A Chance to Live, A Chance to Die, and Clawson Labs blog posts are all related in characters and storyline.
My other fan fics so far, such as 'A Date with Felina' and Down, Down, Down in the Ground are independent of and not related to the Chance/Jake from the 'Clawson Labs universe,' so to speak.
You can probably figure out that italics are indicating thoughts.
SWAT Kats belongs to Hannah-Barbera and I do not own any of the trademarked characters nor am I profiting from this in any way, other than it's fun. Sgt. Barry Bagheera is an OC I made for this storyline.))
A long elevator ride down later T-Bone finds himself in a hall several levels down in the underground portion of the Enforcer HQ. On this level of the HQ was a fairly extensive medical wing. It'd been designed for catastrophic city wide emergency: to be deep enough to withstand shelling, and to be appropriate for medical emergencies when the city hospitals were unavailable.
Mostly it was used for therapy space, beings as there wasn't any call for the Enforcers to have their own mini-hospital 99.9% of the time. Enforcers who'd been injured in the job got treated there and T-Bone remembered once getting a little PT down here during his own Enforcer days, after he'd stupidly slipped off a fighter wing and landed on his tail on the flight line. He'd forgotten the place existed til he was seeing it again.
The hall is dead and he's moved swiftly along. He's got the impression that this was a sorta 'hush hush' situation but he can't help but smirk a little. Right, the way gossip flies through ranks? Good luck keeping this a secret, Feral. You're going to need it.
Soon enough he's wheeled into a ward-style room, with a couple beds, each with a chair and a bedside table, left out of what was probably room for eight. The two beds were positioned right next to each other near the far wall. The place had a drab grey and blue color scheme, and no windows. Oddly some posters were on a couple of the walls. Along with the entrance door, another door leads to a bathroom and there are a couple other narrow ones, presumably to a closet or other storage.
There was enough room without the other beds for two arm chairs and a small kitchen table with some straight chairs. A desk in the corner had a desktop PC, and there was a collection of books on an end table. The place looked lived in, and like they had prepared for them in to settle for a good long time.
In one bed was his buddy Razor who was flat on his back, mouth hanging open and eyes closed.
Razor'd had some sorta reaction to something or other. He didn't exactly understand how they'd 'screwed this up,' in his mind, because how could supposedly smart doctors and nurses use a med that could cause a reaction like this? Wasn't that illegal or something?
Dr. Bengal had assured him that it would wear off, but so far he'd been wrong. T-Bone found it rather ironic that he'd woken up out of his coma earlier than expected, and here Razor took a dive.
T-Bone taps one of the EMTs arms and gestures insistently at the chair next to Razor's bed. With some help they get him settled. Even standing up to turn/pivot and then sit again breaks him out in a sweat.
While one of the EMTs is trying to get the tubing attached into the wall oxygen, the other is giving Razor a curious look.
Touch him and you die, jerk.
He glances over and seeing T-Bone eying him, he steps out of the way a bit hurriedly.
T-Bone grabs Razor's hand and reaches over with the other to pat his shoulder. Hey buddy, how you feeling?
At the touch, Razor's head turned towards him. For a second he fostered hope that he was doing better.
His eyes are slit open but dull and he doesn't respond to the pat other than the head turning. Frowning, T-Bone reaches over and pushes his mouth shut with a finger. He scowls as it just drops open again when he moves his hand. His mouth is so far open T-Bone realizes he can see the back of Razor's throat, with the NG tube racing down between the tonsils. "Eeeh…" T-Bone cringes.
Oh yeah that's real attractive, Sureshot.
"Hey, don't mess with-" The too-curious EMT starts, reaching for T-Bone's hand like he's a meddling kitten, and he leaps back a step when T-Bone SNARLS at him. Glaring, he reaches for and hold Razor's shoulder again tightly. What the hell were they doing moving them in here, anyhow? Razor should still be in the hospital!
"Let him be, Burt, he's not hurting anything," the other EMT admonishes, then he pats him on the shoulder and says loudly, "You take care of yourself now, bud."
I ain't your bud. Or deaf. But he flashes them a thumbs up. What else is he gonna do, spit on them?
Burt, the EMT who'd put a kink in T-Bone's tail is eyeing him as they move away. "Damn that's sad," he mutters to his friend.
T-Bone's throat clenches and he has to make a conscious effort not to chuck the nearest object after them.
The next couple hours were exhausting and frustrating. Nurses from a temp company showed up, most of whom immediately started harping on the insufficiency of the equipment and the facility and blah blah not trained for this not paid enough didn't sign up for this blah blah blah.
Only one actually came over and talked to him and she was one aggressive she-Kat. The rest hung back and eyeballed him, and whispered to each other behind their hands. He was introduced to a ST and a PT who were contracted for Enforcer workers comp claims and who were going to be working with them. They were friendlier anyway, and curious.
Doc Bengal also showed up but he was distracted by signing papers a grouchy nurse manager from the temp agency shoved at him.
Finally things settled down and they were left alone except for the seemingly ubiquitous presence of Sgt. Bagheera.
The Enforcer Sergeant had kind of become Razor's main guard in the past few days. T-Bone only vaguely knew him and hadn't really talked to him much. But he was the only guy telling him anything useful. Barry'd been the one to tell him about Razor's surgery after his encounter with Hard Drive. He'd led into it by telling T-Bone a highly embellished and funny version of their encounter with Hard Drive before he'd give into the hard news. He was handling their move today the same way, sitting kitty corner from him and gesturing animatedly as he spoke.
"So after that, the Lieutenant suggested that you two be brought here... The Commander didn't have a lot of choice. Technically it's the only medical facility that didn't say 'no'." He grins. "That CEO is gonna regret ticking Feral off though. A little birdie told Feral how us toms on street duty are always giving him parking tickets and that he don't always pay them on time..."
Felina walks in with a rather tired but oddly triumphant expression. "Heya, T-Bone," she says absently and hands a formal looking envelope to Barry, who receives it with suspicion. T-Bone taps his finger to his forehead in a mocking salute to the Lieutenant and Barry tears the envelope open.
"This is orders. Okay, Lieutenant, what's up with this?" he asks, after a moment of reading.
"We're reassigned. I got both of us posted here. 12 hour shifts, you're taking the night ones," Felina says crisply.
Barry looks at her with a sour expression. "...Great?" He folds the envelope in half and shoves it into a pocket, and glances back at T-Bone. "Hope you know how to play cards."
Meanwhile she's pulling a chair into the corner and climbing up to reach the item T-Bone had noticed with trepidation hours before - a security camera. It seemed to be off if the absence of a red light was any sign, but that didn't reassure him much. Felina matter of factly unplugs it and starts disconnecting video cables.
"So, this whole night shift thing… That's your uncle's scheduling isn't it. Don't want his niece alone at night with the dastardly handsome SWAT Kats?" Barry teases. T-Bone makes a rude noise with his mouth and Felina ignores them both. She was pulling the camera off its stand and laying it down on the chair seat.
Barry was already half out of his chair. "Uh. Lieutenant, you need some help?"
"Nah, I got it, but you can help me with this," she says, and tugs an item about the size of a big candy bar out of her back pocket. He walks over and takes it curiously.
"It's for detecting bugs," Felina explains as she pulls a screwdriver out of a pocket and starts taking the cover plate off the wall.
"What, like palmetto?" Barry asks, clearly not getting it.
"No," she rolls her eyes. "Like listening devices. You turn it on and sweep the area. It's supposed to beep."
"You think the Commander is gonna plant a bug in here?" Barry asks, sounding dubious.
Felina shakes her head, the entire camera assembly now in her hands. "No, but I wouldn't put it past someone else."
Barry's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. "You got a specific someone in mind?"
"No not really. It's just a concern," she replies, frowning in thought.
T-Bone watches Barry with interest as he switches the little device in his hand on and starts moving around the edge of the room. "Lieutenant."
"Yeah?" She asks, stepping down to the floor.
"How do you know this thing works?"
"It'll work," she replies as she sets the chair back into its former spot.
"It looks like a remote for a TV."
She turns her head to glower at him. "It's not. I got it from an old inventor Kat named Hackle."
T-Bone's ears perk and his attention is drawn from Barry, who's waving the 'TV remote' under Razor's bed, back to Felina.
"Never heard of him. Did you buy it off his garage sale?"
Felina's starting to sound mighty exasperated. "Sergeant! It's not a TV remote!"
"How'd you know about this Hackle guy?"
"Had to bring him in for questioning regarding the Metallikats," Felina replies.
"Ow!" Barry thumps his head on the bedside table, and blinks at her. "What'd he have to do with them?"
"Too much, unfortunately," she replies. Felina shakes her head and unzips her jacket, tossing it onto the chair. T-Bone watches her walk over towards the room door in her tank top, and check the knob. "No lock on the inside… maybe I can get maintenance down here this afternoon to change the knob, or put in a dead bolt…" she muses.
Both T-Bone and Barry look at her curiously. "Little paranoid there?" Barry questions.
"Think, Sergeant. Do you really believe these two are safe here?" she asks abruptly. She moves towards the two, resting her hand on the footboard of Razor's bed.
He scratches the top of his head. "Well…. Wait, how do you want me to answer that?" he asks. "They're underground in a building full of Enforcers. On the other hand, they're underground in a building full of Enforcers," he says seriously.
Felina nods. "There are still plenty of us in the ranks who don't like you, T-Bone." The vigilante gives her a wicked, pleased grin in response and she rolls her eyes. "Can you imagine what Kats Eye News would make of you being unmasked by an Enforcer, in the Enforcer building?"
"Yeah that would sorta be a public relations nightmare, as well as inconvenient for t-..." he pauses as the device in his hand makes a slight beep then falls silent. He starts sweeping it back and forth in the same area but it remains quiet. "Huh… Anyway," he says, making one last swipe before he slips out from between the two beds and is moving on, "maybe your paranoia is warranted."
She turns her head, watching him. "Gee thanks for your support, Sergeant."
He glances back at her with a smirk. "Cause you wouldn't want any bad publicity reflecting on your Uncle."
"How about I see about making your shifts 24 hours, with 12 off… it'd be a nicer schedule for me," she replies.
"Classy, Lieutenant."
T-Bone is only vaguely listening to their nitpicking. His eyes are on Razor. He was kinda pale and his eyes were glazed, but otherwise he looked okay. If it weren't for the oxygen and the NG tube down his nose... and the IVs… and the automatic blood pressure cuff. And the fact he was out of it. He supposed that the pallor was normal.
Yeah, normal. "A new normal," like the therapists keep telling him. A normal that looks like warmed over kitty litter.
Not that he looked a lot better, with his own IVs running and oxygen setup. He reaches to pat his pal's shoulder again, and he sighs. Then his ears perk when Felina walks away and shoves an extra chair against the door and under the knob. She then starts back towards the beds. "Any more beeps, Sergeant?"
Barry shakes his head. "Nah it's not doing nothing," he replies, and glances over. She nods and looks to T-Bone, her hand against the door and he noticed how wary she looks. Like she's expecting a fight.
She exhales and for a second looks uncertain of her next action. This is so unlike the Lieutenant he knows he blinks, and leans in a bit to look at her. She spots this and smiles at him with a bit of hesitation. "Sorry… but… I'm sorry to just spring this on you, but I think this is important. You need to let Barry in on your identity."