A/N: Thanks for the support! On with the drama!

2

"He tried to stand but something happened, he fell."

"Did he hit his head?"

"No, I caught him this time."

"We'll take it from here, sir."

Bernard opened his eyes and saw more flashing lights. More flashlights.

"I'll go with him, I'm his boss. Uncle, I'm his uncle."

"That's fine, sir. Please move out of the way so we can place him on the stretcher."

"Mmmn," said Bernard, who did not want to be placed on the stretcher, and did not want to go to the hospital. He tried to sit up and found hands pushing him back. His vision sharpened. "I'm really fine, can I just sit for a moment?" he asked. The woman closest to him gave him a funny look.

"You were just out for a minute and a half. We're a little worried about your head. We'll just bring you in and make sure everything's fine." She draped a blanket around his shoulders.

"I'm… Geez, I'm fine, look guys. Really," he said, and tried again to sit up, and then heard what the woman had just said as an echo in his head. My head. My hat! A flight of panic swept through him; he reached up and, yes, his hat was gone. Of course it was gone, he'd probably never see it again. It had probably been tossed out the bus window. It was probably being kicked down the street by some surly teenager. Probably sitting in the mud. He tried to nonchalantly muss his hair over his ears as he struggled once again to sit up.

This time he succeeded. Hands steadied his back instead of pushing him down. Good. Now if they'd just give him a minute to recover, he was sure he'd be well enough to walk away. Or bus away, or teleport away, or whatever. He pushed the blanket off his shoulders.

"Keep the blanket on, dear," said the woman, in a motherly, no-nonsense sort of way.

"I'm not cold though," he said, leaning away and hoping she wouldn't get too close to his ears.

"It's for shock, dear," she said, fussing with the blanket.

"I'm not in shock."

"Keep the blanket on, hun," she said again with enough self-assurance that Bernard felt he had no choice in the matter. He let the blanket stay. The woman took his hand in hers – careful of the broken wrist that was no longer broken – and began dabbing at the blood on his palm. After a moment she gave up and dumped what smelled like rubbing alcohol on his hand and then wrapped his palm in gauze and a strip of bandage before getting up and hustling off to the next patient.

"Sant – … Mr. Mason," Bernard said. Santa looked down at him.

"What?"

"I need my hat."

Santa looked a bit aghast that Bernard would bring up something so mundane at a time like this, but soon appeared to realize the relevance of said hat, and turned to scan the scene.

"No luck," he said, "but these people have seen weirder things than ears like yours, trust me. Questioning your humanity will not be their automatic response. They'll probably think you convinced your parents to pay for plastic surgery because you thought pointy ears were cool."

Bernard mulled for a few seconds, and grudgingly had to admit to himself that Santa was probably right. He lowered his head and shut his eyes; voices bustled around him. They were official voices. The medics were cleaning up the scene, muttering. No casualties. Two ambulances. Minor injuries. The police couldn't find the black-haired girl who'd pushed that man in front of the bus but they were –

"Which girl?" he found himself demanding, and opened his eyes. Nobody was listening to him. Santa stood aside, looking worried and pressing buttons on his radio. Bernard tried to flag down the nearest EMT. "Excuse me, was there a girl with black hair out here?"

"Don't worry," said the EMT. "Law enforcement will take care of everything."

Law enforcement can't do squat against a vengeful elf, thought Bernard. What had been her name? Judy. Judy of the Bun. Judy the Vengeful, not Judy the Wonderful from the workshop. Hopefully she'd left the scene after having gotten her revenge.

"Mr. Mason," he said.

"Forget the hat, Bernard, it's fine."

"You forget the hat. Sandman. You have got to call him and ask him to stop. This is the kind of… people… he's going to find."

"What do you mean, 'this is the kind of people', what is 'this'?"

"Judy."

"What about her?"

"Didn't you hear that guy? She shoved a man in front of our bus, that's why we flipped, trying to swerve!"

"Oh come on, why would she do that? She was nice. I still can't believe you blew her off. That was exceptionally rude."

"Santa, she's bad news. She was pissed that I sent her off. You really want that kind of person working at the worksh… Headquarters? Because that's who you're gonna get if you go looking. If Sandman is out there finding these people, you've got to stop him. These people aren't reasonable, they're unpredictable and – "

He stopped talking as the EMT's began to cluster around him. They wanted him on the stretcher; he didn't want to be on the stretcher. He wanted to be on his feet, walking away from this mess. Stretchers were the door to the hospital and he'd never been to a modern hospital but he didn't suppose it was the sort of place an elf should be.

He convinced them he didn't need a stretcher but he found himself in an ambulance all the same, Santa seated next to him. On the way to the ambulance, Santa had fortuitously spotted Bernard's hat on the glass-strewn ground, and now handed it to Bernard, who pulled it down over his ears. Yes, the medical people probably wouldn't blink if they saw his ears but he was already feeling vulnerable; his hat was more of a security blanket than anything. Not that he'd ever admit it.

Another man sat on the other side of the ambulance with his head in his hands, and an elderly woman lay in between on a stretcher. Bernard was sure this little trip would cost a good chunk of someone's paycheck, though he wasn't sure who would end up paying for it. He wished he could make Judy of the Bun pay but he knew she'd taken herself out of the equation.

"I don't think you realize," he whispered to Santa, as the ambulance took off up the street, "what's wrong with this situation with Sandman."

"For heaven'ssake, you're in an ambulance, Bernard! Give it a rest, we'll talk about this later!"

"No, this is – " It was important, is what it was, but Bernard was once again interrupted. The man in white was coming at him with a syringe. "What's that?" Bernard asked.

"Floobinidyne bumblecrump," the man said, or some other series of mouth-noises that Bernard couldn't catch because they sounded too technical. "Pain-killer," the man mercifully explained.

"I don't need a pain-killer."

"This will dull the pain of that broken bone."

"I don't think it's broken."

"Well we'll let the hospital confirm the state of that wrist but for now, this will help with the pain."

"I don't need it, I'm not in pain," said Bernard, in denial of one of the worst headaches he could remember having experienced. The man in white, despite failing to notice that the broken appendage had been miraculously repaired already, seemed practiced with dealing with belligerent people, and swooped in to stick Bernard in the arm faster than Bernard could think of anything smart to say. One band-aid later Bernard and Santa were once again left by themselves. Bernard's mind stalled; what had he been about to say?

"Right," he continued, irritated. "So… Sandman. In Iceland. Not good."

"Once again," said Santa, "let's talk about this later. Maybe after we've made sure you don't have a serious brain injury."

Bernard made a small, frustrated noise.

"You don't get it, you have got to call Sandman off now!"

"No, I don't get it," hissed Santa, losing his carefully-cultivated cool, "I don't understand why this is so important. Back to the secrets. You have too many, how am I supposed to understand half of what you say?"

Bernard felt the hand of panic begin to close around his neck; it was of utmost importance that Sandman stopped looking for elves but Santa wasn't about to call off the sleep-monger until he understood why. With Santa in such a stubborn mood, and with Bernard's mind shaken from the bus accident, the prospects of success were looking slim. Bernard clenched the blanket still draped over his shoulders.

"Okay look, Mr. Mason," he whispered; the man on the other side of the ambulance had raised his head from his hands and was staring at them curiously. Bernard lowered his voice further and grabbed Santa's sleeve to draw him closer. "Historic history things happened way back in the day and now all the elves who are elves that can be trusted and who want to work at the workshop… work at the workshop. Everyone else – all the other elves out there – either just don't want to work at the workshop, or they are not to be trusted. They're mischief-makers, tricksters. Some of them live to cause others hardship. And they'd love to be invited up to the workshop; where else in the world could they cause so much trouble?" Bernard paused briefly to let his thoughts catch up with his mouth – his mind seemed to be tripping over itself. "Sandman could be recruiting a handful of Judy's as we speak and they're all gonna hear what he has to say and think aha, what a great opportunity for mischief, and when we get back up there and kick them out, not only will they already have caused who knows how much disruption, and let me remind you we're less than four months away from the big day, but then we'll have a bunch of angry, vengeful tricksters on our butts. Some of those weirdos are powerful, too."

"So Judy…"

"Judy – with the bun – was acting like such a charmer because she realized what an opportunity it would be for her to go up there. Who knows what she would have done. I mean she threw a man in front of a bus."

"Maybe she's just that sensitive. You were a complete ass to her."

"If that's how she reacts to being slighted, she's not meant to be up there! If she's going to try to hurt everyone who gets in her way – and put others' lives in danger too – she should be avoided at all costs. We shouldn't be rustling up folk like her, you've got to – "

The ambulance stopped. Bernard straightened as the ambulance doors opened to reveal that they were in the docking bay of a hospital. EMT's once again began to move equipment and bodies around and Bernard shot Santa a glare, gesturing meaningfully at the radio strapped to his belt. Santa, however, still looked skeptical. Or distracted. Bodies were rushing around, wheelchairs and straps and levers were flying; Bernard found himself being placed on a stretcher. His desire to get up flared for just a moment but he was suddenly tired, or dizzy, or perhaps underwater. Was it raining that hard? His head swam. Somewhere above him in his periphery Santa's facial fuzz floated. He closed his eyes against the drizzle.

When he opened them again, he was indoors. Someone's voice was saying something about a CT scan. Santa was making noncommittal noises and looking down at Bernard's head as if it were a Rubik's cube.

"I feel weird," Bernard mumbled. Someone wearing a white coat leaned over Bernard. They were doing something to his non-unbroken wrist; securing something around it. A plastic hospital bracelet with a barcode.

"The floobumble crumpidium may be causing you to feel slightly disoriented," the white coat said, and waved a flashlight in front of Bernard's eyes. Whatever the pain-killer was really called, Bernard's brain seemed determined not to allow him to register it. "Well, Bernard, this report includes two occasions of loss of consciousness, one of which was prolonged. That, along with this reported mental disorientation you were experiencing when the EMT's arrived and these optical abnormalities makes me think we should get you in for a CT."

Bernard tried to push away the pain-killer induced confusion.

"What's a CT?"

"Computerized Tomography; it can show us what's going on inside your head."

"Yeah, fine, whatever," Bernard muttered, and turned towards Santa. The man's radio was right there, within Bernard's reach. Maybe the best course of action would be to simply reach over and call Sandman himself. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, right?

His stretcher was moving; he'd missed his chance. Someone was making the stretcher fold up on itself to form a sort of chair, which was infinitely more comfortable, but now Bernard couldn't see Santa. He regretted that he himself didn't have Sandman's call code. His own radio was right there on his belt but Sandman had never been known to carry a radio, so of course had had no call code before this.

"Mr. Mason," he said, deciding to switch tactics, "I can explain everything to you with enough time, but I don't have that time right now – hello," he said, turning as he felt something happening to his right side. A young nurse was wrapping something around his arm. "What is that, what are you doing?"

"Taking your blood pressure," she replied. Bernard, who had never had his blood pressure taken, watched just long enough to make sure it wasn't going to be awful and that she was not, in fact, taking his blood pressure away, before turning back to Santa.

"Um. I don't have time right now to explain everything but if you could just call him and ask him to stop, I'm sure I'll be out of here soon enough and then we can just talk everything out properly. In a better setting. And then you can decide whether or not to go through with this."

Bernard had no intention of letting Santa go through with this plan either way, but perhaps telling Santa that Bernard was willing to give him the option would cause the man's resolve to soften.

"Let's not discuss this right now," said Santa, with an air of finality.

"We have to!" Bernard said, though he would have liked nothing more than to drop the whole thing. He felt as if his brain were doing flip-flops.

"I'm sorry," said the nurse with the blood pressure cuff, who was staring at a small screen and looking concerned. "I'm going to have to re-take your blood pressure. If you could not talk for just a minute I think we'll get a more accurate reading."

Bernard leaned back in the chair, fuming a little on the inside, and Santa turned away, sticking his jaw out, not that it was very noticeable under his tangle of beard. The blood pressure cuff tightened and Bernard was reminded of the feeling of panic he'd had in the ambulance. The feeling came back; even in emergencies, Santa was stubborn to the point of potential disaster. Honestly.

The cuff came off and the nurse scribbled something on a clipboard. She turned away and shuffled through some drawers. Bernard opened his mouth but Santa beat him to it this time.

"Stop," he demanded, quietly. "This is not open for discussion. We can talk about this later. I will give you the chance to explain. Now is not the time."

"Now is the time. Now is the only time."

"We are in a hospital!" Santa hissed, leaning down towards Bernard and punctuating each word.

"It doesn't matter where we are!"

"You've hit your head, you're loopy on pain-killers, you're overreacting."

"No, you're underreacting."

"Okay, right arm, please," said the nurse, who was clearly trying very hard to ignore the conversation in front of her. Bernard, trying and failing not to be irritated by the constant interruptions, held out his right arm.

"Are you allergic to iodine?" she asked him.

"No," he said, wondering for a moment what iodine was. She poked and prodded at the crook of his arm for a moment and his own mind floundered around for another way to convince Santa to pick up that radio. His frustration was in the way; his mind was stuffed with anger. It was getting the better of him. He definitely couldn't think of anything to say when the nurse was right there, hovering over him with that –

"What is that?" he asked.

"An IV catheter. You're going to have a contrast scan, this is where the iodine will go in. This might pinch."

Afterwards he would have described it as more of a stab but by now he was so bewildered by what was happening that he didn't have much of a chance to react. Presently there was a giant hollow needle stuck in his arm and secured with tape and then the nurse had disappeared again. Bernard stared at his arm and, once again, tried to collect his scattered thoughts.

Upon collecting them, he felt his heart hammer against his chest. He turned back to Santa, who was staring at Bernard's arm and looking slightly queasy.

"Look," he began. "If Sandman finds any elves – which he will – and if he invites them to work at the Pole – which he will – we'll have to turn them away, because they'll be rotten. They will be. And then…"

The nurse returned and leaned over Bernard's arm with another syringe.

"Is that the iodine?" asked Santa.

"No; this is just a quick test to check his kidney function."

"… Test?" asked Bernard. The nurse stuck the needle tip into the catheter.

"Yes, a blood test."

"No!" Bernard gasped, jerking his arm away, which caused the nurse to startle and drop the syringe on the floor. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry," said Bernard, "I didn't mean to make you do that…"

"It's fine," said the nurse, in a tired sort of way, bending down to retrieve the dropped tool.

"I don't want my blood drawn," Bernard explained, feeling very silly. The nurse sighed, threw out the old syringe, and started to put together a new one.

"I'm very sorry, sir," she said in a monotone, "but your elevated blood pressure indicates a need to test your kidney function before we're able to safely administer the iodine necessary to take an accurate CT scan of your head."

"I don't have elevated blood pressure."

"Well, you do, it's very elevated."

"Of course he's got elevated blood pressure," grumped Santa. "He was just in a bus accident. And we've been arguing."

"Our equipment indicates possible hypertension and a requirement to take a blood sample before allowing this scan to be given."

"I don't want my blood drawn," said Bernard, who wasn't quite following the nurse's logic but was quite sure about the fact that he didn't want his blood drawn. He knew enough about this stuff to know his blood was different from human blood and probably couldn't be tested the same way human blood could be. Plus whoever saw his sample would probably flip out and then he definitely wouldn't get a CT scan. The nurse stepped around Bernard and faced Santa.

"Mr. Mason?"

"That's me," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"As Bernard is a minor and not in his mental capacities, you, as his current legal guardian, have the right to refuse or grant permission for any procedure."

"What?" cried Bernard. Santa merely raised both eyebrows and looked down at Bernard with amusement.

"Not in your mental capacities, eh? Right from the doctor," said Santa, but he then turned serious and looked at the nurse. "No blood tests," he said, and Bernard sighed, relieved. Apparently Santa was at least aware of why that would have been a bad idea. The nurse, however, did not look happy about Santa's decree. She pursed her lips and looked down at her patient.

"That means we won't be able to perform a CT, then. Are you sure? Let me remind you, Dr. Lincoln suspects a level 3 concussion, possibly more severe."

"Well… I'll just have to be careful then." Bernard said, as she shrugged and bent and removed the catheter with a bit more force than possibly was actually necessary. She stuck a band-aid on his arm and walked away.

"Think I made her mad," Bernard muttered.

"That's the second lady you've made mad today," said Santa. "Let's see how many more you can do."

"Oh stuff it."

"Ooo, mouthy. Don't forget, I'm the one calling the shots here now. So to speak."

"Don't look so happy about it," said Bernard, resisting the urge to pull his hat down over his entire face.

"I'm not. I don't want to be in charge of you."

"Yes you do. You want to be in charge of everything, that's why you won't call Sandman off. You can't stand to put your own plans on hold." Bernard knew nothing good would come from having said all that, though it was the truth, as far as he was concerned. The pain medication was making him say things now that he previously would not have dared to say, because he knew how mad it would make Santa.

True to form, Santa scowled down at him.

"You're putting the entire workshop in danger," said Bernard. Santa looked away.

"Is that nurse coming back or what?" the man asked, distractedly. "She can't just leave us here."

"You're putting more than just the workshop in danger, you're putting Christmas in danger. It's your responsibility to keep it safe and now look what you're doing."

"Maybe we can leave," muttered Santa.

"Hello there," said a new voice. Bernard tried to see who it was but, from his position, could not. "I'm Dr. Norskard, MRI technician." The voice was female; Bernard made a mental note to try extra hard not to make her angry.