Disclaimer - I don't own bones nor will I ever will

Chapter 20 – The Graft in the Girl

Booth, Brennan and Angela were walking together down a hospital corridor, when Angela finally asked, "Uh, Agent Booth?"

Booth looked at her. "Yes, Angela?"

Angela pointed out where they were, "This is the pediatric cancer floor of the hospital."

Booth nodded his head, "Mm-hmm. Yeah."

Angela sighed. He wasn't going to give her anything. "Right. Well, uh, what I'm about to show Deputy Director Cullen is kinda gruesome." She then pointed to her bag.

Brennan looked up from papers she'd been flipping through as she too asked, "Why are we meeting Cullen here?"

Booth didn't like going into the details of Cullen's life, so he answered in a all-encompassing way. "Because he's the deputy director of the FBI and this is where he wants us to show it to him." That got him some pointed looks from both Angela and Brennan. "Okay, listen. About a month ago his daughter Amy was diagnosed with cancer. Meso..."

Brennan remembered Booth telling her that Amy had cancer, but he never said which kind until then. "Mesothelioma. Lung cancer."

Booth nodded his head. "Exactly. So she's not doing so well, so it's a lot easier for us to come to him right now."

Brennan found that…interesting. "Huh."

Booth gave her a pointed look, "Huh, what?"

Brennan shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing. It's just that's an extremely rare form of lung cancer—odd for someone Amy's age to contract."

Booth stopped walking and faced Brennan, holding out hand. "No, no, no. No probing, okay? Not to Cullen, not to his family. This will take five minutes. We go in, do the show and tell relating to the case and then we're out of there. Is that clear?"

Cullen walked outside of room 128 as Brennan whispered back, "I think it's peculiar."

Booth shook his head. "No."

Brennan tried to reason, "But I..."

However, Booth cut her off. "No." He knew how Bones could get when it came to something that was out of norm.

Brennan tried again, "You have to admit..."

Cullen cut them both off as he said gruffly, "Booth. Dr. Brennan. How appropriate, you two bickering in an adolescent wing."

Booth stammered out, flustered at being caught. "Uh, sir, yes. Um, is it okay if we come in, sir?"

Cullen turned and asked his daughter inside the room, "What do you think, sweetheart?"

Amy looked at Booth from inside the hospital room and smiled, "Booth's cool, most of the time."

Cullen smiled at his daughter as he turned to Booth. "You heard the lady. You're cool."

Booth smiled, "Mm-hmmm."

Brennan felt Booth squeeze her arm in warning to not continue their line of conversation inside. "Yeah, right. I got it Booth."

~BONES~

A doctor was washing his hands and prepping for surgery as Brennan and Booth talked to him. "Doctor, you performed Amy Cullen's graft, correct?"

The doctor nodded his head. "Yes, But I just do the procedure, Ms. Brennan."

Booth automatically corrected the doctor, having known Bones for years. "Dr. Brennan."

The doctor looked between the two and asked, "MD?"

Brennan shook her head. "PhD."

The doctor chuckled and said wryly, "Well, those who can't do, do research."

Booth didn't like that this 'good' doctor just insulted his wife. He stepped forward, protectively trying to defend her. "Okay..."

Brennan stopped Booth though. Happy to see that he was defending her, but they didn't need a scuffle about it. "Booth..."

Booth took a step back and looked at her. He sighed and said, "Okay, fine. If you're just the mechanic then who's responsible for all the parts that you install?"

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "You'll have to check with the hospital's transplant coordinator. Why? What's going on?"

Brennan told him authoritatively, "There are indications the bone graft you implanted in Amy Cullen gave her cancer."

The doctor looked at her in shock. "No, that's impossible. Every graft we get has been tested and irradiated."

Brennan smiled smugly at him. "There's one way to know for sure. Assuming significant remodeling hasn't occurred do a transiliac crest core biopsy on the donor bone. Then we'll have age and pathology."

The doctor looked at her and said condescendingly, "And who's going to perform that biopsy, Doctor?"

Brennan crossed her arms over her chest. "You are."

~BONES~

Booth and Brennan were talking to Cullen in Booth's office. Brennan told him gently, "Your daughter's cancer originated in the bone graft. The test confirms it."

Cullen looked at them confused, "It was the operation?"

Brennan nodded her head apologetically, "Not only was the bone contaminated by malignancy it was significantly older than documented."

Cullen was very confused. "It was expired or something?"

Booth stepped in and tried to explain. "No, sir. It just came from a much older donor."

Brennan added, "Someone in their sixties."

Cullen couldn't believe it. He scoffed, "Hospital error."

Booth told him, "The next step would be to find out where the graft came from and how it slipped through the system."

Cullen shook his head. "This is not FBI jurisdiction."

Booth stepped a little closer to him and said quietly, "It's a question of justice."

Cullen looked at Brennan as he asked desperately, "Does this, in any way, change my daughter's prognosis?"

Brennan looked at him and said empathetically, "No."

Cullen sighed, "So she's still gonna die of this cancer?"

Brennan nodded her head. "Barring spontaneous remission the likelihood is significant."

Cullen looked down. "The FBI's not my personal police force. I appreciate what you discovered. Call Charlie Hammond, CDC. Tell him what happened...he'll continue the investigation."

He turned to leave when Brennan told him, "My team can still..."

Booth cut her off though, placing a hand on her shoulder to stop her as he said, "We'll notify CDC right away."

~BONES~

Booth was driving while Brennan was in the passenger seat mad that that was it. "So that's it? Whoever did this to Amy Cullen just gets away."

Booth shook his head as he smiled grimly, "No. What we do now is we find out a way to make this a legitimate FBI case."

Brennan sighed. "If one graft is infected, there's no telling how many others are out there."

Booth shook his head in disgust. "Geez, you know, I feel like I'm on a serial killer case just waiting for another victim to surface."

Brennan pointed out the horrible truth. "You're not far off. What if BioTech makes a habit of selling diseased parts?"

Booth said firmly, "Well, then it becomes FBI business if one of those tainted grafts is sold across state line."

Brennan told him, "Well, you can spit into four states from where we are right now."

Booth looked at her confused, "What?"

Brennan rolled her eyes. "Not literally."

He wasn't used to hearing her make a colloquialism like that. "Okay, first we gotta find out if this tissue lab is servicing any other hospitals."

Brennan nodded her head. "See if they've killed anyone else."

Booth gave her a pointed look. "Amy Cullen is not dead, Bones."

Brennan looked at him with sad eyes. "I'm afraid there's a degree of inevitability." She reached over a squeezed his thigh. "I'm sorry."

~BONES~

Booth and Brennan were inside the SUV again as Booth drove. He looked down at a paper pad as he said, "Hey, look. There are three potential West Virginia donors we could be talking about. There's Lester Blake out of Tague. There's Blair Simmons..." A car zoomed by the honking their horn. Booth yelled, "Hey lady, watch where you're driving!"

Brennan took the paper away from him as she said, "I'd rather not be a donor myself. Blair Simmons out of Dailey and William Hastings out of Beard's Fork. All three men died of mesothelioma last August."

Booth looked at where they were and said, "Ok, we'll be in Beard's Fork within about an hour, ok? You're sure Zack and Hodgins are on the other two, right?"

Brennan answered her ringing cell phone, "This is Brennan."

Zach spoke to her through his own cell, "Dr. Brennan, I'm at Lester Blake's exhumation. I've examined the remains."

Booth's own cell phone rang. He answered it too. "This is Booth."

Hodgins yelled to him over the noise, "Blair Simmons isn't dead."

Booth didn't know what that meant. "What?"

Hodgins told him, "He's frozen in a cryogenics lab."

Booth scrunched his face even more confused. "What do you mean frozen?"

Hodgins joked around, "Like a supermarket turkey. Not a scratch on him. And I think he's wedged between Walt Disney and Ted Williams."

Zach told Brennan while Booth talked with Hodgins, "There's no sign of body tampering, and it's clear his casket hasn't been open since his burial."

Brennan looked at Booth and said, "So if Blake isn't our donor..."

At the same time Booth looked at Brennan and said, "So if Simmons isn't our donor..."

That meant their guy was the donor. Bingo baby.

~BONES~

They were in a room where coffins were out for display. Booth looked around, disturbed by the sight. "What's this place?"

Brennan looked around the room as she told him. "Casket showroom. They're having a sale."

Booth snorted. "Well, it looks like a sick department store. Alright, nobody would be cutting anybody up in this place. Let's go."

He turned to lead Brennan out of the room when she stopped him and pointed at something, "Whoa. Wait, over there."

Booth looked over to where she was pointing. "What? It's a water line. What's the big deal?"

Brennan also pointed out, "But the floor slopes towards the centre of the room. This wasn't always used for a showroom. I wonder what's under the carpet. Huh. If body work was done in here, they'd need a drain." She cut a piece of the carpet to reveal a drain.

Booth shook his head in disbelief. "You're kidding me. It's a drain?"

Martin entered the room and told them in an annoyed tone. "This is our sales office. There is nothing in here you need to see. The only thing in this room is caskets. "

Brennan looked up at an air vent in the wall and said, "I'm not so sure about that."

Martin watched as Brennan walked over to the wall and stammered out, "No, what...you are making a mistake."

Brennan narrowed her eyes. "Am I?" She closed a casket and climbed up on it to look at the vent.

Martin knew he was in trouble. "She's ruining my merchandise."

Booth chuckled at his lame excuse. "Come on, how much is that one?"

Martin told him, "$7,000"

Booth's eyes widened. They could afford that, but they did not need it. "Bones, watch the scuff marks."

Brennan turned around to explain to the man what he so obviously forgot. "Mr. Martin, this room is designed to be washed clean. You've got drains in the floor. I think this is where you did the bone harvesting. When you thought we were coming back, you moved everything around."

Martin played dumb. "That's absurd. I did no such thing."

Brennan leant down and grabbed a mask and swab from her bag. "You're an excellent house cleaner but in the carpeting and tidying up, you forgot about one thing." She reached up and opened the air vent, swabbing the inside. "Bone dust. You forgot about airborne particles."

~BONES~

Booth and Brennan left the hospital after Cullen thanked them for helping solve the case. Booth sensed something was weighing heavily on Brennan's mind though. He reached over the console in the SUV and grabbed her hand, "What's on your mind, Bones?"

She sighed deeply and squeezed his hand. "It's just so sad. She's so young and she did nothing wrong. She only broke a bone."

Booth nudged her so that she was looking at him. He quickly glanced at her before turning his gaze back to driving and said, "What you did for her, you figuring out how she got sick, that will make it easier for them. Yeah, it's still sad that she's going to die, but at least they have a peace of mind knowing what caused it. You gave them that babe. They will be thankful forever for that."

Brennan leaned her head against his shoulder as she closed her eyes and sighed one more time. "Yeah, I guess." This had been a draining case, with only a sad ending. Booth brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them softly, bringing her comfort that she didn't realized she needed. "Thank you, Booth. Thank you."

He smiled warmly at her, "Anytime, babe. Anytime."

Today I'm in a bad mood to day because the most horrible guy has been elected president of the United States, but enough of that... Um I'm sorry that this chapter is shorter today but you know why now.

Please Review it gets me out to bed to keep writing.