This is my twenty-ninth NCIS Mystery and the ninth of my Third Season. The list of stories got so extensive I moved it, with summaries, to my profile.
There are also numerous stand-alone and spin-off stories also listed in my profile.
Belisarius Productions owns NCIS and the usual legal disclaimers apply. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center [pronounced Fletsee] is a real facility in Georgia, just as the USS Ronald Reagan is a real Aircraft Carrier (CVN-76), but in all cases the personnel and their techniques are fictionalized.
My series diverged from the televised version in Season 4, and there are now considerable differences. Since I long ago wrote stories that have Jennifer Shepherd and Michelle (Lee) Palmer alive in the late 2030's, they never suffered the later-filmed fates of their on-screen counterparts.
We're coming up on a year since 'Superheroine Affair', the story that launched this series. References are made here to 'Jurisdiction' and other early stories.
I own only characters such as Samantha Sky, Rev. Siobhan (Sha-vawn) McGee and original agents. This story takes place two weeks after 'Let Down' and a week before the Memorial Day weekend.
Rated T or NCis-17
Please Review.
Rocky Road
by JMK758
Chapter One
It's Over!
When Jimmy Palmer wakes it's still black night outside the window over his shoulder and he's still exhausted from yesterday's three successive autopsies that kept him at work until after midnight so he's particularly displeased they it's still before dawn. Even when his questing hand finds his glasses on the night table beside him and he pulls them on he still can't focus on the red lighted numbers on the clock/radio beside the lamp.
Touching the brass stand twice brings the three small bulbs to two-thirds illumination, and he can read 3:37. Barely more than two hours since he crawled into bed? Actually, he's so tired he doesn't remember doing that.
He looks beside him to Michelle, but sees only the flat mattress.
The bedroom door to his left is closed but when he gets up, his body aching like he's just gone fifteen rounds with Sugar Ray Leonard - until he remembers he's a lover, not a fighter - and opens the door he sees the living room light on at the other end of the short hallway past bathroom and closet.
Clad only in boxers he pads out, squints in the 200 watt glare, but when he steps into the large room he sees Michelle seated sideways on the couch to his left, legs stretched out, her petite body turned away yet almost lost in the large blue blanket she's wrapped herself in. She's awake but doesn't look back at him. Her normally straight black hair is a tangle mess.
"'Chelle?" Is that a flinch? Does she huddle further into the blanket, shoulders hunched? He steps beside the couch, she looks up at him and his heart stops.
Her face is a mask of dark, dried blood, scrapes, dark bruises and swollen red. Her left eye is swollen almost shut, the huge blue/black bruise a two inch wide circle that surrounds it. Her lips are swollen and split in three places while blood, now dried to brown lines, had flowed from her nose and mouth, smeared along both bruised cheeks. There's a cut on her forehead, and brown dried blood had trailed down the left side of her face.
The only thoughts that take fragmented shape are 'What happened? What bastard did this?'
x
Jimmy's too stunned, then outraged to speak and, with a sigh Michelle lets the blanket fall to either side as she lies back against the couch's armrest. She's naked and bruises cover her from shoulders to chest, her upper body pockmarked with large bursts of pain. Her left breast is blackened, swollen larger than her right.
Is THIS how Agent Gibbs takes care of his agents?
"My GOD, 'Chelle!" the words burst out of him. "What happened?"
"What do you mean 'what happened'?" her words are slurred through broken, bloodstained lips in a blast of hate. "You happened!"
Her fury mutes him. He can't take the words in. Bruises cover her, blood has flowed and smeared from several cuts and lacerations, her face covered in gore. She glares up at him; fury and hatred strangle her words.
"You beat the hell out of me!"
x
Horrified, he raises his hands as though to ward off the incredible image and the backs of his hands are covered in dried blood. He stares at the damning sight and pain in his bruised knuckles only now registers.
"'Chelle, I–"
His incredulous burst makes her pull away, yank the blanket about her again like a shield, turn on the couch to hide against its back, seek its soft protection. "GET AWAY FROM ME!" she screams. "DON'T TOUCH ME!"
"'Chelle!" This is impossible. He couldn't have–
"Keep away from me you – you MANIAC! Just keep away. Don't touch me!"
"'Chelle, I didn't…." In reaching out to her, he's presented with his bloody hands again. "I didn't do this."
She looks over her shoulder back to him, the hate on her broken face a stab to his heart. Incredulity turns to misery and she starts to cry.
"You… damned..." she cries so hard the words barely make it through her broken lips, but they lash his soul. "BASTARD!"
"'Chelle…."
"I only wanted to heellllp," she turns from him, her face pressed to the protection of the couch back but it only partially smothers her weeping. Broken sobs wrack her body.
"What'd you do this for? I just wanted to help!"
"'Chelle, I swear to God I don't remember. I'd never hurt you."
"You … lying …" she sobs so hard she can barely form the words, "Bastard! Get away from me!" She looks back, hatred at war with misery. "Get away from me! I never want to see your face again!"
He backs away from her tears, from her murderous fury, but when he reaches the doorway, so consumed by guilt he can barely think, all he can say is "I'm sorry."
"GET OUT OF HERE!" she shrieks and turns back to the safety of the couch, but as he turns away into the hallway her muffled shriek hits him from behind. "MOVE – OUT!"
He goes down the hall into the bathroom, closes the door, but nothing can cut him off from her loud weeping.
x
He turns on the water tap, unable to believe this has happened - is happening. They've been in 'Couples Counseling' with Chaplain McGee for five sessions, he's been seeing NCIS' Psychiatrist Milton Gyves ever since he'd shot and killed George Franklin so many months ago, but nothing has helped. It's harder to open up at the Church, to a woman, because even though she's a priest she's not an anonymous one.
But in all that they'd stuck together, he and 'Chelle. Their love carried them through all the dark times and now she's sobbing in the living room and he holds his hands under the lukewarm water, her dried blood gradually sloughing off his bruised knuckles.
How did it happen? He can't imagine ever hurting her. He adores her - and now he scrubs her blood off his hands, watches the flakes run down the drain and her sobbing in the living room stabs his heart.
Even in his nightmares she'd stuck with him. Even when he stopped seeing Gyves she'd stuck with him. She'd been angry, frustrated but she'd stuck with him. Director Shepherd made him return to Gyves, Mother McGee helped him, both alone and then the three of them together, but no matter what happened he and 'Chelle were together ... and now all he can do is clean his hands and listen to her crying - and at three-thirty in the morning he has no idea what to do next.
x
He turns off the water, dries his clean hands, his bruised knuckles dark accusations of vicious insanity. He has to be insane, he had to be, if he could ever hurt the woman he loves so much.
He steps out into the hallway, all is quiet. Risking it, he calls through the short hall "'Chelle?" but her immediate, hateful scream batters him.
"MOVE … OUT!"
xxx
Monroe University Hospital is nearly silent at 0545, nurses and other staff tread softly, perform their duties as quietly as possible and the approach of a young blonde woman to the nurse's station is nearly as unobtrusive. "Excuse me," she whispers, eyes alight.
"Yes?" Nurse Eleanor Michels hadn't expected anyone. There've been no emergencies on this floor; it's been a quiet shift, Eleanor's favorite kind.
"Hi, I'm Anne Wetzel, Bill Wetzel's daughter," she whispers. "I wonder, would it be possible to see my dad for a few moments?"
"I'm sorry, visiting hours start at ten." The sun's barely up but she won't say this, the woman's come from outside and must know it. There are no windows in these corridors but Michels does have a clock. Her eyes flick to the Duty Board. Yes, William Wetzel was admitted yesterday, he's scheduled for an operation at two. Doctor Rangan will remove some kidney stones and Wetzel will probably be out Thursday evening.
"Oh, but you see, I'm on my way to work," the blonde pest whispers, obviously thinking she can circumvent the rules with words. "I work in West Hyattsville, I won't be back until late and I really wanted to give him the news."
"What news?" It had better be good, urgent, cataclysmic for her to wake a patient and possibly - no, Wetzel's alone in his room; good thing.
Anne extends her left hand, the small diamond on her third finger catches the florescent light. "I just got engaged."
"Congratulations." Eleanor tries to put a little feeling behind it but it's been a long shift. It's also much too early for visitors and the one reason she does the 12 to 8 is there are no visitors.
But she reflects that there's no cause to be mean - yet. Rounds for medications and other services are due to start now, and she is supposed to keep the patients in (reasonably) good cheer... She hopes that a daughter's engagement will be good news.
"I suppose," Michels says and stands up, "that we could make a little exception, but only for a minute."
"Thank you."
"I can only let you stay for a minute," she emphasizes as she steps out of the Station. "Visiting hours aren't for four hours."
"I understand."
Eleanor hopes she does. Lots of people don't, no matter what you tell them or how often. She just hopes no doctor comes on the floor.
x
She leads the younger woman to the fourth blue door down the hall, almost to the end of her sector and quietly opens the door. The lights are off inside but the sun's just breaking the horizon so the room's not black, and the tabs next to the door confirm only the B bed is occupied.
She steps in first, uses one of the three tiny levers beside the door to raise the lights a third of the way. B bed, near the curtained window, is obscured by the white privacy curtain. "Remember," she says softly, "a minute."
"No problem," Wetzel assures her with a smile, enters the room and steps past the curtain. Eleanor quietly closes the door.
She'll wait that minute, then she'll discreetly enter to remind the woman that - a shrill screech rips through the ward.
She turns, shoves open the door and the initial angry reprimand dies on her lips. The woman's standing outside the curtain's range and screams again; Michels imagines it filling the entire building. She's not concerned with rules now, that was the first second, for the woman's face is filled with horror and grief and her body trembles so violently Michels is sure she'll faint. Wetzel's staring at the bed, looks like she's going to scream again.
Michels crosses the room in three steps and throws the curtain aside.
x
William Wetzel lies still on the bed, but there's nothing like the still gray of death. Eleanor slaps the Emergency button on the wall beside the head of the bed even though she knows it's far too late. Procedure. They fight for life until a doctor declares there's no hope left. She commands the woman to stand in the corner by the window.
Throughout the entire hospital a loud voice announces 'Code Blue, 3247' 'Code Blue, 3247'. It will repeat this over and over until it's turned off.
The heart monitor beside the bed already is.