Thank you so much for your responses to the first chapter. I really didn't expect that many and based on the number, it's safe to say that I will finish what I started.
I've condensed an entire season of plots into a single episode or rather a two-part episode and it will read like such. I've added a few herbs and spices of my own into the mix to make sure this isn't a spoiler for the fall premiere. But it is fun for me to think it could be.
I apologize if there are inaccuracies for I have missed a few episodes of Season 3 on account of business trips and that my DVD recorder was on the blink. I hope to catch up with the summer reruns. Again this is my AU so I might have changed a few things.
We're entering a dark tunnel but there should be light at the end of it.
H50H50H50H50
Danny breezed inside the hospital and made a beeline for the nurses' station.
"Excuse me?" he addressed the two nurses on duty. "I'm Detective Daniel Williams. Somebody called me about Commander Steven McGarrett?"
The dark brunette approached the desk. "Yes Detective. I'm the one who contacted you. You are listed as Commander McGarrett's medical proxy."
"That's right. You said something about multiple gunshot wounds?"
"I did."
"How is he?"
"At the moment he's still in surgery. We haven't heard anything from the doctors who are working on him."
"Who brought him to the hospital? What did he say happen?" Danny was coming apart at the seams, going out of his skull with dread.
"A man showed up at the emergency and put him on a gurney. Told us to get in touch with his emergency contact. They immediately rushed him into the OR."
"What man?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Duke said as he walked up to Danny.
"Duke! What the hell is going on here? What happened to Steve?"
"We know that he was shot several times but other than that, nothing."
"Wait a minute! You're standing here telling me that you have absolutely no report whatsoever of a shooting? No identity on the guy who brought him in? For God's sake! He wasn't invisible! Someone must have seen his face? Did he give a name?" Danny was beside himself. Panic has set in every fiber of his being, firing up the nerves in his body.
"He said his name was John Smithers. A few nurses and doctors saw part of his face. He wore a hat and dark glasses. He barely said two words before he quietly slipped away. We're getting an artist sketch to run a facial recognizance."
"What about surveillance tapes?"
"They're getting them ready for us. But I doubt they'll tell us more than what the personnel who got a glimpse of him did."
Danny ran his hands through his hair and puffed out in frustration. Duke came to rest a hand on his shoulder.
"Danny, we will catch whoever did this. Steve will make it."
"Yeah, he's seen worse, right?" Danny replied sarcastically before turning to the nurse. "I'll be in the waiting room."
"We will update you as soon as we hear something."
"Thank you." He turned to Duke. "Duke, you…"
"You'll be the first one I contact, Danny." Duke obliged.
Danny nodded appreciatively and tapped him on the arm as he headed toward the waiting room where he plumped down on the couch and buried his head in his hands in utter despair.
H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50
It wasn't long before Chin showed up at the hospital. He spotted Danny near the coffee machine and walked up to him. "Danny!"
"Chin."
"How's Steve?"
"No word yet."
"Who did this?"
"So far no lead. Duke got a sketchy description of the man who brought him to the hospital and asked for the surveillance tapes."
"Danny! Chin!" Duke called out from down the corridor. He hurried up to the two men. "We just had a report that Wo Fat has escaped."
"What?" Danny jumped in.
"There was a massive carnage at the jail. Ten guards were killed. Blood spattered everywhere and there was a considerable amount of blood inside the confinement space where Wo Fat was held as if someone bled to death or close. Forensic took samples to determine if the blood's Wo Fat's."
"Could the two be related?" Chin threw in.
"Steve did mention he was going to pay that bastard a visit. Couldn't be a coincidence. And yet it doesn't make sense. I mean if Wo Fat's goons shot Steve, then why bring him to the hospital? They would have left him there to die."
The two men shook their heads as they were stumped for answers. Chin however offered this conjecture. "Could it be that whoever broke into that jail wasn't one of Wo Fat's associates but instead a foe and that Steve just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got accidentally shot in the commotion? I mean Danny's right. Why bring Steve to the hospital?"
"That's a plausible theory. We'll look into that." Duke said. "Look guys, I'll go back there and help with the investigation."
"I should go with you," Chin suggested and then turned to Danny, "unless you need me here?"
"No, you go Chin. I'll stay here and wait for news. I have a feeling Steve won't be coming out of surgery soon. You might have plenty of time to come back before we hear anything."
Chin gave Danny's shoulder a hearty squeeze. "Think positive. Steve's SuperSEAL ninja, remember?"
Danny pursed his lips into a thin line to refrain from wearing his heart on his sleeves in front of the two law enforcement officers. "Yeah. He's a tough S.O.B. Go on! Bring me some answers." He waved them off before his unshed tears started spilling out of his eyes.
Completely downcast, Danny wandered back to the coffee machine to buy his fourth cup. He needed to keep his wits about him and that's the stuff that could do it.
H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50H50
Nearly five hours had elapsed. Chin was back at the hospital to keep a despondent Danny company while waiting for news on Steve's condition.
A doctor clad in blood-spattered green scrubs exited the emergency room and made his way to the nurses' station to ask to speak to McGarrett's next of kin. She pointed to the blond detective sitting on the waiting room sofa.
"Detective Williams?"
Danny rose to his feet. "That's me."
"I'm Doctor Canford. I'm part of the surgical team that operated on Commander McGarrett."
"How is he?" Danny asked straightforwardly with a lump in his throat.
"Why don't we sit down?" He proposed with a wave of the hand toward the waiting room. He frowned at the Hawaiian native joining them.
"I'm sorry, this is Lieutenant Chin Ho Kelly. He is also part of the Five-0 Task Force."
"Lieutenant," the doctor nodded toward Chin as he perched himself on the arm of a chair facing the two friends.
"Now before you start listing the injuries, please, I beg of you, speak in plain English. Leave the medical lingo to the professionals. I just want to know what the damage is."
The doctor smiled cooperatively before his expression turned forlorn."Commander McGarrett was shot five times."
"Oh God!" Danny cried in despair and cradled his head between his hands as the air pushed out of his lungs. Chin laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Doctor Canford hung his head and allowed the blond detective a silent moment of grief before he continued delivering the grim prognosis. "One bullet penetrated the intestinal track. There was fecal matter that leaked into his abdomen. We cleaned the abdominal cavity but I'm afraid an infection has already set in. Right now his temperature is a concern. We are treating him with broad-spectrum antibiotics, hoping it will control or even eradicate the infection."
Canford paused momentarily to allow Danny to absorb the first blow. "The second bullet punctured his right lung. As a result he suffered a hemothorax, that's blood collecting in the pleural cavity. The man who brought him to the hospital had already inserted a plastic tube to relieve the pressure and that probably saved his life. We then replaced it a tubular drain."
Again there was a brief gap when Canford noticed that Danny was having a tough time coping with the onslaught of mental pellets striking him.
"The third and fourth bullets did less considerable harm as they missed any vital organs, but did nick veins adding more blood to collect in the abdominal cavity. Fortunately we were able to contain the bleeding."
"And the fifth bullet?"
"That one did the most damage. It was lodged in his heart."
"His heart?" Chin exclaimed in shock.
"Luckily it didn't go through otherwise it would have been fatal. Instead it was partially embedded in the left ventricle wall. It plugged its own hole which is the reason he was still alive when he was admitted. It lodged itself in the myocardium, that's the thick middle layer that forms the bulk of the heart wall. As the organ beats, it contracts and as a result it was making the bullet shift inward and the chest compressions that he must have undoubtedly received when he was shot didn't help his condition. Consequently we had no choice but to perform a cardiopulmonary bypass and a median sternotomy to retrieve both bullets and mend the tears."
"A sternotomy, is that…?" Chin began to ask.
"They cracked open his chest," Danny translated in total dismay.
He arrested twice on the operating table." Canford explained. "We will monitor the chest tube drainage carefully and watch for any drop in volume or if the blood pressure goes down, which will suggest a pericardial tamponade, which is pressure on the heart caused by fluid collecting in the pericardium, the sac in which the heart is enclosed. That's often the case in heart surgery patients post-op. He now shows a mild arrhythmia that we're hoping will stabilize. Plus which the fact that he's battling an infection isn't helping his situation. His heart may not withstand the strain very long."
"What are his chances?
"If the arrhythmia doesn't stabilize or worsens, the survival rate will be considerably lowered. At the moment it's seventy-thirty."
"So what are you telling us?" Chin jumped in before Danny could ask the dreaded question.
"That he might not survive the night."
Danny silently gasped as he felt a dagger going through his own heart. He tried breathing the pain away. "You don't know Steven McGarrett, Doctor. He's a former Navy SEAL. They don't make them any tougher than that. If there's a slim chance of him pulling through, he'll take it."
"I second that," Chin said.
Canford cast a sympathetic smile at the two afflicted men. "I won't say it's hopeless because that would go against what I believe, but I also don't want to feed you false hope either."
"We understand and we appreciate your candor. Can we see him?" It wasn't so much of a request as it was a statement.
"He's in intensive care and only one person is allowed per five-minute visit."
"Surely if he's dying you can make an exception?" came the churlish reply from the anguished detective.
Canford's eyes gleaned over the two faces staring pleadingly at him. "I'll see what I can do. Come with me."
Both Danny and Chin followed Doctor Canford to the ICU where they were asked to wait by the door where a security guard had been stationed, while he informed the nurses of his decision to allow the two visitors inside the room.
"Come in gentlemen." Canford waved them in and led the way to the patient lying deathly still, hooked to an array of machines monitoring his breathing and heartbeat. Tubes snaked out of different parts of his body with fluids flowing in and out. His chest was covered with thick bandages, though the one that stood out and made the bile rise to Danny's throat was the dressing on the large incision in the middle of his sternum as a result of the sternotomy they had to perform to remove the bullets lodged in his lung and heart. The very thought of his friend's chest cracked open made him nauseous.
Danny approached the bed and placed his hands on the railing. He bit his upper lip to refrain from crying at the ghostly pale face staring back at him. He looked away to regain control of his emotions before setting his gaze back on his partner. "I'll find who did this to you, Steven. I swear I'll make him pay if it's the last thing I do." Danny vowed angrily as he reached a hand to touch Steve's fevered brow. "You hang in there, babe. I know you can get through this. You're SuperSEAL remember?" Danny sniffed back a tear and stepped away as his emotions threatened to swallow him whole.
Chin laid his hand on Steve's bare shoulder. "We're here for you, Steve. We'll help you pull through this. Don't you dare give up!"