Thanks for stopping by and extra special thanks for those who have been submitting their thoughts on the story so far! I appreciate your responses and motivation to keep plugging away with this!
Enjoy!
March 1
10:31 am
Though he tries, Jack can't hold back a groan as too much pressure is applied in the wrong area of his ribs.
"Sorry," the man next to him says quietly, "Sure you don't want something stronger for the pain?"
"It's fine," Jack replies with a grimace.
As it turns out, Tucker's use of the word "doc" was merely a loose term to describe Edwin Murro, a small and pleasant man of Filipino descent who, going by the hair with more silver than black and the lines on his face, Jack guesses is probably in his late fifties.
According to Tucker, along with being an assistant engineer, Murro is also a former Navy corpsman and has doubled as a resident medical officer on board various union ships for more years than Tucker wanted to count. The captain has assured him Murro's not only good at his job but that he's also discreet. Not that Jack has any choice but to accept the offer of help. Nor can he complain. He could see in Murro's eyes in his first few minutes with him that he's a good man.
And so far, he seems to know what he's doing.
In the hours since Tucker basically hefted him onto one of the padded narrow exam tables and returned to his duties, Murro has been working on him steadily. He'd taken his vital signs and promptly handed him the oxygen mask. He'd started an IV and hooked him up to a bag of fluid. He'd listened to his lungs, offered him some pain medication and gave him some Tylenol for his fever.
Then, he had helped Jack out of his shirt.
He'd gotten one look at the wounds and scars on his chest, arms and back, drew a deep breath and pushed his gold-rimmed bifocals up on his nose.
"Hmmph," he'd said, lifting the edge of a piece of blood-stained gauze, "Haven't had to do this kind of work for a while."
After that, he began meticulously examining, cleaning and dressing every wound. He's even reopened the slice along Jack's ribs – the same wound Jack had forced Pillar to suture up for him – in order to clean it out. He's been at it for a while now and though Jack has seen the questions in his eyes, Murro hasn't asked a single question about any of it.
He flinches as the man again touches an area that is too sensitive and the man next to him mumbles another apology.
Jack gives no reply. Instead, he stares unseeingly at the infirmary ceiling with tired and aching eyes. He's handled much worse with less than a couple of Tylenol and if enduring the pain means he can stave off the images and focus his thoughts, it'll be worth it.
In the meantime, he's also trying to swallow his frustration.
During the early and middle stages of his recovery from the prion virus, he was trapped in a hospital, connected to IVs and oxygen and all the other things that kept him alive and helped him recover. In those months, he'd lost count of the times he'd sworn to himself that, aside from quite possibly his deathbed, he'd never again be in that kind of situation.
Seeing that this probably isn't his deathbed, he can add yet another promise he'd meant to keep to the long list of promises he's made and broken.
He shivers again and finds himself longing for a long, hot shower. Or a roaring fire in a fireplace. He'd even settle for a warm blanket. Or a hot cup of… anything.
He attempts to keep his thoughts focused on that for a while. Hot showers. Hot drinks. Clothes straight from the dryer. The sun warming his skin on the beach.
He's tried to keep his mind completely clear while laying here but since that's taken more effort than he can muster, he's been trying to direct his thoughts instead, focusing first on the physical pain, then on things he remembers from his last time in a hospital or on how wonderful the hot shower would feel.
Anything to keep his thoughts on relatively safe ground.
He's only half-succeeded.
"Well, they won't be pretty, West," he finally hears Murro announce as he removes his latex gloves with a sharp snap, "But as long as we keep on top of them, I think there's a decent chance we could be okay."
Jack shifts his eyes to follow the man as he pushes back the gray-green curtain and steps over to the stainless steel sink across the room to wash his hands.
"Thanks," he says softly.
For the first time since Tucker brought him here, Jack finds himself scanning his surroundings. Already well acquainted with the curtain and the ceiling with its stained acoustic tiles, he takes in the rest of the infirmary.
While just as old as the rest of the ship that he's seen so far, the large room appears spotlessly clean. The stainless steel cabinets with their scratched and cloudy plexi-glass doors seem to be neatly organized, as does the small desk along the far wall. And the surfaces of the stainless steel countertops are uncluttered and gleaming in the bright overhead lights. Unlike his cabin, this room has a window, though what it looks out on, he's not in a position to see.
The other two exam tables have been unoccupied since he got here, but are prepared for any patient who'd walk in looking for help. The walls, painted in a dull gray-green color just a shade darker than the curtain, may be chipped and peeling in a few places where they aren't covered with shelves and cabinets, but overall, the place seems well taken care of.
Glimpsing Murro approaching once more, Jack shifts his attention back to the ceiling tiles. His body almost hyper-sensitive at the moment, he finds himself flinching slightly when Murro touches his arm.
"Sorry," the man apologizes again, "I just wanted to take another set of vital signs."
Jack briefly glances up at him and nods tiredly but he says nothing, merely lifts his arm so Murro can apply the blood pressure cuff. As the cuff begins to tighten on his arm, he returns his gaze to the ceiling and breathes in the faint antiseptic odor permeating the room.
In spite of his efforts to control them, his thoughts soon begin drifting into territory he's been trying to avoid.
They drift to his family.
In his mind's eye sit the clearest of images: Kim, standing in the tunnel outside CTU, her eyes wet but full of understanding. And Teri – sweet, beautiful little Teri – waiting in the car, Bear held safely in her hands. He can even picture Stephen, who's been more support to Kim during his recovery than Jack could ever have asked for and who has not only earned his trust over the last year and a half but a place in his heart as well.
By now, Chloe should have gotten someone to them. He's not sure who or how, but she has to have managed to put something in place.
He knows the options. He knows they're not going to be happy and that uprooting them is not going to be easy on them. He knows it will cause issues and strains – not the least of which will be on Kim and Stephen's marriage.
He swallows, feeling the guilt beginning to squeeze his throat. On top of everything else he's put her through, after all the pain he's caused her over the years, putting his daughter's marriage and child at risk is now on his shoulders, too.
And he isn't even there to explain why in person.
He'd recorded his message for Kim thinking he'd be dead by the time she heard it. While that's not the case, it will still serve as his final goodbye to her and he wishes he'd had time to say so much more. In the end, he can only hope that what he had managed to say will help her, and maybe someday even help Teri, understand.
Ultimately, however, it's been left to Chloe to fill in the details; it's been left to Chloe to keep them safe.
He bristles at that, the fact that someone else is responsible for keeping his family safe. It should be him taking care of them. It should be him.
But then, if not for him, they wouldn't be requiring protection in the first place.
And Chloe… Chloe can handle it, he tells himself. She's capable of figuring something out that will work for them. He has no choice but to trust that.
The guilt settles in even deeper as his thoughts linger on Chloe and everything he's left on her shoulders.
Leaving her to be responsible for the safety of his family is just one part of it. Adding to that is everything he put her through yesterday…
Forcing her to go against him. Forcing her into a position where she had to choose between him and her obligations to CTU in a way and on a level that was beyond anything he'd asked of her in the past. Forcing her to shoot him.
Friends don't do those kinds of things to each other.
He has.
Still, she tried to help him. Still, she had his interests at heart.
And, at the end of the day, all he'd had to offer her was a simple thank you, one that didn't begin to cover all she has done for him in the years he's known her. Hell, it's not even enough to cover what she's done for him over the last eighteen months.
He swallows, the memory of her face as he ordered her to shoot him flashing into his mind's eye.
And she isn't the only person you've cared about that you've forced into compromising themselves, he tells himself angrily, She isn't the only one who's paid a price for -
"Jack…"
Jack tenses on the exam table as Renee's voice sounds in his ears.
"You all right?"
Her voice is soft but clear as crystal and, even though he knows she can't possibly be here, the shock of hearing it makes him look around the room in search of her. As expected, he finds only Murro, who has moved to rifle through a cabinet on the far side of the room.
He releases the breath he'd held the moment he heard her voice. He must be worse off than he thought if he's hallucinating.
It's just the fever, he decides, Or maybe the fact that you've missed a few doses of your meds.
He tries to think. Though the doctors managed to wean him off most of his medications in the past few months, and though he hasn't had a seizure since coming out of the coma, they'd been reluctant to withdraw his low-dose anti-seizure medication, wanting to wait another six months before stopping it completely. Then there's the medication that's helped keep the slight tremor that can still creep up on him from time to time at bay. He can't recall if stopping the meds so abruptly can cause hallucinations but in the back of his mind now, he wonders if he can look forward to the seizures starting up again and the tremor getting worse.
"Jack?"
Her voice again. And God, how he wishes it was real. How he wishes that the hours that have passed since they were in his bed have just been a nightmare; and that they'd actually fallen asleep in each other's arms, blissful and content and exhausted. How he wants to believe that he's actually there with her now and her voice in his ears is really her – alive and trying to rouse him from this terrible dream.
But the last twenty four hours have been all too real.
"You okay?"
It's just the exhaustion, he acknowledges as another shiver travels through him. And then… It's the grief.
He's learned, far too many times over the years, that grief can play horribly cruel tricks on the mind. Even now, after all his experiences with it, he's not certain what demons may emerge from his subconscious.
Whatever the cause, the reminder of the loss hits him in the gut and the anger and sorrow make a return.
It occurs to him, as he tries to push the emotions down, that it must be some leftover audio memory choosing the wrong time to surface. Though months have passed, he remembers Renee had asked him variations of that question countless times in the hours after he'd been exposed to the prion virus. Somehow, it must have left an indelible imprint in his brain.
She left an indelible imprint.
He's sure that at the time, he probably told her he was fine every time she asked, even though she must have known it was a lie. And, just like then, he's not okay now. He's not fine. If she was here right now, he might even admit to it. If she was just here…
"Here," Murro says, interrupting his thoughts, handing him three pills and a glass of water, "Ibuprofen."
Tugging the oxygen mask from his face, Jack eyes the pills for a moment before pushing himself up enough that he can swallow them down with a sip of water. "How high is the fever?" he asks, giving him back the glass.
"High enough for you to take those on top of the Tylenol," Murro replies as he walks over to a counter and unlocks another cabinet door. "And while I don't have a lot of options in terms of pain medication, I do have a decent supply of antibiotics on hand. I'll give you some of those too. Any allergies?"
"No."
"Any other conditions I need to know about?" the man asks, pulling out two small plastic bins, "Other medications you're on?"
Jack debates the necessity of providing more information than he'd like. He doesn't know the intricacies of the medications and how they work with one another but he knows from one particular incident over the course of his stem cell treatment that they can interact badly. In the end, as he had with Jim's antibiotic, he decides to take his chances.
"No," he says quietly.
"Good, that makes it easier," the man replies as he goes through the bins. A moment later, Murro is at Jack's side with a large brown bottle and the glass of water. As he hands him the water, Jack surprises himself.
"Actually, I've… I've been taking an antibiotic," he finds himself admitting, "Since last night."
"You have?" Murro asks with surprise, and Jack has to give him credit for not asking where he managed to get them without getting the wounds properly addressed at the same time, "Which one?"
"I…" Jack huffs tiredly. For the life of him, he can't recall the name on the label. It's a slip that would concern him if he wasn't sure the exhaustion – mental, emotional and physical – is at the root of the lapse. "I don't remember."
"Do you have it with you?"
"No."
"If it's in your cabin, I can go get it."
Jack frowns, remembering the lockers and everything stored inside. "No," he says, tugging the oxygen mask off, "I'll take yours. It's fine."
Murro seems to consider things for a moment, then shakes out a large white tablet from the bottle and hands it to Jack.
"Bring yours with you in the morning and if we need to, we'll switch back to it. For now, take that." He waits for Jack to down the pill and finish the glass of water before turning to put the bottle back on a shelf.
"Usually," he goes on as he locks the cabinet, "I'd be radioing the supervising doc I work under to get advice about all this. Probably even be shipping you out. But the feeling I got from the skipper is that's not an option. So we'll do what we can on our own, continue the IV fluids and oxygen for the next couple of days and go from there."
Finally, he reaches for a light blanket and returns to Jack's side. "This isn't much," he says as he spreads the thin material over him, "But it'll have to do until your fever comes down some. And I have a couple of oxygen tanks you can use at night in your quarters so you don't have to sleep on this godawful table all night."
Jack looks up at him and for the first time it strikes him just how fortunate he is that Jim pointed him in this direction. Time to rest and recover is a luxury he couldn't have even hoped to have just eighteen hours ago and he certainly hadn't expected someone with medical training to willingly help him out. He could've ended up in a lot worse places – and probably would have – had it not been for Jim Ricker.
"Thanks, Murro," he says, sincerely grateful for the man's kindness, "I appreciate everything you're doing."
"Edwin," Murro replies, his dark, almond-shaped eyes crinkling around the edges as he smiles and extends a hand toward Jack, "Call me Edwin. Or Eddie."
"John," Jack says, grasping his hand and shaking it.
"Well, John," Edwin says with a friendly smirk. "You're going to be here for a while so put that mask back on. And you might as well close your eyes and get some rest, too. No offense, but it seems to me you could really use it."
"Yeah," Jack breathes, managing the most minimal of smiles.
He doesn't want to shut his eyes for longer than it takes to blink. Twenty minutes later, however, the fatigue drives his eyes closed without his consent anyway.
As expected, the mosaic of familiar images comes and her eyes haunt him.
They are standing in front of the reflecting pool in D.C. again, her eyes telling him he was asking too much of her. Yet she had walked away and done what he'd asked anyway.
Then she is sitting stone-silent next to him in a car on their way to see Ziya Dakhilov, her eyes overtly avoiding his, furious tension oozing from every part of her as he struggled to find a way to start a conversation that wouldn't begin or end with him apologizing for getting involved in the operation or for being concerned about her.
And they are in her office at the FBI, her eyes determined and challenging as she basically dared him to walk away from the effort to find Tony.
Finally, she is over him, moving with him, her soft, dark red hair falling forward over her shoulders, shrouding his face and tickling his skin as she leaned down to kiss him. Her eyes… her eyes are focused solely on his. They are stunning and intense. And they are unafraid.
In the moments before he drifts off, he recalls wrapping his arms around her as she lay collapsed on top of his chest, her muscles still faintly twitching around him, her quick and shallow breaths hot on his neck. And he remembers what he whispered in her ear the instant he'd found enough air and was capable of forming a coherent thought.
At the memory of her response…
…a series of soft, breathless kisses strung along the edge of his jaw until she finally reached his lips, where she stopped to study him with curiosity in her intoxicating eyes. Then, her silent question apparently answered, she kissed him with a searing voracity that drew forth a low hum from deep in his belly…
…the ache in his chest only intensifies.
A moment later, that ache is quickly replaced by sharp sparks of anger and regret.
His last thought before sleep claims him is that he should've pulled the trigger the moment Suvarov walked into his line of sight.
March 1
11:20 am
Chloe sits in the back seat of a taxi, scowling as she watches the city beyond her window, an uncomfortable blend of anger, anxiety, paranoia and relief flowing through her.
She spent the bulk of the morning sitting in a hot, sterile interrogation room at the FBI's New York field office, stubbornly maintaining her silence while waiting for the lawyer she hoped Morris could secure for her to arrive.
She passed the time by trying – and failing – not to worry...
About Morris and Prescott and how her arrest and likely conviction was going to affect them and whether she'd still have a family when it was all said and done;
About the search for Jack and the protection protocol for Kim and her family and how things would fall apart if they truly managed to toss her in a cell and throw away the key;
About Renee's status and how not being in a position to look out for her would ultimately leave her – and by extension, quite possibly Jack – more vulnerable. And not just to the Russians;
About how much Logan's mercenaries have spilled to the FBI. She wasn't sure what, if anything, they knew about what truly happened with Jack after President Taylor called them off, but if they suspected the president and CTU allowed him to escape, it went a long way in explaining why she was there;
About how much Taylor shared with the AG about what happened in those final moments before they basically let Jack elude custody;
And whether or not she'd done enough to cover her own tracks.
It wasn't until seventy-two minutes into her stay with the FBI – and she knew the precise number of minutes because the damned ticking of the clock on the wall had just about driven her crazy – that a high-powered defense attorney and two of her associates were ushered into the holding room.
She knew the instant she saw them that there was no way she could afford the fees and it made her wonder what Morris had been thinking in hiring her. Still, after introducing herself and her team, "Gwendolyn Harper of Barron, Harper and Lloyd" quickly got down to business, succinctly laying out the FBI's case against her.
Chloe let her. She'd worry about the fees later.
It turned out, to Chloe's immense relief, that the FBI had nothing concrete. In fact, Harper's opinion had been that there wasn't nearly enough evidence to justify an arrest much less assure conviction.
Contrary to what she'd thought – worried – might've happened, the mercenaries hadn't said a word to investigators since the FBI brought them in.
Nor had President Taylor spilled the details of those last moments with Jack. Instead, she'd apparently lied to and withheld information from federal investigators – a move she has to have known will only compound the list of charges against her if they discover the truth.
According to what Harper was allowed to see of her statement so far, the president explained that once she realized Logan couldn't help her stop his men from killing Jack Bauer, she contacted CTU in the hope that their analysts and drones might help her locate both Jack and Logan's team of hired mercenaries.
She stated that CTU had been involved only insofar as she required their assistance in finding Jack and the men sent to kill him and, upon achieving that, in establishing a communications link so she could speak with the mercenaries and with Jack. Beyond that, she declared, CTU bore no responsibility in what happened.
She also made it clear that she gave Jack the same order she'd given the mercenaries – to stay put and wait for the FBI – and claimed that she was surprised and disappointed that he was gone by the time the Bureau arrived. Gwendolyn Harper couldn't help noting that there was no drone footage to counter the president's claim.
Still, Chloe's friendship with Jack was apparently well known to the FBI. They were aware she'd helped him circumvent their D.C. division eighteen months ago and, with it already on record that she attempted to help Jack earlier in the day by smuggling out whatever evidence he reportedly obtained, they felt that if anyone knew Jack Bauer's whereabouts, it would be her.
In their eagerness to find him – an eagerness likely fueled by the understanding that the more time passed, the harder finding him would be – they went after Chloe in the hope of pressuring her into telling them something in order to save herself.
After a brief discussion in which Chloe told Harper enough to refute various aspects of the FBI's claims and still keep herself out of trouble, the lawyer brought in Agent Frank – and promptly began ripping him and his case apart.
Chloe sat there in silence, watching and listening as her attorney countered each of the FBI's allegations, pointing out that whatever assistance she provided Jack Bauer was less assistance – she'd shot the man to stop him from killing the Russian president, after all – and more doing the job she was supposed to do. Namely, attempting to bring to light the illegal and, one could argue, terrorist-related activities that had been undertaken by people abusing their positions of authority.
As for her alleged facilitation of Jack Bauer's escape, it was clear from the president's statement that Chloe's responsibility ended once CTU's drone found Bauer and they established the communications link.
Her favorite part had been when Harper got right up in Agent Frank's face and, with a not-too-subtle smirk, pointed out that Chloe was hardly to blame for the incompetence shown by the FBI. After all, President Taylor had all but wrapped the team of mercenaries and Jack Bauer in a box complete with ribbon and bow for the FBI. It was their lack of urgency in arriving at the scene in time to secure them that was the issue, especially when they knew what the men involved were capable of. And clearly, they were trying to deflect their failure onto someone else.
Three hours after her arrival at the FBI, Chloe found herself walking out of the interrogation room a free woman. At least for the time being.
The moment she was escorted out of the building, she called Morris and was both surprised and deeply relieved to find that he was still talking to her.
Morris was also surprised. Apparently, he'd called everyone he could think of in order to find a strong enough attorney and had just gotten off the phone with one he thought might be able to help. When she told him about Gwendolyn Harper, it was clear he had nothing to do with hiring her.
She wasn't sure what to make of it. Just as she began to wonder if – impossibly – Jack had known she'd need legal help and had somehow placed a call, she received a call from Wilson at Division.
She was stunned when he informed her that while the FBI's investigation into the events surrounding Jack Bauer's escape was ongoing – which, she decided, meant she was still under scrutiny – she was still Acting Director of CTU and had the full support of Division as well as Homeland Security in all CTU directives and activities, including the search for Jack Bauer.
It struck her, less than a minute into the conversation, that Division must've known FBI was going to arrest her. When she'd asked about it, she discovered that Gwendolyn Harper was one of the "perks of the position."
They'd already spoken with Harper and understood the situation as she had laid it out for the FBI. They knew the FBI's case didn't hold water and, apparently, she impressed enough people with her handling of the recent events that they were willing to follow Tim Woods' recommendation and keep her in place for the time being, which would allow them adequate time to find and properly vet a permanent replacement.
While it doesn't take much self-reflection to know that, right now, she doesn't really want the job – it's seriously interfering with what she really needs to be doing – she recognizes it has also afforded her some benefits, not the least of which is the legal assistance of Gwendolyn Harper. And that assistance is something she's not entirely certain she won't need again sometime soon.
As the taxi cab comes to a stop at a stoplight, her eyes absently skim over the stream of pedestrians crossing the street in front of the car while her mind quickly sifts through the list of things she has to do. After all, CTU is waiting and there will be more than enough catching up to do when she gets there.
Before she tackles any of that, however, she has one little side stop to make. To that end, she leans forward and gives the driver a new destination.
Then, as the light turns green and the cab pulls forward, Chloe takes out her cell and places her second call of the day to Cole Ortiz.