Nick’s medical care was still paid for by the BOP and the responsibility of Sing Sing, but John had convinced both parties that it was absurd to have to drive Nick outside his radius all the way back to prison for care. Nick saw a doctor at John’s clinic, inevitably a pretty young brunette who adored him.
“I don’t need - or want - a doctor,” said Nick. “I’m just beat up.”
“You’re a prisoner in my custody who’s injured and in pain. You’re seeing a doctor.”
Nick didn’t answer, but he didn’t look happy. Finally, at a stop light, John asked the question he’d been dreading. “Nick, were you sexually assaulted?”
Nick shook his head, but John kept watching him, every movement of every muscle in his face. There had been something truly scared in Nick’s voice on the phone, and fear was not something that came easily to him.
Finally Nick surrendered and met his eyes. “No. But I’m fairly certain I would have been if I spent the night in that place.”
It was the first time Nick had looked him in the eyes since they started driving. So John held the gaze.
Hi, Nick. I got you. I care, I’m here for you, you’re safe.
Nick’s return look was almost shy. I’m sorry.
He was trembling, and that made John’s heart break.
“Thank you for calling me,” said John. “Thank you. You’re my friend, and if I ever don’t get that call, I’m gonna be devastated. Thank you.”
“It’s okay?” asked Nick.
“Nick. Always. Of course. No matter what.”
“Thanks.” Nick looked away, pale. It wasn’t easy for him to ask for help, nor to trust that it would actually arrive.
They stopped at another traffic light, and John rested his right hand on Nick’s arm, lost. Nick didn’t tremble like this. Nick got scared, anxious, worried, hurt. He’d gotten shaky during his first arrest, after his conviction, and back there in the cell, an involuntary, mild physical reaction. But he didn’t sit there and quiver like a traumatized puppy.
His arm was cold, but there were beads of sweat on his unnaturally white face.
Nick doesn’t tremble this way.
He was shivering. He was going into shock, not the superficial kind that John had seen in the cell. The kind people died of.
John hit 911 as his eyes searched for the cross street.
“I’m an FBI agent. My partner needs immediate medical attention, get the police to clear the way and give me an escort to the nearest hospital.”
“Uh - John?” Nick gave him a puzzled frown when he got off the phone. “Overreacting much?”
“Of course, the one time you aren’t trying to be the center of attention is when your life actually depends on it,” grumbled John.
Nick’s fists were clenched in pain, and the shivering was worse. John turned the car heater on full blast.
Nick protested. “I got beat up. Thass all.”
“I don’t think it is all,” said John, forcing himself to keep his voice gentle and steady. “I think you’re bleeding internally, and I think you're going into hypovolemic shock.”
Nick shook his head, but he was starting to look like he was going to pass out. He let out a sharp, stifled cry of pain when they hit a pothole.
Damn it.
“I’ll walk out of here if it kills me” had better not turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The pieces were coming together to form a picture John was kicking himself for not seeing.
The blood. There was too damn much blood, and he’d been too much of a coward to simply ask Nick in the cell if it was the result of sexual assault. Nick would have said no, and John would have persisted until he found out why his partner was bleeding all over the place.
Wash had expressed concern about Nick’s low blood pressure and internal bleeding. Had Nick’s walk out caused an internal hemorrhage?
He should have allowed the unfeeling but far more highly trained paramedic examine Nick instead of Wash. He’d sheltered Nick mentally at the expense of his physical survival.
If you leave, I’m gonna die in here.
Please don’t leave me.
Nick had, on some level, sensed something seriously wrong. And John hadn’t picked up on it, just the way he hadn’t taken Nick’s phone call seriously until Nick explicitly asked him for help.
An NYPD squad car nosed its way into the intersection, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
John had deliberately avoided any mention that his partner was actually a criminal consultant. So long as the emergency responders believed Nick was an FBI agent, a member of law enforcement, they’d move heaven, earth, and garbage trucks to save him. Good thing he’d put the bold FBI raid jacket on Nick before they got in the car, too.
In a pause after he lined up behind the squad car, John pulled the anklet key from his pocket, leaned down, and managed to yank it off his partner before they started moving again. Nick was going into the ER as an FBI agent.
John felt a cold, unusually gentle hand on his arm as he pulled out behind the squad car, and glanced sideways. Nick was giving him the most incredibly touched, grateful look a man about to pass out could manage. He understood exactly why John had pulled the anklet.
“I’m gonna be with you every second they let me,” said John.
“Why would I be - bleeding internally?” asked Nick, confused.
“Lots of reasons. Didn’t get stabbed and conveniently avoid telling me, did you?”
“Nope. No stabbing.”
According to the GPS, they were three blocks out from the hospital and closing fast. Without taking his eyes off the road, John said, “Do me a favor. Pull your shirt up and look.”
In his peripheral vision, Nick did. And responded with dead silence.
“Nick.”
“I guess I was stabbed.”
CHAPTER SIX
Agent Aster
JOHN
John ran his finger across the surface of his FBI badge, his reminder of an oath to serve society with honesty and integrity. Then he lied his ass off.
“I thought you said this was your partner - why is the payer the Bureau of Prisons?” asked a very puzzled hospital clerk.
John glanced uneasily from side to side and shifted his feet before leaning forward on the counter in confidential proximity. He spoke in a low voice inaudible to bystanders.
“Aster is my partner. He does - ah - undercover work. Deep undercover. He can’t be checked in here as an FBI agent. Do you understand me?”
The clerk’s eyes lit up with the zeal of a boring life suddenly given a breath of intrigue. She gave him a secretive smile. “I see. Absolutely. On paper he’s a....”
“Convicted felon,” supplied John with a wink.
The clerk blushed and her gaze slid to his left hand, then fell when she saw his wedding ring.
A voice interrupted from behind them. “Agent Langley?” An exhausted-looking blond nurse with blood on her scrubs was holding a clipboard like it was a log in a stormy ocean.
John decided he’d rather not see one more pair of blood-stained scrubs in his life.
“Yes?”
“We’re prepping Aster for emergency surgery. He’s sustained three stab wounds to the torso, and he’s bleeding internally. His prognosis is excellent, but there’s always a risk. We won’t know the extent of the damage until we get him in surgery. We thought you might want to see him before -”
“Yeah.” John cut her off. We’re giving you the chance to see him one last time. In case he dies in surgery. However delicately the nurse was going to put that, John didn’t want to hear it.
John was ushered in to chaos that crackled with the efficiency of a life-or-death operation. Seemingly just minutes ago, it had been him, Nick, and four silent walls. Now, there were people bustling everywhere, and shouts, and monitors and tubes. The red scrubs and the FBI raid jacket were discarded on the floor.
John’s eyes couldn’t help going to the bag hanging above Nick, and t
he red in the tube snaking down to his arm. They were giving him blood.
To replace what he was losing internally.
Nick was in a hospital gown with monitors on his chest and clipped to his finger, and blood was staining the front of the gown and the gloves of the attending doctor. His battered partner looked a little less pale now, the tense lines of pain gone from his forehead.
“Oh Nick. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t look scared. Nick grinned at John, ignoring the efforts of a nurse to get a needle into a vein on the back of his hand. He looked almost elated, and John was trying to figure that out when the nurse huffed in frustration at being unable to hit a vein.
She gave Nick a sympathetic glance. “I’m sorry, Agent Aster. I know this hurts. Your low blood pressure’s making this tough and we really need another line in you right now.”
“S’okay,” said Nick. “Not afraid of needles.” He smiled at her. “And beauty is a wonderful narcotic. Especially when she’s saving your life.”
Agent Aster.
The nurse tried to hide her smile, and gave Nick’s hand a light squeeze before trying again with the needle.
John grinned. “Agent Aster isn’t afraid of much. Just don’t serve him bad coffee, or he’ll run away and never speak to you again.”
Nick’s eyes were twinkling in delight. He looked like a little kid who’d been given a firefighter’s badge. “You gonna be here when I wake up, Agent Langley?”
John cast a questioning glance at the doctor who seemed to be in charge.
“Guys.” In a flash, Nick’s eyes were as serious as John had ever seen them. “John’s my family.”
The doctor glanced between them, then she gave a curt nod.
“But of course, Agent Aster,” said John.
The nurse finally managed to hit a vein, and taped the IV in place. The doctor addressed them both. “Okay, guys. Wrap it up, we’re headed into surgery now.”
John leaned down and gave Nick the closest thing to a hug that he could manage under the circumstances, and Nick’s hands touched his sides in a similar makeshift gesture.
“I’ll see you soon, Nick,” said John.
“John....” Nick hesitated, his eyes taking on that unusually serious look again. “I’d - be dying in that cell right now.”
Nick didn’t need to finish the sentence. If you hadn’t come for me.
“I will never stop chasing you,” promised John.
Nick grinned. “Ah, John. So - cuddly. And not at all creepy.”
“Says the man who looks like he just survived a slasher film.”
“Guys -” snapped the doctor, looking impatient.
“You just relax and sleep through it an’ let the good guys put you back together again,” said John. “I will see you soon.”
“See you soon,” said Nick. They got a chance to squeeze hands one last time, and he was wheeled off.
John turned away, and stood about a foot from a painting on the wall, inspecting it closely to hide the tears that had come into his eyes. His stomach was tied in a knot and he felt like he was gasping for breath even though he was breathing normally.
It had come down to an unspoken pause on a bad connection. If John had missed that, misinterpreted it, or failed to take it seriously....and he almost had....
Nick Aster would have died alone, chained up in a cement box. He would be staring at the body -
John blinked away tears. Nick was alive. Close call or not, emergency surgery or not, Nick was alive. He didn’t have to inflict that grief on himself. But his visceral horror at how close that had been simply would not go away. The life of his best friend - the difference between survival and a painful, desolate death - had rested on the head of a pin John didn’t even know he was holding.
And now it rested in the hands of strangers.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Fairy-Tale Felony
JOHN
“We’re not going to lose him,” said a kind-sounding female voice.
John reluctantly turned to face her. It was the doctor who’d been preparing Nick for surgery, looking far less harried now. “Please take - all the care you can possibly -”
“We’re not going to lose him,” she repeated. “That’s not a professional promise. Just one human being to another. He’s strong and healthy and I have a very experienced gut feeling saying you don’t need to torture yourself. He has two of our best surgeons waiting for him in there, and his anesthesiologist is an expert in stabilizing trauma patients.”
John managed a smile. “My gut agrees with yours. And thanks.”
John left for the waiting area, not wanting to be rude, but unwilling to make conversation. Talking had no bearing on this. Just the actions of a team of surgeons and anesthesiologists and nurses, and one very tough young man’s ability to survive it all.
He would. John knew, with odd certainty, that Nick would make it through surgery. Fear that he would die hadn’t caused those tears.
John sat in the waiting area and buried his face in his hands.
I’d be dying in a cell.
Nick had gone through all of it with three stab wounds in his torso. The waiting, restrained in a cell, for John to arrive. Lying in his arms in shock, having the anklet put back on, getting up and walking out of the facility. John remembered Nick saying yes, he could wait. It made him sick. The hesitation would have been so easy to miss. One miscalculation on John’s part, and Nick Aster would be dying alone right now.
This was the black side of humanity. Not just the violence. Not just the fact that people left a man who’d done nothing to hurt them, and would do nothing to hurt them, beaten, chained, and dying behind a metal door.
What chilled him, wrenched him, and ultimately left him with tears in his eyes was that he’d pulled Nick’s anklet. It was as instinctive as getting a police escort to the hospital.
Because some human beings were less valuable. Because they were black, because they were gay, because they had criminal records. His entire brilliant, brave, wonderful team was comprised of people society was or had been willing to throw away.
He’d had to pull an anklet off his best friend and partner and con the staff of a hospital so that that Nick would be given the same passionate treatment an injured FBI agent would receive.
Remembering the look Nick gave him in the car, and that gentle touch, brought the tears back.
He knows I value him.
That was what moved him about Nick. He looked into John’s eyes with unwavering trust, trust that John didn’t begin to deserve. Trust that he’d repeatedly violated. That Nick had repeatedly violated, too.
But there was so much beauty in the way Nick looked at him with relaxation and surrender when he should be hurt and terrified. All this person asked was for someone to see him when he was down and still care about him when he couldn’t manage witty banter and a charming smile.
It didn’t matter what John had done or would do, arresting him, chewing him out, calling him a criminal. Because John had seen him under arrest, scared, heartbroken, in prison. John had his number. John saw through the act, wasn’t a member of the Nick Aster fan club, sometimes didn’t even like him very much.
But he always had cared about the guy. Especially in those moments when the mask fell. He liked Nick better with his guard down. When he was scared, was sobered, wasn’t acting.
Did that mean he liked to see Nick hurt?
No.
Nick hurting hurt him. But he liked the person, not the act. He liked the true toughness, and courage, and loyalty. He liked the irrepressible spirit, intelligence, and gentleness in Nick. He liked that Nick was trying. And it melted him inside that Nick would crawl into his arms in utter affection and trust.
JOHN
Theo was out of breath like he’d run to the hospital on foot. His face was red, fists clenched and sweat on his forehead.
“I hope you like being a pawn of a brutal government,” said Theo. “Because if he dies, you’re going
to be haunted by his screams every time you close your eyes. His blood is on your hands.”
John decided to take him literally, just to throw him a bit. He looked at his palms with a morose expression. “Hospital made me wash ‘em.”
Theo was thrown. His expression wavered a bit, and he pointed to John’s shirt.
John had stripped down to a t-shirt, but it was still stained where blood had soaked through his dress shirt. He felt dreadfully conspicuous, in a bloody white tee with his shoulder holster and gun in full view.
Broken Blue Lines: Love. Hate. Criminal Justice.: An FBI Crime Drama / LGBT+ Love Story Page 5
