So, are you excited? I know I am! Just hours until the season 3 premiere.
Thank you all so very much for your reviews. I'm sorry I couldn't respond to your reviews for the last chapter. But please know that I appreciate every single one of them very much. Thank you!
Now on with the story. This week you will get the second chapter on Thursday.
PD – Chapter 36 – Max and Danny
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, ICU
Dr. Max Bergman is not sure what he is even doing here standing next to Steve McGarrett's bed. He has never been good with patients or human interaction in general. That's why it was very clear early in his studies that he would practice medicine only on dead people. They at least wouldn't expect a conversation. Commander McGarrett isn't talking to you either. Huh.
Max looks around the room and feels a little like he is in an aquarium. Three glass walls of which one has an opening without a door. There was no privacy at all. At least not at the moment as all the vertical blinds are open. Dr. Bergman looks down at the patient in the ICU bed and has to say that the man doesn't have a lot in common with the commander he knows as the leader of the Governor's Task Force. This man in the bed looks so fragile and small with all the machines attached to him.
The only thing that does look familiar is the frown on his face. Wait… what? Why isn't he relaxed, why is he frowning? "Commander McGarrett? Steve, can you hear me?" Max steps closer and tentatively touches Steve's arm. "Steve?"
Max almost jumps back when the injured man turns his head toward him. But he doesn't open his eyes, or do anything else. He just turned his head and lay still again. Maybe Dr. Jordan is right and he really can hear us, Max muses.
"Steve, hi, it's Max. Max Bergman?" Max feels a bit stupid introducing himself, but it's the first thing that came to mind.
"I'm not good at this stuff... guess you figured that out. Most people think I'm weird and act cautiously around me. But you and Danny never did that. Oh, of course I saw the mildly amused smiles you exchanged at the beginning, but you accepted me right from the start." Max settles down on the chair and looks around before he hesitantly grabs Steve's hand and continues. "You were the first to tell me to call you by your first name. You offered your friendship. And I thank you for that."
Max looks down at his friend and doesn't really know how to say what he wants to tell him. "You allowed me to come to Washington… you didn't have to do that, but you did it just as a personal favor. Thank you for that, Steve. You are a very good friend. I would not like to lose you." Max pauses a moment and looks at the monitors before he sighs and continues, "Your injuries unfortunately indicate that it will probably happen." Max shakes his head at his insensitivity, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I hope you will prove all the doctors wrong. I think I should go. I'm sure Danny will come see you soon."
Max stands up from the chair, takes another look at the readings on the monitors and leaves without another word.
On his way out he again thinks he really sucks at visiting sick friends. Hospitals always make him ill at ease. Before he can leave the area, the elevator doors open and he is very happy to see Danny being pushed forward in a wheelchair.
"Detective, I just told Steve that you would come see him soon."
"Steve is awake?"
"What? No. No, I'm sorry, no he is not. I just told him, you know. Dr. Jordan thinks that he can hear us, I mean…" Max runs out of words, but Danny obviously understands him.
"I know, Max. It's okay. Max?"
"Yes, Danny?"
"Thank you. Thank you for saving his life back at the hotel. I heard what you and Dr. Mallard did. Thank you." Danny stretches his hand out and Max is very happy to take it.
"No thanks necessary. I'm glad I could help."
Danny would swear that their ME is blushing. "Has there been any change?"
"Did Catherine talk to you?"
"Yes," is Danny's grim answer.
"No change since then. He is holding his own at the moment. He is fighting, Danny."
"He better be." Danny nods at Max and his nurse wheels him the rest of the way to Steve's bed.
"Danny, I'll be back in a few minutes to take you to your next scan," the nurse who brought him to the ICU informs him.
"Thank you, Sergeant." Danny looks at the nurse as she leaves and then turns to Steve, "you know I could really use your expertise here. All these uniforms are creeping me out. I never know if I'm talking to an officer or if they are Navy or Army, or whatever. Why the heck can't you all dress the same?"
Danny of course knows that he wouldn't get an answer from his friend, but he still has to try. "And don't even get me started on all the people running around in scrubs with stripes on them, or some without. They are in blue, or green, and I even saw some in red. And the uniforms are also all in different colors, mostly tan or blue. And why the heck, Steven, do they have camouflage on them? I mean, come on, this is a hospital. Do they think they need to play hide and seek? I'm telling you, this is all nuts." While Danny is rattling off the reasons of insanity regarding the dress code, he is watching in wonder how Steve's features are relaxing and how his heart rate is slowing down.
"Hey, Steve. You can hear me, right buddy? You know, that is really not nice, worrying us like that and lying here and listening to your friends pouring their hearts out. But you seem to like that. The pouring out of our hearts, I mean." Danny smiles at his friend, who is by now completely relaxed, no frown in sight.
"Steve, you really scared us. I know you've seen and been through some shit in your life, but I also know that you can beat this. Like you have every other time. So you better not give up, you hear?" Danny looks at Steve and thinks it's time to get the big guns out. "What do you want me to tell Grace if her favorite uncle doesn't come home? How could I ever explain to her that I let Levin shoot you? Steve, I am so sorry."
Danny looks around to see if they are still alone before he continues. "You know what? You better wake up and tell me "I told you so". You were right. See, I can admit that, you were right about Levin. You really need to wake up so you can hear me say it."
"Detective, I'm sorry, but we have to go now." Danny's nurse returns and interrupts his monologue.
"Just one more minute. Steve, I've got to go, but I promise I'll be back as soon as I can. You just rest now." Danny stands up from his wheelchair and bends down to Steve to whisper something in his ear.
"Okay, we can go now," he answers while turning to his nurse and sits back down.
Before he leaves the cubicle he looks back at the bed and could swear that Steve is smiling. As far as one can smile with a tube down one's throat. When Danny finally leaves he does it with hope in his heart; he is sure that his friend will make it.
*~* *~* *~* Hawaii Five-0 *~* *~* *~*
Kiwi Street, Ewa Beach – Home of LT Donaldson – Monday 1900 hour – local time Hawaii
It took Chin Ho Kelly a few hours to get the search warrant for LT Donaldson's home. That the crime scene was not in Hawaii but almost 5000 miles away didn't make that task any easier. But finally they had all the papers granting them access to the suspect's house. For now they only knew that he was guilty of kidnapping and torturing their boss and Dr. Jordan. His involvement with the serial killings is still an assumption after Danny told them about his talk with Levin.
But they still need to prove it before they can say for sure he was the killer. Chin opens the door with Kono and the Crime Scene Unit behind him. They clear the house before they call the technicians in, but it's clear from the moment they enter the house that they are alone.
Chin is not sure what he expected, but the house is spotless and the interior is colorful but still not tacky. The living room looks inviting and lived in, with magazines lying around and books and open DVD's on the small table next to the entertainment center. But other than that it's all tidy and clean. There are no dirty dishes in the kitchen or any waste left in the disposal.
"Chin, you need to see this," Kono calls from a room next to the kitchen.
"Wow," is the only thing that comes to mind upon entering the room that Donaldson obviously used for his planning. "This looks just like Hector Ruiz's room, when he was targeting SEAL team 9." Chin looks at all the pictures and maps on the wall and on every available surface.
"Chin, look at this. It's a surveillance picture of Dr. Jordan and Steve," Kono explain as she shows him the picture. It shows JoJo and Steve sitting outside of a coffee shop engaged in conversation. "There are also pictures of just Steve and of Steve with Danny, and with Cath. Do you think Steve was a target?"
"Maybe. There are a lot of other pictures of Dr. Jordan. She was in his focus for sure. Why did he kill someone else? Why not kill her?"
"He might have felt that she was helping him. Who knows what he was thinking, he was obviously not right in his head," Kono tells her cousin.
"Yeah. Let's process the place and inform Agent Gibbs."
The two members of Five-0 take the next few hours to go through Donaldson's papers, to get a handle on the killings and to give solid information to Special Agent Gibbs. It's the only thing they can do while their leader is still in critical condition in Washington.
*~* *~* *~* Hawaii Five-0 *~* *~* *~*
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, ICU Waiting room
When Danny is finally done with his tests and an MRI, he is wheeled into the ICU waiting room at almost noon. The nurse assigned to him understood his need to be with his friends and gave him thirty minutes before she would come back for him. So, now Danny is sitting in his wheelchair in the waiting room and listening to Gibbs talking on the phone.
It's not much to listen to, since Gibbs is not talking much and they can't hear the other end of the conversation.
"Thank you Ziva. Good work. Get some rest."
Danny looks at Gibbs and wonders if he is always so impolite or is just that way with 'his' people. He has never once heard him say something like goodbye. "What did they find out?"
"Shouldn't you be lying in a bed, Detective?"
"I'm fine, Gibbs. I feel much better this morning. Now, what did your team tell you?"
Ever since this morning someone has always been with Steve; at the moment it's Ducky's turn again. So Gibbs addresses the remaining people in the room. Dr. Jordan and Catherine managed to get new uniform shirts and obviously freshened up at some point. He learned that they got rooms in the adjoining Navy lodge which is provided as housing for visiting family members of injured military personnel.
Max still looks a bit out of place and Williams looks ready to explode. Gibbs is sure that his morning has not been a pleasant one.
"Steve and Dr. Mallard were right, Donaldson had planned something big. He had checked into the hotel on Saturday. Ziva found twenty charges of C4 in his room; some of them with a timed detonator, some of them with a remote one." Gibbs can see that they are shocked about that amount of explosives. "He had them in his suitcase. They were already armed and ready to use. I think when you went up to your room, he had just came back from planting one of his charges."
"Where?" Cath is pretty sure she knows where that bomb was placed.
"In your room, it was on a timer. Ziva arrived just in time to defuse it. He set all of them at the exact same time. Even if there had not been people near all of them, the damage would have been enormous."
"You think he meant to plant them in the conference room?" JoJo wants to know.
"The expert of the bomb disposal team thinks that Donaldson planned to use most of them on the central beams in the parking garage. According to the plans Chin and Kono found, that placement would have caused a lot of damage to the structure of the hotel, it would have been enough for instability of the whole structure. Maybe even enough for a collapse." Gibbs waits for it to set in.
"But with that he would have killed or injured a lot of civilians as well," Danny voices the horror of that scenario.
"Yeah, but I think he was beyond caring about that. I will never understand how someone can kill innocent people. He saw that probably as punishment for what was done to him," Gibbs tells him shaking his head.
"And what exactly was that?" Danny still hasn't heard who this Donaldson even was, let alone what his motivation was.
"We are not completely sure yet. Tony tried to look at his file, but it's sealed. We need to wait for the official channels to de-classify it."
"You've got to be kidding me," Danny exclaims in a little outburst.
"No," JoJo speaks up for the first time. "LT Donaldson was an operative with Special Warfare, there is a lot of classified stuff in his file that even I have never seen."
"He was a SEAL?" Danny asks and wonders if he ever worked with Steve.
"No, he didn't pass BUD/S. But he was recruited into a different program with Special Warfare. I never read that part of his file. I don't know what he and his unit really did. But I know that he was injured during one of his deployments. After three months he was sent back to his unit. Two months later he was back in Bethesda, seriously wounded and in bad mental shape." JoJo looks at all of them to see if they are still following her tale. "I don't have any specifics about what happened, but I know that he was the sole survivor of an OP in Afghanistan and suffered extensive damage to his leg. But not enough to get discharged, he was transferred, retrained and did seemingly well with his new job."
"When did you first see him?" Danny wants to know.
"When he was transferred to Hawaii, about two years ago. He was doing well, there was no issue any longer of his survivor's guilt. He suffered from occasional flashbacks when his leg was bothering him. But his work performance was never affected, he responded very well to his medication." JoJo is by far not over the fact that she didn't realize how disturbed the Lieutenant must have been. "I never suspected that he had other serious issues. I know his wife left him after he came back from Afghanistan, she couldn't handle his time in evaluation before he was released. He spent three months in the psychiatric ward here in Bethesda. But as I said, he responded well and was declared fit for desk duty after his evaluation time."
"Yes, that is the only thing Tony could find out. He was retrained based on his degree in computer engineering. He wrote and installed 'Inventory Management Programs' on different bases. That is how he got around so much."
"How does Levin fit into all of this?" Catherine thinks with disgust about the man that has caused Steve so much pain over the years.
"Donaldson and Levin are half-brothers. Levin was six when Frank was born. They grew up together and were very close. When their parents died in a car crash when Levin was 21 he became Donaldson's legal guardian. At the time he was already in his second year at the Naval Academy. Donaldson was placed in a boarding school to prepare him for attending the Academy."
"That is quite a commitment for a twenty one year old," Danny has to wonder about young Levin.
"Yes, it is. And he risked his career for it too. The board allowed him to stay after a hearing and Frank was placed in boarding school."
"What? You can't have a kid if you want to go to the Academy?" Danny can't believe what he is hearing.
"There is no simple yes or no answer for that. Of course you can have a child when you're in a relationship with a partner outside the Academy. But pregnancy or fathering a child with a fellow student while at the Academy is grounds for dismissal. Single parents are not allowed."
"Gibbs, you've got to be kidding me."
"No, Detective. And frankly I think it's a good rule. How will you manage to become an officer, get your degree, give birth and raise a child? And be successful with all of it?"
"Well…"
"Exactly. You have to commit those four years to the Academy. Of course you can have a kid after those four years, even without being in a relationship, but not during that time. Besides, it's the rules, take it or leave it."
"Gentlemen, can we go back to the case?" Catherine of course knows all about the rules of becoming an officer. One of her friends got pregnant and was dismissed, along with the father of the child. They paid a high price for their stupidity. "Why didn't you realize that one of JoJo's patients was the lead agent's brother?"
"They have different names, and Donaldson's file has many 'blank' pages. It was simply not listed that he even has a brother."
"Yeah, but Steve asked you to look into Levin. And since he was a legal guardian at some point, that should have been in his file," Danny tells Gibbs angrily. Steve was so sure they would find something in Levin's file that would have brought them closer to solving this crime. And he was right with his, admittedly at the time, unfounded belief in Levin's involvement. If Gibbs had found out about Donaldson, they would have checked it out, since Steve didn't believe Levin's story about coming to Hawaii to see his daughter.
"It is in his file, but under Frank Levin. He changed his name to Donaldson after his mother when he attended the Academy. And that is not in Levin's file, since Frank was over eighteen by then. I saw no reason to investigate his brother."
"So they have the same father?"
"Yes. Levin's mother died a week after Levin was born. His father remarried three years later and gave birth to Frank, Levin's half-brother. But frankly it is not really important that they were brothers. What's important is that Levin got suspicious about Frank after the murders in New Orleans. He found his brother's cell phone on the scene. And instead of reporting it, he buried the evidence and covered for his brother." Gibbs looks intensely at Williams who doesn't seem to be listening to him. "Danny, are you alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just got a bit dizzy right now," Danny has to admit that being in an upright position is really not so great for his headache. Ever since he woke up this morning his head has felt ready to explode. And getting all those tests didn't really help.
"Danny, you really should lie down. Come on, I'll take you back to your room. Did the doctor talk to you about the results from the CT?" Catherine offers her help to get him to rest.
"MRI, they did an MRI since they couldn't see anything on a CT last night. No, she hasn't talked to me yet. But I guess everything is okay, since they allowed me to stay with you guys," Danny tells them as he tries to breathe through another bout of nausea. Puking in front of Gibbs is out of the question. So he will just tough it out. Besides, he is not the one to worry about. At least not in his book.
"Okay, but still, you should lie down." Catherine has already turned the wheelchair to take him to his room.
"First I need to see Steve, then I'll lay down." Danny will not leave before he had seen his friend again. It's been a few hours since the last time.
Catherine finally gives in and they make their way over to the ICU and relieve Ducky from his rotation at Steve's bedside. They were very adamant not to leave him alone for even a minute. And in the last few hours they managed to keep that up, and they have every intention of continuing until Steve wakes up.
*~* *~* *~* Hawaii Five-0 *~* *~* *~*