SHEREMYETEVO AIRPORT
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
By the time the taxi pulled up in front of Moscow's airport, Sergei was wound tighter than a spring. It had been a long, cold, noisy flight from Grozny to the Vnukova air field and Alexei, who he'd met when Harm and Mac had been in Chechnya and who Clay had drafted to pick him up, was far too talkative during the ride from the military airfield to the airport. He'd tried to sleep on the flight from Chechnya and after five months in a prisoner of war camp, he would have thought that he could have fallen asleep just about anywhere. But slumber had proved to be an elusive ally in those early morning hours.
Instead, Sergei spent the rest of the night thinking and none of the thoughts swirling in his head were of the comforting variety. Although he'd not known his brother for very long, he thought he could safely say that Harm would not like the lengths to which Clayton Webb had gone to get him released. After stewing over it for about an hour into the flight, Sergei came to an even more troubling conclusion – there was more to the situation than Harm simply being transported to a hospital on land, something which made getting Sergei released imperative. Was his brother dying? Was he being released only to say a final goodbye to Harm?
He had asked Daniel Mason, who had insisted that all he knew was what he'd told Sergei before they left the prison camp, which was that Harm had been transferred off the aircraft carrier. He didn't know why or how serious Harm's condition was. He'd tried to reassure Sergei, saying that if it were really that bad, Clay would have said something.
Sergei had nodded assent and dropped the subject, realizing that he was not going to get anything out of Mason, but he was far from convinced. He wished he knew his brother better. Maybe then he'd be able to feel his presence, to know instinctively that he was going to be okay. As a child, his mother used to tell him that she always knew when something was wrong with him. Maybe if he had more of a connection with Harm ….
Sergei was out of the taxi almost before it had come to a complete stop at the curb, stalking towards a waiting Clay. Inside the cab, Mason shook his head. He knew the young Russian was about to explode and it would probably prove interesting to witness his tête-à-tête with Clay. However amusing, though, it was a confrontation Mason wouldn't get to see. He'd delivered Sergei safely to Moscow and his job was now done. Clay would dismiss him to return to the embassy, possibly knowing that a storm was brewing.
Ignoring Sergei, Clay spoke to Mason and Alexei through an open window in the cab, turning back to Sergei only after passing some money to Alexei. His expression was irritatingly calm as he strode towards the airport entrance, motioning to Sergei to follow him.
"I have everything you'll need to enter the US," he said, pulling a packet out of his inside jacket pocket. "Until we can find some way to prove paternity, you're only eligible for a nonimmigrant tourist visa, but I did get the embassy to approve it for a full ninety days and Ernie McGill is working with INS on smoothing the approval process for your I-94 once we get to New York. After you're in the US, we can start the process of changing your status with INS if you decide to stay. I've also got your passport, courtesy of Major Sokol, and some spending money to hold you over until you're with your family …."
"How bad is my brother's condition?" Sergei demanded, abruptly coming to a stop just inside the entrance to the airport. Grabbing his arm, Clay pulled him out of the crush of people entering and exiting the airport. "He would not approve of what you have done to get me out of prison. You gave them money and weapons? My brother never would have allowed that, which means he is in no condition to say anything."
"I was waiting until we get through checking in for our flight," he explained with patient amusement, purposely ignoring the query about how Sergei's freedom had been bought. Clay didn't really care to explain himself. There was nothing amusing about this situation, but Sergei's expression was so reminiscent of his brother, Clay thought. And his questions – the words were coming out of Sergei's mouth, but he swore to himself that he could hear Harm's voice uttering them. Even if not for his discrete checking into Sergei's story after their adventure in Chechnya, Clay would have sworn that Sergei and Harm were related. They were definitely of one mind about a lot of things. "I have a cell phone and will place a call to your family so you can speak to them directly."
"My family?" Sergei asked, confused. Harm was his family, aside from his mother, and Sergei didn't think he was likely to be in any condition to talk to him. After all, if Harm's condition was not bad, wouldn't Clay have answered his question immediately? Trying to push that morose thought aside, he thought about it a moment, then realized whom Clay must be referring to. "My stepmother?"
He wasn't sure if he was ready for that. Surely, Harm had told his mother about his existence, but that didn't mean that Trish had reconciled herself to it. How did one deal with knowing that the husband you thought was dead was actually living with a woman in another country and fathering her child? He hadn't wanted to ask how she'd taken it and Harm had never volunteered the information.
"Actually, I was thinking of your sister-in-law," Clay said. "Although your grandmother is probably there as well, along with your stepmother."
Sergei stared at him, stunned. His brother was married? He thought back. They'd not had much time to talk when Harm had been in country, when they'd first met, but he did recall Harm saying that he wasn't married. And their meager correspondence prior to his capture, as much as he could recall of it off the top of his head, had delved little into Harm's personal life. Mostly, Harm had talked about work, their grandmother, and the few memories he had of their father. In turn, Sergei wrote of his life growing up on the farm, revealing little of his life in the middle of a war. Not that his brother wouldn't understand, being in the military himself, but his newfound family was something to get his mind off the horrors surrounding him.
Of course, Sergei had been out of contact for five months. He supposed a lot could have changed. i Maybe it is that lovely Marine Colonel /i , he thought. Even during their brief acquaintance, he could see how much they cared for each other. And Alexei had told him the story of how Mac had convinced him to drive her to Chechnya in his taxi once she found out Harm was there. "Colonel MacKenzie?" he asked.
Clay just barely resisted the urge to laugh. "You're probably the only person who will not be surprised by that news," he said mysteriously. Before Sergei could ask what he meant by that, he continued, "I did speak to A.J. – your brother's commanding officer, Admiral Chegwidden – a few hours ago. Harm was in surgery at that time, but it seemed to be going well." He glanced at his watch and calculated the time in Virginia. "He should be out of surgery by now."
"Surgery?" he asked, surprised. Never had anything been mentioned about surgery, just that Harm had been taken off the ship and flown back to land. "What kind of surgery?"
"I don't know," Clay replied honestly. After he'd hung up with A.J. earlier, it occurred to him that he should have asked more questions, but he'd been blindsided – not that he would admit to such thing to anyone – by A.J.'s news of Harm and Mac's wedding. Now that he was face to face with a worried brother looking for answers, he admitted to himself just how inadequate his knowledge was. But he sensed it was not good. Why else transport Harm from the carrier for a middle-of-the-night surgical procedure? "I'm sure Mac can fill you in on the details."
Sensing Sergei's next question even as he opened his mouth to ask it, Clay pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and searched through the memory for the last number he'd dialed, the main switchboard at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center. Sergei waited apprehensively as Clay requested connection to the surgical ward.
"This is Clayton Webb again," Clay said into the phone, recognizing the voice on the other end as the nurse who had connected him to A.J. earlier. "I need to speak to Colonel MacKenzie."
There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Sorry," the nurse apologized after a moment, remembering. "You mean Colonel Rabb. Just a moment, please."
After a minute spent listening to hold music, Mac's familiar warm voice came over the line. "Clay," she said, her tone obviously tired, even over a slightly staticky connection, "you have Sergei with you?"
"Right here," he said before holding the phone out to Sergei. "It's Mac."
Breathing a sigh of relief, he took the offered phone. "Colonel MacKenzie?" he asked a bit hesitantly.
"Hello, Sergei," she replied warmly. "It's good to hear your voice."
Inside Sergei, a dam broke. "Полковник," he began, lapsing into his mother tongue in his anxiety, his tone infused with the tension he'd been under for the last few hours, the words spilling from his mouth in a rush, "Что случилось с моим братом? Мне сказали, что он попал в аварию, и он собирался быть прекрасным, тогда что он был принят от авианосца. Г. Вебб говорит, что он был в операционной, но он не знает для какой. В какой операционной, мой брат нуждался бы в середине ночи?" Colonel, what happened to my brother? I was told that he had an accident and he was going to be fine, then that he was taken off the aircraft carrier. Mr. Webb says he was in surgery, but he does not know for what. What surgery would my brother need in the middle of the night?
Sergei was speaking too quickly for even Mac to translate everything he said in her head, but she got the gist of what he was trying to say. She let the questions run their course, sympathetic to his frustration. After five months in a prison camp, the joy he should have felt at finally being free was overshadowed by worry for Harm. And it would be tonight before he could see Harm for himself. "Well," she began, drawing on every ounce of composure she could, trying to strike a reassuring tone when she was far from reassured herself, "when Harm ejected out of his plane, he suffered a head injury. No one's really quite sure how. He seemed fine for most of, uh, yesterday. He was awake and talking and …. Last evening he had a seizure and, well, that's when the doctors decided to fly him here for surgery."
"He had surgery on his brain?" Sergei asked with a sense of foreboding, remembering to switch to English after she responded to him in that language. In the Russian Army, he'd seen many a soldier die of head injuries. Medical care out in the field could be very primitive.
"Well, it's not as bad as you make it sound," Mac prevaricated, trying to reassure him. i Well, it's true /i , she justified internally. The surgery itself wasn't that bad, at least if I'm interpreting the doctors' tone correctly. It's everything leading up to it. "Harm is out of surgery and they're going to let us in to see him in a few minutes. He'll be fine. By the time you get here tonight, he should be awake, so you can talk to him for yourself."
"He will be fine?" he repeated, willing himself to believe her reassurances. From what little he knew, he was aware that Harm trusted Mac implicitly. Surely, she would not lie to him.
"Harm is a fighter," she said, trying to convince herself as much as him. "He always has been …." There was a pause on the other end of the line and Sergei tensed until Mac's voice came back over the phone. "Sergei, there's someone here who would like to talk to you."
He swallowed nervously. "Who?" he asked.
"Your grandmother," she replied before passing the phone to Sarah, who smiled with relief as she took the phone.
"Sergei," she said.
"Бабушка," he said, smiling at hearing his grandmother's warm voice. He'd spoken to her twice on the phone before his capture, once while in Moscow waiting to see Harm and Mac off on their trip back to Washington and the second time on his twentieth birthday shortly before his capture, a call Harm and Major Sokol had worked together to arrange. Grandma.
The first time, he'd been nervous, even more so than meeting Harm. He'd never had grandparents in his life – his mother's parents had died before he was born – and although they were blood, he knew it must have come to as such a shock that to her that her son had another family in Siberia. But by the end of their first lengthy phone conversation – Sergei tried not to think about how much that call had cost Harm to make for him – throughout most of which he'd uncomfortably stumbled through calling her 'Mrs. Rabb,' he'd proclaimed her his beloved grandmother in Russian. She'd made him feel welcome, even more so than his brother had.
"How are you doing, Sergei?" she asked.
"I'm fine," he said, a bit insistently, brushing aside the concern he heard in her voice. "Colonel MacKenzie said Harm is going to be fine?"
Sarah resisted the urge to sigh. Her grandson could be about to fall over from exhaustion and he probably wouldn't admit it. He was more worried about his brother than his own well-being. Typical Rabb stubbornness, she thought knowingly. "That's what the doctors tell us," she said confidently. "He's still unconscious from the surgery, but the family will be allowed in to see him in a few minutes and the doctors said they would start bringing him off the sedatives this afternoon so he can wake up. From what I understand, he should be conscious by the time you arrive this evening."
Sergei found himself being soothed by his grandmother's warm, calm voice. He could almost imagine her wrapping her arms around him, reassuring him with a tender hug and soothing words. Despite his worry, listening to Sarah set his mind at ease; he could believe that everything was going to be just fine.
-----
Sarah handed the phone back to Mac and she spoke to Clay for another minute, getting the details of Sergei's arrival. Clay was estimating they would arrive in Norfolk about seven that evening and told her that he'd already arranged for transportation from the airport to the hospital. Depending on traffic, Sergei would be with his family within an hour after that. After they were finished talking, she hung up the phone with a sigh.
"I know how he feels," Sarah murmured, "being so far away and feeling so helpless."
"Is it any worse than sitting here," Mac countered wearily, gesturing towards the ICU entrance at the other end of the corridor, "waiting for someone to come through those doors to tell us how he is?"
"I don't know," she admitted, for a brief second showing every one of her eighty-two years as she sighed. Then she was once again the strong, confident woman whom had been such a rock to her granddaughter-in-law for the last few hours. "Trish seems to think it was easier the last time. I think both situations come down to a lack of control. We couldn't make the plane going to Germany fly any faster any more than we could have hurried up the doctors in there." She studied Mac for a long moment, torn. She felt she'd been making inroads with Mac, making her feel as welcome as possible in their family, but a part of her was still hesitant about overstepping some imaginary boundary, one she wasn't entirely sure of the location of. She knew just enough from Harm about Mac's past to know that she didn't share herself easily. She decided to phrase her next thought as a question. "You don't like feeling like you don't have any control over the situation, do you?"
"I don't know how to handle not being there for him," she admitted after a moment, dropping into a chair with a heavy sigh. "When he found out about his dad on the i Hornet /i , his arrest, going to Russia both times …." She trailed off, trying not to remember the times she'd not been there for him – after he returned from the i Henry /i , when he was accused of writing that op-ed piece, after Sydney …. That one haunted her the most.
Why did you go to him so quickly
Why hadn't she heard him clearly before? Looking back on it since the engagement party, she saw things so differently. Instead of rejecting her, Harm now appeared in retrospect to have been lost, not entirely sure of his footing – at JAG, with her. Yet instead of trying to make things easier for him, she'd flown into the arms of another man, leaving Harm feeling …. what exactly? What had he really thought about her when she'd turned to Mic so quickly? Although she knew he'd been keeping a tight lid on his emotions, she'd heard the hurt in his tone as he'd asked the question and it taunted her, ridiculed her for bringing them this point. How many people had been hurt because she'd miscalculated Harm's intentions so badly?
"Honey," Sarah said gently, breaking into her condemning thoughts, "you can't do everything for him, no more than he can do everything for you." Mac glanced at her, wondering how Sarah could read her so easily. "Harm's told me a lot about you over the years. I know how much you've been there for each other and about the times when circumstances prevented you for being there."
"Circumstances?" Mac echoed, frustrated. "I turned my back on my best friend, on the man I love, and look what happened!"
Sarah reached over and took Mac's trembling hand in hers. "You wouldn't happen to be talking about the tension between the two of you when he returned from flight duty, would you," she said, not phrasing it as a question. "Harm did need closure on that part of his life, I won't deny that. But I'm sure there was a part of Harm that thought in some respects that he'd caused more heartache than he'd reconciled when he left JAG."
"Did he say that?" Mac asked, not surprised when Sarah shook her head.
"He didn't have to," she said. "But I do know this. He was seeing Jordan before he went back to flying, but when he told me that he was about to leave JAG, it wasn't her reaction to his decision that bothered him the most. He told me about your goodbye in his office the day he left and it broke his heart. I don't think he knew how to tell you that you weren't the only one crying."
"He never told me any of that," Mac confirmed.
"Mac," she began, "…. Sarah, let me tell you a little secret about Rabb men. They're passionate – about everything. But they're not really ones for showing their feelings - they keep a lot of that passion buried deep down inside. You have to know how to read the signs to see it and know how patiently coax it out of them. Has Harm ever told you about his grandfather?"
"Not a lot," she replied. "Just that he was killed in World War II."
"Hmmm," Sarah murmured. "Not that surprising, I suppose. I've tried to keep his father and grandfather alive through my memories of them, but I guess it's hard when you don't have a frame of reference. But I'm sure I've told him this story. Harm's grandfather and I had grown up together and it was generally known that I was sweet on him. He was harder to read, but most people figured that was just a man's way back then, but that we'd eventually end up married and raising a houseful of children, as people did in those days. Not that love wasn't important, but choice of a spouse was often a practical consideration. Men were raised to provide for their families and women were raised to keep the house and raise the children. Passion is good, but in the end, it alone won't keep a household together.
"Like most everywhere, Lucky Lindy's flight in '27 was huge news," she continued, pausing to gather her thoughts, while Mac listened intently. For some reason, she'd always had this idea that Harm's family background was the stuff made of dreams, despite the heartache they'd endured. He'd had two devoted parents who loved him, three including Frank, and he'd never wanted for anything. Certainly it was more romantic than anything she'd ever experienced. She'd never expected to hear his grandmother speaking of her family in such practical terms. "I had just turned eight, John was a year older. Remember how I told you Rabbs are so passionate about everything? Well, John became passionate about flying, maybe even more so than his son or grandson. I think it was the newness, the excitement of it."
Mac found herself smiling a little. "It's hard to believe that anyone could love flying more than Harm," she remarked.
"But he did," Sarah insisted. "Beallsville was just a small farming and mining community. About the only way that people got out in those days was to join the military. There is nobility in serving one's country that seems to have bypassed a lot of people in the last few generations. Back then, you didn't join the military to earn money for college, only to move on to some fancy civilian job when your term was up. Anyway, when John became a teenager, he started making trips into Pittsburgh. He'd go to the library and read up on flying. In Time magazine, I think it was, he read about the ongoing rivalry between the Army and the Navy in developing their air programs, so then he started seeking out recruiters. By then, we were all already aware of the rumblings coming from Europe, so the military was only to happy to welcome someone like John into their ranks."
"What about you?" Mac asked, sensing that this was the thrust of the story. "How did you feel about his career aspirations?"
"Ah," Sarah said, chuckling a little. "You see where I'm going with this. By then, John and I had an unspoken understanding between us, or so I thought. I didn't understand this obsession of his. He was going to probably be moving around from base to base every few years, with the possibility of sea duty as carriers were starting to come into vogue in the Navy, plus there was the looming possibility that we'd get dragged into Europe's troubles within a few years. I didn't see my place in his plans and I have to say John wasn't doing too well on letting me know what that place was. I didn't really know anyone that well who was in the military, at least not anyone who'd made a career of it. Once they'd left, not a lot of people came back to Beallsville aside from the occasional visit to family still there. My own father had been drafted, served his two years during the Great War, came home, married my mother and worked the farm while my mother worked on producing eleven children, of which I was the oldest."
"I can relate to some of that," Mac admitted. "When Harm left, I had that same feeling of not knowing where I fit into his life, maybe even a part of me wondered if I ever had fit in."
Sarah nodded. "That's what I thought. Well, one night, shortly after John had been accepted into the Navy – back then a college degree wasn't a requirement to become an officer – and knew he was going to be able to go to flight school, we fought bitterly about it. We had gone out for a ride in his father's truck and all he could talk about was the Navy. I finally had enough and insisted he take me home as it was quite obvious to me that I had no place in his life anymore. Even then, it was after half an hour of arguing before he finally blurted out 'Sarah, sweetheart, I'm not doing any of this without you. As soon as I get out of flight school, I'm coming back to get you and you'll come with me wherever the Navy decides to send me."
"That was his proposal?" Mac asked, incredulous, laughter bubbling up within her. Even Harm had managed to get out the words 'Will you marry me?' Maybe it was genetic, as Sarah has suggested.
"That was it," she confirmed. "I smacked him on the side of the head with my purse. I suppose that I was enough of a dreamer that I expected something more than just his foregone conclusion that I was a part of the deal. That was the night I'd finally figured out the Rabb mystique…." She trailed off, remembering John pulling her into his arms and kissing the life out of her. They'd kissed before – chaste pecks on the lips when he would take her home after a date, when he knew her family was probably watching them through the windows. But in that one kiss, she'd felt everything he'd never been able to say to her and she knew in that moment that she would follow him anywhere.
"Um, Gram?" Mac asked hesitantly, nervous about breaking into the other woman's memories. Despite their short time together, it was obvious that the life John and Sarah Rabb shared had been a good one.
"We may not have had much time," Sarah said wistfully, echoing Mac's train of thought, "but I wouldn't trade those memories for anything. It was only because of him that I left my home and I returned after he died. People suggested that I should remarry, have more children."
"But you didn't," Mac said. She knew from Harm that his father had been an only child and assumed, since Sarah had been introduced to her as Sarah Rabb, that she'd never remarried after her husband's death.
"John left me one of those letters," Sarah explained, "one of those that most military men wrote to their families in case they didn't come back. Knowing him, it was probably the hardest letter he ever had to write, because he said a lot of things in it that he'd never been able to say out loud. He told me that the reason he'd been so certain that I was going to go with him when he left home was that I had the 'fortitude' to be able to make a life for us despite having an absentee husband and facing having to move wherever the Navy wanted to send him. He was quite a handsome man, as I'm sure you can imagine, and had his share of girls swooning over him. But he needed more than some silly girl who just fancied herself in love with him."
Mac stared at her uncomprehendingly. "After John died," Sarah continued, sensing her confusion, "I had a widow's pension from the Navy and his family's farm, which he – as the only son in his family – had inherited when his father died, and I moved back there with his mother and my son. There were times when I wondered why I didn't just find myself a dependable man who could take care of us. Then I could worry about nothing but runny noses and making sure dinner wasn't too cold."
"You must think I'm awful for being willing to settle for another man," Mac began, Sarah vehemently shaking her head.
"I wasn't thinking any such thing," she protested. "I'm only thinking that you are human and both you and Harm could learn how to communicate with each other a little better. But when you figure it out, I think you'll find that loving Harm is worth everything that you two have gone through. Even after that night when we reached our understanding, getting John to open up was still like pulling teeth sometimes – there are times when they just don't want to shake loose no matter how much you yank. But he tried to remember that I wasn't a mind reader and I tried to look for what he was thinking in his actions rather than your words."
"Does Harm ever tell you how wise you are, Gram?" Mac asked, the light dawning. How many times had Harm shown her through his actions that he loved her, while she'd focused on waiting for the words?
"All the time," she replied, waving her hand dismissively. "But you'll find when you're eighty-two, most people will think you're wise as well. Life experience will do that to you. But don't be fooled into thinking I haven't made my share of mistakes, dear. The key is to learn from those as well."
Mac mulled over what she was saying. It was so easy to see why Harm so easily – well, maybe not so easily – confided in his grandmother. Mac imagined that she was the lynch pin that held the family together. John Rabb had certainly pegged his wife correctly. She certainly was one of the strongest women Mac had ever met.
A nurse Mac hadn't seen before walked up to them. "Colonel Rabb?" she asked. At Mac's confirming nod, she continued, "I'm Lieutenant Collins, the night nurse in ICU. We've gotten your husband settled and you can go back and see him. Two people are allowed in for fifteen minutes at a time. Doctor Stafford is still back there with him, so if you have any questions about your husband's condition, you can ask him."
"Why don't you go with Lieutenant Collins, Mac?" Sarah suggested, squeezing her hand. "I'll go let Trish and Frank know, and Trish can follow you in."
As Sarah returned to the waiting room, Mac got up and followed the nurse down the corridor to ICU, stopping suddenly just outside the double glass doors leading to the ward. "I'd like to wait for my mother-in-law," she explained to the nurse. "She's supposed to go in with me."
A moment later, Sarah, Trish and Frank joined them, apprehension evident in all their tired eyes. Sarah introduced Trish and Frank to the nurse. "If you and Mrs. Burnett will follow me, Colonel," the nurse instructed, "I take you back now. There's a waiting room just inside the ward where Mrs. Rabb and Mr. Burnett can wait until you come out."
They all followed her into the ICU ward, Frank and Sarah being shown into the waiting room before Mac and Trish were escorted to a room at the far end of the ward where Doctor Stafford was waiting for them. He nodded in greeting as the nurse quietly slipped away. "Commander Rabb is continuing to do as well as can be expected," he said. "His vitals have remained stable since he came out of surgery. Someone will check on him every half hour and if it continues to go well, we still anticipate lowering his level of sedation this afternoon as planned." He paused, considering this one of the hardest parts of his job, almost harder than telling people their loved ones had died. Having been a neurosurgeon for twenty years, he knew that a patient coming out of surgery could be a scary sight and there was really no way to prepare a family for it. "If you have questions about anything, please ask me."
He pushed the door open and Mac followed him in first, her hands clenched into fists at her side, her fingernails digging into her palms as she involuntarily gasped. She froze for a split second before she strode over to the side of the bed, pulling a chair up next to it. Reaching out, she took his left hand, resting on top of the blanket, in hers, nearly dropping it in shock at the sensation of his ice-cold fingers in hers. Had he been that cold earlier, when they'd thought his only problem was fighting the hypothermia?
Trish pulled up another chair and settled in it, watching Mac as much as Harm. Looking at him from this angle, but for the ventilator tubing coming out of his mouth and the IV in his left forearm, it almost looked like he was sleeping. But she, like Mac, had gotten a glimpse of the ugly, black stitches running in a line four inches long on the back of his head. He was rolled onto his right side, to keep pressure off the incision, Trish assumed. In a way, it didn't look nearly as bad as it had it had ten years earlier, when one leg had been in traction and bandages had covered burns sustained in the crash.
Tentatively, Mac reached out with her free hand and touched her fingers to his shaved head, remembering the feel of his soft hair beneath her fingertips the other night, as his mouth had moved down her body. It would grow back she knew and, as long as he didn't keep it too short – but still within military regs - it would likely cover the scar left by the surgical incision. She flicked her gaze to the various machines over the head of the bed, but couldn't make sense of any of them but the slow, steady blip of sound and spiked line indicating his beating heart.
"Um," she began hoarsely, pausing to clear her throat, "the ventilator, is it really necessary?"
"Commander Rabb is breathing on his own," Stafford replied. "But between the previous seizure and the uncertainties of brain surgery, it's a necessary precaution. After we go a time without signs of any more seizures, we'll start weaning him off the machine. Probably sometime tomorrow, or maybe even later today, I'll feel confident enough to remove it completely."
"How long do you anticipate he'll have to stay in the hospital?" Trish asked.
"A lot depends on the patient himself," he replied. "Commander Rabb does have a lot in his favor. His health is very good otherwise, but the hypothermia complicates things since he wasn't completely recovered from that yet. I've had patients be released from the hospital in as soon as six days after this type of surgery. My understanding is that he lives in Washington, so likely what we will do is airlift him to Bethesda the day before and release him from there. The long drive from here back to DC is out of the question for now."
Trish and the doctor looked at Mac, but her attention was focused solely on Harm. She knew there were probably a million questions she should probably be asking, but she couldn't put a single one into words right now. To ask about the ventilator had only occurred to her because she'd brushed her hand against the blue tube as she'd reached for his head.
"If you don't have any more questions," Stafford said, "I'll leave you alone with him now while I brief the rest of your family on what to expect." At Trish's nod, he made a note in the chart he was holding and hung it on the end of the bed before walking out, quietly closing the door behind him.
Trish studied Mac for a moment, sympathy welling at the site of a trail of moisture out the corner of one eye. Remembering what Frank had said, she tried to focus on what they had in common, the only thing that was important right now. "I didn't know what to think when we arrived in Germany ten years ago. Harm had the usual childhood injuries – bumps and bruises, even a broken arm once – but nothing prepares you …. the smallest victories became cause for celebration. The day he was able to stand on his own two feet for just a few seconds, when he was able to slowly make his way to the door of his room, then down the hall."
"You'd never know it to look at him now that he'd gone through all that," Mac remarked quietly. The other night, she'd felt what might be scars on his lower back and hips, but hadn't had the opportunity to explore or to ask about them.
"That's the one thing I'm trying to hold on to right now," Trish said. "Harm is one of the strongest people I know and he doesn't know how to give up. I would not be surprised if in six months, a year, you can't tell any of this happened at first glance."
Mac studied him, idly rubbing her thumb across the back of his hand. The few times she'd seen him seriously injured, he'd bounced back so quickly. After he'd been hit by a car, he'd even diffused a terrorist takeover of the hospital. But never before had she seen him like this, looking so helpless. It was hard to reconcile this Harm with the one she was familiar with and had fallen in love with, the confident pilot-slash-lawyer who had been there for her so many times. He was usually the one there for her, like the way he'd been practically glued to her side after she'd been shot. This new reality set her entire world off-kilter.
"I have to believe that," Mac whispered, a tremor barely detectible in her voice. But Trish heard it and her heart went out to the younger woman whom she sensed was trying to be so strong, ready to let Harm lean on her as he recovered. Making a decision, she reached out and clasped her hand on Mac's shoulder. When Mac turned and glanced at her, she thought she caught a glimpse of gratitude in Mac's teary brown eyes.
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To be continued….