Chapter Text
There was no reason for it to have happened, and that was the worst part.
It was a routine retrieval from an average high-rise office vault, and all they needed were some sealed medical records so their client could get treatment. Hardison and Parker had both mapped the building. Everyone knew the security measures and was thoroughly prepared for them.
After getting in without incident and grabbing the files they needed, they were in the home stretch, moving quietly through the halls toward the back exit where Lucille was parked. Eliot was in front, checking each hallway before they went forward. He looked around the last corner into the last hall, and he could see the exit at the end. He motioned for Parker and Hardison to make their dash for the door, while he checked behind them one final time. Everything was clear. They would be out the door and back at the Brew Pub in time for him to catch the rest of the Cowboys' game.
"Hey, hold it!"
Eliot froze, all thoughts of football evaporating at the sound of a stranger's voice.
He pressed himself against the wall to stay concealed as he tried to think what had gone wrong. Everything was supposed to be clear. The guards were all supposed to be in the control room right now. There weren't even any offices down this hallway, just a janitorial closet and… a bathroom.
Eliot bit back his frustrated groan and listened.
The voice sounded shaky and nervous, but that actually made the situation more dangerous. Fear made people volatile. Eliot didn't want to jump around the corner and disrupt the situation, so he just barely peered out to see what was going on.
A single, jittery security guard stood in front of the exit, his gun trained directly at Parker's chest. She and Hardison both had their hands up, and he could hear Parker trying to talk the guy down. But while one of the guard's hands held the gun, the other was creeping slowly toward his radio. If he called for backup, they were finished. Maybe the situation needed to be disrupted.
Break his concentration. Make yourself the target.
Without another thought, Eliot burst around the corner with a yell and rushed for the guard.
The hallway was only five or ten yards long, and he was fast. All he had to do was get to the man and they would be home-free. He would hit him so hard that he wouldn't even remember their faces.
Eliot was about three strides away when the gun went off.
After two more strides, he was sure he hadn't been shot.
By the time his fist connected with the man's jaw, he realized that someone else had been.
"Parker!" Hardison cried.
She and the guard crumpled to the ground in the same instant, and Eliot whirled around, his fist still clenched from the punch.
"Parker! Parker, you hit?" Hardison started chattering, "Talk to me, mama. What's wrong?"
He was on the ground, cradling her shoulders in one arm while, wide-eyed, Parker looked down at her own abdomen. The others looked too, and they saw that her black shirt and jeans were already soaked with something in a small area just inside her left hip.
Blood. And the stain was growing.
For a split second they all watched, dumbfounded, as a deep red oozed up from the hole in Parker's clothes—the hole in Parker's skin.
The second passed, and Eliot dropped to his knees, tearing off his beanie and pressing it to the wound.
"Hold it there," he barked at Hardison. He took off his jacket and flannel and used the shirt to apply pressure as well. Parker was starting to shake. Her hands hovered unsteadily over her chest as she took quick, shallow breaths.
"Ale-Alec," she started reaching up, and Hardison took her trembling hand in his own. "I didn- I didn't think he was actu- to shoot."
"I know, I know. But you're gonna be ok. We're gonna make it ok," Hardison kept babbling comfort to Parker while Eliot assessed the damage.
For that, he had to tamp down his growing fear.
What's here right now? Focus!
There was no blood pooling on the floor, so the bullet hadn't passed all the way through. Given the location of the wound, it had probably gotten stopped by her pelvis, which meant there were likely bone fragments and severed ligaments. Thankfully, it was too low to have hit any vital organs, but if her intestines were compromised, that would mean a lot of blood and a very difficult repair process.
"We've got to get her to a hospital."
It took him less than ten seconds to come to the conclusion, and Hardison looked up, stunned.
"Can't you fix it at the safehouse? You fix yourself up all the time!"
Eliot swore. "She's got internal bleeding and probably a shattered pelvis! I can't fix that, and we don't have time to argue. Give me your jacket!"
Eliot wrapped his own coat around Parker as Hardison did what he was told, then he used the hacker's jacket to do the same. "She's going into shock. Get the van."
"You're gonna move her?"
"Go!"
Hardison scrambled to his feet, swearing, while Eliot put pressure back on Parker's wound. Her whole body shuddered, and she was blinking rapidly.
"Hey, Parker!" Eliot called, just loudly enough to get her attention. "Parker, look at me!"
After a moment, she jerked her head toward him, and he saw her fear and bewilderment plain as day. Sweat was starting to stand out on her forehead. He forced down another stab of anger. That wasn't what she needed.
"We're gonna get you out of here," he said gently. She nodded vaguely, and her eyes started to close. "Hey!" he shouted, startling her awake again. "We're not gonna do that, Parker! No sleeping."
She nodded. "N-no sleeping."
"That's right. Tell me what you feel."
He spared a glance around for the file they had initially come for, snagging it from the floor and readjusting the arm that was supporting Parker.
She squeezed her eyes shut as he moved her slightly and said, "Hurts."
"I know it does. But that's good, you know why?"
She shook her head.
"It means your body's doing its job and telling you something's wrong. We'd be in real trouble if you couldn't feel anything, got it? Hey! Look at me," her eyes had gone glassy again. She obeyed, and Eliot tried to make her understand. "I gotta move you, and that's gonna hurt pretty bad. But the pain is a good thing, ok?"
She swallowed and seemed to be bracing herself. For just a moment, her eyes cleared, and she nodded, "I trust you."
Eliot's throat seized up.
Not giving himself any more time to think, he slid his other arm under her legs and lifted. Parker gave a piercing shriek.
He wasn't sure if that scream was better or worse than the pitiful whimpering sounds she made afterward, but as he stepped over the prone body of the guard whose bluff he had so terribly misjudged, he wished he had time to deal with the man properly.
He kicked open the door to the alley, and there was Hardison, wrenching open Lucille's side door. Honestly, Eliot was impressed with the hacker. When he imagined situations like this (or lived them in his nightmares), Hardison was always a blubbering obstacle. But apparently he did have some kind of useful adrenaline response.
Eliot laid a now-unconscious Parker in the floor of the van and got her settled while Hardison slammed the door and got into the driver's seat. They tore out of the alley at breakneck speed, and Eliot had to yell at him to be careful.
The ten-minute drive to the hospital took an eternity. Eliot tried to wake Parker up with no success. She had passed out from the pain, and he wasn't really surprised. To pick her up, he'd had to bend her shattered hip. She was breathing and had a pulse, weak and rapid though it was, and those were the facts he decided to focus on.
He felt the van take a sharp turn and looked up to see an ER entrance sign through the windshield. Poised for action, Eliot opened the door as soon as Hardison stopped, and he gathered Parker into his arms. Her breathing was even shallower now, and the flannel he'd wrapped around her hip was completely soaked with blood.
They stumbled through the doors, bringing catastrophe into the existing disorder of the emergency room. Eliot shouted "she's been shot," and a stretcher appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly a doctor was at his elbow asking questions about allergies and blood type, and he heard Hardison answer. Then his arms were empty and someone was barring Hardison from following the stretcher that held a pale, lifeless version of Parker. Silence fell, and the two men stood in the ER waiting room, blood on their hands and clothes, helpless.
It had been fifteen minutes.