A.N. I hate snow. I really hate snow.

Thanks to all for your kind reviews and comments. It seems like this would be a good time to remind you that BIS is my little attempt to stay, for the most part, in canon. It's requiring some self-discipline on my part, but I'm determined to try. So, if you don't like how things are in canon, you may not like how they end up here. I'm sorry if that will disappoint some of you-for those, it's not too late to bail. But if you decide to stick with it, I think (hope) it will be worth the trouble.

Did I mention how much I hate snow?

Before I Sleep

Chapter 37

Reid blinked himself awake, his brain lagging momentarily behind his eyes. It took him a few minutes to orient.

The sun is out. That means…..did I sleep all night? Or…..could it have been more than one?

He had a vague memory of Linda Kimura wheeling him back to his room, and then being helped into bed by Kimura and Carla. And that was it.

I guess I was pretty sick. Am pretty sick, he corrected, as he fell into a fit of coughing. He had to clutch at his chest at the last of it.

Well, that's new.

It was one of the symptoms Kimura had been quizzing him about. Reid assessed himself for other signs that things might be worsening. He wasn't cold, so he knew his temperature wasn't trying to spike, and he wasn't sweating, so it wasn't on its way down from a fever. Okay, that's good. He took a look at the monitors. His pulse and blood pressure looked good, too.

Maybe it's just muscular pain, from the coughing. Which probably means I've been coughing in my sleep.

Reid was still rounding on himself when nurse Margie came in.

"Dr. Reid, how nice to see you awake!"

Reid tried to summon his voice, but all that would come out was a croak. "Hi."

Margie was switching out his IV bag. "Hi. How are you feeling? Do you have any pain? Any shortness of breath?"

Reid sidestepped her questions with his own. "What day is it? How long was I out?"

She answered his second question. "You slept right through the day yesterday, I'm afraid. Dr. Kimura's been monitoring you. She thought it would be best if we let you get the rest you needed."

Reid struggled to a sitting position, involuntarily holding his chest as he did so.

"Is your chest hurting you?"

Caught in the act, Reid had to be honest. He explained the pain, and its relationship to his cough. And, apparently, to other types of movement as well.

"I'll let Dr. Kimura know. She's just across the hall."

Reid's antennae were immediately up. "With JJ….Agent Jareau? Is she all right?"

Margie stopped at the doorway. "I'm sorry, Dr. Reid. That's something Dr. Kimura will have to tell you."

The irony was undeniable. This was, arguably, the highest stakes case of his career, and yet Derek Morgan had never had so much trouble concentrating.

He said she woke up to Henry's voice. That's good. But it's also the last thing he said. Period.

Morgan had called Reid's room almost continually after he'd left the hospital two days ago. Finally, he'd gotten through, and Reid had told him about JJ rousing to Henry's voice.

"That's great, Kid! Couldn't ask for better than that, right?"

But there had been no reply. Morgan repeated himself, and then started shouting through the phone, hoping that someone else might hear him. When that didn't work, he reluctantly broke the connection….what if he can't call for help, what if he can't reach the nurses' call button?...and called the main hospital number. When they put him through to the nurses' station on Reid's floor, he explained the dilemma. Five agonizingly long minutes later, a nurse came back on the line and explained.

"Carla just checked on him. He's asleep. The phone was still in his hand. But he's just sleeping, Agent Morgan."

He was relieved at that, but then not relieved when he kept getting the same report, each time he called, over the next twenty-four hours. How can he still be asleep? When will they start calling it 'coma'?

Finally, one of the nurses picked up on the rising concern in his voice and put on Kimura herself.

"No, Agent Morgan, he's not in a coma. He really is just asleep. Between the infection and the procedures….not to mention the anemia they caused…..he just doesn't have any reserves left. So I've opted to let him rest. We're following his vital signs, but we're not waking him."

"So….he's not getting sicker?" Still sounding wary.

Kimura was confident. "He's not. He's not quite turned the corner yet, but he's not getting worse."

Relieved…partially…..Morgan took advantage of having her on the phone. "What about JJ? Agent Jareau?"

He could hear the smile in Kimura's voice as she replied. "The news there is all good. We're about to extubate her."

Morgan closed his eyes for a moment. Thank God. "Okay. Thanks, Doc. I mean that. Thank you for everything." He paused a moment before adding, "Tell Pretty Boy I said he needs his beauty sleep."

Kimura laughed. She'd learned of Morgan's various nicknames for Reid during their anthrax adventure. "I think you might want to tell him that yourself."

"Wish I could, Doc. Wish I could."

That had all taken place yesterday. Today, Morgan was about to go through the apartment of Zachary Jackson. The surveillance team that had followed him for the three days prior to the explosion….the same team that had seen him take the bus to one of his shifts…had lost track of him.

"He's in the wind," Morgan had declared, at their morning meeting.

"You mean, like….literally?" asked Garcia. "Like maybe he was on the bus and….boom!" She'd thrown her hands apart to mimic the explosion.

Sid Hirsh had worked 9/11 from his former position with military intelligence.

"That's unlikely, Ms. Garcia. Even given the explosion, it was a relatively compact scene. We're confident we've identified all of the separate individuals. We've got just the two missings left…the two unaccounted for students, and two sets of DNA-matched remnants. It's unlikely we'll find one of the sets to be Jackson's."

The police had made a putative 'welfare concern' visit to Jackson's apartment, but there had been no answer. Nor had there been activity on his cell phone, credit card, nor, as far as Garcia could determine, on any known e-mail accounts. Which left the door open for Morgan and Rossi to visit the apartment, along with a couple of new-found colleagues from DHS.

The lock was dispensed, and the team entered the apartment. Immediately, they could see that the search would take little time. The interior was sparsely furnished, even for a DC studio. Bed, card table, single chair, small chest of drawers. No real wardrobe, but a makeshift rack holding several shirts, two jackets, and two pairs of slacks.

"Not much of a dresser, eh," said the usually dapper Rossi.

"I only ever saw him in his youth center staff shirt and jeans. Doesn't look like he had much use for a wardrobe."

Morgan opened the drawers in the chest and sorted through their fairly meager contents while Rossi opened and closed the few kitchen cabinets in rapid succession.

"Seems like he's a fan of oatmeal. Some ramen. The fridge had soy milk, so maybe he's intolerant."

Morgan had moved on to the small bathroom. "Vitamins. Ha! Calcium and vitamin D. I'll bet he is lactose intolerant." He removed a few more bottles from the small medicine cabinet. "Ibuprofen. Some allergy stuff and….whoa, here's something. A handful of oxycodone."

That got Rossi's interest. "Street or prescription?"

"Prescription. Looks like from an oral surgeon. I wonder if my friend Zach had some work done."

Rossi looked over Morgan's shoulder at the bottle. "Better have Garcia get on that. Maybe we should talk to the guy who prescribed these."

Morgan agreed, and called it in to their tech analyst. When he closed the call, he opined to Rossi, "There's something about this that isn't right. I mean, there's nothing personal in here at all, except for that prescription. No bills, no files. And, didn't Penelope tell us he was good for at least five backpacks every couple of months? What does he do with them? There's nothing here." Morgan gestured at the nearly empty apartment.

Rossi narrowed his eyes in agreement. "He's got a stash somewhere. A storage locker, maybe." He moved toward the hallway. "We need to roust the super."

If he could have forced himself back to sleep, Reid would have. Or if he could have gotten together the strength to get out of his hospital bed, he would have done that. Anything to keep from having to just lie there and wait for word on JJ.

Please, God, let her be okay. I don't have anything left to give her, and neither does Kimura. It's all Yours now.

He tried to hold out hope, but the fact that Margie had deferred to Kimura troubled him. They always have the doctors give the bad news, don't they?

As though on cue, Dr. Kimura appeared in Reid's room.

"I heard you were awake."

She's smiling. That has to be a good sign. Right? He went along with her.

"I didn't know I was asleep for so long, because…..well, because I was asleep."

Kimura squinted at him, trying to decide if he was joking, or maybe a little bit addled. Decided, in the end, that he was just being Reid.

"How are you feeling?"

He knew Margie would have passed on the word about the chest pain, so Reid was honest. Kimura responded by pushing on his chest, eliciting a soft "Ouch."

She smiled in apology. "Sorry. The good news is that it seems to be musculoskeletal pain. That, we can deal with." She ran through a short review of systems with him and was satisfied that all of his symptoms could be accounted for by the problems they already knew he had.

"That's considered progress around these parts," she explained. "We don't ask for improvement. We just don't want anything new to go wrong."

Now Reid had to wonder if she was kidding. Her smile gave him his answer.

Enough with the niceties. Doing his best to steel himself, Reid asked, "What about JJ? Margie wouldn't tell me."

Hearing the hint of fear in his voice, Kimura was immediately apologetic. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Dr. Reid. It didn't mean anything that Margie couldn't speak with you. It's just hospital policy." Seeing that he was still anxious, she hurried to tell him what he wanted to hear. "Agent Jareau is much improved."

After seemingly endless tension and bad news, and having tried to prepare himself for more of it, it took Reid an extra few seconds to absorb what she'd said. "She….is she….did you….."

"Extubate her? Yes. About…" Kimura looked at her watch…"sixteen hours ago."

Reid closed his eyes as his head fell back against the pillow. He felt like he was floating, finally rid of the weight of apprehension.

Kimura's voice was soft. "You did well, Spencer. What you did…..that you thought of it…and, my God, that you risked your own life….but you did it. You saved your friend."

The rest of him may have felt weightless, but Reid's eyelids were once again heavy. He couldn't lift them. But a tear managed to trickle out from one, sliding down his cheek and right into the curve of the smile that lifted his lips.

"Well, if he doesn't have storage in the building, it's got to be close by. I mean, there was literally nothing in that apartment. Where does he even keep his checkbook?" They'd just left the building superintendent.

Rossi was surprised at his younger colleague. "Maybe he's gone all electronic."

Morgan stared at him, then off into the distance, trying to picture Zach Jackson. He ended up shaking his head. "I don't remember ever seeing him with a laptop. Not even a tablet. But he did have a smart phone."

Rossi shrugged. "Give Penelope a call. She'll know if he can use a smart phone for everything. Me, I still write checks."

Following Rossi's suggestion, Morgan called Garcia.

"Derek….you're kidding me, right? You can do anything from a smart phone. Including, by the way, blow up a bus."

"I know that, Baby Girl. Explosions are my thing, remember?" He changed the subject. "What did you find out about those pills?"

"Dr. Alfred Huff is an oral surgeon. I may or may not have peeked at some billing data. But, if I had, it would have said that your friend Zach had four wisdom teeth removed by Dr. Huff about eight months ago."

"An address?"

"Such a little thing! I have actually just sent you a map, for which you will thank me very much."

"Oh, really. And why is that?"

"Because, on this map, I have plotted the location of Dr. Huff's office, the pharmacy where Zach filled the prescription….and the locations of Jose Martinez' placements over the past year."

The way she said it gave it away. "There's overlap?"

Garcia was excited. "With two of the placements. One with the oral surgeon's office, and one with the pharmacy. Each within three blocks of each other."

"Spencer….Dr. Reid..."

He felt like he was in a boat that was rocking upon the waves….but it was only Carla shaking him awake.

"Hi," she said.

It took him a moment to process. But then he realized. "I slept through another whole shift?"

Carla smiled. "That you did. But it's only 4. Dr. Kimura wanted me to get you up, so your whole sleep/wake cycle won't get too far off."

He started to push himself up, reflexively examining his monitors and satisfying himself that his numbers were still good. But the change in position seemed to trigger something, and he launched into a long bout of coughing.

Carla came to support his back until he finished. "Okay? How is your chest?"

He nodded until he could catch his breath. "Doesn't hurt as much. And it doesn't feel as…full…as it did before."

She smiled again. "All good. Let me give Dr. Kimura a page. She'll want to examine you."

Reid started to ask about JJ. "How is….oh, never mind, you can't tell me."

Carla turned back from the door to answer him. "Agent Jareau?" She broke into a grin. "I've got special permission to tell you that she wants you to hurry up and get better."

Reid's mouth fell open at the news. As Carla left to call Kimura, his lips widened into a smile.

Anything you say, ma'am.