Chapter 11

Well, you knew it couldn't happen in one piece, right? I did not see this particular crisis coming, but I knew something was because writers can tell when the story is about to toss a spanner into the works. Danny-whumpers, this is for you! I used as much medicalese as I could!

Readers and reviewers have been beyond kind to me with this story, and I thank you humbly. I think I got most people properly thanked, and any omissions were entirely accidental. I have a system now to keep track, but every now and then someone slips by me, and for that I'm deeply sorry!

Just for those interested, I expanded my bio to give a bit more of my background and interests, so if you want to read that, be my guest.

And I really really really promise to get this scene past the part everyone wants! Part 2 to follow, ASAP!

Oh, and I own nothing to do with Hawaii Five-0 (except a copy of the original vinyl soundtrack album from the first series :-D ) I make no profit, no nuffin but the satisfaction of writing about a show I really love.

Chapter 11

Steve watched Danny and the ceiling and the clock during the eternally long twenty minutes before the meeting with Kono and Lou was to take place. Danny spent the entire time trying to rest, eyes closed, silently battling all his battles. His eyes remained wet.

Steve received one call, from Chin, asking if the others were there yet. "I know I'm a little early."

With a glance toward Danny, he almost whispered into the phone. "I want you to come in last, buddy. Then I want you to look surprised when I ask you to hand me the box of stuff you got yesterday. I can't reach it from the bed. And I'm not supposed to lift anything that heavy yet."

"Understood. When I see them, I'll give you war-hold on, Lou just pulled in, and Kono is right behind him. How's Danny holding up?"

"Uh, so-so, waiting on the doc, too, but that might be a good thing. Let them see what he's going through. Thanks for the heads-up."

Steve knew that Danny had heard everything. He had become more tense, his breathing quicker, but he was still resting as much as he could. It had been a very long and difficult day for him, with no sleep because of the treatments. He was exhausted, and tears were still spilling one or two at a time from his eyes.

"Danno, they are on their way up. Have hope, remember?"

"Okay." He carefully reached for the kleenex box and wiped his eyes and face, but the nasal cannula blocked him from blowing his nose, so he pulled it down to his chin, blew his nose, then settled it back into place, the tape not catching quite right on a patch of tear-dampened skin. He was trying to get it to stick when Kono and Lou knocked, then entered the room. Danny did not look at either of them directly, just nodded vaguely in their direction, even when they said, "Hi, Danny," in unison, voices subdued. "Hey," he replied, still not looking at them other than to register that Lou was wearing a medium blue polo shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts, while Kono wore something dark, floaty and sleeveless over dark skinny jeans. He kept struggling with the tape after they moved over to stand by Steve's bed.

"Hi Boss."

"How's it, Steve?"

"Glad you could both make it," answered Steve, after taking a precautionary spoonful of his antacid. He was nervous about this. The fate of the ohana rested on this, and as shattered as it was, it was not going to be easy to fix. So much depended on what Kono and Lou had personally been thinking about, and there was no way yet to know. Their body language gave nothing to him in the way of clues. He wondered if they had spent any time talking together, and if they had, was that a bad thing or a good thing? He wondered if Chin had spoken with either of them after he left the night before. He trusted Chin, though, and he could not have asked him to not check up on Kono. He had to consider the worst case scenario, which was that neither Kono nor Lou had spent any time thinking at all about how they treated Danny.

"Where's Chin?" asked Kono. "Is he coming? Is he in hot water, too? Uh," she paused, shooting Danny the briefest of glances. "I mean, on a case?"

"I told him when the meeting was," answered Steve, deciding to keep his tone as neutral as possible until he had a sense of which way the meeting would go. "And I told Danny everything."

"Oh." Kono did not glance at Danny again.

"Here," said Chin, coming in the room and going straight to Danny's bedside and giving his hand a squeeze. "Your doc was half a hall behind me." He too took his place at Steve's side, after giving both his cousin and Lou encouraging pats on the back.

Nurse Bridget with the bright blonde hair entered with a large pitcher of ice water, and filled Steve's and Danny's little pitchers. She knew about the meeting, and was especially kind in her manner toward her patients and their visitors. She offered them plastic cups of ice water, which each accepted politely.

Dr. Cornett entered the room with a small push-cart of medications. He saw to Steve first, replacing his saline drip, injecting pain meds, and checking his readings, switching out the heavier dressing on his healing wounds for lighter ones. "Temp is 99, so that infection is just about beaten. Blood pressure and heart rate are slightly elevated from before, but very acceptable. How is your stomach?"

"I'm good, Doc. I took an antacid a few minutes ago."

"That's fine. Here are your other meds." Normally the nurse would do temps, blood pressure, pulse, and meds, but with the room so full, Cornett had wanted to do everything, to better sense the mood of the room, and his primary patient. He sensed a lot of tension, and could tell that Steve was not someone to play poker with. He was unreadable, except that alone told the doc that the undercurrents were already running deep. Danny, on the other hand, was an open book, depressed, weary, and clearly he had been crying and was trying to hide it.

As he then turned to Danny and began to pull the privacy curtain, Steve said mildly, "No, Doc, we're all family." Danny tensed briefly, then seemed to deflate like a balloon. "Danny?" asked Cornett. "Are you okay with the curtain being open?"

He just nodded. He felt like a trapped lab rat. All he wanted to do was run, but that was not even remotely on the table of options.

He too got a full new set of drips, including antibiotics and much needed pain medication. Cornett had noticed the red eyes, the pulled up tape on one side of the cannula. "That conjunctivitis should be responding to the drops in another day or so. Let's get some drops in, since I can see you've missed a bit on those." It was all to save Danny's dignity in front of his colleagues. Steve would know he was covering, as would Chin. He used regular saline eye drops, which he always kept with him, as the air in the hospital was on the dry side, and it was common for patients to have eye discomfort. He kept the name on the bottle covered, since these were not the antibiotic drops used for conjunctivitis. Danny obediently accepted the drops.

"What's co-juncti...whatever?" asked Kono, and she sounded concerned.

"Pink eye, a common eye infection, easy to pick up in a hospital setting."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Danny, hope you feel better."

"I'll be fine," said Danny, flatly. "Thank you," he added.

Cornett put him through the whole process of checking his bruised ribs, now a lighter purple on the right, and yellow-green on the left. "Give me a number on the pain as you are breathing right now."

"Uh." Danny floundered, knowing if he was honest, he would not even need to hear the word 'wuss' spoken out loud. The truth was that he was so grateful for the pain meds, as the discomfort he was in was severe, and he still had a treatment to get through without letting the pain show. "It's less," he finally said.

Cornett thought the best thing he could do for Danny was finish the exam and treatment, because the quicker the meeting started, the quicker it would be over. He helped Danny sit up, listened to his lungs, had Danny cough as hard as he could until he felt less congested, then listened as he breathed as deeply as he could. By the end of it, was trying to hold his ribs and grimacing, unable to hide the pain as sweat beaded his brow, upper lip, and just about anything else that sweat from pain.

"Done. Let me help you lay back. Just let me do the work." Once Cornett had his patient settled, he glanced around the room and caught 4 pairs of eyes watching him and his patient. "Pneumonia treatment," he explained, and turned back to Danny. "Significant progress had been made. It may not feel like it, since each time you cough, the ribs and surgery incision, the bruised muscles and organs feel more sore, but if you can tolerate it for another twelve hours, the corner will definitely have been turned. I can increase the pain medication slightly."

"Okay," Danny whispered. "Thanks doc."

As the doc was wiping the sweat off Danny's face and neck, he asked him about his anxiety level. The desperate look in Danny's eyes told him everything he needed to know, so he reached for the hypodermic of sedative and added half of it to the saline drip. "Steve, I want to be notified when this meeting is over."

"Understood, doc."

H50 H50 H50 H50

"So," said Steve, watching Danny try to compose himself, and giving him as much time as he could. He switched on the recording device and set it down on the bedside table separating his and Danny's beds. "Let's get this started. There have been a few setbacks for Danny, but as you can see, those are being addressed. No more need be said about that since all present know what was said yesterday."

"But," said Kono quickly, "we should know. I'm ... I'm worried about him."

"Really? Yesterday you said - "

"-I know what I said yesterday, Steve, and I've had time to think. I was out of line, and ... and I am worried about Danny."

Steve pursed his lips, and kept his tone so neutral, Danny broke into a bitten off sob. He had already had enough. "Just tell them I quit, and stop this, already."

Kono stood up and looked on the verge of running to Danny's bedside. "No! You can't do that! You can't quit!"

Lou too was on his feet. "No way, man. You gotta hang in there!" His voice was a patent-able mix of stern and concern. Steve was encouraged, but he knew both Lou Grover and Kono Kalakaua could have dual motives for seeming now to care about Danny.

"Take seats, everyone," for Chin had stood when the others did. "I have already told Danny he can't quit."

Kono and Lou were watching Danny now as much as they were watching Steve. So Steve pulled the privacy curtain so that he and Chin could see Danny, but Kono and Lou could not. "Meeting back to order." Then, in a very gentle voice, he said to Danny, "I'm sorry you have to hear all this, but you do not need to talk. Rest those ribs. Okay?" It tore Steve up to see Danny's body shaking from the force of sobs it was taking everything he had to keep silent. He was holding a wad of kleenex to his eyes, his other arm wrapped around his stomach.

Steve changed tactics immediately, to spare Danny. He turned to Lou and Kono and said, in anything but a neutral voice, "So help me God, if you are acting concerned to save your badges, I will personally kick both your asses, if I have to heal another six weeks to do it! Why the change?"

Lou handed Kono the kleenex box on Steve's side of the curtain, and patted her knee while she dabbed at her eyes. He said, glancing at the curtain as if trying to see through it. "Those things I said yesterday ... Steve, there's no way I could ever be your partner. Friend, yes. Colleague, co-worker, any day of the week. But partner?" He shook his head. "No way. Forget the arthritic knees and all that, it's way more than that."

"Go on, Lou." Steve's voice was back to neutral, but his face had lost its anger.

"You said something yesterday I couldn't stop thinking about. About how could we respect you if we had no respect for your decision to keep Danny as your partner. I do respect you, Steve. So I got to thinking about Danny."

Sobs suddenly sounded, and a whimper, "Stop! Can't ... can't breathe."

Steve hit the button that would bring the nurse, while Chin, Lou and Kono stood, and there was no faking their worry. Chin literally used the edges of Steve's bed to vault himself over it to be at Danny's side. "He's hyperventilating!". He said it just as the Nurse Bridget ran in. She checked him and hit the button that would bring the doctor, then dug into a drawer and found a bag which she held over Danny's nose and mouth. It inflated and deflated over and over at a rapid rate, until it began to slow, just as Cornett came in. He helped Danny sit up, and listened to his lungs, and pulled the bag aside. "I need you to cough, Danny."

Danny coughed, again and again, each time expelling sputum, seemingly from as deep as his toes. He coughed until he was retching, almost dry heaving. "Inhale, Danny, try to get a breath in." Danny shuddered, but managed to pull in small bits of air, until he had enough to fill his lungs. But immediately he began to cough and retch again. Cornett barked, "Anti-tussive inhaler, Nurse. STAT!" He scribbled something on a paper, which she handed off to another nurse, who took it and literally ran from the room.

Cornett kept his voice firm but soothing. "Your lungs are not going to collapse, Danny. I know it feels like it. Now listen to me. You need to fight the cough now. Fight it as hard as you can." He nodded, but he was crying and holding his screaming ribs. His body was wracked again as another fit shuddered through him, but it was clear that he was trying to fight. "Inhale, Danny, inhale. Every chance you get."

This went on until the second nurse ran back into the room and put what looked like an asthmatic's inhaler in Cornett's hand. He immediately put it to Danny's mouth. "Inhale, now, Danny. Inhale deeply." The doctor timed the pumping of the anti-tussive just as Danny got in a breath. "Another, Danny." He pumped it again. Danny's coughing lessened dramatically and ceased within another minute. "Even breaths, slow and even. Hold Chin's hand, and concentrate on relaxing your chest and abdomen. I'm ordering a warming blanket for your ribs, to help them. Don't try to talk yet."

Danny was drenched in sweat, laying back against the pillow once his breathing was under control. His face was etched by lines of pain and fear, his eyes closed from exhaustion.

Steve, Kono, and Lou had all huddled together as Danny's crisis unfolded, scared half out of their minds. "What happened?" Steve finally asked. "Is Danno okay?"

Dr. Cornette did not answer immediately, as he was listening to his patient's heart, and reaching around him to listen again to his breathing, not letting Danny sit up for it. "...He's okay. In layman's terms, his cough center got stuck in the 'on' position. The inhaler was used to get it to shut off again." He looped his stethoscope around his neck and took a very deep, silent breath of his own. "He needs a new gown, a sponge bath, which -"

"Doctor, he has popped some of the stitches on his incision." As the nurse had removed Danny's gown, she noticed the bandage was showing seepage of blood.

Cornett sighed silently, and looked at the damage. It was considerable. Several layers of stitches had ripped away from the force of the coughing. The doc patted and smoothed Danny's hair, and whispered to him, "A minor set back. You just rest." He reached for a hypo and injected it right into the port on the back of his right hand, then counted to ten with his fingers, including all in the room in on the silent count. On ten, he let out an audible sigh, and fitted an oxygen mask over the now unconscious Danny's face. To Nurse Bridget, he said, "Get a team in here with a gurney. I'm taking no chances, I want..." and he rattled off a variety of scans and other things in multi-syllabic medicalese. "This poor guy can't catch a break."

Kono began to cry. "Will he be okay?"

Cornett nodded, and made way for the team who transferred Danny so gently to the gurney, it made Kono cry even harder. "I just want to make sure his kidney and liver are fine. He sure is messing up my neat stitches, though." Cornett smiled. "Oddly enough, that coughing fit cleared his lungs out very well. Now we can chance the rest we couldn't before. Give us a few hours to run those tests, and he'll be back here. This may take awhile, so you can finish your meeting."

Chin, Lou, Kono, and Steve shook Cornett's hand. "Take good care him," said Steve, his voice cracking from the strain of the fear he'd felt.