"Ok, how many times can I say I'm sorry? It's not like I deliberately poured your coffee down your top. I totally did not see that speed hump coming. Why are you so grumpy today, anyways?
"Grumpy, Castle?" Beckett's eye spat fire as she stopped just inside the hospital's main entrance to face her slightly cowering partner. "'Grumpy' makes me sound like a cantankerous old Disney character. I am not 'grumpy,' I am irritable. So far today I have burned my mouth on breakfast, stubbed my toe on the bathroom door, dented my fender when we parked at the precinct and gone up and down the stairs to homicide at lease five times because the bloody elevator is out. To round that all off I now have to interview a surgeon who is probably an arrogant sixty-something man with a toupee and a penchant for giving answers to my boobs, so yes... coffee down my top is exactly just what I needed to put me in a better mood this morning." Breathing heavily in and out through her nose, Beckett continued to eye Castle with the same withering gaze until the writer hedged a question.
"Is there anything I can say right now, that's not going to make things any worse? Oh..." Castle's eyes popped as he gently reached out to smooth his fingers across Beckett's wrist. "How about I go and get you another, bigger, better coffee at this awesome little cafe I know just around the corner, then I can meet you back at the surgeon's office upstairs?"
A small smile flicked in the corner of Kate's mouth as she rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said, as she twisted her wrist so that she could link her fingers through Castle's. He squeezed his fingers gently together in a loving hand embrace. "But, just so you know, you still have a lot to make up for calling me grumpy."
"Who's grumpy...and why do you smell like coffee?" Esposito quizzed, arriving through the electric hospital doors, Kevin Ryan at his side. Castle immediately turned to the dark-haired detective with widened eyes, begging the man to silence before quickly releasing Beckett's fingers and backing towards the doors.
"I'm gonna go and I'll see you up there in ten." He narrowed his eyes at Esposito before elegantly spinning on one foot. only to clunk straight into an oncoming elderly women being pushed by a surly looking orderly. "Sorry," he uttered, darting out the doors before he could do anymore damage.
"So who's having a worse day Beckett, you or him?" Ryan spoke up for the first time nodding his head in the direction of the fleeing author.
Beckett shook her head, "I'm gonna go and try get a couple of layers of coffee off of me, I'll see you guys at the elevators, 'kay?" Without waiting for an answer she headed for the ladies room.
Once in the bathroom Beckett took in the full extent of the damage to her top. "Thank you so much, Castle," she mumbled before unbuttoning her previously pure white shirt. She tugged the chain carrying her two rings over her head, placed them on the counter and reached for the towel dispenser. She knew there was no chance of cleaning her shirt properly in a hospital bathroom sink, but at least she could remove the sticky feeling from her skin. Wiping over her chest, Beckett heaved another sigh as she chastised herself for wearing a white bra. Rinsing off her chain and rings, she dried them in some clean towel, before beginning to redress. At least her hair was shorter now and she didn't have to deal with coffee-caked hair as well. "Small mercies," she said under her breath and after one final shrug at herself in the mirror, she turned to go find the boys.
"Lets just get this over with," Beckett said, causing Ryan to jump a little as she walked up behind him. "What floor did you say this Doctor's on?"
He looked at his notes. "His name is Neil Cotter and his office is on two but when we called through, his receptionist said he'd be on rounds at eleven so we'll probably catch him on eight now. Was that a lot of numbers? That sounded like a lot of numbers."
"Ryan, what floor?" Esposito voiced exasperation for both himself and Beckett.
"Eight. Gee, now who's grumpy?"
"You wanna see grumpy because I can show you grumpy right now if you want, Bro?"
"Guys," Beckett interjected, before starting towards the elevators, "let's just get this done so I can get back to the precinct and change my damn shirt." Beckett readjusted the scarf around her neck to cover the coffee stains as best as possible. "How's that look?"
Esposito and Ryan looked at each other a little confused.
"What, are we your fashion consultants now?" Espo's lip quivered into a smile.
Beckett stepped on to the newly arrived elevator before answering. "You kidding me, with your taste in 80's jackets and Ryan's taste in ties? No way."
"You're funny," Espo stated, stepping in behind her.
"What's wrong with my ties?" Ryan queried as the doors closed.
By the time the three detectives arrived at the eighth floor Ryan had given up trying to defend his choice in ties and had moved on to the ways hospitals gave him the creeps.
"All I'm saying is that any place that stores a whole lot of dead bodies in a basement should be treated with a healthy sense of apprehension."
"So, I guess Jenny will be having a home-birth then?" Beckett countered.
"She has talked about it, but despite all the cleansing she made us do before the wedding, I think when it comes to birth she's gonna go for all the hospital drugs she can get." The young detective chuckled as he pondered his wife's obvious contradicting healthy lifestyle choices.
"Speaking of drugs," Espo interjected, "nurses stations this way."
Weaving their way through the labyrinth of shiny white corridors, shoes squeaking and clopping (in Beckett's case) on the tiled floors, they stopped just short of the reception desk to formulate their plan of interrogation.
"It shouldn't be that complicated, really," Beckett began. "If you guys can check with the nursing staff about how long, when and who tended Munroe, I'll check in with the surgeon on the amount of medical knowledge that would have been needed to mess with our vic's pacemaker. Then I get to go change my shirt, yeah?" She posed the final sentence as a question but both men knew it wasn't.
"Yeah, just so long as you've got your priorities in order there, Beckett." Espo continued his teasing.
"Shut up and go find a nurse." Beckett rolled her eyes but at least some of her sense of humor was returning over the whole issue.
"C'mon Ryan, let's go find a nurse," Espo gestured to Ryan with quotation fingers in the air.
"You just had to make it sound dirty, didn't you?" Ryan returned with an air of superiority.
Beckett watched the men walk off to the left of the nurses station as Espo complained that Ryan used to be a lot more fun before he became all responsible, married and dad-ish. Shaking her head for the umpteenth time she walked towards the right to hunt down Munroe's surgeon.
Approaching the first person she saw at the desk, the detective introduced herself. "Hi, I'm Detective Beckett. I called through early this morning saying I needed to speak with one of your surgeons about a homicide victim."
The twenty something nurse looked up wide-eyed at Beckett's use of the word 'homicide.' "Homicide?" gasped the girl, "one of our patients was murdered?" She whispered the last word as if saying it too loud might bring the same fate down on herself.
"I'm afraid so, Nurse..." the detective paused briefly to look at the girl's name tag, "...Cooper." Beckett felt torn between pity and contempt for the nurse's obvious naivety about homicide statistics in New York. However, her quick glance to Kate's top reminded Beckett that she wanted to get this line of questioning over and done with, quickly. "The patient's name was Bob Munroe and he had a pacemaker put in here earlier this year. My colleagues are getting information on his treatment while he was here, but what I need is to speak to Mr Munroe's surgeon about who might have had enough knowledge to tamper with the device. Are you able to tell me where I can find Dr Cotter?"
Nurse Cooper blinked her big blue eyes and then appeared to snap back from whatever macabre acts she was imagining. "Um, yes Detective, the surgeons and their interns are in room 8D and they should be fini..." The young women broke off as she looked towards her right where a small group of men and women in scrubs had begun filing out through a doorway. "Oh there they are," the nurse continued, "if you hurry you might be able to catch Dr Cotter before he sees his next patient."
Beckett, mumbled her thanks and took off down the hall. She was almost to the group of surgeons before she realized she still had no idea which one of the group was Cotter. "Excuse me," she began, speaking loud enough to get their attention. "My name's Detective Beckett, I'm look for Dr Neil Cotter?" A sixty something older gentlemen stepped toward Beckett, but before he could speak he was interrupted by another voice.
"Kate?"
Beckett's eyes flew to the back of the group as a familiar face came in to view.
"Josh?"