Sorry for the delay again, I think I am working harder than an elf at Christmas! I hope this is a longer chapter than the previous two. More than anything I hope it's satisfying so that it makes up for my tardiness…
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Hot. When the hell did it get so hot in here? "Liz?" His voice was croaky, dry and sounded like it came from someone else.
A coolness dabbed at his brow and confused him. Charlie, when did you get air-conditioning?
The heat resumed. Charlie? Dad? Can you hear me? I said turn the furnace down.. too damn hot in here. Giving me one hell of a headache. What're you trying to do? Kill me?
His finger subconsciously searched for something. I'm sure I left that tee here. Dad, you'll need a 3-iron for that.
A pulse of heat bore down on him again. So damn hot. No wait. Wait. I said on my command. Flames licked the corners of his brain as a memory passed through it. Problem was, Don's memory was not willing to let him go back there, not at the moment. It had other things on its mind, like keeping this body alive.
He needed to forget to stay alive. That's all he knew and he held on to that thought.
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"It's utter rubbish."
"No arguments here. Here, swap this cloth will you?"
Alan tossed Charlie a cloth which he immediately dipped into a bowl of water by Don's bed and pulled out one that had already been soaking in it.
"They have nurses to do these sort of thing y'know."
"I know Charlie. Don also has a father who can do these sort of things. Besides, makes an old man feel useful."
A nurse walked into the room and brushed past Charlie with a smile. She began checking Don's vitals and took his temperature.
"So?" Alan enquired eagerly.
"It's still high, but it looks like it's slowly coming down. You're doing a good job. You'll put us out of work if we don't watch out." The nurse clicked her pen and wrote down some figures on a chart before leaving.
"So, what are you going to do?" Alan asked Charlie.
"Huh?"
"You said it was utter rubbish. Usually the next thing you do is tap out a few figures and prove your point. So how are you going to prove this?"
Charlie knew what Alan was doing. Distraction, always about distraction. In a lot of ways they were the same. Charlie used math to distract himself and it worked, sometimes a little too well, but it still worked. You can't worry about someone dying if you are too busy trying to prove they can't. Obviously when his mother was sick it didn't actually warrant trying to solve the unsolvable but it was the only way he could cope. Now Alan was trying to use Charlie doing math as his distraction. Alan's late dalliance with further learning had ignited a new respect for Charlie's math in him, but also a greater understanding, of Charlie as a whole. Charlie liked the way he needed to explain less and less of the basics to his father but more and more of the advanced stuff.
"Well simple ballistics and trajectory for a start. Some of my cognitive emergence work will help but…" Charlie paused and looked at his dad.
"But what Charlie?"
"But I was hoping to just ask him when he came round."
Alan smiled and continued ministering the cooling cloth to any unbandaged part of Don's brow and neck. "What if you don't like the answer?"
"Serious? One doctor maybe makes a throw-away comment and suddenly we're supposed to believe it?"
"Well firstly, he's seen it many times before, the angle of entry the burn marks on head and hands…"
"Not you too? Don fires his gun a lot, of course he'd have it on his hands."
"I know I know, hear me out. I don't want to believe it any more than you do but I can't ignore how he was after that last case. Liz and Colby. It hit him hard Charlie. You said as much yourself."
"I know all this dad. But he's dealing with this better than he used to. "
"Don't confuse attitude with emotion. I mean, what about this fellow who went mad in the abattoir. I'm not saying Don did this to himself, but I do think I have to be prepared for every scenario before he wakes up. Once that happens he'll need us no matter what."
A sigh escaped Charlie's lips and he looked towards the prone figure lying on the bed. Only half an hour before Don had been on the brink of consciousness but delirious and had whispered Liz's name. Clearly Don was thinking about the events that had occurred over the past few weeks. Maybe he could admit they had some bearing on his current state.
"I just don't believe it and I'm going to prove it. Don's felt responsible for things before, he sorts it out. Besides, he's done the impossible if it's true – and defied math. I have a lot of faith in Don, but more in math." Charlie looked down at his brother apologetically, "sorry bro. Explain to me how Don's car was found outside San Diego and yet he turns up in Pasadena?"
Alan looked across at his youngest. Such a great brain, and he was generally right, but sometimes he could overlook the obvious. "Hitchhiking?"
Charlie's face dropped then lifted. "Even better, then someone would have seen him and we can…" Before he;'d finished the sentence he was out the door, on his way to the FBI, determined to help piece the puzzle together.
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"Three nights. Where do we even start?" David tossed a folder on top of a pile and stared back at Megan with tired eyes. Barely a few hours of sleep would have to sustain him for the day. With Colby missing in action and Liz not on this case, they were seriously in need of an extra pair of hands.
"Spoke to Alan." Megan responded through a yawn.
"Oh yeah."
"Yeah, he said he's doing ok. Still not with it but they're hoping he'll start coming round once the fever dies down."
"So not likely we'll be getting any clues from that corner any time soon."
"No, and yet in three days someone must have seen him."
"Right. Well I guess the best way is to start…"
"…from Pasadena and work our way back." Megan looked up to see who finished her sentence for her and looked into Charlie's big brown eyes.
"Wondered how long it would take you to appear down here. Sure you shouldn't be at the hospital? I am sure you have a million ways to help us but I'm thinking it's going to be a lot of legwork initially. Knocking on doors and the like."
Charlie looked at David and then back to Megan. "Dad's with him, I can do more for him here."
"Sure you're not just trying to avoid asking him when he wakes up what happened?" Megan suspected Charlie was much better at facing his family's mortality than when his mother died, but he still idolised his brother and wasn't sure that if the answer was unsavoury what it would do to him, let alone Don. Whether he admitted it or not, Don needed Charlie's constant belief in him because the job simply didn't allow for many people to always be on his side.
"I don't know but it doesn't matter, I can still do more good here."
David raised his eyebrow in surprise and admiration at Charlie's maturity. Had he been working with them that long?
"Right then, what can you do?" David tossed Charlie a very thin folder. The folder barely contained more than 5 reports in it, nothing substantial. Charlie opened it and flicked across a few pages, scanning for useable data.
"This is it?"
"Yep." David went to grab his jacket when a figure approaching caught his eye. "Liz?"
Liz tossed David a folder motioning for him to open it and then spoke to Megan. "We've got a problem?"
"What? How so?" Megan moved across to David's shoulder and tried to see the contents of the report he had opened. "Are you kidding me? This is the last thing we need."
"What?" Charlie's voice reminded the group of something they'd momentarily forgotten, he was still standing there.
"It's the Field case. Coroner's report states that Marcus Field couldn't have killed himself. This is no longer a simple murder-suicide. It's a shooting spree."
"So what are we thinking? The wife had an affair and Marcus went down to confront the guy?" David asked.
"Maybe he went down to see Sophie, before she headed up to see her mom, got caught in a fight. Drugs maybe? Drug deal turned sour - has been known to happen." Liz's tone was quiet at the end, everyone knew what she was thinking.
"How 'bout you two go back to Sophie Field. See if you can get some more info from her. Try and suss out maybe if that other agent, what was his name? Crowther. See if his wife or any of his team blame Field for Crowther's death." David had pulled off his jacket before Megan had finished the sentence, ready to join Liz on the new developments of the Field case.
"Hang on." Liz and David both stopped to look at Charlie. "What about Don…Don's? What about the fact that whoever did this to Don, to an FBI agent, is out there still?"
Megan gestured to Liz and David to continue on and she placed a hand on Charlie's shoulder directing him towards a chair. "Don's alive Charlie, the Field case takes priority. Y'know without Colby we're seriously understaffed."
Charlie knew this was going to be her response. It was true. They never had simply one case to work on. They could never devote all their resources to one case, they had to juggle them all the time. Still, he didn't care, this was Don after all, a guy who had saved more asses than he could remember. Somehow he thought that should be a priority.
"And before you say it, he is our priority," as if Megan had read Charlie's mind. "Don'd understand and besides, we can't force you to work on any one case. You can prioritise right? So tell me. How do you think Don made it from San Diego to yours without a car?"
"Dad thinks hitchhiking. I dunno. Don just…he's smart y'know."
"I know." Megan smiled at Charlie.
"And a pain in the butt. There's no way he wouldn't have found a payphone to call to get a lift from one of us."
Megan's smile turned into a small laugh. "Right."
"Unless he didn't want…" Charlie gulped, unable to consider the rest of the thought.
"Nah, he walked to your house Charlie. His childhood home. He wanted to go home. Someone who doesn't want, well you know, it wouldn't make any sense for him to go to the family home unless he'd changed his mind."
"Or forgotten." Charlie said solemnly.
"How 'bout we concentrate on finding out if anyone saw him before we jump to conclusions. Any formulas in your bag for the way an injured man would try and walk to Pasadena?"
"If there aren't any, I'll create one."
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That damn fire just kept crackling away under his skin, making him itch. What was it he had done? Let someone down. No. No. They let me down. Nup, maybe both. Maybe they didn't hear me when I asked to turn the furnace off. Dad?
Charlie was not very good around the house. To be fair Don would be worse, so it must have been his dad who could fix the furnace so he could stop sweating and just get some sleep. It made him feel sick. Will keep that to myself though. Imagine the jibes. A slight giggle trembled through his body as he thought about how Charlie would probably poke fun at him if he saw him like this. Able to leap tall building and stop bullets, but crippled by a bit of balmy weather.
Don never liked the heat. OK so it was more the humidity he didn't like. Living in Albuquerque had cemented that oft-said comment. Boy, am I sweating.
He could feel water droplets run down his brow but then….what the? Is someone? They were quickly wiped away and a slight coolness replaced them. What is going on?
Questions danced around his brain but a deep painful throb broke them up and Don could only remember that he wanted to remember what he last thought. That coolness, again. Nice. I hate the heat. Has someone lit a fire…fire. Liz.
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Staring down at his eldest son Alan began to think about Don's behavior over the last few weeks. He'd been stressed, overworked and then it all blew up on him. Agents had died and he knew Don blamed himself. He'd always blame himself. Alan guessed it was simply what made him such an excellent agent, the responsibility he took. All the bucks stopped with him, he accepted them all. He could only imagine how the internal FBI reprimands probably cemented these feelings. Damn FBI.
Don stirred, moaned and Alan thought he said 'dad' but it was so quiet he wasn't sure. That's right Donnie, I'm here.
Sleep was pressing down on his eyelids but Alan tried his best to defy gravity. A yawn slipped out nonetheless. "C'mon Don." Alan patted his chest and wondered whether he felt slightly cooler. Surely the drugs were doing their business. Please want to wake up.
"Why don't you let us take over for a few hours. You look like you need a break."
Alan looked up and realised he hadn't heard the nurse enter the room. Not a good sign I guess. "Nah, I wanna be here when he wakes up, in case he's confused."
"I can guarantee he'll be confused, with you here or not. But it matters little, it's unlikely his temperature will drop enough in the next few hours so I say he won't be coherent for a while yet." The nurse began to check Don's vitals, gently peering under the bandage on his forehead to see how the head wound was healing.
"Maybe, if it's alright I could just rest here."
The nurse looked up from Don's wounds and smiled. She looked down at the chair Alan was sitting in, not the most comfortable, but it was a lost cause not appeasing him. "Of course. If he wakes we'll make sure to wake you up."
"Thanks." Alan leant back in the chair and let gravity finally win as the nurse checked Don's blankets.
The last thoughts were about Don, the last time he'd seen him before now. Don was silent and distant and Alan had assumed he'd had an altercation with Liz. Charlie was explaining some mathematical discovery to Amita, who was engrossed. Alan was interested but his attention had been diverted by Don.
A call from the FBI meant Alan didn't have a chance to weave his fatherly charm and extract any information. Soon after Charlie spilled to Alan that he thought Don and Liz had broken up due to what happened in the drug case. Alan distinctly remembered that the first he thing he thought was 'stupid Don'. Those words haunted him now for their harshness and he wished a thousand times he could take them back even if they weren't spoken. Why hadn't he been there for his son when he needed him?