Chapter Text
When Harry saw Special Agent Dale Cooper again, it was a day later in the Calhoun Memorial Hospital, where Cooper had spent the whole of that day. Harry wished he could have visited him sooner, but with everything going on, there was endless paperwork and other such things that needed to be done at the Station, and Cooper had been fast asleep by the time he had finally gotten off work. Even now, however, he had not been given the luxury of coming to see Cooper on his own time, as a friend, but on the Station’s time, as the sheriff, due to a serious complaint that had been called in concerning his friend. Or maybe complaint wasn’t the right word-- it was more a call for help than anything else and Harry, as both Cooper’s best friend and as the sheriff, was the right man for the job.
When he pushed through the swinging doors of the hospital, there was a deep-rooted anxiety he felt concerning Cooper that had nothing to do with his job. The call he had gotten had been concerning, to say the least. He had been in the office, trying to figure out who (if anyone) he ought to call over Windom Earle’s disappearance and assumed death when the phone had rung. The nurse told him that Agent Cooper was ‘acting up,’ as she put it, to which Harry replied that he hardly saw how that involved him. It was only when the nurse told him that she thought Cooper was in need of a pair of handcuffs, because his bedside restraints weren’t working, that Harry grew concerned.
The more he spoke to the woman on the other side, the more serious he began to realize the situation was. Cooper had, apparently, been going through episodes of what the nurse described as “almost seizure-like fits” and “temporary psychosis,” that, she assured him, the hospital was more than equipped to deal with… usually. But, she told him, after he had bit a nurse and managed to rip both hands free of the restraints during an ‘episode,’ she thought Harry ought to be notified, more because Cooper was a menace to public safety than anything else. So, Harry had come and again, that feeling was beginning to gnaw at his gut, telling him that there was something deeply, horribly wrong with Cooper-- something far worse than a concussion. He brushed it off, but the feeling lingered.
“Sheriff Truman.” A sharp young nurse bustled over to him the moment he stepped through the door, introducing herself as the same nurse who had called him earlier-- Lindsay.
“How is he?” He asked, barely bothering with any of the other pleasantries he knew he ought to have addressed.
“Not good, Sheriff Truman, I’m sorry to say. The concussion seems to have derailed some of his mental processes in ways that we’re still trying to figure out. We don’t have the money for a CAT scan, but we’re working on as we speaking, Sheriff. We are also running verbal and physical tests to determine the extent of his injury. The doctor says he thinks that your Agent Cooper just suffered a severe concussion when he fell. Severe concussions can and often do alter a patient’s personality in odd ways, so that is to be expected. We want you to know right now that you shouldn’t be at all concerned about his behavior. Although it might be upsetting for you to see, medically, it’s no cause for extreme worry.”
“Then why did you call me in?” the Sheriff asked, his eyes searching the curtained room, trying to guess which one Cooper was in. They looked the same.
The nurse followed his gaze, staring at the curtained room, hiding the sick from their eyes. “Well, to be frank, Sheriff Truman, your agent, as I said on the phone, has proven himself to be a menace to public safety. One of our nurses had to get stitches from the wounds he inflicted on her. I know he’s your friend, but we’ve decided to treat this case as we would any patients prone to violence-- which to say, with handcuffs. It will make the atmosphere he is currently in far safer for both himself and our nurses. But, we also think it could be good to have someone who knew him well to take a look at him and judge his mental state.”
“I don’t know much about medicine, Lindsay,” Harry said, not entirely clear on what she meant for him to do.
She smiled. “We don’t expect that from you, Sheriff. We just want you to see him and tell us if you think he’s acting according to character, so to speak.”
“I can do that,” Harry told her, and yet, he was afraid to see what he find when he visited his friend. He just wanted everything to be back to the way it was again-- Cooper with his odd, focused brightness and serious, calming demeanor. He didn’t deserve this after everything he had been through already-- Annie’s kidnapping, that place in the woods he had disappeared into, and all the rest. Cooper was a good man-- one of the finest Harry had ever met-- and he should have had nothing but the best.
When they came to Cooper’s room, he was sleeping. Harry loathed to wake him when he looked so tired and when there were such dark circles already etched under his eyes, but before he could volunteer to come back later, a nurse was shaking him awake. He came to after a few long moments, his mind clearly in desperate need of sleep. When he finally met Harry’s eyes, the Sheriff could tell he wasn’t all there without hardly looking.
“Cooper.”
“Harry?” Cooper stirred somewhat, his eyes brightening as he shifted into a sitting position. “Thanks for dropping by. I’ve missed seeing you around.” He sighed wistfully. “I miss the Station, Harry. I miss the forest air.”
A brief smile crossed Harry’s face. He had been expecting the worse-- maybe another unnatural, laughing Cooper like the one he had seen on the bathroom floor-- but this one was just like the one he had always known, if not a little tired. Nothing in his countenance seemed to indicate any cause for worry, nor any change from the kind, mild-mannered yet down to business FBI agent.
“Yeah, I know you do, Coop. You’ll be back again in no time. Just recover quick, okay?”
“Yeah.” Cooper nodded in agreement. “I’ll try. The nurses are keeping me here.” He glanced at one of the nurses standing close by before turning his attention back to Harry. “They’re a lovely crew, Harry, but I need to get back. There’s work to be done. And I don’t feel too bad either. A little tired-- yes-- but not enough to keep me in here for as a long as they have. It’s nothing that a good cup of hot coffee can’t cure.”
Harry frowned. Something wasn’t adding up. “Cooper, the doctor thinks you have a concussion. A severe one. You need to recover before you can do anything else.”
“Yes, I know what the doctor thinks.” Cooper shifted closer to Harry, his brow furrowed as he whispered with an earnest conviction into Harry’s ear, “But I’ve had a concussion before, Harry, and it didn’t feel like this.”
Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose as Cooper drew away from him, that intelligent expression he knew so well looking right at home on the agent’s face. “Maybe so, Coop. I don’t know what a concussion feels like so I can’t give an opinion. But listen-- you bit a girl, Cooper. A nurse, and she had to get stitches. That isn’t normal.”
“What?” Cooper shook his head. “What are you talking about, Harry? I didn’t bite anyone. I would never do anything to hurt even a single one of these lovely women who are doing everything in their power to take care of me. You must have me confused with someone else.”
“I don’t think so.” A sick feeling churned into Harry’s stomach. “They called me here because of it. You’re hurting people, and I don’t know if it’s all part of the concussion, or--”
“Stop right there, Harry.” Cooper held up a hand and Harry stopped. “You mean to tell me that I… bit a nurse? I have no memory of doing that at all.”
Harry closed his eyes, suddenly feeling deeply exhausted. “I don’t know what to tell you, Coop. I’m just telling you what the nurses have told me, but they say it’s all part of the concussion.” He put a hand on the agent’s shoulder and Cooper posture softened a bit. “Do you really not remember anything like that happening?”
“No, I don’t,” the other replied, whatever small happiness there might have been in his person leaking away. “Gosh, Harry, I feel so awful. I would like to apologize to this nurse, if at all possible.”
“That’s nice of you. I’m sure we can arrange that at some point, but there’s something else I came here to talk about, as much as I would love to tell you I came here only as your friend.”
“Harry.” Cooper clapped a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “You can talk to me about anything-- anything at all. I am an open book. I have no secrets.”
Harry cleared his throat and briefly took in the rest of Cooper’s plain, curtained room. “I don’t know how to say this, but the reason I’m here is because I got a call from a nurse saying that you’ve been having episodes…”
“Like the one where I bit the nurse, I’m guessing.” The hand fell from Harry’s shoulder.
“Yes.” Harry found himself wishing that Cooper would put his hand back on his shoulder. Even an action as subtle as that one reminded him that Cooper was still his old self, and the warmth his contact offered made him feel at home. “And apparently, the restraints here at the hospital aren’t keeping you… well, restrained. They want me to handcuff you, Cooper, just in case anything happens. I hate to do it, because I know in your normal state you would never do anything that would require you to be restrained, but I think this is a necessary precaution.”
There was a tangible tension in the air between them as Harry waited for Cooper’s response and prayed that the agent wouldn’t fight him or have another mood shift. But, just as Harry was about to apologize for the precautions he was having to take, Cooper spoke:
“I agree with you completely, Harry. I don’t want to hurt anyone else. Here.” He held up his wrists with a complete submission and the Sheriff, not wanting to waste any time, grabbed one and cuffed it to the side of the bed before hardly a second had passed.
“I would have done the exact same thing, if I were you,” Cooper added as Harry attached his other hand to the metal railings of the bed. “Don’t feel bad about it at all. We are men of the law, and the law takes no exceptions.” He shook his cuffed wrists and the ringing of metal on metal sounded unnaturally loud within the sickly quiet of the hospital. “Nice and tight.”
“Good.” Harry managed a stiff smile. “Look, thanks for understanding. I know this whole situation hasn’t been ideal, and that it must be pretty crazy for you, but thanks for not making things difficult.”
When Cooper smiled, despite the circumstances, it looked truly genuine. “I’ve been an FBI agent for seven years. I know it can be difficult and I don’t plan on making your life any harder than it has to be, Harry.”
He held up his left hand then, inspecting the cuff, but, as Harry looked on, Cooper’s hand began to shake. Maybe it had before then, but by the time Cooper held up his wrist, it was so noticeable that for a moment, Harry thought the agent was purposefully shaking his hand again to test the cuffs. It wasn’t until Cooper said a flat, ‘oh, look at that,’ that Harry realized the shaking was involuntary. The phrase ‘seizure-like fits’ flashed through his mind.
“Cooper…” Harry reached out gingerly to take his hand. “Are you okay?”
He squeezed Harry’s hand in reassurance, and the tension coiled in Harry’s stomach lessened momentarily. “Of course, Harry. I don’t know what--”
Then, Cooper began to choke. Or, at least it sounded like he was. Horrible, gut-wrenching sounds came from his throat as he suddenly began to thrash around madly in his bed, his nails digging into Harry’s hand so deeply that the Sheriff felt the heat of blood on his wrist almost immediately. He shot up into as much as a standing position as he was able with Cooper’s hand still grasping his, panic surging through him.
“Nurse! We need help with Agent Cooper! Nurse!”
Cooper, meanwhile, continued to thrash about while his sounds morphed into something eerily similar to a hiss, almost animalistic in nature. His nails tore at Harry’s hand so violently that he got the distinct feeling it must be intentional. Desperately, the Sheriff tried to tear his hand from the agent’s grasp, and only managed to do so with long, deep scratches all across his hand.
“Nurse!”
As the nurses began to run towards the room, Cooper dragged his still unchained feet underneath him and began to push himself forward as if he had every intention of breaking off the cuffs on his hands. The hissing changed to screaming. The bed shook from side to side so violently that Harry had to hold on to it to keep it upright. The nurses poured in, four at once, accompanied by a security guard, as Cooper continued to move like a man possessed, shrieking and howling at random. Siliva oozed from his mouth. Fear shone through on the nurses’ faces.
“I don’t know what happened,” Harry was telling one of them, his eyes still trained on the horror that was Cooper. “One second, he was fine, and the next--”
“Harry!” Cooper screamed, simultaneously interrupting Harry’s words and all action in the room. The nurses all stopped the moment he spoke and stared at Cooper, dumbfounded, as Harry waited, equally frightened and disgusted.
“What happened to Josie, Harry?” Cooper began to laugh as he shook his head from side to side, but his eyes remained narrowed and cold. One of the nurses began to cry. Shock rolled over Harry at Cooper’s words. And then, hatred. Anger. Clear, cold anger that demanded a response. Never had Cooper-- nor anyone else for that matter-- dared to taunt him over Josie’s death. Never had he tossed around her name so casually, so cruelly, like it was only dirt in his mouth.
“What happened to Josie, Harry?” Cooper laughed harder and harder, throwing his head back in apparent glee. “What happened?”
Harry could feel his pulse pounding in his ears. He balled his hands into fists to keep them from shaking but to no avail. The blood was sticky in his palm. The monitor said that Cooper’s heart-rate was racing-- faster, faster, faster. Harry could never hurt Cooper.
“What happened to Josie, Harry?” His words were hardly distinguishable through his laughter. Finally, one of the security guards began to move, his hands attempting to pull Cooper back against the bed. The nurse began to cry harder. Cooper’s heart-monitor flashed urgently. He couldn’t hurt Cooper.
It was just as the guard tried to shove Cooper back onto the pillows. The agent shook out of his grasp, his laughter suddenly stopped, his heart beat climbing higher and higher with every passing moment. Suddenly, his face was inches away from Harry’s, all the cold mirth gone from his eyes, foam dripping from his lips, every vein in his face bulging.
“WHAT HAPPENED TO HER???” Cooper screamed, his spittle spraying across Harry’s face. A sickening thunk followed as Harry slammed his fist into the side of Cooper’s face. The next thing he knew, he was being dragged from the curtained room, the sound of hissing fading behind him.