I do have an apology, I really do! And it´s even a good one, honest. See, I
moved to another town to start studying, and then my computer got baaaadly
hurt during the act of moving and we had to heal it (poor thing), and then
I always had to hike down to the net-café, and blah, blah, blah, yaddah,
yaddah, yaddah ...
You know what I´m talking about, right? But I´m back now and the end is near! It is, believe me! This is the chapter before the last and final one, and hopefully my computer won´t let me down again before that one´s up here, too.
I´m still amazed at how great you guys are! Thanks for all the reviews, though of course I don´t deserve half of them. Thanks so much!
And, yes, I´ve to admit - "A beautiful mind" inspired me a lot. Great observation skills you have there. GRIN.
Okay, no more chitter chatter, let´s start. Disclaimers still the same, and, heyyyyyy, my Obst is back! Missed you so much, kid! (All of you who haven´t checked out "I owe you that" - do NOW or be sorry. Commercial break ends here.)
Enjoy. (Oh, and, ah, sorry about the quotation. I think I didn´t understand it correctly, but you know which one I mean, anyway, right? Don´t sue me please.)
"Lock ´em away, gimme the key,
Quick, before anyone gets up.
Gimme the key, throw it away,
There we are. No one must know."
( "Anyone can whistle")
It took Steve Sloan exactly three minutes to find out that he didn´t like the "Apple Memorial Hospital".
Amanda needed two minutes more.
Mark didn´t think about wether or not he liked the place. He was busy pacing the floor of the waiting room a friendly nurse had sent them to when they´d arrived after Hapgoods phone-call.
Two hours ago Jesse had with every right accused them of having tricked him into this situation. Guilty they all felt.
Much more so when they entered the building and almost immediately heard their friend´s voice call out for help frantically.
Avoiding to look at the other two, Steve had made a grim face, murmuring: "Seems like he´s waken up at last ..."
The silence filling the waiting room now made the air almost unbreathable. In an unconscious rhthym, the team sighed one after the other from time to time.
"Dad, will you please sit down!" Steve groaned when it was his turn to sigh. "You´re driving me cra ..." Biting his lip, he hushed himself.
Smiling slightly in sympathy, Mark walked over to a nearby chair and sat down with a deep sigh.
As if that had been his cue, Dr. Hapgood entered the room, closing the door behind him gingerly, making Amanda think of how softly she´d used to close the doors when CJ had been a baby and finally asleep ...
One great metaphor! She inwardly growled at herself and shook her head as though to clear it.
Obviously exhausted, Hapgood sank onto one of the chairs in the room and rubbed a hand over his face.
Out of a well-trained reflex, Steve immediately stood and placed a coffe- mug the friendly nurse had given him a while ago, in front of the tired- looking doctor, who smiled gratefully.
"Thanks detective. Well," he sighed as if preparing for a battle to be faught, "your friend gave us some sort of a hard time here, but still I´d call it a successfull conversation. I´ve received enough infomation to make a first diagnosis. Pity though that we didn´t manage to dig into the history of his illness. He got ... agitated at a certain point ..."
"We heard,"Mark said sadly.
"Yes," the psychiatrist nodded. "I believe so did everybody else in the street." A short, grim twist of his mouth faded as he added earnestly: "We had to tie him to the bed to keep him from hurting himself - or us for that matter."
As if to underline his words, he rubbed his left shoulder, then continued: "We´re not sedating him, though. Considering how much energy he wasted with that last outburst, I think he does that for himself, anyway."
"He´d to do this to a patient the other day," Amanda suddenly said, gazing at Mark. "Tie her down mean. It ... it really bothered him."
"Something in common we have there," Hapgood murmured, but didn´t look at her. Instead, he draw in a deep breath and began revealing what he´d found out while talking to his patient.
"Well, as far as our conversation led us, I can tell now that he´s constantly seeing people who are not there. Just strangers. Patients maybe or just people on the street. Then there are the distressing hallucinations of dead people, which frighten him. Horrible as it may sound to you, we have to consider those visions normal for a person like him, though."
"You mean a doctor," Mark said.
"Right," Hapgood agreed. "An ER-doctor, too. Who´s confronted with death every day as a part of his job." His gaze changed to an almost poetic one as he explained: "It´s the old, deeply felt fear of failure that acompanies the doctor´s task. Don´t we all fear the ones we lost on our tables to return from the dead to haunt us? You know what I´m talking about, don´t you?" he adressed Mark, who nodded sadly.
"See. It´s every doctor´s nightmare. And it´s coming true for Dr. Travis. As I understood it, he´s practically followed by them. To his apartment, his car, his job, everywhere. They actually do haunt him. I don´t have enough information to be completely sure, yet, but I´d count the dark figure he saw both times before getting hurt, to the dead crowd, too. It may even be death itself as he imagines it. But then ..."
"Who´s Sarah?" Steve interrupted.
"Yes, I come to that now. Besides the living and the dead crowd, there are four people he´s seeing on a regular basis and to who he established relation-ships of some sort. Firstly, there are his neighbors, the Crabtrees. They seem to be his friends. They don´t mean any harm to him, he speaks of them with genuine respect and affection. They even told him to look for help once his condition worsened. Psychologically speaking, they symoblize the sane part of Dr. Travis´ mind. The part who knows about his illness and wants to fight it.
Then there is Sarah Shem, the little girl he saw outside the Doctor´s Lounge today. She is his fear. Very simply speaking, of course. His inner child, if you´d want to put it that way. A completely helpless and frightened person."
"Shem?" Amanda asked, frowning. "Her name is Shem?"
"Yes. Why? Do you know a person of that name?"
"No. Just ... The author of a book I gave Jesse a few weeks ago is called Samuel Shem. But Jesse hated that book."
"Because it scared him?" Hapgood guessed.
"Ahm ... yeah, it ... sorta did."
"Yes. That´s a typical behavior for people suffering from schizophrenia. Dr. Travis mixes reality and the emotions it rises with his hallucinations. The child is called like somebody who frightens him, and Mr. Crabtree´s name, for example, is Shay. I understood there once was a real Shay he knew?"
The three listeners nodded in union.
"See? He´s naming a fictional friend after a real one. And Faith, well ... Faith is what Dr. Travis believes to need right now. Faith in his own reality."
Catching the doubtfull glances, Hapgood made an almost amused face. "Yeah, I know. From what I´ve learnt about Dr. Travis´ subconscious by now, I doubt he´d be a very good writer."
Mark chuckled slightly, noticing with welcome relief that he still could do so. "Don´t let him know you said that," he advised.
"I´ll be carefull. There is one person, though, who doesn´t fit into that pattern, and that is a woman called Oak." He made a short pause to cast all of them a questioning look, but no one gave any sign of recognizing the name.
"She sort of follows him from time to time and gives him advises he blieves to be ... I think the word he used was "misleading"."
They all had to smile on that choice of description. Jesse trying to sound very grown-up, it was.
"He never mentioned her," Mark said and shook his head, as if he´d thought about it once more. "No. Though he did talk about Sarah and his neighbors."
Hapgood shrugged. "He´s not actually fond of her. There is one striking thing about her which I think might be important, though. She kept telling him to not becoming afraid of people."
"So?" Steve asked.
"Well, after all it was his fear of the dead people or you that finally led to his illness being discovered by you, wasn´t it? So Oak´s advice was good. It seems like she wanted to safe him from ... this," he concluded with a very British smile. "Yet, Dr. Travis doesn´t trust her. In fact, he hates her. He told me he even attacked her once."
"Jesse attacked someone?" Amanda asked in disbelief.
"Ah ... no," Hapgood smiled. "Not someone, just ..." He made an amused face at her angry look and nodded.
"Yes, he did. It´s not completely unexpected, though. Actually, schizophrenia can lead to paranoia and aggressions in some cases. You have to understand that Dr. Travis fears for his life. And, of course, he´s trying to defend himself. If he believes Oak to be a threat, he attacks her. It´s simple. Most people behave on a basis of simple logic."
Ignoring Hapgood´s short turn to philosophy, Mark frowned. "Schizophrenia. But you can´t catch schizophrenia. You can´t even get it. It´s a physical illness."
"Yes," Hapgood nodded. "It is indeed. Very good memory you have there, Dr. Sloan. I´m impressed. Dr. Travis suffers from an illness he probably had all his life."
"What?!" Steve couldn´t keep himself from calling out. Since his chin had decided to fall down, anyway, he could at least verbalize his surprise, too.
"You mean Jesse´s always been ... No. You´re wrong. I mean, sure, those ties he´s wearing always were some sort of a hint," he joked half- heartedly, "but ... You´re wrong, doctor."
"You don´t want me to be wrong, believe me, detective," Hapgood replied friendly. "Because if I was, it would be a psychological illness, and that would mean your friend is a very sad, very lonely person who needs to create a reality of his own. He is not. He is sick. Something in his system is not working like it should, and that can be corrected."
"But ..." Amanda came to Steve´s help, "we´ve known Jesse for years. He can´t be schizophrenic all his life. We´d have noticed. Wouldn´t we?"
"Not if there never was any sign of it. He could very likely have had hallucinations for a very long time without befriending them. It´s not uncommon that schizophrenia reveals itself when the patient is in his twenties or thirties. See, children almost always have fictional friends. No one believes them to actually see them. And since I understood that Dr. Travis never had any experience with mind-expanding drugs, we have to assume that he really was born sick."
"And you can prove that theory?" Amanda asked, regretting her tone immediately. "Have you run any test on him?"
"Yes, Dr. Bentley, we have. I´m sorry, I know this must come like a shock to you, but it´s true. Your friend suffers from accute schizophrenia."
"It is a shock," Mark nodded. "I´m sorry, we didn´t mean to accuse you of anything." He sighed, suddenly feeling dead-tired. "So what will you do? Shock-treatment, I guess?"
"Right again. You prepared before coming here?" Hapgood smiled in sympathy. "Yes. We´ll start with shocks, three times a week. And then he´ll have to take pills for the rest of his life. There might be some difficulties in getting used to them at the beginning, but he eventually will be able to live amore or less normal life."
"And ... will he be able to ..." Mark started but couldn´t bring himself to finish the question.
Hapgood´s assuring smile faded as he concluded: "Work as a doctor again? Ahm ... that´s hard to tell at this point of ..."
"That´s a no, right?" Steve interrupted him grimly.
"Yes. He won´t. Well, not as a surgeon, that is. Not in the ER. But there are other fields of medicine. Psychiatry, for example."
"Can we see him now?" Mark asked instead of keeping up the conversation.
Understanding, Hapgood stopped immediately and nodded. "Yes. You should do so, anyway. He needs every support he can get now."
"Yes. Thanks," Mark replied flatly and turned to leave the room.
"We," Hapgood´s voice held him back, "will start the treatment tomorrow morning. It ... it might be helpfull if at least one of you could be with him then. Or maybe even ... I believe he still has parents, right?"
"I tried to reach them," Mark answered. "But without any success. I´ll try again later."
"Oh. So you take care of that then," Hapgood stated, sounding almost relieved. "Fine. Then - I won´t keep you from the patient any longer. He´s in room 203. You can´t miss it."
"Right," Steve murmured. "We just follow the screams."
Fortunately, there were no screams to follow. Dr. Hapgood had been right; when the team entered room 203, they found their friend totally spent.
His eyes sueezed shut, Jesse looked younger than ever, like a child fleeing from a nightmare. A cruel metaphor, Mark thought, for the last thing Jesse could do was to flee.
Worried glances were exchanged among the visitors. What should they say? How to talk to a person tied to his bed? What to say on an occasion like this? You couldn´t just ask "How´s it going?" when you´d heard the adressed man screaming out in fear minutes ago. And you surely couldn´t say anything like ...
"Nice room."
At the two irritated gazes staring him into the ground, Steve Sloan shrugged apologetically, but said it was, and their friend flinched to open- eyed-consciousness.
"Hey Jesse," Amanda hurried to say softly as the young doctor´s eyes opened. He calmed down soon, though, and helped them with following his example by not seeming afraid.
"How´re you feeling?"
"Like I´m tied to a bed in a looney bin," he replied quietly and made a face as if to show he was joking.
Since he wasn´t, nobody laughed.
"I´m okay now,"he added after a moment, but avoided to look into their eyes. "Not scared anymore. For now."
"But you´re seeing them, aren´t you?" Mark asked.
Sighing, the younger man nodded slightly. "Yes," he said quietly, drifting into a whisper. "They´re standing behind you. I can ... smell the blood."
Hallucination or not, the idea of a bunch of zombies staring at their backs sent cold shivers through all three of the guests, and this time no one scowled at Steve for asking almost casually: "And the others? They´re here, too?"
Casting his friend an amused look, Jesse shrugged half-heartedly. "Naw. Guess they don´t wanna be seen ´round here, y ´know."
He rolled his eyes when a tensed silence followed.
"Guys - kidding."
Relieved, but nervous, Mark chuckled. Steve smiled, but still advised with a certain unease:
"Perhaps it´d be good to lay down on the kiddig for a while, Jess."
Preparing a reply, Jesse attempted to sit up, but fell back once his wrists connected with their bounds. Wincing at the sudden halt, he closed his eyes and sweared under his breath.
When he looked at them again, he found his friends frowning at him with unbearable worry and embarrassment. Till then it had seemed as if he´d been a patient, lying in bed. Someone ill, someone being visited.
Now he was a controlled adult. Someone sick, someone being started at.
Remembering the sight of Mrs. Reed, he couldn´t help but smile grimly. His gaze wandered down, away from the uncomfortable pity in his friend´s eyes.
"You look at me like I´m crazy," he stated with a humorless laugh. "But then last time I checked being locked away in a cookie jar and tied down okeyed to be looked at like that."
There they were again on the very silent road, which always tended to take Steve to the most frightened part of himself.
"You ... uh ... you need to rest now, right?" he said more than asked, but lamely for sure, and froze in the process of patting his best friend´s shoulder as if touching him would mean humbling him, damaging him.
"So ..." he muttered and quickly drew his hand back, behind his back, far away from the patient.
Though he knew and understood Steve´s feelings, Jesse couldn´t resist stating: "I´m crazy, you know. Not ill."
"Still you ... ah ... you need some stuff ´ere, right? Like clothes and ... stuff. A-and somebody´s gotta check on the bar and ..." Catching his father´s gaze, Steve hushed himself down, but avoided looking at Jesse.
He managed to hold out a moment longer, before he murmured his goodbyes and left.
"Great," Jesse said under his breath and stared at his blanket.
Worried, Amanda smiled gently. "Jesse, this was a pretty exhausting day, huh? Maybe it´d really be a good idea to give you some time to sleep."
Jesse didn´t answer, but kept staring at nothing in particular. His hands had clenched to useless fists.
Next thing you know you gonna be pinning me up in some psycho ward, Mark heard the young man´s voice echoing in his ear, strangely timeless and horribly real as this sentence was.
The sudden urge to follow his son´s example clutched his stomach till he couldn´t help approaching the door ever so inconspicuously.
Yet, Jesse noticed.
"If you wanna leave, you ..." he started, stopped, swallowed hard, closed his eyes.
Out of a reflex, Amanda turned to look behind her, only to find nothing. A nothing which was filled with horror as she knew.
Hating her helplessness, she reached out to stroke his hair and offered: "We can stay if you want."
"They won´t give me anything, will they?" Jesse asked instead of an answer.
"No," Mark said, relieved that they ´d reached medical ground again. "It´s for your own good, Jesse. You´ll be given very strong sedatives tomorrow, before ..."
"Yeah, `kay," Jesse cut him off, "a simple "no" woulda been enough. For today - we don´t mention that s-word involving an electrical socket again, alright?"
"It´ll help you, Jesse," Mark assured in sympathy and touched the younger man´s shoulder. He found that it felt awkward, though. Jesse couldn´t in any way react to physical comfort, it felt wrong to touch a helpless man.
He took his hand away in an instant.
"I know," Jesse replied quietly, child-like, then added after a wince: "My nose itches."
Funny, how a simple statement, a sentence of absolutely none importance, could tense up a whole room, Mark thought as he exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Amanda.
Finally, the pathologist reached out to scratch the patient´s nose.
"Better?"
"No, you´re making it worse," he complained.
"Steve´s right," Mark suddenly said, "we ought to get you some things here and I still have to make those phone calls."
Relieved as he felt about finally leaving this terrible scenery, he still wanted the young man to know how much he cared, but found that he couldn´t do anything but give him a warm smile.
"I´ll be back soon. And I´ll be here tomorrow. All the way. It´s going to be alright, my friend. You´ll see." God, how much he hated every lame word that was forced out of the unsufficient smile of his.
"Thanks Mark." Jesse smiled back slightly, his expression a mirror to Mark ´s. "And, hey, thanks for tricking me in here. You were right, I´d never have told any of you about ... all this. It´s the right thing, I know that now. And ... what I said earlier ... I ..." he stuttered and peeked up into the older man´s eyes.
A bright proud smile calmed him down, and Mark went without any further unnecessary words.
"Amanda," Jesse murmured when she reached for her coat, too.
"Yes?"
"Uhm ..." He made a short pause, before asking almost in a whisper: "Don´t leave me alone. Please."
A worried frown crawled over her face, but she remained silent, sensing how hard it was for him to ask.
"Don´t ... don´t leave me alone with them. I don´t think I can bear ..." He stopped, biting his lip.
Still silent, she lay back her coat and drew a chair next to the bed to sit by her friend.
"I´m scared." He didn´t look at her. "I´m so scared."
"It´s okay," she soothed. "I´m here. I´ll stay. No one´s going to harm you. And tomorrow they´ll start your treament. Which is scaring. No one expects you to not be afraid of shocks, Jesse. But you´re not facing this alone."
"No, I know. I invited Faith and Shay to come over and watch," he replied and smiled humorlessly. "I also wanted Sarah to see it, but Faith said she´s too young for excitements like that."
Amanda laughed softly and stroke his hair. Other than the Sloans, she found it hard to not touch him. As far as she was concerned, it felt wrong to just stare down at him like he was an animal under observation. He couldn´t chose wether to physically ask for comfort or not.
Besides, she desperately wanted him to feel something right. Contrasting with the restrains, which without a doubt were hurting him by now.
"They ´ll never forget, will they?" Jesse suddenly asked, and Amanda found herself at the end of a glance after so long a time.
"Who?"
"Steve and Mark. They ´ll never forget this, huh?" A Jesse-smile rushed over his features, leaving a shadow of bitterness behind.
"They ´re more scared than I am, I guess. I mean - I would be, too. If it was Steve lying here, I wouldn´t ... I couldn´t ..." He sighed deeply before finishing: "I wouldn´t be able to ever look at him in a normal way again, too."
"It´s not that, Jesse," Amanda said firmly. "You know that."
"Yes it is. I saw it in their eyes."
"How? You didn´t look there."
That brought a slight smile to his lips as he nodded in admission.
"Try to understand them, Jesse," Amanda continued. "They can´t do anything for you now. It´s all up to Hapgood and yourself. That´s hard to accept. For a cop and especially for a doctor. That you should know."
A mixture of a wince and a smile twisted his mouth as he thought about her words.
"Yet I´m ... scared. I´m scared that I might ... lose you," he told after a moment, again looking away. "All of you. I mean ... Gawd, I can´t believe this is happening. I´m losing my mind. Scratch that, I lost my mind!"
"Jesse," Amanda soothed and once again stroke his hair gently. "That´s nonsense, and you know it. Hey, you acted crazier before and we never deserted you, right?"
"Wow," he grinned. "You should have stick to psychology."
"Naw, this is nothing. I´m a woman, remember? We can handle things."
"No kidding."
There was a friendly silence to follow, which Amanda used to continue stroking Jesse, who gazed away.
It was just then he noted for himself how terribly instable he actually felt. Still fearing his treatment, his hallucinations, the possibility of losing his friends, he felt threatened, angry, relieved and sad at the same time without knowing how to express just one of his various emotions.
His body knew, though, and answered his question by simply sending a tear, then another one, down his cheeks. In the unconscious motion of lifting his hand to wipe them away, he was once more stopped painfully by the restrains.
Startled, Amanda took her hand off him and watched in sympathy as he gave his bounds a violent jerk.
"I hate this! I ..." He sniffed, adding in an embarrassed whisper: "I can´t even hug you."
It tore her heart to see him like this, struggling uselessly, just out of the urge to at least try, and she surprised herself as she calmly said:
"But I can hug you."
"No, you can´t," he answered and smiled bitterly. "At least now I know how it feels like. Won´t do this to a patient again. What goes around ..." He interrupted himself, his attention being drawn to the other side of the bed.
"Hey honey," he said friendly and explained: "Sarah´s here." He paused. "She says hi."
Somehow his casual tone reminded Amanda of CJ´s invisible friends he used to have when he´d been younger, and out of a well-trained reflex she said: "Hi Sarah!" and even looked into the direction the little girl was supposed to be.
Jesse laughed out loud. "Maybe it´s a good thing you didn´t become a shrink, after all," he mused.
Though she felt it her duty to make a face it him, she enjoyed hearing him laugh.
His eyes still sparkling, he turned once more to smile at his little invisible guest reassuringly. He even opened his mouth to reply something, but closed it quickly when remembering that he wasn´t alone.
"You know," he told Amanda, "it it wasn´t for... them, it´d be ... good. Honest. Faith and Shay. And Sarah." He smiled warmly. "They might just be my brain making fun of my senses but I like them."
Glancing at him in concern, Amanda reached forward, bent down and hugged him as good as she could.
"This is real," she whispered into his ear. "We are real, Jesse."
"I know," he said, surprised by her reaction.
Yet she didn´t release him for quite a time as if he could slip through her fingers like air and become like his other friends if she let him go.
"D´you wanna talk about it?" Mark asked his son when they sat in the car, driving to Jesse´s apartment. They hadn´t talked much since they ´d left the hospital, and Mark was feeling like he would chocke on the tension if they didn´t start to soon.
"Nope," Steve replied shortly without taking his gaze off the street.
"Well, I do."
"Don´t let me stop you."
"Steve."
"What? I don´t wanna talk about it, okay? I don´t wanna think about it. I wanna drive down this damn street now."
Pause.
"It was terrible seeing him like this."
"Dad, if you´re that crazy about walking, just say it."
"I feel guilty. I mean, I know I´m not, but still I feel like I should have known. I should have done something. - Do you feel guilty?"
"I know what you´re trying to do here, but I´m not falling for it. I´m not gonna stop with squeezing brakes in the middle of the street and shout at you, ´kay? Forget it. I don´t wanna talk about Jesse, and I don´t wanna hear you do it."
"The sound of him screaming when we arrived ... I don´t think I´ll ever forget this."
"If that´s what you call a psychological trick, maybe we should drive back to Hapgood to ..."
"Steve, for Christ´s sake, I´m trying to talk to you here!" Mark exploded. "I don´t care if you refuse to, I will tell you how I feel, want it or not. Because I am feeling awful!"
Dismayed, Steve stopped at the side of the street and leaned back, staring at his father.
"Dad ..."
"He´s my friend, too! If you wanna play tough cop, that´s fine, but I can´t. I´m a doctor. I should have known." Frustrated, Mark rubbed his hands over his face, then looked at his son. "I should have notice something."
"You did. It was you who found out. You ..."
" ... tricked him," Mark concluded. "Like I always do. Like every time I catch a murderer. I set him up. I would even understand it if he hates me now."
"Dad, Jess couldn´t hate you if he wanted to. Besides, you said he thanked you for setting him up. There´s nothing to feel guilty about."
"Remind me of that tomorrow, when I´m going to watch them sending electric shocks through his brain."
"It´s a treament, Dad, and it´s necessary. - Why do I have to do the medical yelling?!"
That sent a smile to Mark´s lips, which faded over the sentence: "We shouldn´t have gone."
That was a sore spot on Steve´s conscience, and it took him quite an effort to say assuringly: "We´ll be there tomorrow."
"He´ll be out cold then. He needed us now."
"So why didn´t you stay?"
"I couldn´t bear the sight."
"Me neither," Steve said grimly. "He looked like a prisoner. Like ... like we´ll never get him back. Scared me to hell. Even more than that night he was afraid of me."
They sat in silence for a few moments, before Steve suddenly asked: "You didn´t just trick me, too, did you?"
"Maybe. A little."
"I knew it. I knew it all along."
"Course you did, son. And now drive on, I want to be back before he´s asleep."
"Huh, huh, huh ... didn´t I see that before?"
Dr. Amanda Bentley frowned at what met her eyes under the microscope.
Behind her lay the late Mr. Dillard, stitched close after having been opened and examined.
"What is this?" Amanda added, but didn´t receive an answer from her guest, whom she cast a questioning glance.
Amazing, how peaceful even a person who´d shot himself looked when dead, the pathologist thought with a wry smile, but rubbed her eyes tiredly a second later. Great, she was so exhausted, she was getting macabre now.
Glancing at her watch, she sighed once more. Now they were probably preparing him for the first shock , gave him a shot or two, brought him into another room, checked on the instruments...
She shook her head. This was no good. Out of nothing to do she once more looked into the microscope, but whatever it was she saw there, it hadn´t decided to change into something she recognized.
"Dr. Bentley?" a male voice from the door announced after a faint knock.
"Yes?" she asked and turned.
"Miller. Mail. Here are the test results from Boston."
"Really?" she asked and grinned.
"Ah ... yes," the young man nodded uncertainly, eyeing first her then the envelope in his hand suspisciously. "I´m sorry if they´re too late. It´s not my faul ..."
"Mr. Miller, your timing is brilliant. You should consider being promoted."
"Ah ... Ma´am?"
"Never mind. Thanks very much." She smiled friendly and opened the envelope. She froze in motion, though,when she still sensed his presence behind her.
"Anything else?"
"N-no." The young man swallowed. "Is ... is he really ..." he stuttered, glancing at the body on the table.
"Since I removed all his inner organs, weighed them and put them back into him afterwards, I guess if he wasn´t dead before, he is by now."
Despite his greenish expression, Miller muttered an impressed "cool" before he finally forced his gaze away from the corpse and left.
Shaking her head in amusement, Amanda smiled at Dillard. "Did you know that? Dead´s in now."
"What d´you mean, we can´t see him?" Steve Sloan was upset.
"I´m sorry, detective,"Dr. Hapgood said apologetically, "but Dr. Travis is already under sedation. It takes a while to prepare a patient for a shock treatment. You can watch from the window up here," he pointed at a nearby door, which led to a small terrace above the examination room from where relatives, students and doctors could witness shock treatments.
"We´ll start in ten minutes," he added after checking his watch.
"But ..." Steve started, but was interrupted by an assuring hand placed on his shoulder.
"Come, Steve, let´s go in there. It´s all we can do."
Grumbling, Steve obeyed and turned.
"Ah, you know," Hapgood´s voice hold him back. "I know I said this before - twice, if I´m right, but ... We´re gonna heal your friend, detective, not kill him."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I´m sorry."
"No, I really want you to understand this," Hapgood insisted. "For your friend´s sake. If you behave like this was the terrible part of his illness later on, you´ll endanger the healing process, ´cause he won´t come here again. This is a treatment, not torture. The fifties are over."
"I know," Steve shot back, but calmed down immediately, adding slightly embarrassed: "I´m sorry, doctor."
"You don´t have to be." Hapgood smiled. "I hear this all the time. I bet your father knows what I´m talking about."
Smiling understandingly, Mark nodded. Yes, to help seldomly looked the part. Doctor´s knew.
"´kay," Hapgood interrupted the short silence. "I better go check the room now. See you afterwards."
With that he turned and left.
Steve and Mark entered the watching-room. What they saw beneath them was a simple looking, small room with a bed in it, on which Jesse lay, completely still, once again restrained, but seemingly peaceful, as if sound asleep.
A bunch of nurses was busy doing various check-ups, and soon afterwards, Dr. Hapgood entered, looked up to the Sloans with a smile, then turned all his attention to his patient, checked his pupils and breathing.
Shooting an uncomfortable glance at his father, Steve nervously shifted his weight from one foot to another.
"Steve ..."
"No, no, no, it´s okay." He let out a deep breath.
"Maybe we should sit down," Mark suggested friendly.
"Naw, I got the sudden urge to move a little," Steve replied sarcastically.
Knowing his son to well to go on with that, Mark sat down, hoping it would drive Steve to follow his example.
But the detective remained where he stood at the window glass, staring down at the scenery beneath him which was about to change.
All preparations done, the treatment started and was over in a second.
The shock itself was given with one simple movement by Hapgood and only had a sudden but expected jerk of the limp body as a result.
"Hey, that wasn´t ..." Steve started, but couldn´t finish his thought. "Oh god ..."
"He´s reacting, son. That´s normal."
"Uh ..."
It looked about as normal as a choking fit, Steve thought. Jesse´s body wriggled and struggled against itself, against his own muscles responding to a stranger´s orders. His hands unclenched and clenched, his face was twisted in pain.
But the most terrible sight of all were the stoic expressions of the nurses holding him down. Since they knew soothing him would have been of no use at all, they didn´t even attempt to do so.
Bizarr, it looked. Morbid.
It reminded Steve of his childhood holidays on farms, when hens and roosters had been killed and still moved after their death. The farmer would hold them down untill the spasms of death would subside ...
With two steps, the detective was out of the room, leaving his startled, yet not surprised father behind.
A few hours later, Amanda was greeted by a tired and questioning looking Mark Sloan when arriving at the beach house.
"So, what´s the emergency?" he asked and closed the door behind her.
"I´ll tell you," she answered. "How ... did it go?"
"Great. - Well, about as great as such things can go, I guess," he added with a wry smile. "Hapgood seemed satisfied."
"Did you see him afterwards?"
They entered the living-room, where Steve sat and nodded a short hello. "Yes," he answered the question, "we did, but only for a minute or so. He was in recovery and still pretty out of it. They said he´ll be for the whole day now."
"Ah," she made, and when finding that there was nothing else to say, sat down. There was a short awkward pause, before the pathologist opened her mouth, closed it and was prevented from repeating the gesture by Steve´s unpatient : "It was terrible, okay?! So - what did you find out about Dillard that´s so important?"
Team-mode kicking in, all of them changed their sitting-positions and gazes, curiosity and attention on the case taking over now. Relieved they all were, though, to have found something they could work on together. A distraction. A case.
"It´s not only about Dillard," Amanda started, "but also Pinter."
"Pinter?" Steve repeated surprisedly. "The guy who shot Seamus Zeesley?"
"And himself," Amanda added. "Like Dillard did. D´you remember the strange test results I got from Pinter? I sent them to Boston."
"Yeah," Mark nodded.
"Huh?" Steve frowned. "You told me you didn´t find anything."
"When you asked me about drugs, right. And I didn´t. This ... thing was found after the toxic test. And it´s no drug."
"You said it was some sort of capsule," Mark remembered.
" "Sort of"´s the word," Amanda said. "It was a nanobot."
"A what?!" Steve and Mark asked in union and then seperately: "What´s a nanobot?!" (coming from the non-physician) and "Nanobots aren´t used yet."
"One was used on Pinter," Amanda objected and turned to Steve to explain: "A nanobot is a very, very,very, very, very incredibly small robot."
"My Latin´s not that bad!"
"You asked. Anyway, they ´re injected into a patient and ... Well, you could say they operate on him."
Steve blinked.
"They ´re programmed," Mark helped out, "to do a specific task. Like stitch an inner gash or something like that. They do inside the patient what a human doctor could only manage by opening him"
A confused grin crossed Steve´s lip. "Ah ... guys, that´s sciene fiction."
"It was," Mark corrected. "Nanobots are real. But they ´re still experimental. There are no records of them ever having been used on a human. And most of the animals they used them on died. They´re very, very experimental."
"Well, the two humans we know of who were injected with nanobots died, too, so your information are still update," Amanda said sarcastically.
"Two?" Steve frowned. "Dillard?"
"Yes. I found the remains of a nanobot in his sytem, too. - You can´t imagine how upset the specialists in Boston are. They ordered me to send Pinter´s body to them immediately. You know what a scandal this is?"
"It´s not very hard to imagine," Mark said. "And if it really were nanobots, then we don´t have two suicides, but ..."
"Murders," Steve concluded.
"Right."
"Right."
"But why?" the detective asked, more himself than the others. "Who would ..."
"Experiments maybe," Mark suggested. "But no matter what the motives were, they were those of a doctor, that´s for sure."
"Okay," Steve said, his tone becoming cop-like. "I wanna know everything about those two men. You go back to the hospital and gather every chart you have on them, alright? I´m gonna drive to the precinct and try to find out some non-medical stuff about them. We´ll meet at the hospital."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Who would do such a thing, you figure?" Amanda asked seriously when she and Mark sat in her car.
"I don´t know. But whoever it is, he probably believes he´s right."
"Right?"
"Medical advance, Amanda."
Remembering, Amanda sighed. "Doctor´s play God, huh?"
"Some do," Mark nodded, knowing what she was referring to. "Even more than others," he added bitterly.
"Here it is," Steve announced when they sat in the Doctor´s Lounge later. He hold up the file he´d searched for and told the rest of the team what he´d found out.
"Pinter and Dillard were both operated six month ago. By the same surgeon at the same hospital."
"What´s the surgeon´s name?" Mark asked and took the file from his son.
"Dr. O. Reddick," Steve answered. "But she left the hospital soon afterwards and turned to psychology."
"Psychology?" Amanda repeated and stated after a moment´s thought: "Both nanobots blocked a way of message from parts of the brain to others."
"Both men went crazy," Steve translated for himself.
"But they both never had psychological treatments. They both never showed any sign of mental instability before," Amanda continued and placed a file back on the table. "Why use it on them? Why not on patients who would need it? Who it could actually heal?"
Since no one knew the answer to that, silence settled, till Mark´s mutter interrupted it.
"There has to be something else. Something they had in common."
"But what?" his son asked.
"Something simple. I think they weren´t chosen because of any illness, but because ... hm ..."
His gaze flew back to a file which he´d read before and which he now picked up again. "5´5."
"What?"
"Pinter´s size," he explained. "5´5. How tall was Dillard?"
"Ah ..." Steve quickly searched for the information and read: "5´6."
"Not very tall," Amanda stated.
"They both weren´t," Mark said and exchanged a glance with his son.
"Come on, Dad! Reddick chosed them because they were small?"
"If it was Reddick," Mark said, "I think so, yes. She didn´t use the nanobots on them because of them, she did it for herself. It meant something to her that they were small."
A short pause followed again, till Steve´s gaze suddenly changed into a dreadful frown. "You know, ahm ... Jesse´s sorta small, too."
Mark looked at him in dismay, when Amanda´s voice sent cold waves through both of them.
"Oh my god," she whispered. "Did you see Dr. Reddick ´s first name in here?"
"No," Steve answered and felt an ice-cold hand inside his stomach. "Why?"
"It´s Oak. Dr. Oak Reddick."
"You remember the morning I found Jesse at "BBQ Bob´s" right after Shay Zeesley´s death?" Steve asked as they sat later in a room they´d occupied at the precinct in order to check on Dr. Oak Reddick.
"Course."
"I think that was when he´d met Oak. Hapgood said, she warned him of becoming afraid or trusting people and she´s the only Harvey not fitting in."
"Very good, Steve," Mark nodded. "She must have known about Pinter and Dillard and she..."
" ... checked on Jesse," Steve finished. "But why? Why inject him with this thing and then worry about his condition?"
"I think the answer´s in here," Amanda said and looked up from a file she´d been reading in. "She´s a surgeon, but turned to psychology after her brother, Greylen Reddick, slipped into a coma a few years ago. He was suffering from schizophrenia. Oak tried a new, very risky operation on him, but failed. She then quitted surgery and devoted herself to research."
"How tall is Greylen Reddick?"
"It doesn´t say here, but Oak´s 5´4."
"Her brother´s probably equally small. There we have our motive."
"Oh ... What´re you saying, Dad, she uses her inventions on men who remind her of her brother?"
"Because she couldn´t safe him, yes," Mark nodded. "She can´t stop trying."
"That´s it. No more Hitchcock for you."
"No, it´s good," Amanda objected. "Yesterday Jesse said that if it wasn´t for the dead people and us, it wouldn´t be that bad to ... be like that. Greylen was born ill, so we can assume that Oak has it, too. And if she suffers from the same symptoms ..."
"She chose to live with them. But Greylen´s her "if it wasn´t for" she can´t let go." Mark shook his head sadly. "Jesse probably met her when she came to see Pinter. Another "brother" on whom she´d failed. She was desperate and lost and once again recognized her brother in a man just because he was ..."
"Small," Steve and Amanda concluded in union.
"Yes."
"Wow," Steve said and then there was nothing more to say. The team sat in dismay.
"That was the reason for Hapgood´s test results," Amanda stated suddenly. "It´s a nanobot."
"And at "BBQ Bob´s", that was no hangover, it was ... the aftermath of the injection," Steve smiled without any humor. "That was why he forgot how he´d got there. Right?"
Mark nodded. "Yes. And that was when it started. When Faith and Shay moved into his building and Sarah became his patient ... God, how couldn´t we notice?! How could we fail to see all that? I yelled at him that day!"
"I shook him," Steve said in a sad, small voice, child-like.
He found his way back to a very adult tone quickly enough, though. "I can´t believe I accused him of being hungover and leaving the bar open. I mean, gee, it´s Jesse! I should have known better! Every time we think he´s crazy, we´re wrong! We should have learned by now."
"Steve, we ..."
"What?! Don´t tell me that´s not exactly what you think, too."
Mark fell silent again and bowed his head. Of course it was.
"We let him be shocked," Amanda suddenly said, calmly, clearly.
The silence following was unbearable. It was filled with chocking guilt and memories of the kind one never forgets.
"We won´t let it happen again," Steve said when he couldn´t hold out longer. He needed to breathe. "Come on, we´ll get him outta there."
They didn´t. Couldn´t.
"What?!"
Because he wasn´t there anymore.
"You´re wrong, please check again." Steve tried to smile friendly, but only managed to look even more threatening than before. The poor nurse at the reception desk at the "Apple Memorial Hospital" flinched under his gaze and quickly scanned the screen of her computer.
Behind the detective´s back, his father and Amanda exchanged a concerned glance.
"I´m sorry, sir. Dr. Travis has left. See - he signed out here."
"Signed out?! How? Last time we saw him he couldn´t lift his head, let alone hold a pen! How could he possibly sign himself out - he can´t even walk!!! He was shocked this morning!!!"
He only noticed he was yelling at the poor girl, when Mark´s calming hand patted his shoulder.
"Uh, I´m sorry," he apologized and earned a forgiving, yet frightened smile from the nurse.
"It´s alright," she squeezed out. "You´re worried, I understand. But I can´t help you, Dr. Travis is no longer Dr. Hapgood´s patient."
Mark frowned. "Why ´s that?"
"His psychiatrist took the case from him. She signed all the necessary papers ... here, see?"
The team grew very pale.
"She?" Mark asked dreadfully. "Did she take him with her?"
"Yes," the girl replied innocently, having absolutely no idea of the horrible meaning her words had. "She said she´d continue his treatment under her observation."
"Dr. Reddick?" Steve asked and closed his eyes against the postive answer.
"Do you wish to talk to Dr. Hapgood?" the nurse asked, obviously eager to help, but was rewarded with ignorance.
You know what I´m talking about, right? But I´m back now and the end is near! It is, believe me! This is the chapter before the last and final one, and hopefully my computer won´t let me down again before that one´s up here, too.
I´m still amazed at how great you guys are! Thanks for all the reviews, though of course I don´t deserve half of them. Thanks so much!
And, yes, I´ve to admit - "A beautiful mind" inspired me a lot. Great observation skills you have there. GRIN.
Okay, no more chitter chatter, let´s start. Disclaimers still the same, and, heyyyyyy, my Obst is back! Missed you so much, kid! (All of you who haven´t checked out "I owe you that" - do NOW or be sorry. Commercial break ends here.)
Enjoy. (Oh, and, ah, sorry about the quotation. I think I didn´t understand it correctly, but you know which one I mean, anyway, right? Don´t sue me please.)
"Lock ´em away, gimme the key,
Quick, before anyone gets up.
Gimme the key, throw it away,
There we are. No one must know."
( "Anyone can whistle")
It took Steve Sloan exactly three minutes to find out that he didn´t like the "Apple Memorial Hospital".
Amanda needed two minutes more.
Mark didn´t think about wether or not he liked the place. He was busy pacing the floor of the waiting room a friendly nurse had sent them to when they´d arrived after Hapgoods phone-call.
Two hours ago Jesse had with every right accused them of having tricked him into this situation. Guilty they all felt.
Much more so when they entered the building and almost immediately heard their friend´s voice call out for help frantically.
Avoiding to look at the other two, Steve had made a grim face, murmuring: "Seems like he´s waken up at last ..."
The silence filling the waiting room now made the air almost unbreathable. In an unconscious rhthym, the team sighed one after the other from time to time.
"Dad, will you please sit down!" Steve groaned when it was his turn to sigh. "You´re driving me cra ..." Biting his lip, he hushed himself.
Smiling slightly in sympathy, Mark walked over to a nearby chair and sat down with a deep sigh.
As if that had been his cue, Dr. Hapgood entered the room, closing the door behind him gingerly, making Amanda think of how softly she´d used to close the doors when CJ had been a baby and finally asleep ...
One great metaphor! She inwardly growled at herself and shook her head as though to clear it.
Obviously exhausted, Hapgood sank onto one of the chairs in the room and rubbed a hand over his face.
Out of a well-trained reflex, Steve immediately stood and placed a coffe- mug the friendly nurse had given him a while ago, in front of the tired- looking doctor, who smiled gratefully.
"Thanks detective. Well," he sighed as if preparing for a battle to be faught, "your friend gave us some sort of a hard time here, but still I´d call it a successfull conversation. I´ve received enough infomation to make a first diagnosis. Pity though that we didn´t manage to dig into the history of his illness. He got ... agitated at a certain point ..."
"We heard,"Mark said sadly.
"Yes," the psychiatrist nodded. "I believe so did everybody else in the street." A short, grim twist of his mouth faded as he added earnestly: "We had to tie him to the bed to keep him from hurting himself - or us for that matter."
As if to underline his words, he rubbed his left shoulder, then continued: "We´re not sedating him, though. Considering how much energy he wasted with that last outburst, I think he does that for himself, anyway."
"He´d to do this to a patient the other day," Amanda suddenly said, gazing at Mark. "Tie her down mean. It ... it really bothered him."
"Something in common we have there," Hapgood murmured, but didn´t look at her. Instead, he draw in a deep breath and began revealing what he´d found out while talking to his patient.
"Well, as far as our conversation led us, I can tell now that he´s constantly seeing people who are not there. Just strangers. Patients maybe or just people on the street. Then there are the distressing hallucinations of dead people, which frighten him. Horrible as it may sound to you, we have to consider those visions normal for a person like him, though."
"You mean a doctor," Mark said.
"Right," Hapgood agreed. "An ER-doctor, too. Who´s confronted with death every day as a part of his job." His gaze changed to an almost poetic one as he explained: "It´s the old, deeply felt fear of failure that acompanies the doctor´s task. Don´t we all fear the ones we lost on our tables to return from the dead to haunt us? You know what I´m talking about, don´t you?" he adressed Mark, who nodded sadly.
"See. It´s every doctor´s nightmare. And it´s coming true for Dr. Travis. As I understood it, he´s practically followed by them. To his apartment, his car, his job, everywhere. They actually do haunt him. I don´t have enough information to be completely sure, yet, but I´d count the dark figure he saw both times before getting hurt, to the dead crowd, too. It may even be death itself as he imagines it. But then ..."
"Who´s Sarah?" Steve interrupted.
"Yes, I come to that now. Besides the living and the dead crowd, there are four people he´s seeing on a regular basis and to who he established relation-ships of some sort. Firstly, there are his neighbors, the Crabtrees. They seem to be his friends. They don´t mean any harm to him, he speaks of them with genuine respect and affection. They even told him to look for help once his condition worsened. Psychologically speaking, they symoblize the sane part of Dr. Travis´ mind. The part who knows about his illness and wants to fight it.
Then there is Sarah Shem, the little girl he saw outside the Doctor´s Lounge today. She is his fear. Very simply speaking, of course. His inner child, if you´d want to put it that way. A completely helpless and frightened person."
"Shem?" Amanda asked, frowning. "Her name is Shem?"
"Yes. Why? Do you know a person of that name?"
"No. Just ... The author of a book I gave Jesse a few weeks ago is called Samuel Shem. But Jesse hated that book."
"Because it scared him?" Hapgood guessed.
"Ahm ... yeah, it ... sorta did."
"Yes. That´s a typical behavior for people suffering from schizophrenia. Dr. Travis mixes reality and the emotions it rises with his hallucinations. The child is called like somebody who frightens him, and Mr. Crabtree´s name, for example, is Shay. I understood there once was a real Shay he knew?"
The three listeners nodded in union.
"See? He´s naming a fictional friend after a real one. And Faith, well ... Faith is what Dr. Travis believes to need right now. Faith in his own reality."
Catching the doubtfull glances, Hapgood made an almost amused face. "Yeah, I know. From what I´ve learnt about Dr. Travis´ subconscious by now, I doubt he´d be a very good writer."
Mark chuckled slightly, noticing with welcome relief that he still could do so. "Don´t let him know you said that," he advised.
"I´ll be carefull. There is one person, though, who doesn´t fit into that pattern, and that is a woman called Oak." He made a short pause to cast all of them a questioning look, but no one gave any sign of recognizing the name.
"She sort of follows him from time to time and gives him advises he blieves to be ... I think the word he used was "misleading"."
They all had to smile on that choice of description. Jesse trying to sound very grown-up, it was.
"He never mentioned her," Mark said and shook his head, as if he´d thought about it once more. "No. Though he did talk about Sarah and his neighbors."
Hapgood shrugged. "He´s not actually fond of her. There is one striking thing about her which I think might be important, though. She kept telling him to not becoming afraid of people."
"So?" Steve asked.
"Well, after all it was his fear of the dead people or you that finally led to his illness being discovered by you, wasn´t it? So Oak´s advice was good. It seems like she wanted to safe him from ... this," he concluded with a very British smile. "Yet, Dr. Travis doesn´t trust her. In fact, he hates her. He told me he even attacked her once."
"Jesse attacked someone?" Amanda asked in disbelief.
"Ah ... no," Hapgood smiled. "Not someone, just ..." He made an amused face at her angry look and nodded.
"Yes, he did. It´s not completely unexpected, though. Actually, schizophrenia can lead to paranoia and aggressions in some cases. You have to understand that Dr. Travis fears for his life. And, of course, he´s trying to defend himself. If he believes Oak to be a threat, he attacks her. It´s simple. Most people behave on a basis of simple logic."
Ignoring Hapgood´s short turn to philosophy, Mark frowned. "Schizophrenia. But you can´t catch schizophrenia. You can´t even get it. It´s a physical illness."
"Yes," Hapgood nodded. "It is indeed. Very good memory you have there, Dr. Sloan. I´m impressed. Dr. Travis suffers from an illness he probably had all his life."
"What?!" Steve couldn´t keep himself from calling out. Since his chin had decided to fall down, anyway, he could at least verbalize his surprise, too.
"You mean Jesse´s always been ... No. You´re wrong. I mean, sure, those ties he´s wearing always were some sort of a hint," he joked half- heartedly, "but ... You´re wrong, doctor."
"You don´t want me to be wrong, believe me, detective," Hapgood replied friendly. "Because if I was, it would be a psychological illness, and that would mean your friend is a very sad, very lonely person who needs to create a reality of his own. He is not. He is sick. Something in his system is not working like it should, and that can be corrected."
"But ..." Amanda came to Steve´s help, "we´ve known Jesse for years. He can´t be schizophrenic all his life. We´d have noticed. Wouldn´t we?"
"Not if there never was any sign of it. He could very likely have had hallucinations for a very long time without befriending them. It´s not uncommon that schizophrenia reveals itself when the patient is in his twenties or thirties. See, children almost always have fictional friends. No one believes them to actually see them. And since I understood that Dr. Travis never had any experience with mind-expanding drugs, we have to assume that he really was born sick."
"And you can prove that theory?" Amanda asked, regretting her tone immediately. "Have you run any test on him?"
"Yes, Dr. Bentley, we have. I´m sorry, I know this must come like a shock to you, but it´s true. Your friend suffers from accute schizophrenia."
"It is a shock," Mark nodded. "I´m sorry, we didn´t mean to accuse you of anything." He sighed, suddenly feeling dead-tired. "So what will you do? Shock-treatment, I guess?"
"Right again. You prepared before coming here?" Hapgood smiled in sympathy. "Yes. We´ll start with shocks, three times a week. And then he´ll have to take pills for the rest of his life. There might be some difficulties in getting used to them at the beginning, but he eventually will be able to live amore or less normal life."
"And ... will he be able to ..." Mark started but couldn´t bring himself to finish the question.
Hapgood´s assuring smile faded as he concluded: "Work as a doctor again? Ahm ... that´s hard to tell at this point of ..."
"That´s a no, right?" Steve interrupted him grimly.
"Yes. He won´t. Well, not as a surgeon, that is. Not in the ER. But there are other fields of medicine. Psychiatry, for example."
"Can we see him now?" Mark asked instead of keeping up the conversation.
Understanding, Hapgood stopped immediately and nodded. "Yes. You should do so, anyway. He needs every support he can get now."
"Yes. Thanks," Mark replied flatly and turned to leave the room.
"We," Hapgood´s voice held him back, "will start the treatment tomorrow morning. It ... it might be helpfull if at least one of you could be with him then. Or maybe even ... I believe he still has parents, right?"
"I tried to reach them," Mark answered. "But without any success. I´ll try again later."
"Oh. So you take care of that then," Hapgood stated, sounding almost relieved. "Fine. Then - I won´t keep you from the patient any longer. He´s in room 203. You can´t miss it."
"Right," Steve murmured. "We just follow the screams."
Fortunately, there were no screams to follow. Dr. Hapgood had been right; when the team entered room 203, they found their friend totally spent.
His eyes sueezed shut, Jesse looked younger than ever, like a child fleeing from a nightmare. A cruel metaphor, Mark thought, for the last thing Jesse could do was to flee.
Worried glances were exchanged among the visitors. What should they say? How to talk to a person tied to his bed? What to say on an occasion like this? You couldn´t just ask "How´s it going?" when you´d heard the adressed man screaming out in fear minutes ago. And you surely couldn´t say anything like ...
"Nice room."
At the two irritated gazes staring him into the ground, Steve Sloan shrugged apologetically, but said it was, and their friend flinched to open- eyed-consciousness.
"Hey Jesse," Amanda hurried to say softly as the young doctor´s eyes opened. He calmed down soon, though, and helped them with following his example by not seeming afraid.
"How´re you feeling?"
"Like I´m tied to a bed in a looney bin," he replied quietly and made a face as if to show he was joking.
Since he wasn´t, nobody laughed.
"I´m okay now,"he added after a moment, but avoided to look into their eyes. "Not scared anymore. For now."
"But you´re seeing them, aren´t you?" Mark asked.
Sighing, the younger man nodded slightly. "Yes," he said quietly, drifting into a whisper. "They´re standing behind you. I can ... smell the blood."
Hallucination or not, the idea of a bunch of zombies staring at their backs sent cold shivers through all three of the guests, and this time no one scowled at Steve for asking almost casually: "And the others? They´re here, too?"
Casting his friend an amused look, Jesse shrugged half-heartedly. "Naw. Guess they don´t wanna be seen ´round here, y ´know."
He rolled his eyes when a tensed silence followed.
"Guys - kidding."
Relieved, but nervous, Mark chuckled. Steve smiled, but still advised with a certain unease:
"Perhaps it´d be good to lay down on the kiddig for a while, Jess."
Preparing a reply, Jesse attempted to sit up, but fell back once his wrists connected with their bounds. Wincing at the sudden halt, he closed his eyes and sweared under his breath.
When he looked at them again, he found his friends frowning at him with unbearable worry and embarrassment. Till then it had seemed as if he´d been a patient, lying in bed. Someone ill, someone being visited.
Now he was a controlled adult. Someone sick, someone being started at.
Remembering the sight of Mrs. Reed, he couldn´t help but smile grimly. His gaze wandered down, away from the uncomfortable pity in his friend´s eyes.
"You look at me like I´m crazy," he stated with a humorless laugh. "But then last time I checked being locked away in a cookie jar and tied down okeyed to be looked at like that."
There they were again on the very silent road, which always tended to take Steve to the most frightened part of himself.
"You ... uh ... you need to rest now, right?" he said more than asked, but lamely for sure, and froze in the process of patting his best friend´s shoulder as if touching him would mean humbling him, damaging him.
"So ..." he muttered and quickly drew his hand back, behind his back, far away from the patient.
Though he knew and understood Steve´s feelings, Jesse couldn´t resist stating: "I´m crazy, you know. Not ill."
"Still you ... ah ... you need some stuff ´ere, right? Like clothes and ... stuff. A-and somebody´s gotta check on the bar and ..." Catching his father´s gaze, Steve hushed himself down, but avoided looking at Jesse.
He managed to hold out a moment longer, before he murmured his goodbyes and left.
"Great," Jesse said under his breath and stared at his blanket.
Worried, Amanda smiled gently. "Jesse, this was a pretty exhausting day, huh? Maybe it´d really be a good idea to give you some time to sleep."
Jesse didn´t answer, but kept staring at nothing in particular. His hands had clenched to useless fists.
Next thing you know you gonna be pinning me up in some psycho ward, Mark heard the young man´s voice echoing in his ear, strangely timeless and horribly real as this sentence was.
The sudden urge to follow his son´s example clutched his stomach till he couldn´t help approaching the door ever so inconspicuously.
Yet, Jesse noticed.
"If you wanna leave, you ..." he started, stopped, swallowed hard, closed his eyes.
Out of a reflex, Amanda turned to look behind her, only to find nothing. A nothing which was filled with horror as she knew.
Hating her helplessness, she reached out to stroke his hair and offered: "We can stay if you want."
"They won´t give me anything, will they?" Jesse asked instead of an answer.
"No," Mark said, relieved that they ´d reached medical ground again. "It´s for your own good, Jesse. You´ll be given very strong sedatives tomorrow, before ..."
"Yeah, `kay," Jesse cut him off, "a simple "no" woulda been enough. For today - we don´t mention that s-word involving an electrical socket again, alright?"
"It´ll help you, Jesse," Mark assured in sympathy and touched the younger man´s shoulder. He found that it felt awkward, though. Jesse couldn´t in any way react to physical comfort, it felt wrong to touch a helpless man.
He took his hand away in an instant.
"I know," Jesse replied quietly, child-like, then added after a wince: "My nose itches."
Funny, how a simple statement, a sentence of absolutely none importance, could tense up a whole room, Mark thought as he exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Amanda.
Finally, the pathologist reached out to scratch the patient´s nose.
"Better?"
"No, you´re making it worse," he complained.
"Steve´s right," Mark suddenly said, "we ought to get you some things here and I still have to make those phone calls."
Relieved as he felt about finally leaving this terrible scenery, he still wanted the young man to know how much he cared, but found that he couldn´t do anything but give him a warm smile.
"I´ll be back soon. And I´ll be here tomorrow. All the way. It´s going to be alright, my friend. You´ll see." God, how much he hated every lame word that was forced out of the unsufficient smile of his.
"Thanks Mark." Jesse smiled back slightly, his expression a mirror to Mark ´s. "And, hey, thanks for tricking me in here. You were right, I´d never have told any of you about ... all this. It´s the right thing, I know that now. And ... what I said earlier ... I ..." he stuttered and peeked up into the older man´s eyes.
A bright proud smile calmed him down, and Mark went without any further unnecessary words.
"Amanda," Jesse murmured when she reached for her coat, too.
"Yes?"
"Uhm ..." He made a short pause, before asking almost in a whisper: "Don´t leave me alone. Please."
A worried frown crawled over her face, but she remained silent, sensing how hard it was for him to ask.
"Don´t ... don´t leave me alone with them. I don´t think I can bear ..." He stopped, biting his lip.
Still silent, she lay back her coat and drew a chair next to the bed to sit by her friend.
"I´m scared." He didn´t look at her. "I´m so scared."
"It´s okay," she soothed. "I´m here. I´ll stay. No one´s going to harm you. And tomorrow they´ll start your treament. Which is scaring. No one expects you to not be afraid of shocks, Jesse. But you´re not facing this alone."
"No, I know. I invited Faith and Shay to come over and watch," he replied and smiled humorlessly. "I also wanted Sarah to see it, but Faith said she´s too young for excitements like that."
Amanda laughed softly and stroke his hair. Other than the Sloans, she found it hard to not touch him. As far as she was concerned, it felt wrong to just stare down at him like he was an animal under observation. He couldn´t chose wether to physically ask for comfort or not.
Besides, she desperately wanted him to feel something right. Contrasting with the restrains, which without a doubt were hurting him by now.
"They ´ll never forget, will they?" Jesse suddenly asked, and Amanda found herself at the end of a glance after so long a time.
"Who?"
"Steve and Mark. They ´ll never forget this, huh?" A Jesse-smile rushed over his features, leaving a shadow of bitterness behind.
"They ´re more scared than I am, I guess. I mean - I would be, too. If it was Steve lying here, I wouldn´t ... I couldn´t ..." He sighed deeply before finishing: "I wouldn´t be able to ever look at him in a normal way again, too."
"It´s not that, Jesse," Amanda said firmly. "You know that."
"Yes it is. I saw it in their eyes."
"How? You didn´t look there."
That brought a slight smile to his lips as he nodded in admission.
"Try to understand them, Jesse," Amanda continued. "They can´t do anything for you now. It´s all up to Hapgood and yourself. That´s hard to accept. For a cop and especially for a doctor. That you should know."
A mixture of a wince and a smile twisted his mouth as he thought about her words.
"Yet I´m ... scared. I´m scared that I might ... lose you," he told after a moment, again looking away. "All of you. I mean ... Gawd, I can´t believe this is happening. I´m losing my mind. Scratch that, I lost my mind!"
"Jesse," Amanda soothed and once again stroke his hair gently. "That´s nonsense, and you know it. Hey, you acted crazier before and we never deserted you, right?"
"Wow," he grinned. "You should have stick to psychology."
"Naw, this is nothing. I´m a woman, remember? We can handle things."
"No kidding."
There was a friendly silence to follow, which Amanda used to continue stroking Jesse, who gazed away.
It was just then he noted for himself how terribly instable he actually felt. Still fearing his treatment, his hallucinations, the possibility of losing his friends, he felt threatened, angry, relieved and sad at the same time without knowing how to express just one of his various emotions.
His body knew, though, and answered his question by simply sending a tear, then another one, down his cheeks. In the unconscious motion of lifting his hand to wipe them away, he was once more stopped painfully by the restrains.
Startled, Amanda took her hand off him and watched in sympathy as he gave his bounds a violent jerk.
"I hate this! I ..." He sniffed, adding in an embarrassed whisper: "I can´t even hug you."
It tore her heart to see him like this, struggling uselessly, just out of the urge to at least try, and she surprised herself as she calmly said:
"But I can hug you."
"No, you can´t," he answered and smiled bitterly. "At least now I know how it feels like. Won´t do this to a patient again. What goes around ..." He interrupted himself, his attention being drawn to the other side of the bed.
"Hey honey," he said friendly and explained: "Sarah´s here." He paused. "She says hi."
Somehow his casual tone reminded Amanda of CJ´s invisible friends he used to have when he´d been younger, and out of a well-trained reflex she said: "Hi Sarah!" and even looked into the direction the little girl was supposed to be.
Jesse laughed out loud. "Maybe it´s a good thing you didn´t become a shrink, after all," he mused.
Though she felt it her duty to make a face it him, she enjoyed hearing him laugh.
His eyes still sparkling, he turned once more to smile at his little invisible guest reassuringly. He even opened his mouth to reply something, but closed it quickly when remembering that he wasn´t alone.
"You know," he told Amanda, "it it wasn´t for... them, it´d be ... good. Honest. Faith and Shay. And Sarah." He smiled warmly. "They might just be my brain making fun of my senses but I like them."
Glancing at him in concern, Amanda reached forward, bent down and hugged him as good as she could.
"This is real," she whispered into his ear. "We are real, Jesse."
"I know," he said, surprised by her reaction.
Yet she didn´t release him for quite a time as if he could slip through her fingers like air and become like his other friends if she let him go.
"D´you wanna talk about it?" Mark asked his son when they sat in the car, driving to Jesse´s apartment. They hadn´t talked much since they ´d left the hospital, and Mark was feeling like he would chocke on the tension if they didn´t start to soon.
"Nope," Steve replied shortly without taking his gaze off the street.
"Well, I do."
"Don´t let me stop you."
"Steve."
"What? I don´t wanna talk about it, okay? I don´t wanna think about it. I wanna drive down this damn street now."
Pause.
"It was terrible seeing him like this."
"Dad, if you´re that crazy about walking, just say it."
"I feel guilty. I mean, I know I´m not, but still I feel like I should have known. I should have done something. - Do you feel guilty?"
"I know what you´re trying to do here, but I´m not falling for it. I´m not gonna stop with squeezing brakes in the middle of the street and shout at you, ´kay? Forget it. I don´t wanna talk about Jesse, and I don´t wanna hear you do it."
"The sound of him screaming when we arrived ... I don´t think I´ll ever forget this."
"If that´s what you call a psychological trick, maybe we should drive back to Hapgood to ..."
"Steve, for Christ´s sake, I´m trying to talk to you here!" Mark exploded. "I don´t care if you refuse to, I will tell you how I feel, want it or not. Because I am feeling awful!"
Dismayed, Steve stopped at the side of the street and leaned back, staring at his father.
"Dad ..."
"He´s my friend, too! If you wanna play tough cop, that´s fine, but I can´t. I´m a doctor. I should have known." Frustrated, Mark rubbed his hands over his face, then looked at his son. "I should have notice something."
"You did. It was you who found out. You ..."
" ... tricked him," Mark concluded. "Like I always do. Like every time I catch a murderer. I set him up. I would even understand it if he hates me now."
"Dad, Jess couldn´t hate you if he wanted to. Besides, you said he thanked you for setting him up. There´s nothing to feel guilty about."
"Remind me of that tomorrow, when I´m going to watch them sending electric shocks through his brain."
"It´s a treament, Dad, and it´s necessary. - Why do I have to do the medical yelling?!"
That sent a smile to Mark´s lips, which faded over the sentence: "We shouldn´t have gone."
That was a sore spot on Steve´s conscience, and it took him quite an effort to say assuringly: "We´ll be there tomorrow."
"He´ll be out cold then. He needed us now."
"So why didn´t you stay?"
"I couldn´t bear the sight."
"Me neither," Steve said grimly. "He looked like a prisoner. Like ... like we´ll never get him back. Scared me to hell. Even more than that night he was afraid of me."
They sat in silence for a few moments, before Steve suddenly asked: "You didn´t just trick me, too, did you?"
"Maybe. A little."
"I knew it. I knew it all along."
"Course you did, son. And now drive on, I want to be back before he´s asleep."
"Huh, huh, huh ... didn´t I see that before?"
Dr. Amanda Bentley frowned at what met her eyes under the microscope.
Behind her lay the late Mr. Dillard, stitched close after having been opened and examined.
"What is this?" Amanda added, but didn´t receive an answer from her guest, whom she cast a questioning glance.
Amazing, how peaceful even a person who´d shot himself looked when dead, the pathologist thought with a wry smile, but rubbed her eyes tiredly a second later. Great, she was so exhausted, she was getting macabre now.
Glancing at her watch, she sighed once more. Now they were probably preparing him for the first shock , gave him a shot or two, brought him into another room, checked on the instruments...
She shook her head. This was no good. Out of nothing to do she once more looked into the microscope, but whatever it was she saw there, it hadn´t decided to change into something she recognized.
"Dr. Bentley?" a male voice from the door announced after a faint knock.
"Yes?" she asked and turned.
"Miller. Mail. Here are the test results from Boston."
"Really?" she asked and grinned.
"Ah ... yes," the young man nodded uncertainly, eyeing first her then the envelope in his hand suspisciously. "I´m sorry if they´re too late. It´s not my faul ..."
"Mr. Miller, your timing is brilliant. You should consider being promoted."
"Ah ... Ma´am?"
"Never mind. Thanks very much." She smiled friendly and opened the envelope. She froze in motion, though,when she still sensed his presence behind her.
"Anything else?"
"N-no." The young man swallowed. "Is ... is he really ..." he stuttered, glancing at the body on the table.
"Since I removed all his inner organs, weighed them and put them back into him afterwards, I guess if he wasn´t dead before, he is by now."
Despite his greenish expression, Miller muttered an impressed "cool" before he finally forced his gaze away from the corpse and left.
Shaking her head in amusement, Amanda smiled at Dillard. "Did you know that? Dead´s in now."
"What d´you mean, we can´t see him?" Steve Sloan was upset.
"I´m sorry, detective,"Dr. Hapgood said apologetically, "but Dr. Travis is already under sedation. It takes a while to prepare a patient for a shock treatment. You can watch from the window up here," he pointed at a nearby door, which led to a small terrace above the examination room from where relatives, students and doctors could witness shock treatments.
"We´ll start in ten minutes," he added after checking his watch.
"But ..." Steve started, but was interrupted by an assuring hand placed on his shoulder.
"Come, Steve, let´s go in there. It´s all we can do."
Grumbling, Steve obeyed and turned.
"Ah, you know," Hapgood´s voice hold him back. "I know I said this before - twice, if I´m right, but ... We´re gonna heal your friend, detective, not kill him."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I´m sorry."
"No, I really want you to understand this," Hapgood insisted. "For your friend´s sake. If you behave like this was the terrible part of his illness later on, you´ll endanger the healing process, ´cause he won´t come here again. This is a treatment, not torture. The fifties are over."
"I know," Steve shot back, but calmed down immediately, adding slightly embarrassed: "I´m sorry, doctor."
"You don´t have to be." Hapgood smiled. "I hear this all the time. I bet your father knows what I´m talking about."
Smiling understandingly, Mark nodded. Yes, to help seldomly looked the part. Doctor´s knew.
"´kay," Hapgood interrupted the short silence. "I better go check the room now. See you afterwards."
With that he turned and left.
Steve and Mark entered the watching-room. What they saw beneath them was a simple looking, small room with a bed in it, on which Jesse lay, completely still, once again restrained, but seemingly peaceful, as if sound asleep.
A bunch of nurses was busy doing various check-ups, and soon afterwards, Dr. Hapgood entered, looked up to the Sloans with a smile, then turned all his attention to his patient, checked his pupils and breathing.
Shooting an uncomfortable glance at his father, Steve nervously shifted his weight from one foot to another.
"Steve ..."
"No, no, no, it´s okay." He let out a deep breath.
"Maybe we should sit down," Mark suggested friendly.
"Naw, I got the sudden urge to move a little," Steve replied sarcastically.
Knowing his son to well to go on with that, Mark sat down, hoping it would drive Steve to follow his example.
But the detective remained where he stood at the window glass, staring down at the scenery beneath him which was about to change.
All preparations done, the treatment started and was over in a second.
The shock itself was given with one simple movement by Hapgood and only had a sudden but expected jerk of the limp body as a result.
"Hey, that wasn´t ..." Steve started, but couldn´t finish his thought. "Oh god ..."
"He´s reacting, son. That´s normal."
"Uh ..."
It looked about as normal as a choking fit, Steve thought. Jesse´s body wriggled and struggled against itself, against his own muscles responding to a stranger´s orders. His hands unclenched and clenched, his face was twisted in pain.
But the most terrible sight of all were the stoic expressions of the nurses holding him down. Since they knew soothing him would have been of no use at all, they didn´t even attempt to do so.
Bizarr, it looked. Morbid.
It reminded Steve of his childhood holidays on farms, when hens and roosters had been killed and still moved after their death. The farmer would hold them down untill the spasms of death would subside ...
With two steps, the detective was out of the room, leaving his startled, yet not surprised father behind.
A few hours later, Amanda was greeted by a tired and questioning looking Mark Sloan when arriving at the beach house.
"So, what´s the emergency?" he asked and closed the door behind her.
"I´ll tell you," she answered. "How ... did it go?"
"Great. - Well, about as great as such things can go, I guess," he added with a wry smile. "Hapgood seemed satisfied."
"Did you see him afterwards?"
They entered the living-room, where Steve sat and nodded a short hello. "Yes," he answered the question, "we did, but only for a minute or so. He was in recovery and still pretty out of it. They said he´ll be for the whole day now."
"Ah," she made, and when finding that there was nothing else to say, sat down. There was a short awkward pause, before the pathologist opened her mouth, closed it and was prevented from repeating the gesture by Steve´s unpatient : "It was terrible, okay?! So - what did you find out about Dillard that´s so important?"
Team-mode kicking in, all of them changed their sitting-positions and gazes, curiosity and attention on the case taking over now. Relieved they all were, though, to have found something they could work on together. A distraction. A case.
"It´s not only about Dillard," Amanda started, "but also Pinter."
"Pinter?" Steve repeated surprisedly. "The guy who shot Seamus Zeesley?"
"And himself," Amanda added. "Like Dillard did. D´you remember the strange test results I got from Pinter? I sent them to Boston."
"Yeah," Mark nodded.
"Huh?" Steve frowned. "You told me you didn´t find anything."
"When you asked me about drugs, right. And I didn´t. This ... thing was found after the toxic test. And it´s no drug."
"You said it was some sort of capsule," Mark remembered.
" "Sort of"´s the word," Amanda said. "It was a nanobot."
"A what?!" Steve and Mark asked in union and then seperately: "What´s a nanobot?!" (coming from the non-physician) and "Nanobots aren´t used yet."
"One was used on Pinter," Amanda objected and turned to Steve to explain: "A nanobot is a very, very,very, very, very incredibly small robot."
"My Latin´s not that bad!"
"You asked. Anyway, they ´re injected into a patient and ... Well, you could say they operate on him."
Steve blinked.
"They ´re programmed," Mark helped out, "to do a specific task. Like stitch an inner gash or something like that. They do inside the patient what a human doctor could only manage by opening him"
A confused grin crossed Steve´s lip. "Ah ... guys, that´s sciene fiction."
"It was," Mark corrected. "Nanobots are real. But they ´re still experimental. There are no records of them ever having been used on a human. And most of the animals they used them on died. They´re very, very experimental."
"Well, the two humans we know of who were injected with nanobots died, too, so your information are still update," Amanda said sarcastically.
"Two?" Steve frowned. "Dillard?"
"Yes. I found the remains of a nanobot in his sytem, too. - You can´t imagine how upset the specialists in Boston are. They ordered me to send Pinter´s body to them immediately. You know what a scandal this is?"
"It´s not very hard to imagine," Mark said. "And if it really were nanobots, then we don´t have two suicides, but ..."
"Murders," Steve concluded.
"Right."
"Right."
"But why?" the detective asked, more himself than the others. "Who would ..."
"Experiments maybe," Mark suggested. "But no matter what the motives were, they were those of a doctor, that´s for sure."
"Okay," Steve said, his tone becoming cop-like. "I wanna know everything about those two men. You go back to the hospital and gather every chart you have on them, alright? I´m gonna drive to the precinct and try to find out some non-medical stuff about them. We´ll meet at the hospital."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Who would do such a thing, you figure?" Amanda asked seriously when she and Mark sat in her car.
"I don´t know. But whoever it is, he probably believes he´s right."
"Right?"
"Medical advance, Amanda."
Remembering, Amanda sighed. "Doctor´s play God, huh?"
"Some do," Mark nodded, knowing what she was referring to. "Even more than others," he added bitterly.
"Here it is," Steve announced when they sat in the Doctor´s Lounge later. He hold up the file he´d searched for and told the rest of the team what he´d found out.
"Pinter and Dillard were both operated six month ago. By the same surgeon at the same hospital."
"What´s the surgeon´s name?" Mark asked and took the file from his son.
"Dr. O. Reddick," Steve answered. "But she left the hospital soon afterwards and turned to psychology."
"Psychology?" Amanda repeated and stated after a moment´s thought: "Both nanobots blocked a way of message from parts of the brain to others."
"Both men went crazy," Steve translated for himself.
"But they both never had psychological treatments. They both never showed any sign of mental instability before," Amanda continued and placed a file back on the table. "Why use it on them? Why not on patients who would need it? Who it could actually heal?"
Since no one knew the answer to that, silence settled, till Mark´s mutter interrupted it.
"There has to be something else. Something they had in common."
"But what?" his son asked.
"Something simple. I think they weren´t chosen because of any illness, but because ... hm ..."
His gaze flew back to a file which he´d read before and which he now picked up again. "5´5."
"What?"
"Pinter´s size," he explained. "5´5. How tall was Dillard?"
"Ah ..." Steve quickly searched for the information and read: "5´6."
"Not very tall," Amanda stated.
"They both weren´t," Mark said and exchanged a glance with his son.
"Come on, Dad! Reddick chosed them because they were small?"
"If it was Reddick," Mark said, "I think so, yes. She didn´t use the nanobots on them because of them, she did it for herself. It meant something to her that they were small."
A short pause followed again, till Steve´s gaze suddenly changed into a dreadful frown. "You know, ahm ... Jesse´s sorta small, too."
Mark looked at him in dismay, when Amanda´s voice sent cold waves through both of them.
"Oh my god," she whispered. "Did you see Dr. Reddick ´s first name in here?"
"No," Steve answered and felt an ice-cold hand inside his stomach. "Why?"
"It´s Oak. Dr. Oak Reddick."
"You remember the morning I found Jesse at "BBQ Bob´s" right after Shay Zeesley´s death?" Steve asked as they sat later in a room they´d occupied at the precinct in order to check on Dr. Oak Reddick.
"Course."
"I think that was when he´d met Oak. Hapgood said, she warned him of becoming afraid or trusting people and she´s the only Harvey not fitting in."
"Very good, Steve," Mark nodded. "She must have known about Pinter and Dillard and she..."
" ... checked on Jesse," Steve finished. "But why? Why inject him with this thing and then worry about his condition?"
"I think the answer´s in here," Amanda said and looked up from a file she´d been reading in. "She´s a surgeon, but turned to psychology after her brother, Greylen Reddick, slipped into a coma a few years ago. He was suffering from schizophrenia. Oak tried a new, very risky operation on him, but failed. She then quitted surgery and devoted herself to research."
"How tall is Greylen Reddick?"
"It doesn´t say here, but Oak´s 5´4."
"Her brother´s probably equally small. There we have our motive."
"Oh ... What´re you saying, Dad, she uses her inventions on men who remind her of her brother?"
"Because she couldn´t safe him, yes," Mark nodded. "She can´t stop trying."
"That´s it. No more Hitchcock for you."
"No, it´s good," Amanda objected. "Yesterday Jesse said that if it wasn´t for the dead people and us, it wouldn´t be that bad to ... be like that. Greylen was born ill, so we can assume that Oak has it, too. And if she suffers from the same symptoms ..."
"She chose to live with them. But Greylen´s her "if it wasn´t for" she can´t let go." Mark shook his head sadly. "Jesse probably met her when she came to see Pinter. Another "brother" on whom she´d failed. She was desperate and lost and once again recognized her brother in a man just because he was ..."
"Small," Steve and Amanda concluded in union.
"Yes."
"Wow," Steve said and then there was nothing more to say. The team sat in dismay.
"That was the reason for Hapgood´s test results," Amanda stated suddenly. "It´s a nanobot."
"And at "BBQ Bob´s", that was no hangover, it was ... the aftermath of the injection," Steve smiled without any humor. "That was why he forgot how he´d got there. Right?"
Mark nodded. "Yes. And that was when it started. When Faith and Shay moved into his building and Sarah became his patient ... God, how couldn´t we notice?! How could we fail to see all that? I yelled at him that day!"
"I shook him," Steve said in a sad, small voice, child-like.
He found his way back to a very adult tone quickly enough, though. "I can´t believe I accused him of being hungover and leaving the bar open. I mean, gee, it´s Jesse! I should have known better! Every time we think he´s crazy, we´re wrong! We should have learned by now."
"Steve, we ..."
"What?! Don´t tell me that´s not exactly what you think, too."
Mark fell silent again and bowed his head. Of course it was.
"We let him be shocked," Amanda suddenly said, calmly, clearly.
The silence following was unbearable. It was filled with chocking guilt and memories of the kind one never forgets.
"We won´t let it happen again," Steve said when he couldn´t hold out longer. He needed to breathe. "Come on, we´ll get him outta there."
They didn´t. Couldn´t.
"What?!"
Because he wasn´t there anymore.
"You´re wrong, please check again." Steve tried to smile friendly, but only managed to look even more threatening than before. The poor nurse at the reception desk at the "Apple Memorial Hospital" flinched under his gaze and quickly scanned the screen of her computer.
Behind the detective´s back, his father and Amanda exchanged a concerned glance.
"I´m sorry, sir. Dr. Travis has left. See - he signed out here."
"Signed out?! How? Last time we saw him he couldn´t lift his head, let alone hold a pen! How could he possibly sign himself out - he can´t even walk!!! He was shocked this morning!!!"
He only noticed he was yelling at the poor girl, when Mark´s calming hand patted his shoulder.
"Uh, I´m sorry," he apologized and earned a forgiving, yet frightened smile from the nurse.
"It´s alright," she squeezed out. "You´re worried, I understand. But I can´t help you, Dr. Travis is no longer Dr. Hapgood´s patient."
Mark frowned. "Why ´s that?"
"His psychiatrist took the case from him. She signed all the necessary papers ... here, see?"
The team grew very pale.
"She?" Mark asked dreadfully. "Did she take him with her?"
"Yes," the girl replied innocently, having absolutely no idea of the horrible meaning her words had. "She said she´d continue his treatment under her observation."
"Dr. Reddick?" Steve asked and closed his eyes against the postive answer.
"Do you wish to talk to Dr. Hapgood?" the nurse asked, obviously eager to help, but was rewarded with ignorance.