Hey guys! I´m going hoooooome!!! Hooray! Home for christmas! Food! Family! Joy to the world! `kay, I shut up. Anyway, since I promised I´d have the third chapter done before christmas, here it is. Hope you like it.
Thanks for the reviews everybody! I was partying as always when reading them. Grin. You just can make one feel so great. The real spirit of christmas!
Special Thanks to Pinky-kid for the precise description of what they were DOING there (Grin.) and my christmas-poxes! And, hey, she´s gonna present us all with a new chaaaaaaaaaaapter soon! Hooray!!!
Disclaimers still the same, I neither own the cool and the cute ones, nor the three nerds. They belong either to EUROPA Cassettes or Alfred Hitchcock, I don´t know for sure. Anyway, I´m just borrowing them, too. I´ve no intention of keeping them, they´re annoying!
Last but not least: Merry Christmas to you all!!! Have yourself a merry little chris... Gee, I gotta stop listening to these songs all day long.
And a happy new year!!! Full of great stories by all of you!
Jesse´s shift started at five o´clock in the morning. At any other day he would have moaned about it, but today he was fairly sure he´d have died of exhaustion by then, anyway.
The whole night long he´d paced his apartment - noticing just then how tiny it really was - gone to bed and standing up again several times, for his eyes didn´t obey to the comand "Close!" anymore, and talked to himself. Now, after hours of such exercises, he was totally spent and felt about as tired as a person possibly couldwithout falling into a coma.
It was three o´clock. If it wouldn´t have been too exhausting, he probably would have cried, he thought. But so he just sat on his sofa, staring at the sun, which rose dramatically outside his window. The whole performance was utterly breathtaking, a fact the young spectator tried to ignore, for he found it hard enough to draw breath into his lungs without nature interfering. Breathing was so exhausting.
Slowly, Jesse´s gaze wandered over to his coffee machine, but the bare thought of going over there, of actually placing one foot in front of the other, was enough to make his head throb, and he decided to have the first coffee of the day at the hospital. If he´d ever made it there.
Maybe he shouldn´t go, anyway. Maybe he should just continue to sit here, let the sun rise ...
His eyes were about to fall shut, when he suddenly heard an all too familiar noise out of his bed-room. Beep, beep, beep.
With his eyes still half-closed, he frowned. Who would call him two hours before his shift started? Changing from a tired man to a tired doctor, he finally stood and rushed - relatively speaking - to his bed-room. Grabbing the small device, he stopped the beeping and looked at the number shown on the display.
It was the number Liotta´s secretary had given him the day before. Startled, he stared at it as if it would change into another set of numbers under his glare.
It didn´t. Well, he thought, he shouldn´t be surprised at being called to his new job at this time of the day after all. The patients probably had to come in for the operation before their jobs started or so. Probably they were thrown out the second they woke up afterwards, Jesse mused. Hello - Thankyou - Goodbye.
He grimaced at the thought, but remembered that Leer had told him he wouldn´t have to do operations. Speaking of Leer, he hadn´t even informed him about his success at the interview. Cursing himself, he sat down on the bed. He´d been supposed to call the detective after the interview, but he´d been busy throwing up then, he thought sarcastically, and remembered that he still at some yelling to do when talking to Leer.
Anyway, he hadn´t called him, so Leer probably didn´t even know Operation Liotta was on. He wouldn´t have made preparations in order to guarantee Jesse´s safety then, would he?
The number still blinked greenishly on the display, Jesse ran a nervous hand through his messy hair. Could he just not answer the call? Or might that endanger the whole mission? What would Liotta make out of it, when he´d hear that the new kid had failed to answer his very first call?
"This sucks, this sucks, this sucks," Jesse muttered and picked up the phone.
"Doctors!" Steve Sloan moaned, when he and his father turned aound a corner in the hallway on their way to the Doctor´s Lounge. He had just been on the wrong (aka receiving) end of another one of his father´s lectures about why it showed a lack of style if one liked the food being served in the hospital canteen.
"Here they are, having this great place right in front of their noses, and what do they do?!"
"Breathe through the mouth?" Mark suggested and added at Steve´s scowling gaze: "Y´know, I think I´m gonna have this DNA-test done some time soon now."
Steve chuckled slightly. It was the first time in two days he´d ever so much as honestly smiled, and Mark felt like hugging him here and there for the much missed sight. Since that was out of question, he joined in the chuckling and patted his son´s shoulder parentally.
It wasn´t exactly getting better, but it was heading somewhere near there. It had turned out to be a good thing, though none of them would have anticipated that, that Steve wasn´t in on Carlie´s case. Therefore he had the distance he needed to grieve about her, to feel the actual loss rather than to seek for revenge. He was being posted by his colleagues naturally, but he was taking things slowly. A sign only his father could read about how very much this actually affected him.
Mark wasn´t sure, yet, if he took this change in his son´s character as a good or bad sign, though he tended for good. Steve had loved Carlie so much, he couldn´t even hide behind his job, his anger or anything now that she was gone. He could do nothing, but feel the pain. The remarkably positive thing about it, which had striked the concerned father as new and worryingly first, was that Steve did just that. He felt the pain. And eventually he would get over it. He was coping.
Anyway, things didn´t go back to normal by themselves, so Mark had decided to help them a little by calling Steve and inventing him over to the canteen for lunch. The lieutenant had gladly accepted. After the first day of shock, he now started to feel how much he seeked his father´s and friends´ help and company.
They continued to drabble on about wether or not the hospital food and already been in Europe with Roosevelt, when they reached and entered the Lounge, where they were quieted down by the sight that greeted them there.
Amanda Bentley was sitting at a table, reading a newspaper, sipping at her coffee from time to time. Next to her, on the sofa, lay Jesse Travis, curled up into a small ball, sound asleep. A soft snoring could be heard in the absolute silence of the room.
The pathologist lifted her head and found herself being eyed questioningly. "I didn´t have the heart to wake him."
Nodding, Steve crossed over to the sofa and ruttled the sleeping doctor´s shoulder . "Jesse!" he called out loud, then shrugged at the reprimanding look Amanda shot him. "I have no heart. - Jesse, your shift at "Bob´s" start in half an hour! Jess!"
"Mnhmpfgnm," Jesse made protestingly and tried to roll away from the rough hands. Still more asleep than awake, he mixed up the directions and rolled to the wrong end. With a low thud he connected with the ground.
"Ah ..." Steve said startled while looking down at the heap of doctor, who began to move slowly, moaning in the process. "Oups."
"Ow!" Jesse had sat up and rubbed a hand along his aching spine, glancing at the lieutenant scornfully. "What did you do that for?!"
"To wake you," Steve replied sweetly and reached out to help his friend to his feet, but was only rewarded with a dirty look.
With another groan, Jesse dragged himself off the floor, wiping imaginary dusk off his scubs. Noticing Amanda´s amused smile, he frowned. "How long did I sleep?"
"Quite a while," she answered. "Your shift´s over."
"No, it starts," Steve objected.
"Oh shi..." Jesse swore softly and hit his forehead frustradedly. "Was that today? Damn. I only meant to sit here for second!" he told no one in particular and rubbed a hand over his face, trying to clean it from the just-woken-up-expression.
"Well, it didn´t surprise me," Amanda said. "You looked like fainting."
Grimacing, Jesse decided to ignore the comment and drove a hand through his hair in order to get it back in place. His friends didn´t need to know he had felt like fainting, too.
The work a the firm´s practice had turned out to be a little more demanding than he´d thought it to be. No, he hadn´t needed operating on someone, but he had been the one supposed to check on the patient afterwards. His assumption that they threw out their clients after the medical procedure had been a little exaggerated - they did care about wether or not the poor guy survived. Therefore Jesse had spent three hours of watching over the patient - a man about his age who had sold one of his kidneys for whatever reason - running tests on him (For he´d been the only one there - literally.) and the organ. And quite a time the drugged man had given him. He obviously hadn´t been in shape for the operation, a fact that was making him pay now.
But eventually Jesse had been released by another doctor, a somewhat old looking man named Bill, who´d refused to say anything but what concerned the patient to his young colleague. Tired beyond caring, Jesse had filled him in and left the practice.
The practice. It actually was one, they even treated real patients there twice a week, for it belonged to an old friend of Liotta. But two rooms it had which none of the lucky patients who consulted the doctor due to a cold or a headache would ever see. Those two were the operating room - a small, patheticly equiped, dark room - and the revocery, where Jesse assumed he would spent most of his time during the undercover assignment.
He regretted his decision already. Looking at the man on the stretcher, who´d mumbled softly in his fevered sleep, had sent waves of guilt through his mind. This wasn´t supposed to happen. The guy had been, though not actually fit, healthy. To remove a completely funcitioning organ out of the need of money ... Jesse shuddered at the thought. He couldn´t understand why any doctor would agree to this perversity.
Though he had been even more tired after his work at the practice, it had actually been a relief to return to CG, to work in a real hospital, to help people, instead of simply assuring their survival. He´d been extra-nice with his patients the whole day, chatting with them, joking around, really taking his time to listen to them.
It had only been a matter of time, though, that his body would simply give up and decide to go to sleep, if it´s owner wanted it or not. Fortunately, it had waited till Jesse was sitting on the sofa in the Lounge, talking - or rather listening to - Amanda.
"Didn´t sleep too good," he said now, as he noticed his friends´ questioning glances on him. "But I´d better hurry now," he added quickly. "See you." With that he left the room.
"Gee," Steve announced and sat down, "what´s with him?"
Amanda and Mark exchanged a quick glance, both thinking the same, and shrugged without answering.
"You know how he is," the pathologist said. "Always overworked," she added, but meant something else.
Steve nodded, not letting on that he´d understood, anyway.
It was a quiet afternoon at "Bob´s", few people came in for a drink or meal. It would get a little more crowded in the evening hours, as Jesse knew, but right now he was completely contend with the situation. Sitting behind the bar, he attempted to read a newspaper, but found it hard to actually concentrate on it. He was still tired, the short nap in the Lounge only seemed to have increased his tiredness, and could feel the first signs of a headache, too.
The door was opened, and Jesse lifted his head to smile at the customer, but it faded once he saw the angry expression on Detective Grady Leer´s face. Shrinking on his chair a little, the doctor forced the smile back on his lips again and even queeked out a soft "hey", when the man sat down at the bar.
Leer didn´t bother with greetings. "I could just fire you," he said hard.
Jesse was tempted to shoot back a smart-ass reply, wether that was a promise, for instance, but heard himself say: "I´m sorry."
"Sorry! D´you have any idea what could have happened?! I know, we two have different opinions on that, but you´re no cop, Jesse! Am I understood? You ever pull a stunt like that, you´re out. Going in there like that, without back-up or anything," he added after a deep, calming breath. "What did you think you were doing, anyway?!"
"Ahm ... I ..." Jesse started to explain his motives in a small voice, but frowned suddenly. "Hey, wait a minu... How d´you know about ..."
"Jesse, please! If I´m gonna say this "that´my job"-line one more time, I´ll go nuts. I know it when someone sneezes in this practice. What d´you think I´m doing all day long, folding files?!"
"Ahm ..."
"Okay," Leer said in a tone that made it clear he would turn to business now, "tell me about your day."
That request brought back the thought Jesse had clung to over the whole day and that wiped away all his rue in an instant now. "I´d to take drugs," he informed the detective angryly, "due to your stupid profile!"
"So he does pay you in ... great," Leer announced, hitting the bar-top with his fist. Jesse felt his chin falling down and caught it to grimace slightly. The man obviously failed to get the point.
"Did you keep it?" Leer asked. "Whatever he gave you? For the files."
"I tried to keep it - for the files," Jesse added dryly, "but my stomach decided to object to that."
"You swallowed it?" Leer asked, a mixture of awe and doubt on his face, as if he actually believed the young man to take advantage of his assignment.
"I didn´t inted to! He wouldn´t have take me otherwise."
"Oh. Well. Why didn´t you throw it up afterwards?"
Jesse stared at the man in disbelief. "I tried, but ... y´know, forget it," he finally winked. Yelling at the detective wasn´t very satisfying, when he couldn´t actually yell.
"You´re the doctor," Leer said casually, before getting back to his business-tone. "So, what happened at the practice?"
Jesse told about the patient, his dues and the practice´s looks.
"Hm-hm," Leer nodded, when the report was over. "Did you have the chance to talk to anyone except this Bill guy?"
Jesse shook his head no.
"Well, I guess evetually you´ll meet Donahue. He runs the place," he explained, when Jesse frowned questioningly. "And I´d bet you´re gonna be paid by Liotta. Hm. Okay." A short pause occured, in which Leer rubbed his chin, left in thoughts, before he finally lifted his head again, smiling. "So - I think I take a cup of coffee now."
"Huh?" Jesse made surprisedly. He´d expected at least some orders. Some instructions on what to observe, what to find out ... Anything.
"Coffee," Leer repeated friendly. "You know that, don´t you?"
"Y-yeah ... ahm ... Don´t you want to give me, like, some instructions?" he asked. "Y´know like in the movies. Find that file or so."
"No."
"Ahm ... but ..."
"Jesse, I don´t do heart transplantations," Leer cut him off, "and I´d be glad if you don´t try to do my job, either. `kay? You just keep on going there, leave the thinking to me."
"`kay," Jesse said in a small voice, and stood to get the coffee. Stopping in mid-step, he turned. "That was an insult, right?"
"Just get that coffee."
Days passed, forming themselves to a big, opaque blur for Jesse. He would work at the hospital or "Bob´s", get a call from the practice, treat a patient there and return to another shift. He couldn´t say when he´d last been home after a while, and soon he didn´t care anymore. Leer would come to check on him from time to time, but either he didn´t notice the young man´s fatigued state or he didn´t care about it. He always left satisfied with what he´ve heard, though Jesse never had anthing different from his first day at the practice to tell.
His first shock about the way people were treated at the practice had vanished, or rather he´d become to tired to feel it anymore, and now he was checking on them with he same enthusiasm he´d seen with Bill.
When frustration dawned, he remembered why he had accepted the assignment - to get the man who´d brought his friend so much pain. To help Steve.
Deep inside him he knew, of course, that it was a lie, for he didn´t even see Steve. He didn´t see how the lieutenant was doing, how he was coping with things after some time had passed. Yet, the real motive didn´t reveal itself to him, if he was too tired to see it or refused to, he couldn´t tell. Fact was that he couldn´t change the way things were heading at, even if he´d wanted to. He´d stopped complaining about the efforts Leer´s request costed him long ago, at least he hadn´t been forced to take more drugs. Though he definitely could have used it, he sometimes thought dryly.
He had met Dr. Donahue, the practice owner, on his third call.
"You´re the new kid?" the older man had asked unimpressedly, when entering the practice in the morning. Jesse had been there all night, watching over a patient who´d given a lung and was running a very high fever due to the operation. It didn´t look good for him.
"Yeah, I´m Jesse Tr... Jesse," he said, remembering how everybody else avoided to say their last names, and accepted the outstretched hand of the doctor.
"I heard about you," Donahue said. He was an old-looking man of medium hight with grey hair and drawn, somewhat British-looking, features. Wrinkles surrounded his friendly brown eyes; he was the absolute cliché of an "old doctor friend". Jesse felt reminded of old mob movies when looking at him, yet, he somehow liked the man. He liked the way Donahue crossed the recovery room to check on their patient and frowned. As if he was a real doctor and the man on the stretcher a real patient.
"He´s been like that all night?" he finally asked in a low voice.
Jesse nodded and sighed tiredly. "Yeah. I managed to get it down a few hours ago, but ..." He shook his head.
"Hm," Donahue made and said after a thought: "Okay. You can go now. I´ll take care of him."
Jesse hadn´t told Leer that part of the story, though he didn´t know why. Perhaps it was the sound of this "I´ll take care of him" that made him feel like he didn´t want to be informed about what exactly had happened to the man.
He found out, anyway, for the man was rolled into his ER half a day later. A passer-by had found him lying in an alley.
Jesse was only glad Mark hadn´t been there, when he´d treated the man. He probably would have noticed something was wrong. But as things were, Jesse managed to safe the man´s life and ordered to get him to ICU. He didn´t dare thinking about what would have been if he´d failed on this one. What he had he gotten himself into?! What was going on?
Before the questions in his head and the guilt he felt overwhelmed him, he´d fled to the Lounge, had sat down on the sofa and instantly fallen asleep.
Steve felt better. A little at least. His father´s observations, though unknown to him, had turned out right. He was grieving over Carlie´s death, but in a way seldomly done by him, which proved easier than his usual anger. He allowed himself to feel how much he missed her, to take things slowly, and found that, though it didn´t hurt less, it was clear. Not the blinding hot anger he´d felt at every loss before, which always had resuled in desperation beyond understanding, but clear, defined sorrow that hurt, but didn´t kill. He found that he could even think of Carlie without the thought of her death covering everything like a big, heavy blanket, but with general greatfullness and joy.
He´d quickly recovered on the outside, anyway, had begun to joke and wise-crack to his colleagues and his dad again, though he somewhat felt a lack of something else. Mark had eventually stopped to treat his son with special carefulness, for he sensed Steve´s desire for things going back to normal, and had started their usual drabbles and arguments. But it wasn´t enough, Steve found, and he wondered what it was he missed when sitting at the bar in "Bob´s" or at the Lounge at the hospital. He would say something and wait for a reply no one would give, and soon it started to frustrate him.
It wasn´t till he entered the Lounge one day to find Jesse sleeping on the sofa once more, curled into a ball as always, as if even in sleep he didn´t want to use up more space than he needed, that the answer to his question appeared to be obvious. Yet not quite accepted, for the lieutenant remained where he stood, a deep frown forming on his forehead. Could it be - and he would have denied it if one had ever suggested it - that he felt a lack of Jesse?
He tried to remember the last time he´d had an actual conversation with his young friend, but couldn´t. It seemed that Jesse had been always on the run ever since Carlie had died, and coming to think about it, Steve couldn´t even remember when he´d last seen his friend.
Every time he started a shift at "Bob´s", Jesse was already gone, and when he came to the hospital, the doctor either worked or wasn´t there. Leaning against the door frame now, Steve frowned. How did that come? Jesse didn´t have more work suddenly than before, did he? Was he avoiding Steve? But for what reason?
"I thought you didn´t have a heart," a soft voice made Steve jump suddenly.
Grabbing his heart, he whirled around to face the intrudor. "Amanda! Don´t do that to me!"
"Sorry," she grinned. "Couldn´t resist. What´re you doing here?"
"Waiting for dad," Steve answered. "Ahm," he added, looking over at the small sleeping form on the sofa, "how long has he been out?"
"Don´t know," she shrugged. "Unlike him, I´m actually working."
"Uh-huh. He looks kinda tired, don´t you think?"
"He´s sleeping, Steve. Most people look tired when they´re sleeping. - Is there any particular reason for your sudden interest in Jesse´s sleeping habits?"
"No," Steve replied unnervedly, but couldn´t help his expression to soften immediately. "It´s just ... Have you seen him lately? Like in more than "hello"?"
"It´s been a few rough days down here," she said gently. "You know how things can get." Casting him an assuring glance, she smiled understandingly.
"Yeah, course," Steve mumbled and wanted to add some more, when a sharp noise interrupted him.
Looking into the room again, he and Amanda saw Jesse first stir, then, though still half-asleep, try to grab the little device which produced the unnerving noise, and lastly fall off the sofa when attempting to stand up.
"This sucks!" he announced, now fully awake and staggering to his feet. "I hate this sofa! It´s evil!"
While his friends couldn´t help laughing out loud by now, he feebly grabbed the device to check the number. Running a hand through his towsled hair, he told it: "and you suck to."
With that, he put it back in place and headed for the door, where he looked at his still giggling friends for the first time. Performing a shaky little bow, he announced: "Glad you enjoyed our little show. Come back tomorrow night!" and hurried down the hallway to the lift.
"Jess, hey, when does your shi..." Steve started to yell after him, but the doors of the lift closed, before he could finish his question.
As soon as Jesse entered recovery at the practice, he was greeted by an agitated young man with wild brown hair and greenish eyes. He was taller than Jesse and obviously younger. Panic radiated from him in waves through the room he paced in a high speed.
High he himself was, too, as his older colleague noticed easily. His eyes were about as bright as they could have gotten without exploding, and he was white as chalk.
"Hey," he cried out in relief when he saw the other man standing in the doorway. "Hey, you´re Jesse?"
"Yeahp," Jesse answered slowly, scanning the room confusedly. A woman was lying on the stretcher, her color matched the one of her doctor. "What ..." he started to ask, but was interrupted by the babbling boy, who had tears whelming up in his eyes now.
"I-I didn´t mean to, I think I ... She wouldn´t come `round, and I-I thought ..."
Alarmed at the words, Jesse rushed over to the woman´s side and checked her pupils and breathing. "What did you give her?" he then asked seriously.
"I-I didn´t mean to, man, I was just ..."
"What d´you give her?!" Jesse repeated harshly, casting his best superior-look on the kid.
"I-I don´t ... I don´t think I ..."
"Oh great," Jesse muttered and turned back to their patient. "She stopped breathing." Instantly he started CPR and glanced over his shoulder after a few seconds. "You wanna help me or what?!"
Together they managed to get her to breathe again, but it was still very shallow. Frowning, as he thought about what to do next, Jesse noticed a small bottle lying on the ground next to the bed. He picked it up and read the label.
"Oh my ... Did you give her that?" he asked, holding the bottle out for the kid to read, but he just raised his arms feebly, chocking on the answer: "I-I don´t know! It coughta been anything, I ..."
Fighting the urge to grab this boy and just throw him out of the room, Jesse drew in a deep, calming breath and said: "Okay. We need to intubate her. I´m gonna need your help here. You think you can do it?"
"Huh?" The answer came in a mixture of fear and confusion.
"You think you ..."
"Yeah, yeah, sure, man, I´m ... Yeah, okay."
Placing another checking look at his colleague, Jesse nodded and started the procedure. "Oookay," he announced, once the difficult part was over. "Now we gonna need to check on her vitals. If her breathing doesn´t improve over the next hours, I´m fresh out."
"Hm-hm," the other man nodded. He´d obviously passed the state of panic and was now realising what he´d done.
Jesse eyed him worriedly. "Hey," he finally announced him, "what´s your name?"
"Edward," he answered, even smiled slightly. "I-I´m really sorry I called you, but I didn´t know what ... Your number was the first I found in the book," he finished lamely.
"Don´t worry, it´s okay," Jesse smiled, though okay was the very last it was. Edward had - plain and simply speaking - almost killed the patient out of the need to get her out of recovery before the next patient would turn up. "At least you called me and ..." he drew in another deep breath, trying to force down the urge to talk some sense into the young man, "it looks as though she´s gonna be okay. Next time, though, just ... don´t use anything you don´t know," he said firmly. "Understood?"
"Yeah, sure," Edward mumbled and bowed his head.
Silence settled over the scenery, eventually Jesse told Edward to leave.
"Y-you sure, I mean, it´s my shift and ..."
"No, `sokay, just go home and ... do some research," he finished with a dry smile. "Intern?" he then asked and received an embarrassed nod.
He briefly pressed his thumb and index finger on his eyes. They let interns watch over patients like this here. High interns for crying out loud!
"I just ... go then," Edward stuttered when Jesse didn´t say anything more. "Thanks again, you ... Thanks."
Jesse simply nodded.
For the second time in two seconds, Steve checked his watch. The result didn´t please him. It hadn´t pleased him ten minutes ago, too, when he´d picked up the habit of looking at his watch every second. It started to drive everybody in the room nuts by now.
"Sloan, I know this question might come as a shocker to you, but are you waiting for someone?" Grady Leer asked dryly, while he put his cup back onto the bar. He´d shown up at "Bob´s" some time ago to fill Steve in on the Vitense-case, and they´d lost track of time over their talking a little, so that Steve had noticed his shift was coming to an end when it had been over already for ten minutes. Yet, no one came to take over.
"Yeah, Jesse," Steve answered. "He was supposed to take over tonight. I have a meeting in half an hour."
"A meeting?" Leer repeated amusedly. "Since when do cops have meetings? Don´t tell me you have a suit, too."
"Course not," Steve winked in mock indignation, and added: "But managers do, and I´ve to question one about his alibi in half an hour, that is if my business-partner allows me to do it!"
"I´m sure he´ll be here in a minute," Leer assured. "Traffic´s murder out there."
"There´ll be murder in here, too, if I miss my appointment cause of him." Steve checked his watch. Though he knew it wasn´t because of the meeting he´d miss, that he was so angry at his friend, he didn´t want to think about the real reason. Therefore he just continued to get furious because of the appointment, and when at last the door was opened to reveal the tired-looking form of Jesse Travis, he practically yelled at him.
"Where´ve you been?!"
"I´m sorry, Steve, honest, I ... something came up."
"Something came ...?!" Steve started, but stopped, as he noticed the tired look in Jesse´s eyes, his drawn features. He´d seen the expression on him before.Immediately, his anger vanished in the air. "Okay, then, I´ve gotta go." Grabbing his jacket, he came around the bar, nodding Leer goodbye. When he passed Jesse, he stopped briefly, trying nevously to catch his friend´s look, without success, though.
"Hey, ahm, you okay?" Oh great! he thought. Who could resist to pour out his heart at a question that sensitive!
Forcing an unconvincing smile on his face, Jesse nodded and looked exactly like one should look after a question like that, Steve mused.
"Yeah, sure, fine. Hey, Im really sorry," he added once more, bowing his head, as if he was ashamed of what Steve might see in his eyes.
"`kay," Steve finally nodded. "I ... `kay. See you." With that he left, feeling a slight knot building in his throat. Damned doctors! Must be all this coffee, he thought sarcastically as the the door fell closed behind him.
Inside the place, Jesse dragged himself behind the bar and hold out a hand in defence, before Grady Leer had even opened his mouth.
"Don´t. Ask."
Surprised, Leer shrugged and remained silent.
It only took seconds, though, before Jesse closed his eyes, saying: "I lost a patient today."
Leer´s gaze snapped up from where he had studied his coffee. "At the practice?"
Jesse nodded sadly.
"Who?"
"A woman. I don´t know her name. Thirty, maybe older. Gave a kidney. But ... it was an accident," he finished, looking directly at the detective. "It really was."
"Why don´t you let me be the judge of that, huh? I studied the difference between accidents and ..."
"It was an accident," Jesse interrupted him firmly. "I studied the difference, too, y´know."
Casting the young man a long look, Leer finally decided to let it be and raised his cup. "Can you find out her name?"
"Dunno. I can try."
"Try then. And Jesse," the doctor lifted his gaze, "don´t hide things from me, you hear me?"
"I´m no..."
"Just don´t," Leer cut him off and stood to leave the bar.
It had happened again. He couldn´t believe it. Trying to not step on the gas any harder, Jesse hold onto the wheel till his knuckles got white. His mind was racing in union with his heart.
It had happened again. Or rather - he had done it again. Wiping the sweat off his face, he recalled his second meeting with Edward a few minutes ago. He´d been running a test on a liver, chatting with Dr. Donahue, who had a real patient waiting behind the door.
"Let them wait and they´ll respect you," the older man had explained his behavior to him. "It´s the secret of my success."
Jesse swallowed the reply that robbing people´s organs and working for satan himself might also be considered the secret of his success, and just smiled friendly.
"That," Donahue continued with a knowing, warm smile, "and a good night´s sleep." Bending over to the pale young man, he raised his index finger to point at him. "You look like you could use some of that, too, kid."
Jesse forced himself to return the smile and shrugged almost apologetically. "I´ve to work when I´m done here."
"Well then, I´d suggest you better take something," Donahue replied. "You sure look like it. Wait a second ..." With that the older man had started to rummage in one of his table´s shelves, muttering to himself, where he´d put that stuff this time.
Knowing instantly, what the other man meant, Jesse could feel the hairs on his neck rising in dreadfull fear. He was about to stutter something, but caught himself at the attempt early enough to prevent himself from it. His gaze started darting from Donahue to the door and back, and his heart beat speeded up as if he´d already taken whatever it was the doctor was looking for in the insides of his desk.
Suddenly, the door opened, making Jesse jump. Whirling around, he met the startlet gaze of Edward the Intern, whose chin dropped due to his shock and was lifted then in order to swallowe nervously.
In the same second, Donahue lifted his upper body with a cheeringly announced "Got it!" and turned to greet Edward, too. "Hey Eddie, haven´t seen you in a while."
"H-hey doctor," Edward said warily and failed to smile. His gaze was still focused on Jesse, who suppressed a sigh without much success, trying to figure out how he could get out of this mess clean (literally). His shift at CG started in about twenty minutes. He couldn´t possibly show up there when he was ...
"Gee, what is it with you young fellows avoiding sleep these days?" Donahue said good-humoredly, now that he got a good look at Edward, too. "I tell you, the system´s breaking all of you nice, promising young doctors, and then what? But who am I to do anything `bout it, huh?" he added helplessly and handed each one of his colleagues a pill out of a small bag. "Here. Just to avoid having one of you faint in my practice," he joked. "Can´t afford to scare away my patients."
As he turned towards his desk again, Edward´s gaze briefly darted to him and back to Jess, who slightly shook his head to tell the younger man that he hadn´t told anyone about the incident.
The greatest smile of relief and greatfullness that ever was layed upon anyone appeared on Edward´s lips, and he raised his pill like it was a glass of champagne to Jess, then swallowed it.
Reluctantly, Jesse followed his example.
That was how he had ended up in the car, once again driving like a maniac to make it in time, knowing instinctly that he wouldn´t.
"Stupid," he muttered and hit the wheel with his palm. "You´re such an idiot, Travis!"
As he tried to break even more traffic rules than he already had, he could feel sweat drying on his forehead and chest, making him shiver. He wondered wether it was a real effect or just his fear getting the better part of him. Either way, he didn´t like it.
Squeezing brakes echoed through the parking lot, when he finally came to the long desired halt at CG, and rather stumbling than getting out of the car, Jesse sprinted over to the next lift, trying to think of disgusting things in order to speed things up a little. On the first floor he burst out of the lift and right into the men´s room.
But it showed that he obviously had been right about him not being the right type for drugs. Leaning against the closed door of a cubicle, he slid down to the ground, trying to catch his breath, but found he couldn´t. And also he couldn´t force himself to throw up. A little dizzy he felt, though not in an uncomfortable way, and leaning back his head against the door, he closed his eyes, wondering what it was this time that was now messing with his system.
Eventually, his breathing speed decreased, he just continued to sit there, shivering slightly, but that, too, in a comfortable, welcome way. As if he was walking through a cool breeze on a hot summer day.
Cracking his eyes open a little he looked around and had to grin about the humiliating surroundings. He must look the ultimate picture of a junky, he thought sarcastically, huddled next to a toilet, drifting off to imaginary places ...
Funny, though, it didn´t actually bother him. Nothing really bothered him. Calm he felt. Calm and content. Slowly, he came to his feet, drew in a deep breath, that just felt great, as if he´d never breathed before, and left the cubicle to - bump into Steve Sloan.
"Hey!" Jesse greeted his friend with a bright smile, stumbling backwards a few steps, till Steve grabbed his arm to hold him. "S-sorry," he added.
"Hey Jess. - You okay?" the lieutenant asked with concern building rapidly in his eyes as he took in his friend´s strikingly bright eyes and paleness.
"I´d be better if you could let me go now," Jesse wise-cracked.
"Oh." Noticing that he still had his fingers wrapped around Jesse´s arm, Steve let him go. He stepped back a little to give the smaller man some space. "I have a patient for y... You sure you´re okay?" he asked, frowning.
"Yes, I´m fine, apart from being annoyed with annoying questions. So where´s this patient of yours and since when do you supply me with patients, anyway?" Jesse asked, while he washed his hands and secretly checked his appearance in the mirror. Okay, he was white as a snow rabbit, but then Steve had seen him now, anyway, so he could as well just go out there and treat some patients. No big deal.
Steve Sloan rubbed a tired hand over his exhausted features, and wondered when exactly he´d begun to hate kids.
Glancing over to a not the least unnerved, but highly amused, busy Dr. Jesse Travis, he frowned once more. There were enough reasons in the room for even Jesse´s ever lasting smile to fade, which were all three male, about sixteen years old and extremely annoying. Yet, the young doctor actually seemed to enjoy their company or rather, he didn´t mind it, which was proof enough for Steve that something was seriously wrong with his friend.
The boys, though, were completely unaware of that and continued unmercyfully to fill both adults in on a great adventure they´d just experienced. Or from their points of view, they were giving information for a police protocol. The fact that Steve didn´t take notes didn´t seem to bother them much.
"So naturally we followed him," one of them was just saying. He was a little smaller than his two friends and definitely in need of a diet. He´d done the most talking, and Steve had given up hope of him stopping some time in the near future a long time ago.
"Naturally," one of his friends sneered. "Course! I didn´t plan on celebrating my 17th birthday, anyway."
"What are you moaning about, we got out of it, right?"
"Yeah, and were are we now, in a hospital!"
"Just because you two never listen to what I ..."
"Kids," Jesse tried to cool down what looked like the beginning of an argument. "I´ve to concentrate here, `kay. So that I won´t stitch anything mean on your pal´s forehead."
The pal was the third boy of the team, who was lying on the stretcher in the room and hadn´t said a word since their arrival - a fact Steve considered reason enough to adopt the kid. He had an angry looking gash on the right side of his forehead, which Jesse was stitching by now.
"Who would know the difference?" the taller boy shot back. His striken friend attempted to lift his head at that, but stopped after a split second, moaning softly.
"Hey, no messing with my patient," Jesse reprimanded the kid jokingly. "If you´ll get him all agitated and moving around, I´ll may be forced to sedate you two."
Steve was just about to comment on that idea, when the door was opened, and a fun expecting Mark Sloan entered the room with a small grin. After having spotted his son in the exam room, the older man had soon noticed the unmistakable signs of Steve being pissed and, deciding he could use some entertainment, he´d made his way over to the room and was now smiling at the little group with bright eyes.
"Hi," he said light-heartedly and grinned. "What´s up?"
"Hey Mark," Jesse nodded, equally grinning. "Nothing in particular. Just checking on Steve´s little colleagues."
As Steve let out a low moan of frustration, he turned to smile innocently. Mark frowned slightly, but was quickly given an explanation for Steve´s reaction to Jesse´s revelation, when the lead-talker of the small team started stating:
"Yeah, right. You wouldn´t believe wha..."
"Dad, please meet the reason I´m going to be cranky when I get home," Steve interupted him dryly and added: "These are the kis who found David Downey."
Mark´s brows raised in surprise. "The David Downey?" he asked. "The bank robber who broke out of jail two days ago?"
"Exactly," one of the kids, the diet-needing fellow, nodded. "By combining and searching our archive, we found out where he might be hiding, found him and manged to overpower him." Casting a glance at Steve, he added: "He only had to collect the guy."
"Wow," Mark said. "Congratulations to you. I take it you´re like hobby-privates or ..."
"Hobby-privates?!" the boy interupted him as if he´d been seriously insulted.
"Don´t say the H-word, Mark, "Jesse warned in mock seriousness. "They´re in real business. Marlowe kids. Show him your card."
Having obviously just waited to get the ceremony done, the boy handed Mark a card, which the older doctor accepted with curiousity. As he began to read it, he was interrupted by Steve´s and Jesse´s knowing voices, ordering in union:
"You´ve to read it out loud."
"Ah ... Okay," he said confused and read: " The three detectives. ??? We take on every case. First Detective: Justus Jonas ..."
"That´s me," the small boy in need of a diet announced proudly.
"Uh-huh ... Second Detective: Peter Shaw ..."
"Me," the named kid said. He was somewhat taller than his two friends and extremely fit-looking. He probably could have taken on Steve for a sprint. But though his physical strength might have given him the expected air of leadership, it just stood in opposite to his very soft features. He seemed to be younger than the others and very nervous. Clenching and unclenching his hands, he presented Mark with a sort of dull smile, to which the doctor answered with an uncertain, shaky one.
"Okay. Investigation and archive: Bob Andrews."
Awaiting the third polite introduction, Mark was surprised when he heard Jesse saying: "That would be this young man here, who isn´t allowed to talk at the moment, so that I may finish my honorable task of stitching that wound of his."
He pointed to the bed in the room, where Bob Andrews lay and smiled warily at the doctor.
"He stumpled over his own feet," Peter Shaw informed Mark helpfully.
"I see," the older doctor nodded in sympathy.
"I didn´t stumble over anything," Bob´s voice suddenly announced, "but ..."
"Guys," Jesse cut off the beginning fight unpatiently, "no more fighting in my hospital, alright? You two leave him alone or I´ll have all of you on valium within a second, `kay? With you catching someone and being held at gun-point and stuff you´re pretty likely to be in shock, anyway!"
"It wasn´t the first time we were held at gun-point," Justus pointed out casually.
Chuckling surprisedly, Mark said: "I didn´t catch your age ..."
"Uh ..." a faint voice queeked, before anyone could answer to, "I think I ..."
"Ah, doctor ..." Justus Jonas´ warning wouldn´t have been necessary, for Jesse had already noticed the change in Bob Andrews´ color of face. Grabbing a kidney bowl to hand it to the greenish boy, he turned to the actually quite amused looking ones.
"Probably only a mild concussion, but I´m gonna run a few more tests, just to be sure. Won´t take long. Steve, take your colleagues some place else, okay? I have a patient."
"But ..."
"Mark!"
"C´mon, son, we´ll take the privates to the Lounge. You want something to drink? - Sure you don´t need help here, Jess?" he added when the other three had already left the room, led by a grumbling lieutenant.
"What, with a puking kid?" Jesse asked indignantly.
"Hey! I´m not ... yet, uh ..."
Chuckling at his colleague´s "Yeah, sure"-gaze he´d come to use with teenage patients, Mark closed the door to follow Steve and the boys.
"So, does anyone care to fill me in now?" he asked when entering the Lounge. "For I feel a little confused here. You found out about Downey´s hiding place."
"Right," Justus Jonas nodded enthusiasticly and would have continued the story, if it hadn´t been for Steve taking in a deep, calming breath and bursting out: "Right! So instead of calling us police guys - which woulda been a real coward thing to do, huh - the three stugees decided to follow an armed man to his house, break into his house and ..."
"We didn´t break in," Peter Shaw objected, "the door was open! And it was his idea," he added, pointing at his friend. "As always."
"Well, yeah, he could have hidden something, you know."
"Like what, a gun?" Peter snapped.
"I wasn´t planning on meeting him inside. He must have ... known that we were coming," Justus defended himself.
"No kidding!" Steve cut off Peter Shaw´s reply. "Which leads us to which assumption, Sherlock, huh?"
"That he ... was waiting for us?" Justus tried, smiling unsurely. With the lieutenant´s tall figure practically towering above him, he didn´t look half as self-assure as before.
"Brilliant. Hope you´re taking notes, dad. What d´you think could have happened?" he snapped at the boys.
"Ah ... We could have gotten ourselves killed?" Peter guessed.
A short pause followed, during which Steve´s eyes grew wide. "And?" he finally all but cried out. "Does that bother you at least a bit?"
"Nothing to worry about," Justus Jonas winked, "we´ve been in situations like that before."
"Don´t tell me," Peter agreed and sneered at his friend. "For Justus, if it doesn´t end up in being held at gun-point it´s no real case."
"I wouldn´t put it like that, but ..."
"Dad," Steve sighed helplessly, "they´re all yours, take them to psych ward or whatever, I´m gonna talk to the third Marx down the hall once more, and then I´m outta here."
"Bye, detective," the boys called after him, but were answered with an sarcastic: "No, you´re the detectives, I´m lieutenant." before the door fell closed.
Trying to figure out what he was supposed to write in his report - for the case that three kids would solve a crime sooner than a cop wasn´t in the handbook - Steve turned around a corner and stopped in med-step, when he saw Jesse´s small figure leaning against a wall, his eyes squeezed closed.
Approaching him, the lieutenant could also make out a slight shade of sweat on his friend´s forehead, his color of face hadn´t improved, too.
"Jess?" he finally asked and was surprised, when the doctor flinched violently. Out of relfex, he hold out his palm as if to show he wasn´t armed. "Easy."
"H-hey," Jesse gasped, laughing nervously. "Wow - you sure gave me a heart attack here. Phew!" Still trying to catch his breath, he wiped a hand over his face.
Steve frowned in concern. "You look awful."
"Ah ... damn, I don´t have anything nice to say to you," the younger man joked, though the shaking in his voice betrayed his humor. "Listen, you want me to give the kids a ride home? I´m done here and ..."
"You´re shift just started," Steve interrupted him firmly. The familiar knot of worry and doubt was beginning to move in his throat, and he definitely didn´t like the feeling. "Jess, you´re not ..."
"I changed shifts," Jesse lied, "I gotta be ... somewhere else in ... ah, soon, so I could just drive home the kids and then go there. You want me to or not?"
Feeling slightly taken aback by Jesse´s almost aggressive tone, the lieutenant said: "I don´t want you to drive no matter where. You look sick. And you´re behaving stra..."
"Fine," Jesse cut him off, raising his hands in a feeble motion, too fast to look natural, "then you drive them. The kid´s allowed to leave when you´re ready. See ya."
With that he turned, swaying slightly and headed for the lift.
"Jess!" Following his friend, Steve grabbed the smaller man´s arm. "Hey, look at me!"
"Let me go!" Jesse snapped, and pulled free. Losing his balance in the process, he fell onto his back.
Steve watched in disbelief. He couldn´t remember his friend ever having acted so irrational. When he reached out to help him to his feet, Jesse ignored his hand, and crawled to standing position on his own. Without a word or look at Steve, he turned and sprinted off for the lift.
"Jesse!" Steve yelled confusedly. Staring at the closing lift-doors, he ran a hand through his hair and let out a loud swear. "What´s going on here?!" he muttered on his way back to the Lounge.
It was some time later when he again entered the Doctor´s Lounge to find Mark and Amanda sitting there, chatting. He´d just came back from the goddamned little dump where he´d driven the three nerds to, and the fact that he´d been brooding over Jesse´s stange behavior all the way back hadn´t improved his damaged mood the least.
"Son," his father greeted him with a bright grin once he´d spotted him at the door. "Saw your colleagues home alright?"
"Yeahp, sent them over a cliff," he replied casually, and sat down. "Say, have either of you noticed something ... strange about Jesse lately?"
"Stranger than the usual?" Amanda asked and frowned in mock ernesty.
"I´m serious here."
"Why?" his father demanded, a little concerned now. "What happened?"
"Nothing in particular. I just got the feeling he ... Have you seen him much these last week?"
"Y´know, we had a lot of patients and emergencies down here," Mark started, but was interrupted by Steve immediately shaking his head. "No, I mean, have you really seen him? Like at "Bob´s" or stuff? For I sure haven´t. And you´ve had rough days before without Jesse being completley out of sight. I mean, we both have two full-time jobs, but normally I still can remember the sound of his voice at the end of a week."
"Aww,"Amanda made and cast Mark a joking look, while she reached out to pat Steve´s head, "isn´t it cute, he misses his friend. Steve," she added in a normal tone, ignoring the look to kill he shot her, "doctors´ work under a lot of pressure, you might have come across this once or twice in your life already. Im sure Jesse´s just a little overworked at the moment. And," she continued, changing to a very soft tone now, "maybe he just doesn´t know how to react right now. After all he was the one who had to tell you that ..."
"It´s not that," Steve cut her off firmly, for of course this thought had crossed his mind, too, and though he was pretty sure it really wasn´t the case, he didn´t even like thinking about it. "It´s, dunno ... I think he´s hiding something from us. You know, after he´d treated the kids, I met him on the hallway, and he acted really strange. Like ... He practically ran away from me."
Alarmed now, for when Steve thought it serious it most probably was, Mark frowned. "Why would he do that?"
Steve opened his mouth, closed it, then bowed his head, looking away.
"Steve?" Amanda asked, worrid herself now. The lieutenant seldomly showed his own concerns that open. That he did alone scared her pretty good.
"I think he ..." Sighing deeply, Steve looked up again. "He looked kinda ... high."
Silence broke lose like a thunderstorm.
"High?" Mark finally repeated unbelievingly. "As in ... drug-high?"
"I don´t think there is another high, dad."
"You think he´s on drugs?" Amanda asked, her tone matching Mark´s.
"I´m not saying he´s taki..." Listening to the echo of his words, Steve hushed himself down, and nodded. "Actually I am saying that, yeah."
"You sure?"
"Dad, I´m a cop. I know a high person when I see one."
"But this is Jesse," Amanda pointed out. "It´s his look most of the time. One could easily think ..."
"Amanda."
"`kay, so maybe you know the difference between Jess-high and real high, but still ... We´ve gotta be carefull on that, Steve, you know that, right?" she asked urgingly and at his questioning look burst out: "Well, the last time we thought we was taking drugs, he actually had been abducted and brutalized, not to mention poisoned."
"He was on drugs nevertheless," Steve replied. "And as far as I know he hasn´t been abducted lately."
"Jesse would never turn to drugs voluntarily," Mark said to no one in particular. He seemed to be lost in thoughts. "Something´s going on he doesn´t want us to know about."
"Did I just say that or what?" Steve mumbled and asked: "So what´re we gonna do, ask him? Personally I would vote for locking him up in one of them rooms with no windows you have here and let him stay there till he tells us."
"I agree to that," Amanda said humorlessly.
"I´m gonna talk to him," Mark decided, casting the other two a hard look. "I´m his superior."
With that, he stood and left the room.
Confused looks were exchanged back in the Lounge. "Since when?" Steve finally asked.
Amanda just shrugged.
Wandering down the hallway of CG, Mark Sloan cursed himself. For not having asked further the night Jesse had turned up at the hospital after his shift had already been over. He´d seen the signs, too, Mark realized now, of course he had, but he´d been too worried about Steve to care.
And damn, had that been wrong?! How was he supposed to have an eye on everybody around him? As if it wasn´t difficult enough to have one so...
Stopping in mid-step, he pressed a hand over his eyes. Had he just thought that? Oh boy! Yes, he admitted to himself, yes, he cared deeply about Jesse, and yes, he was feeling guilty now.
"Content?" he growled at his inner voice and conituned his way, when there was a positive, sarcastic answer.
Why the hell hadn´t he said something? Why had he thought Jesse would be fine? He knew the man for Christ´s sake! He could tell when Jesse was fine and when he wasn´t, and yet he hadn´t ... cared, he finished frustratedly, feeling the sudden urge to kick in a door or something. He´d been too tired to care.
He wasn´t tired anymore, but what difference did it make? Even if he could help his young friend now, he´d been too tired once, and he would always remember that.
"Damn!" he muttered under his breath, turned around a corner, entered the very next exam room he could find, closed the door behind him - and kicked it hard.
The scenery that greeted Jesse at the practice would have been enough for everybody to just turn around and drive back. But in his over-enthusiastic state of mind, an effect of the drug that had started a few minutes ago, taking the place of the dizzyness and sickness, he was curious as to what was going on there, so he parked his car at his usual spot and crossed the street to the small alley next to the building.
Even from the distance he could make out Raymond Liotta´s tall figure, though he stood in a position Jesse never would have thought him capeable of standing - with his hands risen in fear and defence. In front of him stood three men Jesse never had seen before, all of them equally tall and - more importantly - armed.
Holding their chosen victim at gun-point, they laughed out from time to time, but what they were saying, Jesse couldn´t understand from where he came to an halt. At any other time messing with three armed people wouldn´t have seemed like a good idea to him, but since his mind was clouded with the betraying feeling of being invincable, the young man strolled into the alley, calling out: "Hey! What´s going on here?"
Turning at the sudden voice surprisedly, the three men exchanged amused glances. "We´re having a private party here," one of them finally stated. "And you´re not invented."
In the meantime, Jesse had noticed the painfilled grimace on Liotta´s face and the trail of blood that was flooding down his right shoulder. The man was as white as chalk and would probably break down any second.
"You shot him," Jesse pointed out, sounding as if he didn´t actually know what to make out of the fact.
"Bright boy," the one who´d spoken before said, but before he could advise the smaller man to leave now or be sorry once more, Jesse approached the small group even more, saying: "I´m a doctor. Let me help him."
A quick exchange of glances took place, unnoticed by the young doctor who was by now trying to get a better look at Liotta´s shoulder. Though he still stood on his feet, the man was oblivious to his surroundings, concentrating only on not fainting.
"A doctor, huh?" the man who´d spoken before repeated in a threatening voice, before he roughly grabbed Jesse´s shoulder and whirled him around, so that he was facing him now. "One of his doctors?" he asked, pointing at Liotta.
"Ah ... yeah," Jesse replied after a second´s thought, but realized it had been the wrong answer pretty quickly. "Ahm ... I-I mean ..." He gasped in shock when he was without a warning thrown against the opposite wall. He fell to the ground and remained there, holding his head.
"So, how d´you like your job?" The man asked as one of his partners yanked the dazed doctor back to his feet by the back of his shirt. "Defending your boss like that, I bet you´re pretty well off here, right?" He looked at Jesse, who was shaking his head slightly to clear his vision.
"I´m not ..." the young man tried to say softly, but was quickly silenced by a blow to his stomach, that would have made him double over, if he hadn´t still be hold upright.
"Not what, kid?! Not butchering people in there?!" Another devastating fist connected with his ribs, and Jesse yelped in pain.
"No, you don´t und..." he tried once again, but his attempts only enraged the man even more.
"I don´t understand?" he yelled at his captive. "Yeah, you´re right, I don´t." With that he hit Jesse across the face so hard, he fell down despite the other men´s gribs. For a second or two he lost track of his whereabouts, just lay on the cold concrete and tasted his own blood. His head throbbed fiercely, his vision swam in a dark red.
The question of where he was became pretty minor when all of a sudden a solid boot connected with his already sore ribcage. Groaning, he tried to flee the continuing kicks, tried to curl into a ball, but was prevented from it by another boot that shoved his left arm to his side roughly and then settled on his outstretched hand.
Screaming from the pain it caused, Jesse frantically tried to free his hand, before his fingers would break, but all he managed to do was to increase the heaviness on his hand.
The kicks continued, and after a while the young man found it hard to concentrate on anyhing else but the pain anymore. If it just would stop. He could still taste blood and felt a few wet spots on his shirt, too. How had he gotten himself into his mess? he wondered, and panicked when he found he couldn´t rememer.
He didn´t even notice that they stopped, only when his head was once more yanked off the ground by his hair.
"I´d just love to tear out your organs," the man whose voice had become dreadfully familiar to him by now, whispered.
Cracking his eyes half-open, Jesse met the enraged face of his tormentor and saw the fury in the grey eyes, the hate.
"Pl-please ..." he croaked, but was cut off by a sharp pain in the back of his head that sweapt over him like a fire.
He lost consciousness with his head still hold in the air and didn´t feel how he was released from the man´s grib.
To be continued.
Thanks for the reviews everybody! I was partying as always when reading them. Grin. You just can make one feel so great. The real spirit of christmas!
Special Thanks to Pinky-kid for the precise description of what they were DOING there (Grin.) and my christmas-poxes! And, hey, she´s gonna present us all with a new chaaaaaaaaaaapter soon! Hooray!!!
Disclaimers still the same, I neither own the cool and the cute ones, nor the three nerds. They belong either to EUROPA Cassettes or Alfred Hitchcock, I don´t know for sure. Anyway, I´m just borrowing them, too. I´ve no intention of keeping them, they´re annoying!
Last but not least: Merry Christmas to you all!!! Have yourself a merry little chris... Gee, I gotta stop listening to these songs all day long.
And a happy new year!!! Full of great stories by all of you!
Jesse´s shift started at five o´clock in the morning. At any other day he would have moaned about it, but today he was fairly sure he´d have died of exhaustion by then, anyway.
The whole night long he´d paced his apartment - noticing just then how tiny it really was - gone to bed and standing up again several times, for his eyes didn´t obey to the comand "Close!" anymore, and talked to himself. Now, after hours of such exercises, he was totally spent and felt about as tired as a person possibly couldwithout falling into a coma.
It was three o´clock. If it wouldn´t have been too exhausting, he probably would have cried, he thought. But so he just sat on his sofa, staring at the sun, which rose dramatically outside his window. The whole performance was utterly breathtaking, a fact the young spectator tried to ignore, for he found it hard enough to draw breath into his lungs without nature interfering. Breathing was so exhausting.
Slowly, Jesse´s gaze wandered over to his coffee machine, but the bare thought of going over there, of actually placing one foot in front of the other, was enough to make his head throb, and he decided to have the first coffee of the day at the hospital. If he´d ever made it there.
Maybe he shouldn´t go, anyway. Maybe he should just continue to sit here, let the sun rise ...
His eyes were about to fall shut, when he suddenly heard an all too familiar noise out of his bed-room. Beep, beep, beep.
With his eyes still half-closed, he frowned. Who would call him two hours before his shift started? Changing from a tired man to a tired doctor, he finally stood and rushed - relatively speaking - to his bed-room. Grabbing the small device, he stopped the beeping and looked at the number shown on the display.
It was the number Liotta´s secretary had given him the day before. Startled, he stared at it as if it would change into another set of numbers under his glare.
It didn´t. Well, he thought, he shouldn´t be surprised at being called to his new job at this time of the day after all. The patients probably had to come in for the operation before their jobs started or so. Probably they were thrown out the second they woke up afterwards, Jesse mused. Hello - Thankyou - Goodbye.
He grimaced at the thought, but remembered that Leer had told him he wouldn´t have to do operations. Speaking of Leer, he hadn´t even informed him about his success at the interview. Cursing himself, he sat down on the bed. He´d been supposed to call the detective after the interview, but he´d been busy throwing up then, he thought sarcastically, and remembered that he still at some yelling to do when talking to Leer.
Anyway, he hadn´t called him, so Leer probably didn´t even know Operation Liotta was on. He wouldn´t have made preparations in order to guarantee Jesse´s safety then, would he?
The number still blinked greenishly on the display, Jesse ran a nervous hand through his messy hair. Could he just not answer the call? Or might that endanger the whole mission? What would Liotta make out of it, when he´d hear that the new kid had failed to answer his very first call?
"This sucks, this sucks, this sucks," Jesse muttered and picked up the phone.
"Doctors!" Steve Sloan moaned, when he and his father turned aound a corner in the hallway on their way to the Doctor´s Lounge. He had just been on the wrong (aka receiving) end of another one of his father´s lectures about why it showed a lack of style if one liked the food being served in the hospital canteen.
"Here they are, having this great place right in front of their noses, and what do they do?!"
"Breathe through the mouth?" Mark suggested and added at Steve´s scowling gaze: "Y´know, I think I´m gonna have this DNA-test done some time soon now."
Steve chuckled slightly. It was the first time in two days he´d ever so much as honestly smiled, and Mark felt like hugging him here and there for the much missed sight. Since that was out of question, he joined in the chuckling and patted his son´s shoulder parentally.
It wasn´t exactly getting better, but it was heading somewhere near there. It had turned out to be a good thing, though none of them would have anticipated that, that Steve wasn´t in on Carlie´s case. Therefore he had the distance he needed to grieve about her, to feel the actual loss rather than to seek for revenge. He was being posted by his colleagues naturally, but he was taking things slowly. A sign only his father could read about how very much this actually affected him.
Mark wasn´t sure, yet, if he took this change in his son´s character as a good or bad sign, though he tended for good. Steve had loved Carlie so much, he couldn´t even hide behind his job, his anger or anything now that she was gone. He could do nothing, but feel the pain. The remarkably positive thing about it, which had striked the concerned father as new and worryingly first, was that Steve did just that. He felt the pain. And eventually he would get over it. He was coping.
Anyway, things didn´t go back to normal by themselves, so Mark had decided to help them a little by calling Steve and inventing him over to the canteen for lunch. The lieutenant had gladly accepted. After the first day of shock, he now started to feel how much he seeked his father´s and friends´ help and company.
They continued to drabble on about wether or not the hospital food and already been in Europe with Roosevelt, when they reached and entered the Lounge, where they were quieted down by the sight that greeted them there.
Amanda Bentley was sitting at a table, reading a newspaper, sipping at her coffee from time to time. Next to her, on the sofa, lay Jesse Travis, curled up into a small ball, sound asleep. A soft snoring could be heard in the absolute silence of the room.
The pathologist lifted her head and found herself being eyed questioningly. "I didn´t have the heart to wake him."
Nodding, Steve crossed over to the sofa and ruttled the sleeping doctor´s shoulder . "Jesse!" he called out loud, then shrugged at the reprimanding look Amanda shot him. "I have no heart. - Jesse, your shift at "Bob´s" start in half an hour! Jess!"
"Mnhmpfgnm," Jesse made protestingly and tried to roll away from the rough hands. Still more asleep than awake, he mixed up the directions and rolled to the wrong end. With a low thud he connected with the ground.
"Ah ..." Steve said startled while looking down at the heap of doctor, who began to move slowly, moaning in the process. "Oups."
"Ow!" Jesse had sat up and rubbed a hand along his aching spine, glancing at the lieutenant scornfully. "What did you do that for?!"
"To wake you," Steve replied sweetly and reached out to help his friend to his feet, but was only rewarded with a dirty look.
With another groan, Jesse dragged himself off the floor, wiping imaginary dusk off his scubs. Noticing Amanda´s amused smile, he frowned. "How long did I sleep?"
"Quite a while," she answered. "Your shift´s over."
"No, it starts," Steve objected.
"Oh shi..." Jesse swore softly and hit his forehead frustradedly. "Was that today? Damn. I only meant to sit here for second!" he told no one in particular and rubbed a hand over his face, trying to clean it from the just-woken-up-expression.
"Well, it didn´t surprise me," Amanda said. "You looked like fainting."
Grimacing, Jesse decided to ignore the comment and drove a hand through his hair in order to get it back in place. His friends didn´t need to know he had felt like fainting, too.
The work a the firm´s practice had turned out to be a little more demanding than he´d thought it to be. No, he hadn´t needed operating on someone, but he had been the one supposed to check on the patient afterwards. His assumption that they threw out their clients after the medical procedure had been a little exaggerated - they did care about wether or not the poor guy survived. Therefore Jesse had spent three hours of watching over the patient - a man about his age who had sold one of his kidneys for whatever reason - running tests on him (For he´d been the only one there - literally.) and the organ. And quite a time the drugged man had given him. He obviously hadn´t been in shape for the operation, a fact that was making him pay now.
But eventually Jesse had been released by another doctor, a somewhat old looking man named Bill, who´d refused to say anything but what concerned the patient to his young colleague. Tired beyond caring, Jesse had filled him in and left the practice.
The practice. It actually was one, they even treated real patients there twice a week, for it belonged to an old friend of Liotta. But two rooms it had which none of the lucky patients who consulted the doctor due to a cold or a headache would ever see. Those two were the operating room - a small, patheticly equiped, dark room - and the revocery, where Jesse assumed he would spent most of his time during the undercover assignment.
He regretted his decision already. Looking at the man on the stretcher, who´d mumbled softly in his fevered sleep, had sent waves of guilt through his mind. This wasn´t supposed to happen. The guy had been, though not actually fit, healthy. To remove a completely funcitioning organ out of the need of money ... Jesse shuddered at the thought. He couldn´t understand why any doctor would agree to this perversity.
Though he had been even more tired after his work at the practice, it had actually been a relief to return to CG, to work in a real hospital, to help people, instead of simply assuring their survival. He´d been extra-nice with his patients the whole day, chatting with them, joking around, really taking his time to listen to them.
It had only been a matter of time, though, that his body would simply give up and decide to go to sleep, if it´s owner wanted it or not. Fortunately, it had waited till Jesse was sitting on the sofa in the Lounge, talking - or rather listening to - Amanda.
"Didn´t sleep too good," he said now, as he noticed his friends´ questioning glances on him. "But I´d better hurry now," he added quickly. "See you." With that he left the room.
"Gee," Steve announced and sat down, "what´s with him?"
Amanda and Mark exchanged a quick glance, both thinking the same, and shrugged without answering.
"You know how he is," the pathologist said. "Always overworked," she added, but meant something else.
Steve nodded, not letting on that he´d understood, anyway.
It was a quiet afternoon at "Bob´s", few people came in for a drink or meal. It would get a little more crowded in the evening hours, as Jesse knew, but right now he was completely contend with the situation. Sitting behind the bar, he attempted to read a newspaper, but found it hard to actually concentrate on it. He was still tired, the short nap in the Lounge only seemed to have increased his tiredness, and could feel the first signs of a headache, too.
The door was opened, and Jesse lifted his head to smile at the customer, but it faded once he saw the angry expression on Detective Grady Leer´s face. Shrinking on his chair a little, the doctor forced the smile back on his lips again and even queeked out a soft "hey", when the man sat down at the bar.
Leer didn´t bother with greetings. "I could just fire you," he said hard.
Jesse was tempted to shoot back a smart-ass reply, wether that was a promise, for instance, but heard himself say: "I´m sorry."
"Sorry! D´you have any idea what could have happened?! I know, we two have different opinions on that, but you´re no cop, Jesse! Am I understood? You ever pull a stunt like that, you´re out. Going in there like that, without back-up or anything," he added after a deep, calming breath. "What did you think you were doing, anyway?!"
"Ahm ... I ..." Jesse started to explain his motives in a small voice, but frowned suddenly. "Hey, wait a minu... How d´you know about ..."
"Jesse, please! If I´m gonna say this "that´my job"-line one more time, I´ll go nuts. I know it when someone sneezes in this practice. What d´you think I´m doing all day long, folding files?!"
"Ahm ..."
"Okay," Leer said in a tone that made it clear he would turn to business now, "tell me about your day."
That request brought back the thought Jesse had clung to over the whole day and that wiped away all his rue in an instant now. "I´d to take drugs," he informed the detective angryly, "due to your stupid profile!"
"So he does pay you in ... great," Leer announced, hitting the bar-top with his fist. Jesse felt his chin falling down and caught it to grimace slightly. The man obviously failed to get the point.
"Did you keep it?" Leer asked. "Whatever he gave you? For the files."
"I tried to keep it - for the files," Jesse added dryly, "but my stomach decided to object to that."
"You swallowed it?" Leer asked, a mixture of awe and doubt on his face, as if he actually believed the young man to take advantage of his assignment.
"I didn´t inted to! He wouldn´t have take me otherwise."
"Oh. Well. Why didn´t you throw it up afterwards?"
Jesse stared at the man in disbelief. "I tried, but ... y´know, forget it," he finally winked. Yelling at the detective wasn´t very satisfying, when he couldn´t actually yell.
"You´re the doctor," Leer said casually, before getting back to his business-tone. "So, what happened at the practice?"
Jesse told about the patient, his dues and the practice´s looks.
"Hm-hm," Leer nodded, when the report was over. "Did you have the chance to talk to anyone except this Bill guy?"
Jesse shook his head no.
"Well, I guess evetually you´ll meet Donahue. He runs the place," he explained, when Jesse frowned questioningly. "And I´d bet you´re gonna be paid by Liotta. Hm. Okay." A short pause occured, in which Leer rubbed his chin, left in thoughts, before he finally lifted his head again, smiling. "So - I think I take a cup of coffee now."
"Huh?" Jesse made surprisedly. He´d expected at least some orders. Some instructions on what to observe, what to find out ... Anything.
"Coffee," Leer repeated friendly. "You know that, don´t you?"
"Y-yeah ... ahm ... Don´t you want to give me, like, some instructions?" he asked. "Y´know like in the movies. Find that file or so."
"No."
"Ahm ... but ..."
"Jesse, I don´t do heart transplantations," Leer cut him off, "and I´d be glad if you don´t try to do my job, either. `kay? You just keep on going there, leave the thinking to me."
"`kay," Jesse said in a small voice, and stood to get the coffee. Stopping in mid-step, he turned. "That was an insult, right?"
"Just get that coffee."
Days passed, forming themselves to a big, opaque blur for Jesse. He would work at the hospital or "Bob´s", get a call from the practice, treat a patient there and return to another shift. He couldn´t say when he´d last been home after a while, and soon he didn´t care anymore. Leer would come to check on him from time to time, but either he didn´t notice the young man´s fatigued state or he didn´t care about it. He always left satisfied with what he´ve heard, though Jesse never had anthing different from his first day at the practice to tell.
His first shock about the way people were treated at the practice had vanished, or rather he´d become to tired to feel it anymore, and now he was checking on them with he same enthusiasm he´d seen with Bill.
When frustration dawned, he remembered why he had accepted the assignment - to get the man who´d brought his friend so much pain. To help Steve.
Deep inside him he knew, of course, that it was a lie, for he didn´t even see Steve. He didn´t see how the lieutenant was doing, how he was coping with things after some time had passed. Yet, the real motive didn´t reveal itself to him, if he was too tired to see it or refused to, he couldn´t tell. Fact was that he couldn´t change the way things were heading at, even if he´d wanted to. He´d stopped complaining about the efforts Leer´s request costed him long ago, at least he hadn´t been forced to take more drugs. Though he definitely could have used it, he sometimes thought dryly.
He had met Dr. Donahue, the practice owner, on his third call.
"You´re the new kid?" the older man had asked unimpressedly, when entering the practice in the morning. Jesse had been there all night, watching over a patient who´d given a lung and was running a very high fever due to the operation. It didn´t look good for him.
"Yeah, I´m Jesse Tr... Jesse," he said, remembering how everybody else avoided to say their last names, and accepted the outstretched hand of the doctor.
"I heard about you," Donahue said. He was an old-looking man of medium hight with grey hair and drawn, somewhat British-looking, features. Wrinkles surrounded his friendly brown eyes; he was the absolute cliché of an "old doctor friend". Jesse felt reminded of old mob movies when looking at him, yet, he somehow liked the man. He liked the way Donahue crossed the recovery room to check on their patient and frowned. As if he was a real doctor and the man on the stretcher a real patient.
"He´s been like that all night?" he finally asked in a low voice.
Jesse nodded and sighed tiredly. "Yeah. I managed to get it down a few hours ago, but ..." He shook his head.
"Hm," Donahue made and said after a thought: "Okay. You can go now. I´ll take care of him."
Jesse hadn´t told Leer that part of the story, though he didn´t know why. Perhaps it was the sound of this "I´ll take care of him" that made him feel like he didn´t want to be informed about what exactly had happened to the man.
He found out, anyway, for the man was rolled into his ER half a day later. A passer-by had found him lying in an alley.
Jesse was only glad Mark hadn´t been there, when he´d treated the man. He probably would have noticed something was wrong. But as things were, Jesse managed to safe the man´s life and ordered to get him to ICU. He didn´t dare thinking about what would have been if he´d failed on this one. What he had he gotten himself into?! What was going on?
Before the questions in his head and the guilt he felt overwhelmed him, he´d fled to the Lounge, had sat down on the sofa and instantly fallen asleep.
Steve felt better. A little at least. His father´s observations, though unknown to him, had turned out right. He was grieving over Carlie´s death, but in a way seldomly done by him, which proved easier than his usual anger. He allowed himself to feel how much he missed her, to take things slowly, and found that, though it didn´t hurt less, it was clear. Not the blinding hot anger he´d felt at every loss before, which always had resuled in desperation beyond understanding, but clear, defined sorrow that hurt, but didn´t kill. He found that he could even think of Carlie without the thought of her death covering everything like a big, heavy blanket, but with general greatfullness and joy.
He´d quickly recovered on the outside, anyway, had begun to joke and wise-crack to his colleagues and his dad again, though he somewhat felt a lack of something else. Mark had eventually stopped to treat his son with special carefulness, for he sensed Steve´s desire for things going back to normal, and had started their usual drabbles and arguments. But it wasn´t enough, Steve found, and he wondered what it was he missed when sitting at the bar in "Bob´s" or at the Lounge at the hospital. He would say something and wait for a reply no one would give, and soon it started to frustrate him.
It wasn´t till he entered the Lounge one day to find Jesse sleeping on the sofa once more, curled into a ball as always, as if even in sleep he didn´t want to use up more space than he needed, that the answer to his question appeared to be obvious. Yet not quite accepted, for the lieutenant remained where he stood, a deep frown forming on his forehead. Could it be - and he would have denied it if one had ever suggested it - that he felt a lack of Jesse?
He tried to remember the last time he´d had an actual conversation with his young friend, but couldn´t. It seemed that Jesse had been always on the run ever since Carlie had died, and coming to think about it, Steve couldn´t even remember when he´d last seen his friend.
Every time he started a shift at "Bob´s", Jesse was already gone, and when he came to the hospital, the doctor either worked or wasn´t there. Leaning against the door frame now, Steve frowned. How did that come? Jesse didn´t have more work suddenly than before, did he? Was he avoiding Steve? But for what reason?
"I thought you didn´t have a heart," a soft voice made Steve jump suddenly.
Grabbing his heart, he whirled around to face the intrudor. "Amanda! Don´t do that to me!"
"Sorry," she grinned. "Couldn´t resist. What´re you doing here?"
"Waiting for dad," Steve answered. "Ahm," he added, looking over at the small sleeping form on the sofa, "how long has he been out?"
"Don´t know," she shrugged. "Unlike him, I´m actually working."
"Uh-huh. He looks kinda tired, don´t you think?"
"He´s sleeping, Steve. Most people look tired when they´re sleeping. - Is there any particular reason for your sudden interest in Jesse´s sleeping habits?"
"No," Steve replied unnervedly, but couldn´t help his expression to soften immediately. "It´s just ... Have you seen him lately? Like in more than "hello"?"
"It´s been a few rough days down here," she said gently. "You know how things can get." Casting him an assuring glance, she smiled understandingly.
"Yeah, course," Steve mumbled and wanted to add some more, when a sharp noise interrupted him.
Looking into the room again, he and Amanda saw Jesse first stir, then, though still half-asleep, try to grab the little device which produced the unnerving noise, and lastly fall off the sofa when attempting to stand up.
"This sucks!" he announced, now fully awake and staggering to his feet. "I hate this sofa! It´s evil!"
While his friends couldn´t help laughing out loud by now, he feebly grabbed the device to check the number. Running a hand through his towsled hair, he told it: "and you suck to."
With that, he put it back in place and headed for the door, where he looked at his still giggling friends for the first time. Performing a shaky little bow, he announced: "Glad you enjoyed our little show. Come back tomorrow night!" and hurried down the hallway to the lift.
"Jess, hey, when does your shi..." Steve started to yell after him, but the doors of the lift closed, before he could finish his question.
As soon as Jesse entered recovery at the practice, he was greeted by an agitated young man with wild brown hair and greenish eyes. He was taller than Jesse and obviously younger. Panic radiated from him in waves through the room he paced in a high speed.
High he himself was, too, as his older colleague noticed easily. His eyes were about as bright as they could have gotten without exploding, and he was white as chalk.
"Hey," he cried out in relief when he saw the other man standing in the doorway. "Hey, you´re Jesse?"
"Yeahp," Jesse answered slowly, scanning the room confusedly. A woman was lying on the stretcher, her color matched the one of her doctor. "What ..." he started to ask, but was interrupted by the babbling boy, who had tears whelming up in his eyes now.
"I-I didn´t mean to, I think I ... She wouldn´t come `round, and I-I thought ..."
Alarmed at the words, Jesse rushed over to the woman´s side and checked her pupils and breathing. "What did you give her?" he then asked seriously.
"I-I didn´t mean to, man, I was just ..."
"What d´you give her?!" Jesse repeated harshly, casting his best superior-look on the kid.
"I-I don´t ... I don´t think I ..."
"Oh great," Jesse muttered and turned back to their patient. "She stopped breathing." Instantly he started CPR and glanced over his shoulder after a few seconds. "You wanna help me or what?!"
Together they managed to get her to breathe again, but it was still very shallow. Frowning, as he thought about what to do next, Jesse noticed a small bottle lying on the ground next to the bed. He picked it up and read the label.
"Oh my ... Did you give her that?" he asked, holding the bottle out for the kid to read, but he just raised his arms feebly, chocking on the answer: "I-I don´t know! It coughta been anything, I ..."
Fighting the urge to grab this boy and just throw him out of the room, Jesse drew in a deep, calming breath and said: "Okay. We need to intubate her. I´m gonna need your help here. You think you can do it?"
"Huh?" The answer came in a mixture of fear and confusion.
"You think you ..."
"Yeah, yeah, sure, man, I´m ... Yeah, okay."
Placing another checking look at his colleague, Jesse nodded and started the procedure. "Oookay," he announced, once the difficult part was over. "Now we gonna need to check on her vitals. If her breathing doesn´t improve over the next hours, I´m fresh out."
"Hm-hm," the other man nodded. He´d obviously passed the state of panic and was now realising what he´d done.
Jesse eyed him worriedly. "Hey," he finally announced him, "what´s your name?"
"Edward," he answered, even smiled slightly. "I-I´m really sorry I called you, but I didn´t know what ... Your number was the first I found in the book," he finished lamely.
"Don´t worry, it´s okay," Jesse smiled, though okay was the very last it was. Edward had - plain and simply speaking - almost killed the patient out of the need to get her out of recovery before the next patient would turn up. "At least you called me and ..." he drew in another deep breath, trying to force down the urge to talk some sense into the young man, "it looks as though she´s gonna be okay. Next time, though, just ... don´t use anything you don´t know," he said firmly. "Understood?"
"Yeah, sure," Edward mumbled and bowed his head.
Silence settled over the scenery, eventually Jesse told Edward to leave.
"Y-you sure, I mean, it´s my shift and ..."
"No, `sokay, just go home and ... do some research," he finished with a dry smile. "Intern?" he then asked and received an embarrassed nod.
He briefly pressed his thumb and index finger on his eyes. They let interns watch over patients like this here. High interns for crying out loud!
"I just ... go then," Edward stuttered when Jesse didn´t say anything more. "Thanks again, you ... Thanks."
Jesse simply nodded.
For the second time in two seconds, Steve checked his watch. The result didn´t please him. It hadn´t pleased him ten minutes ago, too, when he´d picked up the habit of looking at his watch every second. It started to drive everybody in the room nuts by now.
"Sloan, I know this question might come as a shocker to you, but are you waiting for someone?" Grady Leer asked dryly, while he put his cup back onto the bar. He´d shown up at "Bob´s" some time ago to fill Steve in on the Vitense-case, and they´d lost track of time over their talking a little, so that Steve had noticed his shift was coming to an end when it had been over already for ten minutes. Yet, no one came to take over.
"Yeah, Jesse," Steve answered. "He was supposed to take over tonight. I have a meeting in half an hour."
"A meeting?" Leer repeated amusedly. "Since when do cops have meetings? Don´t tell me you have a suit, too."
"Course not," Steve winked in mock indignation, and added: "But managers do, and I´ve to question one about his alibi in half an hour, that is if my business-partner allows me to do it!"
"I´m sure he´ll be here in a minute," Leer assured. "Traffic´s murder out there."
"There´ll be murder in here, too, if I miss my appointment cause of him." Steve checked his watch. Though he knew it wasn´t because of the meeting he´d miss, that he was so angry at his friend, he didn´t want to think about the real reason. Therefore he just continued to get furious because of the appointment, and when at last the door was opened to reveal the tired-looking form of Jesse Travis, he practically yelled at him.
"Where´ve you been?!"
"I´m sorry, Steve, honest, I ... something came up."
"Something came ...?!" Steve started, but stopped, as he noticed the tired look in Jesse´s eyes, his drawn features. He´d seen the expression on him before.Immediately, his anger vanished in the air. "Okay, then, I´ve gotta go." Grabbing his jacket, he came around the bar, nodding Leer goodbye. When he passed Jesse, he stopped briefly, trying nevously to catch his friend´s look, without success, though.
"Hey, ahm, you okay?" Oh great! he thought. Who could resist to pour out his heart at a question that sensitive!
Forcing an unconvincing smile on his face, Jesse nodded and looked exactly like one should look after a question like that, Steve mused.
"Yeah, sure, fine. Hey, Im really sorry," he added once more, bowing his head, as if he was ashamed of what Steve might see in his eyes.
"`kay," Steve finally nodded. "I ... `kay. See you." With that he left, feeling a slight knot building in his throat. Damned doctors! Must be all this coffee, he thought sarcastically as the the door fell closed behind him.
Inside the place, Jesse dragged himself behind the bar and hold out a hand in defence, before Grady Leer had even opened his mouth.
"Don´t. Ask."
Surprised, Leer shrugged and remained silent.
It only took seconds, though, before Jesse closed his eyes, saying: "I lost a patient today."
Leer´s gaze snapped up from where he had studied his coffee. "At the practice?"
Jesse nodded sadly.
"Who?"
"A woman. I don´t know her name. Thirty, maybe older. Gave a kidney. But ... it was an accident," he finished, looking directly at the detective. "It really was."
"Why don´t you let me be the judge of that, huh? I studied the difference between accidents and ..."
"It was an accident," Jesse interrupted him firmly. "I studied the difference, too, y´know."
Casting the young man a long look, Leer finally decided to let it be and raised his cup. "Can you find out her name?"
"Dunno. I can try."
"Try then. And Jesse," the doctor lifted his gaze, "don´t hide things from me, you hear me?"
"I´m no..."
"Just don´t," Leer cut him off and stood to leave the bar.
It had happened again. He couldn´t believe it. Trying to not step on the gas any harder, Jesse hold onto the wheel till his knuckles got white. His mind was racing in union with his heart.
It had happened again. Or rather - he had done it again. Wiping the sweat off his face, he recalled his second meeting with Edward a few minutes ago. He´d been running a test on a liver, chatting with Dr. Donahue, who had a real patient waiting behind the door.
"Let them wait and they´ll respect you," the older man had explained his behavior to him. "It´s the secret of my success."
Jesse swallowed the reply that robbing people´s organs and working for satan himself might also be considered the secret of his success, and just smiled friendly.
"That," Donahue continued with a knowing, warm smile, "and a good night´s sleep." Bending over to the pale young man, he raised his index finger to point at him. "You look like you could use some of that, too, kid."
Jesse forced himself to return the smile and shrugged almost apologetically. "I´ve to work when I´m done here."
"Well then, I´d suggest you better take something," Donahue replied. "You sure look like it. Wait a second ..." With that the older man had started to rummage in one of his table´s shelves, muttering to himself, where he´d put that stuff this time.
Knowing instantly, what the other man meant, Jesse could feel the hairs on his neck rising in dreadfull fear. He was about to stutter something, but caught himself at the attempt early enough to prevent himself from it. His gaze started darting from Donahue to the door and back, and his heart beat speeded up as if he´d already taken whatever it was the doctor was looking for in the insides of his desk.
Suddenly, the door opened, making Jesse jump. Whirling around, he met the startlet gaze of Edward the Intern, whose chin dropped due to his shock and was lifted then in order to swallowe nervously.
In the same second, Donahue lifted his upper body with a cheeringly announced "Got it!" and turned to greet Edward, too. "Hey Eddie, haven´t seen you in a while."
"H-hey doctor," Edward said warily and failed to smile. His gaze was still focused on Jesse, who suppressed a sigh without much success, trying to figure out how he could get out of this mess clean (literally). His shift at CG started in about twenty minutes. He couldn´t possibly show up there when he was ...
"Gee, what is it with you young fellows avoiding sleep these days?" Donahue said good-humoredly, now that he got a good look at Edward, too. "I tell you, the system´s breaking all of you nice, promising young doctors, and then what? But who am I to do anything `bout it, huh?" he added helplessly and handed each one of his colleagues a pill out of a small bag. "Here. Just to avoid having one of you faint in my practice," he joked. "Can´t afford to scare away my patients."
As he turned towards his desk again, Edward´s gaze briefly darted to him and back to Jess, who slightly shook his head to tell the younger man that he hadn´t told anyone about the incident.
The greatest smile of relief and greatfullness that ever was layed upon anyone appeared on Edward´s lips, and he raised his pill like it was a glass of champagne to Jess, then swallowed it.
Reluctantly, Jesse followed his example.
That was how he had ended up in the car, once again driving like a maniac to make it in time, knowing instinctly that he wouldn´t.
"Stupid," he muttered and hit the wheel with his palm. "You´re such an idiot, Travis!"
As he tried to break even more traffic rules than he already had, he could feel sweat drying on his forehead and chest, making him shiver. He wondered wether it was a real effect or just his fear getting the better part of him. Either way, he didn´t like it.
Squeezing brakes echoed through the parking lot, when he finally came to the long desired halt at CG, and rather stumbling than getting out of the car, Jesse sprinted over to the next lift, trying to think of disgusting things in order to speed things up a little. On the first floor he burst out of the lift and right into the men´s room.
But it showed that he obviously had been right about him not being the right type for drugs. Leaning against the closed door of a cubicle, he slid down to the ground, trying to catch his breath, but found he couldn´t. And also he couldn´t force himself to throw up. A little dizzy he felt, though not in an uncomfortable way, and leaning back his head against the door, he closed his eyes, wondering what it was this time that was now messing with his system.
Eventually, his breathing speed decreased, he just continued to sit there, shivering slightly, but that, too, in a comfortable, welcome way. As if he was walking through a cool breeze on a hot summer day.
Cracking his eyes open a little he looked around and had to grin about the humiliating surroundings. He must look the ultimate picture of a junky, he thought sarcastically, huddled next to a toilet, drifting off to imaginary places ...
Funny, though, it didn´t actually bother him. Nothing really bothered him. Calm he felt. Calm and content. Slowly, he came to his feet, drew in a deep breath, that just felt great, as if he´d never breathed before, and left the cubicle to - bump into Steve Sloan.
"Hey!" Jesse greeted his friend with a bright smile, stumbling backwards a few steps, till Steve grabbed his arm to hold him. "S-sorry," he added.
"Hey Jess. - You okay?" the lieutenant asked with concern building rapidly in his eyes as he took in his friend´s strikingly bright eyes and paleness.
"I´d be better if you could let me go now," Jesse wise-cracked.
"Oh." Noticing that he still had his fingers wrapped around Jesse´s arm, Steve let him go. He stepped back a little to give the smaller man some space. "I have a patient for y... You sure you´re okay?" he asked, frowning.
"Yes, I´m fine, apart from being annoyed with annoying questions. So where´s this patient of yours and since when do you supply me with patients, anyway?" Jesse asked, while he washed his hands and secretly checked his appearance in the mirror. Okay, he was white as a snow rabbit, but then Steve had seen him now, anyway, so he could as well just go out there and treat some patients. No big deal.
Steve Sloan rubbed a tired hand over his exhausted features, and wondered when exactly he´d begun to hate kids.
Glancing over to a not the least unnerved, but highly amused, busy Dr. Jesse Travis, he frowned once more. There were enough reasons in the room for even Jesse´s ever lasting smile to fade, which were all three male, about sixteen years old and extremely annoying. Yet, the young doctor actually seemed to enjoy their company or rather, he didn´t mind it, which was proof enough for Steve that something was seriously wrong with his friend.
The boys, though, were completely unaware of that and continued unmercyfully to fill both adults in on a great adventure they´d just experienced. Or from their points of view, they were giving information for a police protocol. The fact that Steve didn´t take notes didn´t seem to bother them much.
"So naturally we followed him," one of them was just saying. He was a little smaller than his two friends and definitely in need of a diet. He´d done the most talking, and Steve had given up hope of him stopping some time in the near future a long time ago.
"Naturally," one of his friends sneered. "Course! I didn´t plan on celebrating my 17th birthday, anyway."
"What are you moaning about, we got out of it, right?"
"Yeah, and were are we now, in a hospital!"
"Just because you two never listen to what I ..."
"Kids," Jesse tried to cool down what looked like the beginning of an argument. "I´ve to concentrate here, `kay. So that I won´t stitch anything mean on your pal´s forehead."
The pal was the third boy of the team, who was lying on the stretcher in the room and hadn´t said a word since their arrival - a fact Steve considered reason enough to adopt the kid. He had an angry looking gash on the right side of his forehead, which Jesse was stitching by now.
"Who would know the difference?" the taller boy shot back. His striken friend attempted to lift his head at that, but stopped after a split second, moaning softly.
"Hey, no messing with my patient," Jesse reprimanded the kid jokingly. "If you´ll get him all agitated and moving around, I´ll may be forced to sedate you two."
Steve was just about to comment on that idea, when the door was opened, and a fun expecting Mark Sloan entered the room with a small grin. After having spotted his son in the exam room, the older man had soon noticed the unmistakable signs of Steve being pissed and, deciding he could use some entertainment, he´d made his way over to the room and was now smiling at the little group with bright eyes.
"Hi," he said light-heartedly and grinned. "What´s up?"
"Hey Mark," Jesse nodded, equally grinning. "Nothing in particular. Just checking on Steve´s little colleagues."
As Steve let out a low moan of frustration, he turned to smile innocently. Mark frowned slightly, but was quickly given an explanation for Steve´s reaction to Jesse´s revelation, when the lead-talker of the small team started stating:
"Yeah, right. You wouldn´t believe wha..."
"Dad, please meet the reason I´m going to be cranky when I get home," Steve interupted him dryly and added: "These are the kis who found David Downey."
Mark´s brows raised in surprise. "The David Downey?" he asked. "The bank robber who broke out of jail two days ago?"
"Exactly," one of the kids, the diet-needing fellow, nodded. "By combining and searching our archive, we found out where he might be hiding, found him and manged to overpower him." Casting a glance at Steve, he added: "He only had to collect the guy."
"Wow," Mark said. "Congratulations to you. I take it you´re like hobby-privates or ..."
"Hobby-privates?!" the boy interupted him as if he´d been seriously insulted.
"Don´t say the H-word, Mark, "Jesse warned in mock seriousness. "They´re in real business. Marlowe kids. Show him your card."
Having obviously just waited to get the ceremony done, the boy handed Mark a card, which the older doctor accepted with curiousity. As he began to read it, he was interrupted by Steve´s and Jesse´s knowing voices, ordering in union:
"You´ve to read it out loud."
"Ah ... Okay," he said confused and read: " The three detectives. ??? We take on every case. First Detective: Justus Jonas ..."
"That´s me," the small boy in need of a diet announced proudly.
"Uh-huh ... Second Detective: Peter Shaw ..."
"Me," the named kid said. He was somewhat taller than his two friends and extremely fit-looking. He probably could have taken on Steve for a sprint. But though his physical strength might have given him the expected air of leadership, it just stood in opposite to his very soft features. He seemed to be younger than the others and very nervous. Clenching and unclenching his hands, he presented Mark with a sort of dull smile, to which the doctor answered with an uncertain, shaky one.
"Okay. Investigation and archive: Bob Andrews."
Awaiting the third polite introduction, Mark was surprised when he heard Jesse saying: "That would be this young man here, who isn´t allowed to talk at the moment, so that I may finish my honorable task of stitching that wound of his."
He pointed to the bed in the room, where Bob Andrews lay and smiled warily at the doctor.
"He stumpled over his own feet," Peter Shaw informed Mark helpfully.
"I see," the older doctor nodded in sympathy.
"I didn´t stumble over anything," Bob´s voice suddenly announced, "but ..."
"Guys," Jesse cut off the beginning fight unpatiently, "no more fighting in my hospital, alright? You two leave him alone or I´ll have all of you on valium within a second, `kay? With you catching someone and being held at gun-point and stuff you´re pretty likely to be in shock, anyway!"
"It wasn´t the first time we were held at gun-point," Justus pointed out casually.
Chuckling surprisedly, Mark said: "I didn´t catch your age ..."
"Uh ..." a faint voice queeked, before anyone could answer to, "I think I ..."
"Ah, doctor ..." Justus Jonas´ warning wouldn´t have been necessary, for Jesse had already noticed the change in Bob Andrews´ color of face. Grabbing a kidney bowl to hand it to the greenish boy, he turned to the actually quite amused looking ones.
"Probably only a mild concussion, but I´m gonna run a few more tests, just to be sure. Won´t take long. Steve, take your colleagues some place else, okay? I have a patient."
"But ..."
"Mark!"
"C´mon, son, we´ll take the privates to the Lounge. You want something to drink? - Sure you don´t need help here, Jess?" he added when the other three had already left the room, led by a grumbling lieutenant.
"What, with a puking kid?" Jesse asked indignantly.
"Hey! I´m not ... yet, uh ..."
Chuckling at his colleague´s "Yeah, sure"-gaze he´d come to use with teenage patients, Mark closed the door to follow Steve and the boys.
"So, does anyone care to fill me in now?" he asked when entering the Lounge. "For I feel a little confused here. You found out about Downey´s hiding place."
"Right," Justus Jonas nodded enthusiasticly and would have continued the story, if it hadn´t been for Steve taking in a deep, calming breath and bursting out: "Right! So instead of calling us police guys - which woulda been a real coward thing to do, huh - the three stugees decided to follow an armed man to his house, break into his house and ..."
"We didn´t break in," Peter Shaw objected, "the door was open! And it was his idea," he added, pointing at his friend. "As always."
"Well, yeah, he could have hidden something, you know."
"Like what, a gun?" Peter snapped.
"I wasn´t planning on meeting him inside. He must have ... known that we were coming," Justus defended himself.
"No kidding!" Steve cut off Peter Shaw´s reply. "Which leads us to which assumption, Sherlock, huh?"
"That he ... was waiting for us?" Justus tried, smiling unsurely. With the lieutenant´s tall figure practically towering above him, he didn´t look half as self-assure as before.
"Brilliant. Hope you´re taking notes, dad. What d´you think could have happened?" he snapped at the boys.
"Ah ... We could have gotten ourselves killed?" Peter guessed.
A short pause followed, during which Steve´s eyes grew wide. "And?" he finally all but cried out. "Does that bother you at least a bit?"
"Nothing to worry about," Justus Jonas winked, "we´ve been in situations like that before."
"Don´t tell me," Peter agreed and sneered at his friend. "For Justus, if it doesn´t end up in being held at gun-point it´s no real case."
"I wouldn´t put it like that, but ..."
"Dad," Steve sighed helplessly, "they´re all yours, take them to psych ward or whatever, I´m gonna talk to the third Marx down the hall once more, and then I´m outta here."
"Bye, detective," the boys called after him, but were answered with an sarcastic: "No, you´re the detectives, I´m lieutenant." before the door fell closed.
Trying to figure out what he was supposed to write in his report - for the case that three kids would solve a crime sooner than a cop wasn´t in the handbook - Steve turned around a corner and stopped in med-step, when he saw Jesse´s small figure leaning against a wall, his eyes squeezed closed.
Approaching him, the lieutenant could also make out a slight shade of sweat on his friend´s forehead, his color of face hadn´t improved, too.
"Jess?" he finally asked and was surprised, when the doctor flinched violently. Out of relfex, he hold out his palm as if to show he wasn´t armed. "Easy."
"H-hey," Jesse gasped, laughing nervously. "Wow - you sure gave me a heart attack here. Phew!" Still trying to catch his breath, he wiped a hand over his face.
Steve frowned in concern. "You look awful."
"Ah ... damn, I don´t have anything nice to say to you," the younger man joked, though the shaking in his voice betrayed his humor. "Listen, you want me to give the kids a ride home? I´m done here and ..."
"You´re shift just started," Steve interrupted him firmly. The familiar knot of worry and doubt was beginning to move in his throat, and he definitely didn´t like the feeling. "Jess, you´re not ..."
"I changed shifts," Jesse lied, "I gotta be ... somewhere else in ... ah, soon, so I could just drive home the kids and then go there. You want me to or not?"
Feeling slightly taken aback by Jesse´s almost aggressive tone, the lieutenant said: "I don´t want you to drive no matter where. You look sick. And you´re behaving stra..."
"Fine," Jesse cut him off, raising his hands in a feeble motion, too fast to look natural, "then you drive them. The kid´s allowed to leave when you´re ready. See ya."
With that he turned, swaying slightly and headed for the lift.
"Jess!" Following his friend, Steve grabbed the smaller man´s arm. "Hey, look at me!"
"Let me go!" Jesse snapped, and pulled free. Losing his balance in the process, he fell onto his back.
Steve watched in disbelief. He couldn´t remember his friend ever having acted so irrational. When he reached out to help him to his feet, Jesse ignored his hand, and crawled to standing position on his own. Without a word or look at Steve, he turned and sprinted off for the lift.
"Jesse!" Steve yelled confusedly. Staring at the closing lift-doors, he ran a hand through his hair and let out a loud swear. "What´s going on here?!" he muttered on his way back to the Lounge.
It was some time later when he again entered the Doctor´s Lounge to find Mark and Amanda sitting there, chatting. He´d just came back from the goddamned little dump where he´d driven the three nerds to, and the fact that he´d been brooding over Jesse´s stange behavior all the way back hadn´t improved his damaged mood the least.
"Son," his father greeted him with a bright grin once he´d spotted him at the door. "Saw your colleagues home alright?"
"Yeahp, sent them over a cliff," he replied casually, and sat down. "Say, have either of you noticed something ... strange about Jesse lately?"
"Stranger than the usual?" Amanda asked and frowned in mock ernesty.
"I´m serious here."
"Why?" his father demanded, a little concerned now. "What happened?"
"Nothing in particular. I just got the feeling he ... Have you seen him much these last week?"
"Y´know, we had a lot of patients and emergencies down here," Mark started, but was interrupted by Steve immediately shaking his head. "No, I mean, have you really seen him? Like at "Bob´s" or stuff? For I sure haven´t. And you´ve had rough days before without Jesse being completley out of sight. I mean, we both have two full-time jobs, but normally I still can remember the sound of his voice at the end of a week."
"Aww,"Amanda made and cast Mark a joking look, while she reached out to pat Steve´s head, "isn´t it cute, he misses his friend. Steve," she added in a normal tone, ignoring the look to kill he shot her, "doctors´ work under a lot of pressure, you might have come across this once or twice in your life already. Im sure Jesse´s just a little overworked at the moment. And," she continued, changing to a very soft tone now, "maybe he just doesn´t know how to react right now. After all he was the one who had to tell you that ..."
"It´s not that," Steve cut her off firmly, for of course this thought had crossed his mind, too, and though he was pretty sure it really wasn´t the case, he didn´t even like thinking about it. "It´s, dunno ... I think he´s hiding something from us. You know, after he´d treated the kids, I met him on the hallway, and he acted really strange. Like ... He practically ran away from me."
Alarmed now, for when Steve thought it serious it most probably was, Mark frowned. "Why would he do that?"
Steve opened his mouth, closed it, then bowed his head, looking away.
"Steve?" Amanda asked, worrid herself now. The lieutenant seldomly showed his own concerns that open. That he did alone scared her pretty good.
"I think he ..." Sighing deeply, Steve looked up again. "He looked kinda ... high."
Silence broke lose like a thunderstorm.
"High?" Mark finally repeated unbelievingly. "As in ... drug-high?"
"I don´t think there is another high, dad."
"You think he´s on drugs?" Amanda asked, her tone matching Mark´s.
"I´m not saying he´s taki..." Listening to the echo of his words, Steve hushed himself down, and nodded. "Actually I am saying that, yeah."
"You sure?"
"Dad, I´m a cop. I know a high person when I see one."
"But this is Jesse," Amanda pointed out. "It´s his look most of the time. One could easily think ..."
"Amanda."
"`kay, so maybe you know the difference between Jess-high and real high, but still ... We´ve gotta be carefull on that, Steve, you know that, right?" she asked urgingly and at his questioning look burst out: "Well, the last time we thought we was taking drugs, he actually had been abducted and brutalized, not to mention poisoned."
"He was on drugs nevertheless," Steve replied. "And as far as I know he hasn´t been abducted lately."
"Jesse would never turn to drugs voluntarily," Mark said to no one in particular. He seemed to be lost in thoughts. "Something´s going on he doesn´t want us to know about."
"Did I just say that or what?" Steve mumbled and asked: "So what´re we gonna do, ask him? Personally I would vote for locking him up in one of them rooms with no windows you have here and let him stay there till he tells us."
"I agree to that," Amanda said humorlessly.
"I´m gonna talk to him," Mark decided, casting the other two a hard look. "I´m his superior."
With that, he stood and left the room.
Confused looks were exchanged back in the Lounge. "Since when?" Steve finally asked.
Amanda just shrugged.
Wandering down the hallway of CG, Mark Sloan cursed himself. For not having asked further the night Jesse had turned up at the hospital after his shift had already been over. He´d seen the signs, too, Mark realized now, of course he had, but he´d been too worried about Steve to care.
And damn, had that been wrong?! How was he supposed to have an eye on everybody around him? As if it wasn´t difficult enough to have one so...
Stopping in mid-step, he pressed a hand over his eyes. Had he just thought that? Oh boy! Yes, he admitted to himself, yes, he cared deeply about Jesse, and yes, he was feeling guilty now.
"Content?" he growled at his inner voice and conituned his way, when there was a positive, sarcastic answer.
Why the hell hadn´t he said something? Why had he thought Jesse would be fine? He knew the man for Christ´s sake! He could tell when Jesse was fine and when he wasn´t, and yet he hadn´t ... cared, he finished frustratedly, feeling the sudden urge to kick in a door or something. He´d been too tired to care.
He wasn´t tired anymore, but what difference did it make? Even if he could help his young friend now, he´d been too tired once, and he would always remember that.
"Damn!" he muttered under his breath, turned around a corner, entered the very next exam room he could find, closed the door behind him - and kicked it hard.
The scenery that greeted Jesse at the practice would have been enough for everybody to just turn around and drive back. But in his over-enthusiastic state of mind, an effect of the drug that had started a few minutes ago, taking the place of the dizzyness and sickness, he was curious as to what was going on there, so he parked his car at his usual spot and crossed the street to the small alley next to the building.
Even from the distance he could make out Raymond Liotta´s tall figure, though he stood in a position Jesse never would have thought him capeable of standing - with his hands risen in fear and defence. In front of him stood three men Jesse never had seen before, all of them equally tall and - more importantly - armed.
Holding their chosen victim at gun-point, they laughed out from time to time, but what they were saying, Jesse couldn´t understand from where he came to an halt. At any other time messing with three armed people wouldn´t have seemed like a good idea to him, but since his mind was clouded with the betraying feeling of being invincable, the young man strolled into the alley, calling out: "Hey! What´s going on here?"
Turning at the sudden voice surprisedly, the three men exchanged amused glances. "We´re having a private party here," one of them finally stated. "And you´re not invented."
In the meantime, Jesse had noticed the painfilled grimace on Liotta´s face and the trail of blood that was flooding down his right shoulder. The man was as white as chalk and would probably break down any second.
"You shot him," Jesse pointed out, sounding as if he didn´t actually know what to make out of the fact.
"Bright boy," the one who´d spoken before said, but before he could advise the smaller man to leave now or be sorry once more, Jesse approached the small group even more, saying: "I´m a doctor. Let me help him."
A quick exchange of glances took place, unnoticed by the young doctor who was by now trying to get a better look at Liotta´s shoulder. Though he still stood on his feet, the man was oblivious to his surroundings, concentrating only on not fainting.
"A doctor, huh?" the man who´d spoken before repeated in a threatening voice, before he roughly grabbed Jesse´s shoulder and whirled him around, so that he was facing him now. "One of his doctors?" he asked, pointing at Liotta.
"Ah ... yeah," Jesse replied after a second´s thought, but realized it had been the wrong answer pretty quickly. "Ahm ... I-I mean ..." He gasped in shock when he was without a warning thrown against the opposite wall. He fell to the ground and remained there, holding his head.
"So, how d´you like your job?" The man asked as one of his partners yanked the dazed doctor back to his feet by the back of his shirt. "Defending your boss like that, I bet you´re pretty well off here, right?" He looked at Jesse, who was shaking his head slightly to clear his vision.
"I´m not ..." the young man tried to say softly, but was quickly silenced by a blow to his stomach, that would have made him double over, if he hadn´t still be hold upright.
"Not what, kid?! Not butchering people in there?!" Another devastating fist connected with his ribs, and Jesse yelped in pain.
"No, you don´t und..." he tried once again, but his attempts only enraged the man even more.
"I don´t understand?" he yelled at his captive. "Yeah, you´re right, I don´t." With that he hit Jesse across the face so hard, he fell down despite the other men´s gribs. For a second or two he lost track of his whereabouts, just lay on the cold concrete and tasted his own blood. His head throbbed fiercely, his vision swam in a dark red.
The question of where he was became pretty minor when all of a sudden a solid boot connected with his already sore ribcage. Groaning, he tried to flee the continuing kicks, tried to curl into a ball, but was prevented from it by another boot that shoved his left arm to his side roughly and then settled on his outstretched hand.
Screaming from the pain it caused, Jesse frantically tried to free his hand, before his fingers would break, but all he managed to do was to increase the heaviness on his hand.
The kicks continued, and after a while the young man found it hard to concentrate on anyhing else but the pain anymore. If it just would stop. He could still taste blood and felt a few wet spots on his shirt, too. How had he gotten himself into his mess? he wondered, and panicked when he found he couldn´t rememer.
He didn´t even notice that they stopped, only when his head was once more yanked off the ground by his hair.
"I´d just love to tear out your organs," the man whose voice had become dreadfully familiar to him by now, whispered.
Cracking his eyes half-open, Jesse met the enraged face of his tormentor and saw the fury in the grey eyes, the hate.
"Pl-please ..." he croaked, but was cut off by a sharp pain in the back of his head that sweapt over him like a fire.
He lost consciousness with his head still hold in the air and didn´t feel how he was released from the man´s grib.
To be continued.