A/N:

Gah, sorry for the long wait guys! Things got a little busy for me for a while. Here you go!

Thanks again to Mia for the beta. And for being amazing.

Enjoy!

"Whoops?" Gus repeated angrily. Shawn winced. "Whoops? You just had to aggravate him. You just had to say that you suspected him. Now we're stuck!"

Gus started pacing, though he didn't make it very far before having to turn around due to the limited amount of space. Shawn watched his friend walk back and forth enviously.

Now that he had the chance to actually sit down and think about it, the pain had been changing slightly over the past hour. At first, the pain had completely surrounded the lower part of his stomach. Now it was closer to his right side. Though he appreciated that it didn't hurt in as much space, the pain had started to become sharper the smaller the area became.

All in all, he wasn't in a very good position.

A thought seemed to come to Gus, as he suddenly lunged for the elevator controls, poking the call button repeatedly. No light came on and nothing changed. Gus held the button down and leaned down so he was even with the speaker.

"Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?" Gus waited with his hand on the button for a few seconds before eventually letting go with a sigh. "It's not working."

"He must've shut everything down to lock us in here," Shawn sighed. "Or maybe the call button doesn't work when the power's out."

"What would be the point in having it then?" Gus's eyes widened again and he dug for his pocket. "I forgot, I've got my cell phone. We can just call someone that way."

"Um." Shawn looked down at his shoes. "Well, actually your phone's dead."

Gus repeatedly pushed at his power button several times before eventually relenting with a groan. He leaned back against the wall and raised an eyebrow. "Wait, how did you know that?"

"Well, remember when I was playing with it on the way here?"

"Oh no. You did not use up all of my battery."

"How would I know that playing bowling on it would use up the power so quickly? The good news is that I finally beat your high score. Well, good news for me."

Gus looked at Shawn disbelievingly before resorting to a glare, which Shawn thought was a little much. Really, Gus should've expected this from him. Car rides, even after a brief stop to throw up, got pretty boring. Besides, how was he supposed to know that they would end up stuck in an elevator and in dire need of a cell phone? That hadn't exactly been in his plan for the day.

"Well, what about your phone?" Gus asked suddenly.

Shawn thought about it. "It's fully charged."

"Great!"

"But it's back at my place," he admitted.

"Shawn!"

"Well, I wasn't really thinking about it this morning! I was too busy trying not to upchuck."

"That worked out well."

"Well, I didn't throw up until after we left, so yeah, it sort of did."

Gus paused in his pacing and turned to Shawn. "How are you feeling now anyway?"

Shawn started to shrug, before the resulting burn across his stomach made him stop. He had already figured out a basic solution to his pain problem: don't move and it wouldn't hurt. It was the not moving part that was giving him difficulty. "It could be worse," he said.

Gus wasn't going to let that pass now though, apparently. "Shawn, stop it. You're sick. We might as well figure out what's wrong. We're not going anywhere."

He sat down cross-legged across from Shawn. "Now, what exactly is wrong?"

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Gus took a few moments to think about everything Shawn had revealed. He'd known about most of it but hearing Shawn describe it made Gus wish that he'd taken him to the hospital instead of the apartment building. Especially now that they were possibly going to have to spend anywhere from an hour to several in the elevator.

A slight fever, nausea, and loss of appetite could have meant a million things, but it was the pain that really got Gus thinking.

"It's more in my side now," Shawn clarified. "But it hurts a lot more too. Kind of like being stabbed right there every time I move."

"You're being overdramatic."

"Maybe a little bit," he admitted. "But not really."

Gus wasn't a doctor, though he spent plenty of time around them, not to mention researching different drugs, so he had learned a few things. This, however, was something that Gus had figured out fairly easily. That kind of pain, and the way it was starting to move down towards the right side of Shawn's abdomen, led to one conclusion.

"I think it's appendicitis," Gus said.

Shawn raised his eyebrows. "Like what they give you before your meal at a restaurant?"

"That's an appetizer. Appendicitis is when your appendix is inflamed."

"So, what, am I going to have to start taking pills or something?" Shawn asked. "Am I going to need a shot? Please say no."

"Shawn, they're going to have to remove your appendix. You'll have to go through surgery."

Shawn gaped, which Gus had been expecting. Shawn wasn't a huge fan of hospitals. After all the times he'd had to go because of the frequent injuries he'd acquired over the years, not to mention motorcycle accidents, getting shot and that little amount of poison he'd had to deal with a couple months ago, it wasn't really surprising that Shawn had tried to avoid going to the hospital. A surgery probably wasn't something he'd be looking forward to.

"Why do they have to remove it?" Shawn finally asked, a hint of whining in his voice. "Can't they just give it some medicine and make it all better? Isn't that what doctors do? Nobody wants to remove my brain when I have a headache."

"They've got to take it out. That's how they solve the problem," Gus explained. He didn't want to get into the details of an appendix possibly bursting and all the other complications. This was partly because he only had a limited amount of knowledge about it and partly because it might make Shawn worry. It was definitely making Gus worried.

"So do I get a new one?"

"A new appendix? No. You don't even need the one you have."

"Don't even need one?" Shawn looked appalled. "Then why in the name of Billy Zane do I have one in the first place?" He threw his hands up for barely a second before they descended again with a hiss. Gus was worried for a moment, but Shawn seemed to be fine after a few seconds. "It's got to be there to do something," he muttered.

"Other than make you sick?" Gus chuckled weakly. "It's pretty much just there to fill up space."

"Hm." Shawn looked down at his abdomen. "I would have preferred a second stomach or something instead. It would probably cause a lot less hassle too."

Gus snorted and looked at his watch. "They'll fix the elevator and we'll be out of here in no time. And then we're going to the hospital."

"Sure, sure," Shawn said. "It's just the waiting that I wish we didn't have to deal with."

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An hour later, Gus was starting to agree that waiting wasn't doing very much for them. Gus had never been claustrophobic exactly, but anyone who found pleasure in being stuck in a small area doing absolutely nothing for a long period of time was completely insane, in his opinion. He should've just stayed home. What he wouldn't give for a nice day where nothing "exciting" happened except Carissa finding out that her boyfriend was cheating on her with her twin sister and her best friend on his soap opera.

Despite Gus's repeated checks, the call button still wasn't working. The elevator hadn't moved since it's stop. There hadn't been any change at all in their situation.

Except for Shawn. During the past hour, Gus had watched Shawn become more and more uncomfortable. His pain had increased almost exponentially. No matter how much Shawn tried to keep still, the slightest movement made him wince. Even regular breathing seemed to bother him.

"Okay, whoever came up with this whole appendix thing should have their dessert privileges taken away for a couple months," Shawn declared. "Because seriously, this is way too annoying for something that's useless."

"I don't think anyone came up with it. I'm pretty sure it just happened," Gus said.

"Are there any other organs that just spontaneously decide that my body isn't good enough anymore and they have to cause me pain just to get themselves removed? Because if so, I want to get them out now so I don't have to go through this again later."

Gus started to laugh but stopped when he saw the serious look on Shawn's face. He watched Shawn stare down at his stomach for awhile before eventually closing his eyes. His eyes squinted together every couple of minutes whenever he moved something slightly. After a few minutes of stillness, Gus might have thought Shawn had fallen asleep if he didn't know any better. Shawn had a habit of talking in his sleep, not to mention he moved around a lot more.

He was starting to feel a compelling need to keep Shawn talking. And since it was unlikely that Shawn would want to continue with a long conversation about their current predicament, Gus needed to change the subject to something that interested his friend more.

"Do you remember that time in second grade when our class was playing hide-and-seek at recess, and you got stuck behind the teacher's desk?" Gus asked.

He had to hold back a cheer when Shawn opened one of his eyes, looking annoyed. "Stuck? I did not get stuck behind Ms. Patton's desk. I placed myself there thinking that you wouldn't be able to find me," Shawn clarified. "And I was right, wasn't I? You didn't find me all recess."

"Maybe not, but Ms. Patton found you when you started crying because you couldn't get out," Gus chuckled.

Shawn opened his other eye at this and began to glare halfheartedly at Gus. "I didn't cry," he insisted. "And I didn't get stuck, either. I just didn't want to come out."

"Oh yeah. Sure."

"I didn't!" Shawn said, sounding for all the world like a seven-year-old. "Besides, you still lost that round anyway. You never found Kim Weaver or Cindy Thomas either. They were hiding in the girl's bathroom, and you would never have checked in there. You were still too scared of getting cooties."

"You still remember that?" Gus said, surprised.

Shawn rolled his eyes. "Hasn't it been established that I have a memory like TiVo, Gus? I just record and replay when it suits me. I still remember the time in first grade when you came running out of the bathroom with your pants down, crying about aliens in the stall next to yours. I bring out that memory whenever I'm feeling particularly blue."

"Jeremy Henson was in that stall. He looked like something out of Close Encounters and you know it."

"He did," Shawn admitted. "Especially in that lime-green shirt he wore every day. Did he even have any other clothes?"

"In my nightmares he had a full alien suit on, if that counts."

"…You had dreams about Jeremy Henson?"

"Nightmares, Shawn, nightmares. There's a difference."

"Yeah, whatever." Shawn's eyes started to fall back down again, but just as Gus was sure that he was going to fall back into his previous silence, they opened again. "Thanks, by the way," Shawn said quietly.

"For what?"

"Trying to distract me."

Gus was about to deny it and claim that he'd just been trying to talk, but decided against it. "Did it work?" he asked.

Shawn paused. "Yeah," he said slowly and with the slightest shrug, which told Gus that it hadn't helped as much as he had hoped it would. At least he'd tried.

"Your dad knows we came in here. So he's got to be looking for us," Gus pointed out cheerfully. "And they'll probably figure out we're in the elevator and start trying to get the power back on faster."

"The power should've come back on already," Shawn muttered.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, usually the power's back up in twenty minutes after it goes out," Shawn said. Gus nodded and he continued. "Now it's been like an hour. Obviously, Martin didn't just flip a switch this time, or we'd already be out of here."

"So you're saying that-"

"We're probably going to be in here for a lot longer than we want to be." Shawn closed his eyes again after that. Gus didn't try to stop him.

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The next half hour of quiet made Gus want to scream. The complete silence and stillness from Shawn was rare, not to mention unnerving. Shawn's inability to shut up got them in all kinds of trouble every day, and usually Gus would have given half of his buffalo nickel collection to get him to be quiet for just a little while. Now, though, it was making him worry and driving him nuts.

"Shawn," he whispered. "Shawn!"

"Why are you whispering?" Shawn asked, without opening his eyes.

"Are you okay?"

"Stupid question." Gus waited for Shawn to say anything about his condition, and tried to think of something else to say when he realized that Shawn wasn't going to respond.

"Shawn?" he whispered again.

Shawn opened his eyes. "Why do you keep doing that?"

"Just tell me how bad you're feeling. You know, on a scale of 1 to 10."

"10 being the worst?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know, probably a-"

"Shawn? Gus?"

They both jumped, with Shawn hissing right afterward. They looked over to the elevator controls. The call button had lit up and the voice had come from the small intercom.

Gus scrambled to get over to the call button. He pushed down on it and leaned in so close his nose was practically touching the wall. "Juliet?"

"Gus? Oh, thank God, Gus, we've been worried. We had no idea where you guys were. Are you and Shawn alright?" Juliet asked.

Gus looked back around at Shawn, who had his eyes closed again. He was biting his lower lip and the sweat was noticeable on his face. "Not really," he answered.

"Well don't worry," Juliet said, obviously trying to keep the worry out of her own voice. "We managed to get the basic controls back in order, and the power's back on in most of the building, but Martin Price completely disabled the elevator. We're not sure why though."

Gus snorted. "Yeah, that would be Shawn's fault."

"Oh please," Shawn said behind him. "It was probably your fault too, at least partly."

"I didn't even say anything to him."

"Exactly. Maybe you hurt his feelings."

"I think you were the only one hurting feelings-"

"Guys, please," Juliet interrupted. "Gus, is Shawn alright? He sounds pretty quiet," she said worriedly.

"Ah…." Gus looked back to see Shawn carefully shaking his head, his eyes wide. "He's just feeling a little sick today. So, how are you going to get us out of here?"

"We've got a technician working in here right now on getting the elevator up and running again. He isn't sure how long it will take. Do you think you guys can hang in there for a little while longer?" she asked.

Gus turned again and gave Shawn a questioning look. Shawn nodded slowly but Gus still didn't like it.

"Yeah, for a little while. But Juliet?"

"Yes?"

"Hurry."

Nice job to everyone who guessed appendicitis in the reviews too!

Everything I know about appendicitis I learned from internet research and personal experience. Not my personal experience, because I've never had it, but I do have four friends who have had it (I didn't learn that three of them had had it until after I started writing this, lol) and I talked to all of them about it. A lot of what Shawn goes through is based on what happened to them. Though none of them got stuck in an elevator. *shrugs*

Thanks for all the reviews, guys! They're amazing!

Two chapters left!