Work Text:
The whole day had been one disaster after another, but there was a sick feel rolling around in Danny’s gut when Steve opened the passenger door of the moving Camaro and said, “There’s that bastard Turner. I got him.” And dove out.
“Don’t!” Danny reached out as if he could grab Steve and pull him back in the car.
But Steve had leaped out of the car with his weapon drawn. The car fishtailed slightly; Danny slammed on the brakes. Steve rolled over several times on the pavement, landed on his side, and shot Turner neatly in the head. They’d been after Turner for weeks and yeah, OK, Steve’d taken care of him, but had he really needed to leap from a moving vehicle? Were the two seconds it’d taken Danny to finish braking all that crucial?
Danny shoved open the driver’s side door and got out of the car. Words were brewing like acid in his throat. He was going to read Steve the riot act, but there was a flash and the crack of an explosion. He ducked down instinctively behind the open car door, covering his head with his arms. Nothing landed on him, but he felt and heard bits of something raining down on the Camaro. He raised his head to see a column of black smoke issuing from where Turner had hit the ground. The sick bastard had rigged his own body with explosives, just in case. Danny shot up, adrenaline raging through his system. It was warm out, in the low eighties, but sweat began to pour off him in rivulets, as it might on a much hotter day.
Steve was lying limp and twisted on the ground, like a doll Grace had dropped, about ten yards from Turner. Danny had his phone out before he could get his legs moving. His fingers wouldn’t cooperate and he had to dial three times to get the right number.
“Hello. 9-1-1. What’s your emergency?” The voice sounded female and efficient.
“This is Detective Daniel Williams, Five-O. I need an ambulance at a warehouse at 94-1420 Moaniani Street. We have an officer down. I repeat, officer down. There was an explosion.”
“Ambulance is on its way, Detective. It’s about ten minutes out.”
Danny was a little unsteady on his feet, but he stumbled the last few yards to where Steve lay. “Ten minutes?” Danny tugged at his hair. “This is an emergency!”
“I understand. They’ll get there as quickly as they can. Can you tell me if the officer is breathing and has a pulse?” The operator asked.
Danny knelt and fumbled around Steve’s throat for a pulse. He sagged with relief when he found one. “ Steve? Hey! Steve?” Danny raised the phone back to his ear. “He’s got a pulse, but he’s unconscious.”
“Is he breathing?” She repeated calmly. “Is anything blocking his airway?”
Danny bent and put his ear to Steve’s mouth and was rewarded with an exhalation ghosting over his cheek. Steve’s breath smelled of mint from the gum he’d had after lunch and hot sauce he’d poured liberally on his lunch. Danny watched Steve’s chest rise and fall, gently opened Steve’s mouth and saw nothing in the way.
“Yeah. Yeah, he’s breathing. Nothing seems to be blocking his airway.” Danny tried to adjust his legs so his good leg was taking his weight. “What can I do? What do I do?” He’d had First Responder training, but he couldn’t remember a thing. His mind was running through how to make a tourniquet, how to make a sling… nothing helpful.
“It’s OK. I’ll walk you through it. Is he bleeding?” The operator was so calm. Danny felt anything but. He was trembling and he held onto her voice like a big ship being guided into place by a tugboat.
“I--I don’t think so. I can’t see any blood. Oh, he scraped up his arms when he jumped out of the car, but they aren’t bleeding heavily.”
“He jumped out of a moving vehicle?”
“Yeah, he thinks he’s indestructible, but the explosion is what knocked him out. Damn him. When he comes to I’m going to knock him out.”
There was a cough on the line that might have been a smothered laugh.
Danny looked around at the empty lot. The black smoke was starting to waft away from Turner’s body into a large gray cloud against the blue sky. He’d never felt so alone in his entire damn life. He had an unbidden flashback…
…acrid smoke wafting over lower Manhattan ten years earlier. He’d gone in to volunteer with as many of his squad as could be spared to do search and rescue. The bodies…
“When the hell is the ambulance going to get here?” Danny drummed his fingers nervously on his thigh.
“They’re about nine minutes out, Detective. I’ll stay on the line until they get there, OK?”
“Yeah, OK.” Danny looked down at Steve’s face. He might be asleep, if he wasn’t streaked with dirt and wasn’t lying in the middle of a grotty old parking lot with his arms oddly flopped about, covered in road rash.
He spotted Steve’s gun a few feet away, picked it up, and put the safety back on. Steve had dropped his gun. That had never happened before. Danny couldn’t think, wasn’t sure what to do with it, so he placed it back on the front of Steve’s TAC vest feeling the tiny Velcro hooks catch.
“Still with me, Detective?” the voice on the phone asked.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Danny said.
“If you speak to the victim loudly does he open his eyes?” The operator asked.
Damn it. Steve was not a victim. The word just couldn’t coexist in Danny’s thoughts with Steve; didn’t make any sense.
“Steve?! Hey, Steven. Don’t you do this to me. Wake up!” Danny didn’t shake him, because enough of his training was coming back in drips and drabs. He could hear his instructor saying, “You never move anyone who might have a head or spinal injury, without stabilizing their cervical-spine, unless they’re going to die if you don’t. Because paralyzed is better than dead.”
“No, he’s not opening his eyes,” Danny said. “But I don’t want to move him in case his c-spine is injured.”
“Try pinching him firmly. Does he respond?”
Danny pinched Steve’s upper arm, where the skin wasn’t abraded. No response.
“Nothing,” Danny said. He ran his fingers through his hair and his hand came away full of grit.
“OK. I want you to gently lift up each eyelid and see if his pupils look the same size. Can you do that?”
“Yeah,” Danny put his phone on speaker and set it on Steve’s chest braced by the butt of the gun so that it couldn’t slip on the Kevlar. He brushed some loose black gravel from his hands and gently pulled open Steve’s left eye and then his right.
“OK, they look the same. That’s good right?”
“Yeah, that’s a good sign. Can you check behind each ear and see if there’s any visible bruising?”
Danny peered behind Steve’s ears, carefully bending forward his earlobes. The skin was streaked with dust, but otherwise tan and unmarked.
“No. No bruising. That’s a sign of brain hemorrhage, right? What’s it called?”
“Battle’s sign. Good. Your training is coming back, huh?” she asked.
“A little. How far out are they?” Danny had been dreading something like this ever since Steve had broken his arm falling down that damn cliff. Why couldn’t he injure himself near civilization?
“About eight minutes,” the woman said.
“You had to go and do something stupidly heroic, you moron. Get yourself knocked out in the middle of nowhere. I seriously think you need help. Serious help. Maybe shock therapy.”
There was a muffled laugh from the phone.
“What?” Danny barked.
“Well, Waipahu isn’t exactly the middle of nowhere.”
“The nearest hospital is where? In Aiea, right? We might as well be in Siberia.”
“Yes, but it’s only ten minutes away. Good news, the ambulance is making good time. New ETA is six minutes.”
Danny took a deep breath. He needed to keep busy for Steve’s sake as well as for his own sanity.
“Isn’t that good?” she asked.
“I guess. Yeah. Sure. OK. So I’m going to do a head to toe. Can you guide me through it?”
“Do you have some gloves you can wear?”
“Yeah. Body substance isolation. Got it. Be right back.” Danny hurried to the Camaro and dug out a pair of latex gloves from his crime scene kit. He wasn’t actually worried about Steve infecting him, but he knew the gloves would protect Steve from infection if he had any open wounds.
“OK, I’m ready.” Danny was kneeling by Steve’s side again. His knee was going to be a mess later, but that couldn’t be helped.
“Start with his head. Gently palpate his skull. Can you feel any bumps? Or any movement of the skull plates?”
Danny gripped Steve’s head gingerly, taking great care not to move his head or neck and squeezed far more gently than one might squeeze to test a melon for ripeness. He moved his hands over the surface of Steve’s skull, could smell his shampoo and the sharp musky smell that was just Steve. His hands were shaking with relief when he pulled them away.
“No. No bumps, no swelling, and no skull fracture that I can feel. What’s that called when the broken pieces rub together?”
“Crepitus?”
“Yeah, no crepitus.” Danny liked having the right word, the word that meant precisely what he wanted to say. The right word made him feel like he had some semblance of control.
“Do you remember what’s next?” The operator asked.
“Yeah, I need to palpate his neck, shoulders, and arms for dislocations or breaks.” Danny ran his hands over those areas and felt no discernible injuries. “He’s got some road rash, but no breaks or dislocations. Chest and abdomen next, right? What am I looking for?”
“Do his ribs feel solid?”
Danny set his phone on the ground and placed Steve’s gun next to it. He undid the Velcro on the sides of Steve’s TAC vest and pulled the thing open, like a clam shell he could slip his hands inside of, and compressed Steve’s ribs gently with the palms of his hands, feeling the thin layer of grit on Steve’s blue shirt.
“His ribs are OK.” Danny said, “Abdomen next. Divided into four quadrants, right?”
“Exactly. You’re looking for anything that feels distended or rigid, instead of soft and yielding.”
Danny imagined the four quadrants, two upper and two lower and pressed down, one hand over the other, into each quadrant. He could feel the muscled flesh yield as he pressed.
“No. Nothing weird there.” Danny had to shift his weight again, trying to find a comfortable way to kneel.
“Good. What’s next?” The operator was practically quizzing him. He’d done well on his First Responder exam, but it’d been so long since he’d used any of his first aid skills that it was like a language he’d mostly forgotten how to speak.
“Uh, pelvis and legs.” Danny gripped Steve’s hips and pushed on them from the sides and from above. Nothing moved or felt wrong there, Steve was as solid as ever, he just wouldn’t wake up. And he better. He damn well better wake up at some point. Danny could not, would not consider the alternative.
“Pelvis is fine. I’m doing his right leg now. Oh! Yeah, It’s broken. His tibia or fibula, right? Shit. What do I do? I don’t have anything to make a splint with.”
“You’re doing great, Detective. Is it a compound fracture?”
Danny carefully rolled up Steve’s pant leg. The skin was swollen and bruised, but there was no wound, no bone sticking out, thank God.
“No. His leg is starting to swell though. Should I take off his boot?”
“I’d wait until the paramedics get there so that someone can stabilize the fracture first.”
Danny hurriedly checked Steve’s other leg. “His left leg is OK, as far as I can tell. How long?”
“Maybe three minutes.”
“I’m going to see if I can find something to make a splint. I can’t just sit here for three minutes. And his boot is starting to look uncomfortably tight.”
“Detective, you could try just loosening the laces.”
“Oh. Right. I’m not thinking the straightest, you know?” Danny’s fingers fumbled on the knot. “Goddamn Navy. Why can’t you just tie a double knot like everyone else on the planet, Steven?”
“McGarrett, huh?” The operator said.
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“You’re Five-O. Everyone in law enforcement and emergency services knows who McGarrett is. We even have a picture up in our office.” The operator cleared her throat nervously. “Uh, he’s wearing his Navy uniform.”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s a looker. I know.” Danny flapped his hand at the phone. “Do me a favor? I’m sending you a photo of the knot—can you Google it? You know what? Never mind.”
Danny took Steve’s knife out of its ankle sheath and cut the laces. As he’d suspected the swelling had gone beyond the capacity of the boot and there was a deep dent in Steve’s ankle where the leather had been digging into his flesh.
“Is there anything else I can do for him?” Danny put the knife back with hands as steady as he could make them. He hadn’t had an adrenaline reaction like this since the time Grace had wandered away from him at the Bronx Zoo five years earlier.
“Sure. You can take his vitals, if you want to. Remember how to take a radial pulse?”
“Yeah,” Danny felt for Steve’s pulse in his wrist and it took him a few moments to distinguish between it and the thrum of blood in his own fingertips. He waited until the second hand on his watch reached twelve and started counting until it reached fifteen seconds.
“Twelve beats in fifteen seconds. So forty-eight? Is that right? Isn’t that kind of low?”
“Well,” the operator made a choking noise, “Isn’t he in, um, kind of good shape?”
Danny smirked. “Yeah. Kind of.”
“Well, then that’s normal for someone athletic.”
The sun was merciless against all the asphalt and concrete. He brushed the sweat out of his eyes and his hands came away rust red. Something sharp must have caught him on the cheek during the explosion, but he hadn’t even felt it. It couldn’t be bad though because it hadn’t dripped at all and was already scabbing over.
“You can’t take his blood pressure, but since his pulse is good and the ambulance will be there any second—I wouldn’t worry. How are you doing?”
“I’m OK. I just need him to be OK.”
“You guys are close, huh?”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “He’s the best partner I ever had. I mean he’s also the worst partner I ever had, but he’s the best friend I ever had, not that I’d tell him that because he’d never shut up about it. And if he doesn’t…”
Danny’s breathing sounded harsh in his ears, but was drowned out by the wail of sirens. The ambulance stopped short with a gritty burst on the gravel at the edge of the lot. Danny shifted, trying to get his stiff legs to unfold.
“Hey, what’s your name?” Danny said to the woman on the phone.
“Keke,” she said.
“Thank you so much, Keke. I owe you,” he said. “I’ve got to run. The bus is here.”
“Just doing my job, Detective.” She rang off.
A tall man all in navy blue climbed out of the back of the ambulance. “Hi, I’m Joey. That’s Alek. “
Joey was all easy limbs, and efficiency. He set down his bright orange kit and knelt next to Steve. Alek, who looked a little green, must be a newbie, set up shop by Steve’s head, bracing it between his arms, with his hands on Steve’s shoulders.
“Danny,” Danny said, jerking a thumb at himself. “This is Steve—“
“Yeah, I’ve met McGarrett before.” Joey nodded. “Also we heard the details of the call with dispatch. You did good.”
Danny tried not to flush as he skittered out of Joey’s way. He put his phone in his pocket and slid Steve’s gun into the waistband of his own pants.
“How long has he been out, Danny?” Joey pulled a piece of wide white tape off a roll and slapped it onto his thigh.
Danny checked his phone. He’d been on the line with the operator for nine minutes and forty-two seconds. “Roughly ten minutes.”
“There was an explosion? How close was Steve to it?”
“Yeah, something went boom—attached to our perp. Steve took him out just before that. He must have been pretty close. I’d say five or six yards, which means he got thrown four to five yards to land here.”
Joey started making notes on the piece of tape with a permanent marker. Danny could smell the sharp unpleasantness of the ink.
“Steve? Can you hear me?” Joey said loudly. “I’m going to take your pulse.” He grabbed Steve’s wrist in one of his brown hands and stared at his watch for fifteen seconds. “Pulse is good, like you said.” He made another note on the tape on his leg. He pulled back Steve’s eyelids one at a time and flashed a light into each eye. Then he took Steve’s blood pressure with pressure cuff and a stethoscope. The cuff was called a sphygmomanometer Danny remembered.
Joey put a quick splint on Steve’s broken leg with his quick clever fingers, but left Steve’s boot on. Danny was glad he hadn’t tried to take it off.
“OK, we’re going to get him ready to move, Danny.”
“How is he?” Danny choked on the dust that covered everything around him. His eyes were watering, but it was the dust.
“Well, a lot depends on how much longer he’s unconscious, and what diagnostic tests show, but his vitals are strong, which is good.” Joey clapped Danny on the back.
Alek continued to hold Steve’s head and neck immobile while Joey put a large, rigid cervical collar on him and clipped it shut. The two men lifted Steve’s inert body onto an orange plastic backboard and then strapped him onto the gurney, which bumped along the uneven pavement to the ambulance. Joey flipped a lever, raised the gurney up, and slid it into the back of the bus. Danny climbed in and sat on the small bench across from where Steve lay. He felt his eyelid twitch. He still had chunks of gravel embedded in his hands and knees from leaning over Steve. He brushed his palms against his knees, and there was shower of rocks pinging against the stainless steel floor of the ambulance.
“Sorry about that,” Danny said to Joey and tried to kick the gravel out of the way. Alek was driving and Danny could only see the back of his head.
“Don’t worry. You should see what we have to hose out of here.” Joey grinned.
After that he was busy monitoring Steve and Danny just let everything wash over him. It wasn’t his job to take care of Steve anymore. Except, of course, it was. He could never relax, never trust Steve not to throw himself into danger.
They headed for Pali Momi Hospital with lights and sirens blaring. Just before they pulled into the emergency entrance, Steve groaned and tried to move, but was trapped by the cervical collar and the backboard.
“Steve? Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?” Joey said. Danny leaned forward to see if Steve looked OK.
Steve’s eyes flickered opened and then closed again immediately. Joey shot Danny a smile and nodded. This was good even though Steve looked like he was in pain. The divot between his eyes deepened, as did the lines around his mouth.
“Hey, man. Good to have you back with us.” Joey put his fingers inside Steve’s fingers and said, “Steve? Can you squeeze my fingers? Good. That’s good.”
Danny felt like he could cry. Steve had been out for just over twenty-two minutes, but he was awake now. Danny hadn’t been sure he’d ever see Steve open his eyes again. He could admit that now that the threat was gone.
Danny followed Steve as he was rolled into one of the curtained-off bays in the ER. He flattened up against the wall to stay out of the way of the nurses and the short female doctor who came running over. With the help of the paramedics they transferred Steve to an ER bed.
“Good luck. We’re pulling for him.” Joey flashed Danny the shaka before hurrying back to his bus, rolling his gurney ahead of him.
Danny tried to call out thank you, but the words cramped in his throat.
The crew around Steve was busy. Hands everywhere. One nurse clamped a monitor onto Steve’s index finger. The doctor asked Steve a whole series of questions, most of which Joey had already asked, but Steve hadn’t been able to respond. He still couldn’t answer very well. They took his blood pressure, and temperature.
“Where am I?” Steve murmured. He was keeping his eyes mostly closed, and squinting when they were open, like the room was too bright.
“Pali Momi Hospital, Steve. Do you remember what happened?” The doctor asked.
“I was having lunch with Danny…” Steve tried to shake his head and winced at being restrained, or maybe he was in pain.
Shit. Lunch? That was the last thing he remembered? That had been two hours before they’d gone after Turner.
“Are you feeling any pain?” The doctor asked him.
“My head. And my leg. And it’s too bright in here.”
“He must really hurt,” Danny said. “Because I have never heard him admit to being in actual physical pain before.”
The doctor nodded and ordered an intern to take Steve for an MRI and then for an X-Ray of his leg. Danny wanted to follow Steve to make sure he didn’t try to do anything else stupid like get up and stand on a broken leg. The doctor stepped up to him though and blocked him from going anywhere.
“I take it he’s missing some time, some memories? How long was it between lunch and the explosion?” The doctor asked.
“About two hours.”
She made some notes on a chart. “It’s going to be a while before he comes back. You should let someone clean that laceration for you and check you over. You were close to the explosion too, right?”
“I was behind my car and a lot farther away than Steve. How is he?”
“Any blurred vision? Ringing in your ears? Dizziness? Headache?” The doctor asked peering at Danny.
“Nope, just want to know how Steve is.” Danny shoved his hands in his pockets.
“We won’t know about his brain until we get the MRI results. But that he’s awake is a good sign. He probably has a concussion, if we’re lucky that’s all he has. His leg will heal.” The doctor asked one of the nurses clean Danny’s cut and said she’d find him when she knew more about Steve’s condition.
Danny let the nurse, who was a matronly older woman with kind eyes and freckled hands, clean his cut and put steri strips on it.
“You’re lucky you don’t need stitches. You’d have to see a plastic surgeon,” she said.
“Nah. I’d want a big scar so I can compete with Captain America.”
“What?” The nurse’s face registered confusion.
“Nothing. Thanks. Should I wait somewhere else?”
“It’s slow right now. So you can wait here.” She smiled at him and walked away.
Danny dropped into the hard plastic chair next to the empty spot where Steve’s gurney had been. He took out his phone and called Kono and Chin to update them on the situation.
Kono answered her phone. “Hey, Danny. Chin’s on his way to Pali Momi. Someone at HPD heard about the explosion over the scanner. Are you all right? How’s Steve?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m just worried about our fearless leader. He was out for so long. It scared the living hell out of me. He’s kind of awake now. They’re doing an MRI. The doctor says it’s probably a concussion.”
Kono said nothing, but Danny could almost feel her nodding in understanding.
“Call me the second you know how he is? Or if you need anything,” she said.
“Of course.” Danny tucked his phone back in his pocket. He thought about calling Grace, just to hear her voice, but she was having a tennis lesson until four-thirty, and as much as he hated tennis, he didn’t want to interrupt. Something was digging into his back. Then he remembered Steve’s gun. Well, it’d just have to stay there for now.
Really, he wanted to talk to Steve. He wanted Steve to make fun of him for worrying. The guy could be a real jerk at times. “Are you done bitching about your boo-boo?” Danny had wanted to hit him with his cane that day outside the prison.
He rubbed at his face until he remembered his cut and stopped before he opened it up again.
Chin arrived and Danny did feel a lot better with him sitting calmly and quietly next to him in the ER.
One of the orderlies wheeled Steve back into the bay and left him.
“Hey, brah. Howzit?” Chin gripped one of Steve’s hands.
“M’fine.” Steve’s eyes were glassy, unfocussed, and the lids were heavy. His speech was slow. Danny’s breathing grew shallow and he couldn’t stay seated. He paced back and forth.
The doctor returned. “OK. Leg is broken, but it’s not too bad. He’ll need a cast and he’ll have to stay off it for a while. The head injury is what we call a coup-contrecoup. It means his brain is bruised in both the back and the front. His Glasgow score is 13, which is good—it’s a mild traumatic brain injury. I’d like to keep him overnight for observation and then he’s going to need rest for about a week.”
Danny laughed. He felt so light that he thought he might be able to float on thermal currents. “Yeah, getting him to rest is going to be fun.”
“Well, the drugs we’re giving him for pain and inflammation might help.” She smiled. “Someone will be over to put a cast on him and then they’ll take him up to his room after that.”
Someone new, a man in blue scrubs who didn’t introduce himself, came over and put a cast on Steve’s leg. Nurses checked on him every ten minutes or so.
Danny was starting to get antsy after they’d waited an hour for someone to come and take Steve up to his room. He could see that Chin regretted giving him coffee. Steve was in and out, but mostly sleeping. Danny remembered always wanting to pinch or poke Grace when she was an infant to make sure she was sleeping and not dead. He felt the same way with Steve right now. Although he couldn’t very well pinch Steve in front of Chin. It was be too hard to explain.
*
Danny had conked out in the chair in Steve’s room. Chin had gone to get Kono so they could pick up Danny’s car, and meet HPD who had already secured the scene. Chin had refused to let Danny come with him. He’d said, “You’re limping and you need to rest too. Plus, I know you don’t want to leave Steve alone.” He’d taken Steve’s gun so that Danny didn’t have to wander around with it tucked in the back of his pants.
Steve was sleeping, but he was hooked up to a pulse monitor and it beeped quietly, rhythmically proving that Steve was still alive. It lulled Danny into a light sleep.
He started when someone rapped on the open door.
“Detective Williams?” A very pregnant woman in a purple dress cocked her head at him.
“Yeah?” Danny couldn’t help the yawn that cracked his jaw, but hid it behind his hand.
“Hi.” She moved into the room and held out her hand. “I’m Keke.” She was carrying an enormous vase of flowers. “This is Lilia. She works dispatch with me.”
Danny stood up and held out his hand to shake hers. “What am I doing? Come here.” He pulled her into a hug. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You kept me from totally freaking out today.”
Keke was pink faced when Danny let go of her. “Just doing my job.”
Lilia seemed too shy to do more than nod and steal not so subtle glances at Steve. Danny had a feeling she was the one who’d hung up the photo of Steve in their office.
“How is the Lieutenant Commander?” Keke set the flowers on the table by Steve’s bed. Steve opened his eyes and glared at the blooms like they might attack him at any second.
“A little out of it, but he’s going to be fine. He’s got something like a concussion.” Danny actually felt like it was really and deeply true for the first time as he said it. Steve was going to be OK.
“How are you doing?” Keke asked seriously and Danny wondered if she had kids already because there was something highly maternal in her tone.
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” he said.
“Because you almost died today. Because you watched your partner lie injured and unconscious for twenty minutes.” Keke shrugged, but Danny didn’t want to argue with her, he only enjoyed arguing with Steve.
“Danny?” Steve mumbled.
“What, babe?” Danny stole a glance at Keke and Lilai who looked surprised at his term of endearment. Oh, well. Let them think what they like. He was tired of explaining that it’s a Jersey thing. He rocked on his feet, trying to stretch out his stiff legs.
“Who’s here?”
“This is Keke. She’s a 9-1-1 operator and she helped me today when you were out cold.”
“The explosion. Turner.” Steve nodded slightly.
“Yeah, you remember. That’s great.” Danny turned to the women and explained that Steve had had some missing memories earlier.
“That’s a good sign,” Keke nodded. “That his memory is coming back. How are you feeling, Lieutenant Commander?”
“I’m fine. Did Danny argue with you? Because he really likes to argue. He says I wasn’t held enough as a child, but I have photos.”
“I’m sure you were,” Keke said and smiled at Steve warmly. She turned to Danny and said, “It’s normal for patients with concussions to be a little disoriented. Say odd things.”
“Hey, how come you know so much…” Danny wasn’t sure how to phrase it, without it sounding like an insult.
“For an operator?” She laughed. “Yeah, I was a paramedic, but until he comes out I’m working dispatch.” She patted her round belly.
“When are you due?” Danny smiled, remembering when Grace was born.
“September, and it can’t come soon enough.” She was joking, but also a little bit in earnest.
Danny nodded. “Do you have a name picked out yet?”
“Yeah, we’re going to call him—“
“You should always pee on your toothpaste after you spit it on the ground. Neutralizes the PH,” Steve muttered.
“You were saying,” Danny said.
“We’re going to call him Kahalo after my dad.” Keke was trying not to laugh. Lilia’s mouth was hanging open.
“I remember when my daughter was born. Best day of my life. Is this your first?”
“Yeah, and I’m a little nervous about it, but one thing at a time. I’m really glad you’re both OK.” Keke hugged Danny again and ushered her friend out the door.
Danny sat back down and grinned at the flowers, which he realized were just as much for him as they were for Steve. He really had had a day, but everything was going to be all right.
“What happened to my arms?” Steve said holding them out and looking at the bandages.
“You jumped out of the Camaro while it was moving,” Danny said. “You have a nasty case of road rash.”
“I did? Why would I do that?” Steve looked bemused.
“You don’t remember?”
Steve shook his head and then winced. “Could you turn out the light, please?”
Danny got up and switched off the overhead light in the room, relieved to see the tension on Steve’s face ease. “Why would you do that? That, my friend, is a question for the ages. And when you’re better, don’t think we’re not going to talk about it. We are so going to talk about it.”
“I’m confused,” Steve said gripping the edge of the sheet. “Are you sure my leg is going to be OK?”
He sounded so nervous and that wasn’t like Mr. Nerves-of-Steel. Danny figured it was another thing to chalk up the head injury.
“Hey, hey. It’s OK. You’re going to be OK. You’ll have a cast for about a month and then they’ll switch to one you can walk on. But your leg is going to be fine. It will heal.” Danny patted him on the shoulder and Steve settled back against the pillows and relaxed.
Danny watched Steve fall into an almost drooling stupor after the nurse came in and gave him more pain medication. He sank back into the armchair he was slouching in and fell into an exhausted sleep. Danny didn’t have to watch Steve anymore, but he couldn’t quite stop keeping an eye on him cold turkey. He wanted to at least be close by, for now, until he was sure Steve could take care of himself again.