Version 2: Close Shave and a Haircut

Author's Note: This version bears some similarity to Version 1, until it changes... :D

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Danny Reagan banged on his brother's apartment door for the second time. "Kid, I know you're in there. Open up," he called through the door. "I saw your car downstairs." He was reaching for the key he kept in case of emergency when he finally heard the door being unlocked.

"Don't say anything, okay Dan?" Jamie said immediately.

"About what?" Danny looked his brother over and quickly noticed the new haircut, and the row of sutures stretching two inches across his brother's scalp. "Drop and give me fifty, grunt," he teased.

"Come on, Danny."

Danny forced a smirk onto his face and tried to keep his tone light, to keep up the pretense that everything was just fine. "What happened?"

"Like you didn't hear. You just stopped by my place tonight for no reason?"

"I heard an officer from the 12th had a minor incident today. Didn't get all the details." Actually, he had gotten all the gory details from his wife, who had called him after Jamie left St. Vic's ER and filled him in on his brother's eventful afternoon. Not that Jamie needed to know that part. "And I stopped by because I need a place to crash for a few hours. We identified a suspect in that double murder, and he lives just down the street. He typically gets home at four in the morning. Didn't want to disturb Lin and the boys by going home for a few hours." That was true, but after talking to Linda, he'd also wanted to stop by to make sure his kid brother was okay. "But what happened to you?"

Jamie sighed. "It came over the radio as a minor business dispute…"

==BB==BB==

"So, partner, summer or winter?" Eddie Janko asked her partner.

"What about them?" Jamie asked.

"Which do you like better? Hot, sunny summer or cold, snowy winter?"

"Summer," Jamie answered quickly. "It's nice and warm, and you can spend time outside until it gets dark. Which happens a lot later."

"But what about the snow? It makes the trees so pretty"

"Yeah, if you're in a park. Otherwise, it makes the sidewalks slushy and the roads icy."

"Pessimist," Eddie grumbled. "What about for the job? Summer tends to bring out the crazy in people. They spend more time outside interacting with each other and making trouble for us. In winter, they stay inside and away from each other."

"Now who's being a pessimist?"

"12-David, business dispute at the beauty salon," the dispatcher rattled of the address.

"See, just like this. It's summer, and people are freaking out at a beauty salon. One of the most relaxing places you can go," Eddie argued even as Jamie increased his speed. This didn't sound like a call that required the lights and siren.

A few minutes later, he brought the car to a stop in front of the salon, and the two officers made their way into the business.

"Back there," the receptionist gestured toward a station halfway down the room. "Nina's customer, Barbara, is going nuts."

Jamie glanced in the direction the receptionist was pointing. Two women were facing each other across a salon chair, both screaming at each other. "Nina! Barbara! What's the problem here?" he called to the women as he and Eddie walked toward them.

Barbara turned to the officers, then back to Nina. "You called the cops, you incompetent bitch?" she yelled at Nina and started moving around the chair.

Nina moved another step also. "I didn't call. Not that you don't deserve it, slapping me like that. Crazy whore!"

"Hey! Ladies!" Jamie yelled at the two as he and Eddie ran to separate them. "What's this about?"

"She thinks she can tell me how to do my job," Nina huffed.

"I can, you dumbass. I wanted fuchsia highlights. But look at this color. Look!" Barbara pointed toward a bowl of hair color on a stand beside the chair. "That's hot bubblegum pink, not fuchsia."

Jamie looked at the bowl. Fuchsia was a shade of pink, if he remembered right, and that goo was definitely pink. "Nina, is this the color Barbara wanted?"

"It would have come out fuchsia if she'd let me finish," Nina insisted. "I'm the color specialist here. Not that beauty school dropout. Thinks she knows everything because she finished one quarter." Nina directed her last comment at her irate client.

That was apparently the last straw for Barbara. "You incompetent tramp!" she screamed. Before Eddie could stop her, she grabbed a tool off one of the hairdresser's stands and charged at Nina.

"Hey!" Jamie yelled. He stepped between Nina and the charging woman and tried to deflect her arm away from them both. Despite his efforts, whatever Barbara was holding struck him in the head. He felt a stinging pain across the top left side of his head, and almost immediately after, felt blood running down his scalp. "Ouch!" He ducked to the ground, taking Nina down with him and tripping up Barbara in the process.

"Alright. Enough of that!" Eddie pulled Barbara back to her feet and away from Jamie and Nina, pushed her against the wall and wrestled the razor out of her hand. "Drop it!"

Jamie scrambled to his feet was at his partner's side seconds later, pulling out his handcuffs to restrain the enraged woman. "Okay. Now you're going in. For a stupid fight over hair color. Nina, do you want to press charges also?"

"Yes, sir," Nina confirmed. "She slapped me." Nina held out her arm to show off the red mark that was sure to become a more colorful bruise.

"Reagan, you okay?" Eddie asked.

"I'm fine," Jamie replied. "It's just a little cut."

Eddie moved around to Jamie's left side. "Let me see." She stood up as tall as she could, until she could see the long, shallow gash on the side of his head; a gash that was bleeding profusely. "Jamie, that's more than a 'little cut'. You need to sit down now. Nina, do you have a clean towel?"

"Yes, Officer." Nina ran to the shampooing room to retrieve the towel.

"Ed, come on. It's not that bad. Head wounds bleed more than others." Jamie tried to argue, even as he felt blood seeping down the side of his neck. Maybe it is that bad…

"Yeah, well that's still a lot of blood," Eddie argued. She pulled Barbara to one of the beautician's stations away from Jamie, but still within her sight line. "You. Sit there and stay put," she ordered.

"Whatever," Barbara snipped.

Eddie fixed a glare on the woman. "6-David, requesting a bus and an additional unit at our location," she barked into her radio before returning to her partner, grabbing his arm and leading him to a chair. "And you sit here," she ordered Jamie. She spun the chair around so they could both keep an eye on Barbara, then pushed Jamie down into the chair.

"Officer, here's the towel you asked for." Nina held the towel out to Eddie.

"Thanks." Eddie grabbed the towel, folded it, and pressed it against her partner's head to staunch the flow of blood.

Jamie winced and hissed in pain at the pressure. "Ed, come on. This isn't necessary."

Eddie looked at the towel, which was already turning red. "Yes it is. Stay still."

For a few minutes, both Barbara and Jamie stayed sitting where Eddie had put them. Then Barbara stood up. "Seems you have you hands full. I'll just head on out," she informed the officers as she took a step toward the door.

"You sit back down!" Jamie barked at her. "You take one more step toward that door, and we'll add charges of resting arrest, fleeing and theft to the ones you're already facing." He raised his hand to hold the towel against his head, freeing Eddie to control Barbara.

"Theft?" Barbara asked.

"Of my handcuffs," Jamie replied as Eddie moved to block any escape attempt.

Barbara sighed and sat back down. "What-ev-er."

Only a minute later, the ambulance arrived, followed almost immediately by a second patrol unit. Eddie directed the medics to her partner, and helped Kara Walsh and her partner get Barbara out to their car. Once the woman was secured, Eddie headed back inside to find one of the medics wrapping gauze around her partner's head. "How's he doing?"

"He is getting dragged to the hospital," Jamie griped. "You had to call a bus, didn't you?"

Eddie looked at her wounded partner and tried not to smile. He was quite a sight, with gauze wrapped all the way around his head, over the wound and under his chin, to hold a thick wad of gauze in place over the actual gash. "You'd rather pass out from blood loss?"

"No." Jamie sighed as he tried to figure out how to keep his family from hearing about this little kerfuffle.

The medic finished securing the gauze. "Now, he's not going to pass out. You wouldn't do that to me, would you, Officer?" the medic teased.

"I'm fine," Jamie insisted.

"But he's going to need some stitches to close that wound," he told Eddie. "Now, Officer, off to the ambulance with you."

"Don't need the bus," Jamie muttered as he stood up.

The medic shrugged. "Okay. I'll let your partner drive you in. Then you can sit around the waiting room for the rest of the day. I'm sure the doctor will get around to seeing you before that gash gets infected. They're always so prompt about seeing walk-in patients with minor injuries. Or you can take the ride in, and get seen by a doctor right away."

Eddie grabbed her partner's arm. "He'll take your ride. Jamie, be nice to the medic."

"Okay. But can we skip the gurney?" Jamie begged.

==BB==BB==

"And we're all done," the doctor told Jamie as she tied off the last of the sutures closing the gash across the top left side of his head. "What do you think, Nurse Linda?"

"A fine job of suturing, Doctor Tolson," Linda Reagan replied.

"Officer Reagan, do you want to take a look?" Doctor Tolson held up a mirror.

"Why not?" It couldn't make this day any worse, he figured. Jamie glanced up at the mirror the doctor was holding and saw the tidy line of small stitches stretching across his scalp in the middle of a spot shaved bare of any hair. "Nice work," he said, but didn't quite manage to keep the dismayed look off his face.

"Any scarring will be minimal, and not even noticeable once your hair grows back," the doctor told him.

"That's good, but until then, I'm going to look goofy," Jamie moped.

The doctor scribbled something on her prescription pad. "I'm giving you a prescription for a pain medication. I'd suggest you fill it. Once that local wears off, that wound is going to hurt. Lots of nerves in your scalp." She handed him the prescription. "The hospital pharmacy is on the lower level. Linda can show you where it is after she goes over your after-care instructions. And we have a barber shop right next door that can even out your hair."

"Thanks, Doc." Jamie picked up the mirror again and took another look. He had a feeling that 'evening out' his hair meant that he was about to have a whole lot less of it.

==BB==BB==

"And that's what happened. A stupid catfight, and I end up nearly getting scalped."

"Nah. It's not that bad." Danny glanced at the row of stitches again. But bad enough. "Did you take the pain meds the doc gave you?"

Jamie glared at his brother. "You did talk to Linda. You knew what happened before you showed up," he griped.

"Maybe I did," Danny admitted. "Linda was concerned you wouldn't take a pain pill if you needed it if you were alone."

"They make my brain fuzzy."

"Well, I'm here. You can go fuzzy. Pop those pills."

"I don't need 'em," Jamie argued, even though his head really was hurting.

"Sure you don't," Danny scoffed. He knew from experience that scalp wounds bled a lot, and they hurt a lot, too.

"Fine." Jamie retrieved a pill bottle from his jeans pocket, shook one pill into his hand and swallowed it dry. "Happy now?"

Danny shook his head as he looked over his brother once again, taking in the sutures and the ridiculously short haircut. "Kid, it's probably a good thing you didn't follow Grandpa, Dad and I into the Marines."

"Why's that, Dan?" Jamie tried not to get defensive at Danny's remark. His older brother probably wasn't going to rag on him for not being a tough-enough Reagan; not after the day he'd had.

"Because – not sayin' you're ugly or anything; you did get the Reagan and Conor genes – but that haircut is really not your best look." Danny threw an arm around his brother's shoulders. "Come on. Let's go grab some drinks and find a game to watch on that nice TV of yours."

Jamie smiled. "Sir. Yes, Sir!"

And that's two of the many explanations... Thanks for the reviews!