Adrian knew that Joe Christie's joke was just going to be dirty, and he could intergect with a very witty "You're mother" at any time, but he let him finish anyway. Adrian looked out the window at a bright day. Not a cloud in the sky today...no perps this morning, it was pretty slow. But Adrian knew that it was always unpredictable. When you worked for the Police, things were always unpredictable. As tough as it could get sometimes, Adrian loved his job more than anything, except maybe for his wife Trudy. He felt a smile come to his face at the thought of her. Today was a good day, and they were enjoying lunch, and he was looking foward to coming home to see Trudy. He brought himself downt to earth for a moment to listen to the ending of Christie's joke When he did, Adrian had to admit...it was pretty good. He held in his laugh for a moment, and then just had to let it out, so he did...he laughed and laughed pretty hard for a dirty joke. Normally dirty jokes embarrased him, but Christie just had this way of cracking one good one out of every five or six, so Adrian had to give him his laughs every once in a while.

As he laughed he looked up and noticed that the blinds were uneven. He had to fix them. He felt that part of his mind go into "OCD" mode, but Christie noticed what he was looking at, so he got up and fixed them for Adrian. Adrian was Joe's best friend after all, he knew he had a problem, but he didn't know preciscly what. As he did that, the phone started ringing on the desk at Adrians elbow and Adrian picked it up and answered:

"Hello this is Adrian Monk of the San Fransisco Police department. May I help you?"

Joe looked over and noticed Adrians face paling and his hand was trembling. He heard him say "Yes..yes of course. I will be there right away. Thank you...goodbye." Joe came right over to him and asked with concern:

"Adrian..buddy, what's the matter?"

"I-I- have to go to the hospital. Something happend to Trudy." He ran a hand nervously through his tight curly hair and quickly wiped his eyes. "I need to go..." He looked helplessly at Christie and asked mildly "Can you tell the captian that I had to leave?"

"Yes. Yes of course. Do you need me to go with you?"

"No..No thanks...you got work to do here I can see.."

He turned around and left abruptly. About five minutes later, Captian Stottlemyer walked in.

"Where's Monk? I need him for this case we are working on."

Christie fumbled with his hands for just a moment and said nervously: "He just left Captian. He had to go to the hospital. Something about Trudy I think..he looked a mess."

Stottlemyer looked at him for a moment and said: "I'll be back later." He turned around started walking quickly out of the room. Christie called after him: "Where are you going?"

"To save my friend." Stottlemyer replied and left.