Helena came to when she felt Charlie licking her face and heard him whine and whimper.
"What..oh, shit. Okay...okay, good boy, okay, hold on..." she breathed, reached to gently pat him and took a few seconds to get her bearings and figure out what had happened. Someone had run a red light and hit them as they'd been crossing the intersection. Helena knew she shouldn't move around excessively, but decided that since she couldn't feel any immediate aches and pains, she could risk it.
"...Hunnigan?" she muttered and reached over to feel her neck, letting out a tiny sigh of relief at the steady pulse she felt beat against her fingertips. She looked down and the amount of blood she saw was somewhat alarming, as was the way Hunnigan's legs were pinned underneath the caved in dashboard, there was a wound on Hunnigan's leg left behind by a sharp piece of twisted metal, but Helena couldn't see a heavy flow of blood hemorrhaging nor did she see any bones protruding anywhere; that gave her some hope that the situation wasn't as bad as it could've been.
Charlie whined in the backseat and Helena looked over to him. He seemed to be all right physically, just stressed and scared. He'd been behind the driver's seat, furthest place away from the point of impact, the front of the car having taken the most of the damage.
"Okay, it's okay buddy, we're okay," Helena tried to comfort him and then turned to try and open the door. Of course it didn't open, why would anything be easy?
With a groan she pulled back, turned sideways and leaned over to the passenger's side, drew her knees to her chest and kicked the window repeatedly until it shattered and she could crawl out through it. She captured Charlie into her arms as he followed her, and carried him over the sharp shrapnel on the road and ordered him to stay, which he reluctantly did.
"There's been a car accident, we need an ambulance," she heard someone say to a phone, and she went over to the young man talking to the dispatcher.
"And the fire department, advise them that the victim is pinned," Helena said and the young man repeated this into the phone.
Come on. Not now. Not now, not now, not now, Helena ranted mentally as she felt herself starting to lose her grip on where she was and what was happening, her mind glitching back to Afghanistan, fragmented flashes of the aftermath of hitting an IED crossing her mind and dragging her down, threatening to paralyze her. Charlie disobeyed his order and jogged over to her, pawing at her leg to get her attention and stuck his nose into her palm.
"Thanks, boy. Good boy, okay, good Charlie," Helena told him, kissed the top of his head and went back to the car when the ambulance and the fire department arrived at the scene. The paramedic insisted that Helena gets checked out at the hospital, stating that she could have a concussion, but she had no intention of going anywhere.
"I'm fine! Don't worry about me, help her!" she snapped, pointing at the wreck.
"Her legs are encased, we're gonna have to cut her out of there, but we need to stabilize her neck first," a firefighter said.
"It's too tight for me to get in there, and she's still unconscious," the paramedic commented after peeking in.
"I can get back in the same way I got out," Helena said and without waiting for the rescue workers' approval, she climbed back in through the broken window and then shimmied her way over to the backseat. The paramedic instructed her to put her hands on either side of Hunnigan's head, and Helena complied.
"Helena..?" Hunnigan mumbled groggily.
"I'm here, try not to move, okay?"
"What happened?"
"We were in an accident, but everything's okay, I promise, I'm right here, you're gonna be fine, just don't move," Helena reassured as she supported Hunnigan's head with her hands.
"Here, put this around her neck, chin goes there," the paramedic said and handed Helena a neck support, and she carefully put it in place.
"She's got a pretty deep-looking wound on her thigh and she's bleeding a lot, we have to get her out," Helena told him.
"I understand but we need to stabilize her first. Here," he said and handed her a bag of saline. "Look for a big vein and slide the needle parallel to her arm, toward yourself," he instructed and Helena nodded repeatedly. This she knew how to do and it didn't take long for her to get the cannula in and hook up the tubing.
"We're gonna get you out of here, don't worry, just don't move, almost done," Helena kept repeating as she squeezed the bag in her hand to set the fluid in motion.
"All right, I want you to put this over her and yourself so you won't get injured, we're gonna have to break the windshield and the read window before we cut you out of there, okay? There's gonna be a lot of loud noise, but you'll be safe," a firefighter assured and handed Helena two coats.
Helena hung the vinyl bag between her teeth and draped the firefighter's coat over Hunnigan and then over herself, diving underneath it so that the firefighters could do their job.
"We're gonna get you out of there, just hang on, almost there, I promise, just hold on," Helena said into Hunnigan's ear and gently kissed her temple as the loud creaking noise could be heard as the heavy machinery pried the crushed car apart, separating the caved in front from the body, then proceeded to cut through the pillars.
"All right, her legs are free," a firefighter called out and Helena dug herself and Hunnigan out from underneath the coats.
"Ma'am, I'm gonna need you to exit the vehicle so we can fit the spine board in," the paramedic told Helena once the roof of the car had been removed.
"No, Helena, don't leave," Hunnigan cried out when the younger woman moved.
"I'm right here, I'm gonna be right next to you, I promise," Helena said, her left hand around the bag of saline, the other now firmly squeezed in Hunnigan's panicked grip.
She stood by the wreck when the paramedics carefully went to slide the board between Hunnigan and the car seat, strapped her in and finally pulled her out of the wreck and carried her to the ambulance, Helena getting in with them.
"Can someone, please, bring my dog Charlie? Please, he's—"
"I've got it, ma'am," one of the firefighters promised with a smile before shutting the ambulance doors and they began heading toward the hospital.
"I think I'm a bad luck charm. First you get snowed in with me, then you have a heart attack and now this," Helena chuckled through tears. Hunnigan offered a weak smile as the paramedics checked her blood pressure and got her started on pain medicine after deeming it safe.
"Maybe...you're my good luck charm...always there to save me," Hunnigan said tiredly and closed her eyes, her grip loosening, her hand slipping away from Helena's.
"What the fuck happened?" were the first words out of Hunnigan's mouth when she opened her eyes and seemed to realize she was in a hospital bed, Nolan and Helena sitting by her side.
"Some brat ran a red light while joyriding in a stolen SUV and crashed into us. Not a scratch on him, but you got a concussion and a fractured humerus, and your legs are pretty banged up but amazingly and thankfully nothing's broken worse than that," Helena summarized.
The bed Hunnigan was in had been raised so that she was sitting upright, her right arm was in a sling, a sturdy brace covering it from shoulder to elbow, her wrist resting in a narrow sleeve that was attached to the strap tightened across Hunnigan's chest. She didn't seem to be in any pain but Helena was certain it was mostly because she was under a heavy dose of painkillers, and judging from the drowsy and somewhat sheepish look on her face, Helena supposed said painkillers were a member of the opioid-family.
"Are you all right?" Hunnigan asked.
"Yeah, just banged my head and bruised my ribs a little, nothing to worry about," Helena assured.
"My head feels weird."
"It's because you're high," Nolan smirked and Hunnigan laughed.
"You jelly, bro?"
"Yes, very much," he chuckled.
"They want to keep you overnight for observation," Helena then said and Hunnigan nodded a little, having trouble keeping her eyes open. She sucked on her upper lip for a moment before jutting her jaw out and grazing her lower teeth over her lip so it looked like she was trying to eat her own head.
"Hey. You," she said suddenly, smacking her mouth open and pointed at Helena who raised her eyebrows in a silent question. "I've totally forgotten your name."
"You've forgotten my...you've known me for over three years!"
"And what an impression you've made! I wanna say...Jeanne."
"Jean? That's my middle name," Helena chuckled after taking a moment to figure out that was what Hunnigan had said because she'd used the French pronunciation.
"What was I doing?"
"When?"
"It had something to do with corn."
"...okay, you've lost me, and I'm beginning to worry this isn't just the opiates talking, I'm gonna go get a doctor," Helena said and was about to exit the room, but Nolan stopped her.
"They're not gonna do anything, they already did all the tests, she's just high, trust me, I know what it looks like," he assured her.
"I need a nap, and to remember what I was doing," Hunnigan muttered. "Why am I thinking about corn?" she frowned, mostly talking to herself at this point.
"I guess we should go, nothing we can do here," Nolan said and Helena sighed.
"Yeah, and I gotta take Charlie home," she said. "Ingrid? I'll come pick you up tomorrow, okay?"
"Sure, sure. Cool," Hunnigan nodded. "Pick me up from where?"
"Just...get some rest," Nolan laughed before exiting with Helena. They walked over to Nolan's car where Charlie waited in the comfortably air conditioned vehicle behind a note that informed passers by about it so no one would break in to rescue him. Nolan unlocked the doors and Helena let Charlie out.
"Do you need a ride?"
"No, I think we'll walk, but thanks," she told Nolan, said goodbye and began heading home.
"Hey, good to see you're all right and that your buddy made it," one of the paramedics from before said as Helena walked by the entrance to the hospital.
"Oh, hey, you're still here," she said.
"I'm here again, " he corrected with a rueful smile as he leaned to pet Charlie.
"Thanks for your help earlier."
"It's my job, glad to see y'all made it out alive. You held your own back there, a lot of people would've panicked," he then complimented, and Helena shrugged one shoulder.
"I was a medic in the army and served in Afghanistan, so I've seen a lot worse."
"No shit? Well, that would require a cool head I imagine," he agreed. They chatted a few moments longer before he had to get back to work, and as Helena watched him get in the ambulance with his partner, she realized she might have just figured out what she wanted to do for a living.
Hunnigan was in a foul mood and made no attempt to hide it, hoping it would be enough to convince even Skylark that keeping her smartass comments to herself would be the wise thing to do today. She'd checked herself out from the hospital against medical advice the second the 24-hour observation period ended, and instead of going directly to surgery to fix her broken humerus with plates, she was here, working, because this could not wait.
It wasn't bad enough that her arm ached like hell and ibuprofen wasn't enough but she couldn't take anything stronger either because she needed a clear head now. What made it all worse was the news she'd gotten from HR accidentally after the officer who was in charge of the paperwork had emailed her instead of agent Harding who was Helena's handler nowadays, and the reason the paperwork was upsetting was because it was a copy of Helena's letter of resignation.
I put my ass on the line for her and she just quits and doesn't even tell me personally, I have to hear about it by accident? I think I'm owed a bit more than that, Hunnigan thought furiously, and was glad she was not anywhere near Helena at the moment; even she wasn't immune to saying things she didn't mean when she was angry.
Hunnigan was in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, sitting in the backseat of one of the agency's SUVs with agent Skylark, heading toward an ordinary looking farmhouse along a dirt road, a vast field of corn extending behind the building as far as the eye could see, a wall of dark green forest edging the field in the distance. Further away stood a silo and a barn, neither any longer used for their intended purpose since the DSO had bought the land and buildings on it several years ago and planted a pair of agents to work the farm. On the surface the silo and the barn were remnants of a time before the farmhouse had been built to the other edge of the field, abandoned after becoming obsolete when the new barn and the new silo had been built closer to the house. On the inside they hid an entrance to Shadow point.
Upon arrival, a farmer/agent welcomed Hunnigan and offered her coffee, which she declined, stating she wanted to get to work. Without further pleasantries, Skylark began to escort Hunnigan to the silo, and the long walk among the field of corn did nothing to improve Hunnigan's mood, especially since she was more than certain Skylark was letting the leaves smack into her on purpose, knowing she wouldn't stay too far behind because the last thing she needed was to get lost in the corn.
"Welcome to Shadow point," Hawke said ceremoniously, waiting at the barn for them, standing by the floorboards that had been pulled aside to reveal a secret door to the underground facility.
"Thank you," Hunnigan muttered as she walked down the steps and through another door which led to the surveillance area, the space rather narrow and small. Beyond the door to the left of the desk and beyond the soundproofed wall was the windowless cell where their guest, one mister Patel, was sitting in the middle of the room, handcuffed to a metal table that was bolted to the concrete floor. Aside from the table and one chair, the room had no furnishings, only two large speakers and four cameras mounted on each of the walls filming everything that happened in the brightly lit room.
"Did you get demoted or why are you slumming it here with us?" Skylark smirked, a snarky callback to when Hunnigan had reminded her of outranking her.
"How long has he been there?" Hunnigan asked, not acknowledging Skylark's words.
"Since yesterday. We had him in the room in the safehouse until then," Hawke answered. Calling it a room made it sound like a comfortable place to stay, like a hotel room, which it certainly was not. Granted, staying there had to be less humiliating than what it was like here, where he'd been stripped from his clothes, forced to stay awake, and given no option but to use the floor if he needed the toilet because the cell did not include said facilities. Although, judging from the log Hunnigan was reading, he probably had very little need for the toilet since he'd been given nothing but just enough water to keep him alive in the last 36 hours.
"Has he said anything?"
"Nope," Skylark answered.
"Have all the people he came in contact with been quarantined?" she asked and Skylark scoffed.
"Are you serious? The dude flew over from Germany, how the hell are we supposed to determine who he came in contact with? Not to mention that by the time we got to the scene, every other passenger on the plane had already left," she snapped.
"I didn't mean that, I meant the staff at the airport," Hunnigan sighed in exasperation. You really need me to state the obvious for you, huh, you dumbass, she added mentally.
"Yes, and they haven't shown any signs of infection," Hawke answered.
"So we can assume that if he's infected with something it isn't airborne at least," Skylark added.
"Except he doesn't appear to be showing any signs either so if he's infected, it could be that whatever it is, it's still in its incubation period."
"Always with the silver lining huh," Skylark remarked sarcastically. "What are you even doing here?"
"I wanted to see him."
"What's there to see?" Skylark scoffed and Hunnigan rolled her eyes. She didn't think he would speak to her either, but this wasn't about him, it was about her. It was about what Helena had said when Hunnigan had called her to ask her about the letter of resignation.
She'd told Hunnigan it was beginning to seem obvious she wouldn't be getting back to field duty anyway thanks to her mental problems, and most importantly, even if she was allowed back, she didn't want to work for an agency that condoned torture, and in the same breath she'd made it clear she couldn't believe Hunnigan would condone it either.
The thing was, she didn't condone it, not blindly, not without a just cause. Would she approve of torturing a pedophile to get information about a ring of others and possibly save countless children from falling victim to them? Absolutely. Would she approve of torturing an elderly parent to find out the location of their criminal child? Never.
Helena, however, didn't see shades of gray and no matter how Hunnigan had justified it to her, she stood her ground and challenged Hunnigan to go see her handiwork for herself. It was easy to authorize trips to black sites when all you had was a name and an accusation; Helena had stated Hunnigan would feel differently if she had to see the suspect and have to accept that despite their presupposed criminal status, they were a person.
But I don't feel differently , Hunnigan thought as she looked at the screen and the man displayed on it. He was slumped over the table, covering his head with his arm, probably trying to get a moment of rest, but every time he seemed to nod off, Skylark hit a button to bring up the brightness of the lamps in the room and played loud metal music (that mostly just sounded like someone crashing things and screaming) to wake him up.
He could end this every time he wants to, all he has to do is talk, but he is choosing not to, it's not my fault, it's his own. It's his own for even getting mixed up in this in the first place, he had to know this could happen.
Unless of course, he'd been coerced. It wasn't underheard of, but if that were the case, Hunnigan suspected he would've told them as much.
Hunnigan didn't bother explaining herself to Skylark, rather focused on the screens when Hawke entered the room to give questioning the man another go. He stood up when Hawke entered the room and to everyone's surprise, he smiled. Hawke opened her mouth to comment on that but before she could say a single word, he began to projectile-vomit, a thick black substance spewing from him and landing on Hawke, quickly covering her.
"What the fuck!" she spluttered and gagged. The man didn't speak, once he was done vomiting, he collapsed on the table with a heavy thud, a smile still on his face, the black thick substance surrounding his mouth making his teeth appear unnaturally white.
"Jer!" Skylark exclaimed and hurried into the room. "You okay?"
"Do I fuckin' look—" Hawke began to say, her words interrupted by a loud gag as she couldn't fight it back, the contents of her stomach splattering to the floor as she threw up.
"Get out of here and get a damn quarantine team in," Skylark called out and Hunnigan let her know she was already on it.
"Before I die, I must know...who is the big spoon, you or Helena?" Hawke asked dramatically as she sat on the bed that was inside a see-through a quarantine tent set up in the barn. She would remain there while the team prepared to transport her safely to the medical wing at the DSO headquarters where she'd continue being quarantined for two weeks provided the test results didn't reveal anything alarming.
"Who said you're dying?" Hunnigan frowned, and Hawke exhaled deeply.
"Fine, no one, on the contrary, aside from being quarantined, I'm just peachy," she said and shrugged, the paper gown she wore crinkling as she did. "Do we know anything more yet?" she then asked.
"Well, the samples taken from Mr. Patel's body confirmed we're not dealing with a virus which explains why we didn't find anything in the initial tests. Sadly, that's all we know so far, I'm hoping the autopsy will answer more questions."
"So if I'm lucky all I need is some antibiotics, that's something," Hawke said.
"Could be you won't even need that, you might not be infected at all."
"I'm pretty sure some of that shit ended up in my mouth, but then again, I did throw up, so maybe it didn't have a chance to stay long enough to infect me."
Hunnigan nodded, told Hawke she'd check up on her and Skylark when they were all back in D.C. and at the DSO, and turned to leave. She paused at the door and turned to look over her shoulder.
"Oh, and Jeri? To answer your question...I am," she smirked.
"I knew it!" Hawke yelled triumphantly and Hunnigan chuckled as she made her way to the car waiting to take her home.