Used To the Pain

Tampa General Hospital – Emergency Room

8:40 PM


From the moment the phone slammed shut in his hand, to the second Carter answered the 6th floor knock in his boxers, to the very last instant that the automated doors of the emergency room opened up, Lily's hand never left Sands'. He held on tighter to her hand than he felt he ever had to another, lost in a strange, rushing daze of confused voices, panicked footsteps, and bright sparks over his patched world.

Miles gave them directions to the hospital and the floor number, but nothing more. At this his mind ran wild with possibilities, terrible images conjured in relation to his only sister, his only family, lain up in a cold room, tubes, needles scattered over her tiny form, a wound somewhere that he would never see himself. He couldn't even begin to guess what had gone wrong, and as his fingers clenched down harder into Lily's hand, his boots trampling at her side as the three of them jogged down the hallway toward the desk of the third floor, he knew exactly who he wanted to hear open their mouth, exactly who he wanted to do away with.

"…Shane Sands…yes…no…this is her brother." Carter's voice was moving a mile a minute out in front of him, responding, prodding for answers to the questions they were all thinking. The only thing he received though was the pointed finger of an already tired and angry nurses' assistant behind the desk.

"I'm sorry sir, can you please just have a seat in the waiting room and we'll--"

"You don't understand…she has a bullet wound…another friend of ours is already here with her."As he spoke, Jeff pulled Lily closer to where he heard the argument, coming to the counter, feeling the woman's breath in the air, sensing her anxious, haggard temper.

"You're going to have to fill out some paper work, have a seat in the waiting room--"

"No." He interrupted the two of them, angrily, squeezing Lily's hand rough at every jolt of energy in his system. "My sister could be dead by the time we sign your fucking paperwork. I want for you to tell me…where she is." He was growling in the face of the overweight, overstressed, and aging nurse that he couldn't see anyway. A few of the other nurses stared nervously at the confrontation playing out, the man who appeared to only half know which direction he was speaking in at all.

"Miss Sands is in the last room…at the end of this hallway." She replied harshly, not wanting to give in or release the information at all, but feeling she had no choice in light of the man before her.

"Thanks so very much."He stammered back with a bark, tugging at Lily's hand for her to guide the way, as Carter stumbled out in front of the both of them.

They wandered for a few short seconds, past countless patients, some bleeding, others sleeping, all of them in pain, all of the noises disturbing Sands' mind for what he couldn't see. As they stepped in front of the small room she was being held in, they read the name tag, S. Sands, while Andy appeared in the window of the door, coming out.

A number of things began to occur simultaneously. The door creaked to allow him exit from the room, Danny sighed at the sight he must have been witnessing through the window, Lily's heart skipped a beat, her pulse streaming violently against the palm of his hand, and Andy Miles' hand came out to hold firmly, shortly, to Sands' shoulder.

"Jeff man…I'm--" He had not chance to complete his thought, he had no instance to apologize, or assure Sands' that Shane would be fine, or wouldn't be fine at all. There was simply no time at all for anything. Jeff's hand left Lily's, gripping firmly to Andy's opposite, limp arm, shoving back on his entire body, to where he imagined there must be a wall near the doorway, and forced his only slightly smaller body into it.

"You fucker!" He shouted, entrapping Andy's throat within his hands. The last bit of breath he was able to consume, left him immediately as he felt himself growing faint under the older agent, the angrier, impulsive, more dangerous agent's grip.

"Jeff don't…let him go!" Lily tried, but he refused. Danny attempted to pull him away, but again it did nothing to slow down the speed of his blood racing in his veins, the pent up emotion that had been trapped in his fists, his lungs, for almost an hour.

"You little shit…she was with you. She's in here because of you, Rookie!" He slammed Andy's head against the wall harder for a second time, as a few doctors and nurses came to break up the confrontation, with little success. "If my sister dies because you didn't fucking protect her…I'll kill you myself."

At this final squeeze, he released Andy's neck without assistance or resistance from any of the surrounding audience he could hear shouting, breathing. The younger agent fell in a crumpled mess to the tile floor, Danny helped him regain focus and standing, and Jeff, completely uncaring or worried about the damage he had done, reached his hand out for the only safety he had left.

Lily took hold of his hand again, warmly.

Ignoring everything but what he wanted, Sands gripped tighter and stepped closer to where she was, exhausting a final breath and request. "Take me to her."

She nodded, to which he didn't see, and then looked up at the man who she assumed was Shane's doctor, standing by their side silently, and he in turn nodded for her to take him into the room. Carter and Andy brushed aside, each stunned. Lily pushed her way through the door with Jeff's hand tight in her own, and in an instant the mood and scene changed. There, ten or so feet away was the girl she who had for so long, been the sister she never had…unconscious. Her throat grew into a bold lump, the tips of her fingers slid nervously in Jeff's palm, and as she inched the way in, she almost wished she had let someone else bring him inside. Death and tragedy of any kind were not dealt with so easily in her mind, they never had been, she had seen far too much of it, far too close to her.

In cordial step with her, Jeff managed to tap the edge of a close chair with his boot toe, and took a seat near where he heard the monitors beeping and his sister's shallow breathing.

Thank Christ for at least that much…he thought to himself, easing into the uncomfortable chair and reaching his free hand across the edge of the mattress until he could find her ice, cold hand. It felt like death, her knuckles protruding against his fingers and palm so differently than he could have possibly remembered. The difference between the sensation of Lily's hand in his other, and the comatose gloom of Shane's, made him go crazy inside, trying to understand how two hands, so similar in size, shape, texture, could be so far apart on the spectrum now.

The two girls who ever meant anything in his life, his sister and his lover, his best friends.

"Jeff…" Lily whispered over his head, standing at the side of the chair.

"Huh?" He mumbled back, too focused on the condition of his sister now.

"I'm going to step out and talk to the doctor, give you a while with Shane. Okay?"

He nodded silently and turned back to the respirator's noise.

"Jeff?" Lily interrupted him once more and his head jolted back to her voice. "You should talk to her…"At this he nearly scoffed inside, letting his face fall away and back to the direction his hand was at. Refusing to push him any further, Lily tucked her messy curls behind her ears, and stepped out of the room. Jeff listened to her go, regretting the absence instantly, as he sat listening to the dripping of fluids, the skipping of heartbeats, the sound of life outside of the doorway.

Inside, it was anything but.


Hardin Memorial Hospital – Elizabethtown, KY

April 23rd, 1975


There were 86 blue tiles from the front entrance of the hospital to the level his mother would end up on. Jeff remembered this. 86 blue tiles, and 103 small steps. He had been such a great counter, his mother had told him this, a dozen times that week in fact. She told him that when his little sister was born, that he would have to teach her how to count. He agreed he would.

It was early in the morning when his aunt had come over, helped his mother into the car, and taken them both to the hospital. He thought she was sick, and this frightened him. But before she left him at the hospital, before the nurse took her away, she assured him she would be fine.

"Sheldon, sweetie…Mommy has to go with the nurse." Her breathing was heavy, scary to him, but he nodded and tried not to cry. Being five years old meant he was too big to cry, in his mind he had to be strong for her. "Everything will be okay; they're going to help your baby sister. Stay with your Aunt Laura." Smiling down at him through what he would always remember was pain, she kissed his forehead, whispered her final 'I love you', and was rolled away through a heavy double doorway.

And that, was the last time he ever saw his mom.

Shane was never even that lucky.

The hours went on and on that day, sitting in a boring waiting room, speaking only when spoken to by his otherwise mean Aunt, doodling on white paper for a few minutes here and there, and spending the rest of his time watching through the curtained window into the busy hallway. He counted the doctors he saw, the women in wheelchairs like his mother, the babies. But she never came back out of the large doors. His sister never came out either.

Eventually, he remembered falling asleep in one of the uncomfortable chairs and not waking up until his father arrived at the hospital and calmly shook him awake. It was an expression he would never forget, as long as he lived, the first, the only tears his dad ever shed. His eyes were red, puffy, wet, and Jeff didn't understand a thing about it.

"Jeffery…" He paused to wipe away further tears, pulling his son into his arms. "You're baby sister is here now." More crying as he walked with Jeff in his arms, out of the waiting room, and further down the hallway. He said nothing else until they made it to the end of the long corridor, at least three dozen more blue tiles, opposite from the big, doubled doors. They were moving away from his mother, farther away each step his dad made. Eventually, the doors disappeared, and in their place, was a giant wall of glass. Windows, full of babies.

As his dad propped him up in front of the glass, Jeff counted all of the blue blankets, all of the pink blankets. 12 boys and 13 girls. His eyes scanned as his father eventually pointed out into a distant corner, to where the thirteenth pink bassinet he counted, sat in peace.

"That's her Sheldon." The grown man, the professional looking man in the suit that held him up to the glass, his father, cried steadily as he spoke. "That's your little sister…Shane Marie."

In that moment, at five years old, Sheldon Jeffery Sands realized that he wouldn't see his mother again. That the little girl wrapped inside of the pink blanket, behind the glass, yawning, would replace the love he had for his mother. She would be his only honest admittance of love for the next eighteen years of his life.

He couldn't save his mother, but his sister would always be his to protect.

No matter the odds stacked against him.


Lily wasn't an agent, and so she didn't quite understand yet what all of this meant. Had Andy missed a shot to otherwise help Shane? Did Tuzla's men catch on to whatever got them shot in the first place? Were they being followed and hunted now? Did the CIA already have a counterattack set up somewhere, in the hotel, at the docks, right here in the hospital? Was this why Jeff tried to kill Miles the second he was within reach, was there a compromise by this bullet wound? She didn't comprehend a single aspect, and found herself unable to shake the need to figure out at least some of it.

Once she left Shane's room in the silence she knew it would remain in, she took to pacing the floor, in search of one of two people. Depending on whom she found first, she would know whether to be as concerned as Jeff or be prepared to fight. Crossing in front of the central nurses' station mid-hallway, her eyes darted from one corner to the next, from the elevators, and then down a long, pale lit corridor. The sign on the wall read WAITING ROOM with a stark, blind man's arrow trailing along. She followed, knowing which of the men she would most likely see first.

Her hands tucked into the pockets of her corduroy jacket, she skimmed the faces of worried families, desperate patients in as much pain as she tried not to think of Shane having been in. And then, sliding one foot past the final patient room towards the glass entranceway of the sitting area, she was blocked by a friendly, brightened face. Not Andy's after all.

"I'm sorry, hello." He smiled, trying to help in lightening her own mood. It was the man she had recognized as the doctor from minutes past, and the man she also had wanted and hoped to find first.

"Hi."

"You must be a cop too, I assume? Or sister perhaps?"

She realized he was talking about Shane already, and shook her head to come back into the mode of reality. "N-no, I'm not a cop. Shane has just been a close family friend for years…"

"Oh, well excuse me."

"I'm a doctor actually."

"Is that right…?" He replied, the same glowing smile spread across his lips.

She wasn't sure if he was on some sort of a break or if he had been searching her out for the sole purpose of the one conversation she was dying for. As she stared up at him, a whole foot or more taller than she, Lily began to slowly see more to the doctor himself, things she missed in the quick welcome amidst Jeff's hallway battle. He was rather handsome actually, more of a Florida handsome than anything else, with wavy blonde locks tucked in behind his ears, shimmering teeth that made him look like a regular Hollywood star, and a tan that proved he had more days off than he was on call during the week.

Eventually, after staring at him longer than she would have liked, she managed to answer the lingering half question. "Yes. I'm a psychologist, in Washington."

"Wow." Another sparkling grin. "That's impressive."

"Is it?"She replied, almost blushing as he continued to shamelessly flirt his way around the seriousness of her being there.

"Absolutely. You don't seem old enough."

"Oh…well, I guess 29 is the new 40 then."

"I guess so…" He sighed and leaned against the doorway he had come from. Lily though was determined to find out more about Shane's condition, whether she had to undress the doctor for the answers or not.

"I was hoping to find you for a minute Doctor…" she paused, waiting for his fill in.

"Hayes."

"Dr. Hayes, is Shane going to be alright?"

He stopped for a moment and stood tall again, a few manila folders in one hand and a continuously clicking pen in the other. Being a psychologist though, it did little to drive her over the edge…yet.

"She's going to be just fine. The bullet I removed from her lower back must have been fired from a weaker gun, it certainly didn't penetrate the skin very much. The lucky part was its location. One centimeter farther to the left, and it would have probably splintered her coccyx. That would have been a bit more difficult…"

"But she's not waking up, is she in a coma?"

"No…no. She's just sleeping off the anesthesia from surgery. Another half an hour or so and she should be wide awake and hopefully smiling some."

Lily exhaled deeply, wiping the hair away from her face.

"Shane is just going to need a lot of rest…no more firing squads this month…"

He grinned down at her, and with a soft laugh, she smiled back. It was good news, not perfect news, but good enough for now. At least Shane would be alright. Whether it meant Jimmy would be taken down or not, was still left to be seen. But for now, having everyone alive was the important thing. Without realizing it, she had slowly begun looking away from the doctor's face, and when she re-focused, he was speaking again.

She heard none of it.

"I'm sorry, what?" She asked politely, innocently.

He chuckled and stepped to her side, "I was just wondering if you had a name to go by. Or are you just 'The Shrink'?"

"Oh," she giggled shamefully, "My name's Lily."

"Lily…My mother's name was Lily." She tried to ignore the consistent flirtation with only a snicker or two of smiles, but found the doctor pressing even further. "You look like you could use a cup of coffee, Dr. Lily. Feel like joining me?"

"Uhm…" no response was coming to her, nothing short of being rude to the man who had saved her friends life only an hour before.

Part of her began to follow him, her foot crossing out in the direction his was, a smile on her face as he led her down towards the lounge. And certainly, if it hadn't been for the soft ringing in the pocket of her jeans, she might have continued on, taken the short coffee date with the Matthew Machonahey, look-a-like surgeon. But instead, she stopped to flip out Jeff's cell phone.

SHY

At first it was perplexing, and then she saw the blinking text message, and quickly read it as she noticed the doctor waiting on her. I'm awake bitches, come entertain me. Laughing, she glanced up to the handsome blonde's face as he looked back confused.

"She's awake."

A second later, she felt a hand on her back and another, different voice above her head. "Let's go Freud…we've all been summoned." Carter pulled her along, not having realized it was Shane's doctor before them, and together with Andy, they jolted down the hallway and back to her room.

With a near gust of wind, the door flew open and they piled in to see the aforementioned messenger, wide awake and smiling, sitting up, her cell phone attached to her palm, and Jeff sitting at her side, still glumly listening in.

Lily watched Andy dart to one side of the bed, while Carter stood down at the end, tapping wildly on Shane's feet beneath the blanket. "Go on and scare the shit out of us this week why don't you?" He chuckled, taking a seat by her feet then.

Shane smiled at both of the guys, and then darted her eyes away to catch Lily's. "Cute isn't he?"

"Who?"

"Dr. Hayes…" she sighed in a forced exaggeration, Andy stiffening at her side. "That face was the last thing I saw before they put me out."

Lily laughed and came to her side with a step around Jeff's chair. Taking Shane's hand, she also patted her head affectionately and watched the monitors above.

"Good to know that bullet wounds don't hinder your good spirits."

"It takes a lot to keep me down, Hanson. Don't pretend like you don't remember that much."

"I do." She replied with a quick smile, brushing Shane's cheek. "I'm glad you're okay, Shane, it's just…"

"What?"

"What were you thinking…?"

"I was thinking…that I could get him easily. That mansion of his is hardly blocked at all. Andy had a clear lead where my shot was. We almost had it perfect."

Lily shook her head quietly as she sat next to her on the bed. "But you got hurt."

"Oh this is nothing…I'm used to this kind of pain. Give me a day to sleep it off, and we can drive back down there."

At this, the room grew silent, all manner of previous discussion and smiles around the bed, diminished. Lily turned her head back to see Jeff sitting with his tilted down toward the floor, his boots crossed the way they only were when he was anxious and didn't want to discuss something, and his hands twisted together. Andy and Carter too were shut down by her determination to return to the Tuzla estate after the earlier run in. Shane though, interrupted all of their thoughts, knowing them all too well.

"Don't everyone approve at once."

"Shane…" Lily and Andy interrupted at the same time, glancing over to allow the other one access. "There's no way you're ready to go back out there. Let Danny and I handle this one…the doctor says you gotta rest."

"Yeah, right." She laughed at the two of their concerned faces. "This is my case. This is my guy."

"Our guy." Jeff corrected her solemnly, in a hushed murmur.

"You son of a bitch…you're not even supposed to be down here."

"But I am." He replied again, quiet, ignoring the battle in her tone as he adjusted his glasses higher.

"You can't just let me have one, can you?"

No one spoke, Carter and Andy moved to the opposite end of the long suite, and Lily moved out of the line of conversational fire to take a seat in the corner beside Jeff, listening in patiently.

"Jack gave me Tuzla for a reason, Jeff. He knows I can pull it off…I know I can pull this thing off. One stupid bullet in my back isn't going to keep me from tearing this guy apart."

"This isn't about letting you handle this thing on your own."

Shaking her head at him, Lily watched her eyes grow weak with tire and stress, pain she tried to hide as well as her brother. It was amazing to her still, the way their minds fashioned together, the way Shane and Sheldon were often times one. It was how they had survived life all this time.

"What's it about then?" She asked him angrily, as her needle prodded arms flew across the mattress at him.

"Jesus Christ Shane…" He stammered with a leap from his chair, walking aimlessly around in a circle, counting steps from bed to table, table to window, and back again. "…how much more do you think we can fucking take? You run off with Fruit Loop to take down Tuzla alone…? What are you a damn babysitter now for the Agency now?"

"We almost had him, we just missed--"

"It doesn't matter!" He shouted back in a slide back to the bed as he leaned against it. Lily could hear his labored breathing as it met with Shane's own, and biting her nails to contain the nervous energy of the moment, she followed everything. "You're doing this all wrong…and you damn well know it. Your heads in the wrong place for it, Shy."

"I want revenge. Seems like a good place to me. Same place as you and Lily." She spat back at him, as they quarreled inches away over the mattress.

"He wouldn't want us to fight like this…Tommy wouldn't want you going into this thing without the right idea about it. You and I both know that…he'd fucking shoot us both if something happened. And look, something did."His hands waved off the machines he could only hear higher up from his face, and as he stood tall away from the bed again, he paced to a halt, facing where he recognized Lily's shallow breathing.

"You and I are trained to protect ourselves Shane, but you know he won't be after the two of us alone. We lost one Hanson to this cocksucker already…we don't need to lose another. I won't let him take the other."

Her heart dropped as she felt the power of his invisible stare upon her face, as she watched the veins in his hands protrude with his own anger in stating such a fact aloud. Neither of them said anything else, until Shane broke through the silence.

"Lily said she wanted to fight."

More silence.

"She can fight, Jeff. Lily…"Glancing across to Shane with detrimental fear in her eyes, she tried to imagine what her friend was saying, what she was plotting. "You're as tough as any of us. Talk about pain…if there's one thing you've got on your side, it's that. Tommy was your brother."

"Enough." Jeff tried, still facing away from Shane and toward Lily. He was determined to have it dropped once and for all, and yet Shane had other plans, always.

"No. You can't see the look on her face right now, can you? So shut the fuck up, because I can. I can see she wants it; she wants to fight for Tommy. Isn't that the whole damn reason she got on that plane with us?"

"For Christ's sake, stop with this shit…" He spun back on his boots, focused on his words better now, "…what kind of an example are you? You're a trained CIA operative, and you got yourself shot in the ass tonight!"

"And you let some punk ass AFI chick rip yours eyes out!"

"I really never noticed how suicidal you've become."

"I learned from the best…Bro…"

"Stop it." The voice was quiet, forceful, and determined against the best. Jeff stepped down from his mountain of anger with Shane, and held a firm stance between the bed and Lily's voice. Shane peered around him at the sound she knew too well, the sound of frustration, the sound of complacency.

"I'm so tired of hearing you two argue over this same issue…this stupid mistake that I made to come here. It was ridiculous. I've never done anything like this before in my life, I would never think of doing it either…"

Standing to pace at Jeff's side, then onto where Carter and Andy stood near the doorway, listening, she pondered her thoughts play by play.

"I found Carter's folder, and I…I don't know I guess I just lost my mind when I saw his name on that paper, Tuzla. Eight years…I've wanted to kill him myself for that long. I was jealous of you guys…for getting to fill the vengeance I had inside of me." Her eyes grew wet slowly, but she dry them quick and finished as she stood at Shane's bedside. "I want nothing more than to see this fucker gone. You're right; I want to be the one to kill him, Shane. I'll learn whatever I have to, I'll do it all, just…let me finish this with you. I need it…"