Disclaimer: I own nothing of Psych and its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other Psych-Os like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T+

Spoilers: Few, but possible at any point through entire series

A/N: Yeah, I know I didn't need to start another story, but this is what I'm dealing with myself, and I thought it might help me understand it a little better perhaps if I put it in writing. I gave it to Lassy because he, I think, is the most likely to come down with it, seeing as it is apparently caused by anxiety, tension, and just possibly depression (the docs have been a little vague toward me on this point, and it makes no sense because, bipolar or not, I'm never seriously depressed). Give him a bad enough case and he could come down with it, and being sidelined from his job would only increase his stresses. This condition is also, according to the docs, fairly common, though I would have told you I was the last damn person on earth this would have ever happened to, short of Lassy himself. Le sigh. In any event, I've made this pretty much exactly what happened to me, only in a police setting. I don't know how quickly I can finish this one, which I hope will be fairly short, because I don't fully know what I'm dealing with yet and my next neurologist's appointment is late October. So bear with me if you get involved in this. I'm going to try and make it accurate. Probably no pairing.

Prologue: Java

The case had gone on for far, far too long, but at least it was over now. The killer finally brought to justice, or at least to his day in court, and hopefully their ducks were all in a row evidence-wise and the prosecutor would be able to bring it all together with whatever else he could scare up about him and put him away forever. Juliet O'Hara was grateful it was over and done, very grateful. It gave her a chance to relax, but more importantly, her partner.

Head Detective Carlton Lassiter had dived into the case headfirst from the highest board and hadn't come up for air until the last damn second. He spent damned near every night in the station, pouring over evidence, slept as little as he could get away with before Juliet or Chief Karen Vick or pretty much everyone around him sent him packing off home to rest, where there was certainly no guarantee he actually did, ate almost nothing, and lost a great deal of weight he couldn't afford to lose. It wasn't unheard of for him to take a case so intensely seriously, and this one was…that kind of case. A serial killer, targeting children and teens. It took months to track him down, but now they had him. They had him, and they could breathe again.

Chief Vick tried to get Lassiter to take time off. A vacation. "You need it, Carlton. Go fishing. Hunting. Whatever. Just…go out and breathe some fresh air." But he refused. He would come back to work as usual after all was said and done, as though nothing had changed, and he did, and it seemed very much as though nothing had. For weeks, nothing seemed different at all.

And then one afternoon, Juliet was plugging in some data at her computer and Lassiter was behind her at the coffee bar. She tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear as he turned around and held out a cup of steaming black joe toward her. She reached up for it. He didn't hand it to her.

"Carlton?" she said. She looked up. He was leaning on one hand against her desk, looking, apparently, at her computer, and the expression on his face was…utterly blank. And he held that coffee out, quite steadily. "Carlton? What's wrong, Carlton?"

He didn't answer. He didn't move. He held that cup of coffee out.

"Carlton, partner, you're…you're starting to worry me," Juliet said, laughing to lighten what she was saying. "What's wrong, Carlton?"

No answer. No movement. Nothing.

Juliet stood up. She waved a hand in front of his eyes. No response, not even a blink. Scared to death now, she pushed down on the coffee mug so he had to set it down on her desk. She tried to turn him and push him into her chair, but he was too big. All that messing with him, however, seemed to spark something, and he blinked uncertainly at her.

"Carlton? Carlton, are you okay?" she asked, worried beyond comprehension.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," he said, not sounding at all sure of that.

"I think you should sit down, don't you?" she said, trying to keep her voice light and unconcerned.

"Yeah. Okay," he said, and lowered himself into her desk chair. Now she knew he was sick. If he really was fine, he would have pitched a royal fit about being told to sit and take a load off.

"I think we should check your blood pressure, okay?" she said, and he nodded. Moving swiftly, she went to go get the medical kit and the electronic blood pressure cuff contained therein. She rolled up his sleeve and put the cuff on him, but when the machine beeped and gave back its information, there was nothing wrong with his blood pressure at all.

At all.

She took the cuff off him, stood up and looked at him for a long moment. The fog seemed slowly to be lifting, his eyes clearing, but something was definitely wrong with him. She put the cuff away and went into Chief Vick's office.

"Chief, something's wrong with Carlton. I need to take him to the hospital," she said without preamble.

The Chief looked up from her paperwork, eyebrows raised. "What happened?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. He was just getting coffee, when all of a sudden he just…froze up. He came out of it, but…he's still kind of…groggy."

"Froze up? You mean…like a seizure? All right, go, take him," Vick said, with an urgent wave of the hand.

Juliet trotted back to the Bullpen quite quickly in her heels, but found Lassiter not where she left him. Confused, she stood looking at her empty chair for a moment before turning around and coming face to face with him, a few steps from his desk, files in his hand that he appeared to be perusing intently.

"O'Hara, I've got the toxicology report on that Fieldman case," he said, as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened.

"Carlton! We…we've got to go to the hospital," she said, stunned.

He looked at her as though she had squirrels swan-diving out of her ears.

"What the hell? Why?" he asked.

She waved her hands helplessly at him. "Because you…you're sick."

Now he looked outraged. "I am not. What's wrong with you, O'Hara?"

"Carlton, you…you had some sort of seizure or something like that. Don't you…don't you remember?"

"You're being ridiculous, O'Hara; I don't have seizures. Now come on, we've got a murder to solve."