Yeahhhh, so this is gonna be a rough one. The one deleted scene/line I hadn't seen anyone take on in a fic (probably with good reason), was Kate's line after saying how Holtz's IQ was off the charts, "It's okay, I have a terminal illness." Between that and thinking about the retirees in Japan who volunteered to take younger people's places cleaning up the nuclear contamination at Fukushima because they wouldn't live long enough to develop the cancer from it, this story came into my mind.

I've done some research and based a lot of it on situations with my older relatives, but if there's anything I've written that's inaccurate or insensitive to those dealing with conditions like this, I apologize in advance. Let me know and I'll adjust and improve it. I made up a syndrome so I had freedom from being tied to perfect accuracy, but I still want to respect the real conditions it's inspired by.

This is one of the sadder stories I've written, but I never like to leave my characters with nothing but pain and tragedy, so there is a happy ending for this. It just takes a long, rough way to get there.

A common trend Erin had noted about the hauntings they studied and documented was that ghost occurrences frequently correlated with the revelation of hidden secrets. Perhaps they were the other woman, murdered to keep an affair from coming to light, now returned to seek acknowledgment. Maybe they had a story left untold before they died and now were trapped without closure, unable to communicate with the living.

And sometimes, Erin mused, ducking a tray of surgical tools, ghosts were just big stupid jerks.

This particular one was haunting a still active hospital. As if the poor patients didn't have enough woes under normal circumstances, now they had a mischievous and destructive Class 3 who thought it was hilarious to interfere with operations and scare the pediatric ward.

"I'm just saying, instead of chasing this guy all over the place, let me give him one pass through the ghostchipper and we can go home," Patty ranted, as the ghost phased through another wall, evading capture.

"I really don't think the staff will be thrilled if we spray ectoplasm over every surface in a hospital. We're already probably ruining some sterile areas as it is."

"Honestly, with what already lives on hospital surfaces, ectoplasm would probably be an improvement," Holtzmann commented, walking backward at the rear of the group to keep the ghost from sneaking up on them. "Hey, when we're done, you think I could get some MRSA to take home for experiments?"

"Somehow I don't think you even have to ask," Abby grimaced, eyeing a discolored stain on the hallway floor tiles.

There was a shriek and suddenly the elevator doors ahead of them opened, a flurry of stuffed animals from the gift shop flying out at them like a fuzzy swarm of locusts. Batting their way through the distraction, Abby and Patty managed to get their proton streams around the ghost as it flew out of the elevator. They held it momentarily, but before Erin and Holtzmann could get an angle to join in, the ghost had wriggled out of their streams, laughing as it slipped away down a side corridor.

Abby growled frustratedly. "It's not helping that lightning storm outside's giving him tons of extra ionization to play with."

"These skinny hallways aren't making it easy to get room for all of us to shoot at him either," Patty grumbled.

"We need to regroup," Erin agreed. "Split up and surround him somehow. But the way he's drawing power from that storm I'm not sure our trap's going to have enough force to hold him."

Holtz snapped her fingers and Erin noticed she was staring at something down the hall. "I've got an idea. I'm gonna get set up in the room at the end of the hall around that corner. Give me about ten, fifteen minutes, then lure the ghost down there. And whatever you do, don't come in the room yourselves."

"Okay," Patty said dubiously.

Holtz grinned, winking as she jogged down the hallway. "Don't worry. This is gonna be awesome."

Erin wanted to ask for any further clues what the plan was, then saw the sign pointing the direction Holtzmann had just gone.

RADIOLOGY

"Oh, you know this ain't gonna be good," Patty groaned, following Erin's gaze.

"It's freaking brilliant!" Abby laughed, grinning almost as wildly as the engineer. "All right, you heard her. Let's go taunt a ghost."

Keeping the ghost distracted long enough wasn't a problem at all. Getting him to go where they wanted? That took a lot more effort and craftiness. Fortunately, it wanted an audience and the team had developed enough strategies by now to attract ghosts' attention that they were able to gradually steer it back down toward the Radiology department.

Holtzmann had apparently convinced the few techs on shift to take their breaks and so the area was deserted as they drove the ghost past empty exam rooms and shielded doors. Finally, Erin spotted the door Holtzmann had indicated, one of the X-ray rooms. With thick, lined walls and no windows, it was sufficiently insulated from the storm it would slow down the ghost's ability to draw on the free energy.

The ghost seemed to be realizing this too and starting to get aggressive as it felt cornered.

"Oh no, you don't," Patty said, wrapping her proton stream around it as it tried to make a lunge at them.

Erin and Abby joined in, the combined force of three proton streams, plus the lead in the walls giving them enough of an edge to limit his movement, even if it was a struggle to keep him contained.

"Nicely done, ladies," Holtzmann's voice drifted from the room. Erin looked in to see her standing with the trap hotwired into a partially-dissected X-ray machine. "If you can keep him there, that'd be great. And if you can maintain about a thirty foot radius of what's about to happen, that'd be even greater."

"Are we outside thirty feet?" Patty asked nervously. "How'm I supposed to eyeball thirty feet?"

"Ready?" Holtz called.

"Guess we'll find out," Abby said.

"Set…"

"Jesus," Patty muttered.

"Let him go!" Holtz yelled.

All three disabled their proton streams as Holtz stomped the trap activator. The X-ray machine beside her released an almost audible pulse of radiation and the hollow laser beam that erupted from the trap was bigger than Erin had ever seen it.

The ghost didn't stand a chance. Hyperionized or not, he was sucked into the vortex, wailing all the way. Holtz slammed the trap shut again, the devices in the room whirring to a halt as the power drained and smoke drifted up from the trap.

"Whoo!" she whooped, fists raised in victory.

"Nice one!" Abby cheered, high-fiving Erin and Patty as they slumped in exhaustion. She started toward Holtz too, but was waved back as Holtz disconnected the trap and carried it out of the room.

"I wouldn't go in there. They're gonna have to let that place air out for a bit, maybe a week or two. Plus I think we owe them a new X-ray machine. But the trap's holding strong!" She high- and low-fived Abby now that she was back in the hallway.

"Are you okay?" Patty asked, frowning. "I mean, you were in there when that thing went off."

"I am giddy with pride and success, so I am more than okay," Holtz grinned, decisively shoving the trap back into its ruts at the bottom of her proton pack.

"Seriously, Holtz, that looked like a pretty big radiation exposure," Erin insisted with a frown. "I think you should get checked out before we leave, just to make sure."

"Honestly, it was just a few hundred millisieverts, no big deal." She shrugged cheerfully. "The effects won't kick in for another thirty years. I'll be long gone by then."

"That's a grim and morbid way of thinking," Patty grimaced.

"We fight ghosts with nuclear lasers. I'm not exactly counting on getting to cash in that government 401K one day," Holtzmann said, as casually as if she was discussing plans for the weekend.

"Not me," Patty snorted. "I'm taking those pension checks and retiring to a beach somewhere where they ain't heard of snow."

Holtz arched an eyebrow as they started walking back toward the busier parts of the hospital. "Really? You're telling me you don't want to go out in a fiery maelstrom of glory?"

"Call me crazy like that," Patty deadpanned.

Holtzmann turned the Abby. "Abbs? Death by spectral warfare?"

"That's enticing, it really is, but I've gotta admit I'm kind of looking forward to all of us hanging out when we're old and gray."

Erin chuckled. "Can you imagine? It'll be like Golden Girls, but with ghosts and proton weapons."

"Eating cheesecake, arguing over who put Erin's dentures in ectoplasm…" Abby grinned.

"Hey!" Erin protested.

"I call being Blanche," Patty said. "No offense to Bea or Bette, but I wanna still be getting play when I'm old."

"Yeah, that's fair," Abby nodded. "Hey, remember that one episode where…"

Erin smiled at Holtzmann, who had settled into the back of the group, and nudged her with her shoulder. "Sorry, guess we'll have to ask you to put off the blaze of glory and stick around a few decades longer."

Holtz grunted an acknowledgment and Erin noticed her celebratory mood had entirely disappeared. She didn't join the debate over who would be which of the other Golden Girls, just trailed behind them quietly as they walked back out into the lobby and found an elevator, seeming preoccupied with something.

But Erin had learned they wouldn't get her to open up in a public area anyway, so she just accepted Holtzmann's subdued energy as they wrapped things up with hospital security and made the uneventful drive back to the firehouse, lightning still flashing off the windowed buildings around them.

OOO

They mostly went their own ways when they got back, Holtzmann taking the trap to containment, then excusing herself to her lab to work on something. The others settled back into their own projects that had been interrupted by the bust. The weather seemed to keep other customers from calling, so they were mostly able to work uninterrupted. After a couple of hours Erin had mostly forgotten Holtz's odd mood as life settled into the routine of the firehouse.

When they took a break for dinner, Holtzmann declined to join them, but that wasn't unusual when she was immersed in a project. Patty just took her up a Hot Pocket and a fruit cup, insisting she eat both before she raided the kitchen for another snack. And drink at least one bottle of something that didn't contain caffeine.

Late that evening, after the storm had ended and the sun had set unseen behind the clouds, Abby and Erin were sitting together at a desk, discussing the field dynamics of spectral particles between Class 3 and Class 4 entities to figure out whether the fact that the ghost knew who it was had a quantifiable impact on its interactions with the physical world. They were so deep in their analysis Erin didn't even notice when Holtzmann came down the stairs until a manila folder was dropped on the desk in their eyelines.

Both physicists looked up curiously. "Hey, Holtz. What's this?" Abby asked.

Holtzmann had paced a short distance away, chewing at her thumbnail a bit and avoiding their eyes. "Read it and I'll explain."

"Oh god, what is it now? She think of a way to work X-ray machines into the packs?" Patty asked, putting aside the book she was reading and standing up from her couch to come join them at the desk.

Erin watched Holtzmann a moment longer, her closed body language raising concerned alarms in Erin's head, then leaned next to Abby, who had opened the folder.

Instead of calculations or schematics, it contained a file with Holtzmann's name on it. A medical file, Erin realized, reading on. She didn't understand most of what she read within. She saw mention of a syndrome whose name she didn't recognize. She could understand the root words and prefixes of a lot of the terms, but not what they meant in conjunction except that they didn't sound like anything good when combined. And she especially didn't like the idea of any of them being connected to Holtzmann.

"Holtz," Abby said quietly, "what—?"

"It's a genetic disorder," Holtzmann said, voice even, but flat, looking at the ground in front of her rather than her friends, who were now staring at her. "Rare, barely even named by the time they ID'd it in my DNA. Happens in less than one in five hundred million people. Always had a knack for defying the odds," she added in a mirthless attempt at a joke.

A cold pall sank over the room. Erin's stomach suddenly felt like ice.

"Did you just get diagnosed?" Abby managed.

"Nah." Holtzmann shook her head. "Found out in undergrad. Wanted to earn a little extra cash, so I signed up to be in some grad students' genomics study. They found the genetic marker and referred me to a specialist. On the plus side, I wound up being a very interesting data point in a major genetics paper."

"Wait, so what does this mean?" Patty asked, though her expression suggested she didn't really want to know the answer.

Holtzmann licked her lips, still not meeting their eyes. "It's a mutation that affects the neuromuscular system. Little genetic typo, but in juuust the wrong place. Stays dormant most of your life, then effects kick in around middle age."

"Effects?" Abby asked weakly.

Holtz scratched at the back of her head. "Things start breaking down: motor control, neural function, the associated organ failures…"

Patty muttered a curse.

Erin felt like the air had been knocked out of her lungs. "How fast?" she rasped.

Now Holtz's eyes turned to the ceiling. She inhaled as she thought. "Making it to your fifties is doable. Past sixty's unheard of."

Oh god. Erin's eyes closed as she let her head hang, taking deep breaths against the sudden light-headedness that filled her.

She heard a sniffling sound beside her and looked over, realizing Abby was crying.

Holtzmann hunched, looking pained and guilty. "This is why I didn't tell you guys."

"Yeah, it's kind of upsetting to find out your best friend has a terminal illness," Abby said, voice tight as she wiped at her tears.

"I've still got, like, fifteen good years left," Holtz said, as if trying to cheer them up. "I don't want to spend them thinking about when it won't be so good. I just…thought you probably should know. You know, before it happens."

When nobody was comforted or could muster up much response, she continued, as if desperate to break the grieving atmosphere. "I've had it the whole time you've known me. Nothing's wrong yet. I'm the same Holtzy I was yesterday."

Except yesterday we didn't know you had a genetic time bomb ticking away waiting to kill you, Erin thought miserably.

"Baby, if you've known all along, what made you pick tonight to tell us?" Patty asked, then rolled her eyes, answering her own question. "Oh damn, all the retirement talk today."

"Yeahhhh…" Holtz shrank further, apologetically. "You guys had all those ideas about growing old together. I just thought…you should know before you, you know, got your heart set on it."

Abby took a shaky breath, getting up. Holtzmann actually cringed as she approached, as if unsure what Abby was going to do. Erin realized with even more sadness that Holtz was afraid about how they were taking the news, not just because she hated dealing with emotions, but because she thought the small family she had found might reject her now that they knew about her situation.

Instead, Abby reached out and pulled Holtzmann into her arms, hugging her tight. "Doesn't change anything. We've proven ghosts exist and stopped an apocalypse from happening. What's a little piece of DNA code against us, huh?"

Holtzmann awkwardly hugged her back, not quite relaxed yet. "And even if we can't stop it?"

"Then we have the best damn lives we can for whatever time we have," Abby said firmly, shifting back to arm's length so she could look at Holtz. "I mean, with our job, there's no guarantee any of us will make it to old age. We could all die in a bust tomorrow for all we know."

"Yeah, you're right," Holtzmann grinned slightly.

Patty stared at them. "Y'all should not be so happy about that thought. But Holtzy, seriously, you know whatever happens we're gonna be there for you, right?"

Holtz ducked her head, rubbing behind her ear uncomfortably. "Thanks, Pats."

As Abby squeezed her shoulders again, agreeing, a dark thought went through Erin's head. "Holtz, you said you found out when you were an undergrad."

"Yeah," Holtzmann confirmed. "It's part of why I decided to specialize in nuclear engineering. If somebody's gonna play with the really dangerous toys, might as well be someone with less to lose."

Erin blinked past that saddening thought for the time being and pressed forward. "And you said you never thought you'd have a friend until you met Abby. So, what were you going to do when it did kick in?"

Holtz shifted, looking uncomfortable again. "Well, Dr. Gorin knew, but we figured I'd probably outlive her anyway. But that was one of the other perks of working with radioactivity. Decreased the chances I'd make it to that point. Or maybe I'd counter-mutate it. And if I did get that far… I had plenty of ways to check out early."

Erin swallowed. She had suspected as much, but it was a bit of a kick in the gut to hear it confirmed out loud.

Abby and Patty had gone still. "You mean—?" Abby said.

"Play the nuclear solution," Holtz elaborated casually. "Take a fiery shortcut. Ride the atomic rocket to the afterlife—"

"We get it, we get it," Patty interrupted. She walked over, cupping a hand on the back of Holtzmann's head so she would look Patty in the eye. "But I need you to promise me something. Even if you do start getting to that point, don't take that option without telling us, okay? Promise?"

Holtz patted her arm, nodding firmly. "Don't worry, Pats. It's different now. Got plenty worth sticking around for."

"Damn right," Patty agreed, sounding more relieved.

Holtzmann cleared her throat loudly, indicating she was reaching her limit on emotional outpouring. "So, you guys know now, but I've got ages until it starts doing anything, so if we can just keep doing everything like normal, that'd be great."

"With a bombshell like that, I can't make any promises I'm not gonna cry or be messed up for a while," Abby said, "but I promise I'll try."

"Same, girl," Patty nodded. "It's gonna be a long time before I'm remotely okay about this, but if normal's what you want, we'll do the best we can."

"Okay." Holtz nodded, gently freeing herself from Abby's arm. "Think I'm gonna go back up and work on stuff for a bit."

Erin realized she hadn't said much during the whole conversation, though her mind had been a tempest since she first saw the file. As Holtzmann passed, her hand reached out, catching Holtz's wrist to stop her. But when Holtz paused and looked at her inquiringly, Erin found she couldn't find words enough to convey the multitude of thoughts logjamming in her brain.

Her expression must have said enough, though, because Holtz gave her a little half-smile and shifted to squeeze her hand with a wink. "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere yet, Er." Her eyes widened in a slightly troubled expression as she extracted her hand carefully. "Unless I left the heating element on next to the oxyacetylene tanks."

She bounded up the stairs, much closer to her usual self again.

The same couldn't be said for the women left on the ground floor.

Patty drew a deep, shaky breath, running her hands down her face. "Damn."

Abby had a hand on her head, looking like she was trying not to start crying again. "You know, about ninety-five percent of the gray hairs I have I got because of her?" she said, with fake irritation.

"I believe it." Patty pushed away from the desk she was braced against. "Look, I know I ain't getting any more work done tonight, so I'm having a drink. You guys want some?"

"Yeah."

"The stronger stuff's in the cupboard above the fridge," Abby said.

As Patty went to get the alcohol, Erin slumped down at a desk, letting her head sink onto her folded arms. "All the time we've known her, I had no idea. I mean, there's a lot she doesn't talk about, but something this big?"

"I know." Abby rubbed her eyes. "I'm just gonna say this now, if you've got any scary, tragic secrets you've been keeping about your health, maybe just don't tell me, 'cause I think it'd kill me."

The half-hearted joke fell flat between them. They sat in heavy silence for a few more minutes, lost in morose thoughts. Then Abby straightened up, moving to the desk to close the medical file.

"Well, if we've only got fifteen or twenty more years with her, we're gonna make sure they're the best damn years of her life."

As Abby walked off to move to the couch in the lounge, Erin mused that she seconded that plan. If there was nothing else she could do right now, except commiserate with the rest of the team until alcohol numbed the shock of the news, she could at least swear to uphold that goal for however long they were lucky enough to all be together. No more wasting time or taking things for granted. From here on out, every day counted even more than it had before.