Disclaimers: I don't own 'The Rookies.' But, maybe someday.
Summary: Mike learns the extent of Jill's injuries following the bus accident as she begins a struggle to survive.
Chapter 2: The Accident
Mike was in the locker room getting dressed to go home when Rico Zaccharias entered the room. Jill had once commented that Rico was one of those guys where the lights were on, but nobody was home. He was a nice enough guy and a good cop, just a bit on the flaky side. "Hey, Danko, you've been to Paris, haven't you?" Rico asked as he opened his locker door and removed his uniform.
"Yeah, I spent part of my childhood there. Why?" He asked as he tied his shoes.
"My wife brought home all of these brochures from this travel agency. We're supposed to be going away for a second honeymoon," Rico explained. "Anyway, she left the brochure for Paris on top of the stack. Do you think that's a hint?"
"Rico, you've been married for 15 years!" Mike laughed. "If you can't decipher your wife's hints by now, you're probably a lost cause."
"Have you ever taken Jill to Paris?"
"Jill's more of the 'bikini on the beach' type," Mike smiled. "I thought that you were going to Greece, anyway. Remember the whole 'land of my ancestors' speech?"
"She worries about bumping into some of my relatives. She says she keeps having flashbacks of our wedding."
"Take her to Paris. She'll love it. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Bye, Mike. Thanks."
Mike ran into Terry and Willie in the lobby. "What're you two still doing here? I was on my way to hopefully catch Jill before she takes the bus home."
"Overtime," Terry explained. "We need the bread."
"Gillis! Webster!" Ryker bellowed from the Watch Commander's doorway. "There's been a major traffic accident! I need you two to help with traffic control!"
"Yes, sir! We're on our way!" Terry answered as he and Willie ran for the parking lot.
"Do you need me to stay, sir?"
"Not if it means paying you overtime. Go home to your wife, Danko."
***MJMJMJ***
When they arrived at the accident scene, Fire and Rescue was already there as well as several police cars, ambulances and the coroner's wagon. The bus was lying on its side on one side of the intersection, the area around it surrounded by broken glass and water from where the firemen had hosed the area down to keep the spilled fuel from igniting.
"What happened?" Willie asked one of the officers already on the scene.
"See that truck over there?" He pointed to a mid-sized delivery truck that was nothing more than a mass of crumpled metal. "The driver ran the light and hit the bus doing about 60. As you can see, the impact flipped the bus on its side."
"How bad is it?"
"Six dead, so far. Another 15 injured, but there are still people trapped inside the wreckage. The fire department's still pulling out bodies. Can you believe that the guy who caused all of this walked away with nothing more than bumps and bruises?"
"That figures," Willie sighed. "What was his BAC?"
"I don't know. I think they were going to take his blood at the hospital."
"I need help!" One of the rescue workers shouted as Willie and the officer looked toward him.
"You want to go?" Terry asked his partner and the other officer.
"I'll go," Willie volunteered as he jogged over toward the fireman.
Terry took flares from the trunk of the squad car and laid them out before he took his position in the middle of the road and began directing gawkers past the wreck. It amazed him how much people loved nothing more than to see dead bodies covered with yellow sheets lying by the side of the road.
***MJMJMJ***
Half an hour later, Mike walked into the apartment, frowning as he realized that Jill wasn't home. He'd stopped by the hospital, only to be told by one of her co-workers that she'd already left work and had caught the bus. The ride between the hospital and the apartment was a short one and it'd usually place Jill at home about the same time as he arrived by car. Still frowning, he went to the refrigerator and got a beer, figuring that maybe she'd stopped at the market on her way home. He guessed that he'd give her another hour before he'd go into full-blown panic mode.
***MJMJMJ***
Back at the crash site, the firefighter handed Willie some safety equipment and instructed him on how to search for survivors. "If you find dead bodies, mark them with this," he handed Willie a red marker. "We'll pull them out later. Right now we need to get to any more possible survivors."
Willie climbed a ladder and lowered himself through a broken window into the interior of the bus. The inside looked like a war zone. Broken glass, blood, and personal effects littered the inside. He went from victim to victim, checking for a pulse. He sighed as he kept marking bodies with the red marker. He walked toward the back of the bus, and picked up yet one more wrist, the wrist of a woman wearing a gold bracelet. Willie stopped as he stared in shock and horror at the bracelet. He'd seen this bracelet a couple of hundred times over the past two years. "No," he whispered as he felt her wrist, praying for a pulse. "Come on, Jill." Was it his imagination or was there a faint beat? No, he wasn't imagining it. She was definitely alive! "I've got a live one!" Willie shouted up as he heard a flurry of activity.
"Okay, hold on! We'll come down and bring a stretcher with us! Whatever you do, don't move her!" The firefighter called down.
He pulled debris off of her. She was bloody and deeply bruised, looking barely alive. Her lips and cheeks had a bluish tint to them. "Jill, can you hear me?" He called as he gently shook her. She remained ominously still and quiet, not emitting so much as a groan.
The firefighters and paramedics came down into the bus, bringing a stretcher with them. Willie helped them carefully load her onto it and carefully hoist her out of the bus. Willie climbed out of the bed last, and ran over to Terry, who was still directing traffic. "Terry, Jill was on that bus! We need to go get Mike and get him to the hospital!"
***MJMJMJ***
At the hospital, the word went out that several victims of a major traffic accident were going to be coming into the hospital. They were to be triaged in order of severity of injuries. For some of the nurses and orderlies, this was the first major catastrophe they'd ever encountered. "Keep your heads and if you're not sure about something, come and ask one of the doctors," head nurse Meggy Moran instructed them.
Albert Cummings was brought in before any of the victims arrived. He had a nasty cut over one eye that required stitches, but other than that, he was in good shape. The police officer that had brought him in instructed the nurse to take his blood and check the alcohol level. "Did he hit somebody?" She asked innocently as she drew the blood.
"Yeah, he hit a bus full of commuters coming home from work," the officer spat out bitterly. "I haven't seen anything that bad since Vietnam."
"He's the cause of the accident we were just told about?"
"Yeah, fix him up so that I can take him to jail and book him."
***MJMJMJ***
Mike had heard about the accident on the news and tried to force the pictures of doom out of his head. Jill wasn't home yet, but that didn't mean anything. 'Get a grip, Mike,' he mentally scolded himself just as the doorbell rang. He walked to the door on shaking legs and opened it to find Willie and Terry standing there, with solemn looks on their faces. His first thought was how Jill must've felt living in Alabama when she'd seen the blue condolence cars. She'd told him that her first instinct that day they'd come to their small house by mistake was to slam the door shut in their faces. That was now Mike's first instinct, too. "Mike, there's been an accident," Willie began in a shaky voice as Mike stared blankly at him.
"Is this about the accident that I just heard about on the news?"
"Yeah. Jill's on her way to Memorial right now."
"Then, why are we standing here! Let's go!" Mike grabbed his jacket and followed his friends to their patrol car.
***MJMJMJ***
At the hospital, Jackie Greenfield almost lost her composure when she saw Jill being wheeled past her on her way to a trauma room. She ran in as the team went to work. They immediately started IV's and slipped an oxygen mask over her face as they cut her clothes away from her body and slipped her into a gown. The doctor examining her quickly began barking out orders. The people in the room were almost tripping over each other as they raced to comply with his orders. "Is her family here?" He asked as he checked her pupils.
"Her husband should be here shortly," Jackie answered. "I'll go and check."
"If he's here, tell him that I'll be out to talk to him as soon as I can."
Mike was standing out in the hallway, flanked on either side by Willie and Terry. He stood up straighter when he spotted Jackie walking toward him. "Jackie, what's going on? Is Jill okay? Can I see her?"
"Mike, Dr. Vargas will be out as soon as he can to talk to you. I can't tell you anything right now. I have to get back in there." She turned and went back into the room.
"I'm going to get some coffee. Mike, do you want some?" Terry asked.
"No," Mike rubbed his hand over his face as he walked over toward the room that he'd seen Jackie enter. Standing in front of the double doors, he tried to see around all of the personnel in order to try to get a glimpse of Jill. He couldn't see anything through all of the machinery and medical personnel.
"Mike, come on. You need to let them work," Willie pulled Mike away from the doors.
"How'd this happen? The news didn't say much. They just said something about some guy running a light or something. Was he drunk?"
"Possibly. One of the cops on the scene told me that the guy walked away with nothing more than bumps and bruises."
"How many dead and injured?"
"Too many. The bus was almost full of commuters going home from work. Mike, I was the one . . . I went in to help the rescuers. I reached down to feel for a pulse and I recognized Jill's bracelet," he swallowed as he tried to erase the memory of finding his friend's wife almost lifeless on the floor of that bus.
"Did she say anything?"
"Mike, she was unconscious. I wish that I could lie and tell you that she woke up and said something witty, but she didn't."
"I wish that the doctor would come out here and tell me something," Mike ran his hands through his hair as he began pacing the hallway.
He was still standing there leaning against the wall half an hour later, wishing that he had a cigarette just to have something to do with his hands. He couldn't believe that he was actually wishing for a cigarette. The last time he'd wanted one was the night that Jill had gotten shot. He hadn't smoked since Vietnam. In Vietnam, it was something that every soldier did. If you were a non-smoker when you arrived in the LZ, within a week you were usually a smoker. After all, it wasn't like there was anything to do except kill people. "Oh, there you are," one of the nurses approached him as she held a manila envelope in her hand. "I thought that you might want Jill's things."
"Thanks," he murmured in a quiet voice as he sat down on the floor and opened the envelope, pouring out the contents in his hand. Her watch, her pinky ring that had been a gift from one of her aunts and finally, the three items of jewelry that never failed to make Mike's eyes flood with tears, which he quickly and impatiently brushed away. Looking at the gold bracelet, her engagement and wedding rings, he could remember the exact moments when he'd placed all three items on Jill.
"Has there been any word?" Terry asked as he slid down the wall beside Mike.
"No, just a lot of people running in and out with all kinds of huge machines," he sighed as he ran his fingers along the two rings and the bracelet.
"Did Willie tell you that's how he knew that it was Jill? He recognized her bracelet," Terry pointed to it.
"My brother was with me when I bought this. It was the first Christmas after I'd met Jill. I was here visiting my parents, while she stayed behind in Alabama. A bracelet was the first gift my father ever bought my mother when he knew that he wanted to marry her. I heard that story so many times growing up," he smiled as he remembered. "So, I decided that I wanted to continue that tradition. Then I got impulsive," he grinned at his friend.
"How'd you get impulsive?" Terry was intrigued. It was rare that Mike ever opened up about his early life with Jill. All he'd ever heard was how he'd met her in a bar and she'd always considered him a pest.
"After I bought the bracelet, I glanced across the display cases and saw the engagement sets. I'd only known Jill for four months, Terry, but I was so totally crazy about her. I was 30 years old and I was really in love for the first time in my life. I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, so I bought her engagement ring at the same time. I don't know what I would've done if she hadn't said yes when I asked her to marry me," he remembered as his eyes once again filled with tears. "If that doctor doesn't come out soon and tell me something, I swear I'm going to go in there."
"Mike, take it easy," Terry urged him as the doors opened as if on cue and the doctor stepped out, looking around for him. "I think there's your man."
"Mr. Danko?" The doctor looked down at the floor.
"Yes," Mike picked himself up off of the floor.
"I'm Dr. Vargas. Let's go over here so that we can talk," he pointed his arm down the hall as Mike followed him to a nearby waiting area. "Have a seat." Mike stiffly sat down in an area away from listening ears and looked expectantly at the doctor. "I wish that I had good news for you, but I'm afraid that I don't. Right now, the only good news that I can give you is that Jill was lucky that she wasn't sitting on the other side of the bus. If she had been, I don't think she would've made it to the hospital."
"Tell me what's going on," Mike felt slightly sick. "For the past two hours, I've watched people parade in and out of that damned room and nobody's told me a damn thing! I want some answers."
"Jill was buried under a lot of debris," the doctor began. "She was deprived of oxygen for a time. We're not sure for how long. I've paged the on-call neurosurgeon, Dr. Conti, and he'll be down to evaluate her shortly. He can tell you more about her head injury that I can."
"Will she wake up?"
"As I just said, Dr. Conti can tell you more about that than I can. Jill has a lot of other injuries, that in and of themselves could also pose problems. She was crushed by the debris, so I'm about to take her upstairs to perform a laparotomy to check for internal bleeding," the doctor concluded as Mike just stared at him.
"Can I see her?"
"Mr. Danko, as soon as Dr. Conti finishes his evaluation, we need to get her upstairs. If you'll excuse me, I need to get back in there," the doctor stood up to leave.
***MJMJMJ***
Back in the trauma room, Dr. Richard Conti entered the room, all business as he approached the bed. "What do we have?"
"Twenty-five-year old female injured in a truck-bus collision," the nurse said as she rattled off Jill's vital signs.
"Has anybody done the coma scale?" He asked, referring to the Glasgow Coma Scale, which was used to evaluate head injuries.
"It's a six," the nurse reported.
"That's not good," he sighed as he shined a penlight into Jill's eyes. "Mrs. Danko, can you hear me? I need for you to open your eyes!" He stepped to the end of the bed and tightly squeezed the heel of her foot, watching as she drew away from the pain. He was making notations on her chart when Dr. Vargas re-entered the room. "Are you taking her up to surgery?"
"Yes, they're got an OR waiting for her. Has the scale improved?"
"No. Is her family here?"
"Her husband's right outside."
Mike was once again leaning against the wall as yet another doctor exited the room. "Mr. Danko?" The doctor looked at Mike, who nodded in response. "I'm Dr. Conti, chief of neurosurgery. Let's get out of the hallway, shall we?"
"No. Whatever you have to say, you can say it right here," Mike answered, his nerves frayed thin by the constant waiting.
"I've seen the results of your wife's—"
"Jill," Mike corrected him. "My wife's name is 'Jill.' Not 'she,' not 'your wife,' but 'Jill.'"
"Okay. I've looked at the results of Jill's CT scan and her x-rays, and I just finished examining her. Right now, Jill is in a coma. On the Glasgow Coma Scale, she ranks a six out of a possible 15. As you probably realize, that isn't good. She doesn't respond to verbal commands. At least, not from us. Sometimes people in comas respond to family members. Now, Jill's about to go upstairs to surgery, but I'd welcome you to try to get through to her if you can," the doctor ushered Mike toward the trauma room.
Mike thought that he was going to faint when he saw how badly Jill looked. She was covered in deep purple bruises. There were monitor and IV's everywhere he looked. A nurse pushed a small stool toward him, and he sat on it gratefully, no longer sure if his legs would hold him up. He picked up one of her hands, which was ice cold to his touch, much like that awful night more than a year before. He rubbed it in his in order to warm it up. "Baby, it's me. It's Mike," he said loudly over the beeping of the machines. "Baby, they need for you to open your eyes. Just for a second. You need to let them know that you're in there somewhere. I know that you are. But you have to let them know it. Come on, baby. Please," he pleaded as tears begin to fall down his face.
"Mike, we need to get her upstairs now," one of the nurses said as she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"Baby, I have to go. I love you and I'll see you very soon," he vowed as he stood up and kissed her on the forehead. "Dr. Conti?" He turned toward the neurosurgeon.
"Yes?"
"Are you going to perform brain surgery on her?"
"I don't know, yet," he answered honestly. "She has a brain contusion, but so far there's been no swelling. I want to treat her medically first. I'll see how she progresses from there. We need to go now."
After he left the trauma room, he walked over to Terry and Willie, who were standing by the wall drinking coffee. "Do you two need to go back and write your reports?"
"Yeah. What's going on?" Terry asked.
"They're about to take Jill upstairs to surgery to check for internal bleeding. I need to go by the apartment and pick up my car."
"That's not a problem. We'll take you," Willie offered.
"Mike, what did the doctor say? How bad is it?" Terry asked.
"It's about as bad as it can get," he answered as they left the hospital and approached the squad car. "The doctor said that she was lucky that she wasn't sitting on the other side of the bus. Otherwise, she . . . " he stopped, unable to voice his thoughts as his friends looked at each other.
Willie and Terry dropped Mike off at the apartment and then went on to the precinct. Lt. Ryker was standing at the desk in the lobby when they came in. "How's Jill? I heard that she was one of the passengers on the bus," he said as they walked up and stood at his side.
"Mike said that it's bad, but he really didn't say much more than that. When we left, they were in the process of taking her to surgery," Terry reported. "What about the driver of the truck?"
"Right now, he's in a cell at central, sleeping like a baby. The only mark on him is a gash above his eye which required eight stitches."
"What was his BAC?" Willie asked, referring to his blood alcohol content.
"Point one-four, way over the legal limit. He'll be arraigned in the morning and charged with 12 counts of first degree vehicular homicide, 18 counts of attempted vehicular homicide and driving while intoxicated. I hope the judge throws the damn book at him. Patrons at the bar that he frequents said that he'd been there all afternoon, throwing them back," Ryker said in disgust.
"Why didn't anybody stop him from getting back behind the wheel?" Terry wanted to know.
"The bartender said that he offered to call him a cab, but Cummings refused. You two finish your reports and get out of here."
"Yes, sir," they answered in unison as they walked away.
***MJMJMJ***
Back at the hospital, Mike was sitting in the surgical waiting area for word on Jill. It had been more than two hours since she'd been brought up here. In that time, he'd removed the St. Christopher from around his neck and slipped all of Jill's rings onto it. He'd slipped her bracelet into his shirt pocket. The weight of the rings weighed heavily on the chain around his neck, but he wasn't about to remove them. Right now, they were all that he had to hold onto.
An hour later, he heard the double doors to the surgical suite swing opened and Dr. Vargas stepped out. "Mr. Danko, there was some bleeding, but we were able to stop it. Right now, Jill's in recovery and she'll be there for about 45 minutes. Then we'll move her to ICU. While she's in there, you can visit her for 10 minutes every hour. There are no exceptions to that rule. You can see her once she's moved, and then I want you to go home and get some rest yourself. You're not going to do her any good if you end up here, too."
"How long will Jill be in ICU?"
"Twenty four to 72 hours. It depends on how quickly she recuperates. Then we'll know more about the rest of her injuries."
"You think that the coma is irreversible, don't you?"
"Mr. Danko, I'm not going to lie to you. A six on the GCS is catastrophic. I'm not saying that it's hopeless, but right now I'm not sure how much of the old Jill you're going to get back if she comes out of this."
"But you're not a neurologist."
"No, I'm not. Dr. Conti is an expert in this field. He's had some miraculous recoveries from brain injuries. He can tell you much more than I can."
Mike went home to an empty apartment just over an hour later. Dr. Vargas had let him see Jill briefly before booting him from the hospital. Walking into their apartment, he removed the bracelet from his pocket and the rings from around his neck and placed them in Jill's jewelry box. He then walked into the bathroom and slowly removed his clothes before climbing into the shower. It was then that all of the fear and anxiety of the past several hours came rushing to the surface. He stood under the shower and sobbed as the water washed over him. He didn't know what he'd do if he lost her.
A/N: I'm sorry if I make Mike cry so much. There's just something about a man who cries that just gets to me. I want to thank Gina G. for explaining to me how the Glasgow Coma Scale works. It'll be explained more fully in the next chapter.