"What in the mother fuck happened to this man? He looks like 10 miles of bad road!" The receiving physician was in full rant as he quickly assessed Jasper, realizing that he needed all kinds of tests and more than a few extra pairs of hands. "I've got him, but I am warning you, its going to be expensive. If I can save him."
I don't fucking care, its not like I have anything else to spend it on. Just fix him. And make sure he isn't in any pain.
"What's his name? Who do I contact with questions and does he have any family?" They had discussed this on the way over, knowing that he would need an alias to keep him safe from the goons in the department tracking him down. Edward had decided to give him a name that would be easy for him to remember, his initials with Edwards mothers maiden name as his last name, so that night Jasper Whitlock died and "J.D. Hale" was born.
We are his only family. If you have any questions, call the number on the checks you are getting for keeping him alive and happy. I will be back as soon as I can. Please call me with the results of his surgeries. Just fix him. Make him as good as new, and for Gods sake, those things carved into his skin? Make as many of them vanish as you can.
Jasper didn't wake up for days. He was in such bad shape that he was kept heavily sedated so that the work to repair his injuries could be done while leaving him in as little pain as possible. Broken bones were set, torn places were stitched, and infections were treated. Edward didn't return. He threw himself into trying to find proof that Gunny had been involved. The DNA results had come back but they had no one to tie them to without getting a sample from Gunny, and that wasn't going to happen easily. When his phone rang almost a week after delivering Jasper to the hospital, he answered it with trepidation. Emmett had gone over with Rose to check on things and he hadn't heard anything for a couple of days.
"Edward, he's awake. You really need to come see him. Emmetts voice sounded stressed " "He's not dealing well with all the damage done to his body. The repairs to his groin and rectum went well, but he flipped out when he found the colostomy. He had to be restrained and we have him in soft restraints right now. He is also refusing to let us do plastic surgery to remove the largest word from his back. He remembers everything they did to him. Evidence was found that he was repeatedly sexually assaulted and though he has been started on a regime of preventative medications, he will need to be on a testing protocol for at least the next 6 months to a year.
We had been clean. We had gotten tested together and had continued to get tested together every six months the entire time we had been together. We had stayed faithful to each other,(a first for me), and we had enjoyed the benefits of monogamy. That had to have been devastating to Jasper, not only was he not used to submitting to bottoming, to have been forced and brutalized to the point that he required surgery to fix the damage had to have been horrifying. I just didn't know if I could handle seeing him so broken and devastated, or if I could face him with no results of my investigations.
We had no evidence against Gunny. Nothing to tie him to Jaspers disappearance, nothing to tie him to the body by my gate. Nothing to tie him to anything. Even if the DNA on the cigarettes were tied to him, all he had to say was that he was there writing a report or running traffic some time in the recent past. It looked like he was going to get away with it unless someone confessed.
I cant get loose right now. I'm working on the case and if I leave now I am worried that I would lead them to him.
"Cullen, that is bullshit and you know it! I have been here to see him several times with Rose, but he wants and needs to see you. He needs to know you are still there for him. Its crucial for his recovery. At least be man enough to come tell him you cant handle it, but don't leave him laying here in pain, wondering why you aren't coming to see him. It wasn't his fault, and he hung on through all that just too be able to see you, so don't you think you at least owe him a decent goodbye, if that is what you are going to do to him?"
I will come when I can. Don't guilt trip me about this. I know what I have to do and coddling him isn't going to make things better, it isn't going to catch the bastards who hurt him, its just going to get him all worked up and give him hope that he just come back here and pick up where he left off, and he cant. He needs to know he's got to leave because he has nothing left and if we give him any hope, he wont leave and he will die. Right now I haven't got a Goddamned thing on any of those bastards that took him, that means that they are out there and more than able to do it again or to just simply walk up and put a bullet in his head. He cant come back here. I cant leave yet, so he is just going to have to get over me and go. I will have him a place up in Portland when he is ready. Its been bought and put in his new name and his situation has been explained to my connections up there. He is essentially in a witness protection program, and if we keep in contact with him, we are going to put him in danger. I don't know how deep all of this goes, for all I know it could go all the way to the top, after all, there has to be a reason that Gunny has been able to keep his job all these years as well as covered for all the bullshit he has pulled. He needs to get angry and he needs to get motivated to want to leave this Godforsaken place and start over.
I hung up on the doc and sat there with my head in my hands. I knew I would end up going to see him before too long. I had to. I had to make him understand that he had to leave. Now that he was awake and going to survive, I needed to make sure he wasn't thinking he was going to come back here and do anything crazy. I had seen Gunny several times since we had rescued Jasper from his clutches, he smirked at me, knowing that he had won for now.
Jasper,(or J.D. as he had been told he was now named) was angry. He was restrained and every time he raised an objection to it, they sedated him back to sleep, saying that he was at risk of pulling out stitches or causing himself more harm by struggling and raising his blood pressure. He had tubes all over the place, cages that looked like something Frankenstein's monster should have around both of his knees holding them together, a bag where his guts used to be, and his thighs had been skint to repair his dick and his back. He was down a testicle, several teeth, and his jaw was wired shut so he couldn't even yell loudly, he could just make unintelligible growling noises that seemed to upset those working on him. Being restrained again had about sent him over the edge, and when his sounds of distress reached a fevered pitch and his blood pressure spiked to the point that they were afraid he was going to give his fragile brain a stroke, they sedated him and called in a psyche consult.
Weeks went by with small periods of alertness, where while his physical wounds were treated, his mental wounds were assessed, but he refused to talk to anyone other than to ask for Edward. He didn't eat. He simply lay there, allowing things to be done to and for him, not caring as his reconstructive surgeries were completed and the colostomy was removed and then the cages around his knees. He didn't object when a feeding tube was installed because he was refusing to eat and his weight loss had become so dramatic that there was no alternative. Medications for depression and sleep and were added to the pain medications, but they made no difference to the slight figure of a man laying tied to the bed in the private room. He just lay there day after day, staring at nothing, talking to no one, even his friend Emmett who came with his wife Rose to visit at least once a month until it became too painful for even them to see and they stopped coming. He was taken to a rehabilitation facility with locked doors and leather restraints where they began making him try to walk again. He didn't fight them, he didn't cooperate, he simply was.
He was sitting in a wheelchair in his room, tied in so he didn't find something to harm himself or try to leave. He was just staring out the window. It had been 6 months since he had been taken. Six months of hell. Six months of no word from Edward. Six months of feeling like he had been discarded like a piece of trash. He knew his tests had come back clear, and that he was close to being discharged from the hospital, but to what? His life was gone. His career was gone, even his identity was gone. He had been told he was in witness protection and that he was going to be relocated to Portland, but to what? What the hell was he going to do up there without Edward? That was their together plan.
He heard someone coming down the hall. He didn't recognize the footsteps, with the hard soles echoing on the tile floor. The nurses and techs as well as the doctors all wore soft soled shoes so as not to disturb the patients. The footsteps reached his room and stopped outside the doorway. He heard the intake of breath, and he knew it was someone who must have known him previously. Maybe Emmett had come to see him? It had been several months since even he had been by, and that hurt almost as bad as losing Edward. He knew he looked horrible. His hair was down well past his collar and lank. He was bone thin with a feeding tube still taped to his face because he still wouldn't eat, and a catheter still hanging out of him because he was restrained most of the time and wouldn't talk to anyone to tell them when he needed loose to use the urinal or anything else. He had been a less than pleasant patient lately and as such, he tended to get minimal care. He hadn't been bathed in days, so he stunk. He was left to his own devices, just sitting and staring out the window until noon when they would come and take him to physical therapy like he was an inmate.
Jasper?