IN OVER HIS HEAD
Chapter 1
Steve McGarrett walked determinedly out of his office, followed by Chin and Ben. In three long strides, he stopped at the door to Dan Williams' cubicle as he shouldered into his jacket. "Danno, you at a stopping place so you can join me?"
Danny's attention was rapt on whatever paperwork he had been working on, "What? Uh, no. I've got to finish these reports that are already late. Where are you going?"
"You and I need to go down to the Coroner's office," Steve explained. "He's got some results to show us."
"I've really got to get this done," offered Danny, impatiently and a bit shortly. One look at the face Steve gave him in response told him to drop everything and join his boss. "Oh, all right. I'm coming."
Danny stood, pushed the papers away in frustration and grabbed his jacket from the chair, not so quietly announcing, "Nothing like a trip to the morgue to break up my day." He refused to hide the tense, annoyed look on his own face as he left his office to charge down the aisle toward the exit of the Five-O office suite.
Steve looked after him intently and followed. After Danny had left the suite, Steve paused at the door and looked back at Chin, Ben, and Jenny, who were all gathered at the secretary's desk staring at the exiting twosome. With a look of deep concern, he lifted his hand toward his remaining staff to show them two fingers of his right hand—they were crossed. Wish me luck.
The three remaining staffers looked back at Steve, and Jenny gave a "thumbs up" hand signal.
Steve acknowledged the gesture with a nod, and, unsmiling, took a deep breath as he walked out and closed the door behind him.
McGarrett and Williams arrived at the Coroner's Office without delay. They had not been distracted by radio calls. Nor had any casual conversation diverted them, thankfully, which Steve had dreaded would involve questions from Danny about what case Dr. Bergman wanted to discuss. In fact, there had been no casual conversation between them at all, and Danny seemed less than interested in any aspect of work today.
But not just today. That had been his general outlook for over two weeks now. Steve had initially wondered about his apparent preoccupation with something other than work and had tried his best numerous times to casually coax an explanation out of his second-in-command, without success. Danny always brushed off the concern and the questions and tried to look a little less preoccupied for a while until the faraway looks, the blank expressions, and the lack of talkativeness returned unrelenting.
But it wasn't just a black mood hanging over the otherwise sunny, wise-cracking detective that worried the Five-O ohana. Whatever was on his mind was affecting him physically as well. Over the last two weeks, the staff had watched with uneasiness as the normally tanned, energetic, athletically-inclined man with the bounce in his step increasingly looked tired, haggard, pale, and drawn.
Today, the staff was alarmed to see a new sign that all was not well with Danny. As morning wore on into noon, they noticed a clear swelling near his right eye with the tell-tale tinge of black and blue ringing underneath. While the ohana had begun to suspect illness in their friend, suddenly the growing evidence of a black eye made them wonder what else might be going on.
McGarrett had not been the only one during these two weeks to try to discern the cause of the dark disposition and the disheveled appearance. Chin had in his wise fatherly way, and Jenny in her warm feminine manner, tried to get Danny to share his troubles. Ben tried to get Danny to join him after work for a drink and a bite to eat, in hopes that he would loosen up and spill whatever was the problem.
At first, the team teased Danny about his reputation for burning the candle at both ends, assuming living the high life of a Waikiki bachelor was interfering with his work. As the situation grew worse, they stopped kidding him and started serious talks with Steve about their concerns.
The unease of the staff only heightened his own, especially with the confusing appearance of the black eye today. Merely prompted by Chin and Ben who entered his office privately with the sole purpose of venting their worry about Danny, Steve realized he couldn't wait any longer for Danny to finally tell him what was wrong, as he usually did in a crisis. He'd tried the usual small talk on the lanai, even tried to gently force a confession on a "need to know" basis. The normally gregarious detective wouldn't crack.
With Chin and Ben there in the office, Steve made a quiet phone call. He summarized Danny's behavior and seemingly poor health to Dr. Niles Bergman and tried to devine whether Doc might already know something about it. Yes, doctor-patient confidentiality had its place, but this could easily be validated as a supervisor's inquiry into the fitness of an officer for duty, since Bergman was the team's official physician.
Whether the inquiry was personal or professional, it was fruitless in producing any immediate answers. Doc sounded truthfully surprised at the account and how long this had been going on. Obviously, Danny had not been in to see him. However, Steve's recounting of the deterioration of his second-in-command's condition made the good doctor very anxious to see Danny.
Upon hearing about the stubbornness and secretiveness Danny was exhibiting, Doc—with Steve—hatched a well-meaning plot to get him seen by the physician. Thus, the idea of a sudden trumped-up trip to the Coroner's office was born.
Doc was anticipating their arrival but succeeded in not appearing so. Steve entered the coroner's office first and greeted the doctor as he had done hundreds of times—essentially, hello, and get to the point. Except that, on this visit, there was no point except in successfully getting to the bottom of whatever was happening with Dan Williams.
As Danny entered the small office and flopped himself into the nearest chair without much more than a "hi", Doc saw in an instant that every concern Steve had voiced was affirmed in Danny's appearance and manner. Doc returned Dan's perfunctory greeting with one of his own, then studied Danny, who had already clearly shifted to another world mentally and was not even looking at Doc or Steve.
Eventually, Danny noticed the silence. He looked up to see the two men with their eyes drilling into him. "What?" he prompted, defensively.
"Where did you get that black eye?" Doc queried, as he approached Danny, determined to get a better look.
"What black eye?" he responded and drew himself back away from Doc as he examined the area around Danny's right eye. "Oh, that. It's nothing." Danny winced at the touch of the tenderness and swelling. "Just leave it alone! It will clear up on its own."
Doc stood up straight at the rebuke and glanced at Steve, then back at Danny. "Dan Williams, what's wrong with you? You look terrible! And I'm not just talking about that black eye!"
Irritated, Danny snapped back. "Thanks a lot, Doc! I'm just fine! Anyway we didn't come here to discuss me." Danny hoped against hope that he could divert attention away from himself and his very obvious injury. "Can we get on with what we came here for?"
Doc looked over to Steve, and Danny did the same in response. "Actually, Danno," Steve confessed, "We did come here to discuss you." At Danny's done-in expression, Steve looked genuinely apologetic. "Sorry for the ruse, but the whole office is worried sick about you. You haven't been yourself in weeks, and you do look terrible. You need to let Doc check you out."
"I said I'm fine, and I am!" Danny insisted as he stood up from the chair.
"This is not a request, my friend. It's an order." Steve looked upon him compassionately, as Doc nodded in complicity. "Based on your physical condition and your recent behavior, you have no idea how close you are to being declared unfit for duty."
Angrily, Danny shouted out his accusations, "Is this why you dragged me down here? So Doc could give you a medical reason to beach me?"
"Danny," Doc interrupted to defend Steve's actions, "I don't even need to examine you very closely to see that you're exhausted, your eyes are bloodshot, and you've lost weight. I'd venture that your blood pressure is sky-high and that your response times in a crisis would not be what they usually are. I wouldn't need much more than that to beach you."
Impatient to leave and annoyed at the trap his friends had set for him, Danny looked at the ceiling and the floor, the framed photos on the desk, anywhere but at his two interrogators. Doc noted his fidgeting and added it to his mental list of symptoms.
"This has been building, Danno, and you know it," Steve added. "Your sense of humor went AWOL about two weeks ago, bruddah."
"I didn't know that was a requirement of the job," Danny shot back.
Steve ignored the sarcastic remark and continued, "You want me to spell it out for you? John Manicote was angry at you for being late to court recently. He didn't think you were going to show and was about to ask for a continuance when you finally arrived. We're better than that at Five-O and you know it. Then I sent you home one day last week to get some sleep and you came back looking worse than before. Think about yesterday, Danno. You were way too hard on that female suspect we arrested. She was half your size and wasn't going anywhere. You've been biting people's heads off left and right."
Danny's blue eyes lit up with angry fire directed at Steve. "Oh! So, one short temper around the office is OK, but two is too many?" He knew he had hit Steve's bullseye, and, feeling cornered, relished the small victory.
Steve stood stunned for just a moment, then crossed his arms across his chest, and sighed heavily. "Danno..."
Letting his second enjoy the angry, albeit temporary, triumph, he cut it off soon enough. "Now tell us what is going on with you!"
"It's personal!" Danny intoned with stubbornness.
"Is it a woman? Someone by the name of Angie MacDonald maybe?" Steve dropped the name deliberately like a knife, as he would to a suspect when he knew more than the suspect thought he did.
Danny, in his weakened mental state, was taken aback. "What do you know about Angie?" He was much more subdued now, but still very defensive.
"Remember, you gave me an alternate phone number recently where you could be reached if I needed you and couldn't find you at home," Steve shared.
"You traced it to the owner," Danny begrudgingly concluded. "So you've been investigating my private life?"
Shaking his head vigorously, Steve answered, "No, Danno, no. Her name—that's all I know. And I only know that because I have been worried about you. Obviously, you've been spending a lot of time with her lately. What does she have to do with this?"
Danny looked at Steve wearily, "Steve, don't you think that if I were shacking up with some hot babe I would be happy? This is not happy." He sat down heavily, as if in defeat.
Doc stood aside and watched the intense interaction between Steve and Danny with great interest. He had only ever seen these two before as colleagues, friends, like brothers. They were known as an unshakeable team that shared almost a telepathic link—where a look transferred thought from one to the other. They were usually always on the same page of music. He had never seen them in opposition to each other about anything really important. Especially significant, Doc noted, he had never before seen Danny challenge Steve so vehemently.
"That's enough, gentlemen," Dr. Bergman decided. "Danny, listen to me, as your physician. You are apparently under a great deal of unusually difficult stress, whatever the cause. People under extreme, long-lasting stress lash out—or collapse. We've already seen you lash out, and it's just a matter of time before you collapse. Let us help you."