"Doc!" Max exclaims when I walk in the door. He looks tired, but relieved. It's been a long month for him, too, I guess. He wrinkles his nose when he comes near me. "Shower first, hug later," he says in his usual no-nonsense tone.
Kate promises she'll still be here when I'm cleaned up—she'd better be, after that kiss—so I take my cup of tea upstairs and strip off my filthy clothes. I consider putting them in the hamper, but it would take half a dozen washes to clean them, and they probably wouldn't survive anyway, so I put the robe, t-shirt, sweatpants, and underwear into the trash. The water is probably the second most heavenly thing that's happened to me all day, and I try not to look at how dark the water is as it flows down the drain. I do four full washes, and two extra on my hair. The skin on my arms is pink when I get out and towel off, and I'm shedding like a dog. After I get into my clean clothes and trim off the beard I've acquired in the last few weeks, I sit for a minute in the steamed-up bathroom and just breathe.
I'm almost human when I go downstairs, and Max greets me with an actual hug this time before he takes my half-full, stone-cold cup of tea into the kitchen. Kate makes a joke about me cleaning up nicely, even though I'm in a Cubs t-shirt and a pair of sweats. She starts to guide me into the kitchen, and I have to remind her that I do know my way around my own house. Max hands me a hot cup of tea and makes me sit down at the table. He makes Kate sit, too, and then he brings over a casserole of some kind and we dish up. It's good, whatever it is—I think it involves lots of vegetables and maybe some pasta—but now that I'm calmed down, I'm starting to wonder what actually happened—if this isn't another delusion.
"Kate?" I ask.
She's already looking at me, has been for a few minutes. Max has been studying his plate, knowing I'll feel uncomfortable if they're both staring at me. "Yeah," she responds, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Max look up at her.
"What happened?"
Kate looks down at her plate, suddenly intent on her casserole. "You, uh, you were kidnapped. Or, you know, Daniel-napped."
It's a terrible joke, and nobody—not even Kate—finds it amusing. I just need to know what happened, so I have some correct version of reality to push away the incorrect ones. "No, before that," I say.
"Where do you want me to start?" she asks.
I'm not even sure. I try to think back to what I can remember. "There was a murder," I say. "But it wasn't real."
"It was real," Kate says, and I'm confused. It must show on my face, because she takes a deep breath and plunges in right where my memory leaves off. "You called me and said you'd witnessed a murder, but there was no evidence at all. I took you home, and didn't see you for two days. You were alone in the house, and when I came back, Max was just shaking you out of—of an episode. You asked Max and I to take you to the hospital, and you checked yourself in. A few days later, you checked yourself out. They said you'd gone to find me, but I hadn't seen you. I'd been trying to solve the case after I'd found out that there was a Wesley Sumpter who had been murdered. I looked everywhere for you. Our murder investigation turned into a missing persons case, and for three weeks we had no leads.
"We got a tip a couple of days ago from someone about a man in the abandoned building across the alley, but we couldn't trace the call. So we started looking for abandoned buildings in Chicago. All the ones still standing got a once-over, but they were all empty. We got another tip this morning, this one about a couple of suspicious persons outside an abandoned building in Elburn. They were gone when we got there, but you were still there—and you were alive." Kate looks like she's going to cry, and Max is staring holes into his plate. It's a nice recount, but she's left out the important part.
"What happened to me?" I ask. I was out of my mind for weeks, and that's not something I can forget.
Kate shakes her head. "I don't know. Unit found some stuff in the lobby. Probert's trying to piece it together. So far, it looks like they gave you something to make you delirious, but they must have stopped giving it to you, because you seem pretty sane to me."
"What did they find?" I ask. I know I can put it together faster than any of those office monkeys.
"Daniel..." Kate warns. Max is getting uneasy—I can tell by the rate his legs are jittering.
"I need to know what they did to me!" I shout, because no one is hearing what I'm saying. I won't have any rest until I know what kept me out of my mind for three and a half weeks. Why can't anyone understand that?
Kate puts a hand on my arm. "Finish your casserole," she says. "Then you can get dressed and I'll take you to the precinct."