Delirious
By L.M. Lewis
It was the strangest mixture of relief and fear. He'd found the kid, gut-shot and tossed into the bottom of a ravine, but still alive, still smart-mouthed enough to say "What took you so long?" now unconscious and being hauled up to the ambulance in a rescue basket.
"What took you so long?" How the hell did the kid think he had found him? Why on Earth would he have had that much faith, to think anybody would find him thirty feet off a road in the middle of nowhere? Faith in you--that was the unbidden thought that Hardcastle carried with him as he trudged heavily up the slope behind the paramedics and their patient.
Frank Harper was there, with Millie, four police cars, and the ambulance. A regular three-ring circus, the Judge thought--no, a crime scene. A rescue worker was leaning over McCormick, starting another IV; another one was talking on his radio. Hardcastle wanted to go over there, hear what was being said, but he held back. Then Frank had him by the arm. Did he look like he needed somebody's hand? Well . . . probably.
"Milt, Falcon's already trying to weasel a plea-bargain, saying it was all Price's idea. Milt?"
"Yeah, yeah, good." He watched them lift McCormick into the back of the rig.
"It'll be Olive View," the paramedic shouted over his shoulder.
"Okay, Milt, no arguments, I'll drive." Frank looked ready to read somebody their rights and slap on the handcuffs, Hardcastle thought. Well, not today.
"Just get me there."
Frank had parked the Judge and Millie in a small room off the main ER waiting area. Hardcastle had been pointed in the direction of a chair, but was still standing, arms crossed, studying the door through which Frank had just left.
"They call this The Grieving Room," he said flatly. "They didn't have these back when I was a cop--used to have to tell people bad news right out there in the hallway. 'Your son's dead.'" Part of his head was asking him where that had come from.
Millie was sitting perched toward the front of her chair, hands together, worrying a handkerchief. "Judge—"
"Aw Millie, I'm sorry. I didn't even say 'thank you' for what you did." He looked down at her, wonder exactly what it was she had done, now that they were back in the real world, and why had he been so willing to believe in what she could do in the middle of last night, with the minutes ticking by and hope slipping through his fingers like sand?
"It's alright, Judge, I just . . . I'm just glad you found him."
"I think you found him, Millie." He found it wasn't so hard to say, now that it was out. "You saved his life."
Frank came, Frank went. Not much information. McCormick had been taken up to surgery. Twice Hardcastle himself had ventured out, tried to corner somebody and shake some news out of them. They'd offered him coffee, and vague platitudes about how good the trauma surgeon was
"He's holding his own," Frank said, on the third trip back. "They're almost finished. We're supposed to go up to the second floor waiting room, the surgeon will meet us there when he's done."
They went. They sat, or rather, Millie and Frank sat, Hardcastle paced.
"How long did they say it would be?" he growled in Frank's direction.
"They didn't. Sit down Milt."
But the argument went no further. A tall thin man in green scrubs was in the doorway. Milt sat, heavily, in the nearest chair. Now that the news had arrived he wasn't so sure he wanted to hear it.
"I'm Dr. Alton. You're Mr. McCormick's family?"
The judge nodded without thinking.
"The surgery went well. It was a single .22 caliber bullet. The main damage was to the small bowel, that's the upper part of the bowel."
"He's okay then? He'll be alright?" Hardcastle wanted him to skip all the medical mumbo-jumbo and go right to the punch-line.
"Well," Dr. Alton hesitated, "the structural damage was repaired, but it is my understanding that the injury occurred sometime before midnight?"
"'bout ten, ten-fifteen."
"Then we are looking at a substantial elapse of time--"
"Meaning?"
"--meaning peritonitis, bacteria from inside the intestines getting into the rest of the abdomen. Of course we did what we could to wash things out, and antibiotics were started even before surgery but, even in a young person, peritonitis is a serious complication. The next day or so will give us a better idea of how he'll do."
Another waiting room, this time surgical intensive care, Frank had taken Millie home, but hadn't wasted much effort trying to convince the judge to leave.
"Get some rest, both of you," Hardcastle had said. "I just want to hang around until they've got him settled in the room and I can see how he's doing."
"I can come back for you later," Frank offered.
"Nah, I'll take a cab home in a bit."
It was a bold-faced lie and Frank knew it, even Millie knew it, and she'd only met the judge a week earlier, but they'd departed gracefully. Now Hardcastle was alone in a dimly-lit room decorated with calming, institutional paintings. What took you so long? He sat down on the sofa and buried his face in his hands.
It was another hour before they finally led him down the hallway, past glass walled rooms with the inner curtains drawn, to the one near the end where there was a bustle of activity around a still figure on the bed. The doctor had warned him about the ventilator ("Just a precaution, out by morning."). He hadn't mentioned the monitors but Hardcastle expected that, too. Still, he hoped after all this time; maybe the kid would be awake. Don't wish that on him. Not with all these damn tubes and things. Let him stay knocked out for as long as they'll let him.
Someone had found him a chair. "Here you go, sir, your son's doing a well as we can hope so far. I'm his primary nurse, Angie. I'll be here till morning."
He nodded his thanks and nudged the chair closer to the side of the bed where there were the fewest pieces of equipment. He snaked his hand through the railing and rested it on Mark's, no movement there at all. Angie was at the head of the bed, checking the markings on an IV bag and writing something on her clipboard.
"He'll be okay?" Hardcastle asked, hesitantly. The nurse looked up from her notes.
"He's got a good chance." She patted the judge's shoulder.
Frank came back at 8:30 in the morning, after swinging by Gull's Way and confirming what he already suspected. He found Hardcastle in Mark's room in the SICU, muttering. Frank's entrance was all the prompting he needed to complain out-loud.
"They said the tube'd be out by morning--he'd be breathing on his own. Now nobody can tell me when that's gonna happen. And he's still out of it--been almost twenty-four hours."
"And it's been forty-eight hours since you've been in a bed, Milt, so maybe you're not the most rational judge of things right now."
Hardcastle stood there, trying to think of something to say, trying to think of anything except the cold fear that had been creeping over him all night--that the kid was getting worse, not better, that he was slipping away.
The look on his face must have said it all. Frank had him by the elbow, was gently but firmly steering him out of the room.
"This is crazy, Milt, and Mark would be the first person to tell you so, if they didn't have him doped to the gills like that. We're going to go find the doctor. He'll tell you what's going on, and then I'll take you home for at least eight hours of sleep."
"I already talked to him," Hardcastle muttered under his breath. "He probably doesn't want to see me again real soon."
"Geez, Milt, I'm surprised they haven't tossed you out of here already. Come on. Home. Now. Sleep."
"Six hours. I had a nap last night on the sofa in the lounge. And I can drive myself back this afternoon. I'm not helpless."
"Right."
When he returned at 2:30 that afternoon, it was to find the ventilator pushed over into a corner and the tube gone. He smiled for the first time in a day and a half as he moved toward the bed.
"Now we're cookin', kiddo." His smile shifted to a scowl. "What's these?" They had the kid's wrists tied down with thick white Velcro straps.
"Hi," the day nurse (Beth? Betty? She'd introduced herself to him that morning but he hadn't been thinking all that straight), came in smiling.
"What's with the restraints?" Hardcastle barked.
"Just a precaution--he woke up a little, well, feisty."
"He pulled that damn tube out, didn't he? I knew I shoulda hung around."
"I really don't think that would have helped, sir. He was quite confused. It happens sometimes after anesthesia. And he had a fever. We've already had to restart the IV twice; we don't want him to pull it out again."
Hardcastle reached out, was touching the younger man's forehead in an unconscious gesture that would have been at place between a father and a feverish child.
"Damn."
McCormick moved his right arm restlessly against the restraint, the left was splinted. He moaned but did not open his eyes.
"It's okay, kiddo, you're in the hospital. You're gonna be okay."
Hardcastle settled down for a long stay.
The restlessness had steadily increased, along with the fever, through the afternoon. Now the moans had become snatches of speech, a recognizable phrase here and there, though none of it made much sense. It sounded like warnings, cautions--an occasional bit of prison slang slipped out. Hardcastle tried to talk to him, bring him back to the here-and-now, but he didn't seem to be getting through.
Evening. Night. The light above the head of the bed had been left on for the nurses to do their chores. Angie came back. She'd ordered Hardcastle a meal tray which he picked at dutifully. McCormick hadn't said anything for a half hour now, and the judge was trying to decide if that was a good or bad sign.
A sharp intake of breath made Hardcastle looked up from his mashed potatoes. McCormick's eyes were open. He was staring past the judge into the darkened corner of the room, straining heavily against the wrist restraints with a look of horror on his face.
"He's got a . . . knife." The last word squeezed out in a breath of panic so real that Hardcastle himself turned around to look at the empty corner.
"What the hell, McCormick." He moved towards the bed, reaching out for the kid's hand. "Shh . . . there's nothing there, no knives. You're safe--you're in a hospital. I already told ya that."
The younger man was looking at him, staring really, as if he was trying to place a face out of context. "I'm in the infirmary?" he finally asked.
"No--the hospital."
The edge of terror was gone, McCormick had settled into a look of confusion. "Must be pretty bad then," he whispered, as his eyes drifted shut.
Hardcastle felt the hand relax in his. He put it back down, pulled the cover up over it and sat down slowly, thinking.
He wakes up with a fever, he's delirious and in pain, he's scared . . . yes, scared. He's in a bad way, and somebody's got his wrists fastened down and he can't get away. So what's he supposed to think?
Hardcastle thought about the time he'd been throw in jail by that crooked sheriff, how McCormick had thought up that cockamamie scheme with the fake cast and the gun. The time they were down in San Rio, he'd come swooping in with a helicopter for Pete's sake, to bust the judge out of prison. The nervous jokes he'd made when they'd taken that busload of juvies on a Scared Straight tour.
And last Christmas, when Hardcastle had been framed for murder and was stuck in the county lock-up, Mark had nearly gotten himself arrested, barreling into the jail when he hadn't shown up at the visitor's room. And the look on his face when he'd finally located the judge in the jail library. McCormick had been scared . . . he was scared for you.
Are you seeing a pattern here, Hardcase? When the kid wakes up in hell, he thinks he's back in prison. When he sees a friend in hell, he's got to get him out . . . what took you so long?
Morning. McCormick had opened his eyes again, just after dawn, had looked at the judge sitting in a chair next to his bed, with his feet propped up and said, softly, "Dammit Hardcase, don't you have a bed at home?"
The response was not what he expected as the judge shot up from dozing, to full blown up-and-awake, in an instant.
"Don't pull out your IV," the judge shouted gruffly, grabbing for McCormick's hand. "You'll get me in trouble with Betty--or Beth, whichever it is."
McCormick gave him a look of total amazement. He pulled his hand back, held it up above his face and studied it curiously. He thought of a couple questions he could ask but, no, the judge looked pretty beat and, honestly, sometimes it was better not to know.