As always, a big thanks again to the awesome (numerous!) people who left feedback in the review section for me. It provides me with endless encouragement!
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Part 6
Whoever the judge had been expecting, it certainly wasn't Harm and Mac. He was dressed in his dress whites and had obviously been expecting the knock at the door to be his date for the evening. After pushing his way in the door, Harm restrained the man and handcuffed him, while Mac and Andrew rushed into the house. They checked all of the rooms on the first floor and finding nothing, they ran up the stairs to the second storey. They found one door to be locked, so Andrew put his muscled shoulder to good use and knocked the door in, first time. He had no time to think about the pain this action caused, for his heart arrested at the sight of his partner. She was tied to the bed by her wrists and ankles and it looked like she was unconscious. He and Mac bolted to her side in a second, untying her bonds and checking her vitals. To Mac's relief, her pulse felt steady, but she could not help but be worried by the fact that Andy could not rouse her. Elaine had been without her insulin for a whole day and Mac knew that too-low levels of blood sugar over a prolonged period could lead to coma or even death. As Andrew untied her last bond, Mac ran from the room to go and summon the ambulance crew. They had been 'en-route' when they had arrived, but back-up had already been standing by.
"She's upstairs," Mac told Harm, who was overseeing the removal of Judge Harkness from the house, "But she's not coming to. We need to get her medical help, now."
Luckily at this, the ambulance pulled up outside and Mac went out to usher them in and give an account of what had transpired in the last two days.
Harm and Mac, apart from being worried, were fine until they got back upstairs, walking ahead of the medics who were bringing a gurney. They reached the threshold of the room and froze, catching sight of Lieutenant James, with his partner in his arms, completely breaking down, sobbing uncontrollably into her hair. Harm was able to relinquish Andy's hold on Lainey and convince him to let the medics treat her. He then led the Lieutenant downstairs, to try and help him get under control.
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It had been six days since Elaine Hodge had been admitted to hospital and she was itching to get home. Despite feeling much the same as before her ordeal, she seemed to be experiencing nothing much more serious, so was eager to get back to the comfort of her own bed. Many of her friends and co-workers had stopped by over the last few days, including her CO, her two mentors, her partner and various other JAG staff-members. She had been offered enough assistance to know that she would be well taken care of, so she had left a message at the nurse's desk for her doctor, who was currently doing the rounds of his patients in another wing of the hospital.
"Lieutenant Hodge," the tall doctor trailed an unknown individual behind him, a while later, "I hear you've been pestering the nurses about being allowed home again."
"Well," Elaine admitted, "I know that I'm doing fine, feeling nothing that I can't control with my medication from the comfort of my own home, so yeah, I do believe that it is time that I was released."
Her doctor looked to the man behind him, who stepped up to the bed and spoke up.
"That's just it, Lieutenant Hodge," he told her, "Doctor Gray has asked for my opinion on your condition and I'm afraid that you cannot go home. It seems a lot more is going on with you than any of us previously realized…"
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His partner was conspicuously quiet when Andrew turned up to visit her on his lunch hour, that afternoon.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, "There isn't anything wrong, is there?"
"They're not going to let me out," Elaine told him, "They want to run more tests on me."
"I'm sure they just want to make sure that you're okay," he supposed, "I know I prefer to know that you're in here and being taken care of than to know nothing of where and how you are."
"I hate hospitals," she continued to complain, "I've spent entirely too much of my life in them, already."
I know you do," Andy consoled her, "but you've been very lucky to get through all of this unscathed…I mean, if there was something seriously wrong with you, the doctors would have mentioned it, wouldn't they?"
"I guess so," Lainey replied, then changed the subject, "My parents are flying in, tomorrow morning."
"Have they got a ride from the airport?" Andrew asked, "I could go and collect them, if you want."
"They're getting a rental car," Lainey told him, "But thanks."
"Anything you need," her partner told her, sincerely, "you only need to ask."
And that only broke Lainey's heart a bit more, because she knew what she should be telling him would absolutely devastate him once she couldn't hide it any longer. But she would wait until she knew for certain before she'd bring him into her problems. Her parents had helped her through things before and there was a chance that they could do so again.
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"Did Lieutenant Hodge seem awful quiet to you, Ma'am?" Harriet asked Mac, as they waited for the coffee to brew in the break room.
"A little," Mac nodded, "but she's been through a lot. She's bound to have sapped her energy reserves."
"She's been in the hospital an uncommon amount of time, seeing as there's nothing obvious wrong with her," Sturgis joined in the conversation, as he and Harm returned from court.
"It's probably just the doctors being cautious," Mac justified, "since she has a medical condition and all."
"Lieutenant James said that he'll visit her this evening," Harriet added, "And her parents flew into DC this morning, so I'm sure she's being well taken care of."
All of them knew that despite the top-notch medical care that one could get here, there was still no substitute for loving care that one needed when you had been through as much as Elaine had.
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"I'm sorry," the doctor apologized as he reported the results of the set of blood tests, "But one of the most important tests came up positive."
"What does that mean?" Mrs. Hodge tried to process this information, but was drawing a blank.
"Well, we talked about how certain blood groups were compatible. As you know, your daughter has a different blood group to your husband and her sister, but the same as yours and that was running in our favor. But when considering a procedure like this, we need to make sure that there is nothing in your daughter's blood which any part of your body would react to as foreign, as it would predict certain rejection at a later stage. I'm afraid that our tests came out positive. There was a reaction, so we think there is something in her blood, probably passed genetically from her Father that is reacting against your tissue. It means that we cannot go ahead…"
And with those terrible words, Lainey knew that she would have to tell Andrew.
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