Readers—

Wow.  I was shocked by the response I got.  Flattered and surprised.  Reviewing, I've come to discover (I should have discovered this earlier; I've been posting for two years, for Heaven's sake!) is a difficult process for both the reviewer and the reviewee.  It has the opportunity to uplift or sincerely hurt.  In retrospect, I'd like to offer apologies to anyone I reviewed who felt offended.

I decided to continue the story.  Please bear with me; my life is very difficult at the moment.  In retrospect, I overreacted about a couple of reviews and (again) I'm sorry.  Many of you are right—I need a thicker skin.  As for Mary—this probably isn't one of my best stories; my dad died of a heart attack about four months ago and my mom lost her job a week before that, so getting by—let alone writing fantastico—has been rough.  Please see my Scrubs fic for evidence that I really do research my medical information.  I really do try!

Thanks all of you for your time and kind words.  They mean a lot and I'll try to update again soon.

—your humble author

GETTING TO KNOW YOU (PART ONE)

"Jesse—"

            "Jess, you didn't—"

            "I did!  I killed Mr. Harrow!  How is a man supposed to survive the epinephrine or shocking I game him?  That would kill a healthy man, let alone someone suffering from E. Coli!  I should have—I should have checked or made sure he was really in arrest or something!"

            Even Steve knew enough to know that when the alarm sounds for an arrest, thought is replaced by training.  Jesse did exactly what he or any other doctor should have done.  "How could you have known?  There's no way you could have known he was drugged."

            "Every good doctor knows that you can't always accept what appears obvious."

            "I can't believe you would give into something like this!" Steve yelled.  "It's obviously a ploy to make us stop investigating."

            "Because no you have to arrest me."

            "No!  Jesse!"

            Mark put a stop to Steve's yelling by placing his hands on Jesse's shoulders and turning the young man to face him.  He gently, but firmly, pushed his protégé back onto the sofa.  "Jesse, I need to know something.  Do you respect me?"

            "Respect you?  Of course!"

            "And do you think I'm a good doctor?"

            "You're the best doctor I've ever known."

            Mark nodded.  Those were the answers he'd been expecting.  "Then let's try a little role reversal; if I had tried to resuscitate Mr. Harrow using standard procedures, would I be guilty of murder, too?"

            That stumped him.  Mark would never endanger a patient's a life; he truly was the best doctor Jesse had ever known.  "Well…no, but…"

            "Jesse, if I'm a good doctor and you respect me, then you need to believe me when I say you aren't to blame.  I would have done exactly what you did and I would be beating myself up about it, too.  Except we don't have that luxury right now because someone is responsible for murder.  Someone who is not you," Mark cut Jesse off before he could interject his responsibility.  "Jesse, I promise you—as a doctor and as your friend—that you're not at fault.  You can't give up on this investigation and you can't blame yourself."

            Steve took the opportunity to add his two cents.  "Jesse, somebody went to a lot of trouble kill a man and we're obviously on the right track since they sent this letter.  Now you don't have to help me investigate anymore, but—"

            "No—no, I want…I mean, I think I should help.  I have a responsibility to Mr. Harrow.  I just wish things hadn't happened the way they did.  I could have prevented this."

            "Jesse."

            Jess shook his head.  "No, Mark, you don't understand.  The nurse thought she felt a pulse while we were trying to resuscitate him; if I'd taken a minute to check that out, he might be alive today."  Jesse said it quietly, as though he were revealing a shameful secret.  In truth, it was what had been nagging at him since he read the letter.

            "If you had taken that minute, you risked resuscitating Mr. Harrow into a vegetative state; time is of the essence when somebody codes and we don't have time to wonder if the nurse did or didn't feel a pulse; if she told you there was no pulse, you had a duty to continue CPR.  Jesse—son, you did the right thing.  There's no doctor in the world who would have done it differently.  Including me."

            The young man hung his head—grudging acceptance.  He had to accept it; he couldn't argue with Mark's logic.  But it was Steve who really got the doctor's attention.

            "Don't you even want to know what I found out?"

            "You found something out?"

            Steve rolled his eyes and sat down.  "Look, Jess, I'm gonna explain this just one more time:  I am a cop.  It is my job to find stuff out.  Detectives detect.  What don't you get about that?"

            "It's just such a rare event for me to see you do that," Jesse replied, the hint of a smile on his face.

            Mark chuckled softly, thrilled to see Jess coming around.  Steve grimaced.  "Don't encourage him, dad.  Now do you two want to find out what I know?  Good, because it turns out Ms. Nelson's former employer is deceased—and I'm not talking about Mr. Harrow.  She was an administrative assistant in Boston three years ago; a few weeks after the company discovered an embezzling scam in her department, her boss died of a heart attack.  The embezzling stopped and she moved out here."

            "How much do you want to bet it wasn't her late boss who was behind the embezzling?"

            "A lot.  I've already got a team at Lealer, Rubin, Horn, and Associates combing for evidence.  And I'm having Ms. Nelson brought in for questioning.  If you two want to watch from behind the glass—"

            "We'll be there."