Author's Note: This is a follow on story from 'Accident's Do Happen', which is also on the site if you want to read it. It's not vital that you do though. All you need to know is that Eliza Harvey is an ER doctor who was falsely accused of murder by the gang, but has since been persuaded to stay at Community General. I try to write my stories in the style and format of the show, so I hope you enjoy it and please tell me what you think!

Mark walked through the corridors of Community General, humming 'I've Got You Under My Skin' cheerfully to himself. It summed up the way he felt about this place really. His life was so intrinsically involved with the hospital, the medical profession and his work, that he hated to think what he'd do when he finally retired. Not that he ever thought about retiring. That was one of the few things in this world that actually put a knot in his stomach and he intended to put it off as long as possible. Fortunately for him, his employers recognised his worth to the hospital and hadn't seriously brought it up yet. But they would one day, and when they did he was going to make it perfectly clear that Mark Sloan was going nowhere without a fight.

He entered the pathology lab in a buoyant mood to find Amanda up to her elbows in an autopsy.

Literally.

The guy had been found dead in his apartment the night before when the landlord, fed up with him not paying his rent, had broken in. By the looks of him he'd been dead at least a week. The circumstances didn't appear suspicious, but an autopsy was required to establish the means of death.

The doctors' lounge was being painted today and was consequently out of action. Even so, Mark was a little surprised to find Steve, Jesse and Eliza sitting quietly around the table all engrossed in their own paperwork. Ellie was munching on a sandwich as she worked.

Steve looked up his entrance, "Hey, dad. Come to join us?"

"No actually," Mark said looking a little perplexed, "I didn't really expect to find you here."

Jesse simply shrugged. "It was the only quiet place we could find," he explained.

"Well, it was quiet until you three got here," Amanda snapped, pausing the tape she was trying to record her report on, "Shh!"

'Sorry' Steve mouthed, wearing a look Mark recognised from when he'd scolded him as a child. That made him smile slightly.

"So," he said as he crossed over to them, speaking quietly so as not to disturb Amanda, "Did she find anything yet?"

"Looks like natural causes," Steve said with a small nod, "But you know Amanda. She likes to be thorough."

"Shh!"

"Sorry," Mark and Steve chorused together.

Amanda glared at them in warning before turning back to her work.

Ellie took another bite of her sandwich and Steve shot her a frown, shaking his head, "How can you eat when she's pulling some guy apart over there?"

"I'm hungry," Ellie said, shrugging, "It's only a bit of blood."

"No," Steve said, "It's a lot of blood. And some guy's entrails."

"Just doesn't gross me out," she explained, "Never did really. We all have them."

"Yeah but we don't all have them on display while other people are having lunch," Steve reasoned, before a smile broke out, "Now, Jesse eating through anything I can understand. The only way of stopping him would be to sew his mouth up. Although you'd probably still find him trying to push fries up his nose."

"Hey!" Jesse protested.

"Right," Amanda stated firmly, her patience having finally worn thin, "Out. All of you. Now." She wore a no nonsense look on her face and came over to shoo them away.

The four of them quickly gathered up their things and fled outside.

"Damn," Jesse said shaking his head, "Sometimes she's so like a mom it's scary."

Arriving at the nurses' station and depositing their own paper work, each found a spare couple of inches of desk and a stool to perch on.

"You know," Mark prompted with a small smile, "None of you asked me what I wanted."

"What did you want?" they asked in perfect unison, none of them looking up from their work.

He chuckled. "It's about Amanda's birthday."

This got their attention.

"It's on Saturday, right?" Jesse said, chewing on the end of his pen, "What are we going to do?"

"Well," Mark said, "I was thinking about doing dinner at the beach house, just me and Steve, you, Ellie if she's free-"

"Sure," she said brightly.

Mark smiled, glad. "I thought if we have it at home then she can bring CJ and Dion too."

"That's a great idea, Mark," Jesse said with a typically enthused smile. He loved Amanda's two children. At heart he was a bit of a big kid himself and spending time with them certainly allowed that side to come out. He appeared about to say something else, but suddenly his face fell and he let out a small gasp before ducking out of sight behind the desk.

Mark and Steve shared a perplexed glance. Steve was about to make a comment about Jesse needing to hide from all his ex-girlfriends when one of the nurses reached the desk.

. "Ah, Dr Harvey," she said, "I was looking for one of you. Could you come and take a look at the boy in six? He fell and hurt his ankle. I think it's just a sprain but you'd better check it over."

"Yeah, Becky, I can," Ellie said, repressing the sigh. She gave Jesse a swift kick as she passed him. "I hate you," she said, scowling.

Both of them had been whinging all morning about how far behind in the paperwork they had gotten and how it was going to take all day to catch up. It had been fortunately quiet, but even so they had palmed off things on each other at every opportunity. For this, Ellie was going to make sure he got the next unpleasant case that came in. Projectile vomiting would be nice. Maybe she'd get lucky and someone would actually eat the canteen food. Someone apart from Steve of course who was apparently and miraculously immune to its unpleasant side effects.

She entered the room to find an eight year old boy sitting on the bed.

"Hi, Simon," she said, consulting the chart the nurse had handed her, "I'm Ellie. I'm gonna take a quick look at the ankle you've hurt, to see if I can figure out what you've done, okay?"

"Are you a doctor?" asked a blonde girl who was standing worriedly to one side.

Ellie smiled at her. She looked quite young.

"Yes am I. Are you his sister?"

She shook her head, "No. Babysitter."

Ellie nodded. She should've guessed. Her nervous expression gave it away.

"Have you phoned his parents?"

"I tried," the girl said, clearly feeling bad about what had happened, "But I couldn't get through."

"Tell you what," Ellie said with a reassuring smile, "Why don't you try again? You can use the phone at the desk. Becky here will show you."

The nurse took her by the shoulder, leading the girl out, "Don't worry, honey. He'll be just fine."

"So," Ellie said, standing over Simon once they'd gone, "What did you do?"

"I fell off the wall in the back garden," he said, a little embarrassed.

"And I take it you weren't meant to be up there," she realised, trying not to sound too preachy.

He shook his head, "No, but I was trying to escape from General Nasty's troops."

"Oh," she mouthed with a slight smirk, "So you were injured in the line of duty. Your commanding officer will be so proud."

"I am the commanding officer," he protested.

"Of course you are. My mistake," she soothed, checking his ankle over.

"Well, it doesn't look or feel broken," she said after a few moments, "But I'd like to do an x-ray just to make sure. That's a picture of your bones. Is that okay?"

Simon thought about this, trying to decide whether it was or not. "Would it be okay if Murray comes in with me?" he asked eventually, with pleading eyes.

Ellie looked puzzled. Murray? Surely that couldn't be the babysitter....

"Who's Murray?" she asked, writing down the x-ray request on his chart.

"He my friend," the boy said eagerly, "Here, he's in his box. Wanna look?"

---

"So what are we gonna get Amanda for her birthday?" Steve asked with a small frown as he tapped his pen against the desk. He found it hard enough to buy presents for his own father let alone women, who's tastes he had never really understood.

"We could get her a puppy," Jesse suggested enthusiastically, "She was just saying the other day how much she'd loved having a dog when she was little."

Mark smiled, but shook his head, "Jesse, Amanda's a single mother with two small children. I don't think we need to burden her with a dog as well."

"How about jewellery?" Steve suggested.

"Or perfume?" Jesse added.

Becky smiled as she passed them, leading the babysitter to the phone. "Gee, and they say men have no originality," she commented rather sarcastically.

"How's the boy?" Mark asked her, countering Steve and Jesse's rather affronted looks

"Oh, he's fine," she said with a wave of her hand, "Ellie's just checking him over now. Doesn't appear to be any prob-"

An loud female cry of alarm drowned out the rest of her sentence.

Mark, Steve and Jesse immediately shared worried looks before running round the corner to see what had happened.

As they got to room six where the noise seemed to have come from, Steve ran straight into Ellie, who immediately shrieked.

"Oh my God!" she rushed, standing stock still with her eyes squeezed tight shut, holding her arms out as if afraid to move, "It's not on me, right? Tell me it's not on me!"

Steve frowned puzzled, "What's not on you?"

Ellie seemingly didn't hear him however.

"I mean why on earth keep it as a pet? You don't keep them, you kill. All of them," she panicked, not pausing for breath, "Even if you can forget about the horrible creepy legs and the furry body, it's looking at you with eight damn eyes! Why does anything need that many eyes? Tell me, what does it need to see in multiples of eight?"

"You saw a spider," Mark realised. He tried not to laugh because poor Ellie was clearly quite petrified, but considering that no amount of blood and guts disturbed her the fact that she was terrified of spiders was more than a little amusing.

"Oh, no," she ranted, "It wasn't just 'a spider'. It was a damn tarantula!"

"Is she okay?" asked a voice from behind as the boy hobbled to the door, "I just wanted to show her Murray." He looked at her with some derision, "I didn't realise she was such a 'girlie-girl'."

"I am not a 'girlie-girl'", Ellie defended indignantly before turning back to the others, with a near hysterical tone. "Seriously guys, it was the size my hand and it's legs were bigger than my fingers. And it was all hairy and crawl and...." she went a little paler, and gave them a pleading look, "It's not on me, is it?"

"No," Mark said gently, "It's not. Now why don't I finish off with the ankle and you go and get some coffee."

"Yeah," Jesse said, taking her by the shoulders and leading her away, "Let's get a nice calming cup of coffee."

"I think I'm gonna pass out," Ellie said miserably.

Jesse raised an eyebrow, "And possibly some vallium."

---

Wilson Packard had never considered himself either paranoid or unreasonable. He was a man of science. Had been so for forty years up until his retirement two years ago. Fact, sense and truth had been his constant companions his whole life and he was not about to abandon them so easily now.

And yet he was sure he was being followed.

Although why anyone would want to follow a sixty year old former head of a medical research company was beyond him.

Entering his study, still struck by the feeling that someone was there - or at least had been - he sat himself cautiously in his desk chair and glanced about the room with a frown. Something wasn't right. A tingling up the back of his neck disturbed him and he couldn't put his finger on the cause of it.

He momentarily reached for the phone but paused before dismissing the idea. Who would he call? The police?

'Yes, officer I'd like to report this funny feeling I have...'

He didn't think so...

Physically trying to shake the feeling away, he decided to write some letters he had been meaning to get on with. As he reached for the drawer he looked at the photo on his desk. The guys in it had been his colleagues at his research lab. At the time he wouldn't have considered them friends, but reflection was a funny thing. It made you look at stuff differently.

He'd call them tomorrow, see how they were doing.

Pulling at the desk drawer, he was slightly irritated to find it stuck. Realising something must have gotten caught, he reached his hand inside to see if he could loosen whatever it was.

Fumbling blindly about, his fingers couldn't feel anything so he moved them other towards the mechanism. As he did so, he brushed something smooth and hard. He frowned, but his moment of confusion and wondering was cut off as he was struck by numerous stabbing needles.

Yanking his hand firmly from the drawer he swung it in the air, cursing loudly in pain. Examining the hand, which was now burning in agony, he frowned to see numerous small puncture marks, the skin around them already begin to swell.

"What the...?" he whispered quietly to himself.

Remembering he had a first aid kit in the bathroom he decided he'd better go and put something on it. It was really painful.

He only managed to take one pace though before he pitched forward onto his hands and knees. What was happening to him? He felt terrible. It was like his throat was closing up and he was beginning to struggle to breathe.

As a pain in his chest began, he wondered if he was having a heart attack.

Panicking now, his breathing getting harder and harder, Wilson Packard tried to pull himself to get to the phone. He had to get help. But his oxygen starved body didn't have the energy left to respond and he slumped back forward onto the carpet.

---

Mark stood to one side as the EMT's exited the room, talking quietly to one another. As he entered he saw Amanda looking over the body on the floor while Steve was talking to a uniformed officer and a guy with 'animal control' written on his jacket.

"Steve," he said, as he walked up to them, "I got your message. What happened?"

"They did," Steve said grimly, pointing to the two boxes now sitting on the desk. Both contained a couple of seriously nasty looking scorpions. Yellow in colour and about ten centimetres long, they were clacking their pinchers and swinging their tails in a seemingly irritated manner.

"Oh my," Mark whispered in surprise, crouching down in front of them and peering inside. As he did so they attacked the clear plastic separating them from his face. "Aggressive little things, aren't they?" he commented.

"Very," the animal control officer said. "I've been doing this job for ten years and I've never seen anything like it. You get the occasional scorpion that people accidentally bring back in their luggage, but never this many. And I've never seen this species either."

"Who found him?" Mark asked, standing up once more.

"The gardener saw the body through the window," Steve answered, "and he called us. Officer Scott here was first on the scene."

"You were lucky you didn't get stung too," Mark said, a little wide eyed at the young female officer.

She smiled slightly, "I grew up in the desert and I've seen plenty of scorpion stings. When I saw the way he was laying I realised he must having fallen as he was getting up from the desk, and as I walked over there I heard them moving about in the drawer."

"She's good," Mark chuckled slightly, "You'd better watch your back, Steve. She'll be after your job."

Steve shot him a dry look, but curbed his comment in favour of listening to Amanda as she joined them.

"Well, the cause of death is pretty obvious," she said, glancing at the scorpions as the animal control officer carried them out with the help of Officer Scott, "But I'm gonna get his body delivered to the path lab so I can take a closer look. Do we know who he was?"

Steve nodded holding out a wallet to his dad, "Wilson Packard. Retired former head of a medical research company. According to the gardener, he was a nice, friendly, generous guy with no known enemies."

Mark flicked through the wallet's contents, nodding at what Steve was saying. "Have you contacted his next of kin?"

"He didn't have any that anyone knew of."

"What about this?" Mark asked, using the sleeve of his jacket to pick up the photograph on the desk. It was picture of three men, all about the same age. The one in the middle was Wilson Packard.

"Apparently, they were his co-founders of the research company," Steve explained, having already asked the gardener about the photo. "They haven't been seen here since he retired, but," he added, knowing where that statement would take his dad's suspicions, "Since he had a photo of them on his desk I think we can say they were still amicable with each other."

"Even so," Mark frowned, "I think we should contact them. They may know who might have that much of a grudge against him that they'd resort to murder."

---

Mark and Steve walked only two paces out of the lift before they were accosted by Jesse and Ellie.

"We heard about what happened?" Jesse said, trying to keep a cool demeanour to show Ellie how he handled this kind of stuff all the time. Unfortunately he couldn't quite keep the telltale excitement from his voice.

She shook her head, positively bubbling, "I've never even seen a scorpion sting, let alone a death from one."

Mark looked a little put out by their interruption. He'd only just met Steve in the lift, had a number of questions to ask him about what the forensics team had found and had to see Amanda about the autopsy.

"I've seen a couple," he said briefly, "But never a fatality."

"But he was murdered, right?" Jesse said, almost hopefully, "I mean, they were planted in his drawer so he'd get stung. And there were plenty of them to make sure they finished the job."

"Did you find out what species they are?" Ellie asked.

Steve shook his head looking slightly harried, "The guy down at the zoo who's an expert on these things is away until tomorrow."

"Oooh!" Ellie said eagerly, "I can help you with that. A friend of mine from college is married to a guy who works with these sort of things in San Diego. If you have a picture I could fax it to him and see what he knows."

Steve looked a little surprised and slightly hesitant. But eventually he nodded, pulling a picture from the folder he was carrying, "Go. Knock yourself out."

Ellie took the photo with a smile.

Jesse, not to be out done, added, "And I could look on the net for anything. It's amazing the stuff you can find online now. Did you know if you had to you could get all you need to know about doing a heart bypass?"

"No, I didn't," Steve said, clearly not interested, "Just the stuff about the scorpions will do, Jess."

"Yes," Mark said with just a little relief, "You two work on that and tell us what you find later."

They both half bounced down the corridor.

"This is so cool," they heard Ellie enthuse, "We're actually solving a real murder."

Jesse grinned, "Just wait until we know who the guy is, then it'll really hot up."

"Will there be car chases?" Ellie asked, "Can I drive?"

"Sure," Jesse said, "But I've seen your driving and will certainly not be getting in there with you. I'll wait here to patch up the victims."

"Why?" she teased, "Can't handle a fast woman?"

With that, they were out of earshot.

Steve shook his head, "Just remember that I was the one that told you it was a bad idea to put those two together."

Mark chuckled, "I'll bear that in mind." Then his face turned a little more serious, "Why didn't you want Ellie to look into those scorpions?"

Steve looked at his dad thoughtfully for a moment. Was he really so easy to suss out or did the man just have some kind of sixth sense?

"It's not that I don't trust her or anything," Steve said, trying to make the comment a little off hand, "But do you realise the amount of times you, Jesse and Amanda have been kidnapped, injured, attacked, threatened or nearly killed since you started helping me?"

Mark smiled wanly, "I think I'd be happier not knowing."

"A part of me just thinks it'd be better for her to stay out it, that's all," Steve said, fixing his eyes on the corridor ahead.

"You'd probably have to tie her down to do that," Mark chuckled, "And you know what happened last time you tackled her."

Steve shot him a look. It wasn't his fault a five foot four woman had knocked him backwards with a square punch to the jaw. She'd taken him by surprise.

"She's proved herself quite capable of looking after herself, Steve," he added, comfortingly, "There's no need to feel responsible for her - or any of us. Besides, I think she has a bit of a grounding influence on Jesse which can only be a good thing."

"Really?" Steve asked with a surprised smile, "What does she have that the rest of us don't?"

Mark shrugged, "A good right hook and a mean glare."

They walked a few paces more before Mark got back on track.

"So, did you find anything at Wilson Packard's house?"

"Only the piece of wood that was jammed in the mechanism to stick it, meaning he'd have to put his hand inside without seeing what was in there."

Mark nodded, having expected they'd find as much, "Any fingerprints?"

"No, and the forensics guys dusted the place from top to bottom," Steve said with a frustrated sigh.

Not wanting his son to get too wound up, Mark grinned and asked, "I don't suppose you've tried the scorpions?"

"How do you get fingerprints off of an insect?" Steve asked, looking at him dryly, "And who's gonna get close enough to try?"

"I don't know," Mark said with an easy shrug, "Have you interrogated them yet?"

"Oh, ha ha, Dad."

Steve was spared any more of his father's brand of humour as they entered the path lab. The body was lying on a slab in the middle of the room, covered by a sheet. Amanda was sitting at her desk looking over some test results.

"Ah," she said, looking up as they entered, "I'm glad you two are here. You wouldn't believe what the blood screen showed."

She handed it to Mark and he flicked through it. All ten pages of it.

"Wow," Steve said, "I take it this venom isn't simple stuff."

"Not in the slightest," Amanda said shaking her head, "And it's potent too. The tests found biogenic amines, enzymes, salts, a couple unidentified substances and numerous toxins of two distinct types. One of those was identified as chactoids which cause strong vasoconstriction and a lot of pain. The other was buthidaes which affect electrolyte balance and cause heart failure, nerve transmission inefficiency and decreased cell membrane integrity, as well as a number of other effects which would have been apparent if he'd lived long enough."

"So he died of heart failure," Steve confirmed, not wanting to admit that most of that had gone right through him. He hoped he'd picked up on the most important point.

"It seems likely," Mark said with a nod, still glancing over the report, "This is very nasty stuff. More toxic than most poisons we usually run into, but he may have had a chance if he'd only been stung once."

"Do we know exactly what they were yet?" Amanda asked, curiously.

"Jesse and Ellie are looking into it," Steve said in an offhand manner, "But I can't see how that's gonna be much help."

"Well, it could possibly give us some idea about the killer," Mark reasoned, not giving up hope on that line of enquiry just yet, "He would have to have gotten them from somewhere and knowing the species may narrow down the possibilities."

Steve was about to concede defeat with that point when his cell phone rang and he answered it with a business-like, "Sloan."

He spoke to the person on the other end for a few moments while Mark and Amanda waited patiently.

"Well, you'll never guess what Wilson Packard's research company specifically investigated," he said with a suspicious look as he finished his call.

They both shrugged.

"The possible uses of plant and animal venoms in medicine."

Mark's expression immediately turned thoughtful, "So whoever murdered him obviously thought it'd be some kind of poetic justice that he die that way."

"Or," Steve countered, "It was an enemy at work who had access to those things."

"But if it was something to do with work," Mark said shaking his head, not buying that, "Why would it come out now? Years after he retired."

"I don't know," Steve admitted, "Which is why we're tracking down his two partners. They both retired at the same time and they're proving a little elusive. I'm gonna go and call in at the research lab, see if anyone there knows their whereabouts."

"And I'm gonna get on with this autopsy," Amanda said.

"And-" Mark began before his pager went off, he took it out and checked the number with a smile, "It's the ICU. It seems that duty calls. I'll be around if you find anything."

They all headed off to their separate tasks, Mark frowning thoughtful as he rode the lift up. He was sure that the means of death meant something. It was a messy and unpredictable way of killing someone. Whoever had done it had taken a risk in doing so and that convinced Mark that it was important. If only he could figure out why.

---