When Every Second Counts
Chapter 2
Visiting
"How'd you get us in here anyway?" Ryan asked, perplexed. Somehow he doubted that he and Neil qualified as "immediate family." He was almost afraid to guess what the tech had said to get them access to visiting a critical patient. Not critical, he corrected himself, stable now. Just still carefully monitored.
"Congratulations, Serge," Neil replied, "You're her half-brother now."
"I'm what?" Ryan asked, "Hold on, then who did you claim to be?"
Neil mumbled something under his breath, but the sergeant beside him caught enough words to form the full sentence. Actually, there was only one word he needed to catch to form the full sentence, and that was "husband."
"Oh man," Ryan chuckled, "I do not envy you when she hears about that."
"Yeah, I was hoping she wasn't gonna," the tech said, giving Ryan a hopeful please-don't-sign-my-death-warrant look.
Jane had been taken to the military hospital. The doctors had successfully removed the bullet from her throat. They had surmised that she would be able to leave the hospital in a few days, as long as she periodically came back to be checked upon, and that she would be fully recovered in a month or two. The injury was serious only if untreated, but there was still the threat from blood loss. Once everything had been straightened out, a doctor gave an "everything will be alright" speech to the pair that brought the woman in.
Not that the young doctor believed their claim to family, but she was not going to be so cruel to such devoted friends of the patient. Sentimentality was one of her weak spots.
"Neil, put that down," Ryan said as the corporal started going through the medical charts. Not that it was for him to say, but the doctor was not present.
"God, this place is bland," Neil said, paying no attention to his friend in the least, "Needs some nice wallpaper or something."
"Neil," hissed Ryan, grabbing the charts and carefully replacing them, "Sit down and visit or go outside and wait."
The tech complied and looked around the ten-by-ten gray box that served as a hospital room. He managed to look everywhere except to the unconscious woman on the infirmary bed. The speech the doctor gave was of no comfort, as he had heard it before just before losing a good friend less than a year earlier.
"So what did you say when you reported the situation?" Ryan asked after a few minutes of almost unbearable silence.
"'Four soldiers down, as well as one scientist, big mutinous scuffle of some kind, gotta go, bye,'" Neil replied, "I think that was it anyway."
"And I wondered how you–"
Ryan was cut off by the sound of the door opening. The man who entered the room was not one of the doctors, as he had expected, but the surviving lieutenant from the Tucson mission. The sergeant quelled the urge to try to tear the man apart. A hospital was no place for a brawl.
The lieutenant, a coarse man by the name of Williams, had no such ideals. His neck still hurt from the punch received from the Deep Eye's second-in- command, while his whole body ached from being bound in a rather rough way for the long trip from the wreckage site back to New York.
The first thing he did was to gain retaliation on the sergeant by means of a well-placed blow across the side of Ryan's head. It was with great satisfaction that the lieutenant carried out his orders, as he was a rather vengeful man.
"You two are under arrest," Williams spoke slowly, as though savoring the effect his words would have, "I suggest you come quietly, but personally I wouldn't mind if you resisted."
"And what if we didn't huh?" Neil asked, standing, "What if we wanted to stay here a while?"
"I have a squad of six men standing outside that door, Corporal Fleming. If I wanted it they would come in here and kill the both of you. And let's not forget the bitch," he gestured to Jane, still oblivious to anything but her dreams, "This time I'll be sure not to miss her head."
"What's the matter with you, Williams?" Neil asked aggressively, "Your mommy, she beat you as a kid or something?" During the previous mission the two had gotten into a couple of fights over the communications system. When Ryan had told the tech of the events in the back of the transport while they had been in the waiting room, it didn't help Neil's opinion of the lieutenant.
"Neil, let's just go," Ryan said quietly before the fight he had passed by occurred between the subordinate officers instead. Before Neil could protest, he found himself being led out of the room by the sergeant. The tech gave himself the leisure of one last glance into the room before following Ryan outside and into what he considered the wonderful world of being in custody.
