Triptocaine Blues
By Phantaz-Magoria
Chapter 7
* * *
The first warning sign he should have seen, Jayden thought, was the environment. He hadn't chosen one when he'd sat down to find John Sheppard, and yet one had taken the liberty of sneaking up on him while he wasn't paying attention. Of course he'd seen them so many times, it was more real to him to be there on the bottom of the ocean while he flipped through files than it was to be in a hotel room, or a dusty, forgotten closet in a building.
The sunlight filtering through the warm tropical blue water was a welcome sight in this gloomy, rain drenched city. The tropical fish that swam to and fro amongst the reef were far friendlier than Lieutenant Blake and Captain Perry, so why should he be unhappy to see them now? It simply never occurred to him.
The second warning sign should have been more obvious, but he'd been reading, paying more attention to the file in front of him, the newspaper articles detailing the tragedy of the Sheppard children, that he honestly didn't see it happen. The sunlight had gone away, turning the ocean water around him from the bright, safe tropical lagoon into something more akin to a dark and murky abyss. He had been honing in on the twin brother, Scott Sheppard, when all the fish had vanished, disappearing into whatever virtual refuge they had to them.
Somewhere in the real world, he could still hear Madison's voice, feel the touch of her warm fingers on his skin. That was when he did notice, FINALLY, that something was very wrong here. Sharks… BIG sharks had begun to swim casually through the coral reef. Norman felt his heart rate speed up. They weren't entering the area where he sat at his desk, but he could see them briefly here and there as they swam past just outside the rocks. He could see their teeth…
"Norman!" Madison's panicked voice broke through the rising terror.
That's right. This isn't real, it's just a hologram.
He reached up to pull his glasses off, because the easiest, quickest way to turn off the hologram was to unhook the computer. The trouble came when pulling the glasses off didn't do anything. He could still see the sharks. He lurched up out of his seat, stumbling backwards. Something caught him and he cried out, turning quickly to see what it was that grabbed him.
A large squid darted away from him, flitting past without a sound, but it wasn't the squid that had grabbed him. It was a hand, a human hand. A real hand from the real world.
"Madison?" He couldn't see her. She wasn't in this place, but he knew she was there, just outside of the hologram.
"Everything's going to be fine, just tell me how to help!"
I wish I knew!
Jayden turned his terrified gaze back out into the water. One of the sharks had slipped past the protective ring of coral and was swimming this way. His pulse was pounding and he was beginning to hyperventilate as he stumbled back and away from the looming shark ahead of him.
Fucking Jaws is coming to eat me and I can't fucking turn him off!
Hands caught him around his waist and held him tight. "Norman!"
The image rippled and dissolved and he was back in the hotel room. He turned his head to see Madison's face, pale and just as terrified looking as he felt. He was shaking, from fear, from relief… His legs buckled underneath him and he slipped bonelessly to the floor… just in time for the ocean to come flooding back to him, just in time to see the white belly of the enormous great white shark gliding slowly past above him.
This isn't right! This isn't how this works! The glasses are off! This is just a hologram… no, a hallucination. Just take a deep breath and get control yourself. If you just stay in control, everything will be fine. Take a deep breath and get yourself together.
Except he couldn't take a deep breath. The pounding, pulsing torment in his head was killing him and making his breath come in short, pained gasps. He had thought that he had been in pain before, thought the migraines couldn't get much worse, but it was nothing compared to the tortuous agony that assailed him now. It made him sick, made him want to die, to sink into the blackness, anything to end the misery that assaulted him. And that was to say nothing of the sheer terror of watching helplessly while his mind took off without him like a runaway rollercoaster, to know without a doubt that he was only imagining this, dreaming it… hallucinating.
Triptocaine… Dammit, if there was ever a time to need it… Triptocaine… There's a vial in my nightstand but how the hell am I going to find it here?
There was nothing in the dark, forbidding ocean scene that he could see that even remotely resembled a nightstand. Jayden was never more terrified in his life. Another shark was swimming this way, it's jaw hanging slack and open, it's dead fish eyes staring into his soul as it passed by him, so close he thought if he reached out, he could have touched it.
Another shadow loomed in front of his face and reached out for him. He couldn't stop the fearful cry that rose in his throat like bile.
The vision shimmered again and Madison's soft hands held his face, her earnest brown eyes filling the center of his focus. "Norman! Norman, stay with me! Stay with me, please God, don't do this to me!"
Madison! Madison can find it!
"Trip… tripto… nightstand… hurry…"
She moved away from his vision, leaving him staring up at the lights in the ceiling of his hotel room as they swirled and morphed back into sharks. His mind was going… it had never been this bad before!
He was surrounded by darkness and cold and the sharks were circling closer. He wasn't going to make it.
Another great white, the biggest yet, was swimming toward him, it's jaw hyper-extending, teeth gleaming unnaturally in the darkness, ready to rip his body into bloody shreds.
If you get eaten alive in a hallucination, do you die in real life, too?
All he could see was the cavernous maw of the beast and all those teeth and he knew he was going to die.
Cool, smooth glass was pressed into his fingers and he reacted without thinking, pulling the vial to his nose and inhaling as fast as he could.
The shark dissolved and all of its teeth with it mere seconds before it began ripping into his flesh.
Jayden took another deep inhale and felt the powder coat the inside of his nose and the back of his throat and the feeling of RELIEF was so staggering, it was unearthly. The dark, abysmal water faded away and Jayden was left laying on the floor of his lonely hotel room in the most depressingly water-logged city that he'd ever had the misfortune to be stuck in and Jayden was so happy to be here, he wanted to cry.
Except if I cry, it will only make this miserable place wetter.
Jayden laughed, unable to help himself. The great thing about his drugs was that they worked so fast… The pounding in his skull had already begun to recede. The pain was going away, and that alone would have left him higher than a kite, but the added high of the drugs… He was floating on clouds, pain free and care free and SAFE. It was nice.
"Norman?" Somewhere off in the distance, a voice was frantically calling his name, callously breaking his reverie.
Oh, go away…
"Norman, can you hear me?"
What could you possibly want from me that's so fucking urgent, lady?
"Norman, you're temperature is rising and you're heart is going a mile a minute. You need to slow down and relax, okay? I need you to stay with me, I need you to focus, Norman. Focus on me, can you do that?"
If I wanted to, I don't see why I couldn't… but that seems like such a bother just now….
"Norman!"
Damned harpy…
It took effort, monumental effort, but Jayden wrenched his gaze from the eternal fathoms that stretched before him and locked onto the doe brown eyes that stared down at him. She glowed like an angel… so beautiful… He thought she had a name, but it didn't seem terribly important.
"Norman, you need to focus for me, please. You said triptocaine helps you focus, I need you to focus on me, only me."
His words were slurred and echoing in his own ears. "Are you real?"
"Yes, honey, I'm real and I need you to stay with me. Stay with me, Norman."
Not going anywhere, I don't think… It's sort of nice right where I'm at.
"NORMAN!"
He blinked his eyes open. He hadn't realized they had closed. "What?"
"You're temperature is sky rocketing and I need to cool you down, so don't be upset that I'm taking your pants off."
Pants? What do pants have to do with anything?
Then he was being lifted and moved and he wasn't sure how he knew, because the world didn't really matter so much to his brain which was perfectly happy floating contentedly in space. The fact registered somehow, somewhere in the back of his mind.
"Norman, I'm losing you again. Stay focused." The voice was strained. His bare feet were dragging against the floor, the rough sensation of the carpet soon replaced by the smooth tile floor of the bathroom.
Focused… I'm focused.
A sudden painful blast of molten fire hit him and he screamed from the agony of it. The arms around him held him tighter and he struggled wildly to get away.
"Shh, shh, shh! It's okay, Norman! It's okay!"
A howling, moaning sound filled the air, like some sort of wounded animal, bellowing in anguish.
Somebody should find that animal and put it out of its misery… Oh, wait… that's me…
"It's okay, honey, I know it hurts, but I have to get your fever down. I know it hurts, but I'm here with you, I promise. I'm not going anywhere, Norman. I'm here."
It took a few more moments… moments or minutes, he couldn't be sure… for his senses to get their bearings. It seemed like hours and seconds at the same time. However long it took, he finally started putting things together. It wasn't lava that was raining over him, but cold, frigid water. He blinked and looked around, feeling strange now that he was attached to his body again… heavy, uncomfortable… strange… The cold water was coming from the shower head. He was sitting naked in the shower, leaning back against a soft body, held up by two thin arms wrapped protectively around him. He turned his face to see who was holding him, surprised to see an angel with short brown hair and beautiful dark eyes. She wasn't quite as naked as he was, still had her underwear on, but her skin was pleasantly warm against his cold numbed body. Her face was so familiar… so worried…
His vision blurred terribly for a moment and then cleared and suddenly the angel had a name and he could remember it. "Madison?"
"I'm here." Her voice was soft, as soft as the hand that stroked across his chest and just as comforting. "I need you to stay here with me, too, okay?"
"Okay." He nodded shakily. The freezing water was doing its work and he could feel the cold now, anchoring him to reality. "Are you real?"
Her face twisted, filled with an emotion he couldn't identify. "Yes, I'm real."
"Just checking." He turned his face up to the water, eyes closed. "Thanks for saving me from the sharks." He could hear his own voice shaking from the cold. He was so exhausted.
When his eyes began to close again, he heard her say, "Anytime. What sharks?"
His words were starting to slur. "Great big ones…" With that, he fell dead asleep.
* * *
Madison wasn't sure when she became aware that Norman had fallen asleep with his head nestled against her shoulder, but it was long, long after she herself had become greatly discomforted from the painfully cold shower. The only thing that kept it bearable was Norman. His fever had been causing him to radiate heat like an oven for the last half hour. It had taken a long time, but finally his body had begun to cool off. Unfortunately, that meant that she was more aware of how cold her own position was, sitting half naked in the shower with a man she was almost certain that she shouldn't like, a man who was in this position because he'd overdosed on drugs, something that she completely despised.
But...
The treacherous part of her mind was speaking, telling her things she didn't want to listen to.
Is it really fair to blame him for that? If he hadn't taken the drugs, he would have died… No. That was his choice. It was a choice. He didn't have to take the shortcuts that he did. Without those shortcuts, he wouldn't have needed the drugs. But, the only reason he's doing this is to find Shaun Mars ALIVE. Maybe if he didn't care, he would be more than happy to flounder around like the police have been doing for the last three years. But he's not. He's trying to solve this BEFORE Shaun dies. He's trying to do in three days what the entire city police force haven't been able to do in three years. If he hadn't taken the drugs, he would have died. He's literally killing himself to save someone else's son. That has to count for something, right?
Madison sighed in frustration. Going around in circles wasn't getting her anywhere. It felt like Norman's fever was down and he was certainly unconscious now, but at least he had seemed fairly lucid just before he'd passed out. It would be best to let him sleep for as long as he could. As much as she wanted, NEEDED to get back to the investigation, she was also painfully aware that it wouldn't be possible for some time. Aside from the fact that visiting hours at the geriatric clinic probably didn't extend to the early early morning hours, she couldn't just leave Norman alone in this state. Obviously, the young profiler had pushed himself well beyond his limits and was currently suffering for it. He seemed to be sleeping easily now, though, in spite of the freezing water.
I wish I could sleep like that.
She felt the pulse point at his neck. His heartbeat was strong and steady, not the rapid thrumming that had terrified her to the core some thirty minutes ago.
She reached up and turned the tap off, relieved when the icy water stopped cascading down. She wiggled out from underneath Norman's dead weight and stood. There had to be a complimentary towel in the bathroom cabinets somewhere, one of those neatly pressed and folded generic white towels, one of those towels that didn't smell clean, but didn't smell dirty either. Somewhere.
I'm in luck! There are TWO towels!
She grabbed them both. She used one to dry herself down quickly, just enough so that she wasn't freezing, then used the other to dry Norman off more thoroughly.
It would be just my luck to lower his fever, then have him die from hypothermia.
She took extra care to dry him off as gently as she could. Up close, she was even more impressed with how thoroughly his body was battered. Bruises everywhere, his stomach, his arms… He even had one large, particularly nasty black and green streak that started at the middle of his thigh and traveled up over his hip and along his side. She couldn't even begin to guess how he'd gotten that one.
For being as lean as a starving dog, he certainly has some nice muscle tone…
Madison bit her lip and concentrated on drying his hair. She wasn't going to think things like that. Not one bit. She found her fingers gently probing the large knot at the back of his skull.
That would be from the baseball bat… And that cut in his shoulder needs taking care of, but I can at least get him out of the shower, first.
She pulled him up and dragged him out to the room. It was a struggle to get him up and into the bed, but he wasn't as heavy as Ethan had been.
Of course, Ethan had been wearing clothes at the time…
Madison felt herself blushing. She'd been doing so good up until now about not thinking about things like that. She hadn't even snuck a peak below his waist except to dry him off. It must have been the exhaustion catching up to her. She wasn't interested in him, not that way!
So what if he's tall and well muscled… So what if he's got a sense of humor that he keeps hidden or that he's smart and has beautiful eyes that light up when he's amused… He's broken. He's a drug addict. He's an FBI agent. He has a life and it's far away from here and I'm just… plain not interested in him. That's that.
She turned away and hunted for his luggage. She was going to solve the problem one way or another. She found his suitcase and pulled out a clean pair of black boxer-briefs. While she was at it, she pulled out a pair of boxers for herself and a t-shirt to wear so she could hang her underwear up to dry. The t-shirt was soft, the type of soft that comes from washing it a thousand times or so and Madison found herself rubbing the material against her cheek, inhaling the scent that came with it.
Stop it! Get a hold of yourself, girl, you're not interested in him! Trust me!
Taking the clothes to the bed, she maneuvered Norman into the boxers then went to the bathroom to change out of her soaking bra and panties. While she was there, she searched around. Norman had said that there weren't any supplies up here, but she was sure she could find a first aid kit, or something.
Five minutes of searching had turned up nothing but a complimentary sewing kit for the business man with one suit who's lost a button before that important meeting. It wasn't as easy or as neat as butterfly sutures, but it would have to do. Especially since she knew for a fact that no, he wasn't going to go to the hospital to get it looked at by a professional, and yes, he was going to do everything in his power to get himself beat up and run through the wringer again tomorrow.
IF he wakes up tomorrow…
Madison closed her eyes and shook her head. There was nothing but bad thoughts and memories down that road and she was too tired to go there tonight. He WOULD wake up. He would wake up and tell her that he was fine and he wasn't going to the hospital and then he would do his neat little psychobabble trick and bring up something from her past that she knew nobody else in the world knew about her just to distract her and then they would be back to business as usual. Everything would be fine.
She dabbed the last of the vodka onto a towel and began cleaning the cut in his shoulder.
How does a person get stabbed with a katana anyways?
"You're a real trouble magnet, Galahad. Just thought I'd let you know."
He didn't answer of course. He was dead to the world.
But not REALLY dead. Just asleep. He'll wake up in the morning. That's all there is to it.
Before she knew it, Madison had both sides of his shoulder sewed up neatly. Hopefully the alcohol would be enough to keep his cuts from becoming infected, at least as a temporary measure. She also re-cleaned the large gash in his forearm, the one he'd gotten when he was fighting with Dr. Death.
When he was trying to save my life...
With that done, she had nothing else to do it seemed. She placed a call down to room service to order something for breakfast in the morning. She would make sure he ate something at least before she left to follow up on Mrs. Sheppard.
There really was nothing to do. Nothing except watch him sleep.
This is going to get real old, real fast.
Madison sighed and crawled into bed beside him. She placed her hand on his chest, concentrating on his heartbeat. It was strong and steady. It was a relief. She had been terrified that she was watching him die when he thrashed and screamed, terrified of things that only he could see. She had remembered what he had said about the other FBI agents who had lost their lives by using ARI, how fast it happened. She thought she was going to lose him and she didn't even know him yet, not as much as she wanted to. There was no denying it, she had been scared shitless of losing an obnoxiously cocky, smart-assed, self-assured, drug addicted FBI agent that she didn't even like. Now, laying here next to him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, feeling the steady beat of his heart under her hand, she was relaxed. As long as she could feel his heartbeat, she knew he would wake up in the morning.
Not like Rick…
Madison counted heartbeats in her head until she fell asleep.
* * *
TBC
A/N: Yeah, ALMOST wrote myself into a corner, but I got out! Hooray! I won't kill off Norman yet. At least not until I can write Ethan a little better than I'm doing. I have a chapter with him in it, but I'm a little afraid of getting that far because Ethan is terribly hard to write. When I get that far, I hope you all won't be disappointed. I tell you what, though, twelve hour shifts six days a week will seriously cut into writing time so it might take me a little longer than I originally planned. But I'll keep typing away, I swear. Reviews keep me going. =) You all are awesome!
