Tuesday, September 25, 2001

Adrift (Part II) - 135

[The season opener and conclusion to last seasons cliff hanger. Apparently DJEs contract was renewed] Mac, Brumby, Chegwidden, Bud, Harriet, Chloe and Singer left the pre-wedding dinner and went back to JAG headquarters to monitor the rescue attempts. M withdrew and wanted to be alone, excluding Brum who became increasingly hurt. Renee also felt like "odd man out." She said she was going to call Hs mother but B stopped her. M postponed their wedding for that day and Brum reluctantly concurred. Chloe talked with M and chided her for not trying to find H "like you did me." Together, M had a vision of Hs raft, without H in it. She went out and put her finger on a map saying "look here." C was able to convince captain Ingle to search at Ms envisioned coordinates. The Viking found the empty raft and dropped SAR buoys. C saw Brum frustrated and told him "she's dealing with it in her own way." "That's the problem," he said. Renee asked Brum "why aren't you with M" and he told her "you'd have to ask M." Renee asked him "how do I look," and he said "left out." The SAR buoy floated and hit H. He used it as a radio to call the plane back. Then when the helicopter couldn't see him, fired his weapon so they could see his muzzle flashes. The weather was still below minimums but they pulled him up, having been in the ocean for 3 hours (the maximum exposure time). He had stage 4 hypothermia and was dying until Skates "jumped his bones" and talked him back recalling his promise to "save her."

Everyone found an excuse to be elsewhere so Renee could meet Hs plane at transfer. He had retrograde amnesia and could remember Renee but only from a year ago. H told M he was sorry for fouling up the wedding plans and asked if they had set another date. She said "don't worry about it. That's the least of our concerns." Brum pressed to reset the date for the weekend but she said she "couldn't get her head around it that fast" and to "let her think about it." Renee told B that H had forgotten their last year but "seemed to have all his Mac memories organized and cataloged." M and Brum took Chloe to the airport, hugged and were all smiley then Brum said he didn't want to reschedule. He said "let me think about it." Skates told H that the incident "had reawakened her love for flying" so she wasn't leaving. H thanked Loftness for breaking minimums and was told that "I like flying in zero-zero." When Ht wanted info on the new date, M told her that she and Brum were having problems. Renee was pressing H to talk about their relationship and he said "why does it always have to come back to M?" Brum moved out because "if we end it I don't want to have to come back here." He asked "why in a crisis am I the last one you look to?" Very upset M went to Hs apartment to talk and while there Brum called. He told her he had "wondered who she would go to first" and that he was leaving back to Australia. She left for the airport to stop him but he still got on the plane. Very upset and weeping she called H that "he's left." H told her to "come to me… you know the reason…" When she got there, however, Renee was there having just been told that her father had unexpectedly died and had asked him to go with her to the funeral. He wanted to call M when they landed but M said "don’t do that to her. I'll be here when you get back." M walked out into the storm and rain and saw H and Renee embrace through the window.