Dear readers - what do you want? Jack and Teddy getting closer or just staying friends? I don't know yet.

Another four days later, on Sunday evening, her mind was still somehow occupied by him. Where was he? How was he? Or worse: was he still alive, after all? So much could have happened in between.
He hadn't come back here, not alive and not in a black bag, like Owen had predicted. By now, she had checked twice with the people from the morgue. But if he had died, he could as well have been brought to any other hospital in the area and then she'd never even know it if he had survived or not.

The evening was unpleasantly cold. She pulled her jacket closer around her body as she searched for the car keys in her pocket while she balanced her bag with one hand and her used clothes in her other. It had rained not long ago and the ground and the roof of the car were wet.

"Dr. Altman."

The voice made her jump. She knew this craggy voice. It sounded even harsher than she remembered it. Slowly, she turned around.
She made herself expect almost everything. That he was not alone… that he would point a gun at her…

The truth was far worse. He looked like hell. He stood there, leaning against another car, bending over, clutching his stomach with one arm. It must hurt like hell. He wore a woolen hat over the bandage round his head. He still wore the cast around his nose but it looked a bit rumpled. At least his chin and cheekbone weren't as swollen any more as they had been a few days ago. He looked even a bit more like the man on the photo that she'd seen.

But the color of his skin. Pale white. He looked like a walking ghost.

"Four days, Jack.", she remarked. "I already thought you didn't make it."

"Sorry.", he breathed. "That I'm still alive."

"It didn't mean it this way. You look like hell." She derogatorily shook her head. "How did you find me?" He looked like he had caught some of the recent rain. If he didn't watch out, he could easily get pulmonary inflammation. Life threatening, in his state.

"It took me two days to find you.", he silently said. "The day before yesterday you were way too fast for me when you left the building… yesterday I could make out the numbers on your license plate." He pointed at her car. So that was how he had found her here. He'd been probably been waiting here for hours.

"What do you want from me?", she asked. Hell, wasn't that obvious? He was on the run and he was close to dying if she didn't help him.

He looked up, into her eyes. He was not good at asking for help, he had never been good at that. All his life long he had always pulled himself together and swallowed down the pain until it would go away one day. But that didn't work now. With every minute that had gone by after he had left the hospital ward it had become worse. Without any medication against the pain he couldn't even stand upright any more.
"Help me…", he breathed.

"Do you want me to bring you back in?", Teddy asked, though she already knew his answer. He didn't want to be found.

He shook his head. The bad feeling overcame him that she probably didn't even want to help him. "Or just give me something against the pain. I swear I'll never bother you again."

"You won't bother me again.", she remarked and put her bag and the used clothes onto the roof of her still locked car. She hated to put these things on the wet roof. What was she doing here?
Damning herself already, she turned back again an went the few steps over to him. Wordlessly she pulled up one of his eyelids and then felt his pulse. "Because you'll be dead by then.", she added.

"I can't go back in there.", he spoke under his breath. "I'd rather die out here."

Her hand still lay at his throat. They looked into each other's eyes.
Teddy wondered how calm he spoke about his own death. "Why?"

"I can't let them find me again."

"Who are they?" She knew that he still didn't want to answer. But now she'd leave him no choice. "You owe me some answers, mister. Otherwise I'm not going to help you."

He stood with his back to the wall. "Chinese government.", he silently said.

"What?" Not believing it, she stared at him. This was by far not what she had expected. It sounded so strange that even had to be true. "Why?"

"I…" How should he tell her his life's story in just one sentence? "… worked for our DoD and other agencies… they're trying to take revenge."

Teddy stood there, spellbound. Was this believable? Was he credible at all? Somebody was on to him, that was clear. His body spoke for itself. "Did they do this all to you?", she asked.

He slightly nodded, not wanting to think back.
They both stood in silence for a while.

"I know it's hard to believe me…", he added.

Actually, it was not that hard. Everything in the picture fit. "Who were these agents that I met?", she asked.

"Most likely Chinese Agents. They were too close." He groaned, "I had to leave."

"They said they were from homeland security", Teddy commented. She hadn't believed a word they'd said.

Jack shook his head. "Homeland security doesn't even know I'm here. There's no reason for them to suspect I'd be here. They would have known about the police report and they wouldn't have come to you, trust me."

He spoke out loud what she'd been thinking all the way long.

"I know I'm asking much.", he began, pleading her to help him, "If I survive this I swear I'm gonna pay you back… and if I have no chance then tell me now."

"This isn't about money." She took the car keys out. He was a pitiful creature, one that she couldn't leave out here. "Get in."

He was so glad to hear these words.

Teddy watched him push himself away from the other car and limping over to hers. Hesitatingly she went over to him and helped him walking. She knew what injuries were beneath that wet jacket that he was wearing. There was hardly a spot where she could touch him without hurting him even more.

As they finally sat in the car he leant back and closed his eyes. "Take me to some cheap motel and give me something against the pain. I'll be okay.", he tiredly said.

No way, Teddy thought. He needed more than that. "Let this be my concern. I know what I'm doing."
In the corner of her view she saw Christina coming out of the building. Hurriedly she started the engine and drove off, hoping that nobody had seen her in the past minutes.

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He didn't know any more how he had managed to get up here. She hadn't gone to a motel – she had taken him with her, home to her apartment which was on the third floor of an old brick building, a ten minute drive away from the hospital. Somehow she had dragged him up the stairs, not like a doctor but like a drill sergeant, yelling at him to take another step and one more.

He was lying on a sofa, in a warm living room. The first soft bed in days. Aside of the three days in hospital, the first soft bed in months.

Half dazed by the exhaustion and the pain from his abdomen he watched her bend over him. She used scissors to cut the tee shirt open that he was wearing.
Goddamnit, she really looked like Audrey.
Why couldn't she look like somebody else? Why did she – the only person of all he'd met in this hospital who he trusted at least a little bit – have to remind him of such painful things, every time he looked at her?

"Here, take these.", she commanded, handing him a glass of water and two pills.

She cut the bandages around his torso open and cleaned the surgery wounds. The painkillers took a while to kick in. He was so exhausted that he would have let her do anything with his body, no matter how much it hurt.

After a few minutes, she told him to sit up because she wanted to have a look at the wounds on his back, too.

It all felt surreal to him. One by one she took off the dressings and replaced them with clean ones. He felt her hands on his skin. The first time ever, that somebody was treating him with care. And yet it hurt to be taken care of.
He hated it to feel somebody being behind him. Too many bad memories. It was not easy to stay focused not to freak out. You're not over there, he told himself again and again, you're home.

For Teddy, it was the first time to take a closer look. It had been years – since med school? – since she'd done something as simple as examining such superficial wounds. When he'd been on her operating table she hadn't cared that much about these wounds. It had been a war against the clock to get the bullets out and stop the bleeding.

"How did you get those?", she asked and ran her finger along one of the bloody weals.

He didn't answer.
She heard him mumbling something, not to her but to himself. He was all tensed up. Every time she touched his back, he cringed a little. The closer she got to him, the better she could hear what he was telling himself: you're not over there, you're home.

She helped him lie back down decided not to ask any questions for now. It was obvious, that he had gone through hell and she had somehow tapped into a discomforting zone with that question.

He silently watched her pull a tree in a pot over to the couch. A few moments later he saw that she was preparing an infusion bottle for him. He held out his hand to make it easier for to put the needle into the back of his hand. For a moment their eyes met.
"You're dehydrated", she remarked.
"And you're good at improvising", he mentioned, nodding at the IV bottle that hung on the palm tree.

"Yap", she just said and thought back to her time in Iraq. That was the place where she had learned to improvise like this. In med school she had learned to do things right. But down there she had come to terms with the plain and ugly reality. There had been so many times when she had to improvise, in all kinds of ways. When things had been missing, when equipment hadn't been sufficient… or sometimes when time and personnel hadn't been there to do things properly, after a helicopter loaded with ten wounded men came and nobody except for two doctors was there to treat them.
"You better sleep now.", she silently said and stood up. So many times five or six of ten hadn't made it. Most of the times, when they had shot wounds like this guy.

Jack noticed how silent she suddenly was. He already wanted to ask her if he'd said anything wrong, but he let it be.

Teddy switched off the lights but let a little lamp on her library shelf on. "If you need anything, I'll be right over here.", she said and added, "Me and my gun, if you're thinking about trying to rape me." She hoped he'd understand her sarcasm.

He did. "My doctor didn't allow me to do that." A little smile appeared at his face. He wished her a good night and watched her disappear into the room. For quite a while he stared at the closed door and almost couldn't believe it how lucky he was to be here.

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Teddy lay in bed but she couldn't sleep. Goddamnit, there was a wounded soldier just outside the room- why had she taken him home with her? What if he died? That would cause a lot of problems... She quickly put them aside. His state was bad, but not that bad. He wasn't close to death.
Was he dangerous? When she had joked about her gun, she had actually wished that she'd really have one here.

She lay in bed, eyes open. Was this part of a guilt trip, trying to make up for all those men that she hadn't been able to save? In the moment when she'd first seen this ranger tattoo she'd unwillingly been reminded of the old times in Iraq.

I did nothing wrong. I couldn't have done more, she told herself and turned to lie on the other side.

No, it was Henry, who he reminded her of.

That sudden realization struck her a blow. A guy with no-one left but her. One she knew nothing about but decided to help.

She fought the tears but she lost that war quite soon.
She wished this man out there wouldn't be a stranger named Jack Bauer but her husband. That was the moment when she started to hate herself for having let this guy come here and get so close.

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Jack missing Audrey,
Teddy missing Henry...