Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.
-M-
Angus MacGyver hated the ventilator.
Every time they got him anywhere near semi-consciousness, he fought it. Even if they set it to assistive mode, allowing the patient to choose to initiate a breath before the machine engaged. It didn't matter. The moment he became aware enough to control his lungs on any kind of scale, he resisted it tooth and nail.
They'd tried variable speeds, thinking the discomfort in his lung might give him a sensation of difficulty. They'd tried reducing the positive pressure, allowing the patient to use his own muscles as much as she was comfortable doing so. It didn't make any difference.
And that was a problem.
She scowled at his most recent images. "You are not well enough to wean off mechanical ventilation," she explained to the screen patiently. The swelling had gone down significantly; on day one they'd replaced what she called the 'shipping tube' with a soft, skin-like alternative that wouldn't permanently damage his windpipe and vocal chords. It was still down his throat instead of through it, they couldn't perform a tracheostomy since it would leave a permanent scar, and the US government frowned on cosmetically damaging its property.
Or in this case, cosmetically damaging it any more than it already was.
Still, even with some of the discomfort addressed, she had no doubt he could feel the endotracheal tube in there. Something alien.
"So what am I supposed to do with you," she wondered aloud. They needed him out of this heavy sedation to evaluate his brain, but he was too distressed by the tube, too combative. There was no way to bring him around fast enough without his panicked gasping damaging barely healed muscles and tissues.
And that problem was not going to go away. Not until he was alert enough to knock it off.
Time to figure out if the response was due to the tube, the lung, or fear. "Wanda, let's grease him up." They could temporarily numb his mouth and throat – and technically the lung, but it was a bad idea, that would definitely make it feel like it wasn't working. If it was the combination of tube and pain, she was screwed, but if they could just keep him calm until the worst of the sedatives got out of his system, at least she could see if he was capable of understanding what was happening to him.
The woman behind her gave a short laugh. "Rippin' off the bandaid, eh?"
"Well, we need to start some physical therapy ASAP, or his chest is going to become one big glob of scar tissue." Frankly some of that was probably unavoidable at this point. "If he wants to do that the hard way, I'll let him."
Her nurse, Wanda, clucked her tongue. "One Doctor Moan Special, comin' up."
Simone made a face, and moved onto the next image, studying his cervical vertebrae. "You know I hate that nickname. I sound like a porn star."
The African-American woman behind her snorted out a laugh. "I got news for yah, Mone. After we go in there and shut the door, that's kinda what it sounds like anyway."
The rest of his scans looked pretty decent. There was a little swelling between Th 4 and 5, but nothing she wouldn't expect after a knife was lodged there a couple weeks ago. "Yeah, well, healing hurts."
In the case of one Angus MacGyver, it didn't need to hurt nearly this much. "Give him something for his chest, too. Let's get rid of as much of the discomfort as we can, see if this panic response is psychosomatic."
"Ooo, goin' easy on this one?"
"He's young," Simone replied, backing out of the application and turning to find her nurse had already gathered most of what they needed on the patient cart. "I'll let someone else pop his cherry."
Wanda simply arched one platinum bleached-blonde eyebrow. "Mmm-hmm. You like the pretty ones, don't you."
To be honest, she didn't think this was MacGyver's first or even second visit to an intensive care unit. Two bullet wounds, surgical scars, what looked like a little shrapnel damage, a couple pretty well-healed burns, and plastic surgery to hide the scars ringing both his wrists. He'd look right at home in Hollywood, but Angus MacGyver was no stranger to someone bringing the hurt.
Which was another reason she was leaning towards a psychosomatic response. He'd gone down hard, in enemy hands. She'd be scared shitless too.
"You know I like brunettes," she replied distractedly, picking up a tablet and scrolling through his file. She'd already pared the electronic one down to just the important details, and she refreshed herself on a couple as she used a rabbit-slippered foot to hold the double door open for Wanda.
The woman barely even glanced at them as she pushed the cart through. "How many times you sent those poor things through the autoclave by now?"
Countless. "This pair's holding up pretty good, actually." Simone kicked up a foot and looked over her shoulder to see if the brand was written on the bottom, but it wasn't. They had to be cotton, to stand up to the temperatures inside a sterilizing autoclave, and some of the bright pink in their floppy ears had faded, but they were still way the hell more comfortable than her heels. "TJ found them, I think he said Walgreens?"
"After Easter special, I bet." Wanda's tone was wry. "Damn, that man finds all the best deals."
"I think he said he used to be a buyer for Crate and Barrel?" Simone led the way, padding towards Observation Five. "He also found that hideous tortured metal art piece hanging in the chapel."
She heard more than saw Wanda's lip curl. "Oh."
Simone Parsons led the way into the room, badging in, and Wanda flashed her badge as well, recording the entrance. She left the nurse to it, approaching the patient's bedside. He was still sedated, corneal reflex good, pupils symmetric and sluggish. Temp was just over a hundred, he couldn't seem to shake that lowgrade fever. He had decent muscle tone for a patient presenting with neurogenic shock, and she got his Adam's apple to twitch.
On his other side, Wanda went ahead and administered the stimulant and pain meds, scanning in each, and Simone applied the lidocaine through the port on the endotracheal tube. After that, she adjusted his ventilator to assistive, on a feather trigger. The slightest attempt at inhalation would result in a full breath.
On a whim, she snagged the patient privacy curtains, currently hanging by the head of his bed, and pulled them around the overhead track to his elbows. Enough to completely block his peripheral vision, so that the only thing in motion in his field of vision would be Wanda. Then she padded over to the stool, logged into the computer, and fired up the cameras.
The application instantly centered on his face, mapping his eyes, eyebrows, cheekbones, nostrils, mouth, and jaw. It would capture the slightest movements of his eyes, which was the entire point of this exercise.
"Come on, Sleeping Beauty," she murmured quietly. "Show me those baby blues."
Much like yesterday, his first sign of semi-consciousness was a slight tightening of the skin around his eyes. His next breath was a little unsteady, and each successive breath more so. The last couple of times they'd tried to be gentle, letting him come around gradually, but there was no getting him beyond the point of sucking on the vent so hard he stressed his pulmonary system beyond tolerance. He'd absolutely do that now, unless they could get him to a conscious enough state to calm the fuck down. Otherwise it was going to be paralytics and anti-anxiety meds, and that was not the way she wanted to measure this guy's cognitive state.
Hell, he was practically paralyzed now. The neurogenic shock meant he shouldn't be moving much below his shoulders.
His distress was now plain to hear, gasps that terminated before full breaths, rejection of the positive pressure. She watched his blood pressure climb, not alarmingly, but his heart rate had doubled. Simone studied his eyes carefully on the screen. No motion.
"Come on, handsome," Wanda crooned softly, on the other side of the curtain. "You're okay. Come towards me now."
A glance at the bed showed her Wanda was running a small, spiny rubber ball along the top of his left shoulder, where the nerves should be fully intact. Trying to distract him with a sensation other than his chest and his throat. Finally, she got a twitch of a closed eye, rolled to the left. His heart rate had surpassed 100 bpm.
Once he hit 140, they'd have to put him back under.
"Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?"
His skull canted slightly to the left, but he never stopped fighting the ventilator. The carbon dioxide in his blood gases had already dropped almost twenty percent. He was well on his way to hyperventilating.
And seeing as he was vented, and one of his lungs was worthless, that was a significant accomplishment. He really, really didn't like that ventilator.
"Open your eyes, handsome. That's it. Look at me."
His native language was English. Mother died when he was five. A female voice should resonate with him, no matter how badly his memories might be scrambled. And true to that profile, his eyelids fluttered, exposing rolling blue eyes.
Not fixated on Wanda.
"There you are, handsome!" she chirped, half an octave higher, but still coaxingly. "Can you look at me? Look at me, now. You're okay. You're safe. Look at me."
He didn't, not until she increased the pressure of the hard rubber massage ball on his shoulder. She gave him a bright smile. None of it made the slightest difference to his breathing pattern.
Still trying to hyperventilate. Damn it.
"Slow it down there, handsome," Wanda admonished him, still gentle. "You're okay, you can breathe just fine. Keep looking at me, okay? Listen to my voice. You're safe now. You're okay."
He didn't focus on any one point for more than a second or two, and his eyes didn't roll more than forty-five degrees in their orbit. He weakly clenched them shut, then sluggishly got them open again. Still not fixated on Wanda.
Simone frowned, then stood and approached his bed from the foot, on his right. She waved the tablet over him, well within his line of sight.
He didn't look towards her. Didn't respond to the motion at all.
Simone gave him a good five seconds to register her presence. He was consumed with the ventilator, he even twisted his head towards his right in an escape gesture, and his eyes fell across her without focusing.
"Sir, can you hear me?" she asked him, voice authoritative.
More feeble head-shaking. Blood pressure was continuing to climb.
"Specialist!" she bellowed without warning, clapping sharply, and finally got a delayed flinch. He turned in the direction of the sound, and his eyes seemed to crawl up her coat towards her face. But as he relaxed his neck, his head rolled back towards the middle of the pillow, and his focus drifted from her to the ceiling. He blinked, and for the first time, it seemed like a conscious choice.
"You're in a hospital," she told him, still harshly. "I need you to look at me. Look at me!"
He closed his eyes again, for such a long time that she thought he might be losing consciousness, but then he sucked down a full breath from the ventilator – almost deliberately – and opened his eyes. They were still glazed and rolling, but he did a passable job of focusing on her face.
Simone leaned away. His eyes tracked her, but haltingly.
"You're in a hospital. You were injured." She kept the same exact tone. "Blink twice if you understand me."
He stared at her for a long moment, and pulled in another full breath. Then he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, tears leaked from both. He refocused on her for another second, then turned his head, back towards Wanda. She gave him a kind smile, nodding encouragingly.
"Hi, handsome," she cooed. "You're safe here, okay? We're going to fix you right up."
He tried to swallow – the lidocaine and general state of his esophagus made that nearly impossible – and his next breath stuttered. He shifted his right shoulder.
Crap. He was trying to move, and when he figured out he couldn't –
There was no doubt in her mind, every response after that was panic. There was no regaining his attention, no calming him, and in the end she put him back under.
Wanda sighed, gently wiping his face. "Poor baby."
Simone couldn't help a snort, pulling back the bandage on his chest. "Poor baby almost perforated his own lung. Change the dressing, give him a few hours to recuperate. I want him on a six hour sleep cycle. Partial daylight, change up his lighting, but no dusk, no twilight. I don't think Sleeping Beauty here is ready for the dark."
Since she already had him on plenty of pain meds, Simone put his right shoulder and arm through a few gentle stretches while Wanda prepped the bandaging. He was definitely oozing, and the wound drain showed fresh blood, but he hadn't popped any stitches, and the seal over the lung was intact.
It was going to be damn hard on his lung, but they needed to get his brain stimulated. "You are going to fight me the whole fucking way, aren't you," she growled at her patient. "And burn out a damn ventilator while you're at it."
Once again sedated, he gave her no indication of resistance, breathing easily. His heart rate had come back down to a reasonable resting average, and his blood pressure was slowly coming down as well.
"Wanna see if he prefers Alec?" Wanda inquired, peeling off a blue latex glove.
Simone considered it. He'd responded better to authority than comfort. But given that whoever had done this to him was almost certain to be male, she doubted he'd find a masculine presence soothing.
"No. Give him three strikes. Let's see if he remembers you."
She grabbed the tablet back off his bed, then went back to the mobile computer, checking a few things before shutting it down. "You got Mannuel in ten."
"Yes ma'am," Wanda confirmed, cleaning up the last of the bandaging. "Strawberry smoothie day."
"Strawberry smoothie day," Simone agreed, checking her watch. Every third day was strawberry smoothie day for Mannuel, and he got his treat at two pm on the nose. He'd been with them almost a month, now, and routines were having a significantly positive impact on his outbursts.
Her other three patients were in therapy – water, group paint, and physical – and weren't expecting to see her for another two hours. She liked the routines as much as they did, which was why finding a man in a tan suit in her office was such a disagreeable surprise.
Simone padded over to her desk, not even bothering to greet him. "If this about the patient in Five, you know I don't have anything."
"Good afternoon, Dr. Parsons," Seth replied, annunciating everything the same way he might to a kindergarten class, and then he raised the pitch of his voice a little, and continued. "Good afternoon, boss. What can I do for you?"
She ignored the prompting, logging into the computer instead and pulling up the footage of MacGyver. "See, you're fully capable of carrying on the entire conversation by yourself."
Dr. Seth Collins heaved an exaggerated sigh. "The Phoenix Foundation would like an update."
So would she. "No appreciable change in condition. When there is, we'll let them know." She fast forwarded to the part when he finally opened his eyes, and she watched the telemetry closely. Exactly where he focused, and for how long.
On the other side of her desk, Seth shifted. "They're requesting limited access, Simone."
"So?" She paused the footage when he finally actually looked at Wanda, zooming in and getting a measurement on his pupil contraction. "Give them the standard proof of life and tell them it's going to be a little while. Who are these people, anyway? I'm getting the impression they think we're going to boil him in acid."
Her boss was quiet for a moment. "I'm going to grant the request."
And they wondered why she didn't like the politics. "Fine. If they need what's in his head so badly, they can get it out." She shot a glare at her superior over the stacks of papers. "He shouldn't have been sent here if all they wanted was an interrogation. I have other patients to treat."
Collins looked unruffled. "It's just a video feed, not physical patient access. I'll deny audio if that would make you feel better."
"This isn't about making me feel better," she retorted. "Who are these people? Who is this guy, and why'd you let him jump the line?"
The other doctor looked innocent. "Maybe if you actually read your patients' records, you'd have the answers to these questions."
She gave him the side-eye, and went back to her assessment. "What record, they're all covered in black marker. You know how I work, Seth, and you hired me anyway. We all make questionable decisions in our lives."
He grinned. "I did. Bunny slippers and all." He was quiet for a moment, and she'd almost actually started concentrating on the assessment again when he sighed, softly.
"He's a very valuable asset to the Phoenix Foundation, and that foundation is a very valuable organization to someone with a vested interest in the patient."
Vested interest.
Simone stared at Seth incredulously. "Are you fucking kidding me? We've got war heroes settling for second string because you let someone fast-track some - some senator's son?"
Collins raised an eyebrow. "You don't want to know anything about the politics, remember? And your five patient limit is self-inflicted. I'd be happy to add beds to your ward, just tell me how many."
She glowered at him. "You know damn well why I only take five patients at a time."
The other doctor spread his hands. "I know you feel like you can't give more than five patients one hundred percent, but you need to accept that even eighty percent of Simone Parsons is better than second string."
It sounded like a compliment – but it wasn't, and he hadn't meant it as one. "Right up until one of them needs one hundred percent and doesn't get it," she snapped in reply. "That's non-negotiable. It's not fair to them."
Collins shrugged. "Then I guess you better get him back on his feet ASAP, Dr. Parsons, so you can free up that bed for a patient who actually deserves you." He made a show of getting to his feet. "And having seen the non-redacted file, it may be beneficial to the patient if you knew he personally disposed of over five hundred explosive devices during only a few years of service as an EOD tech in the Armed Forces. He might be some senator's son, sure, but he earned his bed in this facility, and he earned your hundred percent."
Simone glared at him, then huffed. ". . . why is it, every time I lose my temper, you manage to make me sound like a giant asshole?"
"Because you're a giant asshole, Parsons," Seth told her plainly. "And you care a hell of a lot. Besides, that's why you decided to work for me. We all make questionable decisions in our lives."
She wadded up a piece of paper and threw it at him.
"No video until he's weaned from the ventilator."
"Video link's going up tomorrow, Simone," Collins replied, watching the crumpled piece of paper roll under the couch. "You know that's a HIPAA violation."
"Out. I have rounds in an hour."
The other doctor shook his head but did as instructed, and Simone slouched in her chair and sulked for a few moments, acknowledging the emotion and observing it until her body had finished expressing it. Once the urge to pout faded, Simone took a deep breath, then resumed her assessment.
"He's right," she told the image, watching MacGyver try and fail to focus. "We don't decide what we mean to other people." Like every other patient she'd ever treated, Angus had friends. Family. Loved ones. Roommates who were spies who were also his power of attorney who were probably behind the repeated attempts to get patient access.
And whoever the entitled asshole was who'd put him here, it was very clearly not the patient's decision. His hearing was intact, he recognized and classified sounds, but he wasn't tracking motion, wasn't able to focus. He was demonstrating extreme disorientation and dizziness. And fear. They weren't going to be able to get him calmed down, not for a while. Not until that disorientation faded. Assuming it could.
Hard way it was.
-M-
"Jack, this is serious."
He almost laughed. "It's like drawin' a black line with a black Sharpie onna black piece of paper. Anybody with clearance to read it won't care."
Matty's look was anything but amused. "I have clearance, Jack, and I care."
"Oh?" He gestured at the screen, where his Phoenix internal employee file was displayed – disciplinary actions and official letters of reprimand scattered among the promotions and commendations. His most recently earned suspension was right there at the top for all to see. "Really? That one line right there, excessive force, that trumps every other line? Insubordination? Failure to follow a direct order? And honestly, why are those two split out anyway," he added, actually confused. "Pretty sure that's the same thing-"
"You're not helping yourself right now."
"What do you want from me? An apology?" Jack threw himself onto one of the sofas and adjusted his sling, getting comfortable. Might as well enjoy this ass chewing more than he'd enjoyed the last two days of debriefing. "Because she ain't gettin' one."
Matty was standing near the front of the room, hands on her hips, which meant she legitimately did intend this to be a dressing down. "Jack, extenuating circumstances aside, shooting Iris was the wrong move. If Bozer hadn't stumbled his way to adding veteran centers to the search parameters, those hostages could have been moved and leveraged against us. She was one of the few people in that convoy we knew had their location –"
"And she was never gonna give it to us," he finished, shaking his head in disgust. "You don't pal around with those kinda guys for a few years and then get scared by some suit in an interrogation room. She'd'a held out for a good long time."
Matty cocked her head. "And you're trying to tell me that thought rattled through your empty skull before you pulled that trigger?" Her expression closed further when he started to open his mouth, and Jack decided silence was the better part of valor. Matty clearly agreed. "You and I both know you thought you were dying, and you wanted to protect Riley."
"I wanted to protect everyone," he snapped, shifting to the edge of the couch. "Clarice was bad news, Matty, and you an' I both know she was far from harmless."
"She was an asset that we should have taken in alive," she corrected with a growl. "You knew that."
"So, what? I'm not supposed to make the safety of my team my number one mission?" He stared at her, a little taken aback. "Cause I'm pretty sure that's why I work here –"
Matty barked out a laugh. "How many more disciplinary hearings do you think you are from forced retirement, Jack? That's what I'm trying to tell you! You went off book when there were over a hundred lives at risk! You were out of control!"
You should have pulled yourself from the field after we found Mac and Riley, she didn't say, but he heard it loud and clear. On the boat, when John had looked at him and told him he coulda gone on the bird with Mac, that was Matty, trying to be gentle.
But she could have pulled him herself, and she hadn't. Which meant –
Which meant his fuck-up was being pinned partially on her. Back to her judgement on the entire op. That new 'excessive force' disciplinary mark, next to a two week suspension, wasn't nothing, because it could be used to prove Matty shouldn't have been in the field any more than he should have been.
Jack exhaled explosively, then pinched the bridge of his nose. They were in the War Room, a formality after the type of hearing he'd literally just left, but he was reasonably sure Oversight could see what was happening in there, which meant he couldn't come right out and ask her. How much trouble she was in because of him.
"Matty," he tried, keeping his voice carefully tempered, "if it's ever a situation of lettin' the bad guys take out my team, or accomplishin' the objective, my primary mission's always protecting the team. I am the head of security of Phoenix, and my job in the field is literally to be a bodyguard."
"And your entire team was in the hospital," she shot back. "Not a one of them was in the field."
"You were in the field," he growled. "On what planet do you think I was gonna leave your safety up to some Dutchies and Krauts?"
Not that he'd been able to do a damn thing to prevent Aydin from getting his fuckin' paws on Matty. God, the colonel had almost taken every single one of 'em. Only Matty sidelining Bozer as early as she did saved him.
Her expression softened, as well, as the same thoughts undoubtedly ran through her head. "Jack . . . you should have wounded Iris, not killed her. I know you disagree, which is why the suspension stands. Riley's a big girl now. She can handle it."
"Oh, like Mac's handlin' Murdoc?" he shot back without thinking. "I'm just supposed to let everyone rack up deadly arch-nemesises now?"
"Arch-nemeses," Matty corrected drily. "And we both know Iris wouldn't have gotten far."
Two feet closer to Riley would have been two feet too many. Jack suddenly felt tired.
"Look. If I could go back, I'd'a done a lot of things differently," he admitted. "But that? That was the right move. She never woulda stopped, Matty. You didn't see her face. It was beyond personal for her."
Matty watched him for a moment. "If Mac had been there, would you have killed her?" she asked suddenly.
Jack blinked at her, and she raised an eyebrow. "You're the one who brought up Murdoc. Are you telling me that if Mac wasn't there to stop you, you would have killed him instead of arresting him?"
The flippant answer was almost out of his mouth before he stopped himself. Hell fucking yes he would have shot that psycho motherfucker between the eyes. For messing with his partner, for messing with Bozer, for everything that he'd done to Phoenix. But that wasn't what she was asking.
And the short answer was . . . "I don't know," he admitted, haltingly. Because in a way, she had a point. Mac's absolute certainty that nearly every situation could be solved without loss of life was so core to who he was, and the regret that you could see in his eyes every time he was forced to seriously injure someone, kill someone, every time he couldn't save someone –
Each and every one of those lives weighed on him. He remembered all of them. Jack wasn't wired quite the same way, not to that extent. He could make peace with most of the things that he'd done. Lives that he'd taken. Mac viewed each and every one of them a personal failure, on his part, to find the right solution in the time allotted.
And to see that regret in his partner's eyes, if it was Jack that was the one who'd made that mistake, pulled that trigger, ended that life when he didn't have to. The thought of disappointing Mac, betraying his trust like that made his gut churn.
"Yes you do," Matty corrected quietly.
Jack sighed, then rubbed his eyes again. "If Mac were there, we woulda had another option," he told her. "I don't always see 'em, and he does. An' if Murdoc ever does get me dead to rights, if I'm toast and Mac's still got a chance . . . I'd do the same damn thing, Matty. You know I would."
Even if his last act on Earth was to let his partner down like that, at least Mac would be alive to hate him for it.
"Mac was in limbo, I was maybe shot fulla holes . . . there's no question. Iris woulda gotten to Riley. None of us have the skills to protect Ri from someone like Ri. Maybe Mac, but . . . I can't do that. I know I can't. Even if it cost us the hostages, even if I knew it would cost us the hostages . . . I probably still woulda pulled that trigger." He looked over at his boss, apology heavy in his voice. "Because Riley's like Mac. She can see options I can't. As long as she's alive, she woulda found a way to fix it."
Matty was silent a long time. "You have a lot of faith in them."
He cracked a smile. "All of it." All the faith in the whole world.
They were better than he was. All he had to do was keep them alive, protect them, and everything else would be okay.
"They have that same faith in you," she told him, watching him intently. "And you can't be there to protect them if you can't toe this line. You can't do this again."
His smile grew, in lieu of the lump in his throat. "Back atcha, boss lady."
They'd come so close to losing her. Without Matty at the helm, her connections, her way of analyzing a situation and knowing exactly what to do – he didn't even want to think about it. He didn't want to leave them, any of them, but if he ever had to, his only comfort was that Matty would still be there to watch over them.
And he knew without asking, that if their roles had been reversed, Matty would have pulled that same trigger. She wasn't out in the field because Aydin had tried to kill her. She'd been out in the field because Aydin had tried to kill her agents. Taken Riley. Taken Mac. And she risked everything to actually be there, on the ground, so she could do literally everything in her power to get them out.
Matty blinked, the only indication that she knew what he meant. "Finish up your paperwork. Then I don't want to see you for two weeks. You can access the facility and use the gym, but you are not authorized for any ops, and your security clearance will be temporarily suspended."
Him using the gym was hilarious, given that his collarbone and ribs were going to take twice that long to heal, but Jack frowned anyway, because he knew that was what he was supposed to do. This was supposed to be a punishment, not time off for recuperation. "What about visiting Mac?"
Matty returned his frown. "I don't have traction on that yet. The Drs, Talbot are going to get a video feed to Mac's treatment room for the purposes of planning his long-term rehabilitation, but the road trip's going to have to wait."
Much as he didn't want to park it in Medical for two weeks, technically that was part of the facility he still had access to. Which meant Matty wasn't really angry with him. "How long before you do get traction?" When Mac went under, he was alone. Hurt. Scared. Jack didn't think for a second that he was gonna hurt anyone when he came around, but if he reacted like he did the last time they'd pulled him away from Aydin – if he was afraid he was still with the colonel, that shit might not be real –
The idea of him bailing into an unfamiliar city didn't sit well. Not at all. Nor did Oversight's probable response to a second MacGyver walkabout. Not to mention he was good and injured this time around. If he didn't see any familiar faces, there was no telling what he'd do.
"I don't know, Jack," she admitted gently. "But I do know that right now he's in no condition to escape, and that he's safe." She'd said it like it was supposed to be reassuring, but then took a deep breath, and put her professional face back on as if it had never faltered. "I'll keep working on it. Now if you'll excuse me."
-M-
"Resume debrief. August 17th, 2018, 1300 hours. Agent Bozer, Wilt. Concerning Operation D364-02."
Bozer scanned the row of five people across from him, trying his best to look calm and confident. He was fairly sure the thin lady hated everyone, even the other people on the committee, and he was never going to win her over. The chairman was fairly ambivalent. Matty was doing a Emmy-worthy performance of a sphinx. The only African-American on the panel seemed cool, and hadn't thrown him any hardballs, and the last guy, near as Boze could tell, hadn't actually asked anything.
He didn't move a whole lot, either. He reminded Bozer weirdly of an accountant.
"Wilt, in a previous session, you testified that you did not see or hear any evidence that any of Colonel Aydin's Bordo Berelilers were on the property or in the home owned by Angus MacGyver, in which you are a tenant."
Wilt worked through it, trying to find the trick, and when it seemed pretty straightforward, he nodded. "That's correct."
"So you don't recall seeing anything unusual in the days leading up to Agent MacGyver's trip to Amsterdam?"
He shook his head at the chairman. "No sir. Mac was his usual self, right up until the morning he left. I never heard him leave the house, and I didn't see him before he and Jack left on their flight."
"Is that normal behavior?" the man asked, his voice ever so slightly curious.
Wilt thought about it. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, sometime we carpool, sometimes we don't, sometimes I'm doing work for other ops in the lab, sometimes he's working on a project . . . it just depends who's got what going where."
He'd tried to set a more casual air in his debriefs, just because the formality made him uncomfortable, and in two days – this was now just after lunch on day three – not a one of them dropped their stuffy attitudes, not once.
And in this case, it bounced off the chairman like oil on Teflon. "You stated that you believe he had been approached by Kadir Hakan or one of his men that previous evening. If that were the case, and he knew the danger he was about to face, why do you think he didn't say goodbye?"
Bozer blinked, completely nonplussed. "Uhhh . . . probably because they'd hear him." It was the first thought that popped into his head. "I mean, we're kind of casual about that whole thing. He's gone on plenty of missions with just a, like, later, you know?"
"But this wasn't just any mission," the thin, unpleasant woman observed. "You claim he knew how much danger he was in, and that he might not survive. He didn't make a single attempt to communicate with you, warn you, or solicit your help?"
No. And if she knew Mac at all, she would have known the answer to her own question. "We had dinner the night before on the patio. That's like, our thing. It woulda been weird if he'd said anything else. I think he mighta tried, if he thought he could tip me off in a way that wouldn't be found out, but honestly, I don't think he wanted to risk it."
The unpleasant woman spread her hands. "You live with him, Agent Bozer, and as we have heard, he is extremely gifted with improvising solutions in nearly impossible situations. There was not a single thing he could have left you, some subtle signal, that would have indicated to you that he had been compromised?"
Probably, but it likely hadn't been worth the risk. If Jack was right, and Maroon Berets were actually in the house that night, it didn't take a genius to figure out he'd been in the crosshairs, and that Mac had been warned specifically not to tip him off. "No, but we are definitely gonna come up with one after this." Once Mac was back on his feet and they'd broken him out of Mayo Clinic Gitmo.
"So you believe his silence was to protect you."
"I know it was," Bozer answered immediately. No question about it.
"And he never attempted to send you a communication after he left US soil?"
Wilt shook his head. Not so much as a text. But since his phone had been bugged, that made sense.
"And you're sure about that?" the chairman pressed, fixing him with a penetrating gaze.
Bozer blinked at the man, then glanced away and really thought about it. "Yeah. I sent him a text about Myrrh getting enacted, but that was just to keep his cover. He didn't reply to it, I guess he was at the courthouse by then."
"And you received no communications, by phone, text, email, or any other method, that could have been from Agent MacGyver, or passed through a third party from Agent MacGyver, between his flight to Amsterdam and the recovery of the hostages?"
Between the flight and the recovery of hostages. As if Mac being stabbed and left to die didn't factor into things As if he could have sent a text from his hospital bed in a coma.
Well, if anyone could –
"No," Bozer confirmed. "No messages." Except the one he was afraid might have been sent from beyond the grave.
And the unpleasant woman seemed to be able to read that on his face, because she pounced. "You told us that you were having a conversation with Agent Davis when you thought of the WVF centers. What brought up that topic?"
Bozer stared at her for a minute, then glanced surreptitiously at Matty. Her face was a mask of barely concealed boredom. She gave him nothing.
"Magic," he said quietly. "Magic brought up that topic." Most of the panel perked up a little, staring not at their papers but at him, and Bozer closed his eyes, remembering the conversation. "We were talking about how . . . it was impossible to make people just disappear. I was tellin' Riley that Mac had had this David Copperfield phase in school, and he bet our physics professor he could make him disappear. Then I was tellin' her how he used that same trick later in life . . . an' a story I'd been told about Mac and one of his grandfather's buddies from World War Two popped into my head." Bozer opened his eyes to find them all listening raptly– including Matty. He smiled a little.
"That story happened at an American Legion hall. After I told it to Riley, I just started wonderin' if there were that many World War Two vets left alive, and it occurred to me that every soldier would know where an American Legion hall was, which meant if Aydin's guys had been sittin' around brainstorming where to stick a bunch of old people, well, a WVF center made sense."
The quiet accountant was the first one to recover. "So it just happened organically, that you suddenly realized where the hostages were being held, and at no time were you given the idea through other means?"
Bozer was one hundred percent sure 'the ghost of Mac told me' was not going to fly. "Oh, y'mean did my comatose best friend tip me off while he was basically braindead? He didn't, if that's what you were wondering."
It came together much slower than it should have, and Bozer frowned, more at himself than them. "Mac wasn't working with the colonel, and he didn't send me some kinda pre-recorded message to get the hostages out. We'd already been lookin' for 'em for a long time, and even if I hadn't told Riley that story, I'm sure someone else would have figured it out."
At least, he hoped like hell someone would have. The passengers had actually had quite a bit of food left, but the news of Aydin being killed would have filtered to those four Turks guarding them sooner rather than later. It might have been harder to pick up the trail, but Bozer was confident they would have eventually been found.
Maybe just not all of them, and maybe just not alive. "Besides, all I had was the idea. Agent Visser was the one who was able to look up the statuses of those WVF halls, and it was Agent Morgan who was able to confirm a truck like the one at the convoy had been in the neighborhood. I didn't find 'em. We did it as a team."
If the panel approved of his sharing the success, they gave him no indication. However, they did drop the topic. Which was good, because it was fucking stupid. Of course Mac wasn't working with the colonel. Maybe he knew where the hostages were, but Riley said Mac had thought they might still even been on the boat, so if he knew, he'd learned it right before he'd been silenced.
The chairman flipped through a few pages. "Prior to your flight to Amsterdam, you stated that you were summoned to Director Webber's house the evening she was attacked. Up until that point, did you have any idea that anything had happened?"
That was also something he could answer honestly. "No. I was workin' on some prosthetics for an op, I packed 'em up and sent 'em with the agents, went home, made dinner, and crashed. Didn't see or hear anything until I got that phone call."
All and all, considering the gravity of the situation, the call itself should have weirded him out more than it had. And damned if that skinny woman didn't pick up on that too. "Had you previously been summoned to Director Webber's residence?"
He almost shook his head, but that wasn't true. "Actually, uh, last year's Christmas party. I think that was the first time I'd been there. But we ended up in a van with blacked out windows, so I didn't actually know what neighborhood it was in." There had been plenty of distractions in the van, in the form of libations and Dirty Santa games, so he hadn't even tried to count the turns and stops.
"And you weren't alarmed, to be summoned there at that time of the evening?"
Bozer fixed her with a look. "Listen, no offense, but I have gotten way weirder phone calls asking for way weirder stuff than 'get to this address and bring your murder scene kit with you'."
The thin woman raised an even thinner eyebrow. "During your work with the Phoenix Foundation?"
That was probably not something Matty wanted him to discuss with a panel of very serious people. "I live with MacGyver. If he's not asking me for random objects at crazy times of the night, it means he's probably got a fever or somethin'."
The panel decided to let that one go. "You stated that you were asked to stage the assassination of Director Webber. Did you have much interaction with her?"
He knew – he knew – that he'd already answered that question before, and Bozer tried very hard to remember what he'd said. "Well, yeah, when I put makeup on her. When I was prepping the actual room, she was upstairs."
"And why did you think you had personally been summoned to do this work? Wouldn't it have been faster to do electronically?"
Bozer felt a broad grin split his face. "If they'd'a done it electronically, the intelligence organizations would have been able to tell the images had been tampered with. Old school gets you a way better result. The only thing I had to be careful of was that the makeup was HD quality, because the resolution of the images would have shown any imperfection."
"So you believed, at the time, that your specific skill set was needed, and not that Director Webber was intentionally arranging for your protection." The unpleasant woman seemed extremely unimpressed.
It was hard not to bristle, knowing that every single one of those people – Matty excluded – thought that what he did was simple. Like he just slapped a beauty makeup on her, instead of layering the airbrush paint to give her skin a true translucent pallor. Not that he'd had to try very hard – she'd been seriously pale. "Yes, I did," was all he said.
"And while you were applying this makeup, did you notice any real injuries the director might have sustained?"
Also something he had previously tiptoed around. ". . . honestly, at the time, I was still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that four guys had just tried to kill my boss, that Mac had been compromised, and that Riley was missin'. Outside of the work, I wasn't really paying much attention to anything else."
"You didn't notice anything out of the ordinary?" Even the suit seemed skeptical, and Wilt looked right at him.
"Everything was out of the ordinary. There was a hole in the wall from a grenade. An agent had just died outside in the front yard. There were two dead assassins gettin' wheeled out. It's not like the house was quiet. People were everywhere, and I was just tryin' to do what I'd been asked to do, as fast as I could. Ma- Director Webber was quieter than usual, sure, but I figured she was tryin' to figure out our next move, and considering she'd just gotten shot at and blown up, I just wanted to do what she needed me to do and get outta the way."
He seemed to accept that. "Were you permitted to leave the premises before joining the director on her flight?"
Bozer shook his head. "No. I helped the other agents clean up a little, then Agent Carter took us both back to the Phoenix Foundation. I barely had time to grab my go-bag and kit before we took off."
Too late he realized that he wouldn't have needed to bring his full makeup kit if the director hadn't already been injured enough to need concealer, and Bozer hoped like hell they'd let it go. After all, every agent has a kit, right, their gun and tools and shit?
And he hadn't even thought of bringing his gun. It was Matty that had had the foresight to pack a firearm for him, and a vest. He'd truly been running on adrenaline and fear. Fear for Matty, sure, but mostly fear for Mac and Riley. It hadn't occurred to him that Matty had scooped him up to keep him safe until days later. All he'd been worried about was getting there and rescuing them.
"While you were en route to Amsterdam, you took a videoconference with Director Samantha Bosch of the State Department." This was a statement, not a question, so Bozer didn't do anything at all. The chairman folded his hands on the conference room table. "Why did the director ask you to take that call?"
And that was most definitely a trap. Because she hadn't. Because when Director Bosch had called, Matty was unconscious from the roofie Agent Keung had given her.
And despite memorizing Matty's debrief dossier from cover to cover, Bozer hadn't found any specific place that she'd admitted that she was more than bruised from the attack at her home. She'd never admitted to taking hydrocodone or any other pharmaceutical that may have impaired her judgement. She hadn't admitted to the oxygen, the surgery, or anything else Patience had given her on the plane – or after. She'd insinuated all her injuries happened in the fight with the colonel and subsequent fall, even though she'd never explicitly stated that.
Now, what she might have said that wasn't written – he was just taking a wild guess. And he knew that if he so much as flicked his eyes her way, that would be the same as admitted she'd lied to them.
This was it. He had to decide. Lie, or tell the truth.
Wilt did his level best not to fidget. "She . . . uh, she didn't exactly . . . ask me to."
The skinny woman drew herself up. "What do you mean? Where was the director?"
Way to not be suspicious, he groaned inwardly. The cat was out of the bag, now. "The director was . . . I think she was asleep." The suit glanced over at Matty, and Wilt focused on the only panel member that he thought kinda liked him, the other black dude. "Okay, she was asleep. And I didn't want to wake her up."
His only friend shrugged at him. "Didn't you think a call with the State Department was important enough to wake her?"
"No," Bozer said honestly. "The last two hadn't been. The director was askin' for an update I knew we didn't have. So I told her that."
Sort of. That and a few other things. He cringed inwardly as he realized it was fully possible that call had been recorded, and the panel had seen it. They might have already talked to Director Bosch, as well, which meant they knew he wasn't her favorite person at the moment.
"You are a junior agent with limited experience." And that was being kind. "Given the serious nature of the operation, don't you think you should have let Director Webber make that decision?"
Bozer mutely shook his head.
"Was there some other reason you didn't want to disturb the director?"
Like, because she was drugged and bleeding a few seats over? The guy was practically begging him to tell the truth. They had to know.
They had to know he was lying.
Bozer couldn't help a glance at Matty, and she gave him absolutely nothing. Just let him hang in the breeze.
She hadn't given him any instructions, hadn't even told him if she knew Riley had passed him her debrief summary. Honestly, Matty hadn't said more than three words to him since he got back after delivering Mac. Maybe that was on purpose. To make sure he knew this was his decision. His and his alone.
Well, Gloria Steinem always said the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
Wilt leaned forward, and clasped his hands on the table. "Any of you ever been blown up?"
He gave the panel a second to respond, and predictably, they didn't. They let him dig his own grave.
"I have. Not with the Phoenix. I don't think," he added quickly, trying to remember if that was true. It probably wasn't, but it didn't matter at this point, he was going to jail. "Just – like you said, me and Mac grew up together. Small town, nothin' to do Friday nights . . . anyway, I know what it's like to be near something that goes kaboom. Like, me and Mac never got hospitalized, it was never anything that'd get you out of school the next day. But it hurts. You're sore. You got a headache. An' she didn't say anything about it-" and that part was true, "- but I figured she needed the sleep."
His only friend on the panel blinked at him. "Even if she didn't explicitly say anything, did the director seem uncomfortable? Did you have some other reason to question her physical condition or judgement?"
Yes. She'd been very uncomfortable. And she'd had a damn good reason. "She was gettin' pretty crabby," Wilt hedged, making it look like he didn't want to say it out loud. Which he didn't. "An' I don't know if you've had the pleasure of gettin' asked the same question by Director Bosch forty times in an hour, but I thought, given the circumstances, that it would be better if I handled the call."
And that was the truth. Under the circumstances, it was definitely better that he'd taken that call.
The chairman studied him solemnly, and Wilt forced himself to sit absolutely still. This was it. The next words out of that guy's mouth were gonna be 'you're under arrest for treason'.
"Did you field any other calls or communications intended for the director during the operation?"
Wilt blinked. "No, I . . . I mean, emails from the team working the op, but she was only asleep a couple hours. I . . . I don't remember anything else specific."
"And you are aware that both Director Webber and Director Bosch have far higher security clearance than you do?"
Bozer nodded, and didn't say a word.
"Did you at any time respond to any of those communications using Director Webber's phone or computer?"
Wilt shook his head emphatically. "No sir."
Oh shit. Anything he did while Matty was under could look like he was intentionally impersonating her. And if he did see something he shouldn't have, that was classified, and she hadn't made the decision to read him in –
Then he was also going to jail.
He was going to jail a lot. For a long time. Maybe ever.
"Are you certain that any communications you may have sent during that time were clearly from you, and could not have been construed to have come from Director Webber herself, Agent Bozer?"
He thought about his answer for a long time. Lie, or tell the truth.
In this case, the truth would probably ingratiate him to them. Even if it got him ten to life. "No. I'm not one hundred percent sure," he admitted hesitantly. "I'd have to go back and look."
"That audit is already in process," the extremely thin woman assured him, and Bozer tried not to cringe.
"Is there anything else you would like to add to the record at this time?"
Yes. Please don't send me to prison.
This was literally his last possible opportunity to come clean. Jack had flat out told them, don't omit important shit. He'd gotten bent over a barrel the last time he'd left something out, and that something was relatively small, just one thing Major Oguzhan had said to him. This was major. This was whether or not the director should have been directing the op, or should have been in the hospital.
. . . and if she had been, what might have happened instead.
The real question here was, did he want Matty to remain the director. And the answer was unequivocally yes. Not because he liked her, and not because he was afraid for himself, but because she had made the right plays, and called in the right favors. It was the right decision for her to remain in charge of the op. Even if it wasn't the decision policy would have dictated.
Bozer shook his head. "That covers it."
The chairman gave him a good five seconds to change his mind, then finally gusted out a metered breath. "You are dismissed, Agent Bozer. If the rest of the panel would please remain."
. . . that had never happened before.
Wilt made a production of collecting his things – a blazer, a pen, and a blank notepad he wasn't even sure what he was supposed to have used it for - and dragged his feet leaving the room, but they didn't say a word. Matty's face was just as impassive as everyone else's, and Bozer gave them an awkward nod, then pulled the conference room door closed behind him.
-M-
Several of you have asked me if James is going to pop up in this story, and because we didn't know about James until after I had finished the first story, in my head there's an Oversight committee that actually answers to Oversight the man, and in this story universe, the only one who knows that is Matty. I insinuated James was the one Matty had been on the phone with, right before she said goodbye to Mac the day they unplugged him. But for anyone wondering who it was that insisted Mac be treated at this facility – in my mind, that absolutely is James MacGyver.
I have no plans to reveal that in this story arc.
So we finally got to see Mac! He came around, but it didn't seem like he was very happy about it. His doctor learned a thing or two about him, and we learned a thing or two about her. Jack's debrief is done and he's been suspended for killing Liris – and he tells Matty that he would absolutely do it again. And Bozer navigates his debrief and still isn't sure if what he did constitutes lying, and if he screwed Matty.