Note: There will most likely not be an update next week. Holidays are lookin' to be busy. I hope you all have a lovely winter-whatever-you-celebrate.
"Sayeed!" Jesusshitfuckingfuckshitfuck. The fingers she's using to press the hand towel against Tim's neck are beginning to get wet. Fuckingshitassfuck. She's lost the mental capacity to think in anything besides profanity. This is the second most scared Lena has been in her life, and every restrained, unspoken obscenity comes fountaining out of the dark corner to which it had been banished.
There are gunshots outside, someone yelling. Holy shit, she'd thought it had been Sayeed at first. When Lena had come running into the kitchen and seen Tim on the floor instead, blood running freely between his fingers where he held his neck, she'd wished it had been. She will feel horribly guilty about that later, but for now blind terror obliterates all else.
"SAYEED!" Jesus fuck, where is that –
Someone slides down beside her and push-drags them both against the stove. Oh of course, line of sight. She's so fucking stupid –
"Move your hands, Lena." When she doesn't do it fast enough he moves them for her.
Hearing direct orders from Sayeed is weird. Somehow it makes this more real, more serious, and that sends a fresh wave of panic crashing through her. Fucking Christ, her heart is going so fast it might stop. Sayeed peels the towel back for a second, and Lena watches the rhythmic pump of blood ooze up from the side of Tim's neck. She's never been afraid of blood, but now she nearly vomits.
"Sayeed –"
"It missed his artery." Then why is there so much fucking blood?
"Tim?" His eyes are open. Shit, he's dead. They blink.
"'m fi'." Tim's voice. Now she vomits.
"Tim!" Dougherty rushes over to them, but seeing Sayeed's hands already pressed at the corner of his neck, hovers instead.
"It missed his artery," Sayeed repeats the information to the marshal in the same calmly clinical voice. How the fuck is he so calm?
Dougherty, still in a squat, goes back to the door, pulling out his cellphone with the hand not holding a gun. Jesus, how fucking stupid is she that she forgot to call an ambulance? Breathe, dumbass. Panic is useless and you are not helpless. And you will not be a useless sack of shit.
"Sayeed?" Lena needs something to do. She needs to be useful, a part of the solution.
"Get the blue backpack in my closet."
Lena crawls as fast as she can for the hallway, then stands and sprints once she's out of sight of windows. The moment she's out of the kitchen, a new fear sucker punches her hard in the gut. What if he dies before she returns? Blue backpack. It's her new mantra to stay on goal. Don't be a useless sack of shit.
She sprints back to the kitchen, forgetting to stay below the windows. Tim blinks, alive. Breathe, dumbass. In, one, two, three, four. Hold, one, two, three, four.
"Put your hands here." Lena presses on Tim's neck while Sayeed opens the backpack, pulls out a large pair of scissors, and begins cutting a wide semi-circle in the shirt around Lena's hands. She looks at Tim's eyes. They're still open, still blinking, switching between her and Sayeed. There's a puddle of blood under his left shoulder. Still blinking. Please keep blinking.
"Move." Even as he says it, Sayeed pushes Lena's hands aside, quickly removes the soaked towel, peels back the shirt, and firmly slaps a thick gauze pad over the wound and holds it there. The backpack had been Sayeed's idea. Whether out of a need for the familiar, or from habit, or boredom, or wanting to be useful he'd asked for medical supplies. Said it might come in handy and that after all he is a doctor. Lena looks down at Tim. After all this shit is over, she'll bomb half of Afghanistan if that's what it takes to get Sayeed's family out.
He looks at Tim. "Can you understand me?"
A nod followed by a grimace.
"This is a hemostatic dressing." He says hemostatic funny, putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable, and Lena lets herself be momentarily distracted by that. "It will stop your bleeding. Okay?"
Another nod.
Sayeed's fastidious, careful pronunciation is like a slowly ticking metronome that gently forces her heart's rhythm to slow.
"You won't die." For some reason, even though he's asserted the opposite, Sayeed saying the word 'die' almost negates the comfort of the statement. "And I can hear sirens."
Tim, stupid man that he is, takes 'you won't die' to mean 'you're perfectly fine, do as you please' and tries to sit up. He makes it to one elbow before the slick of his own blood causes him to wobble and fall back onto the tile.
"Do not try that again," Sayeed says, unsurprised by the attempt, and presses more firmly against Tim's neck to ensure his order is followed.
Tim's jaw clenches and his eyes fall closed only to snap open when Nelson comes through the front door trailing two paramedics behind him.
Lena swipes the pistol of out Tim's holster.
"Len'" Tim warns, head slowly rolling to face her. One hand tries weakly to snatch at the weapon. Sayeed also opens his mouth to object.
"It's fine." She makes sure the safety is on, but positions her thumb to switch it off quickly if the two men behind Nelson turn out not to be paramedics.
"We're coming too," is the first thing out of her mouth. Sayeed has more training than a paramedic, which is good for Tim, and the Afghani doctor will be safer at a hospital surrounded by marshals. It makes sense, not that she'd give half a shit if it didn't as long as Sayeed stays with Tim.
Sayeed glances up at the two EMTs, who look ready to argue. "Maybe the less people, the better it will be in the –"
"Fewer," she corrects automatically.
Sayeed stares at her and in a tone of voice that would make any American teenager proud, says, "Really?"
"Sorry." She's been trying not to correct him in front of other people. He knows she doesn't mean badly, that it's a knee-jerk reaction, but correcting someone in public is a terrible thing to do in Afghanistan, and also this is the dumbest time for it. She makes it up tenfold when she says, "I trust you to look after him." He is, after all, used to treating exactly this sort of thing.
The comment doesn't win her any points with the paramedics, however, but no one argues, and in two short minutes, Tim is on a gurney, and they're packed uncomfortably tightly into the back of an ambulance.
o.O.o
The sound of snoring wakes him.
It's dark. His mouth tastes like ass and chalk.
Tim turns his head to the right, towards the snoring, or starts to. There's an immediate, painful pull on the left side of his neck that stops the motion. After the pain subsides to a dull burn he tries again more slowly. Lena's curled up in the chair next to his bed draped in a blanket, dark hair scrunched up on one side where her cheek rests against an arm. He wonders if it'll stick like that. It looks uncomfortable, and she'll probably have a neck ache when she wakes up. He wonders how she'd react if he told her she snores.
There's nothing to drink on the right side of his bed, so Tim begins the frustratingly slow process of turning his head to the left. The reward for that is fuck all. He turns his head back to center and sighs. The snoring stops.
"Ggh." Lena sits up too fast for her stiff neck, and squints across at him in the dim light filtering through the hospital blinds. "Hey," she finishes sitting up, one hand working at a knot, "you awake?"
He's pretty sure she already saw his eyes open. "Yeah." His mouth tastes terrible, so all words are directed at the ceiling.
"You uh, you need anything?"
"Water would be nice."
"Oh, right." She stands, fumbling to keep the blanket from falling to the floor, and Tim sees she's wearing a loose, over-sized gray t-shirt with 'Jack Daniel's' written across the chest in white. Lena is not a loose t-shirt girl, definitely not a whiskey girl.
"Nice shirt," he says when she comes back with a plastic cup of cold water.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, it's Raylan's."
"That was nice of him." Raylan's an asshole.
"Yeah, mine had blood on it. Doctors said I was a biohazard. I also scared the crap out of some kid."
"Oh yeah?"
"He had it coming. He was throwing a tantrum in front of one of the vending machines."
Lena pulls the chair over to sit just in front of him, turning it so she can prop her elbows on the side while she talks. Tucking herself back up in the chair and the blanket back around her shoulders, she leans forward, resting her chin sleepily on her forearms. "Sayeed says you're lucky. If they'd used a hollow point, it would have gotten your carotid artery."
Or if they'd had better aim. Or if he'd taken a bigger step forward. Or if a hundred other things had gone a bit more wrong. Best part of surviving is getting to think about all the ways you could've died. And all the ways someone else didn't have to.
Memories of sitting in a hospital in Bagram after falling through that hotel roof flash to the front of his brain. You're lucky, ten feet to the side, you'd be dead. Here's some Tylenol. Next!
Lena's still looking at him, expectant, sleepy eyes searching his face. She'd fixed her hair when she went to get him water. Here in the dark, with her face so close to his pillow, he wants to see it messed up again. He wants to be the one messing it up. Fuck. Two years. How did the saying go? 'Fool me once…' A frustrating mix of uncertainty, hurt pride, and yearning grips his chest. Her eyes have lost their guard, and Tim wonders what would happen if he tried to touch her.
Lena takes his silence for something else. "Sorry, I guess that's a dumb thing to say." She licks her lips, and Tim wishes his breath didn't smell like post-op ass-cotton and that it didn't hurt to move. Or maybe he's lucky it does. Two years. It would be easier if he could hate her for it.
She's beginning to look nervous, stiffening as if in preparation to move away.
"Hey, remember that time a building blew up under us?"
It takes a moment, but Lena bursts out laughing, a loud guffaw that she covers with her hands. She grins, surprised, and the tension bleeds away. God, he really is a masochist. "Well luckily, I had the foresight not to be standing on top of it." She'd said those same words to him over two years ago. Lena rubs a finger down the bridge of her nose, which had been huge and purple at the time, caught up in the same memory. And just like back then, he doesn't really know how to approach her, isn't sure if he should. "And don't even think about asking me for bourbon because the doctors would murder me, and your boss would let them get away with it too."
"How about a bedtime story?" He'll blame that on the morphine.
Lena smiles again, eyes crinkling, and tilts her head. "Sure I'll just pull a book out of my aaa… err, hat…if I had one."
"Is Lena your real name?" he asks instead. Suddenly it's important.
For a moment Lena looks almost offended, and Tim is afraid he's screwed up whatever it is that made her pull her chair closer, and maybe that's for the best. But then her face softens. "Yes. Jesus Christ, what sort of cloak and dagger bs do you think this is? It's not that exciting, I swear." Lena squints, then continuing in a lighter tone, "Also, I'm not quite sure you understand the concept of bedtime stories. Pro-tip, it's not interrogation. I think being a cop has addled your brains."
Tim snorts, "I'm not a cop."
Another squint, "So something else has addled your brains."
"Maybe the blood loss. Do I get a story or not?"
He expects her to argue, but instead she smiles indulgently. "Fine, but only cause you're an invalid."
Tim scowls, but she just giggles at him.
"So there's this guy – we'll call him Clemence – gets piss drunk with a bunch of French Foreign Legion dudes…"
o.O.o
On her way back from the bathroom Lena finds Raylan propping up the wall by the nurses' station. He's still wearing yesterday's clothes.
"You look like you could use some coffee, deputy."
Raylan glances down the hall at the marshal posted outside Tim's door. "Well I wouldn't turn it down," he says, pushing off the wall to follow her.
Lena stuffs her hands in her pockets, hoping she's taking the right leap of faith. "So, I hear you're the office problem child." He's a blunt type, so that's the approach she takes.
"Ha," Raylan looks down at her and lifts an eyebrow. "I suppose there are some who might hold that opinion."
"And just how much of a problem child are you?"