oOo

"You okay, brah?" Chin's voice and his hand landing on Steve's shoulder were what finally brought Steve out of his stunned daze. Steve tore his eyes from the retreating forms of the paramedics who were rushing his partner to the ambulance parked outside. He would have gone with them, but they had insisted that they'd need all the available space.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

Chin raised an eyebrow but didn't question the veracity of the statement.

"Any word on Danny?" he asked instead.

Steve had no difficulty casting his mind back over the preceding minutes. "He's been shot twice, once in the side and once in the head. Also, he's lost a lot of blood. They're not sure he's going to make it."

Chin nodded, his face grave.

"At least that girl he jumped in front is going to make it," Steve added. "Seems like she had a severe allergic reaction, probably to something she ate or drank."

"That's good," Chin replied, and then after a long pause said: "Why don't you head over to the hospital? Kono and I will finish up here."

"You sure?" It seemed unfair to leave Chin and Kono alone with all the work when they were just as worried about Danny as he was.

"Positive. And by the way, get your ribs checked out while you're there."

Steve opened his mouth to give a dismissive reply but Chin had already disappeared. Suppressing an exhausted sigh, Steve automatically reached a hand into his pocket to fetch his car keys, when he recalled that he no longer had a car. With everything that had gone down, the explosion had temporarily slipped his mind. Well, he'd just have to commandeer a one of the HPD cars, he decided.

oOo

In the end, Steve had had to find a rental to drive to the hospital. HPD was stretched too thin to spare any of their vehicles and he had been too tired to muster the energy to pull rank. The events of the day had worn him out considerably and the worry he felt for Danny wasn't helping in the least. Even if Danny did survive, the bullet he'd taken to the head could and most likely did do terrible damage. While Steve could understand Danny's decision to dive in front of the bullet to save a child, there was something else that Steve couldn't seem to gets past. He had tried to get some additional information from Captain Wheeler earlier about what had happened in the aftermath of the explosion at the marina, but all Wheeler had told him was that it had been Danny who'd given them the necessary information to set up this take-down. It all boiled down to Danny's decision to 'stay dead' after the explosion. Breaking this case must really have meant a lot to Danny, if he had been willing to let everyone, including his daughter believe that he was dead, in order to catch a killer. Steve thought it more than a little odd and he was still mulling over it as he arrived at the hospital.

After fairly bullying a young resident working the ER into telling him that Danny had been still alive when he'd arrived at the hospital and that he'd been taken into surgery shortly after, there was nothing left for Steve to do, except call Rachel and wait. Danny's ex-wife deserved to know the truth, as far as Steve would be able to relate it. He dialed Rachel's number.

Somewhat to his surprise, it was Rachel herself who answered.

"Mrs Edwards? This is Steve McGarrett."

"Commander. If you're calling about the funeral arrangements, I'm still waiting for the police to conclude their investigation. They said that the death certificate couldn't be issued until they finished their report."

"That's not why I'm calling. Danny's alive."

There was silence at the end of the line for a moment. "They found him alive? But how...?" Rachel stammered.

Steve ignored the question. "He's not in great shape. They've taken him to Kings Medical Center. I'm there right now, waiting for news."

"I'll be there as soon as possible," Rachel replied and hung up.

oOo

Steve had been waiting for less than an forty-five minutes when Rachel walked into the waiting area.

"Commander McGarrett?" Steve looked up from the magazine he wasn't reading to see Rachel standing in front of him. She looked somewhat haggard, her hands nervously clutching her handbag.

"Mrs Edwards. How are you and Grace holding up?"

"About as well as can be expected," she replied coolly. "It has been especially hard on Grace," she added in a softer voice. "I haven't told her the news yet. She couldn't go through losing her father twice in less than a week."

"Any news on Danny?" Steve asked.

Rachel nodded. "I just spoke to his doctor. They're worried about him having lost so much blood, but apparently, his chances are pretty good...if he makes it through surgery."

Her words relieved some of the tension that had been weighing down on Steve. Still, there was one more thing they needed to know. "Do they...have they said anything about how much damage the bullet caused?"

Rachel looked at him with a slightly puzzled expression. "I thought you knew. Danny was very lucky: his side was only badly grazed and the second bullet didn't pierce his skull, so there is at least a chance that he'll make a full recovery."

Steve sighed, sagging down in his chair, wincing at the sharp pain from his ribs. It was almost as if the worry and anxiety were the only things that had kept him going and now that they were at least somewhat alleviated, he felt every one of his bruises. Even breathing suddenly seemed to take effort and wave of dizziness washed over him with enough force to nearly make him fall out of his seat.

He must have grayed out for a moment at the point because the next thing he knew, Rachel's hands were on his shoulders and she was shouting at him.

"Commander McGarrett! Steve! Can you hear me? Are you all right?"

"I don't feel so well," Steve managed, his voice sounding oddly distant to himself. The room suddenly appeared to tilt and warp around him and a few seconds later, he hit the floor, unconscious.

oOo

The sounds coalesced into subdued voices and it didn't take Steve long to recognize Chin's and Kono's voices. For while, he content himself with just drifting along beneath the threshold of true wakefulness. Something however was niggling at him from the back of his mind, something that wouldn't let him rest. Every time he was about to drift back into sleep, there it was, this vague feeling that there was something wrong. It was that feeling that eventually drove Steve to try and open his eyes to try and find out what it was that wouldn't let him rest.

It took Steve considerable effort and willpower just to carry out this small movement and when he finally managed, all he could see were blurred shapes. He blinked. Slowly his vision cleared and the instinct shapes turned into the forms of Chin and Kono. Steve turned his head, trying to spot the forth member of his team, but as soon as he did, the memory came back with a vengeance.

"Danny?" he managed, trying to push himself up at the same time.

Kono was on him in a second, pushing him back down into the pillow. "Oh no, boss. You've just come out of surgery, you're not going anywhere."

Kono's words didn't make any sense, but Steve was too preoccupied to give them much thought.

"How's Danny?" Steve asked, not intending to let himself be dissuaded.

"Relax," Chin's face came into view. "He made it through surgery. He's got bad concussion and a hairline skull fracture, but the doctors think he'll recover."

Reassured, Steve allowed his eyes drift shut again.

~Twenty-four hours later~

Shifting uneasily in his wheelchair and balancing a laptop on his knees, Steve was trying to work. He had been camped out in Danny's hospital room most of the evening after charming a nurse into taking him there. The wheelchair was a concession he'd been forced to make, however unwillingly. It was bad enough that he had ended up in hospital in the first place. As it turned out, Diaz had broken not just one, but three ribs when he'd punched Steve in the chest and one of those ribs had punctured his right lung. That combined with the long day he'd had and the lingering concussion had caused him to collapse in the waiting room. It was fortunate he'd been in the hospital at the time.

Even though Chin and Kono had reassured him that Danny still unconscious, much as the doctor's expected, Steve hadn't been able to rest until he'd seen Danny for himself. He had heard what the doctors had said and rationally, he knew that Danny was most likely going to be just fine. Yet the fact that the few times his partner had regained consciousness up to now, he had been disoriented and confused, subsiding again each time after just a few moments of senseless mumblings. Dr. Gleason, the physician in charge of Danny's care didn't seem concerned and had assured him that this was in fact quite normal after the kind of head injury Danny had suffered. Still, it rattled Steve more than he cared to admit and when he heard Danny moaning once again, he mentally braced himself for dealing with a Danny who didn't even seem to register his presence. He watched Danny shift uncomfortably, scrunching his face up in pain before he opened his eyes.

"Danny?" he asked, hoping that this time, he would be more lucid.

"Sush, not so loud. My head hurts," Danny mumbled. His eyes drifted closed again. Thinking that Danny must be unconscious again, Steve turned back to his laptop, only to be startled by Danny's voice a few seconds later.

"It may be cliched, but do you mind telling me what happened?"

Steve shut the laptop and put it aside, trying to gain time before he answered.

"You don't remember?"

"Obviously not, or I wouldn't be asking," Danny replied, which just a touch of his familiar irritation.

"You were shot during a hostage situation," Steve replied carefully, recalling the doctor's warning that some memory loss, especially surrounding the events of the injury was to be expected.

"Take-down gone bad?" Danny asked.

"No. You were one of the hostage actually. You dove in front of a bullet to save one of the other hostages, a little girl."

"Strange, you'd think I'd remember being taken hostage. Everyone else all right?"

"Yes, everyone's fine. You were the only one who was injured," Steve answered automatically.

Danny regarded him dubiously incredulously. "How come you're in a wheelchair and wearing a hospital gown, then? Or is that a fashion trend that I've somehow missed?"

"It's nothing," Steve tried to shrug, but the pain from his injuries caused him to abort the movement half-way through.

"Doesn't look like nothing to me. So, let me guess. You decided to play the hero and got hurt."

"That's not at all it," Steve said, not wanting to talk about it.

"Okay, what's wrong then?"

"Huh?" Steve was taken aback by the question, wondering if Danny was maybe less lucid than he seemed.

"Why do you have aneurysm face?" Danny asked, enunciating every word clearly as if speaking to a small child child.

"I don't have..." Steve started to protest.

"Yes, you do. Now tell me what's wrong before my head explodes from doing too much thinking."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry and I should have trusted your judgment. There I've said. You happy now?" Steve spat, the concern and worry boiling over into irrational anger.

"Not really. While I appreciate the rarity of an apology from the great Steve McGarrett, it doesn't make any sense. It was me who was wrong. I should have told you about the phone call from my informant and I shouldn't have gone in there without back-up. I should have known better than to trust him."

"You mean Dryden?

"Yeah, who else? My memory might be a little shaky, the last thing I recall is Dryden pulling a gun on me..."

Steve didn't hear the rest of what Danny said as his thoughts whirled off into a million directions at once. The doctors had mentioned memory loss as a possible side effect of Danny's head injury, but should he really be unable to remember anything that had happened during the last few days?

He reached for the call button, but Danny snagged his arm.

"What do you think you're doing?" Danny demanded.

"Calling for your doctor," Steve said.

"Wait. Just tell me what's wrong. Is there something I'm not remembering? Did something happen to Grace? Is she okay?" he asked, his voice growing frantic.

"Calm down. Rachel and Grace are fine," Steve said, settling for the white lie to avoid upsetting Danny further. "You went to see Dryden four days ago. We don't know what exactly happened, but there was an explosion." Steve proceeded to narrate the events of the past four days as best he could.

When he'd finished, he looked back up at Danny, who nodded somberly.

"Thanks for filling me in," Danny said tonelessly. "I think you better press that call button." With that Danny closed his eyes and didn't say another word until a nurse arrived who promptly banished Steve back to his own room.

TBC