I am sorry.

Don't kill me.

Please.

^-^'

Annette Brown trudged down the hospital corridor, yawning widely and rubbing her eyes to stay awake. She was supposed to get off work two hours ago. However, one of her co-workers, Rory, had a death in their close family the previous week. Ever the giving one, Annette picked up all of his shifts until he could pull himself back together. After seven days of working her usual day shift and then stretching that into the wee hours of morning the young nurse was beginning to regret her charity.

The emergency doors bang open and four gurneys are rushed in. Nurse Brown presses her back against the wall to allow them to pass. She recognizes the young girl on the first from all the magazine hype and recent news coverage. Alena Vorshevsky. The president's daughter. A little rush of hope warms Annette from the soles of her feet to the tips of her fingers. If they had the daughter then there was still a chance of peace talks! Her hope turns to joy when the second gurney reveals the president himself! Then her joy is quickly turned to ice cold realization when the third gurney rolls along. A man she does not recognize is struggling to breathe, his eyes fluttering wildly as he tries to fight off unconsciousness.

Price pays no mind to the astounded nurse who is pressed against the wall not two feet from him. He's focused on Yuri. The Russian took a serious blow when the cavern began to collapse. He's bleeding from the head, the shoulder, and one of his legs all at once. Not to mention his skull took quite a beating from the debris. Price reaches down and grips Yuri's forearm reassuringly, trying to let him know that he's nearly in the clear. If he can just hold on a bit longer…

Ghost, Terrance, and Steven are lead in separately. Hawkins and Terrance were led quickly away by armed policemen, since they are not as high profile or in as critical a condition as the others, they will be kept on one of the lower floors. Ghost is clearly higher on the doctors' priority list, as he is both incoherent and hysterical. He keeps shouting about going back and his rights to take 'her' with him. No one was sure who 'she' was. "They wouldn't let me bring her! They have to let me go back! Please! You have to understand! I'll die without her! I don't want to die! Not again! Please not again!"

One of the nurses, a petite blonde named Mandy, had to excuse herself from the room. Tears were already working their way to her eyes when she crashed right into Annette. "I can't go in there!" She insisted without explaining the situation. Instead, she merely shoved the patient's file into Nurse Brown's empty arms and rushed off in the opposite direction.

Annette checks her watch. Twenty minutes left on her shift. Looks like she'll have to take this one. She shoulders room 443 open, expecting a bloodied and mangled mess, but instead finding a barely scratched, hysterical young man. Three doctors are trying to restrain him while another nurse is talking to him in a rushed, soft voice. The patient's eyes lock on nurse Brown as she enters and he immeadiately begins to plead with her. "Please! Please, you have to understand! I need her! The voices will come back! Please! I don't want to die again! I don't want to be Simon! Please! Please!" His desperation makes all his words meld together and he becomes completely incoherent as well as uncooperative. His hysteria is constantly on the rise.

Annette Brown has seen her fair share of mentally and emotionally scarred patients. Young as she is, she threw herself into her career head on and never slowed down. This man—She glances at the patient chart in her hands—'Simon Riley' is clearly one of these psychologically disturbed patients. She looks at the pleading, bright blue eyes and sighs. This is going to be a bit longer than twenty minutes.

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Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Ghost blinked slowly, trying to focus his thoughts.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Light gutters into the room. As an unwelcome guest, it burns at his pupils. Ghost groans softly.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The beeping registers and he tries harder to pull himself to full conciousness.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

It must be a bomb or something…some sort of trap.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

He has to warn the others.

Beep beep. Beep beep. Beep beep.

The sound speeds up, warning Ghost that whatever trap has been set is about to be sprung. He struggles to sit up, but finds he is tied to the spot. Panic sets in and he begins to fight against his bonds. Has to get away! Has to warn the others! Has to save them!

Beep beep beep beep beep beep!

Hands come out of nowhere and press Ghost down. Fear strangles him. They've found him! They're going to kill him! He can hear his own heart beating furiously as if it's trying to keep tempo with the frantic beeping from the bomb.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

"NO!" Ghost roars. He lurches forward, breaking out of the bonds. The room swims before his vision but he fights against the swirling. "Get away from me! I have to help them! I have to-!" Liquid ice begins pumping through Ghost's veins and his eyes roll back. From the moment he hits the pillow he's unconscious. The IV tube in his arm continues to feed strong sedatives into Ghost's bloodstream as the doctors around him rush to latch the restraints back in place. Annette readjusts Ghost's position so his neck isn't being strained. The past two hours have been stressful for everyone on this floor. Between Simon Riley's unpredictable outbursts and sorting out the confusion of who he was and whether or not the authorities should be notified, Annette forgot all about her desire to go home and the fact that her shift ended long ago. She'd been dashing back and forth from Riley's room and the President's, caring for each to the best of her ability. More of the staff had been moved to the lower floors to account for the large number of people wounded in a fire, so she'd been left to deal with the high priority patients.

Only Annette was trusted with the details of their predicament. Due to the confusing matter of…well, of having a dead man alive and (fairly) healthy on the fourth floor, a heavily guarded president of the country on the fifth, and the corpse of a young woman who had died over a year ago freshly zipped into her body bag down in the morgue, still wet with blood. It doesn't make any sense to nurse Brown, but she's been on the force for years. Experience and trustworthiness is what has her spending hours by each bedside, trying to put two and two together…and then divide that by zero. Everything about these patients is such a muddle that she can't make heads or tails out of any of their stories.

Simon Riley remains completely incoherent; the President and his daughter know even less about the situation than Nurse Brown does; Nikolai and Yuri refuse to talk until Price will (he's concrete in his decision NOT to); Terrance is silent, though Annette doubts he knows much. So she's left with no information on them and a threat from her boss that if she doesn't get them taken care of he'll be contacting the authorities. Never one to give up on a patient, no matter how uncooperative they are, Annette's been focusing her efforts on getting them taken care of. If it's in their intentions to talk, they'll do so as soon as they trust her.

While she is caring for Riley one afternoon he suddenly comes into consciousness. Confused and groggy, he tries to sit up only to be stopped by the security strap across his chest. "Where…where'm I?"

"You're in a hospital in Russia," Annette answers calmly. She reaches over and touches his forehead gently. Still a bit clammy, but at least his fever has finally broken. "Tell me your name."

"Ghost."

She looks at him oddly. Must be trauma. "How old are you…Ghost?"

"Twenty-nine…" He closes his eyes. The light hurts. "Why am I here?"

"You have been injured."

"I know that but…The president…Is he here? Did we save him? Was the mission a success?"

"He is safe."

"Gadget?" Hope floods the patient's eyes. Annette must look awfully confused, because he elaborates. "Emily. Emily Robins. You brought her back…right?"

Silence.

Fear.

Denial.

It can't be.

Not her.

Please, not her.

God, not her.

She's too strong, too good, too young.

She's got to be alive.

Realization.

"She's dead…"

Annette nods.

Air suddenly weighs ten thousand pounds. The blankets on top of him are suddenly like lead. All at once thought leaves him. All at once the world drops out from beneath him. All at once he breaks.

A great, heaving sob retches itself out of Ghost's chest. He continues to dry heave and shake and cry for what feels like hours to Nurse Brown. No matter what she does to comfort the man he remains inconsolable. He's devastated, but at the same time he seems puzzled. He brings his hands to his face and wipes away the tears, mumbling something about not crying in years before breaking down again.

Unable to take it anymore, Annette presses the button above Simon's bed to call for another nurse. A young, bright eyed woman in her early twenties comes in. Juliet. Annette doesn't trust anyone else on the ward like she does Juliet. "Watch over him. I think she was his girlfriend."

At the word 'girlfriend', Simon's sobs come even harder, shaking his head in disbelief.

Juliet nods and sits down in the chair next to him, takes his hand, and brushes the sweaty locks of hair out of his face. She smiles sadly. "I'm here…It's all right, it's all right. Try to breathe. Don't worry for her right now. She's in no more pain—" She glances at his file "—Simon. Look at me. There, see? I'm right here. You're not alone."

Slightly jealous of (though not ungrateful for) her assistant's ability to calm her patient's with simple words, Nurse Brown slips out of the room. She ignores all the eyes on her (she's never called someone in to take over for a patient before) and makes a beeline for Captain Price's room. She enters without knocking and finds him sitting on the windowsill, smoking out the open window. He looks at her as though looking at a dirty rag before turning his attention back outside and taps the ashes off the end of his cigar. "Can I help you, Brown?"

"Let's talk."

LOL I LIED :D

That took forever. See, I got a new laptop for my birthday (whooo~~) and tried to transfer all my files onto it. WELL, they all got deleted instead ^-^ How wonderful. So, I rewrote this chapter and actually posted it way shorter than originally planned so you guys didn't have to wait as long as you would've had I written it all at once. I apologize.

Review, por favor 3

EGR~