Chapter Twenty-Four
As Lucky lay still under the heavy white blanket, he started gasping for air with an occasional deep, labored, croupy sound. His protective covering was smothering him.
~*~*~*~
When Kevin and Tony started searching in the hallway, unbeknownst to them, Lucky had galloped in the opposite direction of their search. Ian Thornhart strode briskly towards them with an exasperated look on his face. "Where's Lucky?" he asked.
"Took off," Kevin stated.
"What?" Ian questioned loudly. "How could he escape from an ICU room?"
"Where there's a will, there's a way," Tony intoned wearily.
"Only fifteen minutes passed from when he was in the bed to when he was discovered missing," explained Kevin. "He couldn't have made it too far."
"Let's split up," Ian directed. "I'll head back here and you two explore down that way."
Ian trotted away, and Kevin and Tony headed in the direction that Lucky had gone.
After moving some yards past Lucky's room, something caught Tony's eyes. He glanced over his shoulder at the wall beside him. There were a few drops of smeared blood on the white, textured wallpaper, almost as if someone's fingers had pressed there.
"Kevin." Tony poked Kevin in the arm. "Look at this." Tony pointed at the bloody smear, and Kevin made a puffing sound with his lips.
"I think we're on his trail," said Kevin.
The two walked a bit quicker in the same direction. They kept finding small, bloody marks on the walls and on the handles of locked doors.
Tony stopped and groaned. "Look over here," he motioned to Kevin. The two saw a long bloody trail running a length of three feet along the wall.
"He seems to be hugging the wall. I hope that's not a bad sign," muttered Kevin.
There was half of a bloody handprint on the door to a linen room. Tony stopped and tried the door, which promptly flew open at his hard pull. Kevin and Tony entered the dimly lit room and looked around. Everything seemed to be in place except for a bottom shelf where some linen was pulled away from a neat stack and spilled out onto the floor.
As they stood and looked around, Tony grabbed Kevin's arm and asked, "Did you hear something?" Kevin started to say no and turned towards the door, but they both heard a deep, muffled sound coming from the right corner of the room, next to the untidy shelf.
Tony spotted a pile of blankets in the corner. The sound was coming from that direction, and the blankets twitched. He quickly knelt down and pulled at the blankets. Nothing could prepare him for the sight of Lucky curled into a ball with blood running down the side of his head, over his eyes and nose, twitching convulsively and grunting with a croupy gasp.
"GET IAN!" yelled Tony, and Kevin shot out of there quickly.
"Lucky?" Tony asked softly as he reached out to stroke his head. Lucky didn't respond. "Lucky?" Tony asked again a bit louder, touching his arm firmly. Lucky heard a distant voice and blinked his eyes, but they wouldn't focus. He tried to move his head, but groaned and remained still. "Don't try to move," Tony said. "Why did you run away again?"
Lucky kept trying to push himself up to a sitting position, but it was like his hand and arm were Jell-O, and he flopped around on the floor like a fish out of water. "He's coming, he's coming," Lucky said intently, yet so softly that Tony had to bend close to hear. "Hide me."
Tony looked up gratefully when Kevin arrived with a gurney. Kevin said, "The nurses are going for Ian. Let's lift him onto the gurney." Tony cradled Lucky along with the bundled blankets and gently guided him onto the gurney with no real difficulty. "He's so light," Tony said sadly. Lucky lay on the gurney, jerking and gasping for air.
Kevin quickly wheeled the gurney into the hall and down to the ICU room, and Tony raced along side of it, careful to hold Lucky down safely on the swiftly moving form.
A flustered Ian met them at Lucky's ICU room, and he quickly maneuvered his stethoscope to examine Lucky. Lucky kept trying to move around and began crying. After briefly consulting with Tony and determining that he'd suffered a concussion, and a possible seizure, Ian left orders with the nurses.
Ian walked over to Kevin and Tony. "I've ordered sedation for him for the next 24 hours. He's scheduled for his feeding tube tomorrow morning. I don't ordinarily like to sedate patients with substance abuse problems, but we have no choice. He won't stay in bed, and physical restraints are out of the question with his pneumonia. He needs to be moved throughout the day so that his lungs can have a chance to clear. Ian made an exasperated sigh and looked at Kevin. "Why is this kid freaking out so badly? What is setting him off? This can't be simple withdrawal symptoms."
Kevin shrugged his shoulders. "Lucky never received any counseling after his rescue. He might be suffering from a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a result of his kidnapping. He may have had a bad experience in a clinical setting. It's hard to know for sure without talking to him further."
Tony brightened up a bit and snapped his fingers. "He had a similar meltdown at the free-clinic and ended up running away. I bet it does have something to do with that. And I have an idea for what we can do about it!"
~*~*~*~
Three hours later…
Tony turned his cold draft beer in his hand and took a long, satisfied gulp. "Ahhh," he said. "Just what this body needs after the day from hell."
Kevin took a long, foamy sip of his beer as well, and eyed the carved, wooden sign, complete with the obligatory shamrock hanging over the door: Finegan's Pub. "Leave it to you, Ian, to find a good Irish pub in the middle of Port Charles," he grinned.
"Except that you Americans insist on consuming pilsner wimp dew," Ian chuckled as he poured his warm, dark Guinness brew into a pint glass.
"Well, let's see if your Irish bum can beat us at darts," Kevin challenged.
"My pleasure," Ian smirked, as he grabbed his Guinness and headed for the dartboard in the back of the pub. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his custom set of darts complete with green shamrocks on the flights. Looking at Tony and Kevin's surprised faces, he chuckled. "Always keep them in the car - just in case."
One hour later, a puzzled Ian and Tony handed the bar waitress the money for Kevin's free beers. "I think we've been hustled," Ian protested heartily.
"Where did you learn to play like that?" Tony asked incredulously. "Do you ever make a shot that's not a bullseye?"
Kevin raised his eyebrows impudently and took another sip of his free beer. "How do you think I paid my way through med school?" he asked seriously.
"There's a story here, I know it," joked Ian.
"Could be…." Kevin teased.