Standard Disclaimers in Part One. Same Writers. Same Rating. Feedback welcome!
Chapter Six
Both Megan and Colby had spent far too much time in a multitude of emergency rooms not to know what certain sounds meant. So, it was with great surprise that they watched Charlie stalk out of Trauma Bay #2 with the wail of alarms following in his wake. The two agents exchanged looks before Megan jumped from her chair and headed across the waiting room to stop Charlie before he got out the door; The wailing alarms, mercifully, came to a halt as abruptly as they had started.
"Charlie?" Megan called after him. "Charlie!"
Charlie ignored her, single minded in his determination to leave.
"Charlie Eppes!" She yelled, in her best FBI instructor voice.
That stopped him. The tone in her voice brought Charlie to sharp halt just feet from the ER Entrance/Exit. He turned and glared at Megan, then Colby. "What?" he growled.
Megan involuntarily took a step back. She had never seen Charlie as mad as he was at that moment.
"What do you want?!" he said.
"I want to know what went on in there. You go in and everything's quiet." Megan said. "You come out two minutes later, looking like the wrath of God with alarms going off. What the hell?"
"My brother is what happened." Charlie said. "Oh, he's fine or he'll be fine. No thanks to himself. One of these days, he's going to run out of chances. I just hope I'm not there to see it."
"Charlie, I…" Megan started to say.
"Oh, just fuck off, both of you." Charlie turned back around and disappeared out the door.
Megan and Colby looked at each other again. Colby, eyes wide, said "That's a definite first for me. I've never been cussed at by a mathematician before."
"Neither have I." Megan said. "What on Earth went on in there?" She looked back at Trauma Bay #2. "Go track Charlie down and keep an eye on him, from a safe distance." She said to Colby. "I'm going to see if they'll let me in to see Don. See if I can't calm him down."
Colby nodded and headed out the door after Charlie.
The number of bodies trying to push into his room after Charlie stormed out, cleared Don's hearing of an odd buzzing noise and he finally heard the noise of the machines screaming for attention. Bewildered, Don gave almost no resistance when Nurse Hawkeye pushed him flat on the bed, pulled open his hospital gown and then yelled at the others in the room. "No Code! No Code!" It was only then that he spotted another member of the ER staff pushing a huge rolling toolbox into the room with…Oh shit. Was that…?
He tried not to jump when Hawkeye's hands went rummaging about in his loose gown, but took offense when she slapped something back onto his chest. "Hey! That smarted!"
"Just be glad I thought to look before the Crash Team here zapped you with the defibulator." She covered his chest again with the gown, then pulled the cooling blankets back up over his shoulders and was chasing the others out of the room when Doctor Elaine came barreling into the room.
"Chris? What the hell happened? I heard the code called over the intercom."
"False alarm, Doctor. Agent Eppes here apparently didn't heed my warning earlier and, after having his B/P spike, managed to pull one of his EKG leads off in an attempt to catch up with his brother."
"Warning?" Dr. Elaine asked. Don felt heat rise up his neck into his cheeks. "Chris, what would you need to warn Agent Eppes about?"
"Wasn't so much him as his brother. They were verbally sparring with each other and his blood pressure started to rise, so I warned them to cool it or I kick the brother out."
"Oh, really?" Don did not like the tone of Elaine's voice, it boded ill for Charlie.
"Doc, he's just upset with me. He didn't mean anything by it." Don tried to explain but Elaine wasn't buying it.
"I'll be the judge of that. Chris, get me the Cardio readings from the times Agent Eppes here has had visitors so I can compare them." She turned her attention back to Don. "If I see something I don't like, I'm going to add another day to your hospital stay and limit who can and cannot visit you while you're in the Telemetry Unit." Before he could say anything, she was gone in a flash of copper and white and a flurry of clicks as her heels struck the linoleum flooring.
Don sighed. He had to calm the Doctor down or she'd ban Charlie from visiting him. "Chris?" Don called out to the nurse who was quietly coaxing printouts from the machines arrayed around him.
"Yes?"
"I don't want my brother barred from seeing me. I know he can be a great big pain in the ass but with our father out of town, he's my only family member."
Nurse Hawkeye came around the bed to where he could see her. "You're not married?" He shook his head. "Shame. All right. I'll tell Doc Walker you don't want your only visitors to be cops but you have lie here and behave." She left the room.
A few seconds later, Megan popped her head in. "Couldn't go too long between bouts of adrenaline rush, could'ja?" She said, in way of a greeting.
Don waved her in. "Where's Charlie? How did he look when the team came rushing in here?" He was worried that Charlie was slowly turning into a basket case out in the lobby, or was hovering just outside his room, worried that he wouldn't be allowed back in.
Megan took her time before answering. It was time to see how diplomatic she could be. "Don, Charlie didn't even bat an eye when they rushed in here. In fact, he cussed at Colby and I when we asked him what happened and stomped out the door."
He let out a sigh. "Damn. Megan, I can't chase him down to talk to him, and if Doctor Elaine thinks he's a danger to my health, she'll ban him from visiting me."
"What caused him to be so pissed in the first place?"
"Uh…well, that's kind of a long story."
She crossed her arms. "And you're going somewhere?"
Don sighed. Megan had a right to know, especially as he was going to have to ask her to play big sister to Charlie who, right at this moment, seemed to despise his own older brother. "Charlie and I have always been able to crawl under each other's skins, even as kids, but I think this goes deeper than our usual spats."
Megan nodded, "That I get, but what do you think it is that triggered his anger this time around?"
Knowing that Megan was the youngest child of four, Don thought she had a better chance to relate to Charlie, once he explained a few things. "You remember how he was when Larry got the NASA chance?" She nodded, a graceful smile crossing her face that told Don volumes about how her life was going now that the Physicist/Cosmologist was back on earth. "He's got issues with people leaving, issues that I think go back further than our mom's death…"
Megan listened quietly as he explained how things were in the Eppes house long before Margaret Eppes found out she had cancer and before he'd joined the Fugitive Recovery Squad. It wasn't pretty and if he hadn't already talked to William Bradford, the F.B.I. psychologist, about it, Don wouldn't have been able to tell Megan. She never interrupted, she didn't even take notes, but the way she listened told him she was actively listening and making mental notes. He only hoped that she'd be able to get through to Charlie; that he, Don, really understood why Charlie was so mad and that, as much as he could prevent it, he wasn't planning on going anywhere, anytime soon.
Charlie turned around and saw the last person he ever expected to see. "Lt. Walker?"
"I realize you've never seen me out of uniform, Eppes, but ... yeah, this is me." Walker stared at Charlie, his eyes squinting in the dim light. "Okay, who pissed in your Wheaties and do I need to go talk to them?"
Charlie crossed his arms and scowled. "My brother."
"Don? Okay, that explains your mood...but what are you doing here?"
"Cause's he's here! He nearly dropped dead on a golf course because of heat stroke but it's no big deal!" Charlie flung his arms up in the air.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa Charlie...Don's here?"
"Yeah."
"Here," Lt. Walker pointed at the ground, "not at the morgue?"
"I wouldn't be out here if he were in the morgue. I'd be on the phone, trying to tell my father."
"Actually, Professor, that would probably best left for one of his team members to do or even his boss. At least he's alive, even if he tried to cook himself from the inside out."
Charlie's scowl deepened. "That's almost exactly what he said. What is it WITH you people? He almost dies and no one seems too particularly upset except me!"
"Sounds to me like you're the one with the problem, Professor. Don's alive, a little scorched, but alive...so it's really not a bad way to end a day."
"So I should just accept the fact that he could have died but didn't and be happy about it?"
"Yeah. Barring that, just stay out here and burn off that excess pissiness before you say something to your brother or someone else that you'll regret." Walker said.
Charlie swallowed. "Too late."
The automatic door on the ER opened and Walker looked beyond Charlie to see who had triggered it. "Uh, who ordered a angry redhead?"
Charlie looked back at the ER door and sighed. "That would probably be me."
Lt. Walker shook his head. "Professor, remember this; Never piss off a redhead...I see Agent Reeves, I'm going to go talk to her, she might be needed later for an investigation...Good luck and don't be afraid to duck if you need to!" Walker gave the fast approaching woman a tight nod as he passed her, leaving Charlie to face the woman alone.
"What the HELL did you think you were doing!?!" The woman roared up to Charlie and stood there, glaring at him.
Charlie looked at the woman. "Who are you?"
"Your brother's Cardiologist. You DO realize your little visit with him sent his blood pressure into the atmosphere and he nearly had a gawddamn heart attack?"
Charlie blinked. "Uh…" he stammered.
"Right, you were too damn wrapped up in your own problems to hear the damn monitors going off when you left the room! What the hell kind of brother are you?! Do you WANT to kill him?"
Charlie frowned. "He seems to be doing pretty well on that all by himself."
Elaine stepped back from him, surprise radiating from her. "Oh, I get it...you've never been 'stupid' and suffered from heat stroke or heat exhaustion? You would rather he be in there, maybe fighting for his life on the surgery table as some Trauma Surgeon digs slugs out of his body because his vest failed?"
Charlie swallowed, at a loss for words. Whoever this woman was, she didn't need to make him sound so terrible.
"Well?" The woman demanded.
"No." He finally managed.
"Oh, so you are compassionate after all. Good. Now, are you the only blood relative here I can talk to or should I wait for a parent or wife?"
"Yes, I'm the only blood relative. He has no wife and our father is out of town."
"Fine. Let's try this again...Now that I'm a little calmer." The woman pulled her hand out of her lab coat pocket and held it out toward Charlie. "I'm Doctor Elaine Donovan-Walker. As I said earlier, I'm the cardiologist handling your brother until he's discharged from Pacifica."
Charlie held his hand out and shook Dr. Donovan-Walker's hand.
"I'm Dr. Charlie Eppes, that's a Ph.D. by the way."
"Nice to meet you, Doctor Eppes. Now, let me tell you why the attending thought it prudent to call in a cardiologist for your toasty, but not overcooked, brother." She guided him over to a bench a dozen feet away from the entrance to the Emergency Room. "Do you have any idea how serious heat stroke or exhaustion can be?"
"I hear the warnings on the news."
"Ah, but those warnings don't go into details. Do you want to hear those or should I just gloss things over?"
Despite his fear and anger at Don and everyone else connected with the mess Don had gotten himself into, Charlie was starting to like Dr. Donovan-Walker. "Just gloss things over."
"Right. Heat Stroke, nice and easy one-oh-one." She leaned back on the bench and threw her arm across the backrest. "Heat injuries to the human body can be tricky because while there are certain symptoms which are 'universal' they can be masked by other things or not detected at all by the patient until it's too late. They're cooked, literally. In Don's case, from what I gather, he had little or no warning before he went –bloop--" She waved a hand. "--Right down on the golf course."
"My brother has a tendency to focus on what is in front of him not necessarily himself."
"So he focuses on the outside, not what's going on inside. Sounds like a cop to me."
Charlie almost smiled. "Yeah, that would be Don."
"What department does he work for?"
"The F.B.I."
Elaine's body shuddered, unrealistically Charlie thought. "Ooh, I'm treating a Feebie? Oh dear, I'll have to scrub before I go home and contaminate the hubby."
Charlie looked at her.
She looked back, daring him to make the connection but he didn't. "Charlie...may I call you that? I'm married to a cop. One you've worked with in the past. I've heard all about the Eppes Brothers and their idiosyncrasies."
Charlie thought, then took a good look at Dr. Donovan-Walker's hospital ID badge. "Donovan-Walker..." And he made the connection. "You're married to Lieutenant Gary Walker?"
"Wow, you really are a genius!"
"And I can tell that bedside manner was not something you excelled in at med school, was it?"
"Actually, I am usually quite good at stroking patient egos and calming worried family members. You and your brother just caught me on a bad night."
"You mean that there are better nights to catch you on?"
"Yeah, like nights when I'm not called in from a planned evening out with my husband." She relaxed a little lower into the bench, almost slouching over sideways in her posture. "Okay, let's get back to why Doc Leporre called me in, shall we?"
"Dr. Leapre? Who?"
"Leporre. The tall stick of a man in the lime green shirt under his lab coat in there who looks like a casting director's dream for Wyatt Earp?" She pointed over her shoulder with a thumb toward the ER.
Charlie thought a moment. "Yeah, I guess I saw him"
"Saw him? He didn't come speak to you after you arrived?"
"No. Why would he?"
She let out a sigh. "Courtesy for one reason...unless he was too busy. Oh well, guess I'll just have to muddle through all this on my own." She dropped her hand from the back of the bench onto Charlie's shoulder. "Not to scare you or cause you more worry, but do you know if there's a history of heart disease or strokes in your family background, Charlie?"
"I don't think so."
"That's all right, not everyone knows his or her genealogical medical history. Anyway, the reason I was called in... When Don was being transported here, his heart displayed something called tachycardia, a sudden increase in, or odd pattern to, his heartbeat. It's not uncommon in heat stroke victims, but due to your brother's age, general physical condition and job...Doc Leporre thought it wise to call in a cardiologist. Me."
"Okay." Charlie said.
"You're following so far?" Dr. Donovan-Walker said.
Charlie nodded. "So arguing with him right now, isn't a good idea?"
"Right on the money, Charlie. I'm not sure the heat injury damaged his heart, but I don't want to take any chances with him. In fact, I'm going to be admitting him for at least 24 hours, to monitor his heart and kidney functions, and depending on what I find, I may keep him longer. I also want to convince him to come see me for a cardio stress test sometime in the near future. And that's where you can come in handy."
"Um...Dr. Donovan-Walker, I'm his younger brother, he's not inclined to listen to much of what I say, especially right now." Charlie said.
"Right at this moment, I'd say you're right. But in the next few weeks or months? Drop a hint here and there, not nagging him, just concerned little brother checking to see if he's seen that nice-doctor-who-married-Lieutenant-Walker type hints."
Charlie almost laughed. "Okay. I could also drop a few hints in front of our dad."
Elaine laughed and said, "Now that's thinking like a sneaky brother!" She shot him a wicked grin. "If those tactics don't work, I could always threaten to sic Gary on him. Though I would rather Don come see me on his own, not be dragged kicking, screaming and handcuffed. Might affect the exam."
Charlie actually smiled and held out his hand again. "Thank you, Dr. Donovan-Walker. Lt. Walker is a lucky man."
"Yeah, he is." She stood up and shoved her hands back in her lab coat's pockets. "Now, I'm going to go in there and give your brother the happy news that I'm keeping him overnight. Will I see you tomorrow when I make rounds?"
"If Don wants to actually be in the same room with me, sure. But, I really hacked him" off."
"Never know until you talk to him - calmly this time." She turned to walk away, only to swing back around. "Oh, and Charlie?"
"Yes, Dr. Donovan-Walker?"
"Donovan-Walker is a mouthful...Try Elaine. Night!"
"Good night." Charlie watched her go back into the ER, feeling like he'd just gone three rounds with the budget committee at CalSci.