It Never Ends
By Montez
Chapter 3
Disclaimer: See chapter one
A/N: Maholo! to all of you again for your wonderful response. Okay I'll warn you know, I'm extending your aniexty just a little longer, but this is not a death fic, already did that, don't think I could handle doing it again. I promise Steve will be back in the next chapter which is currently being written. Thanks again for all your support and enjoy-Montez
Some things in life you should just never have to experience or see, like the first time your child flips themselves off the swing set, because you weren't fast enough to catch them, landing on their back and are silent for those few heart-stopping seconds before they start crying. As a cop the first time a person is lying, bleeding on the ground because you had to fire a bullet into their body so they didn't fire one into yours. The first time you have to deal with a murdered child or the first badly burnt corpse. Then there is the one Detective Danny Williams just experienced, his partner, his best friend being rushed down a hospital corridor with a doctor straddling him doing chest compressions to restart a stilled heart.
That is the image that is currently burned into Danny's mind. Steve's heart had stopped just as they pulled up to the emergency room doors and when the doors to the ambulance were opened everything became a blur, except for that last image as the gurney disappeared through swinging doors. A part of Danny's brain demanded that he follow his friend, but another part shouted at him to sit down before he fell down. Over the course of a week Danny's life had gone completely to hell and with this last incident, with Steve collapsing in his office with a raging fever and infection, then his heart stopping, it seemed as if the world was finally crashing down on the Jersey native as he felt his own strength give out.
"Sir, are you okay? Can you hear me?" Danny was vaguely aware of someone talking to him, someone whose voice he didn't recognize and for the first time, probably in his life, he couldn't put together a coherent response. The young woman knelling next to him looked very concerned but he just wasn't quite sure why.
He noticed her turn away from him as he tried to follow her gaze, several people were quickly making their way down the hallway, then his line of vision was suddenly filled with a very familiar face. "Danny?"
"Chin?" Was the only response Danny's overworked mind could process as he stared at the worried face of his friend.
"Danny, are you okay? What happened?" Chin reached up and gently squeezed the younger man's forearm; the lost, confused look coming from the blond detective was not something the older man was use to seeing on the normally put together man.
A million things and nothing seemed to fill Danny's mind as he tried to recall how he came to be sitting on the floor propped against the wall. It was then everything seemed to snap back into place as Williams jerked his head up toward the doors Steve had disappeared through, Danny's breathing increased as he attempted to push himself up off the floor. "Easy man…" Chin said, helping Danny to his feet, though keeping him against the wall.
"Steve…they took him…" Danny ran his hand through his hair, the image of the doctor looming over Steve again flashed in his mind causing Williams to bend over at the waist, his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.
Chin was starting to get a very bad feeling about what was happening, they'd watched McGarrett loose consciousness on the floor of Danny's office, but obviously something had happened on the way to the hospital for Danny to be almost incoherent. "Come on, you need to sit down." Kelly glanced up at Joe White, who'd come to the hospital with him and Kono, motioning for him to help get Danny to a chair.
The young nurse who'd been knelling next to Danny stepped up once Chin and Joe had gotten Williams to a chair, handing Kelly a cup of water and a damp cloth, "If you need anything I'll be right over there." She motioned toward the nurse's station just a few feet away.
"Mahalo." Chin responded, placing the cup in Danny's hand. "Drink", was the only word he said as he moved Williams' hand toward his face.
He'd felt something being placed into his hand and felt his arm being raise, hearing Chin tell him to 'drink' Danny took a small drink of the cool liquid in his hand. His breathing was starting to ease some, but all he could see was Steve, 'dying'. "His heart stopped." Danny whispered uncharacteristically.
"What?" Chin responded, not sure he'd heard correctly.
Taking a deep-breath, Danny tilted his head back, closing his eyes a minute, "He had a seizure in the ambulance and just as we got here…his heart stopped." Williams opened his eye's looking at the shocked expression on Kelly's face. He could just see Steve's former Commander behind Chin, the older man running his hand over his face that still held that composed mask he'd seen Steve wear many times, not letting anyone know what he was really feeling. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kono sit down in a chair a few feet away, her hand over her mouth, disbelief on her face as well.
Taking another drink of the water in his hand Danny seemed to notice they were missing some people, he knew Jenna, Max and Kamakona had been at the office as well, he wondered a moment where they were, "Where's Jenna and the others?"
Chin moved to sit in the chair across from Danny now that the younger man didn't look like he was gonna pass out, "Jenna got a call just after you guys left, something about a contact getting back to her, that she had to take it and would be here as soon as she can." Chin shook his head slightly as he continued, "I think seeing McGarrett unconscious twice in one day kind of freaked Max out some so Kamakona offered to take him home, said he'd call later to check on Steve. Now what happened?"
Leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, Danny tried to put into words what happened once they left the office. "From what I could figure out, Steve's blood pressure wasn't good, too low one of them radioed in, his temp was still around 104 which isn't good either, then we were just a few minutes out and he had a seizure…" Danny took his head in his hands, staring at the floor a minute before finishing, "then his heart just stopped." Williams looked up, clasping his hands together.
Lt. Commander Joe White had taken a seat a few chairs down, he still felt somewhat out of place with this group of people even though they'd seemed to have accepted him based solely on the fact he'd come to help Steve and that Steve trusted him. He'd known the first time he'd seen his former trainee outside of jail, after he'd been stabbed, escaped police custody and apparently been unconscious once already that day, something Joe didn't find out about until he'd heard the very nervous acting Medical Examiner mention when they'd been at the office after the case, he knew Steve wasn't as 'fine' as he tried to have everyone believe.
When he'd watched Steve make his way into his partner's office he could tell the young man wasn't well, could see the sweat the covered his face even in the air-conditioning of the offices. When Detective Williams had made eye contact with him through the glass wall of his office, Joe knew something was wrong and knew Steve's partner had noticed as well. So the fact McGarrett had collapsed in that office didn't surprise him a whole lot, he'd expected it at some point knowing the injury Steve had suffered and that he'd been running on adrenaline only the whole day, what did shock the commander was the heat he felt radiating off the injured man.
Yes Steve had been trained to push pain aside, push exhaustion aside, to push injuries aside until a mission was completed, but everyone knew infections were not to be ignored, nor were fevers since that could drop a man quickly, possibly putting others in danger and extremely high fevers in adults were never, ever a good thing. So White didn't know if it was his presence that caused Steve to continue to hide just how hurt and sick he was, or if it was just the younger man's stubborn streak, but the moment he'd come down the hospital hallway and seen Steve's partner sitting on the floor, White felt his own heart clinch. He viewed Steve as a son, knew that when he'd started training the younger man that Steve had felt abandoned by his own father, which Joe knew all along wasn't true, so he'd tried to be there for Steve, not only because John McGarrett had asked him too, but because he saw that Steve needed it, even if he didn't admit it. So to think that that young man's heart had stopped, that after getting him cleared of all the charges against him, to see him so relieved to have his task force, his team back, Joe couldn't fathom the chance that they could be losing him now.
Silence had settled over the group as minutes turned into an hour, an hour into ninety minutes. Danny was now standing staring out the window toward the parking lot, still trying to grasp what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Chin was sitting next to Kono, who had her head leaning on his shoulder, dealing with her own legal ordeal, but terribly worried about her friend. Chin was watching Danny and Joe, he could read Danny's feelings plainly on the younger man's face, he was terrified but trying to not show it, Steve was his partner, his friend, his brother and he'd watched Steve's heart stop. Chin knew nothing other than Steve pulling through this would help Danny, not with everything else the Jersey-born detective had been dealing with the last week.
Joe was a different story to Chin, he wasn't joking when he'd asked Danny earlier in the day if they could 'blame him' for Steve, he'd never seen two people so much alike in how they held themselves and conducted themselves than Joe and Steve. Chin concluded it had to been the SEAL training, but where Steve had started to come out from behind that training some over the last year, Joe was much like Steve was when they'd first started working together, intense was the only word for it, but where McGarrett had been a 'scary' intense, White seemed to be more of a 'calm' intense. Steve was a jump in, guns-blazing type, where Joe gathered all the facts and went smoothly where he needed to go. Kelly couldn't help an inward chuckle, despite the situation, wondering if Joe was a glimpse of what Steve might be like when he got older, but he quickly shook off that thought realizing Steve was too much of a 'jump into the middle of the action' person and he probably wouldn't slow down a bit, until something slowed him down, Chin just prayed that something didn't happen today.
Four sets of eyes looked up as a white-coat clad doctor emerged from the emergency room doors, "Family of Steve McGarrett."