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But during her very first training shift in Ops, all hell broke loose, and gunshots hit way too close to their team members, who were undercover working on a drug case. Men she knew had nearly been shot. They had, in turn, killed a couple of the drug dealers.
Sure, all their people made it out. But the damage to Laura Lee was done. The horrible memories, crushing anxiety, and dark despair of losing both of her fathers came back to her. The sounds of the gunshots momentarily paralyzed her as she observed in Ops. Good thing she wasn’t trained and really on shift. No, she didn’t care to see and hear any more of that.
So, they then rotated her to play receptionist at their public entrance. Cooper had been so condescending. He told her it should be quiet there and she could put a dent in her FBI coursework. Jackass. By then, the coursework had all been completed months earlier. She’d just not submitted much more of it after she’d seen the name Harrison West on Michael’s documents. And she knew by then that it was the same scumbag, not just a coincidence that this other guy had the same name. That was one rule she broke. She’d logged into the FBI personnel database without permission to pull up the picture of this officer to be sure. And yes, she was sure. It was the same man.
So here she was. On a disciplinary probation because she hadn’t submitted her coursework. Her superiors, of course, thought she hadn’t completed it. She’d considered telling Madison. Certainly, being a woman, Madison would understand that Harrison West just couldn’t know where she was. But it was more than sexual harassment she’d endured from him. He’d baited a trap that she eagerly walked into and even now, he had the goods on her that he could ruin her career and land her in Leavenworth for a long time. She couldn’t chance it. But what would she do?
The pain intensified and it was honestly the worst pain she’d ever felt in her life, a ten out of ten. Even though she absolutely didn’t want to call in an emergency for cramps, she couldn’t take the pain. She grabbed her phone and dialed Ops, which was one floor beneath her. What if it was something more serious?
“Ops, go,” Anthony ‘Razor’ Garcia’s deep, gravelly voice answered.
She was in so much pain she didn’t care that he was the one who answered. The truth was, Garcia scared the crap out of her. “This is Laura Lee, and something is wrong. I’m in the worst pain of my life.” Tears streamed out of her eyes as she spoke. She heard keys clicking.
“You’re in the apartment?”
“Yes. I think I need to go to the ER. It’s bad.”
“Doc is in the building. I’m sending him up.”
Doc let himself in without knocking and was beside her before she realized it. In the few minutes between her call to Ops and Doc’s appearance, the pain had gotten worse. She lay curled up in a ball on her left side, crying. She was barely aware that he’d called Garcia and ordered an ambulance. That’s when she knew it was bad. He wouldn’t even try to bring her to the hospital himself, and she knew they didn’t like to have any official outside organizations in the building.
“Suspect appendicitis,” she heard Doc say.
And from that moment on, it was a blur until she woke up in the hospital. She knew where she was immediately. She was in a private room, in a hospital bed, wearing a gown, with an IV in her arm. Doc sat beside her bed. Her abdomen still hurt, but in a different way, and she was groggy.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Doc said.
“I’m in a hospital,” she said.
“Yes. How do you feel?”
“Groggy and in some pain.”
“It should be less pain than when you called into Ops,” Doc said.
“Yes.”
“You’re groggy from the anesthesia and painkillers.”
“Was it appendicitis?”
“Yes, and it ruptured. How long had your abdomen been hurting?”
“I had cramps on and off for three days.”
Doc shook his head. “You must have a hell of a pain threshold. You had to be in some heavy pain.”
She glanced up at the four bags hanging from the pole with tubes dripping mystery substances into her. “I thought it was just cramps. I tend to have heavy periods and I didn’t want to…”
“If they’re that bad that you mistook a rupturing appendix for cramps, you’re going to want to see a specialist for that. But after you’re healed from this.”
He sounded almost kind, not what she expected from him. “Did they have to cut me open, or did they go in laparoscopically?” Laura Lee knew he’d think she was vain, worrying about that. She was moreover thinking about the recovery time.
“You’re lucky. They went in laparoscopically. You have four or five small incisions. It should only take a few weeks to heal. If you’d spoken up a few days ago, they may have been able to get the appendix out of you before it ruptured. Now, you’ve got an infection spewed throughout your insides. You’ll be here for about five days on a strong antibiotic drip.”
And there was the gruff Doc that she knew. Laura Lee groaned. “I was supposed to help Madison in Ops on the Lexington Case.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Doc said. “Right now, you fighting off this infection and healing is all that matters.”
