Part II
By Mieren
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Quatre dropped the phone in his hands, unaware that it bounced off of his left foot. He turned blankly to Heero, who was typing feverishly on his laptop."Got it," Heero said before the blond could open his mouth. He was out of his chair and through the door before the others registered he was leaving. Wufei was the first to recover and follow. Trowa paused long enough to grab Quatre's arm and haul him along. They barely made it into the car before Heero sped off.
No one dared to speak as the Japanese boy broke every traffic law known to man in an attempt to reach Duo faster. He was the first out of the car after sending it skidding to a stop only inches away from crashing into a nondescript phone booth. He jerked the door open and stepped back, horror appearing on his usually emotionless face. Wufei took one glance at what had shocked him before freezing in place. Trowa looked like he was going to be sick. Quatre would have passed out had the brunette not caught him.
Inside of the phone booth was a scene that would haunt them in nightmares for the rest of their lives. Duo lay slouched in a corner, his head lying at an unnatural angle over a bloodied phone and his right arm pulled almost completely free from his body. The left side of his face was swollen and discolored, his cheek caved in and skin peeled back in numerous places deep enough to show bone. His chest had caved in on both sides, many ribs protruding from beneath his jacket. His right knee was bent in the wrong direction, as was his left elbow. The angle of his slumped posture gave away the break in mid-back. From head to foot, he was soaked in blood and a huge puddle of crimson surrounded him as well.
This time it was Wufei who came to his senses first. The Chinese boy moved forward uneasily and gently lifted the ragged form into his arms. Quatre snapped out of his shock at the movement.
"We shouldn't move him," he said weakly.
"He's already been moved," Wufei countered, circling towards the car. Trowa scrambled to open the door for him so he wouldn't have to jostle his cargo. "There's no way he could have gotten here or dialed the phone by himself. Besides, right now we need to get him to the doctors at your mansion."
At Wufei's last statement, the tension in the air visibly decreased. Duo was still alive, for the moment.
Quatre only nodded slowly, unmoving. Heero was already behind the wheel before Wufei and Trowa managed to maneuver the bloodied American into the back. Trowa actually had to pull the almost catatonic blond to the car, where the two of them piled into the front seat for fear of crowding Duo and Wufei in the back. On the way back, Heero drove at the same fanatical speeds, but this time was wary of sharp corners or sudden stops.
After a few minutes on the road, Trowa pilfered Quatre's cell phone and called ahead to warn the staff what they were bringing in. A small army was waiting outside when they pulled up, stretcher and almost a dozen surgeons standing by. Between them, they had Duo out of the car and out of sight within a matter of seconds, leaving behind four dazed pilots covered in blood.
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Fourteen hours passed without word from the doctors. Quatre kept himself busy pacing his mansion, circling the hallways endlessly with absolutely no idea where he was going. Trowa appeared to be in a coma, his eyes locked on some interesting point on the wall that only he could see. Wufei occupied himself by scaring the life out of the servants with a patented glare of death normally only used by Heero. The only one seeming to be carrying on as normal was Heero, who was typing away at his laptop. Wufei exploded at his behavior once before learning that the Japanese pilot was trying to hack into the main system to learn where Duo had been sent. Their superiors had apparently devised a failsafe system that even he couldn't hack into, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try. When he found out where Duo had gone, who had hurt him, there would be hell to pay. As it was, there was imminent danger of Heero taking out a better part of the country.
Pacing, vacant staring and typing all came to sudden halts when a surgeon finally wandered into the main room. He flopped into one of the armchairs in the room and took a breath to steady himself before announcing anything to the four impatient pilots.
"At the moment, he's alive," he began, waiting for the news to sink in. Heero didn't realize that he was looming over the doctor until he calmed down enough to understand that his best friend wasn't dead yet. Out of immediate danger from the deranged pilot, the surgeon continued. "Both his neck and back are broken badly. If he pulls through, he'll be a quadriplegic. All of his ribs were shattered. Something hit him with enough force to punch a hole in one of the gundams. Both of his lungs were punctured numerous times and had collapsed. His heart had a rib through it as well. It's a miracle that he made it back here. The left side of his skull was crushed and his jaw dislocated. As for the less serious things, we had to remove one kidney and most of his liver. They were crushed too badly to save. His right arm was dislocated and so roughly handled afterwards that we were lucky to be able to reattach it. His right knee and left arm are broken and his right hip dislocated. Whoever did this was strong and if I'm not mistaken, did it in only one or two blows."
"Impossible," Heero snapped.
"What it looks like," the surgeon continued as though he hadn't been interrupted. "Is that someone threw him with his right arm, causing the dislocation there, and slammed him into a wall or the ground two, maybe three, times. He might have been able to defend himself if he hadn't been drugged."
"Drugged?" Wufei echoed.
A shrug answered him. "We don't know what it is. There's a small mark on the inside of his elbow where a syringe was used. Whatever it was, there's no trace of it now and it doesn't appear to have done any lasting harm. In all likelihood, it was a sedative of some sort to keep him under control."
"Can we see him?" Quatre asked.
Another shrug. "If you'd like, but don't be upset if he doesn't wake up. At the moment, he's in a coma. Also, he's going to look pretty bad. Don't be surprised with the number of machines we've hooked him up to."
It was a silent group that was led into the small emergency room Quatre had had installed because of the danger involved with their line of work. What they found within the room was better than they had expected. Too fragile to place into casts yet, Duo lay motionless on a clean white bed. He was bound head to foot in bandages, only the tips of his fingers and parts of his face were showing. What little showed of his face was riddled with tubes. An artificial respirator was set up to ensure that he kept breathing. A heart monitor sat beside him and no less than seven IV's were hooked up to his arms. The left half of his face was discolored and puffy, his eye completely swollen shut and useless.
Heero stared at him for all of three seconds before pulling a chair to the side of the bed and seating himself. Everyone there knew better than to argue with his intent to stay beside Duo until he either recovered or died. Heero gasped and everyone clustered around the bed's edge. Duo's right eye had cracked open and was watching them with a decidedly glazed look. The corner of his mouth twitched upwards into the closest he could come to managing a smile. The tension left his face and he closed his eye again, returning to a more peaceful sleep than the one he had left only seconds before.
"I thought you said he was in a coma," Heero hissed. The surgeon backed away several paces and eyed the door nervously. No one who had seen Heero's temper in action before had any intention of ever seeing it again.
"He's a rotten faker," Wufei supplied, distracting Heero just long enough for the man to make a run for it.
For a moment, he thought he had made a fatal error in distracting the already distraught pilot. The cobalt gaze boring into his own obsidian caused his heart to skip several beats. Heero was going to hurt him. He was saved when Duo made a small noise in the back of his throat, instantly attracting the enraged pilot's attention. Though Wufei normally would have scoffed at the idea of retreating, a dishonorable act in itself, he didn't hesitate before sprinting after the doctor. Dishonorable or not, he had absolutely no intention of facing a pissed Heero.
For his part, Duo made a choked noise and coughed weakly around the tube in his throat. Heero watched him struggle in his sleep against the respirator, wondering if he should have one of the doctors remove it. After a few moments, the dilemma was solved for him as Duo issued an almighty hack and spit the tube out on his own. He coughed weakly several times before his breathing steadied. The other pilots could only stare at him in shock. Most of them had been hooked to a respirator at one time or another and knew full well the impossibility of removing the thick tube without a good deal of yanking and choked obscenities.
Muttering something about a 'longhaired baka who didn't have enough brains to fill a thimble' followed by a few more uncomplimentary phrases, Heero settled into a more comfortable position and locked his gaze on Duo. Quatre shrugged in something akin to relief and left to find something for the stoic pilot to eat. He knew perfectly well that the Japanese man would not move until Duo woke up again and there was no telling how long that would be. Trowa disappeared long enough to deposit Heero's laptop beside him before joining Quatre. Knowing Heero, he would want to continue his search for the name and location of Duo's target. The two pilots silently left, knowing that Duo would pull through after what they had seen. There only worries now were centered on how he and Heero would respond to his new condition.
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To Be Continued…
Things will get much worse before they get better. Aren't I evil? ^_^