CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sitting on the sofa while Sam rummaged for the blade he needed, Callen couldn't help but feel apprehensive. His arm already hurt enough, and it went against every fibre of his being to appear vulnerable in front of Sam. His mouth was dry when he spoke. "I hope you know what you're doing."
"Well enough." Sam came to join him on the sofa, and Callen examined his face to see if he was being sarcastic. Seeing his partner's calm focus, Callen felt only slightly reassured. Sam was well-trained, he knew. Hell, his medical knowledge had saved Callen's life more than once. But, here in the quiet house, it wasn't quite the same as emergency first aid in the field, and with some uncomfortable introspection, Callen realised that what he largely felt was humiliation. He had been subjected to prolonged and methodical abuse – he shied away from the word torture – while he was helpless to do anything about it, and the resultant injuries were all too visible as well as a considerable hindrance on his capabilities in the field. He wasn't one to take well to being dependent on others, and he hated to be 'looked after' just as much as he hated being reminded of what he had suffered. It had been bad enough to wake to the IV in his arm and another bandage on his leg, and know that Sam had managed to do all that while he lay unconscious. Now he had to let Sam close to the very worst of his injuries.
Sam took a cushion from the back of the sofa and placed it on Callen's knees, inviting him to rest his arm on it.
"Just…" Callen swallowed.
"What?" Sam pressed. "Don't cut your arm off by mistake?" His attempt at humour failed miserably as Callen paled a ghostly grey. "Hey!" Sam snapped. "Don't pass out on me again."
Callen swallowed again and shook his head.
"What did he do to it, G?" Sam began to carefully cut the damp plaster over Callen's palm. Quick glances up at his partner as he worked showed Callen still pale, his eyes fixated on the knife near his broken fingers.
His face ashen, Callen murmured, "You don't want to know." He didn't know if he could face even trying to tell anyone what had really happened on the boat, but he could feel sanity slowly ebbing away from him the longer he kept everything bottled up inside. Sam paused from what he was doing for a moment to squeeze a hand on Callen's shoulder, trying in vain to meet his partner's eyes.
"Wouldn't have asked if I didn't." Sam watched intently as a haunted look crossed Callen's face, and finally his eyes rose to meet Sam's.
"He…" Callen baulked. Silence hung in the air like a punctuation mark. Sam went back to work, sensing Callen would be more likely to talk if he wasn't being watched.
Staring hollowly at nothing, Callen eventually continued in a low voice, almost as if he were talking to himself. "One… joint at a time." Bile rose in his throat at the memory. He clenched his teeth, rallying himself to continue. "He had a… table of weapons. Took his time. Hours. He wanted…" Callen paused for a long time. "He wanted me to… suffer. To lose my hand. Painfully, and slowly." His voice was little more than a whisper now. "Like he lost his."
Sam knew that Callen wasn't unfamiliar with being tortured, and so he knew that for him to be this affected by what Janvier had done it had to have been very bad indeed. Callen rarely opened up about his past, and when he did, it was passing anecdotes, fragmented thoughts that could just as well have been fabricated stories to encourage others to talk, though Sam always suspected there was truth behind them. He had gathered some idea from things Nate had said over the years, and more to the point, things that Hetty hadn't said, but he still had very little to go on regarding Callen's more traumatic experiences from his time before NCIS.
"At the beach house… You didn't say any of this. You seemed okay… I didn't realise…" Sam felt guilty that he hadn't probed further into Callen's casual dismissal of what had happened in his time on the boat, but Callen merely shrugged half-heartedly. His natural inclination had always been to box away any signs of vulnerability or weakness, to get on with things. But as time wore on, and his hand continued to trouble him both with the pain and the restrictions it placed on his abilities in the field, as the man responsible remained at large and wreaking havoc for those around him, as the grief and guilt for Joelle went unanswered for, Callen was finding it harder and harder to lock away the horrors of what had happened and carry on as normal.
Sam felt the tension vibrating in Callen's muscles, and wished he still knew how to alleviate it. "I'm sorry," he said calmly, though inside he was raging on Callen's behalf.
"Not your fault." Callen let out a deep and shuddering breath, flashing a quick glance at Sam to check for any signs of pity. Finding none, he struggled on, tiredness as well as an unusually vulnerable need to unburden the internal horrors causing him to be more loquacious than usual. "He stopped… what he was doing… early. Because I signed in the video… He knew you'd find me earlier than he had planned. He wanted to spend… days…" Callen choked on the words, unable to say more, hardly able to even think of the possibility of Janvier's obsessive torture dragging on longer than the many hours that it had.
"That was down to Eric. He recognised you signing… You gave us some leads to follow. Eric was able to work out where the signal from the video was coming from."
"He's probably the reason I still have a hand," Callen whispered when he could bring himself to talk again.
"You should tell him." Sam paused. "He's beating himself up because he got it wrong today. He's blaming himself for us not getting Janvier."
Callen digested this for a long time, whilst trying to ignore the unpleasant sensation of Sam cutting through the plaster.
"Do you blame him?" Sam asked eventually when Callen didn't speak.
"No," Callen sighed. He was aware of Sam raising his eyebrows, not fully believing him, but he wasn't sure he could say out loud what he had barely yet admitted to himself. "If anyone messed up, it was me," he explained in the end. "I had my chance, and I blew it. I can't blame Eric for something I didn't manage to do myself. Which I've repeatedly not managed to do myself. Granger was right, all those years ago. I blew it then, and I've blown it again now."
"Guilt won't help," Sam told him firmly. "Janvier is a master at his craft. We're playing catch-up on something he's undoubtedly been planning for a long time."
"Well, it needs to stop… We need to get ahead of his game. Before anyone else gets hurt, or worse," Callen stated darkly.
"Almost done," Sam said eventually, cutting carefully through the final bits of flaking plaster up near Callen's elbow. With an incision now along the full length of the cast, he was able to gently prise it apart, and Callen eased his arm gingerly out. Sam discarded the remnants on the floor and wordlessly began to remove the padded wrapping underneath, watching as Callen fisted his left hand and pressed his knuckles hard against his mouth, trying to stave off both pain and revulsion at the sight of his mangled arm once again visible.
Sam had used the time while Callen was unconscious to prepare some torn strips of shirt, boiled in a pan on the stove, that he used as sterile cloths to bathe Callen's arm in warm water to remove the stuck pieces of dressing from the seeping wounds.
"You do know that was my favourite shirt," Callen objected, weakly attempting some humour to distract himself from the stinging pain as Sam went on to use all the antiseptic wipes from the first aid kit to thoroughly clean the many abrasions and lacerations.
Sam felt physically sick at the pain he was causing his partner, and he covered it with a grin. "Well, that's good, because you'll be wearing the rest of it for a few hours." Despite the big Seal being as gentle as he could, Callen winced when Sam wrapped a clean towel thickly round his arm and hand to stabilise and protect it, before using the remainder of the shirt tied into a makeshift sling. "There," Sam said, surveying his handiwork with satisfaction. He helped Callen put the hoody back on over the temporary solution, zipping it up with his injured arm immobilised safely inside.
"Forgive me if I don't thank you," Callen grumbled in pain.
"You might not thank me now," Sam chided, though gently because he could see that his efforts had really hurt his partner, "But at least we've minimised any infection from all those wounds."
"Yeah." Leaning back against the sofa with his eyes closed, Callen tried to hide from Sam how faint he was feeling. The last thing he wanted was Sam trying to pierce holes in him with needles again. Getting the plaster off had been trial enough.
"Want something to eat?" Having cleared up the mess by the sofa, Sam left Callen to recompose himself while he assembled the meagre contents of some of the cupboards into a makeshift meal.
After a while, Callen joined him in the kitchen. "Funny time for it," he said. They hadn't eaten anything since lunchtime so in spite of it being the middle of the night the two agents quietly ate together, and Sam boiled the kettle again for another warm drink. Callen needed to keep his fluids up, and Sam was sure he'd be fighting a losing battle if he suggested reinstating the IV.
When they were done, Sam knew that they ought to try and sleep for a few hours. He protested when Callen insisted he should take the bedroom, but in the end his partner assured him with his arm now secured in a sling he'd be most comfortable on the sofa where he could sit rather than lie down, and seeing the sense in that, Sam relented. He handed Callen one of his own personal weapons, which he had liberated earlier from the safe hidden in the bedroom closet, and Callen closed his left hand around the familiar gun with gratitude.
Truth be told, Callen didn't expect to sleep much more that night, between the pain and the nightmares, and he shooed Sam off down the hall with relief. He needed some time to himself to decompress after this latest ordeal. He passed the rest of the night dozing uncomfortably, interspersed with long bouts of sitting quietly, worrying about Connor, thinking fruitlessly through plans of action, willing his body to heal.
As the greyness outside turned from night to something more definably morning, he set the kettle to boil again, cursing once more the lack of anything to put in the hot water to drink. While he was filling the two mugs, there was a knock at the door, and Callen froze, then he remembered resignedly that the doctor was due. Cautiously, gun in hand, he looked through the peep hole, and there sure enough was Dr Laura, balancing three steaming takeaway cups in one hand while she supported an ominously large bag over her shoulder with the other. Callen invited her in, brushing off her apologies for not being able to get there sooner, and wedged the gun in his belt so he could accept the offered coffee gratefully. He led the way to the lounge, apologising over his shoulder.
"I'm sorry this is becoming an unpleasant habit."
"I understand the situation is still not resolved," Dr Laura commented, noting his arm tucked away inside the hoody and how carefully he moved.
"No," Callen affirmed shortly, darkness clouding his eyes.
"And are we… safe.. here?" That he was carrying a weapon had not gone unnoticed either.
"As safe as anywhere," Callen muttered.
"Best be getting this sorted so you can get back on it then," Dr Laura said briskly. Callen couldn't hide his relief at her manner. The last thing he needed was to waste precious time and energy convincing a doctor to patch him up so that he could continue to work. With a smile to cover the unease he always felt around medical personnel, he offered her a permanent support role as part of his team.
"Yeah, about that," she responded, helping him to ease his arm out of the hoody and makeshift sling. She started to unwrap the protective towel. "I don't actually enjoy making a habit out of this sort of thing." It took all her effort to keep her face impassive when Callen's arm was revealed. In some ways, with his fingers no longer askew at unnatural angles, it didn't look as bad as the first time she had seen it – but in others, with the many broken bones causing such pain and swelling and the bruising and flesh wounds raw and angry, aggravated by the wet cast, it looked much, much worse. It went against all her compassion and training to continue to treat him in secret when she knew what he really needed was specialist medical care.
"I'm sorry," Callen apologised sincerely. "And I'm very grateful," he added quickly, sensing the need to ward off any suggestions of hospitals at the pass.
"Oh, you are, are you?" Sam sauntered into the room, nodding a greeting to Dr Laura whilst continuing to bait Callen. "Grateful to her, but not to me, your long-suffering partner who has patched you up more times than I can count?"
"Gentlemen, please," Dr Laura interjected as Callen started to indignantly retort in response, but she welcomed Sam lightening the mood, for Marty hadn't been kidding when he had warned her that her unofficial patient wasn't the easiest to deal with. She pointed Callen in the direction of the couch, bringing her colossal bag with her. Callen took the opportunity before she started touching his arm and muddling his thoughts with pain to beg her not to cast it again, but he was over-ruled by both the doctor and his overly protective partner.
"Two against one isn't fair," he muttered, but he placed his arm out on the offered cushion and conceded to allow Dr Laura to attend to it once more.
A/N: I apologise profusely. My life got turned upside down by a severe concussion/TBI (traumatic brain injury) in the first week of January. Months on, I am only just returning to much in the way of 'normal life'... (Seriously, TV does not portray head injuries anything like accurately enough!) I haven't been able to spend time using any screens (computer, TV, phone...) much at all, and to be honest I completely forgot fanfiction and this mammoth story even existed..!
So it is with come guilt that I return. That last remaining chapter (not THE last chapter - that had been written a year or more ago...) is more or less penned out. Pencilled out anyway - I have got back into writing recently via good old paper and pencil. I feel confident enough now that I will be able to finish it to be able to start posting again... Some editing is obviously still needed to bridge the old and the new, and make sure I haven't made any brain-injury blunders...!
It anyone is still out there reading this - I am truly sorry - I hope you enjoy xx