Chapter Ten: Fame: Lets Him Loose
Evil plot bunny wants poor darling Marty to suffer some more. As do several readers… what a blood thirsty lot you are!
"What's his blood type?" the paramedic demanded, and all the NCIS team could do was to look blankly back at him. "Okay, what about allergies? You don't know that either? Great. You are sure he's one of yours, right?" His hands pressed down on the pad of dressings on the shoulder wound. Greg was 42 and during the course of nearly 20 years of picking up broken and battered bodies he'd seen most things. It was never a good sign when the patient was unconscious and the bleeding was still uncontrolled.
"He's one of us," Callen informed him unequivocably. "He only joined the team yesterday." Turning away for a second, he pulled out his phone and asked Hetty to make sure the hospital had all the necessary information and tried not to feel guilty. He was the team leader – he should have known: he should have taken the trouble to find out.
"Hell of an introduction to the job." Greg looked at his partner and gave an infinitesimal shrug: sometimes there was no accounting for people. Still, it took all sorts and their job was to try to save lives, not to pass judgement. "So you don't know his religion either, I guess?"
"Why the hell would we?" Sam asked. "It's not usually the first question I ask anybody." He'd relinquished his hold on Deeks, who was now lying on the ground as the two paramedics worked frantically on him.
"Comes in handy sometimes." Greg tore open Deeks' shirt and tried not to exclaim when he saw the bullet wound. "Looks like it's nicked the brachial artery." Blood was pulsating out with every heartbeat. "Let's get some large bore IVs into him and try to keep his volume up. By the way, your guy's Catholic." He gestured with his head to a small gold medal on a chain around Deeks' neck. "St Michael – patron saint of police officers, paramedics and a whole heap more. I've been wearing a similar one ever since I started my EMT training. It might be a good idea if we have a priest standing by at the hospital." He nodded to his partner, and they slid cannulas into each arm of their patient, running thought saline in one arm, plasma in the other.
"Why not?" Sam agreed hollowly. Not that Deeks would need it, but why not? It wouldn't do any harm. The things you found out about people under the strangest circumstances… Deeks hadn't struck him as a practising Catholic, he'd not thought of him in that way at all. He'd just characterised the man as an unwanted replacement for Dom, someone who was on there on sufferance and only with them temporarily. He'd even called him "Temp" to his face. It had never occurred to Sam just how temporary Deeks might actually be. It had just been a joke, a stupid, spiteful joke. Only it wasn't funny now, not now that his own clothing was soaked with the other man's blood. It hadn't even been funny at the time.
Callen ended the call with Hetty. "No known allergies and his blood type is A negative."
"I could have told you I was A Neg," Deeks said in a faint voice. "If you'd asked me."
"We thought you were ignoring us," Sam informed him, highly relieved to see Deeks was back in the land of the living and even managing to be sarcastic. "Either that or sleeping on the job."
"A Neg? It would be." Greg tried not to sound too pessimistic, but it was hard. "One of the rarer groups. And after that bus crash yesterday, I know the county is running low on their supplies." This was a complication they didn't need. Sure, their patient could take O negative blood, but an exact match would give him that much more of a chance. And from the looks of things, this guy could do with all the help he could get.
"Sorry to be so awkward." Deeks took a deep breath and immediately regretted it, as the pain surged across his chest, blossoming like some obscene flower.
Greg took a look at the readings on the monitors and frowned. "You want some pain relief there, buddy?"
He shook his head briefly. "I'm okay." From past experience Deeks knew that if he took shallow breaths it made the pain easier to deal with.
"Sure you are." Greg drew up morphine into the syringe. "I'm going to put this straight into the bicep of your good arm – it'll work faster that way."
"I'm A negative, I'll donate my blood," Kensi informed the paramedics, in a tone of voice that brooked no argument. At least there was something useful she could do, even if she did have a healthy terror of needles and regularly passed out each time she had to give a blood sample. "He's my partner." They were loading Marty onto a gurney now and she took a hold of his hand, gently stroking it with her fingers. "I'm coming with you." Her eyes never left his face for an instant.
Deeks smiled up at her and squeezed her hand gently. "Thanks, Kensi." His pupils were starting to contract as the drug started to kick in and had the effect of making his irises look bluer than ever.
"That's what partners are for." It felt as if someone had punched her in the chest, looking at him lying there on that gurney and feeling so helpless.
How come he still looks so bloody gorgeous, even when he's wounded and bleeding all over the place?
Greg closed his eyes briefly and then nodded. "Alright. You can with us. We've got a vascular surgeon prepped and just waiting for us to arrive, so we're going to be moving pretty fast.
"You mean I get the flashing lights and sirens? Cool." Deeks was beginning to sound as if he'd had at least four double whiskies and the room was starting to shimmer in a most peculiar way.
"You get the full treatment – no expense spared. You're an LAPD detective, right? Well, we look after our own." Greg looked at Callen and Sam. "You guys can follow behind. Just try and keep up."
"Don't worry about us. We'll be right there," Callen assured him. "You just take care of our friend."
That was the last thing Deeks remembered before the drugs pulled him down into a soft, hazy world where there was no pain: that Callen had called him his friend. And that Kensi was holding his hand like she would never let him go. Which was fine by him.