Mea Culpa broke 100 reviews a few days ago and it came as a total shock. I never imagined this story would take off like it has! Thanks a million to everyone who has stuck with this story despite my taking a month to update between chapters. Your input makes it all worthwhile.
Storyspindler gets all the credit for the medical info. And for reference, a pusleoxymeter is a machine that measures heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation of the blood. You might recognize it as the little clamp that goes on the finger and the leads that go on the chest. She and I didn't just pull that machine out of nowhere!
As always, enjoy!
Updated 6/27 with a second beta and a few small revisions.
CHAPTER V
Sitting alone on a bench that faced the merciless rays of the dying sunset, David Sinclair looked oddly small against the massive backdrop of the hospital's pale brick walls. Terry had barely noticed him, bent nearly double, elbows on his knees and head buried in his hands. He looked broken, anguished. Instinctively Terry knew that the short hour the agent had spent in that hospital had forever changed him.
Taking a place beside David on the bench, Terry sat in patient silence, waiting for him to acknowledge her presence, but Agent Sinclair was far too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice.
"David?" she all but whispered after several moments. Again, not even a hint of recognition.
"David!" she reiterated, louder, reaching out to touch his drooping shoulder.
Instinct threw Terry's arm back against the wall as David nearly jumped out of his very skin, his back erect in moments, eyes circling wildly, resembling more of a frightened animal than Terry wanted to admit.
Dragging his hands down his exasperated face, David drew in a ragged breath before attempting to speak.
"Terry."
"You okay?" she offered.
David scoffed, a sound halfway between an anguished groan and an expletive.
The expression on Don's face as he entered the hospital was one that, though he longed to, David would not soon forget. Never before—no matter how harrowing the circumstances—had David ever seen Don truly afraid. The older agent, seasoned by years of training, hid his emotions to the point where he barely even flinched. That was the Don that David had grown so accustomed to, the solid pillar of a man. Not the Don he saw at that moment, with his darkened eyes and a face as pale as chalk. Agony and despair; David saw true fear on Don's face in that moment—and it frightened him.
Wandering eyes found Terry's face for a moment, exchanging an anguished look before returning to their downward gaze. David dipped his chin nearly to his chest, examining the palms of his hands with unblinking eyes. His hand. To think hours before he had touched his hand to Charlie's back and into a thick layer of blood; felt the trembling of a body in pain.
"You shouldn't be asking me that," he spat, his tone terse and bitter.
"David… you know, it's always hard when a member of the team goes down."
David was all but seething. "He's not a member of the team, Terry. He never should have been there."
"You had no way of knowing what would happen. There was nothing you could have done."
"Hell, Terry, you think I don't know that?"
"You still feel guilty about it."
"Don't you think I have a right to?" David tore his eyes from his hands to glance at Terry again, this time with bitter air.
"… Charlie's been working out in the field with us a lot lately." Even to Terry's own ears, the comment sounded weightless.
"It was … damn, Terry, it was such a … a stupid mistake!" David threw out his hands, opening a floodgate of raw emotion. "Why did I bring him there? I … I was stupid, Terry! Stupid!" A prolonged sigh. "A rookie mistake."
"David…"
"I should have known better."
Never had David felt so small. An inexplicable feeling that all of his emotions had suddenly grown a dozen times more powerful than his body could handle overwhelmed him. Frantically his mind scanned past events of his career in Los Angeles like a film strip. A thin line of discolored skin, a scar from the knife he fought against his very first day on the job, now burned his eyes, mocked him. The shooting at the bank with the Charm School Boys had happened less than a year before and he often found himself forgetting the unfortunate agent who had lost his life that day. But David doubted he would ever efface the sight of Charlie's body under his, bleeding profusely, body jerking with involuntary spasms of pain …
"… It's a danger we've already assimilated into our daily lives."
The bitter taste of retrospect, nearly unbearable, assaulted David's senses. Charlie was not an agent, but the young man had woven his path in and out of the FBI office so often it was hard to remember that he wasn't. David readily assumed that Charlie was as aware of—or immune to—the danger as Don was prepared to deal with it. He didn't think. He should have known that the sniper was in the building, he should have kept Charlie in the car… should have.
"A sniper is something new. It's random, malicious."
"He'll live, David. Don't worry."
"That's not the point, Terry."
"Don't be so bitter—"
"Bitter! Terry, how would you react? Huh? He wasn't just another consultant, Terry. He was …" he paused, searching his tortured brain for an adjective to suit his needs.
"A friend?"
David's head jerked up. He turned to Terry for a brief moment, grateful for her presence, her solace.
"Yeah."
Terry couldn't help but smile. Just minutes before she would have doubted the validity of her earlier statements, but now she repeated them with no hesitation, no doubt.
"Everything will be all right, David."
"A bullet that can come from anywhere, take anyone, you know?"
Her hand sought his forearm, a gentle gesture of support and unyielding friendship. They remained there for several minutes, frozen as one shadow against the red brick wall.
"David," Terry began softly, "we should get back to the office. There's … nothing more we can do here."
She watched the other agent rise slowly, shedding in the process a great weight. "Just leave?"
"Yeah. Don doesn't need us here."
"Everything will be all right." The phrase repeated over and over in David's head as the hospital shrank into the distance at his back.
Don came and went from his father's field of vision in a flurry again. The older man had given up counting hours ago how many times it had been. Pacing. It was something both his sons did almost subconsciously. But Don's pacing at that moment was far beyond the almost gentle hither and thither movements Charlie would make while engrossed in an equation. This was pacing of an angry sort; the nervous footfalls of a brother trapped on the cusp of mental collapse.
Alan was worried. Not only for Charlie, but for Don. He did not want to admit it, but he was on the verge of losing two sons that night. And he swore by everything he knew that he would not let that happen.
"Donny…" he began, but the introductory music to the nightly news interrupted his thoughts. Suddenly the headline Another Sniper Shooting glared at him from the television set. Don saw it too and stopped mid-stride, his face contorted into a horrific expression. The sudden realization that all of Los Angeles was now aware of his mistake crushed him. Foolish; that was all he was. A fool.
'Fear grips downtown LA again tonight as yet another victim was hit with apparent sniper fire earlier this afternoon. Police have not yet released the man's identity but say he is currently in critical condition. The FBI insists—'
Alan grabbed the remote from the table beside his chair and jammed the power button. Don whirled to face him, torrid fire in his eyes.
"Don, you don't need to see that," Alan whispered. "I don't want some news report to tell me about my son."
Don stood unblinking, unmoving, his mouth slightly open, frozen while trying to form words to a sentence his mind could not conjure. He stared not at his father but seemingly right through him, boring a hole into the wall with his molten gaze. Without saying anything he spun on his heel and continued his pacing, arms folded tightly to his chest, shutting out the world.
For several minutes Alan let the silence percolate. But even mere minutes were too much to endure, to watch his son suffer with every footfall.
"Donny… please sit down."
Their eyes met. Fire no longer backed Don's eyes and they had become hollow, inundated with unfathomable agony.
"Why?" A one syllable word that encompassed all of Don's questions that to that moment he had been unable to voice. Why he had let Charlie come to that scene. Why he had not been paying attention. Why he had not caught the sniper before the fact. Why he had brought Charlie on this case. Why he had listened to his brother's talk of sprinkler heads all those months ago.
Why had this happened to him? To them all?
He shook his head softly, dismissing his father's plea, and returned to his pacing without a word.
The first thing Alan could see was the striped pattern of the wallpaper. Jerking his head upward quicker than he liked, he blinked his eyes against the harsh iridescent light and forced his mind to regain focus. He must have fallen asleep. Glancing across the room he found Don collapsed, exhausted, into a chair. Whether his son was asleep or not, he could not tell.
Time was elastic. Minutes rushed by only to be then stretched out into agonizing lengths again. Alan cursed himself for surrendering to sleep at the one time it seemed most inappropriate. Had he missed something? Had hours passed by, crucial developments come without his knowing? Fear gripped him and he had to force down his desires to rush from his chair and straight to the operating room.
Rising slowly and fighting the aches from his unusual sleeping position, Alan wandered toward the window and pondered the time of day. Had it been twenty minutes or three hours he could not tell; the sky remained the same uninviting shade of starless black.
Convinced that predicting the time was far beyond him at this point Alan's thoughts drifted instead to his youngest son. He hated not knowing, wondering whether Charlie was alive or dead, trapped in a void where the only information he had was from the various medical-related posters hung along the walls of the waiting room.
The door handle twitched and Don—previously so still and unmoving that Alan had forgotten he was even there—leapt to his feet with a speed his father had never seen before; even before Dr. Meisner stepped over the threshold Don was there to meet him. Alan watched the doctor motion with his hands for them both to follow. It was a powerful communication without a word exchanged and Alan started forward, anxious to see his son again.
Through endless corridors Dr. Meisner led them down a path he knew all too well, moving with the swift air of professional instinct. Alan followed the signs with his eyes, all branded with ICU in large white letters, screaming at him. The doctor had not yet said a word and Alan found himself unable to speak; Don kept a reasonable distance behind, his expression one of a man being led off to his own execution.
They walked toward the center of the hospital, a place devoid of natural light, windowless and bare, the threshold between one world and the next. From an adjacent hallway a nurse suddenly joined them, exchanging glances with Dr. Meisner before removing a lanyard with a key card from around her neck. She was their companion for several more minutes until a formidable, windowless door appeared to block their seemingly infinite path.
The nurse swiped the card and the door, once seemingly impenetrable, opened silently to her touch. She waited for the men to filter in before sliding it shut behind them. Dr. Meisner waited for her to join him before starting the procession again, this time past an endless row of cold and identical doors.
The nurse stopped before one of the doors, silent and emotionless. She opened the door and slipped inside, barely exposing a sliver of the room before closing the door behind her.
"Mr. Eppes," Meisner spoke to Alan, "I must warn you … it's not going to look good. Like I said before he's on the respirator and is still in the drug-induced coma. Don't let the machines discourage you; I assure you your son is making progress." He paused, calculating a statement his heart did not want to say. "I'm afraid you can only see him for a few minutes, Mr. Eppes … we can't let you stay overnight here."
"… I understand that," Alan spoke tersely. "I just … want to see my son."
Meisner nodded slowly. The nurse suddenly returned and poked her head out of the door, nodded once, and pushed it fully open for the men to enter. Meisner let the nurse clear the doorway before motioning for the Eppes' to proceed.
"We'll wait out here, Mr. Eppes."
Alan's heart beat wildly in his chest. He was nervous, afraid of what he might find, of what he might see. Glancing back he saw Don's face turn several shades lighter. Cursing himself mentally for not appearing strong for Don, he crossed the threshold with one large stride, masking his fears under an apparent show of bravery. Don entered on more of Dr. Meisner's accord than his own and lingered back in the darkness as the doctor closed the door against his back.
Don watched—and heard—his father try to mask an anguished cry. The sound constricted his very heart in icy clutches and he turned toward the door, unable to bear the feeling.
Alan's mind grasped at something to describe the frightening reality. Foreign sights and sounds. Something—a creature—that was not his son stretched out on a stiff metal hospital bed. A large tube protruding from his throat, taped to his mouth. An IV towering nearby, the transparent cord snaking into the backside of a pale hand. A clamp on a limp finger, leads positioned across a bare chest. A horrid creation of bloodied gauze and tape covering a row of black stitches. A blood transfusion traveling through a central line, sharp in crimson contrast against his pale skin, the white room around him. Unnatural sounds: soft clicking and a rush of air from the respirator; the constant beeping of the pulseoxymeter. Flickering lights and numbers and readings on machines beyond their comprehension, each one of them working in unison to keep young Charles Eppes alive.
Overwhelmed, Alan sank into the chair at his son's bedside, fighting back images of his wife's last days, images he had wished never to have to see again. His hand lingered above Charlie's hand, afraid to disturb the tubes and machines, afraid that if he touched his son he would dissolve away, become a pale ghost before his very eyes.
"Dad, there are a dozen FBI agents and police officers at these scenes. I mean, if I were in any real danger, Don wouldn't let me go, you know that. Don't worry."
Alan choked back a sob and turned his head away. He couldn't bear to see his son—either of his sons—suffer like this. Had he been watching, he would have seen Don mirroring his actions, guilt nearly tearing his body apart from the inside out.
Dr. Meisner opened the door softly, startling Don who for a moment let his FBI training take over and reached for a gun that was not there. Alan did not bother to look up, but fearing he would never see his son again, reached down and slowly brushed his son's hand, his fingertips.
"I'll be back, Charlie. We both will."
To Be Continued.