Season 7 Episode 10

The call came in at 2:13 in the morning. Penelope had been deep in a restless sleep. She was stuck in a dream where she was late for work. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear every 911 call that was being made, every emergency that she was missing. Penn kept trying to reach the alarm clock that was ringing incessantly. The harder she tried the further it got. In her dream-induced state, she started to panic. People were dying and she couldn't get out of bed. The ringing of the clock got louder and louder until Penn finally jolted awake.

Penn groaned and flung her hand aimlessly onto the nightstand until she found her phone. She didn't even glance at the screen before answering.

"Hello?" She said groggily. She could have still been dreaming for all she knew.

"Hi ma'am, I'm calling from First Presbyterian Hospital. Am I speaking with Penelope Nash?" A woman on the other end asked.

Penn pulled herself into a sitting position and tried to rub sleep from her eyes. "Yes, this is she. What's going on?"

"I'm afraid your parents have been in an accident. You should come to the hospital as soon as you can."

Penn, still being half-asleep, was slow to catch up with what the nurse had said. "Parents?" she asked, confused. Images of her father and Marcy flashed through her mind. And much more blurry ones of her father and mother. What did they mean parents?

"Yes honey, your parents. Bobby Nash and Athena Grant?"

Oh. Those parents.

Penn nodded slowly, even though she was not visible to the woman on the phone. "Oh...oh my god! What happened?"

"There was a fire. We can tell you everything once you get here."

Penn shot out of bed and started searching her apartment for her car keys. Where were the damn things? "I'll be there soon," she said, hanging up the phone. She found her keys and slipped on a pair of runners. That was the last thing she remembered.

Penn didn't know how she got to the hospital. She had no memory of walking through the front doors, or of asking the receptionist for directions to her father's room. For the last thirteen hours Penn sat unmoving in the same waiting room chair. Her legs remained uncrossed and her hands were folded neatly in her lap. Her back was straight, but leaning against the back of the chair. It was the way her mother had taught her to sit during mass. She hadn't been to mass in years.

Her mother had gotten into a car accident when Penn was thirteen. She was a police officer involved in a high-speed chase that resulted in a massive collision. Penn has no memory of that day other than the endless waiting in the hospital waiting room. And just like she had back then, Penn stared emotionless through the window of her father's room. He was intubated, strung up like a puppet with the amount of tubes and wires coming out of his body. But it was like Penn couldn't see him. She was completely lost in her own mind.

Athena had come and gone, and eventually her team showed up as well. Penn felt like she was moving in slow motion, that the world around her was too fast to keep up with. Her team, her family, sat beside her, put comforting arms around her. But by the time she noticed them they disappeared. Even her own breathing felt like it took hours to draw a single breath.

At this point, her team had seen this before. The lifeless person she became while waiting on a miracle. It wasn't all that long ago that she was here waiting for Buck to come back to her. She was slightly more conscious then, or maybe she just had a better grasp on the memories. Hen, Chim, and Eddie all took turns trying to get her to drink something, to eat something, to say something. It was no use. Penn was a ghost trapped inside a haunted house. "She's not going to budge, guys." Bobby had told them. "I've seen her like this before. When her mother died." The statement was anything but comforting. But with Bobby's assurance that Penn would be okay, Hen, Chim, and Eddie left her be.

But, this meant that Buck was the only person left unsettled by the behaviour of his best friend. He had never seen her so still, so empty. And maybe it was easier to focus on her instead of Bobby because at least with Penn he felt like he could actually do something. He sat beside her the moment he laid eyes on her. When she gave no response to him he tried harder to get her to look at him. He begged her, pleaded with her, and even shook her a bit. Nothing.

Buck looked at the rest of the team desperately. They just shook their heads, letting him know his efforts wouldn't change Penn's demeanour. They knew what Penn was doing, but they couldn't explain it to Buck. They didn't know how. The only person who could make Buck understand was lying on his deathbed.

"Penn come on, you've been here for hours. You're going to starve if you don't eat anything." Buck was on his knees in front of her now. "Please, just look at me."

Buck placed a gentle hand on Penn's knee. The contact sent a pulse shooting up her spine. She rose to her feet abruptly, nearly knocking Buck over in the process. Their friends all stopped their hushed conversations to watch what Penn's next move might be. Penn stepped over Buck and took straight for Bobby's room. Truthfully, she didn't have much control over herself.

Penn blinked and found herself standing over Bobby's body. The sound of machines beeping and whirring filled the room. Sorrow deep enough to drown her threatened to take over her, but Penn kept it contained in the pit of her stomach. She knew better than to go looking for emotions she knew she had no business trying to handle. To her surprise though, she could feel something else brewing inside of her. Anger. Anger that would become rage if she let it.

She knew the fire last night couldn't have been Bobby's fault, but it brought her back to that night in 2014 all the same. And beyond that, she knew that this, that death, was what Bobby had been waiting for, for years. She wasn't oblivious to the signs. She could tell something was wrong in the days leading up to this day. Finding out that Bobby had gifted Eddie his notebook of names was the straw that broke the camel's back. So the fact that Penn was looking down at her father in a hospital bed, the fact that all his darkness and grief might actually win, well it made her incredibly angry.

Penn thought she would come into the room and sit at her father's bedside. She thought she would take his hand in hers, careful not to disturb the IV line, and give his unconscious form a teary speech about how much she needed him. Because she did, she did need him. And so did Athena, and May and Harry, and everyone at the 118. Robert Nash was not a force that could be easily replaced.

Penn swallowed her feelings. From the corner of her eye, she could see Buck and her team members watching her. They were as still as she once was, waiting to see if she would break like glass or go off like a bomb. Penn ignored them as best she could. She focused on Bobby's face, on the wrinkles around his eyes from years of smiling. The faintest hints of freckles that painted his cheeks. The same ones that splashed across Penn's. Growing up, she always heard that she looked like her mother because of their shared fiery red hair. But Penn always thought she took after her father. They shared the same smile, the same nose, the same grief. Penn hated the idea of having to share the faces of everyone she's ever lost. She took a step closer to the bed and spoke clearly to Bobby.

"Don't you dare become another ghost I have to carry with me."

The machines beeped in response. Penn closed her eyes and heaved a great sigh. She turned on her heels and returned to her seat in the waiting room. She placed her hands in her lap once more and focused her gaze on Bobby's room. Penn was not going to give up on her father. Not again, and not yet. 

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a/n: hello i hope you enjoyed this i did in fact cry while watching this ep. 9-1-1 writers istg im going to come for you one of these days.