First of all, thanks to Trappercreekd, my Beta :D
Second - answers to people who sent messages:
- answer to the readers who want this to be longer, with more hospital chapters - not gonna happen, the next chapters are already written.
- answer to the readers who want this to be faster - see above :D
Sorry, people, this shit is too complicted already, and if i change anything, it will affect too much things in future chapters, and it will become one nasty mess of a fic. I do, however, enjoy talking to you, and your observations are more than useful - and I thank you for that.
I could go back and change Betsy to be young and pretty, but it would certainly ruin their dynamics - though I admit that I had no idea she'll grow into this... if I had, maybe I would reconsider that. Or not. I like her the way she is :D And, it's useful for Eliot to have somebody that's not a love interest. It gets boring when repeated.
Thank you all, people, you're really inspiring :D
Chapter 21.
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Nate was watching the security cameras while Hardison was out preparing Lucille for the night. Sophie and Parker were monitoring three very drunk, heavy built men who had been admitted into the ER in fifteen minutes intervals, all of them accompanied by a few friends who were now scattered all around while waiting to their friends to be examined.
The evening was getting darker, but it was way too early for drunken people to occupy the ER.
Hardison had programmed the cameras to send quality pictures to automatic facial recognition software, and all of the time, on two screens, the search results were displaying. They had about two hits per hour, and a loud ping would warn them if they had a match, but they caught nothing important or relevant to them.
He moved away from the workstation when Hardison returned, and the hacker sat at his place without a word. His shoulders were uncharacteristically slumped.
"Problems?" he asked.
"Nope." The short reply was not convincing, but Nate didn't press. Hardison had a lot of things to go through, and it would be the best to leave him alone to find some answers for himself.
He went into the small room to change, trying to find a dark shirt for the night, before he joined Sophie and Parker. They were facing another sleepless night, and at some point he would have to organize another round of a few sleeping hours for everybody.
When he returned, Hardison was still in the same position, elbows on the table, staring at the small squares of security feed. Yet, something was different. One of the squares was completely dark.
"Hardison?"
"Yeah?"
"You have one dead camera right in front of your nose."
The hacker slowly straightened up. "I've seen it. I can't do anything, it's not a software problem, it's broken. Hospital security is monitoring it like I do, they'll send someone to fix it."
"It's a probe," Parker said from the door. "They're coming."
"What?"
"This time they won't risk coming close to the cameras, they know security will react if they see anything similar to last night. This was a sniper. All the cameras are outside, monitoring the entrances, and they are visible from any high spot. A good shooter could hit it from hundreds of meters without a problem. They took out the first one, to see how long it will take for security to notice and fix it. They'll make their plan according to their response time. When they start, snipers will kill all the cameras, leaving us and security completely blind."
They both stared at her, and Nate had to ask himself who, precisely, was saying that.
"What?" she asked confused. "It's obvious. Normal people do it all the time – you throw bait to the guards to see how quickly they respond."
"Sure, all normal people do it on regular basis. Why are you here, by the way?"
"Hungry." She walked in, grabbed two slices of pizza from the boxes on the small table, smiled, and left with a cheerful wave.
Nate sighed and turned to Hardison. "So, should we think about how to deal with sniper fire, or we-"
"Nate!" Parker chirped from the hall. "You've got a visitor!"
They both looked at the bag full of weapons, but the face at the door was familiar. Betsy. She held a piece of pizza in her hand, and she was staring after Parker whose quick steps were heard from the corridor.
"It's a gesture of affection," Nate quickly explained, taking the squashed pizza from her. "What can I do for you?"
"I need to talk to you, alone." she glanced at Hardison who sighed and went to the bathroom. "Call me when you're done," he said closing the door after himself.
Nate showed her to a seat at the big table, and went to find some paper towels. When he returned, he found her looking at the camera with Eliot's room on it. It seemed he was sleeping.
"Do you have any children, Nate Ford?" Her question caught him unprepared, and he flinched, turning to her. She was studying him.
"No." His answer was too quick and sounded forced, and she raised her eyebrows.
"You see, I was not fooled by Eliot's silently accepting his fate; he was manipulating Patrick even while we took all the morphine from him, and drugged him." She continued after a moment's silence. "I've always treated patients like my children. It's the only way to give them the best care. You have to understand them, to know who they are, to give them what they need." She paused, just looking at him. "If you had children, you would know that there's no such thing as stopping them from doing what they're up to. They always find a way. Patrick is forgetting that, though he has a son – he is a cop and he can't look at his patients like his children. That's why he is wrong when he thinks he succeeded in stopping Eliot from leaving. He is in the cop mode, so he counts on the obstacles he put in front of him; if he was in the father mode, he would know it's useless. I don't know what your position is – without that I can't know what you are able to see. And do."
He thought about everything she said, knowing exactly what she was asking him. He just didn't know why. "If I wasn't aware that he is not completely disabled, I wouldn't monitor his every move," he said carefully.
She didn't respond, just looked at him, thinking, and Nate knew she was judging his lack of sincerity. He gave her the paper towels to wipe her hands, and waited. Funny, most of his interactions with other people lately consisted of waiting and watching, and letting them think. He couldn't say if she was pleased with her conclusions, but he couldn't give her anything more.
He certainly didn't expect her smile. "Maybe this speaks for itself." She pointed at something behind him. "So you don't have to." He turned around and looked at the hospital bed in the corner of the room. "But I have to know, exactly, how far you will go for him, before I tell you why I'm here."
How far? Women were supposed to be intuitive, and feel things, damn it, wasn't it obvious how far he'd go, how far he already… he stopped himself and took a slow breath. "All the way down, Betsy," he said seriously. "What is going on?"
"He is leaving tonight."
"Yes, it is possible," he said slowly. "Not exactly possible, because it is impossible, but I know him, and I know what he can do when he decides to do something. So I keep every option open. Yet, let's look at the situation objectively, shall we?" Nate showed her the monitor with Eliot laying with his eyes closed. "We keep it on all the time now. Since Bonnano left, all he does is rest, maybe even sleeping. When he is awake, he watches TV – we know that because when the TV is on, the camera is not functioning. You said that with a double dose he can't do anything, he is too weak and has triple vision, and all of the other symptoms you listed. He certainly can't walk in that condition," he said reasonably. "He doesn't have anything that would help him escape, and he is still on blood drainage. Not to mention a guard who will stop him."
"He is leaving tonight." She smiled. Calmly.
He observed her quiet certainty. "How?"
"I don't know. I only know that he is playing a complicated game, right now, at this moment, and he is dealing with everything we have done, one problem at a time."
Nate looked at the monitor and sleeping man again.
"The thing that you don't know is…" she hesitated a moment. "He has to be stopped, because he might die without the hospital and blood drainage. He takes it all too lightly, counting that he'll solve it as he goes along, but there's no such thing with such serious injuries – he is not in the SICU because of someone's caprice, he is there because he needs to be there. That's why I agreed with Patrick and approved the tasers; it would be very dangerous for him if they knocked him down, but much less so than leaving the hospital with dangerous internal bleeding. His chest tube is not there to drain the blood remaining from the shooting… it's there to collect the blood that's still leaks."
Nate said nothing. He calmly smiled, controlling the need to go to the hospital and just shoot that stupid son of the bitch, and then chain him to the wall. This… this was even worse than the one thing he had done in the warehouse, the only truly unforgivable thing for which he would pay dearly. He opened his mouth to ask something, but Betsy shook her head; she hadn't finished. He stood silently and clenched his teeth until he felt a muscle jumping in his jaw.
"I don't know what he is planning to do and how long it will take," Betsy continued. "Bleeding to death is the immediate danger. We supplemented it with the transfusions and kept it balanced, but when he leaves the clock will start ticking. It is a slow but steady bleeding, and we are not talking about days, but hours. He'll fall into shock because of the blood loss, and if he's alone, he'll die. The second problem with the lungs filling is breathing in general; he could survive long enough with that one lung collapsed, but the blood could obstruct all of the respiratory pathways and kill him in less than a minute, if it happens."
Nate remembered the helpless fear he felt while they waited for the results of the surgery, to see if he would make it through, and then he compared that feeling to the fear that was now gnawing at him with renewed strength… it took him a moment to realize that not only was it the same feeling, but also that it'd never left, just went duller at moments. "He knows all of that?" he quietly asked.
"At least part of it - though he knows much more than it's clever to know. There is a possibility his decisions are based on solid ground, but I wouldn't count on it. He's extremely stressed, and it's getting worse with every hour that passes. You trust him?"
"His judgment? Yes, I do, especially when it comes to deciding what he can do. He is a professional."
"Well, your professional is now very anxious, and not too reasonable. Keep that in mind. I helped him as much as I could, now it's up to you to take it over."
"We are expecting another Chilean attack when night comes, and we'll all be busy with that. I hope it won't take more than a couple of hours, much before the midnight. We'll try to involve the police as soon as we can. The best time to escape from everywhere is right before dawn, and we'll have enough time to concentrate on that and to stop him."
"He knows there'll be a second attack and he is expecting it too."
"What? How?"
"You tell me, you're his boss."
He rubbed his forehead. "If, somehow, he managed to leave, what he will need when we find him?"
"A hospital. As soon as possible."
"If it's not possible, or safe, or whatever?" If entire the Boston police force were searching for them, for who knows what reasons?
Without a word, she pulled a paper from her bag, a paper with a long list on it. Nate glanced at the medical terms and blinked. "This… I don't think we know…Can you-"
"I've already took a couple of days off… starting tomorrow."
"Great." He sighed. Tomorrow.
"I'll start working on that list and prepare it. Call me when you need me, and don't wait too long."
"Hardison!" Nate called and the hacker emerged from the bathroom. He gave him the paper. "Scan this, just in case."
Betsy looked at a young man. "What did you tell Eliot when you spoke earlier?" she asked him.
"Erm… nothing?" he evaded their eyes, bent over the scanner.
"Well, whatever it was you didn't tell him, it crushed him hard. I was watching him try to gather himself… a very unpleasant experience."
"I have no idea what you are talking about." Hardison gave her the paper with a smile.
"Of course you don't," she smiled back, then got up, turning to Nate again. "Put me on speed dial."
He nodded, catching the message, and watched her leave.
Then he leaned against the table, staring at the monitor. They had to concentrate all their strength on the incoming attack, for now. Thinking about ways to stop Eliot, and at the same time let the Chileans kill him, was just slightly the wrong order of things. It was still evening, not entirely dark, and they had time for everything. Yet, he thought about it again, and counting on Eliot to do the wisest thing in this situation, to wait until the night is almost over, might prove to be a mistake. He wouldn't escape at dawn, because it was obvious and the first choice, he'd start much earlier.
The hiding and deceiving part was over, Nate decided as worried anger twisted through his gut; the very first minute when they were sure the attack had been stopped, he was going into Eliot's room.
No. All of them were going into his room.
Hardison sat at the workstation and started typing at a furious speed, which was the always unspoken message that he couldn't be disturbed, but Nate had no time for that.
"So, what were you two talking about?" he asked conversationally.
"Just some unpleasant private things."
"Let me make this perfectly clear, Hardison…" his voice went into that dark and even tone that often made them all flinch. "In a situation like this, on a job like this, there's no such thing as private. I have to know everything, even things that you think are not important. What have you talked about?"
"I don't think it's clever…" Hardison hesitated, avoiding his eyes. "I thought it might be the best to just elide that, and not disturb the rest of you, but you're right, at least you should know. Though I think it will be wise to tell nothing to the girls." He pulled out his phone. "I recorded it, thank God, I don't think I would be able to repeat it. So, here it is."
Nate listened to the whole conversation from the beginning, while Hardison tried to occupy himself with checking emails and messages.
…"And now, Alec Hardison, the hacker of Leverage & Associates, get out of my life, will ya'?"
After that, there was only the sound of the dead line.
Realizations didn't hit people like a blow to the gut, Nate thought absentmindedly. Nope, they snuck in after all of the scouts they sent before them, and they just stood there, on the verge of sight, waiting patiently to be noticed. Some of them were more patient than others, but as far as he was concerned, all of them were nasty, sadistic bitches.
He hoisted himself to his feet, not paying attention to Hardison's worried stare, and just left the office, silently closing the door behind him. He passed the corridor and reached the stairs, but he didn't continue, he sat on the highest stair and pulled out his earbud.
Maybe, if Betsy wasn't so damn clear about all that blood stuff, he could continue to close his eyes to that stubborn, attacking realization, maybe he wouldn't let himself admit that he knew, for some time, that Eliot wasn't really expecting to survive this shit. Yes, Eliot was the professional. And yes, Nate trusted his judgments. But, he didn't want to trust this one.
It was clear why he got rid of Hardison, and of all of them, why he cut them off for good - or at least he thought he was doing that – to spare them from the outcome, to keep them away from the end of it, and to separate this Eliot from their Eliot.
Because, he wasn't thinking anymore, if he ever did, that he would make it out of this alive. Betsy was not quite right; she thought he knew something about his condition, but not exactly everything – she simply had been deceived. That bastard knew everything, knew all the odds, and decided what to do based on, or in spite of, all of the facts.
So, trust him on this, or not?
Nope, not this time. This time, Nate had to think Eliot was wrong in his assessment, because the alternative was simply not acceptable. They were all going to get through this alive.
Helpless fear. Nate almost smiled, studying his shaking hands, realizing how deep of an impact those three days had on his thoughts, and how fear perfidiously colored every single action. He was on the verge of going to Eliot and cuffing him to that bed by himself, and at the same time, going into his room and simply saying Please, don't do this. The only difference between those two actions would be that the first would only hasten his leaving, while second… well, the second might even be successful.
As soon as the threat of attack diminished, he would do it, he decided. He had to find a way to convince him to wait – not disable him, or stop him entirely, that would be the wrong move, condemned to failure - just make him realize that he could wait a little longer. Even a few hours would make a difference in this race between life and death; the race Nathan Ford intended to win.
They would not lose him.
He was not going to lose him.
He spent the next ten minutes just looking at the dark stairs, enjoying the silence and trying to get himself together. He had to return to Hardison, he knew the hacker was worried and probably half ready to start a search party. They needed the Mastermind, not a scared man who was balancing on the edge of different wrong decisions. The team had to see him as always – calm, busy and competent, that was the only way to keep them functioning. One wrong move and they would fall apart, one wrong step, and they would break, one by one.
He took a deep, long breath, and exhaled, getting rid of everything that Betsy had told him, returning himself to the present situation. Chileans, attack, snipers, papers. Hardison. Who needed him now.
It wasn't easy to make his steps quick and light when he entered the office, but he was satisfied with the result. "I tried to catch Betsy and ask her more about Eliot's reaction that she mentioned, but she was already gone," he said, pouring himself more coffee. "Anything new on the cameras?"
Hardison shook his head. Nate waited to see if Hardison would say something, but the hacker just looked at him, obviously not willing to say anything.
Nate sighed and smirked at him. "About that phone call…. You fell for that?" he asked. "Seriously?"
"No," Hardison said. "Yes. Not exactly. Maybe … perhaps a part of it, at the beginning, before I had a chance to think. Then I listened to it again, and noticed he was normal in the first half of it, no signs or indications of the second part. He just in one moment decided to play that, and started." He frowned, worried. "It was… a very convincing speech."
"Yes, because you have been hearing it all these past four years at least once a week. He just collected all the things he was bitching at us for, and served it all together. Have you asked yourself why he did it?"
"To make sure we don't 'come back to Boston', and get involved in his... doings?"
Nate gave him a long look. "Yes, of course, that's it," he finally said.
"And it also confirms Patrick's words about his not coming back, and cutting off everything he left behind, including us. Especially us," the hacker growled. "You know, Nate, I think I have the highest IQ of all of us. Stop treating me like a fool… and stop messing with my head, too. I know what you were doing the last time we spoke, and I know what he was doing, and just because I say nothing, it doesn't mean I'm not aware of it! Why I am such easy target for you two to practice on me, I don't know, but you have to stop it now."
"The extremely high level of IQ in this team, Hardison, is the cause of almost all of the fuck ups. I would trade a hundred of our IQs for some simple common sense. One gram per person, it would be enough to survive this shit. But, it is too much to expect, when even the one who was supposed to still have it, goes awry."
"Hell, what he has done now?" The anger in Hardison's voice was showing. "What did Betsy tell you?"
Nate listened to that anger. "Just that he is leaving the hospital tonight." No, no one needed to know the rest of it, at least not for now. Especially not Hardison, who was still caught in the disparity between rights and wrongs. He had to decide for himself, without any help from anybody. "As soon as we deal with the attack, I'm going to him, and this will end. Speaking of the attack…"
"Yep, I'm on it. We have one hour before complete dark. While you were speaking with Betsy, Sophie and Parker warned the security about those drunk guys and their friends, they are all being monitored closely by now. They're all decoys, we know that, and this time Villacorta won't do the same thing as last night, but we are aware of that too."
"Okay, make a map of all the cameras that can be destroyed by snipers, and see what exactly they are covering. If they want us blind, we'll find some other way to see through those blind spots. And do it now, so we can send it to security as well. Also, there's-"
"Nope, wait, I have the first reply. I've sent Eliot's papers to my friends-"
"Gnomes?"
"Orcs, Nate, Orcs. Azhar and Marghub sent me the translation of their letters, but they can't help me with the rest – apparently, the numbers are written in Hebrew. Azhar has already sent it to Gilit, she's working on the numbers. We should have a complete translation soon." Hardison handed him the printed papers with the partial results. "While I work on the cameras, you should play with this and see if you can come up something, though I doubt it's possible. There's not a single complete word in here."
"And, while you work on the cameras, don't take your eyes off from him, call me if anything suspicious happened. No, call me if anything happens, suspicious or not."
"Ok, I will… but later. He just turned on that damn TV again. He was sleeping just a second before!"
"No, he wasn't," Nate sighed.
.
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.
.
While the Hitter was busy with assessing the pain and dizziness, the Retrieval Specialist thought about the next steps of leaving the hospital, and the only thing Eliot had to do was keep them both occupied with that, so neither of them thought about any past conversations. Only future conversations were allowed. The team, all of them, had to be completely forgotten, or at least, sorted as one of the obstacles he would have to deal with on his way out.
He couldn't be one hundred percent sure that Betsy didn't change her mind and give the order to shoot him with a triple dose during the entire night, to keep him sleeping, so he pulled the thing Nate forgot to take from him out of the pillow. Bonnano had taken all his papers, but he left the pen on the cupboard. And the pen was mightier than the sword, like Betsy said. Though, with a sword handy…this night might be way more interesting. He carefully stood up and went one entire step away from the bed, as far as the heart monitoring clamps on his fingers let him, being the shortest of all the damn wires he was trapped by. He barely had enough room to reach his chart on the lower part of the bed.
That Google thing was useful, he had to admit. He almost thought he would tell that to Hardison one day, when he was feeling extremely generous, but then he remembered it wouldn't be possible. Not any more.
All he had to type in was "morphine antidote", and there it was: Naloxone, given to patients that suffered from an overdose. He spent a few minutes quickly scanning the entire chart, to see the pattern, then wrote down a new addition to the therapy, a mild dose. Even if they came with Betsy's new orders, the next shift would follow the therapy from the chart. It would even the effects and keep him awake and clear.
He thought of adding one more transfusion, but he couldn't wait that long, it took more than an hour to finish.
He called the store and confirmed his order, and the delivery was on its way, so he returned to bed so Frank wouldn't catch him standing. He was still on a short leash and it was pissing him off; the inability to walk and move was the worst thing imaginable for him. The Hitter was raging inside, though Retrieval Specialist was just annoyed. The third one was calm, and waiting. And calculating.
While he was waiting, he entertained himself by going through all the possible scenarios, and solutions to unexpected problems, checking how many of those he had covered and solved. For now, he had three reserve plans for his every step, but he had only one for the restraints. Google was very useful again; Patrick made a huge mistake by revealing his weapon without using it – he searched every manufacturer of medical bed restraints, though the medical restraints were hard to find. He also found all the legal issues, conditions and permissions of their use. Yes, they could avoid all of that with Betsy report he's dangerous for the staff but in one explanation of the restraining process he found an interesting detail; to avoid problems with IVs and circulation, the restraints had to have at least three centimeters of free space from the wrists, making it one and a half on both sides. And they were padded on the inside, with thick, soft material to avoid bruising. With those three centimeters, and the material that he could cut with his scalpel and give himself even more space to pull out his hand, the restraints were just a decoration.
When an unknown nurse came in to give him the morphine, Frank came in with her.
It was time to start the show, and Eliot clicked remote and turned on the TV, disabling the team from seeing what was going on.
"She asked me to stay close," Frank said, leaning at the door frame, and Eliot, for who knows what time, asked himself how Betsy managed to scare the nurses so much. Not even Frank, an elderly and experienced cop, was immune to it. He tried to look harmless and weak, and smiled at him.
"You know Patrick has told me to stun you if you try to leave the room?" Frank asked him, visibly assessing him, and the nurse almost jumped back.
"Yeah, you know him… good intentions and all that crap. It wasn't enough that he drugged me. By the way, you see that thing stuck into my ribs?" Frank tilted his head and nodded, following the tube to the Pleurevac. "And you still think I can reach the door?"
"Well, I've told him he's slightly overreacting…"
"Don't tell me it worked?"
"Nope," the cop smiled. The nurse finished giving him the morphine and left, doing her regular checks in less than thirty seconds, and Eliot smiled at the cop again, knowing that with that last dose, the countdown clock had just started.
If he had calculated the ETA right, his things were entering the hospital just now, so Frank could stay at the door freely. It would be even better if he was still there when the delivery came, it would be over much sooner.
He missed it by a few minutes, because just when he was trying to say something to keep Frank in conversation, two girls with boxes and balloons showed up at the door.
"Delivery for 304, Daniel Crane!" one of them chirped to Frank.
"Whoa, wait!" he stretched his arm in front of her, but the other one was in the room already, putting away boxes. "What delivery, and who authorized it?"
"How the hell can I know?" The girl handed him a paper. "It's from the lobby desk, the nurses said we can go. Call them and check."
Eliot used Frank's calling the lobby to sign the receipt, listening the confirmation of Doctor Sciortino's orders. Frank checked the girls' IDs, took the number of the store and checked there too, and he had to let them go in a less than two minutes.
Then he stared at the four square and five round boxes in different colors, with balloons attached to them.
"What the hell is this, Spencer?"
"I was going to ask you the same question."
"Patrick told me to check everything suspicious."
"By all means," Eliot stared at boxes and balloons, confused. "I don't like it either. No one is supposed to know I'm here, and I'm not expecting any presents. Do you have metal detector?"
"No, but I can go and borrow one from security. You think this might be-"
"A bomb, yes. Green and red balloons? Those are the colors of the Chilean flag."
Frank cursed under his breath.
"Wait, give me that note. Don't touch anything yet."
Frank carefully detached the big pink envelope that was hanging from one box, and handed it to him.
"Okay, I am fucked." Eliot whispered when he read it. "FUBAR fucked, precisely."
"Chileans?"
"No. Much worse," he slowly raised his head, with stricken eyes. "It's my mother."
Frank just blinked, obviously not sure if he should be suspicious or laugh.
"And I've told Doctor Sciortino not to contact any next of kin."
"So what's the big deal? She sent you some presents and card. It's nice."
"You don't get it," Eliot growled. "Last time I was at the hospital, she sent me a complete set of clothes, including the coat! 'Cause her son had to be decent and elegant in a fucking hospital! No, it's not funny! She is coming tomorrow, and yes, I am fucking escaping from here! Just try to stop me, just try! Fuck the Chileans, she'll be here for a week!" his voice held enough horror in it, and Frank was now grinning, not even trying to hide it. "Give me that square box with green balloon, will ya'? Shit, no, you open it, I can't."
He waited, hoping that the girl who took his order didn't mix up his wishes about arranging and decorating the presents, but he shouldn't have worried. Frank opened it and sneered, pulling out big pajamas, light blue, with dancing elephants holding daises.
"Mama knows best," he cooed.
"This will be a week to remember," Eliot whispered. "Please, throw all that in that corner, under the TV. If anything else comes, especially with balloons, please, burn it in the yard. Unless it's a Chilean bomb, that one you may pass."
"I might do that." Frank saluted and went out, still grinning.
When the door closed, Eliot sank deeper into the pillows. This was… not bad. He was getting quite good at this annoying grifting shit.
The balloons and boxes were beneath the TV, and he knew the camera was near it, so they couldn't see the presents.
He pulled the scalpel and syringe from the pillow, and stood up, slowly bending down. Jesus, he'd have to avoid that kind of movement, the room whirled and pain sliced him, all at the same time. But he managed to reach under the bed and take those two pieces of duct tape that he noticed this morning when he almost fell. He had no idea who left that duct tape under the bed, but those two stripes might save his life, now when all his dressings, gauze and tape were gone.
He had everything he needed at hand. Just one more phone call and he was out of here.
The TV had been turned on for a long time now, and he didn't want Nate to become restless not knowing what was happening in the room. If he sent someone to check, it would mess up everything, so he turned it off and prepared for another couple of minutes of just laying down and looking drugged.
It was getting darker.
.
.
.
.
They were still waiting for the numbers to add them to the letters and diagrams, and Hardison was making a map of every blind spot that could be important if the Chileans shot the security cameras, but Nate still pondered on the papers. All the things that Eliot wrote were divided into three, no, four parts, separated by lines under every one. The diagrams were on the end, he didn't count them in.
The fourth group was different than the others, the numbers and letters were in columns, and the entries were significantly shorter.
The first two had groups of ml, and mm letters. 'Ml' obviously standing for milliliters, and it was connected to the morphine dosage, but the 'mm', millimeters, confused him a long time until he figured it out.
"Hardison," he called the hacker. "Do you remember when you joked about him looking at the mirror and checking to see if he was still pretty?"
"Yeah, why?"
"He was checking something else. Find me the side-effects of morphine and print it."
It took less than a few minutes until Hardison fount it and printed it, and brought him the paper, peering into his papers. "What have you found?"
"Millimeters. He was checking the dilating of his pupils."
"What? Why the hell-"
"I don't know yet. But, when we get the numbers that go with that, I'm pretty sure that it will be a comparison of different amounts of morphine. It may not look important, but think… if you want, you can hide that you're drugged by simply not talking or moving, and sitting still. However, you can't hide that your pupils are the size of a needle point."
"I still can't see how that would help him to escape from the hospital."
"It's like a puzzle, Hardison. It gets easier when you put the first piece in the right place. But, without the numbers, we can't guess anything."
Hardison went back to his desk. "I'll call Gilit. We got the video again, he turned off the TV. It was about time. Do you want me to check what he was watching? I hope it's not some Alcatraz escape shit."
"No, no need for that." Nate rubbed his eyes, looking at Hardison's table. It was too far away from him to see the monitor, he saw only a blurred blue screen, after he spent so much time looking at the papers, so he stood up to come closer. And stopped in the middle of a step. Hardison noticed his abrupt stop and eyed him. "Something wrong?" he asked immediately.
Nate stared at the monitor, and said nothing. He slowly went closer, narrowing his eyes, until he was able to clearly see the room and the bed on the screen, then checked his position. He was nearly three meters from the table.
"Okay, you're scaring me now, officially."
"That son of a bitch," Nate whispered, shaking his head. "Hardison, have you ever had a concussion?"
"I was hit in the head, yes, but not a real concussion, I don't think. Why?"
"When you were hit, I bet you only wanted to lay in the dark, and keep all the noise and light to a minimum, right? So, can you tell me, why the man who is drugged with a double dose, and having nasty nausea and blurred, triple vision, like Betsy said, is watching TV? How he can watch TV?"
"Erm, maybe he just… listens?
"I've told you before, he won't stay down. Betsy said he's leaving tonight. This is not the time for listening to TV, it would just distract him. No, he is doing it on purpose, he is using that damn TV."
"And what are you trying to say?"
"Not only does he know about the camera, he also knows that the TV ruins the signal. That's why he keeps turning it on and off, hiding everything suspicious, and letting us see just the innocent and harmless half sleeping."
"No way! No fucking way! How?"
Nate glanced at the monitor once more, and went back to his papers. "We shall find out. You know what this means?"
"If he knows about the camera – and I still think it's impossible – then he knows it's ours. That we are here. That we… shit."
"Precisely."
"What now?" the hacker asked wearily.
"Nothing. Keep an eye on him and finish those blind spots in the security feed. If he does anything, call me. If he messes with the camera again, and it lasts longer than five minutes, we'll call Frank to check what he's doing. I'll go out as soon as Sophie and Parker talk with security about the blind spots. I know what Villacorta will do tonight, and we'll be prepared. Remember, first things first. We have to stop the assault, that's the priority right now."
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Eliot couldn't rest for long. Seven minutes had passed since the last dose, and he slowly sat up in the bed, deciding to leave the camera on. He knew that the camera's recording wasn't all the detailed and that they couldn't see what exactly he was doing with his phones and bandages. When he prepared the pieces of duct tape with the scalpel, dealing with the chest tube lasted no more than twenty seconds. It looked only like an adjustment of the bandages and some fixing. He also raised the pillows as if he was only trying to make himself comfortable. It was easy to hide the end of the now disconnected chest tube behind his back, and to pull the blanket a little higher to hide it.
The next step was the phone call, and after that, the last step. The moment he disconnected the heart monitoring clamps from his fingers, his readings would start howling a flat line in the nurse's control room, and he had to synchronize everything in less than a minute.
He prepared the phone, but before he started all that mess, he took a few seconds to asses all the effects of this double dose, and his condition in general.
His hand was shaking.
The objects that he watched were late, it seemed they lagged behind for a second and then tried to catch up by abruptly jumping in front of his eyes, dividing themselves into three blurred shapes. Focusing and clearing the image lasted almost three seconds.
Every quick move of the eyes sent waves of nausea over him, and controlling it took an immense effort. But it could be done.
While he was only standing, weakness was not an issue, but walking would put all his strength to the test, and he had no idea how it was going to work. Yet, it would do no good to dwell on things he couldn't change or prove for now.
His thinking was slow and jagged, he had to reconsider every thought and do double checks of everything, which would be deadly when he got in a situations that needed quick decisions and correct responses, but there were only four people who could notice that in his speech.
The pain was not unbearable when he was standing; he had already checked slow movements and if he coordinated it with shallow breathing, he would be able to do all the necessary, ordinary things that people had to do while leaving some place: opening doors, walking, stairs, elevators. Everything else had to wait, for now.
Step by step.
Those minutes were enough for his audience to calm down, but one second before he reached for the remote, the door opened after a knocking.
He cursed under his breath; he didn't need interruptions in this phase, but he quickly relaxed and smiled, turning to the door.
It was a good thing he had a smile ready, because he froze when the redheaded nurse entered. Finally entered his room, in the fucking last two minutes of his stay here. He didn't know if he should laugh, or be pissed, or be grateful for this coincidence. He settled on being grateful, for starters, and quickly scanned the room to see if there was something suspicious that she could notice, and pulled the blanket up few more centimeters, and broadened his smile.
He could consider himself lucky, after all this shit. It was nice a way to end his stay in the hospital. He knew the balloons summoned her, she came to check what was going on, and it was a pity he hadn't done it much sooner.
"How are you feeling, Mr. Crane?" she asked from a distance like all the other nurses did, but she wasn't as stiff as them, she was looking at him with interest. A somewhat strange sort of interest, not quite the one he would like to see.
"Not bad, thank you," especially after he managed to focus completely and clearly see how beautiful she was. "Though, I'm freezing," he remembered to add. "Pretty strange, considering the room temperature is constant all the time."
"Let's see what we can do about it," she went to the display to check the room temperature, giving him a nice chance to see her walking all the way across the room. It was a shame that she wore extremely oversized scrubs that covered her entire shape.
"You know, I've met a lot of nurses, and I dated even more of them, but I've never seen the one who can heal her patients just by entering their rooms. Until now."
"Dated? Do rapists date their victims, or you just call it that?"
"What?" he almost choked. "What rapists? Who-"
"Betsy told us you're a rapist, and that's why you're guarded. The other nurses were frightened, but I'm not so easy to scare." She smiled, watching him. "You look surprised."
He stared at her, stopping a few very inappropriate curses. "I'm not rapist. Christ. I'm a witness in a shooting. Go and ask Frank if you don't believe me." He shook his head, still stunned. That evil, evil- "I should have known she'd do something like that!"
"So, Betsy framed you? Why?"
"I can bet her son made her do it. We work together. I'm sure he is enjoying this now, knowing he chased all the pretty nurses away from me. I'm really glad you told me about that."
"And I'm glad you're just a victim of a prank. It would be such a shame if you were a rapist."
"So, is there any chance that you will actually spend some time in this room, and not just fifteen seconds, like all the other nurses?"
She frowned. And came few steps closer, thank God. "They were neglecting you?"
"All day. I'm completely alone, and bored." He thought he would have to try harder with smiles, but he instantly got one in return.
"We certainly can't let that happen again," she decidedly lowered the railings of the bed so she could sit, and she smiled again, scanning his bandages with quick looks, giving him enough time to adjust his blurred vision and focus his eyes on a much closer target.
Eliot stared at her for almost ten seconds, just admiring the perfection; bright blue eyes in a porcelain face, and long eyelashes, darker than her hair. The fiery red hair was pulled out of her face, and only a few locks had escaped. He should consider her as just another means to escape from here, but he found that concentrating on his leaving was harder than he thought. And it could be dangerous, for him.
"I'll check your IVs first, and then we shall find some way to entertain you, okay?"
"I have a better idea." Checking the IVs was out of question now, so he stopped her by taking her hand, gently, in one natural move, not raising any suspicion. "If I entertain you, you would come more often. I will tell you a story about a patient who waited for a faerie since the first time he saw her at his door."
She hesitated a second, but she didn't try to pull her hand away. "It will have a happy ending, right? It would be such a shame if it didn't." This smile was so brilliant that he had to blink, not to focus his eyes anymore, but his mind. Damn Kenzo Flower, that perfume was a killer for the concentration. He felt his heart skip a beat, literally; he heard one different beep from the monitor. This was so not good.
"Do you know why I told you I dated many nurses?" he whispered and she unwittingly leaned a little closer. "Because, sweetheart, I know a lot about them and their work. Remember the first time I saw you, when you entered while I was speaking with Bonnano? I know nurses never knock when they enter a patient's room. You did. I know they never let unannounced visitors stay, they throw them out mercilessly, no matter if he's a cop. You didn't. They never let the next shift to take care of the patient just because of a visit. You did. They have to fill a chart before they go home. You didn't." He watched her eyes getting wider, but he twisted her wrist while he was speaking, just enough for her arm to be immobilized. "And, finally, when a patient says he is freezing, the nurses don't check if the room is warm enough, they check his temperature, immediately."
She stared at him, and he pulled her closer, gently moving a lock of her hair from her cheek. "Now… you can reach, slowly, and hand me that gun or I can break your neck and take it myself. Which would be such a shame."
He gave her five seconds, watching the dozens of possible moves playing in her eyes, but at the end nothing was left. Her eyes were attentive and cold, like a snake that was waiting to attack, and he knew he had to watch his every move. But he smiled. This was his playground. Finally, a professional.
She knew there was nothing she could do. So she nodded.
"Thank you," he said politely, not releasing his grasp. "And now, a very important question. Do you know how to make origami, darling?"
His waiting for a car and a gun was not in vain, after all.