Author's Note:
First up, I originally intended for Booth to name the vomer, mandible, hyoid, and sacrum, but that was because I "knew" that there were 212 bones in the body. Once I started researching and found out there were 206, I had to have Booth "miss" four bones from my original count. But I was so proud of knowing them myself, I had to at least refer to them.
I owe a tip of the hat to reader Selene Illusinia, who guessed the general idea behind Booth's "error" and inadvertently pushed me figure out just how Bones would react – and assured me that I actually did sound like I knew what I was talking about vis-à-vis human bones.
This chapter is going to be a bit more serious than I originally intended, as the idea of Bones consciously "cheating" bugged me a little. So I had to find some alternative. Trust me, the humorous aspects will return.
The Bones In Bones
Chapter 5
Brennan stopped and stared at the note in her hand.
"Come on, Bones, we got a case. Get in the car!" Booth called.
Bones automatically got into the passenger seat and buckled up purely by instinct, but her eyes never left the note.
Booth glanced over at her, concerned. "Bones, you OK? Hey, it's no big deal."
"I need… I need a few minutes, Booth." She closed her eyes.
Before her, she saw her table. Then, starting with the feet, she slowly "built" a skeleton, bone by bone. Feet, ankles, legs, spine, ribs, then skull. But for the first time in her life, she did it bone by bone – and numbered each.
She finished off the skull with the vomer, bone number 203.
Then she went back in and filled in the chest. Three bones in the sternum, for 206.
But her skeleton still had no pelvis. Ilium, ischium, pubis.
Sacrum – four to six fused sacral vertebrae.
Finally, coccyx. Three to five fused coccygeal vertebrae.
Her eyes snapped open. "Booth, the human body has at least 216 bones, not 206!"
"What are you saying now, Bones? I still lost?"
"No, forget the stupid bet! You win, all right? This is far more important!"
Booth could hear the tension – hell, near panic – in her voice. He looked over at her, and nearly hit a taxi. He forced himself to focus on the road. "Bones, what's wrong? I'm not getting you here."
"Booth, I've spent my entire life studying the human skeleton. I know every bone by name, by sight, by touch. I know every aspect of their surface, purpose, and function. I am quite possibly the world's greatest expert on bones. But I never once counted them."
"Huh? Keep going, I'm trying to catch up."
"Booth, I'd always taken the number 206 for granted. It was a tenet of faith. But I never once noticed that several of the 'bones' on that list were actually collections of fused bones. I've spent my entire academic and professional career operating under a very flawed assumption, Booth!"
Booth spotted a vacancy by the curb and pulled over. He looked her in the eyes. "Hey, Bo – Temperance. It's no big deal."
She snapped at him. "It's a huge deal, Booth. My entire professional identity is based on precision and accuracy and simply knowing everything – and here I've not only made a huge mistake, I've been making it for almost two decades. And it took you and a silly sex game to get me to recognize it."
"There is nothing silly about our sex games, Temperance."
She swatted at him. "This is no time for joking, Booth."
"On the contrary – this is exactly the time for joking."
She stopped and stared at him. "I know I say it a lot, Booth, but I really don't understand that."
"You're experiencing what most people would call a 'crisis of faith.' You've just had some aspects of your most fundamental beliefs not only challenged, but shattered. You have two ways of dealing with it. You can obsess over it and let it break you, or you can adapt to it, learn to adjust your beliefs to reflect the new reality you've just discovered. And the easiest way I've found to start that process is to laugh."
"That makes a bit of sense, but… laugh?"
"Yes, Bones, laugh. You're the world's greatest expert on bones. It's even your nickname. And you made a very simple, very silly mistake that you didn't catch for years – as you said it took me and a sex game for you to recognize that."
"Silly sex game, Booth. I said 'silly' sex game.'"
"And I said there is nothing silly about our sex games. There's nothing silly about anything involving our sex life."
"You're… joking here, right? You're emphasizing an insignificant portion of our discussion far beyond its relevance as a form of absurdity, to draw me out from fixating on the main point."
"Let me add that there is nothing insignificant or absurd about our sex life, either."
Bones smiled in spite of herself. "And it's working."
He finally cracked a smile. "See, Bones? Don't you see the absurdity in the whole situation?"
"Yeah… yeah, I do, Booth. But it still hurts."
"Well, as I said, you have a choice here. You can obsess over it and let it ruin your entire professional career, or you can note that even you can fall victim to assumptions and not occasionally questioning even the most fundamental aspects of your chosen profession. Hey, you could even write up a professional article out of it, talking about how we're doing students a disservice by simply feeding them the 206 number without putting a little asterisk on it."
Bones considered his words – she didn't quite get the "asterisk" part, but could figure out the gist of it from the context. She then leaned forward and embraced him. "Thank you, Seeley. I don't think I want to put my ignorance on such open display – an admission like that could compromise my professional standing and give grounds to have my expert testimony challenged in every single case I've ever worked. But you're right about how I need to learn to assimilate this into my professional outlook without letting it impair my efficiency."
Booth held her tightly (cursing the bucket seats of his SUV) and whispered in her ear. "But, babe, you still lost the bet – and I fully intend to collect. Plus, I think, a little extra for making me pay up."
"She pushed him away, but with a smile. "Oh, please. You enjoyed that almost as much as I did."
"Well, I'll grant you I did enjoy it, but nowhere near as much as you did. After all, I know just how good I can be."