Death of Innocence
Day 1
Day 1 of Whumptober 2023
Theme: "But now this room is spinning, while I'm trying just to fill in all the gaps."
Prompts: Safety net, Swooning, "How many fingers am I holding up?
Manhattan, November 2013
Shaw returned from the coffee shop down the block with a large one - almost too hot to hold, even with the little cardboard band around its belly - and a bag of breakfast. Harold wasn't due back yet. He'd had something important to attend to, and they'd both agreed that Reese had been making enough progress to leave him alone for a half hour, while she went to get them some breakfast.
Harold could make his own Sencha tea in the back now, and Shaw had brought a smaller version of her own coffee for Reese. He wasn't cooperating well on the food front. In fact, he wasn't cooperating at all.
His main mission seemed to be to get himself vertical again, even though it made him deathly ill and nearly pass out every time he'd tried. You couldn't expect to go through what he had and not feel like this. He'd been walking around with two bullet holes in him, leaking a steady supply of blood until they'd found him trying to execute Alonzo Quinn.
By the time they'd gotten him back to the Library Office, where Shaw had set up a makeshift trauma room, none of them knew for sure if Reese was gonna survive that first night. Finch had called in an IOU with a surgeon friend of his, urgently. Shaw had scrubbed in to assist, and then they'd waited.
She'd stolen blood for him from one of the hospitals downtown, then a second unit from another, to see him through. The surgeon left after the first night, and she'd taken over Reese's care just in time to nearly lose him.
Heart rate dropped, then his pressure, and it seemed like he was cashing it in, letting go.
Don't know why, but something seemed to intercede, right him again, and send him back from the other side. Shaw didn't leave his bedside for two more days and nights, because things had become just too rocky with him. Nearly lost him again on his second day. Same thing. Heart rate dropped, pressure bottomed out, and he just seemed to be letting it all go. But it wasn't in the cards for him. Came back just like before.
The fevers started after that. Burning up with it.
The surgeon had cut away the duct tape Reese had used to hold the make-shift dressing against his wounds. A stream of expletives had followed when he'd found a fist-sized, filthy rag stuffed in under each of the sections of tape. Looked like Reese hadn't planned to survive his mission - find the ones responsible for Carter. Just wanted to live long enough to get it done.
The fevers made his delirium worse – crying out even more than during those first two days. Couldn't always tell what he was saying. Sometimes it was the street corner with Carter, but there were other things, too, like from his time back in Afghanistan. Words and phrases, just barely audible, out of there.
She'd hung antibiotics from the first day, after they'd seen the rags coming out from under the duct tape. But she'd changed them when the fever spiked on the third day. God knows what was growing in those rags. Antibiotics were the best safety net a person could have, but only if the right ones were picked. Otherwise, those little organisms would be happily making lots more of themselves, oblivious to the efforts to stop them.
There were other complications along the way.
Shaw had tried to lighten the drugs keeping him under. He'd been so rocky at the beginning, and then thrashing around with the memories of what'd happened, that she'd snowed him with drugs to keep him quieter and maybe block some of the memories. Needed to rest if he was gonna heal.
"This is anguish, Miss Shaw," Harold had told her, standing at her side.
There'd been a sound from Reese as he was thrashing around - before she'd stepped up the drugs. Harold had looked in from his spot in the next room at the sound and walked over. He hadn't looked much better than Reese to her. The whole team had reacted the same way. Suffering, she'd realized later.
She'd been worried about what shape Reese's brain might be in, after all the blood loss and the way his pressure had dropped like that during those first few days. She couldn't help herself. Lowered the drugs as quickly as she'd dared, just to get a reading on his brain function. Would have settled for a squeeze of the hand, or a correct answer to "how many fingers am I holding up, Reese?"
But that didn't happen. He came out of it fast and swinging. Ripped his IVs out of his arms and started the bleeding all over again. Smashed up the room pretty good, too, before she could hit him with enough drugs in a syringe to put him down again.
Learned her lesson. Kept him snowed for days after that. But this time, the drugs didn't stop the dreams. Could actually see them coming on, on the monitor. His pulse would start to race and then the mumbling. Sometimes tears would roll down his face, sometimes that sound Harold had called anguish.
When she was finally able to titrate the dose lower, over a few days this time, he'd come out of it slower. But he wasn't the same Reese they'd known before. Silent, brooding, uncooperative.
Barely ate. All he'd wanted to do was to stand. The first few times he'd forced himself, the room had spun around so hard that he'd passed out from it. Threw up over the side of the hospital bed, and Shaw was afraid he'd ripped out his sutures again.
Over a couple of days, he'd been able to sit up a little longer, then dangle his legs over the side. It made him ill each time, and he'd get this pasty color to him, and a cold sweat'd break out on his skin. She couldn't understand why he was pushing himself so hard.
One day, he was able to get his feet underneath him and wobble up to standing. Didn't last long. But he'd made it. That was yesterday.
So she'd promised him breakfast this morning. He hadn't responded, but she was sure he'd heard her. Maybe he'd feel differently once he'd smelled the food she brought.
Shaw was always ready to eat. One of her top five things to do.
She carried the bags and the tray of hot coffees down the hall, past Finch's computer setup, and toward the back of the library office, where she'd set up the trauma room for Reese.
"Breakfast is served, Reese," she said, and tipped around the corner to show him the bags.
Her eyes scanned.
Empty bed.
No Reese on the floor in a heap.
No Reese, anywhere.