Waiting: Chapter 6

"Shit," Simon blurted as his wounded detective fell bonelessly against him. He turned to Rafe. "Please tell me someone has called an ambulance."

"One of the uniforms called for a second one as soon as they saw that Jim was down. " Rafe informed his captain, and then reminded him, "The one for Blair was already standing by at a safe distance just waiting for the 'all's clear'. It should be here any …"

Rafe's answer was interrupted by sounds of the approaching siren. Simon secretly wondered if Jim had heard it before he passed out – relinquishing his duty to protect his partner only after he knew help was nearby.

Once the first ambulance arrived, the scene became a flurry of motion. Blair's breathing had steadily gotten worse, so that, by the time the EMT's saw him, he had top priority. "Breathing before circulation." They gently but efficiently moved him so that he was lying flat on the floor. One of the personnel not immediately involved with Sandburg had Simon remove the sodden handkerchief that he had still been pressing into Jim's leg wound, and replaced it with a roll of gauze. Before the man could accomplish much more than that, he was called back to work on the more critical patient. As Simon concentrated on his effort to dam Jim's blood with the more efficient – but still somehow lacking – material, he managed to catch the EMT's murmurs of "chest tube" and "broken jaw" and "emergency trach." But Simon tried not to think too hard about what all that might mean for the kid who had somehow wheedled his way into even the hardest of hearts at the PD.

Finally, by the time the other ambulance arrived, Sandburg was ready for transport and the first ambulance left, sirens blaring. The newly arrived personnel wasted no time in taking over Simon's job, replacing his efforts with a pressure bandage, quickly starting an IV to replenish lost fluids and whisking Jim away to join his fallen friend at the hospital.

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The hospital. One of Simon's least favorite places to be. The only worse place he could think of was the morgue – but even then the hospital was a close second. To give it its due, at least here his men had a chance of surviving. How big a chance, Simon was having difficulty ascertaining.

Every visit – and there had been way too many of them lately – was taken up with paper work, waiting, and closed mouth nurses. And to make it worse, this was the only place Simon could think of where no matter how much he blustered, it just didn't have any affect at all. He figured that was some sort of prerequisite for working here. He could see the ad now. "Position open in local ER. Must be able to bark 'I can not reveal that information sir' repeatedly throughout a twelve hour shift, without taking a breath; and must be totally oblivious to threatening demeanors of local police captains." All of the personnel Simon had encountered so far today were certainly well qualified in those skills.

So it was that, after four hours of getting blisters on his backside, he still knew very little about the conditions of his men. Yes, "men", plural. Sandburg might not be a policeman, but after all of this time riding along with Jim, pulling the sentinel's fat out of the fire as often as the reverse was true, and generally just giving his all for the department, with no more pay than a smile and a thank you – and now that Simon thought about it, very rarely even that much – Blair was every bit as much "Simon's man" as Jim was.

What Simon did know about their conditions wouldn't fill a thimble. He knew they had Blair on a respirator and were currently in surgery repairing a list of internal injuries longer than the rap sheets of the perps they had arrested. He knew they had removed the bullet from Jim's femur and repaired Jim's femoral artery and were giving him unit after unit of blood to replace what was now drying on the warehouse floor. He knew they planned to keep the detective under light sedation until at least tomorrow so that he would lie completely still and give the tender area time to heal.

What he didn't know was when they were going to repair the extensive damage done to the bone in Jim's lower leg caused by the first bullet – which had gone straight through the leg, but not before ripping through the bone. He didn't know how extensive the bone damage was and when – or if – Jim would be able to go back into the field. He didn't know if Blair would even live. He didn't know if any of the damaged organs would need to be replaced. He didn't know if there would be any damage to the kid's remarkable brain, and he didn't know when – or if – the kid would wake up.

He didn't know because the doctors didn't know. And that made the waiting even more unbearable.

TBC