| Mystery and Crime Fiction posted June 27, 2020 | Chapters: |
...17 18 -19- 20... 
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A fight for survival, a struggle for faith.
A chapter in the book Looking for Orion - 2
Clear! - part 2
by DeboraDyess
Background:
When Cody McClellan stumbles onto a botched hit while camping with his brother, Jack, he is shot. Jack rescues him, and the two struggle through the state park to escape the assassins. Jack, who refers to God as the Almighty Disappointer, is plagued by Bible verses he memorized as a child, but refuses to pray for help.
Rescued by a father and son who've set up camp near the roads, they arrive at the hospital. But Cody crashes as soon as they reach the emergency room entrance
For a fraction of a second, as the charge hit Cody, it jerked his shoulders off the table and snapped his head back. But only for a fraction of a second. He crashed back down to the table, limp, and as lifeless as before.
Rachael shuddered and Jack tightened his hold on her. Cringing, breath trapped in his lungs, he couldn't take his eyes off his brother.
The heart monitor continued to hum flat.
"300," the doctor ordered. "This needs to do it, Mr. McClollan. Come on ... come on."
Rachel cried out as the voltage hit her son again. Jack took her face, trying to turn her away from the obscene nightmare. She fought to see, pushing his hand away, trying to shrug out of his grasp.
"Get them out of here," the tiny doctor ordered, without turning around.
An orderly, heavy-set and short, stepped toward Jack and Rachel like a miniature wrestler, ready to escort them to the waiting area. Jack looked down at the man, shook his head once and produced, almost magically after the horror of the morning, his badge. The orderly hesitated, torn between the giant police officer in front of him and the tiny, fierce doctor he worked with.
"No," Jack said slowly, chewing on the single syllable and glaring into the other man's eyes.
The orderly turned away.
"How long has he been down?" the doctor barked.
"Eleven, no, twelve minutes," a nurse answered.
Jack shook his head in silent, bewildered protest. It couldn't have been twelve
minutes. They'd just arrived at the hospital, just gotten out of the park.
The doctor paused, trying to decide, glanced toward Jack and Rachel and made eye contact with Jack. They stared at each other for a second before the doctor looked away. "Once more," she said, looking back to Cody.
The machine on the crash cart hummed again, building for the charge that would either give Cody life or decide his death. Cody's answer to his last Encyclopedia Brown crack floated through Jack's head. "He'd ask for help from his father."
"God ... Father ..." Jack breathed the words aloud, never taking his eyes from Cody's ashen face. "I'm sorry. I screwed up so bad! Help my brother. Please let him live. Don't take him. Please ..."
The heart monitor started a steady 'blip-blip-blip'.
Silence replaced the noise of the small room; the trauma team seemed to freeze, as if a sudden, bizarre winter had settled over just the room. The doctor turned to look at Jack, paddles still in her tiny hands. Surprise briefly touched her face before she turned her attention back to her patient.
"What just happened?" the red-headed nurse asked quietly.
"I don't know, but I'll take it. This isn't an art exhibit, folks. Let's move!" Her words snapped the group around her back into action.
We have a chance, so let's not blow it. And if you can't find that moron Cox, page Dr. Weston. I'm going to need some help in here. Notify the OR and let them know that we're going to need a room. Get neurology and vascular. He's going to need the works."
The blue-clad sumo-orderly returned, touched Jack's arm. Jack jerked, startled. The orderly looked apologetic and gestured to the door. " Sir , if you'll wait outside, we'll let you know as soon as we can. Please."
The door to the ER waiting room swung silently open, allowing a shaft of bright light to penetrate the quiet room. Laine stepped in and looked around. The room was full of police officers, all obviously anxious and uncomfortable. A deputy sheriff sat on the edge of a chair, talking to an African-American man and teen in the far corner. The older of the two was talking softly, his thick hands waving as he unfolded his story. They spoke in hushed, hurried tones, their voices immediately absorbed by the whispered conversations of the officers. The younger of the pair looked up at her as she entered the room, the light that stabbed into the dimness catching his ebony eyes. Laine let her gaze pause there for a second, wondering what they had to do with her husband and brother-in-law.
Rudy Sotello paced the floor close by, older than she remembered, and worried.
She'd gotten the call from her principal just before 2:30, as she readied her wiggling, excited kindergarteners for Friday dismissal. "Mrs. McClellan," the intercom speakers crackled with Reyna Terry's soft Tennessee accent, "please come to the office. Mrs. Greene is on her way to take your class."
Laine frowned, confused. "Can I finish the day?" she asked the disembodied principal. She'd always dreaded this kind of call, but not today. Not with Jack camping.
"Mrs. Greene is on her way."
Margaret Greene entered the classroom then. The young woman, face filled with concern, wouldn't make eye contact with her, choosing instead to turn her attention immediately to the children. And Laine knew; something horrible had happened. She'd grabbed her purse, pealing off the oversized man's shirt that she wore to protect her clothing from paste, paint and sticky fingers as she left the room, dropping it in the hallway.
She looked past Rudy, to Jack. He sat with his elbows planted on his knees, fingers laced tightly in front of him, white-knuckled. His face, scored by a frown, was otherwise closed, emotionless. He could have been a statue, sitting there. He looked so tense that Laine fancied if she bumped into him wrong he would implode. She'd seen him this way twice before; once at his father's funeral when they were 17, and again the night Pam died. It frightened her more than anything she'd imagined on her drive to get here. Whatever had happened to Cody was really bad, and Jack felt responsible.
"Honey?" she whispered, and ventured a step closer to her husband.
Jack looked up, jerked from whatever private torment he'd sunk into. "Lainie," he breathed.
Crossing the space between them quickly, she touched Rudy on the arm as she passed. She let Jack lay his head against the silkiness of her blouse and rubbed his hair. "There's blood all over you, Jack." She tried to keep her voice level. It cut like a machete through the men's voices in the room. "Are you hurt?"
He shook his head. "Cody," he answered shortly.
She knelt down to face him, her green eyes wide, and touched his arm and knee, and then his face to make sure. "What happened, Baby? Where is he?"
Jack took a shaky breath, tears forcing their way past his weary eyelids. He leaned his forehead against hers, trying to regain his composure. He tried to match his breathing to hers.
Laine waited, stroking her husband's hair, feeling his tears run against both of their cheeks. "It's okay, Jack. It's all going to be okay." It occurred to her that she didn't know that, not for sure.
Her gentle touch and soft Southern accent calmed him, as magical for him as ever. Jack took a deep breath. "They shot him, Laine. He stumbled into a hit and they shot him. In the back. All those years on the force and he never gets so much as a scratch and I take him on a stupid camping trip and... Laine, he was hurt so bad. I didn't even really want a nap. I just wanted to give him a hard time, and..." Jack wiped his eyes savagely. "So I drag him through the woods, put him through all kinds of hell and we get here and..." His throat closed and he looked at her, shook his head and closed his eyes.
Laine blinked at the empty space over Jack's head. She'd known Cody since he was eleven, when she'd started dating Jack. "He ... died?" She sank the rest of the way to the floor beside her husband, clinging to his knee for support. She stared hollowly at the bloodstains on Jack's jean legs.
"No." Jack took her by the shoulders, gently lifting her back to her knees, getting her attention. "Baby, no." He hugged her close, feeling stronger in the softness of her clothes and hair and skin than he had all day. She clung to him, her breath coming in short gasps and she bit her bottom lip. Jack leaned back into the chair, looking at her again. "We lost him when we first got him here, but..." He paused, his broad face revealing his confusion. "The doctor...she started to...she ..."
"She gave up."
Jack and Laine looked at the doorway. The small brunette, as miniscule as Jack remembered from the ER, stood silhouetted in the opening. She took a step into the room and held her hand out toward Jack. He stood and shook it, as did Laine.
"Dr. Kitman," she introduced herself. "I'm head of the trauma team that treated your brother."
"How is he?" HIs words fell over themselves. The hard knot of fear had returned to his voice.
"He's stable, but still critical." She paused, letting her words sink in. "He'd lost a significant amount of blood when you got him here, Mr. McClellan. And his injuries are quite serious."
"We need to find Mom," Jack interrupted. He suddenly needed her close to him. He felt young and scared, and incredibly old and tired, all at the same time.
"I spoke to her a moment ago," the doctor replied. "She wanted to call Mr. McClellan's children. I've already filled her in. Now I'd like to take a few minutes to get you up to speed before she returns."
Laine took Jack's giant hand in hers. "What did you mean when you said you'd given up?" she asked.
Dr. Kitman licked her lips, then pursed them together as if she were evening her lipstick. "I really didn't think we had a chance. And then your husband prayed."
Jack flushed, aware of not only Laine staring at him, but Rudy's eyes boring into him as well. The whole room had grown tomb-silent. Only the deputy sheriff continued speaking, his voice drawling away from the far corner. Joe Evans shushed him.
"My husband?" 'Laine looked from the doctor to Jack. "Prayed?"
"You see it all the time on TV, and hear about it for real once in a while. A patient comes in who's just too far gone. Too many injuries, too much time elapsed since the accident, whatever. And then, with no medical explanation, he just gets better. But I've never seen it before. At least not to this degree." She looked at Jack. "You did more today to save your brother than just get him to the hospital. That, by itself, wouldn't have been enough."
Laine squeezed Jack's hand. Jack gently pulled it away from her, rubbing the knuckles to ease some of the pain and tension. His arm and shoulder were throbbing, and he realized they'd been hurting for quite a while. "Is he going to be okay?"
"That's difficult to say at this moment," She motioned for the pair to sit and slipped into the chair across from Jack. "He's still a long way from okay. And there are things we don't know yet. There may be brain damage from the time down. Or nerve damage to the arm from the gunshot wound. Or both. Or neither. Right now we just need to get him strong enough to remove that bullet."
"When will that be?"
"We have an excellent neurosurgeon on staff who will be coming to speak with you directly. And a vascular surgeon who is top notch, as well. They'll be able to decide that within the next few hours." The doctor looked critically at Jack. "Are you alright?"
Jack nodded impatiently. He frowned and looked away from her, dismissing the question. "Yeah."
"No. Really." She leaned forward, catching Jack's attention as fully as when she first entered the room. "Are you alright?"
Caught by her intent gaze, Jack hesitated before he answered the second time. "Yeah," he answered slowly. "I think so."
"I'll give you a quick once over while we give your mother another couple of minutes," Dr. Kitman said. Jack started to protest but the young woman smoothly cut him off. "We can do an informal exam right here if you'd like. That way we won't miss her. I need to talk to you all together."
Background:
When Cody McClellan stumbles onto a botched hit while camping with his brother, Jack, he is shot. Jack rescues him, and the two struggle through the state park to escape the assassins. Jack, who refers to God as the Almighty Disappointer, is plagued by Bible verses he memorized as a child, but refuses to pray for help.
Rescued by a father and son who've set up camp near the roads, they arrive at the hospital. But Cody crashes as soon as they reach the emergency room entrance
For a fraction of a second, as the charge hit Cody, it jerked his shoulders off the table and snapped his head back. But only for a fraction of a second. He crashed back down to the table, limp, and as lifeless as before.
Rachael shuddered and Jack tightened his hold on her. Cringing, breath trapped in his lungs, he couldn't take his eyes off his brother.
The heart monitor continued to hum flat.
"300," the doctor ordered. "This needs to do it, Mr. McClollan. Come on ... come on."
Rachel cried out as the voltage hit her son again. Jack took her face, trying to turn her away from the obscene nightmare. She fought to see, pushing his hand away, trying to shrug out of his grasp.
"Get them out of here," the tiny doctor ordered, without turning around.
An orderly, heavy-set and short, stepped toward Jack and Rachel like a miniature wrestler, ready to escort them to the waiting area. Jack looked down at the man, shook his head once and produced, almost magically after the horror of the morning, his badge. The orderly hesitated, torn between the giant police officer in front of him and the tiny, fierce doctor he worked with.
"No," Jack said slowly, chewing on the single syllable and glaring into the other man's eyes.
The orderly turned away.
"How long has he been down?" the doctor barked.
"Eleven, no, twelve minutes," a nurse answered.
Jack shook his head in silent, bewildered protest. It couldn't have been twelve
minutes. They'd just arrived at the hospital, just gotten out of the park.
The doctor paused, trying to decide, glanced toward Jack and Rachel and made eye contact with Jack. They stared at each other for a second before the doctor looked away. "Once more," she said, looking back to Cody.
The machine on the crash cart hummed again, building for the charge that would either give Cody life or decide his death. Cody's answer to his last Encyclopedia Brown crack floated through Jack's head. "He'd ask for help from his father."
"God ... Father ..." Jack breathed the words aloud, never taking his eyes from Cody's ashen face. "I'm sorry. I screwed up so bad! Help my brother. Please let him live. Don't take him. Please ..."
The heart monitor started a steady 'blip-blip-blip'.
Silence replaced the noise of the small room; the trauma team seemed to freeze, as if a sudden, bizarre winter had settled over just the room. The doctor turned to look at Jack, paddles still in her tiny hands. Surprise briefly touched her face before she turned her attention back to her patient.
"What just happened?" the red-headed nurse asked quietly.
"I don't know, but I'll take it. This isn't an art exhibit, folks. Let's move!" Her words snapped the group around her back into action.
We have a chance, so let's not blow it. And if you can't find that moron Cox, page Dr. Weston. I'm going to need some help in here. Notify the OR and let them know that we're going to need a room. Get neurology and vascular. He's going to need the works."
The blue-clad sumo-orderly returned, touched Jack's arm. Jack jerked, startled. The orderly looked apologetic and gestured to the door. " Sir , if you'll wait outside, we'll let you know as soon as we can. Please."
The door to the ER waiting room swung silently open, allowing a shaft of bright light to penetrate the quiet room. Laine stepped in and looked around. The room was full of police officers, all obviously anxious and uncomfortable. A deputy sheriff sat on the edge of a chair, talking to an African-American man and teen in the far corner. The older of the two was talking softly, his thick hands waving as he unfolded his story. They spoke in hushed, hurried tones, their voices immediately absorbed by the whispered conversations of the officers. The younger of the pair looked up at her as she entered the room, the light that stabbed into the dimness catching his ebony eyes. Laine let her gaze pause there for a second, wondering what they had to do with her husband and brother-in-law.
Rudy Sotello paced the floor close by, older than she remembered, and worried.
She'd gotten the call from her principal just before 2:30, as she readied her wiggling, excited kindergarteners for Friday dismissal. "Mrs. McClellan," the intercom speakers crackled with Reyna Terry's soft Tennessee accent, "please come to the office. Mrs. Greene is on her way to take your class."
Laine frowned, confused. "Can I finish the day?" she asked the disembodied principal. She'd always dreaded this kind of call, but not today. Not with Jack camping.
"Mrs. Greene is on her way."
Margaret Greene entered the classroom then. The young woman, face filled with concern, wouldn't make eye contact with her, choosing instead to turn her attention immediately to the children. And Laine knew; something horrible had happened. She'd grabbed her purse, pealing off the oversized man's shirt that she wore to protect her clothing from paste, paint and sticky fingers as she left the room, dropping it in the hallway.
She looked past Rudy, to Jack. He sat with his elbows planted on his knees, fingers laced tightly in front of him, white-knuckled. His face, scored by a frown, was otherwise closed, emotionless. He could have been a statue, sitting there. He looked so tense that Laine fancied if she bumped into him wrong he would implode. She'd seen him this way twice before; once at his father's funeral when they were 17, and again the night Pam died. It frightened her more than anything she'd imagined on her drive to get here. Whatever had happened to Cody was really bad, and Jack felt responsible.
"Honey?" she whispered, and ventured a step closer to her husband.
Jack looked up, jerked from whatever private torment he'd sunk into. "Lainie," he breathed.
Crossing the space between them quickly, she touched Rudy on the arm as she passed. She let Jack lay his head against the silkiness of her blouse and rubbed his hair. "There's blood all over you, Jack." She tried to keep her voice level. It cut like a machete through the men's voices in the room. "Are you hurt?"
He shook his head. "Cody," he answered shortly.
She knelt down to face him, her green eyes wide, and touched his arm and knee, and then his face to make sure. "What happened, Baby? Where is he?"
Jack took a shaky breath, tears forcing their way past his weary eyelids. He leaned his forehead against hers, trying to regain his composure. He tried to match his breathing to hers.
Laine waited, stroking her husband's hair, feeling his tears run against both of their cheeks. "It's okay, Jack. It's all going to be okay." It occurred to her that she didn't know that, not for sure.
Her gentle touch and soft Southern accent calmed him, as magical for him as ever. Jack took a deep breath. "They shot him, Laine. He stumbled into a hit and they shot him. In the back. All those years on the force and he never gets so much as a scratch and I take him on a stupid camping trip and... Laine, he was hurt so bad. I didn't even really want a nap. I just wanted to give him a hard time, and..." Jack wiped his eyes savagely. "So I drag him through the woods, put him through all kinds of hell and we get here and..." His throat closed and he looked at her, shook his head and closed his eyes.
Laine blinked at the empty space over Jack's head. She'd known Cody since he was eleven, when she'd started dating Jack. "He ... died?" She sank the rest of the way to the floor beside her husband, clinging to his knee for support. She stared hollowly at the bloodstains on Jack's jean legs.
"No." Jack took her by the shoulders, gently lifting her back to her knees, getting her attention. "Baby, no." He hugged her close, feeling stronger in the softness of her clothes and hair and skin than he had all day. She clung to him, her breath coming in short gasps and she bit her bottom lip. Jack leaned back into the chair, looking at her again. "We lost him when we first got him here, but..." He paused, his broad face revealing his confusion. "The doctor...she started to...she ..."
"She gave up."
Jack and Laine looked at the doorway. The small brunette, as miniscule as Jack remembered from the ER, stood silhouetted in the opening. She took a step into the room and held her hand out toward Jack. He stood and shook it, as did Laine.
"Dr. Kitman," she introduced herself. "I'm head of the trauma team that treated your brother."
"How is he?" HIs words fell over themselves. The hard knot of fear had returned to his voice.
"He's stable, but still critical." She paused, letting her words sink in. "He'd lost a significant amount of blood when you got him here, Mr. McClellan. And his injuries are quite serious."
"We need to find Mom," Jack interrupted. He suddenly needed her close to him. He felt young and scared, and incredibly old and tired, all at the same time.
"I spoke to her a moment ago," the doctor replied. "She wanted to call Mr. McClellan's children. I've already filled her in. Now I'd like to take a few minutes to get you up to speed before she returns."
Laine took Jack's giant hand in hers. "What did you mean when you said you'd given up?" she asked.
Dr. Kitman licked her lips, then pursed them together as if she were evening her lipstick. "I really didn't think we had a chance. And then your husband prayed."
Jack flushed, aware of not only Laine staring at him, but Rudy's eyes boring into him as well. The whole room had grown tomb-silent. Only the deputy sheriff continued speaking, his voice drawling away from the far corner. Joe Evans shushed him.
"My husband?" 'Laine looked from the doctor to Jack. "Prayed?"
"You see it all the time on TV, and hear about it for real once in a while. A patient comes in who's just too far gone. Too many injuries, too much time elapsed since the accident, whatever. And then, with no medical explanation, he just gets better. But I've never seen it before. At least not to this degree." She looked at Jack. "You did more today to save your brother than just get him to the hospital. That, by itself, wouldn't have been enough."
Laine squeezed Jack's hand. Jack gently pulled it away from her, rubbing the knuckles to ease some of the pain and tension. His arm and shoulder were throbbing, and he realized they'd been hurting for quite a while. "Is he going to be okay?"
"That's difficult to say at this moment," She motioned for the pair to sit and slipped into the chair across from Jack. "He's still a long way from okay. And there are things we don't know yet. There may be brain damage from the time down. Or nerve damage to the arm from the gunshot wound. Or both. Or neither. Right now we just need to get him strong enough to remove that bullet."
"When will that be?"
"We have an excellent neurosurgeon on staff who will be coming to speak with you directly. And a vascular surgeon who is top notch, as well. They'll be able to decide that within the next few hours." The doctor looked critically at Jack. "Are you alright?"
Jack nodded impatiently. He frowned and looked away from her, dismissing the question. "Yeah."
"No. Really." She leaned forward, catching Jack's attention as fully as when she first entered the room. "Are you alright?"
Caught by her intent gaze, Jack hesitated before he answered the second time. "Yeah," he answered slowly. "I think so."
"I'll give you a quick once over while we give your mother another couple of minutes," Dr. Kitman said. Jack started to protest but the young woman smoothly cut him off. "We can do an informal exam right here if you'd like. That way we won't miss her. I need to talk to you all together."
When Cody McClellan stumbles onto a botched hit while camping with his brother, Jack, he is shot. Jack rescues him, and the two struggle through the state park to escape the assassins. Jack, who refers to God as the Almighty Disappointer, is plagued by Bible verses he memorized as a child, but refuses to pray for help.
Rescued by a father and son who've set up camp near the roads, they arrive at the hospital. But Cody crashes as soon as they reach the emergency room entrance
For a fraction of a second, as the charge hit Cody, it jerked his shoulders off the table and snapped his head back. But only for a fraction of a second. He crashed back down to the table, limp, and as lifeless as before.
Rachael shuddered and Jack tightened his hold on her. Cringing, breath trapped in his lungs, he couldn't take his eyes off his brother.
The heart monitor continued to hum flat.
"300," the doctor ordered. "This needs to do it, Mr. McClollan. Come on ... come on."
Rachel cried out as the voltage hit her son again. Jack took her face, trying to turn her away from the obscene nightmare. She fought to see, pushing his hand away, trying to shrug out of his grasp.
"Get them out of here," the tiny doctor ordered, without turning around.
An orderly, heavy-set and short, stepped toward Jack and Rachel like a miniature wrestler, ready to escort them to the waiting area. Jack looked down at the man, shook his head once and produced, almost magically after the horror of the morning, his badge. The orderly hesitated, torn between the giant police officer in front of him and the tiny, fierce doctor he worked with.
"No," Jack said slowly, chewing on the single syllable and glaring into the other man's eyes.
The orderly turned away.
"How long has he been down?" the doctor barked.
"Eleven, no, twelve minutes," a nurse answered.
Jack shook his head in silent, bewildered protest. It couldn't have been twelve
minutes. They'd just arrived at the hospital, just gotten out of the park.
The doctor paused, trying to decide, glanced toward Jack and Rachel and made eye contact with Jack. They stared at each other for a second before the doctor looked away. "Once more," she said, looking back to Cody.
The machine on the crash cart hummed again, building for the charge that would either give Cody life or decide his death. Cody's answer to his last Encyclopedia Brown crack floated through Jack's head. "He'd ask for help from his father."
"God ... Father ..." Jack breathed the words aloud, never taking his eyes from Cody's ashen face. "I'm sorry. I screwed up so bad! Help my brother. Please let him live. Don't take him. Please ..."
The heart monitor started a steady 'blip-blip-blip'.
Silence replaced the noise of the small room; the trauma team seemed to freeze, as if a sudden, bizarre winter had settled over just the room. The doctor turned to look at Jack, paddles still in her tiny hands. Surprise briefly touched her face before she turned her attention back to her patient.
"What just happened?" the red-headed nurse asked quietly.
"I don't know, but I'll take it. This isn't an art exhibit, folks. Let's move!" Her words snapped the group around her back into action.
We have a chance, so let's not blow it. And if you can't find that moron Cox, page Dr. Weston. I'm going to need some help in here. Notify the OR and let them know that we're going to need a room. Get neurology and vascular. He's going to need the works."
The blue-clad sumo-orderly returned, touched Jack's arm. Jack jerked, startled. The orderly looked apologetic and gestured to the door. " Sir , if you'll wait outside, we'll let you know as soon as we can. Please."
The door to the ER waiting room swung silently open, allowing a shaft of bright light to penetrate the quiet room. Laine stepped in and looked around. The room was full of police officers, all obviously anxious and uncomfortable. A deputy sheriff sat on the edge of a chair, talking to an African-American man and teen in the far corner. The older of the two was talking softly, his thick hands waving as he unfolded his story. They spoke in hushed, hurried tones, their voices immediately absorbed by the whispered conversations of the officers. The younger of the pair looked up at her as she entered the room, the light that stabbed into the dimness catching his ebony eyes. Laine let her gaze pause there for a second, wondering what they had to do with her husband and brother-in-law.
Rudy Sotello paced the floor close by, older than she remembered, and worried.
She'd gotten the call from her principal just before 2:30, as she readied her wiggling, excited kindergarteners for Friday dismissal. "Mrs. McClellan," the intercom speakers crackled with Reyna Terry's soft Tennessee accent, "please come to the office. Mrs. Greene is on her way to take your class."
Laine frowned, confused. "Can I finish the day?" she asked the disembodied principal. She'd always dreaded this kind of call, but not today. Not with Jack camping.
"Mrs. Greene is on her way."
Margaret Greene entered the classroom then. The young woman, face filled with concern, wouldn't make eye contact with her, choosing instead to turn her attention immediately to the children. And Laine knew; something horrible had happened. She'd grabbed her purse, pealing off the oversized man's shirt that she wore to protect her clothing from paste, paint and sticky fingers as she left the room, dropping it in the hallway.
She looked past Rudy, to Jack. He sat with his elbows planted on his knees, fingers laced tightly in front of him, white-knuckled. His face, scored by a frown, was otherwise closed, emotionless. He could have been a statue, sitting there. He looked so tense that Laine fancied if she bumped into him wrong he would implode. She'd seen him this way twice before; once at his father's funeral when they were 17, and again the night Pam died. It frightened her more than anything she'd imagined on her drive to get here. Whatever had happened to Cody was really bad, and Jack felt responsible.
"Honey?" she whispered, and ventured a step closer to her husband.
Jack looked up, jerked from whatever private torment he'd sunk into. "Lainie," he breathed.
Crossing the space between them quickly, she touched Rudy on the arm as she passed. She let Jack lay his head against the silkiness of her blouse and rubbed his hair. "There's blood all over you, Jack." She tried to keep her voice level. It cut like a machete through the men's voices in the room. "Are you hurt?"
He shook his head. "Cody," he answered shortly.
She knelt down to face him, her green eyes wide, and touched his arm and knee, and then his face to make sure. "What happened, Baby? Where is he?"
Jack took a shaky breath, tears forcing their way past his weary eyelids. He leaned his forehead against hers, trying to regain his composure. He tried to match his breathing to hers.
Laine waited, stroking her husband's hair, feeling his tears run against both of their cheeks. "It's okay, Jack. It's all going to be okay." It occurred to her that she didn't know that, not for sure.
Her gentle touch and soft Southern accent calmed him, as magical for him as ever. Jack took a deep breath. "They shot him, Laine. He stumbled into a hit and they shot him. In the back. All those years on the force and he never gets so much as a scratch and I take him on a stupid camping trip and... Laine, he was hurt so bad. I didn't even really want a nap. I just wanted to give him a hard time, and..." Jack wiped his eyes savagely. "So I drag him through the woods, put him through all kinds of hell and we get here and..." His throat closed and he looked at her, shook his head and closed his eyes.
Laine blinked at the empty space over Jack's head. She'd known Cody since he was eleven, when she'd started dating Jack. "He ... died?" She sank the rest of the way to the floor beside her husband, clinging to his knee for support. She stared hollowly at the bloodstains on Jack's jean legs.
"No." Jack took her by the shoulders, gently lifting her back to her knees, getting her attention. "Baby, no." He hugged her close, feeling stronger in the softness of her clothes and hair and skin than he had all day. She clung to him, her breath coming in short gasps and she bit her bottom lip. Jack leaned back into the chair, looking at her again. "We lost him when we first got him here, but..." He paused, his broad face revealing his confusion. "The doctor...she started to...she ..."
"She gave up."
Jack and Laine looked at the doorway. The small brunette, as miniscule as Jack remembered from the ER, stood silhouetted in the opening. She took a step into the room and held her hand out toward Jack. He stood and shook it, as did Laine.
"Dr. Kitman," she introduced herself. "I'm head of the trauma team that treated your brother."
"How is he?" HIs words fell over themselves. The hard knot of fear had returned to his voice.
"He's stable, but still critical." She paused, letting her words sink in. "He'd lost a significant amount of blood when you got him here, Mr. McClellan. And his injuries are quite serious."
"We need to find Mom," Jack interrupted. He suddenly needed her close to him. He felt young and scared, and incredibly old and tired, all at the same time.
"I spoke to her a moment ago," the doctor replied. "She wanted to call Mr. McClellan's children. I've already filled her in. Now I'd like to take a few minutes to get you up to speed before she returns."
Laine took Jack's giant hand in hers. "What did you mean when you said you'd given up?" she asked.
Dr. Kitman licked her lips, then pursed them together as if she were evening her lipstick. "I really didn't think we had a chance. And then your husband prayed."
Jack flushed, aware of not only Laine staring at him, but Rudy's eyes boring into him as well. The whole room had grown tomb-silent. Only the deputy sheriff continued speaking, his voice drawling away from the far corner. Joe Evans shushed him.
"My husband?" 'Laine looked from the doctor to Jack. "Prayed?"
"You see it all the time on TV, and hear about it for real once in a while. A patient comes in who's just too far gone. Too many injuries, too much time elapsed since the accident, whatever. And then, with no medical explanation, he just gets better. But I've never seen it before. At least not to this degree." She looked at Jack. "You did more today to save your brother than just get him to the hospital. That, by itself, wouldn't have been enough."
Laine squeezed Jack's hand. Jack gently pulled it away from her, rubbing the knuckles to ease some of the pain and tension. His arm and shoulder were throbbing, and he realized they'd been hurting for quite a while. "Is he going to be okay?"
"That's difficult to say at this moment," She motioned for the pair to sit and slipped into the chair across from Jack. "He's still a long way from okay. And there are things we don't know yet. There may be brain damage from the time down. Or nerve damage to the arm from the gunshot wound. Or both. Or neither. Right now we just need to get him strong enough to remove that bullet."
"When will that be?"
"We have an excellent neurosurgeon on staff who will be coming to speak with you directly. And a vascular surgeon who is top notch, as well. They'll be able to decide that within the next few hours." The doctor looked critically at Jack. "Are you alright?"
Jack nodded impatiently. He frowned and looked away from her, dismissing the question. "Yeah."
"No. Really." She leaned forward, catching Jack's attention as fully as when she first entered the room. "Are you alright?"
Caught by her intent gaze, Jack hesitated before he answered the second time. "Yeah," he answered slowly. "I think so."
"I'll give you a quick once over while we give your mother another couple of minutes," Dr. Kitman said. Jack started to protest but the young woman smoothly cut him off. "We can do an informal exam right here if you'd like. That way we won't miss her. I need to talk to you all together."
Okay, okay, yes! I'm head-hopping. lol.
Does having Laine's POV work? We've been switching from Jack to Cody peridically, and will see life from the doc's viewpoint. Does this throw off the pace/feel of the story? If you've read this far, please leave a comment.
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