Chapter: 2
The Assault

Pulling into the emergency bay and jumping out of the ambulance, Horatio hears the paramedic talk to the doctor.

"We have a female in her late thirties with severe physical trauma. Witness states that they felt the bones of her skull shifting, and he refused to let go of her head until he knew it wouldn't kill her. Her pupils were fixed and dilated."

Horatio recognizes his sister's doctor as Alexx Woods, who is a close and trusted friend of Horatio and his team. He knows that Alexx will try everything to save his sister. He also knows that Alexx will let him inside until he knows that putting his sisters head down will not kill her.

Running right behind the gurney with his sister Horatio pushes himself inside the trauma room. Non-medical staff isn't normally allowed in the trauma room, but since Horatio will not let go of his sister's head, the hospital has to let him in if they are going to save her life.

Horatio doesn't let go of her head until the hospital takes a portable x-ray of her entire skull and shows Horatio that Renee's Occipital bone is not broken. Still, it does have a stress fracture, so he has to be careful when he places her head on the table.

When he places her head on the table, Horatio is pushed rather forcefully out of the emergency room by another doctor.

He is finally able to check in on his team and see if they had found anything at the warehouse. He is going to have to trust Eric and his team to take care of the case without him. He just found out that he has a little sister, and he isn't willing to leave her for anything.

After Eric closed the ambulance doors, he helps Tripp secure the crime scene. Eric then spoke to the police officers, and he rushes to the hospital to be with Horatio in this hour of fear.

Before the ambulance leaves the crime scene, Eric tells his brother and boss that he will meet them at the hospital since Horatio is going with his sister in the ambulance to the hospital.

As Horatio watches his sister be wheeled from the trauma room of the hospital to surgery suite two, he is left alone.

He can only pace the length of the emergency room hall going back and forth, almost wearing a path into the tile flooring.

It takes Eric close to half an hour to get to the hospital, and by this time, Horatio is driving the nurses insane with his unending pacing.

Walking through the hospitals revolving doors into the waiting room, Eric is startled to see Horatio almost as white as a ghost. By the time the doctors come out of the surgery suite, it has been close to twelve hours.

When Horatio sees Eric, relief floods his face. Horatio is very grateful to his brother that he isn't alone. Eric begs Horatio to sit and wait with him, but Horatio can't do it, he can't sit still.

When the surgeon finally comes out to talk to the pair, all the color had drained out of Horatio's face. He was a complete and total wreck. Seeing the surgeon walking through the door, Horatio runs to him with anticipation of the news. Before the surgeon can talk, Horatio begs him for any good news.

"Well, she survived the surgery, but she is by no means out of the woods. The only reason she's alive is the severity of her beating. Her entire skull was shattered, so when her brain swelled, her skull just expanded with it. She was beaten very badly, and it had broken a lot of bones. Follow me, and I will take you into a consulting room to show you her X-rays," her surgeon tells an anxious Horatio and Eric.

The two quietly walk behind the surgeon into a different room away from the sounds of the waiting room. When the surgeon turns on the X-rays light, Horatio and Eric are horrified by the sheer number of breaks that Renee had survived receiving.

All of her ribs were broken in multiple places. The tibia and fibula of both lower legs and the radius and ulna of both forearms were broken. Her cheekbones and both eye sockets are shattered as well as fracturing two vertebrae in her spine. Renee also suffers from a partially collapsed lung caused by blunt force trauma.

"Both of her shoulders are dislocated, and she is currently in surgery to repair the broken bones of her arms and legs as well as to secure her shoulders and make sure they don't get dislocated again," the surgeon finishes talking and turns to face the pair. "We also repaired her collapsed lung."

Before the surgeon leaves the room, he tells them, "when she is out of her orthopedic surgery and settled into her recovery room, we will allow you to see her and spend some time with her."

When Horatio sees her X-rays and finds out the extent of her injuries, he says to himself, "my God, they tortured her, and apparently she didn't tell them what they want to hear, or they would have just put a bullet in her head."

Punching a hole in the hospital wall, he quietly allows a bit of pride for her. She is definitely a Caine. Like her brother's, she would not go quietly since they are all fighters, and she could not be broken. He is beyond pissed that they tortured her. He was even more driven to find her attackers and make them pay dearly. Nobody hurts his family and gets away with it.

The next time that Horatio sees his sister, she was intubated and connected to a ventilator. Renee's head was wrapped up in gauze to protect the incisions in her skull.

If Horatio doesn't know any better, he wouldn't recognize his baby sister since she had been beaten beyond recognition. Walking inside of her recovery room, Horatio stops in his tracks. She is lying there on her bed intubated since the doctors put her on life support.

The doctors don't usually like to use drugs like Pentobarbital to force a coma on a patient.
However, with her extensive and severe injuries, the doctors felt compelled to put Renee in a coma. They thought that they need to allow her body to focus on healing and not on keeping her alive.

Renee's surgery to stabilize her skull lasts twelve full hours, during which the surgeon places a tiny metal plate and screws to stabilize her Occipital bone's stress fracture. The surgeon also needs to figure out a way to stabilize her skull without putting pressure on her already swollen brain.

Renee's heart stops twice during the twelve hours she is under anesthesia. When her heart stops for the first time, the medical staff can restart it fairly quickly with two shocks to her heart at two hundred fifty joules.

However, the doctors and nurses try to restart her heart for quite a while the second time her heart stops.
Renee doesn't respond when they shock her heart at two hundred joules. Increasing the joules to two hundred fifty, the team tries again to get Renee's heart going. Her heart doesn't respond to the shock.

The doctors increase the joules again to three hundred, and they shock her heart, they get no response. The doctors turn the defibrillator to three hundred fifty joules. Still, Renee's heart doesn't respond. As a last-ditch effort, one of the doctors cranks the defibrillator to three hundred sixty joules.

This time they see a single beat on her heart monitor. The whole surgical team in her surgery suite wait with bated breath to see if that means that they got her heart beating again. When her heart beats again, then again, they all breathe a collective sigh of relief that they got her back.

Horatio had only left the hospital a few days before when Piper's dad got home. Today he is back this time for family. Horatio is not ever going to leave her now that he knew she is his baby sister.