It took concentration to pull his hand free of her hair. A dozen strands came with it, stuck to his palm. Jack spat blood at the floor, dragging heavy breaths into his lungs, eyeing the phone again.

He crawled and slid on his own blood, picked up the phone in a hairy palm and winced as he was forced to swallow a mouthful of crimson in order to speak clearly.

"Viv..?"

"Jack! Jack I called an ambulance, they're on their way!"

"Sh-stabbed me..." He mumbled. The move to a sitting position was relatively easy given the slick on the floor. He leaned back against the wall until the pressure building up in his left side was eased. He couldn't hold the phone for long. Both arms hurt too much.

He left a bloody finger print on the phone, right over the speakerphone icon, then let the phone rest on his thigh where it jiggled with the uncontrollable tremor in his leg.

"Where Jack, where are you hurt?" Viv's voice came distantly.

"Left side." Jack managed, looking at the clean slice on his palm, the hairs on his other palm. Jennifer, unmoving, but breathing on the floor at his feet. "Blood everywhere."

"You've got to stop the bleeding, Jack." Viv said. It might have been seconds later, or hours.

Jack knew first aid. They received training twice a year. He'd been partnered with Elena when they went through the CPR portion. They'd taken it seriously, but added a little drama at the end when the instructor had declared their CPR patient to be alive, thanks to their efforts.

Unlike your standard CPR training, Jack and his team had been put through extra paces. CPR is easy for the first minute and a half. Then it starts to get difficult, and then impossible. A marathon of tiny, controlled motions and calculated breaths. It had been exhausting and Elena had looked elated when it all paid off. She'd shouted something celebratory in Spanish, throwing her arms back.

The rest of the team had been drawn to the happy "scene" and after, when they'd decided to end the otherwise boring day with a meal together, the others of the team had repeatedly described the way Jack and Elena had looked, congratulating each other over the saved life of a plastic, armless torso.

Jack used the curtains. Getting them down meant tugging until the aluminum curtain rod came free. He filled his bleeding palm with material then shifted until he could get the mass of cloth between his back and the wall. The knife was still sticking out of his gut, filling that hole, stopping the blood.

"Jack...talk to me, Jack."

Talking...Viv, talking takes air, and I can't get enough of it. You wanna talk, talk to your husband. The last word made it out of his mouth.

Viv caught it, waited in silent confusion for a second then said, "Whose husband, Jack?"

Yours, ya dummy. He was sinking. Falling asleep. Something he needed desperately to do. He hadn't slept more than five hours at a time since John Macy's attack in the office.

"Sleep..."

"No Jack, you gotta stay awake...the ambulance is almost there. Stay awake, Jack..."

Then the phone finally slipped off his leg. The tremors were too violent. It didn't break, renewing Jack's faith in the cover he'd bought for the damned thing. The old flip phones. He could drop one of them from the George Washington bridge into oncoming traffic and it would hold together. But not these new phones.

"Jack?"

"Still here.." He grunted.

The strangest sound came from the phone. It sounded like a gasp, or a sob. It didn't belong with Viv's voice, and it seemed that Vivian knew that too. There was a long, stablizing breath that filtered through the speaker before Viv spoke again, her voice tight. "That's the way I want it, Jack."

Jack nodded, closed his eyes. He knew.

"S'ok..."

"Just hang on."

"...will."

Jack's face contorted and he felt the pain take over for a bit. Pain was in the brain...some sergeant had said that to him, during basic. The idea had been that Jack could take control of, and ignore pain if he put his mind to it. Later, when Jack had left the army and joined the FBI, started his master's degree in psychology. He'd realized how right the sergeant had been. Pain was just unfelt, frantic electrical impulses until it reached the brain.

What he was feeling, wallowing in, in that moment was all due to the damned receptors in his brain, laboring under the overload of signals. Microscopic chemical signals that could bring a man to his knees.

When it began to die again Jack managed a deeper breath. It rattled in his throat but it didn't inspire the congested cough he was expecting. A good sign? He would take it.

"Viv?"

"I'm here, Jack." She said, but her voice echoed. A minute later he realized why when Vivian swept into his apartment, gun drawn. Her Bluetooth glowed at her ear and he could hear her breathing into the phone. "God..." He heard her say, from two different directions.

Viv heard it too and angrily ripped the Bluetooth away, tossing it toward the dining room before she knelt at his side and lifted his shirt away from the knife handle.

The first EMT burst through the door in her wake carrying a giant, orange bag. An exact replica of the damned emergency kit stashed behind the reception desk in the FBI building. Oh the irony.

Jack became an observer from then on, like a school kid reviewing a book for a report. Viv moved out of the way and the EMT swooped in, doing busy things that hurt.

Jack watched Vivian, watched as she stood and stared open mouthed at the decorating Jennifer had done, the way she was dressed, the large smear of blood that telegraphed the struggle. She was quick to realize that she needed her Bluetooth to not be a part of the crime scene and went to pick it up.

A few minutes later Jack was awake again. The gurney was there and somehow Jack was able to get on it. He was forced onto his side, propped up by blocks of styrofoam coated in rubber. More pressure, more pain.

Viv was there, talking to no one...Bluetooth, Jack remembered a second later. Probably calling the rest of the guys.

In his mind Jack was interviewing Vivian. "What did you find when you arrived at the scene?"

"My partner. He'd been stabbed. There was blood everywhere and rose petals. And a girl in white."

"Do you think your partner was romantically involved with the girl?"

But Vivian didn't respond to the question. She looked away, tears in her eyes. Then Jack was awake again, bouncing in the back of an ambulance.

"Viv?" No one answered him.

Maybe he hadn't been heard.

Jack took a deeper breath. "Viv? Somebody?"

"Anybody!?"