Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-M-

He knew he wasn't alone.

The thought had been bouncing around in Jack's head ever since they left St. Mary-Dismas, but never long enough for him to fully appreciate it. Bozer had been head down texting Riley, and he'd been watching for visible surveillance and any tech they could use to monitor who was going in and out of the facility. Then it seemed like they just sat down in the plane before they were touching down in LA. They got the hour back so they landed basically at noon, and still suspended or not, Jack followed Boze back into the building and right back to the couch in the Talbots' office to keep his promise.

He had watch.

It looked like Mac had been sacked the hell out for the two intervening hours, but Jack noticed that Mac's right fist was still wrapped tight around something – presumably the hacky sack. Mac was way too weak to do anything overly exotic with it, and Jack hoped the nurse had enough sense to leave it with him.

Proof that they'd been there, and he hadn't just dreamt it.

Proof that he hadn't been alone.

Even if it had all gone wrong, even if Mac had died that morning three weeks ago in Amsterdam, he would have died knowing that he wasn't alone. He'd known that they were there by his bed, talking to him. Keeping watch.

He'd heard them.

Something that had been wound tight in Jack's chest for damn near the entire month was slowly, slowly easing off. It had been a while since he'd felt it, years even, and he knew what was gonna happen when it finally let go.

So he didn't think about it. Didn't think about the hours in that dark, cold room, babbling about anything that came to his mind. Didn't think about the nights he was afraid to go to sleep, and wake up to a nightmare. Didn't think about anything but watching his partner, and keeping his promise.

Because watch wasn't over yet, and he couldn't relax until he was done.

Four hours in – and undisturbed by the doctors whose office had been completely commandeered since Mac had been checked into St. Mary-Dismas – his phone vibrated. Jack didn't immediately grab it, but after a few seconds, he got a second message, and he frowned and fished it out of his sling.

Tying up that bow.

Last chance.

Jack smirked to himself and sent back a thumb's up. Then he thought better of it, and also sent a thumbs down.

Let Saito make of that what he would.

Motion on the big screen caught his eye, and Jack watched as Storm the X-Man – now known as Wanda, though he definitely liked Storm better – came into view. She paused near Mac's waist, apparently speaking to him, but he didn't so much as twitch. She gave him a few moments, then came up to his head to check something. A blue latex hand reached out and smoothed his hair. He didn't wake.

Having finally met her, Jack was now quite sure that he liked her. More importantly, he was sure that she liked Mac. And reasonably sure that Mac was pretty okay with her too.

She stroked his hair again, but there was no response. His partner was out. He'd had a hell of a day, and Jack could relate. Even though all he'd done was get up, fly an hour, drive a car around, walk a little, yell, drive a car around, fly an hour, and hang out on a couch . . . he was pretty exhausted himself. It was by far the most he'd done since getting back to the United States, and his ribs were definitely sore.

But his exhaustion had nothing to do with his bones and Jack knew it. And maybe Mac was feeling the same way. Maybe the knot in his chest had also been released, just a little.

Maybe he finally knew that it was safe to sleep.

It was safe for both of them to sleep.

In fact . . .

After the second attempt to wake Mac failed, Storm backed off, apparently content to let him keep sleeping as long as he liked, and Jack took a deep breath, then pushed himself off the couch. Nurse Tasha caught him as he stepped into the elevator, and she raised a hand to signal him to wait. Jack gave her a big grin as the elevator doors slid shut.

His checkup could wait til tomorrow.

Jack got off on the ground floor, and got a hole in two. Riley was not in the War Room, as he'd guessed, but instead in the break room just down the hall from it, earbuds in, laptop on the table. A small pile of torn plastic was sitting beside it, among a few crumbs. And that sad little granola bar was probably all the lunch she'd had. Jack grinned to himself, then nonchalantly slipped behind her and slid into the chair to her right.

Riley jumped almost a foot straight into the air.

He couldn't help but chuckle as she yanked out her earbuds with a dirty look. "Dude! Really?"

Still chuckling, he handed over his phone. Riley gave him a strange look, then accepted it. ". . . uh . . . did you break it . . .?" Then she actually looked at it. "Did Mac break it?"

Don't I wish. "Nah, didn't let him get his grubby little hands on it. He says hi, by the way."

Her dirty looked faded a little into curiosity as she woke the phone and somehow magically made the lock screen go away, and she read the visible text thread. "Is . . . this supposed to mean something . . . ?" But then she trailed off.

Jack nodded. "John and Si have eyes on Donnovan."

Just like Saito had promised them. Matty had indeed given them the green light, and Saito and John Tunne had tracked down the asshole in Turkish intelligence that had orchestrated Riley's kidnapping, and were about to tie the whole thing up with a pretty bow.

Riley's face slipped into a neutral mask. "What's with the like dislike?"

Jack let his own grin turn wolfish. Truth be told, he wouldn't mind a bit if Robert Donnovan made the two Phoenix agents tailing him and tragically fell off the roof of a twenty story building before an admittedly still-healing John could wrestle him into custody. Jack didn't really think anyone would mind if the guy didn't survive being taken in. But Riley might actually appreciate the closure, appreciate being allowed to actually see him in orange, being stuffed in a concrete box forever. She might appreciate hearing that door clang shut. Knowing she could access that camera whenever she wanted, and see that he was right where they'd put him. Right where he deserved to be.

"Si was just wondering if you wanted a word with this guy before we put him away."

If she knew what he was really getting at, she didn't acknowledge it, she just handed him back the phone. "I . . . no," she decided, wrinkling her nose. "No, he's wasted enough of my time."

"Fair enough." Jack accepted the phone, tucking it back into his sling. "Speakin' of the time, I think it's right about pizza and skeeball time. That rain check's burnin' a hole in my pocket."

Riley blinked at him. "You know that was a – you know what, nevermind." She closed her laptop with a sigh. "I'd love to, Jack, but I'm still digging into Mac's doc. Her file's about as redacted as yours or Matty's, and –"

"And it can wait until tomorrow," Jack finished, a little more gently. "Riles. The last of Aydin's guys just got rounded up. And Mac's doin' just fine. If this ain't a milkshake occasion, I don't know what is."

In all honesty, the milkshakes were about as good as the pizza – but that wasn't the point. It was also getting near five o'clock, but alcohol was not what either of them needed right now.

This hadn't been the kind of op you celebrated – but you damn well needed to acknowledge when it was over. And for right now, it was over. All the bad guys were caught. All the paperwork was filed. Mac still had a journey in front of him, but he was in there somewhere, and they'd get him back on his feet again.

It was over. And just like for Mac, just like for him, it was finally safe for Riley to sleep. No more boogeymen in the closet.

In her case, literally.

Riley looked like she was thinking about putting her armor back on, but this time it was a little too heavy, and she finally deflated a little bit. ". . . actually, that sounds awesome," she admitted. "But no skeeball. The last time you did skeeball left-handed, I think that attendant ended up with a blood blister on his knee."

The harmless banter got them all the way to Jack's car, and Riley barely balked before she slid in. "I'd tell you that I should drive, but since the skeeball conversation went sideways –"

"I will have you know I have taught courses on defensive driving left handed and left footed," Jack pointed out mildly, starting the engine. "You never know when you're gonna find yourself injured and on the run in Canada-"

She snorted. Loudly. "They drive on the right side of the road in Canada, Jack-"

"As long as it's the American side it's the right side."

She glanced over at him, exasperated and fond all at once. "How is it that you've been to every continent and you still can't keep track of which side of the road they drive on? Oh, wait, I know. It's because you don't pay any attention to which side of the road you're driving on anyway –"

"I am a very safe driver, Riley –"

"Yeah, when you're not hanging out of a window shooting," she snarked good-naturedly. "Do you remember –" But then she stopped.

Jack glanced over at her, to see what had gotten her attention, but she was still staring at him. " . . . what?"

The strange expression was gone from her face almost as fast as it had appeared. "Nothing. Nothing, I . . ." She shook her head, suddenly interested in her phone. "Taken Landen Parkway, you don't want to get on the 10 right now."

"I don't wanna get on the 10 ever," he replied, hoping to restore the playful atmosphere, but she didn't bite. Instead, she frowned.

"Actually, Landen's just as bad." There was a series of small clicks. "Ugh. I hate LA sometimes."

Jack took that to mean the third way – the back way – was also a cluster. After all, it was five o'clock. "I don't mind the traffic if you don't."

She stared at the phone in her hand another moment, then dropped it to her lap. "Actually . . . do you mind just taking me home? I'm just . . ." She trailed off.

"Tired," Jack supplied. When she didn't deny it, he decided to press. Just a little. "You been working solid since the hospital, Ri. You never took a break. But now we caught the last guy, it's a done deal. Matty'd definitely give you a few days."

Her response was immediate. "I'm good."

Jack closed his mouth. Quickest way to get her to clam up was to add the pressure, and he knew it, but -

"I'm okay," she added, more quietly. "I just . . . I was about to say, do you remember when you were teaching me to drive, but . . . that was Elwood."

Jack blinked, trying to latch onto this new thread of conversation. "Well, he don't exactly strike me as the best driver himself, Ri –"

"It was only once," she said quickly. "He . . . he wasn't around much, then, and . . . I didn't want to hear anything he had to say anyway."

Jack eased them out of traffic into an alley between two strip malls. If they couldn't get to pizza and skeeball, he knew the next best thing. She didn't even seem to notice.

"I didn't think about him at all." It sounded almost hollow. "I didn't think about mom either. I . . how selfish is that?"

"You mean . . . on the boat?" He kept his tone light and easy.

"Yeah." She was quiet a moment. "I don't . . . I don't think about it, ever. What would happen if – if I died. To them. How they'd find out. I . . ." Jack dared to glance at her, and found her eyebrows bunched in confusion.

"Of course not," he told her, like it was the most natural thing in the world. "When you're in the moment, you're just gettin' from one minute to the next."

"No, I-" But then she stopped herself again. "I had plenty of time to think. It's all I had. I thought about what you and Mac would do, I thought about . . . music, the clubs I used to go to where there was this DJ who . . ." She fell silent.

Jack found a break in traffic on a side street and got them back on their way.

Riley shook her head a little. "Nevermind."

He debated for a while before he opened his mouth. "Well, that's a good sign. That you weren't plannin' your own funeral, I mean. We got a name for that in this business. It's called givin' up."

"No, I . . . I knew . . . I mean, once Mac showed up, I was sure, but even before that –" She bit her bottom lip, and stared sightlessly out of the passenger window. This time he didn't push, and they were nearly to his apartment before she spoke again.

"Die Hard marathon?" Her voice was suspiciously husky.

He pasted on a grin that he wasn't feeling. "When in doubt, put your trust in Bruce."

She snorted. "Boze is gonna be pissed he's missing out."

"Ordinarily, that'd be true," he drawled, pulling into his parking space. "But Boze has a couple things on his mind right now. Your mission's over and done with. His . . . well, he's just gettin' settled in."

Bozer was without a doubt somewhere in a lab – probably with Specs - trying to come up with a way to help Mac communicate. Wilt wouldn't sleep easy until Mac was back in the house, under the same roof, and there wasn't a whole lot Jack could do about that.

But Mac would be back in that house. His partner was alive and well and as soon as he could talk, he'd tell 'em all that himself.

He'd tell Bozer himself.

The tight coil in his chest inched loose another fraction, and Jack levered himself out of the car. "Pepperoni and banana peppers?" It was her go-to, after all.

Riley, too, had gotten out of the car, and she'd turned and put her hand on the headrest, like she intended to move the seat and grab her stuff. But something made her hesitate, and then he watched her face crumple in on itself.

"Oh, oh, hey, no," and he was around the car in a flash. She didn't rebuff him like she usually did; in fact, she seemed to forget that he was still in the sling at all, and hugged him hard enough to hurt. He didn't pull back an inch.

"Hey, hey, Riley, I'm here. I'm here. You're good."

"I k-know," she sobbed, half over his shoulder, half into his neck.

He gently stroked her back. "Honey, I'm sorry, we don't gotta get pepperoni if you don't wanna-"

As expected, he got a laugh – but it was still more of a sob, and he held her close. He couldn't make out the next few words – there were too many ss's, maybe scared, maybe sorry – maybe both. But then she heaved in a big breath.

"You're here," she told him, her voice thick. "You s-said you would be and you w-were-"

The boat.

Jack took a deep breath himself, stroking her hair to keep it out of his nose. "Yeah, baby. I told you, I'm not goin' anywhere."

And they didn't, not for a long moment. Another car pulled up but Jack didn't pay them any attention, he just held his little girl while the knot she was carrying unwound. She tried to explain it, and he caught half phrases here and there, but the words didn't matter. He could piece it together well enough, and it made his own eyes prick.

She hadn't thought about Elwood. Hadn't thought about Diane. Hadn't even really thought about dying.

But she'd thought about him. Believed without question that he would be there when she needed him to be.

And she still believed that he had been.

"Okay, kiddo, you're okay," he murmured, when it seemed like the storm was mostly past. His own chest had loosened another notch, and if he wasn't careful, they were both going to lose it.

He felt more than heard her start to pull herself together. "Mac is . . . is really . . .?"

"Yeah. Yeah. He's still pretty loopy, but you don't need to be worrying about him right about now. We're all okay. It's over, honey. It's all good."

Riley pressed her forehead into his neck as she rubbed her nose, and then she pulled away, and he let her. Her eye makeup had barely budged, but she swiped at it anyway, and he gave her a quick peck on the temple and then grabbed her bag from behind the passenger seat. She took it from him with a small noise of protest – again with the arm – and he led the way up the stairs to his second-floor apartment.

Her bag went onto the picnic table, per usual, and instead of settling on the couch or the barber's chair, she headed instead for the stools by the island. He took that as an indication that water was in order, and produced two bottles from the fridge. She accepted with a nod, and broke the seal with a crack, drinking deeply. He leaned against the sink counter and did the same, albeit a little slower.

Half the bottle was gone before she came up for air. "Thanks," she said, a little breathlessly, and then toyed with the plastic lid a moment. "It's not like . . . with the Organization guy. It's different."

Jack nodded quietly. "You're still hiding in work, though." The 'that ain't gonna help you' went unsaid but not unheard, because the corner of her mouth turned up.

"Matty said the same thing," she admitted, and took another swig of water.

Jack inhaled deeply. "It's gonna be different. Down in the data center, that was a whole lotta violence all at once, but when it was done, it was done. When someone hangs onto you, when it happens over a longer period of time, and you got time to think about it . . . that's a different kind of stress. It'll get out either way, though. Best not to hang onto it too long."

She glanced at him, and he thought she was going to call him out for doing it himself, but she didn't. "So Saito said."

Unbidden, he felt a little surge of pride – and jealousy. "Yeah, Si knows it as well as any of us. He tell you how he came by that pearl of wisdom?"

Riley silently shook her head, and Jack considered his next words carefully.

"Well, that's his story to tell, not mine. It ain't a pretty one." He sighed, then set the half-empty bottle of water on the counter, and seriously considered replacing it with a beer after all. "Most of us got a story or two, and I'm so damn sorry you got one of your own now."

"That's not your fault. I – working with Phoenix . . . at least this prison cell only lasted a week." She emptied her bottle.

That was true, had she not come to work with him she would still be in a five by six serving the rest of her sentence, but it still made his heart ache. "You don't gotta tell me anything, but . . . is there anything I can do?"

The smile she gave him was small and vulnerable. "You just did."

That meant more to him than he could tell her, and he waved a hand in the air to distract them both. "I mean, there's field trainin', we can work on your skills in the gym, help ya feel a little more prepared . . ."

Just in case there's a next time.

God, he didn't want that for her. Never wanted that for her.

Riley cleared her throat. "Yeah. Yeah, that would probably help."

"Okay," he agreed quickly. "Yeah. We can get that scheduled, no problem."

She stared at the water bottle a second, then a mischievous little smirk covered the vulnerability. "I mean, when you're not suspended –"

Jack straightened and gave her a semi-serious reproachful look. " . . . is that payback for sneakin' up on you earlier?"

The smirk bloomed into a full-blown grin. "Not quite." But then it faded a little. "Bozer's freaking out too. I don't know what to do for him."

Jack stifled another sigh, then crossed the kitchen for the fridge, taking out two cold ones. "Wish I knew what to tell ya." He searched the utensil drawer for a church key. "Just . . . keep an eye on him for me, wouldja?"

A mini mission, something for her to focus on, might be just what she needed. A better distraction than work. But instead of latching onto the idea, she gave him a funny look.

"And where are you gonna be?" Then she shook her head like she'd said something stupid, and started peeling the label off the water bottle. "Oh. Duh."

She thought he was going to leave her to stay with Mac.

He abandoned the beers without a second thought, crossing the kitchen and putting his hands over hers. "I'm gonna be right here," he told her softly. "Right here."

It was gonna suck, not having them all in the same place, but he'd made it work before, and he'd make it work again. He held her eyes until he got a nod, and longer still, until he believed that she believed it, and then let her go, and uncapped the beers.

He heard her shoes hit the floor, two dull slaps, and turned in time to hand her one of the beers and watch her pad over to the couch. She curled up in her favorite spot, which was always on the left armrest, and he took up the remainder. Then he offered her the neck of his bottle.

She obediently clunked it with hers. "From the beginning?"

He fixed her with a very serious look. "You always start at the beginning, Riley. You can't fully appreciate number two without soaking in the evil that is Hans Gruber - did you just roll your eyes at me?"

Riley hid any sign of guilt behind a sip of beer. "Mmm. Well, then kick us off, by all means."

She was asleep before John McClane got off the airplane.

Jack finished his beer, then quietly pulled his phone out of the sling. The pizza order went off without a hitch, and then he launched the browser, and the secret website Riley had set up, and resumed his watch.

-M-

"Really?" she inquired drily, looking up from the tablet at the patient in the bed. "This is really the way you wanna do this?"

The patient did not respond. At least not consciously. Unconsciously was an entirely different story. His inflammation markers were still stupidly high despite the ear infection being completely under control, and the sepsis fully eliminated. His kidneys were still healing, but there was no sign of infection and his creatinine levels were reasonable, if not actually good. His lungs and chest were knitting and there was no fresh blood in his wound drains. His histamine was fine, meaning it wasn't an allergic reaction, and his white count had leveled off.

Whatever was chewing on him, his immune system had wiped its hands of it.

Which pointed yet again towards neurological. Stress. She'd expect to see these levels from a forty year old stock market drone putting in fourteen hours a day and subsiding entirely on coffee. And unfortunately, outside of peristalsis sounds in his intestines, she couldn't be sure if he was suffering from raging indigestion or not.

Really not that far off a med student. But he wasn't a med student. She would have killed for eight uninterrupted hours of sleep.

Right now he was in light sleep. Between the seizure and the visit with his Phoenix buddies, she knew he was physically exhausted, but after the first two hours spent in solid deep sleep cycles, he'd been settled into a very strange pattern. Now it was mostly light with occasional rises into REM, but not for long, and back down into light again. Either his brain didn't think it had much to do in the way of memory building, or it was avoiding REM for entirely different reasons.

And it was still way too early to speculate on that.

Simone glanced down at the patient's right fist, his fingers still curled around the toy Jack Dalton had given him. His stillness during sleep was a direct result of the neurogenic shock, but the persistent grip was more basic, the same kind of instinctive latching on of an infant. And there again, it was too early to speculate on that. He was desperate to keep it, but there was no way to know if it was in the way of a child clinging to his mother, or an adult clinging to their child.

She was going to have to ask him.

The door clicked quietly open, and Parsons watched her patient closely as Alec entered the room with the nutrition cart in tow. Unless they started putting something in his stomach, she was a little afraid his intestines were going to lose interest in trying to function. And if he was suffering from GERD, a little something for his stomach acid to chew on might help. He could definitely use the extra calories, now that he was beginning to move consistently on his own, but he was unlikely to enjoy the application.

He wasn't really enjoying much of anything. He'd been all but ignoring the visual stimulation for the last couple days, and playing the disinterested card with both her and Wanda. The interaction he'd had earlier told her that was an act, probably a defensive one, but despite the fact that he should therefore be on alert, and wake at the sounds around him, MacGyver slept on, even though Alec wasn't being super quiet.

She was tempted to have Alec wake him, just to see what he'd do, but eventually decided against it. His trust was more important.

"Thank you, Alec," she acknowledged him, eyes still on her patient. "I'll put him through a few memory exercises, and then we'll sedate him and get the feeding tube inserted."

"You got it," he replied easily, catching on and speaking at a normal conversational volume.

And Angus finally started to come around.

The same way he always did. Tightening of his eyes followed by a spasmodic gasp on the ventilator.

The lack of REM and the lack of seeming to remember that he was on a vent could be related, and she made a note while the patient took another panicked gasp, and his eyes flew open.

He focused on her immediately, then seemed to search the room – for Wanda, good – and his eyes fell on Alec. The male nurse gave him an easy smile, and Angus watched him as he struggled to normalize his breathing.

"We didn't mean to startle you," she told him, approaching on his left side, where Wanda typically would. "Do you remember what happened earlier?"

He didn't blink, didn't even look at her, but his right hand closed a little more tightly around the ball.

That was a yes.

"You had another seizure," she told him, in the same tone. "While you were resting, two friends came to visit you. Do you remember them?"

Alec remained still, beyond the foot of the bed and definitely too far away to touch him, and eventually MacGyver looked back at her. He'd won the fight against the ventilator and took his first fully easy breath. Then he gave her two blinks.

"That's good," she told him, and she meant it. "Do you remember Nurse Wanda coming back in after they left?"

His eyes shifted to the left – accessing visual memory – and then back to her, and he blinked, slowly.

That was a no.

"That's okay." Simone set the tablet down on the bed beside his empty left hand – and he made no move to grab it as she went through the normal checks of his equipment, his pupils, his reflexes. All part of his routine. So much so that he lost interest in her and went back to watching Alec, who had dropped back to the nutrition cart to finish the prep.

"We're going to work on some mental exercises today," she announced, and as expected, she regained his attention. "After that, I think you've earned a milkshake."

He seemed to think about that for a while, then he surprised her by lifting his left hand to lay it extremely close to his chest wound dressing. She almost stopped him, but all he did after that was reach up a finger to touch the ventilation tube. He made no move to grasp it or pull it out, he simply indicated it, his eyes questioning.

She shook her head in response. "No, we have to leave the ventilator in for a while longer. Your lungs aren't strong enough yet to breathe on their own. You have more healing to do."

He took the news pretty well, relaxing his finger, but the questioning expression didn't leave his face. So he'd put together that he couldn't eat until the tube was gone.

"We're going to insert a feeding tube down your throat, into your stomach. You won't be able to taste it, but we need to start getting you used to digesting food again."

He neither agreed nor disagreed, and his left hand remained where it was, high on his chest, while she worked on his legs and his feet. He didn't play with the dressing, and he didn't make a move for the tube. He just seemed to like leaving it there.

Maybe the change of position was nice. They could only move him up or down about thirty degrees without causing the ventilator tube to rub him the wrong way, and while the bed compensated for bed sores by shifting him regularly – and his daily physical therapy – perhaps it was time to start turning him. She made the mental note while she tested the reflexes in his feet.

No better than the morning, and not significantly better than the last couple days. That damn inflammation was squeezing his spinal column.

"Okay. We're going to do something new. Can you focus on the screen for me?"

His eyes obediently shifted to the screen above him as she recollected her tablet and brought up the name recognition program. Now that he'd met someone he knew, and he should be aware that he was safe, he shouldn't have any qualms about responding to her honestly. That was half the trouble with spies – you could never be sure if they were lying because they thought it was their duty, because they just wanted out, or because they legitimately didn't know the right answer.

However, the first thing she brought up wasn't his name. It was a picture of a hen. He stared at it a second, then looked at her, and she changed the screen. Now there were four words displayed.

Cow. Rat. Hen. Dog.

He looked at the screen for a long second.

"Is the word for the picture you saw earlier up on the screen?"

He stared for another long second, and then he gave her two blinks. Yes.

She clicked to the next screen without comment, a gamboling golden retriever. She let him view the picture for a second, then moved on to a grid of four words.

Dog. Cat. Rat. Bog.

"Is the word for the picture you saw before this up on the screen?"

His eyebrows came together a moment, but it didn't stop him from blinking twice, with surety.

They moved on to more complex words. Horse. Giraffe. Then plurals, cow versus cows. That one also seemed to confuse him, though the second time, mouses versus mice, he seemed to catch onto the rules. Mouses was up there, but it wasn't a word.

They went through at least a dozen iterations before he stopped staring at the screen, and started staring at her. Simone gave him an impassive look. "Look at the screen."

He didn't. He continued staring at her.

"Are you in pain?" she asked him, with the exact same tone as her other questions. In answer, he blinked once.

"Are you bored?" She didn't change her inflection in the slightest.

Two immediate blinks.

"Are you excited?"

He stared at her for a good ten seconds before he gave her a firm blink. Definitely not.

If he was guessing, he was doing a pretty damn good job of it.

"Do you want me to move on to something else?"

Two immediate blinks.

She changed the screen background color, and he glanced back at the screen.

MacGyver. McGuyver. MacGuyver. McGuver.

"Is your name on the screen?"

He stared at it a long moment without blinking. Then his eyes slipped back to her, still without blinking. She gave him absolutely nothing in return but the same impassive stare.

He blinked, but it seemed to be involuntary, then he looked back at the screen. Then he made up his mind, and gave her two blinks.

After all, she clearly knew his name at this point, even though she'd never said it. Four iterations of it were on the screen. Even if he didn't want to admit he knew his name to a stranger, the writing was on the wall. Or the ceiling, to be more precise.

Then she showed each of them individually. "Is that your name?"

He gave her an affirmative for MacGyver, and a negative for the other iterations.

She tapped the screen, and four more iterations came up.

MevGacyr. MaGcyevr. MacGyver. MacGvyer.

"Is your name on the screen?"

The look he shot her was almost a glare, but he stared at the screen again, and this time he really, really studied it.

"Is your name the first name?"

An immediate no.

"Is your name the second name?"

Another immediate no.

"Is your name the third name?"

The two blinks were thoughtful.

"Is your name the fourth name?"

He gave her another two blinks, just as thoughtful as the first two.

There was no record of dyslexia in his file, but it could be a vision issue as much as a letter order issue. She gave him nothing, no indication that any answer was right or wrong, and then flipped to his first name, and repeated the patterns. This time, when he had to choose between Angus and Agnus, he was correct.

Then she put up four more words.

Angus. Agnus. MacGyver. Mac.

"Is your name on the screen?"

He told her it was.

"Is your name the first name?"

He gave her one blink. No.

She didn't even hesitate. "Is the second name your name?"

Another single blink. Nope.

"Is the third name your name?"

This one he owned up to, and told her it was.

"Is the fourth name your name?"

That one he confirmed as well.

He had clearly recognized his name as Angus previously, and not gotten it confused with Agnus. For him to turn it down the last time was deliberate. He didn't want to be called Angus.

"You want to be called MacGyver or Mac?"

He looked at her, really looked at her, and then gave her two deliberate blinks.

"Okay, MacGyver. That's what we'll call you."

He gave her two blinks for good measure, then closed his eyes, and she watched him roll them around under his lids.

"Are your eyes dry?"

He opened said eyes, and to her surprise gave her two blinks. Honest about his name and his discomfort. Eureka.

"Would you like me to put some drops in them?"

She got a yes, and set down the tablet to do just that. Again, she set it within his reach, but he never attempted to grab it. He was calm as she applied the eyedrops, and blinked rapidly to spread the liquid around.

"Okay, MacGyver. I'm getting the feeling that you're frustrated with the current program of therapy and stimulation. Is that right?"

Two emphatic blinks. That was his version of 'hell yes.'

"Would you like to do these sorts of mental exercises again?"

He glared at her, and gave her a single blink. Simone couldn't help it. She smiled.

"Would you prefer different mental exercises?"

An immediate affirmative was his reply.

"Do you remember what I told you about the ventilator?"

He hesitated, then told her that he did.

"That's going to limit how much testing we can do. Do you agree?"

She got a very reluctant yes.

"Your friends thought you might be frustrated too. They're working on a solution. When they finish it, would you like to try it?"

An immediate yes.

"Okay," she agreed. "If we do this, you and I, you have to do something for me. You have to start being honest. Don't you glare at me," she added at his look. "Honest about your pain, honest about any difficulty, honest about your mood, your thoughts, and the sensations in your body. If I ask you a question, any question, you have to tell me the truth. Can you do that?"

He gave her a long look, so long she almost thought it was refusal, but he relented, and blinked twice. The message was obvious – he was not happy about this arrangement. Not happy at all.

"Will you do it?" she asked.

This time the double blink came faster. Acknowledging that he knew the difference.

"There will be discomfort when we insert the feeding tube. Do you understand that?"

He said that he did.

"Do you want to be sedated?"

An immediate no.

Parsons cocked an eyebrow. "Do you think experiencing that discomfort will help you heal?"

MacGyver gave her a look, then glanced to his right. He didn't blink, but he used the ventilator to sigh. Almost to huff, really. It would have been cute if he wasn't refusing to answer her question.

"Let me tell you what I think, and you tell me if I'm on the right track. I think that you're afraid to sleep."

He continued to look away.

"I think you want to sleep, but you're afraid you'll dream."

He didn't react.

"I think something about waking up scares you. Every time. And I think it hurts." She didn't think that last part as much as know it, at least physically. There was no way his chest was healed enough not to feel like it was tearing every time he did it.

"Am I right?"

He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath on the ventilator. But he didn't open them again.

Parsons gave him a sigh of her own – an audible one. "You just promised me that you'd be honest with me, and now you're not. Do you see why I'm hesitant to change your treatments? I can't treat you if I don't know what you're experiencing."

He continued to ignore her, and she picked up the tablet and started charting. If he wanted to give her the silent treatment, she was fine with that. She had a damn tablet to keep herself occupied.

And soon enough it occurred to him that all he was going to achieve was falling asleep, because he did open his eyes, and give her a deeply reproachful look, less than two minutes later. She eyed him over the edge of the tablet.

"Oh, you're talking to me again?"

The expression changed subtly, but she wasn't able to decipher it.

"So. Am I on the right track?"

Eventually, reluctantly, she got two blinks. Yes.

"Okay," she told him. "I won't sedate you. However, I will give you something for pain, and something to relax your muscles so that the tube goes down more easily. It won't make you sleepy, and we'll counter the muscle relaxant so that it's only temporary. Is that okay?"

He didn't seem to like that option much better, but he blinked twice. She nodded.

He didn't like the idea of being relaxed much more than he liked the idea of being asleep. The paralysis could certainly be what was keeping him on edge, but unfortunately, until he chilled the fuck out about it, his own stress was going to lengthen the amount of time the neurogenic shock stuck around.

But maybe there was something she could do about that, too. "Okay. Do you want to hang onto that ball?"

She indicated the toy, still being held in his right hand, which had not shifted at all except to curl a little into the sheet, almost like he was trying to hide it from them. Even after she called him out, he didn't so much as twitch his right hand.

But he did give her two stubborn blinks. Yes.

"Okay. If you're going to keep it, you might as well use it." She stepped away, signaling to Alec that it was time to prep the nutrition equipment. "The more you practice using your hands and fingers, the more quickly you'll gain back dexterity. Don't go crazy," she added, giving him a warning look. "Don't do anything that hurts. Do you understand?"

He gave her a thoughtful look, then blinked twice.

-M-

Jack shook his head. "Yeah, it always seems harmless. Until it's Skynet."

From the other side of Sparky – minus his face, which made the damn thing that much creepier – Bozer made a scoffing sound. "Jack, you have watched way too many movies. Have you actually ever been attacked by a robot army?"

"Hell yes," he answered immediately. "What do you think drones are, Boze?"

Half a dozen wires were running out of Sparky's head to an innocent-looking white rectangle about the size of a paperback book, which was then attached by a single wire to Riley's laptop. She wasn't looking at either of them, but her expression said plenty. "Drones are commanded by human pilots, Jack. They're like RC toys, just bigger."

"If by bigger you mean packing nuclear warheads, then yeah, I guess," he growled. "I still don't see what this has to do with Mac, unless you're gonna make Sparky, like, an Iron Man suit that helps him walk." That thought hadn't occurred to him until right that second, and he decided that he liked it. He liked it a lot. "Hot damn, are you making Sparky into an Iron Man suit?!"

Bozer popped up from behind the deactivated robot. "Jack, does it look like we can fit Mac inside Sparky? I know he's skinny, but come on, dude."

Bummer. "Then I'm back to my first question. How is this helpin' Mac?"

He'd already kind of – sort of – grasped the high points, but for the first time since they'd gotten back from St. Mary-Dismas, Bozer actually looked like himself again. Excited about an idea. More importantly, excited about helping Mac. And he was more than happy to explain said idea again.

"I told you, Jack. Jill and I were working on the programming to help Sparky move –"

"Which is another terrible idea," Jack groused. Wilt ignored him.

"- and one of the things we did was motion capture of hand movement. How fingers and tendons move, so that his servos and mechanism could be mapped to those movements automatically. He'd be able to write with a pen, dribble a basketball –"

"You put that thing on a football field, Imma show you what a quarterback would do to him," Jack warned.

"The point is," Bozer pressed, "the same motion capture system we designed for Sparky can do motion capture and translation for Mac."

"We tweaked it down so that it's looking for very basic motion," Riley supplied. "The cameras can see the smallest movements, so Mac doesn't have to move his knuckle more than a millimeter for the system to figure out what the end result would have been if he could have moved his whole finger."

Yaddah yaddah. Basically it was a hand twitch translation device. Wiggle a finger, and it would be like you typed a whole thesis. He wasn't sure it was gonna work, but they were, and that was enough for Jack. "Is it gonna do what we need it to do?"

Riley smirked at her laptop. She'd woken up from her exhausted nap last night in time to wolf down half the pizza, only to sack out again in his bed til morning, and the difference was stunning. The circles under her eyes were significantly lighter, and so was the way she carried herself. It was like she'd shucked a fifty pound pack, and he'd happily crash on the couch for the next month if it meant she'd finally be able to sleep again.

When he'd handed her a coffee this morning, she'd even smiled.

"Oh yeah," she assured them confidently. "Multiple cameras means multiple angles. We'll have full remote access via an encrypted tunnel back to Phoenix under the guise of processing, and audio to boot. We'll be able to see and hear everything that happens in that room."

Good. "And it's all gonna be tied back to Sparky here?" Jack gestured at the seated robot, holding its own featureless white faceplate in its lap.

"Nope." Riley indicated the cardboard boxes strewn around the lab table. "I ordered a few toys from that gray hat convention before I got grabbed. They came in a couple weeks back. We're talking insanely small processors. It'll have all the power it needs. The tunnel back to us is all for show."

She unplugged the small white rectangle from her rig, and Jack stared at it. There were four small black dots on the front, and a blue light emanating from its interior.

"Okay, so we can see and hear him. Can he see and hear us?"

"Audio in, yes. Audio out, no," she admitted. "I disguised the microphone as another lens, but a speaker would have been way too obvious. Still, as long as he remembers his morse code, and this thing is in line of sight, then he can see us, and we can see him."

On the front of the device, a previously invisible little orange light started flickering. Dot dot dot dot. Dot dot.

HI

"Sweet." Jack walked over to the innocuous looking device and leaned down, peering into a few of the black dots. "Am I ready for my close-up?"

Riley clicked a few keys.

"Aaaugh! My eyes!" Bozer cried dramatically, and Jack caught a flicker of his own nostril, in all its enlarged glory, on the big screen as he turned to look.

"I am so getting you a nose-hair trimmer for Christmas! Or maybe your birthday. Which one's sooner?"

"His birthday was in February, Boze," Riley informed him distractedly. "You got him a six pack of weird Texas beer and another batch of scar cream."

"Oh yeah. Maybe if you put that cream on your face, it'll look better."

Jack leaned up and away from the little device and took a threatening step in Bozer's direction, and he scampered out from behind Sparky to the safety of the other lab table.

God, it felt good to play again. Even if it was only for a second, and even if Mac was only there in spirit. It was one of his favorite labs, Jack could practically hear Mac's laugh in the echo of Bozer's.

"Can you get into the rest of their network from it? Take down security?"

Riley swiveled in the seat so that she was staring at him. "Yeah, Jack, of course it can," she assured him, even though her eyebrows were doing that thing that meant she didn't mean a word of it. "It's a little Transformer, when everybody goes to sleep it'll sprout arms and legs and go kick everyone's ass."

"Awesome," he replied enthusiastically. "But, just so we're on the same page here . . . are you sure Baby Sparky here's an Autobot? Because sometimes, when you two ain't around, I get a kinda Decepticon vibe . . ."

Riley looked to Bozer for support. "Am I Megan Fox in this metaphor?"

Bozer looked like a deer in headlights. "Yesssss?" Then he seemed to think better of it. "Uh . . . no? I mean-"

A computer behind Riley chirped, and Bozer whipped around ninety degrees like a professional dancer. "Saved by the bell!"

Riley rolled her eyes and shoved herself away from the lab table, rolling gracefully to the next one, and commandeering that keyboard. After a few taps, the playful expression faded, and Jack went ahead and circled the table, coming around to join her.

"What's up?"

A few document images appeared on Riley's screen. Personnel records, no black lines in sight. "I think I just got the four one one on Mac's doctor," she murmured, and with a gesture, flicked two of the documents onto the lab's big screen. Jack transferred his attention there while she focused on a couple other images.

"Yep. Simone Parsons, that's her," he confirmed, looking at her smiling face. The date on the record told them the file was from six years ago, but the grinning woman in the profile photo could have been Simone's daughter. Her face was so open, so youthful and cheerful he almost wanted to smile back.

Bozer whistled. "Damn. Are we sure this isn't the good twin?"

Meaning that the Simone they met was the evil one. "Boze, what did we say about you jinxing shit . . ."

There was certainly nothing evil looking in her personnel file. Undergrad was Harvard, grad was John Hopkins, resident at Cornell and Vanderbilt. Parents were alive and well and lived in Boulder. No siblings, no criminal record. Jack scanned down to the next paragraph.

"Hoo-wee, lookie there. Top secret, SCI and SAP clearance. This chick gets to read all the best comic books." She'd been accredited with the CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, and a couple dozen foreign intelligence organizations. Explained why she was allowed to treat 'damaged assets.' Hell, she probably knew whether the moon landing had been faked.

The freckles were still there, and the green eyes flecked with gold, but the hard lines around her mouth, the way she held her jaw, the tension he'd seen in every muscle on her face – no sign of any of it anywhere. This woman was happy and optimistic. The Simone Parsons he'd met was sarcastic and jaded.

"So what the hell happened to you?" he wondered aloud.

Riley cocked her head towards him, then sent another few files their way. "That's exactly what I wondered. So I went and looked. And there's nothing there. She's gotten national recognition for her work in neuroplasty, she's published seven papers, no suspicious purchases or deposits, no hits to her credit, no marriage or divorce, no weird behavior. She's been working at St. Mary-Dismas for a decade in the Neurology department, and they made her the head of it – wait for it -"

"Six years ago?" Jack guessed drily.

"Give that man a prize." A new face popped up on the screen. "Her boss has always been the same guy, a Dr. Seth Collins."

His personnel profile was still mostly redacted, but Jack recognized him from the videoconference they'd had with Parsons the week prior.

"And the two nurses we ran facial rec on, Alec Dubois and Wanda MacFarlane, they both started at St. Mary-Dismas four years ago, on the same day." Two more personnel files popped up, with far fewer redactions. They still had the same security clearance, though.

"All right, so . . . they promoted her six years ago, her current nurses got hired four years ago –"

"Here's where it gets interesting," Riley interrupted. "The four nurses that had worked for her before the two current ones got hired, they all transferred out of St. Mary-Dismas within three months of each other."

A few more personnel records popped up. Three of the four were now working in other hospital systems, and the fourth – a Meghan Curless – wasn't even working in healthcare anymore at all. At least not human healthcare.

"Veterinary assistant?" Jack read aloud. "That's a hell of a pay cut. What did they have these nurses doin' . . . ?"

"Well, that's the weird part." A few more documents popped up, lists of patients. "For the first two years she was head of the department, they were treating upwards of eighty-three patients a year. Around the time the original nurses started bailing, the number of patients being seen halved. She hasn't treated more than forty-two patients in any year since, and never more than five at a time."

Jack stared at the lists, scanning the patient stay durations. Some were dishearteningly short – only a few days. He figured those probably hadn't gone well. The rest of them were anywhere from one to three months, some as long as six. As he scanned the yearly lists, those numbers didn't seem to deviate much.

So she wasn't losing fewer patients or having them stay longer – she'd just had her workload, and her nurses, cut in half. "She screwed up," he concluded.

Beside him, Riley shook her head. "Yeah, I thought that too, but the last dozen patients before whatever went down, they were all discharged after being treated like normal."

"Are they all still alive?" Bozer asked suddenly.

"Uh . . ." Riley returned to the keyboard, and did some more typing. A few names and faces started trickling in, and Jack recognized more than one CIA profile headshot. There was no pattern to them – men and women both, ages ranging from twenty-something to almost sixty, different ethnicities, different nationalities.

Then one of the images, a young man with perfectly coiffed, dark brown hair flashed, and a red date appeared underneath it.

His death was a mere eight days after his discharge date. And fourteen days before the nurses started quitting.

"So what the hell happened to . . . Howard Garcia?"

Riley started digging again, and Bozer fished his phone out of his pocket and started typing. Jack raised an eyebrow.

"You're gonna out-hack Riley?"

Bozer shook his head, his thumbs flying across the screen. "Hell no. But if Mac's doc is responsible for patients dyin', I'm taking all my vacation right now and we're getting him outta there tonight."

Jack clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Dude, why don't you sit on that a minute and give Riles a chance to –"

". . . guys . . ."

A news article appeared on the screen, an Italian website. The software started translating the text, but Jack had already caught the name 'Howard Garcia' under the photo of a mangled BMW being winched up a sheer rocky drop.

Car crash.

Bozer, too, had looked up. ". . . huh. Guess I was expecting something, I dunno, more sinister than just a car wreck –"

"It wasn't just a car wreck." Riley's voice was tighter. "It says he drove off the cliff on purpose."

Jack started reading like he meant it. " . . . eyewitness accounts stated the driver of the vehicle, twenty-six year old Howard Garcia, deliberately rammed a guardrail and drove an additional forty yards to the cliff's edge-"

". . . and there were two passengers," Bozer added quietly.

Andrea and Lorenzo Garcia. His wife and four year old son.

So Parsons had treated and discharged a patient, and the next week he'd put his family in the car and driven them off a cliff.

". . . maybe he had, I dunno, a seizure?" Bozer said it like he was begging Riley to confirm it.

Jack looked back at Howard's profile. Twenty-six years old, good looking guy. Italian AISE agent. He was a language specialist, fluent in over two dozen and capable of reading and speaking another fifty or so at some level.

Smart.

Mac-level smart.

"The article says it was a straight shot. The police ruled it a . . . a murder-suicide." Riley hesitated, then a coroner's report came up, also in Italian. Jack didn't bother even trying to read it.

"That was no accident," he said quietly. "And she knew it."

Dr. Parsons knew it. She'd discharged someone who wasn't ready, and not only did her patient die, he took two innocents with him.

That's why she was packing Mac in bubble wrap. She was afraid he was going to end up like Howard.

"Riles, get everything you can on this guy and send it down to the docs Talbot. Find out if his injury was anything like what they're treatin' Mac for."

-M-

TWO DAYS LATER

"Good morning, handsome!"

Today they'd decided to put rain on the menu, and a strong summer storm was raging just outside Patient Five's room. Rain was pelting against the glass, dribbling down the window panes, and MacGyver was watching the rivulets with a pensive expression.

Wanda followed his gaze. "Yeah, it's miserable out there," she murmured, then came up on his left – always on his left – and started swapping out the empty medicine bags for fresh ones. "Days like this, you're thankful for covered parking."

It was important, for continuity's sake, that everything appeared to be real. It was actually a beautiful day outside, but the patient needed different stimulation, and if they wanted him to believe it was raining, she had to explain why she wasn't soaking wet.

Either way he didn't really look at her, he just kept his eyes on the rain.

That tracked with his previous behavior; he loved nature and weather, even on his screens, though right now the TV was displaying a college basketball game. Every once in a while he checked the score, but the game didn't hold his attention, just like football and soccer hadn't. Definitely not a jock.

"I should let you know that Dr. Parsons isn't going to be in today for your therapy, handsome," Wanda continued, surreptitiously drawing a blood sample from one of his central lines, then tucking it into her scrub pocket before grabbing the used tubing and bags and carrying them to the trash on the far wall. "She had a procedure last night that just finished up, and needs some rest."

When she turned around, he was watching her, not the rain. His eyebrows rose up in a little, as if in question. Wanda gave him a smile.

"You're not our only patient, you know."

The eyebrows relaxed a little, and his attention returned to the window. So now he was fully prepared for a boring day of staring at rain.

Just what the boss ordered.

"Can I get you anything? Are you in pain? Are you hungry?"

He gave her the barest of headshakes, rather than a blink, and used the ventilator to sigh a little. They'd let him wake up by himself his morning – he was an expert at self-soothing now, even if he still woke panicked – and he'd spent the first fifteen minutes he was awake watching the rain, and passing the hacky sack over his stomach, from his right hand to his left hand.

He was certainly more coordinated with his left, which was no surprise given that he'd been stabbed just to the right of center and his right pec and shoulder had weeks and weeks of healing still to do, and right now the hacky sack was in his left hand, and he was running his fingertips slowly over the seam.

"Are you counting the stitches, there?" she asked him lightly, and gestured at the ball when he glanced back at her.

He rubbed his fingers thoughtfully over the material, then gave her a blink.

"Can you feel the stitches, even if you can't count 'em?"

Two blinks. So he had some sensation back, but not full. "That's okay, handsome. It'll come back."

He didn't look reassured, and a little flash of lightning pulled his attention back on the windows.

"Okay. Well, if you need me, you use that button on the side of the bed, okay? If you call, I'll come runnin'."

He had enough coordination now to use the normal bed call feature, and they'd gone over it with him yesterday, and tested him yesterday afternoon to ensure that he remembered, and he knew how to operate it. In this case, he gave the window two distracted blinks, and continued running his fingertips over the hacky sack.

He looked downright miserable, and Wanda hid a smile.

Right on cue, the door clicked quietly open, and soft, whispery footstetps hit the tile. MacGyver didn't look over, not until Dr. Parsons was fully in the room and set down the small litterbox she was carrying. Two ceramic dishes hit the ground next, and by the time Simone leaned up, MacGyver had turned his head in her direction, and was watching with a confused look on his face.

Mone leaned up, her left arm still tucked up and out of his field of vision, and ignored him, speaking to her. "Remember allergy protocols, One's violently allergic."

"Yes ma'am," Wanda confirmed, and then Dr. Parsons fully turned, and approached the patient – on his right side.

"I apologize, MacGyver, but I'm on mandatory rest for the next six and half hours." She looked the part, in nurse scrubs and bunny slippers, with her hair falling out of a ponytail. Tucked in her left arm like a football was a small, mostly white kitten with eyes as wide and blue as the patient's.

"I'd like to get some sleep, and you probably want to avoid it, so we're going to do your therapy differently today."

Without preamble she angled her hip, and the ten week old kitten took the invitation, and slipped down her forearm to the mattress. MacGyver actually turned his head to look at the kitten as she tentatively wandered over to his right arm and sniffed him. His eyes were still wide open and startled.

But not fearful. His heart rate was steady, and his BP wasn't increasing.

"This is Metrodora. She's named after a Greek physician, and she is a therapy animal in training. She'll be handling your physical therapy today." Simone reached out and stroked the kitten fondly as she continued exploring MacGyver's arm. "Don't let her chew on any of your lines, and when you're tired, call Nurse Wanda to come and get her."

And with that, Dr. Parsons padded her way out of the room. Wanda watched MacGyver sit there, frozen, listening to the door open, then click softly shut. His still-startled eyes then cut to her.

Nurse Wanda gave him a broad smile. "Well okay then. I know she's small, but she bites," she warned him. "As soon as you're ready, or if she gets to be too much for you, you just page me with that button there, okay?"

She waited, then ducked her head with an expectant look, and MacGyver gave her two firm blinks. He also turned his right arm over, and the Siamese kitten immediately started checking out the crevasse between his arm and his body, complete with her super-fine, super-sharp little kitten claws. His eyebrows twitched, but his arm didn't move. He made no aggressive motion towards the kitten at all. Instead, he tried to wiggle his fingers, and Dora immediately clambered over to investigate.

"I leave you in Metrodora's capable paws," Wanda told him, then gathered up her things and glanced at him, checking one more time with him before she, too, left the room.

Simone was already camped out in her conference room, slippered feet on the table, danish in hand, by the time Wanda cleaned up and knocked on the door. "How's handsome doing?"

The doctor simply gestured at the screen. Right now he seemed to be trying to keep the kitten away from the edges of the bed, and Dora was trying to pull one of his fingers off the rest of his hand. He made no sudden moves, though they both knew he could, and then he turned his wrist, flipping the kitten onto her back. She started wrestling like she meant it, and he took a quick breath off the vent as she apparently got him.

But he didn't throw her across the room. All his movements were gentle.

He'd never once behaved aggressively towards any of them, and he was continuing to follow that pattern. Though he was clumsy and not terribly coordinated, he managed to keep Dora on the bed and away from his chest dressing and central line, and eventually he put together that he had a cat toy in the hacky sack, and introduced her to that.

Once that happened, it was on. Dora was on her back, ripping into the hacky sack for all she was worth, and MacGyver was manipulating it, keeping it twitching and moving to keep the kitten's attention. Wanda eventually had to leave the conference room to handle her other patients, with her iPhone set to vibrate as usual, but she managed to get through everyone's morning routine as well as two lunches before it finally buzzed.

Check on Patient Five.

Who was handily right next to Patient Four, who was happy to see that he'd been given chocolate pudding for dessert. Wanda left Four and was all set to breeze into Five, but something made her hesitate, and instead of bustling in and making noise, she decided to try stealth.

It paid off.

There was no sound in the room save the patter of rain on glass and the steady, slow hiss of the ventilator. Wanda crept softly around the privacy curtain, peering around.

MacGyver was sound asleep.

So was Metrodora. She'd draped herself pretty much across his throat, tucked just under his chin, and his left hand was curled up near her, his arm folded alongside his chest and neck. It should have been causing him discomfort, having weight so near the tube in his throat and his wound, but it didn't seem to be bothering him at all, and Dora was asleep and purring like a distant gang of Harley Davidsons.

Wanda didn't bother to hide her smile, and she went ahead and drew another blood sample from his central line, without waking either him or the kitten. She didn't bother to pull out her iPhone – if the patient was happy, there was no reason to wake either of them - and she pocketed the blood sample and stole out as quietly as she could.

She carried the sample down to the lab, then changed her scrub top – just to be sure, and again only because the patient in One was violently allergic to cats – and by the time she let herself back into the conference room the results were up on the screen.

Simone had changed back into her regular clothes – of course keeping the bunny slippers – and was comparing the morning's blood work to the afternoon's.

Inflammation markers and cortisol were significantly higher in the morning results. Metrodora had definitely had an impact.

A positive one.

"Well, that answers that," Simone murmured, lining the two results up side by side on the screen.

The presence of the kitten had significantly decreased his stress hormones. Which meant that the stress and the inflammation was neurological. He was doing it to himself, working himself up.

He was scared. Far more scared than he seemed.

"I can't think of many problems that a kitten can't fix," Wanda pointed out reasonably. "Looks like that hunka burnin' love that came to visit a couple days ago was right. He's bored."

Simone shook her head. "It's more than that. Look at this."

She toggled over to his brainwaves, lining them up to baseline. He'd been asleep for the past forty-five minutes, and had just moved from a deep sleep cycle –

Into REM.

He was dreaming. Yet his heart rate and blood pressure were nice and relaxed.

For once, Patient Five was having a good dream.

-M-

I know this one took a while. Sorry about that! For the first time in this story, I have given you literal fluff. Because honestly, our boy deserved a kitten.

A lot happened, and a lot of them were FINALLY!(s). Jack and Riley finally talk. Simone finally determines keeping Mac on the slow track is doing him more harm than good. Phoenix finally finds out why Simone is treating Mac the way she is. And Mac finally has a good day.