Journey Through the Past- Chapter 11
Jim Brass and Nick Stokes entered Desert Palm Hospital intent on interviewing Officer Jenkins about Grissom's abduction. It had been almost a full day since the Graveyard Shift Supervisor had been taken, and both Brass and Stokes had been informed by Catherine just a few hours earlier about Hodges' findings. Immediately, Brass had uniforms guarding the injured police officer. No one with the exception of the doctors and nurses were allowed to get near the man. The detective was able to justify the guards as a form of "protection" as he was the only survivor save Undersheriff McKeen. It was fairly obvious to both Stokes and Brass that Jenkins contributed to Grissom's kidnapping, and they didn't want anything to happen to him before they could find out who had given him his marching orders.
As Nick and Brass entered the third floor surgical wing, they spotted Dr. Taylor rounding the corner. He had obviously just gotten out of surgery and as he turned, he found the detective and CSI approaching him.
Flashing his credentials, Captain Brass smiled at the surgeon, recognizing him as the doctor who had worked on Grissom. "Captain Jim Brass, Las Vegas PD. Dr. Taylor, I believe you were Dr. Gil Grissom's attending physician when he was here. Are you also Officer Jenkins attending?"
The doctor nodded his head wearily and said, "Yes, I am. What can I help you with? Officer Jenkins is just being wheeled out of the operating room and is currently in recovery."
"First, Dr. Taylor, how serious are Officer Jenkins' injuries and what is his condition?" asked Nick.
"Well, he suffered gunshots to his left shoulder and arm, one through his thigh, and a bullet grazed his right side. Apparently when he fell, he hit his head and sustained a moderate concussion. This has caused some swelling to his cerebral cortex. Officer Jenkins did suffer significant blood loss. Right now he is in serious but guarded condition. Taken separately, none of his injuries are life-threatening, but the combination of these injuries ups the ante," reported the physician.
"Thank you, doctor. We'd like to talk to him as soon as possible," said a determined Jim Brass.
"I'll see what I can do. My primary concern is my patient, but I do understand that a crime has been committed," nodded the doctor.
"Yes, we believe that the same perpetrators who attacked Dr. Grissom a few days ago have now abducted him. We're hoping that Officer Jenkins can give us some more details about the perps. Is there anything we should know about Grissom's condition? We know that you released him on the condition that he had bed rest. Obviously, that's not happening," said Nick.
Dr. Taylor took a moment to reflect on what he could remember about Grissom's injuries. "Obviously if Dr. Grissom's injuries were very serious, I would not have released him from the hospital. Still, I wasn't entirely comfortable letting him go. I would have preferred for him to stay at least two or three days."
Pursing his lips, he continued, "We were able to set his wrist and it was casted so that injury is pretty much protected unless the cast is removed prematurely. He had a slight concussion which will obviously worsen with any kind of blow to the head. He could experience double vision, headaches, and even hallucinations. I could go on with the ribs and his shoulder injury, but you get the idea."
Nodding, an impatient Brass replied, "Yeah, we get the idea, Doc, which why we would like to see Jenkins right away."
Dr. Taylor walked back over to the nurses' station and reached over the counter for the chart on Jenkins. "Captain Brass, how about an hour to get him out of recovery and settled into a room? Will that be soon enough?"
Brass nodded reluctantly. He just as soon as go into recovery now and shake the information out of the injured man, but no one except the graveyard shift CSI's, Davy Hodges, and Brass knew that Jenkins had drugged an unsuspecting Grissom. He and Nick would have to wait.
"C'mon, Jim. Let's go down to the cafeteria and get what they pass for coffee around here," Nick said in an attempt to keep the detective calm.
"Sure Nick." Turning to Dr. Taylor, Brass turned to the doctor and said, "No more than an hour, doctor." He then abruptly turned around and headed towards the elevator. Nick quickly followed after him.
Officer Carl Jenkins was wheeled into the recovery room. The OR nurses made sure that the patient was connected to the monitors that would measure his vital signs and checked his IV's. Jenkins was covered with a blanket to keep him warm. When the injured officer regained consciousness, he would be moved to a private room. The nurses went quietly about their business of getting the OR ready for the next surgical procedure. An orderly came in to take care of the used surgical scrubs and the make sure that the used gauze, sponges, and bandages were disposed of properly. The orderly moved deliberately through the recovery room, cautiously working his way towards the recovering patient. Slipping through the drape that surrounded the gurney, the orderly quickly withdrew a syringe from his pocket and injected its contents into the patient's IV port. Slipping the syringe back into his pocket, he made his way through the room and pushing the bin with the used scrubs, wheeling it out of the recovery room and down to the laundry.
An hour later, Nick and Brass made their way back to the third floor, prepared to question the recovering officer. Checking at the nurses' station for the location of the patient's room, they were informed that complications had occurred with Officer Jenkins while he was in recovery. He had developed a high fever and, instead of waking up out of the anesthesia, had slipped into a coma. Dr. Taylor was immediately summoned and he ordered blood work done on the patient and measures were being taken to bring the patient's temperature down. Jenkins would be transferred to ICU and his condition was now critical.
Frustrated beyond belief, Jim Brass demanded to see Dr. Taylor.
A harried Doctor Taylor appeared impatiently a few minutes later.
"Dr. Taylor, just an hour ago, your patient was in recovery. Now you're telling me he's in a coma and in critical condition? What the hell happened?" demanded Brass.
The doctor helplessly shrugged his shoulders and rubbed his forehead. "Captain Brass, Officer Jenkins has apparently developed a potentially lethal staph infection. Right now, we are doing a blood panel on him, trying to get a handle on the type of staph infection he does have and from there we will be able to treat the infection. I'm at a loss to explain this. This all happened so quickly. It's virtually unheard of. My guess is that somehow a live strain was injected into him. It's the only explanation that would explain how quickly this happened," said a weary Dr. Taylor.
"Will he recover, Doctor?" inquired Nick.
"I can't answer that right now. It depends how lethal the strain of staph he has is and how he got the infection. My immediate concern is my patient, so if you will excuse me, I must attend to him," said the doctor as he hurried away.
"Great, just great," mumbled Brass.
"Jim, this infection was no accident. Someone knew that Jenkins would be questioned about what went down in the safe house. I just have this gut feelin' that McKeen was somehow behind this." Nick said.
"I have the same feeling, Nicky," said Brass with a sigh. "Let's get a roster to see which hospital personnel was scheduled to work on the 3rd floor surgical wing. We've got some old fashioned detective work to do."
Officer Jenkins died some eight hours after surgery. He never regained consciousness. The determination had been made that the man had been injected with a deadly strain of staph through his IV port. The hospital personnel assigned that night to the surgical wing had been interviewed and cleared. However, several of the OR nurses had a vague recollection of an orderly they did not recognize in the recovery room hovering around the patient. Descriptions of the suspect varied but it was determined that the mysterious orderly was a male in his late twenties or early thirties. The police department sketch artist was summoned to try to draw a composite sketch of the perpetrator.
Archie in the AV lab was intently analyzing security video from the hospital in an attempt to spot the mystery orderly on camera based on the sketch produced by the police department artist. The mysterious orderly resembled one ex-convict Samuel Baker and Archie had both the sketch and prison photograph of Baker in front of him. Several tapes from the hospital had been confiscated and it was a painstaking task to view all the footage. Smiling, Archie logged in the time signature, location of the camera, and the tape which was frozen on Baker descending down a stairwell from the third floor surgical wing.
Catherine Willows and Greg Sanders were sifting through boxes of evidence recovered from the safe house. It had been two days since Grissom had been abducted. They were making some headway, but as each hour passed, the team felt the anxiety level ratchet up a notch. An APB was issued for Samuel Baker for questioning in the death of Officer Carl Jenkins. His DNA was also found at the safe house where Grissom had been taken. Finding Baker would break this case wide open and enable them to find their two missing CSI's. The evidence was developing, but much too slowly for Catherine.
Wendy Simms burst into the layout room. "Catherine, I've got something to show you. I found matches to all the DNA samples except for one. This one sample doesn't match any of the suspects or any of the police personnel. However, it has 7 alleles common with Grissom's."
With a questioning look in her eyes, Catherine took the report that Wendy held out to her. "Wendy, are you sure? There couldn't be any mistake?" Catherine said in a low voice.
The DNA lab technician shook her head and replied, "I ran it several times, just to make sure. Whoever belongs to this sample is a first degree relative to Grissom, which would mean a brother or father….."
"Or son. Catherine, you don't think that…." interrupted Greg with a look of surprise.
Turning to Greg, Catherine said softly, "I don't know. Grissom was sure that his son and wife were killed twenty years ago. They didn't have the technology back then to make a DNA match of the bodies. If this is Grissom's son, where has he been the last twenty years and what about the mother? Right now, there have more questions than answers."
It had been five days since he had been abducted. Five days of continuous "drug therapy." Grissom was allowed to slowly descend from the constant high that he had been on. Disorientation and confusion slowly enveloped him. Soon nausea joined the confusion along with severe cramps and shaking. Grissom groaned. A raging fever made him feel as though he was on fire and he shakily sat up on the cot on which he had been lying. Sweat streamed down his chest and face, and he felt as though he was slowly suffocating. Bits and pieces of memories flashed through Grissom as he tried to make sense of his situation. Where am I? What is happening to me? He shook his head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs from his brain. Instead, the shaking caused the pounding in his head to intensify to alarmingly proportions. His head felt as if it were going to explode, and Grissom reached up to hold his head together. Excruciating pain shot through his left arm and shoulder. Groaning, the bewildered man collapsed back down onto the cot. He tried to calm the pounding of his heart by taking slow deep breaths, but his sore ribs prevented him from doing so. Instead, he took shallow breaths and tried to concentrate on remembering what had happened to him. Vague images floated before him. A young man staring at him with startlingly blue eyes kept coming to him, but he didn't know who he was but felt that he should. Sounds of gunfire resonating through his head kept in time with the pounding in his head. He tried to grasp hold of the visions, but they seemed like wispy clouds just beyond his reach.
Grissom was dimly aware of a door slowly opening. He turned his eyes see a man dressed in a doctor's white lab coat quietly pull up a chair next to the cot. As the man sat down, he wrote on the clipboard he brought with him and silently stared at Grissom.
Grissom blinked his eyes in order to clear his vision. His eyes gradually started to focus and he took in the silent man sitting next to him. This man in the lab coat looked vaguely familiar to him. I should know this man. Who is he? Someone…someone I don't trust….someone who….. Grissom could not finish the thought. He continued to stare at the man as the stranger regarded him with a slight smile on his face.
"So you are with us today, Gil. That's good. I'm sure that you are feeling a little hazy right now. You had quite an episode, and you really put yourself through the wringer. But I see that you have calmed down quite a bit. I'm sure that you are in some pain and that you experiencing cramping and nausea. That's to be expected when you are going through withdrawal but we'll monitor you closely," said the doctor in measured tones.
"With..withdrawl? Wha..what are you talking about? Where am I and what are you talking about?" croaked Grissom in a hoarse whisper, more confused than ever.
"Gil, you are suffering from a rather serious addiction to hypnotic and hallucinogenic drugs. You have been in and out of rehab for some time and you are now at the Nevada Treatment Center for Addictions. You have been ordered to this treatment facility to dry out and then you will be sentenced to the Nevada State Prison. Depending how your treatment goes and how much progress you make will determine your sentencing. You will be sentenced to a life term, but if you make progress and beat your addiction, the court could grant that you be eligible for parole in 25 years. Your last episode into addiction was extremely violent and you are pretty much done with skirting the court system," said the doctor in a patient tone.
Grissom continued to stare at the doctor at a loss for words. He could not get his voice to work. I have no clue what is going on. He can't possibly mean me. Denial rose within him and panic caused him to rise up out of the cot. The only thought echoing through his brain was that he had to leave this nightmare. He started to push the doctor out of his way to make his way to the door in order to escape. Suddenly, two men in prison guard uniforms grabbed him and threw him on the concrete floor of the cell. Grissom's face was pressed against the cold floor and his arms yanked behind him. He felt the bones in his broken wrist grind against one another and white-hot pain shot through him. One of the men held his head down while the other held his arms behind him, The guard's knee was pressed into his back making it impossible for Grissom to move. Grissom felt the sting of a syringe plunge into his neck as he was sent into oblivion.
A/N: Thanks to all who have stuck with this story. I'm sorry for such a long delay in posting. It's a little rough, and I apologize for that. Please let me know how I'm doing as I am sailing in unknown waters at this point.