Reid sat on the edge of the cot. His head was swimming and his breath shaky. Looking down, partially dried blood ran in streaks down his forearms, pooling around the rope burns on his writs. Darkness encroached on the edges of his vision, and for a moment he wondered if he let go, would he wake from this nightmare? Already is was starting to feel less like reality and more like a bad dream.
"Spence" Alex called. Her voice seemed fuzzy and distant, as if his ears were filled with cotton. "Hang on, stay with me." The room started to come back into focus, and he could feel a dull ache in his body. Damn, this was going to hurt. His hands were shaking ever so slightly. He focused on steadying them.
"If we can't trace the feed, then how do we find Reid?" JJ asked.
"By looking at who else is watching the site!" Garcia exclaimed, jumping up.
"You can trace that?" Hotch asked.
"Well, sort of. If they're all using proxy servers to hide their locations, we're screwed. But come on, there's got to be at least one pervert who isn't a tech genius, right?"
Reid sharply inhaled as Alex sat down next to him, slightly jostling the cot.
"Sorry" Alex winced.
"It's alright, let's just get this over with."
Alex gently started wiping away the dried blood with a wet cloth, working carefully around the cuts on his forearm. The cuffs restricted her, turning automatic movements into obstacles that required planning and often more than one set of hands. More than once, she apologized as a sudden movement resulted in a pained gasp from Reid.
"Hold" she said, placing the final gauze pad against a cut on his upper arm. Obediently, he reached up and placed his hand over hers as she slipped away to grab the roll.
"Hold" she placed the end of the gauze under his fingertips and began wrapping around his arm. Once she had the end secured, he dropped his hand.
He studied her curiously. She was so mater of fact and seemed so calm that if he had not been trained to notice it, he would have almost thought none of this bothered her. But there were subtle signs, the slight shake in her hands, the catch in her breath, even the way she insisted on keeping busy.
"Well," Alex interrupted his train of thought, "the good news is that most of these are superficial and should heal well enough on their own."
"But not this one, right?" Reid asked, gently touching his bloodied shirt just under his collarbone.
"I don't think so." Alex replied, tying off the last of the gauze on his arm. "but I won't know until I get a better look. Do you think you can manage to get this off on your own?"
"Most likely." After a few moments of struggling to avoid the bandages, Reid managed to remove his undershirt.
"Well shit" Alex muttered under her breath. A deep cut slowly seeped blood a couple of inches below his collarbone. This was more serious than what she was used to dealing with. "Any chance that big brain of yours knows how to stitch a wound?"
"Well, yes, but not on myself!" He exclaimed.
"Of course not, dummy! But I'm still going to need you to walk me through it."
"Well, first you'll need to clean it..."
"Rubbing alcohol?"
"You know, actually, rubbing alcohol typically does more harm than good. You see, while the alcohol does destroy any foreign bacterial cells, it also destroys the healthy tissue surrounding the wound, making it take longer to heal and actually increasing the chance of infection later on."
"So that would be a no?"
"No. Water and a mild soap are normally sufficient."
"I'm glad to see your still with us Dr. Reid." Alex smiled, "I was starting to worry you had run out of facts."
"Me? Never!" He mockingly scoffed, "I remember every book and article I've ever read! Morgan says it's more knowledge than any one man would ever need, but he certainly seems to like all my facts when it comes to trivia nights. I even got us banned from a few bars for winning so often, they thought we were cheating."
Alex laughed at his story as she poured water over the cut for a final rinse. Reid flinched ever so slightly.
"Ok, so I've got suturing thread and this weird bent needle, so now what? Do I just start sewing?"
"Not exactly. You'll make one stitch, then cut the thread and tie it off into a suture and repeat."
"oh, ok."
"We should also probably move against a wall or something. The human body's natural reaction to pain is to recoil, and I don't want to make it any more difficult for you."
"Alright." Alex shrugged.
Reid shifted back away from the edge of the cot and gingerly leaned back against the wall. The cold cement was freezing cold against his bare back, but at least it distracted him from the dull throbbing that made the rest of his body feel like it was on fire. Alex shifted closer, needle and thread in one hand, and a pair of kid scissors in the other.
'Kid scissors,' he thought, 'they expected her to play doctor and they gave us kid scissors.'
She sat cross-legged in front of him, dropped the scissors in her lap, and gently placed her left palm on the center of his chest to stabilize herself, pushing him ever so slightly up against the wall. Goosebumps ran up and down his arms, but he wasn't sure if it was from the cold of the cement leaching into his shoulders, or the warmth radiating from her palm across his chest.
"So, Spence, what's your favorite color?"
"I...I don't understand." Reid stuttered, "What does my favorite color have to do wi...Son of a bitch!"
"Sorry," Alex said, picking up the scissors to cut the thread for the first suture. "I was always told that if it was a surprise, it wouldn't hurt as much."
"Well, almost. It actually has more to do with the expected level of pain rather than the timing."
"Huh." Alex mused, picking the needle and thread back up from where she had laid it on her knee, "Interesting."
As she went in for the next stitch, his body instinctively jerked back, almost causing Alex to lose her balance.
"Sorry." Reid said, readjusting back against the wall.
"It's alright." she pressed her forearm firmly across his chest, effectively pinning him against the wall as she went in for the next stitch. Reid winced, but this time didn't move.
"Did you know there have been documented cases of people who are able to use meditation to completely dissociate from their pain?" Reid asked as Alex finished tying of the last suture. "Seems like that would be a useful skill to have."
"I had a friend in high school who tried to teach me how to meditate," she replied, "I could never pull it off though. She tried to teach me sign language as well with about the same level of success. I never made it past the alphabet."
"I could teach you?"
"I think I may be a bit of a lost cause," She laughed, running her finger over the edge of the adhesive bandage to secure it over his cut, "but you're welcome to try."
