AN: Just want to quickly say that I have no medical knowledge, so if I've
made some glaringly obvious mistakes, please forgive me. I'm hoping that
you'll still enjoy this, anyway?
OOOO
Ch 2
As Mac closed the diary, her mind reeling, she once again
wondered how she had managed to misread all of the obvious
signs. The awkward phone calls, the absence of letters,
followed by the sudden letter with the wrong name on it. She
had noted Catriona's reluctance to talk about Jim, her discomfort when
around him, but it had never once crossed her mind that he was
beating Cathy. Mac had not even thought of such a possibility when
Cathy had been reluctant to let Mac drive her home.
Just then, Harm rushed into the waiting room, sitting down
beside her as she explained what had happened.
"Why on earth did Jim do this? I thought her adored that kid!" He
exclaimed to Mac.
"He was an alcoholic, Harm. He was drunk and he freaked out when
Catriona tried to leave the house. He attacked her with her own
softball bat."
Harm paled, staring with large, shocked eyes.
"But she is going to be okay, isn't she?" he stammered.
"I don't know, she's been in surgery for nearly six hours now.
The nurses have come out a couple of times, but said that they
would be in there for quite a while longer. I just can't believe I
didn't realize that any of this was happening to her. All those times
when she was in so much pain, she was crying out for my help and I
wasn't there for her."
As Mac started to cry again, Harm pulled her into his arms, wishing
that he could have been there to comfort her, after all that she had
been through over the last week.
"I should have been there," he thought, "I should have been there for
Mac and for Cathy."
OOOO
Later, Harm got back from the phone, after calling the Admiral
and updating him on the situation. AJ had told him that he would be
down as soon as he could, after he wrapped up some important matters
and got Lt. Roberts prepared to hold down the fort while he was
gone.
As Harm sat down beside Mac once more, he put a comforting arm around
her shoulders, Mac leaned her head against Harm's chest as he softly
stroked her hair, lulling her into an exhausted sleep.
The next thing she was conscious of, The Admiral had joined them in the
waiting room. Neither she nor Harm made any move to change to a more
professional poise and AJ said nothing about their attempt to comfort
one another.
After a while, a nurse joined them in the waiting room,
waiting until Mac had woken and sorted herself out before she
continued,
"The doctors have just wheeled Miss Carter out of the recovery
room. They're just getting her set up in the ICU."
"Can we see her?" Mac asked her.
At first, the nurse hesitated, but seeing the look of desperation on
Mac's face, nodded and continued, "However, before I bring you in,
Catriona's doctor will want to have a word with you about her
condition. Miss Carter has suffered a massive amount of trauma and
you're likely to find it very distressing. Right now, she is on a
life support system."
She continued to explain about all of the machines that they would
see in Cathy's room, the ventilator, the electro-cardiograph, the IV
drip.
"There will be a lot of tubes and wires attached to Cathy, in order
for us to keep as close an eye on her condition as possible."
As she finished this, a doctor entered the room and asked,
"Are you Catriona Carter's family?"
"They're about the closest thing to it." The Admiral told him.
"Is there an actual family member, who perhaps lives nearby?"
the doctor persisted.
"Doctor, it was Cathy's only living family member who did this
to her," The Admiral told him, agitated.
"Okay, I'm sorry," the doctor apologized, then told them, "My
name is Doctor Mark Robertson. Everyone around here calls me
Doctor Mark. I was one of the surgeons operating on Catriona."
He took a deep breath as he proceeded to gently give them the
rundown of Cathy's injuries.
"As the nurse has probably told you, Cathy is on a ventilator,
as well as a life support machine, as one of her lungs was
punctured by one of several broken ribs. Miss Carter also has a
broken left arm, a break of both the humerus and ulna bones.
When she was brought into the local medical center, near where
she lived, she was suffering from trauma to her eyes, caused by
shards of glass. They successfully managed to remove it all before
she was transported here, so we are confident that there will be
minimal damage to her eyes, hopefully none that is permanent, at
least. To make sure that there is no threat of infection, we have
bandaged her eyes and to eliminate that risk, we'll be leaving them on
as long as possible. However, what we found more alarming were the
old hairline fractures that we found in her ribs and skull, when we
took x-rays. These probably healed without any treatment, but these
do suggest that Catriona did suffer long-term abuse, that may affect
her body's ability to heal and recover. Most of the damage was done
to the lower body, inflicted by a massive amount of blunt force,
indicative of bludgeoning. Both of Cathy's legs were dislocated from
the hip sockets and Catriona's left leg has been broken in two places
above the knee and three places below it. Cathy's pelvis, arm and
left leg have been set in plaster casts, along with her right leg,
which is broken at the ankle. We are assuming that this injury was
caused by a fall, which broke most of her toes. Most of her fingers
on her right hand and some on her left hand are also broken.
However, despite the massive amount of trauma that Miss Carter has
sustained, we are very pleased that she is not showing any signs of
brain injury. So far there has been no significant swelling of the
brain within the skull cavity, which is what we'd worry about most in
a case such as this. All we can do for the next 48 hours is observe
her vital signs and hope that they start to pick up."
Dr. Mark then helped Harm, Mac and AJ up from their seats, and then led
them through several hallways, to the Intensive Care Unit. Through
the windows, Mac caught sight of the tiny, broken figure of
Cathy, as she lay surrounded by the huge machines and bundles of
wires. The sight was too much for her and she recoiled violently,
her legs giving way beneath her. Harm caught her around the middle
as she crumpled to the floor, her legs collapsing beneath her. Harm
held her close as she was wracked with violent sobs, trying in vain
to keep the tears at bay himself. The Admiral turned away, cursing
quietly as he placed his head in his hands. He was speechless for
the next couple of minutes, thinking to himself,
"God, if this had ever happened to Francesca, I don't know what I
would have done."
He then realised, "I don't even know what to do now, what should I
do? How do I fix this?"
As he stood there, feeling helpless, Harm stood cradling Mac as
she sobbed her heart out.
OOOO
After they had all pulled themselves together, they prepared
themselves for the torturous task at hand. A nurse brought them
through the ICU doors, to Cathy's bedside. The nurse looked
over Cathy's vital signs, before turning to Harm, Mac and AJ,
who were just standing gawping at the machines, at a loss as to what
to do.
"It's okay," the nurse told them," these machines are just doing the
job of Catriona's body for her, until her body has recovered enough
to work on it's own. You can talk to her and hold her hand, if you
want to. We've often found that patients respond to the voice and
touch of a loved one."
"I'm just afraid of knocking something or disrupting one of the
machines. I don't want to hurt her," Mac confessed.
With the nurse's help, they managed to settle themselves in the
chairs by the bed, talking to Cathy, holding her strapped,
plastered hands and gently stroking her hair back from her face. Mac
traced the dark purple bruise that marred Cathy's face.
Gauze and bandages covered her eyes, so Mac wasn't able to gaze into
their great, blue depths. The Admiral sat in the corner, simply
staring at the broken little figure of the girl he had come to love
like a daughter. While Cathy had been staying with Harm and Mac, she
and AJ had become very close, not just to each other, but to the
entire JAG staff and AJ now looked upon them all as family, as much
now as ever before. Looking behind him, AJ took a look at the rest
of the patients who were in the intensive care unit. Most were
either in their middle or late years. One man looked to be in his
early thirties, but Catriona, by far, was the youngest in the room.
He noticed a tired looking woman, sitting next to the bed behind him,
holding the hand of an old man who seemed to be her Father. The old
man looked as if he'd just gotten out of surgery. The woman looked up
at AJ, giving him a soft, friendly smile, as if to let him know that
she understood what he was going through. He smiled back in reply
and turned back, to concentrate on what Harm and Mac were doing, as
they sat beside Cathy's bed. Mac had leaned her chin on the edge of
the bed and was focusing her attention on Cathy's face, as if
looking for signs of the girl waking up. Harm had a comforting hand
on Mac's back, supportively. AJ suddenly felt a wave of unbearable
fury descend on him. How could any man do this to a child? God
help him if he ever got his hands on Jim Davidson! He'd tear him
limb from limb!
At that, AJ decided to go outside and get himself a cup of coffee and
calm down. This was no way to help Catriona. After first asking
Harm and Mac if they wanted something to drink, AJ headed out of the
ICU and down the hallway to the vending machines. On his way back,
he noticed the woman who was sitting by the next bed, in one of the
chairs, outside the ICU. She seemed to be staring off into space,
probably just getting her thoughts. AJ took a seat next to her and
she startled out of her thoughts. Smiling back at AJ, she introduced
herself.
"Hi, I'm Sydney."
"I'm AJ. Pretty stuffy in there, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I just had to come out to get myself together."
"Is that your Dad, in there?"
"Yep, he's just out of a hip replacement operation."
"I hope he's doing okay."
"Oh, yeah, he'll be fine. His doctor just wanted to put him in there
as a precaution, because of his age. He didn't respond too well to
the anesthetic, either. But he'll be fine now and he should be moved
out before the end of the week."
"That's good," AJ nodded, agreeably.
"Is that your Granddaughter, who you're here to see?" Sydney
broached, tentatively.
"No, not Granddaughter, but sort of a granddaughter-figure. She's like
the granddaughter I've never had...Cathy's a friend of mine and of my
colleagues."
"I really hope that she'll get better, soon," Sydney told AJ, genuinely, but finding the right words with a bit of difficulty.
"Me, too," AJ agreed, "But only time will tell."
AJ said goodbye and went back into the ICU with the coffee that he had
bought for Harm. Sydney remained where she was, not ready to go
back in yet. The beeping of all of the machines had given her a
headache that was taking a while to subside.
At that minute, another nurse approached the nurse's station,
opposite Sydney, to clock on for her shift. Sydney remembered
when she had been doing her internship in medicine in
this very unit, before she had become a general practitioner,
when she had decided to stay at Bethesda. She couldn't remember ever
seeing anything quite as traumatic during her internship as she had
during this week.
The nurse clocking on for her shift turned to another nurse, asking
her, "Any new patients while I've been away?"
"Yep," nurse Amy replied, "A few. 67 year-old man, three beds
from the far wall. Hip replacement patient. 54 year-old lady,
far bed on the left, kidney transplant. But our most critical
patient is in the left hand-side bed, by the window. She's
flat lined on us twice since she arrived..."
The new nurse turned to look where nurse Amy pointed, then gasped in
horror. "Jesus..."she cursed, softly, "What was it, road accident?"
"No," Amy replied, quietly, murmuring two telling words,
understandably disgusted by them.
"Domestic abuse."
OOOO
Over the next week or so, the group was visited by the entire
JAG staff. Harriet and Bud came to visit on the second day, with a
big bunch of flowers. After getting over the initial shock of seeing
Cathy's state for the first time, Harriet turned to Mac, a concerned
look on her face.
"Ma'am, have you eaten yet?" Mac just shook her head, as Harm
explained, "Mac hasn't been able to keep any food down since we got
here. I keep trying to get her to drink something, but she doesn't
think that she'd be able to keep that down either."
Harriet finally managed to persuade Mac to come down to the hospital
canteen and Harm said that he would come as well. As they sat at the
table in the canteen and talked, Mac began to get more and more
anxious to get back to the ICU.
"Don't worry Ma'am," Harriet told her," The Admiral and Bud will keep
an eye on her. The doctors and the nurses are only a buzz away."
But the gnawing feeling in Mac's stomach wouldn't go away, until she
thought that she might not be able to make it back to the ICU, it was
so bad.
Just then, all three of them heard the emergency page over the
tannoy system.
"Paging Doctor Mark to ICU, Doctor Mark to ICU, we have a code blue."
Harm, Mac and Harriet bolted from the table and sprinted to the
elevators.
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