Chapter 6
I wish I had a lotta answers
'Cause that's the way it should be
For all these questions
Being directed at me
"Box Full of Letters," Wilco
It was late, now. Horatio led Tim's parents down to the surgical waiting room. They'd finally gotten in on an 11pm flight. He had been the logical choice to pick them up from the airport, since he hadn't been at the hospital. And besides, he was responsible for Speed, anyway.
He had spent hours at the lab doing what should have taken him half the time. He'd put Eric's current case to rights, eventually, but his concentration was shot all to hell, and he kept forgetting what it was he had been doing. He then tried to deal with some paperwork that had been on his critical list for the day, but kept spacing out in front of the computer screen. When Calleigh had finally called to find out where the hell he was, he'd been surprised at how late it was and how long he'd been at the lab. She'd been half frantic on the phone with him, and he'd felt even worse. The last thing he had intended was to make things worse for her. She'd told him he could pick up Tim's parents by way of apology, so he did, despite the awkwardness. He knew nothing about Speed's parents; not even their names or where they lived, and had been half surprised to discover they were from Syracuse. Speed had never mentioned to him where he had grown up.
They reached the waiting room, finally, and discovered that Calleigh, Alexx and another woman were the only people waiting. "There you are," Alexx said, sounding slightly relieved.
"I'm sorry," he said, genuinely contrite.
"It's no matter," Alexx said, brushing off his apology. Calleigh's eyes gave lie to this, but he said nothing, only sat down next to her.
"Thank God, you're here," the other woman said to Danny and Melissa. Horatio glanced at Calleigh, confused.
"She's Marianne, Tim's mother," Calleigh said softly, as Danny and Melissa were quickly drawn into an explanation of what was happening.
"I don't understand," Horatio said, shaking his head. He'd thought the woman he'd just spent the last half hour or so with was Speed's mother.
"The short version is that Melissa is actually Tim's stepmother, despite the fact that he refers to her as his mom. It's complicated, and right now is probably not the time…" Calleigh explained.
"No, of course not," Horatio agreed. Layers upon layers and all the things he didn't know. "What's happening?" he asked, after a moment.
"Well, they finished the first surgery around 8:30 or so, not too long after Marianne got here," Calleigh sighed. "The internal bleeding turned out to be a bit more than they had anticipated, and they wound up removing his spleen because it was damaged. The trauma surgeon said it wasn't really a big deal- you can live without a spleen just fine, he's just going to be on antibiotics for a while and he's going to have to be careful about infection, but it shouldn't really be a problem once he recovers. The jaw, however, is more extensive and it's going to probably be at least another hour, maybe more. They have to rebuild part of it, from the sounds of things."
"Oh," Horatio said, lamely. He didn't know what to say. None of it seemed like it was happening, it was all vague and distant, and it felt like the only thing that he could focus on was the crushing weight of everything on his head. He wondered, distantly, if this was how Speed had felt last week. Like everything was coming crashing down upon him and shattering him to pieces. It was not a pleasant feeling. If Tim had felt this bad, Horatio was impressed at just how well he had been functioning, despite it all. He suspected Speed had felt worse, even, and he had no idea how Speed had even been upright, let alone working.
Calleigh leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She looked exhausted, but almost relieved, too. Her small hand reached out to rest on the back of his hand, which was resting on his knee. It felt like a lifeline, almost, and he turned his hand over to grasp hers. She opened her eyes, but didn't pull her hand away.
Everyone was tired and after the first flurry of conversation subsided, it was quiet. The volunteers had long since left, and they were alone in the room, just waiting for word. Horatio closed his eyes, still trying to pull himself together. He didn't think anyone else really knew how badly he felt, except perhaps Calleigh, which was comforting.
He was startled by Frank's arrival to the waiting room and was surprised to discover that he'd dozed off.
"Frank," he said, blinking.
"How's it coming?" Frank asked, sitting down on a nearby chair after having been introduced to Tim's family.
Calleigh repeated the litany of Speed's injuries. Her voice was steady, but her hand tightened where it still held Horatio's.
"What do you know?" Horatio asked, after Frank had a moment to digest the extent of everything.
"Not enough," the detective replied, shaking his head. "Manny has some speculation, but not enough to do much with. None of it is going to be worth anything if Speed can't tell us anything about what happened, it looks like."
"What does Manny think?" Calleigh asked.
Frank sighed slightly. "Well, what we're the most sure of is that someone, presumably Speed and Delko, drove the truck around the perimeter of the building. There were tracks in some soft ground along one side. Manny suspects that the perps were alerted by this, somehow, and had time to stage an ambush. It's pretty clear that Delko was hit first and also that he died immediately. It's less clear what happened after that. There were shoe prints, but everything was very muddled. There's some bullet strikes, and we found casings from at least four weapons, two of which were Speed and Hagen's service pieces. It doesn't look like there's a usable bullet in the bunch, however, although Manny admits that you might be able to do something with them that his team can't," Frank said, nodding towards Calleigh. She nodded back and Frank continued. "We're also somewhat sure that Hagen was the second casualty, since it seems he didn't move from where he'd fallen, and it seems that he was nowhere near Speed when he fell. We're guessing that if Speed was the second casualty, then Hagen would have tried to help. It does seem that Speed tried to get over to Hagen, but the prints aren't usable. At any rate, we know Speed did eventually get over there, but it seems like that happened later. We're the most unsure of how Speed got hurt, and what happened after he presumably passed out."
"I'm sorry, I don't know really anything about any of this," Tim's father, Danny, spoke up suddenly. "But how is it that the other two men were shot and Tim wasn't?"
"He was, though," Calleigh said, quietly. "He was shot in the chest, but he was wearing a Kevlar vest, and it caught the bullet." Horatio blinked. He hadn't known that at all. He was suddenly grateful for the flash of warning that had made him tell Speed and Eric to put the vests on as an afterthought.
"Like before, when he was hurt," Melissa said.
Calleigh nodded and asked, "Were Eric and John wearing vests, too?"
"Both Speed and Eric were, but Hagen wasn't," Frank replied. Calleigh nodded again.
"But why were the boys wearing Kevlar in the first place?" Alexx asked, frowning.
"I told them to," Horatio said suddenly, looking up at them all for almost the first time. Everyone stared at him. "I…I didn't like it. Something seemed...wrong about it all, somehow, and I didn't really want to let them go, but it was…it was the first real lead of the case, and Speed…he needed something. Something concrete to focus on in the case. There hadn't been anything, and he was spinning his wheels and I just…he was in the doorway, all keyed up about it, and Eric was there and volunteered to go with, and it was an afterthought, and I wasn't even half sure they'd heard me, and I didn't know that anything would come of it, it just seemed like a good idea, and, and…" he stopped, abruptly, aware that he was nearly babbling. "It didn't occur to me that Hagen might not also be wearing a vest," he said, finally.
"Not your lookout," Frank said.
"Maybe not, but still," Horatio replied. "Anyway."
"It is still odd that Tim was beaten," Calleigh pointed out. "It's obvious that's what happened."
"Yeah, we don't know. Maybe they ran out of bullets, maybe they wanted to hurt him for some reason," Frank shrugged. "That's one of the things that it would be nice if Speed could tell us, but I'm not really holding my breath on that one."
"No, I wouldn't, either," Calleigh agreed.
"Anyway, that's where things stand. I should get back," Frank said, standing up. "You'll call if something happens?" he asked.
Horatio nodded. "Yes. Let us know if anything else comes up, all right?"
"You got it," Frank replied, before turning and walking away.
Everyone was quiet a moment, digesting the information. "What happens if Tim can't tell you anything," Melissa asked finally.
"We might not find who did this," Calleigh said, grimly.
"Oh," she said, frowning.
Horatio closed his eyes to avoid seeing the pain on everyone's face. It was all too much again.
"Y'all are here for Timothy Speedle?" A voice asked, and he jerked awake again.
"Yes," came a ragged chorus of tired, tense voices as everyone turned to look at the nurse standing there.
She smiled. "He's out of surgery, in Recovery, and things look good. I'm going to send someone out to take y'all upstairs where his room is going to be in about fifteen minutes or so. He's gotta rebound a little bit more before we can let him go, but we think it won't be too much longer. His surgeon will come talk to you up there, ok?"
"He'll be ok?" Calleigh asked.
"We think so. His surgeon will tell you more. But his vitals are stable enough that we can send him up to the surgical post-op ward as opposed to intensive care, as soon as we can get him to come around for a moment or two, and that's a very, very good sign," the nurse replied, smiling.
Horatio suddenly was nearly dizzy with relief, and from the looks on the faces around him, he wasn't the only one.
