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The ICU felt like a different world. Beds stood in a neat row, separated only by thin curtains. The air was full of activity as people in scrubs carried out tasks, moving quickly from bed to bed, their voices blending with the constant beeping of monitors and the hiss of ventilators.
It was a deeply unsettling place for Hannibal, a completely new environment with foreign rules. He had to remind himself that he didn't teleport to some other dimension. H still stood in DC General, Washington, Maryland, USA.
“Before you touch anything, disinfect your hands. After touching anything, also disinfect your hands,” the nurse leading him and Murdock ordered. “Here’s your friend,” she showed them the bed, quickly turned around, and left for the nurse’s station.
Hannibal heard a sharp inhale from Murdock.
“You good?”
“Yeah, yeah, fine,” came the weak answer.
A quick glance at the man revealed that he looked several shades paler than a minute ago, while entering the ICU. Hannibal patted him on the back, wanting to say something reassuring, but his throat seized, and he couldn’t find any words.
The thing was, they spent a couple of years in Vietnam. More than ten years working as soldiers of fortune and running from the law. They had seen stuff; blood and gore were nothing new for them. But this… This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was their day off.
And seeing Face in that hospital bed hit them like a ton of bricks.
In the movies, people in hospital beds look like they’re sleeping. Face looked like a dead body.
Apparently, he was alive, at least the monitor showed his vitals. But he certainly didn’t look like it. His skin was pale. He lay completely still, on his back. The machine was breathing for Face, his chest rising and falling in an unnatural rhythm. The tangle of tubes and cables surrounded him, some of them connected to the monitors, the others leading to the wall of infusion pumps behind the bed, blinking with their lights.
“Face?” Murdock asked tentatively.
No reaction. Only the respirator hissed.
“Umm…” He hesitated over what to do next.
The curtain moved, and a woman stepped inside.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Jones, and I’m an on-call ICU doctor today,” she greeted them. “I’ve heard that you wanted to speak about your friend.”
“Can he hear us?” Murdock blurted out before Hannibal even had a chance to open his mouth.
“He’s heavily sedated for now, so most likely not. That said, we can never be sure, so you’re welcome to talk to him, just please, keep your voice down.”
“What’s the prognosis, doc?” Hannibal tried to appear confident, a colonel to a medic, one professional to another.
The alarm went off, startling him.
"What was that?!" So much for a composure.
Doctor Jones shot an unimpressed look at one of the monitors, clicked something, and silenced it.
“Oh, just his oxygen saturation dipping. It’s fine now - probably just an artifact."
Well, for Hannibal, “an artifact” was an old object, not an alarm giving him a heart attack. “As for the prognosis, we have to wait and see what the next couple of days bring. The gunshot resulted in bowel perforation and severe blood loss. It was repaired surgically, but your friend is septic, still unstable, and requires breathing and circulation support from us.”
Hannibal stared at her, unable to find words, his head an empty, dark void.
The alarm broke the silence again.
“Damn it,” the doctor muttered, silencing the monitor and clipping a pulse oximeter on a different finger. She looked at the screen and nodded, satisfied with whatever she saw there.
“I’m sorry, I know it must be overwhelming for you. You can stay here for now. We’ll keep you informed of any changes.”
There was one stool by the bedside, a gentle reminder of the “only one person visiting patient” rule, which they ignored.
“Sit, Murdock.” Hannibal gestured to the seat, “You’re more tired.”
The younger man accepted his offer without a fuss. Hannibal perched on the side of the bed.
“Sir!” A woman in scrubs pointed at him. “No sitting on the bed.”
And so, Colonel John Smith obediently stood up.
***
The surgeon was a fat man who scowled at BA. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, clearly annoyed by all the questions asked. BA scowled back at him. It didn’t impress the man.
“Yes, we had to create a stoma. A primary anastomosis would be too much risk.”
“But that’s just… You’ve butchered him!” The accusation slipped out before he could stop himself, but frankly, he didn’t care.
He managed to catch a glimpse of the incision during the dressing change, although he’s been asked to leave. It stretched from the sternum to the pubic symphysis, stapled together, angry red against waxen skin. And stoma? Face with a shit bag attached to his belly? He wasn’t terminally ill. He was a healthy, young man. Why on Earth would they do something like that to him!
“Everything we did was according to guidelines and standards of care,” came the short answer.
“How is that a standard?!”
“Sir, keep your voice down, or you’ll be asked to leave.” A nurse appeared at his side.
“You’ve already asked me to leave during the dressing change!”
“I’m, sorry, sir, those are the rules.”
He felt his heart picking up the beat, muscles contracting, and fists clenching, before he even felt anger.
God, he couldn’t stay in this fucking room, with this fucking butchers, their guidelines, standards, and rules.
He drove a fist into the pillar next to him, pieces of plaster and paint falling down the floor. Pain exploded across his knuckles. It felt refreshing.
“Fuck!” He spun on his heel, kicked the door open, and stormed out.
***
It’s been two weeks, and the team was in shambles. Even Stockwell backed off and told them, “Take as much time as you need”. With a gentle voice, sympathy was carefully painted onto his face. Maybe it would’ve been better if he’d asked them to go on a mission without Face. At least Hannibal would have an excuse to break his nose, somehow find an outlet for his anger and pain. For the first time in years, Hannibal didn’t know how to put the pieces back together, how to make them a team again. The jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing was just broken. Maybe the A-Team was no more. The silence loomed over the house in Langley, each of them grieving in their own way.
Ever since BA came back from the hospital with a bruised and swollen hand, refusing to explain, he barely spoke to any of them. Most of the time, he spent tinkering in the garage, looking furious. He never went back to the ICU.
Murdock retreated into himself. His previously vivid face became a blank mask. He went through the days automatically. He, at least, visited Face in the ICU, although Hannibal wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. Guilt ate him alive. Every time he returned, he faded a little more, soon leaving only a shell of the man he used to be.
Frankie… Frankie tried to act normal at first, but the cracks showed, and it became crystal clear that he was scared. Deeply, profoundly scared. It was just small things. The slight tremble of the voice, shaking hands masked by expressive gestures. As time passed, he also fell into silence and started spending more and more time in the kitchen cooking elaborate meals.
They were excellent.
Just left a bitter taste. Face would’ve loved them.
For Hannibal, the worst part was the helplessness. He hated that Face lay vulnerable, at the mercy of other people. Breathing thanks to the machine, fed through a tube, a catheter draining his bladder, and medications controlling basically every vital function. Stripped of privacy, unable to defend himself.
Hannibal hated that he couldn’t do anything. There were no plans to be made, no enemy to outsmart. Just waiting and trusting other people.
The doctors would tell him that Face was doing better every day, but he couldn’t see it. The numbers on the monitors, names, and doses of drugs given didn’t mean anything to him.
If only Face woke up. That was the only hope keeping him afloat.
***
Face woke up, and somehow, it got worse.
Calling that consciousness was generous.
He opened his eyes spontaneously and knew more or less who he was. Not so much where or when.
“Please, don’t…” he whimpered again.
“You’re safe, kid, you’re safe,” Hannibal ran his fingers through blond hair, trying to offer as much comfort as possible. He wondered where Face’s mind gone this time. Was it a POW camp in Vietnam? Or maybe he was again a five-year-old kid living on the streets? Too much trauma accumulated during 40 years. It was impossible to tell.
“Han’bal?”
“That’s me. You’re in the hospital, safe. You’ve been shot. It’s alright, you’re recovering,” Hannibal recited what he had told each time. It seemed to settle Face. He visibly relaxed and just watched his CO with tired eyes.
“It’s okay, Face. You can sleep. I’ll watch over you.” The eyelids drifted closed, and the lieutenant fell asleep. Until the next nightmare.
***
After a month, Face was transferred out of the ICU to the surgical floor. His body was broken, but his mind had returned. Something dark lingered in his eyes, though. Hannibal guessed that you can’t almost die and come out unchanged. All of them have changed during that month. The silence at home was the greatest sign of that. It was something that just didn’t happen before. They were chaos. Jokes and pranks, arguments, TV and musing blasting, constant cacophony of sound filled the walls of the house. Now silence was their new normal.
No longer tied by the ICU rules, they went to visit Face together. With balloons, flowers, cake, and candles to make it as cheesy as possible.
He sat on the hospital bed, propped by the pillows, still pale, way thinner than a month before, looking confused as they sang him “Happy birthday”. He blew the candles and asked with sparks in his eyes,
“Hannibal, are you aware that my birthday is not for another six months?”
“I don’t care, kid, I really don’t,”
Face grinned, and Murdock made a move to grab a cake. BA berated him that Face should be the first one to try it. Frankie chimed in, and suddenly loud voices and laughs filled the hospital room as they shared the cake.
And for the first time in a month, it felt like everything was going to be okay.