The room spun. Haseejian grabbed Steve's arms to steady him, manoeuvering him closer to a chair. Healey jumped to his feet and together they helped the younger man sit. Healey took the papers from Steve's hand as Haseejian sat in the chair beside him, one hand on his back.
His voice shaking and his eyes stricken, Steve asked again, "What happened?", one hand over his mouth.
The Armenian sergeant shook his head. "We're not sure, Steve, a nurse just came in to tell us that he was being rushed into surgery and that, ah, that he'd gone into cardiac arrest."
Steve's head dropped and his put his hands over his face, gasping for air. "I don't understand, he was doing okay when I left…" He could feel Haseejian rubbing his back. "This can't be happening," he whispered then looked up again. "How long ago…?"
Healey glanced at his watch. "About half an hour." His voice was steady but his partner could hear the anger in his words and glanced up, worry furrowing his brow. They made momentary eye contact and Healey nodded curtly, dismissing the concern. Haseejian's attention returned to Steve, who had hung his head again and was struggling to breathe normally.
Olsen whispered, "He'll be okay," but no one seemed to share his desperate optimism. A grim reality seemed to settle over the small group of police officers, numb with shock and worry, as the silence lengthened and the minutes crawled by.
"Inspector Keller?"
Steve felt his arm being jostled, and he looked up through a fog at a white-coated older man standing over him. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
"Inspector Keller, I'm Doctor Nugent, the Head of Cardiology. I've been looking after your partner."
The words slowly sinking in, Steve got shakily to his feet, Haseejian and Healey on either side, and held out his hand. With a warm smile, the doctor took Steve's hand and shook it. "Have a seat, please," Nugent said, gesturing at the chair Steve had just vacated, noting how unsteady the young man looked. Haseejian moved aside and the doctor sat as well.
"Before I get into details, Inspector, I want to reassure you that your partner is doing very well and his prognosis is excellent."
"But they said his heart stopped…" Steve got out shakily.
Nugent's head wobbled and he smiled vaguely. "Well, not quite," he said soothingly. "Let me explain. Your partner –"
"Mike," Steve interjected, " his name is Mike."
"Right, Mike," Nugent's smile grew a little bigger, "he developed what we call a cardiac tamponade. That means that the sac that covers the heart, the pericardium, fills with liquid, blood in this case, that impedes the ability of the heart to continue to pump. Now, it wasn't totally surprising, given the severity of the bruising that his heart suffered, and we were monitoring him for it… What happened, from what we know at the moment, is that the slow seepage of blood into the pericardium suddenly increased, for reasons we're still not sure of, and his heart stopped beating."
Steve inhaled raggedly, not taking his eyes from the doctor's face.
Continuing to smile encouragingly, Nugent went on. "He was hooked up to all those monitors for a reason, and we were alerted right away. He was in the OR within seconds and we did what's called a pericardiocentesis. It's when we use a large-bore needle to pierce the wall of the pericardium, the sac around the heart, and drain the fluid that's in there.
"It's a fairly common procedure, and I've done it many times over the years. And the procedure I did on your – on Mike went like clockwork. It was textbook and completely successful. The moment enough blood was drained, his heart started pumping on it's own again, which is exactly what we wanted."
"You put a needle into his heart?" Haseejian asked in an amazed whisper.
Nugent looked up at the others. "Into the sac around his heart, yes. The needle is inserted into the center of the chest just below the sternum at a 45 degree angle up towards the left shoulder." Seeing the winces on their faces, Nugent decided he had been graphic enough and turned his attention back to Steve, whose eyes had never left the doctor's face.
"Mike'll be on his way back to ICU in about an hour, and I'm afraid he's going to be there for quite a bit longer than we'd originally thought. As well as everything went just now, it was still a major episode and he is going to have to be monitored extremely closely for the next several days. We've put a catheter in and there's a tube in his chest now that will help drain the pericardium for the next 24 hours or so; we have to make sure all the blood has been removed, and because we're not a hundred percent sure of the exact source of the bleeding as yet, this will help ensure that a tamponade won't occur again.
"If we're lucky, the bleeding was caused by the bruising and what happened just now will be the last of it. But we're gonna keep a close eye on him to make sure that's the case. In the event that the bleeding had another cause, well, then there's the chance he'll have to undergo heart surgery, but until we know for sure otherwise, we're proceeding on the assumption that the bruising was the cause of the bleeding."
"Is he awake?" Steve asked hopefully.
Nugent shook his head. "Pericardiocentesis is a very painful procedure so we're going to keep him under sedation for the next day or so for his comfort. But, Inspector –"
"Steve, please, call me Steve."
"Alright, Steve, thank you – that doesn't mean you can't stay with him. As a matter of fact, I think you being with him will do you both a lot of good." Nugent glanced up at Olsen and the others. "I know you're all very worried, but let me reassure you, your colleague is doing very well and he's come out of this unfortunate episode as well as can be expected. I'm very optimistic for his full recovery." He stood, and Steve followed suit. But instead of shaking Steve's hand again, he reached out and laid a comforting hand on his arm. "I'll send someone to get you when we get him settled back into ICU, okay?"
As Steve nodded gratefully, he felt hands on his back, and his shoulder was gripped and he was shaken in relief. For the first time, he allowed himself a slight smile. "Thank you, Doctor Nugent, thank you."
"My pleasure, believe me," the doctor said with a smile. "Gentlemen," he nodded as he turned and left the room.
Steve watched him go, then felt himself being turned around and Haseejian enveloped him in a gentle bear hug.
# # # # #
Steve stood immobile beside the bed. Remarkably, Mike looked substantially the same as when he had been there last, but now there was an organized jumble of tubes and connectors taped to his belly and chest. The catheter emerged from a small incision just below his sternum, held in place by two sutures and surgical tape, the clear plastic tubes snaking up the left side of his chest then across his stomach to drain into a vial on the right side of the bed.
Not sure how he felt, Steve blinked several times to clear his eyes then sat slowly, laying a hand on Mike's arm, reveling in the warmth of the touch. He closed his eyes, listening to the steady beeping of the heart monitor, trying to calm his own pounding heart. Eventually he sat back in the armchair, sliding his hand from Mike's arm to interlace his fingers with his partner's. Settling in, he finally allowed himself a relieved smile and squeezed Mike's hand a little harder.
# # # # #
The uniformed sergeant looked up and nodded, tossing the magazine onto the table as he got up and walked to door, the visitor following silently behind him. He took out a raft of keys on a large ring, selected the right one and inserted it into the lock. As they entered the darkened room, the sergeant closed the door behind them.
They walked the short corridor and stopped in front of a cell. A large key was located and the barred door unlocked and opened. The visitor strolled casually into the cell, the door was closed and locked, and the sergeant walked back down the corridor, letting himself out. The visitor could hear that door being locked once again.
The occupant of the cell was sitting on the bench with his knees pulled up and his head down. When neither moved nor spoke, the inmate finally lifted his head. A sneer slowly twisted his features and, with calculated insolence, he got to his feet. "What the hell are you doing here?" Garrity snorted derisively.
The visitor unhurriedly took off his jacket, turned and slipped it over a bar in the cell wall, then slowly began to roll up his sleeves. Garrity's suddenly nervous eyes flicked from the visitor to the cell door and back again. "What the hell is going on here?"
The visitor turned to his coat and took a pair of black gloves out of a pocket. Staring at the increasingly nervous inmate, he slipped them on, flexing his fingers.
Garrity backed up into the corner, his eyes wide and feral. "What's going on?!"
Grinning coldly, the visitor walked slowly across the cell.
# # # # #
The waiting room was half-full of uniformed and plainclothes police officers when Healey and Tanner returned late in the afternoon. They found Lessing in the far corner and approached him with worried frowns.
"What's the latest?" Tanner asked as they got closer.
Lessing looked up from the magazine he was reading. "Hey, you guys were gone a long time."
"Yeah, well, we had some stuff to look after," Healey explained vaguely as he sunk into the chair beside the young inspector. "Heard anything new?"
Lessing shook his head. "Not really. Steve was in here a little while ago. He said Mike's the same, which I guess is a good thing. He looks like crap, Steve I mean. I wish we could get him to go home and get some sleep but that's not gonna happen."
Tanner produced the large paper bag from behind his back. "We got sandwiches from Mario's. There's enough for our guys and Steve." Before Lessing could say anything, he held up a hand. "I know, I know, he just got his jaw unwired. I read the sheets they gave him. He can eat soft stuff, so I got him a peanut butter sandwich. I'm pretty sure he can eat that."
The others chuckled as Tanner reached into the bag and began to take the sandwiches out.
"Hey, it's about time you guys got back, where the hell did you go?" Haseejian's voice sailed over the murmur in the room and they looked up as he approached with two cans of Coke in his hands. He handed one to Lessing. "Hey, Mario's! Did you -?"
"Get enough for everybody? Yes," Tanner cut him off with a chuckle. "Even Steve."
"Great," said Haseejian, handing the second Coke to Healey. "I'll go get everyone drinks. Anything in particular?" he asked, starting to turn away.
"I was hoping to find you all here," Rudy Olsen said breathlessly as he approached them at a rapid pace and pulled himself up. They all turned quickly, concerned by the captain's sudden appearance and harried look.
"What's going on, Captain?" Healey asked.
Olsen took a second to catch his breath, his eyes raking them over with worry and uncertainty. "I just got a call. Garrity was found beaten to death in a cell at Bryant Street."