Everyone and anything familiar belongs to Janet. The mistakes are solely mine.

"Oww."

"If you stop touching it, Babe, it'll hurt less."

I pulled my hand away from my head. "I'll tell you right now, this had better be just a couple goose eggs. If it ends up being something more serious, tell the doctor to cease and desist. After today, I'm not real interested in saving anyone, least of all myself."

"If you say something like that again, I won't be responsible for my actions."

"Sorry. But you can't say I wasn't stupid."

"I can and I will. Your brain may be bruised because of it, but you did use it."

"This means my tumor probably took a hit."

"How many times do I have to tell you, you DO NOT have a brain tumor, Stephanie?"

"I could," I insisted.

That would explain a lot about me and how I live my life.

"You don't. You may have some unusual or severe headaches for awhile as a result of this, but nothing more. A few blows to the head are exactly why you should've called me to come along instead of telling the control room your plans only after you were already parked outside your FTA's current location."

"Then it'd be you who's concussed right now. I wouldn't ever want that."

"The apprehension would have played out a lot differently. Your skip is the one who would've had his brain scrambled had I been there at the start of the capture rather than arriving four minutes into it."

"Yeah well, his nuts will have to be surgically removed from his throat while he's here, so at least he's not out celebrating either."

"Proud of you, Babe."

"You shouldn't be. I fucked up."

"You caught your skip, got a message to me technically before you went after him, and you let me take you here so I'd feel better. You did all that you could do."

"I could've shot Ralston and just be talking to the TPD right now. But no, I'm sitting in St. Francis on a freakin' uncomfortable chair, my head hurts yet feels oddly not attached to me, and Ralston's just half-conscious thanks to you, not dead like he really should be. He's a total waste of the pale, saggy, stinky, skin he's schlepping around."

"Once he stops throwing up and pissing blood," Ranger told me, "a judge will likely agree with you that he should continue to rot in a cell, not his cousin's place."

"Good."

"Mrs. Manoso," a nurse interrupted, "the doctor is ready to see you."

My head whipped in Ranger's direction, which was my second idiotic move of the day.

The first being hauling my ass out of bed this morning. I should've flipped the sun the bird and pulled the blanket back over my head until a good day felt possible.

"Mrs. Manoso?" I asked Ranger.

Looks like Batman's feeling a bit playful now that he's seen that I'm relatively okay and am back in his care.

"I'm assuming you didn't want your name mentioned, which leads to your mother being called a second later. I figured I'd buy you some time until you feel like talking to her."

"I never want her called, but now I definitely can't talk to her," I told him, feeling nauseous from something more serious than head trauma ... a mother-induced migraine. "Hearing that I'm 'married' to you will get her on her way here faster than just about anything else could."

"You could let your 'husband' field any and all calls or visits. We'll say it's my husbandly duty."

"You won't go full-playful and tell her we eloped in Atlantic City last weekend or something similar, will you? Since you've clearly already planned my visit here, I'm guessing I'm going to be too busy getting an MRI, and being subjected to a CT scan, to set the rumor mill-ringleader straight."

"You are set to receive the full 'spa' treatment. Any test they can perform, you're getting so I'll know for sure that you're okay."

"But I told you I'm okay," I told him. "I sound fine, don't I? I'm semi-coherent, cranky, and complaining about my mother ... all normal behavior for me."

"The fact that you let me bring you here without shutting me and the idea down at just the suggestion of an ER visit, has me doubting that. Let the doctor check you out, I'll be here when you're done."

My eyes started to pool. "I don't want to be here. I hate hospitals."

Despite the impatient sigh of the young nurse I thankfully don't know, Ranger gently pulled me against his body.

"I know, Steph. You'll be alright. This is just a precaution."

"You'll behave yourself if my mom or Grandma show up?"

"Of course."

I don't believe him, but I'm not in the mood to argue. Two Rangers should be better than one, but not when you already know there's only one sculpted piece of perfection sitting next to you. Away from him in a separate area of the emergency room, the doctor started in on me with questions, beginning with did I black out? Check on that one, but only for a few seconds. I had heard a few of Ralston's pain-filled grunts. The doc then asked if I remember what happened, to gauge my brain power I'd guess. Unfortunately, I remember too well.

To a bounty hunter, an unlocked door is the equivalent of a 'Welcome! Come on in!' mat. I walked in, not knowing that Ralston Peabody had crammed his scrawny ass behind the door before I'd even had it halfway open. That's the only reason he got the upper hand. I hadn't called Ranger to act as backup because I honestly didn't think I needed any for just a 140 pound drain on society.

But I ended up taking a gun-butt to the back of my head, followed soon after by a table-corner when I fell. Being the badass that I am, though, I maintained my wits. When he crept up on me as I was lying on a carpet I'll likely need a flea dip to counteract, I played dead and nailed him in the gonads with the entire sole of my Cat boot when he reached out to touch me.

That's when things really got painful. Ranger's body filled the doorway, Ralston was removed from my immediate vicinity in the most agonizing way Batman could manage, and then I was carefully brought here after Tank arrived to scrape my skip off the ground where Ranger had left him bound, gagged, and in a boatload of pain. Tank had been feeling uncharacteristically charitable today and 'escorted' Ralston here minutes behind us, but he and Ranger decided it'd be best if the asshole was kept far away from me.

I pictured Ranger when I had to face the MRI machine, and I thought about him during the process of getting a CT scan. I was right about both tests being unnecessary. And Ranger was right ... I do have a brain, there are pictures of it and everything! Though I still forget to use it sometimes. There, of course, is no tumor like Ranger predicted, unless it's playing a good game of hide and seek with the doctor. And my head is only bruised, not broken open. The unanimous conclusion is that I am concussed, but luckily my brain is only shaken ... not stirred. And I got a prescription to do nothing more strenuous than breathing.

When Ranger came to get me again, he had a 'I just went toe-to-toe with Helen Plum ... and all I got is this stupid ulcer' look in his eyes.

"I spoke to the doctor ..." he started to say.

"Wow! I am totally shocked to hear that," I said with considerable sarcasm. "And if the doc told you what he told me, you know that I'm fine."

"That's not exactly what he said, but it was close enough for me to start relaxing."

"If you started to relax, that's when my mother would've shown up," I said, bracing for the dizziness that standing on my own two feet will produce, "ready to interrogate her 'son-in-law'."

Ranger was suddenly right there beside me, putting both arms around me to help me off the creaky hospital bed.

"You would be right. She has since left the building. I decided it'd be more fun to watch her head implode with all the assumptions and accusations she was thinking up on the spot, so I didn't correct any of them. We may actually have to get married as soon as you've recovered from this."

"It'd be just like you to mention marriage again when my thinking is already impaired."

"I've warned you from the start that I'm an opportunist."

"So you say. Guess you didn't hurt my mother like you did Ralston, otherwise she would've had to stay in the hospital, not leave it in the major huff I'm picturing. And knowing my luck, she would've been put in the exam room right next to mine."

"That's why I restrained myself," he replied, grabbing my bag for me. "You need rest, not more stress."

"Yeah, that and you wouldn't hurt anything that has fur or ovaries."

"Maybe I should think about putting that on my business cards."

Ranger claims he doesn't have emotions or a sense of humor, but I know he's full of it because he's always able to make me smile and actually feel cared-about. That's what was running through my addled mind as we left the antiseptic-smelling halls behind.

"You really should," I encouraged. "It'd up business, I bet. I won't even charge Rangeman for using it."

"You're selfless to the end, Babe. You've been officially released into my custody," he informed me, like I was being sprung from prison but still needed to be monitored. "Where should we go so you'll be the most comfortable?"

I closed my eyes after I was gently eased into the passenger's seat of his Cayenne. My POS is likely already parked back in my lot, having been driven there by one of the guys.

"Your choice," I told him. "The doctor joked that I shouldn't do any thinking, so I'll leave our destination up to you."

Ranger had me tucked into his bed, Rex's cage in his kitchen, and all the ways for the outside world to get to me removed, so fast ... my head spun all over again.