Part 20
"Go fish," Will said tiredly, tossing the paper-filled folder into Weiss' lap as the two sat sifting through information Sloane had handed over earlier that day.
The entirety of the SD-6 arms-deals records sat in eight file-folder boxes, the two deciding to sift and sort through things in the lower medical room at the foot of Sydney's bed. The beeps and suctioning air provided sound to their otherwise silent activity, and in some way, they felt like she was still sticking it to the Alliance by simply being present.
In 42 days Arvin Sloane had obtained and made copies of an entire branch of Alliance activities. When coupled with the information they had pulled from the Luxumbourg server files, of which Sloane was kept purposefully in the dark, there was nearly an endless supply of information for analysis to validate and dispense.
Inside Sloane's information was a handful of unnamed contacts through their arms sales and locations. Of a dozen wants on the massive Alliance bad guy list, they had only managed to ascertain two so far, one of which Vaughn was confirming in Hong Kong. His flight had left an hour ago, the private jet at Dover empty save for the single, tired passenger.
"What did we do to deserve this?" Weiss grumbled as he cross-referenced the information in his hand with a cheat-sheet Will had created, dejectedly tossing in the pile to his left.
Will glared and pointed, "how are you sorting those files?"
"This," Weiss announced with a gesture to his right, "is the I found a thing pile, while this," gesturing to the larger pile on the left, "is the bullshit pile. This," he pointed to the file, "is bullshit. It goes on the bullshit pile."
The door opened and the young nurse came in, her left foot hitting one stack into another and scattering the two piles across the floor. "Damnit, you two," she growled.
Weiss looked horrified as Will laughed, "what were those piles?"
"Why have you taken up the entire floor with this? There are a dozen rooms upstairs with tables and chairs and no unconscious people that need to be checked every hour."
"But Jamie, then we wouldn't get to see you," Eric grinned and winked, the young woman rolling her eyes despite the smile that tilted her lips. Bending down to help clean the mess she had inadvertently created, Weiss stood with a groan and watched helplessly as she stacked the files and papers, everything mixed to a point that he knew he'd have to sort it all over again.
It was hard to hear at first: the sudden rise in the tempo of the heart monitor. It was slight, but after spending a significant chunk of time each day over the last 42 days in this room, it made Will move closer to check the machine. What he didn't expect to see were Sydney's fluttering eyes desperately trying to open against the drugs in her system.
"Holy shit," he whispered, the nurse snapping to attention. Piling the folders suddenly into Weiss' open arms unbalanced him, the whole mess toppling to the floor in a scattered floof. He pushed it out of the way with his foot as the doctor flew in, his machines down the hall sounding with the sudden change in his patients' status.
"I think she's waking up," Jamie said with a smile, moving to increase the flow of the IV liquids.
They'd been marginally reducing her sedatives the last week and a half, the doctor pushing for her to wake up on her own over a few days after lowering the drugs. He didn't want to shock her system by killing everything all at once, but when those days passed and she hadn't shown even an inkling of waking, the fears of massive brain damage became very real.
What if she doesn't wake up was a question that everyone had been thinking daily, but none more frequent than the last ten days. This was the first hint of life from the young woman and the room was filled with nervous excitement tinged with fear. Each knew their worry was very legitimate.
The day she'd been extracted Sydney had lost just over three-quarters of the blood in her body and had been dead for at least three minutes before the team got into the room. Another thirty seconds or so passed getting her out of the chair and onto the floor before they could attempt resuscitation. The medical team had been blown away by the fact that they managed to get her heart pumping when there was hardly anything left to pump.
She crashed again when they got to the field office medical floor, all but one doctor ready to make the call. Two additional minutes with no rhythm passed as they inserted IV's as close to the heart as possible to hit it with blood and adrenaline before doing more CPR that brought her back a second time. What ribs weren't broken were cracked, but it was decided to repair it through several surgical procedures that covered the next three days.
Once they achieved a semblance of stability the doctor had cautioned that Sydney had spent a total of five and a half minutes dead across a half an hour, and that it would be nearly impossible for them to tell what permanent damage, if any, had been done during that time. It was known that a person could come out relatively unscathed from more time spent without a heartbeat or air, but those people hadn't sustained six days of beatings, stabbings, and broken bones, all with nothing to eat or drink.
The spectrum was 'she'll never actually wake up' to 'brain damage, paralysis, memory loss' and about six more things. To Will, it had sounded like one of those television ads for a medication and the list of side-effects that would make no one in their right mind talk with their doctor about whatever the ad was peddling.
Her eyes fluttering open made each of them hold their breath because they would finally know which of those side-effects they had to deal with. The other caution, the one that made every person in that room keep their hands off the patient, had come from the psychologist.
Will could hear her voice in his head: 'Don't touch her. You have no idea how she'll react, and with the amount of damage she's had and depending on the healing when she wakes up, anything you do could be painful and that will make her think she isn't in a safe place. Eyes only until she says otherwise.
"Agent Bristow? Blink if you can understand me." The few seconds they waited were long, the confused brown orbs trying hard to focus on the talking face above her.
She blinked.
It was slow, but it was a blink.
…
"Agent Bristow, can you hear me?" The young woman stood over the groggy agent with a soft smile on her friendly face.
Sydney tried to talk, though nothing came out but a wheezing groan. The nurse stopped her by holding up her hand where she could see it, "it's okay. After taking out the breathing tube your throat can be a bit raw. You can blink or nod if that's easier."
Sydney managed a weak nod.
"Great. My name is Jamie and I've been your nurse for a little while. I was just coming in to check your meds when I saw your eyes open."
Another nod as she smacked her lips together against the dryness of her mouth and tongue. The nurse disappeared and reappeared holding a sippy cup, bringing the small opening to Sydney's lips.
Taking a mouthful swallowing past the soreness of her throat, she croaked out: "thanks."
"Whispering might work a bit better. I'm just going to check things over here, but I'm still here." The nurse moved off, Sydney trying to turn her head to follow but the stiffness in her neck kept her looking up at the ceiling. She couldn't really move anything at the moment, and with the last memories of what her body had been through, it made sense.
"Where?" she rasped.
"You're in the JTF medical wing."
Sleep tugged at her, but she really wanted to figure something out before slipping away again.
"When?"
Jamie stopped, wishing anyone else would walk in and set her free. It was rare in the last 24 hours that Sydney was alone, the nurse finding the one moment where someone had run to the off.
"Uh, about a month and a half."
Sydney's mind reeled, her fuzzy brain trying to take stock in the facts. She wasn't dead, that was first. Second: she'd been rescued. The harder she tried to think the less her memory cooperated.
"Let me find someone for you. Your dad? Will?"
Sydney went to wave her off but only managed to lift her right hand a few inches before a heavy weakness and a stinging muscle spasm caused the limb to drop back to the padded bed.
"Please don't. I...I just...uh-" she stumbled over her words in a scratchy voice, Jamie halting her movement toward the door.
"O-okay. Are you in any pain?"
"I don't think so."
The nurse made her way back and checked the machine readouts. "I'll grab the doctor. Do you want to see the psychologist as well?"
Jamie saw the wheels behind Sydney's eyes turn, the slow blinks and rapid opening and closing of her lips not bringing forth any sound.
"I'll grab them both."
The nurse left and, for the first time, locked the door behind her. She spotted Will as he was heading back with a steaming hot coffee in one hand while flipping through something on his phone in the other. Snagging his arm he jumped, his phone clattering to the floor of the hallway as hot coffee splashed across his fingers.
His holler echoed as he glared daggers at the nurse, an apology leaving her lips as the now grumpy analyst bent down to retrieve his phone.
"Follow me," she ordered, the man falling into step as they made their way into the doctor's office at the end of the corridor.
"Agent Bristow is awake."
Will had a burst of excitement flutter up from his stomach.
"Fully conscious? Coherent?" Doc Greene rose from his desk pulling off his glasses and sliding them to the top of his head.
"Yep. But...she seems to not want any visitors. She did agree to see you and Doctor Curtis."
Will's jumped in. "What do you mean she doesn't want visitors?"
The medical team looked at the young man with sympathetic eyes, the doctor setting a hand to his shoulder. "It's fairly common, Will. Coma patients go through a lot when they wake up, even after a short period of time. Add that to her potential last memories and it makes a lot of sense. We'll make sure she's oriented and let her tell us what she needs. What she says goes, even if it means staying away for a little while."
Though it felt like a punch in the heart, Will agreed. He was left in the hallway, deciding to make his first stop Weiss rather than Jack and Francie.
…
"You tell me if you need to stop for any reason. If you get tired or are in pain, or plain get sick of me, we stop." Her voice was soothing, the agent almost completely immobile on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. The lights above were off and a lamp across the room illuminated things well enough for the psychologist to take notes but not to aggravate Sydney's sensitive eyes.
The woman had introduced herself as Sarah Curtis, and once Doctor Green was satisfied that his patient was well enough to speak with her, the two were left in the room.
Sydney wasn't very excited to bring another shrink up to speed. On a one to ten scale of having a crazy life with the lower being normal, Sydney's had to rank at least a 20, and the most recent parts she assumed the lady wanted to poke at were painfully unfuzzy.
'Unless she watched everything.' Her mind kicked out that small factoid, reminding her again that Flynn had broadcast every moment of what she'd been through on the internet. The odds were good that the woman sitting quietly beside her bed knew everything, just like everyone else. That fact made her heart hurt. Her life was no longer secret, and she didn't know how she'd get used to that fact.
"I...don't know where to start." Sydney's voice was somewhere between a smoker's whisper and a harsh rasp, and her throat felt raw from staying silent for so long as well as the removal of the breathing tube.
Sarah smiled softly. "I'm colleagues with Judy Barnett. I have your file at home and have read up on everything, so don't worry about needing to bring me up to speed."
'In my head already? She's good.'
Sydney visibly relaxed at this information.
"I've spent my career working with the military, mostly prisoners of war, and your director thought that my talents would be helpful to you, and I agree. Judy was kept in the dark on this, as were all but a select few, so whatever you tell me doesn't leave this room. I promise. Do you mind if I ask you something, Agent Bristow?"
"Sydney. Just...just call me Sydney."
Sarah nodded, though her patient kept her eyes trained on the ceiling and couldn't see the movement. Sarah wasn't sure if it was because Sydney was in an avoiding mood or if she wasn't able to turn her head, but it didn't really matter.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
Sydney swallowed past the lump bubbling up in her throat, "I remember everything."
"Okay, what the last thing you thought about before...before the camera turned off."
The young woman closed her eyes tight as if that would help jog her memory of the rescue, but it came back blank. "I remember messing with him, trying to get him to lose it one last time."
"Why?"
She tried for a shrug, a pinch of pain in her left shoulder making its way through the medication and causing a wince. "Because it was all I had. Making that guy...lose his mind in frustration was all I had."
"Do you remember being stabbed?"
Sydney let out a dark chuckle, "which time?"
Sarah grinned, "good point."
"Yeah."
They lapsed into a moment of silence.
"I guess I - I don't remember everything. I...I don't...I don't remember the rescue."
Sarah knew she was treading on thin ice. The reason the young woman didn't recall her extraction was because she was dead at the time. She wrestled with herself on whether or not this was too soon to relay this information. Deciding to steer the conversation away from the extraction, she continued.
"It's okay if you don't recall everything, I was just wondering what you remembered last. Do you have any memory of waking here a few hours ago?"
Sydney minutely shook her head, her eyes still focusing above her. "Doctor Curtis?"
"Call me Sarah."
"Did you see...everything, Sarah?"
The woman shook her head. "Not live, but I saw plenty on the news. When they asked if I would take you as a patient, and after I agreed, I watched the footage."
They lapsed into silence, Sarah thinking that she had dozed off, but leaning forward she saw the rapidly moving and blinking brown eyes filled with tears.
"Tell me what you're thinking right now," she prodded.
The agent sighed, making Sarah grin. "Look, I've worked with military guys that could bench press a truck, tough as nails and fed from the day they were born to not let any feelings in because tough didn't do that kind of thing. With me, you don't have to be tough. It's going to come out one way or another, you might as well let it out with me instead of holding on and letting it eat you from the inside out."
Sydney thought for another minute. "I can't really move anything."
"That would be both the drugs and the fact that you haven't so much as wiggled a toe in over forty days. But, you know that with physical therapy and training you'll be back to yourself in a few months."
Sydney sniffled, "is that possible?"
Sarah frowned a bit. "Is what possible?"
"To get back to myself? Because I...I feel really far away." Her voice turned watery.
"Mind or body far away?"
"Both? I don't know," she rasped, Sarah taking a moment to bring the cup to Sydney's lips to let her drink.
"Why can't I remember the extraction? Why do I have to remember everything but the good part?" A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and rolled down her temple.
Sarah drew a deep breath and set the cup on the table beside the chair before moving back into Sydney's eye line, the worried brown orbs meeting her comforting and gentle blue stare.
"How honest do you want me to be right now? If you think you can handle details you don't remember, I'll tell you what parts you're missing. But, I want you to really think. Are you ready to know? Because we have plenty of time and you don't have to do everything all at once."
Sydney thought as hard as she could, but as exhaustion pulled at the edges of her vision thinking was becoming too hard. Sarah was surprised when she shook her head and whispered, "not yet."
"Deal. But know that I'll always be honest with you. All I ask is that you're honest with me."
Sydney passed her a genuine smile. "Is it normal that I don't wanna see anyone? Even...people that I love?"
"Totally normal. Want me to check back a little later? Or have your doc call when you wake up again?"
"Whatever happens first, I guess. Thanks, Sarah."
Lifting her things the psychologist made her way to the door. Turning before exiting, she asked, "if there was one person you wanted to see right now, who would it be?"
…
