Panic had his hands flying, patting down the remaining pockets of his jeans, the small shirt pocket on his chest. All empty but for a half eaten roll of Lifesavers and the silver strip from the Tylenol package he'd opened earlier.
His eyes wandered over the face of the canyon wall, tracing the path he thought they had taken. There was no way in hell he'd ever pick out the particular copse of cacti he'd crash-landed in.
His heart was pounding, his stomach twisting in knots as he cast a glance at his partner, eyes closed, head resting against the quarter panel of the truck. How was he gonna tell him he'd lost the keys? Lost the chance to get them home, lost the chance to get Nick the help he needed so badly.
His head was busy scrambling for an answer, fumbling, hell flailing now, weighing his choices: go back up and look for the keys or start walking back towards the highway. He was so consumed with his thoughts that it took a minute to realize his name was being called.
"Rick!"
His head shot up to see Nick staring at him with concern.
"What's goin on, bro?"
"I… I…"
"Whatsa matter?"
The lanky man took a deeeep breath and closed his eyes, not wanting to see the expression on his partner's face. "I lost the fucking keys."
"You wha-? 'S not funny, man."
He opened his eyes and gazed seriously at his friend. "It's no joke, Nick. They were in this pocket," he said, gesturing at the torn flap of fabric remaining at his hip. "I…I think I can figure out where I lost 'em …"
"In one of a hundred patches of cactus?" Nick shook his head. He let loose a long sigh and kneaded his hands into the thigh of his bad leg as if it was just a bad muscle cramp he could work out.
"Looks like we try an' hotwire it."
"Look, man, I may have grown up black and underprivileged, but I don't know jack about hotwiring a car."
Nick looked at him like he was crazy, then barked out a short pain-filled laugh. "I do."
"White bread judge's son knows how to steal a car?"
"Not cuz of any misspent youth, bro. My brother had a '67 Impala that he bought with his first paycheck. Thought Cisco was gonna bust a nut when he brought it home. Three weeks after he bought it the ignition went. He didn't have the money to fix it up, and he sure as hell wasn't gonna let our dad get any pleasure outa bein' right, so he bypassed the ignition to get it to start. I remember how he did it. "
"Boy Scout and jacker of cars. You never cease to amaze me, bro. Wait… not gonna work…" his jubilance quickly dampened. "I flipped the fuckin' alarm on it before we left. Kill switch'll kick on and the engine won't start."
"Gotta get ridda the alarm first then. C'mon, Rick- we work on cars everyday. Who's better to do this than us?"
"Us?" Warrick raised an eyebrow at his half slumped over partner.
"Yeah, maybe I can just supervise, huh? Can probably manage passin' ya some tools."
"This'd be a lot easier if we had a rolling board."
"It'd be a lot easier a lot of different ways, bro," Nick coughed out as he began dragging himself to the front of the truck. "You can use my pocket knife, 's in my bag. 'S got like a screwdriver 'n shit."
Half an hour later Warrick pulled himself out from under the truck, grease smeared across his forehead, Nick's Leatherman tool in hand.
"Hey, man, hand me the Maglite would ya? Nick?"
His partner didn't answer, his head tipped back to lean against the fender, eyes riveted on a sky so bright it went beyond blue to an almost blinding incandescent light bulb yellow. A mile or more up a single dark dot soared in lazy circles, a raptor of some kind, reveling in the thermal air swells.
"What is it with you an' birds, bro?" Warrick half asked himself, a hand lightly jiggling the injured man's shoulder to bring his attention around. The flesh under his hand was hot but remarkably free of sweat.
"Nick, c'mon, man," he said in a quiet but firm voice. "Need you stay with me just a little longer."
Nick's head bobbled a bit, then slowly turned, looking at Warrick like he had just entered the room, with a smile of recognition and surprise. His eyes had gone from glassy to almost flat looking, his lids only scraping slowly shut over drying corneas once or twice a minute.
Warrick gave him a weak smile in return. "Yeah, hey, bro - still here. C'mon- almost got this sucker. I need the flashlight, then you gotta tell me how to wire up the car."
Nick struggled to sit up straighter, pinching the bridge of his nose then rubbing at his eyes with thumb and forefinger. "Yeah, yeah," he mumbled, clearing his throat. His other hand scrambled blindly about on the desert floor, fingers wrapping around the flashlight, lifting it and handing it over, his hand shaking like the small tool weighed twenty pounds.
The taller man took the light and gave another attempt at a more reassuring smile that never made it to his eyes and hauled himself back underneath the truck.
A few minutes later he pulled himself back out and up with a loud groan, wiping his hands off on his jeans.
"Think I got it all. The rest I gotta do from the inside."
"Gotta get into the truck," Nick grunted out in agreement. He kept shaking his head as if to knock loose the cobwebs and Warrick noticed him digging his ruined nail into his palm again. He sighed as he realized Nick was using the pain to clear his head.
He cast his eye on the ground around them, alighting on a rock the size of a cantaloupe, and he jogged over to heft it into his hand. He removed the sad remnants of his shirt, hissing as the fabric caught on the nearly microscopic cactus spines still embedded in his arms, and again as he wrapped the cloth around his hand, winding it halfway up his forearm.
He returned to the Denali's driver side and glanced down at his partner.
"Motor pool's gonna have my ass for this."
" 'Stenuating circumstances, bro." The words came out sounding like they had twice the sibilants as normal.
"Yeah, ain't that the truth. Well, we'll know if this worked I guess…" and he pulled his cocooned arm back and struck the window, safety glass shattering and showering little blue cubes all over the driver seat.
He held his breath waiting for the truck to explode in blaring noise and flashing lights, but it never happened. He quickly reached in the now open window, popped the lock and threw the door open. Swiping away the shards of glass as best he could, he wriggled his body between the seat and the gas and brake pedals.
"Okay," he yelled, his voice muffled under the dashboard. "What do I do first?"
"You gotta disconnect the ignition -- expose th' rotation switch."
The black truck had been sitting in the desert sun for hours and was roughly the temperature of nuclear fusion inside. Add to that the fact that he was forced to put his weight on his probably broken tailbone and kept catching his increasingly sore and itchy arms on the carpeting and seat fabric and little diamonds of glass were mining their way through his $400 jeans and it left his patience pretty much non-existent.
"You mind being a bit more specific?" he bit out.
"Take the rock. Hit the ignition with it. Hard."
"What? No zappin' wires together?"
"Takes two to do it that way. Need someone in the engine compartment. Just knock the key entry part off so you can get at the rotation switch."
The taller man wrestled himself back up and out, grabbed the rock again, and after several tries, managed to knock the ignition off the steering column. A few more increasingly slurry and mumbled instructions from Nick and he was holding the end of the makeshift screwdriver, the other end embedded within the mechanics of the ignition.
"What next?" he yelled, his heart pounding as it took a second shout to get a reply, albeit the fuzziest one yet.
"Turn -t ov-r. Sh---d start."
With a silent prayer and promises to do everything and anything to get this to work, including being nice to Conrad Ecklie, cleaning out his Grams' gutters (she'd been asking him for a month now), talking to Suzanne and apologizing for not returning her calls and giving her the explanation she deserved, and yeah, if that's what it took, he'd swear on all he held holy that he would never ever place another bet ever again, he turned the screwdriver in its slot.
The engine roared to life bringing with it the comforting normality of the a/c shooting out warm air, the warning beep that the seatbelt wasn't fastened and the door was ajar, and the CD player kicking back on.
He pulled himself up into the seat and hopped out to find Nick slumped against the truck, his body starting to tip to one side.
"C'mon, bro, need you around just a little longer." He shook his friend's shoulder more earnestly. There was no way he was gonna lift Nick's bulk up from the ground without hurting him further, and he felt himself growing angry that they had made it all this way and they were so freaking close and if Nick would just open up his goddamned eyes and stay awake and mobile for just a few more minutes and his shaking started getting rougher, his voice rising in what he thought at first was rage but he soon realized was panic because all of his efforts were being ignored and he just needed Nick to stay with him just a little longer and --
Brown eyes opened to look blearily and with not a small amount of annoyance in them.
Warrick sighed explosively, wiping his hands down his face, smearing sweat and grease in stripes down his cheeks. He hooked his hands under Nick's armpits and bit back all but a small grunt at the pain from the cactus spines and pulled the shorter man's body against his, the skin of Nick's chest eerily and ominously dry against Warrick's sweat covered flesh.
"C'mon, bro, up one more time, I swear it."
No answer but he felt Nick's hands tighten on his shoulders and the thrust of his good leg on the ground and they rose in tandem, clinging to each other in their exhaustion like two heavyweight boxers in the twelfth round.
The jump up to the higher bench seat in back took the last of Nick's energy and by the time Warrick had his splinted up leg stretched out on the seat and a seatbelt hooked through his belt just to keep the man from rolling off, Nick was out for the count.
Out for Warrick revving up the truck, throwing it into drive and leaving the hated mountain behind in a cloud of yellow dust. Out for the engine whining as Warrick pushed the heavy vehicle to speeds that almost put the needle off the odometer and had the tachometer fully into the red. Out for the sheriff deputy's car pulling out from behind the billboard advertising REAL Indian Handicrafts: pottery, rugs, and our jewelry is made with Gen-u-ine Turquoise as Warrick blew past him at a hundred-and-who-knows miles per hour.
Out for the huge hulking mirrored sunglasses-wearing cop to approach the truck with his hand hovering twitchily over his sidearm. For Warrick fumbling in the console for his wallet, simultaneously hooking a thumb at the back seat and flipping open to his CSI badge. Through the wail of the cop's siren and the sound of gravel spewing out from under rapidly accelerating tires.
Out through being lifted from the back seat onto a gurney and riding through a set of swinging metal doors into the ER of the local medical center.
An hour or so later found Warrick leaning wearily against the edge of a gurney wearing a ridiculous looking hospital gown. He'd been poked and prodded and the recipient of not one but two injections in a place that was already hurting, thank you very much, the first antibiotics for the myriad open lacerations and abrasions he received, the second steroids to combat the inflammation from the cactus spines. His arms were slathered in hydrocortisone cream and the advice they gave was just as Nick had said: paraffin after the swelling went down. He'd also been x-rayed and told that there was no crack in his cheekbone but he did have a small hairline fracture in his tailbone, here's an inflatable seat donut and some Darvocet.
What he hadn't been given was any update on his partner's status, and he was weighing his options, whether to shuffle across the hall in the gown, one hand firmly holding things in place behind him, or to poke his head out the door in the hopes someone would walk by he could flag down.
He was standing at the door, one hand on the knob, the other fumbling for a fist full of material when the door opened out into the hall, the doorway framing a small bullet-headed black man in his fifties. He was almost a full foot shorter than Warrick and the CSI smiled as he looked down at the man's shiny dome. He probably polishes it with a cloth every morning to get that high gloss on it. He wore no white lab coat, but his buttoned up white oxford bore a small gold nametag that read Walter Moses, MD next to a necktie of blue with small yellow chevrons.
A small brown hand extended out for a brief shake as the doctor introduced himself as the man treating his partner, then swept out with the suggestion that Warrick take a seat in a nearby chair. He replied with a sickly smile, "No thanks. I'll stand if you don't mind."
"Of course. So, it took some doing but we got Mr. Stokes stabilized. Once we got some fluids running through him he perked right back up. We'll have him taken up to surgery in a bit to repair the break."
"Will he …will he get full use of the leg back, Doc?"
"I'm not an orthopod, but the break looks clean. He'll do some time in a halo frame, and once the wound heals we'll plaster him up and send him home. He'll need PT but other than knowing when bad weather's coming, he should get normal usage back."
"How's he doin' now? Can I see him?"
The doctor chuckled to himself shaking his head with amusement Warrick didn't understand.
"Sure… I'll warn you, he's on a high dosage of morphine right now and he seems to be especially sensitive to its effects."
Warrick's brow knitted; the words made him concerned, but the doc's expression was still almost mirthful, the smile making his flesh wrinkle in rolls right up through his forehead up to the top of his pate.
The physician placed a hand on the taller man's shoulder and led him out, walking with him as they made their way down the hall to stop in front of a closed door.
"Mr. Stokes asked me if I was Shaft, Mr. Brown. Now, I'm afraid I have nothing on Richard Roundtree, and my hair hasn't seen an afro since the seventies."
Warrick rolled his eyes, mortified for his partner. "It's…it's my fault. I was singing Shaft earlier - told him it was a good bonesetting song…" and he trailed off, shaking his head at how weird it sounded even though it had made perfect sense at the time.
The doc's eyebrow corduroyed the flesh on his head once again as it lifted in surprise, doubt, concern, and probably consideration that maybe we shoulda x-rayed your head while we had you in there.
Before Warrick could utter another word to attempt to explain, from the other side of the door rose a voice. A distinctly drunken sounding and definitely White with a capital W voice- attempting to produce the rich and rumbly baritone of the inimitable Isaac Hayes- rang out, every few notes or so actually hitting the right key.
"Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?"
Warrick was already cringing when he heard the same voice answering back, in a cracked and painful sounding falsetto, "Shaft!"
He was willing the ground to open up and swallow him whole when he heard a voice from the man next to him, the doctor nodding his head to an unheard beat, muttering "Ya damn right."
Thanks must be given to my FanFic Medical Consultant (patent pending) Amy for her, once again and as always, invaluable aid in keeping me medically on the ball. If it rang medically true for you, it's cuz of her. Glochidia dermatitis is a very real medical condition, by the by. Gawd, I love the internet.
This was all for my good bud, Kristen. Hope you liked it, sweetie. And for those of you along for the ride, hope you enjoyed it for what it was: a little fun, a little adventure, some brotherly bantering and a ladle of whump. Kristen and I are hard at work on our next epic effort. Promises not so much on the fun side for our favorite Texan.
As far as credit for the song lyrics go, each to their own authors, Google 'em if you care to- this is for kicks 'n' giggles, not Benjamins. But the Scout song is a real one- props to the MacScouter, an online scouting reference. And of course, Nick and Warrick want you to know that hot wiring cars is a Bad Thing and should only be done under… extenuating circumstances.