AN: I'll confess that I almost had this chapter completely written and edited before I posted the last chapter (Donna's wedding). Sigh. I'm strange, I know. On the plus side, very short wait for all of you to get this one. I love exploring how the various people react to finally learning that Sam and Jules are back together. Hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think.
Guest: I'm glad you liked the last chapter and the JAM at the end.
Greg Parker was walking down into the main lobby at SRU when his cell phone rang. Even though he didn't recognize the number he went ahead and answered.
"Greg Parker."
"Parker."
"Dr. Toth, hello," he greeted his caller in a pleasant voice, even though his feelings about the military psychologist were-like those of his entire team-far from favorable.
"How are you, Parker?" The obligatory greeting seemed rather perfunctory, even for a no-nonsense to-the-point man like Toth.
"Very well, thank you. How are you?"
"Displeased."
"Okay. You wanna tell me why?"
"Do you know what was contained in the call transcript for the seventeenth of last month?"
"Yes, I know what's in there."
"Really? For your sake, I hope not."
A frisson of concern began to work up Greg's spine. He covered his phone and gave the information to Ben, directing the dispatcher to display the transcript on the briefing room's monitor.
"Then you must be aware that Braddock and Callaghan broke department rules and violated the terms of the team's probation."
"No, that can't be right," Greg objected, instantly losing his good mood. Though his denial wasn't because he knew the charges weren't true-he knew they absolutely were-but rather because he couldn't imagine either Jules or Sam having been foolish enough to let their secret slip where Toth could have discovered it.
Toth said, "I'm on my way to SRU now-we'll talk when I get there."
After putting his phone away, Greg skimmed through the hot call transcript from the day when a former undercover cop's wife had been shot to death by a member of the Logan Family-the day Donna Sabine's new husband Hank had been wounded by her former partner only hours after they had exchanged their marriage vows. He read and reread the relevant section of the transcript, gazing in silence at the black-and-white proof that Sam and Jules had indeed slipped up and blown their secret for a second time.
Callaghan: Hypothetically, you like the idea of a honeymoon?
Braddock: Hypothetically, I love it.
Callaghan: Please tell me it isn't daiquiris on a beach?
Braddock: Extreme hiking, remote trails, no bathrooms.
Callaghan: Sweet. Sign me up.
Braddock: Oh, you mean with you?
"Damn it," Greg breathed out the imprecation.
"Greg, what's going on?" Ed asked, walking into the briefing room. The sergeant gestured toward the wall-mounted screen, where the hot call transcript was still displayed.
"They forgot to turn their mics off," he answered. Ed leaned forward to read the transcribed conversation that Greg had already memorized.
Greg could feel his friend and the team's tactical leader go very still. While on the surface, it might appear to merely be a natural topic of conversation given the day's events, to anyone-them or Dr. Toth especially-who knew Sam's and Jules' past, the exchange was so, so obviously much more than that. Both men wonder just how and when this started...again. It was something Greg had refused to ask outright when he'd caught them at Jules' house that morning a couple months ago, information he neither wanted nor needed, even if he did suspect the answer. But if they were talking about honeymoons-even just in theory-then what was between them was serious, and had to be the result of something long-term, something that clearly neither of them planned on ending this time.
"Jules and Sam? I thought they were done," Ed protested, clearly scrambling for a explanation other than the obvious.
"Well, they're not," it was as close as Greg was willing to come to saying that he suspected the couple had resumed their romantic relationship quite some time ago, almost in outright defiance of Toth.
"That was the condition when she rejoined the team."
"I know."
"Priority of Life." From the increasing heat in Ed's voice Greg knew that his friend and colleague was ramping up for quite the explosion.
"I got to tell you, Eddie, I knew it was happening."
"How long?"
"Two months." If Ed assumed that means how long the relationship has been going on this time, rather than merely how long Greg had known the truth and concealed it, so much the better. Even now, he was still trying to protect the others on the team. If anyone had to suffer the consequences for keeping silent-and there will be consequences, he was sure, especially with Toth coming here now-then Greg's responsibility as Sergeant was to make sure Ed was kept clean, so the team wouldn't lose both leaders. And he'd try to protect Sam and Jules, too. Sam's words the morning Greg had caught them rang loud in the sergeant's mind: "Have you seen our performance slip?" No, he hadn't. No one had. Did that count for anything? Shouldn't it count for something? "I made the choice to let it go on."
"What happened to 'no more secrets on the team'?"
"That way it's on me. It's not your job, it's mine."
"It's your job? What do you mean?" Ed asked in confusion.
"When Toth put this team on probation, I gave him my word that Sam and Jules wouldn't cross the line."
"Well, what's he going to do? Greg?"
The Sergeant didn't answer; couldn't. He knew that Toth coming to SRU wasn't going to be a good thing, not for him, not for Sam, and not for Jules. Toth had been very clear last year what the consequences would be if Jules and Sam resumed a romantic relationship: immediate suspension and disciplinary action for both of them, and for Greg as well. He'd told himself he was willing to accept the consequences if it came out, but now that the moment was at hand, Greg wasn't sure he was truly ready. Before he could think of what-if anything-to say to his friend of the past twenty years, the claxon alarm began to sound and Ben's voice carried through the intercom system.
"Team One, hot call. Gear up."
"Go," Greg told Ed.
"What do you mean?" asked Ed as he realized Greg wasn't going to be following him.
"I got no choice."
"Greg!"
"Go! Just go. I don't want the team distracted by this. Go."
The team raced to the hot call at a bio-engineering firm. Hearing just what kinds of nasty bugs they were about to encounter sent a chill through everyone on the team. They might have felt better with their Sergeant's voice in their earpieces, but he wasn't there. All Ed had told them was that "The Boss has something he needs to take care of here. We can handle this. Spike, with me. Sam and Jules. Raf, you're driving solo. Let's move, people."
Outside the lab, the team had only just started getting information from the company CFO when gunshots sounded from within the facility.
"Shots fired," Sam announced the obvious to the autoscriptor-the team knew that sound as well as he did. MP5 up and ready, Sam began to move toward the doors into the building, Ed and Raf following close behind, while Jules started herding RDA employees farther away from the threat. That done, she and Spike formed up with the rest of the team and they headed into a dark and powerless building to try and find any victims.
"What's going on, Ben?" Parker asked.
"Active shooter. No confirmed victims yet," the dispatcher replied.
"Just keep me informed, alright?" Team One's Sergeant-at least for this moment-requested, having just caught sight of Dr. Larry Toth entering the SRU lobby.
"Greg, I'm sorry to do this," the psychologist began.
"Do what?" Even though Greg had a fairly good idea, he needed to actually hear the words.
"I'm here to suspend you from duty." The older man actually did seem a bit regretful, but undeterred at the same time.
"Suspended," Greg spoke the word calmly after the two men had taken seats at the briefing room's conference table.
"I was expecting a bigger reaction," Toth replied.
"Conditionally? Permanently? What?" Greg wanted to know. A year ago the team had been cleared for duty-conditionally; with the terms of the detailed review of all call transcripts and incident documentation and the warning concerning Sam and Jules. Toth never seemed to want to make things easy, so most likely there would be strings attached to this suspension, too.
"That will depend on you." The psychologist's answer surprised the Sergeant. So did Toth's next statement. "Team One's probationary period is now over. But-" Toth sighed as he slapped a folder taken from his briefcase down onto the tabletop. "-I'm left with two major concerns. One is your judgment as Sergeant, regarding the relationship between Callaghan and Braddock, which you made the choice to conceal."
"That's right," Greg didn't bother trying to pretend otherwise. He'd trusted the couple to do their jobs to the utmost of their abilities, and they'd never once let him down.
"The other concern, equally critical to your team's safety, is your judgment of your own judgment. Second-guessing. Self-doubt. This is the subtext of all your reports, transcripts, self-evaluations. You openly question your own decision-making. How can you captain a ship, if you've lost your own compass? Any rebuttal? Or am I right that you are relieved that someone has finally made the choice for you?"
Greg looked at the man but said nothing.
"So," Toth slid a sheet of paper over to Greg. "Please sign here, and here, and I'll need you to relinquish your badge and sidearm."
Parker moved the pen closer to the page, but then stopped. "What about Braddock and Callaghan?"
"They will be reassigned to different teams."
Toth's answer is unexpected and unwelcome. Reassignment for both of them? And peremptory, without giving either officer the chance to make the choice to leave team willingly to allow the other to stay. Greg slapped the pen down onto the table.
"That's not gonna work," The Sergeant stated. "If I had told them to end it, they would have. But I didn't. It's on me, not them."
"They made their own choice-" countered Toth, heat finally entering his voice. "-after already having been granted a second chance."
"Come on, doctor. Look me in the eye and tell me if you've ever, in all the calls we've had this year, seen their judgment or performance impaired by their relationship." Greg made it a statement rather than a question.
"Not yet," admitted the psychologist. "But it's only a matter of time before their instinct to protect each other overrides the safety of a citizen. This is why we have the Priority of Life protocol."
"You like assuming the worst, Larry?" Greg used the doctor's first name intentionally.
"Don't lecture me, Greg," he growled. "Imagining I could have kept someone safe, but didn't? That's what keeps me up at night."
xxx
By the time Jules made it to the sealed laboratory chamber where the two scientists were working, the power in the building had just come back on. She didn't mind one bit the advice from the scientists that she stay outside the room until they were finished with their tasks. Microorganisms and other things too tiny to see gave her the heebie-jeebies. She wished the Boss was here to assure them all that things were stable and everything would be okay if they just did their jobs. Jules wondered just what he'd had to do at the station that was more important than being part of the hot call with his team. Maybe it was as innocuous as Ed had indicated, but there was a little niggle in her gut that said different.
"Guys, we need another twenty minutes in here," she reported in after the scientists, Applewhite and Logan, had told her what they needed to do to secure the samples of filoform.
"What's filoform?" Spike asked.
"It's a form of anthrax," the CFO, Rose Gilvery, reported.
"Anthrax? Great!" thought Jules sarcastically.
While Sam and Raf tried to determine where the gunman could have gone after bolting from the deep freeze room, Ed took the rescued security guard back to the command post to see if he could help them identify the gunman. The fact that the man knew the building was both good and bad, the TL decided. Good, because it meant he wasn't going to destroy things or hurt people in a willy-nilly fashion; bad, because he was in the lab for a very specific reason, which meant that the team was playing catch-up to try and stop him. It should have made Ed feel better to have a name for the subject, but hearing that Xavier Dodd had been let go partly due to mental health issues wasn't something he wanted to hear. Mentally-disturbed individuals were difficult to negotiate with and the team was a man down today-and that man was their best negotiator.
Jules jolted when a man in a protective suit-Xavier Dodd, without a doubt-burst into the clean room from a door on the other side from where she'd been watching. Seeing him point the gun he'd taken from the security guard at the two scientists sent Jules into the lab as well, her sidearm out and aimed at him. She didn't want to shoot a mentally-unbalanced person, but if he threatened the two doctors...Xavier had already gone active when he'd shot out the lab's generator, so policy would back her up if she had to shoot. And she might have to, Jules realized. The way Xavier kept waving the gun around, the fact that he didn't care of everyone in the room-including himself-were now inhaling anthrax spores..."Not good...Boss, what would you do?"
"Sir?" Ben had left the dispatcher's desk and was standing in the doorway to the briefing room. "Jules is in the line of fire. Subject has two hostages."
"What does he want?" Parker asked.
"No clear demands yet. He was fired for psychological reasons."
"Alright. I'll get a headset," Greg stood up and took a couple steps away from the table.
"Greg," Toth began, "we are going to the gun cage."
"No," Team One's Sergeant denied. "These are my people. I need to know what's going on."
As he handed Greg a communications headset, Ben added, "There's an exposed pathogen that could become airborne."
"What kind of pathogen?"
"Anthrax." The word would send a chill down the spine of anyone who heard it and Greg and Larry were no exceptions.
"Okay, forget the headset. Have Spike patch audio and visual into the briefing room. Do it now, right now."
"Don't make me call for an escort to take you off SRU property," Toth warned.
"Back off, Larry!" snapped Greg.
"You know you're officially under suspension."
As Greg hadn't actually signed the acknowledgment paperwork, he was tempted to dispute the point. "Then I have nothing left to lose, do I?" He turned away from Toth to look at the wall-mounted display that was now filled by a security camera view of the lab where Jules, Xavier, and the two scientists stood.
"If you do that, then you know your chances of returning to duty-"
"My team needs me." Greg's simple statement as he pointed to the screen silenced Toth's objections and he gave a small nod. This is what he wants to see: a confident and decisive man, who will make a choice and stand by it unapologetically.
Greg tapped a button on the tabletop comm unit. "Spike. Eddie. Can you hear me?"
"Boss." Ed blinked at the unexpected-but very welcome-voice.
"I've got comm and visual. I'm with you. Jules, you can do this."
Jules internally breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the Boss's voice and his confidence in her. "Xavier, can you tell me what you want here today?" She was as much worried by the erratic and angry man pacing on the other side of the lab as she was by the background information Spike fed her.
"A good employee, suddenly gone paranoid? Accusing the company of poisoning him?" Greg wasn't sure what it meant, yet. He set Ben to researching Xavier's life and himself called Spike to talk to Rose Gilvery. She told him that Xavier's symptoms were psychosomatic-all in his head-and that he'd blamed a mandatory vaccine for making him sick.
A thread of fear knotted itself in Jules' belly when Xavier demanded a sample of the vaccine he'd been given-the one he was sure caused whatever illness he thought he had-for his doctor to test, only to have Dr. Applewhite reply that there wasn't any of that batch left and thus nothing to test.
"Xavier's unstable. Unwilling to accept reality. His plans are derailing, and now that he can't get what he wants, what will he do?"
"Xavier doesn't have a lot to lose," Greg laid it out. "It's going to be hard working him down from this." But Jules did him proud, listening to Xavier talk about his condition-ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease-the lawsuit's purpose to provide for this family and his regrets that his little daughter would never remember the real him. "De-escalating. Nice job, Jules."
But it didn't last. Xavier shot right back up on the aggression meter when his personal doctor's examination of the company's records didn't produce the desired answer.
"Jules, I'm coming in," Sam said.
"Hang on. This is a lot for him to accept," she replied. With the Boss having left it to Jules to order him and Raf to move, Sam stayed put. He didn't like it, but he did it anyway. A minute later, he wished he hadn't. Xavier's yelling and gun-waving in Dr. Applewhite's face had drawn Jules closer in an effort to de-escalate things again. Sam's attention was focused on the gun, watching to see what the subject might do. Neither of them saw Dr. Logan, the female scientist, bend down and pull Xavier's other gun out of the satchel he'd set down on the floor until she had the weapon pointed at Xavier. A moment later, the gun went off and an explosion rocked the room.
"Jules. Jules. Jules! Jules, status!" Sam stared into the clean room in impotent fury. With the automatic lockdown triggered, there was now no way for either him or Raf to enter the lab to back her up. And Jules needed backup. Everyone in the room had been knocked the the floor by the explosion. As they started stirring, Sam continued requesting a response from his girlfriend. "Jules, status. What's your status?"
"I'm okay," Jules' answer was quiet and not too convincing. She slowly sat up and moaned as blood began to spurt from a nicked artery in her left arm.
"Keep pressure on it," Sam commanded. "Ed, we got injured. I gotta get in there now."
"Easy, Sam, easy. We gotta know what we're dealing with here?" The words aren't easy for Ed to say, not with what he'd learned that morning about the true nature of Sam's and Jules' relationship. Part of him feels like a hypocrite to be telling the younger man to calm down in the face of what they both see-especially when he himself wouldn't be able to follow his own advice.
"What the hell happened?" Parker demanded from the station. "Team?"
"Logan fired," Sam reported. "We got a major spill. The refrigeration unit broke open."
With that unwelcome news, the situation went from bad to worse. With the unit's contents scattered and broken on the floor, the pathogen meter's display had jumped from 200 to 900 in a matter of seconds and was still climbing. And from worse to worst: the environmental controls that would normally have cleansed the air weren't working thanks to Xavier's earlier sabotage of the power system.
"Jules!" Sam silently screamed her name, while outwardly showing nothing of his terror and anguish. Aloud, he said, "Ed, we've got to go in. I'm suiting up now." Even if Raf was now on his way to the vent room to try and fix the sabotaged controls, there was no way that Sam could stay outside that room as a spectator. Not with the spore count up to almost half of the lethal exposure level, or with Logan trapped under the knocked-over refrigeration unit.
As he suited up, Sam saw Xavier remarkably help Applewhite move the overturned unit and reset Logan's broken leg, after he'd kicked Jules' gun away from her-not that she was in any condition to use it right now.
"Jules, can you hear me?" Sam adjusted his earpiece. She nodded. "Sniper breathing. Okay? Slow it down and hold. Lower your heart rate; you'll lose less blood. We're coming right in. We'll get you out soon, okay?"
Ed's gut and fists clenched in helpless fury at Xavier's insistence that no one would leave the room until he got his answer. "What does the idiot think? That he can just wave a magic wand and get a different result than before? Is he so detached from reality, from facing his own inevitable death, that he doesn't care if he takes three other innocent people with him? Personally, Ed didn't care what happened to Logan and was indifferent to Applewhite-though, of course, as a police officer he'd do everything possible to save them both. But he did care personally and professionally about Jules and she needed to be out of there just as much as the others did.
Spike and Ed both racked their brains trying to figure out what explanations there might be for this situation. Ed's mind flashed back to the roster of former employees and Rose's story about a department head-the safety operations department head-taking his entire team with him to a new job. "Could Xavier be right? Could there really have been a cover-up? A buy-off?
Even across the miles that separated him from his team, Greg was on the same wavelength. "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably not a cat," he thought. And he knew just how to prove it.
Jules couldn't help the soft whimper that escaped her tense lips when the alarm and flashing light trumpeted the rapidly-approaching fatal exposure threshold.
"Jules, slow your breath, okay? Count it out. Keep your heart rate real slow," Sam spoke with a calmness that he didn't feel, not with how ragged her breathing had become.
"Jules? Jules! Jules! Jules!" Sam's voice went from questioning to concerned as, within the clean room, Jules slumped back down to the floor. For some reason that, rather than anything she'd said, was what seemed to evoke a measure of concern from Xavier. While Dr. Applewhite tried to keep Jules calm and to control the bleeding, Sam stepped into a negotiation that he absolutely did not feel qualified to run, urging Xavier yet again to let the innocents in the room get out while there was still time. "Xavier, how can this possibly help you?"
Somehow, miraculously, the dying man listened that time and agreed to let Logan leave.
"Jules, I'm on my way," Sam turned to head for the airlock chamber. Despite the obvious emotion driving the words, Sam's tone still managed to be calm and nearly professional.
"Are you hearing what I'm hearing? Civilians are at risk!" Toth spoke for the first time in a while. He had been remarkably unobtrusive as Greg worked this call at a distance-until now.
"He knows what he's doing," Greg stated with confidence. He knew-he knew-that Sam would always do the right thing. It was just the essential core to the remarkable young man thrust upon Team One years ago.
Everyone, whether inside the clean room, outside it, or sitting miles away in SRU's headquarters, watched the scene that plays out in stark whiteness on security monitors and TV screens, each of them silent and still. Sam Braddock, completely covered in a white protective bio-suit, walked across the lab floor from the airlock door to where Dr. Applewhite had braced wounded scientist in a semi-sitting position against his body. Sam passed directly in front of his own wounded teammate and girlfriend, and while his head did turn to look at her-and Jules' head lifted to gaze back at him-his strides did not falter and his feet did not deviate from the path. Sam reached the injured woman, slid his arms under her shoulders and knees, and stood up with the other scientist's help. Then he turned and retraced his steps back to the exit and the decontamination chamber, head again rotating slightly to check on Jules. Every single man had the exact same thought: "I couldn't do that. There is no way I could ever do that."
As the decontamination process sent plumes of white mist swirling, Sam faced back into the lab. From where she lay on the floor, surrounded by her own blood, Jules looked back at him. They offered no words and didn't need any. Their eyes did all the talking necessary.
"I love you. I'm sorry. I had to save Logan first. I didn't want to, Jules, but I had to."
"I know, Sam. It's okay. You followed the rules, just like you were supposed to, just like we promised each other and the Boss that we always would. I love you, too."
"Did you see that?" Parker asked the psychologist. A rhetorical question, since the man was sitting next to Greg, looking at the same TV screen on the wall. "You might want to write that down, put it in your file. Priority of Life is observed."
"Noted," Toth's answer was a single word. He had to know exactly what Greg did at this moment. Even in the direst and most life-threatening situations, both Sam and Jules could keep to the rules and do the right thing. Not the easy thing-hell, no, that couldn't have been easy at all-but the right thing. If it had been Greg in Sam's place and Dean or Marina in Jules' position...Greg knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he couldn't have possibly had the mental and emotional strength that Sam just displayed, to walk past his grievously wounded loved one to save the injured civilian who was directly responsible for that loved one's current condition. But Sam had done exactly that. Just like years earlier when he'd let Jules leave in the ambulance, grabbed his rifle, and soon after taken the Scorpio shot that had saved Ed's life by ending that of Petar Tomasic, Sam had done his job perfectly here. Maybe not a single other person in the world could have done any of that, but Sam clearly could, and just has. Not that the sniper wouldn't feel guilty about this for a long time-perhaps always. As Greg had said more than once to his team: "Just because we do right, doesn't mean we get to feel right." Sam did right today, but surely won't feel good about it, especially if-no! "I won't go there", Greg vowed. They would get Jules out in time, or Raf would get the environmental controls system reset, before the lethal exposure threshold was reached. The anthrax exposure would be treated, the shrapnel wound tended to, and Jules-the daughter of his heart and love of Sam's life-would be okay.
"Hey, Sarge, is that you?" Jules gasps the words.
"Hey, Jules, you stay with me," Parker lifted up the comm device, as it speaking into it directly might bring him closer to her. "You hang in there, okay?"
"I couldn't get through to him," she apologized for what she saw as a failure. In his seat, Toth was rendered immobile. This woman is so close to either bleeding to death or succumbing to anthrax exposure, and she's apologizing for failing her boss?
And Larry Toth also realized-he did, finally, understand-that neither Samuel Braddock nor Julianna Callaghan fit any typical mold. He hadn't understood-certainly hadn't believed-that they could really go back to just being teammates and friends after having been lovers, yet they had done it. Looking objectively at the years of hot call transcripts that he'd examined over the past 12 months, Toth was aware that there was nothing in any of them that would have been exclusively indicative of a romantic relationship between the pair. Oh, yes, Braddock had repeatedly expressed concern for threats that subjects had posed to Callaghan's safety or risks she'd taken to protect hostages or civilians-but he did that for everyone on the team, not just her. The words he'd spoken to Greg Parker an hour ago (how long? hot call lasted 5+ hours) now revealed themselves to be wisps of fog that evaporated under the light of the sun. Put into the crucible today, Braddock had proven just how refined an instrument he truly was. Larry had watched as the ex-military sniper had walked across the clean room, right past his wounded girlfriend, and instead carried the wounded female scientist to safety. No tears, no obvious emotion, no hesitations. Absolute and complete professionalism.
"Thank you for your honesty, Rose," Dr. Bergan, RDA's CEO ended the call with his CFO and delivered sober glances to both Parker and Toth that expressed his total and heartfelt dismay at what had happened under his less than thorough supervision.
Those sitting in the SRU conference room heard Ed Lane's voice through the tabletop comm unit speak the exact same words moments later, but with a very different delivery. The CEO's voice had been regretful, the sorrow of a man realizing that someone he has trusted just proved themselves to be unworthy of it. The TL's tone had been the tight-leashed anger of a man who could do precious little to try and protect a subordinate who was in mortal danger because of a greedy woman who viewed the lives of countless innocent patients as a small price to pay in the quest for a company profit and a year-end personal bonus.
Ed marched to the clean room, hoping and praying that Jules would be able to convince Xavier of the truth in time to save their lives. And thanks to the phenomenal negotiator that she has become, his prayers are answered. In an amazing display of courage, Xavier lets his two hostages leave, knowing that the decontamination chamber may not work fast enough to bring him out next.
"Be ready. She's lost a lot of blood," Sam alerted the paramedics who were waiting just a short distance down the hallway. As soon as the door opened, Sam helped Dr. Applewhite guide Jules out of the chamber and onto the nearby gurney.
"Come on, Jules. Come on." Ed spoke emphatically, urging her to keep fighting.
"We're going to give you an IV and then get you to the hospital," one paramedic told Jules as he handed Sam an oxygen mask to place over her nose and mouth.
"I love you. You're gonna be okay, Jules." Even though Sam had muted and removed his headset before speaking, Jules' comm unit was still in place and on, so everyone linked in still heard the quiet avowal that Sam spoke to her as the paramedics worked to save her life. Jules didn't-likely couldn't-respond verbally, and Sam's body was between the gurney and the security cameras, so any unspoken answer Jules might have managed was just between her and Sam. What the remote watchers did see was the look that Ed-and Spike and Raf, too, for that matter-directed at the nearby camera. Ed's laser blue gaze easily pierced the distance with its intensity. Look at this. Look at them! he silently demanded.
"Okay, we've got her stabilized for the moment. Let's get her to the hospital," one of the paramedics announced.
"Alright, team. Unis have Xavier and Rose in custody. Spike, Raf, go get the equipment in the command center packed up. Sam, you take one of the SUVs and follow the ambulance to the hospital. Jules shouldn't be alone right now. I'll give the scene a once-over before handing things off, and we'll all meet at the hospital to check on Jules, okay?" Ed met Sam's eyes squarely and gave a small nod.
"Copy that," Sam breathed out the acknowledgement. He stepped away to allow the gurney to be turned and moved down the hallway, then moved back close to it and took hold of the hand on Jules' uninjured side. Even though they all had things to do right now, all three members of the team who were present stayed to watch the gurney as it was wheeled away. For Ed and Spike, the moment felt like deja vu. A couple years earlier, they'd watched an almost identical scene: Jules shot on the rooftop, Sam walking with her all the way to the ambulance, letting go only when he didn't have the choice not to. It had been the first thing to clue the team into the fact that Sam and Jules were secretly dating at the time. Now this repeat stands as an affirmation of the depths of the feelings that those two clearly have for each other, always have, and clearly always will.
"Did you know...?" Raf asked Spike as they walked back to the command center and started taking Spike's setup apart.
The techie sighed, considering what to say to their newest teammate. Then he overtly turned off his comm unit and gestured for Raf to do the same. "We figured out they were dating in secret when Jules got shot a couple years ago. But they broke up when Jules came back to the team after she recovered. I didn't pick up on them getting back together, but...I don't know. I guess it doesn't really bother me."
"But it's against the rules."
"Technically, yeah, it is. I don't know how long it's been going on this time, but I certainly haven't seen it causing any problems. There are rules, yeah, but black-and-white rules don't always make practical sense in the real grayscale world we live in. I mean, you can't really help who you fall in love with. And to be punished for doing something that everyone else in the world can do with no problems...is that right? I don't think so."
Raf picked up another piece of equipment and considered what Spike just said. He could see the other man's point. Married police officers did't face-at least in any official sense-scrutiny over whether their relationships impacted their ability to work professionally; neither did single officers who date civilians. It seemed obvious that Sam and Jules had faced the firing squad simply because they happened to fall in love with someone they worked with. Raf suddenly remembered his first day in SRU, when he'd invited the available members of the team to the club where he and his band had a Valentine's Day performance booked. How closely Sam and Jules had been sitting to each other in the booth. The way their gazes had met and held. He now wonders if being an outsider at the time might have helped him pick up on what the existing members of the team didn't see: that the connection between Sam Braddock and Julianna Callaghan went beyond that of mere teammates. He thinks back over the months since then. Like Spike, he can't recall a time when either one of them has let their personal life interfere with their job. Raf generally prefers the certainty of those black-and-white rules Spike mentioned, but...can he really blame Jules and Sam for choosing to grab hold of happiness when it appeared in front of them, rather than being self-sacrificial just to follow a rule?
Spike was silently grateful when Raf chose not to ask any more questions. He needed the time to think. And there was certainly plenty to consider. How could he not have realized that his two best friends have been secretly dating each other for who knew how long? Was he that unobservant? No, I'm not, Spike realized. Just preoccupied. Pa dying, Ma moving back to Italy, me being on my own for the first time... So, really it wasn't a huge surprise that he didn't figure it out, he decided. So that left him to figure out how he would feel about it. Will he mean the stuff he said to Raf just a few minutes ago? Does it make a difference to him if two of his teammates are dating? Has it hurt anyone? Does it really matter that they've broken a rule? No, it doesn't-none of it. They deserve to be happy, and he's going to be happy for them.
Alone in the SUV, heading to the hospital with Raf and Spike in the vehicle behind him, Ed takes time to think. It was probably good that this hot call had been such an intense one-if only from the standpoint that being so focused on the biological hazards and the civilians and team members who were thus at risk has kept Ed from having any time to explode at Sam-or Jules, too-but more likely Sam, over this second secret relationship. Ed was man enough to admit that he and Greg hadn't handled things the right way the first time. Insisting that Sam go out with them for drinks only a day after he was dumped by Jules? Justifying his callous reaction to the emotional pain he'd seen in the eyes of the normally stoic sniper by saying that he'd never seen the pair as a real couple? Laying the blame for the relationship's existence solely on Sam, and not giving Jules any of the same criticism? None of that had been right. With the rocky patch in his own marriage being in the not-too distant past, what justification did Ed have to pass judgment on anyone else's relationship? Okay, so Sam and Jules were an item again. If he thought about it, Ed realized that it might not be all that big of a deal. Lack of time had kept him from pressing the issue with Greg that morning, but Ed would color himself highly surprised if this had only been going on for a couple of months, the way Greg implied. Not with Jules and Sam talking about honeymoons. Ed couldn't think of any time in at least past year, if not even longer, when either party had been anything other than professional. Will he ask how long they've been back together? Can he react calmly if the answer isn't one he likes? What will he do about this? Accept it? Try to split them up again? The fact that this is a renewed relationship strongly suggests that being apart isn't an option for either Sam or Jules. Will he support them staying on the same team, since they've proven they can handle it? Or will he follow the rules and force one of them to leave?
When they arrived at the hospital, they didn't see Sam anywhere in the waiting room, so Ed went to the information desk to get details.
"I'm Ed Lane with SRU. One of my officers, Julianna Callaghan, was brought in a little while ago. Another of my officers, Sam Braddock, was with her. Where are they?"
"Officer Callaghan is being treated in room four. That way," the nurse pointed. "Officer Braddock is with her."
Approaching the room, Ed and Spike again got that feeling of deja vu. Sam was beside Jules' bed, just like he had been years before, only sitting this time. Sam's body canted forward and he was holding Jules' hand again, brushing fingers along her cheek just outside the coverage of an oxygen mask. A bag hanging from an IV stand was dripping something into the IV line running into Jules' other arm.
The trio stood in the doorway for a minute deliberating what to do. Jules looked to be a bit foggy at that moment, but none of them could imagine that Sam wasn't aware of their presence. However, his eyes remained fixed on Jules. His shoulders relaxed slightly when her eyes opened to meet his.
"You guys might as well come in," Sam said without looking at them.
Ed approached the bed first. "How are you doing?" he asked Jules.
"Okay," the word is more whispered than spoken.
Sam lifted a finger to his lips in a warning for Jules not to talk. "She got decontaminated just as a precaution. Weapons will be okay, but she'll need a new uniform and vest just to be on the safe side. Doctor stitched up the laceration in her arm. It was fairly deep, so it took a quite a few, but he said Jules will be just fine. Stitches may come out by the end of the week. They gave her Diphenhydramine as a pretreatment and just started the regemine of Raxibacumab. They want to monitor her at least through tomorrow and do some follow-up checks before even talking about discharge, but they feel confident that the lethal exposure threshold wasn't reached and that these treatments are largely precautionary."
"That's good news," Ed expressed his relief, which Raf and Spike echoed. After a few moments of silence, the Team Leader decided that ignoring the elephant in the room was pointless.
"So, a couple months, huh?" An eyebrow lifts as Ed posed the rhetorical question.
"What?" Sam looked up in confusion.
"This," Ed gestured between the two. "This morning, Greg said it's been going on for two months."
"He's known for two months. How long he suspected before that..." a heavy sigh from the blond sniper. "Maybe from the very start. I don't know. He didn't say and we didn't ask."
"So when was the beginning?" Spike interrupted.
A glance passed between Sam and Jules.
"The day we all got grilled by Toth."
Even though he'd been sure the relationship have some length to it, Ed found himself still a bit surprised to be told it had been an entire year now.
"It's not like we did this to spite him," Sam began to explain. "We aren't childish. But it is at least in part because of Toth. Those interviews...he made us both face up to things we'd been trying-and somewhat succeeding-to ignore ever since we broke up: that the feelings we had for each other were still there. Always had been and always would be. Once we realized that..."
"Getting back together was inevitable," Jules' completion of Sam's sentence could be heard even through her oxygen mask.
"We hated lying to everyone again, but..." Sam shrugged one shoulder. He didn't finish the sentence, but it was clear to the team all the same: Sam and Jules hadn't liked lying but they hadn't had a choice about it-at least, not one they could live with.
"How did Greg find out?"
"He showed up at Jules' place before shift one day to tell her about the Law Enforcement Professional of the Year award she'd been chosen for. And I just trot down the stairs half-dressed, all easy-breezy, asking Jules what she wanted for breakfast...talk about getting busted. But he didn't have much time to dress us down over it before we got upped early to take that gun call at McClendon Park-Martin Terran, remember? Boss said we'd pick the lecture up again later, but by the end of the day...I guess he decided not to do anything about it; just told us he had faith we could do the job right in spite of our relationship." Sam paused and then his entire body tensed up as the precise topic of discussion and who he was having it with belatedly registered. "How? How do you know?"
"You two busted yourselves a month ago, but I guess it didn't actually hit anyone's radar until today. Talking honeymoon ideas on the job? Really?" Ed raised an eyebrow.
Sam and Jules were both motionless for long seconds. Then Sam breathed out, "Oh, shit."
"Yeah. Toth just found out. He showed up at HQ today right when we got the call. That's why the Boss didn't come."
Behind her oxygen mask, Jules' face was horrified. "What happened?" she mouthed more than gasps the question.
"I don't know," Ed admitted. "But I'm going to guess Toth didn't stop by to say 'congratulations'."
Sam let go of Jules' hand, lifting both of his to run through his cropped blond hair in a very Greg-like gesture. "He could lose his job," the sniper muttered.
"What?" Raf asked the question.
Sam's head lifted and his blue eyes met Raf's brown ones. "When the team got put on probation a year ago, Sarge got a very specific warning about us-" he flicked a hand between himself and Jules. "If we crossed the line again with a personal relationship, we'd both be suspended and disciplined...and so would Sarge, if he knew about it. He should have reported us when he found out, but he didn't. He let it slide. Trusted us not to make a mistake." He snorted bitterly. "And what do we do? Talk about honeymoon ideas right after a call, with our mics still on and the auto-scriptor recording! How could we be that stupid? Risking our careers was one thing-risking the Boss's?"
"Sam," Jules whispered his name. They locked eyes, and to their watching teammates, it was clear that a silent conversation was taking place. Both faces lacked the masks they'd obviously been wearing to conceal their truth, and it's a powerful revelation to their teammates of just how strong their connection is. For Spike and Raf, there is the hope that such a relationship awaits them sometime in the future. Ed knows that he already has it with Sophie, and how crucial and sustaining their relationship is for him to be able to do this job for as long as he has.
"Don't give up on this," Ed found himself advising. "If this-" he gestured between them again "-is what you want, then fight for it. I'll fight for it."
Two heads snapped around to lock onto him.
"I almost lost my wife and my kids because I kept putting the job in front of them. The job is important to me, but so are Sophie, Clark, and Izzy. I could have ended up alone if I hadn't reevaluated my priorities. I don't want either of you being alone for the rest of your lives because of this job. I don't like it that you were lying to us by omission when you were keeping this a secret, but I get why you did it. I'm sure Greg did, too, and that's why he kept this secret for you. You're good at your jobs; both of you are so damned good at what you do. This team doesn't deserve to lose either of you because of a rule designed by a paper-pusher."
All four of the ambulatory team members leave the hospital and go back to SRU. Jules insisted that Sam go, too; to wrap up his work day, get their stuff, and try-if possible-to keep their decisions from blowing back onto the Boss.
"I love you, Sam," Jules lifted her oxygen mask long enough to speak those four simple-yet powerful-words.
"Nowhere else I'd rather be," Sam offered the phrase that most on the team had spoken at one time or another. Spike suddenly recalled the sniper saying those exact words a year ago, when-after Dr. Toth tried to forbid Sam and Jules from doing the double-drop to take down Colin Potter-the Boss had given each team member the opportunity to stand down.
Greg and Dr. Toth were sitting at the table, piles of papers and other call-related gear scattered over the surface.
"I confronted you with your suspension. You agreed to it. But when you saw your people out there were at risk, what'd you do?" Toth waved one hand in the air. "You went high-noon on me-at great risk to your chances of getting your job back. Now why is that?"
Ed had moved faster than the rest of his team and reached SRU and the briefing room in time to hear Toth speaking.
"You saw what happened out there," Ed didn't make his words anything other than an emphatic statement as he sat down next to the psychologist. "Priority of Life was observed."
"Today it was. We don't know about tomorrow," Toth dismissed.
"Well, hell," Ed thought. "No one knows about tomorrow. Nothing is guaranteed for anyone."
"Oh, you gotta be kidding me." Ed had looked down to see a document of suspension sitting on the table in front of Toth.
"Your Sergeant's suspension orders," Toth confirmed.
"You just don't get it, do you?"
"I've seen this team. I've read the reports."
"You don't see what this team does. You don't live the job. If it wasn't for him-" Ed pointed to Greg.
"Eddie," Greg tried to warn his friend off from career suicide.
"Sam and Jules? That was the right call."
"You can't say that," Greg shook his head.
Ed slapped the table in emphasis. "It was the right call because it was your call. And that's why we're here. That's why we're Team One. So don't come in here and tell me otherwise."
Sam, Spike and Raf walked into the room now, though Sam stopped short. There haven't been too many people in his life that he has ever hated, but he'd seen two of them today: that damned scientist Logan, who'd gotten Jules hurt, and now this sadistic psychologist Toth again. For one mad moment, Sam wanted to offer the man some sort of prize as a thank you for helping him and Jules get back together a year ago. But sanity keeps a firm grip on his tongue and he said nothing.
"See, here's the thing. I like this team. I like your Sergeant. I trust him. The problem is: he doesn't trust himself. Team One is off of probation as of today. Regarding Callaghan and Braddock-" Toth turned to face Sam directly.
Sam met the psychologist's gaze with a blank stare of his own.
"Based on what I've seen today, I will make a personal appeal to the chief to reverse his decision to split them up. Until that time, they will remain on Team One." Toth had swung away from Sam to face Greg as he spoke that last part.
Sam's gaze flicked around the room, trying to absorb this. He and Jules were going to be split up-professionally? And now Toth-Toth?-was going to go to bat for them? What kind of twilight zone was this?
"Thank you," Greg smiled.
"How is she?" Toth directed the question to Sam. The sniper wore a professional mask and didn't tear into the psychologist the way he honestly wanted to. Career-preservation, perhaps, or maybe registering a measure of sincere concern in the older man's voice.
"She's stable, Sir. She'll be alright," Sam replied.
"I'm glad to hear it," and Toth appeared to mean it.
"Sergeant Parker, you have some thinking to do. I'm going to give you one week to decide if you want to continue to lead this team. Your team trusts your judgment. So do I. One week." Toth walked out of the room and every single person hoped it's for the last time, that they'd never see the man again.
"We'll debrief tomorrow," Ed made the executive decision after Greg walked out of the room after refusing to tear up the suspension papers on the spot. "Sam, you make sure to take care of yourself so that you can take care of Jules, okay? Let us know how she's doing when you come in tomorrow-and if you need anything tonight, just give one of us a call, you hear me?"
"Copy that."
As soon as Ed got home, Sophie could see that he was worked up about something. It wasn't the same as when he'd had to take a lethal shot-she knew only too well what that looked like on her husband. No, this was different. He was more frustrated or angry or something like that; not withdrawn and despondent. She quietly asked Clark to keep an eye on Izzy, and as she headed for the master bedroom after Ed, she heard Clark start to play the child-friendly songs that had been some of the earliest cello pieces he'd learned.
"What's wrong? Was it a bad call?"
"Yes, but not like that. Everyone walked away today. Jules didn't-she was wheeled away. But she's going to be fine."
"What happened?" Sophie gently pushed Ed down to sit on the bed and sat next to him, hoping that he'd share with her what was bothering him. She listened in silence as he spoke about everything that had happened that day.
"Are you angry?" she asked when he'd finished.
"Angry? Why would I be angry?"
"Eddie..." his wife chided gently. "Three members of your team-three of your friends-lied to you by omission for months. They didn't trust you with this secret. I know you, darling. You're angry-or at least upset."
"I was," he admitted. "But then I watched them, I listened... You know, when Greg and I broke them up the first time they dated, I told him that I didn't see Sam and Jules as a couple-like my impressions were what mattered most. But today...Soph...there is no way I could have done what Sam did today. I look back at all the stuff they've done this year...they got through all of it because they had each other to lean on. I was wrong about them, Sophie."
Greg lay sleepless in his bed that night. He would have thought that having the team's probation ended would ensure a good night's sleep, but that didn't seem to be in the cards. Too many thoughts whirled around inside his head for sleep to come easily, or maybe at all. The past few years had been some of the toughest he'd ever known, at least since the days of having his wife and son ripped away and his hard climb out of the bottle. Dean's sudden reappearance in his life had been an un-looked for blessing, just like the relationship with Marina was proving to be. But he still couldn't help feeling that he didn't deserve either of them, that one day he'd fail one or both of them in some spectacular fashion. And there was the lingering aftermath of his best friend of several decades having been seriously wounded as a result of the decision he'd made to bring in an outside psychologist to do the team's psychological evaluations last year. Why had he done that? When and why had he started questioning his own judgment as the leader of the team?
If there was a single smoking gun, it might have been the night of the spree shooting at the museum and the brutal SIU sessions that the entire team had endured from Agent Jill Hastings afterward.
"She's gunning for you," Ed had said to him that night. And she had been, Greg knew. It had been easier for her to blame Greg-Brian's SRU Team Leader-than to admit that an officer she'd personally trained with an eye to joining SRU hadn't been able to do the job when it had counted and had lost his life as a result. It had, he now judged, planted a seed of doubt in his mind that maybe Greg Parker wasn't really as good at the job as everyone thought he was.
Jill had been targeting him...had Larry Toth been targeting Team One?
"Military psychologist. He breaks up teams." That had been Sam's observation the day of the requals. And it might hit the nail square on the head. Just like Jill had been laser-focused in her post-spree interviews to find some action or inaction of Greg's to prove he was at fault, so too had Larry gone after each team member's vulnerabilities with a machete, deliberately creating the very stress responses that he used to justify hammering them even more over.
"Is this why the probation lasted a full year?" Greg now wondered. Toth had left them completely alone until today, to the point when they'd all basically forgotten that each call transcript was being sent to the psychologist's office for detailed review. An entire year of hot calls, yet Toth hadn't contacted them until today. Why? Logically it was because he'd had no reason to, nothing at all to point to as a justification to remove even a single member from the team. Not until he'd read the recorded conversation between Sam and Jules, immediately high-tailed it to SRU to throw down the punishments, and apparently called the Commander and Chief on the way. Why had Toth been focused so heavily on the two of them, almost from the start? Okay, yes, Spike, Wordy, and Ed had all gotten reamed, too, but not even close to the extent that the former couple had received. Why hadn't Toth followed up on Ed's marital status and work/family balance? Why hadn't he asked about Spike's commitment to the team, both before and after his father's death from cancer? Why hadn't Toth requested Wordy's new health assessment-where he would have learned of the Parkinson's diagnosis months before Ed's overreaction forced Wordy to resign from SRU? Why hadn't any or all of those red-flag issues Toth had identified sparked even one single warning like the one he'd delivered to Greg about Jules and Sam and any future renewed relationship?
Recognizing that the few hours of restless sleep he'd gotten after first going to bed would be all he'd get tonight, Greg finally got up and quietly headed into the kitchen to turn on the coffee pot. While the pot brewed and after he'd poured and begun drinking, he continued his reflections.
Sam and Jules. What, exactly, about that honeymoon conversation had been so damning that it caused Toth's certainty about a resumed romantic attachment between them? Even though he'd thought while reading the transcript that the exchange was obvious in its implications, he isn't so sure about that now. Sam and Jules were both—officially-single and had just wrapped up a call where a colleague's wedding had been interrupted by gunfire and followed by her new husband being shot. Was it really so unbelievable that they might afterwards talk about their own thoughts concerning marriage and dream honeymoons? Had it just been the fact that it was Sam and Jules having that conversation that had provoked the relationship assumption? What if it had been Jules and Spike? Jules and Raf? Sam and former teammate Leah?
"Dad?"
Greg started in surprise.
"Dean? Son, are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Are you?" Dean shuffled into the kitchen and poured his own cup of coffee, for which he got a look from his father. "What? You drink it. And I'm as tall as you are, so no need for any growth-stunting comments."
Greg-who had in fact been able to say precisely that-chose to salute his son with his cup instead. Much as he appreciated watching Jules' growing skill in profiling and negotiating, he was now experiencing the same thing with his seventeen-year-old son. Dean was proving to have quite an insightful personality and intellect. That made Greg regret yet again the decade of their estrangement and at the same time rejoice in their reunion now. Rejoice-and yet watch for a falling sandbag. There was a part of him that, logically or not, couldn't help feeling that he didn't deserve this. That somehow he was going to screw up this second chance just like he had the first. Joanne and Dean, Marina and Dean...
"Dad?"
"Sorry. Yeah, I'm fine. Just a rough day yesterday, Jules getting hurt and all."
"But she's going to be okay, right?"
"She will. I'm fine, Dean-O, really. Just tired. Hard to settle down last night. Any plans today?"
"What happened with Toth?" Jules asked. Her voice-much stronger now than it had been earlier-woke Sam from his light sleep.
The sniper sat upright in the padded hospital chair and stretched to loosen the kinks in his muscles. "He decided he was wrong about us. Thinks we can handle dating and being on the same team so he's going to appeal to the Chief and Commander to reverse their decision to make one of us move to a different team. The Boss got suspended for covering for us and has a week to decide if he'll accept the suspension-and the likely end of his career in SRU-or stay and keep leading the team. Debrief got pushed to today, so I'll need to be there by 9 AM."
"Hold me," she requested. Sam helped her shift over on the bed and slid in behind her to lay his arm over her waist. So much was still unknown for both them and for the Boss, but in the here-and-now of the moment, together, life was good.
AN: Thanks to Venetiaj for the review asking why the honeymoon talk would have been enough to bring Toth back breathing condemnation. I think I remembered most of what I said in my review reply and put it in Greg's head here, as I'm sure he would have started his week of thinking almost immediately.
The next chapter will be the final one for this story. Thanks for coming along on this journey with me and stay tuned for what I might have coming up next.