It was, almost, like a scene from a Victorian novel. The handsome man waiting by the bedside of an obviously sick woman, his head bowed, hands clasped loosely between his knees. The woman lay still, pale even against the pale hospital sheets. In another time, another era, the scene might have been romantic. That is, until you looked closely at it. The hospital corridors were teeming with people. The human noise was minimal in comparison to the sounds of a functioning hospital. Machines beeped, doors buzzed open, nurses chatted, ambulances screamed in the distance. Patients were sitting on gurneys in the hallways.
Or
until you looked at the people themselves. Charcoal stained the woman's
teeth and lips, turning them a dark unforgiving gray. It ringed her nostrils
and smudged the corners of her mouth. An IV line formed a seam along the
inside of her wrist and arm. Her lips, almost black, mumbled something
incoherent, causing the man to jerk out of his stupor. He, too, did not
fit the mold of a
Victorian character. His jaw was set and his eyes, red from the fluorescent
lighting, were hard. Emotions turned slow revolutions in his eyes. First
anger, then guilt, then anger again, followed by concern. They were slowly
blending, melding together, into misery, but the anger remained distinct.
A nurse had encouraged him to talk to her. But he couldn't begin to know where to start. He hadn't known what to do or say since the moment he'd arrived at her apartment and saw the paramedics lifting her body onto a stretcher. There had been nothing in the apartment to indicate why she had done this. The super had let them in; he had even volunteered to clean up the mess. He liked the lady. That's what he told Harm and the paramedics. Always real nice, always kept to herself, but still nice, she didn't deserve this. And now the apartment looked like it did when she left it for work. There wasn't even a note.
His fingers curled into a fist and slowly unclenched. He wasn't just angry with her. It bordered on furious. She was stronger than this.
Her eyes drifted open and she said, "There's a present for Harriet on my dresser." She sighed. "I forgot to give it to her."
"I'll get it for you."
She blinked slowly and forced her eyes open. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Just rest, Sarah." His fingers stroked the back of her hand and he watched her eyes fight to stay open.
"Don't tell Harm," she mumbled.
His fingers stilled. "What?"
"Don't tell Harm," she pleaded. "Please?"
"Ssh, rest, Sarah."
"It's a heart," she said on a long drawn out breath.
"A heart," he repeated dumbly.
"On my ankle. I put cover up on it before work." She lifted her right leg and gestured to her ankle. Looking at her leg, she sighed. "Oh, you can't see it." She turned her head to study him. "Because of the sheets," she explained.
She lowered her leg and turned around on the gurney to face him. "That dress was so uncomfortable." Her voice had lowered a little, as if she was confiding something in him.
"What dress, Sarah?" His thumb brushed over her forehead, pushing the bangs back from her eyes.
"The one I wore to the nightclub. In Paraguay." Her voice was beginning to drowse and her eyes were losing the battle to stay open.
He kept rubbing his hand over the crown of her skull, unsure of whom he was soothing, but needing the contact it provided. His bad day had spun rapidly into nightmarish and he was still half-convinced that, if he shut his eyes, he would wake up in his apartment, far from the hospital and far from her.
Her hand clawed at the bed sheet before turning over in his and gripping his hand. They had been at the hospital for a while; he wasn't sure how long, but it looked like it was getting dark outside. The first part of the afternoon had been spent watching her throw up the charcoal the doctor's had forced into her stomach. As her body spasms diminished, the long, convoluted thoughts began. Her ramblings were exhausting him and he'd long since given up on trying to follow them. The doctors had assured him, as best as they could, that the treatment was slowly working and that the hallucinations weren't an indication of worsening conditions. They were simply a by-product of the drugs coursing through her system. As best at the doctors and paramedics could tell, she'd taken extremely strong over the counter painkillers and chased them with alcohol. He shuddered when he wondered how she knew that particular combination could produce these results. They'd known each other for years and still knew so little about each other.
She was quieting down again, but he couldn't let himself relax. There were things he needed to do, he knew, but he couldn't gather his thoughts long enough to remember what they were. The cell phone vibrating against his hip startled him. Casting a glance at her, he slipped quietly out of the emergency room and out of the hospital. The sun was setting and a waiting ambulance's lights bounced off the hospital's walls. And for the first that evening, he allowed himself to breathe deeply.
"Rabb," he answered the phone.
"Comman - Harm. It's Bud, Sir."
He rubbed his forehead and cursed silently. This was one of the things he had forgotten. "Yes, Bud?"
"Sir, I'm at Colonel Mackenzie's apartment and there's no one here." Bud's voice sounded confused.
"I know that, Bud. I'm sorry, I forgot to call you."
"She's with you?" His question had a hopeful lilt.
"Yes, but-"
"Well, I guess I'll just give her these files tomorrow. I'm sorry to interrupt."
"Bud," he said quietly, "I'm at the hospital at Georgetown."
There was a long silence. "Is everything okay?"
He sighed heavily. "No. Everything is most definitely not okay."
He had drifted off. When he woke up, he saw the Admiral sitting in a chair across from him. Over her abdomen, their eyes met. He resisted the urge to snap to attention and reminded himself that he was no longer in the Navy. "Sir," he acknowledged.
"Hell, Harm. Call me AJ." The older man shifted forward in his seat and scrubbed his hands over his face.
"AJ." He nodded. His eyes drifted up her torso to her face. She was still sleeping, her fingers were still curled in his.
"What the hell happened?" The Admiral's tone was gruff.
He shrugged. The gesture wasn't meant to be insolent, but the emotion was implied. "I don't know. They couldn't find a note." He looked back at the other man. "How long have you been here?"
"About a half hour. She's been asleep the whole time." The Admiral leaned back against the chair and ran a hand across his mouth. He mumbled something like
"What a mess." That part was clear enough and Harm would never be sure whether it was his imagination or the admiral's voice that added the "I made."
He glanced up at Harm. "I never saw this coming." He patted Mac's other hand. "She didn't seem depressed.
A doctor pulled back the curtain warding the trio from the rest of the ER. "We're going to have to take her for some tests now," she told the men.
"Tests?" They echoed the doctor in stereo.
"Just
a precaution." The corners of her mouth tilted up in a tired, sympathetic
smile. She had been hoping that the woman had been alone so she could
escape without answering questions. It wasn't that she didn't want to
help. It was just that she'd been on duty for twenty hours and she desperately
wanted to go to sleep. "Just to make sure that there isn't any damage
to any of her
organs."
"She's going to be okay?" The younger man asked.
The doctor flipped through her medical charts. "We're going to run some more blood tests too." She told them. "But physically, without the results from the other tests, yes, it looks like she's going to be okay."
"I don't understand." The older man turned to his friend. "Was this just an attempt to get attention?"
His question made the doctor pause. "Sir, I don't know your friend. And I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but I will say this." She drew a deep breath. "Just because it doesn't kill you, a non-fatal heart attack is still a heart attack."
"What do you mean?"
She could tell the older man's temper was short and she weighed her next words carefully. "I mean, sir, just because she didn't succeed doesn't mean she didn't mean it. Don't blow this off as a bid for attention or a cry for help." She gestured to the orderlies to wheel the woman off. "This is still serious." She started to follow the gurney.
Pausing at the elevator doors, she turned around. "We'll put her in a room after this. Someone will let you know where she is." She smiled again, this time the edges of her mouth her a little tenser. She tried to make it a little more sympathetic. They couldn't know, she reasoned with herself, that the roughest terrain was still ahead.
The men stood next to each other as the elevator's doors slid shut. They waited for a minute and walked away. In separate directions.