I have messed with your minds long enough, and while it is fun, Jackie thinks I'm being mean. So here is the next part. Enjoy and send her lots of reviews, Flatkatsi

Supporting Rumors - Part 18

Sam thought that madness had finally ascended on her ... the way her thoughts seared around, winding and thumping into each other, scattering her few remaining sanity cells far and wide …

"Mrs O'Neill?" Doctor Hill raised her voice and leaned closer. "We have removed the bullet and stopped the bleeding." She flicked a look of concern to the General. "Did you hear me Mrs O'Neill? Your husband is alive." She grasped both of Sam's hands, pressing something into her fingers. "It was only when we got him fully sedated he released his grip on this."

It took several seconds for the doctor's words to penetrate Sam's skull and another couple of seconds for her fried synapses to process the information being sent to her brain.

Eyes brimming with tears, she stared at the little yellow yoyo. "He's alive?" Her words came out hesitatingly, almost as though she was afraid to believe them.

"Yes, yes he is. We don't know yet what permanent damage there is and he's extremely weak, but he is alive."

Sam crumpled. Huge sobs racked her frame. She clutched the little yellow yoyo close to her heart and cried ... and cried ... the release her body and mind craved …

xoxoxoxoxoxo

Doctor Hill calmly organized a room and a light sedative for Mrs O'Neill. She had expected something along these lines. She vaguely recalled that her patient's wife was also military, yet no matter how hard they thought they were, their bodies knew what was necessary for survival. It was important that the stresses and strains of events were permitted to take their natural release ... She knew that the next few days would be just as fraught for both of them.

General Hammond followed her out of the room they'd settled Mrs O'Neill into. "You need rest too you know," chided Doctor Hill in a soft voice.

The General nodded. "I'm going to make a few calls and then try and get some sleep in the relative's room. That couch is sure big enough. You will wake me if there's anything?"

She nodded. He was a rock if ever she saw one. She liked the large man and heartily warmed to the trusting, enticing nature of him, that and the ready twinkle in his eyes. "I'm so glad Mrs O'Neill has someone like you with her. She'll be ready to face the next battle after a good sleep."

Doctor Hill left the General and returned to check General O'Neill. The first forty-eight hours were the most critical and round the clock high dependency care was required. She didn't like to lose any of her patients and it had come pretty close with the General, more than once.

She'd tried her best to talk O'Neill out of having the operation that had been scheduled for tomorrow, but the man had quietly insisted that the necessary paperwork be prepared and he had calmly signed everything. She could understand, in a way, why he had insisted on having the operation. But that he was so calm and accepting of his fate was slightly unnerving. She didn't know why ... but what she was sure of was that death held no horror for him, only the promise of release, though it would have given a private hell of its own to his wife. There was a lot of love between them and she had been hoping that Mrs O'Neill would change her husband's mind ... but it just wasn't to be.

The yoyo that rolled from his hand in the theatre as he went under stopped them all in their tracks for a moment and she felt the ridiculously shocking urge to giggle. As she was choking it down with a cough, she wondered where he'd got it and how on Earth he'd been holding on to it for all of this time ... and then silently promised herself that her staff would getting a ticking off for missing it ...

After the operation, when she was cleaning herself up, her head nurse put the yoyo down on the counter beside her. The bright red letters bearing its owner's name brought a smile to her tired face and she had picked it up on her way out to see his wife.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

She methodically checked over her patient's vitals and adjusted the medication when it looked like he was coming out of it just a little too soon for her liking. She intended to keep him lightly sedated just a while longer, giving his body a chance to begin the healing it desperately needed.

She'd done her best. That was all she could ever do. Miracles weren't her specialty and she'd long stopped believing in the power of prayer ... it was in the hands of fate now …

xoxoxoxoxoxo

TBC