Disclaimer:  The characters are not my own, I'm only borrowing them to put them into situations of my own imagining.

Finding Family

Part Six

By Dr. Scott

Rating: G

Category: S

Timeline: Sometime in the middle of the series

Spoilers: None

Keywords: MPJF, JOF

Summary:  Miss Parker accidentally shoots Jarod, which forces her to confront her feelings towards him.  Meanwhile, a seriously injured Jarod has to learn to trust someone to help him and finds out a little about his family history.

Houston, Texas, Thursday, Noon

Jarod awoke hot and miserable.  His whole body ached, but especially his right shoulder.  His brow was sweaty with a fever and when he opened his eyes everything seemed to be composed of small spots like some sort of pointillist painting.  Just turning his head on the pillow made him feel dizzy.  But despite how badly he felt, he had an even greater need to urinate.  He struggled to push himself to a sitting position, his legs swung out over the edge of the bed.  He drew several ragged breaths and then by sheer force of will made himself stand and begin walking to the open doorway of the bathroom.  Staggering, he caught himself on the doorframe and slowly the gray spots before his eyes cleared.  He could see himself in the large mirror over the sink.  He was wearing gray cotton sweatpants and had no shirt, just gauze bandages carefully taped on the front and back of his shoulder.  His dark hair was sticking up wildly from having slept on it while it had dried.  He had several days of scraggly black beard and his eyes were yellowed and bloodshot.  He not only felt like hell, he looked like it too.  His need drove him forward and he managed to relieve himself by leaning over the toilet with his good arm bracing him against the back wall.  Hitching his sweatpants back up, he turned and started to walk back to the doorway.  But after two swaying steps he found it difficult to maintain his balance.  As dizzying gray spots clouded his sight, he reached out his left hand for the counter, swept a cup into the sink with a clatter, and fell with a loud thud to the linoleum.

In the kitchen preparing lunch, Emily heard the clatter and rushed to the back bedroom.  She saw him collapsed on the bathroom floor and knelt by his side turning him gently.  She felt his pulse and pulled back an eyelid, noting the warmth of his forehead as she did.  He wasn't a large man, but he was tall and she knew she couldn't carry him back to the bed.  If she could bring him back to at least semi-consciousness, she could help him.  So she pulled a washcloth from a drawer and wetted it with cold water.  Then lifting his head into her lap, she squeezed some water on his cracked lips and onto his hair.  She pressed the cloth to his forehead and slapped his cheek lightly, "Jarod, wake up.  Don't pass out on me down here.  Jarod, Jarod," she called his name.

His eyes fluttered open and his fevered brain struggled to make connections.  Her red hair sent him back in time to when he was a little boy, "Mom?" he asked.  "Don't let them take me this time, Mom, please."  He clutched at her arm pleading, "Please."

"Shhh, it's alright.  Let me help you up.  You need to get back to bed now," Emily said as she struggled to stand and pull him up at the same time.

Being 6'3" he was considerably taller than her 5 ½ feet so it was easy to wedge her shoulder under his good arm and take most of his weight as he shuffled the few steps back to the bed where he slid slowly down to sit on the edge.  Emily grabbed a prescription bottle by the side of the bed and quickly pulled two large caplets out and pressed one of them to his lips.  "Take these.  They're antibiotics.  You've gotten an infection and need to fight it off.  Don't pass out yet," she told him slapping his cheek again.  "Stay with me now.  Drink this…good…now take another…that's right," she murmured as she fed him the medications.

Laying him on his side, she gently pulled off the small back bandage and replaced it with a fresh one using supplies all ready on the nightstand.  She left the front bandage alone for now and rolled him on his back pulling the sheets up over him as he seemed to be falling asleep again.  "Get some more rest now.  It's perfect napping weather.  It looks like it will be a gray afternoon with mist and rain."

Suddenly his eyes flew open in panic, "Mister Raines!" he shouted.  Adrenaline shot through his fevered body and he thrust the sheets off, pushing her away with surprising strength as he stood again and looked wildly around the room with fever crazed eyes.

Emily was unprepared for his wild actions and fell backwards on the rug.  Her training in the hospital helped her and she knew better than to touch him in his delusional state.  "Jarod," she called, "it's just me.  I'm your friend."  She moved slowly to her knees and then to standing as he turned and his eyes slowly focused on her.  "It's only me and you.  There's no one else here.  You're safe.  I promise you."

His head shook in a little shiver.  Then his brown eyes cleared temporarily looking sadly into her blue ones and he echoed the words, "I promise you."

She held out her hand and he reached out slowly.  Then slowly his knees began to crumple and she barely managed to catch him and pivot so that he fell once again on the bed.  This time she covered him soundlessly and left the room with more questions than ever in her head.  Who was this man?  What job had he had before?  What had he done to be shot?  Who was this Mr. Raines that could terrify a grown man?

The Centre, Blue Cove, Delaware

Sydney led Broots down one of the long corridors of the hospital wing.  He hadn't been there for at least ten years, not since the days of training Jarod to be a doctor had required them to spend months seeing select patients and getting practice in actual surgery.  But Broots had never been in this part of the Centre and he found the sharp, antiseptic smell even more disquieting than the sterile white walls and tomblike silence.

"This seems really empty for a medical unit," observed Broots quietly.  "It was positively bustling on those first two floors we walked down."

"It's supposed to be this way," Sydney reassured him.  "This level has extra insulation and air filters to prevent spread of contagion.  It's reserved for patients with highly contagious diseases.  There is probably no one admitted here right now."

"It feels creepy," complained Broots.

"You're the one who said we had to come here to access the old main frame computer that stored the old hospital wing records."

"I know.  They didn't bother transferring many of the old records to the new system when they updated five years ago.  In order to search the data base to see which patients Eleanor Black had nursed, we have to go directly to the hard drives.  I just hope they had installed some kind of standard query language, my Fortran is getting pretty rusty," replied Broots.

As they neared the end of the quiet corridor, there were three doors to choose from.  Broots opened the middle one that lined up with the hall but it was a small storage closet with cleaning supplies inside.  Sydney turned to the right and easily opened the door that led to a large room with computer towers and reels of magnetic tape stacked all around the edges.  He turned back to Broots smiling, but saw him frozen at the door across the hall, "What is it?" Sydney asked.

"There's someone moaning in here," Broots replied in a frightened whisper.

Sydney stepped across the corridor and leaned his head against the door to listen.  A dull monotonous sound could be faintly heard.  He tested the door but it was securely locked.  "Do you have any tools to open the lock?" he asked.

Broots nodded nervously and removed a folded leather pouch from his shirt pocket.  Unfolding it, he revealed a set of slim metal picks with a variety of hooks on the ends.  He selected three and crouched down to the lock, inserting two of them and twisting them around.  He shook his head and traded one hook for the other in his hands and tried again.  His tongue stuck out slightly as he concentrated on maneuvering the picks.  Suddenly, Sydney clapped a hand on his shoulder pushing him off balance and making him bite his tongue.  "Ow," he exclaimed.

"Shh, someone's coming!" Sydney whispered urgently.

They darted back across the corridor and into the computer room.  Sydney turned the lock quietly and leaned his head against the door hinge to listen.  Broots cowered next to a rack of computer equipment.

"I hear footsteps and squeaking wheels," whispered Sydney.

In terror, Broots mouthed the words, "Mis-ter Raines."

Sydney nodded in agreement and leaned his ear back on the door.  Voices carried faintly but clearly through the door.

"Open it up, Willie," the raspy voice of the Raines ordered.  His heavy breathing and the squeak of the oxygen tank he dragged behind him everywhere for his emphysema where right outside their door.  "Ah, George, so have we learned our lesson for not following orders, hmm?"  The voice paused but any reply was too faint to be heard.  The fading squeak of the tank implied that he had walked into the other room.

"Is George the sweeper who quit two weeks ago?" Sydney whispered to Broots.

"I heard he disagreed with Raines about using force with some of the children in the research wing," Broots whispered back.

A loud voice drew Sydney's attention back to his listening post.  "No one can leave the Centre," the voice paused, "not even him!  He's been shot and is being tracked and will be returned to the Centre before long.  Are you ready to resume your duties now?"

Another voice could faintly be heard, "I'll never be the instrument of your cruelty again!"

"Very well, that can be arranged.  Willie…" Raines replied.  A sudden whistle of a muffled gunshot ended the conversation.  "Bring a cleanup crew back to decontaminate the room," he ordered as their footsteps and the squeak of the tank receded down the hallway.

Sydney looked over at Broots, "We have to get out of here before Raines' men come back."

"What about the computer data base?" gestured Broots.

"We'll have to come back later tonight when they're all through cleaning up.  We don't want to be found here," replied Sydney grimly.  He opened the door cautiously and looked down the hall to be sure there were no signs of Raines or his men returning.  Beckoning to Broots, Sydney led the way out with only a quick glance at the crumpled figure across the hall of the poor lost soul that had been George.

Duke University, Raleigh, North Carolina

Parker sighed in frustration and slapped the top of the computer screen, "Blasted thing!  Let me in!" she yelled at it.  She had been trying passwords for over half an hour and hadn't been able to access the computer's operating system.  She had tried all sorts of words that held meaning for Jarod.  His parents' names Margaret and Charles.  His brother Kyle, who had been shot by her twin brother, Lyle.  His younger sister Emily whom he had never even met.  She tried code words such as used at the Centre like prodigy, genius, pretender, red files.  She tried words from Greek and Roman myths.  She tried words from foreign languages.  How many languages could he speak now?  Forty or something?  She shook her head.  This is no good, she admitted, I'm up against the genius of Jarod.

"Ah-ha!" she exclaimed out loud, quickly typing the name 'Sydney'.  Why hadn't she tried that sooner.  But was rewarded with the now familiar flash of "Access Denied" and the cursor screen reappearing to blink "Enter Password" infuriatingly at her.  Just to say she had, she quickly ran through the list of all the Centre employees she knew that Jarod knew including herself, where she typed 'Miss Parker' and then simply 'Parker'.

She stared thoughtfully at the screen a moment remembering her dream of the morning, or maybe she should say reawakening.  When they were kids, she had whispered her name to him once.  Almost no one knew her given name.  Everyone called her Miss Parker, and even her father called her by his nickname for her, Angel.  Slowly she typed in 'Andrea' and hit enter.

Unbelievably, the computer drives began clicking and churning as the password screen blinked away to be replaced with a video image of Jarod.  "Congratulations.  You've obviously surprised me and have either killed me or captured me, or you wouldn't be seeing this message."  His eyes stared sorrowfully out at her from the computer screen.  "The last couple of years I have teased you and thwarted you, but it's really been in your best interest.  You would have never accepted the truths I know about the Centre if I had just told them to you.  I have been trying to guide you and help you discover them for yourself.  I hoped you had escaped from the Centre when you went away to school, but in many ways you are more your father's prisoner than I ever was.  Why did you agree to chase me?  Why didn't you trust me to find you?  You've forced us both to be alone for so long, but I was and ever shall be your friend."  Jarod smiled sadly as the recording finished and then it blinked away to be replaced with the standard program icons.

Parker blinked a few times in shock.  How did he do that?  She had only just remembered clearly the day her father sent her off to boarding school and he reminded her of it again.  He had to have made this recording months ago, since his hair in it was much more close cropped than it had been lately.  Teasing her?  Ha!  She remembered all the clues he had left for them to find or had sent directly to her at the Centre over the last three years.  It had been a source of aggravation to her that he had continued to play games with her.  She wanted to be a force to be reckoned with by catching and returning him to the Centre.  Suddenly she was furious with him.  It was all his fault!  When he had escaped she had been transferred out of the corporate office where she had built a base of power and had been able to travel all over the world.  It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement with herself and Sydney assigned to capture Jarod because of their previous ties to him and supposed ability to know how he thought.  That was a laugh!  Nobody could come close to how he thought!  That's why they wanted him back.  And how dare he suggest she was a prisoner?  Her father loved and protected her!

She drew her breath in sharply, except this very morning she had been thinking the same thing.  Her father had manipulated her over the years.  There had been so many times when what her father said and what he did were two different things.  He always brushed her concerns away explaining it was all about survival in the intrigues of the Centre.  She had to admit to herself that there was only one person who had always been there for her.  Who had comforted her when mother died so long ago?  Who had been there only last year when her boyfriend Thomas had been murdered?  Who had always been on her side?  Jarod.

She remembered all the gifts he had sent her, the painting of her as a girl, the stained glass portrait as a woman, her mother's necklace, and so many others.  She remembered the Valentine's Day when she had been so rude to him on the phone and when she finally opened the box, he had sent her a card saying 'Be My Valentine.'  She bowed her head and a single tear rolled down the side of her nose.  He had said the same thing then as he had in the recording about them both being left alone.

Then like a coin being turned over, like the sun coming out from behind the eclipsing moon, like a flash flood covering a desert with water, her heart was transformed from hate to love.  All the anger and resentment she had held towards Jarod were not really for him but because of him.  She put both elbows on the desk and leaned her forehead on her hands to hold her head up as she realized the awful truth.  She was in love with Jarod and they could never be together in that happily-ever-after of fairy tales.  The Centre would never permit it and would hunt the two of them just as relentlessly as she had hunted him for the last three years.  He had known it all those long years ago when they were kids.  At last, she knew it too.

Then, like it always did, her cell phone rang at the worst possible time.  "What?" she croaked irritably.

"Miss Parker, are you all right?" asked Broots.

She took a deep breath, and looked up at the ceiling as she wiped the wetness off her cheek.  She sat ramrod straight in the chair, as she pushed her feelings deep down and cloaked herself with the icy, business-only attitude she was known for.  "What is it?" she demanded, pointedly ignoring his personal question.

"You'll never believe what Raines just did," he began breathlessly.

"I know that old goat is capable of anything," she interrupted.  "What have you found out about the nurse, Eleanor Black?" she demanded.

"Well, nothing yet.  We have to go back later tonight."

"Fine," she snapped, "call me back then.

"Wait, wait.  Miss Parker?" Broots called anxiously before she could hang up, "Raines said something about tracking Jarod and returning him to the Centre soon."

"Since when is he on my assignment?" Parker hissed.

"I don't know, Miss Parker.  Keep an eye out for his men.  They can be dangerous.  Do you want me to come help you?"

Parker sighed.  It wasn't fair for her to be irritated with Broots.  After all, he was one of only three people she could really depend on.  Her voice softened, "No, thanks Broots, you stay there.  You can help me best by finding out all you can about Eleanor Black, what she worked on at the Centre and what ties she may have had to my mother."

"Okay.  Be careful, Miss Parker," Broots replied in a worried tone.  "I'll call you late tonight after we search the computer's data base."  Then for once he hung up on her.

To be continued…