A/N I don't own any rights to the characters.

A/N Good news: I'm back from my trip so I can post this chapter – (and I'm doing it before I even watch the ep. ) While away I thought of a few great ideas to add to the next chapter (which was basically complete and the end of the fic.)

Bad news: The few things I want to add to the last chapter will take me a while to rewrite so I'm not sure when I will post. (Might end up as two chapters so maybe that's a good thing? We'll see.)

A/N I don't like to beg for reviews but I work very hard at getting the characters right. If you have any comments or opinions on that I'd love to hear them. Even negative ones are fine as long as you treat me with respect.

H50 H50 H50

The EMT's hurried to secure Danny to the board, still lying on his left side. There was nothing more they could do. He needed to fight and he needed surgery – and then he'd need to fight some more.

Danny came close to giving in to the pain and letting the darkness overtake him. It would have been so easy to let go but then he heard Steve's voice in his ear and it drew him back from the edge.

"Stay with me Danno. Come on brother. Stay with me. Grace and Charlie, they need you buddy."

"Grace? Charlie?"

"They're fine buddy, but they need their Dad. Hell, I need you too. Come on Danno. I've got ya. Just hold on. I've got ya."

"Don't leave," Danny begged.

"Not going anywhere," Steve promised. "I need you too much, brother. I'm not going anywhere."

"His pulse is lowering," the EMT told Steve who sighed in relief. "Stay with him. Keep talking to him. It's helping."

As the EMT's worked to move the board to the gurney, Steve maintained his embrace, speaking words of friendship and reassurance the whole time. They covered Danny with a blanket as they readied to leave the room. This would be enough of a spectacle without every person around seeing the knife still impaling the victim.

Due to his calming effect on Danny combined with Danny's verbal pleas for him not to leave, Steve was allowed in the ambulance and even in the ER trauma room.

They moved Danny, on the backboard, off the gurney and onto the trauma room bed. He groaned with the movement and then asked for Steve.

"Right here," Steve said from where he stood by Danny's head trying his best to stay out of the way so he could remain in the room.

"Cut him out of these clothes and prep him for the OR," a Resident ordered the nurses. "Nothing we can do for him here."

Steve watched in sullen fascination as a young woman approached with a pair of scissors and began to cut right through Danny's bloody pants. Someone pulled off his shoes and unfastened his belt. It crossed Steve's mind that if this weren't so serious a situation the two of them would be cracking awful jokes about Danny being stripped by total strangers. As they cut away his boxers, they quickly covered him with a blanket, protecting his privacy.

Removal of his shirt required more care. The ER doctor herself painstakingly removed the blood soaked shirt and tie that Eric had used to stanch the bleeding. Danny grunted in pain but bit back a scream. The morphine was helping a bit. He shifted his left hand and Steve grasped it in his. "I'm right here buddy," Steve assured him again. The doctor then went to work cutting off Danny's own blood and sweat covered, tight fitting dress shirt.

Steve had seen many wounds and injuries in his days in combat but when they finally removed Danny's shirt the sight of a knife embedded to it's hilt in his best friend's bare back was almost more than he could take. Blood covered his back, sweat glistened off his chest. Steve's knees began to buckle and an observant nurse supported him by his elbow.

"Let's get you into a chair," she told him.

"You faint on me SuperSeal?" Danny whispered. Even in agony, a mirthful smirk graced his lips. "When I'm out of surgery I'm gunna tell Chin and Lou all about it." His soft laugh turned into an excruciating cough.

As they rolled Danny towards the operating room, Steve called after him. "You do that Danno!" He followed that with a whisper. "You damn well better do that!"

About an hour and a half later, Lou came into the surgical waiting room. "Any word?"

"Nothing," Steve replied in a whisper, his head buried in his hands.

"You okay?" Lou asked gently as he sat down next to him.

Steve didn't directly answer the question but he spoke what had been on his mind since he was left alone to wait. "They cut his clothes off in the trauma room. Pants, shirt, everything. The sight of that knife buried in Danny's back…" Steve choked back a sob. "I've seen a lot of bad stuff, Lou. But I just can't get that image out of my head."

Lou reached over and gripped the back of Steve's neck. "Because you've never let anybody get this close to you before, never let anybody get inside your heart like Danny has managed to do."

Lou was very direct. He knew there was nothing more than a true friendship between the two men, a friendship that was more like brothers than anything else. Brothers who would bicker and fight and insult and nag each other but God help the poor soul who said or did anything to either one of them. Neither man ever did anything to make Lou or the others feel any less of a friend or any less important, but there was just something there between them that was different, and very special to witness.

"Still not sure how that happened," Steve said with a laugh. "He couldn't stand me from the start and you know Danny, he made that perfectly clear, but I wasn't sure what to think of him, besides him being a damn good detective. I guess it was when he punched me in the face that I decided I liked him."

"Only you, Steve."

"What?"

Lou laughed now. "Only you would make friends with a guy just because he had the guts to slug you."

"There's much more to him than that," Steve said.

"Yeah," Lou agreed.

It was another half hour before Chin and Kono walked in. Abby had gone back to her hotel, feeling it wasn't her place to sit with them at the hospital. She had made Chin promise to call her with an update later, though.

"What happened?" asked Chin.

"How's Danny?" asked Kono.

Lou answered. "Knife to the back, just left of his right shoulder. He's still in surgery. It was pretty bad. Went all the way through. Good thing Eric found him. He did everything right from what I could tell."

"Eric?" Kono asked, surprised.

"Yep. Kid did good."

"He did good on the flip side, too," Chin said. "Security video clearly shows our guy walking into the classroom and then walking out just a minute later. It's too grainy to see clearly but you can tell he has something in his hand when he goes in that's not there when he comes out. Five minutes later Eric walked in."

"You get him?" Lou asked.

"Sure did. Eric tracked him on security video directly to his dorm room. Got him right there," Chin explained.

Kono looked at Steve now. He hadn't said a word. "You okay boss?"

Steve looked up now and they could see his bloodshot eyes. His voice was strained. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'll be better when I see him waving that hand around though." And if he could get that image of Danny with the knife in his back out of his head.

Steve didn't say any more so Lou explained. "Danny couldn't move his right hand, couldn't feel anything."

"Damn," said Chin.

"Yeah," agreed Kono.

They all sat down and waited and then Steve spoke again. "What time is it? Danny's supposed to pick up Grace."

"No worries," Chin said. "Eric's picking her up from school. He'll check in with us first, decide if he should bring her here or to Rachel."

"How's he doing that? Kid doesn't have a car, does he?" Lou asked.

"Danny's keys were on the desk. He's got the Camaro," Kono said.

Three heads turned as they heard a soft chuckle from Steve. "Wait til Danno hears about that. That'll get his hand moving." Steve prayed he was right.

All four were still there when the doctor came in and sat down with them. "He's in recovery. He was lucky in a way. Couple inches to the left and we wouldn't be here. I was able to remove the knife and stop the bleeding but there was quite a bit of damage –an artery, muscles, tendons, nerves. We needed to call in a couple specialists to reattach and repair everything. The wound was all the way through so we repaired what we could reach, closed his back up, turned him over and entered from the front to finish repairs. As I said, there was substantial damage. He's stable now and will likely be waking from the anesthesia within the hour."

"Doctor," Steve said, his voice taut and anxious. "He couldn't move his hand, couldn't feel anything…" It wasn't exactly worded as a question but Steve just couldn't ask if Danny would ever be able to use that arm again.

The doctor took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There were so many wonderful things about being a doctor but delivering news like this wasn't one of them.

tbc