The Disclaimer Continues. Ad Infinitum.

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Chapter 2

He was a small man, but Charlie's plummeting body weight almost pulled Don over the edge as well. The ripping t-shirt and a fast-thinking, fast-moving LAPD officer kept Don on the roof. The officer tackled him from behind and dragged him down hard; so hard that Larry, five feet away, heard a bone crack somewhere.

Don, head hanging slightly over the edge, didn't feel a thing. He was focused on the scrap of t-shirt, willing it to metamorphasize into his brother. The screams of the onlookers entered his senses dully, and then he didn't understand how it was that he was standing up. He couldn't put together the fact that the officers and Larry were helping him.

He peered over the edge, and wasn't sure he really saw what he was seeing, or if he just wanted to see it. There were fire fighter uniforms dotting the crowd, and a large, round, trampoline lay on the ground. Don swayed a little and grabbed at Larry, nearly pulling them both off the edge again. "Is that there?", he breathed.

Someone was pulling on his shirt, and he unwillingly stepped back. A voice he didn't recognize spoke into his ear. "They weren't quite in position, yet. He hit the edge of the trampoline – it broke his fall, but he bounced off. The EMTs are with him now. You should go down." Don turned in a daze, and saw an LAPD officer regarding him intently. Was this some kind of sick joke? He had seen Charlie step off the roof…He had seen it. He would see it forever.

The officer saw his disbelief. "Sir, that's what the officers on the ground are telling me. Paramedics are working on him." At the same moment, Don felt as if he would vomit, pass out and jump off the roof himself, just to get to Charlie faster. He and Larry got hit at the same time, apparently. The physicist grabbed Don's arm, and Don screamed. Everyone on the roof froze, even though they had just started moving.

"Oh, dear." Larry was looking at Don's arm, and the discolored, swollen lump that didn't belong on his wrist. It was obvious in the late afternoon sun. "That must be the crack I heard. It looks like you need an EMT as well."

Don jerked his arm back and bit off another scream. He hugged his arm to his belly and started moving, again. He didn't care if the damn thing fell off. He had to get to Charlie. Later, he had no clear memory of going back through the door and down the stairs. Larry would tell him he fell down the last six, he was moving so fast, and almost broke his leg along with his arm, but Don didn't remember that. He was never even sure how he got past the police and Campus Security barrier in front of the building. The next thing he clearly remembered, after Larry grabbing his arm on the roof, was kneeling on the sidewalk about five feet from Charlie.

On the ground, just as on the roof, Don couldn't seem to get close enough to touch him.

The paramedics refused to acknowledge him, so Don watched a growing pool of blood under Charlie's head for as long as he could, then shifted to staring at Charlie's leg. The foot was pointing in the wrong direction. Once he had registered that, Don felt the bile rising again, and he re-focused on Charlie's arms. He saw an EMT shoving needles into one; another EMT putting a brace on the other. He watched silently while Charlie was gently turned onto a backboard, and encased in a cervical collar. At some point, the top of his head had been wrapped in gauze, and there was already a dark stain spreading throughout its weave, from an epicenter above Charlie's right eye. Don tried to take everything in. He didn't move, he didn't speak, until Charlie was lifted onto a stretcher and was headed away from Don, through the other side of the crowd.

He stood awkwardly. "FREEZE! FBI!", he shouted, because it was the first thing he thought of.

The two paramedics with the stretcher ignored him, but a fire fighter standing between Larry and the trampoline looked at him with sympathy. He called after the EMTs. "This guy is riding along. He's family."

All the way to the hospital, Don watched Charlie's face, and heard those words. He repeated them in his head. I'm family, Charlie, he thought, ignoring a paramedic who was splinting his own wrist. He stared at his brother's closed eyes. You're my family. He wondered, briefly, how someone in his family could be in such pain, and he would not know it.

His thoughts were interrupted by staccato questions, to which he gave brief answers. Charlie. 32. No allergies. O-negative. He felt, as the ambulance slowed to enter the trauma entrance of the hospital, that those things did not say enough about Charlie. Those facts did not represent him well. The people working on him needed to understand how important he was. He reached out and touched the woman next to him, who turned her eyes from a monitor and looked at him. "He's good," Don said to her seriously. "He's a good man. We need him." The woman nodded silently as the vehicle screeched to a halt. The doors opened, hands reached inside, and Charlie was taken from him again.

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Don refused to be led to a treatment room himself until he made a phone call. He glowered at the nurse impatiently waiting for him, and sat in the triage chairs. He pulled out his phone.

Both pieces.

It had been broken, on the roof. As Don looked at it, he thought he might start to cry. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that his phone was broken, and he couldn't believe that he didn't know what to do about it. He was a friggin' FBI senior agent. He had a brain. He tried to remember. What did people do before cell phones?

He felt someone sit next to him, and barely registered a light touch on his good arm. He saw fingers taking the phone pieces out of his hand. "It's all right, Don. I'll take care of it."

Don looked up and blinked blearily at Larry. "You got here fast," he said stupidly.

Larry nodded. "The police brought me, and took my preliminary statement on the way." He glanced at Don's other arm, cradled against his stomach, again. "Go with this young lady and have your wrist attended," he ordered gently. "I phoned Megan. She's going to pick Alan up and bring him here."

Tears of gratitude sprang to Don's eyes before he could stop them. He stood hurriedly, so Larry wouldn't notice. Don brushed his eyes with the back of his good hand and looked at Larry long and hard before he finally walked off with the nurse. All the way to the treatment room, he thought about that word, the one the fire fighter had planted in his head:

Family.