COUNTERMEASURES - THOSE SPOILERS!

(This is an unresolved snippet of what might happen in 10.01. It contains some of the spoilers we've been given - not all. I just had to get it out of my system.)

Eric watched the officers bundle Randy North into the patrol car, and turned back towards Horatio. Expecting him to be right behind him, he was shocked that his boss was still on one knee, at the spot where they'd taken North. He ran back to him…

It was only six hours earlier that Eric had arrived at the quay, to a scene at first totally mystifying. Two empty Hummers, no one around, Natalia's gun on the ground. Then blood, quite a lot, and Horatio's 9mm… and his jacket, the lining blood-stained.

"H! Nat!" he called frantically, aware that this could be an ambush, but, at that moment, not caring.

He heard a faint female voice answering him, peered over the rail and saw… he wasn't sure what he saw… Natalia and Horatio in the water, trying to reach the slipway. In trouble. He wasn't sure who was pulling whom.

He ran down to the water's edge, waded in, and hauled them both out. Horatio was a semi-conscious heap at his feet, shaking with cold and shock, blood, mixing with water, streaming down the slip into the sea. Eric dropped to his knees beside him.

He glanced at Natalia, who was kneeling, coughing. "Are you hurt?" At her brief shake of the head, he thrust his phone at her. "Get him some help, now!" If he took in that she was as white and shocked as Horatio, it didn't register.

He rolled his boss over, pulled the shirt out of his waistband, and found the wound… wounds… It looked like a through-and-through. Into the abdomen, but out through his side. It flashed through his mind, that H's excess weight, far from endangering his health, might just have helped him. But he was bleeding heavily. Eric ripped his own shirt off, over his head, and used it, and both hands, to try to stem the blood-flow.

Horatio groaned. His eyes flickered open and he murmured "Natalia?"

"She's OK. She's here. Who did this?"

"North. He… Oh God…" The pain took him again and he twisted away from Eric's hands.

"Lie still! There's help coming."

He hadn't heard Calleigh arrive, but she was there. "Is he…?"

"Shot. Bleeding. See to Nat."

"What happened?"

"No idea."

Calleigh went to attend to the trembling, weeping Natalia.

"What happened?" she asked again.

Natalia explained, as best she could, adding bleakly, " I led him right into a trap."

"He'll forgive you," Calleigh said soothingly.

Eric glanced up, thinking, 'but I might not'. Horatio seemed to be losing consciousness. "Where's that goddamn ambulance?"

Help came quickly, and Eric and Calleigh saw their two injured colleagues into the vehicle.

"Do you want to go with him?" Calleigh asked.

"Yes, but we need to see what happened here…" Eric looked round, stunned. "At least collect their firearms and stuff…"

"Do that. Tape the scene. Then go to the hospital." She knew how Eric felt about his boss and brother-in-law. In fact, she had, on occasions, felt like the least important part in an emotional triangle. Anyway, she knew Eric would never be able to concentrate on a crime scene, with Horatio in his current state.

As Eric gathered up the guns, and Horatio's jacket, Calleigh was on her cell, taking charge as was her right as H's deputy, and summoning Ryan, Frank, and anyone else she thought might be useful.

At the hospital, the events became clearer. While the doctors worked on Horatio, Eric talked to Natalia, who, though deeply shocked and with a mild concussion, was uninjured.

"He came in after me," she said with amazement. "Shot… and he came in after me."

"That's H," Eric said ruefully. "Though the cold water probably numbed him a bit and slowed the bleeding."

"How is he?"

"Don't know yet."

"Come and tell me."

Eric nodded, left her, and called to discuss the details he had learned with Frank.

"We'll get him." The big Texan was angry "Oh boy, will we get him!"

The doctor was optimistic when Eric went back to Horatio. He addressed the CSI as they stood either side of their prone patient.

"It's a through-and-through, and possibly just a bullet fragment. No internal organ damage. He's been lucky."

"If getting shot is lucky…"

Horatio murmured, "Talk to me."

"Oh, you're back with us, are you?" Eric smiled at him.

"Always was, bro…"

"Actually," the doctor said, "you weren't. But you're going to be OK. You need to rest, while your body makes up the blood loss, and there's a risk of infection, so I'm putting you on strong antibiotics. I'll clean you up and stitch you now… And," He looked at Horatio's face, "find you some pain relief."

For two hours, Eric sat beside him, leaving Calleigh and Frank to co-ordinate the search for North. His boss seemed to doze, giving in, for a while, to his body's needs. Only for a while though. As a nurse came to remove the canula from his arm, Horatio focussed on Eric, and said pointedly, "Why aren't you out catching North?"

"Because Calleigh's in charge, and there are plenty of people doing just that."

"Are my clothes here?"

"Yes… All soaking wet."

"Do something for me?"

"Of course."

"Go to my apartment and get me some fresh stuff."

"You're not thinking of discharging yourself?"

"Not thinking. Doing. I'm OK. Bit sore, but I need to be doing something."

"H, you're mad!"

"Will you fetch my clothes? Or do I ask someone else?"

Eric sighed. Arguing with H was totally pointless. "All right. Rest while I'm gone."

He took the keys from his boss's jacket and drove to the apartment, returning, as slowly as he dared, with suit, shirt, underwear, even shoes. He found Horatio on his feet, coming back from visiting Natalia. Less than dignified in a hospital gown, he was pale, limping, moving slowly, and with his hand over his side.

Eric leapt to help him sit on the bed. "How are you?"

"Weaker than I'd like. But OK."

As both he and the doctors failed to make Horatio see sense, within half an hour, Eric drove him back to the lab. His gun, badge, and even his ID had survived, and he looked… normal, if pale. Eric was only too conscious that he wasn't. He had barely made it to the car, had to be helped into it, and winced every time the car hit a bump. Holstering the gun, directly over his wounded side, had been painful to watch.

Well, they had caught Randy North easily - the man was stupidly predictable. It was H himself who had taken him down, with a hefty punch in the face. Eric marvelled that he had the strength, but assumed an adrenalin-rush at the critical point had helped.

But he'd hurt himself. As Eric reached his side, he was holding the wound, fresh blood seeping through his fingers.

"What have you done?"

"Torn a stitch. Felt it go…" Horatio carefully took his hand away, and cautiously reholstered his gun. "Help me up."