In A Heart Beat (a Castle Fan Fiction)

Chapter 5: Writing of Death

The doors opened threw to the actual hospital where doctors stripped themselves of bloody robes and many people cried. Kate looked around, seeing several patients in white gowns with their families, reassuring them that they were safe. This must have been the ER, and they must have just been getting around to the little injuries. Most patients looked as though they were getting sown up. There were some minor burns being checked and shrapnel loosely stuck in wounds being tweezed out.

As they continued walking, Kate saw a woman giving her husband or boyfriend a hug while he was sitting up on the bed talking to her. She wished that was Castle and her. With all her heart she wished that was what castle would look like when she saw him. Everyone in this room had so little to worry about. Broken bones and cut up skin healed fairly easily. She knew that wasn’t what it was going to be like for her. She faced death every day in her line of work, but this time, she faced it without Richard by her side, and without doing it willingly. She always knew that every time they went into the building full of gunman that he could die. But this- this was unlike a bullet to the head killing you. This wasn’t your body’s death she was facing this was his spirit, his passion, his soul being put on the line.

While they walked out the glass door, leaving the ER, they walked into another hall that seemed less friendly to the eyes. Men and women cried as they left what looked to be conference rooms. The doctors all had solemn looks, as though they’d just told someone their lover, their child, their father was dead. Throughout the halls, Beckett heard the cries she’d heard nearly everyday of loss and grievances. These, however, these bothered her more than any other.

They continued through the hall and into an open area with curtains and rooms with doors closed. There was a single nurses’ station and several doctors. As they made their way through, dodging people left and right, they stopped at an elevator and stepped in when it came down. The doctor pressed the button up to third floor. “I’m terribly sorry for this delay. I’d like to prepare you though, Mr. Castle received severe injuries to the face and body. As I’m sure you detectives know, he was shot and then that offal bomb hit. When he was shot, the bullet went straight for his head, but, by some miracle, missed, and hit him in his lower jaw. It didn’t do any damage to the brain, but he won’t be able to talk for some time.”

“Is he alright, otherwise?” Lanie asked. “There weren’t any burns sever enough to cause any serious damage or any shrapnel that hit him or-.”

“Ma’am. I’m sorry, could you please hold on just one moment. I’m sorry, but with this being a high profile case, we’d like to be out of people’s hearing rang. Then I will answer any and every question you have.” She said that somewhat rude statement in such a polite and caring way that Kate almost forgot that this “high profile case” was for an author. Not Lady Gaga.

The elevator opened to the floor, where blue-ish white walls lined with informational and directional posters. They stepped out, and past door after door. The plates on the doors all read ICU. The floor was quiet, and patient after patient lay in their beds, tubes in their mouths, and unmoving, decorated IVs and wires hooked up to monitors. As they moved forward, each looked worse that the last. Some seemed on the verge of death, while the early ones had seemed only to be sleeping in pain.

“Are all of these people from the explosion?” Javi asked. The thought of this many people in this bad of conditions made Beckett sick.

“No, no, all the explosion victims are on the end here,” she waved her hand to the four doors ahead of them.

“Only three in the ICU?” Lanie asked.

“Yes. I’m afraid for most if it was bad enough to be life threatening, they didn’t make it.”