The hospital corridors were a blur of lights and held the sharp sting of an antiseptic smell to Jordan. She was only vaguely aware of her surroundings....She remembered the ambulance ride and Woody yelling at her to stay conscious...stay with him...she remembered him begging her not to leave him...Where would I go? She had thought. Now she was in a small room that held her bed and several doctors and nurses. There was a large glass window beside the door that she could look out of into the hallway. She saw Garrett and Woody talking to one of the doctors. Her room was a flurry of activity as the injection site was examined, her vitals taken, and more blood drawn than she was aware she even had in her body. A saline drip was started and one of the nurses asked her if she was allergic to any antibiotics. Jordan shook her head no. The nurse hung another bag of medication onto the drip and told Jordan to try to sleep. Exhausted, Jordan willingly laid her head back down on the pillow and shut her eyes.

Woody was filling in the doctor on what had happened. "The lab tech told Jordan that whatever it was in the syringe, it wasn't the bacteria, but she was going to die." He was nearly out of his mind with worry. He didn't know what kind of time frame they were working with. Did Jordan have days or hours? Days or weeks? Was it curable? He ran his hand through his hair. "Damn. Do we have any idea of what was in the syringe?"

"Not yet," said Garrett. Nigel had met them at the hospital and picked up the evidence bag with the syringe in it. "Nigel's running tests even as we speak. You know he's not going to rest until he knows what's in it."

"We're testing her blood...culturing everything to see if it's a bacteria. The perp may have told Jordan that it wasn't the killer bacteria just to throw everyone off. We've got a high-powered antibiotic in her drip right now just as a precaution. We just need to know what we're working against," said Dr. Barker, Jordan's attending physician.

"Can I see her?" asked Woody.

"I'm afraid not. Until we know what she has been contaminated with....until we know if it's contagious, she can't have any visitors. And I'm going to recommend that my staff wear complete containment outfits – full PAPR's – until we do know. Just as a precaution."

Woody and Garrett walked over to the window to look at Jordan. She was asleep now...her breathing, blood pressure – everything being closely monitored. She looked so small in the hospital bed. And so pale. "How's she doing?" asked Garrett.

Dr. Barker looked at her chart. "Better than she was when she was brought in. She's not in shock any longer. Her vitals are not quite as strong as they should be, but they are steady. She's reacting well right now to the antibiotic. It may make her a little sick, but she needs to keep getting it." He shut the chart with a snap. "The best thing you two can do is go home and get some rest. You're not going to do her any good if you're worn out. So leave. Go home. We'll call you if anything changes."

Woody and Garrett glanced at each other and then back at Jordan. Both knew there was no way in hell anyone was going to sleep until they at least knew what the bastard injected her with. And now they were going back to the morgue to see what Nigel had found out.

888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Nigel wearily rubbed his eyes and willed them to stay open just a little longer. There were three, large, empty Styrofoam coffee cups beside his computer, silent witnesses to his efforts to stay alert and run the tests on the empty syringe. When he had gotten the panicky call from Garrett about Jordan, he had wondered what his girl had gotten herself into now. Turns out it wasn't Jordan's fault this time at all. Her home and her body had been invaded by this...this...criminal. Nigel carefully loaded the centrifuge and turned it on. He was hoping to extract enough fluid from the vial to run tests on. It didn't look promising. He heard the elevator doors open and the rapid footsteps coming down the hall. He knew who it was before they even got in the door way. "How's she doing?" he asked, without even looking up.

"She's okay right now," replied Woody. "She's holding her own.." The detective's voice cracked and he quickly turned his back to Garrett and Nigel. Nigel glanced at Woody and then back at Garrett. Garrett backed off a little to give Woody time to pull himself together.

"Her vitals are steady, but weak," Garrett told Nigel. "She's out of shock. They're treating her with an antibiotic drip as a precaution. What do you have so far?"

"So far? Nothing. There wasn't enough fluid left in the syringe to run any tests on. I have it in the centrifuge hoping to pull enough out for some kind of extraction." He motioned towards the whirring machine. "I should know something in a few minutes."

Woody turned back around. His eyes were red and his face was still wet. "What will you do then?"

"If the doctor's running bacterial cultures, then I'm going to test for toxins and other things...it could be anything."

"How soon will you know?" Woody asked quietly.

Nigel regarded the young man. When he first met Woody, he had regarded the young man as a rival for Jordan's affections. Turns out he had been right. But Jordan had fallen for Woody, whether she would admit it or not. And Nigel knew it – he had watched the way her eyes lit up when he came bounding in the office, how quick she was to show up on one of his cases, and the way she allowed his hand to linger at her waist or on her arm. And Woody, it was well known, returned the affection. And while Jordan adored Nigel, he knew she didn't return his affection the same way.

Nigel didn't particularly like this, but he wanted Jordan to be happy. "I'm working as quickly as I can, Woody, but some of these tests are going to take time. If necessary, I'll e-mail the CDC in Atlanta my findings and see what they can come up with."

Woody sighed. Everyone was doing all they could do. Including Jordan. She was fighting for her life, too.

88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

"How's she doing?" Woody asked the nurse at Jordan's station at the hospital.

"Are you her husband?"

"No, I'm the detective on her case," Woody fibbed, while flashing his badge. Truth was, because of his closeness to Jordan, he had been taken off the case. Eddie Winslow was now the lead detective, but was keeping Woody in the loop.

"Let me check." The nurse walked over to Jordan's room and pulled the file from the holder on the door. "Her vitals are still weak," she glanced at the detective. His face wasn't telling her anything. "She's had some instability a couple of times in the last 12 hours, but we've managed to get her back on track. She's still on the antibiotic drip."

"Is it helping?"

"Not that we can tell. The doctor will be by to check her in a few minutes, if you'd like to wait."

Woody sat down on the bench across from Jordan's door. It wasn't long before Dr. Barker's lanky frame came striding down the hall. "Detective," Dr. Barker said, greeting Woody.

"How...how's she doing?" Woody asked, swallowing hard.

"I'll know more in a minute. I'm suiting up and going in to examine her." Dr. Barker disappeared into a small side room and reappeared a few minutes later with full PAPR on – from the contained breathing apparatus to the head-to-toe enclosed suit. Woody winced. Jordan couldn't be that sick, that contagious, could she? Seeing the doctor in such an outfit just brought home once again the fact that no one knew what they were fighting against. He watched as the doctor took Jordan's vitals and examined her. She stayed unconscious the entire time.

Emerging from Jordan's room, Dr. Barker pulled off mask and said, "I'll be out in a minute...let me decontaminate." Woody nodded, walking over to the window and looking at Jordan. He didn't hear Garrett and Rene Walcott come up behind him. "How's she doing?" Garrett asked.

"The doctor will be out in a minute. We'll know more then," said Woody, softly, never taking his eyes off her sleeping figure. Garrett glanced at Woody. The detective looked like hell. Of course, they all did. No one had slept in well over 24-hours. "You need to get some rest, Woody," he remarked.

Woody shook his head no. "Not until I know something....anything."

Just then Dr. Barker re-emerged from the side room. Motioning Woody, Rene, and Garrett over to him, he sat down on one of the benches in the hall way. "Okay, let me explain where we are with this. Her vitals are slipping. Her breathing is getting shallow and weaker, and if it gets much worse, I'm going to recommend putting a breathing tube in. Her blood pressure is weaker, but steady. I don't have a definitive word on the cultures yet, but so far, everything has come back negative. So if it is a bacteria, we don't know what kind it is yet. I'll give it about six more hours to culture, then I'd predict we're not working with a bacteria at all, but something potentially even deadlier."

"How much time do we have, doc?" asked Woody, not really wanting to hear the answer, but nevertheless, needing to know.

"I'm not sure. Right now, we're just treating symptoms and keeping her comfortable. When I know what we're working against, I can be more aggressive."

Woody nodded and walked back over to the window of Jordan's room. Leaning his forehead against the window, he silently prayed that they would be allowed more time together...more time to explore what had begun as a casual friendship and was developing into something much closer, much warmer....In many ways, he felt like he had just found the part of himself that was missing. He had found it the minute he had looked into her whiskey-colored eyes. And they were just as intoxicating as good whiskey, too. From the instant their eyes had met, he knew...he just knew she was the one. Cal, his brother, had laughed at him. "No such thing as love at first sight, Wood," he had off-handedly commented to Woody the last time he came home from Boston.

But he knew different. He may have come to Boston to further his career, but she was the reason he stayed. And now, unless a miracle happened, she may never know exactly how he felt...how much he felt....how deeply he felt. Turning to Rene, who had walked up beside him, he asked, "Do you have a lipstick?"

Quizzically, she looked at him, but seeing how exhausted he was, she asked no questions. She simply reached inside her handbag and handed him one.

"Thanks," he said. "I'll probably owe you another one."

Rene walked back over to Garrett. "What is he doing?" she asked.

Garrett looked at the window to Jordan's room. "I think he's leaving her a message."

On the window, with the lipstick, written backwards so Jordan could read it from inside her room when she came to, Woody wrote, "Hang it in there. I love you. Woody."