[Author's Note]

This is fairly new territory for me, but I love these two characters more than I can say and I just couldn't resist taking them for a spin. In any case, there will be some medical mistakes and improbabilities but I hope than you all can overlook them in the name of what I hope will be a good time. If there are any mistakes or (unintentional) OOC moments, I'm to blame. All warnings aside, please enjoy and leave a review to let me know if I should keep this one going. - A.E.

Chapter One

"Penny!"

Somewhere, in another place in time, a voice shrieks like a vulture. The sudden interruption in her thoughts makes Penny jump like a scared rabbit. She shakes her head out of her day dream and turns to find her manager facing her with a bored expression, with one hand rested pointedly on her wide hip. Penny winces and hopes she hasn't been ignoring a table.

"I'm sorry, what's up?" she asks and her only answer is the cordless phone being shoved into her hands. She takes the gesture for what it is and brings the device to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Penny?" the voice asks and she recognizes it as Howard's. She fights the urge to roll her eyes and clears her throat instead.

"Yeah, Howard, it's me," she replies impatiently, wondering what he could possibly want enough to call her at work, "What's up?"

"There's been an accident," he says and her heart jolts violently in her chest. She can faintly hear commotion in the background, but nothing is clear enough to make out.

"Accident?" she questions, finally forcing her voice to work. It comes out high and squeaky and she had to clear her throat again to get it to sound like something audible to human ears. "What kind of accident?"

"It was the craziest thing, actually," he starts in and she's suddenly terrified of how long this story might go on, "We were moving furniture in Leonard and Sheldon's apartment."

"Oh, my God," she says, honestly shocked, "Sheldon let you move furniture?"

"No, not really," he replies candidly, "He was trying to stop us when one of his action figures fell and knocked him out cold."

"Is he okay?" she asks, starting to reach for her purse to collect her things.

"Well, we couldn't get him to wake up for a few minutes but… well, he's awake," he says and she has the instant idea that he's leaving something very important out of the conversation. "Anyway, Sheldon's ready to be released. Leonard and Raj had to go back to work and now we seem to be without a ride."

She hears someone shout something in the background, but the sound is muffled over the line. The voice is followed by Howard's shouting something along the lines of, "For the love of God, shut up. And stop doing that!"

"Okay… sure thing," she says suspiciously. He must be talking to Sheldon, who's undoubtedly trying to reorganize the emergency room to achieve its maximum efficiency.

Or something like that, anyway.

She nods her head, convinced of her theory, and slings her handbag over her shoulder. "Which hospital did you take him to?"

Howard gives her the address and she hangs up, heading for the door. She spares her ambivalent manager an explanation of "personal emergency," and then she heads out to the car. Despite the still-warm weather, a chill creeps up the back of her neck and on her arms.

He's fine, she tells herself as she pulls herself behind the wheel. Sheldon's just fine.

---

Penny arrives at the hospital in minutes, pointed in the right direction by an overworked male nurse who looked like he might burst into tears at any moment. She's heading down the hallway when Howard appears out of nowhere, tapping her on the shoulder and making her start for the second time that night.

"Hey," she says, exhaling loudly and trying to quell the steadily building unease in the back of her mind. "So? Where's the good doctor?"

"He's down the hall just a bit," Howard tells her and shifts his feet, staring intently at them. Normally she'd be all for his staring at his own shoes rather than her boobs, but something told her that this time it foretold of far worse circumstances to come.

"Well?"

"Well… he's down there," he says but grabs her arm when she turns to find his room. "Penny, I feel like I need to warn you before you talk to him."

"Oh, my God. How bad is he?" she questions, feeling herself starting to panic again. She imagined the blood, bandages, and bruises before grimacing and kicking herself for jumping to conclusions. "Is he… deformed or something?"

"No, no. Nothing like that," he assures her with a slightly chagrined expression, "He's just not himself, that's all."

"Nothing could be worse than a sick Sheldon," she informs him carelessly and turns away. "If I can sing 'Soft Kitty' to a grown man, I can handle this."

"Penny, wait!"

The warning was wasted. Her legs were longer than his and they carried her down the remainder of the distance before he could think to stop her again. She found Sheldon's chart on the wall before knocking lightly to see if it was safe for her to come in. The voice that answered sounded perfectly fine, and she silently cursed Howard for worrying her over nothing.

"Come in."

She opens the door and finds Sheldon Sitting on the edge of an examination table, his hands resting on his thighs. His Superman shirt has a little bit of blood on it—she's not examining that too closely—and his hair is unusually mussed. Other than the bandage across his forehead and the light shiner over his left eye, he looks perfectly fine. She knew he would be, obviously.

"Hey, sweetie," she says in her most soothing voice. He's eyeing her carefully, and for a moment she wonders if he remembers her. "I'm here to take you home. Are you ready to go?"

His eyes pass over her again and this time something about him seems… off.

"Anywhere with you, gorgeous," he says, pushing himself off the table. His voice was darker, and had lost its pleasing musical quality. Now it sounded harsh, and forced. She wants to say something, almost does, but she realizes that he's moving ever closer and fixing her with a look she didn't think she'd ever see on Dr. Sheldon Cooper. His eyes had shadows of darker blue in them now, and he was looking at her like she was the only woman left on earth. She shrank under the weight of his stare, and swallowed hard.

Something was seriously, seriously wrong.

[A/N]- I'm planning on this being a fun little piece where Sheldon obviously isn't himself. The "him" I'm bringing to life is the complete opposite of the Sheldon we all know and love, and he sets his calculating eyes on Penny. The question is, who does Penny want more?