OK, I may need to clarify something. I believe I mentioned at the beginning that this story is set in Season 1. The reason for that is I didn't have the energy to deal with the evil Governor Jameson, Joe White and Lori. So, to simplify everything, this is last year. I hope that doesn't throw you off.
Ho'okahi, Chapter 7
"Chin Ho Kelly!"
Chin was surprised at the enthusiasm behind those words, but smiled and replied, "Hey, Boss. Good to see you awake."
"Boss?" Steve gave him a lopsided grin. "Hope my dad doesn't hear you say that. He would shoot both of us."
Kono grabbed Chin's arm, squeezing it tightly as he looked down at her, his eyes wide in shock. She looked up at him, her shock also evident. "I think I'll go find the doctor," she whispered.
Her cousin nodded his agreement and smiled at Steve once again, speaking loudly for his benefit. "She's going to tell your doctor that you're awake."
"Don't bother. He just left."
Chin moved to the other side of the bed and sat in the chair Danny had vacated. "Who? The doctor?"
"Yeah. Little guy wearing scrubs. He was just here."
"Nah, you got a lady doctor, Brah. She'll be here soon." Not soon enough, Chin thought to himself as he motioned for Kono to hurry.
"She's cute," Steve told Chin. "Girlfriend?"
"Who, Kono? She's my cousin."
"Huh? Talk louder. My head feels like it's full of cotton."
"I said she's my cousin." Amnesia? Chin didn't do panic well. But he was feeling an attack coming on.
"Cute cousin."
Brain damage? Crap. He's gonna have more than brain damage if he tells Kono that she's "cute" to her face.
~~~H50~~~
Kono raced into the hallway, running into Danny just as he hung up the phone.
"We got a problem, Brah. Steve thinks you're his doctor and I don't think he recognized me at all. But he remembered that Chin was his dad's partner."
"Let's get Palakiko in here. I knew last night something was wrong. I could just feel it."
They hurried as quickly as Danny could hobble down the hall to the nurse's desk, where Danny didn't even wait for her to acknowledge them. "We need Dr. Palakiko, and we need her now," he ordered.
The nurse rose from her chair. "Is Commander McGarrett all right?"
"Hell, no, he's not all right," Danny barked out. "He doesn't know us. Now find that doctor."
Kono placed her hand on his arm to calm him and turned to the nurse. "Please. We need to speak to her now."
The nurse nodded toward Kono. "Of course. Just give her a moment to get here. Why don't you wait and I'll have her meet you here at the desk."
"Thank you," Kono replied while Danny leaned against the wall, running both hands through his hair and down his neck.
"Danny, it's going to be OK," Kono assured him, propping herself against the wall next to him.
~~~H50~~~
"So…" Steve began, looking unsure of himself. "Looks like you had an accident, too." He waved his hand toward the bandaged cuts on Chin's face and neck.
"Yeah, no worries," Chin Ho told him. "I'm fine."
Steve continued, and Chin could see the fear on his face. "Must've done a number on myself if they shipped me back home, right? How bad is it?"
"Your injuries?" Chin asked. At Steve's hesitant nod, he shook his head. "You're not too badly injured. You were very, very lucky. We all were."
"Then why'd they ship me back to Hawaii?"
"I – uh…"
He was saved by the doctor.
Palakiko entered the room followed by Danny and Kono. "Hello there," she began, moving around the bed and motioning Chin to give her space. She leaned over and smiled at her patient, speaking louder than normal. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm OK," he began.
"Those are your first words to me?" She muttered. "I don't believe it."
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Tell me, how does your head feel? And don't lie." She examined the monitor over the bed and then picked up his wrist to feel his pulse.
"Hurts a little," he admitted. "What's wrong with my eye?"
"We removed some dust and particles of debris in it," she replied. "The bandage is precautionary. Don't want you to rub it and make it worse." She flicked a flashlight into his uncovered eye, checking his reaction. "How about your hearing? Can you hear me?"
"Kind of. Lots of white noise in my head."
She nodded. "I don't doubt it."
"What?"
The doctor smiled and explained, touching the right side of his head. "You ruptured an eardrum on that side. The noise should clear up in a few days. Now… you received a concussion, so I need to ask some basic questions."
"Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarrett," he answered before she asked.
She smiled and nodded. "Good. That was the first question. Do you know where you are?"
He nodded. "Hospital. But why am I in Hawaii?"
Palakiko held up her finger, stalling him. "I'm still asking the questions. And you're at Tripler. Do you remember what happened to you?"
Steve thought for a moment, confusion written on his face before replying, "Explosion."
"And where were you when this happened?"
McGarrett shook his head. "Classified, Ma'am."
"Of course it is," she agreed. "Do you remember what happened after the explosion?"
He thought once again, then swallowed before explaining, "I… uh… hit the wall." He reached his hand up to rub across his face, but she grabbed it before he had a chance to touch his eyes. "Then I fell backwards, and I remember… the wall fell on me. Not much after that. I… there was a chopper, I think. Don't remember the trip back home at all."
"Let's not worry about that just yet, Commander. It will come. One more question. Do you remember what day the explosion happened?"
"I…" He squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in his breath. "Headache," he admitted.
"I'll give you something soon," the doctor promised. "Now, can you tell me the month and year?"
"It's… I was in… no, that's classified. Explosion was Tuesday. May, 2010. Right?" He opened his eyes waiting for her confirmation.
Dr. Palakiko glanced at the three stunned faces of the people standing near the doorway before looking back at her patient. "Well, you missed a little bit in your calculation, but that's good enough for now," she assured him. "I'm going to give you something for pain and I want you to rest today and get some much needed sleep. We're going to take good care of you. Any questions?"
"Yeah… when can I get out of here?"
The doctor snorted. "When I say so, all right? And not a moment sooner. I'll have the nurse come in with some pain meds. When you wake up, we'll have some lunch for you. Now get some rest," she ordered, smiling at him.
She turned to leave, motioning for the team to precede her out of the room.
"What—" Danny began before she held up her hand.
"Let's go to the lounge and sit down," she told them, walking toward the nurse's station motioning for them to follow. "I don't know about you, but I need coffee." Once there, she showed them the doctor's lounge and stopped to talk to the nurse.
"Kala, Commander McGarrett needs his pain meds, please. I want him checked every half hour while he sleeps. And you can order a bland diet lunch tray for him, also. He has partial retrograde amnesia, so try to be generic in answering any questions he may have. I'd rather him regain his memories on his own."
The nurse acknowledged her orders and Palakiko turned to follow the team into the lounge, not looking forward to being grilled by the three people waiting for her.
~~~H50~~~
What the hell is going on?
And who were those people with the doc?
Why was Chin Ho here? Haven't seen him since I was a kid.
He reached up his hand to rub his eyes once again, but remembered the doctor's warning and dropped it back down to the bed. He sighed in frustration and closed his eyes.
Crap, my head hurts. And trying to think doesn't help.
Why can't I remember?
I came half way across the world and don't remember the trip at all?
Makes no sense.
He sensed movement and slowly opened his eye, causing the stabbing pain behind it to begin again.
"Sorry," Kala whispered. "I hope I didn't wake you." She checked his wristband to ensure she had the right patient before emptying the contents of the syringe into the IV line. "You should begin feeling pain relief very soon."
"Um, yeah," he replied, feeling the warmth travel up his arm to spread throughout his body.
"Just rest," she told him. "I'll be back to check on you soon."
"Unh…" The words wouldn't come.
What the hell is wrong with me?
~~~H50~~~
Shortly before dinner, Dr. P. and Anita entered Steve's room, Anita pushing a rolling cart in front of her. Palakiko began checking her patient's vitals when he woke up, turning his head to stare at her.
He blinked to clear his vision. "We need to talk," he began, then tried to lick his dry lips.
"All right," she agreed while pouring a cup of water, placing a straw in it and holding it to his lips. "We're here to change your dressings, so we can talk at the same time." After a few sips of the cold water, she took it back. "I think that's enough for now. How are you feeling?"
"You're gonna have to speak louder," he grumbled. "Still sounds like an F-18 leaving an aircraft carrier inside my head."
"Give it a few days and that should disappear," the doctor assured him, "I'm going to raise the bed a bit, so you might get dizzy. Just take slow, even breaths. Ready?" She pressed the button on the bed.
He grabbed the bedrail and sucked in his breath. "Shit," he whispered.
"Breathe."
"Room's…" he clinched his mouth and closed his eye while making motion circles with his hand.
She placed her hand lightly on his forehead to ground him. "Take a deep breath and relax. It will pass." She waited a beat for him to comply, then continued, "The vertigo is due to your injured eardrum. Any sudden movement is going to aggravate it for a few days." As she spoke, she used a light to inspect his right ear. "Hmm, looks pretty raw in there," she told Anita. "Give me those drops and some gauze, please. We're going to need to clean this."
He kept his jaw clinched while she cleansed his very tender ear, after which she continued to lean over him, poking and prodding each the scrapes and cuts on his head and neck. "So, you wanted to talk to me?" she asked him while removing the tape from the bandage covering his eye.
"Yeah." He took a breath, grimacing when she pulled tape from his cheek. "No more drugs," Steve told her. "All day people kept coming in and shooting me up with stuff. Don't like it."
She continued to work while listening to his complaint. "Close both eyes before I remove this final piece of gauze," she told him, motioning to Anita to lower the lights. "The light is dim, but the glare will probably still hurt," Palakiko warned. "Now… open up and let me check them."
He had trouble getting his right eye open and immediately began blinking when both eyes started watering. "Hurts. What's in there?" he asked, squeezing them tightly shut before she could use her penlight again.
"Nothing now," she assured him, "but the debris scratched your cornea, so you have that gritty feeling. It will heal, but while it is doing so, keeping it closed will be more comfortable. I'm going to insert an antibiotic before I bandage it again. Your left eye is scratched a bit, too, but I didn't want to leave both of them covered, so please don't rub it." She took the tube from Anita and pried open his eye.
"So," she continued their conversation. "Let me get this straight. You received pain meds without asking for them, right?" Dr. Palakiko grinned and glanced over to the nurse. "Anita, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it still part of our job descriptions to keep our patients comfortable?"
"That's part of the reason I became a nurse," Anita agreed with her, covering his eye with the new bandage once the antibiotic was in place.
"But, I don't need 'em," McGarrett argued. "SEALs are taught to manage pain, but I can't even think when you keep me drugged up. I need to get up and—"
She stopped taping the bandage in place and held up her hand. "Hold it right there, Buster! You do not need and will not get up. By no means are you ready to get out of this bed. Twenty-four hours ago, you—" she bit off her comment, hoping he didn't catch the slip of her tongue.
No such luck.
"Twenty four hours ago, what?"
"Nothing, really," she tried to backpedal. "You weren't really conscious yet." Dr. Palakiko began cutting the gauze away from his upper arm and accepted a wipe from Anita, cleansing the stitched cut, before replacing the bandage and moving to another area.
"I've been lying here thinking-"
She interrupted once again. "When you should have been lying here resting or sleeping, like I ordered."
He ignored her. "Don't understand why I was transferred to Hawaii. And I need to know about the rest of my team. And, most important, I want that damn plumbing removed."
The doctor unsnapped the shoulder of his hospital gown and lowered it to check the damage to his chest and stomach. "And people in hell want ice water," she retorted, examining him while ignoring his mini-rant.
"Bruising's pretty widespread," she commented to the nurse before placing one hand on Steve's shoulder. "Anita, help me over there, please. Commander, we're going to help you roll to your right so I can check the damage to your back. The dizziness will probably return."
"Hasn't left," he admitted, sucking in air when they rolled him and the room somersaulted once again.
"Don't forget to breathe," she reminded, while touching a particularly sore spot over his left kidney. He couldn't hide the hitch in his breath at the sudden pain her touch caused.
"When you fell, you landed on a chunk of jagged concrete," she explained. "You have both external and internal bruising of your kidney, which is the reason you have 'plumbing', as you call it. And no, I won't take it out until you quit passing blood." She removed the blanket from his legs and reached for the bandage scissors, snipping at the thick layers of gauze wrapped around his thigh. "Let's see what your leg looks like," she said, explaining to him, "a piece of rebar went through it, and while you are lucky it didn't hit anything vital, this is the reason your butt's staying in bed."
"And the longer I lay here and don't move, the harder it will be to get up," he argued. "I know my limits, but I also know what my body is capable of."
Palakiko continued cleaning the wounds on his leg, listening as he tried not to hiss in pain. "That may be true," she admitted. "But doing too much, too quickly is only going to hinder your healing. And this is going to take a while to heal; you've got a chunk out of your muscle." She wrapped clean gauze around his leg, taped him back together and then helped him roll back over. "Besides, until you can sit up without turning that nice shade of green you've got going on, you're not getting out of bed. I doubt you want to face plant onto the floor!"
He let out his breath, and tried once again. "Tell me why I'm here? What has happened? You said… when you asked me about the date, you said I was missing some time. If I'm here with these injuries, that makes no sense. Tell me what's going on. Please."
"Commander, please listen to me. You have a concussion and your entire body has had pretty major trauma. You need to rest and let yourself heal. I feel certain that your memory will clear," she began. "Be patient for—"
"Look," he began again, his voice quieter. "I know I'm not firing on all cylinders right now. I get it, but I still recognize evasive tactics when I hear them. I just want to know what the hell is going on. If you won't talk, get me Chin Ho. Or better yet, get my father. Where is he?"
Dr. Palakiko stared at him and sighed before giving in. "All right. Let me make some calls," she finally agreed. "But only on a couple of conditions."
"What?"
"You allow Anita to give you a muscle relaxant and something for the pain – don't argue," she added, pointing her finger at him when he opened his mouth. "And you need to eat something. Rumor has it you didn't touch the lunch tray."
He grimaced at the thought of hospital food. "I'll try," he whispered.
"Good. I'll be back."
And when you do, I better get some answers.
~~~H50~~~