Oh dear! I can't say how sorry I am for not updating this story in such a long time!!! My only excuse is that I've had writer's block again, but I've been working on getting the momentum of writing back, really! I have another chapter finished up, so hopefully I should be able to resume at least semi-regular posting again. Hehe.

Spoilers/Episode References: #2.24 - "Charge of this Post".

37: WAITING

"Can I ask you something, Mac?"

Mac turned to look at Morgan. "What was going through my head when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center?" he said before Morgan could even ask her question.

"Something like that, yeah. How did you know I was going to ask you that?"

Mac said nothing, and only flashed a hint of a smile. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to," said Morgan.

"No, it's okay,"

Mac told her that when he found out the towers had collapsed, it felt like a bad dream. "I didn't want it to be real, I had hoped that it was somehow a bad dream that I would wake up from. But it wasn't."

On that day, he raced over to where Ground Zero now stood. Mac saw the damage done and knew that there was no hope that Claire had survived.

He knew exactly what Morgan was going through at that moment. Before he lost Claire, Mac had to watch that young Marine in Beirut die before his very eyes, and now he was reliving those feelings all over again. Despite reassuring Morgan that Flack would pull through, he wasn't sure of it himself at all.

Both of them sat in silence for a while as they waited for Flack's surgery to end. Neither realized it, but it was probably the longest conversation they have ever had with each other.

Flack was wheeled out of the operation room over an hour later and he was brought into the Intensive Care Unit. Mac asked the doctor if he could go into the ICU and take photographs of Flack's wounds for documentation purposes. He agreed and led Mac off to the room. Morgan intended to follow, but Mac nodded his head slightly as a sign that she should stay. "But Mac..." said Morgan. "Don't worry, he's in good hands," replied Mac.

He walked alongside the doctor and the both of them went off to the ICU where Flack was. Morgan sat back down on the plastic chairs placed along the hospital corridor and clasped her hands tightly together. Her cell phone rang.

"Morgan! Are you okay?" It was Kim.

"I'm fine," Morgan replied weakly.

"You don't sound fine, is something wrong?" Kim gasped. "Did something happen to your boyfriend?"

Morgan didn't answer. "He's...not dead, is he?" Kim asked cautiously.

"No."

"I could go down and sit with you, if you want."

"No, it's okay." Morgan said. "My brother is here with me." That was a lie. Danny was still working at the scene of the explosion. She just didn't want her friend to worry.

XXX

While Mac and Morgan were at the hospital keeping vigil, Hawkes and Lindsay returned to the lab to process the evidence they had collected at the scene. Mac would soon join them back at the lab after he had collected the debris extracted from Flack's body during surgery earlier. With the debris and evidence collected along with Mac's account of what happened, Lindsay managed to reconstruct the bombing and ran a stimulation in the A/V lab.

"I would've gotten this done sooner if I had help," Lindsay said, alluding to Morgan's absence. She wasn't griping about it, however, as she knew that even if Morgan was at the lab she probably would not be in the mood to work. "How's Flack doing?"

Mac shook his head. "Still unconscious."

The bomb trigger, a SIM card, was found in the bag of debris removed from Flack's body, embedded in a charred segment of a cell phone. Lindsay is tasked with tracing the card, hoping that it might lead to a potential suspect. Just then, Mac's cell phone rang.

It was a call from the bomber, calling to warn Mac that there would be another bombing at 1600 hours that same day. The phone number was traced, in case that man called again.

Meanwhile, Lindsay teamed up with Danny to run a trace on the SIM card, and pulled up the last call made to that number - that was how the bomb was triggered. To everyone's surprise, the number was a secure line belonging to the Department of Homeland Security.

Mac confronted Agent Ellen Fielding, the person who had made the call. She clarified that she was only following protocol by answering a coded message, and that the laptops in the department containing those codes had recently been stolen. Agent Fielding suggested shutting down secure networks to prevent another bomb detonation in the same manner.

The realization that any person answering a page could potentially set off another bomb was shocking. "It's not about the networks!" Mac said agitatedly. "Anyone can return a page! There are eight million New Yorkers, six million cell phones, any one of which could trigger the next bomb!" Mac warned.

After careful analysis of the suspect's behavior, Mac deduced that he was trying to absolve himself of all responsibility by designing the bomb in such a way that answering a page from him would cause it to go off. He did not consider himself a bomber or a killer. Rather, he was trying to make a statement - why else would he choose to detonate the bomb on a Sunday, when the building would be mostly vacant?

If he had wanted to take lives, he would have chosen a weekday for the bomb to go off and at a time when the casualties would be highest.

In keeping with his promise to keep Morgan in the loop as much as protocol allowed, Mac called her to inform her that they had some leads on the bomber and were working on tracking him down.

"Good...good," Morgan said distractedly.

"How are you holding up?" Mac asked.

Morgan remained silent. "If you want, I can get Danny to go down to the hospital..." Mac said.

"No, it's fine. You need all the help you can get."

Unknown to her, Mac and Danny had managed to track down the bomber's cell phone location to Chelsea University Library. A duffel bag similar to the one at the first bombing scene was found at a payphone within the premises. With Danny watching on nervously, Mac carefully deactivated the bomb by cutting off the wires that connected the bomb trigger and the C-4.

The cell phone that was attached to the bomb rang just after Mac completed the task, congratulating him for leading by example, for not ignoring the bomber's warnings that the city of New York was "not ready".

XXX

Morgan sat next to an unconscious Flack, watching his chest rise and fall slowly with each breath he took. She held his hand in hers as she stroked his hair with the other hand.

"Don…"

She remembered those harsh words she said to him the day before. All she wanted then was to be able to apologize to him.

Morgan fished around in her jeans pocket or the chain she had given Flack. She pulled it out and held it in her fist.

She had given Flack the chain about a month ago. She had been out shopping with a friend when they came upon a small shop selling accessories like chains, necklaces, bracelets and rings. Morgan spotted a ring with a simple design that she had thought of giving to Flack and the shop owner asked if she wished to engrave a message on it.

"Are you planning to give it to your boyfriend?" asked the store owner, and Morgan nodded with a smile.

Flack and Morgan met up for lunch the next day, and she presented the gift to him while they were waiting for their orders.

"Why the gift? It isn't my birthday or Christmas," said a surprised Flack.

"If you don't want it, I can always take it back," Morgan said as she moved to snatch the chain back from Flack's hands.

"No, of course I want it." Flack grabbed it back from her and tried the ring on. "Erm, we have a problem," he said.

The ring was a bit too small for all of Flack's ten fingers. "Oops," Morgan said with a chuckle. She showed him the chain she had picked out while at the shop and he threaded the ring through the chain and wore it around his neck.

"Problem solved," Flack said with a smile.

Feeling thirsty, Morgan got up to go to the vending machine to buy a drink, but the shooting pain in her ankle made her sit back down on the chair.

"Are you alright?" It was Danny.

Morgan shook her head slowly. He sat down next to her and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

"I'm scared, Danny," said Morgan as her eyes filled with tears she had been holding in for the past couple of hours.

"It's going to be okay," said Danny. "I'll make sure of that."