Darkness at Noon
Chapter 9 - Still Night
"Hey, thanks again..." Officer Meredith rubbed the back of his neck.
"Don't mention it," Janine smiled at him from the passenger seat. Eduardo and Kylie were situated in the back, Kylie doing her best to help Eduardo keep from bleeding all over the interior.
They had all mutually insisted on being taken directly back to the Firehouse to empty the trap before anything else could go wrong. The unfortunate part of it was that, due to the power outage, traffic was a total B.
Regardless, they were back and they were safe, if not unscathed. Officer Meredith slipped around to Janine's side to open her door for her, an action for which she was grateful since she had stupidly burned her hands on the hot trap in her eagerness to pick it up and get it off the bridge.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"Hey, would you mind giving them a ride to the hospital?" Janine nodded over at Eduardo and Kylie, who gave her an offended look she tried to ignore.
"Ambulance is already on it's way."
She smiled at the officer, resisting the urge to pat him on the arm. "Thank you."
"'Ey, I can't afford that!" Eduardo squawked, nasally and distorted.
"Stop talking and hold your head up," fussed Kylie unsympathetically.
"I've had a broken nose b'fore," he groused.
"Stop..."
Janine rolled her eyes, grabbed the trap by the cord despite her aching hands, and walked to the door, which Officer Meredith also opened for her.
She stepped past him with a quick 'thanks' and hollered into the cavernous darkness. "Hey Egon! Got any ice packs?"
He loomed out of the dark, pale and bearing circles under his eyes so dark she was fairly certain they were permanent by now. He said nothing, just looked down at the trap in her hands blankly, then back up at her. It was easily the most frightening expression she'd ever beheld on him; just a complete absence of thought.
Behind her Roland and Garrett filed in, having finally found a place to park his Mustang.
"Get a meter," she muttered to them, but all Roland produced was the smoking husk of the one they had been using. Well that was just great.
"You got the ghost," he said, finally, after an uncomfortably long silence. It was hard to hear him over the ringing in her ears, but she caught enough to understand. A statement of fact, monotoned without emotion. His mouth flickered into a quavering smile. "That's good. Very good."
"Um...Yeah...So. Ice packs." Garrett cut in. "'Cause Eddie boy here really needs one."
"I'm fine!" he snarled, provoking an equally annoyed snarl from Kylie.
"No, you aren't, and stop moving so much, you're making it worse!"
"You are!" Eduardo tried to push her tissue clenching fist away. "Geddoff!"
"Ice packs, yes." Egon didn't react to their arguing whatsoever, but seemed to register Eduardo had just spattered blood all over the floor and turned away, limping slowly up the stairs.
Janine watched him go, furrowing her brow in concern. "Roland, let's go take care of the trap..."
"We're coming too!" Kylie turned to Janine. "I want to see this thing put away."
"Ow!" Apparently she had bumped Eduardo's nose in the process of turning.
Garrett watched the entire scenario with amusement. "I thought you said you wanted to play doctors and nurses with her?"
Eduardo turned to glare at him, demonically. "I will kill you."
"You'd have to catch me first!"
"Children," Janine monotoned, still clutching the trap cable in her burnt hands. She had no patience left at this point, and so turned and walked down the stairs with Roland in her wake. Garrett made for the elevator but made a disappointed noise when he found out the power outage affected that too.
"So, show me how this works," Roland said, still curious despite the whole ordeal.
Janine shot him a quick smile and gave him the quick and dirty trap cleaning spiel, demonstrating with the trap containing Achira. It was over so quickly it seemed simply too easy. She sighed and almost ran her hands through her hair before remembering the burns and letting them drop to her sides. Now she knew how the guys had felt after a particularly difficult bust...
With that done they headed back upstairs into a considerably less chaotic reception area.
Eduardo had retreated to Dr V's chair and was holding the ice pack to his face while Kylie watched the door for the ambulance. Officer Meredith was apparently negotiating giving Garrett a ride back home.
Egon stood a little apart from them, a first aid kit clutched in his hands, still looking more than a little out of sorts.
Janine nudged Roland in the arm with her elbow and nodded at Eduardo before going over to Egon. "Egon...Are you alright?"
He blinked at her owlishly. "Yes, once the virus...was..." He trailed off and suddenly looked upset. "Oh, Janine, your hands."
Janine looked down and grimaced at them. The burns weren't bad for the most part, but the heel of her palms where her thumbs began were a vibrant red and the skin was already peeling away.
"Come upstairs," he commanded, walking up to the landing and pausing to wait for her.
Janine looked over her shoulder at Roland, who nodded once and made a gesture along the lines of 'go on, get'. She sighed and trailed Egon up the stairs, looking down at her palms miserably. How was she going to take notes like this? She honestly had not realized how bad they were, but that could be attributed to the adrenaline she was still feeling.
Once up the stairs he wordlessly pushed the bathroom door open and turned the cold tap up on the sink, making a motion for her to put her hands under the cool water. He disappeared around the corner and she heard the guest room door opening.
Janine put her hands under the stream, wincing at the pressure and the fact it had just now hit her how badly they burned. How the hell had she carried that trap? She bit her lip and looked up at herself in the mirror, hardly recognizing herself in the moonlight. The cut on her forehead had reopened at some point and added new blood streaks across her brow, fortunately not getting into her eye. Her face was liberally covered in gritty soot. She couldn't see much else.
A click behind her heralded the dim yellow glow of a light and she turned to look, then immediately regretted it. Dim as it was, her eyes had no time to adjust to a miner's helmet pointed directly into them. She pulled her hands out of the water, which was becoming uncomfortably cold, and squinted.
"Come out here, I need to see." The light shifted sideways, then was aimed down at the table where it shivered briefly and went still.
Janine shut the tap off with her knuckles and almost gasped at how hard it was to curl her fingers. She made her way into the living room, still blinking spots out of her eyes, and nearly tripped over Egon's legs. He scuttled away across the couch, which she sat down on, laying her singed hands out in the pooled light for examination.
His hands, larger and calloused, came out of the gloom beside her and gently turned them this way and that. "What happened?"
"Achira."
"Aside from that."
"...I forgot how hot the traps get and tried to pick it up by the box like an idiot," she groused, a little embarrassed.
"We should have insulated them better to begin with, but the design was so much more conducive to disposal..." he muttered, releasing her hands and cracking open the first aid kit. "You should go to the hospital with Eduardo, this is going to hinder you and this-" he indicated the blistering on the heels of her palms "-is a second degree burn."
Janine shook her head. "All I want to do right now is get a shower and sleep. I'm just going to go ho-" she halted, recalling that her car was totally and utterly in ruins. "Damn it!" She stood up, stomping her foot and instantaneously remembering the bruise on her ass with that motion. "I need to call my insurance company and...Augh!"
"Tomorrow. We can claim it on our insurance maybe, we'll see...Come back here and at least let me wrap your hands so they don't get infected."
Janine sat with a huff, scowling down at her hands. "Car's gone, no hot water, and my hands look like tomatoes. It just can't get any better."
"You're alive." It was said so softly she almost didn't hear it. He cleared his throat and repeated himself as he pulled clean white gauze from the kit. "You're alive. The kids are alive. I'm rather glad for that much."
Janine scuffed a foot on the floor, not really willing to confront her own mortality. "Yeah, well..."
"You did good out there, all of you," he said, wrapping her hands gently. Even that much was painful.
"We did what had to be done, you know? Nothing you guys haven't done before." She watched his hands move, a little shaky and still scaly in spots. "Are you alright?" She asked once again.
"I'm fine," he replied, quietly. "I may have scars for a while afterward, but they will fade eventually."
"I didn't mean physically."
He paused, hands frozen for a moment, before he continued his progress and tied the bandages just below her wrists. "I'm fine."
She sighed. She knew it was an evasive answer but really couldn't muster the energy to drag it out of him. She didn't much want to think about the implications either. "I'm going home. I bet Meredith or Roland could give me a ride home..." She trailed off, and recalled that her purse had been in her car. "Crap, my keys were in my car...Maybe management's still awake." She flexed her hands, testing the bandages and wincing as it stretched too-tight skin.
Without waiting for his response she headed back down the stairs, blinking as she adjusted to the dark again.
"Yo, Miss M." Garrett waved at her from the bottom of the stairs. Eduardo and Kylie were already gone, presumably in the ambulance. "Officer Meredith said it's gonna take forever to get across town in this mess, so...Do you think the Prof would be upset if we stayed the night here?"
"That's fine," Egon said from behind her. Janine almost jumped right onto the landing, having been unaware he had followed her.
Janine looked back at Garrett and shrugged.
"Where are Eduardo and Kylie?" Egon asked.
"Ambulance, they're gonna go to the hospital to at least get Ed's nose looked at. Meredith went with so he could use his sirens too."
Egon nodded curtly and turned to walk back up the stairs. "The bunk room is on the third floor. I'll be in the lab if you need me." And like that he was gone.
Janine looked back at Garrett who nodded at the elevator, then shook his head. She sighed and went down to help Roland assist him up the stairs - something Garrett quietly informed them he would kill them if it was mentioned later, after thanking them - and into the bunk room. By then she had decided she should stay there as well, just seeing a bed made her feel ten times more tired than she had before. Between the three of them they managed to dust off the bedding enough for the night. Janine couldn't help but steal glances across the hall at the closed lab doors. Light seeped out below them, but no sounds came out.
"Ms. Melnitz?" Roland asked quietly near her shoulder. "If Professor Spengler alright? He seemed a little..."
"Yeah, I know." Janine bit her lip, thinking it over. "He'll talk about it when he's comfortable. Right now I think a good night's sleep is what all of us need the most."
That said, they retired to their respectively staked out beds, wished each other a good night, and turned out the lights. For a while Janine lay awake, snuggled under Ray's faded comforter, feeling the ache spreading in her hands and watching the lights in the lab for any movement, of which there was none. She wasn't sure when she had finally fallen asleep, but she was aware that at some point in the night the door to the bunk room had been shut and the light across the hall went out. She hadn't really been aware of when or how that occurred, just registered it in a bleary half sleep before the dark swallowed her up again.
Still Night is a song by Pretty Lights.
Special thanks to my friend Fox for her help!