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Of course the antidote didn’t work automatically. Danny got the first dose, at everyone’s insistence, followed by Steve, Tani and Junior.
Danny was still half conscious and Steve had huddled on the couch at his side, feeling the exhaustion from the virus and from his dip in the ocean. He was happy, or resigned, really, to leave Tani and Junior in charge for the moment.
The storm had passed after a couple of hours, and Lou and Jerry were coordinating with the Coast Guard to evacuate them from the boat, so there wasn’t too much to do for Tani and Junior, apart from checking on the two older men, who slept quietly on the couch.
By the time the Coast Guard arrived with a ship equipped with the proper isolation equipment to transport them, Tani and Junior were already starting to feel better, but Danny and Steve were still asleep.
A couple of medics checked the vitals of the men sleeping on the couch, while Tani and Junior were escorted to the ship and hooked with IVs and oxygen masks.
The feeling of a mask being placed over his mouth was what startled Danny awake. “Wha? No…” He mumbled, as he tried to sit up and remove the mask.
The medic was wearing a hazmat suit, which did nothing to reassure Danny. “Detective Williams. I need you to stay still and keep the mask on. We are moving you to the ship soon,” he said in a no nonsense tone.
Of course that wouldn’t go well with Danny, so he struggled to sit up, pushing away the medic. “No, get off. Steve, where’s Steve?” He asked, trying to look past the guys in space suits that surrounded him.
“Detective, I need you to calm down-”
“You calm down, where the hell is Steve? And what did you do with the rest of my team?” He managed to sit up, and was psyching himself to try to stand when the medics moved away and allowed him to see Steve lying down on the opposite side of the couch.
“Detective, we are assessing Commander McGarrett and getting you both ready for transport. Please, lie down, you need the oxygen right now,” the medic closest to him said in a gentler tone.
Danny shook his head, frowning in concern. Steve hadn’t even twitched, and he looked like hell. He remembered Steve telling him that he was going to get the antidote, but he couldn’t remember much of what happened afterwards. “Is he- is he alright?” he asked quietly. “He got radiation poisoning a couple of months back, he got a liver transplant too,” he explained, having far too much trouble stringing a whole thought together, but he managed to get his point across, wanting them to know as much as they could to help his partner.
The nicer medic moved closer to Danny. “Detective, we have been briefed on the Commander’s and your medical history, and we are taking all precautions to transport you both safely back to land,” he said as he tried to get Danny to lie back down. Danny’s energy was gone, so he slumped back on the couch, twisting as much as he could to still keep an eye on his partner. “He looks like hell. Did he take the antidote?” He asked in concern, wishing he could get the energy to move to Steve’s side.
The medic checking on Steve turned to look at Danny. “His vitals are stable. From what we know you were all inoculated with the antidote. Now we just have to transport you back to Tripler and wait for the meds to kick in,” he said, trying to get Danny to cooperate.
Danny finally allowed the medics to put the oxygen mask back on, and watched as they transferred Steve to a stretcher and moved him out of the boat. By the time the medics repeated the procedure with him, Danny was already out again.
Waking up in the hospital was strange, to say the least. They had him isolated in a tiny room, away from the rest of the team, and surrounded by the guys in the space suits, which did nothing good for his anxiety and claustrophobia. He lasted about 10 minutes awake before the doctors put something on his IV to knock him out again.
The second time he woke up was a little better. Tani was there with him, and only one of the guys with the space suits was doing something in a corner of the room. The room was still tiny, but for some reason (something on his IV, probably) he wasn’t minding so much.
“They are moving us to a bigger room tomorrow,” Tani explained. “They just needed to run some tests first, and make sure that you and Steve were better before they piled us all together.”
Danny nodded in the right places, one thing catching his mind. “Steve’s alright then?” He asked, remembering the fears that had made him lash out the last time he woke. “Not dead? These guys wouldn’t say,” he trailed off, feeling a spike of fear in spite of all the drugs running through his system.
Tani’s eyes widened and she turned to the space guy standing in the corner. “You didn’t say anything about McGarrett? How can you be such assholes!?” She yelled, turning to Danny with a concerned expression. “He’s alright. He took a while to wake up, just like you,” she said gently. “And the fever stuck around for a little while longer, but he’s doing fine right now. He’s probably asking about you as we speak; they had Junior keeping him company for a little while,” she finished with a smile.
Danny slumped on the bed, blinking back tears of relief. “That’s really good news, thank you,” he said sincerely.
They sat in silence for a while, but Tani started fidgeting in her seat. She would turn to talk to Danny but then stop herself. It went on for a few minutes until Danny finally had enough.
“Alright, whatever it is you want to say, could you please say it? I’m sorry, but you’re kind of killing my buzz here,” Danny said in what he hoped was a nice tone.
Tani looked at Danny with a guilty expression. “It’s just; the doctors said that your lungs had been compromised, from the time you were poisoned with Sarin? They said that’s what probably made you get sick faster than the rest of us, and that you wouldn’t have lasted much longer without the antidote. Steve with the radiation poisoning was a little bit behind you,” she said quietly.
“Oh, at least that explains it,” muttered Danny. One of the reasons he didn’t enjoy his trips back to Jersey anymore was because he kept getting these terrible coughs every time he went there. He had no idea it was because of the Sarin incident, he’d just figured it was the change in the weather. Tani still looked strange though. “Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face?” He asked, trying to get the worried expression off her face.
“No, but Sarin? How the hell did you get exposed to Sarin?” She asked, sounding indignant.
Danny just shrugged. “Don’t ask me, it’s part of the crazy of working with Five-0 I guess.”
Tani shook her head. “You never said anything about chemical weapons,” she said, looking serious.
Danny winced a bit. “Well, at least it only happens once every two or three years?” He said as a consolation. “At least I learnt the lesson of never touching a dead body without gloves,” he finished with a shrug.
Tani just rolled her eyes and went back to reading a magazine.
The move to a bigger room wasn’t exactly pleasant for Danny. In order to move him they needed to put him in one of the hazmat suits. After two unsuccessful attempts, they finally managed to get Danny into the suit without too much trouble, and then it was a matter of passing through a decontamination room and transporting the bed to the other room. The whole thing didn’t take more than 10 minutes, but for Danny it felt like hours.
Once they were in the room the nurses took their time removing the suit carefully and by the time they were done, Danny was ready to tear his hair off, if he could reach it. As soon as he was free he stumbled to the nearest bathroom and sat on the toilet lid, needing a minute to get himself together. He closed his eyes, willing his heartbeat to slow down. Reciting the Mets lineup hadn’t helped much inside the suit, so now he resigned himself to start counting his breaths, feeling like a schmuck for trying some ridiculous meditation method.
Luckily the hippy trick worked, even if it took him a few minutes to feel like he could stand up. He moved to the sink, where he washed his hands and face, and with a deep breath he moved outside.
He wasn’t surprised to see Steve standing just outside the bathroom. “Hello Partner,” Steve said, pulling Danny into a brief hug.
Danny moved into the hug, closing his eyes in relief at seeing that Steve was mostly healthy. He patted his friend’s back. “It’s so good to see your annoying face, Babe.”
They pulled apart and moved to the couch, catching up on what had happened in the last day and what they had heard from Lou and Jerry on the case.
Danny didn’t really notice when he nodded off, but he was woken by Steve’s angry whisper. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, Sir. Just that he wasn’t exactly useful during the mission,” Junior’s answer sounded uncertain. “He wasn’t even there to help retrieve the antidote from the water, Sir. You had to go in, and we all know what happened then.”
“Useful? He wouldn’t have lasted more than an hour if we hadn’t gotten the antidote, did you hear him say anything? Complain about it? He was also stuck in the middle of the ocean with no real means of rescue. He had every reason to freak out and throw a fit that could be heard all the way to Jersey, but he didn’t. He was calm, supportive, and even managed to keep our spirits up, so don’t come telling me he wasn’t useful, because-”
“Steven, stop,” Steve’s angry tirade was interrupted by Danny’s raspy rebuke. When he opened his eyes, Danny saw the two SEALs facing each other with furious expressions on their faces.
“You see? He got McGarrett to stand down with only two words, who else can do that?” Tani quipped from the other couch, resettling her headphones and going back to her book.
The SEALs seemed to deflate, Junior turning to Danny with an odd expression on his face. “My apologies, Sir, I was out of line,” he said, almost standing at attention.
Danny shook his head in amusement. “Apology accepted,” he said with a smile, glancing at Steve for a second.
“Hey! His apology you accept? What about mine? I’m still waiting, you know?” Steve argued.
“Well, you got me shot, more than once, I may add. He, on the other hand, was just expressing an opinion,” Danny replied, matching Steve’s tone. “Besides, he didn’t need any prompting to make his apology, you should take some pointers, maybe ask him for techniques…”
Tani took Junior’s arm and pulled him to the opposite side of the room. “Come on, let’s see if we can get someone to bring some food. Maybe that will shut them up for a minute.” It was a long shot, but Five-0 had beaten worse odds.
Steve and Danny were left alone, their argument dying down once Junior and Tani were out of the room. Danny looked at his partner with a concerned expression on his face. “You went into the water to get the antidote,” he said in a flat tone.
Steve lifted his hand, scratching the back of his head in a nervous gesture. “The line from the chopper got cut, and the case fell into the water. I went in to get it, and Junior helped me to get it back to the ship,” Steve explained, as if it had been just a simple dip in the ocean.
Danny seemed to consider Steve’s words for a minute. “I should have been there,” he muttered quietly, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. He felt Steve moving to sit next to him on the couch.
“You know Buddy, you were there, more than you can imagine,” Steve said in a gentle tone. “You see, looking back, I didn’t go into the water to get the antidote for me. And I could tell you that it was for Tani and Junior, but I don’t think it was them either. I went there to get the antidote for you. You were fading, and I could see it, and I had to do something to stop it.”
Danny tilted sideways to lean his head on Steve’s shoulder. “We would have died anyway if you drowned back there,” He said in a rough voice.
“Well, I would have hated myself if I hadn’t done anything,” Steve replied, as he lifted his arm and pulled Danny closer.
“You’re a schmuck, you know that?” Danny said roughly, lifting his hand to pass it over his eye.
“That’s not the worst thing you’ve called me, Danno,” Steve said with a smile.
“Don’t call me Danno.”
The End