Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Midvalley's Serenade ❯ Blood and Guts ( Chapter 28 )

Blood and Guts

Fleming must have called ahead The on-duty emergency staff met us at the door with a gurney. I helped them lift Nick onto it. They removed his jacket and handed it to me. I was sick to see how large the red stain on his shirt had grown, and when they opened the shirt and the top of his pants, I saw dark blood welling up from a hole in his lower left side. I also smelled shit and moaned low when I knew my friend was gut shot. This could kill him I realized.

The doctor and two nurses started to work on him.

"You'd better get him out of here," said the doctor with a brusque tone and an irritated glance in my direction.

One of the nurses walked me back to a waiting room.

The bouncer, Jerry was there.

"Sorry about your friend. Fleming sent me over here. He's busy with the sheriff at the club. Oh, I was supposed to give you this," he said.

He pulled Nick's automatic out of his waistband and said, "Here's his gun. Don't know if you heard about the rash of night club robberies."

"Fleming mentioned something about it this afternoon."

"Looked like ours was next on the list but your friend in there foiled the robbery attempt. Fleming's so grateful, he wanted me to tell you that the hospital bill is on the house. He also wanted to let your friend know that there was a big bounty out for the three he killed. Over 200, 000 double dollars-dead or alive. I guess your friend will be a rich man."

"If he lives," I said.

"Is he hurt bad?'

"Gut shot."

"Oh that's bad. Is he a good friend?" asked Jerry.

"Yeah, and he took a bullet for me tonight."

"Really good friend then. Sorry. Hope it turns out good for you. I gotta go."

And then I was alone with worries that threatened to overwhelm me. I couldn't just sit there so I paced for a while. More than once I felt I couldn't take the suspense any longer and made up my mind to barge into the room and check on him. What the hell was taking them so long anyway?

"Oh, God, don't let Nick die," I whispered out loud. I shut my eyes and prayed, "Oh, God, help him pull through this."

What had gotten into me? I'm not a religious man and I don't believe in heaven, but I was suffering the pains of hell whenever I thought of going on with life without Nick.

"Oh, God, help me pull through this," I prayed.

I was praying to a god I didn't believe in, but I think Nick did, and right now that was good enough for me.

Of the five agents I knew who had been gut shot, three were dead, one was crippled, and the other working a desk job way out in the boonies near Carcassus. It was a tough wound to bounce back from. The odds weren't in Nick's favor. Oh fuck, I was going out of my mind and I knew damned well I had good reason to. Nick could die. My knees started to shake and I had to sit down. I hugged Nick's jacket to me and began to rock nervously.

Every time I looked at the clock, it looked like another half-minute had gone by. Time was about at a standstill. Finally I couldn't stand it any longer and went back to the room where they were working on Nick, opened the door a notch and looked in. Then I wished I hadn't. Nick was lying with his head lolled back, his mouth slack and he was so pale under his tan, he looked dead. But they were still working on him, so he must be alive.

"More blood," said the doctor, "and a fluid drip."

A nurse hurried to comply. I moved aside as she pushed past me through the door. I was just in the way.

I went back to the waiting room and sat holding Nick's coat in my arms. Then it occurred to me to have one of his cigarettes. Maybe it would help to relax me. I pulled one out of his breast pocket and fumbled around for matches. My fingers found bundled papers and then finally the small box and I pulled it out. The match box bore the logo of the May Queen Club. A piece of paper was stuck to it and fell to the floor. I picked it up. It was a funds transmittal telegram.

"Remit $$1000 to the Orleans Orphanage, City of December."

The remitter's name was Nicholas D. Wolfwood. The date of the wire was just a few days ago. Just out of curiosity, I pulled out the bundle of papers that I had felt in his pocket. There were more transmittals, fifty or more and all made out to the Orleans Orphanage I found as I thumbed through them. One from a month ago was for $$100,000 dollars, most of the others were for 1500 to 2000 double dollars. There were notations on some of them. Groceries, staff salaries, clothing, hydroponics equipment, whatever that was. Air cooler…that rang a bell. I thought back and recalled that Nick had received a letter from the orphanage a few months ago and been concerned about a broken air cooler.

No wonder he was always broke. He was spending a fortune on these motherless, fatherless children. I shook my head trying to figure it out. This had to be the debt that he was paying off. A debt that could never be paid off, I realized. The more I thought, the more I realized that Nick's actions were aimed at easing his guilt over the little girl, Charlie he had killed by accident during the Drake hit. There was no way he could bring her back to life, but he could make life better for other children. Funding the orphanage had been what he meant when he spoke of restitution.

I felt a surge of admiration for his dedication and generosity.

"You never cease to surprise me, my friend," I whispered to myself.

I put the receipts back in the coat, lit the cigarette and smoked it. It eased my pain and made me feel close to him, somehow to be smoking his cigarettes and holding his jacket. I draped his black suit coat over me and dozed off.

A sixth sense woke me up. I saw by the clock that nearly two hours had elapsed and then the door of the room where Nick was opened and the surgeon stepped out.

"Mr. Midvalley, isn't it? I saw you play at the Bedbug with Mr. McCoy."

"Yes, I'm Midvalley. How is my partner?"

"Ah, so he's your partner," said the doctor with a raised eyebrow. "He was shot in the lower left quadrant of the abdomen and the bullet punctured his colon. Some of the bowel contents leaked and I have no doubt that some peritonitis will develop. The only question is how severe it will be. The bullet I took out of him was a .45 caliber that tumbled a bit and did some damage. I sutured the areas of perforation very carefully and made them as snug as I could because your friend is going to be very, very sick and if he vomits too violently, he may rip open the stitches again.

We put him on a heavy course of antibiotics and a drip to restore fluid and nutrients, because without it, he could die of complications from dehydration.

"Will he live?" I asked.

"I'd like to say yes, but I don't know. In wounds as severe as this, sometimes all the organs just shut down."

I felt sick when I heard him say that.

"My friend is going to make it," I said. I only wish I felt as confident as I sounded.

"Well, for the moment, Mr. Wolfwood's condition is stable. Your friend may very well make it, as you say. A positive attitude never hurts, but if he does, you should be aware that he's looking at a fairly lengthy recovery time, a minimum of two months, more if there are complications. The average time of recovery is about three months."

"Three months…" I murmured. We'd been so happy. We had plans for pity's sake…now what? It was a question with no immediate answers and one I couldn't bare to contemplate, so my mind shut down. I didn't hear anything the surgeon said, just a sound like white noise in my head, until finally I felt a tug on my arm.

"Are you all right, Mr. Midvalley?"

I turned my gaze to the doctor.

"I've put our best nurses on to make sure he gets the best care possible."

"Thank you, doctor. May I sit with him?" I asked.

"Of course," said the doctor, "stay as long as you like."

I watched the surgeon walk up the corridor. I was almost afraid to open the door again to look at Nick, but I pulled it open and entered the room.

The first thing I noticed was how colorless Nick's face was. Nick thinks my skin is pale, but the only other people I had seen that white had been corpses and the thought gave me cold chills. Nick lay on his back with several tubes hooked up to his arms. A monitor beeped by his bedside and a nurse was taking his vital statistics.

"He's too pale," I murmured to the nurse. "His skin is usually so tan," I tried to explain my worry.

"He lost a lot of blood," said the nurse. "Repairing the damage to the bowel took more time than the doctor would have liked. One thing in his favor though…"

"What's that?" I asked, anxious for the slightest good news.

"He's got a good strong heart," she said.

I felt her words differently than she intended on a deeper more personal level.

"That he does," I said softly. "He saved my life tonight."

"He's a good friend, isn't he?"

"The best," I said. My voice caught as I spoke the words.

"You really ought to get some rest," said the nurse. "The anesthetic hasn't even worn off yet."

She made a notation on a chart by the door and left the room.

I sank into a chair and draped Nick's jacket over me for a blanket, watched his face and the rise and fall of his chest as he inhaled and exhaled. I felt through the link for him, closed my eyes and and concentrated on sending some healing through it. The effort exhausted me and I dozed off.

I woke up with the feeling that something was wrong. I looked at Nick. His face was flushed and at first I was relieved to see that it finally had some color in it, but when I reached through the link to see how he felt, I was overwhelmed by the physical sensations that bombarded me. I felt so hot like my head was about to explode and my breath came in rapid gasps. I looked at Nick. His breathing was ragged. His monitor started pinging like crazy and a nurse charged into the room.

"His fever is spiking. You should leave for a while," she said as another nurse brought in some more tubes and bottles and started to join her working on Nick.

"Come back this afternoon," she said.

I left the room with one last backward glance at Nick. He looked so ill, it hurt to look at him and I walked down the corridor with downcast eyes and a lump in my throat. As long as he was still alive, I wouldn't cry.

"Pull it together, Midvalley," I told myself sternly. "He's going to be fine."

With a faith based solely on my desire for it to be true, I put aside the doubts that threatened to paralyze me and willed myself into action on Nick's behalf.

I went home first. It wasn't more than a twenty minute walk from the hospital. I don't know what I thought of while I walked, but the movement seemed to do me good. When I looked in the mirror when I got home, I saw that my pale green suit and yellow shirt bore the stains of Nick's blood. I was still holding Nick's coat tightly in the other. I set it down on the bed we had made love on and would have burst into tears, but I forced them back. I would not let them fall.

"He's going to be fine," I told myself through gritted teeth.

As I showered and changed I thought about how dangerous Mei City had become. When I thought of danger, I thought of Silvia, my constant protector.

"Shit," I said to myself. In all the confusion, I left her at the club. I was worried for a minute and then relaxed. I was sure she was fine, but I was going to head over to the club anyway to make sure she was. I decided I had better pack a weapon. I pulled a shoulder holster and a clean oiled automatic from my dresser, loaded it with a 15 bullet clip, and slipped the rig over my shoulders.

Besides picking up Silvia, I wanted to pick up my pay for the previous night's gig, tell Fleming there was no way I was playing again, until Nick was out of danger. I also wanted to find out what needed to be done to make sure that Nick collected the bounty for the three robbers.

When I got there, Fleming was busy answering some questions from a deputy about the shootings. I asked the officer what had to be done to put the process of claiming the reward into motion. He mentioned three sets of paperwork and the need for a power of attorney if I was working on someone else's behalf. He made it seem like there was a lot of it, but I wasn't scared. A master of the five-page field report like myself was hardly going to be put-off by paperwork, no matter how involved.

I needed to get affidavits in triplicate from Fleming and the bouncers who were on the scene just after the shootings and ended up filling one out too, since I was an eye-witness. The hardest thing was going to be getting power of attorney for me to act on Nick's behalf.

It occurred to me that I ought to contact the Academy, and Chapel the Evergreen to let him know that his son was seriously wounded, and so I sent him a wire.

I checked through the link every now and then to see how Nick was. I could tell he was unconscious and feverish but that was all. There was nothing about his condition that worried me, so I decided to visit Monk's music store to see if I could keep from going out of my mind.

I bought a couple more boxes of reeds while I was there. I went home and played Silvia for a while, ended up improvising a melody that slipped and slid in a minor key. It was the musical sum total of all my worries over Nick.

When I set down Silvia, I felt ill at ease at once, and the uneasiness was something I was feeling through my empathic link. I hadn't been able to access the link while I was playing, but now I could tell that Nick was feeling very ill, so I headed back to the hospital.

When I entered the room, I saw at once that Nick was all alone without a nurse in sight. His dark blue eyes were open but unfocussed, his face was flushed. He shivered as if he were freezing, but when I touched his forehead, it was burning with fever.

I yelled for a nurse.

"What the hell do you want," asked Nick in his deadliest voice. He stared right at me when he said it. "If you touch a hair of his head, I will fucking kill you."

He started to mutter under his breath, "Needle-noggin idiot anyway, always trouble. What next. Shit. I've got to get loose."

Nick started to pull tubes out of his arms.

"Fuck, Nick, don't," I said with desperation.

"Let me go, dammit," he said and he struggled with me.

"Vash!" he called. "Vash, you moron."

I pinned his arms down so he wouldn't do more damage to himself.

"Why are you holding me," he asked. "I have to go to him."

"Where's Midvalley," he said. "I need Midvalley," he sobbed. "Midvalley," he asked plaintively, "where are you?"

"Right here, partner," I said with tears stinging my eyes.

Just then a nurse appeared, elbowed me aside and plunged a hypo into his thigh muscle, a moment later his eyes rolled back in his head. Another nurse arrived with a cart and I saw them putting ice packs on his body as a third nurse came in and nudged me out of the room and into the hall.

I went back to the waiting room, poured a glass of water, gulped it down, then lit a cigarette from Nick's pack. I smoked it and half of another trying to calm my brittle nerves, when it hit me like a bolt of lightning and I said out loud to the empty room, "Who the hell is Vash?"

It had to be Vash the Stampede and my Nick was on a first name basis with him? I brooded over that while I smoked another cigarette, but by the time I finished it, I let go of the jealous thoughts that had started to eat at me and was left with the satisfaction of knowing that when Nick had felt his worst, he called for me.

After that episode, I didn't trust the nurses to care for him again. I was frightened by how quickly his condition had deteriorated in just a few hours. I resolved not to leave him alone again until I was sure he was better. I poured a cup of hours-old coffee and slipped back into Nick's room. Things were calmer now.

Nick slept peacefully with his dark hair spread out on the pillow. His monitor pinged slow and strong. My emotions see-sawed between relief and fear. He had made it through the crisis alive. Finally the sheer effort of controlling the conflicting emotions and hours with only snatched naps, brought me to the point of exhaustion and despite the strong coffee I had just drunk, I fell asleep in the chair by his bed. When I woke it was to find his eyes on me. When he saw I was awake, he gave me a faint half-smile and whispered, "Hey, you're alive."

"Thanks to you," I said. "You took a bullet for me."

"I'm glad," he said. His eyelids slid shut and moments later his breathing deepened into soft snores. While he slept, I slept. When I woke up, he was still sleeping. The nurse was standing beside him, her fingers on the pulse in his wrist.

"How is he," I asked her.

"He gave us quite a scare, but his fever's broken. I'd say he's on the mend. You look like you could use some rest yourself."

"I don't need rest," I said. "I need to make sure that my partner gets good care and stays alive."

"Sure, that's fine," she said.

Hours passed. I only left to use the bathroom or to get a drink of water or coffee. I started to get hungry. I hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours.

The nurse came back. Nick was still asleep. She checked the tubes in his arms and changed the bags of the intravenous drip that delivered the anti-biotic, pain medication, liquid and nutrients.

"Your friend's condition is stable. If you need to, you could step out for a bite to eat. I'm on duty for the next couple of hours. I promise I'll take good care of him."

When I left Nick, I hurried home, showered and shaved and ate a few slices of bread with cheese. I got a melancholy feeling when I saw the bed in my room. Nick had been so vibrant and passionate-how long ago had that been? And now…Images assaulted me of Nick dead, me standing next to his grave. I couldn't take it.

"No!" I said out loud. "He's not going to die!"

Nick was still sleeping when I got back and his color was better.

I was surprised that Chapel the Evergreen hadn't shown up to visit his son. The trip from Epril Town to Mei City is only 400 iles. He should have arrived by now, I would have thought. I knew that he and Nick had their differences, but I had always thought that there was a bond nonetheless, but perhaps there were more problems at the academy.

It seemed almost peculiar to me what happened next. I was thinking of Evergreen when a messenger arrived with a wire for me from him. Terse as all his wires were, this one was no different.

"Sandsteamer arrives 7 am Sunday morning. Meet me. New orders from headquarters.

Chapel the Evergreen.

It was Saturday afternoon.

I didn't want to meet Chapel the Evergreen. Not if I had to leave Nick to do it. But Evergreen had mentioned new orders from headquarters.

There were only two reasons I could think of for new orders. One, that something had come up and my medical leave was canceled or there were to be new assignments as Hot Lips had suggested. Could they have found Vash the Stampede so soon?

Of course, no leave is ever set in stone. Everything is subject to immediate change. But the thing that was floating around in the back of my mind was that the partnership was about to be broken up and the thought was torture to me.

If I was going to meet the Evergreen on business from Headquarters, I supposed I would have to make an effort to appear professional, and much as I hated the idea , that meant leaving Nick.

I met with the nurse who was going to be assigned to Nick that evening. She seemed very smart and helpful. Her name was Carrie.

Nick woke up and stayed conscious for a while. He gave me a tender lazy smile and said, "Midvalley."

I loved the way he said my name. I took his hand and held it.

"Your dad's arriving on the sandsteamer tomorrow morning at 7. I think he's worried about you."

"Yeah, maybe," he said. "More likely it's about new assignments."

Weak and feverish as he had been, Nick's mind was sharp as ever..

"But I'm on medical leave for another three weeks."

"Then the last thing you need is to be taking care of me."

"You're wrong, Nick."

He gave me another smile with his eyes half-closed and squeezed my hand.

I stayed with Nick until midnight, but finally left to go home and get some sleep.

Sleep was hard to come by. Every time I dropped off to sleep, my worries came back and I woke up and I rechecked my link with Nick to see how he was feeling. But every time I checked he seemed to be fine. Finally I fell asleep, but woke up at 4 AM with a sick feeling in my gut, a piercing headache and a sensation of fever-it had to be Nick.

I threw on my pants and shoes, left the house at a fast walk and finished buttoning my shirt and jacket en route to the hospital. Then I began to run. Fear spurred me on. I cannoned through the front door , took the steps up to Nick's floor two by two. I ran down the hall on his floor, but I didn't see any nurses or orderlies anywhere.

When I opened the door of his room, I was hit by the smell and sound of retching. It was Nick. He was a mess, delirious, vomiting, shivering and when I saw the wide bandage around his waist covered with fresh blood, I yelled , "Son of a bitch!!!" and charged out the door at a run to find the nearest doctor on duty.

I heard sounds coming from a patient room, opened the door and found one of the orderlies fucking a nurse. It wasn't Carrie.

I pulled him out of her and threw him on the floor while he was still babbling a garbled, "What the hell…"

I pulled the holstered automatic out of my jacket and shoved the business end of it in his mouth. "You want some of this? You find a doctor and send him to Wolfwood's room and hurry up or I will hunt you down and kill you and everybody in your whole fucking family". When I took the gun out of his mouth, he stammered, "Yes, sir," and scurried off as if his life depended on it.

I yanked the nurse by the hair and she screamed, and followed me as I dragged her down the hall to Nick's room.

Nick was lying still as death on the floor when I found him. His chest wasn't moving.

"Fuck!" I yelled. "I think he must have choked on his vomit. Help him for God's sake. He needs help. I don't care how you do it but he'd better live. If he doesn't, you're a dead woman."

She cleared his air passage in no time flat, breathed into him a few times and he started to breathe again, deep rasping breaths. His eyes were glassy and then he vomited again.

Less than a minute later there was a team of nurses and doctors in Nick's room. Dr. Reed, the surgeon who had sewed up Nick was among them.

I calmed myself and got out of the way as they started to work on him, but there was no fucking way I was leaving him alone again.