Just Another Day: Chapter 17
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DISCLAIMER: Most of these characters are not mine at all, but they are memorable. Thank you, Mr. Marlowe. The others? Yeah, they're mine
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6:57 p.m. on May 14, 2012, on the third floor of the San Francisco Chinese Hospital in Chinatown
Lindy Matthews sits next to the patient bed holding Willie Crockett, in the chair that is closest to the door. She is smiling as she reads the latest issue of the People magazine that was sitting on the small table here in Room 321. Crockett was brought back to the room out of surgery some fifteen minutes ago after a relatively short surgery.
Fortunately, the initial prognosis provided that called potentially for Crockett's spleen removal was overstated a bit. As hoped, they were able to go in and repair the damage to his spleen with internal stitches and medications. The procedure took just over an hour, and after a subsequent ninety minutes in intensive care, the staff has brought the big man upstairs to his private room, where Lindy Matthews was waiting.
On the same floor, just across the hallway, in Room 322 – lies Jennifer Blackard. Her surgery was a bit more extensive as they considered internal verses external apparatus fixtures, and in the end, decided on the external screws.
It was Kate Beckett's idea to put the two patients literally across the hallway from one another.
"Much easier to protect, and it allows us to pull our resources together in closer proximity to one another," Kate had told Sam Carlos and Lindy Matthews, once both patients were out of surgery and in the ICU. Crockett had arrived here on the third floor roughly half an hour before Jennifer Blackard, whose surgery ran about forty-five minutes longer than Crockett's procedure.
Now both patients, who were revived once in ICU, are back to resting comfortably in their respective rooms.
As she is flipping through pages in the magazine, Lindy is speaking on the phone with Mike Monroe through her earphones. She catches the stirring form of the large black man in bed next to her, signaling Crockett's reawakening.
"Hold on Babe, gotta go," she tells Monroe. "Sleeping Beauty is finally waking up."
"OK," he replies with a smile. "I need to check in with Paul and make sure he isn't picking up any more visitors on the monitor."
"Good plan," Lindy tells the man who is becoming more important to her than anyone else, day by day.
"Take care of our friends," Monroe tells her.
"It's the only reason I am here and not there," she reminds him, as she clicks off. Monroe smiles at the phone before standing and stretching tired legs. Seconds later, he is walking down the hallway corridor toward the security monitoring room to check in with Paul.
Back at the hospital, Lindy immediately texts Sam Carlos, who is across the hallway visiting Jennifer Blackard's room. Jennifer had awakened a few minutes earlier, immediately noticing two things out of the ordinary.
First, she noticed that she is in a lot pain, with her left arm. She can feel that the weight of arm is off, now heavily bandaged in a cast.
"External fixture," she had with a wistful and grateful smile. After watching the horror story that was attached to Richard Castle's arm, she wanted no part of such a device, but is a realist, and was already warned that an external fixture was the likely course of action for her.
Second, she noticed her right hand being held by the sleeping form beside her. Sam Carlos sits in the chair on her right side, holding her right hand very gently as he dozes in and out. He has awakened occasionally just to stare at her face and then her arm. His body chooses this time to awaken yet again. Not recognizing that she is awake, her eyes are drawn immediately to her arm.
Once again, he winces, seeing the screws that invade her arm, protruding from either side. Glancing upward toward her face, he notices her staring at him.
"Ah, finally awake, I see," he tells Jennifer.
Kate Beckett sits on the other side of the bed, happy to see her friend awakening out of anesthesia.
"It is good to see you, Jennifer," Sam Carlos tells the woman lying in the bed next to him.
"Are you in a lot of pain, Jenn?" Kate asks.
"Just a bit," Blackard half mutters, half moans. "It appears I am on some decent pain meds. It hurts, but nothing like before."
"Good, good," Kate agrees.
At that moment, Sam's cell phone beeps with an incoming text message.
"It is Lindy," he tells the two women in the room, reading her text message. "It seems Willie is finally awake."
He stands slowly, stretching his body much like Mike Monroe had done across the bay.
"I need to go across the hallway for just a moment," he tells the women. "I wanted to be there when Willie awakened.
He surprises both women as he pauses momentarily, and then making up his mind, he leans down and places a soft kiss on Jennifer's forehead, and a second kiss on her right cheek.
"I will be right back, Jennifer," he tells the woman as he detaches himself and walks toward the door. Opening the door, he touches the shoulder of Junior Boy, the mammoth Filipino who sits outside the door in a chair much too small for his massive frame.
"Thank you, Junior Boy," he tells his large friend. "I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you."
"No problem, boss, you know –"
"No, my friend," Carlos interrupts. He waves his hands up and down the hallway.
"This . . . is personal," he tells his security man. "I appreciate what you are doing."
He continues across the hallway and walks into Room 321, and sits on the side opposite the door, next to Willie Crockett. Lindy continues to sit in the chair next to the bed, closest to the door. From this vantage point, she can protect both men from any intruder coming in from the door.
She glances from the door to the window, preparing herself against any kind of attack from either entry point. Carlos watches with interest how Lindy assesses the room calmly, then returns her attention to her magazine, unable to resist a smile at the sheer confidence of this woman.
"All good?" he hears Willie Crockett ask with a voice stronger than either he or Lindy Matthews could imagine.
"We are good," Carlos tells his friend. "The surgery for you was successful. You kept your spleen. They did some clean up and stopped the bleeding."
"You're fortunate, Willie," Lindy adds.
The large black man simply nods his head, closes his eyes for a few seconds, then blinks them open, his eyes clearing.
"Easy Big Fella," Lindy tells him. "I'm right here. JB is outside. Kate is in the other room with Jennifer."
"JB?" Carlos asks, a bit confused, before chuckling under his breath, realizing that Richard Castle's most fierce defender has given a nickname to Junior Boy.
"Any more aftershocks?" Willie asks. "No damage to our –"
"None at all," Sam Carlos replies, glancing at Matthews.
"Damage to our what?" the blonde warrior asks, her curiosity now peaked.
"Later," Carlos tells their friend. "For now – to answer his question," Carlos continues, now turning his attention back to Willie Crockett.
For now, no – there have been no more aftershocks since you went under," Carlos tells him. "Jennifer has come through her surgery successfully as well."
As if on cue, the door to the room opens up, causing all three to turn quickly toward the intruding form in the doorway. Everyone calms immediately as they see the hulking form of Junior Boy opening the door, but not entering.
A second later, Kate Beckett enters the room, wheeling the now fully-awakened form of Detective Jennifer Blackard into Crockett's room. Blackard sits in the wheelchair, her damaged arm lying atop her lap.
"Willie," Blackard calls out with a wistful, pained smile.
"Jennifer," Crockett replies. "We are two peas in a pod, aren't we?" he half chuckles.
"I'd say that is the full pod right there," Blackard smiles, pointing to the large black man in the bed. Junior Boy enters the room after them, shutting the door behind them and standing guard from inside the room.
Kate wheels Jennifer next to the bed where Lindy has just given up her position. Once Jennifer is positioned at the bed, she stands between the wheelchair and the doorway, as Kate takes the now-vacant chair beside the bed.
Everyone settles in, as the two patients eye one another, and Sam Carlos.
"The things we resort to in order to get together," Jennifer muses when a smile, bringing a similar smile to both men.
"There are easier ways, for certain," Carlos agrees, still smiling at all of his friends in the room.
"Not that we would ever try such simple things," Crockett smiles.
"Heaven-forbid," Kate remarks, sighing loudly and pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers.
"You need rest, Katie," Carlos tells his old college friend.
"She can rest later," Lindy remarks, still on high alert. Kate simply grunts in agreement.
"What she said," Kate smiles.
Suddenly the door opens, and a white-clad doctor steps into the room, glancing around at the large group of people.
"My apologies folks," the doctor tells the group with a smile. "I will come back in a bit."
Before anyone can react, Junior Boy grabs the doctor by the collar with his left hand, and smashes his right fist flush into the doctor's face. The doctor crumples to the ground, unconscious.
Kate is the first up from bedside, of course – since she is the only one healthy there, save Sam Carlos. And Willie Crockett has already grabbed the hand of his boss, and pulled him down to the ground in a kneeling position – ready to protect Carlos even from his vulnerable position.
"Good call," Lindy admires, bending over to ensure that the 'doctor' is, indeed, out.
Out cold.
"A real doctor comes into a crowded room, directly after a patient has had invasive surgery, and sees a roomful of people?" Junior Boy begins.
"And tells the room, 'I will be back?'" Lindy laughs out loud.
"A real doctor wouldn't say that," Sam Carlos realizes aloud.
"A real doctor would clear out the room, telling Jennifer to go back to her room, and telling everyone to leave," Junior Boy continues. "Two patients just out of surgery, out of ICU, with a roomful of people?"
Junior Boy has been in enough hospital rooms, in enough recovery rooms to know proper protocol. He immediately looks at Lindy.
"With me," he mouths the words silently. Matthews is up and at the door in a flash as he opens the door and steps out to the left, she to the right.
"I've got one," he tells her as he watches a figure in white fleeing down the corridor.
"I've got one also," she replies, gazing at an equally-retreating form in green scrubs from her side, who has run down the hallway and entered into the stairwell.
"We do not pursue," Junior Boy comments.
"We do not," Lindy agrees.
Both glance at each other, and then beyond each other in the direction each was looking. As if synchronized by years of work together, they move in coordinated fashion back into the room, this time Junior Boy first, and Lindy second. She leaves the door open.
"We've got company," Junior Boy tells the room. "They have run off, but they will be back."
"We can't stay here much longer," Lindy agrees. Each person in the room considers the absurdity of the situation, knowing that there is no way on earth either Blackard or Crockett are ready to be moved to a different floor, much less discharged.
"No choice," Kate remarks aloud, watching as all heads in the room – including Blackard and Crockett – nod in agreement.
"No choice at all," Carlos agrees, taking his phone out and placing a call. Simultaneously, Lindy Matthews punches digits in her phone, and waits for two rings before getting her answer.
"Mike," she greets Monroe. "We need an extraction, ASAP."