The Colonel vs. The Angel of Death
The indescribable pressure in the center of his chest reminded him of the pain he experienced when the Folcrum agent blew the bio-hazard power into his face. Today, each gasp of breath was punctuated by the horrific squeezing of his heart muscle. He recognized the whine of the sirens, the frantic activity of the e.m.t.s around him, the twinge from the bite of the intravenous needle and the whoosh of the clean, plastic smell of the oxygen mask placed over his nose. He tried to speak but the mask blurred the words; the paramedic leaned into his line of vision and spoke.
"Mr. Casey, you are in an ambulance on route to the emergency room General Beckman directed us to. Do you understand, sir?"
Casey grunted, vision swirling around in and out and he frantically searched around the mobile hospital for further clues to his condition. Once again, his chest seized, the erratic pounding in his ears swelled in its volume, and he grabbed the front of his sweat drenched shirt to try and stop the chest pain.
"No, Casey, let the man do his work." Again, a face swirled into his line of vision, grabbed Casey's hands and tried to force them down.
"Bartowski….what…happened?" Casey pulled the mask slightly off his face to speak, but Charles Bartowski batted Casey's right hand away, letting the mask snap sharply back into place.
"Hey," Carey grunted, but it did not deter Chuck from getting into Casey's personal space.
"Listen, big guy, you got to let us work on you. You understand?" By now, Chuck had his hands on either side of Casey's jaw, staring intently into the frantic eyes of his handler. Casey glared into the chocolate eyes filled with concern for him and he tried to nod slightly. As soon as Casey relaxed, the familiar glazed look of a flash swiped over Chuck's face. Swiftly, Chuck ripped open Casey's chest and begin to apply the heart leads to his handler's skin. The blood pressure cuff inflated and Chuck read the numbers off to the paramedic to record.
Suddenly, Casey bolted upright, his face ashen, his limbs locked into immobility.
"Chuck…" Casey groaned, his hand searching frantically for Chucks. "Dear God, help me." He groaned loudly and then fell back onto the gurney.
"He's going into cardiac arrest!" Chuck shouted as the paramedic handed him the large needle of epinephrine. Once he got the nod from the e.m.t. Chuck centered the needle over Casey's chest and plunged it into the heart muscle.
The monitor steadied off, and Casey began to stir enough to moan. "Good, John, that's it." Chuck glanced at his partner and then blew a sign of relief as the frantic heart beat began to settle into normal rhythm.
"Hey, big guy, open those baby blues of yours, ok? " Chuck forced Casey to look him into the eye, and surprisingly, Chuck recognized a flash of abject fear in the eyes of his normally fearless friend, who reached, shaking, up to catch Chuck's hand again.
"Tell me…going on with me" Casey mumbled behind his mask, but didn't try to remove it this time.
"Somehow, you have had a massive heart attack, John." Chuck's serious tone and his
use of Casey's first name directed Casey to stare into Bartowski's face intently.
We're taking you to West Hills N.S.A. hospital." Chuck grasped Casey's hand, now fisted on the front of Chuck's Buy More uniform.
"How" Casey strained against the fingers of black unconsciousness that was beginning to close in on his peripheral vision.
"You were outside the apartment this morning, working on washing Vicky." At that name Casey relaxed his hand, eased back into the gurney and grunted for Chuck to continue.
"I was taking my garbage out to the sidewalk can and waved at you when you nodded at me. You then picked up the cell phone and mouthed to me, 'Pastor Annie'. I was just going to tell you to say hello for me, when you dropped the phone and clutched your chest. Before I could get to you, you were already on the ground, curled up in a fetal, groaning from the pain."
Memories of Pastor Annie's beautiful voice rushed over Casey's mind, and he begin to smile slightly when the spasms begin again in the center of his chest.
"Dear God, help me" Casey repeated, as if a prayer, as his body curled up reflexively around the pain. He grabbed Chuck's shirt once more, and ordered his younger friend.
"Call Annie…I need her." Casey frantically tried to get his phone from his black jeans pocket and as Chuck helped him release it from the denim, the phone rang "Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In". Pastor Annie's Coburn's picture flashed on the screen, and Casey cried out and fell into the black abyss of unconsciousness