"Well," Face said to Hannibal when they returned later that afternoon, "Did you ever manage to track down Amy?"
"Yes, finally," Hannibal answered, "She found out Jean was in the hospital, went to the hospital, found out there wasn't anybody there by that name, and she left."
"And she calls herself a reporter," Murdock said haughtily with his nose up in the air as he shook his head back and forth as he spoke.
"If you don't put your nose down, fool, I'm gonna rip it off," B.A. warned him.
Murdock put his hand over his nose and returned his head to its regular level and moved over towards the others.
"Well then how come she didn't call us sooner and let us know?" Face asked Hannibal.
Hannibal shrugged, clearly just as clueless as he was and said, "She said she tried but nobody answered."
"Nobody answered because the phone in the van didn't ring," Face reminded him.
"This whole week's been nothing but a comedy of errors," Murdock noted.
"And ain't anybody laughing," Jean said from where she was seated on the couch, "By the way, I should've told you before about the sleeping arrangements if you insist on staying here. There are two spare bedrooms upstairs, and there's one bedroom here on the ground floor."
"Three spare bedrooms, not bad for somebody living alone," Hannibal commented, "Are they furnished?"
"Yes they're furnished, genius," Jean replied.
"Were you expecting company?" he asked coyly.
"Maybe just a family," Jean responded.
"It's definitely something to persevere towards," Murdock said as he sat down beside her elevated ankle.
"Anyway," Jean continued, "Either somebody's gonna have to double up or somebody's gonna have to sleep on the couch."
"Well that's no problem," Murdock told her, "Face and I can take one of the rooms upstairs."
"That just leaves the matter of who sleeps upstairs and who stays downstairs," Jean said.
"Oh I think it would be a good idea if I took the other room upstairs," Hannibal told them, and turned to look at Face and Murdock and added, "Keep these two out of trouble." He turned to the sergeant and said, "If you don't mind taking the room down here, B.A."
"Na man, that's fine with me," B.A. answered.
"Well that's settled," Jean said as she started to get up from the couch, "I'll go get started on dinner."
She felt something grab her from behind and realized it was B.A., and Hannibal told her, "I talked to your doctor at the hospital and she said for you to stay off that ankle for the next few days as much as possible, so," his eyes traveled to the ceiling and he nodded his head in that direction and told her, "B.A.'s going to escort you upstairs and get you settled, and you can consider yourself relieved from your duties as our host."
"Meanwhile what am I supposed to be doing for the rest of the day?" Jean asked him.
"Relax," he said with a flash of his trademark grin.
"Relax," she scoffed, "If I do that I'll drop down dead. But notwithstanding, I'll go upstairs," she turned to B.A. and added, "Without anybody's help."
Despite that statement, Murdock got up from the couch and mouthed "I'll go with her" to the others and followed Jean out of the living room. He stayed enough behind her that she was halfway up the stairs before he started up behind her, and was just in time to catch her as she fell on her bad foot.
"I gotcha," he told her as he helped her get up again.
"Thanks, Murdock," she replied as he helped her get up the rest of the stairs.
"Don't mention it, hon," he said again, "Besides, I've been dying to see what your room looks like."
When they reached the upstairs hall, Jean pointed to the first door on the left and told him, "It's over here."
The door was already open so they went in, and Murdock looked around the place like a little kid trying to see all the rides in an amusement park at once, "Wow, this place looks like my room!"
Of course there were a few obvious differences, hers was minus the large arcade games and plus a full sized double bed, but still, it looked very much like a place he would stay at. It had everything: a nice large bed, a 20 inch TV on the dresser, a large stereo system with a wide collection of tapes, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase jammed full of books that at first glance looked like a lot he had read over the years, and scattered all over the room were pieces of costumes, small toys and odds and ends. A few objects that particularly stuck out for him were a Polaroid camera, a Snoopy Jews harp, a large half eaten chocolate bar, an automatic pistol, half a box of ammo, half a dozen books about movies left open to certain pages, and her teddy bear, the same one that her mother had given to B.A. when they went to find her last year.
Murdock helped Jean over to the bed though she insisted she could walk the rest of the way, and he set to work making sure she was comfortable, with two pillows behind her head and one under her ankle.
"Thanks Murdock," she said again.
"No problem," he told her, then asked, "Is it alright if I look around here for a while?"
"Go ahead," Jean replied, "I got nothing to hide."
He went over to the bookcase and tilted his head to the side to read the spines, "The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Peck's Bad Boy, Lucky Terrell, Philo Vance, Charlie Chan, Wizard of Oz, Tarzan, Bomba the Jungle Boy…" he read the spines of the next shelf and saw they were comics, "Batman, Dick Tracy, The Shadow, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Dan Dare…got quite a variety here, don't you?"
Jean just shrugged in response. Murdock pulled down one volume, "I read most of these when I was younger…" he grinned as he recalled, "I loved Lucky Terrell as a kid."
"Was that what made you want to be a pilot?" Jean asked.
"No, but it didn't hurt any either," he replied as he went over to the bed and asked, "Is it alright if I sit down here?"
"Go ahead," she answered.
He was careful not to get near her foot and he laid down on the other side of the bed alongside her and looked inside the book. Jean looked over at him and after a minute she asked him, "Murdock, can I tell you something?"
He closed the book and told her, "Why sure, you can tell me anything, oh, except who shot J.R. because I didn't see that episode and I don't want the ending ruined."
Jean leaned over towards him and whispered into his ear, "I didn't really flip that car during a practice run the other day…I crashed it into another car."
"Well that's nothing to be embarrassed about, it happens all the time," Murdock said, "Perfectly natural accident."
Jean almost laughed and she tried again, "It wasn't an accident, Murdock…I did it on purpose."
He looked at her and asked, "How come, they cut you off?"
"No Murdock," she shook her head, "It was Decker's car…after you guys left the course I saw the red lights coming up the road and I just hit the gas and drove right at Decker's car and hit him."
The look on his face was of mild shock but she knew whatever was going through his mind ran far deeper than he was letting on.
"What did he do to you?" was the first coherent question he managed to ask.
"Nothing really," Jean shook her head, "I figured if I crashed his car that would delay his finding your trail, and boy did it, see he wanted to know why I crashed into him, so he was willing to wait around the hospital until I regained consciousness to find out. But I left him waiting for two days before I finally woke up so everybody could see it. He asked me a lot of questions, though none of them about you guys, I think he actually managed to forget about you for a while. You should've seen the look on his face when he peered in through the window and saw me all smashed up and covered in blood."
She was actually smiling, she was almost laughing in remembrance of it. Murdock was still trying to process this information, and he asked her, "How badly were you really hurt?"
"Not very," she answered, "Just the bruises and bumps…oh I made him worry, I had some of those movie blood packets in my pockets and they smashed on impact when I hit the steering wheel and managed to pop one on the side of my head as well…had him going for a while, he insisted on riding in the ambulance with me. I guess he wanted to be present incase I died."
Murdock looked down at the bruise on her arm and the ones on her leg and he asked her, "Why didn't the right side of your body get bruised like that during the crash?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Murdock, I think stunt work in movies is almost comparable to being in the army, split second timing and decision can save or lose a lot of lives. Of course I've done this stuff for a while and I know a bit about how to crash and not get seriously injured…though I don't know if the guys at the studio would approve of what I did. It all came down to a matter of seconds, I had the car sped up and going at 80 miles steadily, and I took my foot off the gas, and I had it timed so I had just enough time to turn and lift my legs up on the front seat, turned to the side so the steering wheel didn't smash them, and after the impact, I turned back to my regular position and put my legs down on the floor again, which by now was also pretty smashed up. You see Murdock, I knew that if I hadn't done that, you could probably be calling me Blizzard right about now." She used her finger to draw a line across both her legs up at the thighs and said, "In most car accidents, when the front end gets smashed in, one of the first things to go is the legs, either through paralysis and permanent nerve damage, or through amputation. So I pulled them up and lay across the front seat, I hit my left arm against the wheel on impact, and when I swung back around, I hit my leg against the door, that's why it's bruised. So now you know it's not as bad as if the car had locked up and rolled, so you don't have to worry about me."
He fought hard not to give voice to the thought that was going through his mind at that time, which was 'well now I wouldn't say thaaaat'.
"Why'd he finally leave? What did you tell him?" Murdock asked.
"Nothing really," Jean said, "I got stir crazy after 2 days of sleeping every time someone came in, so I decided to have a little fun at his expense. Every time he came back to question me, I was something or somebody else. I even told him that I was Colonel Decker, and ooooh you should've seen the look on his face when I said that." She burst out laughing, "I thought he was going to have a heart attack."
"Why didn't you tell us that earlier?" Murdock wanted to know.
"Decker had just left when you guys came into the hospital, as far as I know he doesn't have any idea where you guys are…and he didn't have any idea who I was, so he can't find out who or where I am which means you guys should be safe here for the time being. If I had told Hannibal what I had done, what do you think he would've said?"
"Well…I don't know," Murdock admitted, "But you don't think he'd do something crazy like go after Decker, do you?"
"Maybe not, but it's like B.A. says, when Hannibal gets on the jazz he gets dangerous, and I wouldn't entirely put it past Hannibal to try hunting Decker for a change."
"Hmmm, that's true," Murdock said, "I could see him trying that."
Of course they both knew the same thing, that Jean had nothing to worry about in the way of Murdock telling any of the others what she had just confided in him, he kept all her secrets. Though he couldn't resist asking, "So what did you do to make him leave?"
"I acted crazy until he was about crazy and around that time he was driving the whole hospital crazy so they finally told him he had to leave, and boy did he hate that, but he didn't really have any choice, he's supposed to be hunting after you guys, and he'd already lost three days waiting around on me," she told Murdock, "I hope he chases his tail for a week." Another thought came to her and she asked Murdock, "How do you suppose he'd react to having a gun to the back of his head?"
"I wouldn't try my luck on that one," he warned her, "He might just take you up on it."
Jean nodded sadly and asked rhetorically, "Who's the really crazy one around here?"
"Decker's not crazy," Murdock told her, "He's just nuts."
Murdock made sure Jean had her ankle on ice around the clock, every half hour the rag had to be wrung out and refilled, though when he came up once and found she'd fallen asleep he decided the ice could wait. He returned an hour later with two plates of burgers and potato chips, he'd brought her dinner up and kept her company while she ate, she didn't seem to catch onto it though and he was grateful for that. If she wanted to be left alone he would respect her wishes but he didn't like the idea of her being left up there alone with the four of them downstairs. He did leave her alone after dinner, but returned a couple hours later with a large bowl of popcorn, two sodas, and the newspaper's TV guide, with some story about keeping her company for a while and watching a movie together. He got the pillows fluffed up again and replaced them behind her head so she could see the TV better.
"What's on?" Jean asked him.
He held the TV guide in one hand and went over to the TV and messed with the dials with the other, "The Wizard of Oz is on channel 23 in a few minutes."
"I hate that movie," Jean said as she rolled onto her side.
"How can you hate it?" Murdock asked, "That's positively un-American!"
"I prefer the old one," Jean told him, "Where nobody talked and nobody sang and the pirates came in a biplane to kidnap Dorothy."
"What one's that?" Murdock asked as he looked over to her suspiciously.
"Very old one," she answered as she rubbed her eye, "Had Hardy in it as the Tin Man before he joined up with Laurel."
"No kidding," Murdock said as he went back to the bed, "I never knew that."
"Well the film's probably destroyed by now," Jean said, "I saw that one a long time ago."
Murdock laughed but didn't comment on the irony of that one, if anybody in this room was an expert on a long time ago, it would be him.
They managed to get halfway through the movie before Murdock noticed Jean had fallen asleep and was out cold. He thought if he tried to get up, the shift in the mattress would wake her up, so he stayed on the other side of the bed and watched the TV until 2 in the morning when Jean shot up in bed with a ragged gasp for breath and her eyes flew open in a momentary panic. After bunking with Face too many times over the years, he knew better than to reach over and grab her to get her attention, he just leaned over and asked her, "You alright?"
Jean closed her eyes and when she opened them again she seemed to remember where she was and she nodded, "What time is it?"
"2 A.M. and all's well," Murdock said as he finally got up from the bed and went over to shut the TV off, "The late, late shows have been running so long it's about time for the early, early exercise shows." He went back to the bed and sat down beside her and asked her, "Nightmare?"
Jean nodded again and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
"What was it about?" he asked, not prying, just naturally curious.
"It's ridiculous," she tried to shrug it off.
No, he knew better than that. When dreams were ridiculous they didn't jerk you awake, they generally just kept going until they ended or an outside force woke you up. Only nightmares had this effect on people.
"Dreams are just the mind's subconscious way of bringing to light matters that need to be unearthed for internal peace of said mind," he told her, "Now come on, you know you can tell me anything, I've heard them all, I've thought up most of them."
"Well probably not this one," Jean told him, "Uh…last year after we all met…I had this weird dream," she pointed at him, "You…all four of you had been caught by the army and were going to be executed…but you all killed yourselves before they could do it."
He knew about that, they all did, hell he had been the one to find it in her journal, but she had never known that they found out about that. And he knew it wouldn't do any good to let her know that now. It may have taken a year but she was finally actually telling him about it, that was some kind of breakthrough.
"And that's what happened now?" he asked her, having a good idea on what the answer was.
She slowly nodded, her eyes staring straight ahead and she was seeing past the TV, past the wall, so far ahead at something that it would never be found. Murdock reached over with one arm and pulled Jean towards him and kept his arm wrapped around her as he told her, "That's never going to happen, they're never going to catch us."
"What if they did though?" Jean asked.
"We'd escape, we always do," he told her, "Decker is not going to have the satisfaction of seeing us behind bars anywhere, so don't worry about it." He craned his neck down to see her face and saw her eyes were still looking ahead a million miles away, so he tried something else. "Hey, remember what we did last time we were all together and you were having nightmares and couldn't sleep?"
"No," she said after thinking about it for a few seconds. Her eyes had moved from side to side as she tried to remember, and they weren't staring ahead past the wall anymore.
Murdock placed his hand on the back of her head and gently repositioned it on his chest and told her, "Just put your ear over the old ticker here, that's what I used to do with Billy all the time when he was a puppy and had nightmares, and it always worked like a charm."
The effect must've been mutual because both of them fell asleep before too long. An hour later that was exactly how Hannibal found them, both asleep and Jean in Murdock's arms; apparently she was right, some things never changed. Hannibal smiled to himself and turned off the lights and went back to his own room, which he wound up sharing with Face for the night. It hadn't been planned but when they'd come up for the night, Face stayed to talk with Hannibal for a while and that quickly became an hour, then two, and somewhere during it the lieutenant fell asleep in the chair by the bed. Hannibal didn't want to wake him up but helped him to stand up long enough to get him over to the bed and let him collapse there comfortably.
That was when it occurred to Hannibal that Murdock was probably in the room he and Face would be sharing for the night and would be wondering where Face was, so Hannibal had gone to see him but found the room empty. His next immediate thought was to check Jean's room, and he hadn't been too surprised by what he found. As he got into his side of the bed, the noise from the springs woke Face up and he realized where he was and asked Hannibal, "What's going on?"
"Nothing Face, go back to sleep," he told him.
"Where's Murdock?" Face asked.
"Asleep," Hannibal answered.
"Mmm," Face murmured as his head fell back against the pillow and he was out like a light almost immediately.
Hannibal agreed, it sounded like a good idea to him too. It had been a long day, and a long week for that matter, and he was glad to have it over with.
The next morning Jean was laying in bed and going out of her mind with boredom when somebody knocked at the door, she could tell by the knock that it was B.A. "Come on in, B.A., I'm dressed," she said. And she was, after Murdock had left she'd changed for the day into a pair of army green shorts, a black tank top and a Hawaiian button up shirt that hung open like a jacket.
The door opened and B.A. came into the room with a tray in one hand. "Hannibal sent your breakfast up, how're you today?"
"I'm alright," she told him, "I'd feel better if everybody didn't parade through here to make sure I'm not on my feet. I've gotten around on a bad ankle before, doesn't everybody?"
"We' just trying to make sure you recover as quickly as possible," B.A. told her, "No sense in making it worse than it already is."
"So noted," Jean said as she took the tray and looked over her food, "Did Murdock cook this?"
B.A. snorted and replied, "No way, you can't trust that crazy fool to get anything right, you especially can't trust him around food."
Jean smiled tiredly and commented, "I see you're still you're same old grumpy self…I'd think you'd be thrilled."
"About what?" B.A. asked.
"About Billy being gone," Jean told him, "Murdock told me about giving him to the people in Holland…I'd think you'd be ecstatic that Murdock got rid of him, no more Billy around here anymore, right?"
B.A. scoffed and replied, "You'd think so, but no, if anything it's only worse since he did that."
"How is that possible?" Jean asked him.
"Because," B.A. answered, "Now all that crazy fool does is go on about that stupid invisible dog, talks about him all the time about how much he misses him, like he was real or something."
Jean seldom wore her emotions on her arm but the look on her face became very somber as she told B.A., "I'll ask you to remember who you're speaking to…that dog Billy is as real as you or I am…well, as real as you anyway, I'm not so sure about myself."
There was a moment of silence between them before B.A. said to her, "I just don't get it, I know Murdock's crazy and he' been crazy since he crashed his plane back in 'Nam, but you, I don't get how you can see that dog when he ain't there."
"B.A.," Jean calmly explained to him, "He is there, when I met you guys I didn't know anything about Billy, I didn't know there was a dog…so how could I possibly have seen him if I didn't know about him if he wasn't there?"
B.A. had to admit he couldn't come up with an answer for that one, but he asked her, "If the dog is real, why can't anybody else see him?"
"They can, Murdock says the kids in Holland could see Billy…maybe it's just a matter of Billy only likes revealing himself to open minded people," Jean suggested.
The look B.A. shot at her when she said that was nothing short of hilarious, but he said nothing and turned to leave when Jean called him back and said, "I'm not hungry, so why don't you take this back to the kitchen and ram it down the garbage disposal?"
"You sure you're feeling alright, mama?" he asked her.
Jean nodded and insisted she was fine, B.A. could tell she wouldn't budge on her answer but he got the feeling that something was up.
Later in the morning, Murdock came back upstairs to visit with Jean, he checked her ankle and saw the swelling was going down and made sure she had fresh ice put on it. He also showed Jean a tube of Deep Heat that he found in the medicine cabinet and suggested they use it on her bruises, which were taking their sweet time to change colors and heal.
"It seems to me that you've done this before," she said teasingly as he applied it to her left arm.
So he had, he remembered, only last time it was on her back after the MPs got done beating on her because they thought she was him. The army had never managed to prove that he was the fourth member of the A-Team, everybody still thought only Hannibal, B.A. and Face were the actual members, but still they always had their suspicions. And when they'd seen her in his jacket and cap, that had been confirmation enough for them, until Lynch actually had the brains to call it off when he saw it was a woman they were trying to kill.
"You know, Murdock," Jean told him when he finished, "You don't have to stay up here with me."
"That's alright, I like it up here," Murdock told her, "It's a nice change of pace from just having the other three to talk to all the time. They're a nice bunch of guys but I need a little variety from time to time."
Jean watched him as he went around the room still looking at everything she had laying around, and she asked him, "Murdock, how far is the V.A. hospital from here?"
"Oh I don't know," he said as he pulled part of some costume off the floor and held it up against himself and saw his reflection in the mirror, "About five or six miles I guess, why?"
"No reason," Jean said, "I was just thinking if you could ever find a way to bust out of there without Face's help, you could always hole up here, nobody would ever think to look for you in this place."
Murdock hawed at that thought and told her, "Anybody could hide out in this place, Glenn Miller probably came here after his plane crashed," he turned away from the mirror and looked back to the bed and added, "Maybe he's hiding in the shower."
Jean tried to get through to Murdock and asked him, "It wouldn't be worse staying here than at the hospital, would it?"
"Worse?" he repeated in disbelief, "Hell no, this place is great."
"I don't know how you do it, Murdock," Jean told him, "I don't know how you go back to that place…I'd kill myself if I had to go back to the hospital I was in and I was only there for three days."
"Well at the V.A. they have a few more things planned to keep the patients occupied than at a regular hospital," Murdock explained, "Especially in the crazy ward."
"I suppose that's true, but don't they stuff you full of a lot of pills and give you all kinds of shots and stuff like that?" Jean asked.
"Oh that just takes a little getting around," Murdock told her, "In the beginning yeah, but I've found a way to get around most of that over the years…they think I take my medication but I don't."
"Still, you can't be happy there," Jean said.
"Well, it certainly does put a crimp in trying to find somebody to settle down with and start a family," Murdock agreed as he sat down at the foot of the bed and looked at her, "Most of the nurses there have some kind of qualm about getting involved with patients."
"Then what you need is a woman shrink, it's my understanding the head doctors have no qualms about getting involved with their patients," Jean told him.
"Hmmm, I might have to try that," Murdock nodded, "I just have to find one…come to think of it, I think all the psychiatrists I've seen since I got there have been men…I wonder why?"
Jean reached forward and grabbed him by his hair to get his attention, and when she had it she told him, "Murdock, why don't you just take those tests the right way so the doctors will know you're not really insane and they'll let you go?" Before he could respond with his usual repertoire that he was crazy she reminded him, "You know they don't let crazy people consent to marriage."
Murdock moped like a depressed dog and told her, "They don't let us vote, they don't let us get married, they don't let crazy people do anything, all the time they try harder and harder to make it impossible for a crazy person to have any fun, what's the point in being crazy then?"
Around noon, Face came upstairs to see Jean and check on how she was doing, and her patience was about to run threadbare as he told him, "First B.A. comes up with my breakfast, then Murdock comes up to make sure I've got ice for my ankle, then Hannibal comes up to make sure I'm not taking any painkillers that are going to cause any problems for the blood in my bruises…and now here you are…why? The four of you didn't hover me this much when you thought I was going to kill myself."
"Well of course not," Face replied cynically, "Back then we only had to worry about protecting you from yourself."
"That's not the reason you're up here now," she replied, "So what is it?"
"Just seeing if you were ready for lunch," Face told her.
"No thanks, I'm not hungry," Jean said as she rolled on her side away from him.
"That's what you said at breakfast, are you sick?" he asked her.
"No I'm not sick," she said as she turned over to see him, "I'm just not in the mood for company, third degrees, or your colonel's God awful cooking, good day Face."
"But I…"
"I said good day!" Jean repeated as she turned away from him again.
Face remembered a few days ago when she was ready to start throwing things at him and he took the hint and left the room before something particularly heavy or sharp suddenly became airborne. He bumped into Murdock on the way out and warned him to keep his distance, "Right now I think it'd be safer to swim in a pool full of piranhas than to see her."
"I never tried swimming with piranhas, I'll take the chance," Murdock told him.
"Good luck," Face told him as he headed for the stairs, "You'll need it."
Murdock went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him and went over to the bed where Jean was turned away from him and had her head buried under a pillow. Murdock thought about announcing his presence but decided it would be better to try something that might lighten the mood some, and he got an idea. He went over to the bed, knelt down next to Jean and pressed his nose against her hand and whimpered like a dog. He sat up with his hands hanging down like paws and he panted and yipped a little, trying to get her to turn around, but that didn't work so he nudged her again with his nose and tried licking her hand.
Jean rolled over and removed the pillow to see him and he sat up and barked, then he threw his hands on her shoulders to paw her and licked her face as she squeezed her eyes closed and half turned her face to avoid the assault, but she couldn't fool him, he could see the smile starting to crack through. He stopped licking her face and started sniffing frantically like she was hiding a treat from him and he started to stick his head inside her outer shirt. Jean was laughing by this time and she reached behind her and grabbed the daily paper and rolled it up and told him, "Down boy!" and smacked him on the head with it.
He drew back from her and said, with a big grin of his own, "I thought that'd bring you around." He became a bit more serious and said to her, "Now come on, darling, what's the matter with you?"
"I'm just going stir crazy lying in bed all day, that's what's the matter," she told him, "Who do you think looked after me when I moved out here if something went wrong? Nobody, I've been taking care of myself, and I don't take anything lying down."
"I can understand that but there comes a time when you've got to let your body heal or else it's gonna rebel against you," Murdock told her.
"Yeah but come on Murdock," Jean held her foot up to show him, "It's about the right size again, surely I can get up and walk around my own house instead of just to the bathroom and back."
"I'm sure you can, sweetheart, but humor a crazy person will you? And just try and hold out until tomorrow and give it a little more time to heal up."
Jean bit the inside of her bottom lip and folded her arms and seemed to consider it and she finally told him though it was obvious she wasn't happy with this arrangement, "For you, Murdock, I'll try anything."
He grinned at her sheepishly and replied, "Aw that's a nice thing to say…now if I could only get one of the nurses at the V.A. to say the same thing."
