Chapter 30: some wounds you couldn't fix (rated T)
Airspace Over Manhattan, January, 2015
Reese stood to one side, watching Shaw's eyes flick from cardiac rhythm on the monitor back to Root, lying on her stretcher. Root was shivering again, now that her temperature was starting to rise – long runs of stretcher-shaking spasms. And with each one they saw her heart tracing jiggle violently; volleys of spikes on the monitor, hiding her real rhythm.
Shaw leaned over Root on the stretcher, listening to slow, soft tapping of her heart sounds, listening to coarse crackles with her breathing. Even with all the distractions – racket from rotors thumping overhead, shrieks of alarm bells sounding on the monitors, and jostling from air currents buffeting their ride, Reese could see the calm in her, the calm in her dark eyes looking down.
It could be chaos all around her and she tuned it out. Her focus was on the patient in front of her. He remembered the feeling – looking up to those calm, dark eyes when he was there, himself. It was the feeling a wounded soldier had in the hands of a fellow warrior. Warrior-doctor. That fit her.
He could see that same singular focus in her eyes now – keeping Root from crashing while they did what they could in the field to raise her temperature. It wasn't pretty; it wasn't clean, but it was effective.
On the far side of the gurney, their transport nurse, Pete, watched her, too. If she looked that calm, there was no need for him to be alarmed – even if their patient did look this bad. When she'd come aboard, she hadn't had a pulse that he could find; she was gray and cold. If she were any other patient, it would've been time for a body bag. But not for her. In deep hypothermia like this, you're not dead until you're warm and dead. They'd just have to keep at it, until they knew which way it was going to go.
When Reese had first seen Root, back in that cold basement in Queens, he didn't think she'd be coming out of this. He'd seen enough in his own past to know when things were bad. Seeing her like that, it hit him in the pit of his stomach – not so much for himself but for Harold and Shaw. For him this was simple. The Zheng had taken one of his Team, and he was going to get her back.
For Harold and Shaw, though, it was different. Harold would feel responsible – that he'd put Root in harm's way. No one knew how she'd gotten there, or how she was lured by the Zheng. But Harold would move heaven and earth to make things right. Like the helicopter to bring Root to the safe-house.
Shaw and Root were more of a mystery to Reese. He didn't pretend to understand. To keep it straight and keep it simple, he treated them both as members of the Team. What they did on their own time was up to them. But if their personal lives interfered with the work, they would hear it from him. That was his job. The rest was up to them.
When the bay doors had first rolled closed, Shaw and Pete synchronized efforts. Pete pulled a pair of trauma shears from a pouch on his side. He lifted the cold, wet sheeting clinging to Root and snipped a wide hole through it. Then they ripped the bloody sheet down to her feet and peeled it back away from her skin.
Cold, gray skin under the bright overhead lights.
Reese could see she wasn't moving, wasn't conscious, wasn't even shivering in the cold. For a long moment he looked at her still body. An old familiar feeling started to rise. Color drained from his face; his eyes went dead. If he'd let himself, he'd have recalled another woman – cold and gray like this, lying in his arms. His body stiffened – and when it did, Shaw caught it from the corner of her eye. She glanced his way, a question forming. But Reese made a motion, no, with his head. Her dark eyes turned away.
She'd probably guessed where his thoughts had gone, but her glance put a stop to them. He wouldn't let himself go there; Reese could stop the thoughts, but what he couldn't stop was the hurt seeping in. Like broken glass in his heart all over again; sharp pain in his chest and his breath hard to pull in. Shaw glanced his way again. She could see the struggle.
He shook himself inside, changed his focus, pushed the thoughts even further away. Now was not the time for this.
With Root exposed under the lights, they could all see the damage – deep gouges on a wrist and ankle from shackles, skin scraped raw from skidding over rough concrete, and bruising – everywhere. Shaw made a mental list: lacerations, abrasions, contusions, maybe worse – but all of that would need to wait. The urgent thing right now was bringing her safely out of deep hypothermia.
If they couldn't do that, Root wouldn't make it.
Reese watched them pull the wet sheet away. Then they layered dry, heated blankets under her body. Next came heated IV bags, four of them, packed against her skin at the armpits and groin; followed by more layers of heated blankets on top. Over all, they wrapped Root in a thin sheet of silver mylar to reflect heat back inside.
Wrapping her this way warmed her from the outside in, but it wouldn't be enough. To warm her deeper in her core, they needed to thin and warm her blood. Cold blood is thick; so they started an IV in each arm and hung two long IV bags, wrapped to keep them warm. That sent heated fluids into each arm. Necessary, but dangerous; warm blood flowing to cold places could cause new problems, but if Root was going to survive, they had to take that chance.
Reese glanced at his wrist. He'd clocked them. It was seven minutes from door closing to IV's hanging. They'd be over Mid-town soon and ready to land. Shaw watched the monitor now, early warning if things were going south.
It wasn't long before Root showed signs of responding. Spikes on the monitor. She'd started shivering again.
Root's heart rate picked up a little more, too, Shaw noticed. It seemed like Root was inching her way out of this. She wasn't awake yet, but her vitals were improving with just a little oxygen and the re-warming they'd done so far. Shaw's main job now was to keep Root from crashing while they kept at it – this was the most vulnerable time – when things could go bad if she tried to push too fast. Push too fast...
Her eyes swung to Reese and met his, a sudden frown on her face. Could he read her thoughts? He was good at reading people. She'd remembered the time when he'd been hovering on the line between life and death. And she'd pushed him too hard, too fast.
They'd stopped the bleeding, saved his life that first night. She'd scrubbed in with the surgeon in their makeshift OR. No one but Shaw thought he'd make it. Too much blood lost, too much strain, hunting the ones who'd taken Carter – and nearly Reese, too. He'd spent himself – every bit of himself, like that mission was the last thing on earth he had to do. So close to death when they'd found him.
She'd stolen blood for him, twice, and kept him snowed for days with pain meds – not just for the gunshots, but enough more to keep the memories down, at least for a little while. She'd thought it would help Reese if he didn't remember.
When she looked around, the whole Team was wrecked. She could see it in their eyes, this loss, even if she didn't feel it herself. This was suffering, she'd reasoned. The way they'd all looked, it must be that. For herself, she'd felt nothing inside when Carter bought it. Her disorder.
They'd nearly lost Reese twice those first two nights. She was at his bedside when it happened; he just started drifting away, as though he'd decided to let it all go. His heart slowed to nearly nothing; his pressure dropped to nothing. He was leaving.
But each time, he'd rallied somehow. As though something had pushed him back to them from the other side.
After that, the more time that went by, the worse it got for Shaw. She had to know, know for herself, if his brain was still working. So much blood lost, so much time without it, and such a rocky course once they'd stopped the bleeding; he could be a vegetable upstairs by now.
On the third day, she'd turned the meds down to wake him up. If he opened his eyes, tried to speak or even squeezed her hand, she'd know he was in there. But she'd pushed him too hard, too fast.
It was ugly; he woke up swinging, damn near took her head off as she jumped up to grab him. He ripped the IV's out of his arms, and in the melee trying to hold him, he'd started bleeding from the gunshots again. It took three of them to hold him down so she could hit him again with more drugs, enough to bring down a horse. The room was in shambles after that; blood everywhere, tables tossed, equipment trashed, glass shattered all around her. She'd pushed him too fast.
Reese wasn't the same after that. She guessed it was the memories. Suppressing them with meds didn't work. She could tell when they were coming from the monitor; his heart started to race first; then he'd call out Carter's name, and then the sound came after – a long, low sound - anguish, Harold called it. Tears streamed from his eyes, sometimes. He thrashed in his sleep. She sat by his bed, night after night, watching him; and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
When he finally woke, slowly – tapering his dose down over days this time – Reese was silent, sullen. He barely ate, barely spoke. Over days, she watched Reese will himself to sit, then to stand, then to take a few halting, painful steps.
By the next morning, Reese was gone.
Shaw remembered it all like yesterday. Had he read it in her eyes? He'd looked away again. This was past now. If Root was going to make it, Shaw's focus had to be here. She'd learned hard lessons with Reese. Don't push too hard; don't push too fast.
The less movement, the less activity and stress on Root right now, the better her chances. With hypothermia, it doesn't take much to bring down all your gains and crash the patient. Shaw straightened and folded her arms over her chest. Better that she stand there and take it all in, rather than rushing to do more. There'd be time once they got Root to the safe-house. Shaw heard rotors thumping overhead as they sped along, high above Manhattan. Their safe-house was minutes away. They'd better get her ready for the transfer.
Shaw listened again over Root's chest and snapped her fingers. Pete looked up from charting. It was time for a new round of warmed IV fluids and blankets. Once they landed, they'd be taking her out in the cold air. So, in the last few minutes, they swapped out the two IV bags flowing into her veins, the four at her groin and armpits and, lastly, the blankets down next to her cold skin. As soon as they landed, then, the transport could proceed with the least stress on Root.
Shaw watched the heart monitor and gave final instructions to Pete. They'd be landing in a minute. For now, the plan was to handle Root as delicately as they could while her condition stabilized. That list of tasks in her head would need to wait, wait until she'd seen more improvement. Resuscitating a hypothermic victim had its challenges, but even people who'd been worse off than Root had made it back, intact. Shaw was counting on it, even if she was the only one.
Reese signaled that they were there. On the roof below was the helipad. Some of the tenants used it to fly in and out for business – or pleasure – bypassing traffic on Manhattan streets. They could feel the chopper maneuver above the top of the building, preparing to set down on the pad.
Shaw and Pete prepped Root's stretcher. They unhooked the IV bags from overhead and laid them across the top of the stretcher mattress. Belts were cinched over the crinkly mylar. Shaw lifted the cardiac monitor and set it on the stretcher next to Root's legs. She could watch the tracing as they rolled her along on the transport. On his side, Pete slid a green oxygen tank to the other side of Root's legs; and he ran the tubing, looking for kinks.
They felt the chopper touch down and sink a bit on the surface as it settled.
The sounds and smell of exhaust came in as Pete popped the door. He and Reese rolled the stretcher out to the rooftop deck, while Shaw jumped down next to it. Harold was already standing there in front of the elevator door. He searched their faces for some clue of Root's status. Hopeful, he opened the door for them to roll the stretcher inside.
The door started to close and Harold surprised Pete by blocking his way. He wasn't going to let him go to the safe-house. Instead, Harold held up his hand and showed him a fistful of white envelopes. He smiled at this able man in front of him. Harold sensed he was ex-military by the way he carried himself; a corpsman, perhaps, home from war.
"I'll be calling your boss back in a few minutes to thank you for your service," he said. "We've agreed on payment, to include the equipment we'll keep." Pete looked at Harold, surprised. He thought he'd be getting the stretcher and monitor back, but that would complicate the transfer. Harold showed him the three long white envelopes, instead.
"This one is for your boss and covers the transport here, the cost of replacement supplies, and a little extra for his trouble." Harold opened the flap and thumbed across the sheaf of big bills inside. Pete's eyes opened wider.
"There is an envelope here for your pilot, and another one for you, for your trouble," Harold said, watching the man's eyes as he fanned the stack of bills inside each.
"I remind you that our agreement requires your discretion," Harold said, matter-of-factly. "You agree not to divulge any information about this flight – even that the flight occurred." Harold held the envelopes in his hand as the man in blue considered his words.
"Do you agree to these terms?" Harold stood there, waiting, while the sound of the rotor drowned all the other sounds. Pete turned back to the helicopter, as though looking for his pilot's vote. Then he turned back and met his eyes, nodding solemnly to Harold.
"Yes sir," he said, over the rotors.
The slightest smile curled his lip, and a moment later, Harold placed the envelopes in Pete's hand. For just a moment, Pete stared at them, then up to Harold, nodding once more before he turned back. Harold watched as he retreated, and then returned to the elevator door. The machine powered up, blasting him with cold, gritty air, and lifted straight up off the yellow circle. He noticed as it swung away that neither of the men inside looked back.
Excellent, he thought. No effort to memorize details as they left. He was hopeful their arrangement would buy their silence. One more thing to do. He pulled his cell phone from his overcoat and clicked on the number for the helicopter service. A few minutes of discussion with their boss were all he needed to assure himself that this transport had never happened. Harold turned and pushed the button to summon the elevator.
By the time he'd descended to the safe-house, Miss Shaw and Mr. Reese had rolled the stretcher into the first bedroom in the back hallway. That's where Miss Shaw had set up their medical space, like a small ER trauma bay. Any one of their Team who'd needed serious medical care came here, to this safe-house. There were others scattered about the island, most with weapons caches, vehicles, phones, and cash – but this one was the one they used for medical emergencies, especially trauma. Miss Shaw had outfitted it with everything she could need. Just as though she were still an ER doctor. Over time, it had seen its share of action. And heartache.
As they all knew, some wounds you couldn't fix; the worst ones, you couldn't even see...