Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Chapter 1
"Okay, that's enough." Danny Williams reached across the wheeled table separating two hospital beds, one of which he occupied, and yanked the room's privacy curtain as hard as he could, blocking out his ability to see his partner, Steve McGarrett, which had the added bonus of preventing Steve from seeing him. He could overlook Steve's fatigue as he recovered from multiple gunshot wounds, the life-saving liver transplant as he received half Danny's healthy liver, the fact that he was on medications, and worn out from the flock of friends who had crowded in to celebrate his leaving ICU for a room he would share with Danny. But he could not un-hear what Steve had said about his son. It was a stinging argument, and Danny had admitted it hurt that Steve had not even thanked him for the liver donation, and in fact seemed to be more upset that the thing had come from the "negative" Danny before saying that Danny's little son, Charlie, would come in time to hate him as much as Steve did. Danny had only heard the last part over the zzzzzip of the curtain as he yanked it to block their view of each other and put an end to the argument. He also switched off the light over his bed, and refused to say anything, despite Steve's attempts to draw him back into talking to him.
Danny had had enough. No father ever wanted to think his little four-year-old son would ever come to hate him, especially when that father was Danny Williams. He thought about how much it had hurt to be lied to by his ex-wife, who had let him believe for more than two years that Charlie was not even his son. At first, she had told him she was pregnant with their second child. It was not an ideal situation, since Rachel was still married to her second husband, Stan, and Danny felt she had used him during a rocky patch in that marriage to attempt what was supposed to be a reconciliation with Danny. He would have married her again, when she divorced Stan, and put his family back together. Those months of thinking he was going to be a father again had been happy! But then Rachel and Stan reconciled as if there had never been a rift, and Rachel told Danny she had known all along that her unborn child was Stan's, not his. She had used him as the back-up plan.
Danny had grieved! He had still helped Rachel when she went into labor while Stan was away, was there at the birth of Charlie, thinking at the time that this beautiful child was not his, and how badly he wished he was. He was still his daughter's half-brother, so he was always kind and loving to the boy in those first years, because that's how he was. He loved kids. Even when they weren't his. Even when he saw them so seldom and fleetingly that only his cop's training allowed him to even remember what Grace's little brother looked like.
Danny still felt the anger and hurt when Rachel had been forced to admit that Charlie was his. The boy was very sick, and needed a bone marrow transplant from a parent or blood family member, to best survive. Rachel wasn't a good match, and she needed Danny to be tested to see if he was - because he was Charlie's real biological father. Rachel had known all along, but had lied to him, because Danny's job was dangerous, and Stan was rich. Stung and hurt by his ex-wife's betrayal, he had never-the-less immediately agreed to be tested, and saved Charlie's life by donating bone marrow to him when he was found to be a perfect match. The boy was now part of Danny's family, and loved beyond words, for Danny loved his children, and they both knew it and loved him in return. Grace, his daughter by Rachel, was now almost 15, and Charlie 4, and both called him Danno, and he would do anything for them. Both had been at the gathering, mostly for Danny, but also for Steve, whom they referred to as Uncle Steve. They were all ohana, "family" in the Hawaiian language. Somehow Grace had talked her mom into letting Charlie come with her to see their dad that night. He didn't know how she had done it, but was glad because he had two sitting with him, on his otherwise empty side of the room.
Danny had already lost precious time with the boy, and now Steve was telling him that, given time, he'd grow to hate his real father as much as Steve did.
Steve had crossed the line. A close friend would never say something like that. Ohana never would.
And yet Steve had. Danny wondered - not for the first time recently - if he was even part of the ohana anymore, the group that comprised the Five-0 task force, and the friends and colleagues that surrounded them. The people, his friends, too, or so he had believed until recently, who had crowded around Steve's bed with all the balloons, flower bouquets, fruit bouquets, some plush animals, and the huge stack of get well cards they had been saving for Steve until he was released from ICU. It was further, painful proof that Danny wasn't part of the ohana anymore. No one had thought to bring him one balloon or card, and he had been discharged from ICU three days earlier. And while Steve had visitors practically around the clock, Danny had gotten brief "pop ins" of friends on their way to see Steve. His best company was the daily phone calls from his parents and two sisters in New Jersey, and the visits of his daughter, and his son when Rachel let Charlie come see his father.
The truth was that Danny had been hurting physically and emotionally for most of the whole week since the events had occurred which had landed both him and Steve in the hospital. He and Steve had gone dangerously undercover as pilots of a deadly cargo of fentanyl laced meth, which was killing junkies almost every day in Honolulu. Steve was posing as a pilot with Danny as his mechanic. An unmarked chopper had come at them on the pilot's side, and the plane was shot up from rear to nose, critically injuring Steve, and damaging the plane so it lost all fuel while they were still forty miles from shore. Danny, with no pilot's training, had been walked through landing a fuel-less plane with two dead engines by Air Traffic Control, and had refused to land it on the water, which he knew would kill Steve, who he could not have gotten out of the plane fast enough to stop him from drowning while unconscious. Instead, he had told them to clear the beach because that was where he was landing the plane.
He had done it, too, safely enough to be able to help lift his unconscious, bleeding partner out of the Cessna and into the waiting arms of the rest of their Five-0 ohana and the gathered EMTs. He hadn't thought a thing about climbing out afterwards by himself, with not even an EMT focused on him, despite his cuts, bruises, and broken ribs. He was entirely focused on Steve, praying he would not die. And when the ER doctor at Tripler Army Medical Center, Dr. Isaac Cornett, had delivered the horrifying news that Steve's liver was so badly damaged that he needed a liver transplant within hours, or he would die, Danny offered his, since he knew he and Steve were the same blood type, and that Chin Ho, Kono, and Grover, being of different blood types and nationalities, would likely not be good matches. Besides, Dr. Cornett already had all his information on file, since he had been Danny's trauma surgeon and doctor when he was stabbed a year ago.
After Dr. Cornett had told Steve's gathered ohana that the transplant went well and he and Danny would be fine, Chin, Kono, and Lou Grover had been tested to be added to the living donor list, and each had in fact been found to be very poor matches for Steve. Only Danny could have donated anyway, and stepping in so quickly, despite his own injuries, had saved precious time, giving Steve the best chance of survival. It had been explained to him that he was not the ideal donor either, due to his recent traumas, and therefore the surgery might be more dangerous for him, but he had waved it all away. All that mattered was that Steve would die without a liver transplant, and Danny was the quickest, easiest good match. Danny had accepted the increased risk for him, and gone into the surgery with a hope that, whatever the outcome where he was concerned, Steve, his best friend and partner, would live. He hadn't questioned that no one had come to see him off to the surgery, except Grace who Kono had brought to be with her father. Kono hadn't said a word to him, hadn't stayed; Chin hadn't come; Grover did not stop by. It all made sense now, but at the time he hadn't given it a thought. Grace was there. She had stayed with him. Danny wondered who had stayed with her when he was wheeled beyond the doors to the surgical unit.
Now Steve had half Danny's liver, was on the road to a full recovery, and had not thanked Danny for what he had done for him. All Danny had expected was a simple, "Thanks," which he would have waved away between friends, had it been said. He had not donated half his liver to be thanked. He had done it to hopefully save Steve's life, his best friend, his partner, his ohana. It wasn't until the only person besides his beautiful, loving Grace who had thanked him was Dr. Cornett that he even realized no one else had, and he felt the sting of the omission.
But now he wondered if they were still ohana. The things that had happened - or not happened-in the past week had Danny feeling very uncertain that he was, and more and more sure that he was not. He wondered when things had changed, not just with Steve, but with Chin, Kono, Grover, Max, Jerry, Kamekona, and others. What had he done? Sure, Chin and Kono had stopped by briefly to see him most days, but each visit was either prefaced by or ended with, "The doc is in with Steve, so I had to scram for a few minutes," or "I should go check in on Steve. We're taking shifts so he isn't alone."
But Danny was left alone most of the time. Weren't they his friends, too? He had been shot at in the plane with Steve, had been scared worse than ever before in his life when he could not even be sure for a time that Steve hadn't bled out from wounds he could not see, because of the angle the bullets had entered Steve's body. All he could see was a lot of blood. Way too much blood. A dangerous amount of blood. He had successfully defied ATC and crash landed the plane on Waikiki beach instead of the water, so Steve would have a chance to survive. He had steri-strips on the cut on his cheek, bruises and a split lip from the crash landing, which had been safe enough that no one was more than bruised and contused, and Steve had made it to the ER in time. Being told, "Thank God Steve made it," was not the same as also being told, "We're glad you are okay, too." Not the same thing at all. Hadn't he just undergone risky, major surgery to donate half his liver, and lost his gall bladder in the process? Dr. Cornett had explained to him that the gall bladder was routinely removed when the liver was damaged, so Steve had lost his too. It meant they had to restrict their fat intake for awhile, while their bodies adjusted to the new normal and the liver halves grew back to full size – it was not a big deal!. The beach landing and donating half his liver were the big deals. So why did no one care about what he had gone through beyond that Steve hadn't died.
Had they stopped caring about him? When had they stopped, and why?
He had no answers.