"Home safe."
Hawk's words were the proverbial music to Jon's ears. "Tank, what's your ETA?"
"Ten minutes. Sorry for having to take the long way home."
"Not your fault Mother Nature put a massive storm system right in front of that gate." Hawk's reply was accompanied by the sound of his footsteps as he ran back to the hold of the Jumpship. "How's our patient?"
"Stable for now, I think." The monitors weren't all in the normal range yet, but her core body temperature had kept coming down – slowly but steadily. And there was something he still didn't like about her breathing… "But it's probably going to be a while before we can have any kind of conversation with her." Jennifer had barely spoken at all after her one feeble struggle against the blindfold. Just an occasional whimper of pain – and a couple half-whispers of that one phrase she'd kept repeating to Scout.
"can't go back…"
"Agreed." Hawk reached for her IV, and as he did so, Jon's eyes found the Dread Youth hat again. Something in him didn't feel right about leaving it behind. On an impulse, he picked it up and let it drop on top of the blanket – right over her heart. He didn't bother looking back to see Hawk's puzzled expression at the gesture.
Now for the hard part... Jon picked Jennifer up and cradled her against his chest as gently as he could, bracing himself for a wriggle and cry of protest from the girl that never came. Hawk offered a half-laugh at that. "I think she barely knows she's in the world right now." He reached out with his free hand to reposition the cold pack that was starting to slip off Jennifer's forehead.
Jon nodded as he took a quick lean against the bulkhead behind him, adjusting his grip and hoping none of the other packs were about to fall away. "Probably for the best if she stays that way for a while, at least until-"
"We figure out what the hell we're supposed to do with her?" Hawk finished the thought for him.
"Right now, let's just get her to MedBay, and go from there." Jon started gingerly down the ramp, mindful of Hawk following him with the IV.
Scout was already waiting at their feet, looking the most worried Jon had ever seen him.
"What can I do to help?"
"In case you've forgotten, you have an appointment in the kitchen and your quarters – in that order per my orders." Hawk was using his best command voice.
"Captain-" Scout appealed, and Jon couldn't help feeling for his young sergeant and his sense of responsibility for Jennifer.
Even so – "Hawk's right. You had already been going almost nonstop from well before dawn until you found Jennifer. All the hops you took today on top of this are going to catch up with you any minute now."
"But-"
"Eat, drink, and rest, Scout. That's my order now."
"Yes, sir." Reluctant but resigned. It reminded Jon of similar exchanges he'd had with Hawk in the early months of the war.
"We'll comm you as soon as she wakes up. Or if we need any help from you in MedBay before then." Jon didn't have to look back to know that Hawk was tossing those words over his shoulder – a bone of a promise to tide their junior soldier over for at least a little while.
The walk to MedBay from the hangar wasn't especially long, but it seemed to take a small eternity.
Jennifer wasn't that heavy in his arms, but the awkwardness of balancing all the cold packs and the cooling blanket as well…
Would have been so much easier if Tank could have gotten back sooner and had a gurney ready in the hangar for us…
Jennifer stirred in his arms, and he forgot any hard feelings about having to carry her the whole way.
"Not much farther to go… and we'll take that band off your eyes… I promise…"
He could feel her tense up as she let out a pitiful little whimper in response.
"Easy… we're almost there…" A moment later they were through the doorway and he was laying her down on the nearest bed. Leaving Hawk to put the IV in place, he untied the cooling band from her eyes, just as he had promised.
Her reaction – or lack thereof – was not what he had expected.
Her eyes stayed closed and she just lay there, breathing heavily.
"Jennifer?" He leaned in and put a hand on her shoulder.
No response.
He gave that shoulder a gentle shake and raised his voice. "Jennifer?"
She winced and let out a little groan, but nothing more.
"We need to get her out of that uniform and onto full monitors – see what the hell else we're dealing with –" Hawk grabbed the hat and tossed it aside – peeling back the cooling blanket the next moment.
"The heatstroke didn't give her that bloody nose and mouth – and I suspect whatever – whoever- did-"
he was removing most of the cold packs as he spoke – piling them at her feet – "caused some underlying trauma."
"I didn't see any broken bones or evidence of internal bleeding on the medi-bunk scanner," Jon told him even as he started for the drawer where the portable med-scanners were stored.
"That scanner's not the most reliable when it comes to soft tissue damage," Hawk reminded him as he tossed the girl's necktie in the same direction as the hat. "And now's the time to make damned sure we rule out all the worst-case scenarios – before she goes into shock or worse -" He started to undo Jennifer's shirt – carefully and deliberately, Jon noticed. A hopeful sign. Hawk surely would have grabbed a pair of shears and sliced that shirt in half if he'd thought the trauma was immediately life-threatening.
"Jennifer? Can you hear me?" Hawk spoke again before Jon could, and his tone had changed from concerned medic to the voice he'd always used to calm his children when they were frightened.
A little wince at that, but nothing more.
"We're going to scan you and put you on full monitors so we can see where else you're hurt. But we need to get you out of this uniform to do that, all right?"
A barely audible whimper.
"Jon, where's the portable scanner?" Hawk asked.
"Right here. Should I-" Jon stopped short as Hawk peeled back the shirt – revealing a mass of purple and black bruises that covered the girl from her bra line to her waistband.
"Oh my God." The words came out as a reflex – even as he heard Hawk curse under his breath.
"Somebody beat the hell out of this girl." Hawk's words were hushed. "And my guess is more than one person." He swallowed hard and gestured for Jon to move in with the scanner.
A careful pass confirmed what the medi-bunk readings had shown him. No broken bones, no internal bleeding – just the severe bruising that met their eyes.
"Let's get her on her side and check her back – just to be sure we're not missing anything."
Her back didn't look nearly as bad as the front of her torso, but it was still a sickening sight. How could anyone abuse a young girl like this – no matter what she had done or what uniform she was wearing?
"Lucky for her they didn't hit her back as hard as the front – or we might have been looking at serious kidney damage." Hawk observed as Jon settled her back down and began hooking up the monitors. "It's also a small miracle they didn't break any of her ribs – though I doubt it was from lack of trying. The bruising alone looks bad enough that it's probably affected her breathing almost as much as the heatstroke did."
"So, we've ruled out the worst-case scenarios."
"The life-threatening ones, yes." Hawk still had a concerned frown as he brought his attention to Jennifer's face and neck – pulling off the last of the cold packs and carefully inspecting what had been hidden underneath. "I've still got concerns about what made us check for additional trauma in the first place. Looks to me like it's another minor miracle that her nose wasn't broken and she's still got all her teeth – because I don't think that's from lack of effort on someone's part."
"What makes you say that?"
"I know it's hard to tell through the sunburn, but – can you see those marks on her throat?"
Jon leaned in, and felt bile rise into his own throat. He'd seen so many horrific sights over the last ten years – he should have been numb to one more.
"Somebody tried to strangle her?"
"I don't think it went quite that far. But it looks to me like someone put a hand there and squeezed. Hard."
No wonder talking and breathing were such an effort for her. And if someone had done all that to her-
He swallowed hard against the nausea that threatened as he looked at the lower half of her uniform. "You don't think-"
"We need to rule out the possibility. Scanner should confirm one way or another without… any other sort of violation." Hawk paused for a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "But we'll still have to finish getting her out of that uniform and into something clean before we repack her with fresh cold packs and put the cooling blanket back on."
"Right." Jon moved to the foot of the bed and gently removed the girl's boots and socks. Edging back to Hawk's side, he reached out for her waistband – and hesitated.
Hawk's expression turned into one of understanding. "You know, I appreciate that even after all you've seen over the years, you still want to be a perfect gentleman. And—"
He was interrupted by a knock at the doorway. Tank stood there, looking just a bit out of breath. "I thought it would be better if I just ran back here as soon as I landed. Can I help with anything?"
Hawk chuckled. "I think I've got this part in hand. But maybe you could just stand right over there and let Jon tell you the full story of our adventures so far. That way, you'll both be close enough that I'll barely have to raise my voice to let you know if I run into any trouble while I finish working her up."
"But keep our backs turned unless you call out to us?" Tank asked.
"That would be nice. Jon, it would also be nice if you could grab a hospital gown for our patient before you start bringing Tank up to speed on everything else."
"Of course." Jon quickly found one and draped it over the pile of cold packs at the foot of Jennifer's bed.
He turned to go and found his foot stepping on something soft.
Jennifer's Dread Youth hat. Again. This time with her necktie just a few inches from where it had fallen. He picked them both up and just stared at them for a long moment.
"Hawk, can you do me a favor when you're done?"
"Sure, what?"
Jon turned and stepped back to the end of the hospital bed. "Keep the rest of her uniform together with these. I'll put all in with the rest of our laundry."
"I was thinking the incinerator was probably the best place for all that. Why do you want to keep it?"
Good question. "I don't know… I just thought there might be… another use for it." He propped the cap upright against the cold packs and draped the necktie in front of it, not sure why he was treating the hated symbols so carefully.
It's not the symbols, he realized. It's the person behind them. A girl who deserves to be treated with kindness and dignity. Because that's the only way she'll know real humanity.