Chapter 19
Talk
And it will fall out as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore, you will provoke another; and that which removes the one ill symptom produces others: -Sir Thomas More
Disclaimer: Criminal Minds is not mine.
"Floyd?"
Emily just stood and watched for a little while. Why had he stopped moving? Slowly she walked forward taking in the amount of blood around the still form on the grass. He was still on his front and still had his hands under him.
"Floyd!"
Crouching down now and touching his shoulder.
A deep intake of breath from Emily as she noted the lack of movement from his shoulders.
"Floyd. Oh no – oh no!" She pushed him over onto his back and stared down at the white empty face looking back at her. His eyes were open but unfocused. The front of him was just a puddle of blood. She moved quickly now by ripping the bottom off her vest and wrapping it tightly around his arm above where most of the blood seemed to have come from. She then grabbed his shoulders and tried to pull him off the grass and onto the gravel at the side of the road. She needed to flag down a car somehow but didn't want to leave him. She dropped his shoulders onto the ground and placed her head on his chest. A very faint sound but she wasn't sure if it was his hear or just the sounds of death.
Shaking him didn't seem to do much. She needed to do CPR – and knowing the chances of that working were so slim she wanted to scream. It was an eternity. A life time that Emily sat on the road side astride Floyd trying to get his heart to start and trying to get him to breathe. A car pulled over and someone got out.
"You ok?"
She glanced up quickly to see a woman in her fifties. "I need an ambulance. I think he's dead!"
The woman pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and made the calls and stood watching for a while. "Let me help….What can I do?"
"His wrist – something sliced through his wrist." And the smell of blood was up her nose again and gagging and sticking at the back of her throat. "He can't die. Oh god please don't die on me Floyd. Not after all this….not now!"
The woman pulled off her Tshirt – she was wearing a sport's bra under it….she took Floyd's hand and felt how cold his fingers were and saw how he wasn't bleeding and looked over at Emily. She said nothing. She wrapped his wrist tightly in the Tshirt and put pressure on it. Anything to help – she would never forgive herself if she didn't do all she could.
"Where are they? I need the ambulance! Breathe for me – please breathe!" and she was kneeling at his side doing chest compressions and breathing into his dirty filthy blood smeared mouth and her lips pressed against his and they were cold and unmoving.
-o-o-o-
He could see he was on the grass and he could see Emily was moving towards him.
Floyd was for a while confused. That was until things began to dim and go dark.
For a small while there was a glimmer of a light somewhere but he couldn't moved he just sort of hung in limbo and watched it. He thought he should have been able to feel Emily's hands on him but he couldn't.
He wondered why he had stopped breathing and made an effort to start again, but he suddenly became aware of a pain. A deep inside of him pain.
Floyd could feel at last. He could feel the pain inside and he could feel grass under his feet. He opened his eyes and looked down. His boots were gone. A frown on his face now as he looked around him. Many people of all ages shapes sizes and colours walked down towards a river.
He put a hand on his chest. Where he could feel soft hands touching him but it was a ghostly feeling. The hands weren't there. It was just a memory. Slowly he began to walk along with the others. No one spoke. Some had been crying. Some were smiling. Most were elderly.
Floyd couldn't work out why he suddenly felt so heavy. His arms too tired to move his feet too tired to walk. He stopped again and let the people carry on walking by him. No one touched him but some stopped to look. As he sunk down to his knees unable to move any closer to the river everyone was making for someone grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back onto the ground.
-o-o-o-
The ambulance crew didn't look very hopeful. They moved Emily out of the way and the other lady moved back too as they swarmed over the man covered in blood. They intubated him and put things on his chest to listen.
For Emily it was a relief to finally see Floyd's chest moving again, but it was a short lived relief. They called '200' and 'clear' and as everyone moved out of contact she watched his back arch and his shoulders leave the gravel and then fall back down again. The tube down his throat had air squished down it and they listened again.
More numbers called more shouts of 'clear' and Emily watched in shocked silent horror as the man who seemed to survive anything lay dying at the side of the road.
Again the arching of the back and needles going into his arm and another being prepared.
"He's lost too much blood."
She heard them say.
"Well top him up again." She thought to herself knowing full well that wasn't how it worked and if Floyd died they had lost Spencer too. She walked over to the woman who was standing holding her blood soaked Tshirt to her chest.
"I'm sorry." She said to Emily. "You were together?"
Emily nodded. "I was wondering if I could use your phone. I need to call my boss."
-o-o-o-
He looked around him and saw faces of people in white.
"You need to decide what to do." One of them said in a sad voice.
They looked down at him. "I don't know what you mean. Decide what?"
His voice sounded strange – as though it was coming from a thousand miles away – or had been caught in the wind and blown away before he could say the words properly.
"Well you can come with us down to the river, or you can take back some of what you gave Spencer."
And the fist bolt of pain ripped through him.
He wanted to scream now but there was no air in his lungs to force the sound out with.
Stinging sensations swept up his arms and to his brain as he felt his lungs suddenly inflate again.
"I can't take it back. He needs it."
"He will kill you. Take some back Floyd. Go on. Save yourself."
Another bolt of electricity passed through him. He felt his back leave the grass and then thump hard back down again.
"You are running out of time. You need to decide what to do."
Another voice now spoke to him. "It's you or him Floyd. Decide."
And another. "Come on Floyd – don't give up – please don't give up." It was Emily.
-o-o-o-
"We need to call." One of the paramedics said as he stood.
"You can't!" Emily pushed the man out of the way. "He can't be dead!"
"We're sorry miss. There is just too much blood loss."
"NO! He will pull through….he will be ok – he's always ok!" And she was on him shaking him by the shoulders and screaming in his face. "Stop messing around…we need you to find Reid!"
They carefully pulled Emily away from him. She watched numbly as the tube was removed and the monitors taken away. Someone was writing something down on a bit of paper…someone else entering something on a small hand held computer.
Prentiss could feel everything spinning around her head. They lifted him onto a gurney from the ambulance and pulled the straps across him. The blanket was laid across his middle and one end pulled down to cover his boots and the other end to cover his face.
Emily sank to the ground as she looked without blinking at the scene unfolding in front of her eyes. She saw them tuck the blanket in around him and it was this final act which finally caused her to lean forwards from where she was kneeling in the bloodied grass and throw up.
-o-o-o-
"I've decided."
They nodded and stepped back
"A shame Floyd. You were so close." The voices were whispers now and the grass became hard.
"But either way I cause him pain."
There was no answer.
-o-o-o-
They thought it was the convulsion that did it. They had just pulled the gurney up onto the wheels and it started. They quickly pulled the blanket back and watched with shocked pale faces as the man they had called TOD on tipped his head back and screamed as though a thousand demons were ripping out of him.
His back arched under the straps and quickly he was lowered back down again.
From where she knelt on the grass she could hear his desperate rattling gasps for breath and in the strange half light half darkness of the traffic rushing by and the lights from the emergency vehicles she watched Floyd pull himself back a bit. She leapt up and ran to his side.
"I knew you could do it." As the convulsion subsided and more drips and monitors were attached she wiped a stray bit of hair off his face and leaned down to whisper in his ear. "Thank you."
And just barely a reply. "I think I just pissed myself again."
-o-o-o-
He woke up suddenly. He had a strange dream about laying on the grass somewhere warm and friendly. Spencer could feel Ardal behind him holding him close and then he could feel something else. The bed was wet. He looked down and saw a slowly spreading redness appear. At first he just looked at it not quite understanding what it was and it was around then that the pain hit.
His back suddenly stiffened and he threw his head back smacking Ardal hard on the side of the face.
Spencer's brain couldn't take in quite what was going on. He knew he was in pain – the most dreadful screaming sort of pain any person could ever be in and still be alive. He could see red. Everything was red and he knew people were holding him and saying things to him but he was totally unable to respond in any way. Something was wrong. What had happened? Where had all this pain suddenly come from?
They had hold of his hands. Someone was shouting at him, but he could only hear his heart racing so hard in his chest that he thought they should be able to see it trying to escape through his rib cage. Others now holding his legs and cool hands on his face. Ardal's hands and Ardal's worried voice.
Spencer had no idea how long it lasted. He gagged and choked and couldn't breathe and then the searing deadly pain across his chest and up his neck and into his brain.
And the same words over and over again.
'sorry babes.'
Thumping in his mind.
And he wanted to scream back that he didn't know what 'sorry' meant but they were dragging him from the room and Ardal's hands were gone and all he could feel was the roughness of these other people.
Ardal stood in the suddenly very quiet room.
Obviously it was a nightmare, but he had never seen anything like it before. He had seen nightmares – sure he had – he had seen Spencer's but this was like he was possessed. Like his mind had suddenly snapped. He looked down at the bed and saw the sweaty patch Spencer left behind. He bent down and took in the scent and then just knelt on the floor.
The end. They wouldn't keep him now. Not if he was going to be unpredictable. He ran his hands over the bed where they had been laying so peacefully not so long ago. Well peaceful for him – he wasn't so sure about the stability of Spencer's mind anymore. Slowly he had changed. Slowly he had grown to love him more and now this. This sweat stain on the bed and the bloodied razor blade was all that was left.
Ardal spent the rest of that night listening to the screams echoing through the hallways of this home of his and his head resting on the only thing left he had of Reid's. A soiled bit of bed linen.
-o-o-o-
She wasn't allowed in the ambulance with them. She stood at the side of the road with the strange woman in a bra and stared at the flashing lights taking him away.
"Well what in hell's name just happened?" The woman asked.
Emily turned to her. "I'm sorry I haven't introduced myself. I am Agent Emily Prentiss and to be very honest with you ma'm I have no idea what just happened. I thought he was dead." And she could feel as those weak walls she had built get soggy and collapse big hot tears begin to run down her dirty face.
"Agent? Like you're a Fed? Was he a criminal?"
Emily turned to the woman again. "Yes a Federal Agent." A swipe away of the tears on her face. "No he is a witness I suppose." She had to call Hotch. She had to tell him what was going on. Emily tried to keep her voice calm. "Do you think I could use your phone one more time?"
A smile and it was handed to her. Emily wiped her bloodied hands on the front of her ripped vest and smiled a thank you.
She pressed the numbers slowly trying to find time to get her own head around what had happened before explaining it all to Hotch. She ended up just telling him the name of the hospital they had taken Flanders to and wondering if it was wise to leave him there with the poor people, but on the other hand she really didn't think he was going to be doing much. He had died. He had been dead for long enough for them to clear up the debris and …………
Yes she would go to the hospital now and she would see them there.
Emily handed the phone back. "Thank you so much. You have been a wonderful help." Emily said quietly.
The woman had put her blood stained Tshirt back on again. "I would offer you a lift but you know…your bike and all."
Emily put a kind hand on the woman's arm. "You have been too kind already. Thank you again."
She put her hand out to shake. "Katherine Halls." She said and then walked quietly back to her car and for the third time that evening she watched a vehicle disappear.
-o-o-o-
When Floyd opened his eyes and he felt able to move his head he was overjoyed to see Rossi sitting next to his bed looking at him. He licked his lips but said nothing and moved his head again so that he was staring at the ceiling. He could feel that on hand was strapped to the bed and the other had bandages and some sort of brace covering his lower arm and hand.
"You had us worried for a bit there." Rossi stated.
Floyd didn't answer.
"Care to explain what is going on?"
"Water please." The question ignored.
Rossi rose and picked up a beaker with a straw in it and walked to the bed. "Prentiss thought we'd lost you."
He sipped at the water and looked at Dave. "I'm not that easy to get rid of."
"You nearly took your hand off. They don't know if you will get full movement back in it. And your leg – the cut tendon – that is going to be a problem for you too."
Floyd pulled a pissed off face and looked back at the ceiling. "I feel fine. I assume you don't have Spencer back yet?"
"And I assume you are going to tell us where he is?"
"I don't know where he is. I can track him for you. I can't give you an address." A thought. "How long have I been here?"
Rossi sat back down again. "Long enough for extensive surgery on your wrist and foot."
"Ah no – oh shit. Look – I need to do something in quiet – you know….so I need to you to stop talking for a bit."
He had been here hours. He had only meant to snatch a small tag off Reid for a few minutes, just long enough to get him over the little bump – and now Reid was without full protection and once again he had performed a royal fuck up.
"I can hear you breathing…I really do need total silence."
Rossi stood. "I will get a paper to read and a coffee. Don't go anywhere now will you. I will be right outside." He walked to Floyd's bed. "I don't know you as well as the other's do and I know you pull crazy stunts on them, and I know you have messed with Prentiss but I am willing to give you a fair chance. Don't let me down. He tapped Floyd on the arm and turned to walk away.
"Always knew you were different Rossi." He heard as he pulled open the big white door to leave.
He lay back head on the pillow and closed his eyes. "Right you bastards. I need to sort something out with you. I need to talk."
When Rossi returned fifteen minutes later Floyd was sleeping fitfully. The blood on his wrist soaking through the bandages.
-o-o-o-
"I don't know what you want me to say." Emily was pacing. Hotch was watching her.
"I need you to explain everything. You disobeyed my direct order Prentiss."
"I can't explain – it's a fog – I don't understand what was going on."
"You understood enough to get money from your account and to find where Flanders was."
She nodded. "But it was like that wasn't me. I don't know how to explain something I don't even understand." She ran her hands over her head. "Sir do you really think I would do this from choice?"
Hotch shook his head. "We have all had our own problems since the last case involving Flanders. He is a blight Prentiss."
She stopped pacing and turned to look at Hotch. "A blight? He wasn't there Sir I really don't think he had any involvement in it. I don't know what it was…a small breakdown? I don't know! I wish I did."
"I need you to see someone about it Prentiss. You have to talk this all through with a professional before I can allow you to come back to work. I need to be sure nothing like this will ever happen again."
She bit on her bottom lip. "I was hoping I could come with you to find Reid." Her dark eyes met Hotch's.
He didn't show any feeling on his face – he kept it hard so that he could keep it under control. "I'm sorry Prentiss that is out of the question. You are on leave until I know you are medically fit enough to return."
She turned and left the room without another word.
Hotch walked to the window and placed the palms of his hands onto the glass. He needed Reid back. He needed to know he was there in the bullpen in the mornings. He needed to be able to see his smile in the mornings and see that awkward wave of his. He wanted to walk behind him and watch him. He needed to near him on the jet and smell his soap and shampoo. He needed Reid in his life so desperately it made his stomach hurt knowing he could never be his.
Tonight he had a date with Rosie. She was nice and intelligent and fun to be with. But she didn't have Reid's body.