"Reminiscing"
Chapter 7: Puzzle Pieces
Hi everyone!! Sorry about the long delay, but thank you for your patience and the long wait is now over!! Also, thanks for all of your previous reviews from last time (Solar Flare, Duck3, HeeroYuy195, and Silentheaven.) I greatly appreciate them. Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or any of its characters.
Ten minutes before the call...
"Calling Dr. Stenson, you're needed in the ICU immediately. Code blue." The message echoed throughout the entire hospital.
A nurse donning a ponytail and a flower printed scrubs passed the waiting room, where Zechs and Heero were anxiously waiting for any news. Both men looked up from their seats and peered into the glass windows. The hallway was filled with a frenzy of nurses and attendants running about. The two then left the area and followed the nurse that had just passed them only a minute ago. When they arrived near the entrance of Relena's room, the two saw a group of nurses running in and out.
"What's happening to her?" Zechs's eyes widened with disbelief. The sounds of alarms were being emitted out of various monitors that showed a faltering heartbeat and blood pressure. Somewhere down the hall, a female voice called out, "Where is she?" Another person responded, "She's in room three." In seconds, a nurse ran passed the two with a blood bag in her hands and entered into Relena's room. The nurse quickly replaced the empty o negative blood bad with the new bag in her hands. It dawned on the two of them that Relena was bleeding out.
"We need a crash cart here." An order was given and out came another nurse, who scurried into the hallway and rolled the cart that carried the portable device. She wheeled the cart into the room and started to prepare the machine.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the cafeteria, a pager rang off amongst the crowd. The announcement was inaudible due to renovations outside the cafeteria. Dr. Stenson was just finishing a cup of strawberry yogurt. She whipped out the small black electronic device and with alarm in her eyes; she quickly darted out of the crowded room. She ran to the closet staircase and ran up three flights of stairs, before arriving on the ICU floor.
As she was going to Relena's room, she saw an attendant ushering the two men back to the confines of the waiting room. She gave them a small nod with an expression that she'll do her best to save Relena's life. With that, the two left with sounds of the crash cart charging behind their backs with Dr. Stenson arriving not a moment too soon. Just fifteen minutes before, Relena was out of surgery and they were told that she was moved to the ICU for observations. Dr. Stenson had briefed them that there was some damage to Relena's abdomen and that complications could arise any time after her surgery. And now, one of those complications had occurred.
Back in Relena's room, Dr. Stenson finally removed the electronic paddles from Relena's body. "What are her vitals?"
The nurse wearing the flower printed scrubs looked over at the monitors, "BP is going up and the heartbeat looks good. The new blood line worked."
Dr. Stenson then looked at the bandages and noticed that were beginning to soak through. "These bandages need to be changed. If they get soaked again, then we might have a problem again with internal bleeding. I want someone to record her stats every hour. I don't want to take any chances right now."
"Yes, doctor," replied the same nurse.
With that, everyone cleared out of the room and resumed back to their normal duties. Dr. Stenson was the last one to leave and she then walked to the waiting room, where she saw Zechs and Heero sitting in opposite corners of the room. She came in with her hair tied back, "She's stable now...she just gave us a scare...her blood pressure dropped due to some blood loss, but a new blood line was placed in. The next twenty-four hours will be critical and I suggest that the two of you should get some sleep. I'm sure that Relena will make it through all of this."
"Thank you," replied the two of them.
Heero then got up from his seat and headed out of the room.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to make a call to the others." He then entered the hallway and found the nearest pay phone was situated near a couple of vending machines. He slipped in the coins and dialed the appropriate number, assuming that everyone would be situated in one certain house. The phone rang. He then noticed a familiar cheery voice on the other end, "Hi Duo...it's me."
"Well, what happened? What's the update?"
"Relena is out of surgery, but suffered a complication."
"Is she...?"
Before Duo could finish his sentence, Heero cut him off, "She's stable now...they're worried that she might have some internal bleeding or some other complication. The next twenty-four hours will be critical. She'll be in the ICU." He heard a sigh of relief escaping from Duo.
"That was a close call...alright then, just let us know any further updates on her condition. And Heero, get some sleep, you did everything you could for her."
"Not enough." Within a second, he closed the connection, while Duo was still on. He then placed the phone back on its respective stand and he also noticed two pairs of eyes were gazing at him.
"She's in the ICU now. Heero is still with her. I'm going back to headquarters, I can't just sit around here and do nothing."
"Same here," echoed in Trowa, who was now standing with his arms crossed on his chest. "There's nothing much we can do here."
"We might as well go now." Quatre was already by the front door with keys in his hands.
"What about the coffee?"
"Never mind about the coffee now, Duo, we'll just get the coffee at headquarters. All right, let's go now."
In a matter of minutes, the three were driving in the pre-dawn hours of the winter morning. The headlights in front of Quatre stared blankly at the barren road with a couple of snowflakes interrupting the beam of light. His other two passengers remained silent throughout the twenty-minute ride. He focused in front of him and felt a chilling foreboding feeling run up his spine. He had a premonition that trouble was not too far behind them. He looked at the rearview mirror and saw Duo slumped in his seat with his mouth slightly jarred open. He smiled to himself and continued to drive up a familiar road.
Zechs continued to wait in the waiting room, but he wondered where Heero had run off to now. He figured that he had snuck into Relena's room, without the nurses' permission. With that, he peered out the waiting room and noticed that a familiar face was in there. The site of Heero in Relena's room didn't alarm him that much. He felt safer that there was someone to protect Relena. As for himself, he noticed a couple of security guards were placed strategically on the floor and that three Preventers were situated by the waiting room.
Right then and there, he decided to fall asleep for a while, in hopes of making up for the hours he had lost in the late night/early morning. Within minutes, his body was paralyzed with sleep. The events of Relena's and Heero's surprised attacker played in his mind and then there was the name of General Norfolk surfacing in his subconscious thoughts. As he drifted further into this sleep, an image of a cargo ship appeared before his memory. He was in the cockpit of a mobile suit, but he couldn't tell which one, the control panel was somewhat blurred, and he had the saber beam on full power. A woman on the vid link appeared before him, her blue eyes pleading to him that her ship was just filled with food and medical supplies.
"You can't do this," she cried out to him. He then cut the communication line off leaving her with his name. In less than ten minutes, it would be all over. He pursued the renegade ship knowing where it would go and end up, a rogue station outside the boundaries of L1. But, he knew that station had its own objectives in the war. He then flew out of range of the slowly disintegrating ship and decided to greet it head on within its flight path. Within a minute, the ship was in his sight and he flew to it. His saber beam tore in the titanium alloy and behind him, a brilliant flash of orange and yellow light emitted from the ship. He flew off into space and looked for more possible targets.
He was suddenly awakened from a jolt. He didn't know why he had a sudden reaction, but the memory of the explosion in space lingered in his mind. He decided to walk it off and he paced back and forth through the white tiled floor of the ICU wing. He passed by Relena's room twice and noting the same scene over...no improvement. At that time he noted that someone else wasn't in there anymore. "I wonder where he could have run off to now."
"Heero, what are you doing here?" Duo looked up from his stack of files he was skimming over to see if there were any possible leads. On the other side of his desk, two empty cups of coffee were still visible.
"Nothing." The same monotone voice was present.
"Didn't I tell you to get some sleep? You look like crap." He noticed the bloodstained shirt that he was still wearing.
"Duo..." a sign of agitation was becoming apparent. "Where are the others?"
"Trowa went to Sector C, where our prisoner is being held and that's where Wufei is too. As for everyone else, they're either managing the media or searching through the files like me." He then went directly back into his stash of papers.
"Where's Quatre?" He saw Duo lift his index finger and pointed in the direction of Lady Une's office, without looking up from his stack of papers. "Hn." Before Duo could ask any questions, Heero left and was out of his sight. He then heard Duo shouting from his office, "You're welcome too."
After winding down another hallway, he saw the familiar oak door. He heard a muffled conversation or rather an argument that was being fired from both sides.
He recognized Quatre's voice, "There's going to be some trouble. We need to have more Preventers on call now."
"That's out of the question. I'm already short staffed here and there's too much activity going on within certain cells in space and on Earth." Lady Une fired back at him.
With no formalities, he quickly entered the room, while Quatre and Lady Une were still arguing. The two looked at him and wondered what he was doing here and not at the hospital.
Once inside the office, he wasted no time in getting his sources, "I need to see the information that was collected so far."
Lady Une shook off her surprised look and quickly produced the file that he asked for. "You should get some sleep, Heero."
"I'm fine." He flipped through the interview and forms that have been already filed. His eyes were furiously scanning across the endless lines of black print. He was hoping to find any possible background information on the name that Zechs had left him. He already knew about Donal's connection to Norfolk. He thought to himself, "Please let there be something here."
Quatre then spoke up, "How's Relena doing?"
Without looking up from the file, "There's no sign of improvement."
"Is Zechs still there?" Lady Une looked questioningly at Heero.
"Yes, but there are three Preventers posted near him." He continued to scan through the papers, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that would track to the mysterious General Norfolk. "Quatre, I want you to do a present search through all of Zechs's possible connections with the current government and colonies."
"All right Heero, but the search might turn out nothing."
"There could be something. I'm going to take this file and do some researching of my own."
"Be my guest, Heero. Mr. Donal won't crack. Zechs already tried it his own way, but it only gave us a small window of information." Lady Une sat back at her seat. She looked at her stash of files that were lying in the plastic tray. "I need to get back to work now and I should say the same for you, Quatre. But Heero, you should get some rest." She looked towards Heero and saw the sight of a negative response. She then looked towards Quatre's way, "And Quatre, I believe that the issue is closed now. There's adequate security within the hospital and I can't thin out the Preventers any further. There's too much at stake already."
"I'm just giving you a fair warning."
"All right then, fair enough. Now get back to work."
With that order, the two left her office and headed back to where Duo was still searching through his paper stash on Travis's background and his possible connections to past organizations like OZ and the White Fang.
"This guy is clean as a whistle. The only dirt that I can pick up is that he was part of Mariemeia's army before he surrendered peacefully to authorities. Other than that, I can't find anything else."
"I might as well start the search on Zechs's current connections to the colonies and the Earth." The blonde haired man went over to his desk and started a massive archive search on his computer. Within minutes, the search came up nothing except past files on Zechs as a Gundam pilot. "I have nothing here. You would think with his past, there would be some enemies popping here and there."
Heero then went over to his own desk, which was hardly ever in use. He opened his laptop up and went directly to the Preventers' database on past histories and typed in the name of Norfolk in the main popup window for the database. Within ten minutes, a list of seventy-five documents popped up. "Hn." He carefully scrutinized each one and then eliminated the documents that were too old. With that, fifty documents remained, but a particular space report caught his eye. He clicked on it and a picture of twenty-member crew popped up at the top of the article, but two of the faces were highlighted. "Unknown Mobile Suit Strikes Down Station's Cargo Ship."
He then read further into the article, "An unidentified mobile suit attacked a cargo ship that was heading to a space station outside the boundaries of L1. Two crewmembers Casey Barret and Alexis Townsley both perished in the attack. (See photo above)." He then skimmed the rest of the article until another name appeared, "Lieutenant Lucas Norfolk comments, "It's the most horrific accident that I've ever seen before. Two of my comrades died in that attack...they were just bringing food and medical supplies to the station."
Heero looked questioningly at that name and made a mental note about it. He then scrolled down and saw another vague photo. He could barely make it out, but he knew it was a mobile suit that he had seen before. He took another double take on it and it dawned on him. It was the Tallgeese.
"I've found something. You all might want to come over and see this for yourself." He called out to Duo and Quatre.
"Looks like you might have found the needle in the haystack after all," replied the braided pilot, who looked more alert than before.
"This is just only the beginning." Heero continued to look at his laptop screen. He slowly saw the pieces of the puzzle coming together, but how would they all fit together was another obstacle.
TBC
Stay tune for chapter eight!!! Thank you for reading chapter seven, I hoped you enjoyed it. Any thoughts or comments? Well, take care everyone and happy holidays!!!
