December 10, 2013
"My God….Carter, take a look at this! How has this man been walking around with this much bleed in his system?"
"I'm counting one..two…three heavily bleeding ulcers for starters. Mary, how's his heart rate and blood pressure?"
"A hell of a lot lower than I'd like. He's hovering around 70/40- any lower and I'll have to step in. His heart rate is rising though. Pearce, his insides look like hell. What did the family say happened to him?"
"They claim stress. This looks bad….. He'll be lucky if he makes it off this table."
As the group of surgeons work tirelessly on the ill detective, Deeks continues to struggle subconsciously….
"So this is it? You're giving up on us, our friends, and your life?" Kensi asks. Her tone continues to be impassive, too impassive for hearing that Deeks is nearly suicidal. Deeks wraps his arms around his body and shivers from the soaking cold jacket and hat.
"I don't know, Kens…I just-" Deeks looks up to the sky and narrows his eyes when he realizes that the light, gentle snowfall has been replaced by dark, gray clouds. He doesn't hear the male voice anymore or the breeze that had continuously been blowing around him. "I'm so tired of hurting."
"What do you mean?" There's a slight smugness on her face that he doesn't like. He ignores it and continues on, " I've always been hurting, Kens. Every day I have to force myself to smile and joke so I don't have to deal with the thoughts in my head. For as long as I can remember, I see myself as worthless, useless, basically-crap. I feel like happiness for me will never happen. Look at us- every day I walk around praying that I don't wake up and find that you and I were just a dream."
"Are you sure?" Kensi suddenly stands up and brushes the snow off her pants. Deeks can suddenly hear a child's laughter somewhere off in the distance. He can't place it where, when or how but he knows that laughter; he knows it so well.
"That's you laughing as a child," Kensi states with wonder. "You're six and playing tag with Jonny James, the six year old who was your partner in crime before you met Ray." The child's laughter disappears as quickly as it had come and is replaced by Deeks' wondrous laughter as an adult. It makes Deeks close his eyes to stop himself from breaking into tears again.
"What about when you were an adult? How about when you met me?" She holds out her hand to him and he reluctantly takes it. She helps him to her feet and when Deeks catches his bearings, he sees the sky darken even more.
"I've had good moments, but the voices," Deeks replies with his attention on the darkening sky, " The abuse and all of it, Kens! I don't think I can do it anymore!"
"You've been through a lot, Marty," Kensi says softly. She turns away and begins making her way across the ice, saying, " The abuse as a child, the mocking in LAPD and NCIS, the thing that happened in college, and then….."
Deeks cringes as he knows what coming up next. It's the most destructive that's happened to him in his life time. He's had six years of trying to run from it and now he's going to have to face it.
"The worst day of your life."
In the waiting room, Sam is about four seconds away from losing his mind.
He's been mixing it up between pacing in circles around the waiting room to sitting and rubbing his chin in frustration. Deeks has been in surgery for three hours and there's been no news. Not a sneak preview, not a quick update and not even a here's what happening in your neck of the woods shutout over the intercom. The 'no news is good news' is beginning to sound like crap, in the SEAL's opinion. He's about to burst into the surgery wing when he sees Callen at the waiting room entrance.
Callen slowly makes hi ways over to Sam like a lost child about to get punished. When he reaches Sam's side, he mumbles, "Is he-"
"Sit down," Sam snaps without looking up at Callen. The lead agent half nods and slides into the chair next to Sam. He rubs his hands and looks over to Sam with puppy eyes and asks, "I'm sorr-"
"Don't apologize to me. You have nothing to apologize to me for."
"Where is he?"
Sam inhales deeply and slowly lets out a huff of air. "He's in surgery- they don't know what's making him bleed to- nearly bleed to death so they're doing exploratory surgery. Odds aren't good, G. The doctor believes that his survival is all on Deeks…..emotionally distraught Deeks. I told the doctor to tell him that Kensi's on her way."
"You lied?" Callen's pretty sure that there's no possible way Sam had contact with Kensi and not him.
"She knew- she called about half hour after we got to the ER," Sam chuckles, "Kensi just knew…..that's love, G, that's love. She's thousands of miles away and yet she just knew that Deeks was hurting. They're a true love story."
Callen blinks the tears away furiously that's forming in his eyes. He's never had a love story like Sam and Michelle or Deeks and Kensi. And because of it, it might cause them to lose Deeks. "Maybe it's time for me to step away from this. I'm too jaded- I'm too jaded for this job anymore, Sam."
Sam finally turns to look at his partner in annoyance. "Don't pull a Hetty on me, G! You screwed up and you and me and the rest of the team have to fix our mistakes. We have to hope and pray that he pulls through. You don't get to run from this."
"How? I broke his trust on so many levels."
"Well for starters, your bed side manner sucks," Sam says lightly. He smiles when there's a tiny spark in agent's eyes.
Callen scratches his head and says, "I thought being less jaded would be number one."
"We'll get you that later."
"Hmmm…." Callen sits forward in his chair and asks, " Would you fight if you were Deeks?"
"Honestly?" Sam states, " No."
OPS Center
Henrietta Lange enters the barely lit weapons cache room.
No agents or analysts are in the building after her detective's collapse. There was no real reason to evacuate the entire building but Hetty needed them gone. Although she is a woman feared...very feared, she's very aware of judging and curious eyes. Right now she's too shaken to deal with those judging eyes and maintain the doubt me and you'll be dead before you know it persona.
She clicks on the room light and watches the room slowly brighten to its usual, warm glow. Hetty inhales deeply and her mind quickly wonders back to the first failed attempt at speaking with Deeks the day after Kensi had left. The detective had blatantly lied that he was ok even as Hetty had watched him struggle to stay awake in the middle of a marathon gun cleaning.
"Forgive me, Marty," Hetty whispers softly. She should be at the hospital, waiting to see if her once eccentric detective was going to live. However, there's something that's taking precedent over everything in this moment. It's the catalyst for everything- the reason for Deeks' panic attacks over cyanide, the real reason she handed Kensi over to Granger to find 'White Ghost and why Hetty made up a position to get Deeks out of LAPD as an agent or not.
Henrietta Lange pulls a file from the unknown, thin locked file under the side table near the door. Only two other people on the planet know about what's in the file until now.
The Bearson case.
