Jack
I chuckle at Thomas' expression as Nikki's complaints float through the open door.
"Thank you! I'm able to manage myself and I don't need a chair. The bullet went in my arm. I don't walk on my hands!"
"You've lost a lot of blood, Dr Alexander." The patronising nurse tells her sternly. "Be a good girl now, or I'll take you back to bed!"
I roar with laughter as Nikki retorts indignantly:
"Be a good girl?! I'm older than you are! Take me back to bed if you like – I'll just come on my own. I only needed you to show me the way!"
"Doctors don't make good patients!" Clarissa snorts as Thomas heads out to 'rescue' the nurse.
He comes back in pushing Nikki in a wheelchair and scolding her sharply for making the nurse's life 'difficult'.
"Yeah, well I only wanted to come and see Jack" She responds, pulling the pole with her drip on, along beside her. "I feel like I'm in a bloody prison."
"The nurse was being quite patronising, Thomas" Clarissa points out in Nikki defence.
"Oh you heard?" Nikki comments airily.
I can't help sniggering as Thomas replies in a slightly irritated tone:
"I think the whole hospital heard Nikki!"
"It was hilarious the way you told her off." I grin as she's 'parked' beside me.
Thomas sighs "I suppose you've done Jack the world of good by making him laugh, so I'll let you off this time!"
"Where's your Dad?" Nikki asks me, noting his absence.
"Oh...erm..."
"Jack sent him on an errand." Clarissa intervenes.
"Clarissa – shush!" I warn "Its meant to be a surprise!"
"Is it really a surprise if she asked for them, Jack?" Clarissa chortles.
"Oh I suppose not." I mutter "I asked Thomas in the ambulance to tell my Dad to bring my wallet to the hospital and then sent him to get you some flowers."
"Roses." Clarissa comments pointedly "He said they had to be roses!"
"Well I did take you down a smelly sewer!" I consider.
"Aw, thank you, that's lovely" Nikki smiles "I'd give you a hug but I'll probably get told off for standing up!" She eyes Thomas crossly.
"I spoke to the doctor." Thomas informs us, ignoring the look he's getting from Nikki. "You're very lucky, Jack. Apparently, because the bullet went through Nikki's hand first, it slowed down and didn't go far enough into your back to do any lasting damage. You were both also very lucky not pick up an infection from down there – or to catch anything other than mild hypothermia!" He adds dryly.
"One thing though" Clarissa remarks "Why were you so far into the sewer?"
"We were coming out." Nikki admits "But then we heard a noise and freaked out."
"Now I come to think of it, the noise was probably just plumbing or something" I reason "but we were in a panic and thought the gunman was coming after us."
My Dad appears at the door, holding a bunch of – to my delight – red roses.
"Here you go, son" He says handing them to me.
He leans over to Nikki and gives her a peck on the cheek. "Hi Nikki, you ok?"
"Hi Connor" She greets him "Yeah, I'm ok."
"Thanks Da" I nod at him and turn to Nikki.
She's bursts into giggles at my look of excitement as I hand her the red roses.
I need to work on my poker face.
"They're lovely, Jack. Thank you." She smiles again, forgetting herself for a minute and starting to stand up.
"No!" Thomas exclaims loudly.
She rolls her eyes at me and sits down again, squeezing my hand instead.
"She's not allowed out of the chair." Thomas offers by way of explanation to my Da's stunned expression.
"There's nothing wrong with her legs!" He answers bluntly.
"Yes, thank you Connor – my point exactly!" Nikki agrees triumphantly.
I half expect a mini war to break out between Da and Thomas over who takes on the role of Nikki's father.
"She gave the nurse a right telling-off though!" I grin at my Dad.
He pats her gently on the back. "Causing trouble are you?" He muses fondly.
"Always!" She chuckles.
"Gun-woman" Clarissa announces suddenly.
"Huh?" I interject.
"You said 'gunman' " She reflects. "It was in fact one of the teenage daughters. She shot her family and tried to shoot herself under the influence, but when the drugs came into play she just shot at anything and everything...and it was Connor you have to thank for finding you – he worked out you were down the sewer."
"Really, Da?" I ask in surprise.
He shrugs "I remembered that first case you worked on with Nikki. You both went down a sewer then – and we could see on the camera that it was dark and you appeared to have a torch."
"So the cameras weren't dead then?" Nikki contemplates.
"The mics were dead and the cameras were too – but then Jack's camera started working again." Clarissa tells us.
I see a smirk spreading across Nikki's face.
"Yes, ok" I sigh holding my hands up in surrender "You were right!"
Nikki's smirk widens further when she realises that I now have to explain myself to the other eyes in the room, which are staring at me, inquisitively.
Fantastic!
"I was going to throw it away because it had stopped working" I confess.
"The whole thing! He was going to throw the whole thing away!" Nikki giggles – anxious to let them know just how annoyed I was with the 'broken' technology.
"So why didn't you?" Thomas comments.
"Nikki stopped me" I explain "She said that even if we couldn't hear anything on it – that didn't mean you couldn't."
"Well done Nikki!" Connor chuckles.
I notice that Thomas is looking at me with disgust. "What?"
"You took Nikki down a sewer on your first case!" He retorts with the air of an annoyed father.
"You know that Jack likes sewers, Thomas!" Clarissa points out.
"I didn't know that he took Nikki down one the very first time he worked with her!" He responds loudly in a most unimpressed tone.
Hilariously, at this point, Nikki decides to annoy him further by announcing enthusiastically:
"No one had ever taken me down there before, Thomas!" accompanied by a beaming smile.
"It's not Disneyland!" Thomas exclaims indignantly.
"Do you know, I've never really wanted to go to Disneyland" Nikki deliberates as Clarissa, Da and I howl with laughter.
"Conor has said that you can both stay with him for a bit after discharge - seeing as apparently you were both doing so anyway." Thomas informs us, changing the subject. "It's probably just as well to have someone else around when you're both walking wounded."
"Hey, I've just had a thought." Nikki ponders suddenly. "Considering I stopped you throwing your camera away – and saved your life by stopping a bullet with my hand...like superman..." She adds with a grin in Thomas' direction.
He covers his face with his hands. "Oh, give me strength! Nikki, superman didn't injure his hands in the process!"
Nikki smirks and turns back to me to deliver her 'punch line' "I reckon you owe me a takeaway!"
"Again?!" I groan.
She chuckles "I know you're not doing very well in those stakes, are you!"
Something else occurs to me when the two of us have been left in hospital to 'rest'.
"We got Thomas down a sewer!" I grin at Nikki.
""Yeah there is that!" Nikki giggles "It's the 'Disneyland' of the underworld!"
