A/N: Thank you so much for your patience, your wishes and your great reviews! Thank you for reading, favoring and following! This is not a happy chapter, because I'm afraid I enjoy angst too much, but I promise some light will come, eventually. Let me know what you think and I hope you'll enjoy this chapter as well!
Just War
Chapter 4
They reached his private clinic in 12 minutes. John had stopped breathing during the brief flight, and the rescue team had been forced to intubate him despite the C-spine and the bullet dangerously embedded in his throat.
Now he was laying on the emergency room bed, uncharacteristically still among the frantic staff around him. Harold absently noticed his blood soaked waistcoat, lying on the floor together with the rest of John's clothes.
The possibility of spinal damage was still ominously present. They still couldn't tell without a proper X-ray but the simple thought horrified Harold to no end. He refused to face it before due time, clinging to every single rational thought he could muster on the matter.
Then there was blood loss. Everybody, included himself, was covered in blood. John's blood. And they kept talking about internal bleeding as well, because of punctured organs, somewhere in the middle of the former CIA's abdomen.
They still had to evaluate internal damage as well, and he wasn't able to hear every exchange and he certainly couldn't ask questions then, in the middle of diagnosis and clinical stabilization.
Not many answers then, but he only knew that suddenly they had to revive John because his heart had stopped. Harold felt like fainting, suddenly overwhelmed by the events of day, from the explosion to the gunshots and the terrible silence that had followed the chaos.
He watched his friend jerk on the bed and a nurse appeared from nowhere then, dragging him away from the gruesome scene in front of his eyes. Harold objected weakly but John's heart was beating again and they were now moving him to the OR, so he let the woman lead him to another, pristine room.
"We need to properly bandage this hand." She told him calmly. And Harold had completely forgotten about that, even if in the back of his mind he could still feel it painfully throb.
He vaguely nodded and she made him lie down in a bed, not essential to treat his hand but quite so to control the shock he was still experiencing.
She then approached him with a burn kit. Methodically, she grabbed a pair scissors and suddenly Harold was besieged by the absurd and utterly irrational demand that he didn't want his bandage cut.
He froze, staring at his hand. He felt like he was about to lose something invaluably important, it was John's torn undershirt, John had put it there, meticulous and gentle, while reproaching him softly about his carelessness.
Harold realized that he hadn't any other connection with his partner at that moment; no ear-bud, no cell phones or GPS, anything but that tattered shred of clothe. And yet he didn't utter a word, let alone demand something.
He watched with impassiveness as the nurse cut John's makeshift bandage with practical ease, discarding the clothe in the trash bin.
Harold kept his eyes fixed on that trash bin during the entire treatment, thinking that he had to borrow one of John's suits again, unable to deprive Bear of the small measures of comfort he was forced to deny himself.
Quite aware that the surgery wasn't going take ten minutes, Harold left the clinic after instructing the staff to call him if anything happened. Not that he hadn't already done it months before, when he had literally created the facility from scratch - John poisoning being the last straw - hiring the best medical staff after examining each résumé personally.
Hence they perfectly knew how to reach him and that under circumstances such those currently ongoing they could at every hour of every day.
Meagerly reassured by the thought he headed for the safe house just around the block where the clinic was located. His clothes were still damp and he needed a shower, but most importantly he needed to shed some light on what had just happened.
And some light didn't cover even half of what Harold was going to investigate. He wanted to unveil every single detail and find every single man responsible for their current plight. Then destroy them in any possible way.
"Detective." He answered without faltering in his uneven yet hasty pace.
"Hey! Did you and Wonderboy simply decide I could babysit all night? That man had done nothing but read all day!"
"I'm sorry, Detective. Something has come up." He knew Fusco wasn't really mad, Harold knew the detective was just as grumpy and bored as John had been early that day.
It felt ages ago.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Where's our mutual friend, by the way? He assured me he'd come back in a couple of hours and now he doesn't even answer the phone."
Harold paused for a moment, literally stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.
"Is he okay?" Fusco sounded worried now and Harold knew he cared, despite the turbulent beginning, despite John's menaces and particularly eerie tone he used exclusively for his pet detective.
"No, Detective. I'm afraid he's not." There was no point in being secretive about it, Fusco was going to hear something from Carter in a few hours anyway. "But I really need you to keep watch on Mr. Stevenson, because he could be in more danger than we previously anticipated."
"All right. And keep me update, will you?" Fusco didn't seem entirely sure on wanting to hear any news soon, and Harold could relate. He just hoped they would overcome everything, once more.
"I will." He ended the call, looking around warily before entering the brownstone in front of him.
Glancing longingly at the clean suit in his wardrobe, Harold couldn't allow himself the bliss of a hot shower just yet. He had two more phone calls to make: he needed an update from Detective Carter and any help he could get from Samantha Shaw.
John had made it through surgery. Harold had long been back to the clinic, impeccable as nothing had happened, and had been frantically typing on his laptop when the surgeon had entered the waiting room and delivered the news.
He was glad he was sitting down because the wave of relief was almost overwhelming, making him incredibly dizzy.
He then listened carefully, not little distressed, to the doctor's report.
Predictably the metal fragment from the explosion had done just some minor muscular damage, but hadn't obviously helped in the blood loss context; then they had extracted a bullet from his neck, which had missed John's vocal cords by millimeters. But true to form, the worst damage had been from abdominal lesions.
The other bullet, in fact, had pierced the former soldier's stomach, causing severe internal bleeding. Then a broken rib, probably earned with a hard blow to the chest, had punctured John's right lung, which had consequentially collapsed.
They had managed to repair all damaged tissue, applied several internal stitches and connected the patient to a respirator.
John's clinic picture was far from reassuring but still, surviving such a complex operation was a small victory Harold could temporarily settle with.
Making sure his legs were actually able to bear his weight, Harold flipped the laptop close and followed the doctor to the ICU. John wasn't even close to being out of the woods so of course they needed him there, to monitor every single parameter and physical reaction. The first night was always crucial, they said.
And of course the sight that welcomed Harold was awfully disturbing. IVs of blood and saline he had seen before, so maybe it was the ventilator, or the heavy bandage around the neck, or maybe it was the impossibly pale complexion. John had dark circles under his eyes and looked… sick.
It sounded silly even inside his head, but Harold wasn't able to put it differently at the moment. His only friend was lying on a hospital bed, eyelids glued together into induced sleep, ashen, tubes up his nose and in and out his mouth, heavily bandaged on neck and abdomen.
He looked terribly sick.
"We have excluded any spinal damage." The doctor announced after a while. "The bullet pierced his neck but then settled downward, just under the collarbone."
And Harold felt another surge of relief, because the sight of a crippled John would have been simply too much to bear.
He exchanged formalities with the surgeon for a couple of minutes then was left alone.
Harold knew he couldn't linger there, he still had to bring Bear to Mr. Tao and retrieve some equipment from the Library, so he could work from the clinic. And he knew he couldn't dither either because adrenaline was keeping him upright and making possible to ignore how uncomfortable and sore he was.
He also needed something to eat, it was past 1 in the morning and he refused to pass out because he hadn't ingested anything in more than 12 hours. He was just too busy for that.
Yet he stood there for another minute, momentarily mesmerized by the steady hiss of the breathing machine.
"Is he gonna make it?"
Harold was startled but he was glad his body didn't betray his surprise. He was used to silent approaches, John had seemed to really enjoy startling him since the very first day they had started working together.
He noted absently though that somehow, along the months – years now, he had learnt to sense his presence all the same. He couldn't assert the same about Shaw though, maybe it was too soon, maybe they weren't connected.
He forced himself to avert his gaze from the bed in front of him and he turned around, facing the rogue asset.
"They still don't know". He replied quietly.
Harold didn't feel like elaborating and frankly he wasn't entirely sure if Shaw was interested in more details. Or maybe he wasn't sure if he had the strength to voice them.
She didn't move from the threshold and he glanced at the bed one last time before heading towards her. The former Marine followed him down the corridor, listening attentively to each information Harold was reciting.
He shared with her his recent talk with Detective Carter. The homicide detective had sent some scraps of the bomb to the crime lab, still waiting for the results. Joss couldn't find out much about the four armed men though. No IDs on the bodies, nor on the two survivors. One of them had died after being admitted to the hospital, the other one was in critical conditions.
"I'll pay him a visit all the same." Shaw declared knowingly.
And Harold was sure that if there was any information they could get from the man, the female operative would find a way to obtain it. He contained himself from inquiring on the modus operandi, because he was sure she wasn't going to kill him and at the moment he could make do on that.
Meanwhile, he kept explaining, Detective Fusco was having a chat with James Stevenson, now aware that his office and entire workplace had first blown up then housed a shooting.
"I expect you know where to find me, as soon as you have any news." He found himself dismissing her.
"I'll be in touch, and Finch? Next time I wouldn't mind adequate notice", she said with a pointed look.
"Ms. Shaw," Harold started calmly "I wish the cause of this recent predicament was mere lack of better judgment, on my part, or even John's. It'd feel much more acceptable than being part of the negative outcomes of Frequentist Probability."
And Harold could hear in his own voice every ounce of tiredness, and frustration, and bitterness he was currently feeling.
"Just telling that you can. Call me, I mean." Was Shaw's simple reply. And she looked meek, almost sympathetic, maybe for the first time since he had met her.
Harold found himself allowing the tiniest smile on his lips. "Thank you, Ms. Shaw, I'll keep that in mind."
TBC