Disclaimer in Part 1.
oooooooooooooooooo
Karen gave a huge yawn as she stepped into the elevator. It was just after 6 A.M., which was normally not too early for her. But yesterday had been exhausting, to say the least. Her calendar was still clear of patients, and the doctor who had checked her over last night had strongly recommended she rest for as long as possible today. There was no reason for her to be here. Nothing except the strong compulsion that had driven her out of bed at five as soon as she realized that sleep wouldn't be coming back.
The doors opened on the sixth floor, and she stepped out. She'd gotten Don's room number from the nurse downstairs fairly easily, with her white coat and her old L.A. General name badge. As she had expected, the floor was quiet. It was well before visiting hours and morning rounds. She'd be in and out in no time.
She'd been giving her statement to Agent Sinclair yesterday evening when he'd received the call that Don was going to be fine. It suddenly became a lot easier to endure the gut-wrenching process of reliving everything that had happened in the old hotel. But she still had to see for herself that he was really okay. And part of her had to know exactly what he had gone through, since she was the one for whom he had taken two bullets. Sinclair's terse phone conversation with Don's brother had only conveyed the basics, and she needed to know more. After all, she was the one who should have nearly died.
She walked briskly past the nurses' desk and towards room 616. Pushing the door open, she slipped inside and gently closed it behind her. The morning light was starting to slant through the blinds, but it was still fairly dark inside. She walked to the foot of the bed and stood there for a moment, looking at Don Eppes.
The regular, steady beeping from the heart monitor was a reassuring sound in the background. She followed the leads from the monitors to where they were taped to his arms and chest. He seemed to be resting peacefully, his chest rising and falling under its swathes of bandages, the thin green tube beneath his nose assisting with extra oxygen, and the white clip on his forefinger monitoring his oxygen saturation. His color was a little pale, but then he had lost a lot of blood. She blinked back the memory of her jacket soaking through with it.
There was a small line of stitches on his right cheek, where McDowd had struck him after he had called out to warn her. There was some colorful bruising over his ribs, probably from the kick he had taken on the floor. She let her eyes linger over each of his injuries, cataloguing them as a reminder of what had happened, and what hadn't happened to her.
After a few minutes, she picked up the chart at the end of the bed and examined it. To her practiced eye, it told the story of a man who had had a narrow escape, but was doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances. She didn't see a notation as to when he had regained consciousness, but it wouldn't be unusual if he was still out, considering the major trauma his body had been through. She flipped to the page with the surgeon's report and started to read the details that she had come to seek.
Suddenly there was a movement off to the side, and she jumped back, clutching the clipboard to her chest. Her mind started racing, wondering how far away the door was and if she could get out in time and --
And then she noticed the cot back in the shadows. An older man with salt-and-pepper hair was sitting up on it, looking perfectly harmless. "Good morning," he said groggily, swinging his feet down to the floor.
"I'm sorry," she said, taking a step back and willing her heart to slow down. "I didn't know anyone was here." Then she paused, wondering if the rules had changed since her residency. "Usually visitors aren't allowed overnight in Recovery."
"Oh, I'm pretty stubborn," he said in a wry tone of voice. "Are you the morning shift?"
"No," she automatically replied. Then she froze. If this man was who he appeared to be, he probably wouldn't be too keen on talking to the person who had gotten his son shot. "I was just, uh, checking on Agent Eppes' condition."
His puzzled gaze took in her white doctor's coat. "You're not with the FBI, are you?"
"No, I'm not," she said, taking another step back. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you, sir. I can come back another time."
"No, it's all right," he said, rubbing his eyes. "You can tell me how he's doing," and he gestured towards Don.
"Oh. Okay." It was probably easier to play along than to run off and make him suspicious. So she stepped forward, taking the stethoscope from around her neck. The real doctor was going to wonder what was going on when he or she found that the morning rounds had already been done in Room 616.
The older man watched in silence as she took Don's pulse and respiration. She jotted them down and then looked back through the chart, comparing the numbers she'd just observed to the ones from last night. "He's coming along fine," she said softly, in her best encouraging doctor voice.
Her eyes caught on the initial numbers from when he'd first been brought in to the ER, and she swallowed. Flipping through to the surgeon's report, she saw that his pulse had almost disappeared twice during surgery, and she let out a soft gasp at the amount of blood that had been pumped back into him.
"What is it?" the man on the cot demanded.
"Nothing," she quickly reassured him, aware that her voice wasn't as strong as it was a minute ago. "Don was very lucky." And so was I, she thought, staring at the stranger who had saved her life. She remembered exactly where she'd been yesterday, crouched on the windowsill in midflight. McDowd's shots wouldn't have hit her in the liver or the lung. They'd have gone right into her heart.
"Doctor, is everything all right?"
She put a hand up to her face, then suddenly realized where she was and who she was talking to. "I'm -- I'm sorry, Mr. Eppes. It is Mr. Eppes, right?" When he nodded, looking more than a little confused, she took a deep breath. He deserved to know the truth.
"I have a confession to make. I'm not Don's doctor. I don't even work at this hospital." His eyes widened, and she hurried on, "My name is Karen Fisher. I'm the witness that Don was protecting yesterday. I'm -- " Her second deep breath was more shuddering than the first. "I would be dead if it weren't for him, and I'm the reason he's here."
He was quiet for a moment. She looked away, ready to walk out of the room to avoid his wrath and to avoid waking Don. Then his voice came softly across the room, "Are you all right, Karen?"
"Oh, I'm fine," she said with a touch of bitterness. "Just fine, even though I'm the one he was after."
"The one who was after?" He rose to his feet and moved towards her. "My name's Alan. Don doesn't tell me much about his cases; he probably doesn't want me to worry. I suppose he's right about that. So all I know is that there was some escaped convict that he and his old partner were trying to track down."
She nodded, swallowing back a lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. "I, um, I saw him kill a man a few years ago. I testified at his trial, and they told me he was locked up for good. Then Agent Eppes came by a week ago to tell me this man, McDowd, was out, and that I might be in danger." She shook her head. "I didn't believe him. Then he came by again and said they had more information, and that I really needed to go into protective custody."
"That must have been hard for you," he said softly.
"Yeah, it was. It was like a nightmare repeating itself, you know?" She dared to look over at him, and he was nodding sympathetically. "So they put me in this safe house near downtown, but it obviously wasn't very safe. I guess there had been a cop in on it all along, who helped break McDowd out and who told him where I was. And…he came and found me."
"Is that when Don came along?"
She nodded, wiping away a tear that had started to form while she was talking. "Yeah. He chased McDowd up onto the roof and told me to hide. I don't know what happened, but only a few minutes later McDowd was banging on the door and demanding that I let him in or he would kill an FBI agent. And then Don called out to me, telling me to get out, and then I think he hit him." She gestured towards her cheek in the same place where Don's face was marked with a row of neat stitches.
She looked up to see that Alan's face had grown paler. "So the fugitive managed to capture Don instead of the other way around?"
She suddenly realized who she was talking to. Her hand flew to her mouth. "I'm sorry, Mr. Eppes. You -- you probably don't want to hear all of this. I should just go."
"No, it's okay." He heaved in a great breath, but kept his gaze steady on hers. "I think you need to say it. You came here for a reason." Then his voice grew quieter, as if he was talking to himself. "And maybe after all, I need to hear it."
"If I could trade myself for him, I would. I mean, I tried: I asked McDowd to let him go, that I was the one he was after." She shook her head. "And then it all happened so fast." She had gone over every detail of this with Agent Sinclair yesterday, a couple of times, but now it all seemed like one blurred nightmare. "He was going to shoot me, and then they started struggling for the gun, and then…" She looked down at the still-sleeping Don. "He just -- threw himself in front of me. He was on the floor, and he must have seen that he couldn't get to McDowd, so he just threw himself in front of me. Without a vest, without anything. And -- "
She stopped. The memory of Don's face twisting with sudden, excruciating pain was something she would never forget. Nor would she forget the way he had collapsed to the ground at her feet, or that his sacrifice would have been meaningless if his partner had been a second later with his own weapon. It was also something she would never tell someone as close to Don as his father.
So she finished quietly, "And then Agent Cooper came up from the hallway and shot McDowd, and then we waited for the paramedics."
Alan was looking at his son, one hand clenched around the railing at the foot of the bed. "Amazing," he said softly.
"He really is," she agreed. "I guess I knew in the abstract what it meant to have people assigned to watch over me, to protect me. I just never thought something like this would actually happen."
He turned and fixed her with a look. "And you're feeling guilty about it, aren't you?"
She blinked. How could he be trying to comfort her, when it was his son who had nearly died for her? "I suppose so," she answered. "I mean, if it weren't for me, this wouldn't have happened," and she gestured towards Don.
Alan was shaking his head. "If it weren't for that criminal McDowd, this wouldn't have happened. I know what Don would say if he was awake, and I'm going to say it for him. It is not your fault that some maniac was after you. Nor was it your fault that Don chose to protect you the only way he could. It was horrible what you had to go through, yes, and it's horrible what Don has gone through, but it wasn't your doing." He looked down at his son. "And if I know Don, I'm going to have to have the same conversation with him once he wakes up."
She bit back the comment that it was actually Don's fault that he was shot, and asked instead, "What do you mean?"
He sighed. "Don is a good FBI agent. That's not just fatherly pride talking, mind you, that's what his colleagues tell me, and it's what I've seen when I've gotten to observe him work. He's damn good, as a matter of fact. But he takes too much on his shoulders. You watch, he'll blame himself for not getting to you sooner and for putting you through all this when it wasn't his fault at all."
She said ruefully, "He did more than enough to make up for it."
"You should come back and tell him that yourself," Alan quietly replied.
She looked at him for a moment, then back at Don. "I just don't understand. How does someone offer up their life for someone they don't even know?"
"It sounds like you already know the answer to that."
She stared at him. "I don't understand."
There was a rustling noise from the bed. They both turned to see Don shifting a bit, and as Alan moved to his side, his eyes slowly opened.
Alan sat down on the cot and grasped Don's hand with both of his. "Donnie?"
She took a hesitant step towards the door, knowing that she should find the doctor on call. But Alan's gaze flickered to her for a moment, and she stayed.
"Dad?" Don's voice was little more than a croak.
"I'm here, son. You're okay, Donnie, you're going to be just fine."
His eyes fluttered shut, then came wide open. "Karen?" he asked with as much urgency as he could muster. "She okay?"
It took a second for her to find her voice. "I'm fine," she stammered, coming around to his other side. "Thanks to you."
His head turned a bit, and when his dark brown eyes locked on hers, he seemed to settle back into the pillows. "Good," he murmured. Then, so softly she almost didn't hear it, "'m sorry. Not there sooner."
She exchanged a look with Alan, whose face had "I told you so" written all over it. "It's all right," she said, reaching out to touch his arm. "It's more than all right. You saved my life."
The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. "Good," he breathed. "Hate to hurt like this for nothing."
She felt tears springing to her eyes, and she quickly turned away. "I'll get the doctor on call," she said, hurrying towards the door.
Outside, she leaned back against the wall and took a moment to compose herself. She still didn't have all the answers she had come here for, but thanks to Don's father, she had a start. For one thing, it was clear that concern for strangers ran in the family. She couldn't imagine most people being so compassionate in Alan Eppes' situation.
But she would come back and visit Don later for the answer to her question, and maybe to Alan's as well. Showing compassion was one thing. But giving up your life for someone… that was something else entirely.