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Post by cameron o'neil on Mar 4, 2009 16:04:58 GMT -5
CHAPTER ONE,
`the accident “Common’ Lassie! You’re not telling me you’re afraid of heights?!” called a hyped up Shawn Spencer as he carefully let go of the handhold he had and tested a new one. When he thought it was safe he grabbed it and started to shift the rest of his body up.
Detective Lassiter was a few feet below him and being much more cautious than the thirty year old child he was working with recently since his partner has not been allowed in the field due to pregnancy. “I’m not afraid of heights, I just prefer not falling,” he said sternly and more or less mimicking the other mans moves up the sloped yet steep incline.
The two men were not on a leisurely rock climb, but instead that was the only way to get to where Shawn’s “vision” earlier that morning had told them they would find the dead body of a drug dealer they had been after. Shawn had already come up here once, so his time getting up was a little easier than the Detectives.
“Aw, it’s not that dangerous!” Shawn said with a smirk as he took another hand hold which was firm and started to pull his feet up. Shawn absolutely loved rock climbing, and this wasn’t really heavy duty rock wall scaling rock climbing, but the easy stuff.
Suddenly he felt the rock supporting his right foot give way and his foot slipped against the smooth face of the rocks beneath them. Gasping in surprise, Shawn reached for a new hand hold and just barely gripped it with his finger tips. Knuckles white, he pulled himself to a new foot hold, he laughed to himself, “That was close… he thought aloud.
“Careful, Spencer!” Lassiter barked. “I don’t need you being rushed off to a hospital!”
“Me? Hospital? You’re funny.” The thirty year old man scoffed.
“And that’s when it happened. The line holding him for safety snapped. And Shawn went crashing nearly fifty feet to the ground.
Flashing lights and sirens blaring the ambulance that just picked up the unconscious and broken psychic flew down the highway for the nearest hospital; Lassiter road along, leaving his patrol car behind.
The EMT’s were doing CPR on Shawn as they tried to hook up a portable respirator as well as other machines that started to beep when they were finally attached to the limp figure.
When they reached the hospital, the EMT’s wheeled Shawn into a trauma room in the ER and when Lassiter tried to follow, he was told to wait in the waiting area. With an annoyed look on his face he figured this might be the best time to call Henry, O’Hara and Guster.
Picking up his phone he dialed Henry Spencer’s phone number, knowing he most likely wouldn’t be busy because it was a weekday afternoon and he is a retired cop. The phone rang twice, and Henry’s gruff voice answered, “Hello?”
“Mr. Spencer,” Lassiter said confirming who he was talking to.
“Yes, Detective?” he said, and his gut sunk. Lassiter and Shawn had been out doing a job today. And he was sure something had gone wrong.
“Mr. Spencer…” Lassiter repeated once more. “You need to come down to Santa Barbara Memorial, Shawn fell on our rock climb…” he explained, “They wont tell me anything, other wise I’d have told you already, but you need to come.”
“Damn it, Kid,” was the last thing Lassiter heard faintly as he heard a click and knew Henry had hung up the phone to get in his truck and leave for the hospital.
Seconds later, he was dialing his partner’s number, which was the call he was dreading most. Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Voicemail.
“Shit…” Lassiter mumbled, and repeated the process twice before calling Guster, who answered after one ring. “Guster, do you know why O’Hara isn’t answering her phone?” he asked first.
“Yeah, she’s with me and she left her phone in my car, we didn’t think it was that important, why?” he asked curiously.
“Spencer is in the hospital. He fell during our rock climb to find the body. We never even got that far,” he explained the story once more. “Henry is on his way over here, you two need to come now too. They won’t tell me his condition yet, either,” he told them, and as Gus told Juliet you could hear a gasp and a hurried, “Get in the car.” And with that they hung up on him as well and they were all on their way.
Within ten minutes Henry was running through the double doors of the ER, shortly followed by Gus and Juliet, six month pregnant stomach and all.
“Anything?” Henry said hopefully.
Lassiter shook his head, “No. He was unconscious after the fall and still hadn’t woken up when we got here,” he informed him.
The three new arrivals heads dropped simultaneously at the unfortunate news. Juliet clutched her swollen belly and Henry pulled up a chair for her. “Sit down,” he told her, “You’re supposed to be taking it easy, remember?” he told her and she nodded and sat however reluctantly.
After another forty five minutes of waiting a many with dark hair and a slightly blood stained lab coat came out making his way to the waiting area. “Spencer family?” he called and immediately Henry motioned him over to their small group.
“You’re his father,” he said, recognizing the man from when he had been an intern at the ER when Shawn was a teenager in here every five months with a new injury. “And you’re the detective who called him in, and you are…” he said leaving room for the others to be introduced.
After a solemn nod at being recognized, Henry looked from him to the other two. “His best friend, Gus,” he pointed and the doctor seemed to recognize him as well. “And his wife,” he said and the man smiled to her too. “Now what’s going on with my son, if you don’t mind, Kale?” Henry said voice rising with every syllable.
“Your son Shawn is in surgery now, he has a couple of broken ribs, and one nearly punctured his lung. He’s very lucky it didn’t. We’re most worried about his concussion and bruising to his head, but we’re operating on his chest, trying to get the bone spurs out of his ribs. He also has a broke femur on the right and a broken forearm on the left. I’m going back to assist the surgeon Dr. Andrews, and I’ll be back to let you know what’s happening when he is in recovery,” he explained and all they could do was nod before he walked away.
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Post by cameron o'neil on Mar 4, 2009 17:36:46 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWO,
`recovery An hour and a half later, Shawn is in recovery, with a morphine drip for the pain and still unconscious. Though, now he is breathing on his own again for the first time since before the surgery. He had not punctured his lung, but it had collapsed from the fall. The doctors re-inflated it, and they were monitoring his condition periodically to see how the psychic was doing.
Henry sat by his son’s head on one side of the bed, standing there watching his son look weaker than he ever had before. He couldn’t stand to see him like this. His wife, Juliet was sitting at the head of his bed in a chair, stroking his head softly; his hair was shaved because they had to stitch up a gash in his head. The man also had a white cast on his left forearm and up his entire right leg. Lassiter and Gus were standing awkwardly near the end of the bed, not sure of what do to or say.
Visiting hours were supposed to be up, so Lassiter and Gus left for the night, Shawn still had not woken up. Juliet and Henry on the other hand, got permission to stay the night in hopes that their loved one would wake during the night. Around ten, Juliet fell asleep slumped in an uncomfortable hospital chair, and Henry covered her in a blanket. He was not really tired yet, so he would watch over his injured son and his pregnant wife, and unborn grandchild.
And then it happened. Shawn crashed, and he crashed hard. The regular beeping heart rate went spazmatic out of no where, and then he flat-lined.
“NURSE!” Henry called at the top of his lungs, and it woke up Juliet, and when she saw what was happening, she started to freak out and a few tears started rolling. The nurses and doctors came in and got Shawn’s heartbeat back but he was not breathing. They had to put him back on the respirator for now. There was no way he was stable enough to breath on his own. Not until he was awake.
Now the grim faces on the doctors faces made the two family members worried, and Henry asked what they thought caused it. They told them it could be an array of things, but most likely it was the shock to the body from the accident and that it had been bound to happen. Neither Henry nor Juliet liked the sounds of that, because the doctors were no longer telling them Shawn would be okay, and that he would be home and well before the baby was born. Now they were just watching him; very closely.
Over the next days, Shawn still had not woken up, and if he had, no one had been around to witness it. Which meant it was highly unlikely because Henry, Juliet and Gus had barely left his side. Even Shawn’s mother came into town to watch over her baby in hopes of him recovering sooner rather than later.
People were still in and out of his hospital room, but only one person never seemed to leave his side. Henry. He even forced Juliet to go home and get some rest; she and the baby would need it because now it was a short two months before the baby would be born. But Henry barely left his sons’ side, and Madeline had not much since her arrival either. The two parents could not bear to leave, because it felt like if they did… they might lose him.
Three days later, the visits became less frequent. Shawn had been taken off the ventilator once more, breathing on his own again. But still, Shawn had not woken up.
Madeline had flown back home to get a few things straightened out at work, but planned to be back in a few weeks for the birth of her grandchild, which to everyone was still unknown to be a girl or a boy. Juliet was currently home resting, on orders from every doctor who had been watching her stress over her husband since the accident occurred. Lassiter was still beating himself up about it, saying he should have made sure the lines were safer, but Henry kept saying that it made no difference, Shawn had rocked climbed all his life, and accidents happen. That’s why they call them accidents.
As Henry sat with his face in his hands, about two feet away from Shawns hospital bed (Henry was the only one that was still there every day from the time visiting hours started until they closed.) and something no one expected happened.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
That was not the heart rate monitor. That was the brain activity monitor.
A soft moan escaped from Shawn’s feeble body, and Henry looked up at his son in disbelief. “Shawn?” he asked and the boy lying in the bed struggled to open his eyes.
“Dad?” he asked his eyes just barely parted as though there were little weights on his eyelashes keeping his eyes closed for now.
“Its okay, Kid. You’re okay, don’t try and move though,” he said soothingly to his son. He had almost given up hope that Shawn would ever wake up. Especially in time to see his child born. He looked so scared, so defenseless; he hated looking at him like that.
“It hurts…” Shawn moaned under his breath and Henry put a hand on his un-casted arm.
“I know Kid,” he said and with that Shawn’s eyes fell back closed, no matter how little they had been opened.
“How’s Jules? The baby?” he asked, fighting ever feeling of falling asleep once more.
“They’re both fine, Shawn. Just rest now…” he said and watched his son lay there. A nurse was walking past and saw Henry talking, and walked in.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, and Henry shook his head to indicate a no.
“He’s awake…” he told them, and immediately they started to take temperature and do other routine procedures.
“It was just the exhaustion and shock from the fall that kept him unconscious,” a doctor told Henry a little later. “We were only worried that it might result a coma, but now we’re not. We do have to keep him awake, he still has a bit of a concussion, even after the past week,” he explained to Henry, who nodded, and went back to Shawn’s side.
Shawn was breathing, and his eyes kept slowly opening and closing. He was obviously fighting to keep them open. They had upped the dosage of morphine a little now that he was awake and could consciously feel the pain in his arm, leg, and ribs, and everywhere else. The poor guy was lucky he had not broken his back.
“They said you haven’t left…” came Shawn’s distant voice, which seemed so small in that room.
“I wouldn’t leave you. Kid. Mom was here, she left yesterday morning,” Henry informed him.
“Hmm.” Was all that came from Shawn’s limp and weak form.
And then he couldn’t fight it anymore. No matter how hard he tried. His eyelids tugged heavily and his eyes shut slowly. And then he was asleep once more. And this time… He didn’t wake up.
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Post by cameron o'neil on Mar 5, 2009 18:52:00 GMT -5
CHAPTER THREE,
`awakening Two months later, Juliet and Shawn’s baby was born, on September 21st, at nine in the morning. Shawn was still in a diagnosed comatose state, and was not there to witness his sons’ birth.
Everyone started to move on, Henry had stopped living at the hospital day and night. His visits and Juliet’s too actually dwindled from once a day, to once a week, to once a month. Juliet never brought her son Andrew with her to the hospital with her once he was two, he was too young to understand, but she did not want him to grow up knowing his father was on life support. The only reason they kept Shawn alive was because even though he was on a ventilator was because it was only because his breathing had become shallower as time passed, but his brain activity was still there. As long as he was kept alive, he still had a chance, and they still had a little hope.
Now, three years after the accident, and a month before Andrews third birthday, Henry was sitting at the table in his living room, with a few new friends. Among them were Detective Lassiter, the new M.E., Alexander Rodney, and a retired cop that went by the name of Thomas Cullen. Henry was leading a poker game; he had the most chips out of anybody right now. The still balding man had a baseball cap on and a beer in his hand as he smiled widely looking at his hand.
“Well, feeling lucky boys? I know I am,” he told the room, and upon that statement the others pushed in their chips and laid down their cards. They all knew Henry had a better hand than them, so why even bother?
Meanwhile, in Shawns abandoned hospital room, it was as quiet as it has been for the past few years, with the exception of beeping monitors and the sound of his shallow breathing through the ventilator.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep. Beep.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
His heart rate suddenly pulsed from 65 to 85 in half a minute, and then the psychic’s limp body started to come to. The nurse had run in hearing the sporadic beeping from the hall (he had been moved to the Coma Patient wing and it was generally pretty quiet in there after all.) and she was pulling the ventilator out of the throat of a struggling man.
Coughing as the tube was torn from his throat, the man tried to talk, but the nurse quickly shushed him, and he listened as his throat was terribly dry and sore and he did not think he could get a word out anyway. The nurse was in shock; it hardly ever happened that she had more work to do other than changing a catheter bag, or a bedpan, or cleaning the sheets or helping a visitor. She went to get the man ice chips, and then picked up his chart, immediately calling Dr. Kale, who had been this man’s first attending. He had not been called in since he was in the other ward, so he was certainly surprised to get the call.
“Lindsey, why did you page me? You said something happened with Shawn Spencer’s condition?” questioned Dr. Kale with confusion on his face. The poor man had been in a coma for three years, and his family did not want to give up on him. Knowing Shawn and his father for as long as he had, nearly twenty years, he understood.
“He’s awake, sir,” said the nurse called Lindsey and Dr. Kale’s eyes widened and he made a dash for the room.
When he walked in there, sure enough, a patient who had been comatose for three years was now sitting before him breathing and sucking on ice chips as if the accident had only been two days ago. His hair had grown out again from when Dr. Kale had last seen him, and his arm and leg were no longer in a thick cast for protection. “Shawn?” he asked softly, hoping the injury to his head had not left him with amnesia as well.
Shawn coughed as he tried to talk, and a very raspy, “What up doc?” came from his voice in the childish way it always had. Ever since he had been fourteen and first walked into the ER with a broken arm on Dr. Kale’s first day as an intern. That assured him that Shawn was indeed awake and miraculously not in pain still. Of course, he did have a very lost look in his pale green eyes.
“Don’t try and talk anymore, Shawn. Not yet,” he told him and Shawn nodded in agreement. “Shawn I’m going to ask you questions and you need to answer with simple yes or no nods okay?” he said and Shawn nodded simply. “Okay,” he started.
“Do you remember the accident? Falling off the rocks while climbing with Detective Lassiter?”
Shawn nodded.
“Do you remember talking to your father? Being in a lot of pain? Asking about your wife, and baby who was not yet born?”
Again, Shawn nodded. This time his eyes flickered something more than confusion. He looked scared.
“Shawn, I know this is going to be hard to believe,” started off Dr. Kale, and he took a deep breath before continuing. “You’ve been in a coma for about three years… Juliet had a healthy baby; I delivered him because her own doctors’ wife was in labor too. I don’t know what else is changed really; I haven’t been around you much since you were moved to the Coma Wing,”
A small tear rolled down Shawn’s cheek, he did not want to look weak, but he couldn’t believe this. It couldn’t be true. He had missed his son’s birth… and his birthdays… No. This had to be a joke. He couldn’t have been gone for three years… No way.
“Shawn,” Dr. Kale said trying to regain his patients’ attention. “I’m going to call your dad, okay? And you are not to get out of this bed right now. Not until I am here and you’ve been up and stable a little longer, okay?”
Shawn nodded, still in total shock and disbelief. Dr. Kale left the room to go call Henry, and Shawn was left there alone to suck on little chips of ice.
Juliet was all alone… For the last three years, raising their son… Without him? The fact that he had a son at all amazed him. Shawn had been ready for parent hood but not for him to be thrown into it three years later. He still did not want to believe that that much time could have passed. Dr. Kale was kind enough about the situation, and it was good to see a familiar face when he was there.
Shawn stretched his sore wrists, and realized the muscles were not anywhere near as defined as they had been before. He looked down at his legs which too looked thin and frail, and felt like jelly, like he couldn’t stand up right now if he wanted to. He closed his eyes, but stayed sitting up for fear of drifting back into his horrible slumber. Faintly, he could hear the sound of Dr. Kale on the phone with his dad.
After winning that hand, smile growing, Henry said, “Well, this must be my lucky night!”
Ring. Ring. Ring.
His cell phone rang loudly at the table, and he picked it up. “Officer Spencer,” the husky older man answered his phone.
“Mr. Spencer? It’s Dr. Kale,” said the voice on the other line.
“Um. Hi,” Henry said rather unsure of why he was receiving this call.
“Mr. Spencer, your son Shawn,” the conversation started.
Immediately Henry assumed the worst .His heart sank. Shawn’s heart had finally given out. Or they were asking to take him off the ventilator, to make room for someone else. Some one more urgent. “Yeah,” he said softly.
“Mr. Spencer, Shawn is awake,” said the cool doctors’ voice on the phone, and with that Henry dropped the phone in amazement. “Mr. Spencer?” the man called again and then Henry picked up the phone again.
“You’re not joking, right?” he asked.
“No sir, you should come down here now,” he said, and he heard the phone click off.
Henry turned to Lassiter and the other boys and said, “I’ve got to go to the hospital,”
Lassiter eyed Henry curiously. “Are Juliet and Andrew alright?” he asked urgently.
“They’re fine, and Shawn is awake,” he said.
Lassiter did not wait for another word from Henry as he dropped his sloshing beer on the table and watched the father leave his own house. Lassiter would clean up for him. He hoped for Henry’s sake that this was not just a false hope. He hoped for Henry’s sake that they had the annoying psychic back.
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