"You have medtech training, right?"
Triplett accepted the beer Skye was offering to him. "Yeah. Why, you got a sprain or something?"
"No," said Skye. "I was just wondering if you were one of the ones who patched Ward up when he-" Skye made an exaggerated gesture, pantomiming suicide.
"Yeah, I was. Coulson wanted to keep the number of people who knew about him to a minimum, so it was mostly me and Simmons."
Skye didn't ask why she hadn't been told. She didn't want to know, honestly. "Was he serious? I mean, was he actually trying to die?"
Trip raised an eyebrow. "I'm not psychic, girl. I don't know."
Skye sighed. "What was he like when he woke up?"
"Which time?"
"First one."
"The first time? With the button? He was just…sad."
He's in modified five-point restraints. His head is free to turn and his wrists are tightly sutured. He's on the bed in his cell. Well, he's on the bedframe. They've taken the mattress away. It will be a long time before he's trusted with bedsheets and a pillow.
Triplett walks over, manually checks his pulse and counts his respirations. Ward stops talking to himself long enough for Trip to ensure that his vitals are strong. Of course they are. He's in peak physical condition.
Triplett can hear Ward mumbling. People are always confused and disoriented when they come out of anesthesia. They're recording this just in case Ward says something useful, but so far he's just whimpered a mix of apologies and pleas to no one in particular. Trip's not really one for traditional gender roles, but he feels uncomfortable watching a grown man cry like a preschooler.
"How's your pain?"
"Three."
"Now that's a lie. I can give you more pain meds."
"Kill me."
Trip's going to pretend he misheard that. "I'm going to give you something for the pain." He checks Simmons' notes, double-checks the math, and adds a small dose of oxycodone to the IV.
"I'm sorry, John. It's a weakness. Please, I'm sorry."
So that's who he's apologizing to. Yeah, Garrett's the one you should feel bad about. Not the people you killed and betrayed.
Ward rolls his head to the side so he can look Trip in the eye. "Kill me," he repeats.
"Nope," says Trip, in a voice that belies the gravity of the situation, "you won't make a murderer out of me."
"What did they do with his body?"
"Whose body?"
"Garrett."
"There wasn't much left. Pretty sure they cremated anything that wasn't destroyed in the fight."
"I'm sorry," says Ward. He's not talking to Triplett. He's crying again, rolling his head back and forth. "I'm sorry."
"What about the second time," asked Skye, "with the folded paper?"
"Oh, he was royally pissed."
When Ward comes out of the anesthesia, he lets out a bestial roar. He looks feral as he bucks and strains against the restraints, wide-eyed with fury and misery.
Triplett tightens the abdominal restraints. He isn't concerned about Ward getting out, though. He might not be able to take Ward out in a fair fight, but he's easily able to overpower the prisoner the way he is now, weak and woozy from the anesthesia and the blood loss.
Ward continues growling and fighting the restraints. Sometimes the growl contains a whistling noise laid over top of the rumbling. Trip assumes that has something to do with the injury to his throat he incurred during his capture. All Trip knows is that it makes him sound like a squealing pig.
Ward is turning his wrists back and forth against the cuffs, trying to dislodge the stitches.
"I can't let you do that, man," says Trip calmly. He takes each of Ward's hands in one of his own and turns them so they lay flat. "Just cool it."
Ward spits at him and makes another animalistic snarl, but at least he stops pulling at his stiches.
They abide in silence for a little while. Well, Trip is silent. Ward is breathing loudly, nostrils flared and teeth clenched.
Trip is checking his watch, wondering if he should call someone else in so he can have a bathroom break, when Ward sticks out his tongue, closes his teeth around it, and starts slamming his head backwards. Believe it or not, this is a serious problem. There are some big blood vessels in the tongue and teeth can do major damage to them. It's also possible to choke on a bitten-off piece of tongue.
When Ward and Triplett were at the Academy, there were joking rumors that Ward had been raised by wolves. Trip had laughed it off at the time, but now he can see it, can see something predatory and terrifying in Ward's eyes, can see a creature that would gnaw its own leg off to get free. Or maybe he can't see it and he's just imagining things.
"Ward," says Trip. "You're gonna have to stop that. You can stop on your own or I can shove a bite block down your throat."
Ward smacks his head down one last time, defiantly. His nose and upper lip are twitching and he looks like a caged beast. "I was supposed to have nine and a half minutes," he says in a guttural whisper.
Trip realizes that must be how long Ward had expected to have between cutting himself and being discovered. The cuts were deep, especially given the blunt tool he had used to make them. Nine and a half minutes was enough time to bleed out, given his incomplete recovery from his last attempt. So what Ward is saying is, "I was supposed to die."
Well, thinks Trip, that's too damn bad. You don't just get to disappear after taking so much. Killing yourself doesn't balance the scales. But what Trip says is, "You were asking me about Garrett last time. I checked. They did cremate him. We've still got some of his stuff, though. That jacket he used to wear. You can't have it now, obviously, but maybe someday, when they let you have stuff in your cell."
Skye took a long drink of her beer. "Could he have actually died? Because that's the sort of thing specialists know about."
Trip shrugged. "It varies with time, but yeah, it could happen. He tried to hide it to buy himself time. First time, he hid under his bedsheets. Second time, he flooded his cell so we wouldn't see the blood."
"What about the third time?"
"I don't know if he was trying to die then, or if he was just throwing a fit. It's pretty damn hard to kill yourself just running at the walls." Trip shrugged. "They had taken everything out of his cell by that point. He didn't have a lot of options."
They're running out of numbers to describe what kind of restraints Ward is being held in as he recovers from a fracture and a concussion. His head is banded down, with a second tie holding his jaw tight to a bite block. There are straps on his arms, his legs, and his torso. They'd put him under general anesthesia to set the fracture and remove a bone fragment that was impinging on his eye. Simmons will do the surgeries because orders are orders, because they need him alive, but she has to leave the monitoring to Triplett. She doesn't like the urges she has when Ward is lying unconscious beneath her knife.
Triplett isn't sure which version of Ward he's hoping will emerge from the haze of sedation: the weeping child or the spindle of rage. The former is embarrassing and pitiful. The latter is frankly scary. Neither is of any help in the fight against Hydra.
Ward coughs and gags on the bite block.
"If I take this out, will you be good?" asks Triplett. "Blink twice for yes."
Ward blinks twice. His expression is unreadable, though that may be a function of the various straps restraining his face.
Trip reaches over him carefully and slides the bite block out of his mouth. "That better?"
Ward seems to think for a moment, as if he's somehow considering whether to fly into a rage and has opted against it. "Yes," he says finally, "thank you."
"Well," said Skye, "I guess he wasn't lying about that."