Title: Shall We Play A Game?
Author: FraidyCat
Disclaimer: per diem re all Numb3rs characters and characterizations. The "main hospital" featured in this fanFICTION is a work of FICTION and does not really exist in any location other than my mind. Ditto the "downtown Y", as well as whatever else I decide to make up.
A/N: The Cat takes this opportunity to clarify: Suggestions are always welcome in any review. Said suggestions may be ignored, borrowed, filed for future reference or, if there are enough of them, burned at midnight during a full moon while chanting Latin.
A/N #2: Upcoming moments with Charlie definitely contain humorous situations, but are based in medical fact: When my father began to behave in odd ways, using nonsense words and completing off-the-charts connections, it was always a sign to me that I should take him to the ER and check out his pulse ox readings. The lower they were, the higher he flew.
As the Body Count Mounts…
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Chapter Twenty-Two: Nightmares
In a well-intentioned attempt to transfer all of the St. Michael's patients as soon as possible, it was decided in hindsight, resources had been spread too thin. When the Eppes/Simmons/Simpson debacle was verified, hospital administration reacted swiftly. All but two exits were sealed; the remaining 300 patients would be routed through either the main entrance, or the ER entrance. Security guards were placed at each of the others – in full hazmat regalia. Their job was both to assure that no-one disappeared again, and to satisfy fire code during the evacuation. As long as there was someone posted by a secured door at all times – someone capable of opening that door in an emergency -- the fire department cooperated with St. Michael's plan. Paring the exits down to two created somewhat of a traffic jam in the parking lot, as ambulances, police cruisers, medivans and private vehicles all jockeyed for position – but LAPD had officers directing traffic, so it wasn't the nightmare it could have been. Things actually began to run a little more smoothly inside the hospital – each point of departure now had additional – and more competent – personnel helping in the evac.
As each floor was emptied of patients, the hazmat team moved in. Havercamp was both relieved and appalled by Don's call. On the one hand, it would be a coup to find out so early exactly how the bacteria was released. On the other, if it really was sprayed in lieu of disinfectant, literally every surface of the hospital needed to be checked for contamination, and truly disinfected.
LAPD had several teams of detectives, armed with Charlie's most recent faculty i.d. photo, making the rounds of all the area hospitals – both public and private. The F.B.I.'s Assistant Director Wright had even chipped in, releasing two of his 'light duty' agents to leave the office and join the LAPD search squad. Edgarton was in the enviable position of making his own rules. For the most part, that was the universe in which he operated all the time anyway. Now, he was technically on vacation; not assigned to the L.A. office or any other. He didn't wait for orders. Instead, he liberated Don of a snapshot of Charlie and their father that he carried in his wallet, and had the other agent drop him off at St. Michael's.
Edgarton was nothing if not thorough, and he had learned an important lesson a long time ago: A good tracker always starts at the beginning.
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Charlie tried to roll over in his sleep. The drainage bag, by now full-to-bursting, pushed on the tube sutured to his chest, and he awoke with a start and a groan.
Had there been a physician handy, or even a nurse, he would have been told that the drainage tube inserted into his chest was not big enough to adequately drain the bacterial infection in his pericardium. It would have been explained to him once more that excessive fluid in the sac surrounding his most important organ was elevating pressure on his heart. Not only was this the cause of the continual pressure on his chest, it also meant that there was ineffective pumping of blood. Someone, no doubt, would have pointed out that his legs and feet were beginning to swell again, and that he had a low-grade fever. Almost certainly, a set of blood gases would have been ordered to see if the slow-down of oxygen-rich blood being pumped to the brain was creating a dangerous level of carbon dioxide. Charlie might have even remembered all of that himself – if it wasn't already true. As it was, he was lucky to remember his name.
Charlie couldn't seem to coax his brain into rational thought. He sat up gingerly, bright eyes flitting around the large room full of beds. Some of those beds had bodies in them, and he reasoned that he was in some kind of hospital ward. He wondered why his father had not arranged for a private, or at least semi-private room. He almost wondered why his father wasn't there, but the thought was oddly elusive, and slithered out of his brain before his left hemispheric cortex pulled itself together.
Charlie let his pudgy feet slide over the edge of the the bed, sighing in relief when his bare soles rested on cold linoleum. Looking down, he pulled back in shock at the sight of the large, grotesque tumor between his pectorals. It seemed to be filled with some sort of cloudy fluid. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out why someone would operate only to move the ugly growth to an external location.
It frightened him, and he moaned a sound of distress and looked around the room again. "Hello?" he called, his voice quavering. "Is anybody else awake?" He received no answer, so he stood slowly by the side of the bed. He waited for a bout of dizziness to pass, and then moved in slow, old-man steps to the glass door about 10 feet away.
The trip was interminable, painful. Tears were running down his face unchecked when he finally reached the glass. A panel retracted into the wall when he touched it. He swayed for a moment, then cautiously pushed his head and shoulders out the opening. He looked first to the left. Finding nothing familiar, he tried the right.
His eyes widened in shocked disbelief. Bipeds, encased in some form of baggy, white skin, wandered the corridor like some sort of surreal, silent nightmare. He couldn't look very long, but it appeared that they had bug eyes, and long, flexible noses that drooped downwards and attached themselves to the creature's skin. "My God," he breathed, and stumbled backwards into the room again, narrowly missing having his pounding head crushed by the motion-controlled door as it silently swooshed closed.
His respirations increased and became even mor shallow as he painfully made his way back across the room. Aliens. The word richocheted around his befuddled brain. He was terrified as he had not been terrified since he was a child of preschool-age, awakened by night terrors; and his thoughts now were as they had been then. Got to find Donny. Donny will help. Need Donny.
The bed closest to him was empty, so he approached the next one – one with covers tucked neatly under a mannequin's chin, its featureless face pointed toward the wall. He pawed mindlessly at the tumor on his chest and sniffed – a sound which echoed loudly in the cavernous room and added to his sense of foreboding. "Excuse me," he whispered to the plastic half-man with no legs, "excuse me. I need a phone. Is there a phone?" His roommate ignored him, so Charlie hesitantly reached out to shake the man's shoulder under the blanket.
When he did, the mannequin flopped over onto its back to stare sightlessly at the ceiling. The bed's coverings shifted, revealing more of the CPR dummy. Charlie had time to register that the patient had no arms, and his chest had been opened and buttoned back together again – just as someone had tried to do with him. He tried to gasp when the knowledge hit him that he had been kidnapped and experimented on by aliens, but he couldn't get enough air.
Even his scream was strangled, as he dropped in a heap between the two beds.
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Colby and David were still at the abandoned house, overseeing the investigation there and the removal of the grenades. Ian was at St. Michael's. So it was just Don and the trace technician.
He waited for a nod from the tech and input Sarah's number. She picked up after one ring. "You think I'm an idiot, don't you?"
Don felt his blood coagulate. He hadn't even spoken yet; there was no way she could know he wasn't Edgarton. He stalled. "I'm on time, aren't I?"
"You tried to trace the GPS," she accused. "I told you not to bring anyone else in on it!"
Don looked at the print-out of the text message that he was holding. "That's not true," he objected. "You said to be alone when I called you – and I am."
Her voice dripped suspicion. "How do I even know this is Ian Edgarton? I've had someone watching the front entrance of the F.B.I. all day, and he hasn't been spotted since before noon." It was a shot in the dark; Sarah herself was huddled in the corner of a Metro substation almost 30 miles away – and who the hell knew where Aaron was.
Don didn't miss a beat. "Of course I'm not at the F.B.I.," he answered with feigned exasperation. "Didn't we just establish that you wanted me to make the call alone?"
Sarah wasn't ready to give up, yet. She had another test prepared. "Where did me meet?" she challenged.
Don was ready for that. Edgarton had briefed the team on his relationship with Planet Green already, and reviewed the finer points with Eppes on the way to St. Michael's. "The morgue," he said right away. "I saw you at the morgue, after…"
"…you murdered Joe," she finished. Then she kicked herself mentally; Edgarton would never agree to meet her tomorrow if he knew how much she hated him. She closed her eyes and ground out a lie. "After Joe made you pull the trigger."
Don noted her slip of the tongue with his hink-ometer, but changed the subject quickly. "You said Planet Green is planning something bad," Don pointed out. "Worse than the Brucella?"
Sarah confirmed. "The leader is crazy; he's gone over the edge. We have some C-4, and he's targeting children. A day care center."
"My God," Don breathed, but Sarah just kept talking.
"You won't keep me on here long enough to trace this call. The hit is tomorrow. I won't tell you which day care center on the phone – you have to meet me; alone. I'll take you there."
"That's not enough time for me to stop them by myself," Don argued. "I need to know now what the target is."
Sarah was already nervous and angry, wondering about Aaron, and she barked into the cell. "No! I need…safe passage; we have to talk deal before I let you have them."
Don pushed harder. "I'm in no position to offer you a deal, Sarah. You were instrumental in the Brucella release, and there are fatalities. The most I can do is tell the D.A. that you helped prevent even more. Maybe I can get you life instead of the needle."
Sarah didn't really give a rat's ass, since she had no intention of meeting Edgarton in the morning – just as she had always planned to tell him this afternoon about the downtown Y. He would worry when she was 'late' that she was backing out of the deal; in truth, she and Aaron would be safely ensconced behind a dumpster, ready to lob the F1s at him like a couple of lethal baseballs. She hoped the murderer would get out of his car and wait for her on the sidewalk; but even if he didn't, Aaron would draw on all he had learned at coalition training sessions. There was a certain poetic justice in the fact that Joe himself had taught Aaron how to target a vehicle's gas tank, so that when the grenade blew – so did everything else.
Sarah tried to sound frightened, spineless, vapid – the way Patty sounded most of the time. "If I tell you now, will you still meet me in the morning? I want you to bring me in."
The hink-ometer took another hit. "Why not come in now?" Don hedged. "I can call the office, and have them send someone to pick you up."
"No!" she protested again. "You said it yourself – I'm a member of Planet Green, and we've killed people. All your little fuzz friends, they want me to pay for that." She grit her teeth, finding the next lie physically painful. "You're the only one I trust. Anybody else is sure to have an accident, or swear that I tried to escape – or both." She paused, took a breath, and moved on, glad that she and Aaron had role-played this to death the night before. "I want one last night with my lover. You took Joe from me – you owe me that much."
Abruptly and unexpectedly, a dial tone reverberated in Don's ear. "Shit," he swore, looking frantically at the tech.
The lab-coated woman shrugged. "She's either really good or really lucky. Fifteen more seconds and we would have had it."
Don swore again. "Get ready for another try," he ordered. "I'm calling her back." Without waiting to see if the tech was with him, he jabbed the 'redial' button on the phone and waited impatiently for Sarah to answer.
She made him wait seven rings, and was laughing when she finally did. "I'll do that every time you get that close to tracing me," she promised. "I'll ask you again not to treat me like an idiot. Now, do you want to hear about the downtown Y, or not?"
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A/N: Oh, No! Sarah proves once again that the line between genius and madness is thin indeed. Actually, Charlie did that, too. Heavens to Betsy, it's all such a nightmare…