FanFic: "Ground Fire" (Hawaii Five-0) - Chapter 17 of ??
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He was floating and it wasn't entirely pleasant. He would have expected it to be a happy feeling, but without the ability to find purchase .. to even think clearly ... no, it wasn't an entirely pleasant experience. Besides that very palpable discomfort, there was also a constant hum. Or more, it was a deep vibration of sound. That at least was more agreeable even though he couldn't define precisely what it was. His larger issue though soon became his continued inability to focus more strongly on anything, including the calmer drone which settled deeply in his bones. The hum was there, he knew it without doubt. However, he couldn't control it or find the energy to bring it closer and so, he became afraid of losing it.
Danny shuddered involuntarily when it receded so far away that he thought it was in fact, gone. Floating in a near soundless void increased his unease and meant that he'd been entirely wrong about the deep tonal vibration's constancy after all. A spark of fear kindled until he realized that only the timbre had changed and the hum was returning even stronger than before. He blindly accepted the brief threat of the lull as the hum remained and then soon forgot it even happened.
"How is he?" Steve looked up from between his fingers to find Sergeant Duke Lukela straddling the doorway. "I just saw Chin and Kono. It was a real mess in here, Steve." The older police officer was more than sympathetic by what had occurred over the last many hours.
"Debacle comes to mind." Steve snorted softly as he rose to greet the man. "And no, Danny's not good right now." Actually, Steve had visited each of his other team members earlier in the hour. Chin had fallen asleep with an unceremonious apology and Kono had been loathe to do anything more than lay silently in her darkened room. He had then followed up on the injured Coast Guardsmen, especially Mike who was happily doing better than expected.
Now, Steve had been filling Danny in on Chin and Kono's health even as he lay in a fevered state. "He hasn't moved in hours; not a single inch. Nothing." Steve murmured softly.
The fact was disconcerting and so not Danny, that Duke didn't need to ask about anything else. From where he stood, he could see the ongoing drips to push fluids and medications which were all still desperately in play to stabilize a badly stressed system. Chin Ho had survived emergency surgery to repair a torn artery and was resting a few doors down in the intensive care unit. His cousin, Kono, was technically faring better in terms of her own injuries, but that was only based upon common medical lingo. Housed in a quiet private room and pale as migraines and nausea plagued her, she was peevish and sick as she recovered from a severe concussion and an infection acquired from her injured arm.
Walking closer, Duke winced while measuring Danny's complexion. Pale and with lips still tinged a light blue, he could literally hear the still too rapid and erratic sequence of breaths under the oxygen mask. Duke obviously wasn't a doctor, but after years of experience in the field, he knew that Danny's skin would still be cold and clammy; all of which were testament to the shock his body was attempting to recover from. The infection and fever were simply two more insults to contend with.
"He got through surgery, Steve. That was the hardest part." Duke tried to balance what he was seeing, yet failed miserably. A number of IV's had been strung to push fluids, blood, antibiotics and medication. His same field experience provided other basic knowledge and he roughly knew the numbers and what they meant when he looked at each machine. Danny's O2 sats were low, his respiration was high, his heart rate rapid, and yet his blood pressure was much too low. Heaving a sigh as he took a half step back, Duke agreed that 'debacle' was an excellent descriptive word.
"We'll know for sure in another twenty-four hours." Steve's monotone response coincided with a nurse's arrival. She came in at least every hour wheeling her traveling computerized medical chart, if not sooner, to confirm readings or check whatever was flowing into her patient's body. Her expressionless face matched how Steve felt only on the outside and she was gone only seconds later after taking notes which were dutifully input into Danny's online records.
Inside though, Steve was in turmoil as he hesitated to contact Danny's ex-wife who was vacationing with their daughter on the mainland. He needed to make that call, but the concept brought a terrible foreboding which he was fighting tooth and nail. Mentally, Steve promised to call later ... later when something more happened .. be that good or even bad. But no, not yet.
"Duke, I'll come with you for the rest of the day." He spoke without looking at the sergeant. Tearing himself away would be difficult, but working with HPD and helping Duke locate Trish Pratt would be a justifiable way to spend that time. It gave him a real goal and provided a valid excuse. He could do that and it would make sense.
"I'll join you. We can talk on the way back to the precinct and come up with a game plan." With a final glance towards Danny, Steve attempted to move past Duke. However, he was stopped by a rather smug smile as the man remained rooted at the foot of Danny's hospital bed.
"No. Why?" Duke asked, never once taking his eyes from Steve's confused expression. It was a loaded question and Steve cocked his head quizzically at the not so humble tone.
"Pratt's wife. It stands to reason that our only lead is now dead. She's still out there, though .. somewhere." The shooter whom Andrea Winston had sent to finish the job had died on the operating room table. Evidence in his car indicated that he had possibly been the one and only link to the missing lawyer's wife. With no leads, Winston was long gone, too. But Steve's voice trailed off as Duke's smile deepened and he bore an air of great personal satisfaction.
"What are you telling me, Duke? You found her?" A thin smile finally tugged at Steve's mouth. The entire posture Duke had adopted was one of utter success. "You did, didn't you. Is she alive?"
Completely pleased with himself, the older officer shrugged nonchalantly. Not only wishing to check on Five-0's status, he also had come to personally bring Steve up-to-speed. "I didn't want to bother you yet with all that you've been dealing with here; especially since this one thing ended favorably. But after CSU evaluated call records, text messages and whatever trail they could piece together, we narrowed the area to something very reasonable. We were lucky too to some extent, but we did find her very much alive .. not so very well, but definitely alive."
It certainly wasn't the last responsibility to contend with, but Trish Pratt's rescue was a significant load he'd been relieved of and Duke Lukela had every right to be proud of that fact. Concern would still run rampant once Andrea Winston realized her second failure point. But it was a definite win for the good guys and they were learning quickly how deep the Tortorro animosity and deception could reach.
"That's great news." With a sense of relief bigger than he'd thought, Steve warmly complimented him. "It has to be the best news yet. Pratt must be thrilled."
"He is .. they both are. She's a bit worse for wear and will be staying at Queen's Medical for a day or two. But overall, she'll make a complete recovery." Duke added. He and his team had found her at the construction site. Deep in the bowels of the renovation amongst scaffolding, pallets of lumber and dry wall, Trish Pratt had been trapped behind one closed door to a makeshift windowless, storage room. In actuality, her prison would one day be a small bathroom to a single hotel room. But upon finding her tied tightly to a chair with no hope of escape, it was merely a small prison.
"The FBI has refined their detail here to two particular representatives; they are guarding Tortorro's room as if it were Fort Knox. As can we, if you think it's warranted to add more uniforms for security?" Duke was referring now to their portion of the mission. It was a legitimate question even though the FBI was resuming complete accountability for Al Tortorro's safety going forward. If he was ever cleared to be moved, the FBI was already discussing other hospitals or a safe house with a small contingent of dedicated medical staff. "Regardless of what they do or what you decide, I assume we are maintaining the same plan of action?"
Al Tortorro had made it through his own emergency surgery, but now lay in a coma after being placed on life support. HPD and Five-0 had discussed avowing the man's death even from back in the jungle; just after the plane had been brought down by ground fire. They had another opportunity now to either delay or even mitigate the truth from leaking out until a more opportune time. Continually declaring his death was a basic plan to give them all breathing room and Al Tortorro a better chance of making it to trial.
"Yeah." Steve nodded, preferring to go the original route. "We stick to the plan for now and add our own people here to offer backup support. If the FBI wants to do anything differently, then they can deal with the fallout themselves."
"So, I assume you're going to stay here for a few more hours?" Duke asked. He had wandered a bit closer to the bed, uncomfortably taking in the machines, leads and then, the various medications being pumped into his friend. Behind him, Steve didn't answer. Instead, Duke could feel the anxiety being broadcast as Steve began a short agitated pacing. He sighed and shook his head at the volume of trouble the Tortorro issue had caused until he noticed a small change.
"Steve." At first drawn to the slight twitch of Danny's fingers, Duke stared full into his face. His smile was firmly back in place when he realized that he was being watched. Perhaps not very clearly or with much understanding, but Danny's eyes were indeed open. "Steve, he's awake."
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The ongoing conversation near where Danny lay was the reason for the sonorous hum and its persistence helped build the tenuous thread needed to peel his eyes open. However after that monumental effort, he remained out of sorts and unable to truly focus on the two blurry images hanging so closely over his head. He didn't understand that the hum was really a translation of speech. Vision was a colorless merging of black and white; dark and light. Words evaded him, as did the ability to think and come up with what he thought he was seeing.
With no ability or compulsion to do more, he stared upwards and tried to absorb the soothing hum. It ebbed, flowed and something changed around him, yet for the most part, it stayed relatively constant. It was enough to let it just happen and allow it to flow over him.
"Danny?" Steve's hesitant smile dropped instantly as Danny lay with his eyes partially opened, yet utterly still and unresponsive. He waited a fraction of a second longer before reacting to the ghostlike, very disturbing stare. "Something's wrong."
He was gone then, forgetting the nurse's call button to leave the room at an anxious trot to find the closest doctor or nurse. "Danny?" Duke gently lay a hand on his friend's shoulder, surprised to find the odd combination of cold sweat and heat drifting upwards. "Danny, can you hear me? Steve's gone to get a doctor, so just hang in there for us. Alright?"
Wincing again for the lack of recognition, the older officer was rendered speechless while he hoped his presence was doing at least some good. But what he thought was eye movement at first, was really a glassy fixed expression. A doctor and two nurses maneuvered Duke to the side where Steve joined him. His fisted hands immediately found his hips out of a frenetically worried habit to vainly keep the rest of his body still. They both waited impatiently as the doctor examined Danny from head to toe until Steve couldn't take the confusion of orders. He calculated the severity of the doctor's face as he injected something into one of the intravenous lines and felt his own stomach plummet in warning.
"So? What's wrong?" The tone was harsh and Duke automatically put a restraining and on Steve's forearm. "He's awake .. he's looking at us."
The doctor's own pensive expression and dismal shake of the head negated that remark though. Steve had forgotten the stress the entire medical staff was under in addition to the Five-0 group. Over-taxed with injured peers and equally important Coast Guardsmen, the doctor was short and a bit more abrupt than normal. "He's in shock, Commander. And while he may hear or even sense something on some level, he's not exactly looking at any of us."
The curt answer was completely unsatisfactory, yet Steve couldn't find a single thing to say as he stared incomprehensibly at Danny's eyes. Slivers of pale blue could be seen, but they were indeed murky and quite unfocused. He barely heard the doctor's revised explanation as he shifted his feet to finally lean heavily on the base of the hospital bed.
"This could happen again and he may hear you .. or at least sense the activity around him. But no, he's not entirely aware nor awake." The doctor amended quietly.
"Fine." Almost defeated, Steve nearly spat the word out into hands that were strangling the bed's foot rail. "What did you just give him?"
"A dose of norepinephrine. His blood pressure is slightly improved and I wanted to encourage that with an added boost. It constricts the veins and arteries, without increasing cardiac pressure." The doctor gauged the two officers in front of him. One older and more calmly accepting, yet just as concerned. The second much younger and resentful of that same level of understanding. He searched his own ample knowledge base to find a reasonable next step that would give at least one of them something useful to do.
"I suggest doing whatever it was when he seemed to open his eyes." The doctor waited while looking at each man. In particular, the younger nodded and shrugged because he'd only been talking. Though the care was optimal and the nurses were well aware of any major changes in their patients, the doctor saw suit to add another comment before leaving the room. They were all traumatized one way or another; each needing support no matter how it was offered. "If anything else should happen, don't hesitate to get us back in here."
"Stay with him." Duke was sober as he awkwardly patted Steve's arm again. He would follow-up with the FBI and with the Pratt situation in his steady, diligent manner. He had heard the murmur of one voice as he approached Danny's room. He had listened briefly while standing in the doorway upon his arrival.
To compound that, he was sure that their soft conversation might have added to the small set of stimuli which brought Danny a bit closer to waking. It was also something that Steve needed to do for himself and Duke easily instilled the last prompt to make sure it happened. His last words pushed Steve to resume the seat he'd originally held by the bedside.
"Stay here and talk to him. I'll take care of everything else."
~ to be continued ~
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