Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
A/N: Thanks for the reviews – I like to know what works for you and what completely annoys you, so let me know.
Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY; all song lyrics are from The Beatles.
It's A Long Journey Home
Chapter 2: Lost The Only Girl
I've got every reason on earth to be mad,
'Cos I've lost the only girl I've had.
If I could get my way,
I'd get myself locked up today,
But I can't, so I'll cry instead.
If it hadn't been a city vehicle, it wouldn't have been so bad. After all, people had minor accidents every day on the freeway going in and out of New York. If it had been his own car, he wouldn't have been tagged as a city employee, and now he wouldn't be sitting here in an emergency room cubicle in the hospital waiting for one of his supervisors to come to have him released and sign for the damaged vehicle.
He refused to stay on the bed. When he faced his doom, he was at the very least going to be wearing his own clothes, no matter how blood-stained, and sitting on a chair, not the bed. The nurse had thrown up her hands in disgust when he growled at her to give him his fucking clothes and leave him alone. She had done just that.
He could only hope that it was Stella who would come. She might cut him a little slack. Mac wouldn't, he knew – well, "couldn't" would be more accurate. Mac had cut him a lot of slack over the past two years; even he had to have reached his limit by now. He'd pulled some crap, Danny admitted, although everything had seemed necessary at the time. Looking back, he thought now that some of it might have been a little ill-advised.
Okay, most of it had been bloody stupid.
Every time, he promised himself he would slow down, think things through before jumping. And every time, he kicked himself for forgetting that promise as he flew through the air after whatever goal he had set this time.
Like with Lindsay. After the diamond smugglers case, he had been so desperate to hold on to her. He should have seen that she wasn't ready, or even interested, maybe, in a relationship with him. Hell, he had seen it. She had given him all the back-off cues, the more subtle ones as well as the giant neon flashing sign of standing him up for a date without even the decency of giving an unbelievable excuse. How stupid was he?
But he'd wanted her. And he was used to getting what he wanted. Maybe a little too used to getting what he wanted. No one, certainly no woman, turned him down for long. In his considerable experience, persistence always paid off. He had worked Lindsay good, stepping back when she asked him to, staying available, not going out with anyone else, and basically just waiting her out.
He'd given up his player ways, and had made sure she knew it. He'd turned down a sure thing with a Suicide Girl.
Adam had been with a Suicide Girl. He'd let Adam get ahead of him in the "Adventurous Relationship" stakes. How much did that hurt at two in the morning?
None of it had mattered, though. She'd beaten him. Just stepped on a plane and left, while kicking his teeth in with a note that read like a third-grade teacher's reprimand to an unruly student.
He closed his eyes against the headache struggling to get past the pain meds. His glasses had been broken in the accident, which left him feeling like he was underwater all the time. He hated that feeling. Weirdly, he felt like he couldn't hear properly when he didn't have his glasses on. Unfortunately, his extra pair had been in his kit, which was still in the back of the upturned vehicle, as far as he knew.
His thoughts returned to which of his supervisors would come to get him out of here. Not Mac, then. He'd wash his hands in disgust, Danny was pretty sure. Stella, though. In a way, she'd be worse. Mac might be pissed off, but Stella would be sorry for him. And damn it all, the last thing he wanted was for people to feel sorry for him. He was fine, wasn't he? Okay, a little concussed, but other than that, the doctor had checked him out and said there was nothing wrong.
He'd been confused by that at the time. The nurses had taken his pulse and his blood pressure. How was that possible? His heart had stopped beating before he got into the car to go to the airport. He couldn't feel it, even now. When he surreptitiously checked his wrist, he still couldn't feel a pulse.
Of course, he'd always been crap at finding his own pulse, but still.
It mattered. Because if he had a pulse, then he should be alive, shouldn't he? Stands to reason. But he didn't feel alive. The hallways were full of shadows; everything had a grey tinge to it, especially the people he now vaguely saw walking towards him, with worry pulsing out of them in waves.
As they got closer, he could see Stella's green eyes shining with concern. Shit. She was sorry for him. He closed his eyes against her. If he couldn't see her, maybe she wouldn't be there any more. He could hear Flack's voice – it was as unmistakable as Stella's eyes. They were the only two things he could distinguish in the fog which surrounded him.
"Okay, Messer?"
Why did the name Messer hurt so much? It was his name; he knew that. The doctors and nurses had gone over that about a thousand times: his name, his address, the date, the name of the current president, where he had been, where he had been going to, then back to his name and address again. Over and over as they checked him out for injuries.
Over and over, he'd explained the accident. He was traveling, a little fast he admitted, into the city from the airport when a car had come out of nowhere into his lane, swerving out of control. He had attempted to avoid the car, and in doing so, had hit black ice and flipped the SUV he was driving.
When he came to, the other car was gone and he was hanging upside, tangled up in the seat belt, with blood pouring from a cut on top of his head, and another cut under his eye, probably from his glasses. It had taken the EMTs a while to get to him; by the time they had made it down the embankment he had gone over, he had got himself out of the car and was sitting on the ground beside it, holding his head together.
He had given a description of the car to the first officer on the scene, as well as a partial plate. At least his eyes and parts of his brain had still worked.
Stella was sitting beside him, holding his hand. Danny opened dazed blue eyes and looked at her. She was crying: had been crying, he amended the thought. Her cheeks were tear-stained. Why was she crying?
"Danny? The doctors say you're okay. Are they right?" She was watching him carefully.
"Just a concussion, some stitches," he mumbled, ashamed of upsetting her. Then he touched her cheek, rubbing at a tear track with his thumb. "What's wrong?"
"We get a call that you've been in an accident, rolled an SUV, I'm not supposed to be upset?" Stella shot back, a little shakily.
She handed him his emergency bag, and he gratefully began to dig for his other pair of glasses, but looked up frowning at her response.
"Come on, Stel. If they phoned, they told you I was okay, and no one else was involved." Thank God, Danny thought. His own death he could face, but causing someone else's would have finished him this time. "What's happened?"
Putting on his glasses so he could see properly, he looked at Flack, who had gone white and was looking at the floor, refusing to answer. Danny grabbed Stella's hands and held them hard. "It's Lindsay. What's happened?"
"Her plane. Danny, her plane went down. They're searching for it, but haven't found it yet. It went down in the mountains. We were trying to find you, but then the hospital called…" Stella's voice disappeared completely. When the call from the hospital came through half an hour after the news report had declared the Montana flight lost, the entire office had stopped. She hadn't seen Mac look so blank since the news of the World Trade Centre attack.
Oh, Danny thought dully. He must be alive, because he could hear his heart. Now it was beating so hard he thought Stella and Flack would be deafened by it. It pounded in his ears, in his head, in his hands which still gripped Stella's as the world went completely dark around him.