Ratchet's P.O.V.
Waiting for the blood test results is torture. Thankfully, Crosshairs, Drift, and Lightning are already asleep, unaware I'm in my office reading the results. Jamie's numbers are low, but not concerning...yet, but the one number I need to track specifically is high.
Same tactic but adding poison. That's your game, Jadin?
I quietly go into the room to check on Jamie. Her vitals are high, which might be a good thing. Her body is fighting the poison and keeping the chemical in her blood at bay, but we must be prepared for the likely possibility of a flare-up. I don't think it'll immediately be severe, even with the poison. For now, Jamie doesn't need oxygen support. I'm unsure if pain medication will help her, so I'm sedating her heavily.
Surprisingly, Drift isn't sleeping in the bed with her. I know he's made it work before.
There's always the fear that Jamie won't be able to survive a severe flare-up, or even a mild one will become severe. This time, we also have to worry about the poison.
Come on, Jamie, you're a fighter; stay strong.
I don't know if she'll be ok overnight. I make room for a cot.
Drift's P.O.V.
Knowing how critical Jamie can be, I didn't think I'd be able to sleep, relieved she's stable for now. I sit by the bed and hold her hand.
I wish I was waiting for you to wake up, but I don't want you in pain.
I know Ratchet will be putting in a feeding tube today. I can't believe how many times I've failed to protect her. I know I can't tell her no to do everything she wants to do. That's not my duty as her guardian, and what kind of boyfriend would I be?
Flashback
I wake up seconds before Crosshairs. We didn't have to search for Jamie. Thankfully she landed ten feet from us. My relief turned to horror as I notice the pool of blood around her head.
How long were we knocked out?
We activate our holoforms and rush to her. Once on his knees, Crosshairs gets the capsule with the medical kit and hands me gauze to stop the bleeding. Blood gushes out and onto my hands as I apply pressure. I'm trying to stay calm but frightened that this is an emergency we can't handle at our current location. There's no way to transport Jamie properly in her current condition, and our commlinks are down. Crosshairs gets the portable vital signs monitor and checked over Jamie. For now, she's stable. Crosshairs gets what we need to take care of the wound.
"This isn't good," I fret, seeing the pile of bloody gauze as I get another one. Crosshairs searches for something to use to get the bleeding to stop. I'm glad we had a little medical training, though I'd rather we were taught because we wanted to, not because we had to due to Jamie's illness. The other Autobots, Cade, Crosshairs, and I opted to learn wound first aid after what Jayce and J.R. did while watching Jamie fight for her life.
" it's ok, Drift, we have what we need," Crosshairs assures me. Though I hear the concern in his voice, I know he's calmer than me, even though we both have watched Jamie fight for her life. He tells me to hold Jamie sitting up while he tries petrolatum jelly. Putting the substance on is difficult as blood drips down Jamie's head.
Finally, the bleeding stops, but we hesitate to clean the petrolatum jelly from the wound.
Please don't start bleeding again.
I watch Crosshairs clean the wound. Though I want Jamie to wake up, I don't want her to wake up from the pain. Crosshairs agrees to use localized pain relief, aware the injection might wake her up. I try to stay calm, seeing she didn't wake up from the injection. I want her to wake up, but I don't want to hear her cry. He stitches the wound closed.
"Come on, wake up," Crosshairs whispers as he cleans up the mess and supplies.
It's been a long thirty minutes, but Jamie is stable.
"I think we should stay here for the night," I insist.
This is tricky; will Jamie do ok during the trip back to the junkyard? But we can only handle some complications that might occur here.
Crosshairs gets the capsule with camping supplies and put up the tent. He insists I hold Jamie. Though I wonder if it's so she's not scared if she wakes up or thinks I'm too worried about her to help him.
Twenty minutes pass before Crosshairs finishes setting up the campsite. While he set up, I looked at Jamie's wound, trying to figure out what happened. There weren't any rocks around Jamie. I tried to protect her from injury as we flew in the air from the explosion. Did I fail to protect her?
"This isn't your fault; we try our best to protect her, but we can't keep her from getting injured," Crosshairs says as he sits beside me.
We watch the stars for an hour, checking Jamie's vitals every twenty minutes before putting out the fire and entering the tent. I kept Jamie close to me as I tried to fall asleep, but I worry how Jamie will be when she wakes up.
"She's been out for two hours, Crosshairs," I fret.
"She's stable; unwanted vitals would reflect any internal injuries. I have the monitor set to alarm us if there's an unwanted change. Try to get some sleep."
He lays down and takes Jamie's hand before closing his eyes. I kissed Jamie's forehead before trying to go to sleep.
Early in the morning, Jamie is still not waking up. I try to think she woke up but was tired and able to fall asleep, but how much pain would she be in with the wound she has?
Her vitals are still in the good range, but if she doesn't wake up soon, I must put a feeding tube in. Then it dawned on me; oh fuck, that's all we need.
I scan the microchip in Jamie's throat with my smartwatch. The chemical level is low. It's a normal range, but we hate calling it a normal level.
I get the pain medication, a syringe, and a case of needles ready if Jamie wakes up in pain. I want to wait until Jamie wakes up to leave, but we're risking serious complications to arise, and we're unprepared. The others have no idea where we are though transporting Jamie in Hound's alt mode would be better.
Something happened to you to cause a terrible injury, and so far, you have been unconscious for twelve hours.
Sitting on the ground, watching the sunrise, when I hear footsteps before Crosshairs sits next to me. I tell him we will leave at noon and that I'm also worried about the drive back to the Junkyard, but we can't stay here. We watched the sunrise in silence, hoping Jamie will wake up soon.
Crosshairs tells me he'll clean up the campsite.
I return to the tent and check in Jamie. Her oxygen level is 80% this is not good.
I struggle to put Jamie on oxygen, afraid I made a mistake insisting we stay here overnight.
I'm crying by the time Crosshairs walks in.
"We need to go now!" I sob.
One look at Jamie explains it all for Crosshairs.
I worried Jamie wouldn't do well on the drive back to the junkyard, and now w have an emergency. Sure, the fact Jamie's been unconscious for thirteen hours now should be considered an emergency, but now her oxygen level is suddenly rapidly decreasing. I need to monitor it, but I worry she'll need the ventilator when we return to the junkyard.
Damn, not a good time to have damaged commlinks and no signal on our cell phones. That is the only reason the others have yet to contact us. Then I realized; it's been fourteen hours, and we're only eight hours away from the junkyard, enough time for them to get to us unless we're way off from our last known location. Damn, that was a powerful explosion.
We pull over halfway to our destination. Jamie's oxygen level is now 70%.
Crosshairs got a disposable phone, hoping one of the others would respond.
He has yet to get a response.
"Frag, I hope they'll take the message seriously," he frets.
I'm trying not to panic and can't say anything.
As we feared, Jamie has to be put on the ventilator when we return to the junkyard. Her oxygen level is 50%, and her lips are blue.
What have I done?
Cade kept the portable EEG in case we needed it in the future.
"No way she can be taken to Bulma's dimension for a CT scan. You're right, any brain injury would be reflected by her vitals, and there wouldn't be a thirteen-hour delay before declining. Something else is going on," Cade explains as he puts the device on Jamie. Cade draws blood from Jamie before putting a nasogastric feeding tube in. I care for her while Cade sees our friend, Bulma, in her dimension.
"Come on, my sweetspark, I can't watch you go through this again."
Cade has been gone for three hours, adding to everyone's concern. Bulma is with him when he returns, which I worry means this is bad.
Bulma wants to take Jamie to her dimension. Everyone insists on coming.
However, we wait two hours only for scans to show nothing.
Twenty-four hours now, come on, Jamie.
We all insist Jamie stay here so Bulma can monitor her. Bulma brings Jamie to a room. Crosshairs tries to be comforting, but I know he's also worried; everyone is.
We all stay overnight, though I refuse to go to sleep. I don't care if we'll hear an alarm if something changes; I can't sleep. Crosshairs tried to help me, but he fell asleep. He's not going to like knowing I didn't sleep at all.
Everyone but Crosshairs stays a couple of hours before going back to the junkyard. I can't believe I'm tube feeding Jamie again. I knew a situation like this would happen eventually, but not like this after an accident.
Everything is normal, so why aren't you waking up? Almost two days now. Something happened to cause her body to respond this way. I'm not sure if a fall and head wound would cause this. I know major head trauma would cause this, but one of the scans would have found a serious injury.
"There's nothing showing something is wrong, but the three of us know someone's oxygen level doesn't drop to 50% for no reason," Crosshairs sighs.
"Come on, I can't take you being in a coma for days."
I want my girl to wake up, but how much pain will she be in? Will she be scared?
Even though Bulma took Jamie off the ventilator, I feel no better.
Three hours pass before Jamie finally wakes up. She looks at me for a second before crying. I hug her close to me and rub her back. She knew I had to care for her even if she was unaware of the nasogastric tube.
Crosshairs crouches down next to me and tries to help calm Jamie. Ten minutes pass before we decide to try a walk around Capsule Corp. Crosshairs carries the oxygen concentrator as we walk down the hall.
We walk for ten minutes before stopping.
"Let me try something," Crosshairs says, taking Jamie from me.
"Shh, you're ok, we're safe. Neither of us got hurt," Crosshairs says while swaying from side to side. An alternative to the rocking motion our three femme friends respond to. I'm a little embarrassed I didn't think to do this.
Bulma walks down the hall, confused by what she's seeing.
"Well, it's working," I point out.
Bulma walks away. I try to help by rubbing her back.
Five minutes pass before she finally stops crying. We return to the room, and I feed her via the nasogastric tube.
"We'll see if you can stomach food at dinner," I tell her.
Just like when she goes through a flare-up, Jamie wants to sleep after the feeding finishes.
"It's all right, Drift," Bulma assures me as I watch Jamie fall asleep. I sit on the chair by the bed as Bulma walks out of the room. Crosshairs put Jamie back on the monitor. Damn, you know I'm that worried even if she'll fully recover in a few days.
End of flashback
Jamie did recover within a few days. The wound didn't get infected. Now we find a device in her head, and if it's on her brain.
"How did she do it?"
"Hmm?" I hear Ratchet.
He's looking over Jamie and probably planning to put a G-tube in.
"I told you about the explosion and the aftermath. Bulma found nothing, and yet look what your scans found. Jadin knows about our technology. Maybe not like Jamie, but enough to make an undetectable device — until now because she's using it, but for what?"
I sound like I'm coming up with a crazy idea, but what else could have happened?
Ratchet tells me there's only a way to know once he can closely look at the device. I would rather he find a way to destroy it without surgery, but that's likely just as risky.
Crosshairs and Lighting heard my theory and look horrified. Even Lightning, who's known Jamie for only two years. There are a lot more questions with this theory.
"Drift, we're ready," Ironhide says, "please stay strong, Jamie."
"You really should stay," Crosshairs insists.
"No, I'm dealing with that glitch."
Crosshairs' P.O.V.
"Damn, he's enraged to want to go on a revenge mission," Ratchet observes, "it's not like him to think revenge is ok."
"I hope he's not going to regret it," I look at Jamie as Lightning hugs me. I can feel she's scared. I worry the team will come back after Jamie dies. Drift is going to regret not saying goodbye to Jamie.
Ratchet sighs, "I wish I could say she'll be fine, but I don't know..."