I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it
Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.
Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.
And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing
Woo over 30 reviews for my first eleven chapters...I'm glad, thank you to you all, if there's anything anyone wants to see here PM and I will see if I can get it in.
The vote is closed at 5-1, want to find out which way it went...better read on and find out. To the person who wanted the other outcomes, I will be writing at least one alt version, eventually, I may possibly even write versions that offer up both alternatives you wanted.
Thank you to Jediyauk for all the fabulous medicalese in the chapter. You still have a few days to vote while I write Chapter 13.
Chapter 12
Morgan couldn't even think, all he could do was pace, anxiety overwhelming him. Reid had left with the badly injured Eve, but Morgan was ashamed to think that all he had wanted to do was shake her awake and demand to know where they could have taken Garcia.
Hotch was trying to keep him calm, but all he could think of was his Baby Girl, taken away by strangers and being hurt, maybe even killed. It made him want to throw up, to punch something, to do something, anything.
Hotch was sitting in front of Garcia's computer, which had been knocked off the table in the fight, but was thankfully still working, in spite of a crack in the screen. Garcia would have been so angry about it if she'd been there. "We know Garcia was looking at places these women could have been held, the unit that Eve was held in were closed after the last murders." Hotch's brow furrowed as he moved through Garcia's unique and complex system. "There was a hotel, abandoned in the woods at the bottom of the mountain following the murders, when a touring company withdrew following the bad press in the town...we just need to find out exactly where."
-x-x-x-x-x-
Reid was sitting, waiting, he felt like he'd been waiting forever. Eve's eyes had opened in the ambulance and she'd looked at him, smiled and lifted her hand to him, the tips of her fingers brushing his face before her eyes rolled back in her head, heralding the beginning of a fit. Her body arched and shook as it battled to stay alive, the monitors showing a flatline.
"Eve?" Reid dropped her hand as the paramedic moved to start compressions.
"She's in cardiac arrest."
"What's our ETA?" The other paramedic asked.
"We're practically there... not even a minute," the driver shot back over his shoulder.
"Best tell them we have a code blue."
"Can you help her?"
The paramedic, that had spoken to the driver, looked at Reid. "We're trying. Once we get her to the hospital, they'll take care of her."
"What then?"
"They'll work to stabilise her before sending her up for surgery."
"She lost a lot of blood...and...we'll need to talk to her as soon as we can."
"She won't be doing any talking for a while."
"She told us something about the murders...we need to know...I need to know...is she going to die?"
The paramedic met his gaze. "I honestly can't say but she will have a far better chance once we get her in the hands of the docs. And as for the other thing... you'll just have to wait."
Reid shook his head, needing facts, figures and reality to cling to, not chances and hope. "What are her chances?"
"Ask the docs." The response was shot back, as the paramedic moved to the back of the rig as the driver announced that they were there.
Reid stepped back to let them unload Eve, his head whirring, if she knew where they were, they needed her to get Garcia back before the unsubs killed her...and he needed her...even if he couldn't quite understand why.
"What we got?" One of the doctors, an attending, asked.
"Female, 27, stab wounds to back and abdomen... two and two... lost a lot of blood on scene and went into cardiac arrest on route," the paramediac, that had been talking to Reid, reeled off.
"How long?"
"About a minute, maybe two."
The doctor nodded. "Ok, we've got it from here." As he spoke, a nurse took over breathing, while a resident started compressions. "Lets get her into Trauma and get some O-neg hooked up, and EKG."
"I...where can I wait?" Reid stuttered
"As long as you keep out of the way, you can wait just inside or outside the trauma room, if you want? Or someone can take you to the family room?" A nurse said softly.
"I'll wait outside...in the room..." Reid muttered. "I'm not her family."
"Ok. I'll get someone else to show you to it.. they need me in there," she replied, offering him a sympathetic look and then, after stopping to talk to another nurse, moved to go into the trauma room, the shouted orders, stats and machinery noises floating out into the corridor before become muted once more as the doors swung closed.
Reid shuffled from foot to foot, running his hands through his hair. Now what did he do? Did he wait, or go back, to where Eve's blood was soaking into the carpet. He stared down at his hands, covered in her blood, drying rusty.
"Come on honey... lets get you somewhere you can get cleaned up," the kindly voice of an older nurse said from his side, the same sympathetic look upon her face as had been present on her younger colleague.
"Is she going to die?"
"I don't know..." the nurse began.
Just then the doors to the trauma room opened again, as a surgeon rushed in after being paged down.
"...crap... V-Fib!" a voice from inside shouted.
"Paddles! Clear!"
The doors swung closed once more.
