The Librarians Fanfic: By Paths Coincident 6/?
Title: By Paths Coincident 6/?
Author: Honorat
Rating: T
Crossover: Leverage and The Librarians
Characters: Jenkins, Eve Baird, Jacob Stone, Cassandra Cillian, Ezekiel Jones, Parker, Alec Hardison, Eliot Spencer, Others TBA as needed.
Pairing: Parker/Hardison, Cassandra/Jake, Cassandra/Eliot, just a touch of Eliot/OC
Disclaimer: Dean Devlin, John Rogers, TNT own these characters.
Description: The Librarians discover Leverage International. Jacob Stone and Eliot Spencer have a family past, but they aren’t the only members of the two teams who’ve met before. Expect whiplash between light and dark. Lots of backstory in this chapter.
Previous chapters HERE.
* * * * *
By Paths Coincident
* * * * *
11 Years Ago
Port of Algeciras Bay, Strait of Gibralter, Spain
Doctor Mateo Villanueva Cortés, emergency physician, gripped the armrests of his seat as Jorge sent the Ambulancia de UVI móvil careening around the corner and into the Port gateway in a spray of gravel. Jorge always drove their mobile intensive care unit as if he thought it was a Formula One race car in the Grand Prix de Monaco, but he was outdoing himself today.
Mateo had been employed in the Servicios de Emergencias Médicas for over fifteen years, and he had never ridden with such a Jehu of driver as this one. It was a matter of honour for Jorge to arrive on scene before the Vehículo de Intervención Rápida, and once again he had succeeded. Mateo could see the amber lights of the rapid response team’s vehicle in the side mirror. Jorge would be insufferable for a week.
Glancing back at Nadia, Mateo rolled his eyes. His emergency nurse was grinning, clearly enjoying the jolting ride in the back of the ambulance far too much. She and Jorge were menaces.
Ahead of them several cars belonging to the policía were clearing the way, reminding Mateo that this call was not like all the others. This was not an illness or an accident. There was a killer loose at the Port, and his team would be running into a war zone.
Jorge slowed the vehicle as two police officers jogged up to them, weapons drawn. He rolled down the window and leaned out.
“Can you tell us where to go?” Jorge asked. “The VIR is right behind us.”
“Right this way,” one of the officers gestured. “There’s one victim still alive over behind that second row of cargo containers. The rest, I’m afraid, are very dead.”
He had to shout the last sentence after them as Jorge left a layer of tyres on the asphalt. The VIR personnel would not be getting to the patient before Mateo and Nadia if Jorge could help it.
The ambulance screeched to a halt perilously close to a startled group of police clustered around one of four bodies Mateo could see.
Vaulting from the vehicle, kit in hand, Mateo sprinted to the side of the victim. All of the officers moved away except for two, one trying to staunch the blood from a penetrating abdominal wound, the other kneeling beside the non-responsive young woman and breathing into what appeared to be a cobbled together trach tube made from a repurposed ballpoint pen.
Behind him he heard Nadia and Jorge rushing in with the heavier equipment. Nadia had been an emergency nurse for longer than Mateo had been a doctor, so she set immediately to attaching cardiac and oxygen monitors to their patient.
“She’s not breathing on her own?” Mateo asked the young officer who was continuing his primitive airway management.
In between breaths, he shook his head. “No, her throat is crushed. She was turning blue when we got here. I can’t tell if she has a pulse, but since she’s still bleeding, something’s got to be moving, right?”
“I’m getting a pulse,” Nadia informed him. “Extreme tachycardia and diminished blood pressure, so it’s no wonder you’re not feeling it.”
“You saved her life, young man,” Mateo said. “Excellent work with the cricothyroidotomy.”
“The what?”
Mateo indicated the tube.
“Oh,” the officer said, “I read about it on the Internet.”
Dear God, Mateo thought, the fact that this woman is still alive is a miracle.
She had obviously been the victim of blunt force trauma resulting in a laryngeal fracture. He suspected unstable laryngeal cartilage and massive mucosal injuries at the least, if not disruption of the anterior commissure. The resultant severe edema and haematoma had completely blocked off her airway.
“Nadia, what are her O2 sats?”
“74 percent,” Nadia said, already busy starting an IV. “And dropping.”
The makeshift trach had kept her alive, but it was insufficient. Hypoxemia was already affecting her organ function.
“We’re going to have to perform a tracheostomy,” Mateo told Nadia. He deftly began to prep the patient for the procedure while Nadia gathered the trach tube and the ventilator.
However, his patient’s airway wasn’t the only issue. Already she was exhibiting signs of hypovolemic shock. The woman had lost a frightening amount of blood, Class III, verging on Class IV hemorrhage. If he could not get her stabilized, her body was going to shut down.
“Put a second IV in,” Mateo instructed. “We’re going to have to give her enough transfusion to get her arterial pressure up to 40-50mmHg.”
Pumping fluids into her system would be like trying to hold water in a cracked glass, but it was her only chance to survive long enough to make it to surgery.
Mateo was relieved when the Rapid Response team arrived from confirming the deaths of the other victims on site. The officers had remained, but their attention was turned outward, ready for another attack. Another pair of experienced hands was welcome.
Mateo was securing the trach tube and attaching it to the ventilator while Nadia was managing the transfusion. Having the VIR doctor and nurse meant that someone was able to check for other injuries and arrange for transport.
Observing both that her helmet had nearly been ripped off her head and that her pupils were unresponsive, the VIR doctor diagnosed severe traumatic brain injury with a Glasgow Coma Score of 2T. That meant they’d also need to treat her for possible cervical spinal injury, always a complication when dealing with a trach tube.
The fact that she had a dislocated left shoulder and a broken right arm seemed trivial in comparison.
Finally, their patient was receiving oxygen via the ventilator and trach; her blood supply was being augmented with saline and plasma; her neck, shoulder and arm were immobilized; and she was carefully maneuvered onto the gurney for transport.
They had done all they could for her, but it wasn’t enough. His patient flatlined as they loaded her into the ambulance.
Asystole. She was dead.
Even defibrillation would have no effect, although they would try. With a feeling of despair, Mateo began CPR.
“Nadia, administer 1 mg epinephrine by IV every 3-5 minutes,” he ordered. He could only pray that they could keep her brain alive long enough to get any kind of a rhythm re-established.
It was not far from the Port of Algeciras Bay to the Complejo Hospitalario Punta de Europa, but they covered the distance in record time. For once, Mateo was grateful for Jorge’s ability to take an ambulance around a corner on two wheels.
* * * * *
Complejo Hospitalario Punta de Europa, Algeciras, Spain
The first thing she became aware of was sound. A woman weeping.
Mom?
Then everything was silence.
* * * * *
She was surfacing through viscous blackness, trying to breathe. What was that infernal beeping? Why didn’t someone turn it off?
“Don’t you dare leave us, Baby Girl. Don’t you leave. You have to fight. You’ve always been a fighter, Eve.”
I won’t, Dad, she would have said, as she stopped fighting.
It was dark inside the silence.
* * * * *
A shaft of memory, like light. She was six years old, and her father was teaching her to fire a gun. She smelled the acrid sulphur of the propellant.
Smells. Disinfectant. Blood.
She was kneeling on rough pavement. Her knees were wet with blood. Blood was pouring over her hands. Someone was dying, and she could not stop it.
The darkness was a friend.
* * * * *
A man, a stranger, speaking. “We’ve managed to repair the abdominal damage. Peritonitis is responding well to treatment. Intracranial pressure is being regulated through an external ventricular drainage system. All of her organs are functioning again. We’ve stabilized the architecture of her larynx with metal alloy plates, but as long as she’s comatose, we’ll be leaving in the trach tube and assisting with her breathing.”
Who was he talking about?
“But when will she wake up? It has been two weeks. If she’s okay now, why doesn’t she wake up?”
“Coma is complicated, and she is suffering from a skull fracture. We don’t entirely understand why the body shuts down this way, but it may be in order to give it the rest and resources it needs to heal. Your daughter has survived a major trauma. She was a very fit and healthy person, and that gives her an advantage. Let her have the time.”
The silence took his voice.
* * * * *
A woman, a stranger, speaking in Spanish. Who speaks Spanish in Brussels?
“Hello, love. My name is Gabriela and this is Ines. We’re just going to move you so we can clean the sheets. Then we’ll give you a nice bath, so you’ll feel all fresh.”
Another voice, also a woman. “Do you always talk to them?”
“Of course. You never know what they hear. It’s a nice thing to do. I’d want someone to remember I was there if it happened to me.”
“She probably doesn’t even speak Spanish.”
“She was a NATO Captain. Of course, she does.”
Was?
There were strangers’ hands on her body, moving her, but she could not move herself. Somewhere, off in the distance she thought there was pain, but it did not seem relevant to her. Warm, wet cloth touched her as if she were a soiled child. What had happened to her?
“There you go, love. All clean again. How would you like some lotion?”
The hands again, soothing. The lotion did feel good.
She was so tired.
* * * * *
She spent her days and nights, undifferentiated, surrounded by sounds of machines monitoring her vital signs, pumping fluids and nutrients and medications into her, draining fluids out of her, rhythmically compressing her legs to keep her blood circulating. Sleeping and waking and dreaming bled into each other until she did not know whether she believed everything was real or nothing was. The only constant was the pain. The only interruptions were when people came into the room.
Sometimes their voices blended into the sounds. Occasionally she understood entire conversations.
They handled her like she was a large and awkward doll, dressing and undressing her, bathing her, attending to her machines. Often they hurt her, moving her, taking blood, changing dressings.
Eve began to look forward to Gabrielle, the nurse who talked to her as she worked, babbling like a brook about the weather, her siblings, hospital gossip, the local news.
Eve was so very, very bored.
* * * * *
Someone was reading to her. A romance novel? ,i>Mom? She had always been a bit of a disappointment to her mother-the daughter who wanted to be the hero instead of the heroine.
“I want the pretty dress and the sword!”
“My warrior princess,” said her dad.
She smiled at the memory and heard the novel drop on the floor.
“Eve! She’s waking up! Can you hear me? Oh, Eve.”
Her mother was gripping her hand. Eve tried to answer, but her mouth made no sound.
“She’s trying to say something! Eve, honey, you can’t talk. Can you squeeze my hand?”
What kind of a question was that? She could carry a 100 pounds of gear at a jog over rough terrain for a 12 hour day. Of course she could squeeze a hand . . . except she couldn’t.
“I can feel her trying!” Her mother was crying. “She’s going to be okay. I know it.”
The world faded to dark again.
* * * * *
Eventually the time came when she could tell it was light. Should she open her eyes? No, it was too much work. Why did she hurt everywhere?
“Ms. Baird.” A new voice. Masculine. “I’m Dr. Andrade, your urologist. It’s time to replace your catheter.”
Where was the darkness when she needed it?
* * * * *
Someone was stalking her, moving like smoke on the wind. He was dressed all in black-no insignia. His face shield was cracked and bloody, and he carried a knife. She could neither run nor fight. Her heart rate spiked as he plunged the knife into her stomach.
Alarms went off.
He vanished like a shadow.
* * * * *
The next time she awoke, she did open her eyes. Everything was a blur of unfamiliar shapes. There was nothing that she recognized. Her eyes felt like she’d been squinting through a desert sandstorm for a week, and she blinked trying to clear them of the dryness and grit. She was in a colourless room full of humming machinery. There were tubes in every possible orifice of her body and some impossible ones.
She could not move, tied down by wire leads and plastic tubing.
She needed to move. It wasn’t safe to stay here. Someone was trying to kill her.
Her struggles were setting off alarms. Why couldn’t she just jump up and flee? Why didn’t her body work?
Pain struck like the blowback from an IED. So much pain.
Voices shouting. She tried to call-to warn them.
Then the room was full of milling bodies. Hands tried to pin her down. She flailed at them, satisfied to hear them cry out, hating the fact that her arms refused to move at her command.
“Don’t let her displace the EVD!”
“We need to sedate her before she damages herself!”
No!
A sharp pinch of pain and the world faded to darkness.
* * * * *
The next time she was lucid, she could see clearly that a stranger was in the room. He wore an eye-achingly bright orange uniform with navy and silver stripes. She did not recognize the colours, but the emergency medical services patch on his chest let her know his profession.
Paramedic. No. That was Spanish labelling him “Médico”-he was an emergency doctor. Which meant she was in Spain.
He noticed her observing him, and a smile crinkled up the lines of his face.
“Senorita, you are awake!” he exclaimed. His voice sounded choked and a glint of extra moisture shone in his eyes.
Why would a stranger shed tears for her? Eve tried to greet him, to ask who he was, but no words came.
“No, do not try to talk,” he said, moving swiftly to her side and taking her hand in one of his. “You have had an injury to your larynx.” He touched his other hand to his neck, demonstrating. “My name is Doctor Villanueva Cortés. I am médico de emergencias with the ambulancia that brought you here.”
She wanted to ask him so many questions. Where was here? What had happened to her? What had happened to her team?
His hand was warm on hers, large and tanned. In contrast, her hand was so very pale and claw-like. Surely that bony, fleshless arm did not belong to her?
“I am so happy to see you alive!” he said. “We hoped and prayed, but we did not know if . . .” his voice trailed off. “It is wonderful, a miracle.”
Eve needed to talk. Her right arm appeared to be encased in a cast, but she still had her left arm. Withdrawing her hand from the doctor’s grip, she tried to pantomime writing.
“Ah!” the doctor exclaimed. “You would like pen and paper, I am sure. And you have family here who will be delighted that you are awake. I will take my leave of you and deliver your request.”
No, Eve wanted to interrogate him.
“Farewell, Senorita,” he said.
She closed her eyes, frustration alarming her monitors and exhausting her.
Sleep dragged her down before anyone else arrived.
* * * * *
TBC
Author: Honorat
Rating: T
Crossover: Leverage and The Librarians
Characters: Jenkins, Eve Baird, Jacob Stone, Cassandra Cillian, Ezekiel Jones, Parker, Alec Hardison, Eliot Spencer, Others TBA as needed.
Pairing: Parker/Hardison, Cassandra/Jake, Cassandra/Eliot, just a touch of Eliot/OC
Disclaimer: Dean Devlin, John Rogers, TNT own these characters.
Description: The Librarians discover Leverage International. Jacob Stone and Eliot Spencer have a family past, but they aren’t the only members of the two teams who’ve met before. Expect whiplash between light and dark. Lots of backstory in this chapter.
Previous chapters HERE.
* * * * *
By Paths Coincident
* * * * *
11 Years Ago
Port of Algeciras Bay, Strait of Gibralter, Spain
Doctor Mateo Villanueva Cortés, emergency physician, gripped the armrests of his seat as Jorge sent the Ambulancia de UVI móvil careening around the corner and into the Port gateway in a spray of gravel. Jorge always drove their mobile intensive care unit as if he thought it was a Formula One race car in the Grand Prix de Monaco, but he was outdoing himself today.
Mateo had been employed in the Servicios de Emergencias Médicas for over fifteen years, and he had never ridden with such a Jehu of driver as this one. It was a matter of honour for Jorge to arrive on scene before the Vehículo de Intervención Rápida, and once again he had succeeded. Mateo could see the amber lights of the rapid response team’s vehicle in the side mirror. Jorge would be insufferable for a week.
Glancing back at Nadia, Mateo rolled his eyes. His emergency nurse was grinning, clearly enjoying the jolting ride in the back of the ambulance far too much. She and Jorge were menaces.
Ahead of them several cars belonging to the policía were clearing the way, reminding Mateo that this call was not like all the others. This was not an illness or an accident. There was a killer loose at the Port, and his team would be running into a war zone.
Jorge slowed the vehicle as two police officers jogged up to them, weapons drawn. He rolled down the window and leaned out.
“Can you tell us where to go?” Jorge asked. “The VIR is right behind us.”
“Right this way,” one of the officers gestured. “There’s one victim still alive over behind that second row of cargo containers. The rest, I’m afraid, are very dead.”
He had to shout the last sentence after them as Jorge left a layer of tyres on the asphalt. The VIR personnel would not be getting to the patient before Mateo and Nadia if Jorge could help it.
The ambulance screeched to a halt perilously close to a startled group of police clustered around one of four bodies Mateo could see.
Vaulting from the vehicle, kit in hand, Mateo sprinted to the side of the victim. All of the officers moved away except for two, one trying to staunch the blood from a penetrating abdominal wound, the other kneeling beside the non-responsive young woman and breathing into what appeared to be a cobbled together trach tube made from a repurposed ballpoint pen.
Behind him he heard Nadia and Jorge rushing in with the heavier equipment. Nadia had been an emergency nurse for longer than Mateo had been a doctor, so she set immediately to attaching cardiac and oxygen monitors to their patient.
“She’s not breathing on her own?” Mateo asked the young officer who was continuing his primitive airway management.
In between breaths, he shook his head. “No, her throat is crushed. She was turning blue when we got here. I can’t tell if she has a pulse, but since she’s still bleeding, something’s got to be moving, right?”
“I’m getting a pulse,” Nadia informed him. “Extreme tachycardia and diminished blood pressure, so it’s no wonder you’re not feeling it.”
“You saved her life, young man,” Mateo said. “Excellent work with the cricothyroidotomy.”
“The what?”
Mateo indicated the tube.
“Oh,” the officer said, “I read about it on the Internet.”
Dear God, Mateo thought, the fact that this woman is still alive is a miracle.
She had obviously been the victim of blunt force trauma resulting in a laryngeal fracture. He suspected unstable laryngeal cartilage and massive mucosal injuries at the least, if not disruption of the anterior commissure. The resultant severe edema and haematoma had completely blocked off her airway.
“Nadia, what are her O2 sats?”
“74 percent,” Nadia said, already busy starting an IV. “And dropping.”
The makeshift trach had kept her alive, but it was insufficient. Hypoxemia was already affecting her organ function.
“We’re going to have to perform a tracheostomy,” Mateo told Nadia. He deftly began to prep the patient for the procedure while Nadia gathered the trach tube and the ventilator.
However, his patient’s airway wasn’t the only issue. Already she was exhibiting signs of hypovolemic shock. The woman had lost a frightening amount of blood, Class III, verging on Class IV hemorrhage. If he could not get her stabilized, her body was going to shut down.
“Put a second IV in,” Mateo instructed. “We’re going to have to give her enough transfusion to get her arterial pressure up to 40-50mmHg.”
Pumping fluids into her system would be like trying to hold water in a cracked glass, but it was her only chance to survive long enough to make it to surgery.
Mateo was relieved when the Rapid Response team arrived from confirming the deaths of the other victims on site. The officers had remained, but their attention was turned outward, ready for another attack. Another pair of experienced hands was welcome.
Mateo was securing the trach tube and attaching it to the ventilator while Nadia was managing the transfusion. Having the VIR doctor and nurse meant that someone was able to check for other injuries and arrange for transport.
Observing both that her helmet had nearly been ripped off her head and that her pupils were unresponsive, the VIR doctor diagnosed severe traumatic brain injury with a Glasgow Coma Score of 2T. That meant they’d also need to treat her for possible cervical spinal injury, always a complication when dealing with a trach tube.
The fact that she had a dislocated left shoulder and a broken right arm seemed trivial in comparison.
Finally, their patient was receiving oxygen via the ventilator and trach; her blood supply was being augmented with saline and plasma; her neck, shoulder and arm were immobilized; and she was carefully maneuvered onto the gurney for transport.
They had done all they could for her, but it wasn’t enough. His patient flatlined as they loaded her into the ambulance.
Asystole. She was dead.
Even defibrillation would have no effect, although they would try. With a feeling of despair, Mateo began CPR.
“Nadia, administer 1 mg epinephrine by IV every 3-5 minutes,” he ordered. He could only pray that they could keep her brain alive long enough to get any kind of a rhythm re-established.
It was not far from the Port of Algeciras Bay to the Complejo Hospitalario Punta de Europa, but they covered the distance in record time. For once, Mateo was grateful for Jorge’s ability to take an ambulance around a corner on two wheels.
* * * * *
Complejo Hospitalario Punta de Europa, Algeciras, Spain
The first thing she became aware of was sound. A woman weeping.
Mom?
Then everything was silence.
* * * * *
She was surfacing through viscous blackness, trying to breathe. What was that infernal beeping? Why didn’t someone turn it off?
“Don’t you dare leave us, Baby Girl. Don’t you leave. You have to fight. You’ve always been a fighter, Eve.”
I won’t, Dad, she would have said, as she stopped fighting.
It was dark inside the silence.
* * * * *
A shaft of memory, like light. She was six years old, and her father was teaching her to fire a gun. She smelled the acrid sulphur of the propellant.
Smells. Disinfectant. Blood.
She was kneeling on rough pavement. Her knees were wet with blood. Blood was pouring over her hands. Someone was dying, and she could not stop it.
The darkness was a friend.
* * * * *
A man, a stranger, speaking. “We’ve managed to repair the abdominal damage. Peritonitis is responding well to treatment. Intracranial pressure is being regulated through an external ventricular drainage system. All of her organs are functioning again. We’ve stabilized the architecture of her larynx with metal alloy plates, but as long as she’s comatose, we’ll be leaving in the trach tube and assisting with her breathing.”
Who was he talking about?
“But when will she wake up? It has been two weeks. If she’s okay now, why doesn’t she wake up?”
“Coma is complicated, and she is suffering from a skull fracture. We don’t entirely understand why the body shuts down this way, but it may be in order to give it the rest and resources it needs to heal. Your daughter has survived a major trauma. She was a very fit and healthy person, and that gives her an advantage. Let her have the time.”
The silence took his voice.
* * * * *
A woman, a stranger, speaking in Spanish. Who speaks Spanish in Brussels?
“Hello, love. My name is Gabriela and this is Ines. We’re just going to move you so we can clean the sheets. Then we’ll give you a nice bath, so you’ll feel all fresh.”
Another voice, also a woman. “Do you always talk to them?”
“Of course. You never know what they hear. It’s a nice thing to do. I’d want someone to remember I was there if it happened to me.”
“She probably doesn’t even speak Spanish.”
“She was a NATO Captain. Of course, she does.”
Was?
There were strangers’ hands on her body, moving her, but she could not move herself. Somewhere, off in the distance she thought there was pain, but it did not seem relevant to her. Warm, wet cloth touched her as if she were a soiled child. What had happened to her?
“There you go, love. All clean again. How would you like some lotion?”
The hands again, soothing. The lotion did feel good.
She was so tired.
* * * * *
She spent her days and nights, undifferentiated, surrounded by sounds of machines monitoring her vital signs, pumping fluids and nutrients and medications into her, draining fluids out of her, rhythmically compressing her legs to keep her blood circulating. Sleeping and waking and dreaming bled into each other until she did not know whether she believed everything was real or nothing was. The only constant was the pain. The only interruptions were when people came into the room.
Sometimes their voices blended into the sounds. Occasionally she understood entire conversations.
They handled her like she was a large and awkward doll, dressing and undressing her, bathing her, attending to her machines. Often they hurt her, moving her, taking blood, changing dressings.
Eve began to look forward to Gabrielle, the nurse who talked to her as she worked, babbling like a brook about the weather, her siblings, hospital gossip, the local news.
Eve was so very, very bored.
* * * * *
Someone was reading to her. A romance novel? ,i>Mom? She had always been a bit of a disappointment to her mother-the daughter who wanted to be the hero instead of the heroine.
“I want the pretty dress and the sword!”
“My warrior princess,” said her dad.
She smiled at the memory and heard the novel drop on the floor.
“Eve! She’s waking up! Can you hear me? Oh, Eve.”
Her mother was gripping her hand. Eve tried to answer, but her mouth made no sound.
“She’s trying to say something! Eve, honey, you can’t talk. Can you squeeze my hand?”
What kind of a question was that? She could carry a 100 pounds of gear at a jog over rough terrain for a 12 hour day. Of course she could squeeze a hand . . . except she couldn’t.
“I can feel her trying!” Her mother was crying. “She’s going to be okay. I know it.”
The world faded to dark again.
* * * * *
Eventually the time came when she could tell it was light. Should she open her eyes? No, it was too much work. Why did she hurt everywhere?
“Ms. Baird.” A new voice. Masculine. “I’m Dr. Andrade, your urologist. It’s time to replace your catheter.”
Where was the darkness when she needed it?
* * * * *
Someone was stalking her, moving like smoke on the wind. He was dressed all in black-no insignia. His face shield was cracked and bloody, and he carried a knife. She could neither run nor fight. Her heart rate spiked as he plunged the knife into her stomach.
Alarms went off.
He vanished like a shadow.
* * * * *
The next time she awoke, she did open her eyes. Everything was a blur of unfamiliar shapes. There was nothing that she recognized. Her eyes felt like she’d been squinting through a desert sandstorm for a week, and she blinked trying to clear them of the dryness and grit. She was in a colourless room full of humming machinery. There were tubes in every possible orifice of her body and some impossible ones.
She could not move, tied down by wire leads and plastic tubing.
She needed to move. It wasn’t safe to stay here. Someone was trying to kill her.
Her struggles were setting off alarms. Why couldn’t she just jump up and flee? Why didn’t her body work?
Pain struck like the blowback from an IED. So much pain.
Voices shouting. She tried to call-to warn them.
Then the room was full of milling bodies. Hands tried to pin her down. She flailed at them, satisfied to hear them cry out, hating the fact that her arms refused to move at her command.
“Don’t let her displace the EVD!”
“We need to sedate her before she damages herself!”
No!
A sharp pinch of pain and the world faded to darkness.
* * * * *
The next time she was lucid, she could see clearly that a stranger was in the room. He wore an eye-achingly bright orange uniform with navy and silver stripes. She did not recognize the colours, but the emergency medical services patch on his chest let her know his profession.
Paramedic. No. That was Spanish labelling him “Médico”-he was an emergency doctor. Which meant she was in Spain.
He noticed her observing him, and a smile crinkled up the lines of his face.
“Senorita, you are awake!” he exclaimed. His voice sounded choked and a glint of extra moisture shone in his eyes.
Why would a stranger shed tears for her? Eve tried to greet him, to ask who he was, but no words came.
“No, do not try to talk,” he said, moving swiftly to her side and taking her hand in one of his. “You have had an injury to your larynx.” He touched his other hand to his neck, demonstrating. “My name is Doctor Villanueva Cortés. I am médico de emergencias with the ambulancia that brought you here.”
She wanted to ask him so many questions. Where was here? What had happened to her? What had happened to her team?
His hand was warm on hers, large and tanned. In contrast, her hand was so very pale and claw-like. Surely that bony, fleshless arm did not belong to her?
“I am so happy to see you alive!” he said. “We hoped and prayed, but we did not know if . . .” his voice trailed off. “It is wonderful, a miracle.”
Eve needed to talk. Her right arm appeared to be encased in a cast, but she still had her left arm. Withdrawing her hand from the doctor’s grip, she tried to pantomime writing.
“Ah!” the doctor exclaimed. “You would like pen and paper, I am sure. And you have family here who will be delighted that you are awake. I will take my leave of you and deliver your request.”
No, Eve wanted to interrogate him.
“Farewell, Senorita,” he said.
She closed her eyes, frustration alarming her monitors and exhausting her.
Sleep dragged her down before anyone else arrived.
* * * * *
TBC