Hunter had no idea what time it was. He wasn't wearing a watch and the walls of Cam's room were devoid of clocks.
Not that it really mattered; the only thing that did matter was how much of it Cam had left. Hunter looked down at the unmoving form on the bed and tried to take some comfort from the steady beeping of the EKG machine. It didn't work.
He let out a deep sigh; those past few months he'd had to live with constant battles, had to walk a constant high wire in this war for the fate of the Earth, had stared down the most hideous monsters, yet he had never been as afraid as he was at this very moment. The only way he could have been more terrified was if it were Blake lying in that bed.
The blond ninja rose and went to the window, gazing out over the parking lot. He was exhausted. As much as he forced his drooping eyelids to stay open, he could feel himself losing the fight with weariness. He propped his hip onto the sill and leaned his head against the window jamb. If I could close my eyes for just a moment…
The reprieve lasted for only seconds before a loud beeping noise was roughly pulling him out of a sleepy reverie. Alarmed, he spun around; the sounds came from Cam's bed, or more specifically, the EKG machine. Cam was still motionless, his face completely inert, but on the monitor, the previously green and steady rhythm of the heart monitor now displayed a red line of jagged irregularity. A moment later, while Hunter was watching in frozen horror, Cam's blood pressure line and pulse rate changed from green to red as well. The samurai amulet began to glow brightly.
Hunter was on the other side of the bed in an instant, frantically pressing the alarm button on the bed's intercom, trying to keep his hands from shaking and his mind from blacking out from fear.
Suddenly, the short, urgent beeps turned into one continuous sound. Death's signature tune.
On Cam's chest, the samurai amulet began to pulse wildly and Hunter didn't want to look, didn't want to turn away from Cam's face to confirm what he already knew he was going to see on the monitor.
Flatline.
"NO, oh God, no, CAM!" Hunter reacted purely on instinct. Before he even knew what he was doing, his hands were already ripping apart the front of Cam's hospital gown. "Hold on Cam please don't do this to me hang in there please I love you please oh God..."
Crimson energy crackled across the palm of Hunter's right hand as he pressed it against Cam's rib cage. The samurai's body jerked as the Thunder energy surged into his body. The monitor's flat line jumped for an instant before it went slack again.
A strange sound came to Hunter's ears, a cross between a wail and a sob. His subconscious mind was telling him that he was hearing himself, but he didn't care. He was about to pump one more jolt of energy into Cam when the door behind him flew open. Half a dozen hospital personnel dashed into the room, Dr. McAllister in the lead, and suddenly the room was filled with a flurry of controlled yet urgent activity. Hunter was gently but insistently pushed out of the way while one orderly immediately began to administer CPR. The Crimson Ranger was of half a mind to fight back when, through his tear-blurred vision, he suddenly found himself face to face with Dr. McAllister.
"Doc..."
The physician grasped his shoulders. "We'll take it from here," was all he said. He did not reassure Hunter with the false promise that Cam would be just fine, but this tall, balding man's aura of quiet competence somehow managed to wrap around Hunter, enveloping him in a thin blanket of comfort. Unfortunately, the incessant monotonic beeping of the EKG machine and the hectic activity all around Cam's bed quickly counteracted that feeling.
As Dr. McAllister moved to join his staff, Hunter said. "Doc...don't take off his amulet." He intoned his words with an intense gaze. "It's his energy source. It helps him."
The physician nodded curtly before he turned and began to bark orders to the nurses.
Weak-kneed and nauseous with worry, Hunter retreated until he stood with his back pressed to the wall, just far enough not to be in the way. With three people crowding around each side of Cam's bed, Hunter could only catch occasional glimpses of his partner.
Dr. McAllister had positioned himself to Cam's left side. "Debbie, give me some stats."
The nurse closest to the EKG machine, a stocky, middle-aged and competent-looking blonde, replied promptly. "Ventricular fibrillation. Flatlined about sixty seconds ago."
"Vitals?"
"Pulse is faint, blood pressure 70 over 40 and falling!" The nurse cast McAllister an urgent look.
"All right everybody, first things first – heart rhythm and blood pressure. Get me 3 milligrams of atropine and get the paddles ready," Dr. McAllister ordered, then grabbed a fold of Cam's already ripped hospital gown. He cast Hunter a quick, yet scrutinizing glance, but the young man by the wall didn't notice it. He had his eyes firmly fixed on his partner.
"Yes, Doctor." Nurse Debbie turned to lend a hand to the closest orderly who was already wrestling a mobile defibrillator into position next to Cam's bed. Moments later, the machine was plugged in and powering up. A second orderly handed McAllister a syringe filled with clear fluid and the physician injected Cam with the blood pressure-raising medication while another nurse covered his chest and the defibrillator paddles with a conductive gel. Meanwhile, another nurse was inserting a breathing tube down Cam's throat.
McAllister nodded to his staff. "Let's start him off with 200 volts."
Discarding the syringe in favor of the defibrillator paddles, the physician pressed the paddles firmly on Cam's chest, one beneath the clavicle, the other just below the nipple.
"Clear!" Dr. McAllister cried and everyone immediately backed away from the bed.
"Charge!"
Cam's torso arched upwards as the electric jolt slammed into his body.
McAllister was still holding the paddles when Nurse Debbie was already pressing her fingers to Cam's neck and a stethoscope to his chest.
"Pulse?" the physician barked.
The nurse listened for a moment, then wordlessly shook her head.
McAllister was stone-faced as he positioned the paddles again. "Let's try it again, 250 volts."
Cam's body jerked even more violently under the second charge. This time, Dr. McAllister didn't even address the nurse afterwards, who was holding her stethoscope to Cam's chest again. He simply looked between her and the still unmoving line on the EKG monitor. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife.
A few feet away, forced to watch the horrifying spectacle from the sidelines, Hunter could do nothing but hug himself around the middle and try hard to somehow contain the fear, helplessness and anguish churning inside him. He clenched his teeth and wished pestilence, eternal damnation and the electric chair on Julio Morales.
The next few seconds felt like hours, but at last the absolute silence was broken by a single beep from the EKG monitor, followed almost immediately by several more. The line on the screen was moving. Simultaneously, Nurse Debbie, who was now holding onto Cam's wrist, looked up and smiled.
"We have a pulse. He's back."
Half a dozen sighs of relief sounded through the room, but Hunter's was the loudest of them all. Doctor McAllister and his nurses kept on working on Cam for quite a while longer, attaching him to several life-supporting machines. Eventually – their tasks completed - one nurse after the other left the room, until only Hunter and the doctor were left. Hunter was still frozen in place propped up against the wall, staring in dismay at his boyfriend.
Seeing Cam hooked up to multiple IV's, the heart monitor and the respirator, Hunter was painfully aware that his partner was now being kept alive only by those machines. Even a glance at the amulet didn't give him hope anymore since its glow had diminished to only the faintest shimmer.
Hunter bit his lip in order to suppress the sob that was building up inside him. He kept on gazing at his nearly lifeless partner. Hell existed, he was sure of that now. And even though they fought the alien Hellhounds on an almost daily basis, he now did not picture Satan with a leather mask anymore, but instead with olive complexion, slicked-back black hair and a tailored Armani suit.
Hunter had destroyed countless monsters and kelzaks in the name of the forces of Good, but he had never killed a human being. Now his hand curled into a fist and he stared at it, mesmerized. He was ready to kill one now.
He was propelled out of his dark reverie by a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Dr. McAllister gazing solemnly at him.
"He's stabilized for now."
For a moment Hunter simply stared at him until the meaning of the physician's words sunk in: Cam was still alive. He had known that, of course, but hearing it from McAllister made it definite. The Crimson Ranger wanted to throw his arms around the tall doctor and thank him, to somehow articulate his relief and gratefulness, but all he could manage was a mute and weak nod.
Dr. McAllister, apparently no stranger to the effects of these kinds of extreme situations on a person, only gave him a small smile. "It may not seem like it, but Cam was actually lucky we only had to shock him twice," he said. "Normally, we have to defibrillate four to six times; it's almost like he had some help."
And while Hunter's hand reflexively twitched, the physician squeezed his shoulder reassuringly and turned to follow his nurses out the door.
For a long minute after everyone had cleared from the room, Hunter simply stood at the foot of the bed, staring at Cam's unmoving form. He had no idea how he had managed to remain upright and in control of his bowels throughout the resuscitation. He knew that for the rest of his life, he would carry the memories of what happened in this room with him.
He turned and retrieved his chair from where it had been kicked out of the way, pushed it as close to the side of the bed as possible and collapsed into it. The horrors of the past half hour were finally settling into his bones, making them suddenly as heavy as lead. Hunter raised the palms of his hands to his eyes, rubbing them vigorously. The eerie silence in the room after all the frantic movement and urgent voices had such a dream-like quality that he was half expecting to find Cam sitting up in bed, grinning and saying 'April Fools', but when he took his hands away from his eyes, Cam hadn't moved. He was as still as before, his chest rising and falling in accordance with the respirator and his face was as pale as that of any geisha's.
Hunter leaned forward and took his boyfriend's unresponsive hand in his. Dr. McAllister had been able to bring Cam back this time, but Hunter knew that if Cam coded again, no doctor in the world would be able to perform this miracle once more.
A sob tore lose from Hunter's throat as despair and blood were pumping in equal measures through his body. Slowly, deliberately, he put his head down until his forehead touched cool bed sheets and, in the solitude of room 410, the blond Thunder ninja finally relinquished the control he'd had maintained up until now.
Hunter wept.
Outside, the purple twilight was slowly drowning in a sea of dark blue.
Interrogation and Persuasion...
Sensei sensed his students arriving at the secret entrance of Ninja Ops before they even set foot on the stone stairs. Shane had called ahead over his morpher to inform Kanoi of Jared's successful capture and to ask for further guidance as to what to do with him. Sensei had ordered them to bring Jared to Ninja Ops and although the team was not at all comfortable with that idea, they had complied.
The sounds of boots were drawing closer and a moment later, Shane and Dustin stepped into the room, leading a blindfolded and white-faced Jared Wong between them. The sounds of their captive's chattering teeth were rebounding off the command center's walls and his sodden boots left wet prints with every step he took.
Jared's involuntary time inside Tori's snowball, brief as it was, had nevertheless left him completely soaked and by the time they had arrived at Ninja Ops, his entire body was shaking like a sapling in a storm. Apparently, hypothermia was a serious threat even toWater ninjas.
With gestures alone, Sensei directed them, and Dustin and Shane steered the Water ninja straight towards the only space safe enough to keep Jared inside Ninja Ops; the practice room. Sensei motioned for Tori to stay behind, and on her teacher's orders Tori fetched some of Cam's clothes: a green cotton sweat suit and thick socks as well as a woolen blanket.
Guarded by the male ninjas, Jared clumsily changed into the dry garments while Tori was busying herself in the kitchenette, preparing tea. By the time she returned to the practice room with a steaming mug, Jared was sitting on the tatami mats, dressed in green and hugging the blanket around him. He stoically avoided eye contact with anyone and Tori had to virtually hold the tea under his nose before he realized what she was offering him. He cast her a wary look but took the mug from her after a moment with a silent nod of thanks. Tori let him take a sip of the hot beverage while she lowered herself onto the mats and resolutely fixed her eyes on him.
"We have some unfinished conversation," she began without preamble.
"What makes you think I'm any more willing to talk now?" he mumbled, but his defiance seemed half-hearted.
Shane was the one who replied. "Well, considering the position you're in right now, I really don't think you have much of a choice," the Air ninja declared, pushing away from the wall he had been leaning against and crouching down next to Jared. Once he was at eye level with the huddled Water ninja, he added, "And you might want to remember that you are currently being kept warm by wearing the clothes of the man who is on the brink of death because of you. Any normal, warm-blooded human being might feel a stab of guilty conscience right about now."
Suddenly, a disembodied voice sounded through the small chamber. "Shane makes a good point, Jared. It is high time we address my son's welfare."
Jared flinched and jerked his head around, clearly startled and confused. His eyes darted between the Wind ninjas and the stone walls. Shane elbowed him to get his attention, nodding towards the floor. "Down there, dude."
Jared followed his gaze - and promptly dropped the tea cup he was still holding at the sight of the robed guinea pig standing before him. With eyes as wide as saucers, he stared at the figure for a long moment before he could find his voice.
"Sensei Watanabe?"
The guinea pig nodded and Jared looked up, his stunned gaze moving from Tori to Dustin and back as if to confirm that he was not hallucinating. The Wind ninjas looked back at him, completely unperturbed.
"Wh...what happened to you?" he finally stammered.
Sensei took a few steps forward. "I have been rendered into this form by the same forces of evil that have been wreaking havoc on Blue Bay Harbor for the past few months."
"Huh?"
"The monster attacks, man," Shane elaborated with an exasperated wave of his hand. "The freaks who've been attacking innocent civilians all around town. We fight them, destroy them, they grow big, we blow them up again..."
"The mastermind behind all these attacks is the same villain who has also abducted the Wind and Thunder academies. In the unsuccessful process of thwarting the attack, an evil spell was cast upon me and I have been stuck in the form you see before you ever since," Sensei said, not delving into any further explanations. "We have been combating his evil creations ever since as well as devising plans to rescue the students and teachers."
"Unlike other people," Blake mumbled just loud enough to be heard from his spot by the entryway. It earned him several grim smiles from his teammates and a half-stern look from his teacher.
"But trying to keep the monsters out of the city and protecting the people is now going to be next to impossible, since you've taken out our tech support," Dustin chipped in with clearly audible sarcasm.
Jared didn't reply, just looked around at all of them with a sudden expression of shock and dismay as the revelation of the effects of his actions finally seemed to seep in. His shoulders sagged and he swallowed heavily. A dead silence hung in the room for a long moment until Jared slowly lifted his head.
"Sensei, what...what exactly has happened to our school?"
"You really have no inkling as to the academy's fate?" Sensei asked, his gaze probing.
"No, sir, I didn't have any classes scheduled until late that afternoon and when I got there, there was nothing but rubble and everyone was gone..." Jared shrugged helplessly. The ninjas cast each other dubious looks, but remained silent.
"I believe you, Jared," Sensei said, "but now is not the time to go into lengthy accounts. There are more pressing matters at hand."
"Yeah, like where Morales is keeping the antidote," Shane growled.
"I…I can't tell you that."
"Why not?"
Jared hesitated. "No one snitches on Julio Morales. He's too powerful. If he finds me…"
"Number one: he's not going to find you here," Dustin said. "Number two: You've got no one to blame but yourself for the mess you're in right now, dude."
"Hey, you don't understand…"
"What we understand is that you betrayed and dishonored your school, and that you've got some serious making up to do," Tori cut in, her usual calm demeanor now practically radiating disdain.
"I've always been a good student," Jared tried to defend himself. "I never meant to disgrace my school."
"Should have thought about that before you decided to use the Wind Academy as a stashing ground for your dope money," Shane sneered.
"That was only that one time," Jared exclaimed, looking indignant. "And I only did it because I couldn't afford to miss night training again, I had already overslept once..." The ninja's eyes glanced off his teacher.
"...and I told you that, if you missed class again, I would have to re-evaluate your dedication to ninja training," Sensei Watanabe injected. "Yes, I remember that incident."
"Well, you know what, Jared?" Dustin suddenly spoke up. "The day before the school was taken, we got that same speech from Sensei because we were late, too. Only the reason we were late wasn't because we were hustling dope."
"I've never sold drugs," Jared snapped. "I only made deliveries and most of the times I didn't even know what I was delivering."
"Oh please." Blake let out an exasperated groan. "Don't even try to feed us this 'I had no idea what I was doing' crap."
"You've got no right to judge me," the boy suddenly burst out. "At the end of the day you all go home to your families in your nice, comfortable houses, white picket fence and all, but some of us are not so lucky, okay? I'm seventeen and I'm still sharing a room with my sister, because my parents can't afford to move into a bigger apartment. I have to take the bus to school dressed in Wal-Mart clothes while my classmates are driving their own cars and are all decked out in designer gear." The words were gushing out of Jared, his voice quickly rising. "Do you have any idea how humiliating it is having to listen to your friends raving about all these new video games and you can't say nothing because you can't even afford a Playstation?" Jared Wong was meeting the ninjas glare for glare now. "I gotta make my money whichever way I can."
"And some overtime at the video store just didn't cut it for you, I guess." Blake remarked, his voice thick with sarcasm.
"Do you know how much overtime that would be? I make minimum wage, man!"
Tori cocked her head. "You never struck me as someone so weak-minded that it means so much to you to keep up with the crowd, Jared." At that, Jared's gaze flickered up to her briefly and something was glinting in his eyes. It was too brief, however, for her to be sure whether it was guilt or defiance. Then his eyes went back to the floor.
"I want to be able to have nice things," Jared told the tatami mats. "What's wrong with wanting nice stuff?"
"Nothing wrong with wanting it, dude, but you gotta go about it the right way," Dustin said.
"And running drugs is definitely not it." Shane shook his head, looking incredulous and disgusted at the same time.
"None of you understands, I can already see that."
"Oh, for crying out loud!" Blake exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "You know, there's kids out there who get their clothes from the Salvation Army! Maybe you should think about that before you whine about not being able to afford Sean John leather jackets and Nike sneakers, you spoiled brat!"
Jared began to stutter. "I...I'm just saying that..."
"Yeah, sure, Jared. Life just sucks so much for you, right?" Dustin cut him off, and there was an indignant look on the usually laid-back Earth ninja's face. "You have no privacy because you don't have your own room! You know what? Be glad that you don't have to sleep at a shelter or a safehouse like other kids who are homeless or whose parents beat them."
"That's right," Shane fixed the Asian boy with a glare. "Tell me: Do your parents fight all the time, or does your father come home drunk every day and smack you and your sister around? Have you ever gone to bed hungry, huh? Or does someone in your family have an incurable illness, the medical bills are through the roof and you can't afford to buy the medication anymore? Tell me!"
The volley of questions obviously caught Jared off guard. "Uh...no." He blinked.
Shane brought his face close to Jared's, staring into his eyes. "Then you ain't got no excuse for doing what you did," the Air ninja said with disdain. The two young men glared at each other and Sensei took that moment to step in.
"Rangers, if you don't mind, I think I'd like some words with Jared in private." The dismissal was evident in the guinea pig's voice and although none of them were eager to leave Sensei by himself with his traitorous student, they also knew better than to argue with their teacher. So, amid many glares and much grumbling, they slowly filed out of the practice room and ascended the stairs. Shane was the last one through the doorway, therefore he still caught Sensei's words.
"Jared, let us speak of life, shall we?"
The practice room did not have a door, but it also only had one way out and that was through the one doorway and up the dozen steps into Ninja Ops' command room. So naturally, the Rangers re-assembled themselves on top of the stairs and plopped down onto the first step. If Jared tried to make a break for it, he wouldn't get far.
Shane ran his hands through his hair with a frustrated growl. "I can't believe he's down there having tea with that traitor and chit-chatting," he exclaimed. "He acts like he's got all the time in the world when his son's virtually on life support in the hospital! Time's the one thing we don't have! We need to move, find Morales. Doesn't he remember that?" His gaze glanced off Tori's, who was sitting beside him.
"Of course he knows that," she said and fixed her friend with a pointed look. "You know, Shane, for a leader you still have lots to learn about diplomacy." She held up her hand, stifling Shane's reply and cushioned the somewhat harsh words with a gentle gaze. "Jared's been defiant ever since we confronted him by the video store. So do you think that putting him through Chinese thumb torture, or whatever you want to do to him, would yield any results?"
"But..."
"Sensei is doing the right thing, he's down there appealing to Jared's conscience right now and that is going to be more effective than anything we can come up with. And if anyone can break through to him and achieve results with words alone, it's Sensei."
Tori delivered those words with a hopeful confidence that showed her deep trust in her mentor and almost against his will, Shane felt their effects. He relaxed his shoulders and took a deep breath.
"All right," he said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "So we wait."
A silence fell over the four teens as they sat and waited and Ninja Ops became perfectly quiet. Yet even in this utter stillness, the voices from the practice room were too faint to make out.
Clearly, Sensei – knowing that the Rangers were hovering within earshot – intended to keep whatever was being said strictly between him and his dishonored student.
Unable to do more than just sit and listen to the unintelligible murmurings from below, the Rangers did just that for a while - until Blake stirred.
"Well, since we're on forced downtime here…" The Thunder Ranger took out his cell phone and pushed his brother's speed-dial button.
Brother talk...
His phone's chime jerked Hunter out of an uncomfortable semi-doze. He had nodded off with his head on Cam's mattress, still clutching his partner's hand. With a guilty side-glance at Cam, he answered Blake's call.
He barely got to say 'Hello?' before the younger Bradley was already launching into an account of the past few hours. He ended his report with, "...so Sensei virtually kicked us out of the practice room and the two of them have been down there talking for the past fifteen minutes or so." There was a heavy sigh, then, "Man, I really hope Sensei's gonna get through to this guy somehow. He's the only lead we got left right now."
There was a pause on the other line and Hunter closed his eyes, concentrating on taking in a calming breath. Blake, having apparently realized that this implication might not have been the smartest thing to say since Hunter wasn't two feet away from his dying partner, quickly added, "Of course if anyone could get through to Jared, it is Sensei, so I'm sure he'll come up with something really soon, so just bear with us, okay, bro?"
"God Blake, hurry." This actually wasn't what Hunter had intended to say, but somehow it had slipped out anyway, and the effect was prompt.
"Something happen?" Blake's voice was instantly alarmed.
Hunter cast a glance at Cam's bed. For a brief moment Hunter considered telling Blake about Cam's coding, but decided against it. It was bad enough that he had had to experience this ordeal; no use upsetting Blake and the rest of the team with a recount.
So when he spoke again, he told Blake only, "It's getting worse, bro. I don't know how much longer he can hold on."
There was a brief silence at the other end of the line and Hunter could almost see his brother's worry-lined face. At length, Blake said, "We'll move out the instant Sensei comes up with something, anything we can use. In the meantime, you've got to hang in there, both of you, you hear?"
"Yeah, I hear you."
"All right, man. Look, I should get back to the others, just in case." There was a pause, followed by a quiet, "Keep your head up, okay, bro?"
"Yeah, all right," was all Hunter could say. It came out raspy and unconvincing. "Keep me in the loop, bro."
The moment he hung up his cell, Hunter wanted nothing more then to scream. The urge was so great he could feel his chest and throat constrict and it took quite a while, not to mention a great deal of self-control, not to give in to it. Hunter had never felt so utterly alone.
It was also way too damn quiet in this room. Apart from the beeping of the EKG monitor, the silence that hung all around him was beginning to take on weight, pressing down and up against him.
Hunter hated it, the silence, the loneliness, the sigh of Cam's artificially ventilated body, the fear that he would never be able to see those dark almond eyes look back at him again...Hunter turned and suddenly found himself by the window, one hand already wrapped around the window lock. He really, really needed some fresh air, but of course the window was locked. So he pressed his forehead against the cool glass instead and stayed in this position for a long minute before he returned to his plastic chair. He took Cam's hand into his again and did the only other thing he could do: Wait - and hope.
To Be Continued...
A/N: A quicker update this time, to make up for the posting delay from the last few chapters. This is drawing to a close soon, one more chapter to go (well, maybe two...)
A big Thank You to Cmar and Weesta for their valuable input with the hospital defibrillation scene!