Ch 5: Christmas Morning

Josie was sure that couldn't possibly be the phone ringing. She and Steve had just gotten settled into bed, and Steve was wrapped around her nice and warm, and they were almost asleep.

And that was the phone.

It wasn't even the emergency phone; it was the house phone. Of course if the house phone was ringing at 2:15AM, it probably was some sort of emergency.

Despite Steve's protest, Josie reached over and answered the phone on her nightstand.

"Hello?" she stifled a yawn.

Steve snuggled against her back, trying with some success to distract her.

"Warren?" Josie said in surprise at the voice on the other end of the line.

Steve was suddenly paying much more attention.

"What happened?" she sat up as she listened to the response. "Our kind of trouble?" There was a pause, then she relaxed visibly. "No, I'll be right there. Don't worry about it."

"What happened?" Steve asked.

"I don't know," Josie kicked off the blankets and started looking for reasonably clean clothes on their not so clean bedroom floor. "He just said there had been some trouble, and he needed a ride."

"But not our kind of trouble," Steve flipped the covers down to stop the heat from escaping.

"No. I could hear people talking in the background," Josie pulled on a pair of jeans she found under the bed. "I don't think he wanted to go into details with an audience. He's only a few blocks away. I'm going to go get him."

Josie found a sweatshirt that smelled clean and was probably Steve's, and decided to wear it anyway.

"Maybe I should come with you," Steve started to get out of bed.

"It's two blocks," Josie pushed him back into bed, and grabbed the car keys off his night stand. "By the time you get dressed, and tell Will we're going, and figure out if Will is going or not, and wait for Will to get dressed, I could be there. I'll call if I need you."

"Was that the phone?" Will appeared in the doorway of their bedroom in his pajamas.

"Warren needs a ride," Josie kissed his cheek as she walked by him.

"Why?" Will asked apprehensively.

"Ask your father," Josie called over her shoulder as she walked down the hall.

Warren was not hard to find. There was an ambulance and several police cars gathered in the street, along with the expected crowd of gawkers. Warren was leaning against the trunk of a patrol car wrapped in a police blanket, his hair limp and dripping. He was arguing stubbornly with a medic, and he kept shrugging her off when she tried to check him over.

Josie could tell intervention was going to be needed, although she wasn't sure if it would be for Warren or the medic. Warren was very pale, and his skin had a slight bluish tint to it. Josie suspected the medic had the right idea.

"Warren!" Josie called to him and watched his shoulders slump in relief.

A police officer waved her over, and she reminded herself that she was playing the part of the slightly confused best friend's mother and not the slightly confused superhero. She was going to have to be a little more subtle than just telling the emergency personnel what she wanted.

"You know him?" the medic asked.

"Yes," Josie leaned against the car beside Warren, their shoulders almost touching. She just didn't think Warren was comfortable enough with her for her to do anything else, although the mother in her wanted to tuck the blanket around him tighter. "He's my

son's best friend. We're keeping an eye on him while his mother is out of town." Not entirely true, but entirely true wasn't going to help anyone right now.

Much to her surprise, Warren leaned against her and let his head rest on her shoulder. She responded by wrapping an arm around him. She could feel small shutters wracking his whole body.

"I can't let them take my temperature," Warren whispered into her ear.

And suddenly everything made sense. Josie squeezed Warren's shoulder and felt him relax against her.

"Well, has he got something against medics?" the agitated woman asked. "Because he's real hypothermic, and Lord only knows what he broke getting dragged down the creek."

"Dragged down the creek?" Josie repeated, wondering just what Warren had been up to.

"Yeah," the medic's agitation faded slightly. "A girl fell into the creek, and he pulled her out. Look, I really think you should let me take him in. He's not looking good."

"I don't like hospitals," Warren said shortly.

Josie was hardly surprised by that. Warren didn't even like people he knew poking at him. Strangers were probably out of the question.

"You know what," Josie said in the manner of someone who was trying to find a solution that worked for everyone. "He's conscious, and he seems to be really coherent, so why don't I take him home with me. He can stay the night with us, we'll keep an eye on him, get him into a hot shower, get some hot food in him, and make sure he stays awake until his temperature is back up. If anything looks funny, we'll get him down to the ER."

The medic hesitated, then took in the stubborn set of Warren's face and nodded. "Alright. Just make sure you watch him."

"We will," Josie squeezed Warren's shoulders. "Thanks."

The medic nodded, still not entirely happy with the situation, but she let them go.

"Thanks for coming to get me," Warren huddled in the passenger's seat, ice crystals glittering in his hair. "If you take Rosehill up to Yellow Ridge you can get to my house without the police seeing."

Josie actually laughed.

"Sweetheart, you are so hypothermic it isn't even funny," she headed the car in the opposite direction. "You're coming home with me, you're taking a hot shower, I'm feeding you, then I'm letting Will keep you awake until I decide it's safe for you to sleep."

Warren looked at her in surprise, but he didn't disagree.

Will, not surprisingly, met them at the door.

"Are you alright?" he asked, curling an arm around Warren's back to steady him.

"Yeah," Warren leaned on his shoulder.

"Liar," Will frowned at him.

Warren didn't say anything, but Will could tell he agreed.

"Will, get him upstairs and into a hot shower and see if you can't find him some dry cloths," Josie instructed.

Josie watched the boys head up the stairs, then turned to Steve who was hovering in the living room doorway.

"What happened?" he demanded.

"A girl fell in the creek. Warren must have spotted her on his way home, and he pulled her out," Josie headed for the kitchen. "I keep saying that creek needs to be fenced off. It's dangerous."

"Warren can swim?" Steve asked, trailing after her.

Josie snorted. "Apparently," she filled the tea kettle and put it on the stove. "Although the wet and cold didn't do him any good."

"He is looking a little blue," Steve agreed, leaning against the counter, arms folded across his chest.

"The only reason he called at all was because the medics, being sane people, wouldn't let him leave by himself, and he couldn't let them actually take care of him, because his normal temperature is so high they would have known right away something was up," Josie poked around the fridge for something to heat up for Warren. "He didn't have anyone else to call," she snatched a Tupperware of rice out of the fridge. "You know, I'm very uncomfortable with his mother leaving him alone for extended periods of time. What if we had been away on a call?"

"Doesn't water… I don't know… extinguish him?" Steve was thinking of how much Baron Battle had hated water.

"Steve," Josie sometimes wondered if her husband heard a word she said.

"I'm sure he would have called someone else," Steve said placatingly.

"Like who?" Josie leveled her I-do-not-find-you-amusing-or-intelligent look at him.

That, Steve didn't have an answer to.

Josie peered through Will's half closed door, spotting both boys sitting cross-legged on Will's bed facing each other. Warren had a sub-zero sleeping bag pulled up over his head like a hood and wrapped around him. He was still too pale, but his skin had lost its blue tint, and he wasn't shivering anymore.

Still, Josie was glad it didn't look like he was going to be going to sleep anytime soon. He and Will were sitting close, heads bowed together so Will could catch what Warren was saying, and whatever he was saying, Will was listening as intently as Warren was telling. By the time they got through, chances were it would be safe for Warren to sleep.

Josie retreated to her own bedroom where Steve was getting ready for bed a second time. She joined him under the blankets, curling against his side and resting her head on his shoulder.

"He really is insane you know," Steve said.

"Mmm," Josie murmured sleepily.

"I mean, in an icy river his powers are pretty much useless," Steve continued. "They were probably more of a hindrance then a help."

Josie laughed into the curve of his neck, then propped herself up on his chest. "That's why they call them heroes."

She kissed his nose, then snuggled down against him again.

Steve blinked and stared up at the ceiling for a moment.

"Yeah, I guess so."