Warning: uses the f-word, so read no further if you're offended by it. Now, back to our regularly scheduled Marshall whumpage!
Six weeks later, around dusk, Mary opened up the passenger door of her purple Ford POS and bent over to regard Marshall, who lay in the reclined seat with his eyes closed. He was pale, sweaty, and she could see the muscles in his jaw working as he staved off a groan lying just beneath the surface. After a moment, he rolled his head toward her and levered open his eyes. His pupils were mere pinpricks from the effects of the heavy-duty painkillers he was on, courtesy of the Houston hospital that had treated and discharged him that morning.
"You're gonna have to get out yourself," said Mary. "You're too big for me to haul out on my own." He nodded, closing his eyes again for a minute while he geared himself up for the move. Mary took advantage of his inertia to grab his crutches out of the rear seat, leaning them up against the car. It took quite a bit of swearing on Mary's part before her partner was as vertical as he was going to be, propped up on crutches, his bandaged leg barely touching the ground. That effort alone left him shaky and woozy, and he contemplated the ramifications of taking a quick nap on the sidewalk.
Mary slapped him lightly on the cheek to focus him. "Hey! Don't go all wimpy on me here. I can't carry you inside." He nodded and took a deep breath before they moved slowly toward his door.
The Houston transport had been a clusterfuck. As they were exiting the courthouse with the witness, a drive-by attempt had them all diving for the pavement. Mary, in the lead, had ducked behind a police cruiser, but Marshall had taken a ricochet in the thigh as he tackled the witness and covered him with his body until the shooters had departed. The bullet more than made up for its lack of velocity with its flattened profile, which left a swath of destruction as it entered and exited his leg, nicking an artery along the way.
After extensive surgery and five days in recovery, the doctors in Houston had reluctantly pronounced him fit to travel, but Marshall was beginning to wish he'd taken them up on their recommendation of two more glorious fun-filled nights in the hospital. The relatively brief flight back to ABQ had made him feel positively ancient.
With the help of several long breaks, Mary finally deposited her partner none-too-gently on his bed. Leaving momentarily, she returned with two Vicodins and a bottle of water.
"Thanks." His voice was barely above a whisper, whether from the pain or from the fact that he was already sliding into sleep, she didn't know. Mary pulled off his shoes and then tugged his bedclothes up to cover him before grabbing a spare blanket and crashing on the couch.
She was fried, but her racing mind insisted-as it had for the last few days-on replaying the shooting. After the ambush with Horst/Lola, Mary had lived daily with the understanding that the next transport-the next witness visit-could be her partner's last. But that acceptance didn't exactly lessen the shock of seeing him decorating downtown Houston with his own blood. Sighing, she pummeled the pillow under her head, trying both to beat it into a more comfortable position and remove the mental picture of Marshall calmly pulling off his belt to use as a temporary tourniquet until medical help arrived. Some days this job just sucked, she thought bitterly. No way around that.
Awakening from an exhausted sleep had never been one of her strong points, and this morning was no exception. Disorientation was the order of the day as she opened her eyes and for a few seconds had no idea where she was. Houston. Shooting. Marshall. Clambering blearily onto her feet, she slouched into the bedroom to check on Sleeping Beauty. He didn't look like he'd moved at all from where she'd dumped him twelve hours earlier, which made her lean in closely to see if he was breathing or not. Just checking, you know...
While she waited for him to wake up, she killed a couple of hours making coffee and reading the newspaper. Figuring out Marshall's overly complicated coffee machine took up the bulk of her time. Is it so much to ask that a coffee machine just make a damn cup of coffee, she wondered?
She figured he was awake when she heard a rustle and then a loud "Jesus!" from the direction of the bedroom. Arriving at the door just in time to watch him flop back onto the bed from his sitting position, she decided to put on her positive face, just to irritate him.
"Rise and shine! It's a beautiful morning out there. Wakey wakey!"
Marshall expended enough energy to flip her off before returning his arm to where it rested across his eyes. He was as washed out in the light of day as he had been the evening before, which was unusual for him. Even his shoulder injury hadn't kept him down for long, and he'd never lost his trademark verbal diarrhea the whole recovery period.
This time was different, though, and she couldn't put a finger on what it was. She pried him out of bed and helped him to the bathroom (stopping at the door, of course) and back. He didn't utter a sound, other than breathing hard and hissing through his teeth when he made an injudicious movement. He shut his eyes almost before he hit the pillow, so she was left with nothing to do but cover him up again.
"Marshall!"
"Yeah..." he didn't bother to look at her.
"Seriously, are you OK? I need to go clean up and fill out an incident report for Stan before it gets any later."
He flapped his hand in the general direction of her voice. "Go ahead...I'm just going to catch up on my sleep."
Mary padded out to the kitchen and rummaged around for a sports bottle, which she filled with ice water. Setting it on the nightstand next to the Vicodin and antibiotic bottles and Marshall's cell phone, she stood looking down for a moment as he slept. He wasn't getting any younger, she realized with a pang. Time-and the job-had carved lines around his eyes and mouth, and pain deepened them. On the other hand, after the events of the last few days, she herself probably wasn't looking too fresh, either. Gathering her keys and bag, she locked up and left for home and a shower.
Five hours later, she was on her third set of forms and entertaining the fantasy of wadding them up, setting them alight, and using them to torch Allison Pearson's desk. Despite having pulled out every procrastination trick in the book, she was stuck with finishing the paperwork. Marshall couldn't even offer moral support: every time she called to check up on him, he was too out of it from the drugs to be of any help. Mary finally gave up and decided to let him rest.
Just after four, her Blackberry warbled for her attention. Checking the caller ID, she answered with a crabby, "It's about time you woke up, idiot. Do you even care that Stan wants a full report on the Houston incident, by tomorrow morning?"
"Is this Mary? This is Barrett Thorsen."
"What the hell are you doing using Marshall's phone? That's property of the Department of Justice! I don't know-"
"Shut up for a second and listen! I couldn't think of any other way to contact you. I called Marshall to see if he wanted to get some dinner, and he was completely incoherent. It didn't even sound like him."
"Uh, yeah, he's taking some painkillers right now, so he's a little woozy..."
"MARY! I'm standing right here looking at him; it's not good. He's non-responsive, and he's burning up. Plus, his leg's swollen to the point of pulling the stitches. If you don't get over here, I'm calling an ambulance."
Grabbing her jacket, Mary ran for the elevator. "Don't wait for me. Call an ambulance right now! Have him taken to Mesa." She hung up and danced impatiently in front of the doors, waiting for them to open. Fuck! She should never have left him alone when he was recovering like that. How many times had he taken care of her, and she couldn't even be bothered to do her part when he needed it? She hated herself more than usual.