Chicago is a mess. Exchanging my ticket is a nightmare, and because of the holiday season, I have to fly out at midnight tomorrow, rather than some reasonable hour. I'd give an arm and a leg to get out even two hours earlier. I hate planes when I'm tired. So instead, I get myself out to the taxi pick-up area and hail myself a cab with my good arm.

The hospital isn't too far away, and it's reassuring that I haven't seen a single person that I know since I got off the plane. The taxi ride is short, and cold, and I wish that I somehow had thicker skin or socks, because I can hardly feel my toes in the back of this badly-heated cab.

The blissfully short ride is, however, uneventful, and I get out at the hospital and make my way to the emergency room as Lady Une instructed.

"You'll need to fill out these forms, ma'am," the young desk attendant says to me. She's one of those types that's overly perky and annoyingly upbeat at any hour of the day, most likely considering it part of their job description to present an overly cheerful, false face to the world. "And then take a seat. We'll be with you shortly."

I nod, wordlessly taking the clipboard and the oversized pen, and make my way to a seat out of the direct path of anyone. For a certified doctor, who used to work in places like this one, I have never liked hospitals, or doctor's offices. There is something disturbing in the orderliness of them. I much prefer to do my medical work on the spot, improvising when necessary, than to having a stocked and categorized office and staff behind me.

It's really why, after the first Eve War, when Lady Une offered me a position at the Preventers under the classification of senior field operative, I accepted so readily. I was working at a high brow clinic in Puerto Rico at the time, and I hated every minute of the clean, sterile walls and the fully stocked back room with a clientele that rivaled the ranks of Romefellor and both a helipad and a runway outside. Not that I was the big fish in a little pan, on the contrary, I was qualified when it comes to practical skills, but I didn't have the PR experience for the position.

When I tendered my hasty resignation, the senior staff were relieved and saddened to see me go, but far from being shocked.

"You must understand, Doctor Po, it's not that we don't value your contributions… on the contrary, we're sad to be loosing someone of your talent. But everyone in this room is well aware that you weren't made to be just a doctor."

Idly twirling the pen in my hand, I have to wonder if the staff spokesman was right about that, and if I'm remembering his words correctly. The mind, in that manner, plays many tricks upon you. What you think you remember properly you can be thinking of in entirely the wrong manner.

I finish the form and take it back up to the window, but the bubbly young woman is absent. I leave it on the counter and return to my seat, slouching. I shrug carefully out of his jacket, but keep it close to me, on my lap. The other people in the emergency room waiting area are mostly older people, probably suffering from more common ailments than a gunshot wound, frostbite and the like. The bandage on my shoulder, and the tears Trowa and I made in my shirt to get it bandaged properly, cause a little bit of a spectacle.

"Did it hurt much, dearie?" one nondescript old woman asks, shifting two seats closer to me. "This city is always so dangerous this time of year, I was telling my son just last week…"

"Miss Po?" a doctor interrupts the nice old woman, and she blinks her eyes behind her large glasses, turning, as I do, to see the doctor standing across the small open space staring at me with a faint glower on her face.

"That would be me," I respond.

"This way, if you would please," she almost shouts it, I'm guessing she's new to the ER. I'm not in the best of health, for sure, but I'm nowhere near needing to be reprimanded for laxness in getting to medical treatment.

I can tell this is bound to be one fun examination.

*

Dozing slightly in the terminal, drugged up on quite a bit of needless pain medication, I feel my mind wander past the most recent memories of 'Doctor Phisher' giving me the third degree about proper care and treatment of bullet wounds, and how, as a fellow member of the medical profession, I ought to know better than to just wind it tightly in guaze with no other dressing…

The woman sure knew how to babble. And I suppose the extraction of the offending bullet, and the stitches, were enough of a consolation to her constant chatter that I can forgive her whatever many failings she had.

Instead, I let my mind wander to Wufei, and feel a waterfall of worry between where I am and wherever he is. My mother used to tell me that if I tried hard enough, I could reach someone with my thoughts, and that I'd be able to know if they were all right or not. I've never tried it, but something tells me I'm going to have to get past all the worry I have over him if I'm going to be able to 'reach' him, like my mother used to say.

The world around me seems as though it is a dream, and suddenly, I can see through the eyes of what must be my dream-self. I walk up to the waterfall, and try to step through, thinking that's the most logical way to end it, as though my presence in it will dispel it, but I hear a hundred echoes of my own voice, with little hints of friends of mine wrapped into one or another of them, vocalizing my worries for and about Wufei to me.

Frustrated, I start to back up, until I hear a quietness in the cacophony of my own voice, the repeated thoughts spreading a little, as though, on the other side, he were trying to reach me as well.

"Fei," I call out, but my voice is drown out by the rest of the voices in the waterfall, "Fei can you hear me?"

"Sally," his voice is faint, his impression within the dream is fainter. He must be very weak, wherever he is. I start to push forward, painfully, when I feel a hand shake me, hard.

Opening my eyes in the waking world, I find a smiling gate attendant looking down at me. "Miss, boarding for flight 1604 to London is commencing, are you on that flight?"

I rub my eyes lightly with my left hand and glance at the clock, "Impossible, I couldn't have been…"

He nods politely. "I'm sorry to say that you slept for several hours. Don't worry, I've been keeping an eye on you. You really shouldn't sleep in public places."

I start to respond, but the loudspeaker overhead announces the same information he just related to me, and I can hear Wufei's old admonishment in this kind gate attendant's words. I nod and stand up, fishing my ticket out of the pocket of the jacket. Together, the two of us walk over to the boarding area, and I hand my ticket over to the young woman inspecting people's tickets.

I take my seat on the plane and lean against the window, a stewardess furnished pillow between my head and the hard plastic molding. I can almost hear Wufei's chiding voice in the back of my mind…

**

"You're hopeless, woman," he said to me, shaking me gently to wake me up. The two of us were waiting in the terminal of the Buenos Aires International Airport for our flight back to London after one relatively travel-intensive mission. Heading into the rainforests in Brazil to investigate guerrilla activity wasn't my favorite way to spend the hottest month of the year in South America, but the assignment had been unavoidable.

The tan on my skin from all the time spent in an open-topped Jeep Wrangler hadn't done much for my good attitude. I looked great, but as usual, after tanning, my body was lethargic. After driving most of the last few days out in the sun to reach our airport in time to get back to London on our scheduled departure date, I was sleepier than if I'd been given sleeping pills with a glass of red wine on a full stomach. I had konked out at the gate and Wufei had woken me up to get on the plane.

Unlike me, who had developed a bronzy tan over the past couple days of driving, Wufei had simply gotten red in the face, and on his neck. I figured it was more than just his Asian heritage, but probably the idea of growing up under sun lamps in the colonies rather than the real thing on earth. He had a restless time trying to relax because of the tightness of his face and the skin on his arms and neck being burnt to a crispy red.

I would've laughed, if he didn't look so utterly furious about the whole situation. "I'm hopeless? I offered you sunblock… it was your choice not to use it."

"You fall asleep everywhere… if someone weren't watching over you, it would be easy for you to be kidnapped… or worse," he offered me a hand up, and once I took his hand he hauled me to my feet with that sometimes disturbing strength he has.

"Don't get mad at me just because you're cranky and irritable, Fei," I grumbled. It was one of the few times that he got close to me, tugging me close to stare me straight in the eye, one hand latched onto my wrist and the other holding his dufflebag.

"I'm not mad," he breathed, and the force of his words was louder and more striking than his presentation of them, he searched my eyes, speaking softly, and looking like there was something he wanted me to know, "I'm just pointing out that you ought to be more careful."

**

Six months ago. He let go of my hand, and unceremoniously scooped up my duffle, carrying both, rather heavy bags, effortlessly over to the gate and handing over our tickets while I followed wordlessly behind.

He used to admonish me about things like that quite a bit, more so recently. There's a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that tells me that if I really tried, I'd be able to figure out what it was he was trying to tell me when he got cut off.

At the airport in London I get off the plane, blissfully lacking any luggage to carry. They don't call it lugg-age for nothing. With a dull ache in my right shoulder beginning, I walk out and flag down a taxi. The wind and the snow together make it a little difficult to do, with only one fully functional upper appendage, but somehow I manage to keep the coat, and not pull my strained arm too much.

What would you have to say to me now, Fei? I'm barely coherent enough to give the cabby my address without slurring my words, and the kind man gives me an affectionate glance and says that I'm very lucky that I didn't get some other taxi, in my condition. If I were a little more together, I might be insulted by what he's insinuating with that statement, but as it is, I'm not.

"Rough night?" he asks.

I start to respond, but he just nods his head, commiserating. Outside of the cab, the snow falls in puffy snowflakes that stick to the windows of the taxi like it's covered in glue… or sugar. I lean back in the seat and pretend not to notice the driver's worried glances at me in the rear view mirror.

"Buckle up," he says, stopping at a light, "The snow's sticking to the pavement worse than it is to this car."

The rest of the short trip to my apartment goes by in a blur and by the time I get out of the elevator on my floor, the seventh, I manage to make it into my apartment, closing it and locking it behind me, before my waning strength finally seems to give out. I lurch over onto the couch and collapse face first onto it, the dimness of the room going darker as the few seconds of my remaining consciousness tick by.

*

In the morning, or rather, the midafternoon when I wake up, I feel the ache in my arm in the background of my mind, and vague images of my dreams hover in my view. I shake my head to clear it and glance around my apartment's main room, lit with dim gray sunlight coming through the clouds outside. Snow is falling, whipped around by winds that threatened me last night by tugging at his jacket that I'm still wearing. Slowly, I sit up and peel the jacket off, experiencing a sudden feeling of cold. I itch to put it back on, but stop myself, standing, instead and moving to turn up the thermostat.

Life as usual, as it has to be. I scoop the mail up off the floor and turn on the television, switching it idly to a news channel to hear if there's been any report of the small-scale shootout I had at Exian on L1. Vanity, probably what kept me from falling into shock. I had to live to hear what the reports would say about my little escapade.

Everyone, I reason, has at least that much mortal vanity in them. If I'm going to die, I at least want it to be big and flashy… something someone will hear about, and have the chance to remember. I sort through my mail. Bills, bills…

And I nearly drop the small pile as I find one that's written with an address from Indonesia. That's the last place Lin was… I half stagger, half stumble into the kitchen, pushing the button next to the flashing light on my answering machine.

"You have six unheard messages," the faintly female computerized voice says.

"Oh really?" I retort, pulling out a chair as I drift about the kitchen, debating on fixing myself something to eat.

"Message one," there is a tone, and then the first message plays, "Miss Po, this is Martin Kase, with Chase Financial, we're in charge of dealing with your family's estate… I'm terribly sorry to bother you so close to Christmas, especially after what's happened. We're all very sorry to hear about your loss. If you could please give me a call, my number is 778-1023-1426."

"Loss? Father…" my heartbeat speeds up as I punch on the coffee machine, checking the filter, I pull a knife out of the drawer and rip open Lin's letter.

Wrestling it out of the envelope, I'm distracted by the monotonic, "Message two," and the next beep.

"Sally, it's me. Lin. I-" his next words are obscured by a thick static that comes over the phone line he's using, so garbled that I can't make out what he's saying. And then, once the static is clear there's nothing but dialtone on the machine.

Puzzled, I unfold the letter.

Unlike my brother's tight, responsible handwriting, with his perfect grammar and spelling, which I'm expecting to find, there's a typed letter inside. My heart sinks.

It's some sort of an official notice.

"Message three," the answering machine beeps again. I don't know how much more of this I can stand. Weird messages, Wufei gone missing… my father…

"Sai Lei," a raspy voice seems to fill the kitchen, and I am at once afraid that this is the last of my father I have. His breathing is too labored, his speech too slurred. "I know that you are probably out on one of the missions that you find so important… and whether they are more important than me after all we have been through… No matter what else has passed between us, we are still family, and I cannot be sure how I am to respond to that idea, that a job can be more important than your family. We have both been mean to one another, my daughter, we have both been unkind… but I know that it was always out of love that we quarreled. It is the way of the spirit that we both carry in us." He takes a wheezing breath on the answering machine and I hold mine, the letter in my fingers crumpling as I silently will the old man to hang on. "It would do me… great honor… if you would come home. I would… like to see you once more." He says a few words in Mandarin that I cannot quite make out, they are uttered between wheezes and a nasty cough, and then hangs up the phone.

The letter in my hands seems blurry as I look down to read it, the fourth message going forgotten in the background, as the unbelieveable words burn into my mind. The letterhead reads that it is from the company Lin worked for in Indonesia.

'Due to our inability to reach Po Zhou Shui with this news, Po Sai Lei, we must regretfully inform you of the death of your brother, Po Sai Lin.' The rest of the letter is meaningless, giving a time and a date of the accident which took my brother's life from him, and from us. There is mention of a young woman he was seeing at the time, and that she has asked to get in touch with me, and my father, but I fold the letter quietly after reading it all the way through, and set it on the table, opposite the bills.

"Message five," the machine chimes in, and it feels like the computerized voice is mocking me. The beep seems longer, and the voice I recognize even though it gives no name, and despite the obvious strain on it for some reason, even through the static of an interspace call… "I love you," is ground out, probably through clenched teeth. My heart leaps to my throat and what tears I could not shed over the letter announcing my brother's demise come spilling out now.

I bite my lip, wiping furiously at my eyes in an attempt to stop the tears that are falling, but nothing seems to work. I am stronger than this, I admonish myself. I am…

"Message six," the machine says. "Sally, it's Lady Une. I'm sorry to disturb you at home, but something's come up, and I need you to come into Headquarters as soon as you get this."