Murdock tried to think of what to say but all he managed to get out was, "Uh…look, Stevi…" before she pounced on him and he found himself knocked to the floor with her on top of him kissing him.

Murdock was trying to think of a civilized way to bring this to an end and get Stevi off of him when the door opened and he could hear Face exclaiming, "What in the hell?"

Hannibal joined Face at the door a couple seconds later and asked, "What's wrong, Face?" before he realized what the Lieutenant was looking at.

Face turned to Hannibal and said sarcastically, "I'm not sure but I think Stevi's attacking him."

Hannibal scratched the side of his head momentarily before he and Face went over to, if need be, pull Stevi off of the pilot.

"Alright, Miss Faith," he told her, "That's enough theatrics for one day." He and Face each took a hand and pulled her up.

"Now, would somebody care to explain what's going on around here?" Hannibal asked.

Murdock raised his hand as he rolled on his side to get to his feet, "I think I can explain it, Colonel."

"This ought to be interesting," Face said.

"Alright, Captain," Hannibal told him, "We're listening."

"Well," Murdock said as he stood up, "Tony came back and I thought that I'd pretend to be her boyfriend so, maybe he'd get riled up and we could catch him in the act in a fit of rage, or at the least, Stevi wouldn't be alone with him. But he just walked out of here, and…"

Hannibal was already waving it off and said, "That's alright, Murdock, we get the picture."

"Yeah, and I wish I didn't," Face noted.

Murdock sighed and tried to pull his cap down over his eyes. It was obvious that the pilot was experiencing a rare moment of wanting to shrink down to the size of a gnat and disappear from this awkward situation.

"Now Stevi," Murdock pulled the woman's hands off of him and tried to move away from her, "It's not that I don't like you, it's just…"

"Just what?" she asked, "You and I have perfect energy together, Murdock."

"Yeah I know we do, but," Murdock took a step back and stepped up on a table. He'd asked for a moment alone to try and better explain himself to Stevi, and he'd gotten it, and now he was wishing the guys hadn't left him alone with her. The minute the door shut she'd been all over him like an octopus.

"What about Tony?" Murdock asked, "You said he had good energy too."

"He does," Stevi said, "He and I aren't mutually exclusive, we have an understanding."

Murdock didn't doubt that.

"You mean you're alright with him seeing other women?" Murdock asked as he tried getting to the far back of the table.

Stevi grabbed him by his shirt and said, "You know most species of animals aren't biologically monogamous?"

"I thought you was a reptile," Murdock said as he pried her fingers off of his T-shirt.

"Most of them aren't either," she replied.

"Well how many other guys are you currently with besides Tony?" Murdock asked.

"No one presently," she said, "Doesn't mean I don't like to keep my options open."

"I see," Murdock said as he lightly toed her with his sneaker to make her get back, "But Stevi, this can't work between us."

"Why not?" she asked, "We're totally in sync, you're a man, I'm a woman…"

"Yeah, but I'm engaged," Murdock told her.

"So?"

"Happily," Murdock explained, "And if she was here right now she'd probably rip your arm off and beat you to death with it." He reached in his jacket pocket and took out a silver band and said to Stevi, "See this? This is my engagement ring," he pulled out his Captain Midnight decoder ring and said, "And this is my other engagement ring." He reached over and picked up his bag and opened it up and took out a framed photograph and showed it to Stevi and said, "And here's her picture, see?"

Stevi looked at the photo, and then held it up right in front of her face like she was myopic, and pulled it back and looked at it from a distance again. Of all the pictures Murdock could've picked to take of Jean so he could see her every day while he was gone, he'd had one framed of Jean with her hair buzzed short and dressed in her soldier greens from when they'd been fooling around in between shots for a war movie she had a bit part in. Obviously he had to be proud, it wasn't every woman that could pull off posing with an M16 as naturally as if it was an extension of her own body, dirt caked on her face, one of her steel toed boots mounted on the back of a fallen enemy soldier, and a big grin on her face, and looking like she actually belonged there. Change her hair to white and stick a cigar between those teeth and she'd almost look like Hannibal.

"Oh wow," Stevi said, some of the air going out of her balloon as she looked at the picture, she looked up at Murdock and said, "She's cute."

"Yeah, she's a real sweetie," Murdock said as he took the picture back, "She 'n I been together for over a year now."

"Exclusively?" Stevi asked.

Murdock nodded.

"Oh wow," Stevi said as she fell back in a chair.

Murdock decided it was safe now to step down from the table and as he did, he told her, "It's not you, Stevi, you're a very nice lady, and I like you…it's just…I'm already involved and it just wouldn't work with us." He took a chance and put his other foot back on the floor and moved over to her chair and said, "But there's no reason that we can't be friends."

She looked up to him and said with a small smile, "I'd like that." She glanced over at the picture again and asked, "So what's her name?"

"Jean."

Stevi nodded slowly and said, "Good vibes with a name like that. How'd you meet?"

"Uh…she was a case."

"You mean a client?"

"No, her parents hired us to find her when she'd gone missing, we all got off to a rocky start, took her a while to warm up to all of us."

"So when did you two…"

"Well we got married a year ago," Murdock told her, "But that was short lived, so we've been kind of rebounding after that."

"For a year?" Stevi asked.

Murdock just giggled and said, "We've been having a nice time separately together." He turned somber as he added, "She…was in a car wreck a few days ago, she's at home recuperating now."

"How bad is it?" Stevi asked him.

"Enough," he answered, "She got lucky, nothing broken, but…I feel bad for leaving her."

Stevi reached over and poked him and asked him, "So if you're as tight with her as you say, why'd you kiss me earlier?"

"Well…" he looked sheepish about it as he said, "Like I said, I wanted to see what Tony's reaction would be…and…" he looked down at the floor and ground the toe of his sneaker against the carpeting as he explained, "I just closed my eyes and pretended you was her, made it a bit easier." The look on his face became more serious as he said to himself, "I wonder how she's doing now?"

If Jean ever got any sleep tonight, she'd be surprised. She'd been laying in bed with the lights off for the better part of an hour now and still couldn't sleep. Of course she didn't need the lights on, she'd pulled the blind up to see out into the night, and the street lamp at the corner offered plenty of illumination into the room for her. Total darkness was overrated. People liked to think that there was something wrong with you if you needed a light on to go to sleep. But…anybody who'd ever slept with a digital clock or a VCR in their room knew that you were never in complete darkness, so what difference did it make?

Murdock preferred having a light on if he had a say in the matter, she remembered that. You could say what you wanted about his reason why, officially he said it was so he didn't kill himself tripping over something in the middle of the night to get to the bathroom. And she'd about broken both of her big toes on the bedstead plenty of times on the way back in the night to see the logic in that. At Christmas he'd strung a string of tree lights around the window frame so they could see each other at night. After Christmas when the decorations all came down, he'd fought to keep the lights in the window. He'd talked about how winter was the most depressing time of the year, even in California, because it stayed dark for so much longer, and out here away from the city side of L.A., away from all the lights, it was especially painfully obvious. It was nothing, she assured him, to winter in New York, if you wanted to talk about depressing; darkness was one thing, bundle it in with extreme cold, snow and plenty of ice to slip and fall on and crack something, that took the whole cake. The snow and ice could last so long that by the time the sun finally came back out, you didn't even recognize it anymore; more than one spring Jean found herself staring up at the bright sun and the deep blue sky in awe.

The older she got, the easier it was to understand why in ancient times at Halloween, people feared that once the sun went down in the fall and approaching winter, it might never return and the world would stay dark and cold. In more recent times she'd found herself wondering the same thing on more than one occasion. In the end, Murdock had agreed to give up the lights, but he refused to give in, he merely replaced them with a string of luau pineapple and palm tree lights and put them in the window instead; he figured that way they could stay up all year, Jean could hardly argue with that. The truth of the matter was she liked the lights too, especially on those nights when she dreamt she was back in the freezer. There had been no light in that giant meat cooler, she'd been left to freeze to death in the dark. If the lights were on when she woke up, then she instantaneously knew that it was only a dream and in the past now.

This is how you spent the night when you were too hopped up on drugs, or the withdrawal thereof, to sleep. You just lay in bed thinking things to yourself that even if you weren't a newly convert insomniac, you'd still never get to sleep because your brain never shut down or shut up for the night. Still, it was a better way to pass the time than most options. Once again she tried turning every which way on every side possible, to a certain extent she could get comfortable but not enough that she'd actually be able to fall asleep. Oddly enough she didn't feel tired, she didn't feel fully awake either, but she wasn't tired. Oh well, if you were going to be up all night, that was the way to do it, she supposed, still it seemed a bit weird to her. Of course she'd slept for a while after Decker had left…and she regretted now doing that, she wish she'd stayed awake when he and Crane had come to the house because there was something she wanted to talk to him about. Oh well, it would have to wait until the next time, assuming there was a next time.

Jean found herself scratching just above her elbow as she tried to think back to how many confrontational encounters she'd had with Decker over the past year or so now. The man was largely talk, and also largely self assertive, she had to give him points for that one. Unlike Lynch, he didn't always have to travel with a pack, he'd proven several times that he had no problem coming after the A-Team single handedly, or least of all without that parade of dunderhead MPs. She tried to think, of course the first beatdown she'd taken from the Army was the MPs with Lynch when they thought she was Murdock. She wondered if she might be able to make a comeback with that act, but then her mind focused on something else. Last year, when Decker had been temporarily replaced with that Colonel Briggs, he had been the one that knocked her down on the pavement, no major damage but enough, another trip to the hospital, another road trip with Decker and his man Friday, er, Crane. Decker…Decker…strictly speaking she couldn't right off hand recall a time he ever put his hands on her, though he'd threatened to a few times when she got him going. So that's why Murdock was always tantalizing B.A., she realized with a small smirk, it was fun.

Decker…her problems with him were largely just a matter of association, he was a problem for the A-Team, therefore he was a problem for her, and she in turn became a large problem for him. Sounded like a nice roundabout way of dealing with matters. Aside from that time he forced her into their car at gunpoint, she couldn't really think of any time he'd gotten rough with her. Or maybe she was suffering from intermittent memory loss. Okay, so he grabbed her a few times but that didn't count for anything, she didn't care what anybody said, that wasn't assault, and if it was, then the law was in dire need of changing. Either way…the man was a hardheaded jackass, but they did have a history and it wasn't all bad. It was actually scary to think of all the times that they'd actually managed to work together, even if it was only short term, even if it was with Decker groaning about it the entire time. The fact remained that he and she had some unfinished business, and as soon as she was able to take more than four steps without something on her being hit with a thousand needles of pain, she was going to have a word with him.

Stevi had been tossing and turning in her bed trying to sleep. The accident in the street down below had finally cleared up, but there was still a whole mess of people around trying to figure out what had happened, and Hannibal hadn't wanted to chance moving until tomorrow morning when the excitement would have finally died down. This was nuts, she'd been cooped up in the hotel all night, and had been ordered to turn in early so they could get out first thing in the morning. But she knew there wasn't any way she was going to get any sleep. She sat up in her bed and looked around the dark room and glanced over to the bedroom window and her eyes bugged open and a breath caught in her throat. Against the backdrop lights from the city outside, a silhouette of a man was cast against the curtains covering the window. Stevi quietly jumped out of bed and ran for the door and pulled it open and came face to face with another man.

Stevi let out a small scream before she realized that it was Hannibal, who just smiled coyly and said only, "Problems, Miss Faith?"

"There's someone outside my window!" she told him.

Hannibal cast a small glance to the window and said nonchalantly, "Oh yeah, that, well that is Lieutenant Peck, Miss Faith."

"What?" she asked.

"If somebody wanted to snatch you up and hold you for ransom or other reasons," Hannibal explained, "It would be very easy to creep into your bedroom at night after everyone's gone to sleep. So we're going to keep a watch posted here all night to make sure that doesn't happen, one of us will be on that balcony all night, and someone else will be here outside the door."

"What if someone sees you?" Stevi asked.

"Then I do my fine imitation of a passed out drunk who couldn't find his room," Hannibal answered with a knowing smirk.

Stevi slowly shook her head from side to side and said only, "Radical, man."

"Now go back to sleep," Hannibal told her, "We're getting out of here at first light. Night-night."

He pulled the door shut and left her standing there for a moment, completely dumbstruck. She turned to look back to the window and watched the silhouette as it barely moved. She wasn't sure about this, but, it didn't seem that she had much choice. Slowly, she padded back over to her bed and climbed into it and crawled under the covers and tried to get to sleep. But the minutes passed and she couldn't sleep, somehow having Face out on the balcony didn't make her feel anymore secure. She didn't know why but for some reason she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched. After a few more minutes of tossing and turning on the bed, she heard a low creaking sound and rolled on her side and saw her closet door opening and saw a figure start to emerge from it. She got up on her knees and was ready to make a run for it when she recognized who it was.

"Murdock!"

"Shhhh," he lifted a finger to his lips.

"What're you doing here?" Stevi whispered.

"Well you can't be too careful, now can you?" Murdock asked, "This way even if somebody would manage to get past Hannibal out in the hall or get past Faceman on that balcony, they'd still have to go through me to get to you."

It took a minute for this to register with Stevi but once it finally did she looked at him in awe and said, "Far out, man."

Murdock tiptoed over to the bed and sat down on the foot of it and said, "Too bad we couldn't sneak you on over to our room, that way I could sleep in this bed and if somebody managed to get in, they'd think I was you. Then they'd definitely be in for a rude surprise."

"You really think somebody's going to try busting in here?" Stevi asked.

"Well we don't know, but why take a chance?" Murdock asked.

Face had only been off watch and asleep for an hour and a half when Hannibal got everyone up in the morning to move out. They'd gotten their stuff packed up, left the hotel, and took off for the house and managed to make it out there without incident. As soon as they got in the front door they all collapsed on the furniture in the living room. Face picked up one of the throw pillows off of the couch and buried his head in it and tried to go back to sleep. He and B.A. were both exhausted to the point of just about succumbing to unconsciousness, but Murdock and Stevi were annoyingly wide awake and acting like everything was just hunky-dory. In fact, Face realized in horror, they were singing. He lowered the pillow from his face and watched the two half walk, half dance across the floor as they went to check out the kitchen. He grumbled to himself and threw the pillow behind his head and he turned to look at B.A. and said, "Boy I never thought I'd see the day I'd wish Jean was here, at least she's not this annoying, at least I hope she isn't."

B.A. growled and replied, "If she is, least she got the sense not to do it when we' around."

"Amen to that," Face remarked as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

"Alright," Hannibal said, "It's obvious that nobody got much sleep last night." He went over to the front window and looked out, "Everything looks status quo here…I doubt we have anything to worry about at the present time, so everybody just flake out for a while."

"Sounds good to me," Face said as he stretched his upper body out and immediately became dead to the world.

B.A. grumbled something that might've been a 'me too' except it was too garbled and in a few seconds he was out like a light as well.

"Well I can't sleep," Stevi told Murdock, "Last night threw my whole bio clock out of whack having to go to sleep before 3 o' clock in the morning, totally inhumane, man."

That got Face's attention to rouse him from sleep long enough to ask her, "Your what?"

"Oh I know what you mean," Murdock told her, "Just like at the V.A., every morning up at 5, breakfast at 7, you get out on a weekend pass, come back, go to sleep too late, too early, it just throws the whole schedule of the day off and you can't function properly."

"Fine, Murdock," Hannibal told him, "Then you can keep an eye on things for a couple hours while everybody else gets some rest."

Murdock snapped to attention, knocked his heels against each other as he stood straight and saluted, "Yes sir, Colonel. Oh uh," he stood at ease and asked Hannibal, "Would it be alright if I made a phone call?"

"I don't see why not," Hannibal told him, "Nobody knows we're here, nobody could possibly be tapping this line."

"Oh thank you, Colonel," Murdock said.

Jean felt the lukewarm water shut off and stop pouring down her hair, and as she felt a set of hands wringing her short locks out, she commented, "This is one of the weirder experiences I've ever had."

V.C. dried her hands on a towel and asked, "What's the matter, didn't you ever wash your hair in the sink?"

"Oh sure," Jean said, "But I mean like this. My mother did this with me a few times when I was a kid, but then I outgrew our kitchen counter."

V.C. laughed as she tossed the dish towel back on the table and grabbed Jean to help her slide off the counter. They'd stayed the night, and it was a short night for everybody because nobody really slept. Helping Jean up the stairs to her room the night before had been a job in itself, but helping her down the stairs this morning was an even bigger challenge. She still had noticeable trouble walking regularly but she seemed to be over the worst part of the withdrawal now and everybody was glad about that.

As Jean's weight shifted to the floor as she actually put some weight on her feet again, the movement had pulled her shirt down initially and V.C. looked at her and asked, "Hey, where'd you get those beauty marks from?" and pointed to the scars on her chest just before the shirt she wore bounced back to its original fit.

Jean pulled the low cut neck of her shirt down and took a look at her scars. V.C. leaned in for a closer look and asked, "What is that, .50 caliber?"

Jean looked at her and asked, "How'd you know that?"

"You don't want to know how I know half the stuff I know," she replied.

Jean let the material snap back into place and said, "You know it's funny, I've had these things for 2 years now, and everybody said that sooner or later they'd stop being so noticeable, I never believed it but…I don't even remember when the last time I was I noticed them."

"You're getting used to them," V.C. said, "It happens to everyone."

"I guess so," Jean replied, and groaned as she buried half her face behind a hand and grumbled to herself, "Broke that mirror…and for what?"

Tommy came into the kitchen dragging the telephone receiver by its very long cord to the point it was about to snap, and he had his hand wrapped around the mouthpiece and said, "It's for you."

"Who is it?" Jean asked.

"Sounds like Murdock."

"Murdock?" Jean marched over to him and took the phone from him and said into the receiver in their established gibber code, "Voulez vous twa-twa de-a de-a."

She could hear Murdock chuckling and he said, "Don't need to bother with that, Saint, we're moved out now, now we're safe at our hideaway, the phone's fine now."

"So how's it going?" Jean asked.

"Everybody's crashing, we didn't sleep much last night," he replied, "How're you doing?"

Jean answered him, "Ain't slept but aside from that I'm doing alright."

"Well you just take it easy and I'll be back soon to keep an eye on ya," he told her.

Jean wanted to say something in response but she couldn't think of anything. Her eyes burnt from too many hours spent awake, her reflexes were slow, but she managed a tired smile and said into the phone, "Alright, Murdock." Though the thought entered her mind, she couldn't even drudge up the energy to tell him 'I love you'.

After spending the night standing guard in shifts, now everybody was taking turns sleeping in shifts. First Face, Hannibal and B.A. slept for a few hours, then when they were up and found that Murdock hadn't burnt the house down yet while they were out of it, Stevi and Murdock retreated to their own rooms for a little shut eye. And a few hours later they both woke up and emerged just as the sun was starting to go down. It had been an off day for all of them.

"You just about missed dinner, Captain," Hannibal said as the two entered the kitchen, he handed Murdock a plate to dish up.

"Thanks, Colonel," Murdock yawned.

"So how long is this going to go on for?" Stevi asked.

"How," Face yawned too, it was contagious, "How long is what going to go on for?"

"Staying here," Stevi said, "I feel like a bird stuck in a cage, if I don't get out of here soon."

"I might remind you, Miss Faith," Hannibal interjected, "That the whole reason we're here in the first place is because you and your manager were worried about what your ex-boyfriend would do to you if he got to you."

"But he's not going to get me out here," Stevi said.

"Well…" Face started to say.

Stevi looked at him, and then back to Hannibal, who explained, "We didn't go out of our way to advertise we were coming here, but all the same I expect Woody will show up sooner or later. He's a problem that must be dealt with directly, that way he won't be a problem anymore once the authorities have him."

"But how?" Stevi asked, "They wouldn't do anything before."

"Ah," Face told her, "But that was before we came along to add our little touch to it. We have a way of getting their attention that most people just don't possess."

After dinner, everybody had gotten settled in the living room and all sat down in their own section to either watch TV or read the evening paper or just withdraw into themselves. Stevi had pulled her shoes off and folded her legs over each other and made a bunch of weird sounds as she seemed to be meditating. Murdock tried to do the same thing, but a whole different set of sounds came out of him and it had everybody looking at him like he was a mutant animal or something. So he decided meditation wasn't for him and he got his legs out of the pretzel he'd put them in and started to put his shoes back on.

"Do you do that often?" Hannibal asked Stevi.

"Oh it's very relaxing," Stevi told him, "It does wonders for the spirit, you should try it sometime."

"No thanks," Hannibal replied, "My spirit's just fine thank you."

Stevi turned to Face and started to ask him and he replied, "No thanks, I don't think I'm that limber."

Murdock had decided to call the house again and see how Jean was doing and got up from the couch and went over to the phone on the wall in the dining room.

"I guess it was too much to hope he could go one day without calling her?" Face asked Hannibal.

Hannibal took a slow drag off of his cigar and remarked, "If she hadn't been smashed to hell in that car wreck, maybe, but Murdock wants to make sure she's alright while she's alone."

"She's not alone, Hannibal," Face told him, "She's got the 7 Stooges at the house watching her."

"For how long though?" Hannibal asked in response.

The first part of Murdock's call had been muffled over their own talking, but after that Murdock started to get louder, and it didn't sound promising. "Jean…hello? Jean, can you hear me? Jean? Are you alr…are you crying, hon? Jean? Hello?!" he started hitting the disconnect buttons on the switch hook.

Hannibal got up from his chair and went over to the pilot and asked, "What's the matter, Captain?"

"I don't know, I can't get her," Murdock told him, "She's not talking."

"Here, give it to me," Hannibal said as he took the receiver from Murdock and put it to his own ear, "Hello, Jean?"

"Hello?"

"Virginia!" Hannibal said, "What the hell's going on over there? Where's Jean?"

"She's right here, Hannibal," she answered.

"Well put her on."

He could almost hear her shaking her head, "Sorry, no can do."

"And why not?" Hannibal wanted to know.

"Because she finally conked out, that's why not," V.C. told him, "She was up all night, if she's going to sleep now I say let her sleep."

"Is she alright?"

"Oh sure, she's fine, we've been here with her all day," she answered in a tone that, coming from anyone else would've meant that there was trouble.

"You're hiding something, what is it?" Hannibal asked.

"Nothing," she insisted mischievously, "Everything's fine…Jean's just sleeping like a baby, and when she wakes up I doubt she's gonna have a worry in the world."

V.C. turned to look at the younger woman sleeping on the couch; Jean was on her stomach with her arms raised over her head on the pillow and dead to the world, she was covered with a light sheet but the bottom half of it was weighted down by stacks of $100 bills that had covered Jean clear up to her back.

About an hour later, Jean was awake again and able to talk on the phone, so she called the A-Team back and, with V.C. helping her hold the phone in place, explained to the others what had happened.

"You remember that amusement park that I said I wasn't going to sue?" she said to Face, "Turns out I didn't have to. They sent a lawyer out here today."

"What for?" he asked.

"He wanted to talk about a cash settlement to compensate for my injuries," Jean said, "Apparently they figured since they hadn't heard anything out of me since the accident that I was planning to get a really good lawyer and come out of nowhere and hit them with a massive lawsuit."

"Well that's overestimating, isn't it?" Face asked.

"Well you'd think so," Jean said, "Except when the guy came into the house, I had my shirt hiked up and was getting a Deep Heat treatment for some of my sore spots. Incidentally, Face, have you seen my back since the wreck?"

"Can't say I have," he replied.

"Well I guess it must be pretty bad because when the lawyer stepped in he about threw up when he saw it," Jean explained, "See, he didn't know that these bruises weren't from me being tossed out of the ride. He doesn't know that I was in a car crash, so he especially wanted to see if we could reach an agreement without having to go to court."

"So how'd that work out?" he asked.

"We debated on the amount for a while, but I don't remember how the debate went because I was so tired, I just kept slipping in and out of consciousness, but by the time I woke up the last time, I had a check in my hand for $20,000."

"Only $20,000 when you're that banged up?" Face asked, "Did you show him your legs?"

"Well we decided it was a reasonable amount since nothing was broken," Jean pointed out.

"Well true," he said.

"Anyway, I was able to get up and about long enough once he'd gone to take the check and get it cashed."

"You mean you got the whole 20 grand in the house with you?" Face asked.

Jean didn't answer, but he swore he could hear her nodding. Face could almost feel something changing over the lines, he handed the phone to Hannibal to see what he thought of it.

"You there, kid?" he asked.

"Yeah I'm here," Jean replied.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

She seemed to be struggling with that question briefly before she told him, "I wasn't going to sue the place…I didn't want their money."

"Well they don't need to know that," Hannibal said, trying to cheer her up.

"Why did I take it?" she asked, more to herself than to him.

"Why ask why?" Hannibal asked her, "Look Jean, you did fall out of that car, that much is true, and you were injured in the fall, now did this lawyer say anything about seeing a doctor's report?"

"No, I'm pretty sure my bruises spoke for themselves," she replied.

"So? Then what's the problem?" he asked, "With you laid up like this you're going to be out of work for quite a while, you can consider it an unofficial worker's comp."

"I suppose so," Jean said distantly.

Hannibal listened to her moan and sigh and yawn and told her, "You just need to get some sleep, then you'll be able to look at this whole thing better in the morning."

"I've been trying, believe me," she said, "So far nothing's worked."

Hannibal thought about it and asked her, "How long's it been since you took your pills?"

"About 48 hours," Jean told him, "Not really enough time to take anything else, is it?"

Maybe it was, but Hannibal wasn't comfortable taking that chance when they weren't there. "You just hang in there, kid, you'll beat it."

"I know I will, it's just the waiting that's the worst," Jean said.

Hannibal handed the phone to Murdock and he and she conversed for a couple minutes in little more than senseless small talk since he could tell she was winding down. After they said their goodbyes, Jean hung up the phone and lay back on the couch. Her hands roamed around and latched onto one of the stacks of money from when she'd cashed the check earlier in the day. She flipped through all the bills and tried to figure out what she was going to do with the money. And then, an idea hit her.