CHAPTER 10: A GOOD STORY

2330: HR 125, RR 24, BP 85/48, Skin pale and cool but moving in the right direction.

Gayle tried not to think about what could have happened tonight as she watched Mac and Riley sleep. For the last couple of hours, on what felt like borrowed time, she had listened to Jack tell Riley increasingly ridiculous stories about other times they'd (usually him and Mac) almost died in the field. For a while, they were almost enough to distract her. And then Riley had finally fallen asleep, and Jack had quieted, resting his hand on hers as he leaned a chair against the cement wall and settled in for the haul of the last few hours.

The time passed mostly in silence. Gayle checked Mac and Riley periodically. The dynamap battery had crapped out on her around hour 4 and she was back to taking manual vitals. Which was fine, she supposed, she needed the practice.

At 0035, there was a sudden click and a buzz. Less than a minute later, the lights blinked pragmatically back to life. She'd been sitting on an office chair, leaning against Mac's cot and wondering how she'd ever gotten through rotating shifts in the old days.

Blinking, she groped for her cell phone in her pocket. As her eyes adjusted to the sudden light, her face fell again, noting the reception necessary to dial 911 was still lacking.

"Huh?" Jack had jerked awake to the sound of the doors unlocking but had somehow managed to stay on his chair.

"Go upstairs, now, get EMS in here as soon as possible." She ordered a mildly confused Jack. He rose slowly, his face anxiously turned towards Mac.

"How's Mac doing?" He asked.

"He's still alive, but he needs a hospital, like, four hours ago."

"Copy." Jack said, nodding and bolting out of the door. Gayle turned back toward Mac. She was glad, in a way, that she'd not been able to see this much of his skin color in the darkness. He looked worse than even she realized, and that was after the improvised unit of blood. Though, to be honest, he'd probably lost at least that much before he'd been able to clot off whatever was bleeding.

"Mac, how are you doing over here, man?" She said, eliciting a brief moan from the agent when she pressed her knuckles into his chest. Not great, but she'd take it. She took vitals again, noting that they'd remained crappy-but-stable for long enough she was confident he'd make it to the hospital breathing.

"He okay?" Riley asked, climbing off her own cot and squinting in the unnecessarily bright light.

Gayle thought about saying no. It was the truth, but she hedged with a weary "maybe." There was a lot that could still have gone wrong. Four hours without adequate blood flow, especially given his mental status and lack of urine output in the last 6 hours, meant a solid possibility of brain and kidney damage. And that was if something didn't go screwy with his electrolytes and kill him before those things became apparent. He'd survived the lockdown, but still needed a lot if he was going to survive past the night.

Riley sat in Gayle's vacated chair. She looked a little pale herself and though it was probably just a combination of the stress and lack of sleep, she would recommend the young hacker get herself checked out as well. Gayle turned away from Mac for a minute and tried to mentally compose a report for the medics.

No matter how she sliced it, she would be asking them to check her work. To make sure she hadn't killed Mac. Which, yes, was what anyone and everyone was there to do in medicine. Heck, when she'd worked hospital, half the job had been to make sure the residents put in the orders they'd meant to and failed to outright kill anyone. But just because the work got checked and the patient lived didn't mean no one got punished for it. And given what she'd done, she'd be lucky if she ever worked again, let alone in healthcare.

She'd pulled him through. She berated herself on that fact. He would have died. Bled out in front of her if she hadn't done anything. And that should have been enough to justify it. But what she'd done could have killed him too, and that was every reason she was standing there worried about her own future.

Better go out giving someone a good story, she figured, and turned back to her patient.

Less than five minutes after the power had come back online, a small crowd of tired Phoenix Foundation employees began emerging from their labs and offices. Jack pushed his way through the group, beelining toward the flashing red and blue lights outside that signaled help.

Just in front of the building, a half dozen police cars were parked with lights flashing in the darkened parking lot. Matty stood off to the side, supervising what appeared to be the arrest of a man in a Phoenix lab coat, her arms folded in the full-body disappointment scowl she was famous for. Jack himself wanted to do more than arrest the guy, (even though, he noted smugly, it looked like someone had already taken offense to his nose- he couldn't wait to hear how that had played out) but he had bigger fish to fry cleaning up what had to be the result of the man's actions.

An ambulance idled at the end of the line of emergency vehicles. Jack rushed over, getting the attention of the EMS personnel who stood alongside it. He found he wasn't all that effective in explaining exactly what happened, but he was able to give a general location and a room number, which they seemed to appreciate.

He was about to follow them back inside when Matty caught up with him. "Jack!" She said, her tone more irritated than anything. In her eyes, though, Jack sensed an undercurrent of worry.

"What the hell happened here tonight?" Jack asked. "Who's he?" He pointed to the man in the back of the cop car.

"Bradley Roswell." Matty said, detest evident in her voice. "Doesn't work here and probably won't last long in prison." She turned to look briefly in the direction of the paramedics. "Looking at that I'm not sure how much help I'm planning to give him in that regard. Are you going to tell me what happened to Mac or do I have to guess?"

"I'm not totally sure, but it was scary." Jack said.

"But he's still alive?"

"Wha-? Oh, yeah, takes more than- well, whatever it was- to kill Mac." Jack said uneasily. Matty started towards the building at a clipped pace. Jack followed after her.

"Sawyer!" Gayle recognized the voice and turned slowly, hands on hips, stifling a relieved smile.

"Gisom." She acknowledged, nodding at the older of the two medics. "Thought you'd've retired by now."

"Pssh, and done what? Got myself a BSN and an office job?" Gayle shot him a wry laugh.

"You at least going to introduce your partner before you insult me in front of him?" The other man, younger and far more slightly built, leaned in with a handshake.

"Kinnly."

"Good to meet you. Sorry you have to ride with this hellhound." Gayle said, turning back to MacGyver. "And don't knock the occupational health life. I got stories of this place that would make your hair curl if you had one left, Gisom, and tonight's one of them."

"I'm all ears, kiddo."

"Gather round, then, boys, and meet the office troublemaker. Name's MacGyver. Mac's a 27 year old male, intoxicated with an unknown substance intramuscularly about 31 hours ago. Since then he presented with worsening nausea and coffee ground emesis, with EBL in the 1500ml range. Mental status suddenly worsened- he's responsive to pain- and vital signs trended to shitty approximately 4 hours ago. Blood pressure's been holding in the 80's with a heart rate in the 140s. Repositioned, placed on oxygen 3L NC and bolused x2L IV NS with no improvement." Gayle paused while Kinnly took a set of vitals and Gisom did his own assessment. "Here's where the story starts, though. As you know we were in lockdown since about 6 hours ago. He was bleeding out internally because, I'm guessing, something in the toxin was an anticoagulant."

Kinnly seemed to get where this was going before Gisom did. "You didn't…" Gayle cringed.

"Hey, I figure I'm going to lose my license over it eventually and I'm at peace with that," She sighed, resigned to her fate. "So if I find either of you covering my ass I'm taking you down myself. But yeah. Riley Davis was a match and we were able to transfuse approximately 360ml of blood from her into Mac. By some miracle both of them are still breathing. I'm relying on you two to keep it that way, any questions?"

Jack and Riley followed the medics out to the ambulance, and, she figured, all the way to the hospital assuming Matty hadn't caught them first demanding a report. Gayle herself stayed back in the infirmary to clean up and take inventory.

The place reeked of sweat and body odor and blood and emesis. Now under the fluorescent lights, wrappers and disposable plastic bits littered the floor. Gayle found herself shaking as she swept the remnants of the previous six hours' intensity into a dustpan, disposed of any remaining sharps and biohazards appropriately, wiped down the cots with industrial antiseptic wipes and cleaned the bathroom and bucket. Next she inventoried the emergency kit, replaced what was missing from the back shelves, and tested the AED.

In less than a half hour, the only remaining sign of the craziness they'd all just lived through was a few post-it reminders on her desk computer to reorder IV start kits and exchange the oxygen tank. She thought about how, in a hospital setting, another patient would soon be inhabiting that bed, utterly oblivious to what had just transpired.

She figured, if anything needed written down, she wouldn't want to leave it to the morning. The computer was back online, and wearily, she logged in and began to type the longest encounter report she'd completed since starting at the Phoenix foundation. Documenting every moment that had transpired since the first time Matty had called her to say MacGyver was on his way to the medics leaving with Mac on a stretcher. She tried to make it look like she had legitimate reasons for her actions, but when it was all said and done, nothing she could say would stop her losing at the least her job and at the most her licenses and freedom.

It was closing on 0200 by the time Matty knocked on the door. She too looked as tired as Gayle felt, and very honestly, Gayle hadn't expected her to still be in the building. Whatever had happened, she had been worked to the bone over it too.

Gayle hit complete on the report and leaned back in her chair. She'd really wanted to go home after the report, but if she had to face the music, it would be worth getting it over with tonight rather than spending the night worrying about it. Matty dragged a chair over to Gayle's desk and sat in it.

"I just got word from Riley at the hospital." Matty started. Gayle quietly held her breath. "He's in the ED now and they're planning to transfer him to a floor for a few days once a bed becomes available. They think he'll be alright once he gets a little more blood in him and they can fully reverse the anticoagulation." Gayle smiled tiredly. Mac was alive. At least part of her fears were relieved by that. Matty leaned in slightly. "Would I be right in saying you had a part in that?"

The question didn't exactly catch Gayle by surprise. She knew where Matty was going with that line of questioning. "Yes." She said.

"And you feel as though you acted in a manner appropriate for the situation?" Gayle hesitated. Officially, the answer was no. Absufreakinlutely not. MacGyver would have had to weather the blood loss alone- be the result life, death, or permanent disability. And there were reasons for that that Gayle wholeheartedly agreed to. She'd been working on half information. No one had trained or certified her to improvise a blood donation under extremely austere conditions. No one had given her medical direction to do it. There was no entity that had taken legal or medical responsibility for her ability to do what she'd done.

Had Mac died from getting someone else's blood injected into him, that would have been murder. Had he not died, that was still attempted murder. Gayle took a breath. The question was not had she acted in accordance with her license and law. The question was if her actions matched the severity of the situation. Would Mac have died without her intervention? Yes, almost certainly. Did she do something of equal threat to his life? Definitely. But that threat that had, in the end, worked.

"Yes." She confirmed.

Matty nodded. "You're nervous." She noted aloud.

Gayle scrubbed her face with her hands. "Yeah." She agreed.

"Well, I'm sure glad someone still is." Gayle frowned. Matty leaned forward a little more tenderly than usual. "Listen, in all the hundreds of missions MacGyver has run for the Phoenix Foundation, I think I can count on one hand how many times he or Jack actually acted in accordance with something resembling their explicitly written protocols."

"Now, myself and Director Thornton before me, and many other directors before her, we've more or less agreed to take a pretty steep risk letting our agents get away with that. On one hand, a lot of people are alive because of it. On the other, we've had to answer to some pretty big names for the... misadventures of some of our people." Matty paused. "We take that risk ourselves, personally and as the face of the Phoenix Foundation, so people like MacGyver can improvise otherwise untested solutions to problems. So people like Riley can break into systems without clearance and so people like Jack can use unconventional tactics to keep everyone safe while they do what they do."

A small ray of hope flickered in Gayle's chest. "What are you saying, exactly?"

"I'm saying… well, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud at all," Matty rolled her eyes. "To be perfectly honest, no one in this organization has needed it spelled out this explicitly, but… if there's a risk you need to take, for a legitimate reason, we aren't new to the idea of covering some methods up." Gayle looked up.

"As in?" She asked.

"As in, MacGyver's medical records, print and electronic, have been sealed above top secret and all persons involved in his care are being sworn to secrecy as we speak. As far as anyone is concerned, you acted within your scope and protocols and MacGyver lived despite it."

Gayle wanted to dispute it. Wanted to argue how dangerous and reckless and stupid that was for an organization to operate like that. But, also, she didn't. "Thank you."

"For what?" Matty smirked, then hopped off her chair and walked out of the infirmary, leaving Gayle to realize what the hell had just happened.