Back Home
Barely awake, Brennan stirred in bed, shifting her torso to turn over. A sudden jolt of pain reminded her it was time for a dose of ibuprofen. Nearly every one of her 206 bones were achingly sore, incredibly stiff, and hurt like the dickens, as Max would have said. She opened her eyes and frowned at her inaccuracy. Bones were less likely the source of her discomfort; she chided herself, her muscles, tendons and ligaments were what had been battered and strained god-knows-how in the lab explosion. She could have been tossed about like a rag doll and would have been none the wiser. She had no memories of the bombs going off, and little recall of the moments before that. Her dreams were of searching for something she could not find, the hunches she'd had about Fred Walden's bones holding clues to Mark Kovac's whereabouts were just out of reach in her befogged brain. Booth had insisted she take a pain pill from the hospital's prescription before retiring last night, and narcotic medications always left her feeling wooden-headed the next morning. She moved carefully to slip out of bed and use the restroom, but Booth's sniper senses were always on alert when she'd been injured. He sat up next to her, concern written across his handsome sleepy face, and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
"You okay there Bones? Wanna backrub?"
"Yeah, Booth, still sore, but- I really gotta go!"
"Ah, can't argue with the call of nature," he chuckled. "Can you get up or need some help?"
"Ooof, no, I can do this-argh, geez-oww! Okay, I'm upright, I think. I must've been flung or thrown by the bomb blast; can't believe I'm THIS sore!"
"Even your bones aren't magic, Bones! Healing is gonna take some time. Aren't you the one who's always telling me that, when I get hurt on the job?"
"Booth, it's not my bones; but rather my tendon, muscles, and ligaments that were traumatized-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mrs. Anatomy Textbook, you know what I mean!"
Brennan smiled at her husband, or started to, but even that hurt from the impact of landing facedown atop shattered glass. Booth had been correct that the lab's choice of tempered safety glass had been fortuitous, but she had still suffered facial lacerations.
She came back to bed and slipped awkwardly under the blankets. A thought occurred to her and she turned to Booth.
"How many days was I unconscious?" she asked.
He looked at her in surprise. "You were only out for maybe an hour at most. When I finally found you on the floor, it took me talking to you and patting your face, but you came to pretty quickly, Bones."
"I'm still not entirely clear how much time elapsed in all that mess, but you were awake by the time the first responders broke through the wall."
A worried frown still creasing his forehead, Booth asked, "Don't you remember checking Angela's baby with the stethoscope and beaker? She told me Hodgins had suggested it to her but you were the one who taught him that technique."
"Yes, now that you mention it, I do remember that. Was I dreaming last night? It seemed so real. I woke up and you were sitting by my hospital bed holding my hand. I thought you were praying; your head was bowed…."
"Well, we've been in that situation enough times before, and reversed too, camped in a hospital room with me in the bed and you beside me, right? That experience has gotten stuck in your memory, I guess," Booth ventured.
"I think maybe we should call Dr. Jursik, let him know what you're experiencing, have him check you out again…"
"Booth, that's not necessary—"
"You'd be telling me to do so; hell, Bones, you'd be calling the doctor yourself; if I'd had that happen. You've done so before!"
Well, we can call when the office opens if you insist. For now, we've got to go in to work. We still don't know where Kovac's hiding out," Brennan declared.
"Your interns are on it, Bones. They're checking the bones to find what clues you came up with in those four bones you wrote down. All of 'em worked way late last night."
"But they may not see what I did! Kovac could be building another bomb by now!"
"Relax, Bones. You taught them well. Ange said Hodgins gave them quite a pep talk; said you'd trained them thoroughly, precisely for a critical moment like this. They've got this. They'll figure it out. Maybe not quite as fast as your genius brain, but you'll see. They'll come through!" Booth reassured her.
"Give your brain a break. If you relax a little, your thoughts might pop back into place and you'll be 'all better' real soon," he suggested.
"I still need to be there, Booth-"
"Temperance, give them some credence. You were their teacher. There's no mentor better than you. Baby birds hafta fly for themselves. You'll see, I promise. Give them til at least tomorrow morning. If they haven't solved your clues by then, you can have another go at the bones, okay?"
Booth's cell phone jangled and vibrated on the bedside table just then.
"Booth."
"Hey, Booth, Clark Edison here. Ms. Warren found a mark on one of Fred Walden's teeth; an incisor. Never mind which one. "
"The important thing is, she realized Dr. Brennan wanted to test the enamel. Wendell figured out why. It'll tell us where he grew up. Hodgins is running the tests right now."
"We think Kovacs chose Walden to escape with on purpose. Daisy realized he needed a place to hide. A place to hole up; maybe somewhere off the grid;"
Booth finished his statement. "And once you know where he lived as a kid, there's we'll probably find Kovacs. Once he had what he needed from Walden, he killed him!"
He clicked off the call and looked at his wife.
"See, Bones, I toldja! They came through for you. They figured it out. You trained them perfectly!"