Chapter 8
Oscar's head swam with possibilities, each worse than the last. No OSI or NSB service weapons had been reported stolen but there were so many out there that anyone who worked under Jack Hansen (or himself) could be a suspect; at this point, no one was cleared. There was a traitor in their midst - someone selling their secrets to the highest bidder, who had cold-bloodedly stood directly in front of Jaime and shot her in the head when she came too close to uncovering the truth. She would obviously have seen her potential assassin. Did she know who it was; had she recognized them? And would she ever be able to tell them?
Michael could feel the eyes in the OR on him in a way they'd never been before. It wasn't good...but he couldn't let it throw him. He needed their focus and concentration where his was - on the patient lying so near death in front of them. She was no longer the woman he'd been in love with and he didn't see the woman he'd brutalized either; lying before him was someone who desperately needed his help and he focused every bit of his attention and ability on that. The curious (and somewhat doubtful) looks on the faces of his team gradually shared his focus and determination as they saw he was once again (at least for now) a surgeon...and still the best in his field.
Steve couldn't bear to sit up in the OR theater - and pacing the floor outside the big double doors was agonizing. There would be no news for probably many hours, so he found himself drawn back to the nursery...and Becca. When he scooped her from her crib, she cooed at him and (even though he knew it was too early for it to be real) Steve could've sworn that she smiled. It soothed him.
''Mama's gonna be alright, Peanut,'' he told her (still trying to convince himself). ''She'll be singing to you again before you know it.'' He thought of the island where Becca had been conceived, and of the many hours he and Jaime had spent there, quietly luxuriating in just being together. He tried to focus on that, on how beautiful she'd looked with the sun reflecting off of the brilliant white sand to light up her face, her hair, her eyes...instead of thinking of the way the man who'd tried to kill her now held her life in his hands.
''Feel like talking?'' Mark asked quietly from his spot against the wall.
''Not really.'' Steve's eyes never left his daughter's face. Amidst all of the ugliness, fear, anger and pain that threatened to close in on him, Becca represented hope.
''You need to calm down before you give yourself a real heart attack,'' Rudy's cardiologist told him gently.
''Calm down?'' Weak as he was, Rudy's nostrils flared with indignation at the thought. He couldn't reach Oscar or Mark Conrad by phone to quiet the feeling that something was wrong. ''When no one seems to be able to answer a simple page?'' he fretted. ''I'm not comatose, I'm not unconscious and I am certainly not feeble. What's going on that no one wants me to know about?''
''What's going on...is that you need to rest,'' his doctor insisted.
''I'll rest when I'm dead. And that's a long way off, thank you! I need to get someone from National on the phone or I need a transfer over there - one or the other - and I need it now!''
''Brilliant work in there,'' Corinth told Michael as they both accepted a mug of coffee and sank wearily onto stools to rest for a few brief minutes.
''Thanks; the hard part is still ahead though.''
Corinth nodded. Michael was right, of course, but for someone who hadn't even set foot in a hospital for many months, he had already proven he was still miles ahead of anyone else. ''You've held off brain swelling; that's huge.''
''She's far from stable though,'' Michael sighed. The bullet had done more damage than initial appearances had indicated. Once inside Jaime's head, Michael had made the decision to remove the bionic components entirely, to allow her injured brain a little more room and hopefully avoid removal of a portion of her skull. Then he had frozen, cauterized, irrigated and medicated the surviving tissue and kept her alive when by all rights and appearances (and standard medical knowledge and practice) she should have died on the table. When they went back in, in a few more minutes, the initial reconstruction would begin. Jaime would then have to be assessed, both before and after she woke up, before regeneration would proceed.
Given her traumatic history with Michael, it had already been decided that Corinth would treat Jaime while she was awake, for at least the foreseeable future, with instructions from Michael as to what specifically to watch for. Michael would examine his patient only at night or while she was sedated, to hopefully lessen the trauma she might suffer, It pained Michael terribly to know that his own behavior had necessitated these precautions. He still didn't understand where that part of him had come from! Sitting here in surgical scrubs, having kept an unstable and critically wounded patient alive and preparing to take her in a direction that most of medical science would still not believe possible...this was who he really was.
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