"The Eighth Side of the Triangle"(10/?) by Susan Jameson (DrBarnBarn@aol.com) See part 1 for headers, archive info, etc.
~~~~~ USS George Washington In the Adriatic Sea As Daniel Saw It ~~~~~ The days after the crash are a blur. There was the immediate aftermath; I remember most of that. With the ship at general quarters, the watertight doors were sealed and I couldn't get to the sick bay, so I stayed at the midships auxiliary battle dressing station on the flight deck, rendering first aid and helping -- attempting to help --the plane captain. It was far too late for him, however. I ... Actually, if you'll forgive me, I don't think I'll go there just yet. We managed to treat all but the worst wounds at the BDS; as soon as the fire was out, the reflash watch set and the ship unsealed, we got the more seriously wounded down to sick bay and I went with them, leaving corpsmen and two dental officers to complete the triage on the flight deck. I was already scrubbing for surgery when I got a call from the search- and-rescue teams that were attempting to get Lt. Galindez, the RIO, out of the water; he was entangled in his chute lines, and the lines were entangled in some of the wreckage of the F-14, which was floating alongside the carrier, although most of that bird had gone to Davy Jones' locker. Normally, I wouldn't be anywhere near that part of the rescue effort, but he was so firmly entangled that the SAR personnel got a little freaked and asked me to come see about him; he was dangerously close to the waterline and they were afraid they couldn't get him free without amputating his foot. That wasn't an option as far as I was concerned, but I agreed to go take a look; his leg was pretty bunged up, judging from the SAR team's reports. That meant I had to go into the water to get to him, though, and that turned out to be one of the worst experiences of my life. Boarding a submarine was nothing by comparison. The thing about helicopters, you see, is that their rotors generate a lot of static electricity as they go whirring through the air. Whatever's dangling from the helo becomes the point of discharge, like your finger is the point of discharge when you shuffle your feet across the carpet. I was the one dangling from this damn helo, and it was generating so much static that I was just about convulsing every time I got near the water. Christ, it hurt ... it wasn't doing Lt. Galindez any good, either, because a couple of times I shocked him before I could discharge the static elsewhere. It was also dark, and stormy, and the seas were around 20 feet. Miserable, in other words, as Ensign Knox had said ... God, it seemed like a lifetime ago. We finally got him free, though, and got him back to the boat in one piece. It wasn't a pleasant recovery mission, but it was a recovery, and that's all that counts. The divers also recovered the body of the pilot, Lt. Williams, while I was out there. I could have done without that, especially after Petty Officer Franklin... Anyway ... I got back aboard, dried off and spent the better part of the next 24 hours in the sick bay, first working on Galindez' leg and then on some of the lesser injuries suffered by others on the flight deck, mostly burns, lacerations and fractures of varying degrees. Not all of those had to come to OR, but a few did. We had a few cases of heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation among the firefighting crew, too, but I had issued standing orders to cover those problems -- mostly just oxygen, oral rehydration and rest -- and the corpsmen took care of most of them. As soon as there was a break in the action, I called my team together, along with the SAR personnel and all the others involved in medical rescue and told them, as best I could, how proud I was of them for all their hard work, of how quickly they'd responded and how well they'd held together throughout the long ordeal. There were some exhausted and upset people in that group, let me tell you --some of them bewildered teen-agers facing death for the first time, some of them grim-faced doctors who'd seen far too much of it, but all of them worn out, appalled and nearly overcome by what they'd had to see and do. I knew how they felt. What was really getting to me right then, though, was seeing how much it mattered to them to hear me praise them. The weak smiles, the tired eyes that brightened as they met mine ... it was almost enough to make me break down and cry myself. I couldn't take it. As quickly as I could, I dismissed them and sent as many of them as I could spare off to bed for a well-earned rest. And then I went to the morgue and I signed the death certificates for Lt. Williams -- formerly known as Lowdown -- and for Petty Officer Franklin, the plane captain from the tanker. The corpsmen got the bodies ready for transport to Italy, where the autopsies would take place. After that, they would go home. I tried not to imagine what was happening back home right now -- the young wife or mother seeing the car pull up out front, seeing the two officers get out, one of them a chaplain, and knowing in one heart- stopping moment that her worst fear has come true ... they're here to tell her that he won't be coming home again. Jill used to tell me how afraid she was of those two officers. She said she saw them in her dreams, especially while I was in Saudi Arabia. She was even more afraid now, especially after the gay-bashing death aboard the USS Belleau Wood. To be honest, I always thought she was overreacting. I was so sure that I would be magically protected somehow, even in the Gulf War ... even after all of that. People were dying all around me, even some people I knew, and I never once thought it would be me. That was before Fox, of course ... that's when I got to know what it was like from the other side. After that damn Modell case, things were different. From then on, when he'd get up from my bed and get dressed, when he'd fasten his holster to his belt and then holster his gun, I'd look at him and I'd know --there was always the chance he wouldn't be coming home. It's not a good feeling. Not at all. And so this time, I really meant it when I promised everyone I'd be careful. That's a laugh, isn't it? I've never been less careful in my life. But at least it was over. I didn't leave the sick bay until the captain got wind of how long I'd been on my feet and sent word that I was to stand down for at least six hours. I did, of course. Believe me, it's only on TV that officers defy orders from the captain in order to do heroic things. In real life, you do as you're told. I went by post-op and checked the external fixators on Galindez' leg to make sure he was ready for MEDEVAC -- it was bad injury and a very dirty wound, but I was reasonably sure he'd end his days with two legs. I checked a couple of other patients while I was there and left orders for Lt. Orland to wake me if there was any significant change. But that was all I did. I had my orders. I headed for the dressing room outside OR, stripped off my scrubs, took a quick shower and changed back into my khakis, and was just about to head to officer country when I realized I'd left my cover in my office. When I opened my office door and turned on the light, however, I found a lot more than my cover -- I found Kim Knox, sitting in a chair next to my desk, looking pale as a ghost and blinking in the light. "Ensign, what are you doing in here?" I said, not as sharply as I'd intended. I'd meant it to be a reprimand, but I was just too damn tired for that to work very well. "I'm sorry, sir," she said, and I could hear then that she was pretty near tears. "I ... sir, I need to ask you something. I wanted to know ... I thought you could tell me ..." She stopped there and brought her hands, clenched into fists, up to her mouth and held them there, as if she wanted to force the words back into her throat. She was shaking like a leaf in the wind. Actually, she was almost in shock, and I was mentally kicking myself. The pilot was a friend of hers, and she'd watched him die. This wasn't the time to give her an ass-kicking about being in my office without my leave. I walked over and knelt down next to her and took one of those trembling hands in mine. "You wanted me to tell you what, Kim?" I said, as gently as I could, looking into her soft green eyes. She didn't speak right away; she grabbed my hand in both of hers and sat there, breathing heavily, wanting to speak, I think, but not wanting to break down. "I wanted," she said, finally, her lips trembling on every word, "I wanted to ask you about Lowdown." "About how he died?" I said, still holding her hand. "Is that what you want to know?" She nodded. She was terrified. She trusted me to answer her, but she was so afraid of what I might say. I knew what I could do. I could tell her the truth and leave her with a horror that would follow her every time she entered the cockpit and wake her up every night for the rest of her life, haunted by an image that would never leave her and yet would never begin to live up to the reality. But Kim didn't come to me for the kind of details you'd find in a post-mortem report. She came to me for reassurance, and I would give it to her. If there were moral and ethical distinctions to be made, I'd make them later. "He drowned," I said, simply. "But his neck was broken. I doubt he ever knew what was happening." Like the man said in the song, two out of three ain't bad. Lt. Williams drowned, all right, and he did have a cervical spine fracture that could in and of itself have been fatal, but the last part was a lie. I knew what had happened by the look on his face when they pulled him out of the water. He was struggling for air right until the last possible moment, and when he lost the fight and the water rushed into his lungs, he was conscious. He knew. The divers and I were the only ones who knew the truth, and I knew they were no more anxious than I was to have it come out. Kim looked at me, a bleak kind of gratefulness in her eyes. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to speak, but nothing came out ... she took a breath and tried again, but still nothing. Without a word, I opened my arms to her, and she came to me; I held her tightly, and she wept in my arms like a broken-hearted child. ~~~~~ Trinity Hospital As Mulder Saw It ~~~~~ "Crazy," Bill Scully said. "This is crazy." I had a very strong feeling that if his mother hadn't been there, he'd have added a colorful adjective in front of that "crazy." But his mother was there. So was his sister. And so was Jon Fuckerman. Okay, his name is Zuckerman. Excuse me. He had to be there, I know. If I'd had a choice, I'd almost rather have faced Bill Scully alone, because Zuckerman was about to get some excellent ammunition against me if he chose to use it that way. Here I was, abandoning all pretense of reason and doing it in front of Dr. Jonathan Famous Cancer Doctor Zuckerman, who was not only the epitome of reason at this moment, honored and revered by all present except me -- and even I had to respect him as a doctor -- but who had made it quite clear to me the other night that he still wanted Daniel back. And he'd been willing to stoop pretty low and give me a couple of very cheap shots because of that fact, too. Maybe he was drunk, but he wasn't so drunk he didn't know what he was saying. I still wanted to knock him right to the ground and pound the shit out of him for it, but I couldn't. I needed his cooperation. What was most terrifying to me was realizing that I'd decided to risk paying whatever Zuckerman's price might be if it would save Scully, even though just the thought of him getting close to Daniel again made my heart pound and made it almost impossible to breathe ... Shit. I was going to be so calm. Be calm, Mulder, I told myself. Just answer the man. "Crazy in what sense?" I said, hoping I sounded level-headed and in control. "In that it might save your sister's life?" "You're not a doctor," Bill said, with his usual snotty tone. "You have no place in even suggesting this ... this science fiction ... this ..." Still wishing you could employ some classic Navy language, aren't you, commander? "This is not science fiction," I said, calmly. "He's never heard of it!" Bill exploded, gesturing toward Zuckerman. "Have you?" "No, I haven't," Zuckerman said. I swear, that mother-fucker sounded triumphant. "You see?" Bill crowed, even more triumphantly. "Bill," his mother chided. Yeah, I know, his sister was dying and he was upset. So fucking what? She was a hell of a lot more to me than just a sister. Anyway, I had no reason to feel charitable toward Billy Boy, believe me. I'd had about all the abuse from this guy I felt like taking over the past three years. Every line in his face, every intonation in his voice screamed "Fag!" at me every time we met -- that is, when it wasn't screaming "Maniac!" It had always been that way, whether Scully was well or sick. And he'd had a lot of goddamn nerve telling me to leave the work stuff at home. He didn't have one fucking clue what his sister and I had talked about, and I had no goddamn intention of telling him, either. That was between me and her. But if I had told him, it would have gone something like this: As a matter of fact, Lieutenant Commander William Fucking Scully, your sister offered to destroy what's left of her life and trash her impeccable reputation to save me. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't hear of it. She wants to save me if she can, no matter what it costs her. Try that on for size. Oh, yeah -- my boyfriend outranks you, too. I know. There was no way I could ever say that. But it gave me no small satisfaction to know that it was true. "I think there's an obvious difference of opinion here," Mrs. Scully said, with classic understatement. "Yeah," Bill growled. I nodded. Couldn't argue with that. But I knew one thing for sure. I wasn't going to lose this argument. I couldn't afford to. And I knew Scully well enough to know that I wasn't likely to, either. Sure enough, her next words confirmed it. "I think that everybody here has their heart in the right place," Scully said. "But I need it to be my decision." "Dana," Bill said, as though he was getting ready to take off on me again. She didn't let him. God, even when she's dying, she's ten times as strong as any other woman on earth. If she doesn't do this, if it doesn't work ... if I lose her ... But I couldn't think about that. I had to stay focused. She was handling things all right by herself just now. "I know you're only looking out for me, Bill," she said, not unkindly. "But I don't think you have all the facts." Oh, he didn't like that at all. Not at all. She was coming down on my side, and that wasn't what his little sister was supposed to do. But he should have figured that one out a long time ago: In the final analysis, Dana Scully does what she thinks is right, not what someone else thinks she's supposed to do. And she trusts me. I don't know why she should after everything that's happened, but she does. "Don't you think you should listen to your doctor?" Maggie said, sounding worried and frightened at the same time. "Yes," Scully said, gently. "I am." Sure, I thought. Listen to him when he's talking about cancer. Listen to him, but only if he says it's okay to do this. Don't listen to him if he says not to do this and don't listen to anything he says about me or Daniel. I turned to Zuckerman. "Would she have to stop her conventional treatment?" I said, as politely as I possibly could. "To be honest, at this point," Zuckerman said, with equal politeness, "the only approach I have left with her particular cancer is quite unconventional." Good save, doc, I thought. You and I just may be able to work together. Judging from the look in Zuckerman's eyes, he wasn't quite so sure about me anymore. As long as Scully got better, I didn't give a damn. Just let her do this, let it work, and Zuckerman could tell Daniel anything he wanted to tell him about me. He could tell him he found me in Badlands cruising the entire fucking clientele and passing out Laetrile to the whole hospital if he wanted to, and I'd still find a way to make it all work. Even knowing how Daniel feels about untested, unproven therapies and how furious he'd be if he thought I'd put Scully in danger by employing one, I still knew I had to do this. Scully would live and Daniel and I would work it out ... somehow. Please, Scully, please, I pleaded with her silently. Please do it. I wanted so badly for her to make eye contact with me. I wanted our silent communication to work, wanted to beg her with everything in my soul to do this, to at least try it because she had nothing to lose and I had everything to lose. She never once looked at me, though. Maybe she didn't want me to influence her that way. Or maybe ... maybe the bond between us was so strong that she could feel me there without even looking, because somehow, I got my miracle. She held the little vial up and looked at it. "I'd like to try this," she said. Bill Scully looked unhappy. Zuckerman made no response at all. And I began to breathe again. ~~~~~ CAPT CARL W. MEISENHEIMER, USN, Commanding USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (CVN 73) FPO AP 09550-2873 CAPT ROBERT HEDGEPATH, Chief of Staff COMNAVAIRLANT 1279 Franklin Street Norfolk, VA 23511-2494 Dear Bob: As per your request, here is the suggested citation for CMDR Daniel Reilly's award of the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. I have to tell you, Bob, I never thought Dr. Reilly had it in him. He always struck me as a fine officer, a very good doctor, but not a fountain of courage, if you know what I mean. I'm glad I was wrong. I know of one aviator who owes his life to Dr. Reilly's courage. It wasn't the rescue that prompted me to put him up for this medal, though, heroic as that was. It was the one he couldn't save. I don't think anyone who was there will ever forget the sound of that man screaming. I know we were all grateful when the doc got in there and gave Franklin a hypo, probably almost as grateful as the poor bastard himself. If you need anything more, please let me know, as I hope the matter can be expedited. It is my understanding that the commander's father, CAPT Joseph A. Reilly, USN (ret.), is to be promoted to rear admiral, lower half, in the US Naval Reserve in July. I am sure it would be a source of great pride to him if his son were to be decorated at the same time with the highest noncombat award for heroism that the US Naval Service has to bestow. Yours truly, (signed) Bill CARL W. MEISENHEIMER, CAPT, USN *** THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the NAVY AND MARINE CORPS MEDAL to DANIEL A. REILLY COMMANDER, MEDICAL CORPS UNITED STATES NAVY for service as set forth in the following Citation: For heroism on 19 May 1997 while serving aboard USS GEORGE WASHINGTON and with friendly foreign forces as the Senior Medical Officer when an F-14 Tomcat piloted by LT j.g. Thomas M. Williams, accompanied by his Radar Intercept Officer, LT j.g. Randy Galindez, touched down outside the arresting wires while attempting to land during inclement weather. LT Williams attempted to eject but was trapped in the aircraft; LT Galindez ejected into the sea. The aircraft continued its forward motion and struck a KA-6 tanker, causing shrapnel and other injuries to personnel on the flight deck and trapping Petty Officer First Class Phillip Franklin in the remains of the burning tanker. Commander Reilly immediately reported to the flight deck and took command of the emergency medical assistance, evacuation and first aid of the injured. Fully aware of the dangers involved, and without regard for his own safety, Commander Reilly donned flame-retardant gear and unhesitatingly approached the accident scene to offer aid. Despite the danger from the flames and shifting debris, Commander Reilly approached PO1 Franklin. Upon determining that the petty officer was mortally injured, Commander Reilly administered pain-relieving drugs, offering comfort in the petty officer's remaining moments of life. Commander Reilly then joined the search-and-rescue team and, working in the water around and through debris, gave medical treatment to control serious bleeding from LT Galindez's injured leg until the lieutenant was freed from the lines of his parachute, thus saving the man's life at great risk to his own. Commander Reilly's courageous, competent, and efficient actions and forceful leadership in directing the medical rescue effort, and in particular, in effecting the rescue of a man trapped perilously near the waterline, at great risk to his own life, were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. FOR THE PRESIDENT:
END "The Eighth Side of the Triangle"(10/?) by Susan Jameson (DrBarnBarn@aol.com)