I'm truly sorry that this is a little late. But RL is a bit hectic at the moment. On the bright side though, this is a long chapter, and you will get the next one right on schedule next Monday.
Hope you will enjoy this one. Let me know.
Open Water – Chapter 11
Tripler Army Medical Center – Saturday, 1431 hours
Danny looked around in confusion as the penetrating siren started howling. He was still in a daze after he had learned, not a minute ago, that his best friend had died.
"Sir, you have to leave," the nurse behind the desk told him and got him out of his stupor.
"What?!"
"You have to leave the hospital, this is a fire alarm," she told him as she came around the counter.
"NO. I have to talk to a doctor. My friend…"
"You have to leave, right now!" Sergeant Hart told him and winked an MP over who was just securing the exit. "Corporal, please make sure everyone leaves this area immediately."
"No, you don't understand. I need to find my friend." Danny again tried to reason while the huge uniformed guy gently led him outside.
"Sir, please leave and move to the collecting point down on the parking lot. Please help people getting there," the MP told Danny after seeing his badge and identifying him as a police officer. "Make sure no one is left behind on your way out."
"But, I—"
"NOW, Sir!"
"Fuck," Danny grumbled and turned to walk out the exit and as instructed, made sure everyone in the waiting zone was coming with him.
It only took the group a couple of minutes to reach the parking lot away from the building. Danny watched in amazement how everyone in that wing of the hospital was leaving in a seemingly orderly manner.
The first fire fighters were already rushing into the emergency department. He couldn't see any smoke coming out the building, but knew that didn't have to mean anything. Danny wondered what they were doing with the patients currently in the ER, or if there even were any patients right now.
He had to go back and make sure that his friend was not in there right now, getting killed by a stupid fire. What if that idiot of a corporal was right, and Steve had—No, he wouldn't believe that, not before he saw his body.
Danny kept looking at the entrance to the ER; he waited another minute and then decided on his plan.
H50 – H50 – H50
Kapiolani Blvd – Friday, 1155 hours
"Hey, you okay?"
Steve looked at his friend when he was addressed by Danny, "What?"
"Are you okay? You're grimacing."
"I'm not," Steve answered as he adjusted his tac vest.
"Guess the vest isn't really comfortable on those bruises?" Danny had seen the angry bruises forming on his friend's chest, and knew that he was hurting.
"I'm fine, Danno. Let's wait for Duke and SWAT before we go in," Steve told his partner; ignoring the look Danny was giving him. They had requested a small group of SWAT members along with HPD back-up.
They had no idea what they would find in the office building, but the information they had received from the building manager suggested that the rented office was mostly empty. They were told that the occupants were still in the process of moving in. And that two of them had left the building about fifteen minutes ago.
Steve and Danny had learned that the rented office was on Level two and consisted of three offices overlooking the parking lot out back.
"Duke, are your men in position?" Steve asked when they met with the HPD sergeant.
"We're ready when you are, Steve," the older man told them.
"Alright, then let's go."
Steve and Danny went into the lobby on Level one and found their way to the stairs leading to the floors above. SWAT and HPD would wait for their signal to come in.
Steve opened the door to the stair case and Danny entered first, leading the way up the two flights of stairs.
Danny had just reached the top when the door was suddenly pushed open and 180 pounds of pure muscle barreled into him. Danny tried, but couldn't keep his balance and stumbled into McGarrett who was still on the stairs.
Steve was taken by surprise when his friend, who had been right in front of him, suddenly fell back against him. He grabbed the railing and tried to stay on his feet, but Steve lost his grip when Danny instinctively pushed away from him to upright himself.
Steve had no chance against the power of gravity and knew he would fall. He tried to turn, but was already falling straight backwards. He had a perfect view at Danny's panicked face. Steve thought he heard Danny calling his name, but then he impacted on the stairs and that really took his breath away.
He tumbled head over heels down the way they had just come up, landing in a heap on the landing at the mid-level. The guy who had run into them was storming further down the stairs, knocking Steve in the head as he ran past him.
Steve was getting back onto his hands and knees again when Danny reached him, "'m good… go after him," Steve panted out and motioned for Danny to follow their suspect.
He made his way back onto his feet but had to lean against the wall when a wave of dizziness slammed into him. When he had hit the deck, he had seen a nice kaleidoscope of stars, and his vision only slowly cleared.
The head of Five-0 pushed away from the wall and started to move down the stairs after his partner when he heard a loud banging sound from the first floor. It sounded like a door being forcefully shut.
"Danny! You alright?" Steve called out to his partner through his mic.
"Okay. HPD is with me," Danny sounded like he was hot on pursuit.
Knowing that Danny had back-up from Duke's men, Steve made his way up the stairs to take a look at what had made the sound he had heard. He drew his gun and entered the hallway on the first floor.
He knew the rented office was only a short distance from where he entered and cautiously made his way over to the right door. Steve stood next to the door and smiled when two HPD officers found their way onto the floor. Duke had sent his back-up. He motioned the two officers next to him, and counted down from three with his hand.
One of the officers, Big Mike, a guy they had worked with before, kicked in the door, and Steve, Mike and Officer Cane entered the office with their guns drawn. But what they found was not what any of them had expected.
They cautiously made their way through the offices but it was soon clear that the space was empty. They gathered in the main office when again the door flew shut with a loud bang. But this time the sound was drowned out by a few small explosions.
Within seconds the whole office was filled with a vast amount of CS gas. The reaction of the three men was immediate. Even if exposed to it before in training, no one can prevent the involuntary reactions.
In moments it was clear that they were being exposed to the really high grade stuff. Steve couldn't keep his eyes open, they were burning and watering. His upper body was subjected to muscle spasms and he doubled over, falling to his knees. Breathing was suddenly a challenge, he was coughing and it felt like his insides were running out his nose. The strong urge to vomit was almost his undoing.
Steve had no idea what had been in those grenades, but it for sure wasn't the normal police grade tear gas. They had to get out of the offices, that much was clear. Steve crawled in the direction he thought the door was and hoped that his sense of direction wasn't failing him.
"Steve? What's going on? Steve!" He heard his partner calling in his ear piece, but was unable to answer him.
He was completely overwhelmed by coughing, sneezing and wheezing. He could barely breathe, his chest felt constricted, his throat was burning, and his eyes were on fire. He felt incredibly sick to his stomach and was dizzy. He had been exposed to many variations of CS and OS gas a few times, but he had never had such a strong reaction.
Steve could feel one of the officers had grabbed his boot and held on to find his way out. He hoped he wasn't leading them into the wrong direction. He was just about ready to pass out when he felt strong hands grabbing him and dragging him forward.
He felt a fresh breeze and knew he was out of the office, but was still not able to open his eyes or help with moving away from the contaminated offices. He was too busy fighting not to lose consciousness.
Suddenly he was gently laid on the ground and he felt people around him, talking all at the same time. The urge to vomit got overwhelming when he heard the sounds of retching next to him. That send him over the edge too, accompanied by coughing he got violently sick. Completely exhausted he finally couldn't fight the darkness any longer.
H50 – H50 – H50
He couldn't have been out for very long. Steve opened his burning eyes to see the concerned face of Danny hovering over him.
"I leave you alone for one minute. Man…" Danny scolded him, but Steve could hear the worry in his voice.
"The… others… okay?" His question was still interrupted by coughing.
"They are in the same condition as you are. Coughing up a lung, and throwing up last week's food," Danny informed him. "How do you feel?"
"Like road-kill?" Steve mumbled between more coughing. He raised his hands to rub at his still burning eyes, but was stopped by Danny.
"Don't rub. They irrigated your eyes with a special solution. The medic said you should feel relief in a few minutes."
"Okay." Steve laid his head back and tried to breathe normally. "Danny, this was nothing but a trap. Did you get your guy?"
"Did I get my guy? So nice of you to remember that."
"Hey, give me a break, will ya?"
"Of course I got my guy. I'm not the Navy SEAL who got knocked out by a little bit of tear gas."
"Very funny," Steve said and looked at Danny. Seeing him grinning he knew that Danny was just riling him up. Steve was about to ask about their captured suspect when another wave of nausea slammed into him.
Danny had just enough time to grab a bag the medic had given him for this coming event, before Steve lost the rest of his breakfast, and every morsel he had eaten before that.
"All done?" Danny asked after Steve stopped retching.
"Think so," Steve grumbled and gratefully took the water bottle Danny offered him. "Thanks."
Steve only now noticed where they actually were. In the back of an ambulance; but mostly he only now noticed his state of dress, or better undress. He was covered with a sheet to his waist and that was actually the only piece of clothes on him. Since they were not in a Greek saga, a toga probably wouldn't even count as clothing.
"They took it off," Danny informed him matter of factly, seeing his face. "It will probably be burned."
"Oh. Right." Steve remembered that his clothing of course also was contaminated. Then he squinted at his friend. His vision was still blurry, but it was slowly improving. "Why are you in a coveralls?"
"I got some of the stuff on my clothes."
"You hauled me out of there, didn't you?" Steve suddenly knew whose arms had dragged his six out of the office.
"You, my friend, need to lay off the donuts."
Steve only grinned at that comment. "Thanks, Danno."
"Yeah, yeah. Listen, they will take you to Queens to check you over—"
"No, I'm fine."
"Where Cath will provide you with fresh clothes," Danny continued, without missing a beat. "Then you can join us at HQ to learn all about Kono's operation. She, by the way, arrested the rest of the gang."
"She did?"
"Yeah. Three guys, including Skip Redding, or Marcus Philips, whatever name he is using right now. With the guy we arrested, we have all four of them."
"Wait a minute, you're saying we have them all in custody?"
"Yep. Listen, Steve. Let them check you out. You can't even say a sentence without coughing and wheezing for breath."
"Okay, fine. But only because Cath has my clothes at the hospital."
"Sure. Whatever. I'll see you in a bit at HQ."
H50 – H50 – H50
Tripler Army Medical Center – Saturday, 1440 hours
Dr. Kulani pushed the gurney through the door to the hallway leading to the pediatric wing. It was the closest department right now that was declared safe, and his patient wasn't stable enough to be carried endlessly around the hospital. So the pediatric ICU had to do for now.
As far as he knew there was an electrical fire in the server room of the TAMC, which was in the process of destroying all their servers. Thankfully the power station was in a different wing and not affected. It would take time to get all the data from the back-up servers, but nothing would be permanently lost.
But it would be a nightmare to find a particular patient if the system was down. All patients already on their stations wouldn't be affected, their data was stored in a different system, but everyone in the ER and ORs would not exist until the system was restored.
But that was really not Dr. Kulani's worry right now. He was only thinking about the eleven patients from the ER they had had to transfer immediately out of the danger zone. All the administrative stuff would come later.
For a moment he thought that the odds really were against him today. First the drowning victims and now he was in danger of losing even more patients due to a darn fire.
He looked up when the heart monitor, currently lying at his patient's feet, started beeping again in a frantic manner.
"Damn, hurry, we need to get him into a bed before he crashes again."
Five minutes later, the patient was in a bed under a warmed blanket. It was quite a sight seeing the over six foot man lying in bed next to a small child sleeping in the ICU bed next to him.
Dr. Kulani had to smile at the picture in front of him and was happy that he didn't have to call a second time of death today after all.
"Hey, Jenny, take good care of this guy. A lot of people are rooting for him. I'll stop by later to see if we can transfer him to a private room. IF we ever figure out what rooms are available," he added at an afterthought about the ensuing chaos that would the next hours bring.
"Sure. Give me the low down of his condition." Dr. Grassi asked, looking at his colleague from the ER. This was the second patient Kulani had brought over. The first one, a woman, was already resting in one of the rooms as her injuries weren't as severe.
"His temp is slowly rising, but he suffered rewarming shock. We got that covered though. His kidneys need to be monitored; he's still dehydrated and not producing much output at the moment. The data is on the clipboard." Kulani was glad that he hadn't been able to put it in the system just yet. So they still had all his test results. "He has severe abrasions on his leg and side. A couple of broken bones in his left hand, which we haven't casted yet; still too much swelling. He must have hit something pretty hard to get those breaks. We are also a bit worried about his head. It seems that he has suffered different blows to the head recently. We diagnosed a severe concussion. He reacts to pain stimuli but doesn't come fully alert. That's pretty much the run down so far. Oh, and he moans every time we move his right leg, but we couldn't find any obvious injuries. There is some bruising, but we need an MRI to know more. No internal bleedings or injuries."
Dr. Kulani finished the tale of his patient and knew he would be in good hands with his new doctor.
"Okay, that doesn't sound too bad. We'll take care of him. You head back to your other guys."
"Thanks."
Kulani took one last look at the now sleeping lieutenant commander and left the pediatric ICU to see if he could help with the evacuation of the rest of the patients.
H50 – H50 – H50
Tripler Army Medical Center – Saturday, 1930 hours
It took the fire department five hours not only to extinguish the fire and contain it to the server room, but mostly to make sure that no toxic fumes were still lingering in the emergency department. Thankfully there had been no damage to the rest of the hospital. Only the over 3,000 square feet of the server room had been destroyed.
Because of the fire, the whole system regarding the patients was down. It would take at least a day to restore the hospital to full operational status. At the moment only medical information about patients could be called up, but everything associated with their administrative status, including their placement in the hospital could not.
It was utter chaos, but the most important thing was that the doctors could call up information about their patients even though no one could figure out where one patient was at the time. And if the patient had been in the process of being admitted to the hospital during the fire, he or she would be totally lost until the system was back up.
But as nurse Kala Griffin tried to tell Danny for the umpteenth time, "the important part is, Detective, if your friend is in this hospital he will get the best care possible. I'm sorry I can't tell you right now where he might be."
"You don't get it. I was told five hours ago that Commander McGarrett had died, and immediately after that, I was pushed out into the parking lot. No one is still here so that I can talk about it." Danny was getting really frustrated right now, as was Catherine, who had joined Danny in the parking lot two hours ago. First Danny and then the both of them had made numerous attempts to get into the hospital before now, but without any luck. The fire department refused admittance to anyone who didn't belong there.
"Listen, can't you tell us what doctor treated him in the ER?" Catherine now tried her luck.
"I'm sorry, as I have told you, there was already a shift change, I don't know who was in the ER at the time of the fire," nurse Griffin told them… not for the first time. "Maybe you should simply go down to the morgue and try your luck there."
"Are you kidding me?!" Danny exploded. "Luck? You think we would have luck if we'd find our friend down there?" Danny couldn't keep his voice down any longer.
"Danny, she's only trying to help," Cath tried to calm the agitated detective down. She was upset herself, but she also knew how the military worked.
"That is no help at all!"
"I'm sorry, Sir. That was uncalled for," the nurse said and did look apologetic. "I know this must be really frustrating for you, but believe me it is for us as well. You are not the only one looking for a loved one. But again I assure you, your friend will get the best care—"
"Possible, yeah, yeah, you already told us." Danny didn't want to hear it another time. "Thank you."
"Danny, where are you going?" Catherine nodded to the nurse and followed Danny.
"To the morgue."
That actually stopped her in her tracks. "You can't be serious."
"Look, Cath, I just need to know, okay? You don't have to come, but I simply need to know." Danny looked at Steve's friend, and could see the anguish on her face. "I'm sure it's not him, but… I just need to know," he added in an almost whisper.
"Okay, but then let's go together."
Ten minutes later they had found the morgue and asked about the still unknown drowning victim.
"Are you here to ID the body?" The pathologist on duty asked them.
"We are looking for our friend, he was fished out of the water by the Coast Guard and brought here around the time—"
"I see, and no one can tell you if that is your friend. I understand," the doctor told them and took out a clipboard with a filled out form on it. "The victim is in his thirties—"
"Does he have tattoos?" Danny suddenly thought about the most obvious thing to ask.
"Tattoos?" The doctor asked and looked at his paper. "Yeah. Two."
"On his arms?"
"Yeah?"
Danny didn't ask anything else, just looked at the doctor, and asked himself if he had already performed an autopsy on his friend. He shuddered at the thought.
"As I said he's dark haired and six foot, two."
It was clear that they would have to take a look if they wanted to be sure. "Cath, you can wait here; I'll go in."
"Thank you, Danny."
Catherine watched Danny vanish behind the pale green door and prayed that he would not come out with the devastating news that they had found Steve.
She had to wait two minutes for the door to open again and a smiling Danny came out. "It's not him," he blurted out, almost overwhelmed when Cath hugged him. "Hey, it's okay, Cath, please don't cry."
"Sorry, but…" Catherine couldn't quite describe what she was feeling right now. Relief was not enough to describe her feelings.
"Okay, now let's go and find our wayward friend. I don't care if we have to look into every damn room of this hospital," Danny told her and was already on his way back to the elevator.
"We should start with the ICU. I mean I think he most likely would be there, right?"
"Guess that makes sense. We need to find out if they have more than one." Danny was determined to find his friend. He was a detective for God's sake. He would be able to find a lost patient in a hospital.
At least that's what he thought.
H50 – H50 – H50
No cliffhanger this time. Hope that makes up for the delay. :-)
