CSI: NY part 23
The next couple of parts will be pretty long, as I couldn't figure out good places to split up the narrative
Danny was grabbing a coffee to keep him going the next half hour, until his shift ended and he could head home to dress for the community center party, away from the nuts out on Halloween highjinks. He was about to pay for his coffee when his radio squawked.
"4539, Messer. Urgent, report to the precinct."
"Messer. Heading that way."
After his partner nodded that he'd take care of the last 15 minutes, he ran back to the precinct, almost knocking the wind out of himself on the dispatcher's counter.
"Hey, Del. What's the message?"
"An Ella called, something about you needing to get to University Hospital, " reading from her slip, she said, "she said to tell you, 'Your Caro's hurt, come quickly'. I've gotten the OK from the Lute, she wishes you luck."
In case you don't remember, Devon was in their English class (the Beowulf=comic book discussion)
After a harrowing 20 minutes to change and run the six blocks in the middle of rush hour, Danny arrived at the reception desk. "Don Flack, please."
"Reason for visit?" the nurse droned.
"He's my partner."
"Don't lie to me, his partner's already checked on him."
"Not that kind of partner, lady!"
She rolled her eyes, picking up the phone.
"Deb, grab Mrs. Flack from the waiting room up there, put her on the phone...Hello, Mrs. Flack. I have a young man here, says he's your son's partner," pausing, she turned to Danny, asking for his name, at his answer, she made a face. "Alright, Mrs. Flack. He'll be right up...Floor 5, he's in surgery."
"Thank you, ma'am," he sprinted to the elevator, squeezing in as the door closed.
When he arrived on the floor, after a long stop at every floor in between, he looked at the directory. From what the nurse said on the phone, he was looking for the surgery waiting room. He was staring blankly at the directory when he heard a familiar voice saying his name.
"Ma, what's wrong with him?" He asked, words muffled in her hair as she hugged him tightly.
"He was helping a detective with a field interview with someone who was either a nasty witness, or a suspect, no one's told me which. The man pulled a gun, shot Don in the left shoulder and thigh. The shoulder wound wasn't too nasty, but the bullet was against the nerves, and the thigh shot nicked the artery. He'll have to stay for a few days."
"No problems with mobility?"
"Once everything's healed, he'll be back to normal, but he'll be desk-bound for a month or two because of the shoulder, probably. Be prepared for him being cranky."
"He wasn't too bad when he had bronchitis, I just want him better."
"He broke his leg in junior high, he was a terror. Now, come on, let's get you on the approved visitor list before he gets out of surgery. The nurses said it wouldn't be too much longer."
When Don woke up, he saw Ma and Danny sitting next to his bed, asleep. Danny looked like he'd been crying. When he started shifting around, Danny woke up.
"Caro...How you feeling?"
"Shot, but they have me on good drugs, so I'll be fine. Come lie down with me? I guess we're not working at the party this year either."
Getting up, Danny climbed in to Don's right side, careful not to touch the IV.
"Yeah. Once I got here and Ma told me what was up, I called Bob at the center...We really need to change your contact information. I understand why we initially had your mom down as the emergency contact, 'cause I was in school, but I had to hear from Ma calling the precinct and Del, the dispatcher, taking a message. Why didn't Gavin call?"
"He was out sick today, that's why I was doing 'tec back-up, they didn't want me on beat without my partner."
They chatted for a bit longer, until the nurse came in to check on him, awakening Ma. She left shortly afterward, going to make dinner and tell Donald.
Once Don had eaten his Jello and soup, Danny asked, "Don, I...Do you wanna make things more official? Ma said something about your dad retiring, they might move to Florida in a year or so."
"You mean sign papers so you can make medical decisions? You're already on the deed for the apartment, so that’s taken care of. We have a joint account..."
"Yeah. I know you love me, but...I'd feel better if I was the one they called when you got hurt, and vice versa. I've been lucky so far, just patch jobs where I can call you while I'm waiting for the local to kick in before stitches...I'm babbling."
Smiling dopily, partly due to the conversation, and partly because of the drugs, Don mumbled, "My kitten, I'd love to be your husband...I'm really tired. I think that nurse slipped me something. You gonna stay?"
"Ma said she'd take care of it. I'll move the recliner over here so I can sleep next to you without knocking anything. So, rings or ID bracelets?"
"Rings can wait until we have a ceremony, legal or not, and when we have time to re-learn our gun grips. ID bracelets with messages on the underside."
Before Danny could respond, Don was asleep with a smile on his face. A matching one shone on Danny's.
Don woke once in the night, about 20 minutes before his next dose of painkillers. He couldn't go back to sleep, so he planned the engravings he wanted on Danny's bracelet on a napkin and stuck it in Danny's jacket pocket.
When Danny awoke at his internal alarm clock, he saw it was an hour until he had to be at work. He grabbed for the little notepad he kept in his jacket pocket, but found the napkin first. Smiling, he put it in the other pocket, writing a note for Don, telling him he'd be at work, he'd be back at 4:30.
Since it was a bit early, he headed to a place on the way to the precinct that he knew engraved the steel bracelets many associated with med-alerts. When he arrived at work, Del was worried about him, so he reassured her that everything was getting better, that it was mainly a blood loss issue. He got changed, and it was still about 20 minutes before roll-call, so he looked in his cubby for forms that needed to be filled out or filed. Mike had a little girl with cerebral palsy, so whenever he got a call, Mike did the paperwork the next day. He figured he'd return the favor.
Once they were out on the streets, Danny told him the basics, his lover was hurt and the call was to get over to the hospital. Once that was over, it was a pretty normal shift, running after a couple dealers, stopping a hold-up, helping a little kid find his mom...
Mike let him off the hook on paperwork, telling him to go back to the hospital.
Arriving on the 5th floor, he almost ran head-on into Derek.
"Whoa, Danny. Hi, Don's just gotten a pain shot, they kicked me out. Keep me updated? I'd stay, but I promised Carly I'd be home soon."
"Sure, Derek. Have a nice night."
When he arrived in Don's room, he had a roommate, a college kid with a broken leg in traction. He was the only visitor, though.
"Hey, caro. I hear you just got some of the good stuff."
"Yup. Jack here did too. His mom's a bitch. She yelled at him for getting hurt, then left. Did you see the message I left you?"
"I even took it to the engraver's. You're just lucky I know how many links are in your watch band. It'll be ready in 3 days."
Don made a silly pout and puppy eyes, moaning, "Why don't you want to kiss me? You propose marriage last night, and not even a kiss today?"
Giving in, since Jack didn't seem disgusted by the conversation, he gave Don a proper hello kiss, complete with hand in hair and lots of tongue.
"Better?" Danny panted.
"Much. It's almost time for dinner, come sit with me?"
At about nine, since Ma was back, and promised to stay the night, Danny went home to go through the mail and clean out the fridge. He also got together a bag of clothes for Don.
Don got to come home from the hospital two days later, as he was fully rehydrated, on pills instead of morphine, and the tingling in his fingers had gone away. Danny made sure he was off-duty that day, as he wanted to be the one to take Don home.
They were on the couch, eating chicken noodle soup, when Danny brought up the fact that their bracelets would be done the next day.
"I'll pick them up. And do you still have Devon's phone number?"
"You're going to talk to her about who to have compose the documents?"
"Yeah, she's L3 by now, and clerking for someone expensive, so she'd have some clue. She could probably even do it, cause some people write their own. I want to ask her if there’s something different we should do, since we don’t have the finality of marriage to support it."
Danny nodded, "She's actually not clerking this term, she's doing something for Ma, helping the residents with their options against their husbands, and such."
"I thought I remembered Ma mentioning a Devon, I didn't know it was the same one," Wiggling his eyebrows, Don continued, "I didn't sleep well without you cuddled up. Lounge with me?"
Danny agreed, helping Don take off the zippered sweatshirt and his button-down. They settled in bed, Don on his back, Danny facing him on his side, head on his good shoulder, arm across his stomach. It didn't take more than 10 minutes for them to drift off, though they awakened quickly when they heard their front door open. Danny quietly got up, but relaxed when he saw it was Ma.
"Ma, don't scare us like that! Don's in the bedroom."
"It looks like you were too, until recently. Did I interrupt something?"
Don, hearing this from the bedroom, laughed, calling out, "Nah, Ma, come on in, I'm decent."
She did a quick Mom-exam, left a casserole, then cleared out.
The first full day Don was home, Danny went back to work, with the assurance that Ma would be around from 10 to 3. Before Danny got on the train home, he stopped by the shop to pick up the bracelets. They were perfect, though he did not put his on; he put both in his pocket, and headed home.
Don had called Devon that day. She'd loosened up a lot since they had that class group with her, and she was happy to help them write up their papers. It was a week before her big exams, but she promised to visit the day of her last exam.
When Danny got home, there was pizza and soda on the table. Don met him with a kiss.
"I'd have liked to have a fancy meal to celebrate, but I can't really use a fork and knife. You got them?"
"Yeah," he answered heading to the living room, pulling them out after they were sitting on the couch. Reading the inscription as he helped Don put on his bracelet, he said, “Amilo ad Eternità, Marito" and kissed the clasp.
Doing the same, but badly, given the reduced mobility of his left arm, Don put Danny's bracelet on him, saying, "Love is friendship on fire, mo anam cara." Instead of kissing the clasp, he kissed Danny lightly all over his face. Pulling away, he said, "Devon'll come by on the 11th, after her last exam, she said."
A week after the shooting, Don was back at the precinct, though he was on desk duty until his shoulder healed more, and his leg could hold up to running. This meant he was made a dispatcher for a few days, and helped with booking. No one mentioned the new bracelet, mostly because the ones that would comment remembered then-Deputy Chief Flack's tirades about the boyfriend, though Gavin did tease him a bit. He also took the opportunity to redo his emergency contact form.
One day, while they were both off-duty, so they were having a lazy day, Danny said, "We're basically getting married. Maybe we should take a vacation over the holidays, a delayed honeymoon of sorts. Maybe somewhere upstate."
"Not the Caribbean?" Don asked jokingly.
"Nah, too many other people go during the winter. And we could go on Amtrak, no trying to fly when everyone else is."
"Sounds nice. Any particular place?"
"Well, we'd need privacy, and be far enough away from the front desk that we don’t feel like exhibitionists. Maybe one of those summer camps up-state that are used as villas in the off-season."
Thinking about it, Don decided that sounded good.
"There's a place that's a drama camp in the summer that's in an old Catskills resort, the kind with cabins rather than a hotel. Carly went to it one summer during junior high, some of the cabins have kitchenettes, so no need to be dressed the whole week, if we don't want to. I'll call her tomorrow at lunchtime, see if she remembers the name. Thank God I only have one more week of desk duty."
Devon came by at 2 PM, giving them a call before she left campus. She'd asked a professor about the protocol for these kinds of documents, as they'd cover them in the final semester. The professor had even pointed her to a short book meant to act as an office reference on contract formats. She remembered that Don was in that Law seminar their final semester at NYU, so he'd at least recognize some of the words.
"Hey, guys. I'm honored you're involving me in this. It's a shame it's so back-channel still, rather than a marriage license, poof, everything's set."
"Thanks for this, Devon. we didn't mess up your study time, did we?" Danny asked.
"It's nothing, I had a 10 minute talk with the Contract Law professor yesterday and skimmed a 30-page pamphlet on the subway over. So, it's pretty simple..."
It took about 45 minutes to go through the 4 pages on various types of Powers of Attorney and Medical Proxies, and another hour to write up the drafts to be typed.
Standing up, Devon said, "Right, guys. I'll get this typed up. I'll email you the text and you can send back any changes. I'll come by with the final copies on Saturday?"
Don agreed, and stood to let her out.
That night, Danny opened his email and found two text files from Devon, a Power of Attorney and a Medical Proxy Agreement. They looked through them carefully, finding no problems, so they sent a message back, that they were fine.
They went to sleep nervous. Not because of the step they were taking, but because they were so close to getting a concrete date for an anniversary. They'd been disagreeing about when they actually started their relationship. Don wanted to say the day he returned Danny's ID; Danny, being more pragmatic, counted from the night of the concert, or meeting Ma.
The weekend came, and Devon had arrived. She gave them a diskette with the text, so they could reissue them themselves every couple years, as part of the standard document was to have an expiration date. They signed them and placed a copy of the other's medical proxy in each of their wallets.
"Congratulations, guys. As this is the closest to civil union at this point, I'll say mazel tov and get going. Make sure that copies of those go in your personnel files, at least your Lute's copy."
"Thanks, Devon. Have a nice holiday."
Danny was grabbing a coffee to keep him going the next half hour, until his shift ended and he could head home to dress for the community center party, away from the nuts out on Halloween highjinks. He was about to pay for his coffee when his radio squawked.
"4539, Messer. Urgent, report to the precinct."
"Messer. Heading that way."
After his partner nodded that he'd take care of the last 15 minutes, he ran back to the precinct, almost knocking the wind out of himself on the dispatcher's counter.
"Hey, Del. What's the message?"
"An Ella called, something about you needing to get to University Hospital, " reading from her slip, she said, "she said to tell you, 'Your Caro's hurt, come quickly'. I've gotten the OK from the Lute, she wishes you luck."
In case you don't remember, Devon was in their English class (the Beowulf=comic book discussion)
After a harrowing 20 minutes to change and run the six blocks in the middle of rush hour, Danny arrived at the reception desk. "Don Flack, please."
"Reason for visit?" the nurse droned.
"He's my partner."
"Don't lie to me, his partner's already checked on him."
"Not that kind of partner, lady!"
She rolled her eyes, picking up the phone.
"Deb, grab Mrs. Flack from the waiting room up there, put her on the phone...Hello, Mrs. Flack. I have a young man here, says he's your son's partner," pausing, she turned to Danny, asking for his name, at his answer, she made a face. "Alright, Mrs. Flack. He'll be right up...Floor 5, he's in surgery."
"Thank you, ma'am," he sprinted to the elevator, squeezing in as the door closed.
When he arrived on the floor, after a long stop at every floor in between, he looked at the directory. From what the nurse said on the phone, he was looking for the surgery waiting room. He was staring blankly at the directory when he heard a familiar voice saying his name.
"Ma, what's wrong with him?" He asked, words muffled in her hair as she hugged him tightly.
"He was helping a detective with a field interview with someone who was either a nasty witness, or a suspect, no one's told me which. The man pulled a gun, shot Don in the left shoulder and thigh. The shoulder wound wasn't too nasty, but the bullet was against the nerves, and the thigh shot nicked the artery. He'll have to stay for a few days."
"No problems with mobility?"
"Once everything's healed, he'll be back to normal, but he'll be desk-bound for a month or two because of the shoulder, probably. Be prepared for him being cranky."
"He wasn't too bad when he had bronchitis, I just want him better."
"He broke his leg in junior high, he was a terror. Now, come on, let's get you on the approved visitor list before he gets out of surgery. The nurses said it wouldn't be too much longer."
When Don woke up, he saw Ma and Danny sitting next to his bed, asleep. Danny looked like he'd been crying. When he started shifting around, Danny woke up.
"Caro...How you feeling?"
"Shot, but they have me on good drugs, so I'll be fine. Come lie down with me? I guess we're not working at the party this year either."
Getting up, Danny climbed in to Don's right side, careful not to touch the IV.
"Yeah. Once I got here and Ma told me what was up, I called Bob at the center...We really need to change your contact information. I understand why we initially had your mom down as the emergency contact, 'cause I was in school, but I had to hear from Ma calling the precinct and Del, the dispatcher, taking a message. Why didn't Gavin call?"
"He was out sick today, that's why I was doing 'tec back-up, they didn't want me on beat without my partner."
They chatted for a bit longer, until the nurse came in to check on him, awakening Ma. She left shortly afterward, going to make dinner and tell Donald.
Once Don had eaten his Jello and soup, Danny asked, "Don, I...Do you wanna make things more official? Ma said something about your dad retiring, they might move to Florida in a year or so."
"You mean sign papers so you can make medical decisions? You're already on the deed for the apartment, so that’s taken care of. We have a joint account..."
"Yeah. I know you love me, but...I'd feel better if I was the one they called when you got hurt, and vice versa. I've been lucky so far, just patch jobs where I can call you while I'm waiting for the local to kick in before stitches...I'm babbling."
Smiling dopily, partly due to the conversation, and partly because of the drugs, Don mumbled, "My kitten, I'd love to be your husband...I'm really tired. I think that nurse slipped me something. You gonna stay?"
"Ma said she'd take care of it. I'll move the recliner over here so I can sleep next to you without knocking anything. So, rings or ID bracelets?"
"Rings can wait until we have a ceremony, legal or not, and when we have time to re-learn our gun grips. ID bracelets with messages on the underside."
Before Danny could respond, Don was asleep with a smile on his face. A matching one shone on Danny's.
Don woke once in the night, about 20 minutes before his next dose of painkillers. He couldn't go back to sleep, so he planned the engravings he wanted on Danny's bracelet on a napkin and stuck it in Danny's jacket pocket.
When Danny awoke at his internal alarm clock, he saw it was an hour until he had to be at work. He grabbed for the little notepad he kept in his jacket pocket, but found the napkin first. Smiling, he put it in the other pocket, writing a note for Don, telling him he'd be at work, he'd be back at 4:30.
Since it was a bit early, he headed to a place on the way to the precinct that he knew engraved the steel bracelets many associated with med-alerts. When he arrived at work, Del was worried about him, so he reassured her that everything was getting better, that it was mainly a blood loss issue. He got changed, and it was still about 20 minutes before roll-call, so he looked in his cubby for forms that needed to be filled out or filed. Mike had a little girl with cerebral palsy, so whenever he got a call, Mike did the paperwork the next day. He figured he'd return the favor.
Once they were out on the streets, Danny told him the basics, his lover was hurt and the call was to get over to the hospital. Once that was over, it was a pretty normal shift, running after a couple dealers, stopping a hold-up, helping a little kid find his mom...
Mike let him off the hook on paperwork, telling him to go back to the hospital.
Arriving on the 5th floor, he almost ran head-on into Derek.
"Whoa, Danny. Hi, Don's just gotten a pain shot, they kicked me out. Keep me updated? I'd stay, but I promised Carly I'd be home soon."
"Sure, Derek. Have a nice night."
When he arrived in Don's room, he had a roommate, a college kid with a broken leg in traction. He was the only visitor, though.
"Hey, caro. I hear you just got some of the good stuff."
"Yup. Jack here did too. His mom's a bitch. She yelled at him for getting hurt, then left. Did you see the message I left you?"
"I even took it to the engraver's. You're just lucky I know how many links are in your watch band. It'll be ready in 3 days."
Don made a silly pout and puppy eyes, moaning, "Why don't you want to kiss me? You propose marriage last night, and not even a kiss today?"
Giving in, since Jack didn't seem disgusted by the conversation, he gave Don a proper hello kiss, complete with hand in hair and lots of tongue.
"Better?" Danny panted.
"Much. It's almost time for dinner, come sit with me?"
At about nine, since Ma was back, and promised to stay the night, Danny went home to go through the mail and clean out the fridge. He also got together a bag of clothes for Don.
Don got to come home from the hospital two days later, as he was fully rehydrated, on pills instead of morphine, and the tingling in his fingers had gone away. Danny made sure he was off-duty that day, as he wanted to be the one to take Don home.
They were on the couch, eating chicken noodle soup, when Danny brought up the fact that their bracelets would be done the next day.
"I'll pick them up. And do you still have Devon's phone number?"
"You're going to talk to her about who to have compose the documents?"
"Yeah, she's L3 by now, and clerking for someone expensive, so she'd have some clue. She could probably even do it, cause some people write their own. I want to ask her if there’s something different we should do, since we don’t have the finality of marriage to support it."
Danny nodded, "She's actually not clerking this term, she's doing something for Ma, helping the residents with their options against their husbands, and such."
"I thought I remembered Ma mentioning a Devon, I didn't know it was the same one," Wiggling his eyebrows, Don continued, "I didn't sleep well without you cuddled up. Lounge with me?"
Danny agreed, helping Don take off the zippered sweatshirt and his button-down. They settled in bed, Don on his back, Danny facing him on his side, head on his good shoulder, arm across his stomach. It didn't take more than 10 minutes for them to drift off, though they awakened quickly when they heard their front door open. Danny quietly got up, but relaxed when he saw it was Ma.
"Ma, don't scare us like that! Don's in the bedroom."
"It looks like you were too, until recently. Did I interrupt something?"
Don, hearing this from the bedroom, laughed, calling out, "Nah, Ma, come on in, I'm decent."
She did a quick Mom-exam, left a casserole, then cleared out.
The first full day Don was home, Danny went back to work, with the assurance that Ma would be around from 10 to 3. Before Danny got on the train home, he stopped by the shop to pick up the bracelets. They were perfect, though he did not put his on; he put both in his pocket, and headed home.
Don had called Devon that day. She'd loosened up a lot since they had that class group with her, and she was happy to help them write up their papers. It was a week before her big exams, but she promised to visit the day of her last exam.
When Danny got home, there was pizza and soda on the table. Don met him with a kiss.
"I'd have liked to have a fancy meal to celebrate, but I can't really use a fork and knife. You got them?"
"Yeah," he answered heading to the living room, pulling them out after they were sitting on the couch. Reading the inscription as he helped Don put on his bracelet, he said, “Amilo ad Eternità, Marito" and kissed the clasp.
Doing the same, but badly, given the reduced mobility of his left arm, Don put Danny's bracelet on him, saying, "Love is friendship on fire, mo anam cara." Instead of kissing the clasp, he kissed Danny lightly all over his face. Pulling away, he said, "Devon'll come by on the 11th, after her last exam, she said."
A week after the shooting, Don was back at the precinct, though he was on desk duty until his shoulder healed more, and his leg could hold up to running. This meant he was made a dispatcher for a few days, and helped with booking. No one mentioned the new bracelet, mostly because the ones that would comment remembered then-Deputy Chief Flack's tirades about the boyfriend, though Gavin did tease him a bit. He also took the opportunity to redo his emergency contact form.
One day, while they were both off-duty, so they were having a lazy day, Danny said, "We're basically getting married. Maybe we should take a vacation over the holidays, a delayed honeymoon of sorts. Maybe somewhere upstate."
"Not the Caribbean?" Don asked jokingly.
"Nah, too many other people go during the winter. And we could go on Amtrak, no trying to fly when everyone else is."
"Sounds nice. Any particular place?"
"Well, we'd need privacy, and be far enough away from the front desk that we don’t feel like exhibitionists. Maybe one of those summer camps up-state that are used as villas in the off-season."
Thinking about it, Don decided that sounded good.
"There's a place that's a drama camp in the summer that's in an old Catskills resort, the kind with cabins rather than a hotel. Carly went to it one summer during junior high, some of the cabins have kitchenettes, so no need to be dressed the whole week, if we don't want to. I'll call her tomorrow at lunchtime, see if she remembers the name. Thank God I only have one more week of desk duty."
Devon came by at 2 PM, giving them a call before she left campus. She'd asked a professor about the protocol for these kinds of documents, as they'd cover them in the final semester. The professor had even pointed her to a short book meant to act as an office reference on contract formats. She remembered that Don was in that Law seminar their final semester at NYU, so he'd at least recognize some of the words.
"Hey, guys. I'm honored you're involving me in this. It's a shame it's so back-channel still, rather than a marriage license, poof, everything's set."
"Thanks for this, Devon. we didn't mess up your study time, did we?" Danny asked.
"It's nothing, I had a 10 minute talk with the Contract Law professor yesterday and skimmed a 30-page pamphlet on the subway over. So, it's pretty simple..."
It took about 45 minutes to go through the 4 pages on various types of Powers of Attorney and Medical Proxies, and another hour to write up the drafts to be typed.
Standing up, Devon said, "Right, guys. I'll get this typed up. I'll email you the text and you can send back any changes. I'll come by with the final copies on Saturday?"
Don agreed, and stood to let her out.
That night, Danny opened his email and found two text files from Devon, a Power of Attorney and a Medical Proxy Agreement. They looked through them carefully, finding no problems, so they sent a message back, that they were fine.
They went to sleep nervous. Not because of the step they were taking, but because they were so close to getting a concrete date for an anniversary. They'd been disagreeing about when they actually started their relationship. Don wanted to say the day he returned Danny's ID; Danny, being more pragmatic, counted from the night of the concert, or meeting Ma.
The weekend came, and Devon had arrived. She gave them a diskette with the text, so they could reissue them themselves every couple years, as part of the standard document was to have an expiration date. They signed them and placed a copy of the other's medical proxy in each of their wallets.
"Congratulations, guys. As this is the closest to civil union at this point, I'll say mazel tov and get going. Make sure that copies of those go in your personnel files, at least your Lute's copy."
"Thanks, Devon. Have a nice holiday."