Chapter 38

"Ed… Eddie…" a tired, raspy voice and a reaching hand touching her own as it rested on the edge of the bed next to his roused her from the nearby recliner and what had honestly been the longest, deepest sleep she herself had experienced since this whole nightmare had begun. "Time is it?" he questioned as he squeezed her fingers and grimaced with a small cramped-up stretch.

"Six," she reported after a glance at the clock on the table as she pushed herself forward and sat up while rubbing her face and yawning. "Wow, I guess we both really needed that," she acknowledged. "Are you feeling better now?"

"Yeah, I guess… considering," he admitted with a small shake of his head to try to further clear it. "What happened?" he puzzled since his recall of the entire day was nothing more than a blur. "Why is it so late? You've been here all this time?"

"Of course… it's not like I could have gone anywhere else if I wanted to. You should see the snow piled up outside…" she revealed as she walked over to the drapes and pulled them back. "Over twenty inches already the last time I heard… you were just really, really tired, Jamie," she added while finally addressing his first question. "Your brain needed sleep, that's all," she comforted without getting into any of the details as she turned back around and her husband noted the dark circles under her eyes... obviously he was not the only one requiring that at the moment.

"The house," he worried openly as he pushed himself up. "Who's taking care of… can't be Gramps or your… um, Eva," he stumbled over his thoughts slightly again. "I was supposed to..."

"Your Dad hired people for both places," she assured. "Please, Jamie… relax, it's being done, okay? I talked to Mom after lunch. Everything is fine at home; she was going to spend the afternoon teaching Kaylin and Pop how to make Dobostorta… that cake she brought at Thanksgiving," she explained. "Maybe they can save you some for later this week… are you hungry? You didn't really have anything to eat yet, and it's really important now that you get the right nutrition and enough calories to heal. Marguerite was explaining to me about the extra calcium and protein you should have, plus vitamin D…"

"Stop it… please," he sighed as her determined run was hurting his head and he rubbed his face while frowning at the stubbly dryness and the irritating plastic of the nasal cannula again. "I don't want you to worry about me; you're the one that needs to eat right for the baby. I just… I just want to get up," he pleaded as his eyes lifted and his hand struggled to find the bed controls. "I can't… I can't stand being stuck in one place like this… I feel helpless," he breathed as the claustrophobia that had touched him since being trapped under that beam the previous year revisited and he pushed the heel of his good leg down and winced at the corresponding shift of his upper body, but it was not enough to deter him. "I need to get up…" he added as he reached across to his left arm where his IV lines were secured.

"Oh, no, no, no! No you don't!…" Eddie reacted and quickly got a hold of him before he managed to undo anything. "Jamie, you absolutely cannot do that… please, not yet. If you try, you'll hurt yourself more or they'll have to sedate you, and we'll have to go through this all over again."

"All what over again?" he demanded even as he relented to the desperation in her voice and eased back trying to read the situation while picking up on her reluctance to speak the truth.

"Nothing, it just made you… I mean you were tired, so you didn't know what you were saying," she admitted with a frowny face not wanting to reveal that he had been stuck back in the past somehow reliving part of his brother's murder. "It's not important."

"What? Honey, if I said something to hurt you…"

"Oh, no, lambchop… it was nothing like that," she assured. "You were just sort of dreaming while you were awake and not making a lot of sense. You forgot the fruit of the week… stuff like that."

"I forgot the… but m'm doing a lot of that… letting you and Kaylin down," he admitted with a depressed sigh. "It's not right… you're both supposed to be able to count on me."

"Jamie, you are not doing anything to me or her… we love you so much. I'm just glad that you're going to get better soon, and we have to try to get through this next week or so until you can come home and be with us, okay? I do count on you… I will always count on you, but right now we have to let other people help, and you need to trust me to handle things for a little while. Pop says you're just like your Dad about letting others do for you, so I know that's hard to accept," she added with a smug little smile to try to lighten his mood. "Almost as hard as letting me take the wheel since you say I drive just like Mario..." she trailed off suggestively hinting at those Andretti sunglasses.

"Kart?" he answered quizzically instead as he lay back and rubbed his hand over his eyes, blanking on one of their familiar banters and not picking up on the possible snoop through the presents he had purchased. Even though he was more alert, it was obvious there were still deficits in his responses.

"Sure, baby… just like him," she agreed to placate him while her attention was diverted out in the hall as a thin, but curious-looking short-statured middle-aged dark-haired man with an ironically tight upturned mustache approached Jamie's room in the supposed strictly controlled surgical ward while staring intently inside, seemingly ignoring the fact that Eddie's eyes were locking right back on him as she instinctively inched closer to the bed before the stranger nodded at her with pursed lips and moved on quickly down the hall towards Kenzie's office.

"Now, just who the hell was that…?" Eddie mouthed without alerting her husband to the disturbance. "I swear there's just something weird about this place," she added with a little more volume as her spidey sense flared before quickly being pushed aside once more.

"Ed," Jamie started in obvious discomfort again. "I need… please, um… get the nurse," he asked since she was still gripping the control well out of his reach.

"What is it? I told you... you have to let me help you," she insisted while focusing her attention back down on him.

"No, I need to… can't get up," he explained with urgency while blushing with humiliation at bringing this up in front of his wife. "Please."

"Oh… I mean okay! I'm sorry, baby," she replied after catching on although her heart hurt at his apparent embarrassment and she soon found herself down the hallway in the small cafe room intently studying one of the detailed nutritional pamphlets for patients undergoing bone repair that Marguerite had provided while having her own bite of dinner as Jamie's personal needs were attended to by one of the male nurses. "I have got to be better at this stuff," she murmured as she checked off the items he already regularly ate and mentally noted some of the other suggestions. "Foods rich in protein include meat, dairy products and tofu… tofu, ick…" she shuttered. "If you are a vegetarian, peanut butter, yogurt and cottage cheese… gag... contain high levels of protein," she recited.

"While he's here, the nutritionist on staff will take care of all that," the aforementioned nurse reminded as she stepped in on a break to have a cup of tea herself, having been informed of the need to work a double shift as the weather was proving too treacherous for the night nurse to make it in. "We just have to get him to eat it," she added with a bit of concern considering the fact that Jamie had not touched a meal all day. "Right now he requires as much as three times his normal intake of calories to begin healing, and I'm afraid that's not happening."

"I know. I promise I'll get him to eat dinner tonight as soon as I go back, but for when he comes home…" Eddie trailed off desperately wishing that could happen sooner rather than later, but knowing in her heart that she and her husband were looking at a long process. "Jamie is always the one to do this; he plans things out for me and the baby, but right now he's… well, he's not himself," she admitted with a sigh. "Who was that man who came down the hallway before?" she asked out of the blue as her curiosity go the better of her, and frankly that gaze he had given Jamie unnerved her. "He looked in at us… stared, actually. It was kinda creepy. Is he on the staff too?"

"Short man with a twisted up mustache or a taller fellow with his arm in a sling?" Marguerite smiled, wondering if the harmless Commander Rigsby had skirted her perimeter barricades earlier than intended.

"Mustache," Eddie informed.

"Oh, well that's Oliver Wendell, dear. He's not on the staff… he's the reason for it. That's the program's director and main investor. He must be here to see Dr. MacKenzie."

###

"CHARLOTTE!" a gruff voice startled Kenzie's focused attention away from her computer screen in her office as she was mapping out the detailed parameters for the printed matrix needed for Jamie's second operation. "Why is there an unauthorized person in there alone with the subject?" he demanded from the hallway before letting himself in without invitation and closing the door. "Pre-surgical visits are supposed to be strictly supervised so that proprietary information is not released!" he insisted. "You promised to control all of that when I agreed to accept this case! This is a critical outcome for FDA approval, and with the media attention that is bound to follow with him being the son of the Police Commissioner, it is imperative we follow procedure! Now you are asking me to approve outside care? I will not have this study compromised and the intellectual secrets stolen!"

"Oliver," Kenzie sighed as she sat back and viewed her somewhat tightly wound investor while wondering just for a second how he had managed to make it into the city from his lavish mansion upstate on a day where all forms of travel in the greater North East had ground to a halt. "We needed this test case to show the protocol can work as designed for recent trauma… he was the perfect candidate, but these are people with families… not lab rats," she emphasized. "I couldn't just pluck him out of the other hospital with a promise to return him at a later date, and he's not a soldier assigned to active duty across the country so he has local connections here. All the family has been told is the basics of what needs to be done and when, but absolutely nothing has been revealed in their presence outside of the norm of treatment for such an injury. The confidentiality papers were signed. You have nothing to worry about, and in my opinion we have a much better chance of showing a positive outcome by allowing the family to have a more active role in caring for him. Studies show…"

"I am not interested in other studies!" Wendell insisted as he cut her off rather rudely. "I care for only this one and the hundreds of millions of dollars it represents to my company… approval from the FDA and a patent on the process is why you are funded for this state-of-the-art facility and provided with such discretion. Now get on with his treatment and don't make me regret saying that!" he insisted impatiently in almost a hiss.

"You will not," Kenzie assured as she worked her always-tense boss patiently, knowing that in spite of his apparent quirks she had hit the virtual lottery by cultivating this relationship with the deep-pocketed man, even if it brought with it constant vigilance against the possibility of corporate espionage from the intensely competitive and lucrative medical technology industry. "You hired me to develop and prove this protocol works, and it does," she admitted proudly. "The first patients to receive minor implants are all doing well, and now that we are moving on to the more complex repairs we're on a fast track for that patent. You need to trust me when I tell you that positive outcomes in these trauma cases require more than just our process… we're dealing with circumstances greater than a broken or missing bone here. You said I have discretion, so let me use it," she insisted. "My stake in this is just as great as yours," she added while considering her life's work and her determination to help people like Jamie and her former SEAL comrade Quincy walk again. "It's my reputation on the line and I promised myself I would find a way to heal some of these boys... Trust me when I tell you I won't let anything stand in the way of that."

"Very well," Wendell conceded with an even tone. "Use your so-called discretion in this matter, but know all of that can disappear like this if you make the wrong choice," he added as he snapped his fingers with an unveiled threat as he turned to open the door and stalk back down the hall.

"Sir, yes, sir," Kenzie frowned before turning back to her work.

###

"Jamie, you have got to do better than that, c'mon! How are you ever going to get better? This is worse than trying to get Kaylin to eat her supper sometimes," Eddie vented in frustration after all attempts to get him to take more than a few bites of anything had obviously failed. "Do I need to try the airplane game?" she whined. "I thought you said you were evolved!"

"I'm just not hungry," he insisted, not knowing that nausea, and a decreased appetite were just a few of the other hidden short-term side effects of the drug he had been given earlier that day. "Maybe tomorrow," he offered as he pushed the tray away.

"Finish the yogurt at least," she demanded as she pushed it right back in front of him. "Or I'll tell a certain little girl that her Daddy is not behaving himself when I see her."

"Aw, Eddie… don't do that; I miss her," Jamie responded sadly as he lay back and gave up.

"I know you do… I'm so sorry," she frowned as she leaned in for a hug and a light kiss after pulling the tray away. "I didn't mean it that way. I wish we could have our phones and do a video chat with her or something, but that's apparently not allowed here," she griped in renewed disgust at the tight security measures instituted by that little strange man with the Mario mustache who had evidently invaded their lives for the near future.

"I don't…" he acknowledged with a shake of his head. "I don't want her to see me this way, Ed. I look like a monster with this effing thing on my leg. It'll scare her… she'll hide behind the couch again or have nightmares for months… just like before."

"Okay, now don't do that," she teared up, not wanting to tell him that their sensitive daughter had already taken to going back under the furniture at home without them, although Eva had conveniently left out the part about the door-slamming tantrum and comments Kaylin made about the baby when they had spoken earlier since the little girl had been distracted and happy in the middle of their cake baking exercise as Henry knew she would. "And that's going to be gone soon," Eddie added with a deliberate nod towards the metal fixator that she had almost… almost become accustomed to encircling her husband's leg whenever it was uncovered. "After Thursday we'll never have to see it again, right?"

"I doubt what's left will look any better," Jamie added dejectedly as he allowed for a moment of self pity while thinking about the inevitable scars that would remain if… and only if there was a leg left there to display them.

"That's not true, Jamie. You're going to get through this, I swear. Everything's not okay and perfect right now, but it will be. I believe it. Just a week and a half and you'll be with your sweetness again," Eddie promised in an effort to encourage him. "Every day is one day closer, okay? Now eat your yogurt, it's got calcium and protein," she added and shoved it back at him. "Open wide."

"You're relentless, you know that?" he acknowledged while shaking his head and conceding to his wife's demands by taking another spoonful.

"You've got that right," she huffed without realizing that Jamie would be seeing Kaylin very soon… but in his own nightmare instead of hers.

###

"Hey, c'mon… dinner wasn't that bad, was it?" Danny asked as he returned upstairs to their bedroom to find his wife weepy-eyed and propped up where he had left her dressed comfortably in her pajamas and silky housecoat after providing her meal on a tray in bed. "The boys ate it… more or less," he smirked. "Okay, so they reminded me about ten times that I'm not you and I admit I put a frozen pizza in the oven for them after we brought your plate up here."

"Danny, that was the worst lasagne I've ever had in my entire life," Linda laughed sadly as she played with the edges of the blanket. "Just as bad as Pop's burnt duck that time. Thank you for doing that though," she added with a small attempted smile when he reached in to give her a kiss. "It really means alot to me."

"Then what's all this?" he asked as he carefully slid onto the bed next to her and dried a tear on her cheek. "Is it hurting again? Maybe we should call and go back Monday…"

"No, it's not my back… that's feeling better as long as I don't try to move too fast or lift anything," she admitted. "It's just everything else," she offered while not revealing the truth about the situation and how this could very possibly be a shift in hormones talking since Danny would no doubt blow a major league gasket and it would be four more days before that could be determined or not. "I just really need you to stay with me for a while," she sniffed and reached for his hand. "I don't want you to go anywhere right now."

"Well, that's definitely not happening tonight, unless I get called in," he assured since an earlier call to the records department revealed that his friend was not scheduled to work until the next day so there was no urgency to return that mystery badge, especially in this weather. "But honey, on Monday I have work and I need see my brother before that," he admitted. "They're taking him back to the OR late afternoon for whatever's next which means he'll probably be messed up for a couple of days again. I need to see if he remembers anything about the accident yet."

"You won't give that up, will you?" she asked with a frown and shake of her head. "No matter what… even if you promised."

"I can't, Lin. It's something I have to do," he admitted with a sigh. "I want to be here with you too, but you know me. Please don't ask me not to do this… he's my brother… part of our family, it's important."

"And you want me to understand that right, Daniel Reagan? That this is just something you have to do no matter what?" she asked purposefully, intent on setting him up for a future discussion using the exact same logic if it became necessary in a few days time since she had no intention of turning back if indeed there was a path forward to another child, even if it put her own health and welfare in jeopardy.

"I know what I'm asking, Linda… but yes, that's what I need."

"Okay," she nodded. "I understand then," she admitted softly as he sighed in relief. "And I hope you can do the same," she added under her breath as he remained by her side at least for one more night as the darkness fell outside.

###

Night had come over the medical campus of Columbia as well, but instead of another Reagan couple spending time together, Eddie and Jamie were once again parted as in spite of Kenzie's allowance for her to spend the night if necessary, he had managed to convince her to return to the hotel to sleep more comfortably in a bed with the promise of doing the same himself on a negotiated lower dose of pain medication.

Alone in his room, Jamie grew more restless during his sleep as the hours went by. His distress culminated with a nightmare that had him moaning and crying out Eddie and Kaylin's names before waking with a start at 1:46, sweating profusely and clutching his stomach. Unable to get up, he desperately reached for an emesis basin on the nearby tray, but only managed to succeed in knocking the stainless steel bowl to the ground with a clatter before he was forced to grab his left side to cushion those broken ribs and he lost what was left of his pitiful supper off to the side on the covers. "Ah, DAMN IT!" he cried as a wave of crunching pain overcame him even and he blinked heavily as the lights in the room flicked on and William, one of the male floor nurses who was spelling Marguerite as she took a few hours to sleep during a double shift, came rushing in to check on him.

"Sergeant Reagan, just try to breathe easy and ride this through," he urged as he reached for a pillow for Jamie to clutch to his side to lessen the strain and picked up the basin off the floor.

"M'm sorry," Jamie gasped as he grabbed it while the nausea continued. By the time it was over he was exhausted and his gown and sheets were soaked through with sweat as he slumped back against the bed. "Think I'm done now," he admitted finally, unwilling to close his eyes again... afraid to even blink after that dream had left fear ripping through his heart which was still beating wildly and noted on the monitor.

"S'alright, no problem… don't worry about it. Happens all the time, man. Trust me, you can't show me much more than I've seen over the past ten years and I'm still here," William assured as he helped him settle back. "Try to take nice even breaths," he encouraged while he pulled off the top layer of soiled bedding and carefully balled it up. "Just let me run out and get a few supplies off the cart and we'll get the bed changed, and you fixed up in no time. You okay? I'll be back in just a minute," he added.

"I hate this," Jamie muttered. "Really hate it…" he emphasized with a frustrated roll of the eyes as he watched the man hurry out into the hall… forced to treat him again as if he were a helpless child. "Oh, God… my baby girl," he moaned again, still shaking as he recalled the terror of that dream once more.

He had been asleep alone in a hospital bed downstairs at the house on a winter's night only to wake up and feel a cold, icy draft tickling his bare back. Eddie was nowhere to be found and neither she nor Kaylin answered his calls for help. Concerned that the furnace was off he tried to get up, only to fall to the ground flat on his face with the realization that his right leg was no longer there to support him.

Undeterred, he crawled out into the living room army-style, dragging himself along with his elbows on the ground to find the front door wide open and snow drifting into the entryway. His heart clenched when he saw a single set of small footprints wandering out of the home, across the porch and down steps. Continuing his tiring efforts, he pulled himself out into the cold night… tumbling down the front stairs to the yard in a heap wearing only a hospital gown while screaming for Kaylin. He finally caught sight of her in the middle of the empty street in her cherished ducky footie jammies, clutching her blanket as she stood eerily still, staring forward while she was illuminated by the headlights of a blue '71 Chevelle idling a hundred feet away; its exhaust sending a curtain of smoke across the yard. Jamie had watched in horror, glued to the ground and unable to move, as the driver grinned while he gunned the motor and the car raced towards his helpless child… seemingly intent on mowing her down in cold blood… until at the last possible second…

He woke up.

Jamie's hands were still trembling as he covered his face and let out a sob. It had been so real, so vivid he could recall every last single detail of the scene, including the identity of the heartless bastard behind the wheel.

Joe. It was Joe.

He had witnessed his own beloved dead brother run down his precious, innocent daughter in the street with such cold calculation in the car that they had both poured their heart and souls into. Just as some crazy notion had made him imagine for a fraction of a second that it had been the sight of Joe at the wheel of the car that had left him frozen… motionless as it ran him down in the crosswalk in Washington and left him damaged forever in this pitiful helpless state. The memory of that moment had Jamie reaching for the basin again until he was dry heaving.

There would be no more sleep for him tonight without an uncharacteristic request for a heavy dose of medication which Marguerite dispensed with some worry when she was summoned from the call room. For once, Jamie gratefully drifted away from reality into the mind-numbing white fog as a now-familiar deep voice from just down the hall saw him out.

In my dark days and night
It might've been just a dream
In these dark days and night
I'll be more than what you see
In my dark there's a light
It might've been just a dream
In these dark days and night (Dark days and night)

Oh when I was younger
You told me I should get my shit together (People can dream)
When I was younger
So why your colors always bleed together

People can dream

That's our buddy Quincy with his encyclopedic musical knowledge offering his knowing input regarding traumatic flashbacks with a few lines from the group OneRepublic and their song "Dream" one of my current fav's. We'll discover later why he's prone to expressing himself like that. Next, an early morning call from Kaylin does nothing to ease his heart and reveals that Jamie's beloved little daughter is having trouble coping with things at home without her parents. A 'discussion' will ensue with Eddie, and he'll try determinedly to send her away before she puts him in his place after much angst.