Mac would later hope that Thornton passed it off as bad judgement from pain-induced adrenaline. But that couldn't have been further from the truth. When he'd argued with her and the company's medical personnel about being separated from Jack for transport, he hadn't been feeling any pain at all.
He'd gotten outside and promptly hopped off the gurney he'd been being pushed along on to follow Jack into one of the waiting ambulances. "Hold on, there, kid. Not enough room," the man, Evers, said holding up a hand and getting in his way.
Jack would have recognized the stubborn line that formed across Mac's forehead for what it was, and if he hadn't been in absolute agony, he probably would have tried to intervene and explain that Mac wasn't somebody you really wanted to argue with in a situation like this. With somebody like Mac, you had to take care of their concern for others first. It was just how Mac was wired. If you stood in the way of that, he'd bleed to death on the spot trying to change your mind.
"You said there was room. And I sat down and waited and didn't just walk out here. So, let's go."
Mac moved to step around him and suddenly found himself face to face with Patricia Thornton. "Excuse me, ma'am," he said, pleasantly enough, but the get-the-hell-out-of-my-way was definitely implied.
She gave him a small smile that didn't actually feel like a smile at all. "Mac, your injury can be taken care of back at our facility, but our people are taking Jack to a nearby private hospital that is better equipped to handle his situation."
"Which is?" Mac snapped.
Her eyes narrowed for a moment. "Our team here suspects that Jack may have … injured … his back."
"Yeah, me too. I saw him fall," he replied. "Duh," he added under his breath. Then he moved to step around her again.
"Broken," she said more definitely. "They suspect a break."
"Well, then, what are we waiting for?" Mac asked, stubbornly squaring his shoulders.
Thornton raised one eyebrow. "For you to be reasonable, I believe," she answered cooly.
"I'm not being unreasonable. I'm being responsible." This time he just pushed past her and started toward the back of the ambulance with Jack.
"You have a bullet wound that needs to be treated," she said with some irritation.
His eyes flashed for a split second like he didn't care whose boss she was. "So does Jack." His voice dropped. "This is my fault. I'm going to make sure he's okay."
She considered him for a long moment before nodding thoughtfully. Mac started limping in his original direction. Thornton looked at Evers. "Make sure he gets taken care of, too, and is either clear on the accident story or too medicated for anyone to pay any attention to him. He's not briefed in, so he has no reference for protocol here. I'll send staff along to move them back to headquarters as soon as you give me the word."
He just nodded, somewhat surprised that Thornton didn't just bite the young man's head off and make him go back to the office for treatment. No security clearance, worked as a lab tech in the front office, and here he was in the middle of an op that was going to take no small amount of creative record altering to keep a lid on, and he'd just more or less told the boss to kiss his ass, in so many words. And instead of firing him, or more likely ordering one of them to knock his ass out until she could figure out what to do about it, she was just giving him his way.
Actually, Evers thought, as he climbed into the rig, based on the expression on the kid's face, he wasn't sure even Patricia Thornton could have gotten him away from Dalton at the moment. Once he'd gotten his way and was sitting as out of the way as he could be while still being in Jack's line of site, he was agreeable enough. He let Evers slice through his pant leg up to the point of the injury and look at his leg, securing a pressure bandage around the wound.
Mac did refuse any pain management, which Evers was afraid was going to be the case. Being able to just dope the kid senseless would have made his life so much easier. But Thornton had offered an alternative. So Evers went over the accident story: a carjacking gone horribly wrong, and that Mac was not to mention X-Com (which Mac was now realizing was definitely a cover name for something much bigger and much deeper than a tech-based swanky think tank) as anything other than his employer, and was to defer any real questions until a representative from the company arrived at the hospital.
Mac just nodded. "Yeah, of course," he agreed quietly, still mostly watching Jack who was well-bandaged and finally happier to have the IV than he'd been to not have it, since it was delivering something to make his pain tolerable. Although it was clear to Mac from the lines of his friend's face that tolerable was as far as they could get him. He was still obviously hurting.
The other member of the medical team that fit back here with them, Davis, Mac thought her name was, was less interested in whatever story the boss was cooking up for the civilians and more interested in how lousy their more resistant patient looked at the moment. She switched places with Evers and took the young man's vital signs again and told him very pointedly that he might think getting shot was no big deal, but his blood pressure had dropped some, which didn't really surprise her because he wasn't bleeding badly, but he was bleeding.
At that point, he let them start an IV, but had flatly asked which one of them sucked the least at doing it before offering up a hand to let them. Davis apologized after blowing the second try. She assured him she was normally really good at it.
He growled that he'd had about enough and that stabbing him with sharp things was like baseball. Three strikes and you're out. Then he glanced at Evers and said, "And in this case that means the inning is over!"
Jack had dopily teased him a little then, and Mac threatened to expand on the earlier start of the story, which had shut Jack right up.
That was as much as he'd put up with until they were about halfway to where they were going when, without any warning that Mac could ever remember later, other than looking down and seeing that the bandage hard started to soak through, feeling suddenly returned to his leg. He stifled a surprised cry of pain behind lips he was biting.
"Hurts, huh?" Jack asked, not moving at first. Then, incredibly grateful for the above average pain medication he'd been given because otherwise just laying here would have been unbearable, Jack opened his eyes again, reached out and tugged on Mac's sleeve, "These guys could help with that you know."
Mac shook his head, not even realizing how narrow his eyes were. "I'm okay. It just … you know … kinda …"
"Burns like someone's holding a hot poker to it for fun?" Jack asked with a wry expression that wasn't quite a smile but that said he found Mac's pretense that it wasn't miserable to be a little amusing.
Mac closed his eyes. "Okay, maybe, yeah. A little." He took a deep breath. "I'll be okay until you're …"
"What exactly do you think you're gonna do for me, kid?" Jack asked, his tone a bit sharp. "Because I'm here to tell ya, watching you sittin' there hurtin' like hell ain't doin' a damn thing for me. The meds these fine folks were kind enough to bring along, those are great. Bein' pretty sure Patty is sending me somewhere good to get fixed up, also great."
Mac smirked a little when Jack slipped and called the boss Patty. He couldn't help it. Then Jack grabbed his hand and squeezed it until Mac looked at him directly.
"You sitting here bleeding and hurting and not letting these guys help you as much as they could, hell as much as they'd like to? That's actually sort of making a bad situation worse, kid."
He didn't really want to lay a guilt trip on the kid, but for one thing it was really how he felt, and for another it was a disturbing pattern of behavior he'd noticed in a certain blond bomb nerd, that he thought was maybe time to do something about.
Mac shifted, gasping as the small movement lit a blowtorch inside his leg that shot fire all the way down to his foot. "I'm sorry, Jack …" It was clear that he didn't necessarily mean about what was happening at the moment. "But I just want you to be …"
"I know. I get it," Jack interrupted. "And I'm a long damn way from fine this second, but I'll get there. Count on it. Always put your money on Jack Wyatt Dalton, bud. I'm a good bet." Jack managed a cocky smirk, although it took every ounce of willpower he had.
Mac half smiled at that, even though he sort of thought he'd put that same money up for someone punching his lights out just so he didn't have to feel his leg or anything else for awhile. Then he took an almost ragged breath, meeting Jack's eyes. "But this is my fault."
Jack shook his head, exchanging a look with Davis as he spoke, sort of letting her know with his eyes that he was pretty sure he could get Mac around to a more sensible way of thinking. "There are definitely aspects of this situation that are in fact your fault and believe you me when I can think half straight again we will be discussing them. At length."
Mac looked away, but he was almost smiling. Good God, even doped up to high heaven with a possibly broken back, Jack couldn't help but adopt that big brother, I'm your Overwatch, you ain't got a lick of sense so you best listen to me tone. And Mac knew he deserved it. "I know it, Jack, and I …"
"Me bein' hurt right now ain't one of the things we'll be talkin' about. You hear? Goin' after guys like that is my job."
Mac's eyes widened a little bit. That was quite an admission. Then Jack gave him a hard stare; even through his pain medication it was pretty intimidating.
"But it ain't yours. And you're hurt, too. So you let these folks take care of you, and once we're on the other side of this we'll maybe talk about your job since you're so fired up about savin' the world."
Mac nodded. Even though he absolutely detested how his brain felt on any kind of drugs that slowed him down, he agreed to let them start treating him a little more. By the time they'd arrived at the hospital and Jack had been whisked away for an MRI and someone was dealing with his leg more aggressively, he was not ungrateful that he had some pain relief on board, even though he felt way more looped than he'd told them would be okay.
He was also feeling liberally medicated enough that he only gave half a damn when someone said the words surgical repair. He just blearily signed the consent form, and nodded off before they'd gotten him as far as the OR.
Thornton must've called ahead and made some arrangements for security. A couple of taciturn guys in suits were sitting in his room when he was more with later that night. He figured they were there to make sure he didn't breach security for whoever the hell it was he actually worked for. But he didn't mind so much after one of them had the decency to assure him that, "Dalton is doing fine and he'll be brought here when he's out of surgery."
Mac dozed off, still pretty well in the bag (as Jack liked to say) on pain meds and fuzzy from anesthesia. When he woke again, Jack was there, in the bed closer to the window. The men who'd been sitting with him earlier had disappeared, and it was as quiet as a hospital ever gets. Mac had almost fallen back asleep, when he heard Jack say softly, "You awake, kid?"
He pried his eyes open. "Sort of," he mumbled. "How you doing?"
"I'm alright, I guess, bud, but …"
"But what?" Mac asked, pushing himself up on his pillow and starting to feel more awake, realizing there was more apprehension in Jack's voice than there was pain or even his usual softly revealed affection or concern.
"I just checked my phone. There going to move us back to the infirmary this morning, kid, and …"
"Spit it out, Jack," Mac said, starting to be legitimately worried, and realising his own pain management had started to wear off, and unusually for him, he was a little disappointed about it.
"Thornton is coming to see us to debrief this incident personally."
Mac swallowed hard. "That's bad, huh?"
"I don't think it's good, bud."