"Yeah, plus the human skull is a lot harder to penetrate than you'd think," Michael added, "For once my brother's thick skull came in handy."
Natalie nodded as she processed this information then asked, "Wait a minute you said painkillers? Where did he get painkillers?"
"From me," Michael said softly, "for the leg injury from Statesville. He said he didn't want them but I insisted. God I'm an idiot. I should have-"
"Hey," Natalie said swatting him on the upper arm, "if I don't get to blame myself neither do you."
"I don't think assigning blame is very helpful in cases like this anyway," Bo interjected. He looked as though he was about to say something else but his phone rang and he excused himself to take the call.
"Michael," Natalie said watching Bo walk away, "does this make sense to you?"
Michael looked at her for a moment as though she'd grown another head, "My brother just tried to kill himself, Natalie, I don't expect anything to make sense right now."
"That's just it," she said, "I don't think-" She stopped herself seeing Dr. Miller approach and held her breath, hoping that the doctor wasn't bringing bad news.
But Paige smiled and looking at Michael said, "You can see him now."
"Thank you," Michael said letting out a deep sigh--apparently he'd been holding his breath as well.
She turned a sympathetic gaze to Natalie and added, "Immediate family only at the moment. But you should be able to see him before too long."
"I understand," Natalie said as Michael stood and followed Paige around the corner.
"I know exactly what your thinking, Nattie," Rex said when he figured Michael was out of earshot.
"Rex it just doesn't add up," she said.
"It's a natural reaction," he said.
"What?" Natalie asked shaking her head, not understanding his question.
"When someone you care about kills themselves, or tries to, I think it's a natural reaction to deny that it happened," he said, a patronizing tone sneaking into his voice. "And one of the easiest ways to do that is to come up with some conspiracy story where someone else is to blame."
Natalie stared at her brother in shock. "I can't believe I'm hearing this from you, of all people. Rex, when Jen was murdered everyone just assumed it was a suicide, but you knew better and you were right."
"That was different," Rex said.
"How?" she asked folding her arms defensively.
"Well… for starters Jen wasn't crazy," Rex said.
"John's not crazy!" Natalie said starting to raise her voice.
"Okay, keep it down, we're in a hospital," Rex said catching the dirty looks the nurse was giving him. "Maybe crazy was the wrong word. But you have to admit he's been exhibiting some unhealthy, self-destructive behavior."
"Who hasn't?" Natalie spat back, "but that's a long way from killing yourself."
Rex sighed, knowing that his next statement was only going to provoke further wrath from his sister but he felt he needed to say it. "I think there's another possibility you need to consider."
"What's that?" she asked trepidation evident in her voice.
"Maybe this was just a cry for help. Maybe he didn't try to kill himself, maybe he just wanted you all to think that he tried to kill himself," he said, cringing slightly, fully expecting to get slapped for the insinuation.
To his surprise Natalie actually thought over this possibility before shaking her head and saying, "No."
"You're sure?"
She rolled her eyes. "Staging it so that it looked like he wanted to kill himself just so he could get us all upset? Okay, that's something you would do, and that's maybe even something I would do, but not John. He's got too much of a martyr complex for that."
After considering her point he nodded. "Actually, you're right about that."
He'd finally given up and just let himself drift; that seemed to be the only thing he was capable of anyhow. But suddenly something very distant roused his consciousness slightly. Michael was here. "Here" didn't feel like the right word to use, because Michael seemed so far away, but somehow he knew that he was actually close. Close enough to touch. Not that he was capable of touching anyone.
Michael was mad. What had he done to piss of Michael now? He tried to think. Maybe it was just old stuff; maybe Michael was holding grudges. Maybe Michael was just as frustrated as he was over his present condition.
Medical knowledge was only but so helpful when it was a family member in that bed, hooked up to all those machines. He'd never expected to see John this way. He had every reason to expect it; John had been shot before, he'd been injured countless times, he certainly lived surrounded by enough danger. But as he entered the room and saw John lying there Michael realized how totally unprepared he was for this.
He sat down in the chair beside the bed for a moment before jumping up and pacing a little. "What the hell were you thinking, Johnny?" he finally asked. He turned and looked at his brother as though he were capable of responding. "I mean you've done some dumb things in the past but this…"
Another look at John, at that bandage, at the monitors, softened his attitude. "Mom's on her way," he said. "Natalie sent Asa's plane to go pick her up. Yeah, that's right, Natalie's here too. Waiting on your sorry ass to wake up, though I can't for the life of me figure out why after everything you did to her. So you better wake up, okay? For her, for Mom… they don't deserve to have to go through this."
"Okay," Rex said, "so you're thinking this is a set up. Why?"
"For starters," she said, "I don't care how impaired you are your own head is a pretty hard target to miss especially for someone experienced with a gun."
"That much makes sense," he nodded.
"And then there's the part about him being impaired in the first place. I mean, drunk I can believe, but the painkillers?"
"Haven't you ever wanted to feel numb?" he asked.
"All the time, but we're not talking about me. This is John McBain, Mr. McMacho, Mr. McMartyr. It just doesn't seem like him to me. And why was he down by the docks? That seems strange."
"He wanted to be alone," Rex argued, "most suicides do."
"How did he get there if he was that impaired?" she asked.
"If he was thinking irrationally enough to kill himself you think he stopped to think, 'Oh I shouldn't drive--I've been drinking'?"
"Again," she said, "we're not talking about a normal human being, we're talking about John. I'm telling you he'd never drive drunk, it's something he feels very strongly about."
Rex gave her a sideways glance, "If you're planning on using the argument that you think he was crazy enough to kill himself but not enough to drive under the influence you might have a hard time convincing people. Besides, maybe he got drunk there."
"Was there evidence of that at the scene?" she asked, "Empty bottles or anything like that?"
"I don't know," he shrugged, "I wasn't there."
"I need to find out," she said softly to herself.
"Fine," Rex said, "you can talk to Bo about this. He can probably answer all of your questions better than I can anyway."
"Bo won't talk to me about crime scenes," she said dismissively.
"Right," he said, "you know why? Because you're not a cop. That's his job not yours."
Natalie gaped at him. "Who am I talking to? You're not a cop either, that's never stopped you!"
"That's different," he said.
"How?"
"Because when you try to get involved, inevitably you wind up getting shot at and I wind up getting yelled at."
"That was one time!" she protested.
"Bo will do a good job of handling this, Nattie," he said firmly, "let him."
She was about to protest further when she heard a woman's voice say her name. She looked up to see Eve McBain hurrying towards her. Natalie rose to meet her and the older woman clasped both her hands tightly. "Natalie, how is he?" she asked breathlessly.
"They're not really saying much," she said, "he's out of surgery and I guess he's stable because they just took Michael back to see him."
Eve nodded, "Where is he?"
"I don't know exactly," she said looking around. "He went- Dr. Truman!" she called to the doctor who was passing by.
Spenser Truman stopped immediately and turned, flashing Natalie and Eve his genial smile, "Ms. Vega, how can I help you?"
"Um… it's Buchanan," Natalie corrected him. She still got flustered every time she had to explain to someone that she was no longer the grieving widow but rather the irritated divorcee.
"Of course," he said, his smile never wavering.
Natalie motioned towards Eve, "This is John McBain's mother."
"Dr. Spenser Truman," he said reaching for her hand, "I'm one of the surgeons who worked on your son."
"How is he?" she asked anxiously.
Spenser sighed letting his smile transform into a look of patronizing sympathy, "Well he's stable, but his condition is still very precarious. It's too soon for us to really know the full extent of the damage."
"Can I see him?" she asked.
He nodded, "Come with me."
As they disappeared Natalie sank down next to Rex once more. Still looking in the direction John's mother had walked she said, "Whatever happened, I have to know. I have to make sure that this is what everyone's saying it is and if it's not..."
Rex sighed. He wasn't going to be able to talk Natalie out of this completely, but if he could keep her here and talking he could perhaps keep her from doing anything reckless at the very least. "Okay, so you've told me why you're suspicious, but do you have any suspects?"
"Suspects?"
"Well if your idea is that he didn't try to kill himself then that means someone tried to kill him and make it look like a suicide. So who?"
"I don't know," she said, "I mean he's a cop he's made a lot of enemies."
"McBain's made more enemies than the average cop," Rex pointed out, "but who would do this. It's one thing to try to kill someone, but trying to make it look like a suicide is different. It makes it a little more personal, doesn't it?"
"Well maybe they were just trying to cover their tracks," she suggested, "what better way to avoid getting caught yourself than for the police to think there hasn't even been a murder."
"And with the way McBain's been acting lately, people would believe it," he said.
"But that means whoever it is knows enough about what's going on in his life to know that," Natalie said already trying to run through possibilities in her mind.
"It still seems to me like someone went through a lot of trouble," he said thinking through the few facts he knew about the case, "if they were just trying to cover their tracks there had to be easier ways to do it. Ways that would be quicker which would have minimized their chances of getting caught. I mean he was right by the river, why didn't they just dump him in. It could have been weeks before anyone found him."
The image of John's decomposing body being dragged out of the river like Margaret Cochran's hit Natalie with a sudden wave of nausea. She squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the side of the couch.
"Nattie?" Rex asked putting a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm okay," she said, "it's just thinking about John…"
"Sorry," he said, "I shouldn't have run off at the mouth."
"You make a good point though," she said quickly regaining her composure, "someone went through a lot of trouble to do this. We need to figure out-"
Rex cut her off by clearing his throat suddenly and a second later Michael sat down across from them. "How is he?" Natalie asked as Michael buried his head in his hands.
"Comatose," Michael said, "with a hole in his head."
"But he's-"
"He's stable so far," Michael sighed, "Mom's with him now. She's a wreck she-" Michael stopped and looked at the siblings across from him. "So I'm gathering you don't think he did this."
"No," Natalie said, "what do you think?"
"I don't know," Michael said softly, "but I know I need the truth. So what do you have so far?"
"Not much," she said, "mostly just a gut feeling that he wouldn't do this and if he did this isn't how he would do it."
"Which I would agree with," he said, "but it could just be denial."
"You're right," she said, "we need to do some research. Find out how he got down to the docks, if anyone saw him there, if there was evidence that he was drinking there or-"
Natalie saw Michael tense suddenly and give her an uneasy look and at the same time Rex gripped her upper arm as if to keep her from standing. She looked at him in confusion for a moment and then followed his gaze and Michael's to see Evangeline Williamson standing a few feet away looking down at her.
To be continued.
Author's note: There's one line in this which owes its inspiration to actress Amanda Tapping.