Chapter 8

Finding Aaron

"We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full." Marcel Proust

Rossi felt for a pulse on Aaron's neck. He felt afraid for him. He looked as if he had been buried alive for all the time he had been missing. He couldn't imagine the terror that Aaron had been put through. He had been supplied with air through the tube, but he didn't know how long ago it had been removed. As he touched Aaron's neck, he prayed that they weren't too late.

"Can't find a pulse, Derek. Help me get him out of here!"

Morgan carefully helped Rossi turn Aaron onto his back. What he saw made him feel sick. Aaron was naked except for his underwear, and most of his exposed skin was cut and bloodied from contact with the rough sides of the box in which he had spent most of three days. The back of his head was a tangle of clotted blood and hair, and his face was bleeding and torn again from the rough wood, and there was a deep bleeding gash on his forehead. Blood had run from his hair line where he had ripped handfuls of hair from his scalp, and dug his finger nails into the skin of his face. But the worst was his hands. The tips of his fingers were ripped of skin, and several of his finger nails had been torn away leaving bloody stumps with which he had frantically scratched at the lid of the box. Stuck in the drying blood of his fingers were tufts of dark hair with skin still attached, which he had ripped out in his terror and fear. His skin was dry and hot, and looked thin and papery and fragile. His dry mouth was slightly open, his eyes wide open showing huge dark pupils, a masque of pure terror..

"Get us something to lay him on!" shouted Rossi, and the women took off their coats and laid them down on the ground next to the pit. Rossi took Aaron's shoulders, and Morgan carefully slipped his arm beneath his knees. Gently, they lifted the injured and dying man out of the pit, and laid him on the coats.

"I'll get some water!" JJ said, running back to the house.

"Oh my god!" Emily gently lifted his hand and held it in hers. "He's so hot, David."

"Dehydration. " Rossi knelt down and tried again to find a pulse. "He's alive, but if he doesn't get water, he'll die quickly."

JJ returned with water and a sponge. She dripped a little onto his cracked and bloody lips. He didn't respond. She carefully washed the blood and mess from his face and neck, and washed his broken hands.

"The ambulance is on its way." said Emily, sliding her phone into her pocket.. She knelt next to JJ, and stroked Aaron's hair. She was almost afraid to touch him, his skin felt so thin and fragile, brittle with the loss of moisture. She wondered if he could ever recover physically. But the mental damage could be far reaching. It broke her heart to see how the man she admired had been brought down so low.

Hotch, please be ok. We will be with you at every step of your recovery, but please, take the steps. Please don't die, Hotch...

She thought of Spencer, so far away fighting for his life. To lose either one of her closest friends would be such a tragedy, but how would either be able to live on alone? Emily knew the depth of their love, and she wasn't sure that either could continue to live without the other. She lifted his lifeless hand and held it to her cheek.

"Come on, Sir. You've got to make it!"

Morgan just stood and watched, not knowing what to do. Hotch looked dead. Rossi had found a pulse, but Morgan was terrified that he would die while they stood and did nothing. He and Rossi watched the ambulance approach in the distance, as it drove at speed along the dusty road.

-0-0-0-

It was going to be a long and difficult operation. The scan showed that the bullet was right next to the heart, beneath the aortic arch, and it was going to take all the skill of the surgeon to pull him through. Spencer hadn't regained consciousness since being brought in.

The surgeon switched on the CD player – The Planet Suite played, starting with Jupiter, The Bringer of Joy. He hoped it was prophetic. He cut down Spencer's chest and applied the sternum spreader to expose the beating heart. In the background the monitors beeped away seconds of his life over the sound of Holst, as the bullet was carefully removed. He held it up for the OR team to see, a two inch deadly piece of metal. He dropped it into the tray for the police, and went on to repair a tiny tear to the aorta on the underside of the arch.

"I don't know how this man didn't die." he said. "The bullet was touching the heart, and nicked the aorta. A millimetre either way, and he wouldn't have made it."

"BP dropping!" the anaesthetist yelled. "V-Fib!"

"Charge paddles at 20!"

The paddles were handed to the surgeon who inserted them into Spencer's chest cavity, holding his fibrillating heart. A slight buzz as they discharged through the cardiac muscle, and to everyone's relief, sinus rhythm was restored. The surgeon said nothing and handed the paddles back to the OR nurse. The tension in the OR was palpable, as they watched the cardiac monitor rise.

After a breath holding few seconds that felt very much longer, the surgeon removed the sternum spreader, and allowed the rib cage to move back into position.

He nodded at his assistant. "You close please. I will be in the building for another hour. Page me if there are any significant developments."

He left the OR, removing his mask as he went.

-0-0-0-

In another hospital in another city, Aaron was being wheeled into the ER.

He had three friends with him, Morgan had returned to Quantico to be with Spencer. One, Dave Rossi, travelled with him in the ambulance. Emily and JJ followed in the SUV. Rossi held Aaron's ripped and broken hands gently in his as they rushed through the streets of Boston. He didn't speak. He really didn't know what to say. But he held tight, showing Aaron that he was safe and with friends.

Aaron had suffered convulsions in the ambulance, and Rossi had been shocked at the violence of the seizures. He had tried to pull out the drips from his wrists. The paramedics had set up rapid infusers to each arm to try to rehydrate him before he suffered brain damage. He had lost almost ten percent of his fluids, often proving fatal. They put isotonic drops in his eyes and taped his eyelids closed to prevent his eyes from drying out, and wet inside his mouth and nose. They had begun to remove the splinters and shreds of wood that were sticking in his skin, before they became septic, cleaning the skin with antiseptic.

As yet, the fluid replacement therapy hadn't made a difference. He lay unmoving, catatonic while they took blood for U&E and blood glucose. They replaced the saline and antibiotic drips, and added glucose when the blood test showed his glucose was low, despite his being dehydrated. The Lambdoid Suture on the back of his head had been repaired, and the skin stitched. Everything possible had been done, but the man lay as still as death in the ICU.

As the fluids in his body were reaching a normal level, his skin began to lose the fragile papery texture, and his face filled out again. They tried various stimuli, untaping his eyes at one point and shone lights to try to make him respond, but there was nothing.

He was started on Benzodiazepines therapy, with a 2mg injection of lorazepam as soon as his U&E's were in the normal range.

They waited expectantly for the response.