Black and Blue and Red All Over
Author's Note: I'm still making my way through the majority of the first season of this show, which is both a good thing (for me) and a bad thing (for you). The good thing for me is, this means I have lots of awesome episodes that I have not yet seen to relish and enjoy. The bad thing for you is, I don't have the same background on this show that most of you do, so I'm completely guessing on many of the details regarding family history, incidents, memories and circumstances. Please chalk it up to author's license if (when) I get anything wrong. I hope you enjoy the story in any case, and would love to know what you think. Hit a girl up, would you?
Missing Scene #2 - Danny takes care of Jamie in the frantic moments following the escape from the church.
Danny was used to driving at ridiculous and completely unsafe levels of speed, and it certainly wasn't anything to do with being a cop. From the time he was ten and commandeered Grandma Rose's 1965 Cadillac for a two-block joyride down the street, Danny had been passionate about the freedom a six-cylinder engine could provide. He wasn't much on what went on under the hood, but he did appreciate "pedal to the metal" as one of the distinct pleasures of life. Being a cop had done nothing to temper Danny's need for speed, and he still grinned when he recalled getting behind the wheel of a patrol car for the first time, flipping on the siren with a smile brighter than his red and blue lights as his father stood in amused resignation a few feet away, running a weary hand down his face.
The undercover clunker that he was in at the moment wasn't exactly the top-of-the-line model he'd come to appreciate as a beat cop, but that didn't matter at the moment. Danny was pushing it to top performance anyway, and this time had no appreciation for its acceleration or nimble handling of the New York City traffic. In the passenger's seat next to him, Jackie had gone equally silent, letting fly with none of her usual barbs about Danny's driving prowess or oncoming cars he might want to avoid. Instead, she gripped her portable radio in one hand and the plastic handle above the door with the other to steady herself, eyes on the road, face tense.
These calls were the reasons Danny had learned to drive fast and hard in the first place.
Joe had been a 10-85 once, too.
"Christ," Jackie said, and Danny saw it up ahead instantly - a tangle of uniforms and suits on the sidewalk, spilling into the street. They were wrestling with and clashing into each other bodily, the quarters so tight it was hard to tell which ones were the cops and which ones were not. "Would you look at this?"
Danny gunned his unmarked piece of crap and hopped the curb with a loud and satisfying bang, scraping the undercarriage against curbing. Jackie leapt out immediately, the portable radio still in her hand, and Danny followed with his gaze narrow and tight. Adrenaline was pounding in his veins, and he stepped boldly around the hood. "What the hell's going on here? Back up," he added, putting a drop of menace into his tone when he spotted a wide-eyed citizen edging too close.
A few of the officers on the far side of the fray were calling out, voices rising above the din, and Danny's eyes went back to the fracas. He was scanning quickly, looking for a place to jump in and help, when his eyes landed on two particular cops emerging from the cluster of bodies. They were notable because they were stumbling away from the action, not diving into it, and...
...one of them was Jamie.
He actually blinked first, just for a half-second, because he couldn't believe what his eyes were trying to tell him. There was no way, no way in hell his little brother was here, pulling another officer to safety. Not here, of all places, with cops fighting and burly black men struggling back, and people hollering and chaos reigning. In Danny's heart, his little brother was still an eight-year-old with missing teeth and footie pajamas and a ragged hand-me-down teddy bear named Eddie. He wasn't a hero. Was he?
"Hey, kid!" Danny hollered across the space.
Jamie's head jerked towards the sound of the familiar voice, and then Danny saw it.
Blood.
The entire right side of Jamie's face was covered in it, fresh red contrasting sharply against drying black, and it had dripped in lazy and haphazard patterns over his brow, temple and cheekbone. He looked like someone had ground the business end of a broken bottle into the side of his face.
"Danny!" Jamie called back, and the young officer picked up his stumbling pace, changing direction to move towards his older brother and hauling the cop next to him - Renzulli; he's got his TO - along as well. "He's hurt," Jamie added, but Danny never heard the words. His world had narrowed to Jamie, blood, and danger.
"What happened?" Danny snapped when he could pull in a breath around his shock, bolting forward and grabbing hold of Renzulli's elbow. He eased the older officer to a seat on the car hood, but had eyes only for Jamie. His little brother was still gripping Renzulli by the shoulder, searching the sergeant's cloudy eyes with his own clear, concerned ones. He seemed oblivious to both the blood on his face and the gory picture he presented. "What's going on?" Danny pressed.
"He's hurt," Jamie said again. "A bus is on the way."
In Danny's opinion, Jamie himself was the only one who looked hurt at the moment, and he was just opening his mouth to say so when Jackie caught her first full look at Jamie's face. "Whoa!"
Danny stared, too.
And remembered another time.
Kneeling on a concrete floor amid puddles of spilled alcohol and broken tumblers, not feeling the tiny chips of glass biting into his knees. His head was spinning, thoughts circling and melting into each other like a merry-go-round, and his stomach was a bottomless pit.
A hand came down on his shoulder. "Danny, you shouldn't be here."
Stray pieces of gauze and tubing left behind by the EMTs, scattered and trampled like forgotten favors at a holiday party, surrounded him. Horror crept stealthily up his spine.
"They're taking him to the hospital, Danny. We've got a car waiting for you. C'mon, you're not doing him any good here."
Blood was pooled in front of him, smeared like dark paint against the floor. Blood, cooling and drying on the concrete.
And just like that, he knew his brother was gone.
Someone jostled Danny from behind, and he shook loose of the dark thoughts, turning quickly back to the escalating mob scene behind him. "Get back!" he ordered, but was startled when one of the black men plowed into him, nearly knocking him off his feet.
"This is a church!" The man's face was screwed tight with rage.
Danny neatly ducked the meaty fists and caught the man fast, neatly flipping him onto his stomach and pinning him down to the hood next to a dazed Renzulli, who seemed to be watching with only a passing interest. "What are you doing, huh?" Danny hissed at the man's back. The thought crossed his mind that maybe this man was the one who had hurt his brother, and his grip tightened. "You put your hands on a police officer?"
The man grimaced, grunting something unintelligible in response.
"You better watch your back, pig!" someone else in the mass of bodies yelled.
Danny twisted to fire an angry look into the crowd. "Hey!"
"Ten-thirteen," Jackie called breathlessly into her radio next to him. "We've got a situation; we're going to need more units."
"I said back up!" Danny snapped, and for the first time began to feel a thread of unease curling up inside him like smoke.
As though summoned by that moment of hesitation, the district's commander was suddenly standing next to Danny, his broad shoulders and strong voice bringing the same sort of easy reassurance that his father's presence did. "I need a situation report, now! Are the responding officers accounted for?"
Jamie spun to face the commander so fast, he nearly tumbled over Renzulli's feet. "Yes sir, my training officer and I are here."
The commander's eyes narrowed when he caught a full-on look at Jamie. "You responded to the 911 call?"
"Yes sir... a 10-30," Jamie explained breathlessly. "Church security tried to prevent us from accessing the building."
"And this is what happened when you insisted?"
"Yes sir. We were the only officers ever inside, as far as I know."
"Get yourselves looked after," the commander ordered curtly, then moved assuredly into the fray, barking orders.
Danny turned to Jamie, keeping one hand firmly planted on the back of the man in front of him. Anger flared again at the sight of his brother's face. "Tell me what they hit you with."
In true cop fashion, Jamie's attention had gone back to the fight. His hand, Danny noted, was still on Renzulli's shoulder. "Huh?"
"What did they hit you with, kid?"
"Oh - nothing," he replied absently. "We got pushed down the stairs. I smacked my head on the way down."
Danny stared at him incredulously. "They pushed you down the STAIRS? Are you kidding me?"
Jamie paid no attention to the comment, instead twisting himself to better protect Renzulli as a pair of cops shoved another church security guard away from the curb, bumping off the car as they did so. The fight seemed to be dying down, with church security retreating to the building's face and police slowly peeling back. "Danny," Jamie said. "What caused this? We were just responding to a 911 call."
Danny's burgeoning anger over Jamie's revelation faded a bit as the words sank in. "Kid - this is Reverend Potter's church, you know? And you know what an idiot he is about police intervention." He nodded to another officer as he took over the man Danny had grabbed, pulling him towards detainment in a squad car.
Jamie still looked confused. "But we were here to help him."
"If you and the sarge got shoved down the stairs, I'm guessing he didn't want your brand of help." Danny shot a quick look at Renzulli, who seemed relatively coherent, then leaned forward to lay a rough hand against the side of his brother's neck, turning his jaw gently to better see the damage. "How many stairs did you two fall down?"
"I don't know... a dozen, maybe. They were marble." He smiled wryly and rubbed at the small of his back. "Not a fun trip."
For his part, Danny saw no levity in the subject. "You both need to go to over to New York Presbyterian. Get yourselves checked out."
"I'm fine," he protested. "But I don't know about the sarge. He cracked his head pretty hard on that bottom step; might have shaken something loose."
Danny took a breath to reply but was interrupted by the arrival of EMTs, who listened to Jamie's brief report before whisking Renzulli off to the waiting ambulance. "You're going to be fine, sarge," Jamie called after him. "These guys will take great care of you."
Danny pinned him with a critical eye. "Next bus is for you, junior," he said, tone brokering no argument.
"I'm okay, I swear."
Danny tapped the window of his car, and Jamie glanced over, catching his blurry reflection. "Your face says otherwise."
"It's not as bad as it looks. Just a cut. And you know what dad always said about head wounds."
"Yeah, with three boys, he would know." He took hold of his younger brother's arm and pulled him forward, nodding towards the approaching ambulance. "Let's go, kid. I mean it."
Jamie moved with him for a few paces, but suddenly slowed. Exasperated, Danny turned towards him, but hesitated when he saw the guarded expression on Jamie's face. "Dad's going to be pissed," Jamie said.
"For what? You doing your job?"
"He's been having trouble with the reverend for months." Jamie's eyes darted away from Danny's, taking in the dozens of cop cars and the growing crowd. "Did we do the wrong thing?"
"You did your job," Danny insisted. "Exactly what you were supposed to do."
"But this will be all over the news, won't it?"
Danny looked over Jamie's shoulder across the street, spotting the New York One truck pulling up. "Speaking of," he muttered, and stepped neatly between Jamie and the news vehicle, slinging a arm over his brother's shoulder and tucking the clean side of Jamie's face into his chest. "Right this way, kiddo."
"What are you doing?" Jamie asked, his voice muffled against Danny's hoodie.
"Protecting your pretty face from the TV cameras, Mr. Undercover."
"Hell, I didn't even think about that."
"Well, you're lucky I'm here, then." They rounded the back of the waiting ambulance, and Danny nodded to the EMT. "Can I turn him over to you? He took a nasty fall down a flight of stairs."
Jamie extricated himself from Danny's grip and shot him a baleful look, which was rendered less effective by his rumpled hair. "Will you call dad and tell him?"
"You don't think he already knows?"
Jamie frowned as the EMTs sat him down on the back bumper of the ambulance, then winced as one pressed a thick gauze pad against his forehead. "Just make sure he knows... we were trying to do the right thing."
"Yeah, I know, kid. And he will, too."
Please read and review! You know, you make an author's day when you do that... plus, if you want more chapters or scenes, this is the only way we know. :) Next up…
Missing Scene #3 - Frank finds out just what sort of a day it's been for Danny and Jamie.