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aviv_b_artworkIANTO'S JOURNEY, PART V- REDEMPTION
TITLE: Chapter 64 - Examination
AUTHOR: Aviv_b
RATING: Chapter 64 - PG
CHARACTERS: Ianto, Aaron. Jack, Owen, Martha, Alonso, Stephen, The Brigadier, Aaron's mother.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine; Aunty B's and RTD's
WORDS: ~ 2115
SUMMARY: Owen and Martha try to figure out what's wrong with Aaron. Aaron's mother surprises Ianto.
Authors Note: Another full throttle angst chapter. Tissue may be required.
RL has been a bitch - several family members ill/injured, so I wrote the medical stuff off the cuff this time, I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV so if I made any serious mistakes let me know and I'll fix if possible.
Title is from: Examine the contents, not the bottle. The Talmud
Owen arrived at the hospital a little before 8 AM the following morning. He wasn’t a bit surprised by the reaction he received when he asked for Mr. Hamilton’s room.
The woman at the information desk rolled her eyes. “And just who are you? We’re already overrun with UNIT personnel here, we’re really not equipped to deal with all the…”
“I’m from Torchwood.”
“Bloody marvelous. Between Torchwood and UNIT you have half the staff and all of the patients terrified. The cheek of some….”
“Mr. Hamilton’s room please,” Owen said as he clenched his teeth.
After some more complaining, the attendant finally gave Owen directions to the ICU. He had to admit that he wasn’t prepared for the site of four armed soldiers guarding Aaron’s room. And he was also surprised, but delighted to be greeted by Martha Jones as he entered the room.
They chatted for a while and reviewed the latest brain scans and vital signs. From Owen’s experience, the prognosis was not promising. Still, if Ianto heard something… Owen didn’t want to speculate until he could examine Aaron for himself.
He looked over to where Aaron lay and saw that Ianto was sitting next to the bed totally focused on him. He hadn’t acknowledged Owen’s arrival and seemed unaware of the other people in the room. This wasn’t going to be easy, especially with Ianto and Aaron’s family hovering nearby.
He said hello to The Brigadier and Stephen as well as to Jack and some young man who introduced himself as Alonso Frame. Best to clear the room so that he could do a thorough exam with several alien scanners and have a frank discussion with Martha.
“Alright, I need some space to work. Has anyone had breakfast? No, well why don’t you all go get some and let me check Aaron out.” Everyone got up to leave except Ianto. Owen went over to him and quietly suggested that he needed to have breakfast. Ianto wouldn’t even look at him. Owen motioned everyone to leave and shut the door once they had.
“Look Ianto, I know you are upset, but I really need you to let me examine him.”
‘You can go ahead and examine him but I’m staying.’
'If I didn’t know you as well as I do, I’d be insulted. Please Ianto, let me do my job. You need to eat, and I need to be able to run these tests and analyze the results objectively.”
‘You don’t think he’s really alive, do you? That’s why you want me to leave.’
“For fuck sake, Ianto, I’m not saying that, but I need to be able run the tests and analyze the results. I’m not going to hurt Aaron, there are armed men outside the door, do yourself a favor and go get something to eat. If you get sick, you are not going to be much help to Aaron.”
Something about that last remark got through to Ianto. He startled as if he only was just becoming aware of his surroundings. 'Sorry Owen, I’m just so worried that those scanners won’t pick up what I sense. And then everyone will want me to order that life support be disconnected.’
“Ianto, regardless of what I find or don’t find, no one is pulling the plug on Aaron. So please let me and Martha see if we can’t figure out what’s going on, OK?”
Ianto reluctantly agreed to go get something to eat. He was surprised to see that The Brigadier had waited for him with Martha. The Brigadier gently led Ianto away from the room as Martha entered.
“I’m not even sure what half these setting are for,” Owen told Martha as he unpacked the three scanners he had brought from Cardiff. “This one,” he said pointing to the largest, “seems to be the most conventional in that it measures temperature, pulse, respiration rate, oxygen exchange rate, fairly routine things. The second one performs a thorough blood chemistry. So thorough that I’m not what’s being analyzed in some cases. The small black box measures brain wave activity. But it measures some things that we haven’t been able to identify."
They ran the first scanner over Aaron and Martha looked at the results. “Well, this is pretty straight forward, body temperature is a little depressed but nothing alarming, respiration you can’t really use since he’s on a ventilator, pulse is slow but that’s not unexpected."
The second scanner had a series of colored bars with 00 superimposed over each one. "What are these two?” Martha said pointing to two blue glowing lines.
“Let’s get a blood sample and you’ll see.” Owen pricked Aaron’s finger and put a drop of blood on a small arm of the scanner and the numbers began to change.
“Red cell count and white cell count,” Martha realized. “His red cell count is actually pretty good…must be the physical shape he was in other than that blockage. The green lines..Oh it’s HDL, LDL and total cholesterol. What’s the red line?”
“C-reactive protein. Not a great number, but not terrible either,” Owen noted.
“That puzzles me, why would he have a fully blocked artery when he was in otherwise excellent shape?”
“Most likely an inherited defect,” Owen explained. “His mother had almost identical experience at about the same age. She had one artery that was almost entirely blocked; fortunately she got to a hospital before she suffered a heart attack.”
“And the subsequent stroke?”
“I don’t know Martha, lots of people have miniscule brain bleeds and never even know it. Or a blood clot could have formed or broken free during surgery and traveled to the brain creating a blockage there and triggering a stroke. Again, it could be hereditary, or maybe the physical punishment of the Commando Course threw something off in his body…electrolytes, oxygen levels, I just don’t know.” There were several other bars with numbers but neither one could interpret the results.
They moved on to the third scanner observing that Aaron’s brain waves were consistent with a person after having a stroke. “Low alpha and beta wave activity,” Owen remarked. “Not unexpected since they control higher brain functions.”
“The theta and delta waves look a bit better than I would have expected,” Martha pointed out.
“Yeah, especially the Theta waves…they have a lot to do with dreaming, and controlling emotion…”
“So that could indicate that he still has emotions and feelings which Ianto is picking up on.”
“But look at this wave – it’s very strong, but I have no idea what being measured. Its marked ‘ε’, maybe for emotions?” Owen speculated.
“Maybe empathic waves…” Martha started to say. “But how can we tell? And this one, marked with a pi symbol, it’s a straight line…”
“Could be measuring something that’s part of alien physiology for all we know.”
As they waited for the others to return from lunch, they discussed what they were going to tell everyone. They could explain the results but that still wouldn’t put Ianto in a much better position to justify not having life support removed.
Owen sighed, “I don’t even know if there is a right decision. I don’t envy Ianto, The Brigadier and Stephen clearly believe that Aaron shouldn’t be maintained on life support, and Aaron’s mother will be arriving in the next day or so and who knows what she’ll think. Still, I think we can all agree that we should move Aaron over to the UNIT medical facility and continue to monitor his status.”
“I have an idea Owen. If the ε wave could be measuring empathic waves, let’s try it on Ianto. It couldn’t hurt and it might explain what Ianto is sensing.”
When the group returned from breakfast, Owen and Martha explained the results and of the scanners and the tests they wanted to run. They ran the brain wave scanner over Ianto and got results typical for a waking, mentally engaged person. But Ianto’s ε-waves were very high. As a point of comparison they scanned Jack who showed some ε-wave activity as well as Alonso, The Brigadier and Stephen who showed none.
Jack asked to look at the third scanner. “I’ve seen one of these before, but I can’t remember when…” Jack stopped speaking, obviously deep in thought. “I have an idea. It may not show anything, but go with me on this.”
He motioned Ianto to come and stand near Aaron. “Ianto, ask Aaron a question that you’d expect to get a ‘yes’ answer to.” Ianto went to type on his phone.
“No, push the question out to him with your mind.”
Ianto nodded and focused his attention. Jack held the scanner near Aaron and then up for everyone to see the results. The ε-wave function showed a small increase.
“Now ask him something that he’d give a stronger positive answer to.”
Ianto thought for a moment and then smiled. Jack smiled back at him, having sensed what the question was going to be. As Ianto pushed the question out to Aaron, the ε-wave function showed a huge increase.
“Let’s see what happens when you ask him something that he’ll have a strong negative response to.” Again, the scanner showed a huge increase in the ε-waves.
“Well something is going on. Some part of Aaron’s brain is responding to the questions,” Martha pointed out.
The Brigadier was a little confused by the results. “But what does that mean exactly? Can Aaron recover from this?”
Neither Owen nor Martha could answer the question. “I think it means that we shouldn’t be too hasty about making any decisions,” Jack suggested. “Perhaps the best thing to do is to give it some more time and see what happens. Not really any harm in doing that, except for the cost. And while the hospital may not want to take on the burden of the expense, UNIT probably will. And if they won’t, I’ll authorize Torchwood to reimburse UNIT for the cost.”
“Either way,” Martha added, “I’ve already made arrangements for him to be transported to UNIT ICU this afternoon.”
The Brigadier and Stephen seemed to accept this idea and Jack already knew that it was what Ianto wanted. Aaron’s transfer to UNIT was uneventful and then the excruciating wait for something, anything to change in Aaron’s status began.
****
Aaron’s mother arrived the day after Aaron was transferred. Ianto had only met her a few times, but she was a forceful and dynamic women. He had worried that she would try to bully him into disconnecting Aaron from life support, but surprisingly she was supportive of Ianto’s decision.
“As his mother, I don’t think I could give the order. And as his partner, it’s really your decision.”
Ianto didn’t think that Aaron’s mother was terribly religious, but he had never asked Aaron about end of life decisions and didn’t know what would be considered appropriate by his Israeli family.
‘Ronit, are their ‘Jewish’ guidelines for keeping someone on life support? I don’t want to do anything that would be offensive.’
“We’re not a terribly religious lot, but I spoke to his step-sisters and the best I can sum it up is that we all think that it’s fine to prolong life as long as there is some hope of recovery, but not to delay death when it is inevitable.”
She looked at Ianto and took his hands in hers. “I know, not very helpful, am I? But I know you love him, and I trust you and will support whatever decision you make. I will only ask you to do one thing for me.”
Ianto hoped it wasn’t going to be something he wouldn’t want to do. “If…,” she stopped speaking. “When the time comes, promise me that you’ll have him buried, not cremated. I know he’s going to be buried with the Hamilton’s, but please don’t let his body be burned.”
Ianto shuddered at her request. The way she put it made him think of Canary Wharf…but he wasn’t sure why she would ask him not to…then it struck him. ‘No of course not, that I can promise you.’
“Thank you Ianto. Would you mind if I just sat here a bit with him on my own? I need to tell him some things, and I‘d like a little privacy.”
‘Of course, take all the time you need.’
Ianto decided to go get something to eat which would give her at least an hour alone with Aaron. As he left, he was surprised to hear Ronit praying softly, “…מִי שֶׁבֵּרַךְ” (Mi sheberach…).*
He remembered his own prayers the evening before Aaron’s surgery thinking, ‘I don’t know about foxholes, but there don’t see too many atheists in ICU.’
Chapter 65 Here: http://aviv-b.livejournal.com/34652.html
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*Prayers commonly known as a Mi Sheberach (literally means ‘He who blessed’) are said on different occasions and in recognition of many life events. There is a Mi Sheberach which is recited for someone who is ill:
"May he who blessed our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, bless [names] with healing. May the Holy One have mercy on them, heal, strengthen and revive them. Speedily grant them a complete healing, a healing of the soul and a healing of the body, along with all who are ill, now and swiftly. And let us say: Amen."
