Hi,
Crazy week. Four exams in two days, then my birthday, then another exam and I have my final one tomorrow. I wanted to get this out and I'm hoping the fact it is slightly longer than normal will make up for it being later. Again, please enjoy my rampant use of fake medical knowledge. Very little is based on fact. Please read, review and enjoy!
Rose xx
Someone was punching Steve in the chest. He wanted to get them off, but he didn't have the air to move a finger let alone attack an assailant. Suddenly, a final hit came and there came a rush of air and memories. Coughing weakly, Steve felt himself being rolled onto his side and heaved breath in and out.
"Lieutenant, can you hear me?" He twitched trying to get his lips to move. "Lieutenant, squeeze my hand if you can hear me." A warm hand slips into his own, covered by what he assumed was a latex glove. Compelling is fingers to move, he weakly squeezed the hand in his, hearing from above a harsh breath and a familiar voice.
"Thank god. Can I yell at him yet?"
"Detective, I'll ask you once more to stand back." It's the same voice as before and Steve was suddenly aware of an oppressive weight on his face. As soon as he became aware of that he realised he was once again being moved. Struggling, he fought to open his eyes, the view above him hazy.
"Hey, leave that alone." The familiar voice was back and even through the blur, he could make out a blonde head.
"D'nn?" His tongue felt thick and dry, the words wouldn't form properly.
"Yeah babe, it's me. Leave that on okay?" There was a calloused hand on his head, smoothing the lines of confusion.
"W'hppen?"
"You were an idiot is what happened. I'm going to kill you later. But you need to rest for now, okay? These guys are going to help you and me, Chin and Kono are going to keep up with the case okay?"
He wanted to protest, but there was a shot of ice through his arm and then nothing.
"You okay brah?" Danny turned to look at Kono, her brown eyes filled with worry.
"Not really. I just watched our best friend nearly die and now I know the only thing I can do involves not being with him."
Her small hand rested on his shoulder and as the sound of sirens faded in the background, Chin approached.
"We need to get going. HPD is ready to head to Johnson's house and now we don't just have to worry about those kids but Steve too okay?"
Nodding, Danny stood and tightened his vest. It was time to go.
"Stephan Johnson, 5-0 open up!" Danny pounded on the door of the run-down house, Kono and Chin standing back on the nature strip as they'd been unsure if the decking would hold their combined weight. When there was no response, Danny drew back, gathering the anger and worry for their missing leader and kicking out, the door shattering off its hinges. Moving forward, the team entered the house and Danny's free hand immediately went to his mouth at the stench.
"Clear," Danny barked, moving through the kitchen.
"Clear."
"Clear."
"Clear."
The call echoed from various rooms around the house.
"In here." Danny raced towards Kono's voice, stopping short at the door. There was what must have bee the body of a young girl, around Grace's age, and, judging by the smell and condition, she had been dead for around a month. It was, undoubtedly, Jemima Johnson.
"Kanapapiki." Chin's soft voice came behind Danny, uttering what he could only assume was a curse.
"Come on." The three of them moved from the room, leaving the room for CSU when they arrived.
Back in the kitchen, Danny was sorting through stacks of paper on the table alongside Kono, while Chin did the same in a bedroom they'd assumed was Johnson's.
"Guys, I've got something."
Dropping the rent bill he'd been scanning, they hurried towards the call.
Arriving in the doorway, they saw Chin holding up a manila file.
"That missing file, it was coded 6809." Kono nodded, and Chin pointe to the label on the file displaying the same number.
"Let's head back to the hospital. We'll see how Steve is and look over the file there." Agreeing, they once again left, leaving the body of a young girl behind. Danny just hoped it would be the only body he saw that day.
"Steve McGarrett please." Chin forewent the pleasantries; the case had been draining him and with the lives, at stake, he was ready for it to be over.
"Just a second." Clearly used to impatient visitors, the young receptionist met his short demand with a smile, though as her fingers flew across the keyboard it quickly turned to a frown.
"I'm sorry, the only man we've had by that name checked out just under an hour ago.
"He what?" Behind him came Danny's incredulous cry, and Chin was tempted to echo it.
"Yes, I'm sorry, it seems here he left against medical advice shortly after his assessment."
Danny was already stalking towards the doors, keys in hand and murder in his eyes. "If he isn't already dead I'm going to kill him."
"The hell is wrong with you?" Steve startled, looking up as his office door slammed open, and three angry Danny's stormed into his office. Blinking, the three men became one; one very angry man leaning over him. "Have you got a death wish, Steven? Suicidal ideation? Do you actually think you are invincible? Or, are you actually, really, as mind-numbingly stupid as you seem right now?"
"Ah…"
"No, you don't get to talk right now. You had a heart attack, Steven. A heart attack. As in boom-boom-stop. You died. And we had to watch. Then we trust you, we leave you because there's not only three kids dying but you too! And then we get a lead, a lead that might save your life and we come to see how you are, and you're gone!"
"Danny-"
"I'm not done!" Danny is right in his face then, hand feeling over his chest and at his neck measuring his pulse. "How do you feel, are you-"
"Chill brah." Chin and Kono are there too and Steve is pretty sure he should have known that, pretty sure they shouldn't have been able to come in without him noticing. Danny stepped back, but Steve could see the reluctance painted on his face.
"What have you got then?" Steve hated that his voice crackled over the words and his chest ached with them but he needed to know how the case was going.
"Hey, you aren't off the hook McGarrett. I've got patient transport fifteen minutes out and you'll be back in a bed within the hour."
"But the case."
"It will go ahead without you, boss."
"No." Steve pushed his seat back, standing and trying to ignore the wave of heat through his body and the further tightening of his chest. "I need to see that." He pointed to the file. "And then we need to figure out where Johnson is." He moved to grab the file still in Kono's hand but stumbled and it was only Danny and Chin's combined reflexes that stopped him going to ground.
"Steve!" He was gently lowered to the ground, Danny coming up behind him as he slumped bonelessly. "Goddammit, when will you admit that you need help? I don't want my friend to die because he's too stubborn to slow down."
The was a knock at the door, and two men walked in. They were touching Steve all over and worse than the feel of their hands on him was the vulnerability he felt. The escape from the hospital and his team's entrance had taken far more out of him than he had wanted to admit. Much to his chagrin, an oxygen mask was once again slipped over his face. He saw Danny follow him out to the transport vehicle, felt an IV be slipped into the crook of his arm. The doors closed and his friend's hand slipped into his, the squeeze that should have mortified him served instead as comfort, and the exhaustion from the day quickly caught up with him and before he could fight it, sleep took him.
"Hey, guys." As Kono and Chin slid into the room, Danny stood from his place beside Steve's slumbering form.
"He looks terrible." Danny had to agree with Kono. Steve was pale and gaunt. He'd lost weight in the last few days, not much, but enough for Dann to notice the sharp curves of his body around the thin hospital gown. He had an oxygen mask covering his face, something Dany had thought they would remove but had been deemed necessary when the SEAL's oxygen saturation had dropped dangerously low upon their arrival. His face was beaded with sweat, and he in no way resembled the man he had seemed the day before.
"How the hell did this get so bad without us knowing?" Chin asked what they all wondered.
Several minute later, they were all seated in various positions around the room.
"The file doesn't have much, really. Names of the three politicians, information of the health grant. Really, I think taking it was so we'd be slower making the connection between the grant and the illness."
Before anyone could reply to Chin, a short nurse appeared at the door.
"Mr Williams?"
Danny stood. "Detective."
"My apologies, detective. Dr Bishop, he's the Commander's primary. He'd like to speak with you." She looked around the room, her gaze landing on both Chin and Kono respectively. "Alone."
Danny glared, tired from the long day. "Anything he needs to say is gonna come back to them anyway, so tell Bishop he can save us both time and tell me in here."
Looking taken aback, the nurse nodded and left. Seconds later, a man who looked young enough to be Danny's nephew walked in, but the air of confidence he carried himself with quelled any fear over his qualifications.
"Detective. I'm Dr Bishop, please call me Mark. I'll be the Commander's primary while he's here. I've been looking over the cases of Declan, Hani and Lane and I'm sorry to say this is looking like a more aggressive strain of the same thing."
"More aggressive?" Danny asked, immediately glancing towards the still form on the bed.
"Yes. You remember we advised that it seemed the first victims had only received one dose of the virus?" Danny nodded. "Steve's symptoms indicate he's ingested multiple doses; we initially theorised that multiple dosages would lead to more serious symptoms, such as those we're seeing here. There would be more delayed onset, but once it hit the symptoms would be more severe."
"What can we be doing?"
In a gesture of familiarity, the doctor reached out a hand, resting it on Danny's shoulder.
"Exactly what you've been doing so far. Investigate the case. Trust our doctors and technicians working on a cure, and do everything on your end to help us. I have to continue on my rounds, but I'll see you around later."
Bishop left, leaving the only sound in the room Steve's labouring breaths.
Danny took a second to compose himself. "Alright. Kono, you head back to the house. I want everything CSU has and then I want you to comb every inch of that house. Chin, you stay here. I am not taking any chances of him leaving again. I'm going back to the office. There has to be something we missed." Turning to leave, Danny muttered again, this time to himself. "There has to be."
Night had fallen but Kono knew she was no closer to going home than she had been at nine am that morning. CSU had confirmed everything they'd thought; the body had been Jemima Johnson's, likely smuggled from its coffin by her father ad enshrined in her old bedroom. It had slowly rotted away in the weeks since her death, but according to Max, there was little doubt it was the Batten's that had killed her. Kono sifted through the sty that was the house, finding countless pages of research o the disease that had ailed the family, overdue bills and threatening letters to all the politicians, signed but never sent. Moving towards the back of the house, Kono paused, something drawing her attention to her left. Something on the wall wasn't right. The house wasn't large, but there should have been another room. It was a perfect square, and Johnson's room was too small to take up an entire side of the hall. Leaning in closer towards the wall, she found what she was looking for. Next to a photo of a smiling young girl, a small crack, running from the roof to the ground. Turning side on, Kono hip and shouldered the wall. It gave way and suddenly, she was standing in a room. She gazed around the room, stunned. Without waiting, she pulled out her phone.
"Danny, you need to see this."
Danny paced his office, pouring over the information they had so far. Stephan Johnson was a father grieving over the loss of his daughter she had died in pain due to an incurable disease. Shortly before her death, there had been a research grant, aiming to improve the quality of life for sufferers. Around the same time, Junior Senator Maize Hirono, Senator John Bailey and Governor Harold Jenkins had endorsed a health grant to tackle the rising obesity crisis in Hawaii, a grant that needed money. Some of that money had come from the cancellation of the batten grant. Children on those three government officials had since been poisoned. Five-0 began investigating, upon which their leader had been taken down by the same illness. And Danny felt they were no closer to finding Johnson and a cure than they had been when they started.
Danny was running the day's events over in his head when a detail from Johnson's house jumped at him. The rent bill he'd been looking at when Kono had found Jemima. Johnson owned the house. There was no reason for him to be paying rent. He was reaching for his phone to call the team when it rang. Quickly answering, Kono's voice came through.
"Danny you have to see this.
So? What'd you think? Stay tuned.
Rose xx
