Disclaimer: I don't own Magnum, PI or any of the characters you recognize from the show. Written for enjoyment, not money.
A/N #1: I am not a medical professional. I've done my best to research, but I do apologize for any medical inaccuracies.
A/N #2: This story is complete. Chapters will be posted Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, RL permitting.
Magnum tasted blood. Blood and dirt. The slippery, gritty mixture coated his tongue and pooled around his lips. It was in his nose, matting his hair, trickling down his face. He pushed up on his hands and spat on the ground, but the motion sent a torrent of nauseating agony rushing through his skull that dropped him again. He didn't know up from down, wasn't even sure if his eyes were open. Sound was muffled by the ringing in his ears and he balled himself up around the throbbing mass of pain that was his stomach, sinking back into the blackness.
When he came to the second time the pain was no better, but the ringing had subsided enough that he could hear the surf in the distance and a few random voices. American voices. He relaxed a little. With the blood, disorientation, and darkness, he'd not been at all certain that he wasn't back in Afghanistan. Slowly, he cracked open his eyelids and found further confirmation that he was in Hawaii in the form of a red blur that, with much effort, solidified into the shape of one of Robin's Ferraris. The car looked strange, though, and it took him far longer than it should have to work out why: he was lying on the ground beside it, staring up at the half-open driver's door. He remembered trying to reach his gun beneath the seat, but his attackers had beaten him to it - and then beaten him with it. Struggling to move, Magnum attempted to ascertain whether the men were still nearby and ultimately decided they weren't when he didn't get kicked in the head again for his trouble.
At length he made it to his hands and knees, but had no idea how he was going to make it further. He couldn't see straight. His pulse pounded in his ears, blood still seeped from somewhere on his forehead, and the pain from the initial hit he'd taken to his midsection promised to overwhelm him if he straightened his body even minutely.
Watching fresh red droplets making patterns in the dirt, he took a few deep breaths, trying to quell his nausea. He failed. Korean barbecue mixed with blood on the ground and every retch was like another fist to the gut, but when he finally stopped gagging he somehow managed to crawl a few feet away from the mess before collapsing against the side of the Ferrari. Shoulder wedged firmly against the back wheel, he slowly curled up once more and closed his eyes, feeling terribly sick and shivery.
Two minutes. He just needed two minutes. Then he'd get up, call Rick, and go find out what was at those coordinates Nuzo had left him.
Twelve minutes later, he ordered himself to get off his ass in his most unforgiving inner voice - the one that had mastered him through SEAL training and many, many dark days in captivity.
Ten minutes after that he was still slumped against the car, breathing through the pain, listening to Cyndi Lauper sing "Girls Just Want To Have Fun".
Wait, what?
His pocket was vibrating. With fingers that were shaking almost as much as his phone, Magnum dug the device out and answered it, a little surprised to find it still in one piece. "Rick," he muttered thickly in relief.
"Hey, how did it go with your friend?"
"Was jus' gonna call you 'bout that."
"You sound weird, Magnum...are you drunk?"
Punch-drunk, Magnum thought absently, but made more of an effort to enunciate. "No. Could use a ride, though."
"Uh oh, did you wreck another car?"
Thomas scowled at that, mildly affronted despite his current state. "No! You sound like Higgins."
Rick laughed. "Where are you?"
"Kim's Barbecue."
"Great, I'm only five minutes away. Did he figure out what those numbers mean?"
"They're coordinates."
"Coordinates for what?"
Magnum sucked in a slow, careful breath. Talking was not helping the fiery ache in his stomach or the nausea that was still threatening. He opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again, swallowing hard.
"Thomas?"
"When you get here," he finally managed, then hung up quickly before his friend could hear the groan that followed.
Rick glanced uneasily at the "Call Ended" message on his screen. A lot of things about that conversation felt off. For one, Magnum wasn't normally so abrupt. What could he have possibly learned from Kim that was so sensitive he wouldn't discuss it over the phone? More importantly, why had he been slurring his words? He could have been lying about drinking, but Rick didn't think he was. Thomas seldom had more than a couple of beers during an investigation, especially one as important as this.
What was it, then? Wright failed to work out the answer as he exited the highway, but he developed another question immediately upon arriving at his destination: why had Magnum asked for a ride when the undamaged Ferrari was parked just down the street from Kim's?
Slowing, Rick swung his own vehicle into a space halfway between the two, pocketed his keys, and began scanning the area for his friend. A street light illuminated the interior of the Ferrari - unoccupied. Kim's was dark, as expected - it was late, well after eleven. The boardwalk was deserted, too. It was just the kind of night Thomas would take advantage of for a quiet stroll on the beach. Unfortunately, Rick didn't find him there either. A stray dog was having a fine time splashing in the surf, but otherwise the beach was as empty as the rest.
Turning back for the cars, Wright pulled out his phone and began composing a text. He hit send and heard a faint ping from the direction of the Ferrari. Apprehension growing stronger, Rick increased his pace, rounding the back of the car at a jog. There, he skidded to a halt as his heart sank abruptly into his shoes. Magnum was half-sitting, half-lying against the rear wheel, limp and unmoving. The left side of his head and neck were drenched in blood, and his gun lay on the ground not three feet away.
"Thomas! Hey, you with me, brother?" Rick demanded anxiously, fearing the worst as he dropped to his knees next to his friend. At closer proximity he could see that Magnum was conscious, but it was little consolation. He was in rough shape - breathing shallow and ragged, body trembling. Reaching out, Rick grasped his shoulder firmly. "Come on, look at me, Tommy."
They both winced in tandem as Magnum sluggishly turned his head. His face was completely ashen between scrapes and bruises, and his left eye was swollen under a deep gash in his eyebrow - the source of much of the blood. "Shit, man, what happened to you?" Rick breathed as he peered at the still-bleeding laceration with concern.
"Didn' wreck th'Ferrari," Magnum quipped weakly.
"No, you just look like it ran you over a few times," Rick answered, pressing his fingers against Thomas' wrist. His pulse was way too fast.
"Nah...it was the guys who took Nuzo...they wanted me to drop my investigation. Badly. But those numbers I found weren't random. They're GPS coordinates for the windward side of the island. We need...need to get a look at whatever's out there...ASAP. It has to be related to why they...went after him. Is your boat available?"
Rick stared at him incredulously. "The club's boat is booked on an all-night private charter, which is just as well, because the only place you're going is the hospital."
"I don't need-"
"You do need!" Rick interrupted sharply. "Kim's closed at 2230, which means you've probably been right here for at least an hour. How much of that time did you spend unconscious?"
"Not long," Magnum lied, somehow mustering an innocent look.
Rick's eyes narrowed. "Uh-huh. I'm not losing another friend today. Stay put. I'm calling an ambulance."
"Hell no," Thomas said, and if he'd been giving Rick puppy-dog eyes before, now they were just haunted and grief-stricken.
Rick paused, phone in hand, and paled a little himself. That last, terrible image of Nuzo in the back of that ambulance...hell no was right. Feeling suddenly protective, he nodded in agreement, but it didn't change the fact that Thomas needed medical attention. Soon. "All right, Plan B. We need to get this bleeding stopped. Then, you are getting checked out, but my car's just the other side of yours. Think you can walk that far?"
They ended up taking the Ferrari to the hospital. Even with most of his weight supported, Magnum's legs barely held him long enough to reach the passenger side, and by the time Rick gently lowered him into the seat and strapped him in he was making small sounds of distress that Rick hadn't heard since Afghanistan, and had hoped to never hear again. As in the prison camp, though, there was nothing to be done for it, so Wright fastened his own seatbelt, gunned the engine, and murmured occasional words of encouragement that were as much for his benefit as for Magnum's.
Verbal reassurance gave way to internal monologue at some point during the trip, and Rick had just about convinced himself that his friend would be all right when they reached an exam room and things took a turn. Magnum's knees buckled as he was trying to rise from the wheelchair that had transported him from the car. A nurse's quick thinking saved him from crashing to the floor and he was helped safely onto a gurney, only to let out a sob of such unadulterated pain at the evaluating physician's gentle pressure on his midsection that he passed out anyway. As if that weren't bad enough, the newly-minted resident froze in place, looking terrified, his shaking hands hovering indecisively over his patient.
Rick could have heard a pin drop in the sudden silence, but just as he was glancing between Thomas and the medical staff, wondering whether it was a good time to have a heart attack, Magnum let out a soft groan, reanimating the doctor who began rattling off orders. A flurry of activity ensued, and Rick watched as Thomas had several vials of blood drawn from one arm, gained an IV line in the other, and was given a small dose of morphine before being taken for CT scans of his head and abdomen.
That had been half an hour ago, and Wright still hadn't stopped pacing the small room. He'd thought he'd relax once he got Magnum to the ER, but between the Doogie Howser wannabe, his friend's anguished cries, and the speed at which they'd rushed him off to radiology, Rick was so antsy that his heart tried to jump out of his chest all over again when the door finally slid open and Thomas was wheeled back in. At first glance he appeared to be asleep, but his winces as the nurse worked to clean and bandage the gash over his eye said otherwise. He seemed more fragile than he had before - his battered body now sheltered by layers of blankets and the greyish cast to his skin more pronounced with the blood absent from his face and his ruined shirt traded for a hospital gown.
"How's he doing?" Rick asked quietly.
The nurse gave him a small smile as she gathered up her supplies. "I'll leave most of that explanation to Dr. Connor. He'll be back in to speak with you once he reviews the results of Mr. Magnum's scans, but your friend's vitals are starting to stabilize. Try not to worry." She took a last glance at the monitors before leaving them alone. Rick sighed and made one more circuit of the room before coming to a stop next to Thomas' bed. After a few moments, a pair of barely-open eyes met his.
"It's not polite to stare, Orville."
"Yeah, well, it's not polite to call names, either, so I guess we're even."
Thomas smirked slightly and his shoulders shook with what Rick assumed was laughter, before he tensed suddenly, his face contorting in a grimace.
"Hey, careful. I'm not that funny."
Magnum's only response was a pained grunt, and he clutched at his stomach weakly with one hand. Rick grabbed the other, squeezing it as Thomas squirmed uncomfortably. "Shhh, just ride it out, buddy. You're all right."
"Hurts, Nuzo…"
Rick suddenly felt like all the air had been sucked from the room. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to know this: how it was going to be without Nuzo. It had been the four of them for so long and through so much. They had a system, a method for handling every possible scenario, their own specific roles they played. Dealing with an injured Tommy...well, that was Nuzo's thing. Sure, they had all taken care of each other over the years, and Rick had patched Magnum up many times (and would willingly do so many more if needed), but when Thomas was in really bad shape, really hurting, it was invariably Nuzo that he asked for. The bond between those two had always run deep, even before the events in Afghanistan. Maybe it was a SEAL thing, maybe something else, but all Rick knew was that he felt completely inadequate as a stand-in. Nuzo should be here, dammit.
The hand he'd been gently massaging with his thumb squeezed his firmly, and with stinging eyes he looked down to find Magnum watching him with equal devastation. "Sorry, brother. Drugs. I know he's not here," Thomas mumbled. "Glad you are."
Not trusting his voice, Rick just nodded, and didn't even bother trying to hide the tears that spilled over as he sank heavily into the chair beside the bed. "What can I do?" he asked after a few moments, noting that Thomas hadn't relaxed his grip and that he was getting fidgety again.
"Get me...outta here?"
Rick frowned. Magnum couldn't be serious. Still...something in those words had triggered a fragment of a memory, and Wright tentatively asked, "Land, air, or water?"
"Chauffeur's choice."
Silently giving thanks for the insight, Rick thought for a moment. "Water. Let's say...aircraft carrier."
"That's cheating."
"No, it's not. There's a fleet of ten pirate ships surrounding you. You'll need the firepower."
"Modern-day pirates, or Jack Sparrow?"
"Cap'n Jack for sure, matey."
"Oh, come on. Pirate ship cannons are no match for an aircraft ca - "
"Did I mention they're phaser cannons?"
"Why would...the Black Pearl...have phaser cannons?"
"Because she's going to battle with the USS Enterprise, duh!"
"You do realize the USS Enterprise aircraft...carrier was decommissioned...over a year ago, right?"
"Do you want to get out of here or not?"
"Just making sure I understand the...rules of engagement."
"Suffice it to say that both sides have enough armament and technology to make it a fair fight, okay?"
"Fine."
"So, as I was saying, you're surrounded by ten pirate ships. The Black Pearl fired the first shot, but it was just a diversion. The Enterprise is being boarded as we speak. You're standing on the flight deck with Ambassador Spock - shut up, he's French - and national security depends on you getting him safely off the carrier and to an island base twenty miles away. You have every resource at your disposal, but neither of you are pilots and Spock refuses to fly anyway. The pirates will kill you both if they capture you. What do you do?"