Disclaimer: I don't own it and probably never will.
Nancy's cab stopped in front of the entrance to the hospital a little over an hour after Bess had called her. After paying the driver Nancy went inside to track down Bess, mentally kicking herself for not having asked where in the hospital to meet her friend. She walked by the fracture room despite the fact that she knew they had to have finished setting Bess's leg by now. After that she went to the desk to ask if they knew where to find Bess Marvin.
"Ms. Marvin was released a little bit ago…I can have her paged if you think she's still here." The nurse said after checking the computer quickly.
"I know she's still here, she called me from here to come meet her. The thing is she doesn't have a cell phone at the moment so I can't find out where in here she is, and I forgot to ask where in here to meet her when she called me before." Nancy responded.
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After about a minute the thermometer beeped and Frank started for the couch to see what it said. "99 even." Joe called over his shoulder after taking it out of his mouth, but Frank knew his brother and snatched it out of his grasp to read for himself: 101.5.
"Nice try little brother." Frank said as he went to put the thermometer away.
"You're going to be hovering over me all day aren't you?" Joe asked sullenly, he hated being sick but he hated being babied even more. The two together were unbearable.
"I don't hover, and besides it's my job." Frank responded as he went back to setting his laptop up on the dining room table, he noticed the look Joe sent his way but chose to ignore it. After all, it would be wrong to smack his brother when said brother was sick.
"And here I thought you were a detective." Joe muttered , annoyed.
Luckily Frank knew that Joe got moody when he was sick and let it slide, mostly. "I've had the job of 'big brother' longer, I happen to think I'm good at it." he said jokingly as the laptop booted up.
Joe slid down lower on the couch again and muttered something that sounded like 'Irritating at it.'.
"Part of the job." Frank said calmly, after a short while a sound behind Frank let him know that poor Joe had finally lost whatever was left of his breakfast, he winced and glanced over his shoulder but didn't say anything. He could hear that Joe was not all right, though he may actually feel better after that.
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"Nancy! I was just about to call you again." A voice said right after the elevator doors opened.
Nancy turned around to see Bess standing behind her on a pair of crutches she'd had the foresight to buy from the hospital, she knew all ready that she probably wouldn't still be in New York when the time came to get the cast off and return the crutches if she'd rented them. "Bess! Are you all right? How do you feel?" Nancy asked rushing over.
"I'm fine Nancy, I don't know how much fun I'll be for awhile though." Bess said jokingly as they started slowly working their way towards the doors. Bess had some bruises besides the broken leg but Nancy was really all that surprised, once you've broken a bone you don't worry so much about bruises.
"Did you get the new file from Mahoy yet?" Bess asked as they walked in order to make conversation that wasn't about the accident. She was starting to understand why Nancy changed the subject whenever she was hurt, it made you feel the pain that you had forgotten about when you talk about it.
"Yeah, I picked it up on the way over." Nancy responded, she understood perfectly what Bess was doing and why she was doing it.
"So you haven't read it yet?" Bess asked slightly disappointed, she'd been hoping to get Nancy to start telling her about the new file and get her mind off the fact that she could feel last nights crash in every inch of her body.
"Not yet, no. But I did hear from one of the officers near Mahoy's office that Mahoy is pushing to have Mr. Hardy arrested." Nancy said as she held one of the doors open for Bess to go through.
"What?!" Bess asked incredulously, "Have they really found enough evidence against Mr. Hardy to make an arrest?"
"I don't know… I don't think so but I don't know what they could be keeping back from me." Nancy said miserably, she didn't like the idea of explaining to Frank and Joe that she had not only been working a case behind their back but that she couldn't even solve in time to keep their Dad out of jail.
"If Mr. Hardy is arrested then there is no way they're going to keep Frank and Joe out of it." Bess said worriedly as Nancy hailed a cab. "Or keep them from finding out that we're working on that very case."
"I know Bess… But right now I'm not sure what we can do about it." Nancy said as a cab stopped in front of them and they had to figure out how to get Bess and her crutches in and still leave enough room for Nancy to get in with her. It wasn't easy but after almost ten minutes they managed to work out a mildly uncomfortable but useable seating arrangement.
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"Feel better Joe?" Frank asked as he deleted junk e-mails and tried to sort through for the important stuff mixed in with it. It had been about ten minutes since Joe had lost his lunch and Frank felt that it might be a good idea to check on him now.
"Actually I do feel a little better." Joe responded though it sounded a little like he was sulking, "I hate getting sick." he added giving the reason for the sulky voice without really even realizing that he was sulking at all.
"Who doesn't?" Frank asked before a message from Nancy caught his eye, "Hey Joe, I just found something that might take your mind off being sick for awhile."
"Well? What is it? Are we about to get another case?" Joe asked from the couch, though now he was looking over the back of the couch and towards Frank's seat at the dining room table.
"No case. It's an e-mail from Nancy, it doesn't look like good news though." Frank said after quickly skimming over the message. "Bess broke her leg, and apparently we aren't the only ones Ned is hanging up on at the moment."
"Wait… Back up. How did Bess break her leg?" Joe asked curiously, Ned hanging up on them was not really unexpected. He'd never seemed to like either of them but he seemed to have a special hatred of Frank who had made that last call, and Ned hanging up on Nancy wasn't all that shocking to Joe either since he had been wondering for awhile now how those two had managed for as long as they had when what each of them wanted so different.
"It doesn't say… Which is odd actually. There really isn't any information in this except for the news that Bess broke her leg and that Nancy and Ned are having trouble again." Frank said as he reread the short e-mail.
"When are they not? That relationship has been on the rocks for the last three years or so hasn't it?" Joe said conversationally from the couch.
Frank shrugged, he'd noticed but didn't really think it was his place to comment since he and Callie had had the same problem and they had only broken up a couple weeks before he had left for Peru. "If it makes them happy." was all he was willing to say on the matter.
"That's just it though… I'm not sure they are. I talked to Bess a lot before we went to Peru, and naturally the conversation eventually turned to mutual acquaintances." Joe said thoughtfully.
Frank scowled slightly but Joe had succeeded in grabbing his attention, "Well?" he asked irritably.
Joe fought the urge to smile, this was one of the few amusing things you can do while down with a virus. Or food poisoning but he felt that the fever indicated that a virus was the culprit and not the outdated creamer. You didn't have to be mobile to annoy your older brother into a conversation he didn't want to have anything to do with, especially when you had information you'd sitting on for over six months. "It seems that at that point in time Nancy and Ned were hardly talking, and when they did most anyone within a block of them was likely to hear what they were discussing first hand. Bess actually thought they were about to break up but somehow they stuck together, she said it was probably more out of habit than anything else and since she's one of the first people Nancy calls when she's upset I'm inclined to believe her." he said with a slight smirk.
"Did it ever occur to you that they stuck it out because they love each other?" Frank asked as he turned back to his computer, however he was still thinking about what Joe had said. He was also wondering why he had to hear all this from Joe months after the fact when there had been a time when Nancy would have let her know what was bothering her when he had spoken to her, and he remembered speaking to her around that time. He'd told her about breaking up with Callie because it had actually come as kind of a shock to him that Callie had wanted marriage whether it was to him or not, but Nancy hadn't said anything about her own problems with Ned even though Frank had asked her what was wrong.
"If they loved each other that much wouldn't they have found some sort of compromise to this problem years ago? Bess said that most of those arguments were about Nancy's detective work, something they've been arguing about for almost as long as I've known them." Joe said calmly, he wasn't letting go of this one since he was certain he was right.
"Callie and I had come to compromise and look where that landed us." Frank pointed out.
"Yeah, but personally I think Callie's biological clock was on overdrive." Joe said flippantly, "Who wants to get married this young?"
"Normally I'd hit you for that no matter who you said it about…"
"Thank god you won't hit me when I'm sick." Joe quipped.
"But in this case I kind of agree with you, she hadn't really known that guy very long when they walked down the aisle." Frank finished smiling at Joe's renewed sense of humor, it was always trying when Joe was moody for a long period of time. It tended to make everyone around him moody as well.
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"Ok, that's done." Nancy said as she finally sent the e-mail she had been working on for roughly half an hour, it was surprising hard to write a message that didn't sound like it was hiding something without actually giving any information about the fact that she was on a case. Especially when she was sending that message to Frank, who normally would be one of the people she would call for advice if she needed it. She could have saved herself a lot of trouble by not e-mailing him at all but she was pretty sure that Joe for one would be mad if they didn't let him know that Bess had been hurt, and Nancy was pretty certain that Joe hardly ever checked his e-mail so e-mailing Frank seemed like the better option.
"I never knew it was so hard to tell someone something without actually telling them anything." Bess said from her position on the bed, they were back at the hotel and she had just listened to several variations of the e-mail that Nancy had finally sent to Frank before both of them had been satisfied that it didn't say anything they didn't want it to.
"I know, I think I understand how we get so many clues from those letters the bad guys keep sending me to warn me off cases now. I'd always thought they were just stupid before but it's a lot harder than it seems like it would be not give anything away." Nancy said rubbing her neck, then her computer indicated that she had a new e-mail. She read it then deleted it deciding that she might claim that never received it, it had been from Frank asking why she was in New York and why she hadn't called them yet.
"What is it?" Bess asked seeing the way Nancy tensed when she read the message.
"Nothing… It was from Frank." Nancy explained but she was still frowning, she wondered how long she could realistically keep this from them.
Bess winced slightly, "This is not going to be easy." she said though it was kind of stating the obvious.
Nancy nodded her agreement with that statement and shut down her computer, "Do you want to read the new file first?" she asked politely though she was itching to see what it said.
"No… I think I'll read my magazine." Bess said, she could see how eager Nancy was to see that new file and she wasn't nearly as eager so it wasn't a hardship to defer the first reading to her friend.
"Thanks Bess." Nancy said as she reached for the file.
"No problem." Bess said as she pretended to read her magazine, actually she was thinking about how much trouble they'd had getting her into the cab and she'd needed help to get back out anyway. How were they going to investigate anything like that? And she knew herself well enough to know she'd go quietly crazy if she had to stay in the hotel for the entire investigation.
Author's Note: Ok, the pace of this story has slowed a bit since I first started it but please remember that I started it with a vague idea for a story behind a single scene which I haven't had a chance to write yet. I want to thank my Beta beatlechicksteph for checking this and the last several chapters for errors for me.
