A/N: Okay, I knew I'd have some complaints about my killing Callen off, but man! - I didn't expect your theories. A lot of you wanted to believe it was a dream on Kensi's part - and one wondered if it was an undercover op.
Well, I don't want to give anything away...so here's Chapter 11 for you!
P.S. Thanks to Rebel Magnus, DizzyDrea, terken, SP SVU B, vampiregirl2009 wolfgirl 77769, cdfuller21, Allie, TwilightPony21, and ChlollieRockz for reviewing! And thanks for all your birthday wishes!
Chapter 11: Two Days Later
The lights were way too bright.
Kensi groaned and squeezed her eyes shut, rectifying the mistake she'd made in opening them in the first place. She drew in a deep breath. She hated hospitals.
Wait a minute.
Why was she even in the hospital? What was she doing in bed? Why could she feel an IV needle in her hand? Why was there an oxygen mask over her face? And why (she added to her growing list of questions) did it hurt so much to breathe?
"I think she's coming out of it," someone said from next to her. The voice was unquestionably familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. She could definitely recognize the immense relief in it, though.
Come on! she groaned inwardly. Don't tell me it was that bad. That would really screw up her tough girl reputation big time.
"She is?" Another familiar voice, going from soft to loud, indicating that the speaker was coming towards her.
Oh, man, she groused. It really was that resigned herself to enduring the concerns and "How are you feeling?"s of her anxious teammates for the next couple of days, at least. Anything that was bad enough to land her unconscious in the hospital with an oxygen mask over her face and two or more people in the room with her would almost certainly entail all of that – and more.
Then she got the shock of her life.
"Kensi?"
That voice she would know anywhere. That voice she would be able to identify even through the heaviest and haziest of fogs. That voice was now as much a part of her as her own identity.
But how the hell was this possible?
Her pulse sped up, against her permission. Kensi could hear it because a shrill beeping sound was accompanying her every heartbeat.
Wonderful. So she was hooked up to a heart monitor, too. Could this day get any worse?
"Kensi, shh!" that same voice said, soothingly. "It's all right. You're okay. Relax."
Kensi did. His voice had a calming effect on her, and her heart resumed its normal pace. Kensi could almost feel the relief radiating from the people in the room – or, more accurately, the person standing right next to her – who also happened to be holding her hand.
That still didn't clear up the mystery, though.
Forcing herself to open her eyes, Kensi squinted against the glare of the hospital lights and tried to stare through her reflexively blinking eyelids.
Vision was blurry at first, but after the first few blinks, it cleared up somewhat. A face came into focus, hovering anxiously above her.
Her heart went into overdrive again.
"Kenz…" he began.
No. She recoiled from him, trying to wrench her hand away from his – unsuccessfully, for he was holding it rather firmly. Not uncomfortably, but not easy to get out of in her weakened state.
This was not possible. He'd died…she'd seen him die…she'd gone to his funeral…
And then what?
Her mind drew a blank. What had happened after the funeral?
"Kensi, it's us." Another familiar face swam into view – this one with blond hair and a scruffy chin. "It's okay, you're safe. We're all here."
Kensi blinked up at Deeks' concerned face. What did he mean, 'all of them'?
As her pulse gradually slowed again, she cautiously turned her head, taking in her surroundings.
Oh, man.
Deeks was right; everyone was here. There were Eric and Nell, standing together, keeping their distance, giving her space; there was Sam, smiling at her from not too far away; there was Nate, leaning against the wall with Hetty next to him; and there was Renko, sitting cross-legged in the chair and looking at her. On her immediate right was Deeks, every inch the concerned partner.
And on her left, letting go of her hand – no doubt he'd felt her feeble attempts to pry away from his grasp – was G Callen.
And – big surprise – her pulse started racing again.
Callen glanced worriedly at the accelerating heart monitor.
"Kenz, it's okay," he soothed. "It's me."
When she just looked at him with the oddest expression – like a mixture of confusion and incredulity – he started to wonder, with a plummeting heart, if perhaps she had experienced some memory loss. Or, the more painful option was that she simply didn't want him there.
Kensi reached up to lift the oxygen mask away from her face – but Deeks' hand stopped her.
"Don't do that," he told her.
She scowled fiercely at him, a challenge in her eyes. Don't tell me what to do, Marty Deeks. He chuckled and removed his hand.
"Okay, have it your way."
She did. Without further ado, she lifted the mask, freeing her mouth and nose. Now she could finally talk.
"What happened?" she queried, avoiding Callen's probing gaze – indeed, she was avoiding even looking at him.
"You got shot, Kensi," Sam informed her, walking over. "Twice. During the op, with Gordon, remember?"
Kensi frowned. Yes, she did remember the op…but it was Callen who got shot, not her…
She warily turned her gaze to the left, looking straight into the ice blue eyes she thought she'd never see again.
"What are you doing here?" she blurted out.
For the briefest of moments, she could have sworn he looked hurt – but then, being the consummate professional he was, he concealed it.
"Do you want me to leave?" he asked.
Kensi shook her head slightly, trying to think. She was clearly missing something here.
"Wrong question," she admitted. "I meant, how are you alive?"
He was confused by the question – she could see it in the quirk of his eyebrow, the sudden wary tensing of his features.
"What do you mean?" he inquired. "I wasn't hurt, Kenz; you were." He exhaled. "You had us all worried for a minute there."
Now this was just getting bizarre. Since when had she been shot? Kensi screwed her eyes shut again, flinching away from the whirling vortex of bewilderment that was assaulting her. This was just too much to take.
That was when she realized that the growing discomfort in her chest and lower abdomen was actually getting quite painful. She cringed at how sore she felt.
"I believe Miss Blye needs a moment to herself," Hetty suggested.
Obligingly, they all left the room, leaving Hetty alone with Kensi. The older woman walked over to Kensi.
"We'll come back later, dear," she said in her matronly way. "Meanwhile, I'll get the nurse to up your morphine."
Not knowing how else to respond, Kensi nodded minutely, still trying to make sense of the illogical world she'd woken up in.
Callen rubbed his eyes absent-mindedly as he tried to sort through his muddled thoughts.
The first thing he thought of was the fact that he could relax again. He didn't think he'd been even the slightest bit at ease for over a week.
He tried to get the picture of Kensi bleeding on the ground out of his head. It almost felt like he'd been the one who was shot, who was slipping away…he'd known what Simmons was going to do, but he'd been too slow to stop it.
He hadn't managed to save her – again.
Breathing deeply, Callen leaned against the wall, trying to look nonchalant, even though on the inside he was anything but. For the last two days he'd been reliving his greatest nightmare, fearing that he was going to lose the one woman he cared most for, for the second time in his life.
When Sharon had been shot, he'd thought that was the worst day of his life. Now he knew he'd been wrong.
The worst day of his life was the day before yesterday, when Kensi had been shot.
The two shots uncovered a deep-seated fear he'd kept buried for years now. He saw, as if in slow motion, Kensi toppling to the ground, bleeding far too much out of the two bullet holes in her. He wanted to cry out, to say something to ease the panic in her wide brown eyes, but his breath had left him; his mouth was dry and silent.
He whipped his head back to Simmons' impassive face as the latter swung his gun around to shoot him now, while Gordon watched in glee.
Callen knew he would never be able to dodge the shot, and he wasn't sure he wanted to, after what was almost certainly a fatal injury had been inflicted on Kensi. He didn't think he could bear to live through that a second time.
All this passed through his mind in the blink of an eye – not enough time to move even if he wanted to – and if he stood there for another blink, he would almost definitely die.
But the next instant brought backup. Sam, Deeks, Nate, and Renko all charged in, announcing their presence. Their entrance cleared his head, and, acting on reflex, he ducked, throwing himself to the ground, as bullets flew overhead.
When the gunfight stopped there was not a villain alive – the agents had done their job well.
But that didn't erase the nightmare that was still unfolding.
Deeks rushed to Kensi, tearing off his shirt to staunch the bleeding of her wounds, while Sam roared to Eric for an ambulance. Nate and Renko employed a professional detachment until they had scouted the back.
"Ambulance is on its way," Sam informed them tersely. "Hang in there, Kensi." He exchanged a short glance with Callen, whose normally calm eyes betrayed his great fear.
At the hospital, the doctors ordered them all away as they rushed Kensi to the operating room. Callen's ears rang with the medical jargon.
"Female Caucasian, late twenties. Two GSW's to the chest and lower abdomen."
"Clear OR 3!"
"Hang two units of B positive."
"Page Dr. Flemming!"
"BP's dropping."
"She's going into V-fib – we need to get her to surgery stat!"
And so on and so forth. Callen didn't even understand half of what they were saying. All he knew was that Kensi was in very bad shape.
She'd made it through surgery, but she wasn't out of the woods yet. The doctors couldn't say if she would wake up – if she did, they said, then she would have a better chance of recovery.
"And if she doesn't?" Nate inquired, afraid to hear the answer.
The doctor looked grave as he replied, "Then it means her body has shut down and can't recover from her injuries."
Callen had spent the last two days in an agony of waiting, longing for Kensi to open her eyes. When she finally did, it was like the sun had come out. He could breathe again.
She still had a long road ahead of her, but the doctors were optimistic. Now, the thing that had Callen worried was the fact that she couldn't seem to understand why he was here.
"How are you, Mr. Callen?"
Callen glanced up to see a familiar short figure drop down into the seat beside him. She handed him the cup she was carrying.
"Here," she said. "Coffee to soothe the nerves."
Callen accepted it, but didn't drink it, instead leaving it on his lap.
"Why's she acting this way, Hetty?" he asked.
Hetty shrugged. "She's been through a great ordeal, Mr. Callen. It's understandable for her to be a little disoriented. I'm afraid it will be some time before she's fully herself again."
"She almost didn't make it." Even as he said it, Callen was amazed – and horrified – by how close Kensi had come to death.
"Indeed, Mr. Callen," Hetty agreed solemnly. She sighed. "I must admit, this morning, when she flatlined…I thought it was the end."
Callen nodded, seemingly absently, but inside he was shrinking away from the memory. To hide his anxiety, he took a sip of his coffee.
The loud, frenzied clamor of several machines beeping rapidly claimed all their attention. Callen, Sam, and Deeks rushed into the room, where Nell had hurriedly jumped up from the chair she'd been sitting in to stare uncertainly through wide, fearful eyes at Kensi's shaking body.
An instant later, trained to respond immediately to such a situation, the doctors flooded into the room while the nurses attempted to forcibly remove them from the ward. They stopped trying to persuade the adamant agents, however, when Hetty appeared. Giving up, they turned their attention to helping the doctors.
"She's seizing – give me four milligrams of diazepam, stat!" a doctor called.
The drug was quickly prescribed by one of the nurses and handed to the doctor, who injected it into Kensi's IV.
The effect was immediate; Kensi stopped shaking, her body growing still.
But any breath of relief the agents might draw was cut off when Kensi's heart monitor flatlined with a long, loud whine. When he heard it, Callen felt like his own heart had stopped.
"V-fib!" the doctor declared. "Paddles," she ordered.
The first shock caused Kensi's body to arch upwards, but it didn't restart her heart.
Sam looked on anxiously.
The second jolt was much the same as the first.
"Come on, Kensi," Deeks muttered, half to himself.
The third attempt was more successful, causing the heart tone to spike a few times before leveling out again.
Almost there, Callen thought to himself, silently urging her to fight just a little harder.
The fourth try, again, caused no change.
Nell had tears running freely down her face. She was absolutely sure Kensi was going to die.
And finally, the fifth charge succeeded in pulling Kensi's heart back into its normal rhythm.
"Pulse has stabilized," a nurse reported.
The doctor, heaving a sigh of relief, replaced the paddles.
And, unnoticed by anyone, Henrietta Lange breathed her own puff of relief and quietly thanked heaven for bringing their agent back to them.
"I think," Hetty said, bringing Callen back to the present, "it is clear that something is bothering Kensi about your presence here." Her face assumed a wry expression. "Judging from what I've seen, she seems to be under the impression that you were the one who got shot, not her."
Callen looked puzzled. "But that makes no sense," he objected.
"Actually," interjected Nate as he came over, "it's quite plausible that while she was unconscious, her mind generated a vivid dream, an alternate reality in which you were the one who was shot."
"And did I die in that reality?" Callen asked, half-sarcastically. The notion was…well, bizarre, to say the least.
"Probably," Nate admitted. "At least, Kensi seems to think you're dead. That would explain why she reacted so oddly to you just now."
"But now that she's woken up, she should know that that's not true, right?" Nell, who had been listening to the conversation, queried.
"Not necessarily," Nate disagreed. "Kensi was unconscious for two days, and the brain is a powerful thing. In her mind, she might possibly have lived every minute of those days in the alternate reality where Callen died, and now that she's woken up to the real world, she's finding it difficult to accept the truth."
"Why?" Sam wanted to know. "If I thought Callen was dead and then I woke up and found out he's still alive, I'd be more than happy to accept it."
"That's not the point, Sam," Nate said patiently. "Kensi's mind has created such a powerful dream that it is very real to her. It was her only reality for two days. Now that she sees what really happened, she's understandably shocked and confused. She can't accept that the past two days have only existed in her own imagination."
"But she will eventually, right?" Eric inquired worriedly.
"Eventually, yes," Nate replied.
"Why do you think this happened, Nate?" Hetty inquired.
Nate shrugged. "There are many factors that could account for why she created her own reality. Stress, trauma, emotional turmoil…"
Callen might have imagined that Nate glanced sideways at him as he said that last one, but somehow he doubted it.
"Whatever it was, she needs time to come to terms with the 'new' reality," Nate finished.
Now Callen was sure it wasn't his imagination – the operational psychologist looked right at him.
"Maybe it would help if someone close to her went in and explained everything slowly to her," Nate suggested.
Callen raised an eyebrow.
"Not you," Nate added quickly. "The source of her confusion is you – having you explain it to her might make things worse." He turned his gaze to Deeks. "But maybe her partner will be able to sort things out."
Said LAPD liaison nodded in agreement. Then, without a word, he rose and entered Kensi's room.
A/N: So...guess my record's NOT broken after all - Callen didn't stay dead. You can thank the fact that I am a permanently incurable optimist for that. That being said, I'm afraid this "twist" didn't turn out as surprising or as "twisty" as I'd hoped - because you guys apparently are optimists too, and guessed that it was a dream. Way to spoil the surprise, people.
No episode references today - but I'm sure you've noticed the parallels between the scenes of Callen-got-shot and Kensi-got-shot. I purposely wrote it like that so it would make more sense - you know, because Kensi's subconscious would have picked up on some of what was going on around her.