I don't usually write sequels, and I don't like to post stories before they are complete. Unfortunately, this one took me by surprise. When I finished Shooter on the Green, I summarized the aftermath of the shooting in a few quick paragraphs thinking that was all that was needed to bring some closure and draw a curtain over the whole traumatic episode. But, then came Snapshots of Pain which only added to the tension of the story without helping at all and making it seem somehow undone. After Snapshots…I needed to take a closer look at some of the things hinted at in that end summary just so I could put the episode behind me even if I couldn't for Lewis and Hathaway. Leave it to me to take twenty pages to say what could easily be said in four or five short paragraphs.

After the Shooting

Drowning

Sergeant James Hathaway sat on the ground, his knees up to his chin like a small boy. He rocked his body slightly back and forth as though he still held the child he'd rescued, but the children's worker had already come and gone and taken the little girl kicking and screaming from him. Although the afternoon heat was almost stifling, he shivered, wrapped in a blanket from one of the ambulances. He looked near tears, but his eyes were dry. It had been one thing to cry under the bridge surrounded by strangers doing the same. It was something else, something beyond him to cry under the watchful eyes of his colleagues.

DCS Innocent eyed him with concern. She thought he should be in hospital, kept quiet, protected, surrounded by thick walls, and miles away from the green. She could have ordered it so, but she didn't. Physically, the hospital and the distance sounded like just the ticket, and emotionally…he'd been through so much already, he should be able to escape into a few hours of very needed oblivion. But, she wasn't a fool. She knew sending him away before the situation had been resolved and they knew one way or another about Inspector Lewis would be as traumatic for Hathaway as taking her away from him had been for the little girl. Only she'd been able to scream and fight against it; Hathaway wouldn't even have that.

So, the chief superintendent left him there, rocking and shivering and utterly vulnerable. Though not alone. Laura Hobson was with him…well, perhaps with was the wrong word. The doctor and the sergeant were only a few feet away from each other, but they both seemed very much alone even so. Innocent had been silently rooting for Hobson and Lewis to get together ever since her own attempt at matchmaking had proven to be such a dismal failure. She had wished they would just get on with it and make each other happy, but now…would it be harder to lose a man you had loved but never had? Innocent, happily married to Mr. Innocent for a good many years now, couldn't guess.

She herself also stuck close to the sergeant's side. It was difficult, her job, being everything to everyone and still managing to keep everyone together, on their toes, and under budget. She did it as well as she could and hoped for the best while expecting even better. But, her best was totally inadequate for young Hathaway. Anyone's would be. Still, she did what she could. As often as she had a moment, she stood beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder or squatted in front of him and filled him in on the fact that there were no new developments.

It was a waiting game they were playing now. A game that couldn't go on much longer without disastrous consequences. One she was not going to continue to play…there was an armored vehicle in route—and why it was taking so long to arrive, no one had yet managed to explain to her. It wasn't an ideal end move, but if the sharpshooters couldn't bring down their quarry soon, she'd send the armored vehicle in to retrieve the survivors. The SO team would have to keep the shooter pinned in the trees while the retrieval went on…and then, once the survivors were safely off the green—they'd have all the time in the world to deal with the madman who'd destroyed so many lives that afternoon.

Her plan carried with it a great number of risks and could backfire on her as horribly as her matchmaking between Ginny and Lewis had…with much more dire results.

It was a plan she didn't have time to put into motion.

He'd been passing in and out of consciousness for a good long time he thought…possibly long enough to be a great-grandad by now. Innocent's 'can't be much longer' had proven to be either a lie or a mistake. Much like his 'I'm fine' had proven to be.

He had come to realize that he was far from fine…and getting farther every minute now. Something was changing in his condition, something ominous and heavy pressing down on him making it almost impossible to breathe instead of just problematic. And there was a twisting and churning somewhere deep inside of him. He struggled to move against the weight and…wrongness pressing on him.

Gentle, restraining hands tried to ease his movements. And gripping, screaming pain made sure he stayed put. Not that he could have moved anyway…his muscles spasmed and ached from lying on the ground for so long, but they refused to obey his commands to move.

"Easy there. Easy. The docs want you to lie still. You could hurt something, you know, moving about." Hurt something. He didn't think he could possibly hurt anything worse than it already was. He was wrong though.

The twisting and churning became an unstoppable force and…

"Oh! Help me turn him! Now! Get him over—" he was spewing up blood in one prolonged and violent bout of vomiting. Unable to move, unable to clear his airway, unable to breath, and all too able to feel his body's desperate need for oxygen. Hands pulled him to his side, and somewhere far away a voice was yelling.

"Your man's going! He's…uh! Blood, litres of it…he's drowning in it!"

Drowning. That was what he was doing and, then, as suddenly as the eruption had begun, it was past. But he was still dying from lack of air. He gasped and struggled to draw in a breath but the pressure on his chest was unrelenting and heavier than the universe itself.

And this, he thought, was death. His mind sharpened and time condensed to this single moment of pain and struggle. And he thought, "Oh, Val, I'm so sorry I wasn't there with you," because the thought of her enduring this moment alone, without him, was worse than the pain of his own death.

The connection to the survivors down below had long ago been transferred to a speakerphone, and the frantic call broadcast it's despairing news to the anxious, restless group up above.

DCS Innocent was helpless in the face of it; her immediate thought was she'd been mistaken, dreadfully mistaken, to leave Hathaway there to have to hear the details of Lewis' death.

Hathaway himself jumped to his feet, throwing off the blanket as he did so. Innocent reached out a hand and grabbed his arm afraid he'd take off running to Lewis. And he would have if she hadn't held on as though both their lives depended on it.

Hobson also jumped to her feet. She moved rapidly to Innocent's side and said, "We can't wait! We've got to go now! Tell the SO teams to keep the shooter on the run…we're going down!" The medical team were nodding and murmuring their assent, and Innocent understood, regardless of what authority she wielded, there was nothing she could do to keep them from their jobs…they were there to save lives, they would not, could not stand by and listen to a man die without doing everything in their power to save him.

And she was only too glad. She couldn't have ordered them to risk their lives to go after Lewis herself, couldn't and wouldn't. But, she could and would stand out of their way to let them go voluntarily.

She gave the order immediately, "Clear the way to the wall. Now! We've people going in." She had a group of officers already charged with securing the area and making sure there would be no unwelcome surprises to endanger the medical team which should have waited for their all clear before moving. They were there primed to go as soon as word came that the shooter was down, but it was the medical team that crouched low and rushed down the rise and across the long expanse of grass to reach the wall first.

They couldn't know that even as they'd taken off, the word they'd been waiting for had finally arrived—the way was clear. The killer was down. It wouldn't have made any difference. They were needed and they went regardless of whether there was still a shooter or not. There wasn't time to do anything else. They were an experienced and well-trained team who knew what they would find on the other side of that wall—unless they were too slow, unless they were too late.

Hobson wasn't a member of their team, but she made the run with them anyway. She, too, knew what to expect. Still, she wasn't really prepared for it. The victim struggling to draw air into lungs which had collapsed under the pressure of the blood filling the pleural cavity, the volumes of semi-clotted and darkening blood, the muscles clenching in a desperate battle for life, the purplish-black skin knotted with distended veins, the wide-open, all-too-aware eyes of a man looking at his end, and over it all death's overpowering stench.

The people who had for the past hour and a half shared with Lewis the little bit of safety the wall offered, moved to the sides to allow the medics room to reach their patient. Innocent had relayed the good news to them over the mobile, but it hadn't computed. They were still trapped with a dying man while out there a madman waited to finish them all off. They couldn't believe their ordeal was over. Even when the first officers reached them, even when they began to lead them away, they didn't really believe. It was only when they were reunited with their waiting families that most of them began to accept the reality of their survival.

A second medical team arrived to care for Tony Jessop. They worked quickly, starting IV lines and hanging bags of antibiotics, saline, and plasma, consulting with the surgeons waiting at the Radcliffe, applying pressure bandages and monitors, and performing a multitude of other tasks that would hopefully give him a fighting chance of surviving transport.

The boy hadn't been fully conscious since Lewis had brought him to his father, and he did not rouse as the medical team worked quickly and efficiently over him. An ambulance eased out onto the soft grass of the green, and, then, with sirens blaring and a police escort, he was on his way to the surgeons at the Radcliffe. His father rode beside him; his mother, who'd been there just as Innocent had promised, in a patrol car right behind him.

And then, it was only Lewis and the soon-to-be verified dead lying on the grass of Melray Green.

And, if the boy's team had worked quickly and efficiently, they had nothing on the team working on Lewis. Everything young Tony had needed, the inspector needed, and much, much more before there could be any hope of transporting him anywhere but to Hobson's morgue. He had been needing it for far too long already. Most of it should have been done in a sterile operating room with a ventilator in place and easy access to a heart/lung bypass machine. The green was far from a surgical suite, but they ignored that fact and did what needed done anyway.

Hobson knelt near his head, murmuring words she didn't think Lewis could hear or take in and understand if he could, trying to stay out of the med team's way, and struggling to pull air into her own lungs in rhythm to his desperate attempts.

She was unaware that as soon as word of the shooter's death had come through, Innocent had released her death grip on Hathaway's arm, and he was there just a few feet behind her. He stood well out of the way of the desperately busy med team, swaying on his feet, and unsuccessfully trying to pray. His fear and dread were too strong to allow him to form coherent thoughts, and his growing certainty that he was watching Lewis die stronger than his faith.

And then there was a noise behind him and a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to find his father and mother. As they enveloped him in their arms, he looked into his dad's eyes and said, "I didn't go into the summerhouse, Dad. I didn't."

His mother was busy assuring herself he was unharmed and didn't even hear him. His father though nodded his head and as he pulled him closer said, "I know, Son. I know you didn't…and I'm glad. I'm proud of you." And Hathaway, who didn't even know where the words had come from or what had been so important about them that they had for that brief moment overridden every other concern in his mind, felt a relief so great that for a second he couldn't hold himself upright and sagged in his father's arms. His father tightened his hold on him and kept him from crashing to the ground.

Hathaway's mother said, "Let's get him out of here." At that, Hathaway suddenly remembered where he was and why he wasn't going anywhere.

"I…I've got to stay—my governor," he said motioning vaguely to the frantic scene going on behind him. His parents, who upon arriving had seen only their child, suddenly looked about them and understood that their son's ordeal was far from over.

"Of course," his father said when he found his voice, "but let's sit down, shall we?" In the practiced manner of a man used to being in charge, he saw his son safely settled in a way that wouldn't have made the younger Hathaway bristle at the indignity of being treated as a small child if he'd been in any state to notice.

Although Hobson assumed, hoped, and prayed that Lewis was beyond hearing, understanding, or feeling what was happening to him, he wasn't. He lay helpless and defenseless under the med team's ministering hands. He could hear their grave comments to each other as they worked and Hobson's low murmurs near his ear as though they came from a great way off. The frantic, irregular pounding of his heart and the rushing flow of his blood sounded much more immediate and clear. Other than the struggle to get an airway inserted and the placement of the chest tubes, the medical procedures didn't register on his radar. What were they to the consuming need for oxygen and the sharp, shooting pain assailing him with every breath he tried to take?

The effort to endure, to hold on, to live began to wear him down. He might have given up and let go if not for Hobson's worried voice calling to him.

"Stay with us, Robbie," she pleaded, and he did his best to not disappoint her.

"You've got to hold on—what will Hathaway do if you die?" she asked, and he remembered the ache he'd felt losing Morse and held on.

"Think of your children," she said. And he remembered the pain that had radiated from them as they'd sat vigil at Val's bedside in London. And the sounds of their grief as they'd sat by his side at her funeral, and he refused to have them go through that again for his sake.

"Don't die, Robbie," she begged, and he didn't.