Not wanting to see the end as it was coming, Shawn closed his eyes only opening them at the sound of another gunshot and a body dropping with a 'thud'. At that his head involuntarily jerked up, willing himself to see whether or not one of his friends had been a part of the carnage. He would have sighed in relief had the pain from the fresh gunshot wound in his side let him seeing the sight of his father standing over a now prone Duffy with a still smoking gun in his hands.
Instead he settled for grasping for the last embers of his almost faded consciousness. It was a task that was made significantly easier when he heard the gruff voice of Lassiter screaming Juliet's name. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father rush toward him, his gun discarded, but his attention was focused on where he now saw Lassiter kneeling next to a once again unconscious Juliet. Any other time he would have cursed Lassiter's stupidity for putting her in this position in the first place, although a small part of his brain would have to admit that it was really his fault, but his body was beginning to turn on him. If was not for the small hole in his now otherwise completely black field of vision that was still focusing on Juliet he would have just given in to the comforting, floating feeling in his mind and fallen into unconsciousness himself. His father, he noticed, had finally made it to his side and was apparently speaking to him, but he might as well have been speaking gibberish because Shawn was not listening.
As he watched the rare sight of Lassiter panicking over his partner, Shawn was fighting the urge not to panic himself as his vision suddenly blacked out. He did not fall into unconsciousness however, but found himself reduced to just listening to the sounds around him. His father was yelling at him, and he still could not understand what he was saying. He was shaking him, but he felt too weak to respond. After about five minutes he heard Lassiter yelling over to his father, a yell which was now accompanied by the all too familiar wail of an ambulance followed by the shrill sound of several squad cars.
Soon cold, unfamiliar hands were trailing all over his body. One found the gunshot wound at his side, and Shawn whimpered from the contact, but his eyes remained glued shut. Amidst the overwhelming pain in his side he felt the sharp sting of a needle in his right hand and the rush of air being forced into his lungs. The floating feeling that had been plaguing him since he fell returned with a vicious intensity, but it felt different this time. Finally being able to open his eyes just a crack, he realized that he was being lifted into a stretcher and pulled into the waiting ambulance. Being confident of two things, one: that he was in good hands and it was now safe to pass out, and two: that if he did not his dinner was bound to make reappearance he gave into that floating feeling.
When next he came around he noted that he must not have been out for that long based on the flurry of activity that still surrounded him coupled with the feeling of being hoisted on to a different bed. He wanted to open his eyes again, to yell at whoever was jostling him so harshly, but his eyes and mouth were not cooperating. His ears however, were now strangely, in perfect working order. The bed that he was in started moving. They, whoever 'they' were, were taking him into an OR.
Though his brain was working slower than normal courtesy of the cocktail of drugs in his system he understood enough to know that he going to have surgery. Not a minute later he heard the 'bang' of two double doors opening simultaneously. His bed stopped moving. He heard a strange ripping sound coming from his side, and the 'clink' of metal against metal. Then he noticed a new mask being put on his face this one emitting a fouler smelling air. He noted that he could liken the smell to bubblegum gone into overdrive before he drifted into unconsciousness once again.
His surgery was not even halfway over when Juliet was relocated to a regular hospital room to recuperate after her own surgery to set her leg which had been broken in two places. Other than that, physically she was fine. Save for a few scratches, the most annoying of which being on her forehead, she looked nothing like she had just survived a head-on collision. The agonizing pain that she had experienced at the crash site was nothing but a memory that the morphine drip at her side was driving away with every second.
When she reached her room she was surprised to find Lassiter and Gus already there. For one terrifying moment she wondered if the worst had happened. Then Gus spoke up.
"We don't know yet," he said, answering what he knew was her unspoken question.
"So then, why are you here?"
"Well, I can't speak for Lassiter, but Shawn once told me that the only way he cannot be there for you is if he knows that I am, so I figure I am doing him a better service by sitting here with you than I would be sitting in a waiting room," Gus said. "Besides, they'll tell us something when they know something," he said with a little smile.
"And I'm here because you're my partner, besides, Spencer will be fine," Lassiter muttered, in an obviously difficult attempt at being supportive.
She tried to answer, but the early onset of what she judged to be post-anesthesia sickness was upon her, making it difficult to get a single sentence out between the heaving and embarrassment. As embarrassing as the situation was, it was also a learning experience for Juliet, who learned the true quality of the men who sat with her as they smiled and held her hair back while she heaved everything in her stomach into a small basin. During the three hours that it took for the nausea to finally subside, she almost forgot what was on the line at that moment, until Gus's cell phone rang. Juliet only had to hear the tone of his voice to know he was talking to Henry, who had been the only one to actually wait Shawn's surgery out in the waiting room.