Chapter 2

Jess could hear the birds of spring chirping outside the half-open window. The scent of spring flowers wafted along their songs in through the window as well. A soft smile crossed his face. He just lay in bed savoring the moments before the alarm would ring, sounding the official start to his day. An arm reached over just as the alarm began to sound. It squelched the noise.

Jess rolled over and swept Angelyne's hair out of her face. His ran his nose over her face tenderly and ended with a gentle kiss on her forehead.

"Do you know how much I love you?" he whispered.

His wife smiled and stroked the stubble across his face, "Yes, but I still have to deploy."

Lazily, Jess enfolded her in his arms, "Show me how much you love me..."

An alarm sounded again.

"O2 sats are dropping. He's at 87 percent," announced the anesthetist.

"Roger that," a deep baritone responded. "I'm almost done for now with big vascular resection on his leg. Remember he came in here looking like hamburger. Keep him breathing. What's his heart doing? BP?"

"Stable for now. I've got the atropine and paddles handy if I need 'em," was the reply. "You know we've been at this for four hours now. If I can wake him up soon, I'll feel better."

Jess reached back and shut off the alarm before resuming his slow and deeply affectionate caressing of Angelyne.

"Let me show you how much I love you," he crooned as he breathed softly in her ear, making her both shudder and giggle.

The surgeon continued to piece Jess's leg back together. The anesthetist fixed his eyes on the vital signs, noting that the O2 sats were not improving.

"O2 sats still suck, Dillon."

Dr. Brown looked up and quickly surveyed the readouts, "Okay, let me close on this for now. We'll bring him back to fix his femur and work on the smaller resections when he's stronger. The ER did a fairly decent first run at debriding the surface wounds. But I'm still finding glass and other crap in the wounds. I freakin' hate IEDs and those who make them!"

"They can finish cleaning him up in Recovery, make him look human again. No sense scaring the family, you know," remarked his head surgical tech to which Dr. Brown grunted approval.

"Yeah, but I don't want to risk infections from the debris in these deep tissue wounds. We will already be dealing with the usual post-operative fever that goes with cutting the human body open and tinkering inside. I've seen a perfectly put-back-together legs still have to come off due to infection that went to gangrene in a matter of a few hours," Brown practically exploded. "It takes only one piece of dirt to do it. This is a very dirty wound."

Dr. Brown had filled the tray with a multitude of little pieces of glass and wood, as well as some debris that really was hard to identify. He had found no typical IED shrapnel like nails, ball bearings, tacks, and screws. He installed a drain and left the main wound open for dressing and bandaging.

Jess's swelling face and arms bore many lacerations from the explosion's debris which had raced toward him, angrily peppering his exposed body. In Recovery, the wound care specialists and nurses carefully finished cleaning out those wounds and dressed them. Before the dressings went on, they carefully washed away the dried blood from his face and extremities. They got some of it out of his hair where it had caked. In due course, Jess was moved from Recovery to the ICU. He was no longer intubated and was muttering something incomprehensible.

A handsome middle-aged black man approached the gathered agents. He was wearing light green scrubs with a long white lab coat over those and a mask still dangling from his neck where he had moved it away when he'd finished his work.

Clinton rose and walked to meet him, "Dr. Brown?"

Dr. Dillon Brown looked Clinton up and down with some measure of skepticism, "Lemme guess - The brother?"

Clinton nodded.

"Okay, we'll go with that happy little fiction for now. Your brother," he continued, "is in rough shape. I understand he had a ballistic vest on when the IED went off."

The team nodded.

The surgeon continued, "Good thing. That's likely what initially saved his life. His center mass was protected well enough to survive the shock wave and shrapnel. Having seen the kind of damage that an IED can do, I'd also say that your bomb maker was an amateur, another point in favor of Agent LeCroix. I found no typical kinds of IED shrapnel like screws and such."

Crosby chimed in with a slightly louder than normal voice, "The EOD techs on scene found that the trigger only partially detonated the device. The main load of nails were still secured to the larger section of the explosive charge, homemade TATP. The rest did a slow burn. That's what started the house fire actually."

Brown nodded, "Don't doubt it. So for now, Agent LeCroix is stable, sedated, and in ICU. We need to do some more surgeries to repair all the damage from the blast. I was able to reconstruct the majority of the larger blood vessels that were not shredded. At least enough to re-establish marginal blood flow. I'm tentatively hopeful that he won't end up losing the leg below the knee."

The team looked at one another then back to Clinton whose game face gave away nothing.

"What is next for Jess?" Clinton's voice began to crack just at the edges. He cleared his throat.

"If he does not suffer a brain bleed, then it's open up the leg and pin the femur that was broken in either the blast or the landing back on solid ground. I'm a vascular surgeon by trade, but I can do the orthopod work if need be," he wiggled his fingers. "Eventually, I need to repair the smaller blood vessels that I did not resect today. And say a little prayer that I got all the debris out while I was in there, so we don't have to deal with a subsequent infection. An orthopedic surgeon will take a look tomorrow and make recommendations then. He's also going to be followed by our neurologist closely," Dr. Brown followed up. "There is a two-inch long skull fracture involved along with a few small rib fractures. That probably was due to the coming back to the ground after the blast. Gravity always wins."

"Any internal injuries?"

"Not that we can tell for now. His lungs sound clear. The next thing we have to deal with is general swelling which makes more surgery and diagnostic scans a bit more complicated. Scans don't always tell us the truth about what is damaged and what is simply swollen by the general insult to the soft tissues," Dr. Brown was just about to wrap up. "Time is both our friend and our enemy. Much later on, he will need some skin grafts and extensive rehab."

"Can I see him?" Clinton wanted to know; his eyes pleaded his case. "I need to reassure his daughter, Tali. She lost her mom in Afghanistan to an IED."

Dr. Brown hesitated, closed his eyes as if remembering, pursed his lips, and said "Only for a moment. Follow me. He's not going to look right since his face swelled up in reaction to the trauma."

Outside the ICU, a nursing assistant gave Clinton a mask and gown to cover his dirty clothes. He had more of Jess's blood on him that he realized. He'd need to shower and change before doing anything else. The charge nurse rose from her desk and followed Dr. Brown and Clinton to her patient's bed.

"I'm Esmer Sanchez, and I'll be looking after Agent LeCroix tonight," she reassured Clinton.

"His name is Jess," Clinton began.

"Brother from a different mother, I take it?" Sanchez joked, eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, something like that," he replied with a hint of a smile.

Jess was all cut up and swathed in enumerable bandages. His lips were an odd shade of blue even though he had a tranquil expression on his swollen face. A single sheet covered his legs. A plastic frame, most often used for burn patients, surrounded his legs and kept the sheet from touching them. An ugly tube with deep red blood ran out from underneath the sheet into a reservoir attached to the bed.

"Why are his lips blue?" Clinton asked.

"We haven't been able to get his O2 sats up," replied the surgeon.

The nurse leaned over, "O2 sats are the amount of oxygen in his blood. Most healthy people are at 100 percent. We worry when it goes into the mid-90s. His are," she pointed to the digital readout, "exceptionally low."

"Does that mean he could still be bleeding? Did his lungs get damaged in the blast?" Clinton began to get more worried.

"Don't think so on either case," Dr. Brown replied. "Again, it's about time being on our side and against us all at the same time." He paused, "No pun intended."

Clinton squeezed his eyes to make them stop tearing up. He reached out and took Jess by the hand, "I'm here, Bro. I need you to fight you way back. Tali needs you. Don't disappoint my little niece."

Then he put his forehead on Jess's cold hand in prayer.