Chapter 11 – Darkness in a brightly lit room

The warehouse was dark as Lassiter stopped the car on the road. But that didn't have to mean anything, there were offices on the back of the building which couldn't be seen from the road. Lassiter got out of the car and gestured for Juliet to follow him as he reached for the walkie-talkie that was fixed on top of his bullet-proof west.

"I want two teams on the back of the building, blocking all entrances."

"Roger that, team alpha and gamma are on the way."

"The rest come with me, we take the front."

"Roger"

Pulling his gun, Lassiter made sure that the security was disengaged, then looked at Juliet once more. She nodded at him.

"Ready."

"Good. We're going in silently."

Juliet nodded and together with three other teams of officers, the two set out towards the front door of the building. Lassiter noticed that there was a black van parked across the street, next to a black SUV, but he didn't concern himself with this any further. The cars were empty, and there were other units here to check the registrations.

The front door was unlocked, and Lassiter thanked the deities responsible for this small mercy. Breaking down the door would have been too loud, and jimmying the lock would have taken too much time.

Inside, the warehouse was pitch dark, so Lassiter pulled out his flashlight with his free hand and held it below his gun barrel to light the way ahead.

It was a warehouse like thousands of others in the city. Front door leading into a big storage room that took up the entire height of the building. Loading dock to the left, facing Baker Street, and on the level of the second floor huge glass windows lightened the storage room throughout the day. The offices were in the back. One was connected to the storage room by a huge glass window, and it was dark. There was nobody inside.

The second office was entirely separated from the storage room, no window facing the storage area, and the door was closed. If there was truly anybody in here, that's where they were. Lassiter stopped and raised a hand to get the attention of the other officers, then pointed towards the second office door. At that moment, he got the confirmation through his in-ear that the teams on the back of the building were in place. If there was a back way out of the building, they had it covered, and more reinforcements were on the way.

Adrenaline started running high. Lassiter had been involved in many busts in his life, but never been in such a situation before. If their information was sound, both Spencer men were in that office, together with an unknown number of mafia goons. That takedown might just become difficult.

Lassiter and Juliet took up position on either side of the office door. The deadbolt and locks were obviously disengaged which meant that they'd get the door opened up on the first try and didn't have to break it down. Another thing that worked in their favour. Lassiter only hoped that this lucky streak would hold, they could certainly need it.

Lassiter gestured towards the door, then at himself, holding out three fingers. As he received answering nods from the officers around him that they understood and had their weapons ready, Lassiter started his countdown. Silently, Lassiter counted with his fingers, and after he had reached the "one", he drew a last deep breath, readied his weapon and tore open the door.

"SBPD!"

"Freeze!"

"Police! Put your weapons down!"

The office was brightly lit, and as soon as Lassiter and Juliet had entered the room, the other officers barrelled in behind them. Lassiter looked around, scanning the room. The three goons who had been unfortunate enough to stand near the door were immediately disarmed and cuffed. To Lassiter's right was Ricardo Delgado, staring at the display in front of him with a totally dumbfolded expression on his face. Before Lassiter could even react, Juliet was already on her way over to him, frisked him for weapons and slapped the cuffs on his wrists.

Which was good, because for just one moment, just one second, Carlton Lassiter forgot everything he had ever been taught about behaviour during a takedown and simply stared at the display in front of him. Lorenzo Delgado was standing, his back to the door, a gun in his hand and pointed at the back of Henry Spencer's head. The former cop seemed frozen solid in place by the pressure of the barrel against his head, but still he kept a firm pressure on whatever cloth he was using as a makeshift compress against his son's chest.

The sight of the always so annoyingly lively and loud Spencer lying motionless in a huge pool of blood in fact shocked Lassiter into a frozen stupor for a moment. But only for a moment. Whether or not Spencer was even alive was a matter for later, right now he needed to take care of the mob-boss holding Spencer's father at gunpoint.

"Drop the weapon, Delgado!"

Lassiter stepped into the mob-boss' line of vision, gun pointed straight at Delgado's chest. Delgado didn't move, but after a moment his eyes shifted towards Lassiter. The detective was startled for a moment. Delgado's nose looked as if he had run straight on into a steel wall.

"Put the gun down, Delgado. That's my last warning."

Lassiter's gun arm never wavered, and he searched Delgado's face for the telltale signs that would tell him what the man would do next. Inwardly he prepared himself to pull the trigger before Delgado could shoot the older Spencer. But Delgado deliberated motionlessly for a moment, then he slowly withdrew the gun and raised his arms.

Lassiter immediately took the weapon away from the man. "On your knees, hands behind your head."

"You have no right to be here", Delgado said, eerily calm. "You have nothing you can hold against me with this illegal entry. This will cost you your badge."

Lassiter didn't even try to keep the contempt out of his voice. "We have a warrant, and you are under arrest. I'd really advice you to make use of your right to remain silent, before you tempt me to do something I might regret later. Sanders, take him out and read him his rights. Wilkerson, radio the ambulance. We need those EMTs here ASAP!"

When the two officers set to their tasks, Lassiter turned back towards the two Spencers. Henry was still kneeling in the same position, all but behaving as if he hadn't noticed that the barrel of the gun was no longer pressing against his head. Right now, Lassiter was even willing to believe that the ex-cop hadn't even noticed the gun in the first place.

Lassiter slowly knelt down next to Henry and tried to catch his eyes. Henry didn't react, he was totally focussed on his son's face, even though Shawn wasn't moving. Lassiter tried to get a better look at the wound, but other than the fact that it must have bled like mad he couldn't detect anything. But if there was one thing that was clear, then it was that Spencer couldn't afford to lose any more blood.

So without a word directed at Henry, which the former cop wouldn't have heard anyway, Lassiter put his own hands above Henry's and pushed down tightly.

"Where are those EMTs?", he yelled back over his shoulder. "We need them here ten minutes ago!"

There was a flurry of activity behind him, then a voice called out "Coming through!", and two medics put their equipment down beside Lassiter.

"What have we got?"

"Gunshot wound to the chest", Lassiter replied, surprised that his voice wasn't as calm as it normally was. "He has lost a lot of blood."

"All right, we'll take it from here. Move aside!"

Lassiter got up as the EMT he had spoken to relieved him of keeping pressure on the wound. Henry, however, remained kneeling in the same position, not taking his hands off the wound.

"Sir, we need you to let go so that we can do our job!"

Lassiter was sure that Henry hadn't heard a word of what the medic had said. Gently but firmly he grabbed the older man by the upper arm and pulled him away. At first, Henry resisted, but then it was as if the strength to fight had simply left him and he slowly got to his feet.

"Let them do their job, Henry. They'll get him to the hospital as quickly as they can."

Henry nodded, numbly, his eyes averted as if he could not stand watching the EMTs working on his son's lifeless body. He was still clutching the bloody remains of his shirt in his hand, which was slowly dripping blood to the floor. Lassiter tugged at the shirt, and Henry's fingers released it to let it drop to the floor with a wet smack that made Lassiter's stomach turn.

"Come on, let's give them some room."

Still not saying a word, Henry allowed Lassiter to lead him a few steps away from his son. Both Delgados and the goons they had brought along were no longer in the office; Lassiter guessed that by now they were in the back of a police cruiser on their way to being charged and arraigned. But they could stew for a while, there were other things to think about right now.

Truth was, Lassiter didn't quite know what to say. Henry was currently spaced out in a world all of his own, a world that consisted of nothing but the fact that his son was right now bleeding to death only a few feet away from him, and there was nothing Lassiter could say to make that any better. It was a disturbing situation.

As the EMTs began loading Shawn onto a gurney, Chief Vick came hurrying through the office door, much to Lassiter's dismay with Guster in tow. Vick stared at Henry, and for the first time Lassiter noticed that even without the bloody shirt in his hand, Spencer was smeared with blood. There was blood all over his formerly white t-shirt, and his hands and forearms were, well, red. Vick stared at all the blood for a moment, then turned towards Lassiter, asking the question foremost on her mind without voicing it. Lassiter shrugged. He had no idea if Spencer was going to survive this. In fact, he didn't even have an idea whether or not he was still alive as of this moment, and he most certainly wouldn't start speculating now.

"God, is that Shawn's blood?"

Guster had stormed into the room after Vick, and at the sight of the large amount of blood on the floor had stopped dead in his tracks, looking every bit as if he was about to either collapse or throw up. Vick turned around towards Guster, and when she saw that he was about to storm over towards the gurney she held him back by the arm.
"Not now, Mr. Guster. Let them get him to the hospital. And whatever you do, don't throw up on our crime scene!"

Lassiter was sure that she hadn't meant to sound that harsh, but judged from the look on her face, she was just as shocked about seeing the younger Spencer like this than the rest of them were. O'Hara, who had been silently staring at what the EMTs were doing for the past minutes, her face pale and drawn, took Gus by the arm.

"Come on Gus. Let's get you out to the car, then I'll drive you to the hospital."

Gus nodded numbly and allowed her to lead him out of the office. Vick turned towards Lassiter. "Carlton, I want you to go to the hospital as well. Keep me updated. Forensics will work the crime scene here, and I'll start questioning the Delgados for now."

Lassiter nodded and turned back to Henry just as the EMTs finished strapping Shawn to the gurney and started wheeling him towards the door.

"Anybody know his blood-type?", one of them called out to Lassiter and Henry. Lassiter looked at Henry, and without taking his eyes off his son Henry answered.

"B positive."

It was the first he had spoken since Lassiter had arrived, and the detective was shocked to hear the older man's voice sound as rough and hoarse as it did.

"Wait", Lassiter called and pulled Henry along behind the EMTs and the gurney. "He's going to ride with you to the hospital."

Without breaking stride, one of the EMTs shook his head. "Not this time, detective. We'll need all the room we can get in there if we want to bring this one to the hospital alive."

And then they were out he front door, and it was a matter of less than a minute to load Shawn into the back of the ambulance and take off with wailing sirens and flashing lights.

Totally stunned, Henry stood on the street outside the warehouse and stared at the spot where he had last seen his son, just before the EMT had closed the ambulance doors.

Lassiter drew a deep breath, ran a hand over his face, then reached for Henry's arm again.
"Come on Henry, I'll drive you to the hospital."

Henry nodded and followed the detective, still without saying a word.

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It was a blur. It felt as if he was drunk and couldn't really make sense of everything that was going on around him. He saw the images, but he couldn't make sense of them.

Carlton Lassiter. Henry had no idea where he had come from, or where Delgado had gone to. He didn't care, either. There were people crowding around Shawn, blocking Henry's view, and then Karen was there and Gus, but they weren't supposed to be here because nobody knew where they were and Shawn was bleeding to death and there was nothing Henry could do about it. But then they took Shawn away, and Henry couldn't let them do that but he wasn't able to form any words of protest, and before he knew what was happening Shawn had been driven away, and he was in the passenger seat of a car, Lassiter behind the wheel, and then the bright lights of the emergency room blinded him for a moment as they entered the hospital.

A nurse was hurrying towards him, asking him questions, her eyes anxious, but Henry didn't hear a word she was saying over the sound of his blood pounding in his own ears. He was looking for his son, he only wanted to see Shawn, but no matter where he looked, Shawn wasn't here. Lassiter said a few words to the nurse, who seemed to calm down a little and went away. Suddenly, Lassiter's hand was on his arm.

"Come on, let's go wash the blood off your hands."

A restroom, that was the next thing he was aware of, he was standing in a restroom, watching his son's blood flow down the drain as he washed it off his hands. This wasn't right. His son's blood wasn't supposed to be on his hands and arms, and much less was it supposed to flow gurgling down a drain like dirty dishwater. Shawn needed it, how could he let it flow down the drain like that?

And then he was in a chair, sitting down in a waiting room, it seemed. It was getting a little easier to hold on to reality now, not much, but at least a little easier. But still the foremost thing on his mind was the image of his son, lying lifelessly in front of him, blood flowing out his wound no matter how much Henry tried to stop it.

Gus was there, Henry noticed. His son's best friend was sitting in the chair next to Henry, silently staring at the wall ahead. Henry knew that Gus couldn't stand to look at him right now. Gus had always been particular about seeing blood, that hadn't changed in the past twenty years.

Henry struggled harder not to drift off right now. He needed to focus, needed to be ready for the doctor when he came out and told him that Shawn…told him what had happened to his son. He needed to focus.

Henry took a few deep breaths and tried to focus both, his eyes and his mind. It wasn't easy, it was so much easier to just sit there in a stupor and wait for the things to come, but he couldn't do that now. He owed it to Shawn to keep his head clear.

It was a monumental effort, and Henry didn't know how long it took, but after breathing deeply for a few long moments the fog around his mind lifted a little more. He looked around for the first time. Gus was no longer there, but Lassiter was sitting in the chair next to Henry.

"How long have we been here?", Henry asked. It was a stupid question, but if Lassiter thought so he didn't let it show.

"Forty minutes. He's still in surgery."

Henry nodded. Another thing that helped him hold on to reality a little more, knowing the time.

"Where is Gus?"

"Downstairs, giving blood."

Just three words, but they served to make Henry chuckle, despite everything. Lassiter looked at Henry as if he had gone mad.

"What's so funny about that?"

"Gus hates the sight of blood. Even his own. And his blood type doesn't match Shawn's."

Lassiter frowned. "How do you know?"

"He and Shawn have been friends since elementary school. I spent half my free time driving one of them or both to the hospital. The nurses in the ER offered me to stash a personal coffee cup here. I know Gus' medical record as well as my own son's."

The corner of Lassiter's mouth twitched, just a little. "Then maybe his donation will help somebody else. Somehow, word has gotten out about Spe…Shawn being shot, by now half the Department is lining up downstairs to give blood."

Henry looked up at Lassiter, astounded. He had seen that before, during his active days on the force. A cop was shot, or hurt otherwise, and next thing you knew every cop in the city turned up to donate blood. As Henry took his first good look at Lassiter ever since his arrival in the warehouse, he knew immediately just how word about Shawn's injuries had gotten out. And one didn't need to have Shawn's perceptive abilities to interpret Lassiter's slight paleness, and the half-empty plastic cup of juice he was holding, to know who had initiated the blood donations.

"Thank you, Carlton."

Lassiter waved him off. "I'm head detective, Henry. What kind of an example would I set otherwise? Besides, I'm a universal donor. It's no big deal."

To Henry it was, but he didn't say it out loud.

A small smile showed on Lassiter's face. "Besides, as much as your son is grating on my nerves, that doesn't give anybody but me the right to shoot him. Especially not before I have had some words with him about locking me in the Records Room."

"He did that?"

Lassiter shook his head. "Either that, or the broom somehow lodged itself in front of the door."

"Reversed gravity."

Lassiter frowned. "Pardon me?"

"He calls that reversed gravity. At least that's what he told me after I asked him how that rake ended up blocking the door to our garden shed when he was ten. Gus spent an entire afternoon in the dark, didn't talk to Shawn for an entire day afterwards."

He smiled slightly at the memory.

Lassiter only shook his head. "That's what I'll never understand."

"What?"

"Those two." He gestured around helplessly with his hands. "I mean, Guster is so…so normal. How can he be around your son everyday and not go crazy?"

"Gus is probably the only person on the entire face of the planet who really understands how Shawn's mind works."

"You don't?"

Henry looked at Lassiter with both eyebrows raised. "You really think I understand Shawn? No. I'm slowly getting there, at least I think so. But Gus simply knows what makes Shawn tick, I don't know how he does it. Maybe he's just grown up into Shawn's plane of thinking. He's the mediator between Shawn and the real world."

"Oh yes, I can see your son needing that."

"Yes. Sometimes I wished there had been someone to mediate between him and me."

Both men fell silent after that, staring at the clock on the opposite wall and waiting for news. Gus returned after another twenty minutes, looking pale and shaky, clutching his cup of juice and a chocolate cookie as if it were the only things that kept him from fainting.

He sat down on Henry's other side, and even attempted to smile at his friend's father as Henry squeezed his shoulder.

"Thanks for doing this, Gus."

Gus shrugged, acting as if there had been nothing to what he had just done. "It's all right, Mr. Spencer. I know it's not of much use for Shawn, but…it gave me the feeling that I could do something. I've been useless for the entire day, I was fed up with it."

"I wouldn't call pointing us in the right direction useless", Lassiter chimed in from Henry's other side.

"You did?", Henry asked Gus.

"I did?", Gus said to Lassiter.

"You were the one who made us look more closely into Ricky Delgado. Who knows if we had gotten that warrant solely on the phone call O'Leary made, without connecting the property. In any case, you saved us a lot of time, and from what I've seen, time was essential."

Gus didn't know what to say to that, and he moved around uncomfortably and crossed his arms in front of his chest. As his fingers brushed something in the inside pocked of his jacket, he seemed glad to direct the conversation into a different direction.

"Here, I've asked one of the nurses for those. I figured you might want to get rid of the t-shirt, you know, because of the…the blood."

He handed Henry the shirt belonging to a pair of scrubs. Henry took it, knowing fully well that seeing Shawn's blood smeared all over his t-shirt was bothering Gus the most.

"Thanks Gus."

He got up from his chair, surprised to realise that his legs were able to support him even though they felt like rubber. Then he shrugged out of the bloodied t-shirt and put on the shirt Gus had given him. For a moment, he looked helplessly at the t-shirt in his hands, then with a shake of his head threw it into a nearby trash bin. And somehow, even though he hadn't before paid any mind to the blood on his shirt, wearing something clean suddenly made a difference.

"Thanks", he said again as he sat back down, and the three men settled for the wait.

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Three hours were a long time. In three hours, one could drink more cups of horrible hospital coffee than was healthy. In three hours, three men could imagine all kinds of horrible scenarios, over and over again. If three men waited for three hours, did that mean that all in all they had waited for nine hours?

Henry couldn't tell. It certainly felt as if it had been longer than that. Neither of them had spoken much during that time. In regular intervals, Lassiter had excused himself to go and call Chief Vick. Gus had paced occasionally. Henry had simply sat there, scared that if he got up his legs might give out underneath him.

When Lassiter came back from his latest check-in call with Chief Vick, there was a slight grin on his face. Henry silently raised an eyebrow at him.

"I just checked in with the Chief. Delgado senior has been brought to St. Francis' Emergency Room after his lawyer insisted on it for over an hour. Good job, Henry, you broke his nose in three places."

Henry didn't smile. He didn't even remember the moment when he had struck. "The bastard had that one coming for twenty years. He got off easy."

Lassiter drew breath to answer, but at that moment the doors on the other end of the corridor opened and a middle-aged man in scrubs came out towards them. Henry's breath caught in his throat, and without consciously thinking about it he found himself getting up.

"You're here for Shawn Spencer?"

"How's my son doing?", Henry said while Lassiter and Gus merely nodded at the doctor's question.

"Mr. Spencer, I'm Stuart Wilkins, your son's surgeon. Why don't we sit down…"

"No."

Startled, the three other men stared at Henry. But he didn't care. He didn't want to sit down again, because sitting down meant that the doctor was about to break bad news to him. And he couldn't allow that.

"No", he repeated more lowly. "Just tell me how Shawn is doing. The no-bullshit approach."

Wilkins nodded. "All right. The no-bullshit summary is that your son is in critical condition. To be honest, I can't quite explain what thread he's holding onto, but for now he is. The bullet nicked his subclavian artery before it lodged itself in his shoulder blade, that's what caused most of the blood loss. He'd have bled out quickly if the bleeding hadn't been stemmed right away. That saved his life. The problem was that the bullet did some more damage than just hitting the artery. Some smaller blood vessels were damaged, and the blood from those was accumulating inside his body and putting pressure on his lung. We had to do an emergency incision to drain the blood, but I'm still worried about Shawn's respiration. We have him on the respirator right now, for as long as he's critical I don't want him to put any additional stress on his lungs. What really worries me is the blood loss. The surgery took so long because I had to make absolutely sure that all the damage from the bullet was repaired, and that possible sources of infection have been removed. Frankly, I'm convinced that Shawn wouldn't survive another surgery right now, so we had to make absolutely sure we got everything during the first one."

Henry nodded, numbly, while his brain was still struggling to sort through all the information.

"What's your prognosis?", he rasped out.

Wilkins sighed. "I can't make any promises at this time. If his lung isn't damaged any further than we could assess right now, if he starts breathing spontaneously without any problems when we take him off the ventilator, and if he doesn't catch an infection, he has a chance. As of yet I cannot make an estimation of the damage caused by the blood loss. We're watching his organ functions very closely. He had a circulation failure halfway through the surgery because his blood pressure was barely measurable anymore. So that's another thing we need to keep our eyes on. Listen Mr. Spencer, I hate that I cannot give you a clear answer to your questions, but fact is that the next twenty-four hours will be crucial. If Shawn gets through those without any further problems, I'll be able to tell you more."

Henry nodded. "I want to see him."

"He's in ICU, but you can go see him for a few minutes."

Henry shook his head. "You don't understand, doctor. A few hours ago I watched my son bleed nearly to death right in front of me. A few minutes won't do. I'll go see him, and I'm going to stay with him. There's no discussion about that."

Wilkins drew a deep breath, but something about the look in Henry's eyes stopped him from saying no. Finally, he sighed and nodded. "On the condition that you will leave your son's room immediately if a doctor or a nurse tells you to, I'll allow you to stay with him. But we can't have you standing in the way should Shawn's condition take a turn for the worse."

"It won't", Henry said with a confidence he didn't feel.

"All right. But just you, not all three of you. If you want to, you can go see him for a minute, but an ICU room isn't designed for receiving visitors."

Lassiter shook his head. "I need to get going. But I'm going to need the bullet first."

"Sure, I'll have it brought to you." He looked at Gus. "I can grant you a minute or two, not more. He needs rest now."

Gus nodded with a relieved sigh. "That's all I need."

"All right, if you'd follow me. Detective, I'll have somebody come down with the bullet."

Lassiter nodded his thanks, then turned towards Henry again. "I'll let the Chief know about Shawn. Call if…if anything changes."

Henry nodded. "Sure. Thank you, Carlton."

"Goodbye, Henry."

They left Lassiter waiting for the bullet and took the elevator one floor up to the ICU. Wilkins forced both Henry and Gus to put on sterile gowns before showing them into a small cubicle that was separated from the corridor by glass walls.

Henry had to stop a moment because suddenly his legs turned wobbly. It was hard to make out the bed amongst all the machinery piling up around it at first. Machinery which was right now all that was keeping his son alive. The heart monitor was beeping in a constant rhythm, accompanied by the sound of the respirator. Half a dozen monitors showed various readings of Shawn's bodily functions, but none of them held any meaning for Henry.

All he could look at was Shawn, who looked so small amongst all the machinery. Small and pale. And most disturbingly, still. Shawn was never really still, not even in sleep. He always shifted, turned or mumbled something. Seeing Shawn lie there like that was the most disturbing image Henry had ever seen.

Slowly, Henry walked over towards the one single chair standing beside the bed, sat down and picked up Shawn's hand. Eyes fixed on his son's face, trying not to notice the tube of the respirator sticking out of Shawn's mouth which just looked so wrong being there at all, Henry settled for the wait. He didn't even notice the nurse who came in after five minutes to usher Gus out again, and he barely heard Gus' words about coming back in the morning. He would stay here until Shawn woke up. There was no "if" Shawn woke up. Only until.