A/N: I don't blame anyone if they have boycotted this story as it hasn't been updated in 10 months. I cannot apologise enough for this. I have never in my history of fanfiction taken this long to updqate a story and it has been weighing on my mind. I do deeply apologise. I think my muse up and left me and life got incredibly busy and ... if this isn't any good … I again apologise. A lot has happened in the show since I started writing this. Sorry if there is any inconsistency. I'm just plane sorry. I promise Any reviews I am lucky to get from this point onwards I will answer.
Now I am going to stop apologising and get on with this. I have managed to finish the last 2 chapters and plan to publish them one after the other as I believe anyone sticking this out does not deserve to wait any longer for another chapter. Once again sorry and I do hope you enjoy it a little. Thanks everyone.
Chapter 3. The Pin Drops
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.
The Lieutenant Commander's breathing pattern was quite visible from where Danny sat. Every time his friend released a breath the oxygen mask fogged up. Then he would breathe in again, taking some of the mist with the inhalation. It should have been reassuring, watching his friend breathe. But it wasn't. It was irregular. It sounded harsh and hard fought for. It sounded unnatural.
Danny supposed that he should be happy that he was breathing at all. After hearing Doctor Collins' prognosis and what he'd learnt about the toxin since the Doctor's phone call, Danny was going to count them all lucky. They were lucky that Steve was still around to fog up an oxygen mask at all. Not everyone subjected to this toxin survived this long.
But then luck was in the eye of the beholder. Danny was sure if they were as lucky as he would like them to be, a cure would have already been administered and Steve would have been well on his way to being able to drive him crazy again. But then he had also been taught to deal with the cards you'd been dealt. Maybe he was being greedy for wanting more than what they had but Danny didn't exactly care.
Danny looked towards the door, to where Mary – Steve's sister – had left the room moments before to get herself a coffee. He'd hated having to make that call. He was sure that Steve would have preferred that Mary stay oblivious to her big brother's latest adventure with death.
Calling Mary hadn't been Danny's first thought, or thought at all. All Danny had cared about was getting whoever did this and making sure McGarrett survived. Kono had been the one to bring up Steve's only living relative currently on the island. Danny had opted to make the call. He was Steve's partner after all. It was his duty. And he was glad that there was someone to watch over his partner while they investigated his situation.
With the comfort of knowing someone was at the hospital, keeping watch over Steve, Danny wasn't entirely sure why he was sitting there beside his friend's bed right in that moment. There was a lot to do. There was an investigation to be had. They needed to find out when and where Steve had been injected with the toxin and they needed to find out by who. They have a good team. The Five-O Team was a force to be reckoned with.
Chin and Kono were on the job as he sat there and stared at their fallen leader, but Danny needed to be there, even for five minutes. Grace had called him, asking him if everything was alright, if Steve was alright. He had promised her that he would tell Steve to get well soon. He never broke a promise to his daughter. He had nothing to do with allaying his own fears at all … not at all.
Movement from the bed shocked Danny out of his thoughts. He sat up straighter, watching his partner with anticipation. His gaze darted to the heart monitor when it's rhythm changed. Danny stood up. "Steve?" he asked looking down at the sick man before him.
Steve shifted again, a pitiful moan escaped him. Danny knew that under normal circumstances Steve would have never allowed himself to sound like that. Until this moment he was sure that Steve was some super human entity that didn't feel pain, or maybe had some super human ability to block it all out. If Steve were in his right mind he would have never allowed himself to show any sign of weakness. It was something that infuriated Danny to no end, along with Steve's rambo like ways of handling a case, or a suspect … or Danny's car.
"How you doin', Sleeping Ugly?" Danny asked when Steve's eye's finally opened. The Ex-Seal's gaze darted around the room in confusion before landing on Danny.
"God ..." Steve's voice was gravelly and barely audible under the mask.
"Nope, but I can understand your mistake," Danny quipped. "It's about time you woke up. Not all of us can afford to lay around on the job."
"Danny ..." Steve breathed, his chest working double time to accommodate his need for air. "What … are y'doin … h-here?"
Danny threw his hands up in the air. "Nice. Here I am, showing my support to my pain in the ass partner and you ..."
"Danny ..." Steve interrupted.
"Steve, I need you to think for me. I know it's hard for you on a good day but just work with me here." Danny thought he almost caught an eye-roll from his partner. "Whoever infected you with this toxin … administered it by needle. The doctors found … hey, you with me, buddy?" Danny asked mid explanation when Steve's eyes slid closed slightly.
"Needle?" Steve asked, his eyes widening in an attempt to concentrate.
"You remember anything? Was there any time in the last twenty four hours that someone would have gotten close enough to jab you in the leg?" Danny asked, he reached up and cupped Steve's chin to try and keep the Lt Commander's attention on what he was saying. "Steve?"
Steve lifted his arm sluggishly to bat Danny's hand away. "No …." His confused and pained frown deepened. "Wait ..."
The words were soft and ragged beneath the mask. "Wait? What? Don't get shy on me now, GI Jane."
"Fight ..."
"Fight? Steve, what fight?" Danny asked. He placed a hand on Steve's shoulder. He was starting to rethink drilling Steve for answers. "Hey, take it easy."
"Hot ..." Steve mumbled. The confused frown had not left his partner's face. He shifted in the bed again, bringing his hand up to feel his face. "What..."
Danny reached and caught Steve's wrist before he could move the oxygen mask. "Stay still. That's there for a reason, Einstein. It's to help you breathe, now I know you needing assistance must be a foreign concept to you but just go with it." Danny pulled Steve's wrist back down to the sheets.
Steve breathed heavily into the mask and brought his other hand up. "Not … helping."
"Steve." Danny complained as he caught Steve's other attempt to remove the mask. "Stop it."
This visit was not turning out like it did in the movies. There was no silent vigil, there was no meaningful conversation … there was just Steve being a stubborn ass. "You need to leave it on, Steven." Danny reiterated slowly, now holding both arms to the mattress. He leaned over to try and get directly in Steve's line of sight. "Are you listening to me?"
Steve shook his head, his eyes open much wider than before. "Danny … c-cant ... Breathe."
"Yes you can." Danny refuted. "Yes you can." He repeated, his own heart skipping a beat as Steve's heart monitor started showing stress. He let go of one of Steve's hands and pressed the call button for the nurse. He pressed it more than once in quick succession and then dropped the device.
Steve was gasping, his chest heaving. Steve's fingers were wrapped around the oxygen masked, pulling it away from his face. His lips were blue. Danny used both his hands to disentangle Steve's fingers from the mask and then quickly held it back over the panicking man's nose and mouth.
"You listen to me, you stubborn jerk. Calm the hell down and just breathe." Danny demanded, holding Steve's arms at bay with his left arm across his body and holding the mask to his face.
The doors to Steve's room finally opened and a nurse rushed in. Danny glanced over his shoulder and then looked down at the man struggling for breath. "What the hell took you so long?" Danny snapped as the woman rushed over.
The nurse ignored him, took one look at the patient and called for assistance. "What the hell is wrong with him? I thought you were handling his symptoms. This? Is not handling anything. This is the exact opposite of handling!" Danny stopped his ranting when he felt someone grab at his wrist. His grip on the oxygen mask nearly slipped. He looked down to see Steve's hand hanging on to him.
"You done?" The nurse asked.
"If it will help you fix him? Then yes!"
"Just keep him calm. Talk to him." The Nurse told him. He watched her face as she read the monitors. She was harder to read than the equipment. She gave nothing away. "Detective!"
"Okay, okay." Danny once again looked down at Steve. "Listen to me, man. Breathe. That's not asking a lot, right? You keep breathing. Just look at me and keep breathing."
Danny couldn't actually say he had ever seen Steve McGarrett really scared. Not for himself anyway. He'd seen him worried for his teams welfare, about his sister. He'd seen him scared just recently for Chin when Hesse had strapped an explosive device around his neck. But scared for himself? Danny couldn't really say he'd seen the same measure of worry, concern or fear for himself … that was until now. Danny knew what it felt like to not be able to draw breath and he couldn't blame the man.
The doors to Steve's room opened again and a team of medical staff piled in. Doctor Collins lead the team to the Commander's bed. "Detective, you need to leave the room."
Steve's grip on his wrist suddenly got tighter and Danny wasn't sure whether Steve had heard the doctor's words and wanted him to stay or if it was just a reflex. Regardless. If Steve wanted him to stay. He was staying.
Danny ignored the Doctor's order, instead continuing to fix his gaze on his friend's panicked eyes. "Besides, I told Grace you were okay. I wont let you make me out a liar to my daughter. You're going to be okay, because I say you're going to be okay. Nod if you can hear me through that thick skull of yours."
Steve nodded. No-one else probably would have called it a nod, no-one else probably would have even noticed it. But Danny did. Steve was hearing everything and just in typical Steve McGarrett fashion he did the exact opposite of what Danny wanted. He gasped, his chest stopped, started and then stopped as his eyes rolled back in his head and his grip on Danny's arm went limp.
"Steve!"
"Detective, leave now and let us do our job!" Doctor Collins, yelled over the whining heart monitor.
Danny felt himself shoved aside by the small female, shortly before he felt arms wrap around his and pull him back. He was too shocked by the sudden turn of events to register that he'd been moved away from his partner until it was too late.
"Come on. Come outside..." One of the orderlies suggested and attempted to follow up by physically leading Danny out of the room.
Danny shrugged out of their grip. He might not have been tall as McGarrett but he wasn't lacking in the strength department. "Get your hands off me." He glared at them for a second before taking a few steps back towards the bed.
"Detective Williams ..."
"Back off!" Danny shouted back without actually looking at them. "That's my partner, now back the hell off." And they did. Whether it was his tone, the look in his eyes or the fact that the orderlies understood his need, Danny didn't care.
The flurry of activity around Steve's bed was making him dizzy. Or maybe it was the sick feeling in his stomach that was afraid that maybe they were going to lose the man. Steve drove him crazy on a day to day basis but he had also given him purpose, friends that he would die for and one more reason outside of Grace to not hate living in Hawaii. Steve was a damn good friend. Of course he would never admit that to the man himself. But the truth was the truth.
Danny watched on, one hand covering his mouth, his feet rooted to the spot as electricity jolted Steve's body in an attempt to get his heart started again. Once, twice … three times and that amazing sound of Steve's heart beating filtered through the room again. Danny let out the breath he hadn't realised he had been holding.
Everything seemed to happen too fast. One minute they were applying paddles to his friend's chest and the next they were inserting a tube down his throat and administering drugs into his IV. They worked without hesitation and quickly. Danny watched them as if watching a silent movie. Medical jargon he didn't understand flowed but the beeping monitor besides Steve's bed? That told him everything he needed to know in that instance.
"Detective?"
Danny blinked at the sound of someone addressing him, at the feel of a hand on his upper arm. He refocused his eyes and found that Doctor Collins was standing in front of him.
"Detective, are you okay?"
Danny raised his eyebrows and laughed. "Am I okay?" he asked incredulously. "Am I … Doc, I'm not the guy that just decided to go on a permanent vacation. What happened?"
The Doctor sighed and looked almost regretful. "The palytoxin, it attacks certain functions. One of them is the respiratory function. The tube will take pressure off his lungs. His heart though, I wont lie to you. It's under a lot of pressure. His whole body is breaking down."
Danny ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "And when exactly will you be able to give him this cure?"
"At Least another hour. We're closely monitoring his blood work and his symptoms. Until it's gone. It's the best we can do." Doctor Collins told him. "We're almost there, Detective."
Danny smiled grimly and nodded. "I have to get back out there. Call me if anything changes … anything, alright?"
"You have my word." Doctor Collins reached across and squeezed his arm, stood back and then walked around him and headed for the door.
Now alone with his friend once more, Danny walked up to his partner's bed. Steve now had a ventilator doing his breathing for him and his eyes were closed. Danny frowned down at the sight before him. And just when he thought Steve couldn't look any more vulnerable. It was just like the man to prove him wrong.
The door to the room opened once more, followed by a small gasp. Mary McGarrett walked quickly to her brother's bedside. "What happened?"
XxX
"I don't know," Danny said as he walked to his car. The Camero's silver body glinted in the sunlight. "He's alive but I wouldn't exactly call his condition okay."
"What did the doctor say?" Chin asked, concern tainting his normally calm tone.
Danny leaned forward and wrenched open his car door but then turned around, running his hand through his hair in frustration. "Nothing that helps. He's still an hour or so off them being able to do anything for him. It amazes me that he's lying in a hospital, a place that is meant to save lives and their just watching him die. Nice."
"They're doing all they can, Brah." Chin reminded him.
"That would be easier to accept if I hadn't just watched the man's heart stop beating," Danny argued, punctuating his point with an aggravated hand gesture. "Maybe all they can is not good enough."
Only silence followed his angry words and Danny sighed, dragging his hand over his face, stubble prickling his skin. Chin was letting him rant and would probably give him a small opportunity to rave as well. His team-mate didn't deserve it, though, so Danny tried to rein himself in.
"Find anything new that will tell us anything at all?" Danny asked in lieu of apologising. Chin's silence was enough of an understanding.
"Steve's apartment turned up clean," Kono's voice came as a surprise through the phone and Danny wasn't sure whether she'd been there the whole time or whether she'd just joined the party.
"HQ?" Danny asked, turning back towards his car. He leant against her side, one hand resting on his hip as his other hand held the cell phone to his ear.
"Clean. Just like the boss' house. No prints that shouldn't be there, no evidence of tampering, nothing," Kono was annoyed and sounded about as frustrated as he was. Danny was glad that their youngest team-member hadn't been with him when Steve had taken his turn for the worse.
"Did you manage to get anything out of McGarrett?" Chin asked.
"You mean before the man decided flat-lining was another fun way to give me a heart attack? No ..." Danny began and then stopped. He stood up straighter. "Wait, he said something about a fight."
"What do you mean?" Chin asked and Danny could almost see the cousins sharing a look between them.
"I was trying to get him to remember if anyone had gotten close enough to him to jab a needle into his leg. He said 'fight'. It was hard to tell if he understood anything I was saying, but ..."
"Oh my God, I don't know why I didn't think of it before," Kono gasped.
"What?"
"Victor Hesse."
"Hesse? You guys took him out." Danny stood up straight again at the criminal's name.
"But not before Steve traded blows with him," Kono reminded them.
"You think Hesse got close enough to administer the toxin without Super SEAL knowing?"
"They were rolling around in the dirt, throwing each other around as much as they had been throwing fists. It's possible."
"Alright, alright, Chin call Hesse's new care-takers, tell them we want a little chat with him and then meet me at the prison."
"Sure thing," Chin assured him. "We're on our way."
Danny ended the call, squeezed the phone in frustration and then put it back in his pocket to avoid throwing the damn thing. Danny hadn't been at the showdown between Steve and Hesse but how had he not remembered the fist fight? Steve hadn't said anything. Surely the man would have known if he'd been stung.
Slipping into the driver's seat of the camero, Danny felt out of place. How was it that he felt wrong driving his own freaking car? It was stupid but right then? It felt wrong without his partner at the wheel, driving Danny's car the way he saw fit, playing awful songs on the radio despite Danny's protest and just simply annoying the hell out of him. How did they get to this place? And when? Right now Danny didn't care. He missed his partner.
XxX
"We should have worked this out sooner," Danny hissed under his breath, loud enough for his team members to hear.
The frustration and guilt was festering and Danny knew that he wasn't the only one feeling it. Kono bowed her head, worrying her bottom lip and Danny felt like a jerk. He wasn't trying to make his friends feel worse about the situation. He was kicking himself more than anyone. They were a team but Steve was his partner. He should have worked this out sooner.
"We couldn't have known, Brah," Chin replied, looking up from where he was sitting on the edge of a hard plastic chair. His shoulders were hunched, his elbows resting on his knees.
"We couldn't have known he was sick or we couldn't have known who made him sick?" Kono asked her cousin, looking up. That question had been on Danny's lips but Kono had beat him to the punch.
"Both," Chin tried to reason. "Steve's stubborn, he wouldn't and didn't let us know he was feeling off, he never mentioned anything out of the ordinary about his tangle with Hesse and when we we did find out what was wrong with him, the diagnosis didn't give us reason to automatically consider Hesse."
"Does that make you feel any better?" Danny challenged.
Chin sighed. "Not exactly."
It was the truth and that made Danny feel even more like a complete ass. Even if they had of known from the start that it was Hesse that had poisoned Steve it wouldn't changed the outcome. They still needed to wait for his system to be flushed before an antidote could be administered. It didn't change anything. Before he could say anything more, movement attracted his attention from the other side of the glass.
"Show time," Danny commented to his friends as he stepped over to the glass. He took a seat opposite the injured felon. Steve had done a number on the man. It only made Danny feel slightly better.
"You look a wee bit stressed, Detective," Hesse spoke, holding the phone handle with his good arm, the other was sitting in a sling courtesy of his fight with McGarrett. "Had yer blood pressure checked recently? Shouldn't mess about with things like that, y'know."
Danny took a calming breath, his gaze fixed on the man on the other side of the glass. "I'm not here for a chat. Done all the catching up with you we'll need for the next lifetime. We have some questions and you're gonna be a good little prison bitch and answer them for us."
"Or what? Do you think things could honestly get worse for me, right now?" Hesse asked, his voice tilted in humour. "I mean McGarret got my brother killed and is the reason I'm sittin' in here. Speaking of McGarrett … where is he?"
"You know where he is you son of a bitch!" Kono growled from behind Danny. He didn't flinch at the heat in her words and he didn't take his eyes of Hesse. The smirk on the man's face told him all he needed to know in their suspicions.
"What was that, love?" Hesse asked, and then pointed to the phone handle. "Cant hear you."
"Cut the bullshit, Hesse."
"Or what?" Hesse replied with a snarl. "You gonna lock me up? Beat the living shit out of me? Sorry but your beloved Commander has already seen to both."
Danny reached into the pocket of his suit pants and pulled out his cell phone, flipped through his contacts before he found the desired name. He held the screen of his phone against the glass. "All I have to do is make one call and your life gets a lot more complicated than it already is."
"You think your direct line to the Governor scares me?" Hesse asked, leaning forward. "You have no idea what you're dealing with. None of you do." Hesse briefly glanced up at the others before looking back at Danny. There was something different in his eyes, something he wasn't telling them.
"Why the poison?" Danny asked, pulling his phone away from the glass.
"Why not?" Hesse countered.
"Poison isn't exactly your M.O, Hesse. Maybe someone else is pulling your strings. Do you answer to someone else, Hesse?."
"You think I don't want him dead enough to pull something like that? McGarrett killed my brother. It was a back-up plan."
"A back-up plan? If you wanted him dead there are a lot of more definite ways to accomplish that. This was … vindictive. This was more like a warning."
"Believe what you want, Detective. But I have nothing more to say to you." Hesse made to stand up. He indicated to the guard that he was ready to leave.
Danny slammed his fist against the clear screen between him and Victor Hesse. "Where do you think you're going? I'm not finished with this conversation!"
Hesse turned around quickly, and faced Danny, clenching his jaw, his eyes meeting Danny's in a look that Danny couldn't quite decipher. "I am. You can shout, point, gesture wildly and threaten as much as you want, Williams. Fact is, I want to be around long enough to see McGarrett get what he deserves. It's out of my hands." Hesse lifted his hands in front of him, before shrugging. "I have nothing more to say to you."
Hesse turned back to the guard. "We're finished here." Without looking back at the Five-O team, Hesse exited through the door, re-entering his new world of confinement.
Danny stood, staring at the now closed door, the receiver still clenched in his hand.
"He's no telling us everything." Chin stated the obvious.
"He told us something," Danny said, putting the phone back on the hook.
"He's not working entirely on his own. He answers to someone else." Kono supplied what both men were already thinking.
"The question is who? What does this person have against Steve?" Chin wondered out loud.
"Hesse is not going to say a damn word." Especially while there was a wall between them and guards to pull Danny off if the interrogation turned south. Especially when he had no protection from anybody that might see him as a threat to their identity. Whoever was pulling the strings, Hesse was scared. The amount of control Danny didn't feel was overwhelming.
"Then we need pull some of our own strings, get Hesse released into our custody, question him on our own turf," Kono told them. Her eyes were wide with need as she continued to look between Chin and Danny.
Danny understood what she was feeling. It was a need to do something, anything because not continuing to seek answers - even if you knew you weren't likely to get any – felt like they were letting Steve down. Giving up wasn't something that Danny was accustomed to.
"It might be for the best anyway because if someone else is pulling the strings that makes Hesse a liability and I am not having that smug son of a bitch getting himself knocked off before we know everything he knows."
"I hate to burst your bubble, guys but I don't think we'll be getting much out of him. Hesse isnt the type of guy to stick out his neck for just anyone. He's going to keep his mouth tightly shut. You said it before Danny. He's a liability. Talking to us could sign his death warrant if he's working for a powerful enough person." Chin reminded them.
It was true. Hesse had played it cool but Danny hadn't missed the signs of fear. Hesse was much more concerned about the person behind the curtains than he was about them. But Danny didn't care. They needed to work on something and he wouldn't be satisfied until he'd gotten his hands on Hesse without the watchful eyes of the prison guards … even if it was just to make use of their immunity and means that the Governor had nicely given them.
"That doesn't mean that we don't try, Chin. He's our best lead at the moment." Danny pulled out his phone to make the call that would get him what he wanted … a private chat with the man that had ruined his Christmas with his daughter.
"What do ..." Kono started to ask. She stopped mid-sentence when Danny's phone started ringing.
"It's the hospital." Danny felt apprehension fill him down the to bones.
The doctors hadn't had anything good to tell him since Steve had been admitted and the last time that he'd been in there he'd witnessed his friend's heart stop beating. Danny brought the phone to his ear. "Williams," he answered, keeping eye contact with his team-mates as he waited to hear whether the news was good or bad.
TBC...