Angst and Cheesecake
Angst and Cheesecake
part 3
Marshall awoke in the hospital bed, cold and uncomfortable. He’d been having an unpleasant dream. He was lying in a white room, except there were no walls or ceiling. It was just an expanse of white in every direction. And it was cold, and he couldn’t move, and he was alone. Now that he was awake, everything throbbed - the large bruise on the back of his head, the road rash on his left hand where he’d apparently attempted to brace his fall, even the hang nail he’d chewed on during the trial yesterday. He noticed the darkness outside his window and realized that it had been about four hours since his pain meds. He pressed the non-emergent nurse call button to see if he might be able to get some more.
He got up to use the restroom, and found that the hospital gown he’d changed into before getting the MRI did not provide nearly enough warmth. He located his clothes and personal belongings on a table beside the bed. He was debating putting the slacks that he’d worn to trial yesterday back on, when he noticed his cellphone silently vibrate and light up. Had he not been looking directly at it, he never would have known it was going off. He picked it up and saw Mary’s name on the caller ID. He pressed the button to accept the call. The line sounded static-y, like she was somewhere with poor reception. “Had to resort to eating anyone yet?” He smiled into the phone. He noticed the blizzard raging outside and knew the driving would be slow. His heart plummeted to his ankles at what he heard next through the static.
“Marshall, I’m sorry. I’m not gonna make it.” Her voice was small and weak. Then there was static again.
“Mare! Mary! What’s going on? Where are you?”
“Take care of my witnesses.”
He yelled into the phone as he pulled on his pants and clipped the gun to his belt, “Mary, I will save you. If you can hold on a little longer I promise I will be there.”
“You have always been there for me.” Silence and static echoed momentarily. “Goodbye partner.”
The commotion had alerted the nurses, who now rushed into his room. “Hold on Mare, just hold on! I will get to you if you just hold on.” The connection was lost.
Marshall was already dressed and making for the door. As soon as he realized the call from his partner had disconnected, he held down the number 2 key. To the horror of the nurses, he ripped out the IV catheter in his right forearm as the phone began to ring.
A doctor appeared in the doorway, “Mr. Mann. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but you can’t leave. You need to lay back down.
Marshall shoved his way passed the shocked doctor as Stan picked up.
“Marshall, I thought you weren’t allowed to use cell phones in the hospital.” He greeted, sounding slightly concerned that his normally respectful inspector was breaching policy.
“It’s Mary. Something happened.” He shouted, unable to control his fear. He was tearing through the hospital towards the stairs leading down from the sixth floor ICU.
“Do you know what’s wrong, how bad is it?”
“She barely got the call in. Reception was horrible. She said ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘goodbye’.”
“What do you need?” Stan understood the significance of what Mary had said to Marshall.
“I need a ping on her phone or at least a GPS trace of where she was for that last call.” He barreled out of the stairway into the lobby. “I need a bird in the air out of Denver or Colorado Springs yesterday.” He ran out the ER doors into the night.
“Marshall, have you seen the news? The storm that’s over you right now is being called the storm of the decade. Nothing is going to be airborne in this. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
The words penetrated Marshall’s brain as sharply as the cold air. He looked around, feeling lost and helpless. He had no vehicle. There would be no rescue chopper. He spun around looking for inspiration or divine intervention anywhere. He found it as he looked upwards along the front of the building and his gaze reached the roof. “Stan, just get me the coordinates. I have an idea.” He flipped the phone shut and darted back into the building.
Badge visible and credentials held in front of him, he stormed through the doors labeled “No Unauthorized Personnel Beyond This Point” and made for the elevator. He met no resistance as he reached it and hit the button for the top floor. As the contraption whooshed up twelve stories, Marshall remembered stories he had been told while sitting in the hospital as Mary was recovering from the bullet wound last year. Paramedic helicopter pilots are some of the best in the business, usually second only to the Coast Guard rescue diver pilots. These guys were usually ex-military and lived for treacherous rescues that they could brag about later.
The top floor was smaller than the other floors of the hospital and mostly housed administrative offices, whose occupants had already departed for the night. “I need a pilot and flight crew!” He yelled as he rushed out of the elevator.
“Down here.” A voice echoed from a corridor to his left.
Marshall followed the sound of the man’s voice and found a woman and two men in flight suits with the hospital’s logo sitting around a table, playing cards, and drinking coffee.
“How long until you can be airborne?”
“How long until this storm ends?” One of the men returned.
“Which one of you is the pilot?”
The woman stood up and extended a hand. “Jill Gregory. It’s my bird.” The short haircut, perfect posture, and strong grip screamed military, and Marshall was relieved.
“I need your help.” Marshall pleaded. His phone vibrated with a text message. It was a set of GPS coordinates from Stan. He quickly hit a few buttons on his smart phone and a map with a flashing blue dot appeared. “I need you to fly me here. Now.” He held out the device revealing the location.
“In case you haven’t noticed, conditions outside are somewhat suboptimal.” The two men beside her sniggered. “I’m not sure I can even take off in this without killing myself and my entire crew, let alone fly through that mountain range. What is so important that you would ask me to take that risk?” The desperation in the strange tall man’s face had her interest piqued.
Marshall took a deep breath and realized that all the protocol and regulation in the world would make no difference to him if Mary were dead. “I am a US Marshal with Witness Protection. My partner and our federally protected witness have been attacked at these coordinates. My partner is dying, alone, in the cold. And no other pilot is willing to try to help them.”
The woman was as tall as Marshall and looked him straight in the eyes for a moment. His eyes were starting to well up with moisture, but he did not blink and break her gaze. She turned and addressed her flight crew, “Fire her up!”
“Thank you.” Marshall whispered, only then able to wipe the forming tears from his eyes.
“Don’t thank me yet. You’re coming with and I still may kill us all in this weather.”
“Still, thank you.”
They had the helicopter ready and were strapped in within ten minutes. At just that time, a small break in the storm occurred and the helicopter lifted into the air amongst only 10 mph winds and slight flurries of snow. Marshall considered it a miracle.
He sat up front next to the pilot and the paramedics worked in back, readying their supplies. With a direct route over the mountains, they should reach the location within thirty minutes. He couldn’t pull his eyes from the topographical map on his phone. The flashing blue dot a hundred miles away held an uncertain nightmare, and he couldnn’t get there soon enough.
“She’s more than just your partner, isn’t she?” Jill asked.
“Yeah.” He admitted, looking at his hands. “I mean, nothing’s happened. It can’t because we’re partners. And there are issues… But I can’t lose her.”
“I know.” She said quietly, never taking her eyes off the instrument panels.
Marshall turned and looked at her.
“I was Navy. Did two tours in the early days of Iraqi Freedom. Had the same co-pilot since flight school. You go through that much together and there’s no way you don’t end up… close. No matter what the rules say.” She sighed. “We were three weeks from the end of our tour. We weren’t renewing and once we got stateside we were going to give it a go. The whole rings, kids, picket fence, and a dog bit. Then a scud glanced our Blackhawk one night. We went down behind enemy lines.” She paused again before continuing. “I sprained my wrist and got a small laceration on my forehead in the crash. He got twisted metal shrapnel in his gut. I held him, alone in the desert, for two hours while he died.”
“I’m so sorry.” Marshall was picturing the scene as she described it, but with him and Mary instead. Then his brain shifted from a hot desert scene to the snowy Hell he knew he was about to enter. He felt bile rising in his throat.
“How long have you two been partners?”
He was broken out of his reverie, “Almost eight years now.” The realization that they might not meet that milestone made him visibly convulse.
“Love at first sight?” She was trying to keep him out of the dark places in his mind.
“We almost had a friendly fire incident in the first ten minutes.”
“Yeah. Jack and I were the same way. Amazing how someone who drives you so nuts at first can grow on you so much.”
“Wait.” Marshall realized something. “His name was Jack? Jack and Jill?”
“Yeah, I know. You’re not the first one to point that out.”
The flight continued in silence for another ten minutes as they cleared the mountain range, which was the most dangerous part of the trip. They were streaking over the valley now, following the path of US 24. “We should be at the coordinates any minute now.” Jill announced.
In the distance Marshall noticed a faint spot of light along the unlit highway. “There!” He shouted.
“I might have to put down a bit up the road. That clearing over there’s not quite big enough and the road is too narrow there.” The pilot started preparing.
As they flew over the light, Marshall could barely make out the overturned truck’s one working fog light slowly becoming covered in snow. They were too high up still for him to make out any details of the scene. The obviously abandoned, snow covered SUV in the road a short distance up made his heart drop further. There was a scenic area pullout along the side of the road about 200 yards up that provided enough room for them to land.
Despite the warning, Marshall had unbuckled his restraints and dove from the helicopter about two feet before it actually touched down. He instructed them to stay at the helicopter until he called for them on the walkie talkie they provided, so that he could clear the scene. Weapon drawn, he ran as fast as he could to the truck. The bullet holes running up the hood in a straight line towards the driver’s seat were unmistakable. He recognized the lifeless form in the driver’s seat as the Denver Marshal immediately and he felt air return to his lungs. He felt bad about the relief the woman’s dead body caused him, but he couldn’t regret not having to face Mary’s dead body in the SUV. He cleared the vehicle, and finding no one else inside, he began to move on. He noticed the body of a man in coveralls becoming enveloped by snow and laying just behind an area with decreased snow accumulation. It was if another vehicle had been parked there and then moved. After finding no pulse on the man, he darted the few hundred yards up the street to the next vehicle.
The scene was horrific, and he almost vomited at the sight of the frozen body of their witness hanging in the truck. He saw the drag marks in the snow leading to the vehicle, and area that looked thoroughly walked on. Then he saw the uneven, haphazard tracks leading into the trees along the road. He followed them mindlessly, his brain knowing he was getting close, but too terrified at the thought of what he might find. As he reached the small clearing, his phone made a sound, alerting him that he had arrived at his GPS coordinates, which were accurate to within about ten meters.
He scanned the scene quickly, and his eyes fell on a mound of snow about forty feet in front of him. He surged forward, the knee high snow attempting to trip him the entire way. He collapsed at the still form of his partner. Trembling hands went to her neck and he didn’t feel anything. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Her skin was freezing and tinted blue. He was certain that his heart was about to stop right along with hers.
Then he felt a weak little thump against the fingers placed on her neck. It took more than a second for him to recognize the sensation. Then there was another. It was a pulse. It was far too slow and weak, but somehow she was still alive. He screamed directions to their location into the two-way radio and pulled her body against his. He wrapped his jacket around her and began vigorously rubbing her shoulders through the material. The two minutes it took the paramedics to reach his location with the backboard felt like an eternity. He could not imagine having to spend two hours like this.
She remained unconscious as they strapped her to the board, covered her with a thermal blanket and began carrying her towards the waiting helicopter. The door had not even closed behind the four passengers as the helicopter lifted into the air.
Marshall watched in stunned silence as Mary was wrapped in warm air blankets, IV catheters were placed in each arm, and fluids passing through a portable warmer were pumped into her body. There were injections of medications whose names Marshall didn’t pay attention to. He just silently sat and held her hand as color began to return to her face. The frequency of the beeps from the heart rate monitor gradually increased to a normal rate, and her temperature had risen to 95.8 F by the time they landed on the roof of the hospital he had escaped from only a little over an hour earlier.
The ER doctors continued supportive care and raising her body temperature. When they cut off her jeans to see the extent of her tibial fracture Marshall left the room. Mostly because he had realized that the fracture was going to be horrific, but also because if she found out that he had seen her nearly naked, she would probably kill him.
They were stuck in Denver for another six days as Mary recovered from the shock and hypothermia, and orthopedic surgeons attempted to fix her mangled leg. Marshall never left her side. She was released from the hospital two days before Christmas and was glad that they would make it back to Albuquerque in time to not have a white Christmas. Now she really really didn’t like the cold.
She limped into the airport, with him following closely behind. She eyed the security checkpoint suspiciously. “How the hell is this going to work?” She tapped her crutch on the giant metal frame of rings and wires that encompassed her right lower leg.
“Mary, it’s not like they’re going to worry about you hiding a weapon in there. We have those on our belts.” He reminded her that as Marshals, their version of a metal scan and safety checkpoint would be a bit different.
“Touche.”
The flight from Denver to Albuquerque was uneventful, except for when Mary almost shot Marshall. He had found the external fixator that the surgeons used to fix her leg so interesting, that he had thoroughly researched the topic while she was in the hospital. Honestly, it was her fault. She had brought it up.
She couldn’t quite get comfortable in the cramped airline seat with the contraption on her leg. She absent mindedly picked at the scab forming around one of the wires that penetrated her leg and attached on both sides to a large metal ring. “Why didn’t they just put me in a cast again?”
“Because your bone was broken into too many little pieces, and some of the fractures extended so close to the ends of the bones that they wouldn’t be able to get a big enough plate and screws on the bone to stabilize it properly.”
“Yeah, I guess there’s that.” She huffed and continued picking. It was kind of nice to be able to walk on the leg so soon after surgery, but she felt like a freak with big wires sticking out of her leg.
“The circular external fixator was first created by a Russian doctor named Gavril Ilizarov in the 50’s. He developed the technique to treat injured soldiers in Siberia, and the first ones were made out of spokes and rims from a bicycle wheel. The ingenuity of it is astounding.”
She slammed the metal frame and the few protruding wire ends into Marshall’s leg. “Ow! That hurts.”
“Huh…also works as a weapon. This guy might have been onto something.”
Stan greeted them at the airport and hugged Mary thoroughly, despite her protests. He finally let go when she clubbed his shin with the metal fixator on her leg. “This shit is astounding.” She echoed Marshall’s earlier statement.
Marshall felt a physical pain when he left her at her house that night. He disliked leaving her alone in the house, but Mary begged for some personal time after being under his constant scrutiny for the last week. He begrudgingly acquiesced. They had agreed to meet for lunch on Christmas day.
Marshall checked in at the office the next day, though Mary had been ordered to stay home. Stan sat Marshall down for what would certainly become an uncomfortable talk.
“Based on Mary’s description, Denver PD was able to apprehend the man that ambushed them. He was a fairly well know hit man in the drug circles up there. No one before has ever been able or willing to ID him, let alone testify against him. They suspect he has over twenty bodies to his name now, and this is the first time they have an actual chance to nail him.”
Marshall knew where this was going. This was the schpeil he had given loved ones of witnesses for the last decade. “What are you saying Stan?”
“Merry Christmas Marshall.” He handed the man a familiar manila folder. “You have a new witness to protect.” The name on the folder was “Mary Elizabeth Shannon”
“Oh, this is going to go over well.” He rolled his eyes and considered buying shin guards, at least until that thing was taken off her leg in two months.
(Part 4)
part 3
Marshall awoke in the hospital bed, cold and uncomfortable. He’d been having an unpleasant dream. He was lying in a white room, except there were no walls or ceiling. It was just an expanse of white in every direction. And it was cold, and he couldn’t move, and he was alone. Now that he was awake, everything throbbed - the large bruise on the back of his head, the road rash on his left hand where he’d apparently attempted to brace his fall, even the hang nail he’d chewed on during the trial yesterday. He noticed the darkness outside his window and realized that it had been about four hours since his pain meds. He pressed the non-emergent nurse call button to see if he might be able to get some more.
He got up to use the restroom, and found that the hospital gown he’d changed into before getting the MRI did not provide nearly enough warmth. He located his clothes and personal belongings on a table beside the bed. He was debating putting the slacks that he’d worn to trial yesterday back on, when he noticed his cellphone silently vibrate and light up. Had he not been looking directly at it, he never would have known it was going off. He picked it up and saw Mary’s name on the caller ID. He pressed the button to accept the call. The line sounded static-y, like she was somewhere with poor reception. “Had to resort to eating anyone yet?” He smiled into the phone. He noticed the blizzard raging outside and knew the driving would be slow. His heart plummeted to his ankles at what he heard next through the static.
“Marshall, I’m sorry. I’m not gonna make it.” Her voice was small and weak. Then there was static again.
“Mare! Mary! What’s going on? Where are you?”
“Take care of my witnesses.”
He yelled into the phone as he pulled on his pants and clipped the gun to his belt, “Mary, I will save you. If you can hold on a little longer I promise I will be there.”
“You have always been there for me.” Silence and static echoed momentarily. “Goodbye partner.”
The commotion had alerted the nurses, who now rushed into his room. “Hold on Mare, just hold on! I will get to you if you just hold on.” The connection was lost.
Marshall was already dressed and making for the door. As soon as he realized the call from his partner had disconnected, he held down the number 2 key. To the horror of the nurses, he ripped out the IV catheter in his right forearm as the phone began to ring.
A doctor appeared in the doorway, “Mr. Mann. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but you can’t leave. You need to lay back down.
Marshall shoved his way passed the shocked doctor as Stan picked up.
“Marshall, I thought you weren’t allowed to use cell phones in the hospital.” He greeted, sounding slightly concerned that his normally respectful inspector was breaching policy.
“It’s Mary. Something happened.” He shouted, unable to control his fear. He was tearing through the hospital towards the stairs leading down from the sixth floor ICU.
“Do you know what’s wrong, how bad is it?”
“She barely got the call in. Reception was horrible. She said ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘goodbye’.”
“What do you need?” Stan understood the significance of what Mary had said to Marshall.
“I need a ping on her phone or at least a GPS trace of where she was for that last call.” He barreled out of the stairway into the lobby. “I need a bird in the air out of Denver or Colorado Springs yesterday.” He ran out the ER doors into the night.
“Marshall, have you seen the news? The storm that’s over you right now is being called the storm of the decade. Nothing is going to be airborne in this. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
The words penetrated Marshall’s brain as sharply as the cold air. He looked around, feeling lost and helpless. He had no vehicle. There would be no rescue chopper. He spun around looking for inspiration or divine intervention anywhere. He found it as he looked upwards along the front of the building and his gaze reached the roof. “Stan, just get me the coordinates. I have an idea.” He flipped the phone shut and darted back into the building.
Badge visible and credentials held in front of him, he stormed through the doors labeled “No Unauthorized Personnel Beyond This Point” and made for the elevator. He met no resistance as he reached it and hit the button for the top floor. As the contraption whooshed up twelve stories, Marshall remembered stories he had been told while sitting in the hospital as Mary was recovering from the bullet wound last year. Paramedic helicopter pilots are some of the best in the business, usually second only to the Coast Guard rescue diver pilots. These guys were usually ex-military and lived for treacherous rescues that they could brag about later.
The top floor was smaller than the other floors of the hospital and mostly housed administrative offices, whose occupants had already departed for the night. “I need a pilot and flight crew!” He yelled as he rushed out of the elevator.
“Down here.” A voice echoed from a corridor to his left.
Marshall followed the sound of the man’s voice and found a woman and two men in flight suits with the hospital’s logo sitting around a table, playing cards, and drinking coffee.
“How long until you can be airborne?”
“How long until this storm ends?” One of the men returned.
“Which one of you is the pilot?”
The woman stood up and extended a hand. “Jill Gregory. It’s my bird.” The short haircut, perfect posture, and strong grip screamed military, and Marshall was relieved.
“I need your help.” Marshall pleaded. His phone vibrated with a text message. It was a set of GPS coordinates from Stan. He quickly hit a few buttons on his smart phone and a map with a flashing blue dot appeared. “I need you to fly me here. Now.” He held out the device revealing the location.
“In case you haven’t noticed, conditions outside are somewhat suboptimal.” The two men beside her sniggered. “I’m not sure I can even take off in this without killing myself and my entire crew, let alone fly through that mountain range. What is so important that you would ask me to take that risk?” The desperation in the strange tall man’s face had her interest piqued.
Marshall took a deep breath and realized that all the protocol and regulation in the world would make no difference to him if Mary were dead. “I am a US Marshal with Witness Protection. My partner and our federally protected witness have been attacked at these coordinates. My partner is dying, alone, in the cold. And no other pilot is willing to try to help them.”
The woman was as tall as Marshall and looked him straight in the eyes for a moment. His eyes were starting to well up with moisture, but he did not blink and break her gaze. She turned and addressed her flight crew, “Fire her up!”
“Thank you.” Marshall whispered, only then able to wipe the forming tears from his eyes.
“Don’t thank me yet. You’re coming with and I still may kill us all in this weather.”
“Still, thank you.”
They had the helicopter ready and were strapped in within ten minutes. At just that time, a small break in the storm occurred and the helicopter lifted into the air amongst only 10 mph winds and slight flurries of snow. Marshall considered it a miracle.
He sat up front next to the pilot and the paramedics worked in back, readying their supplies. With a direct route over the mountains, they should reach the location within thirty minutes. He couldn’t pull his eyes from the topographical map on his phone. The flashing blue dot a hundred miles away held an uncertain nightmare, and he couldnn’t get there soon enough.
“She’s more than just your partner, isn’t she?” Jill asked.
“Yeah.” He admitted, looking at his hands. “I mean, nothing’s happened. It can’t because we’re partners. And there are issues… But I can’t lose her.”
“I know.” She said quietly, never taking her eyes off the instrument panels.
Marshall turned and looked at her.
“I was Navy. Did two tours in the early days of Iraqi Freedom. Had the same co-pilot since flight school. You go through that much together and there’s no way you don’t end up… close. No matter what the rules say.” She sighed. “We were three weeks from the end of our tour. We weren’t renewing and once we got stateside we were going to give it a go. The whole rings, kids, picket fence, and a dog bit. Then a scud glanced our Blackhawk one night. We went down behind enemy lines.” She paused again before continuing. “I sprained my wrist and got a small laceration on my forehead in the crash. He got twisted metal shrapnel in his gut. I held him, alone in the desert, for two hours while he died.”
“I’m so sorry.” Marshall was picturing the scene as she described it, but with him and Mary instead. Then his brain shifted from a hot desert scene to the snowy Hell he knew he was about to enter. He felt bile rising in his throat.
“How long have you two been partners?”
He was broken out of his reverie, “Almost eight years now.” The realization that they might not meet that milestone made him visibly convulse.
“Love at first sight?” She was trying to keep him out of the dark places in his mind.
“We almost had a friendly fire incident in the first ten minutes.”
“Yeah. Jack and I were the same way. Amazing how someone who drives you so nuts at first can grow on you so much.”
“Wait.” Marshall realized something. “His name was Jack? Jack and Jill?”
“Yeah, I know. You’re not the first one to point that out.”
The flight continued in silence for another ten minutes as they cleared the mountain range, which was the most dangerous part of the trip. They were streaking over the valley now, following the path of US 24. “We should be at the coordinates any minute now.” Jill announced.
In the distance Marshall noticed a faint spot of light along the unlit highway. “There!” He shouted.
“I might have to put down a bit up the road. That clearing over there’s not quite big enough and the road is too narrow there.” The pilot started preparing.
As they flew over the light, Marshall could barely make out the overturned truck’s one working fog light slowly becoming covered in snow. They were too high up still for him to make out any details of the scene. The obviously abandoned, snow covered SUV in the road a short distance up made his heart drop further. There was a scenic area pullout along the side of the road about 200 yards up that provided enough room for them to land.
Despite the warning, Marshall had unbuckled his restraints and dove from the helicopter about two feet before it actually touched down. He instructed them to stay at the helicopter until he called for them on the walkie talkie they provided, so that he could clear the scene. Weapon drawn, he ran as fast as he could to the truck. The bullet holes running up the hood in a straight line towards the driver’s seat were unmistakable. He recognized the lifeless form in the driver’s seat as the Denver Marshal immediately and he felt air return to his lungs. He felt bad about the relief the woman’s dead body caused him, but he couldn’t regret not having to face Mary’s dead body in the SUV. He cleared the vehicle, and finding no one else inside, he began to move on. He noticed the body of a man in coveralls becoming enveloped by snow and laying just behind an area with decreased snow accumulation. It was if another vehicle had been parked there and then moved. After finding no pulse on the man, he darted the few hundred yards up the street to the next vehicle.
The scene was horrific, and he almost vomited at the sight of the frozen body of their witness hanging in the truck. He saw the drag marks in the snow leading to the vehicle, and area that looked thoroughly walked on. Then he saw the uneven, haphazard tracks leading into the trees along the road. He followed them mindlessly, his brain knowing he was getting close, but too terrified at the thought of what he might find. As he reached the small clearing, his phone made a sound, alerting him that he had arrived at his GPS coordinates, which were accurate to within about ten meters.
He scanned the scene quickly, and his eyes fell on a mound of snow about forty feet in front of him. He surged forward, the knee high snow attempting to trip him the entire way. He collapsed at the still form of his partner. Trembling hands went to her neck and he didn’t feel anything. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Her skin was freezing and tinted blue. He was certain that his heart was about to stop right along with hers.
Then he felt a weak little thump against the fingers placed on her neck. It took more than a second for him to recognize the sensation. Then there was another. It was a pulse. It was far too slow and weak, but somehow she was still alive. He screamed directions to their location into the two-way radio and pulled her body against his. He wrapped his jacket around her and began vigorously rubbing her shoulders through the material. The two minutes it took the paramedics to reach his location with the backboard felt like an eternity. He could not imagine having to spend two hours like this.
She remained unconscious as they strapped her to the board, covered her with a thermal blanket and began carrying her towards the waiting helicopter. The door had not even closed behind the four passengers as the helicopter lifted into the air.
Marshall watched in stunned silence as Mary was wrapped in warm air blankets, IV catheters were placed in each arm, and fluids passing through a portable warmer were pumped into her body. There were injections of medications whose names Marshall didn’t pay attention to. He just silently sat and held her hand as color began to return to her face. The frequency of the beeps from the heart rate monitor gradually increased to a normal rate, and her temperature had risen to 95.8 F by the time they landed on the roof of the hospital he had escaped from only a little over an hour earlier.
The ER doctors continued supportive care and raising her body temperature. When they cut off her jeans to see the extent of her tibial fracture Marshall left the room. Mostly because he had realized that the fracture was going to be horrific, but also because if she found out that he had seen her nearly naked, she would probably kill him.
They were stuck in Denver for another six days as Mary recovered from the shock and hypothermia, and orthopedic surgeons attempted to fix her mangled leg. Marshall never left her side. She was released from the hospital two days before Christmas and was glad that they would make it back to Albuquerque in time to not have a white Christmas. Now she really really didn’t like the cold.
She limped into the airport, with him following closely behind. She eyed the security checkpoint suspiciously. “How the hell is this going to work?” She tapped her crutch on the giant metal frame of rings and wires that encompassed her right lower leg.
“Mary, it’s not like they’re going to worry about you hiding a weapon in there. We have those on our belts.” He reminded her that as Marshals, their version of a metal scan and safety checkpoint would be a bit different.
“Touche.”
The flight from Denver to Albuquerque was uneventful, except for when Mary almost shot Marshall. He had found the external fixator that the surgeons used to fix her leg so interesting, that he had thoroughly researched the topic while she was in the hospital. Honestly, it was her fault. She had brought it up.
She couldn’t quite get comfortable in the cramped airline seat with the contraption on her leg. She absent mindedly picked at the scab forming around one of the wires that penetrated her leg and attached on both sides to a large metal ring. “Why didn’t they just put me in a cast again?”
“Because your bone was broken into too many little pieces, and some of the fractures extended so close to the ends of the bones that they wouldn’t be able to get a big enough plate and screws on the bone to stabilize it properly.”
“Yeah, I guess there’s that.” She huffed and continued picking. It was kind of nice to be able to walk on the leg so soon after surgery, but she felt like a freak with big wires sticking out of her leg.
“The circular external fixator was first created by a Russian doctor named Gavril Ilizarov in the 50’s. He developed the technique to treat injured soldiers in Siberia, and the first ones were made out of spokes and rims from a bicycle wheel. The ingenuity of it is astounding.”
She slammed the metal frame and the few protruding wire ends into Marshall’s leg. “Ow! That hurts.”
“Huh…also works as a weapon. This guy might have been onto something.”
Stan greeted them at the airport and hugged Mary thoroughly, despite her protests. He finally let go when she clubbed his shin with the metal fixator on her leg. “This shit is astounding.” She echoed Marshall’s earlier statement.
Marshall felt a physical pain when he left her at her house that night. He disliked leaving her alone in the house, but Mary begged for some personal time after being under his constant scrutiny for the last week. He begrudgingly acquiesced. They had agreed to meet for lunch on Christmas day.
Marshall checked in at the office the next day, though Mary had been ordered to stay home. Stan sat Marshall down for what would certainly become an uncomfortable talk.
“Based on Mary’s description, Denver PD was able to apprehend the man that ambushed them. He was a fairly well know hit man in the drug circles up there. No one before has ever been able or willing to ID him, let alone testify against him. They suspect he has over twenty bodies to his name now, and this is the first time they have an actual chance to nail him.”
Marshall knew where this was going. This was the schpeil he had given loved ones of witnesses for the last decade. “What are you saying Stan?”
“Merry Christmas Marshall.” He handed the man a familiar manila folder. “You have a new witness to protect.” The name on the folder was “Mary Elizabeth Shannon”
“Oh, this is going to go over well.” He rolled his eyes and considered buying shin guards, at least until that thing was taken off her leg in two months.
(Part 4)