"As soon as there is life, there is danger."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson -


7. TERROR

The fifteen minute drive to Queens Medical takes fourteen minutes too long as far as Danny is concerned. He nearly falls from the passenger door as Lou pulls up, stumbles inside and runs to the Emergency Department.

"McGarrett, they just flew him in" he manages to gasp to one of the nurses. "I need to know ... find out, how he is." She holds up a hand. "Hang on, let me check, OK?" Danny finds a wall to hold him up, to ground him, stop the sensation of free-falling ever since they found Steve.

Lou finds him like that, pale, eyes glued to the door behind which the nurse disappeared. "How is he?" ask Lou, and Danny shakes his head. "They haven't told me anything yet, still waiting for ..."

The nurse re-appears through the door, a doctor in her wake, looking distracted. Danny's eyes immediately zero in on the blood covered blue gloves. Steve's blood he knows. "Five-0?" He looks at Danny and Lou, and they both nod.

"We're still trying to stabilize him, so we can get him into surgery." He looks over his shoulder, then back at Danny and Lou. "I need to get back in there, it's all hands on deck." As he's moving towards the doors again, he turns around for a moment, throwing them a look which causes Danny's heart to stutter.

"I know this is not what you want to hear, but I'm afraid you'll have to seriously consider the fact that we won't be able to save him. The combination of injuries, blood loss, fever, shock and other complications, as well as the complicated rescue mission ... I'd be very surprised if he made it."

He disappears through the doors, taking Danny's sanity with him.


They're still in shock when Chin and Kono come running in. "How is he, brah?" Chin asks as he places a hand on Danny's neck. "Danny?" Two glazed blue eyes slowly come up to meet Chin's, looking as if they're begging to be taken out of this reality, a reality in which he's been told Steve will likely die.

"They ..." he swallows, tries to lubricate a throat which feels raw with emotion. "They told us he probably won't make it. Injuries, shock ... doc doesn't think they'll be able to save him." Chin's eyes grow wide as the news hits him full force. "Oh Danny ... oh shit, brah."

Kono slumps down in one of the seats, staring at the wall across from her. Lou places a hand on her shoulder and she slowly lets herself sink into the comforting arm pulling her into his big chest. "Can't be true" she says, listlessly. "The Boss, he's just too pa'akikî, too tough, too stubborn to die!"

They sit for hours, unaware of what goes on around them, silently holding on to each other within the little bubble that is their world now, their minds focused on the only thing that matters: Steve.

Finally, the doors open and the same doctor that talked to Danny before comes out, his face hard-lined with exhaustion, mouth grim. He's had the foresight to remove his blood spattered OR scrubs before walking out to talk to McGarrett's team.

They spring up from their chairs, four pair of eyes demanding information, filled with both hope and the anticipation of bad news. Danny just barely manages to prevent himself from grabbing the doctor by the front of his shirt, wanting to shake the information out of him, desperate to know.

"He's still alive, and that in itself is a miracle." The doctor massages his temples, exhausted by the bone-weary hours of intense struggle to save this patient's life. "We had to fight every minute of the time we were in the OR to keep him from slipping away; he coded twice."

A small frown appears on his brow. "Just couldn't believe he even came back." He doesn't tell them that, after the second cardiac arrest, the OR team had agreed on not performing CPR if he coded a third time; the man's system was just too compromised.

He looks at the four people standing in front of him, sighs. "The news still is not good, I'm afraid. We have no idea how he managed to hold on for so long, how he still had a pulse when brought in, how he survived what we had to do in the OR."

He watches the faces in front of him crumble, what little hope they have die in their eyes. "I won't even begin to describe his injuries; they're just massive. And right now, the point is moot anyway." He draws a breath, steeling himself for what he has to say next.

"We simply can't tell you if he'll live. I wish I could tell you more, but I can't. We just don't know."

Danny turns, sinks down in one of the chairs along the wall, his knees no longer able to carry the burden of not just his body, but his guilt, his fear, his terror of still being able to lose Steve. He runs a shaky hand over his face, closing his eyes, vaguely hearing the doctor's next words.

"On top of the Commander's extensive injuries, the fact that it took so long before he was found gave infection a chance to spread through his system. He has a very high fever which has caused convulsions, further weakening a system already severely compromised by being wet, by being exposed to the night air, by being in shock for so long."

That's right, thinks Danny. Put the boot in by telling us that we took too long to find him. Tell us again how we failed him. He utters a shaky sigh, then looks up at the doctor. "How long before ... before you know, before you are certain he'll pull through?"

The doctor shakes his head. "That completely depends on what other complications the Commander may suffer from. New infections, complications, his breathing ... like I said, we're completely in the dark here."

Danny shakes his head, holds up a hand. "Sorry, please ... I don't want to hear all the possible negative scenarios; there's too many of those running around my head already. I don't want to hear about death. I want to know at which point you can be certain that he'll live, at what moment we can stop being scared and start having some faith that he'll be OK."

The doctor seems to relent, aware that his message of doom has hit a hard and fast home run, and now is the time to offer whatever little sliver of hope there might be."Basically, as soon as the Commander is able to breathe on his own and his fever is down. When he's responsive, alert. And that may take days, weeks ..."

He holds up his hands, powerless to offer them more than this, powerless to stop his own mind from thinking that such a moment will most likely never arrive.

Danny nods, looks at the others, sees their faces slack with shock, their eyes wide open as if the words of the doctor have materialized and strut their horror in front of them. He shakes his head, looks at the doctor again. "Can we ... is it OK if we see him?"

He hates the look of compassion he gets, instinctively knows it's a look reserved for family of those patients that will most likely never leave the hospital on their own power. It further crumbles what little hope he has.

"Yes, you can see him. He's being settled in at the ICU, so give them a little time to finish doing that." The doctor sighs. "I'll tell the nurses you do not need to adhere to visiting hours. Make sure you don't all come at once, but you can come in whenever you like, until ..." He leaves the words unspoken.

Until he dies, Danny's mind finishes for him.


They've been steering clear of the tall man, their boss, for the last few hours. He's been throwing stuff at them, at the wall; screaming his head off in unrelenting fury. Peter Wright is filled with rage, infuriated by the fact that his carefully concocted plan to exact revenge on Five-0's Commander has been thwarted.

And not even by Five-0 itself; oh no, by a bunch of kids! Fucking monkeys on a rope, who have climbed down and gotten McGarrett out of the wreck which was plastered all over the mountain side.

He remembers the moment of anticipation, that intense moment of satisfaction when their car slammed into the side of McGarrett's truck as he slowed down for the next corner. A crazy giggle filled with glee had escaped his mouth as the Silverado had crashed through the roadside barrier, disappearing from sight.

When he got out and stood there, looking down, he had stared into the face of a man wholly surprised by the fact that one minute he was on the road, and the next he was hanging next to it. A man obviously already injured by that first impact, judging by the painfully contorted face as he was wedged between deployed airbags.

The truck's downward movement had initially been halted by a web of interlocking small trees, brushes and other plants. Smiling, he had watched the vegetation give way to the weight of the truck and had seen it slipping down the side of the mountain, faster and faster, until it crashed somewhere below.

It had filled him with a sense of completion, of satisfaction; the knowledge of his tormentor now dead, or at least dying, a healing ointment for the physical and mental wound inflicted by him.

Until he got the news that he wasn't dead; had in fact been saved.

A little smile suddenly appears. Peter Wright has decided that he will have his revenge, no matter what the consequences, no matter what the cost. And he'll start with those damn kids that have screwed up his plans.

Yeah, those brats will be the first to pay.


As soon as the herd of nurses and doctors is gone, Danny slips through the door of the ICU unit they've placed Steve in. The sight which greets him makes him stumble back against the wall, causes him to slide down until his butt hits the floor. He sits there, trying to take it all in.

Steve is hooked up to almost every machine in the room, all of them beeping, hissing or producing some other sound. There's an IV running to his hand, another one hooked up to a line going into his chest. Then there's a tube running out of his chest to a small box on the ground, and a catheter.

They have a sheet draped over him, which seems to be resting on some kind of frame over his legs, preventing the cloth from touching his body. Suddenly Danny notices that Steve's is being ventilated through his throat; there's no tube running from his mouth.

He scrambles up then, wills his shaky legs to walk towards the bed. Coming closer he can see angry dark bruises on Steve's jaw and chin, the area below it purplish and very swollen; he realizes then that they may not have been able to intubate him normally. Shuddering, he thinks They cut his throat!

Danny's eyes travel down to the surgical bandage draped around Steve's right shoulder, then move to his left arm. He sucks in his breath. There is what seems to b a huge gap in Steve's left arm, running from his wrist to his elbow, and it seems to be stuffed with gauze.

Then Danny finally looks at Steve's face, and his heart tries to disappear down into his gut. The blush from the fever creates a stark contrast to the deathly white pallor, looking almost as if somebody has applied rouge to his cheeks. His lips are bloodless and cracked, his mouth slack, slightly open.

He already looks dead thinks Danny, and he holds on to the railing of the bed as his legs threaten to give out on him. A soft keening sound escapes his lips as he stares at the man lying there, so quiet, so god-awful quiet.

Shaking, he lifts a hand, gently touches Steve's brow. "Hey there, partner. I'm so sorry we didn't get to you sooner, that you had to wait that long before we came for you." He swallows, barely able to speak through the grief constricting his throat.

"But please, babe, don't give up on us, OK? Don't leave us thinking we didn't care, because we do, Steven. We care, and we love you. Just keep fighting, babe. You made it out of that car and off that mountain, and you made it to hospital and you pulled through surgery."

Danny's heart is pouring out of his mouth, pouring down his face. "We need you, Steve, we so desperately need you. We're not Five-0 without you, we're not complete, not whole. So prove those doctors wrong. Just be your normal, stubborn SEAL self and prove them wrong by not dying. OK? Can you do that for me, buddy?"

He looks for a response, a flicker of an eyelash, or a change in heart rhythm, but there's nothing. "You just rest for now, babe. We're all here, the others are outside, and we'll be keeping you company the whole way through." He strokes the quiet brow, his fingers soft, gentle, then places his lips against it, whispering softly.

"We got you, Steve.


The dark blue van slows down next to the young Hawaiian walking along the sidewalk, then stops. He looks up. The window on the passenger side opens up, and he can see the driver leaning over the passenger seat.

"Hey kid, I'm lost here. Can you help me out and give me directions?"

The face of the young man breaks out in a smile, and he steps down off the sidewalk, hoisting his backpack with climbing gear onto his other shoulder. "Sure, Mister. Where do you need to go?"

The next moment, the side door of the van slides open and two pairs of hands grab him, yank him inside the van. As the door quickly slides close again, a gag is stuffed into the young man's mouth as his arms are roughly bound behind him.

The van pulls away from the curb, then drives off.


We need you, Steve.

Somehow, the voice filters through to the deep, dark void he has been in the last couple of hours. It's a place very different from where he's been before, bearing no relation to the calm darkness he has floated in.

This is not a place of healing, of waiting; this is a place of severing ties, of shedding burdens before moving on. He has been ready for a while, ready to take that last step, to make that final journey.

Yet something has been holding him back, prevented him from cutting those last ties binding him to a thing called Life. It is the same thing which has pulled him back not once, but twice in the OR.

Despite not being burdened by anything remotely resembling emotions, there is a sensation, something akin to curiosity which makes him falter, restraining him from moving on.

The dark void moves around him, almost as if it tries to gently force him to cross the border between Life and Death; but he resists. Then the voice reaches him again.

We got you, Steve.

He decides to wait.