Thanks to all of you who reviewed the first chapter! I'm glad you are all enjoying so far. This chapter should answer a few of your questions. Enjoy, and of course, review at the end please!
Chapter 2 (Don)
He'd been drifting in and out of it for so long that time had ceased to have any meaning at all. He'd been vaguely aware of his dad. He'd been vaguely aware of Robin. He'd been vaguely aware of some unfamiliar people. But he'd had too little energy to try and figure out who they were. Or where he was. Or anything at all about what was going on.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't pull anything into focus at all. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that he was likely at least mostly unconscious, but he didn't really know how to do anything about that, so he didn't dwell on it.
The only thing he could think of to do was sleep. Maybe if he tried to sleep for long enough, he'd eventually ride out whatever situation he was in, and come out the other side and everything would come back to normal.
When he did fall asleep—or at least he was pretty sure he was asleep—his dreams had been confused and disjointed. He felt wet . . . he felt pain . . . he felt cold. He could hear his brother reaching him, trying to help chase the pain and the cold away. But he couldn't even begin to attempt to make sense of any of it.
At some point, Don suddenly realized that he was legitimately aware of his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was that his eyes were closed. Okay, he'd have to fix that somehow. But first, he wanted to figure out what these sounds he was hearing was.
A beeping noise, steady in the background. He didn't have the slightest idea what that was. A murmuring sound, coming from somewhere close by. He concentrated on that one for awhile. It was two different murmuring sounds, actually. One was deeper, and one was softer.
They were voices, Don realized. He figured they most likely belonged to Dad and Robin.
Only one way to find out. His eyelids were ultra-heavy, but with strength that Don felt rivaled Superman's, he managed to pull them open.
His vision was a little blurry, but not so much that he couldn't tell who was sitting off to his right. There was his dad, looking tired and worn. Next to him was Robin, with her beautiful long hair that Don loved so much. Her hands were resting on her enlarged belly that held his future child.
He couldn't bring himself to do much other than just stare at them for awhile. He was tired, and he didn't have the energy to try and get their attention. He'd deduced that he was in a hospital, and the beeping noise he'd been hearing was a heart monitor.
Eventually, though, the two of them most definitely noticed him. They looked over at him and smiled. A rough hand, his dad's, grabbed his. He blinked in response.
"Oh, Don," Robin whispered near his ear. He felt her hand rubbing his forehead, pushing his hair back. "How're you feeling, sweetheart?"
Don concentrated really hard on making his tongue and vocal chords obey him. " . . . tired," he managed to breathe out.
Robin continued rubbing his forehead. "We'll let you sleep," she assured him, and he was glad. As confused as he was as to what was happening and why he was in a hospital, sleep was all he really wanted to do.
He could feel his father grip his hand a little tighter and lean in closer to him. "Do you feel any pain, Donnie?"
Pain? Hmm. He couldn't really tell. He supposed he should be in pain. If he was in a hospital, he was probably injured. He didn't really know, so he simply shook his head.
He shut his eyes again; unable to keep them open any longer. He supposed he probably looked really pathetic. He felt pretty pathetic. But at the moment, he didn't know or even care why.
And that was that. He fell asleep and was unaware once more, falling back into strange dreams of being painfully cold and wet and trapped somewhere and for some reason that he still couldn't figure out, Charlie was there with him.
Don went through a few more cycles of waking and sleeping before his energy level had improved significantly enough for him to stay awake long enough to learn what had happened.
When his dad had told him, there were so many alarming parts to the story that Don figured he'd have a heart attack by the end.
He'd been in a car accident with Charlie when Charlie had been driving—first alarming point. He'd had to stop his father in the middle of a sentence, begging for reassurance that his younger brother was okay. Charlie was fine, his dad had said. He'd taken a nice bonk on the head, and had been in the hospital for a couple of days, but he was at home and recuperating quickly. Nothing to worry about. But Don still worried.
At that point, Don realized that although he didn't actually remember an accident, he did remember riding with Charlie in his little blue Prius, and it had been raining. He told his dad as much, and Alan confirmed Don's shaky memory - it had indeed been raining. It had been raining so hard that the windshield wipers failed to keep up, and the two hadn't seen the too-large puddle in the road. They'd hit it and started sliding, and the Prius's brakes were just worn out enough that the car didn't quite slow down enough before hitting the guard rail and toppling over.
Second alarming point—the car had flipped over and somehow, both Don and Charlie had ended up not inside the vehicle. Which made no sense as they'd both been wearing seatbelts - but apparently the force of them striking the guard rail had been enough to cause both their belts to snap. Charlie had been okay, probably because he'd ended up near the vehicle whereas Don had ended up under the vehicle. Well, his dad had sugar-coated these details a little, but Don knew.
His father's normally well-controlled emotions had begun to leak at this point in the story. Don's tired mind could only imagine how difficult and painful it would be for his dad to deal with the image of his son being helplessly pinned underneath something as large and heavy as a car, all the while in pain, shivering cold, and rapidly becoming rain-soaked. It was a bit much for Don himself to think about.
He'd nearly died. His dad had basically said as much. He probably would have, too, had Charlie not been there. He likely would have bled out, right there on the ground, under the car, had Charlie not been there to help slow down the bleeding. Charlie had saved his life. Although Don had a sneaking suspicion that Charlie probably wasn't seeing things quite the same way. He made a mental note to make sure Charlie knew that Don was grateful, as soon as Charlie came to see him.
He'd thought that was the end of the story. His dad had stopped talking, but Don now realized that he'd just been hesitating, trying to figure out how to say the rest.
Don looked his father in the eye, hoping his gaze was strong enough to help his father realize that he could continue and Don would be okay, no matter what he had to say.
Eventually, his dad continued. "Donnie," he said, "your left leg took the worst of it. The damage was pretty severe." He looked at Don, hard. It was as if he was hoping that Don would somehow telepathically get the message.
Which he did, sort of. A rock settled at the bottom of Don's stomach, although he couldn't quite figure out why it was there or what it meant. He just knew his father was telling him something really, really bad.
"It was too much, Donnie," his dad was saying. "They couldn't fix it. There was no way they could have fixed it. And besides, it was cut pretty badly and it was starting to become seriously infected—they had to move quickly."
Alarm bells were clanging loudly in Don's head now. Infected, huh? That would explain why he felt so weak and sick. That plus the drugs made his mind too sluggish to put all the pieces together right away, though.
"What are you saying, Dad?" Don asked, the words leaving his mouth very slowly, one word at a time. His eyes were wide; he was watching his father's face with perfect attentiveness. He could hear the heart monitor speed up a tiny bit; there was no hiding his anxiety.
His dad took a deep breath. "There wasn't any choice son," he rambled. "I mean you could have died if they didn't . . . and there's no way you could've rehabilitated yourself back from—I mean, they had to . . . they had to take it off, Donnie. I'm so sorry."
The world fell out from underneath him, somehow, right then.
Robin was there, later. She was a nice, refreshing change from his dad. Not that he was necessarily sick of his dad or anything, it was just—he'd needed something else for awhile. He felt like he'd spent so much time sitting there, listening to his dad reassure him time and time again how everything would be fine. He'd be okay. Things would work out for him, in the end. He'd learn to walk on a prosthetic leg; he could probably get another non-field position with the FBI if he wanted; he had a baby to look forward to in two months. All true statements, but Don felt it was a little more complicated than that.
Yes, he'd go through rehab and be fine later, but right now he wasn't, and he figured that re-learning how to walk on a leg that wasn't his own was going to be incredibly difficult. Yes, he could get some non-field job, maybe even with the Bureau, but at this point, Don didn't even want to think about that. That would be a whole other nightmare. And yes, Robin was due to have their baby in two months. But suddenly, the timing was all wrong. In two months, Don would be in the middle of recovering and trying to work his way back to some shred of normalcy and he was afraid it would be hard to focus much attention on being a new father.
He didn't tell his dad any of this, though. He'd nodded and pretended that he was fine, but it wasn't that simple. He'd been incredibly grateful when his dad finally noticed how tired he was and had let him go to sleep.
Now Robin was here, and she wasn't offering him any empty reassurances, and for that Don was happy. But she looked pretty forlorn herself, for which Don wasn't so happy. He grabbed her hand and squeezed, hoping to reassure her.
She looked at him then and smiled a small, sad smile. He returned the smile, hoping it would reassure her. She looked just as shaken up by this sudden situation as he felt.
He rubbed her arm gently. "Hey," he said softly. "I'll be fine, okay? Don't worry about it." He felt bad. He knew this had to be really hard on Robin. As he'd been unconscious and significantly injured at the time when something had needed to be done about his leg, Robin, as his wife, had to act as his medical proxy. She'd been the one to officially consent to the procedure, and he knew she was feeling awful for it.
Robin was chuckling quietly and mirthlessly. "I don't know how you can sit there and tell me you'll be fine," she told him. "If I were you, I would—I wouldn't even know what to do."
Don didn't say anything; he wasn't quite sure how to respond. He didn't know what to do right now. He smiled again, a small smile, and reached up to touch Robin's face.
"I'm so sorry, Don," Robin whispered, gripping his hand with both of hers. His heart broke at the tears in her eyes.
"Please don't be," he soothed. "There was nothing else you could do, okay?"
She nodded and sniffed, but remained silent. Don didn't say anything else, either; he was unsure of what else he could say.
They sat in silence for a few moments, each trying to comfort each other. Finally, Don spoke again.
"Hey, how's Charlie doing?" he asked. He hadn't really heard anything about his younger brother since his father had told him what happened. He'd been hoping to see Charlie one of these days, but so far not yet.
Robin took a deep breath. "I guess he's doing okay," she answered vaguely. "He's been at the house, recovering. I haven't really talked to him or Amita in awhile. You probably should ask your dad about that."
Don nodded absently. He'd figured as much. Robin seemed to know more than she was saying, but he was not going to press the issue. But years of being a LEO had honed his skills of reading between the lines, and he could pretty much infer how Charlie was really doing. Charlie was an emotional person who took everything to heart—and he'd just witnessed something terrible happening to his older brother that he likely felt responsible for. Knowing Charlie, the younger man probably never took into account the time he spent slowing down the bleeding in his injured brother's gut and just generally keeping Don alive. Don just wished he could speak with his brother—maybe Charlie would know then that it was okay.
Don sighed, closing his eyes. He was suddenly finding himself in an awful situation, and too many people were feeling guilty about it. He just hoped he'd have the strength to handle it all.
TBC