Danny watched as the doctor ushered his partner out into the hallway. He knew he should know the doctor's name, but it wouldn't come to mind for the life of him, and he supposed it didn't matter anyway, because Steve was taking care of things like Steve always did.

Or tried to, anyway.

He supposed for the sake of form, he should grouse to Steve that being made his next-of-kin didn't mean Steve was in charge of Danny's entire life, but he was tired and not really feeling up to a rant, and his baby girl was lying in the crook of his arm drawing patterns absentmindedly against his stupid paisley-and-flower-covered hospital gown.

She kept looking up at him and her body was stiff, like she was tense, but he wasn't sure why that would be. He was fine, although…strangely…he couldn't remember exactly what'd happened to land him in the hospital this time.

Odd. You'd think he'd remember.

Why was Gracie so tense? And why was Steve glaring at the Japanese-looking doctor? Why were Steve's arms folded defensively over his chest like he was about to open up a can on a nasty suspect? Why did Grace keep looking up at him like that, as though she expected him to spontaneously combust? What wasn't he remembering?

Then a flash of light caught his peripheral. Steve's eyes were huge and round. The glint of light came from something in the doctor's hand. Something metal. Something silver.

A gun!

Danny tried to yell, tried to cry out, tried to warn his partner. After all, it was his job to have Steve's back, and he saw the gun, the gun pointed right at Steve! And…and Grace was here, Grace was in danger from this doctor, this doctor, who was he? Why did he have a gun pointed at Steve, why?

The the gun went off.

Steve fell.

Horrified at what he'd seen, and terrified for Grace's safety, Danny tried to yell for help, but he couldn't. And then there was a blinding flash of pain, and Danny saw no more.


"…Garrett."

Steve stirred. He felt a weight in his arms and wasn't sure for a moment what it was.

"Lieutenant Commander McGarrett."

Then a hand touched his arm and his eyes blinked wide open. The man touching him, who jumped back a little when he woke, was Dr. Ma. He looked down. The weight in his arms was a still-slumbering Grace.

Someone else was there. A quick look to his right confirmed it was Malia. He gave her a small smile, which she returned as she placed the magazine she'd been flipping through down onto the room's one small wooden table.

"I'm sorry to awaken you, Mr. McGarrett, but your partner is once again awake and coherent, though highly agitated. He's demanding to see you, but not yet his daughter."

Steve tried to keep Grace as still as possible as he hiked himself and her up off the hard plastic chair. Malia gestured to him that she would take the girl, and Steve knew that Grace had met and talked with Malia, so at least she wouldn't be with a stranger when she woke.

So he nodded and gently transferred her to Malia's waiting arms. Grace stirred a little, but soon was snuggled right into Malia's small frame and dozing soundly again. "I'll be right back," Steve whispered, and Malia nodded.

Back through the stupid swinging double doors.

Down the same hall.

Turning the same corner.

This time, though, Dr. Ma stopped and turned with a hand raised in the air. "Mr. McGarrett, we've completed a second battery of tests which include a three-sixty X-ray, a CT scan, an MRI and cognitive tests. Everything from Detective Williams' eyesight to his hearing to his speech to his recognition of shapes and objects to his deductive reasoning skills has been checked out."

Steve frowned. "You're kidding. How long was I out for?"

"I'm not sure, but it's been four hours since the seizure Mr. Williams experienced while you and Grace were here."

Steve scrubbed a hand down his face. Four hours? He shook his head in disbelief that he'd slept at all, let alone that long, and that apparently Danny had been awake for a while without him knowing it.

"Now, he's passed every single test with flying colors except for the fact that the trauma to the uncinate area of his brain is still evident in these latest scans and actually seems to have spread beyond where the first scans showed."

"Spread," Steve repeated. "I don't understand. Did he hit his head again when he was convulsing?"

"No, we were all right there. Yes, he was thrashing, but his head didn't come into contact with anything other than the pillows behind it. Dr. Noshimuri is currently on a conference call with some colleagues trying to find out if there's precedent for severe TBI to actually spread without further trauma occurring to the frontal or temporal lobes, in Detective Williams' case."

"Excuse me," Steve said, shaking his head because he hated not fully understanding what was being said, "TBI?"

"My apologies. Traumatic Brain Injury. The one your partner has is classified as severe because he was unconscious for longer than thirty minutes, and because of the epileptic seizures we've witnessed twice now."

Steve felt his heart skip several beats. Traumatic brain injury. Seizures. Not good for a cop. To hell with that. Not good for Danny. "What is he looking at here? Is going to become permanently epileptic, or…what?"

"There's simply no way of telling. I'm hopeful that Dr. Noshimuri will return to us with further information after his consultation, but until then…" Ma's voice trailed off as he held his hands out in front of him with an unspoken we just don't know.

Something Steve did not want to hear. "Did he say why he doesn't want to see his daughter right now?"

"I'm afraid that when he awoke, he wondered why she wasn't in his lap. It's the last thing he remembered, and he wanted to know who'd taken her away, and why. So the nurse told him he'd begun convulsing while she was in his arms, and he became very upset."

"Dr. Ma," Steve said after gritting his teeth through the explanation, "I would appreciate it if the nurses didn't volunteer any other information to Danny in any way, shape or form, especially if it has to do with Grace."

"I'll relay the message, but of course I can't guarantee anything."

Steve stepped right up into the shorter man's personal space. "I'm asking you for a guarantee."

Of course, the way Dr. Ma gulped showed he knew damn well that Steve wasn't asking anything. He was telling. "Right," Ma said. "I'll give the two of you ten minutes alone, and then I need to hook Mr. Williams back up to the brain monitoring system. We will also be talking with him about implanting a Brain Monitoring Device should it become apparent that he may experience further seizures or other symptoms from this event, but we'll cross that bridge when and if we come to it."

"Thank you," Steve said with a nod, backing away so the doctor could go about his business. Shit, he really shouldn't treat the guy badly. After all, he was doing his best for Danny as, apparently, was Alan Noshimuri.

He really needed to check in with Kono and Charlie on that front, but first, Danny.

So he walked into Danny's room, but this time, Danny's face didn't light up like a Christmas tree. This time he looked…well, he looked scared.

"Steve," he said, voice sounding way smaller than Danny Williams' voice had ever sounded to Steve's ears, "what's happening to me?"

What the hell could Steve tell him? What the hell was he supposed to say? He couldn't think of anything. No words seemed right, no sentiment seemed adequate. He knew Danny was killing himself worrying about his daughter, about what she'd had to witness when he'd seized. He knew Danny was trying to understand what this injury meant and whether it would end his career, life as he knew it, their partnership, his time with Five-0, the team.

Whether it would kill him.

Steve managed to shake his head just a little, and Danny's eyes lowered to the white sheet covering most of his body. Before Steve could even try to work up a handful of words to try and make the man feel better, though, there was a sound at the door behind him. He turned to find Dr. Noshimuri standing there with a smile on his face.

He expected the man to tell them he'd found a miraculous cure for what ailed Danny.

Or he expected, at the very least, to be told he'd found some more answers and could give them more information than they currently had.

The one thing he didn't expect was the gut-wrenching bellow that came from his partner. "Steve, look out!"

That's when Steve saw the gun.

That's when Steve went down.