Chapter One: Fateful Collapse
Author note: This story is the fourteenth in the Magical Flashpoint series. It follows "It's Gonna Be Okay".
Although all original characters belong to me, I do not own Flashpoint, Harry Potter, Narnia, or Merlin. This story also includes concepts, ideas, and minor characters from The Real Ghostbusters. Bonus points for anyone who spots the cameo from a mid-nineties to early two-thousands TV show named Diagnosis Murder.
The day dawned bright, cheerful, with that perfect combination of temperature and humidity. The clouds, what few there were, had a white, puffy look to them, with nary a drop of gray to be seen. The Strategic Response Unit was the same as it ever was; though Jules and Lou had managed to get themselves assigned to window washing duty after separate pranks the pair had pulled left said windows covered in muck.
Inside, Spike was inspecting – and pampering – his robot, Babycakes, newly upgraded with an assortment of runes, wards, and other improvements to keep the bomb-detection 'bot in good working order no matter where it was deployed. Wordy, Sam and Ed were in the workout room, trading banter back and forth as they spotted each other with the free weights and whiled away the time. Ed had cajoled their boss into promising to join them as soon as he was finished with the ever constant paperwork, but he had yet to appear; Ed plotted out how best to tease his boss and friend over the delay as he left the free weights in favor of a treadmill.
As the day continued on, the rest of Team One joined their fellows in the workout room, Spike straggling in last. He received a good share of guff; his dislike – to put it mildly – of workouts was well known to his teammates. Ed, though, peered out the door, growing concern on his face.
"Boss still working on paperwork?" he asked Spike casually.
Spike, in the middle of hopping up on another treadmill, shrugged. "Must be, Ed. I haven't seen him all morning."
Ed sighed, shaking his head and tapping the controls on his treadmill to bring it to a halt. "I'll get him; he's been skipping too many workouts lately." No way Greg was getting landed with that much paperwork; sure the stuff multiplied like rabbits, but Greg had been working on it for hours. Plus, it was Ed's job as team leader to keep all of his teammates on top of their physical fitness – and that included his negotiator, usually-in-the-truck boss.
So Ed sidled off the treadmill, with a grin for Wordy's tease as he left. As he strolled out into the main area, Winnie Camden, their newest dispatcher, waved to get his attention. He detoured to her at once. She was a petite woman, a bit shorter than Spike, with light cocoa skin and brown hair. It was naturally curly, but Winnie alternated between her natural curl and straightened hair. Her brown eyes held a touch of worry and concern; Ed dispensed with any banter as he leaned against her desk and arched a brow in expectation.
For a moment, Winnie's jaw clenched, then she reported, "There was some paperwork this morning that Commander Holleran put a rush on; Sarge still hasn't gotten it to me."
Ed's brows shot up. "He's been working on paperwork all morning, Winnie."
"I know," Winnie agreed, "But he hasn't gotten any of it to me and Commander Holleran's getting impatient."
Ed glanced over at the briefing room, somewhat surprised that he didn't immediately see his friend and boss inside, pen in hand as he worked at the table. "He in there?"
"Yeah," Winnie confirmed.
"Okay, I'll roust the Boss out, get that paperwork to you, Winnie," Ed promised, pushing off from the counter.
"Thanks, Ed," Winnie thanked him.
Ed nodded to her, then headed over to the briefing room and around the table, calling, "Hey, Greg, Winnie's waiting on that paperwork from…"
Greg Parker lay behind the table, a storm of white paper scattered around him. He wasn't moving; it took Ed far, far too long to see his chest move in a single, shallow breath. Even in the dimly lit room, he was deathly pale, almost shrunken for some reason.
Ed froze, staring in utter horror; he bellowed, "Winnie, call the paramedics!" and threw himself at his boss. He landed hard on his hands and knees, but didn't care as he scrambled to check his Sergeant's pulse. Don't you dare die on me, Greg!
His bellow attracted attention from the rest of Team One, who barreled en mass from the workout room to the briefing room at Ed's roar. Still on his knees at Greg's side, Ed looked up at them as they stampeded in. "Move the table," he snapped, "Get everything you can out of here."
For a minute, that occupied them, but then the table and chairs were out of the way, shoved into the hall or to the sides of the room. "Is he?" Lou managed, pale and stricken; behind him, the rest of the team hovered anxiously for their team leader's response, torn between terror and guilt for not checking on their boss earlier.
Ed's face was grim; his fingers rested on Greg's pulse, there but rapid and fluttering. "He's alive," the man confirmed, as the unconscious Sergeant drew in another shallow breath. "I don't like his pulse or breathing, though," Ed finished, looking very unhappy.
The paramedics arrived then, pushing through the hovering Team One and setting their gear down next to Ed and Greg. "What happened?" the first one, a blonde, middle-aged woman asked.
"I don't know," Ed admitted, "I came to get him; he's been spending too much time on paperwork lately; and I found him like this."
Winnie had, by this time, fought her way through Team One; she volunteered, "I last saw Sergeant Parker working about an hour and a half ago, he asked me to bring him some coffee, extra hot."
She was immediately the focus of several laser-like looks; Jules voicing their mutual concern, "Sarge doesn't like his coffee that hot; he says it burns his mouth."
Winnie frowned, thinking back. "I'm not sure, but, um, he might have been shivering."
Ed's gut clenched, shivering indoors while in an SRU uniform? Usually, the problem they had was the exact opposite. If the Boss had been getting sick, why hadn't he said anything or stayed home? His eyes dropped to his boss, still unresponsive, the pulse under his fingertips growing weaker by the minute, and he flinched. If Greg had stayed home, how long would it have taken to find him? And would he have…Ed cut his train of thought, refusing to even think of his friend dying – at all, much less…alone… The team leader swore at himself; Greg was not going to die, not on his watch!
The paramedics assessed their patient as well as they could, then strapped the SRU Sergeant to a backboard and hefted him onto the stretcher Sam and Spike retrieved for them. "We're taking him to Metro General," the younger, brown-haired paramedic informed them. Then they were gone and Ed was listening to the wail of an ambulance siren outside.
The utterly numb team looked up as Commander Holleran stepped in, attracted by the commotion and fully informed by a tearful Winnie. The tall, gray and white peppered man surveyed his top team, not bothering to hide his frown. "Go, all of you; just keep me informed."
Not a single one of them bothered to change back into civilian clothes before they hit their cars.
The doctor that finally arrived and spoke to them – spoke to Ed actually – started off with a deep frown and a rather pointed, "Has Sergeant Parker, at any time recently, taken or been exposed to drugs or does he have a drinking problem?" He was an older, distinguished gentleman, with a full head of white hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, and an pair of wire-frame glasses. He looked rather friendly but, at the moment, was all business as he regarded Ed and held a pen at the ready over his clipboard.
Ed took the lead, a quick hand gesture keeping the rest of the team silent. "He had an alcohol problem years ago, but he hasn't touched a drop in over a decade. No drugs," he said firmly, no give in his voice at all.
A few scrawled notes then, "Any unusual behavior in the past few days?"
The group traded looks, then Ed replied in the negative.
"Any work related injuries that were considered too minor to report?"
"No, doc, it's been pretty quiet the past two days." Ed considered, thinking hard about the past week, but nothing jumped out at him; again, the team traded looks and shrugs, then Ed remarked, "We did just work the Eco-Terror bombing case, but other than Lou, none of us took any hard knocks."
The doctor sighed heavily as he wrote a few final notes. "We'll continue to investigate, gentlemen, but for now, your Sergeant's in a coma with no immediately identifiable cause." Ed swallowed hard, but the doctor wasn't done. "No stroke, no tumor, nothing in his medical records about diabetes, no infection; in short, we have no idea why he collapsed or why he's now in a coma."
"How bad?" Ed got out, the shock of it hitting him like a baseball bat – or a sledgehammer.
A glance was cast around at the rest of the team; Ed's expression hardened. "They're going to hear it anyway, doc, so just spit it out."
With a deep sigh, the doctor admitted, "He came in with a five on the Glasgow Coma Scale; hasn't slipped any farther than that, but that's quite the severe decline for a man who was walking and talking not four, five hours ago." The doctor removed his glasses, considering them all quite seriously. "If he has any family, I would notify them as soon as possible. It's entirely possible that if Sergeant Parker continues to decline as he has, he may not survive the night."
Dead silence draped the group; in spite of their extreme worry, the idea that their Sergeant might not survive had never crossed their minds. It was one thing if they got hurt on the job, but for their boss to die from a sudden, inexplicable coma was quite another; it felt unjust and extraordinarily unfair.
"Don't count Sarge out," Wordy spoke up after a minute, a glint in his eye and an obstinate set to his jaw. "He's stubborn enough to put up with us; he's stubborn enough to pull through."
This earned them the first smile they'd seen from the doctor. "I hope so, gentlemen," the man admitted. "He certainly has a fine group of friends pulling for him."
With that, the doctor departed to return to his patient. Behind him, Team One traded grim looks and discussed their plans. In short order, it was settled that Jules, Sam, and Lou would return to headquarters to update Commander Holleran and retrieve the team's civilian clothing. Ed and Wordy would call their families to let them know what had happened and what the current prognosis was; then Wordy would pick their boss's kids up from school while Ed headed for the Auror Division to inform Madame Locksley and see if she could get a Healer out to Metro General. Spike would stay at Metro General to keep an eye on Greg, notifying his parents by telephone of the day's events. Plans set, the team scattered.
To the frustration of all, the Healers were similarly mystified by the coma; they'd been snuck in well after visiting hours, in between Metro General's overworked shifts of workers. The two Healers, experienced men both, cast every diagnostic spell in the book and a few that weren't in the book, determined to discover the coma's cause. Yet not a single one of the diagnostics told the worried group anything they hadn't already known. Yes, their Sergeant was in a coma; yes, his consciousness was depressed to the point of barely reacting to stimuli; but, no, there was no readily identifiable cause.
It was Wordy who thanked the Healers for their time and efforts, Ed was too upset and frustrated to do so. After some whispered – mostly whispered – arguing, a rotation of watchers was settled on. Wordy took the kids home with him; no way the team would let them stay on their own in Greg's apartment. Ed, with his own brand of obstinate stubbornness, won the right of first watch and the rest of the team headed home, with loud insistence on being notified if anything changed.
By morning, something had changed. Greg Parker was on life-support.
Author note: At some future point (not saying when), this story will move to a crossover archive. More when we get closer, but I don't want to spoil anything, so that's why we're running in the main Flashpoint archive right now. I will say that I've already included the information in my disclaimer, so, happy puzzling!