he was done with his physical treatment, Mike was to come back to be checked for any sign that his condition was chronic. But if Mike was never going to wake, the talk of an extension of his treatment could be set up.

But that conversation was nearly thirteen months ago, Harvey calculated. The original plan had run it’s course, and the doctor called Harvey into his office again.

“How are his muscles—how is he? Are they—”

“Muscle atrophy has long begun.” The doctor shook his head. “It occurs within days after inactivity, but exponentially worsens significantly around the two-week mark. Technically, at the time of our first meeting, Mr. Ross’s muscle mass was already decreasing.”

“And if he doesn’t wake for another, say six months, what are his chances?”

“I cannot say,” the doctor said quietly. “But, the primary nurse has done her routine checks almost daily, testing Mr. Ross’s joints, and just testing muscle contractions and relaxations. What I will say, is if he doesn’t wake up within a month or two and start physical therapy to counteract this atrophy, he runs the risk of living a frail life with all sorts of medication and care for his organs, or just… death.”

“So he has maybe two more months then?”

The doctor sighed. “Mr. Specter… I hate to say this, but so far, it seems like continuing life support is futile. Mr. Ross has been on the machine for over a year at this point and achieved no meaningful health outcome. The hospital’s ethics board has already been pressuring me to just submit a petition to withdraw life support. And I’m afraid they have a valid reason. It seems, based on the lab tech’s reports, that Mr. Ross has little to no chance of recovery.”

Harvey looked at the physician, choking on the plead waiting on his tongue as he tried to control the tears. 

“One month.” The doctor suddenly broke the silence, likely uncomfortable with how long this conversation was. “But after that, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the ethics committee or court for an extension.”

After signing another document promising a payment of $102,300, Harvey stood up abruptly to leave. Every visit afterward, he avoided the doctor’s office like a plague.

But now, that extension was almost up too. A year and a near month in total meant 395 days, or 9,480 hours, which meant 568,800 minutes, which was only 34,128,000 seconds. Harvey remembered where he was all those 395 days ago. He remembered being particularly annoyed that a file he wanted to be annotated hadn’t even landed in his hands after an entire dire. Harvey had marched straight into the bullpen with the mind to speak a few harsh words to his associate, which he did briefly before he noticed the swaying.

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The half-swallowed food in his mouth is desperately trying to choke him, and as woozy as he is, Mike pushes himself off the concrete to try to cough out his food.

His head hurt a little; he wasn’t wearing a helmet. He sits there, wobbling in his seated position, before he lies back down to close his eyes and pretend it was all a bad dream. 

There are sounds of car doors slamming closed, and the lady is crouched down before him now. The other cars in the road haven’t taken the new blockage too kindly, and are taking every spare moment to honk their horns.

“Oh my God, are you okay? Are you hurt? Can you stand? Oh my God, I’m so sorry…”

The woman’s voice flows through his ears. She’s concerned, naturally. He pushes himself back up, feeling nothing but bruised, yet knows that he will definitely feel everything in his arms and legs tomorrow. 

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“Mike. Mike!” Harvey watched Mike’s body fall forward. There was a split second in his mind where he hoped that it was all some cruel joke. “Mike.” There was a twang of urgency in the way he prodded Mike’s head to shake the man awake. But when he didn’t react, Harvey wanted nothing more than to utter a slew of “fuck” under his breath and hope it resurrected Mike.

Harvey remembers with sudden regret-filled clarity that Mike had numerously tried to interject his angry lecture. 

“Harvey, I’m sorry, really I’m—”

“No, Mike. Listen to me. When I say I want something as soon as you get here, it isn’t a suggestion. It’s an order. What about me saying ‘this is important’ doesn’t mean anything to you? Seriously, Mike. I can’t believe—”

“Harvey—” Mike tried again.

“Interrupt me one more time, and I will have you fired. I’ve given you everything: a new job, a sign-in bonus of twenty-five grand, and a new life! And this is how you repay me? If you can’t take a serious job seriously, then you’d really be no better. Don’t bother. Go back, find Trevor, and continue living that lifestyle.” Petty, he knows, and he greatly regrets it now.

To be honest, Harvey doesn’t remember what it was about that morning and afternoon that had ticked off his mood so poorly. It was likely something stupid, like a stubborn client or his favorite bagel being out of stock.

One of Harvey’s best qualities is his ability to keep calm even under duress. How else would he go around being a lawyer if rich idiots kept ticking him off? Hell, even a lawyer who dealt with the average person would meet someone who’d challenge them. Sure, a contract signed under duress was void, but not everything had a trail of evidence to back up a claim.

Yet here he was, panicking as he rounded the cubicle in a hurry to hope that his associate didn’t hold the title of “Most Recent Death”. The associates around him have long stopped pretending not to eavesdrop and jumped up to help.

Someone dialed 911, and another managed to convert Harvey’s panic into annoyance when the associate tried handing him a paper towel. What was that supposed to do? Wipe away his guilt? But then the associate pointed and uttered something about Mike’s hands and bloodstained papers, and then he suddenly understood there was so much he hadn’t been in the loop about.

Harvey cradled Mike’s neck with one hand to tilt it and pressed his fingers to his pulse points. Another associate—he really didn’t care about who was who right now—asked him in a panic about Mike’s heart rate. He nodded to confirm it existed, but there was something wrong either with the clock on the wall, or the muscles of Mike’s heart.

One… two… three… it had already been over four seconds. 

Forty-one… forty-two… forty-three. Harvey’s eyes had been on the clock for a whole minute, and Mike’s heart hadn’t met the average resting rate. He knew the term for it; his dad died of a similar fate.

Bradycardia. Noun. The condition where the heart rate is abnormally slow, less than sixty beats per minute, and can occur during a heart attack or a stroke. Causes insufficient blood flow to the brain. His father’s doctor also emphasized the last three words when he explained it: may be life-threatening.

Mike was going to die if he didn’t receive medical attention.

Orders to loosen Mike’s collar and to let him lie flat on the floor went through one ear and out the other. Instead, he let his eyes scan over Mike to observe everything he’d missed and staggered in his step when the associates pushed him away from the cubicle. God, he was so stupid for not realizing.

Mike’s brain, the same stupid doctor who rejected an extension on the life support told him, had suffered severe damage. His brain had swollen up from the car crash and compressed itself against the skull. The blood vessels, the doctor pointed to a separate image, had been compressed so much that blood flow was limited. When blood begins to pool like that in blood vessels, the platelets are more likely to stick together. 

It didn’t take a doctor to translate what had happened. Mike had a stroke. His brain had swollen up so much—edema, it was called—that he lacked blood flow, and he’d still stayed at work for six hours more than he needed to. He could have just called Harvey to tell him he got in an accident. Maybe then, Mike would have gone home and realized something was wrong. Maybe then, medical attention would have prevented the stroke.

The doctor didn’t stop there. Concussions and coup-contrecoup injuries. Harvey was fairly sure it was just the doctor’s pretentious way of telling him the associate had whiplash, but he nodded along politely in case being rude backfired on Mike. Now Mike really needed to wake up because Harvey was receiving lectures and pamphlets about the dangers of biking without a helmet. Worse, a nurse had looked him up and down and jokingly given him the unprofessional diagnosis of needing guilt-reduction therapy. He had smiled and said he’d think about it, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

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He looks toward his bike. His bag has somehow flown off his body and lays closer to the bike than Mike himself. His phone is facing downward, and he pushes himself up to stand with the hope that it’s not cracked. 

He looks down at his suit. It isn’t noticeably damaged to his relief. There is a worn-down area by the cloth over his kneecaps and elbows, but otherwise, it looks the same when he squints. 

The woman is still pestering him with questions, and he notes the broken frame of her license plate on the ground.

“Oh my God,” he mirrors, “I’m so sorry about your license plate… frame,” he finishes lamely. Nothing about his mind seems to want to think, and he squints his eyes to read and memorize the characters on the license plate in case he’ll ever need it.

“Are you okay?” The woman asks again. “Is your bike okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m okay. I… um… am running late, but it would be great if you gave me your number so I could contact your insurance—” Mike pauses mid-sentence. He walks over to his bike and lifts it up.

His bike seems heavier than usual. He tries to push it off to the sidewalk to get out of the way, but the wheels won’t budge. Through a haze, he is able to make note of the left pedal that had been pushed onto his back tire to the point of no repair.

“Do you need me to give you a ride?” The woman asks again, eager to take his phone instead of hassling over insurance and police now.

“No, no. I’m good. I’m alright,” Mike smiles in assurance, testing out his limbs once more before he lifts his bike to move up the curb. 

He sits there for a while, just there on the curb. The lady is presumably calling her husband. She hands the phone over to make him confirm to the panicked voice that crackles through the speakers that he’s indeed fine. And he does. He’s fine, truly. He swallows the panic that rises to his throat when he runs his fingers over the broken bike beside him. He can’t call his grandmother. She is dead, just like his mother and father. It is a dark thought to bitterly wish he followed their path at the missed opportunity from seconds ago, but he can’t just shrug the feeling off. It disturbs him.

He waves off the lady after she hands him back his phone. A new contact looks back up at him through a cracked screen. It’s already 7:37 AM. He doesn’t have the time to get to work on time by foot.

He has no choice but to spend money on cramming himself into a cab and hoping the man won’t ask questions. The bike goes in the trunk. He will figure out the details of the bike later, but he can’t just leave it on the side of the road. It’s rush hour. He’s lucky enough to have only spent five minutes trying to call one, and he gets to the office at 8:04 AM, locks his bike, and heads into the lobby and reception area at 8:07.

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If Harvey did the math right in his head, Mike had twelve hours and thirty-one more minutes to wake up. And if he didn’t, well, Mike had twelve hours and thirty-one more minutes before being declared legally dead. Prolonging his diminishing sense of hope and increasing desperation will do nothing beneficial to his mental health, the firm, and Mike when he makes—he hesitates in his thoughts—when he makes funeral arrangements.

“Harvey…” Donna tries again.

Harvey looks up this time.

Donna hesitates, taken aback perhaps. She swallows as if it pains her to ask, “Do you want me to leave?”

Harvey, through his tired state, shakes his head.

“You know tomorrow morning,” she suddenly begins again, “I won’t… come back. I can’t. I—There’s a steakhouse down the street. How about we grab dinner, and you can get a good night’s sleep back at your place?”

Harvey let Mike’s hand drop back down onto the hospital bed, and he himself collapsed back onto the hospital chair. He was looking at Mike when he answered with his teeth grinded. “I can’t.” He can feel her frustration grow. He has been enough of an asshole to deserve it. He expects another fight. A “why not?” would even suffice. But weary must have taken a hold on Donna too, because she nods without any further remonstrations or pleads.

She steps out, following her routine again. Harvey knows she’d wait for him outside—hospital policy said no in and out privileges—with a bottle of water and some food from the hospital cafeteria. The nurse would come in at exactly 7:35, check on Mike’s vitals again, and shoot Harvey a sympathetic glance before she left again. On rare occasions, the nurse would comment on how great of a friend, coworker, or boss Harvey was being. You know, for support, the nurse explained as her smile faltered at Harvey’s judgmental expression. He’d wait until the clock turned 7:59 before he stood up, grabbed his briefcase, and joined Donna to wait for Ray to pick them both up.

Donna stayed around long enough for the nurse to come in on the first day and has been excusing herself away since. She couldn’t handle it, Harvey supposed. He could barely handle it.

The nurse comes in twenty-three seconds after the clock hits thirty-five. She’s late, and the nurse smiles apologetically when Harvey bluntly points it out.

“I apologize. The patient next door wanted to fight me about eating before a major surgery. It’s more difficult to be stern when they have visitors.” 

The same routine of checking the vitals begins. First, it’s a glance at the heart rate monitor. Then as if in doubt that Mike’s still alive, the nurse grabs his hands and counts the pulse herself. He wants to wince at the way the nurse lets Mike’s hands fall back onto the bed and at the way a tube on his forearm strains.

A clip of sorts—the nurse smiled warmly when she noticed Harvey was watching intently. She told him on the first day that it was called a pulse oximeter—attaches it to Mike’s finger, and it rests there like another thing attached to his body. Two lights blink, and then the oxygen saturation is all done and tested, 

It was always uncomfortable to watch, and Harvey, without fail, always drew his eyes away from Mike. It felt like a weird invasion of privacy to watch his employee, even if the man was his best friend, in such a vulnerable state.

“Are you staying the night?” the nurse interrupts and Harvey’s eyes drag themselves away from the distraction offered by counting floor tiles. 

“Can I do that?” He tries his best to sound normal. He pretends he’s cheekily asking Jessica for a favor and musters any charisma he has left over. He’s never looked too closely at the nurse before, but when the moment’s like this: him in his best charming smile and a pretty woman before him smiling back, he might just forget that Mike is in a coma-like state sleeping in a hospital bed rather than his own.

“Policy says yes if nursing staff approve.”

Right. Now all of a sudden his confidence flees, and the blue of the nurse’s scrub reminds him where he is. “Thank you,” he nods. He fidgets with his fingers and catches a glimpse of the time on his watch: 7:42 PM. He didn’t have an overnight bag packed; it would be pointless to ask Ray to bring him a change of clothes and maybe a toothbrush.

“I’ll bring you a blanket and some pillows.” Then, the nurse makes her leave.

Staying past 8 PM is like breaking a boundary, Harvey feels. It’s almost like walking in a graveyard at midnight. It’s silent, and the machine that enables Mike to survive whirs with no reassurance that it will keep running if Harvey closes his eyes and stops supervising. It’s lonely.

Without the entertainment of his laptop to work on new cases—Jessica essentially moved all his workload to her desk and excused his presence for three months, Harvey had no reason to stay.

Tomorrow, if the unfortunate happened, the hospital would allow up to three visitors. Even if Mike woke, there was a particularly high chance he was deemed too weak to survive on his own. The choice was the associate’s decision to make, but then the three visitors would be granted visitation not due to death, but rather the basis that he was at the end of life, where death was imminent within 24 hours anyway.

Maybe it was selfish to think this way, but if Mike was going to die, he’d rather it be while he was asleep. Then, for at least a couple of hours, Mike would still be alive to him. Taking his anger and frustration out on the doctors and nurses who failed was just so much easier than taking it out on himself.

He tried explaining his feelings to Donna once. Well, she had pushed a little too much for an answer on a bad day.

“Stop. I know that look,” he pointedly reminded her when he spotted his secretary in his room.

“What? I was just coming to ask—”

He cut her off before he heard another excuse. “About my emotional well-being, yeah I know. And I’m telling you right now that I don’t want this conversation.”

That didn’t work. Clearly.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like shit. Better?”

“Harvey. You know what I mean.”

“What do you want from me?” pairs well with a huff of annoyance, so it’s exactly what Harvey does.

“I’m not the enemy here, Harvey. So let’s try this again: how are you feeling?”

And Donna’s just so patient, that Harvey genuinely feels frustrated at how calm she’s being. He wants to touch a nerve. To shift the entire focus back onto her, and imagine she was someone he hated: opposing council maybe if they were really arrogant, or Travis Tanner, or just someone else. He wanted—he needed to take out his frustration. He could shake Donna to make her hit him. Let her storm out.

But he could cry, and he could beg. Yet Donna just seemed increasingly more worried, and increasingly more motivated to stay and dissect this issue of his.

His fingers balled into fists, and he let his nails dig into his skin. If he was hurting himself with his hands, then he wasn’t hurting Donna with a punch. On his nineteenth “I don’t know,” Harvey is convinced that it’s psychological torture.

“I don’t—I don’t know,” Harvey’s hands shook, and the fingers trembled as he let it uncoil. He couldn’t breathe, and he felt the thumping of his heart way up in his head where it was causing a headache. Standing didn’t feel like a safe place to pretend he wasn’t weak—not when they were shaking more than his fingers. With despair, he tried to find a place for his hands. One balled into a fist to press against his mouth, to push until his teeth dug into lips and drew out blood. His hand shook as the pressure increased to perhaps fulfill his wish, but he was a coward. He turned his head away, and the hand limply hung by his side again.

“Then what do you know?” Donna tried again.

He shook his head, but Donna was still there when he turned back to look after a moment of silence.

“I don’t know why I’m caring so much, and I don’t get why it’s affecting me so much. I’ve known the man for less than two years, yet I find myself caring about him more than his ex-girlfriend does. Make this make sense, Donna. Make this make sense!” He turned around, away from the door, to look out the windows of his office. 

There’s an urge to tug something. Rip his hair out in frustration. Throw his liquor cart across the room. Shatter the glass walls. Anything to prevent himself from breaking down and crying.

“You’re scared.”

Harvey doesn’t spare Donna a glance. If he does, it’s the same to her as admitting it out loud.

“You’re scared he’s abandoning you by death.”

This was too far.

“You feel guilty.”

That’s because I am, he wanted to say. “I overworked him,” he said instead.

“You took no part in his accident.”

That wasn’t reassuring, but Harvey pretended it was. Just to stop Donna from pestering. Harvey tucked his hands into his pockets.

“I’ll pour you a scotch,” Donna said when it got too awkward to keep staring at Harvey’s backside in the silence. 

Harvey turned around in time to see Donna hand over the whole bottle to him, with a small glass for herself. “You need it,” she told him and offered the glass forward to his hands again. Was it responsible to accept? No, but he took it anyway to keep whatever conversation was left going. Anything but to be left alone with his own thoughts.

It took more than a few swings to loosen his tongue enough for another conversation.

“I want this to stop,” he begins. He expects Donna to jump in with a quirk to steer him away from sounding so suicidal, but she doesn’t. He figured he’d give her what she had come in for anyway. “With my dad, it wouldn’t have even mattered. He was gone before I knew. But they’re taunting me with Mike.”

He leaves words unsaid, particularly the part where he feels forced to watch Mike die slowly, yet he’s certain Donna heard him anyway.

He remembers something else the doctor had told him in that terrible, awful meeting in his office. There’s a low chance of survival, the doctor had informed him. He gave him a statistic, an estimation, and a promise that in that many estimated days, he would pull the plug. He had pushed the information away days ago, but it seemed to be all he could focus on now. 

“When my dad died those years ago, I told Marcus the news. He had a child propped up on his hip and a wife behind the door, listening in on the conversation. He didn’t cry, or at least I couldn’t see his face properly. But in the end, we both knew it was coming.”

“I’m so sorry,” Donna iterates.

“But Mike… nothing about this was ever predictable. I told him to switch methods of transportation maybe once or twice because hell, the subway might’ve been safer. But I never knew.”

Another swing broke the eye contact Donna forced upon him.

“He doesn’t deserve this.”

“He doesn’t,” Donna agrees.

“It’s not his time.”

His secretary looked down at her shoes. She can’t overturn decisions that were never hers to make. No, she wanted to say—wanted to assure. But if she was wrong, she would never forgive herself.

¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤

He’s not sure exactly how bad he looks when he finally arrives at his cubicle in the bullpen. It was currently 8:09, and the majority of the associates had somewhere to be, so the area was mostly empty. A few carried a stack of folders and rushed out the doors, and a couple of others sat by their desks, typing away at their computers, too busy being engrossed by whatever last-minute document they were supposed to draft to even bother commenting on Mike’s ragged appearance.

He doesn’t mind that though, and he sits down and practically collapses onto his desk. In the crash and his hurry to leave, he’s left his earbuds behind. There goes the chance to be distracted from the ache in his joints.

Mike looks around his desk. He’s got nothing to give Harvey as the older man never assigned him anything. Strangely, he finds relief in that. Harvey doesn’t need to know about what just happened. And if Harvey ever found out he was late to work, well, he’d rather not think about it.

He wishes he had a second suit right about now. Taking Harvey’s extra one was out of the question especially because walking around in Harvey’s large clothing made him feel on edge. Harvey’s suit just felt luxurious, and Mike feared that the smallest rip in the thread would have Harvey hate him for decades.

But there’s no more time to ponder the situation anymore. Louis comes into the bullpen, wheeling in a cart of cases. Every free associate jumps out of their seat, hurriedly flipping through the folders for an interesting case that would bring them the most glory in the least amount of effort.

Mike stands up and grabs the last one on the cart.

When he opens up the folder, the file reads with a title that mentions an all too familiar name. It’s a murder case for a high-profile client, a Hollywood star. Yet, after a brief scrutinization, he can already see why it’s been passed up. 

The file contains several underlined sections in the witness’s sworn testimonies, and several annotations have been made in the margins. Granted, they’re sloppy, but Louis always prized himself as a civil lawyer and not a criminal one. If you were going to be one, Louis always said, be a goddamn prosecutor. It was always more fun that way.

Mike took his time reading over the other folders in the stack. His head hurt, and he felt as if he was going to throw up if he read something too fast. But he could still work and read, he convinced himself, so he forced himself to reread the files repeatedly, satisfied at last when he finally understood what all the words on the page read.

A portion of the paper bleeds red, Mike notes, and he looks around for a cause. The adrenaline must’ve still not worn off, because Mike’s fingers are bleeding from a particularly nasty scrape on the cement. 

Frustrated, he stands to wet a piece of paper towel, and gently wipes the dried blood off his skin.

¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤

Harvey has rarely ever confessed his true feelings before, and Donna hasn’t been given enough time to prepare her comforting monologue. Instead, she wetted her lips and took a small sip of scotch. 

It was an unfamiliar role he found himself in. It was all too confusing—to discuss and understand his feelings—and he hated the vulnerability that came with a conversation like that. 

Donna left him soon enough anyway, unable to tolerate his misdirected frustration toward her. She didn’t sit back at her desk when she closed the door to Harvey’s office, so she must have gone to Mike’s. And it was fair, Harvey knew. She was close to Mike too, and she deserved to feel just as sad or upset. He could try to offer her comfort, but if he couldn’t even reassure himself, was there even a point in trying?

“Get some rest, Harvey,” she said before she left.

He nodded and pretended he would.

Harvey sought solace in a drink or maybe five, hoping to drown his anxieties in alcohol. A record was carefully chosen to be spun on the player, and it provided him with enough of a temporary distraction as he listened to the lyrics. He didn’t stop drinking until the seventh song of the album had ended, and by then, the edges of his despair had blurred and quieted the gnawing fear in his chest.

But it was just a fleeting reprieve.

When he finally looked at the time, visiting hours at the hospital had long passed.

There was a pool of guilt flooding his mind as he tried to sleep. The night was void of noise—except of course of the faint ticking of his watch that he kept on the nightstand. Whenever he shut his eyes and hoped for refuge in sleep, Mike was suddenly there too, motionless except for the forced rise and fall of his chest.

Tick… tock. 

It’s hard not to picture the room in perfect detail. He had stared at the same four walls, the same two nightstands, the same three bulky monitors, the same two tubes, and the same patient every day for a month at this point. 

Tick… tock. Tick… tock.

There were so many issues, so many what-ifs. What if Mike had another stroke? What if the ventilator wasn’t enough to sustain him? There was one that echoed in his head as he tossed and turned to block the question out: What if Mike died tonight?

There was also the question of whether or not he was spending his time wisely. He could have refused the offer for scotch and instead spent the hour sitting by Mike’s bedside, where he could run his fingers absentmindedly in patterns across Mike’s palm and fingertips.

Tick… tock. Tick… tock. Tick—

Harvey sat up in frustration and threw his watch against the wall. Something shattered, and he assumed it was the sound of the watch’s gears spilling out of their case and onto the vinyl flooring that followed.

He lay back down and closed his eyes in the hope that fatigue would whisk him away, but it never did. He had lost track of his counting—he was somewhere in the thousands now—before he gave up for the night.

The glass windows of his condominium let the moonlight spill in, and Harvey took it as a sign to make a cup of coffee instead.

Sleep eluded him. In fact, it abandoned him when he needed it the most.

Chapter Text

Harvey brewed two pots of coffee. He sipped on it as he watched the sunrise. He sipped on it as he emailed Jessica that he’d come down with something and needed the day off. He was still sipping at it when he slipped into the unusual sweater and jeans. He was finishing the last cup when Ray messaged that he had arrived at his building.

There was a certain urgency he felt that morning. Perhaps it was from the high level of caffeine he’d consumed before it was even 8 AM, but he could feel the panic seize his throat when Ray was inevitably caught up in the morning commute. 

It was currently a red light, but despite that, the road never remained fully still. Some occasional pedestrians crossed the road, weaving their way through the rows of cars. A bike whooshed past so close to his door that it caught his attention; the cyclist stood out as the fastest vehicle at this four-way intersection.

Harvey’s eyes followed as the cyclist skillfully navigated the congested streets. He ran a red light, and then, he was zig-zagging back and forth on the sidewalk and road, choosing whichever had fewer obstacles to maneuver around. And for a heart-stopping moment, he swore the cyclist was Mike. It jolted him, and the fear, the pain, the desperate hope—it all came crashing over. It filled him with anguish, and he felt like he might go mad if he experienced it again. 

¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤

He doesn’t set down his pen and highlighter again until he’s finished identifying and underlining certain contradictions between witnesses in their testimonies. But then comes the dreaded work of typing up every discovery and preparing questions for direct and cross-examination, and it’s then that he notes the oddly bright computer screen and its correlation to the pounding in his head as he hesitates at the keyboard.

Mike ignores it—or tries to anyway. He fingers through some folders, trying to find something else to do. He filters out some ambiguous wording to give his client a legal loophole here, then he reads through a 147-page document with cross-referenced New York penal codes just to fact-check prosecution charges being brought onto his pro bono client. 

He feels strained, like every action requires immense effort. Every thought, every attempt at focus or concentration was met with resistance. His mind, so usually agile and sharp, now struggles to copy the penal code numbers correctly. Each breakthrough and idea slips past his grasp before he fully understands them. It’s like a dense fog that muddles clarity, synchronizing with the hammering on both sides of his head.

He gets a fleeting moment of respite and almost slumps over with a relieved groan that sneaks past his lips. Whether or not it was audible, Mike really didn’t care, not when seconds later the relentless assault was back.

He glances at his computer for a sense of the time and the words on his screen, once crisp and clear, now swirls into an indistinct haze as if ink had seeped and spread across the monitor. His eyes scan the screen quicker, and his brain picks little bits of information and holds onto them, trying desperately to process information as quickly as he reads through it. Every blink felt like an eternity; each glance at the screen only deepened the confusion. Frustration wells up, mingling with a hint of nausea that threatens to overwhelm him further. Defeated, Mike covers his eyes with his palms to prevent any of the cool-white, fluorescent lights from intensifying the pulsating ache in his temples.

His coworkers pay no mind and shuffle their papers busily. But something about that sound along with the clock's ticking, the air conditioning's soft hum, and the occasional scrape on the paper as the uni-ball pens run out of ink only adds further torment. The faintest sounds reverberate through his skull like thunder; it would be impossible for him to resume work.

Maybe now was the chance to finally get some lunch and a quick breather.

¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤

A week ago when Harvey first inquired about the visitation hours, he had no intention of actually seeing Mike. It had already been three weeks, what was there to see? The doctors already gave him weekly updates and swore to call if anything changed. That was all he needed.

Weekly updates required an actual visit to the hospital, which felt unfair. Reading “the patient’s condition remains stable with no significant changes observed” through an email was one thing—Harvey could just hold off reading its contents until he was actually ready to hear it—but understanding the sugarcoated words while trying to seem composed was entirely another.

The doctor’s prognosis was the same every time. He never deviated, like it was against hospital policy to stop referring to Mike’s condition as “stable”. The man was on life support —that, at least according to Harvey’s definitions, was far from stable.

Harvey was supposed to interrupt the man and ask. Cut the doctor off just as he slid the signed treatment plan back toward the physician. He rehearsed the sentence over and over again, taking a deep breath to steady himself. It was right there, on the tip of his tongue, just waiting for a pause in the doctor’s words. Harvey’s eyes followed the man’s hands, half-listening and nodding when appropriate.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” This was his chance.

He opened his mouth, only to feel foolish when his carefully prepared question suddenly sounded ridiculous. 

Hey, would you be a dear and give me like all of Mike’s medical documents? You know, so that I can protect him from losing his job. Yeah, I’m his boss… what do you mean I’d benefit more if I just fired Mike and replaced him with someone who could actually work? 

“No.” Harvey shrugged off in a forced, casual tone. “Thank you.”

(Anxiety: 1; Harvey Specter: 0.)

The sterile smell of the hospital clung to him as he moved through the labyrinthine hallways of the hospital, barely registering the people he passed. Nurses and doctors in scrubs, patients in wheelchairs, visitors with worried expressions—some even acknowledged him as he passed with a tilt of the head, but everything blurred into a haze of muted colors and muffled sounds.

Harvey knew which hallways to steer clear of, and which ones gave him a safe path outside back to Ray’s car. He couldn’t think of anything other than the image of Mike on the first day lying motionless, hooked up to machines, so he let Donna (and sometimes Jessica), visit instead. If he didn’t refresh his memory, the image would surely fade away. Maybe then, the anticipatory grief would stop bothering him.

Without realizing it, Harvey found himself walking in circles, his path aimless and meandering. He turned a corner, then another, each one looking just like the last. He paused for a moment, trying to get his bearings, but everything seemed unfamiliar. Nothing was relaxing about the beige-painted walls, or the few splotches of green and blue in the tiling, or the disgustingly yellow fluorescent lights.

His feet kept moving though, driven more by muscle memory than conscious thought. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, fingers absently fidgeting with loose change and a crumpled receipt that detailed the disgusting hospital lunch he’d swallowed just to make himself suffer. It wasn’t the same as what Mike was experiencing, but at least they had something in common again.

Suddenly, Harvey stopped. He was standing in front of the hospital information desk, where to the left was Mike’s room. He snapped out of his trance-like state when the receptionist looked up from her computer to give him a polite but curious smile. 

He cleared his throat and scrambled for an excuse to cover his presence. “Excuse me,” he began, his voice hoarse as he tried to maintain his composure, “I was just… I wanted to ask about the visiting hours.” 

Donna already told him the hours.

The receptionist nodded, her expression softening. “Of course. Visiting hours are from 8 AM to 8 PM, but the number of guests depends on the department you are visiting. I can give you a pamphlet about it if you like?”

Donna told him that one too. Up to two visitors, and if the second visitor left the room, they could not wait in the lobby.

“That would be great,” Harvey replied, managing a weak smile. “Thanks.”

He turned away from the desk as soon as the pamphlet was handed to him. As he reached the hallway, his gaze briefly flickered to the cover. The image of an elderly man lying on a hospital bed and smiling warmly at a visitor stared back at him. A pang of bitterness struck him; it was a complete and utter fucking lie—false advertising. Mike’s room wasn’t so warmly lit; he wasn’t even awake to smile like that.

He swallowed hard, focusing on the sound of his footsteps echoing in the corridor, willing himself to push the thoughts away. He folded the pamphlet in haste and tucked it into his suit jacket with a practiced nonchalance.

¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤

The hot dog feels too greasy. His suit is too uncomfortably hot; his forehead threatens him with a potential fever. His limbs ache; his knees are bruising. It’s too bright outside, and now he’s concerned he’s developing a migraine.

It’s not too unbearable yet, he presumes, but he does need to figure out a way to get home and come back to work tomorrow.

At one o’clock, he returns to the lobby. He’s forgotten entirely about just how terrible his suit must look, but it must have been bad if the security guards in the lobby scanned over his figure with a disbelieving look. Mike’s too tired to go up to them and ask what the looks were for. 

The afternoons are typically more free for the associates, and a few assholes stifle laughs behind files of cases for contract negligence and some other bullshit. But those aren’t funny at all, Mike frowns in slight confusion.

The pile of papers on his desk nags and tugs at Mike’s memory, threatening to continue until he remembers. He sits down in unease as he stares blankly; his fingers flip through the folders and skim over the words, trying to find whatever he was somehow forgetting.

His hands ache as he shuffles through the collections, determined to peruse until the weird tingling in his left arm limits his movements. The arm sags, but then again, he was hit from the left side. Maybe he’s just tired, and this is all normal.

It’s terrifying and frustrating to go from remembering every little detail to being able to remember nearly none. But he’ll figure out the document sooner or later, even if it means taking an hour to squint at the words on the page to decipher a sentence.

Mike runs through small questions, just to assure himself that he still remembers the basics. Today is a Monday; 246 times 89 divided by 3 was 7,298. Humans have 46 chromosomes, and New York Vehicle and Traffic Law 600(1)(a) prohibited leaving the scene of an accident without providing all contact information—goddamn it, he forgot to file a police report.

The text cursor flashes on the screen, waiting as he pauses over the first question. Mike could just feel the strain in his cognitive muscles, where the more he struggled, the more elusive the answer felt. There was no way he forgot his name. He’s tempted to stand up and casually ask the associate beside him what his name is. 

Mike moved on to the next question but then stopped in irritation when he couldn’t recall the date.

His hands quiver as they hover, and it isn’t long until his fingers collapse onto the keyboard. Mike huffs in annoyance and frowns when he tries and fails to raise his left arm to run a hand through his hair. Maybe he was tired; he should go home. 

The backspace key clanked as he tapped it with a little more aggression than needed to delete the frustrated keyboard mash. It was a Monday, not Wednesday, and his name definitely had more letters to it than just an M.

Mike rests his forehead in the palm of his hand, eyes closed and half wishing he could fall asleep right then and there. But his lower back is aching, and so is the base of his neck. An associate is looking at him—ready to tattle to Louis, perhaps, and Mike’s mind is blank. So is the police report.

It felt like spinning and blacking out all at once, with a crushing headache that made it feel as if his skull was being squeezed. This was all so much more intense than he recalled a concussion being.

¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤

It was fucking absurd at this point. He could look around the road, and suddenly everything had a memory of Mike attached to it. There was the place Mike always ordered his cheap Chinese food from, and right around the corner was the bar where he had always invited Harvey out for a drink. Harvey always said no of course, and insisted they go to the place near his condo instead because they offered much more than cheap beer.

Three weeks into Mike’s crash, Harvey had visited the hospital a grand total of four times, each for an appointment to sign off another week of treatment. He never arrived early, never lingered after. The doctor showed him results from lab works that looked the exact same as the week before, and that was all. 

He’d spend the weekdays busying himself with work, then occupy every free moment on the weekends with mundane tasks. Dishes were no longer washed in the dishwasher; the washer and dryer were replaced with hand washes. He stocked his refrigerator for the first time, and he even started watering the wilting plants on his balcony in hopes they might flourish again. In the office, he reorganized his bookshelf of records numerous times and had spent more time doing an associate’s job even though he had Rachel as a replacement.

He had hoped that other people in the office would get the signs to just leave him alone—that he was functioning, so clearly he was fine. But then there were calls, texts, emails, hell, even post-it notes stuck on his desk. Each one consisted of some rewording of the same sentence, and there was no point in telling everyone to leave him alone if they would just start to ask with concerned expressions and hesitant voices. 

At first, he brushed them off. “Never been better,” he said, gritting through his teeth. But when the questions started coming from his old clients , that was a whole other story.

If the question was then pursued with an “Are you sure?” and a look of disbelief, he resorted to insults. “Ask me that one more time, and I’ll shove these contracts so far up your ass, that you’ll be negotiating for your next bowel movement rather than your company’s merger.”

There were three main stages to Harvey’s impatience: indifference, irritation, and resentment, although the second and third stages blurred together more often than not. 

However, a new fourth stage appeared about a week ago, when his mind finally had enough. Harvey didn’t have the time to fully enter the elevator before being hounded, being asked again that same question he’d learned to dread: “How are you?” 

The stranger meant that as a casual greeting—he knew that now. A friendly substitute for “Hey, what’s up” or even a “Hi.” Yet still, Harvey found a way to stumble and lose balance in his steps as if he were struck with a blow. He stood frozen, staring at the reflective metal walls of the elevator door as they closed; he couldn’t even manage a fake smile or a nod of acknowledgment. And that was frankly pathetic .

It was pathetic how he struggled to come up with an answer. Either Harvey would answer truthfully, or he’d go with a simple and defensive “I’m fine.”

It was pathetic the way he grew frustrated, and it was even more pathetic when Harvey realized that frustration seemed to be one of the only emotions he was capable of feeling lately. That and despair. He could add hopelessness to that list too.

As much as he tried, he could only dumb down how he truthfully felt after Mike’s accident into two vague categories: emptiness and pain. He was constantly teetering on the edge of just ripping his hair out for no good reason, other than the fact that it was painful and distracting. It was like stepping on eggshells around himself. Every time he discovered how he truly felt, he’d wake up to find himself on the floor of his living room in the same clothes he had worn the night before, with no memory to explain the pounding headache from what he’d considered every time as the worst hangover of his life. And it was like catching himself in the same loop. Nothing he wrote down made any sense to the emotions flowing through his head.

“Try writing down what you feel,” Donna had told him. “It works sometimes, for me.”

“How?”

She shrugged. “Metaphors?”

Well, the notebook was filled with nightly entries, each with little variation in its length. All were a sentence or so long, going anywhere from I fucking miss him to I hate how much I care . And each time he did try to elaborate, the words on the page only seemed to emphasize just how fatuous it all was. 

It’s like carrying a weight that just becomes heavier and heavier . Get a better backpack then? A hiking backpack maybe?

It feels like running through quicksand. He lived in New York, not Florida. He had never even seen quicksand.

His words were just as effective as his attempts at emotional depth—bland and underwhelming.

An “I’m fine” signified a lie. Everyone knew that; it was basic knowledge. But it was safe. It required no in-depth analysis, and it was already ready to be rolled off the tip of his tongue in a mindless blurt. 

But the stranger beat him to it, coughing awkwardly at the silence he inadvertently created. And then Harvey was overthinking again. Could the other man see what was going on in his mind by looking at his face? Was his mental state so easy to read? Was there something he was doing that betrayed the amount of anxiety coursing through him? Was it palpable, and did it prickle the other man’s skin as he tried to look everywhere but at Harvey?

And then came the guilt again; he had ruined a perfectly friendly atmosphere. The other man hadn’t signed up for this. His breathing shallowed and became rapid; a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. If the other man in the elevator with him wasn’t suffocating, Harvey certainly was. It was like the air was being sucked out of the small space, and the walls were closing in around him. He needed to get out. Harvey’s hands trembled as he abruptly surged forward to press the button of the floor they were ascending to—the 21st, which was nearly thirty floors below his.

As soon as the doors slid open, he stepped out, muttering an incomprehensible, hasty apology to the stranger. Harvey felt eyes on him, from both people who worked on the floor and the man in the elevator, but he didn’t dare look anyone in the eye.

His vision blurred as panic set in, and his heart pounded in his chest. Harvey walked briskly down the hallway, taking a corner here, then a U-turn at the dead ends, stopping temporarily to lean on the walls to catch his breath, which was coming in short, sharp gasps. His chest felt like it was on fire; his heart pounded violently against his ribcage, each beat echoing in his ears. 

Harvey’s steps were unsteady, and his palms were sweaty. He didn’t know how he managed to find the bathroom, but he staggered into a stall and locked the door behind him. He leaned against the cool, tiled wall, trying to desperately steady his breathing.

He didn’t know what this feeling was. With a nauseating wave of dizziness, Harvey felt like leaning over the toilet bowl and heaving out his nutritionless breakfast. But with the way his vision blurred, he thought against it—in case he missed the toilet bowl completely and threw up over his shoes. 

Harvey pressed his palms to his temples, feeling the pulse pounding there, and squeezed his eyes shut. His hands were clammy, and a large gush of air as the restroom door opened and closed told him he was sweating profusely everywhere else too.

Shit, shit, shit. This was so stupid, he told himself. This was weak and fucking pitiful. 

He slid down the wall to sit on the bathroom floor, exhausted because his body made the point to tell him he was panicking, but the feeling wasn’t subsiding. Harvey’s throat constricted again, and he struggled to swallow, feeling as though he might choke. He fought tears back, taking deep, shaky breaths in an attempt to calm down.

He had to calm himself down. He was no use to Mike as a healthcare agent if he was going to be hyperventilating anytime Harvey thought about him. He was no use to Jessica or the firm if he spent the morning crying in the bathroom. Or else he was just weak, and to punctuate his distaste, Harvey leaned forward to spit in the toilet bowl. 

He was utterly drained, physically and emotionally, when he finally left the stall, like the panic attack had sapped every last bit of energy from him. The reflection in the bathroom mirror showed a pale, shaken man, far from the composure he naturally carried whenever he donned the suit. Harvey’s stomach churned uncomfortably at what he saw, so he opted to close his eyes and splash cold water on his face, trying to wash away the remnants of the anxiety. 

So naturally, a week later, when it marked a month since Mike’s crash, Harvey had begun to wake with the wish that he could just push Mike out of his mind somehow as if it would help him in any way get over whatever he was feeling. 

But that conversation he shared with Donna last night, that fear—it was something he understood. He needed to know that his most selfish wish hadn’t actually come true. He needed to verify it for himself.

Without thinking, he pressed a familiar slew of numbers and listened as the line rang a few times before someone answered.

“I need to make a last-minute appointment,” Harvey interrupted before the doctor could identify himself.

A crackled sigh came through his phone speaker. “I’ll see you in ten then, Mr. Specter.”

¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤

It’s not until the bullpen suddenly quiets does Mike lift his head from his hand. And it’s then as he watches Harvey walk over with anger on his face that he knows something’s seriously wrong. Either someone—likely Mike—has made a grave error, or Harvey’s just received news that’s thrown him into a fury.

“Mike.” It’s all gentle, a chance to explain himself. Harvey’s scanning his face in an expression that’s anything but gentle.

Mike blinks the name. Is that his name? If it is then he has to finish entering the information on the police report—

“Mike,” Harvey repeats, slightly louder and heavily articulated, in a tone of voice reserved only for when he is running out of patience.

He supposes the answer to his question was the first option then: he’s messed up. But whatever Harvey has to say or yell, he can do that later. 

“Not yet, Harvey. I’m sorry; I just—” Didn’t finish, doesn’t know what Harvey wants, needs to finish a police report that would delete all progress in two minutes… the list for what he’s apologizing for goes on, and he hopes Harvey will be understanding enough for that.

His head is pounding again—Harvey has begun his monologue regardless of whether or not Mike is listening. God, could the fluorescent office lights just stop flickering? His left arm isn’t cooperating, and Harvey is still talking. God, how is he still talking—

“I’m not finished,” Mike blurts. He has no clue if Harvey’s even referencing a missing document, but he just needs the pounding in his head to stop, and it seems like Harvey’s diatribe is fueling it. It catches Harvey off guard and gives him some time to rest his head on his palms again.

“Not yet? Are you serious? I—” Harvey’s words are slurring together, coming out more as a continued slew of sound rather than articulated speech. 

He wants to stand up and tell Harvey to just quiet for a second, to tell him to maybe come back later because this really isn’t a great time. His left leg is tingling and uncooperative; his brain is supposed to know and remember everything—that’s why Harvey had hired him in the first place—yet he just can’t recall the license plate he had spent so much time staring blankly at.

“Harvey, I’m sorry, really I’m—”

He doesn’t remember what Harvey says next, or what he had said to counter it, but he hopes the man has nothing important to update him on because his desk is suddenly looking like a comfortable place to rest his head.

He lets the fatigue catch him, and the last thing he recalls is the sound of his forehead hitting the desk as the lack of blood in his head takes away his eyesight.

¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤ ¤━━━¤

There was something about the glance Donna gave him when Harvey passed her desk to enter his office. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint it, and he wasn’t necessarily in the mood to try either.

“Jessica wants to see you.”

Harvey looked up, “When?”

“Ten minutes ago.”

It’s unprofessional the way he dragged his feet over to Jessica’s office. His shoulders ached from his stunt earlier, and he only straightened his posture when he caught Jessica looking at him through the glass walls.

“How are you doing?” she greeted. 

It’s funny because Harvey half-expected his body to seize up again and dramatically collapse onto the chair. Instead, he had just let out a tired sigh, before eyeing Jessica’s expression wearily. Harvey let her question hang in the air, and searched her face for any signs of forced sympathy or an expectation in a certain answer.

“Harvey?”

He knew she meant well—everyone did—but the weight of their concern that forcefully demanded an answer was becoming overwhelming. He didn’t want to think about how he was feeling right now, let alone talk about it.

“I’m…” Harvey found himself answering, and his voice hesitated at his realization. It was better to be truthful. She wasn’t asking from a place to try to gain a favor or take advantage of his vulnerability. But everything was so tightly woven together that he couldn’t even tell if he was on the verge of crying because he was scared that Mike wasn’t going to wake up, or because Harvey was angry that the car that hit him ruined a perfectly good Monday.

He was… as well as one could be considering the circumstances? He certainly wasn’t fine. He knew that, and the fact that he really didn’t want to dissect his emotions right here in Jessica’s office, because if he did it would certainly end in a breakdown and heavy alcohol consumption before it was even noon. The state of not knowing was the only thing keeping him from completely unraveling.

“I’ll manage,” Harvey answered, walking a few steps into the room and letting the door close behind him. It was true, to his defense; he needed to.

He could feel Jessica’s eyes on him, waiting for him to continue, to elaborate. But he couldn’t. He didn’t want to talk about it, because it meant acknowledging possibilities he didn’t even want to think about.

The silence stretched between them, heavy and awkward. Jessica’s neutral face slipped to show signs of concern, and he appreciated it—he really did. But he also resented it. He resented the fact that several senior partners and clients caught onto the news and paid him a special visit just to treat him like he was something fragile. 

I’m so sorry for your loss, the majority of them would say—like he was somehow mourning . Mike was alive. If anyone deserved a visit with an attached feel-better-soon, it was Mike.

The board members had caught on too—in their own ways, they each had the nerve to question Harvey’s capabilities to his face. Yes , he was fine. No , his associate wasn’t dead. And no , the whole situation would not interfere with his ability to handle their cases. 

“I just… need to focus on work,” he continued, hoping that Jessica could sense his annoyance and back down. “Thanks for asking, Jessica. I appreciate it.”

Jessica nodded slowly, her expression softening with understanding. “Of course, Harvey. Take all the time you need. If you ever want to talk—”

“Thanks,” he muttered, cutting her off before she could say more.

Jessica cleared her throat before she spoke again. “Well, I apologize for calling you into my office so early, but we need to discuss Mike’s employment situation.” She reached for a collection of papers bound by a paper clip. 

“I’ve taken the liberty of filing and approving Mike’s sick and vacation leaves. However, that would only last him another week. Now, I can approve a family and medical leave, but I need a—”

“A doctor’s diagnosis,” Harvey interrupted.

“Exactly.”

If the doctor was surprised by Harvey bursting into his office three minutes early, he did a good job of concealing it.

(No chickening out, no chickening out, no chickening out—)

“You were in here just a few days ago,” the doctor greeted, amusement clear on his lips as he continued. “I’m not expecting another payment for another few days, so how may I help you?”

Harvey wasted no time. “I need some medical documents.”

“What for?” The doctor raised an eyebrow, intrigued, and gestured for the attorney to take a seat.

“Short term disability leave.”

“You do know that it doesn’t grant a lot of time, right?” The doctor turned to face his computer, typing quickly.

“What’s the maximum coverage?”

“Barely even six months.”

“That’s more time than what sick and vacation leaves grant him.”

“It would take a while, you know. And who knows, Mr. Ross’s insurance might deny it.”

Harvey had to try. “With his medical evidence? I doubt it.”

He sat there in silence, watching the doctor scan through and fill in information where necessary. He needed to get this done fast. Then he could visit Mike, reassure himself that he was still alive, and then never ever come back again.

“Do you need the form as well to claim disability benefits?” The doctor’s voice broke the silence, drawing Harvey’s gaze from his nervously fidgeting fingers.

Almost automatically, he responded, “That would be great.”

Moments later, a warm stack of papers were moved from the printer and into Harvey’s waiting hands. “Thank you,” he murmured, tucking the papers safely in a folder before he stood up.

(Ha! He hadn’t chickened out! [Anxiety: 1; Harvey Specter: 1.] Tie!)

He practically sprinted to Mike’s room after that—ecstatic to tell him that he hadn’t given up yet. That everything he thought last night while speaking to Donna wasn’t genuine, and that he was going to try to maintain Mike’s life until he could wake. 

From then on, he insisted on visiting every day. It didn’t matter if he still had work to do; he’d just bring his laptop and folders, sprawl them around, and work from the cold, vinyl hospital flooring.