A/N: I wasn't expecting the story to take this direction, but it did. I will update the story description accordingly. Next chapter will be up tomorrow.
Inadequate Provision
This can NOT be happening.
JT paced the floor, waiting for headlights to shine through the windows.
The decision to have Vincent brought here rather than go to him had been one JT found himself ill-prepared to make. When Tori's frenzied shouts over the phone resolved themselves into a panicky but coherent description of a gunshot wound, shock, and what sounded like barely adequate field medicine, JT realized he was the only person in that conversation capable of making medical decisions for Vincent, prepared or not.
"Can you get him into your car? Good. Bring him straight to me, and do not stop."
This way made more sense to JT, if only because he still had Vincent's old medical equipment handy, a few recent acquisitions, not to mention a highly valued collection of medical reference books. There was no way to know what Vincent had on his houseboat or how much of it would be useful. His place had one more advantage: he'd had the foresight, several weeks prior, to obtain and store a pint of Vincent's blood for exactly this kind of emergency. The real trick had been finding a way to keep it secured without it being exposed to bacteria.
Not that any of this was good enough. JT Forbes was a biochemist and a hacker. Not a surgeon. Not a field medic, even a crappy one. If you wanted some medication created or blood analyzed, he could do it for you; access to India's missile defense system, he was your man. But when it came to providing actual medical assistance, JT's experience came strictly from what Vincent had managed to teach him over the course of the last decade when they experimented on rats in the name of seeking a cure, or when Vincent got bored and felt like he needed to practice his doctoring skills, or when they wanted to make fun of TV medical dramas.
JT examined several books on a card table open to key pages he thought he might need. Trauma Surgery was opened to page 397, "Bone and metal fragments, recognition and removal." Anatomy and Physiology had been flipped open to page 104, "Gastro-intestinal tract," with a bookmark on page 183, "Circulatory system." When There is No Doctor, officially the scariest title in the collection, actually had the most useful information for diagnosing injuries and temporarily treating them. As with all first aid books, though, the underlying assumption was that you would be able to get the patient to some kind of medical facility eventually. Not an option today.
Headlights. They're here.
JT barely looked at Tori as he pushed a wheeled cart—the closest thing he had to a stretcher—to the rear passenger side of the car and flung the door open. His friend lay inside, wrapped in a blanket, feet resting on the armrest of the other door. Blood stained the corner of Vincent's mouth.
"Jesus, Vince."
Tori helped him maneuver Vincent onto the cart, into the building, and onto the bar. Several lamps had already been moved into place around the makeshift treatment area, and the card table loaded with JT's books also held a tray of surgical instruments, small bottles, and syringes.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Tori asked nervously.
JT didn't answer her right away. With one last look at his books, he sent a mental prayer to the Great Whatever in the Sky, popped the safety cap off an Epi-Pen, and stabbed his best friend in the thigh.
The epinephrine worked quickly; Vincent gasped for air, his yellow eyes flying open and searching wildly around the room. He tried to sit up, but the combination of restraining hands and a terrible pain in his side kept him down.
"Catherine!" he choked.
Tori looked away, her unspoken question answered.
"Vincent," JT shouted, "it's me, it's JT. You're at our—at my house. We're gonna fix you up, but I need your help. Look at me." He waited for Vincent to find his eyes. "I need you to keep the Beast in check. Do you understand? Can you do that with Tori here?"
Vincent nodded, trying to calm himself. JT. My friend.
"Take these," JT said, handing Tori a pair of oddly-shaped serrated scissors. "Cut his pants off."
"Are you kidding me?" Tori exclaimed. The little man looked serious, though, pouring a bottle of isopropyl alcohol into a bowl and scrubbing his hands together inside it. She noticed a nearby saline bag and IV drip, waiting to be put to use.
He's not kidding. He's going to operate.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Tori put the scissors to work, watching as JT put his blue neoprene gloves on. She wasn't in love with Vincent any more than he was with her, and she hadn't forgotten that he wasn't exactly a saint. When her new, animal hormones weren't shutting off her brain, she knew better than to try to compete for the attention of a man so obviously hung up on someone else, even if it was a woman she didn't much care for. But Vincent was important to her. Moreover, Tori was not the frivolous, snobby debutante people automatically saw when they looked at her, and she wasn't about to let anyone accuse her of being useless in a time of crisis.
"Okay, buddy, I've got to find a vein and get this IV line in you," JT said. Vincent's muscles were so tense that the veins were standing rigid along his arm. JT opened an alcohol pad. "I haven't done this in a long time, so it's probably gonna hurt, and I might have to do it more than once. Don't kill me, all right?"
"I won't," Vincent whispered, attempting to regulate his breathing while JT scrubbed the hell out of his arm. "You'll…do fine…"
"Tori," JT said, not looking at her as he opened a package containing a sterile PIV line. "There's a large standing mirror in the bedroom—hallway, first door on the left. You're going to have to bring that in here and angle it over Vincent's body." Vincent was hissing in pain, but JT managed to insert the cannula in his arm and withdraw the metal trocar on the first try. It looked close enough to correct, and there were no signs of a blown vein (JT determined this by looking at the pictures on page 205 of Pre-hospital Emergency Care: Intermediate Level). He taped everything down the best he knew how, grabbed the end of the saline infusion line, and inserted it into the connecting hub. "Go get it, please. And tie back your hair."
When Tori had gone, JT leaned closer to his friend. "I called Tess on her burner phone. I'm sorry, man."
"Call Catherine," Vincent said, beyond all reason as the adrenaline coursed through his veins.
"Can't," JT sighed. "Tess says not to make any calls to Cat's phone. She's down at the precinct covering our asses, and that's where she needs to stay for now."
"Damn right," Tori grumbled, lugging a full length mirror into the room. It was not lost on her that she was most likely wearing one of Catherine's hair ties.
"But—" Vincent started.
"Cat can't help you right now," JT said firmly. "Not with this. Now I need you to focus, Vincent. I am about to operate on you, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking for or patching up. I'm going to give you a local anesthetic and make whatever incisions or stitches you want, but you're going to have to tell me what to do. Do you think we can handle this?"
Wide-eyed, Tori wiped the dust off the mirror and stood it up on the end of the bar, at Vincent's feet. Realizing what was about to happen, she tipped the hinged glass so that Vincent would be able to see his abdomen in the reflection. God in heaven, this is real…
Vincent closed his eyes and swallowed, trying to get control over himself. He wasn't sure if he wanted Catherine so he could give her a piece of his mind for doing this to him, tell her he'd made a mistake, or tell her he loved her; maybe all three. It was just important to him that he see her.
Naturally, the universe wouldn't let him have any form of comfort when he needed it most.
Vincent could hear his pulse and decided it was improved, but not ideal. "Check my blood pressure first," he said quietly. "And give me oxygen."
"Tori, the blood pressure cuff, to your left," JT said, looking around until he saw the oxygen mask and tubing attached to a green metal canister. "It's automated. Just slip it around his arm above the elbow like the diagram shows and push the red button. Then I need you to wash your hands in alcohol, get some gloves on, and start sanitizing his skin."
Blood. Screams.
"Breathe, Vincent, breathe! You've got to lie still!"
"Give him another local or something!"
"I can't give him anymore or his blood pressure could drop again!"
Lifeblood. Can't lose any more.
"You need to restrain him before I nick an artery!"
"How the fuck do I do that?"
"What the hell?" A new voice. "What's going on here?"
"Tess! Get over here and help me!"
A new pair of hands, not gloved, pressed into Vincent's struggling shoulders.
"Why isn't he under?"
"He's directing the surgery."
"He's thrashing around, honey. He's not directing a damn thing."
"Catherine!" The shout rang out around the room, equal parts angry, desperate, and frightened.
Tess exchanged a loaded look with JT, then leaned over Vincent and met eyes flaring between yellow and brown in rapid succession. She'd never seen anyone so chalky pale outside of the morgue. "Catherine can't be here. She's under investigation. She sent me."
It was the truth, except for the part that was a lie. Internal Affairs would begin their mandatory investigation of the shooting promptly at eight AM, and there were a whole lot of Agents With Acronyms already beginning to tie up the phone lines, trying to get a grasp of where they needed to start their own investigations into Agent Reynolds, Detective Chandler, and possibly ADA Lowen. But Tess hadn't spoken to Catherine at all—Gabe had Cat stowed away in a secluded office to fake a really convincing story while he filled Tess in on the shooting and the arrest. Tess figured Cat would be worried about Vincent, but she didn't want to risk making too many calls inside the precinct, even on her burner phone. After JT's call, she waited until she could slip away and make it over to his place to check on the patient. She was just planning to look in on him, see if he needed any supplies, and go back to the precinct to let Cat know how he was doing.
Arriving mid-surgical horror show was the last thing she expected.
Cat should be here dealing with this, Tess thought, her stomach rolling. She tried not to think about the mess of metal clamps sticking out of Vincent's abdomen and told herself that terrible smell coming from the open wound was probably normal. There was so much blood on the bar, the floor, clothing, staining every hand. Except Cat's, because she had to fill out some goddamned paperwork. You owe me, Chandler.
"She sends her love," Tess improvised. "And she's so, so sorry. She's protecting you the best way she knows how. But right now," she placed a palm across Vincent's forehead, the way her mother did when she was sick, "you need to be still, or your guts will be all over my shoes."
Tori didn't see how Vincent could be swallowing this obvious make-believe message, but it seemed to work well enough to calm him down, at least for the moment, so she said nothing. Vincent allowed Tess to place the oxygen mask back over his face. Everyone grew quiet, letting JT work.
"I've sutured the vein," JT finally announced, exhausted, "four intestinal ruptures, and both sides of the mesentery." He had no idea one bullet could do that much damage. He had no idea what a mesentery was until a few hours ago. "All the clamps and gauze are out, and everything looks clean…I guess." By clean, he meant 'no longer leaking unknown solids and fluids.'
"You can close up," Vincent said weakly. He could hardly feel a thing, and not because of the anesthesia; the lower half of his body simply shut down to protect itself from the unrelenting assault.
"Thank God," Tess muttered, one hand still on Vincent's shoulder. She wondered if maybe he was pretending it was Cat's.
"Any word from Catherine?" he asked, as if Tess's voice had broken a spell.
"My phone died hours ago," Tess lied. She turned both her phones off shortly after arriving, worried that a drunk-dial from an old boyfriend would set her ringer chirping and make JT slice into Vincent's colon. JT and Tori had done the same. Besides, nobody wanted Vincent to be disappointed if Cat didn't call.
"Sun's out," Tori observed, counting the bloody gauze in the little bowl in front of her. …Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. We only used fifteen, didn't we?
Tess looked at her watch. "God, it's ten o'clock in the morning. How long were you operating?"
JT tried to remember what time he'd started. It didn't exactly matter if the answer was ten hours or eight or twelve, though, because his honest assessment was, "Way too long."
They weren't in a sterile operating theater; they were in a repurposed nudie bar full of dust and germs. The probability for infection was high. Worse, JT had zero understanding of avoiding nerve damage or inserting a drain. He didn't know whether he'd cut off the blood supply to something important for too long. There was nothing he could do about any of this except continue what he was already doing and hope for the best. He made a new row of careful stitches across the wound. "Vincent, do I need to use some Superglue on this?"
Vincent nodded weakly. "If you have it. Look for a tube marked bioadhesive or Bioglue. It'll look like a caulking gun."
JT stared at him. "I have Superglue."
Vincent nodded again, like this was all normal. "I need antibiotics…a gram of cefazolin every six hours…" He cast a solemn look at the mirror's reflection of the door, willing it to open, and covered his nose with the oxygen mask again.
"I have to go to work," Tess announced.
"Seriously?" Tori almost sneered, reaching for the iodine, gauze, and medical tape as if to say, 'We're not done here.'
"First rule of staying under the radar: don't attract attention," Tess replied, not allowing Tori to get under her skin. "When a cop fails to show up for work with no explanation, people notice." To Vincent, she said, "Get some rest, big guy. I'll be back later."
Addressing JT in a quieter, altogether different voice, Tess said, "You did good."
JT recognized this for the glowing praise that it was and flashed a small smile in return. "Thanks." He consulted another book before plunging a syringe into a brown bottle of fluid. Morphine.
Tori could read their faces well enough to be quiet and let them have their moment. She was only waiting for JT to tell her there was no more to do so she could either run out for meds or collapse on the sofa.
The minute Tess was out the door, she turned on her work phone to call Cat—if either of their phone records were subpoenaed, there would be nothing unusual about Cat getting a call from her partner during working hours.
6 Voice Mail Messages
1:19 AM: "Hey, it's Cat. Where are you? Gabe said he talked to you a while ago."
2:31 AM: "Tess? Why is your phone off? Did you go home? Do you think you can do me a quick favor? Call me back."
3:11 AM: "I know this is asking a lot, but can you please go check on him? I don't think he wants to hear from me."
4:08 AM: "I'm still working on this report. If you wake up soon, can you please go make sure he's okay?"
5:32 AM: "Hey, it's me. I'm finally on the way home, and it might be the sleepiness talking, but I think I have a tail. I'm due back at the precinct at twelve. Call me if you hear anything."
8:15 AM: "Detective Vargas, this is Sergeant Jacobson from Internal Affairs. I understand you and your partner had a late night last night. Can you come see me when you get in today? My office is on the fifth floor. I'll be here until five PM."
Damn it.
It only took a moment for Tess to decide what to do. She tapped her screen.
"Tess?"
"Don't leave your place, and don't make any calls. I'll be right there."
