(Got this idea after rewatching 207 and being reminded that Jack is a universal donor…)
“Please don’t be mad.” Jack wants to cry at the words Mac won’t stop repeating even as blood bubbles over his lips. Damn it, the kid’s bleeding out in the middle of a war zone in a third world country and all he’s doing is apologizing, like somehow Jack is going to be angry that he took three bullets trying to get the ambassador and his daughter safely out of the rebel-held territory.
The assets are on their way to exfil coordinates in the capable hands of Jack’s local contact, but there was no way Mac would survive long enough for them to get him to the airlift.
Jack broke their covers to get them access to the aid hospital. He knows it’s against protocol to use their status to get them preferential treatment, but Mac is dyingand Jack doesn’t care what protocol says. So now they’re in a battered, half-staffed hospital, with a group of volunteer medics who Jack can’t decide are insanely courageous or just insane. Kind of like Mac.
“Excuse me, Agent Dalton, we’re going to have to get a better look at that wound,” a young medic says, pulling his hands away from Mac’s side.
“He got shot in the stomach and he’s bleeding out, what the hell more do you need to know?” Jack knows it’s not this kid’s fault. She looks fresh out of college, a little older than Mac was when Jack met him in the Sandbox, but with the same ‘out to save the world’ look in her eyes. She came here trying to make a difference with the skills she has. You can’t blame her for not being a fully trained professional.
But all logic tends to go out the window when it comes to Mac. Jack just wants these people to fix his kid. “Is there a doctor here?”
“He got seriously ill from another patient three weeks ago, shipped home to a hospital in the US.” The woman says. “We chose to stay and save as many lives as we can. Including your friend’s.” Her hands fly over Mac’s face and chest, assessing his injuries. He looks horrifically pale, Jack’s seen corpses with more color. The medic turns to one of the others with her. “He’s lost a lot of blood, and he’s going into hypovolemic shock. I need a transfusion started right now.” She turns back to Jack. “What’s his blood type?”
“AB Neg.” Jack tries not to think about the fact that that’s not a very common one.
“No.” Her partner scrubs a hand over his face. “And I remember, because that girl with the shrapnel in her arm needed the last of it.”
The medic turns back to Jack. “I’m sorry. This is a war zone, Agent Dalton, we deal with dozens of casualties a day. And his blood type is rare; we’ve used up the last of it and all of our universal blood has been gone for three days now.”
“I’m a universal donor,” Jack insists.
“The amount of blood Agent MacGyver has lost…” The doctor glances at Jack. “To replace it would be a risk to your own life and no guarantee of saving him.”
“I don’t care if you have to bleed me dry to save him, just do it.” Jack looks down at the shaking, delirious boy on the gurney. Then he rolls up his sleeve.
After the first hour, everything is a blur. Watching the medics close Mac up, listening to them argue about infection and sepsis and the risks of a transport. Being loaded into the back of a ramshackle van and driven out of the city in the middle of the night, on a road mined with IEDs and occasionally swept by enemy fire.
Jack’s seen a lot of courage, in his years with the Deltas and the CIA. And these volunteer medics are as brave as anyone he’s met. He just hopes they don’t all die doing this.
When they get to a town that hasn’t yet had its phone service cut by the rebel forces, Jack calls Patty and demands exfil. He passes out in the back of the van ten minutes later.
When he wakes up, it’s to someone standing over him, arms crossed. Patty.
“From what I hear, Dalton, you ditched the assets, and exfil, to try and save Agent MacGyver’s life, in the process revealing your identity and putting the lives of two volunteer medics, as well as your own, at risk.” Patty shakes her head.
“They did volunteer,” Jack says. “So did I.”
“Your medevac told me you and MacGyver were both suffering from low blood volume when you were brought in,” Patty says. “You could have died if they had been an hour later.”
“Good thing you’re punctual then.”
“What I want to know, Dalton, is if I am to expect this kind of behavior every time Agent MacGyver is seriously injured in the field.”
Jack stares at her, as intimidatingly as he can when he’s still loopy from blood loss and wearing nothing but a flimsy hospital gown. “Yes. Because that damn kid has been abandoned too many times in his life, and I ain’t gonna be the next one to do it.”
Patty nods. “I assumed that would be your answer. But in the future, Dalton, if you’re going to ditch the plan, please tell me.”
“I would have! If the kid hadn’t torn our cell phones and sat phone apart to get us out of the embassy!” Jack shakes his head. Mac is disturbingly fond of destroying communication technology. “How is he?”
A ghost of a smile crosses Patty’s lips. “Still in surgery, one of the bullets had fragmented, but he’s young, and strong. He’ll live, thanks to you.”
And when, at Jack’s insistence, Patty has them bring him into Mac’s recovery room, Jack looks down at the still too pale boy on the bed and knows that if he had died last night, it still would have been worth it.
The world ain’t worth saving without him in it.
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