Title: Of Hospitals and Helicopters
Author: BlueKangaroo
Rating: K
Disclaimer: I don't own 24 or any of its characters, and I write fanfic solely for entertainment.
Summary: This story is a dream that I had one night during a long, stressful hospital stay. (I blame boredom, stress, and painkillers.) I was talking with a friend about this a few days ago, and decided to write it down before I forgot anything.
Background Details
In November of 2004, I spent four weeks in Children's Hospital undergoing major brain surgery and rehab for a brain tumor. The tumor was benign, a non-cancerous mass of tissue and cells, but its size and location posed problems. Surgery was risky; I could emerge paralyzed, deaf, blind, mentally handicapped, or any number of other problems. Or, as if those weren't frightening enough, I could have not survived the surgery at all.
I survived the operation, and the mass was successfully removed, but recovery was another battle. The operation left me with little coordination, affected balance, and severe muscle spasms for nearly three months afterward. I had to re-train my muscles to hold a fork to feed myself, to hold a pencil to write my name, to hold my head upright instead of at an odd angle, and to walk again. In the span of about three weeks, I went from a relatively normal and capable fourteen-year-old girl, to one whose parents had to help feed, bathe, and dress her. I spent four weeks in the hospital recovering from the surgery and undergoing intense physical therapy, and three more months in outpatient rehab after that.
During that long hospital stay, I was on several different painkillers, muscle relaxants, and other medications. Some of their effects were rather funny (morphine hallucinations, whew!), and others were far from it (extreme mood swings and crying fits from Valium, which was intended as a muscle relaxant for the spasms, but did nothing except make me cry a lot). After one particular day, I was emotionally spent, tired of it all, and just wanted to go home. That, combined with medications (I assume), resulted in an utterly random and yet much-welcomed dream. Because this dream was so detailed (and RANDOM), and cheered me up so much, I remember it vividly.
(Today, I am nineteen years old and tumor-free. My handwriting is much slower than it was before the tumor and surgery, but it is just as neat as before. I can stand, walk, feed myself, and do all the normal things that I am expected to do. As a result of being born four months premature, I have mild cerebral palsy and a whole host of other issues. I've had fifteen surgeries and too many hospital stays to count, but outside of the hospital, I lead a fairly normal life.)
Now, for the story itself...
Of Hospitals and Helicopters
The bedside digital clock's glowing red numbers announced that it was after eleven o'clock at night, but neither Mom nor I could sleep. Briefly, I wondered if Dad was asleep at home. (Once I was out of the ICU and stable, he and Mom alternated nights staying with me so he could go to work and they could get some sleep.) Sleep in a hospital was nearly impossible, especially for a light sleeper like me.
That day had been difficult, with an afternoon crying meltdown brought on by sheer stress, frustration, fear, and the effects of the Valium that I was taking in an attempt to ease the muscle spasms in my hands. Walking was getting easier as I regained my balance, but my hands were still all but useless. As soon as I picked anything up, be it a hairbrush or a cookie, powerful and uncontrollable muscle spasms left my hands shaking wildly. That resulted in me hitting myself in the head with a hairbrush, almost jabbing myself in the eye with a toothpaste-covered toothbrush, spilling food all over myself and the table, producing unrecognizable scribbles and jabbing a hole in the paper when I held a pen, and flinging Connect Four chips (and, once, even the game board itself) across the table at Mom when we tried to play a game. Unfortunately, so far, all that the Valium had done was display one of its unpleasant side effects: irritability and random crying jags.
Despite the fact that the meltdown had been early that afternoon and it was now late at night, my eyes were still red and scratchy, and my head and sinuses ached dully. I should have been asleep hours ago, but instead Mom and I were watching an episode of "Without a Trace" (or maybe it was "NCIS"?) on the tiny TV hanging over my hospital bed. Neither of us were paying full attention to it. I tossed and turned restlessly under tangled sheets. Mom glanced back and forth between me in the bed, the book in her lap, and the TV screen.
Finally, I felt my eyelids drooping and my head nodding, and I surrendered gratefully to sleep. As I tumbled into darkness, I heard Mom whisper, "Good night" across the room.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Outside my window, I heard the whirring of a helicopter's rotor blades. Probably LifeFlight coming in with a patient, I thought sleepily. The noise became even louder, and then gradually diminished as the helicopter touched down on the lighted landing pad outside.
A few moments later, I heard an odd noise that sounded like the scrape of metal. Stranger still, it sounded as though it were coming closer, up the wall towards my window.
Suddenly, there was a muffled squeaking sound as the large glass window slid open. It was early December in the Midwestern United States, and nights were cold. The window's abrupt and unannounced opening brought with it an unwelcome blast of cool air. I burrowed deeper under my blankets, turning towards the window as I did...
...And froze in utter shock and surprise. A man wearing black military fatigues was climbing through the window into my room! I opened my mouth to cry out, but the man held a finger to his lips and turned his face towards me. I found myself staring at Jack Bauer.
Before I could process that surprise, I realized that more people were climbing through the window behind him. As they removed ski masks and stepped into my room one by one, all carrying some sort of wall-climbing harness device, I recognized Chloe O'Brien and Sydney Bristow (from the TV show "ALIAS"), and several CIA and CTU TAC team agents. And behind them were... Huh? The dean of students, Mr. Hall; his sister-in-law and my English teacher, Mrs. Hall; my Bible class teacher, Mr. Talley; and my science teacher, Mr. Lewis.
I shook my head. "What are YOU doing here?" I demanded incredulously. "Sydney, Jack, and my teachers? What is going on?"
They surrounded my bed, still dressed in all of their black-ops gear. Seeing my teachers wearing black fatigues and ski masks (and were those pistols in holsters?) was surreal – as was the fact that they were standing next to characters from my two favorite TV shows!
"We were tasked on a top-secret CTU and CIA mission and told to get you out," Chloe spoke up as she stared at something on her PDA screen. "You do want out of here, right?" she added somewhat impatiently. Of COURSE I do! I nodded emphatically.
"But... my head," I said meekly. "I-I can't sit up very well, and the monitors..."
"We'll take care of that," Sydney Bristow said calmly. "Here, lean forward." Still stunned and bewildered, I carefully pushed myself upright and angled my head downward. She kept a hand on my arm, balancing me, as a CTU TAC agent carefully placed a bandage over my cropped hair and the raw red incision that began halfway up my neck and stretched upward to the base of my skull.
As gently as they possibly could while hurrying, she and Jack carefully disconnected me from the tangled myriad of wires and monitors that I was attached to.
With that accomplished, Jack took my left hand in a firm grip and studied the layers of sticky adhesive that secured my IV line in the back of my hand. With one abrupt yank, he seized the needle and tubing and pulled it out. I gasped at the stinging pain that shot through my hand and wrist.
"There; done. I'm sorry," Jack apologized, sounding genuinely sorry. He gently pressed a gauze pad over the now-profusely bleeding puncture wound in my hand. "Come on, we've got to go now."
Two TAC agents stepped up next to the bed. "It's cold outside," one of them said calmly as they wrapped me in a cocoon of blankets. "There you go. We've got you; you're okay." Gently, carefully, they scooped me out of the bed, blankets and all, and walked over to the window.
Mrs. Hall was sitting on the window sill, and Mr. Talley had apparently climbed out the window and into the helicopter that was hovering just outside. She took me from the TAC agents and carefully handed me to him, and he pulled me inside the helicopter and onto a seat.
Chloe glanced up from looking at her PDA. I saw several little green blips moving on the screen, and realized that she was looking at a map of the hospital. "A nurse will be coming in here in five minutes to do a vitals check," she warned.
"All right, let's go; we're running out of time!" Jack ordered sharply. With that command, and me safely inside the waiting helicopter, the rest of the agents and my teachers scrambled out the window and into the helicopter. As soon as the last person was inside, the door slammed and the helicopter rose into the sky.
I watched the brightly-lit hospital complex grow smaller beneath us as we flew away.
Jack turned around in his seat. "You okay?" he asked kindly.
I nodded. "Fine. Thank you."
"So... why am I here?" I ventured timidly after a few moments of silence. "I'm a civilian. Why would you break me out of the hospital? Not that I'm complaining, of course," I added hastily.
Jack turned around in his seat. "We brought all of you together to help CTU with a top-secret mission," he informed me solemnly, producing a black folder and handing it to me. "The briefing details are all in there."
As he continued talking, filling me in on the details, I heard him say something about radioactive macaroni and bio-hazard food in the school cafeteria. "Our cafeteria food is really gross, but I never knew it was a biohazard," Mr. Talley spoke up.
This was really weird. First a top-secret stealth hospital break-out, and now radioactive cafeteria food?
Jack and Mr. Talley were still talking, but a persistent beeping sound was drowning out their words. As the annoying noise grew louder, I struggled to hear.
"Taylor? Are you awake?" What? Why was Lauren (my night nurse) here? I turned my head and saw her sitting on the floor next to my chair, still dressed in her colorful scrubs.
Yes, I'm awake; can't you see me looking at you? My mouth wouldn't form the words. Please, please make that thing stop beeping. I can't hear Jack, and I need to hear what he's telling me about this mission...
-o-o-o-o-o-
"Taylor? Come on, hon, I need you to wake up for a minute."
Groggily, I opened my eyes. "Huh? What...?"
"Hey." Lauren stood over the bed, holding a medicine dropper filled with pale orange liquid. "Sorry to wake you up," she whispered, "but it's time for your meds." She handed me the syringe. "Think you can hold that by yourself? I'll see if I can get your silly IV pump to stop beeping and let you sleep."
Gradually, I realized that I was still in my hospital room, still connected to an IV line and monitors. There was no helicopter, no teachers and government agents waiting to whisk me away, and no mission involving radioactive food. Darn. Back to reality.
Sighing, I lifted the syringe to my mouth. Like usual, as soon as I picked up the syringe, my hand began to tremble violently. Temporarily abandoning the beeping IV pump, Lauren gripped my wrist and kept my shaking hand from squirting medicine all over myself and the sheets instead of into my mouth.
"There you go," she said with a smile, taking the syringe and handing me a cup of apple juice. "See if this will help to get some of that nasty taste out of your mouth."
"It won't," I replied grimly. "It just makes it taste weirder." I took a drink anyway.
Lauren went back to fiddling with the blinking blue box and glowing display screen. "There!" she exclaimed triumphantly as the incessant two-tone alarm finally quieted. "That'll make it easier for you to go back to sleep."
"Thanks." I yawned.
As I burrowed into the blankets again, I suddenly heard the sound of a helicopter's rotors outside my window. "There's the LifeFlight team," Lauren said as she stepped towards the door. "I've got to go. They move quickly, so you'll be able to go back to sleep soon." She left the room, closing the door behind her.
I lay in bed, listening to the sounds outside, but this time, there were no secret agents dressed in tactical gear to climb through my window. Finally, I drifted back to sleep with a smile.
I think I'll stay away from the school macaroni and cheese...
-El Fin-
A/N: I told my parents about this the next day, and they and my doctor thought it was hilarious. Also, that afternoon, I was served mac and cheese for lunch. It wasn't radioactive (probably), but it was the most disgusting macaroni I've ever eaten. Kraft EasyMac, steam-warmed and reheated until it was gluey, dry, and tasteless. To this day, I hate EasyMac!