Not being allowed out in the field frustrated Renee to no end. She can't do still. She can't just stand on the sidelines and not do anything.
Ever since Renee was little, when she would get bored, she would make up things to do. This time she took to taking things apart and making other things out of the pieces. She was currently playing with the pieces of a flashlight and an old stun gun.
The hotel security officers found her on the roof several times, so they gave her a key. She used to work for the NOPD, and NCIS Senior Agent Dwayne Pride vouched for her.
Renee would use her key every night. She could be found on the roof with her legs dangling over the edge every night. Renee loves to go up on the roof to watch the sunset. She had done this every night for two full weeks. Horatio is very nervous seeing his sister on the edge of the roof.
The hotel itself is near the local amusement park by the roller coaster. After a long day searching for the killer, Horatio went to check on his sister. He had not heard from her for some hours.
Using his key, he lets himself into her adjacent room. Opening the door, he was unnerved by the eerie silence.
"Nae… Nae… You awake?" Horatio asks the room. Turning on the light, he was shocked to see Echo sleeping on the bed, and Renee was nowhere to be seen.
He had noticed a gutted flashlight, wire stripper, wire cutter, and pieces of a stun gun. His sister was nowhere to be found in the room.
When he realized what time it was, he knew where his sister was. He headed to the roof. Getting to the roof access door, he saw that she had propped it open with a trash can.
Walking through the roof door, he slowly approached his sister. She was sitting down on the edge of the rooftop watching the sunset.
Sitting with her feet dangling off. Horatio calls her name to get her attention before he sits down next to her. He didn't want to startle his sister.
With Horatio still on his feet, Renee starts to stand. At that time, she begins to slip. Horatio grabs her wrists and has her in his hands before she falls. By this time, Horatio Is lying flat on his stomach.
Renee is hanging off of the roof, scrambling to get up when she slips again. Renee still had her heavy over-sized backpack with all of her backup weapons, a jacket, and extra ammo on her back.
Lying on his stomach Horatio starts to slide towards the edge a little. Renee knows that if she falls off of the roof with Horatio holding her wrists, she will take her brother with her over the edge.
Knowing Horatio was not willing to let go; he needed to break free. She would fall the ninety feet to the ground. Rene hoped that the twenty-foot angled roof twenty feet below along with her backpack and the hotel's canopy would be enough of a cushion to break her fall.
Renee using all the added weight from her backpack to push off of the wall with everything that she has. The backpacks added weight gives her the right amount of leverage to break free from her brother's grip.
The instant his sister breaks free from his grip, Horatio jumps to his feet. He can't remember how he got downstairs. He was on the ground, looking up at his sister before he knows what is happening.
Renee lands on the angled roof of the building twenty feet below where she fell from hard. She got knocked unconscious on impact. Renee slid down the steep angle unexpectedly fast on her stomach. Hitting a skylight, she gets flipped to her back.
As she went over the edge of the gutter, Renee opens her eyes. Going feet first but sideways, she braced for the fall. Much to her shock, Renee's backpack gets snagged on the gutter.
Again Renee was hanging suspended in the air. To her horror, she feels herself slipping out of her backpack as she is suspended fifty feet in the air.
As she feels the arms straps from her backpack slip, Renee frantically tries to get something out of her back pocket.
By this time, Horatio is out front on the ground, and again he is watching his sister fall, and again, he is powerless to help her.
Quickly she is again falling through the air. The only thing that might slow her fall enough for her to survive was the building's canopy over the entrance.
Nobody on the ground knows what is happening above them. Renee never makes a sound as she falls. Horatio was out on the ground and cleared the area around the canopy.
Since Horatio clears the area when she lands, nobody else got hurt. As soon as the dust settles, Horatio runs to tend to his sister.
The first thing he does is check her for a pulse. He is able to breathe a sigh of relief when he realizes that his sister still has a heartbeat, but it is dangerously high.
While Horatio tends to his sister, a bystander calls 911.
"911 emergency, what's your emergency?"
"I'm at the hotel near the amusement park. You know the one by the roller coaster. Some woman fell off the building onto the ground."
"Does she have a pulse?"
"I don't know someone is doing chest compressions."
"Don't move her. The paramedics are on their way."
It only took a few minutes for the paramedics to get to the scene.
When the medics get there, they ask Horatio a few questions.
"What happened? Is she alive?"
Questions that Horatio answers very quickly.
"She slipped off the top. She slid down the angled roof and fell through the canopy. I checked her for a heartbeat. It's there, but it is way too fast."
When one of the paramedics hears she has a heartbeat, she rushes to Renee's side to feel for herself.
"She has tachycardia, bring the portable defibrillator."
The other medic pulls out the portable defibrillator and charges to three hundred joules. They attempt to shock Renee's heart back into a normal sinus rhythm.
Renee's body jerks with the shock, and the medics check the heart rate. What the paramedics see confuses them. They see a normal beat then their patient is tachycardic again.
They try again to get a normal sinus rhythm, but again they get a single normal heartbeat, and her heart is tachycardic.
The first paramedic pulls out her penlight to check their patient's eyes response to light. It is at this time she realizes her patient's eyes were twitching, but why were they twitching.
Grabbing the arm of one of the paramedics, Horatio remembered why his sister was on the roof. When she was on the edge, she had been holding something in her right hand. Where is her right hand?
Looking down at their patient, the paramedics and Horatio slowly and carefully roll her over to her side. Her right hand is still in her back pocket. As carefully as Horatio can, he gently pulls his sister's hand out of her pocket, and out from under her lower back.
What they see makes it clear why they were not able to get the normal sinus rhythm to stay. A stripped wire was wrapped tightly around her hand. Both ends of the wire are attached to the positive and negative poles of a deconstructed stun gun.
The stun gun's on switch had been jammed, so it was a live wire. Renee had been messing with the voltage and got her stun gun to emit 80-100 mA on a continuous basis.
When the paramedics shocked her heart, the stun gun would just mess it up again. Quickly Horatio pulls out his sister's Swiss Army knife from her left cargo pants pocket and cuts one side of the wire, which effectively stops the slow electrocution of his sister.
Without a word, one of the paramedics recharges the defibrillator and shocks Renee's heart back into normal sinus rhythm.
Since his sister is still not conscious, Horatio has his sister taken to the hospital to check her out since she had fallen ninety feet.
Renee had fallen a great distance and had been electrocuted, so even if she had been awake, he would insist that she goes to the hospital.
Loading Renee into the ambulance, Horatio doesn't let his sister out of his sight. As she is taken into the trauma room, Horatio calls Pride and his team.
"Pride, It's Horatio. We are at the hospital again."
"What... what happened?"
"I went back to the hotel to check on Renee, and I found her on the roof. Well, she slipped and fell off the building."
"She fell off the top, falling down twenty feet, slid down the angled roof of the lower building, fell fifty additional feet, and through the hotel's entrance canopy."
"Apparently, when she was on the roof, she had been taking apart her old stun gun."
"Halfway down, she put her hand in her back pocket, and her hand got caught around a stripped wire connected to the jacked-up stun gun. It put her into a coma."
Pride doesn't say a word when Horatio tells him what happened.
"I'll be at the hospital as fast as I can," Pride tells his fellow officer.
Renee was in a coma from her fall. Luckily for her, she didn't break her back, and she survived the fall.
Her coma lasts about two weeks. By that time, Horatio had Gregorio go to the hotel and bring Echo to the hospital.
Horatio and Pride were both sitting in her room at the hospital. The two officers had fallen asleep on chairs that the nurses had brought them.
Echo was the first to notice that Renee was awake. Jumping up on the bed, she woke the officers up.
Quickly Horatio reaches over and tries to pull the canine off of the hospital bed. It took a few minutes for both Horatio and Pride to realize that Renee was awake.
"Welcome back, Sweetheart. You really need to stop doing this to yourself," Horatio tells his sister through a weak smile. He tells her that after he breathed a sigh of relief.
"You're awake… You are one tough and dare I say, indestructible, officer," Pride tells his friend.
The hospital keeps Renee admitted for a week after she came out of her coma. By this time, Renee was driving the staff crazy. She was always trying to escape and get out of the hospital.
When Renee finally gets discharged from the hospital, Horatio decides that his sister is going to go with him to NCIS headquarters. They can keep an eye on her at the HQ. She can help Patton with research, and she can help Wade in the Coroner's office.
Renee can't be left unattended or alone. She can't be trusted not to do something stupid.
"What happened on the hotel roof?" Horatio asks his sister with Pride and his team in the room.
"Well, I was trying to stand, and I slipped. You grabbed me by the wrists. You were on your stomach, but I could feel you struggling to keep your grip. I felt you start to slip."
"The weight of me and my backpack was going to get both of us killed. I knew that you would never be willing to let go."
"I'm sorry, but I needed to break free. So I kicked off of the wall, and it broke your grip. I hoped that the angled roof and the canopy combined with the contents of my backpack would be enough to break my fall."
"To my horror, my backpack got snagged on the gutter of the angled roof. My straps start to slip."
"At that moment, I realize that I needed to get my little experiment out of my back pocket."
"I guess that the wire got stripped when I landed on the angled roof and slid down."
"Because when I put my hand in my pocket, I feel a painful and continuous electrical shock."
"That is why I never made a sound I couldn't even if I wanted too."
"My heart was racing. I remember hearing my heartbeat pounding in my head."
"I don't know what happened after that. I don't remember landing or anything that happened after I put my hand in my pocket."
"What happened?" Renee finishes her explanation with a question addressed to the room rather than her brother directly.
Horatio answers his sister's question. "Sweetheart, when you landed, I realized that your heart was beating way to fast, so I start compressions."
"The paramedics arrive and try to shock your heart back into normal sinus rhythm."
"It works for only a second before your heart races again. So they try again and again."
"Each time they shock your heart, it works for a few seconds, then your heart races again."
"I remembered what I saw in your room and what I saw on the roof."
"We pulled your right hand out from under you, and it was tangled up in a stripped wire connected to a live stun gun."
"I pulled out your knife and cut one end of the wire. The medics tried again."
"They get a normal sinus rhythm quickly, and they rush you to the hospital."
"You were in a coma for two weeks. I'm just glad you're okay," Horatio finally finished his answers his sister's question.
Shortly after Renee was released from the hospital, she was back in the field despite her brother's objections.
By this time, Renee, Horatio, Pride, and his team were willing to try anything. They were willing to reach out to other agencies. It was time to bring in the big guns.