Places to Go and People to See

6:30 a.m.

Beep-beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep-beep, "Damn it." beep-beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep-beep, Reid jabbed at the buttons on his watch a few times before ripping it off his wrist and stuffing it under the couch cushion. He shoved himself into a sitting position and rubbed wearily at his eyes. "Work," he mumbled, "gotta go t' work."

He pushed himself to his feet and staggered toward the coffeepot, pushed the button, then turned and headed for the shower, tugging his sleep shirt over his head as he forced his feet to move in the right direction. He reached the small alcove the washer/dryer was set into and stuffed the sleep shirt inside before stripping off his sleep pants and underwear and doing the same.

"Shower. Gotta wake up." He closed the bathroom door most of the way behind him to seal in the warmth and adjusted the water before stepping into the spray. He managed to get out of the shower before the hot water lulled him back to sleep and grabbed a towel to dry off as he stumbled back toward the kitchen for his first cup of coffee.

He'd barely stepped through the doorway into the kitchen when the strangled squawk/squeal/shriek pierced his awareness. Instinctively he dropped into a crouch and dropped the towel to reach for the gun on his hip, slapping bare skin instead. The adrenalin rush finished waking him up as he looked into the shocked face of his little sister. He clapped his hands over his genitals, turned tail - belatedly realizing he was giving Chelsea a perfect view of his backside - and fled to his room repeating, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

&*&*&*&*&*&

Reid dressed as quickly as he could, then sat on his trunk and hung his head in his hands; he couldn't do this, there was no way he could do this: He'd been responsible for his sister for less than twelve hours, and he'd already traumatized her. She was probably scarred for life. How the hell had he forgotten she was there? Remembering things is what he did; it was what he was supposed to be good at.

Not for the first time in his life, he wished there was someone to tell him what to do. In fact, if his phone weren't in the other room, he'd call JJ and beg for her superior knowledge of teenage girls even if it was only quarter to seven. Instead he tried to imagine what she'd tell him, 'you're the adult, I know you're embarrassed, but you can't hide forever.' Morgan's voice followed, 'suck it up, man, you'll get through it.' Hotch, 'just take it one step at a time, and remember we're all here for you, so if you need anything call.'

Well, without his phone, he couldn't call for backup (or reassurance), but he could do the rest - suck it up, go out there, apologize, and go on with the day's plans as if he wasn't half as embarrassed as he was.

SECTION BREAK

'Holy shit, Janie is never going to believe this.' Chelsea would have called her best friend right away if her cell phone weren't shut up in the bedroom - the one with her runs-around-the-house-in-his-birthday-suit brother in it - with the rest of her stuff. She giggled to herself; he'd really meant it when he said he couldn't function until he'd had his morning coffee.

Her sister's eyes had tried not to look, but her artist's eye and her never-seen-the-real-thing-before eye had conspired against her. 'Those things really did look different in real life than they did in museums.' 'No, no, no, he's my brother. Where is the brain bleach? God, I need brain bleach.'

She poured herself a cup of coffee, adding five spoons of sugar and four of creamer to disguise the bitter taste - her brother didn't need to know that her mom and dad didn't allow her to drink it - after they'd finally said goodnight and gone to bed, she'd tossed and turned for what felt like hours, she really needed something to get her going today. She pulled a second mug from the cupboard, filled it with coffee and set it on the counter next to the sugar and creamer before sitting down at the table.

'Okay, Chels, he's going to come back in here, and you're going to pretend it didn't happen. He'll never know you looked. And he definitely doesn't need to know you have almost perfect recall of what you see. I mean almost nobody has that kind of memory, so he won't be expecting it. Just give him his coffee and forget it ever happened and go on from here.'

She looked at the list on the table of the things they would need to do today: First they would go to the hospital and talk to her parents' doctor. Spencer and JJ had said they'd have a better idea of what was going to happen after that. She assumed that meant how long she'd be living here. Then they'd go to her house and pick up some of her clothes and personal items.

JJ had promised that she, Penelope and Emily would help her pack up everything she would need to bring back here Saturday. She had assumed that they'd just pick up a few things since it really wasn't that far to her house, but JJ had explained that they never knew when they'd get called away for a case or how long they'd be gone, so when they had the opportunity to do something they didn't wait, because it could be weeks before they got another chance. Basically the same thing Spencer had said about keeping the kitchen clean (without the threat of mold and mildew).

On the one hand it sounded kind of exotic, never knowing when the next adventure would be, where you'd wake up tomorrow. On the other, it must get tiring sleeping in strange beds all the time, never having a home-cooked meal, heck, he probably couldn't even count on watching his favorite tv show. What was his favorite? Did he have a favorite? He must have one, anybody with a giant flat-screen tv had to have a favorite tv show. Not to mention the bookshelves full of DVDs and books in the living room. And judging by the number of books he had, he must read a lot, too.

SECTION BREAK

Reid took a deep breath and walked into the kitchen. "Um, I'm really sorry about that, it won't happen again."

"Well, you did warn me you weren't really awake before you have your coffee."

"Yeah. Um, I'll leave a note for myself before bed tonight." Reid felt his face heat as he broached the other side of the subject, "Um, you've had health class in school; right? Um, I mean -- I -- um, if you have any questions -- well, I don't know if you've ever seen -- what I mean is --" he ran his hand through his hair in frustration, he could coax every last detail out of a violent crime victim without stuttering or making her cry but he couldn't ask his sister a simple question?

He picked up the coffee mug on the counter to give himself something to distract himself. With his back to her it was a little easier and he forced the words out, "Okay, I'm just going to say this, I don't know if you have any experience with boys, but if you have any questions - about what happened this morning or anything else - you can ask me. I'll answer." He paused to breathe, the worst was over "it may take me an hour and a half to spit it out, but I promise I'll answer," he continued with a touch of humor in his voice. "And if it's something I don't know the answer to, or if you don't want to ask me you could ask JJ or Emily or Gar -- no, don't ask Garcia, but you can ask JJ or Emily."

He sipped the coffee, then carefully proceeded to add sugar, a lot of sugar, this was going to be a long day.

SECTION BREAK

8:30 a.m.

Reid tried to be aware of the effects of the hospital setting on Chelsea, the beeps and hisses of the machinery were mere background noise to him after all the time he'd sent in various hospitals interviewing victims, but he knew Chelsea didn't have that experience to insulate her from the horror of seeing her parents hooked to wires and tubes, their every breath and heartbeat monitored.

Carefully, he explained what each of the machines was for, from the pulse/ox monitors on their fingers, to the catheters emptying their bladders. He picked up their charts and evaluated the treatment and care they'd received over the last twenty-four hours. He led Chelsea to one of the two visitors' chairs in the corner of the room and reassured her that the treatment choices - some of which she, as the only known next of kin, had been responsible for making - had been the proper ones.

He explained the short-term prognosis from the chart, but decided told her he wanted to wait until he had talked to the doctor before discussing the long-term prognosis, even though he had a pretty good idea what her -- their parents were facing from the list of injuries and treatment they'd already received.

He tried to ease the pain that was evident on her face as she looked at the parents who had loved and cared for her, her entire life. He felt so sympathetic for her pain, but in a way he was also jealous of the purity of the emotions she showed. She looked at them and felt the love of a happy home and everything that went with it. Yes, her security had just been pulled out from under her, but at least she'd had sixteen years of security, at least she understood why her life was being turned upside down.

He looked over at his father and wanted to feel nothing, he wanted this to be a stranger who he didn't have to care about, instead he felt too much:

He felt anger at his abandonment, how do you trade one child in for another; swap one wife for another? He felt the confusion of hearing his parents fight over who would take him, "take Spencer with you, just for a little while." "Don't do this." "You're weak." "You're right."

He felt sadness at the time he had lost with both his father and his sister, wondered what kind of connection could he have shared with this woman who'd been his stepmother for the last sixteen years, but whom he'd never met?

He felt sympathy for the injuries they'd sustained, the pain they would be in when they woke.

But most painful and confusing were the remnants of the love he had shared with this man who had read him bedtime stories, taught him to ride his first bicycle, taken him to the park and the zoo, wanted him to be a little boy in spite of his I.Q. With all his intellect he still couldn't fathom why he had gone, or why he had left Spencer behind when he did.

SECTION BREAK

Chelsea looked down at her parents' too-still bodies as she listened carefully to her brother's explanations of the contents of their medical charts to her. She had tried so hard to understand everything yesterday, and the doctors and nurses had been wonderful when it came to guiding her through the decisions she had had to make, but it was such a relief to hear Spencer agree that those decisions had been the right ones, that the doctors hadn't led her to the easy options or pointed her towards choices because of insurance.

In her social sciences class last month they had studied the differences between socialized medicine and a privatized medicine, there had been such horror stories about people suffering and dying because the socialized system didn't cover the treatments they needed or they didn't have good enough insurance in a privatized system.

She thought her parents had good insurance, but it was one of those things they had never talked to her about so she didn't know, right now she really wanted to know. She wanted to ask Spencer what would happen if they didn't have good enough insurance, but she was too afraid - her dad had left him, just thrown him out like yesterday's trash - what if he said, 'no insurance? Tough.'

He'd been great to her, but she didn't know if that was because of, or in spite of, the fact that she was his father's daughter. What if -- what if he hated his father for leaving and her mother for taking him away? What if felt like he'd be happier if they just dropped dead?

She looked at him looking at her parents, their parents; he looked so lost and confused. She couldn't imagine having all this being dumped on her out of the blue, 'hey, your dad, who you haven't seen in years, may be dying, and oh, by the way, here's the little sister no one ever told you about, take care of her.'

Both their lives had been turned upside-down in the last twenty-four hours and nothing was ever going to be the same again.

SECTION BREAK

Trauma surgeons see despair all the time. Our job isn't to prevent it - by the time we're needed it's far too late for prevention - but to make it as short-lived as possible. I step into the Reids' room, and saw the family sitting; the boy had the charts laying on his lap and was looking at his parents. I didn't know the whole story - I rarely do - but apparently he had been estranged from his father and stepmother for some time. The girl hadn't even known he existed until the social worker had told her about him shortly after the surgeries had been completed.

She'd been very brave yesterday, quite intelligent, she'd taken in what I and the other doctors had told her about her parents' conditions and asked intelligent questions before signing release form after release form for their treatment. I knew she didn't quite understand everything, but she trusted us enough to follow our suggestions. When I'd gotten the message that they'd be here this morning, I instructed the nurse to have a copy prepared so the brother could re-sign the papers. It's a formality, but one that I've learned is very necessary.

I step into the room and they look up at me and stand. If I had seen them together on the street I would have known instantly they were brother and sister: Same hair color, although his was a bit on the long side, hers was significantly longer; his eyes were more hazel than her brown; but the bone structure, it was the bone structure that stood out, their faces were so similar, hers a bit softer than his, but still amazingly similar.

They were both impossibly thin. Yesterday I had worried that the girl was undereating, teenage girls do tend to diet constantly, but she had shown no signs of anorexia, bulimia or any other form of eating disorder - in fact, the nurses had worried that the vending machine down the hall was going to run out of snacks - but standing next to her brother I could see it was genetics.

I approach and reach out for the charts the boy holds and he hands them over quickly, willingly, I wonder how much he understood of what he'd read. Some families understand nothing at all of the charts, others with medical backgrounds most of it, I prepare myself to spend the next hour trying to explain the complexities of the drug cocktail keeping their parents unconscious and the reasons why it was necessary, the nature and extent of their injuries.

He shocks me by asking about the extent of the subarachnoid hematomas suffered and the results of the EEGs monitoring their brainwaves, and whether I felt the stents draining the excess fluid from their brains were likely to be necessary for long, if the fractures to William's right tibia and fibula would prevent PT, which he'd like to have passive motion exercises started today if possible so they'd lose as little muscle mass as possible while they were recovering.

I find myself pleased to be spending the next hour discussing long-term treatment plans and prognoses, and which facility would be best suited to their long-term care rather than trying to explain what was happening today in the layman's terms that sometimes failed to convey the exact situation. He not only understands what's happening with his parents, but he's able to convey that information to his sister with honesty and compassion and doesn't seem to mind that she has to ask for clarification of the things he understands the first time.

Unfortunately, it's too early for me to be able to tell them exactly how soon their parents will be able to go home, right now the best I can tell them is six months to a year - if there are no complications - and even after they're allowed to go home they may still need to continue physical therapy for a year or more and need extra help with daily living.

It was going to be hard to accept for two of the top trial lawyers in the state. I mention that the treatment plan should consist of regular mental health counseling sessions to help them deal with the emotional trauma as well as the physical. He grimaces slightly at the mention of psychotherapy and I have to wonder if he's had a bad experience with it somewhere along the line. He agrees to the necessity though and asks who I recommend.

When they leave I'm confident that this young man not only has the best interests of my patients in heart, but a clear understanding of what that was.

A.N.: I don't work directly in the medical profession, but as a transcriptionist, my job does requires research into many different areas, including medical, so the medical terminology here is accurate and reflects a small portion of the treatment that would be required after a severe head injury. However, if anyone with more direct knowledge spots a flaw p.m. me and I'll be glad to make any corrections needed.