The scene is a doctor's office in midtown Manhatten where the worried parents of a 13-year-old boy sit anxiously in the waiting room, clutching each other's hands and doing their best to encourage each other with pained smiles.

"What are we gonna do, Mike?" his wife, Karen, asked, fighting back tears. "What if we lose him?"

Mike patted her hand and hugged her close with his free arm. "Hey, none of that, remember? We wait and see what the doctor has to say." He kissed her on the side of her head and reminded her, "The kid's strong. And he's determined to beat this. So you and I," he said, wagging a finger back and forth between them, "have to remain strong for him."

Karen attempted a brighter smile but it faltered. "I'm not as strong as the two of you are."

"Oh, yes, you are, lady," Mike replied, grinning. "You were strong enough to bag me, weren't you? And keep me all these years. And you were strong enough to get the boys and me to eat Brussel sprouts, so Wonder Woman in my book." He laughed and hugged her again as that got a genuine laugh out of her.

"I just hope - hope that he doesn't need a kidney transplant," she said. "There's all that medication a person has to take to prevent organ rejection." She sighed and added, "And I hope he can have one. At least it will help him to keep living." She vigorously shook her head full of short, blonde curls. "Oh, I'm not making much sense right now, am I?"

"You make perfect sense," he softly replied. "Can't tell you some of the crazy thoughts that cross my mind sometimes about all of this."

"Dr. Morgan?" Karen asked cautiously and he nodded grimly in response. "Well ... he can't be the only one compatible with Mikey. In this whole country, this whole world, he's the only one who can donate a kidney to our son?! There simply has to be someone else out there. Someone willing," she added. Try as she might, she couldn't stop her anger from building against the ME who worked so diligently with her husband and the NYPD, helping so many others find a resolution but refusing to help their son!

"New donors are being added to the database every day, honey," Mike told her in an effort to calm her. "But if I could, I'd rip that kidney out of him, myself and ... " his voice trailed off in frustration.

"With your bare hands?" she teasingly asked.

"Yeah," he quietly replied, nodding his head up and down and then releasing a sigh of frustration. "Just don't understand why he won't help us. I know he wants to. Really wants to but ... he keeps saying that he can't."

Karen studied her husband for a few moments, then said, "Make you a deal. When you decide to rip his kidney out, I wanna be there, too." When Mike frowned at her, trying to convince himself that she was kidding but doubting that she was, she clarified her request. "Have to make sure it's properly packaged and promptly transported."

Just then, the inner door to the waiting room opened and a medical assistant in scrubs stood there with a clipboard. "The doctor will see you in his office now, Mr. and Mrs. Hanson," she told them.

They followed the MA along the beehive of corridors, it seemed, until they reached the doctor's surprisingly small office. For the next 45 minutes, they listened to him explain that their son's plastic catheter that had been surgically inserted into his abdominal cavity was failing. They already knew that his catheter served as a passage for dialysate, a fluid that assists in cleansing the blood from waste products. But only five months after surgery, it had performed poorly and was now failing.

It had all sounded like Greek when the doctor, Dr. Winthrop, had first explained Mikey's diagnosis, the course of treatment, and prognosis to them. Like Greek from a bad movie. But after hours of personal research out of pure necessity, the medical terminology had risen up off of the pages and shaken off its cloak of mumbo-jumbo. They now knew more than they wished to about kidney failure in children and still not enough to help their son.

"After all that bad news," Dr. Winthrop said, "the good news is that your son has moved up on the donee list." The doctor sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Wish the news could be better. Any luck finding a donor among your circle of family or friends?"

Mike and Karen exchanged a look then, Mike sighed and replied, "Uh, no. No luck."

As they left the building and got into their car, Mike responded to Karen's unspoken plea. "I'll talk to Henry again." He angrily wrenched the key in the ignition and the car thrummed to life.

The next morning in the OCME ...

"The stab wounds in the back confirm what the blood trail indicates: the victim was fleeing her assailant. The heel of one of her shoes broke, she stumbled and fell, and was overpowered by her assailant," Henry stated confidently but noted that Mike was uncharacteristically distracted. He had a pretty good idea of what was on the detective's mind because the same thing was on his own mind making it difficult for him to remain focused on this poor victim of a vicious knife attack.

"Couldn't she have been stabbed, then stumbled away, fallen and bled out where we found her?" Jo asked. Although painfully aware of the tension between her two crime-solving partners, she knew it was important to concentrate on the victim in front of them. She was glad that they both were maintaining a professional attitude today, unlike their last interaction that had deteriorated into a shouting match requiring two unis to pull them apart.

Jo simply couldn't believe what she'd witnessed. The two men hadn't developed a particularly close relationship during the past few years they'd all worked together but she never imagined she'd ever see Mike look at Henry with such anger in his eyes over Henry's refusal to donate a kidney to his young son. Even though she knew the reason behind Henry's refusal, she and Abe had not been able to convince the Immortal to at least try.

"You don't understand. Whenever I die, everything disappears," he'd told Abe and her, chopping the air with a hand as he'd spoken. "Everything on my person and any blood or human matter. Anyone walking around that I had donated to might suddenly finds themselves lacking a vital organ."

"Might, Henry, might," Jo had emphasized to him. "You don't know for sure if that would happen."

"Yeah, Pops. Your watch always seems to survive your disappearances," Abe had offered as an example.

"All thanks to a faulty fob that causes it to leave my person in those ... unfortunate moments," Henry had replied. He then went on to point out that all of the blood samples he'd provided as part of a routine procedure to eliminate crime scene contamination had also disappeared. "Why do you think that happened?" he'd asked. "No. I can't do it. I won't."

"Their son will die without a new kidney, Henry," Jo had told him again. "Besides, your blood samples, along with many others, had been stolen, remember? We got the weirdos who confessed to having illegally sold them to research labs."

"Except none of my blood samples were ever recovered," he reminded her. "No. I simply can't chance to donate my kidney to him, Jo. It would be tantamount to murder for me to do so," he still contended.

"To Mike and his wife, since they don't know the real reason behind your refusal to donate, it will also be tantamount to murder in their eyes if you don't," Jo had pointed out.

The ME's voice brought her back to the present when she heard him reply to her hypothetical question.

"No, the blood trail clearly shows that she was moving at a faster pace than simply stumbling. And these 23 stab wounds indicate that this crime was personal," Henry said.

"For real," Lucas scoffed.

"She was trying desperately to get away from her attacker. But look here," Henry said, flicking his head toward the victim's mouth, cradling her chin with both hands. "This cut lip wound was made probably after a disagreement but before the knife attack. The blow not only knocked her #11 Canine tooth out of its socket in the upper left quadrant, it caused her to swallow it."

"Hmmm," Mike said. "Person who hit her should have a corresponding wound on their hand."

"Quite correct, Detective," Henry said. "The human mouth contains more than 6 billion bacteria and would have immediately invaded the cut on the hand, possibly infecting it."

"Okay," Jo said. "We'll round up the usual suspects and check out which one recently delivered a knuckle sandwich."

Mike pulled his buzzing phone out of his pocket and checked the text message he'd just received. A cloud of worry passed over his face as he read it. "Uh, sorry guys, I gotta go. My kid." He hurried out of the morgue.

As they all watched Mike leave, Lucas buried his head into his chest as he made notations on the clipboard he was holding. He stole a glance at Jo and her silent, pleading gaze at Henry, who appeared to be trying to avoid it. Lucas cleared his throat and said, "Excuse me, Doc. She goes back into the cooler now?"

"Oh, yes, yes," Henry replied.

"Guess I'll go round up those usual suspects," Jo said. "Care to join me?" she asked Henry.

A soft smile of gratitude spread over his face. "Let me get my coat and scarf." He was thankful for the distraction from worrying about Mike and his ill son but also because Jo had not shut him out of fieldwork ... or her life.

vvvv

"Always good to get a perp to confess without having to grill them or take off in hot pursuit in order to nab them," Jo said. "Simple. Mike loves simple." When Henry failed to respond, she looked at him as they stood by her assigned vehicle.

"We nab the right guy?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," he quickly replied, forcing a smile. "I'm sure that the shape of the wound on the knuckle of his right ring finger will match perfectly with the victim's tooth she'd swallowed. The toxicology reports should also show the victim's bacteria-laden saliva and her blood in his wound."

"Sounds gross but promising," Jo replied, grimacing. She studied him for a moment or two, realizing that his concentration was elsewhere. After nudging him on the arm, they got into the car and she started it up. "I still have a lot of paperwork to complete for this case. Back to the morgue for you or to the shop?"

"Well," he began uncertainly. "I suppose ... " He shut his eyes and laid his head back into the headrest, sighing. "It's hard to concentrate, Jo. I simply can't ... " He opened his eyes and pursed his lips.

"Henry, I ... " She just didn't know what to say to him anymore. It was his decision to make. And yet she couldn't get little Mikey's cute little face in that hospital bed out of her mind. His parents' worried faces out of her mind.

"Jo. I've come to a decision regarding this troubling matter," Henry suddenly told her. "But I'll need both Abraham and you to help me."

Startled but happy, she looked at him and asked, "Help you do what?" She prayed that she was right in her unvoiced assumption.

"I am willing to donate one of my kidneys to young Mikey. But first I need to explain to them why for so long I had refused. They need to have all the facts before they decide to accept my offer."

"Oh, Henry, that's great!" Jo exclaimed, grabbing his hand and raising it almost in victory and squeezing it. "Of course, Abe and I will help you all we can. Mike and Karen will be so happy!"

"In the end, though, I suppose it will be Mikey's decision."

"Ohhh, Henry, now, he's just a kid."

"Jo, he's old enough to understand and weigh in on how all of this might affect his health and possibly his life."

"But 12, Henry."

"He's actually 13, according to Mike; only two years younger than Abraham was when he found out about my condition," he explained. "Children are so much more mature and open-minded about things nowadays." He gave her a determined look and added, "It's the only way."