In The Air Tonight, Part 5

- - -

With Vaughn gone, Jack took off his sport coat and carefully laid it down next to Sydney's wrapped body, covering the remains of her mirror to protect himself. Then he knelt down, checking her carotid artery for a pulse, which was there, but not beating as strongly or as regularly as he would have liked. Her breathing was shallow and labored and beads of sweat covered the forehead of Sydney's otherwise pale face.

Clenching his jaw in anger and pain at seeing his daughter in this condition, he pulled back the blankets to assess Sydney's other injuries. She appeared to have at least three broken ribs, a broken wrist and maybe more. She was bruised, scraped and contused, and there were several cuts that appeared to still have glass shards in them. Jack didn't dare move her or bandage her wounds for fear of unseen glass that could be pushed deeper and cause more damage. Things were already bad enough. With the fever she was forming, Jack was almost certain Sydney had sustained internal injuries as well. He could only hope the ambulance would arrive soon.

- - -

Vaughn flicked the light switch on the wall of the bathroom, suddenly bathing the room with harsh white light from over the sink. The image of Will's bloody body haphazardly dumped in the bathtub instantly brought another image to mind: police photographs from the crime scene of Daniel Hecht's murder.

Had Sydney seen this!? he wondered, his heart breaking, knowing how much it would have affected her, would have reminded her. He figured she must have; it appeared that the fight between herself and Francie ~ no, AG Dorran, he reminded himself ~ took place all over the house.

Turning, Vaughn opened the closet door and removed clean pillowcases and new towels. He placed them on the floor next to the toilet and then reached over to try and position Will to make his wound more accessible.

The gash in Will's side was smooth and deep; blood continued to spill out and dribble down his side, staining the tub a vivid red. Tossing the already bloody towels he'd used earlier aside, Vaughn quickly packed the wound with the smooth cotton pillowcases and then used the towels to cover them. He exerted gentle pressure and watched as small spots of red formed around the edges of his palms.

Vaughn was alarmed at the loss of blood Sydney's friend had apparently sustained and hoped to God that Will could hold on until help arrived.

- - -

Outside, two silent ambulances pulled up in front of the house, while three unmarked black vans surrounded the house on other sides. Agents dressed in black gear streamed from the vans, spreading out over the grounds, looking for other suspects…all except for one. Eric Weiss came bursting in through the front door, yelling, "Mike?" He skidded to a stop as the devastation around him sank in. A note of urgency and panic tinged his voice. "Mike!? Where are you, man?"

Not bothering to turn around, Vaughn answered, "In here."

Eric ran to the open doorway of the bathroom. The sight he found shocked him into silence. Vaughn with blood in his hair, on his shirt, his pants, his jacket. From his vantage point, Eric could even see a piece of glass sticking out of a seeping slash on Vaughn's right thigh a couple of inches above the knee. He looked like he had just been through combat. But Vaughn appeared to be aware of none of this; his sole focus seemed to be on whatever he was pressing on. Stepping into the room, a tinny taste filled Weiss' mouth, the kind that usually preceded vomiting. Hitching in a shaky breath, not wanting to see what he knew he would see, he stepped to the right of Vaughn to see the bloody body of…. Wait. Was that… Will Tippin!?

"Jesus, Vaughn," Eric gasped. "What happened here?"

"I don't know," Vaughn replied. "I don't know if the double did this before she attacked Sydney, or if he tried to intervene during the attack… but I'm guessing it was before, based the amount of blood lost."

Softly Eric asked, "Where's Sydney?"

Vaughn swallowed hard, trying not to lose control now that Eric and the others were here. "She's…she's in the bedroom…with Jack."

"Jack's here!? How did he know?" inquired Eric, astounded.

"I called him…right after I…"

"Hung up on Kendall… Yeah, I heard about that…" said Eric, smirking, trying to bring a little bit of levity to a horrific situation. "Trust me, everyone in the Ops Center heard about that…"

"I'm sure…" agreed Vaughn.

Suddenly, a medic appeared behind Eric. Peering between the two men into the bathtub, He asked Vaughn, "What have we got here?"

"Stab wound," Vaughn replied. "It's clean, but it's deep and he's lost a lot of blood. Has a pulse, but it's very weak."

The medic nudged Weiss out of the way and lifted the makeshift pressure bandage to inspect the wound. "Hmmm, doesn't appear to have hit any major arteries… punctured the liver, perhaps a kidney.. We're gonna have to move him, stat." He turned and spoke into a walkie-talkie attached to a strap across his chest. "We're gonna need two gurneys and two bags of hemoglobin, stat." Then he reached across and moved Vaughn's hands out of the way, saying, "I'll take it from here."

Vaughn pulled his hands away from the pressure dressing, his whole palms covered in blood. He pushed himself to stand and was about to move toward the door to check on Sydney when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Uh, buddy…don't you think maybe you should wash some of that off?" Eric asked. He'd never seen his friend like this…so…out of touch. But then, Sydney had never been in this kind of danger before, either, and he knew that weighed heavily on Vaughn's mind.

Dazed, Vaughn looked down at his hands, not really seeing them. "Oh, yeah. I guess." He turned the tap, leaving a reddish smear, and then ran his hands under the cool water, watching the water turn pink and then swirl as it was sucked down the drain. That's someone's life I'm washing off…someone's life flowing down the drain…, he thought feverishly. Sydney's, Will's, the real Francie's… Suddenly he felt responsible for the death of them all.

Eric reached around Vaughn and shut off the tap, handing Mike a hand towel. Now that the excess blood was gone, Eric could see that Vaughn had several of his own cuts creasing his palms. "Come on, Mike. You need to snap out of this; Sydney needs you."

"Sydney…" Vaughn breathed and then turned the corner to the doorway of her bedroom, just in time to see the EMTs securing the belts over Sydney's pale, still form. A thick cushion lay beneath her.

Jack walked up to Vaughn and addressed him directly. His lips were pursed, his face grim. "She's got a big piece of glass wedged in her back between her shoulder blades. They were afraid to remove it here, so they cut a hole in the cushion to pad around it until they can get her to the hospital." Nodding once to acknowledge Weiss' presence he continued, "She's got five broken ribs, a broken wrist and multiple internal injuries. Still, at this point, there is some optimism that she can make it."

"There's optimism she can make it!?" repeated Vaughn incredulously. "What the hell does that mean!?"

"It means," Jack answered in his cool, succinct way, "That until they can assess the extent of her internal injuries…they just don't know."

As they wheeled Sydney's stretcher down the hallway, Vaughn stepped up his pace to catch up, telling the medic, "I'm going with you."

"I'm sorry, sir, but you…"

"I'm going with you." Vaughn repeated, determined. He would not take no for an answer.

The medic began to protest, but Jack came up behind him saying, "No, he needs to go; he also has sustained injuries." To Vaughn he said, "I'll take care of everything here; we'll get your statement later. Go and get yourself looked at."

Vaughn nodded, grateful. As much as he didn't understand and sometimes intensely disliked Jack Bristow, their mutual love for Sydney was one common ground they could always agree upon.