Free (Maze Runner fanfic Newtmas Newt x Thomas)

Epilogue

Ten years later

The two men jolted awake as Newt's work phone blared its ringtone. Newt wildly and blindly reached to switch it off, tapping the screen to answer it and bringing it to his ear. "H-hello..?" He murmured, half awake and half terrified.

"Newt there's been an accident on the motorway near the edge of the city and we're super short staffed! We need you to come down and help with these patients because some are in critical condition and dozens of others are injured!"

"In the middle of the night..?" He squinted at his phone screen to read the time. "Okay.. I'll be there in ten." He hung up and forced himself to roll out of bed, landing with a thump and then sitting up in confusion.

"Where are you going?" Thomas whispered, lifting his head.

"Work.. there's been an accident, need more staff. Gotta go."

"When will you be back?"

"I don't know. Depends if they make me still do my afternoon shift." Thomas turned on a bedside light. "Go back to sleep, I'll change in the bathroom; and.. sorry about waking you, I forgot to turn down the ringtone volume." Newt picked up his uniform from where it hung over a chair and took his two phones as well.

"It's fine, just.. gimme kiss when you go."

Newt smiled. "I will." Thomas turned out the light and Newt used his phone torch to make his way to the bathroom.

He rushed to get changed and left his pyjamas on the bathroom floor, returning to Thomas but saw he'd fallen back to sleep already. Newt stroked back his fringe and gently kissed his forehead. He quietly shut their bedroom door and tiptoed past the other rooms too before going downstairs and out the front door, locking it behind him.

The whole nurse job was horrible when he had night shifts, especially ones he probably wasn't going to be paid for and his job description said he only did dedicated shifts; but any job probably had situations like these, and accidents at night were always short staffed, plenty more people around in the day.

One thing that Newt learned while studying, which surprised him, was that in this country health care used to be free, but it was always overcome at night and people were abusive; that part hadn't changed, but it did inevitably get privatised like the rest of the world.

Newt sometimes wondered what it would have been like to live back then, with much less developed technology, but free health care! That stuff was expensive now. Then again, he lived in a post apocalyptic world so not a lot was the same, even if they were back then.

Sirens whizzed past him during his walk to work, so he wasn't surprised to find people rushing about everywhere inside and he was pulled away to work before he could hang his coat up. The first patient was covered in blood and he had to clean the wounds, and those kind of things were his job.

He quickly forgot it was the middle of the night and his family slept back home, in their cosy beds with pillows and nice warm duvets; and Newt was here. He didn't mind, this was his job, and he loved it.

The ptsd had calmed down a lot, he came off his tablets a couple years ago, he rarely got nightmares and he wasn't depressed more than the average person. For better choice of words, Newt was back to normal.

Thomas proposed when Newt was at university and they got married once money started coming in and Newt began training, and being inspired by their friends both gladers and new starting families... so did they. They'd only had them since shortly after Newt stopped taking his medicine; six year old Lily and her three year old younger brother Max who had been four and one when they met. Thomas wasn't keen on a baby at all, but Newt's studies meant he was home a lot and their friends were surprisingly happy to babysit fairy often.