Nick was gasping for breath, panic-stricken. He looked at Brass and saw the older man's worry that he tried to hide.
"Hey, Stokes!" Brass snapped. "Focus on me. Stay with me. The medics are on their way."
"You're bleeding." Nick's voice was barely a whisper as he looked at Brass' right shoulder.
Brass had stripped his jacket off and was using it to apply pressure to the wound in Nick's stomach. "Yeah, I know. It's not that bad though." He turned and shouted over his shoulder, "Christ! Where's the damn ambulance?"
Lockwood, bent over the body of a dead officer, looked up. "They're rolling."
"In case you haven't noticed, we need them yesterday!"
Lockwood stood and ran to help Brass and Nick. "Fuck!" He saw the captain, shot at least twice from what he could see, applying pressure to a nasty gut shot Nick had received. He hastily stripped off his jacket to replace Brass', which was now soaked with Nick's blood. "Here," he said urging Brass to move aside. Lockwood looked for a uniform that wasn't too busy. "Myles, get your ass over here with a kit! Jergins call and see what the ETA is on an ambulance!"
Officer Myles hurried over with a first aide kit. Brass jerked it from his hands with his good arm and opened it, tearing through it to find some gauze to tend to his and Nick's wounds while they waited for medical help. "What's the status?" he growled out.
"Kendrick, Morris and three others are down. Perkins just radioed that the body of one of the shooters was dumped out of one of the cars involved. They're still chasing the shooters."
"How bad?" He ripped open the sleeve of his shirt and hissed in pain, pressing a gauze pad to the wound.
Myles swallowed and licked his lips nervously. "Kendrick's dead and I don't think anything can be done for Morris."
Brass swore under his breath then nodded toward his injured leg. "Help me with that, will ya?"
Myles nodded and squatted down to tend to the leg wound.
Lockwood was still applying pressure to Nick's wound when they could hear sirens drawing closer. "Okay Nick. I need you to stay alert. The paramedics are here." He watched the first ambulance pull in and three paramedics piled out to unload their equipment. "Hey, over here!" he shouted. "This guy's serious."
The medics rushed over with their equipment and took over Nick's care. One cut his shirt open to treat the wound while a second applied an oxygen mask. The third turned to Brass and tried to assist him. The captain kept brushing him away to watch what was happening with Nick.
"Sir, I need to treat your injuries. My partners are taking excellent care of him."
"Yeah, excellent," Brass wheezed. "Then how come he's not on the way to the hospital yet?"
"He needs to be stabilized."
Deep down, Brass knew all this. He knew the rules, the drill. But blood loss and the beginnings of shock were robbing him of all his knowledge as a cop.
Nick was floating in a haze of pain and red. He did not like the feeling at all. It didn't even hurt this bad when Nigel had pushed him out the window. His gut was burning and he could dimly make out voices and figures.
He had known Brass was with him. The man had ordered him to stay focused. Then he had thought he heard Lockwood's voice. Now he was hearing the voices of strangers as they tended to him.
There was that small intellectual part of him, the trained CSI and officer, that knew he was being treated for a critical gunshot wound. That part of him was scrabbling to maintain its purchase amongst the hurting, burning torment he was experiencing. He was desperately trying to grasp that training, that ability to keep control.
But the little boy in him wanted to curl into a ball and hide till it all went away. That little boy in him, that despite all the ugly things that happened to him, still survived deep inside of Nick. Tears came easy to the little boy, so therefore they tended to come easy to the man. And tears were still welling up in Nick's eyes from the pain and fear.
And both the boy and the man in Nick wondered if the others knew what had transpired.
Two of the crime lab's Tahoes sped down the Vegas streets. Information coming over the scanners wasn't enough to either dispel or confirm the occupants' worst fears. The only information they had gleaned was four officers and one suspect dead and three officers wounded. One of those critically.
Catherine was frightened, worried and angry. She felt so helpless not knowing what had happened to Nick and she hated that feeling. Questions were flying through her head rapid fire. Did Brass manage to get the two of them behind cover in time? Did Nicky make it unscathed? Was he one of the injured? She didn't want to consider the other possibility.
The mother in her wished she could have shielded Nick from this, just like she always did for her daughter. With all the ugly things in the world, Catherine kept Lindsey as safe and as sheltered as she could. But no one had ever successfully shielded Nick from all the horrors of humanity. He learned about them first hand when he was nine.
When he had told her what the babysitter had done to him she had wanted to soothe his pain like his mother should have all those years ago. She wanted to take Nick in her arms and tell him it wasn't his fault. She wanted to hunt the bitch down and beat the shit out of her for doing something so cruel and inhuman to an innocent child. She wanted to take Nick home, give him some hot chocolate and tuck him into bed safe and sound for the night. But he was a grown man now, and would have looked at her like she was insane.
A noise escaped her throat that was part laugh and part sob.
Brass watched as they finally loaded Nick onto a stretcher, and then rolled him toward the ambulance. The pain meds they had injected him with were making his thinking fuzzy. Even more so then the pain had. Brass wondered how much time had actually passed since the shooting had begun. To him, it felt like hours ago.
Someone was saying something to him. His brows knit together and he turned toward the paramedics who were trying to get him onto the stretcher. He glanced around the parking lot at the carnage. He saw David Phillips, the assistant corner bent over someone's body. Brass knew he wouldn't move the body until Grissom or someone else from the crew got there.
But not Nicky. No, Nick wouldn't be processing this scene.
To Warrick it seemed like an eternity before they arrived at the scene. He wanted to find Nick and to be reassured he was safe. He was positive that Nick would have called someone's cell after it all went down, but perhaps he was distracted. Maybe he was already collecting evidence. Scanning the sea of officers and paramedics his heart began to sink as he noted the absence of his friend.
Sara was clutching his arm in a vise like grip. She too hadn't seen any sign of Nick. Fear wormed its way through her entire being at the implications.
She then saw a familiar face amongst the other paramedics. As much as she didn't want to speak to him, she thought he might know where Nick was. Sara led the way as Warrick, Catherine and Grissom– O'Riley having jogged off to get a report from some of the uniforms – followed her to where Hank was working on a fallen officer.
As they drew nearer they could see he was frantically working to save the man's life as the officer's blood spurted from a severed artery. Hank did what he could to clamp the artery. Glancing up, eyes weary, he saw Sara standing there with the others, wide-eyed with fear and worry. He motioned with his head for his partner to take over. When he was relieved he walked hurriedly to Sara.
"Sara, you look like you've seen a ghost," he said softly.
She gave herself a mental shake, dispelling the image of Nick in place of the officer Hank had been treating. "Have you seen Nick? He was here processing the first shooting when this all went down."
Hank looked puzzled for a moment. "Stokes? I haven't seen him." He realized what Sara was afraid of and tried to do what he could to reassure her. "He could be helping the other paramedics with triage."
Sara nodded, trying to believe those words. She felt someone gently take her elbow. She looked over at Grissom.
"I see Lockwood over there," he explained as he moved her toward the detective, who was hovering over the occupant of a stretcher talking with them.
Brass ripped the oxygen mask off his face. "Did they say how Nicky was?" he asked Lockwood as the paramedics prepared to load him. The ambulance carrying Nick had already left, right as the CSIs were pulling in.
Lockwood shook his head in the negative.
"Lockwood," Grissom said as he approached with the others. He looked shocked when he realized the man on the stretcher was Brass. As he recovered from the shock he asked, "where's Nick?"
Both officers looked sad and defeated. "Gil," Brass began. "He was hit."
Catherine paled. "Oh no."
*****
AN: Sorry it's taken so long to update, but thanks for all the wonderful reviews. I'm glad everyone seems to be enjoying the story. Even though I'm a big meanie for having Nicky get shot. But I love him so much I just gotta do it. (How sick is that?!)
