Chances

Author: Dragon's Daughter 1980

Spoilers: Season 1

Pairing: Don/Terry

Disclaimer: CBS has ownership over Numb3rs. That being said, I'm just borrowing the cast for my own enjoyment and I promise to return all characters unharmed.

Author's Note: It's amazing sometimes that teachers have no concept of 'free time' during the school year. That being said, I promise the next chapter of this story will be extra-long to make up for the long waits. Thank you all for reading and reviewing.


FBI Field Office,
Quantico, Virginia
(6:48 PM, Local Time)

Jasmine stood, watching the paramedics wheel their patient with all speed toward the elevators, her heart pounding painfully with fear. Lisa remained where she was when the paramedics had burst into the interrogation room. She was still kneeling at the edge of a pool of blood — Terry's blood. Jasmine didn't have to look down to know that both of their hands were stained crimson. She couldn't think about it, or deal with the rising tide of self-recriminations in her mind. Mechanically, she looked around the room. The table and chairs had been disarranged in the desperate struggle. Terry's notepad had ended up shoved into a corner of the room. Kirsch's service weapon had fallen to the ground near one of the walls. There were two blood pools: a small one that had been created when the paramedics had tossed aside Lisa's bloody jacket and the other, larger—

Jasmine choked slightly. It took her a second to realize that someone was standing right next to her, taking her elbow in a gentle grip. In the next heartbeat, she realized who was standing beside her. 'My boss.'

"Jasmine?" asked FBI Special Agent Carl Robbins gently. She ignored the silver-haired man's concern.

"Henderson," Jasmine was glad her voice barely shook now; her emotions swung between controlled and panicked, "are you all right?" Lisa didn't appear to have heard the question because Jasmine didn't see the flippant expression that usually greeted such an idiotic inquiry on her protégé's face. Instead, Lisa seemed dazed and her breathing was too slow and harsh to be normal. 'No, none of us are 'all right' until we know Terry's going to be okay.'

"Lisa?" she raised her voice slightly as she had been taught to do when dealing with shocked witnesses and used the other woman's personal name. That caught Lisa's attention. The younger woman's eyes glistened slightly and that, or Jasmine's voice, jerked her back into harsh reality.

"I'm fine," Lisa spat out tonelessly. She rose from her position, her hands clasped together to keep the still-wet blood from dripping on the floor. "I'm going to go clean myself up, if anyone comes looking for me." With that, she walked out of the room, her face a mask of uncomprehending shock.

"Jasmine, you need to—"

"Of course," she unthinkingly interrupted her supervisor, her voice sharp. He let go of her arm, though his hand hovered in the air. "I'll clean up and get the paperwork done."

"No, get yourself cleaned up," said Carl gently. He touched her elbow cautiously. "Then I'll have someone drive you to Benson after you've given your statement, all right? I'll handle things here."

That snapped her briefly out of her trance as reality hit and her breathing became ragged. Carl guided her around the blood pools and toward the restrooms. "I'll have someone find her next-of-kin information for you. You'll want to make the phone call?" Carl had been her mentor eight years ago and he knew her well. This case had just turned highly personal for all of them, and Jasmine, for one, would spare another the difficult job of contacting Terry's family.

"Thank you," she whispered before she turned away from him. Entering the women's washroom alone, Jasmine found Lisa, wrists resting against the rim of the sink, shoulders hunched and head bowed, trying in vain to hide her violent sobbing. The older woman's first thought was to comfort the young agent until she remembered that her hands were encrusted with drying blood. She turned the warm water on and thrust her hands under its force.

It was surprising how quickly they became clean, but the sickening feeling remained and her hands trembled as she dried them off. By the time she turned around, Lisa's sobs had slowed into the occasional gasp for breath, but it was clear that her hysteria was just barely below the surface.

"I think —" Between her naturally soft voice and the onset of shock, the young woman's words were barely audible. "I think I need to go home. Is that all right?"

"Of course," Jasmine said quietly, gently guiding the other woman out of the restroom. They almost ran into a man waiting right outside the door. Jasmine glanced at his identification badge; he was from Lisa's former team, one that was based on another floor in the same building.

"Lisa," the man's voice was soothing as he took her elbow, "I've already called Jonathan. He's on his way. I'll take you downstairs, okay?" Lisa nodded silently. Wordlessly, the man guided her toward the door. Jasmine spared a second to watch them walk away before going to her desk.

It took a minute of sorting, but she found what she was looking for. She pulled the completed forms out of the organized piles of paper. 'Good thing I finished these during lunch — but never for this…' Grabbing a pen, she quickly added a final signature and a date.

"Jasmine?" Carl was standing by her desk, watching her with a worried expression. She stood up and held out the forms.

"These are papers for the immediate transfer of Carlos Alverez to the federal penitentiary," she said firmly. "I want him out of my sight." Carl nodded as he accepted them.

"I understand. I've already sent the rest of your team home. I'll handle the raid tonight and we'll deal paperwork when we can. Jasmine, given the nature of this case and the fact that it won't take long before the cartel finds out what Alverez has done, I'm going to assign a guard to Agent Lake. So when she gets out of surgery, I'll need you to call me so I can set things up at the hospital, all right?"

She nodded, thankful that he was optimistic and clearheaded. He took her shoulder, "I'm going to walk you downstairs. There's a car waiting for you. As soon as I've got her next-of-kin information, I'll send them to you, okay?"

"Thanks. What about my statement?"

"I'll take that as we go, all right?"

"All right," she answered, grabbing her coat, grateful that Carl knew how quickly she wanted to get to the hospital.


Residence of Charles and Alan Eppes
Los Angeles, California
(3:58 PM, Local Time)

"So how did your meeting go with the Dean today?" Charlie asked as they got out of her car. Amita shut her car door, slipping her keys into her pocket, her other hand carrying her satchel. "He said that he can arrange with the INS to extend my student visa if I can get the registration in on time."

"That sounds easy." Amita couldn't stop the irritated sigh from escaping. 'Don't I wish.' Instead of replying immediately to Charlie's remark, she smiled in greeting at the gardener in the front yard, "Hi, Mr. Eppes."

"Amita," the patriarch of the Eppes family sat back on his knees, "nice to see you again. I trust my son won't bore you too much?"

She laughed, "No, Mr. Eppes. We've got papers to grade."

"Ah, yes. Of course, papers." He gave Charlie a look Amita couldn't quite decipher. "Then I won't keep you."

"Hi Dad," said Charlie as he escorted her up the walkway and front steps.

"Dinner's going to be spaghetti," was the distracted reply as Alan returned his attention to the untended flower bed. Charlie nodded, not looking at his father as he opened the door to the entryway. Amita just shrugged mentally to herself; this was the typical near-telepathic connection between a parent and child. She shared that trait with her father, who almost always seemed to know what she was thinking. He was the one who had been the most supportive in her family about her dream of coming to California to finish her education.

When she had returned home last summer to visit, her father had given her a questioning look when she suggested the prospect of her earning a degree in astrophysics before she returned permanently to India. But he never asked if it was because she was in love with someone else, though Amita noticed that she didn't meet with her 'fiancé' as often as she used to on previous visits. He was a nice enough man, but there was no spark, no chemistry between them. To her, he was just another boring banker and Amita sensed that he saw her as another independent-minded woman who needed to be gently controlled. She knew that she would never be happy in that kind of relationship.

On the other hand, Charlie saw her intellect first and then her beauty. It was a good thing because he was her thesis adviser and she wanted to earn her degree through her intelligence, not her looks. He was a great teacher who had a passionate enthusiasm for his work that was infectious. The only drawback was that it was proving rather difficult to get Charlie to notice that she was flirting with him. At times, Amita was almost sure he flirted back, but their timing always seemed to be off. People walked in or something interrupted them right before that critical moment. 'Well,' she thought with a quiet sigh as she walked up the stairs behind Charlie, 'as soon as I finish defending my thesis, advisor-advisee rules won't apply anymore and maybe I can get an answer. That is, if my visa doesn't expire first.'


"So you won't have any problems?" prompted Charlie again once they were settled in his room. He opened the ring binder containing her latest thesis draft.

"Plenty apparently," Amita sighed, "the admissions office computers crashed this morning and they don't know what went wrong or when they can get it fixed, so now I can't enroll in the right classes and then there was some mix-up in the student files before that idiot—"

"I heard." She nodded, only half-surprised that he knew. Charlie was known for being selectively deaf at times. But he wasn't physically deaf or so mentally absorbed all the time as to not hear the fire engines roaring onto campus. "I couldn't get my Calculus 101 class to settle after lunch," he said in explanation. Amita sighed, quelling her much-abused temper.

"I'm just relieved he didn't burn the whole building down or destroy all of the 'R' paper files. If I'm lucky, my file's just soggy, not ashes and my student visa won't expire before I can get everything turned in."

"You know, the chances that a single lit cigarette can burn down a structure are actually—"

"Charlie, please, it's been a long day; I don't want to hear it." He closed his mouth and nodded, "Sorry."

"It's okay." She sighed again and reached for her stack of papers, "Let's just get this done and over with." He nodded and followed her lead, gradually sinking into his inner world of mathematics as he read through her argument.


"What's this?" he said, breaking the silence. Amita looked up from Gregory Packer's paper, one of her more promising students, to see Charlie holding up a sealed envelope addressed to her. She vaguely recalled the possibility of her blindly shoving her mail into her bag as she left her shared apartment that morning. All thought of checking for bills or official notices had left her mind once she had gotten on campus…until now.

"Where'd you find this?" she asked, reaching for it. He pointed at her thesis draft as he handed it to her, "In here. It's from the INS."

"Oh no," she muttered as she quickly opened the envelope, glancing at the official seal of the office of immigration. 'With the way my luck's been going today, this better not be a notice that my visa's going to expire.' Bracing herself for disappointment, she read the letter and blinked. 'No. This can't be right…' Amita re-read the black text and laughed with relief. 'I'm eligible! I'm finally eligible!'

"What?" Charlie was smiling, bemusedly sharing in her elation. She restrained the urge to hug him, settling for a shout of mixed joy and relief instead.

"I'm eligible for a green card now," she said happily, carefully folding the precious letter and putting it back into its envelope, placing the valuable document in her backpack.

"That's — that's fantastic. Wow. I — that means you can stay, right?" And when she saw the expression on his face, she knew what he wasn't saying. 'He wants me to stay.' She nodded, saying softly, "Yes."

Amita and Charlie smiled at each other, silent understanding coursing through the room. All too soon, however, the moment passed, and Charlie quickly looked back down at her thesis, his hands automatically smoothing the already smooth surface—a sure sign of nervousness. Feeling her cheeks flush too, Amita followed his example and returned her attention to Gregory's paper. 'Time enough now; time enough for anything that might happen between us. I can stay for as long as I need to. Thank you Vishnu!'


Benson Memorial Hospital
Quantico, Virginia
(6:53 PM, Local Time)

"GSW to the upper chest —" "Page Meeker and the OR —" "— five units of O-neg —" "Did the FBI send over her medical —" "— respirations erratic —" "Let's move it people, we need —" "— pulse thready—" "—heavy blood loss." The noise was what pulled her back into the waking world, where pain was still possible. Terry groaned quietly, her ears assaulted by the sounds of the chaotic emergency room.

"Agent Lake?" a man's soft voice caught her attention in the cacophony surrounding her. She easily heard him over the commands of the doctors and nurses in the room. 'That's odd. He must be nearly whispering.' "Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can." His hand was pleasantly warm when he took her right hand. She tried her best, but she felt so tired. She didn't open her eyes. A part of her knew that it was a bad sign. "Okay, that's good," his voice was calming, "You're going to be all right, Ms. Lake. We're going to take good care of you…" His hand fell away from hers and the loss of human contact made her feel a degree of panic.

"Lift on three: one, two, three!" A jostle of movement sent a stab of agony through her, knocking Terry back into the numbing darkness.