A/N: I thank everyone for the reads, favorites, follows...and welcome any reviews and comments.

Meg placed Joe's hands on the floor and again rummaged in her squirrel's nest of tools, coming up with a pair of bandage scissors. Slowly, she cut through the thick nylon straps holding Joe's vest together. She was fairly sure the costuming department was going to have a meltdown when her handiwork was discovered, but her primary concern was getting him to triage, not saving a glorified lifejacket. Carefully, Meg peeled back the front of the vest, sliding her fingers inside along each one of Joe's ribs. His head lolled from side to side, making her nervous about just how far toward the land of the unconscious he had slipped, but his breathing was beginning to even out. 'Nothing broken. He's calm. Slip him a few glucose tablets and try to get him on his feet.'

Joe felt her fingertips dance across the length of each of his ribs, and shivered again. Her hands were crushingly, unbelievably cold, like snow. She moved closer to him while she pressed her fingers against his chest, and he felt like he was floating on the intensity of her scent. Joe swore he could taste it, could almost feel rose petals on his skin, crumbling under the ice of her fingers. He tried to reach forward, and for a second it felt like she was pulling him into her. She was; Meg was savvy enough to use his forward lean to her advantage. While Joe had tipped away from the wall, she slid his vest down his arms and let it drop to the floor, lifting his hands over it.

"I'm so sorry I don't have a towel, but we're on our way. I'm going to give you some glucose tabs to help bring up your blood sugar and wake you up a little, so you can walk. You're exhausted. You're going to take them. No arguing."

She slid her right hand under his. Another single squeeze. 'She's made out of snow and roses. You don't remember anything. You're losing your mind if you think she's made out of snow and roses.'

Meg moved to the right of Joe, slipped two tabs into his mouth, and wrapped his arm behind her. "Just let those melt and grab my hip. Doesn't matter how hard, you won't hurt me. I'm going to be your eyes on this side. On the left, just lean on the wall. All I want you to do is stand straight up. No walking. I'm going to help. Just push straight up with your legs. Nice and easy."

'Do what the roses say, Joe. You're gone. Whatever happened, you've lost it.'

He dug his fingers deeply into Meg's hip; she had to strangle down a scream and immediately regretted saying he wouldn't hurt her. Joe struggled to get his feet underneath him, and it was largely Meg's effort that initiated their rise. Once Joe was vertical and able to understand her directions for walking, Meg had to roll her eyes. It was a bit like trying to direct a drunk. A drunk who was making every effort to cooperate, but a drunk nonetheless. He, meanwhile, had settled into a sway-bump rhythm that pressed her firmly into his side, oblivious to the pain his grip was causing her. She couldn't fault him for it; he was so lost in his injury that she could have told him to climb a tree and he would have tried.

Once they staggered into triage, Meg shaking from the effort, the sigh of relief that slipped from her was so enormous it almost brought her to her knees. It startled Joe into a dead halt, which in turn scared Meg into flinging herself in front of him and again grasping his shoulders to steady him.

"What's wrong? Is something wrong? Here, here's my hand." Breathy and urgent, Meg groped for Joe's right hand, hoping he would remember how to signal her. Two squeezes, and Meg felt her heart slow.

Dave started to chuckle from his corner of the room, but stifled the noise with coughing when she shot a sharp glare his way. The smile never faded from his face. "What's got you so rattled? You never get like this, Miss No Bullshit, but you're falling all over yourself on this one."

"Yeah, Dave, because I fucked up on this one. I got called out by Randy on this one, I lost the patient on this one, the patient passed out in the fucking hallway on this one, and in case you haven't noticed, I was by myself on this one when I walked the giant, non-verbal, only partially-ambulatory patient down here. I'm a little out of breath and I'm a little worried he's gonna pass out on this one."

Dave held his hands up in mock surrender. "Okay, okay. You win. Everything is prepped. We'll clean him up and then I'll call media once we have the EMLA in place. I'm not sticking a needle in him and neither are you. Go get something with some sugar in it so your hands are steady. I'll set the first stitch or two for pictures, you finish the rest. Sound good?"

Meg stopped paying attention after hearing that things were prepped. She steered Joe to the table and carefully turned him, hissing when his right hand dug into her hip for the second time. He was tall enough to be able to simply sit back once the table was behind him, and once he found purchase on the edge, his hand relaxed on Meg's hip. Joe didn't let go, though, and Meg found herself still holding his hand. Joe rolled his thumb slowly across the back of her hand and willed himself to open his eyes, have his vision clear, find his voice somehow, anything, before she vanished. 'You know she's going to disappear, idiot. You're imagining her. This isn't real.'

"Here. Open your mouth. It's ice. Just let it melt." From her position, Meg could barely reach Dave's requisite pail of ice chips with her left hand, but managed to snag a few off the top. Dave watched, eyebrow arched, as she palmed all but one of the pieces and Joe tilted his head back slightly, lips barely parted. She touched the edge of the ice to his lower lip, rivulets of freezing water running down her wrist as the ice in her hand began to melt. Joe startled when the ice touched him, but stilled when Meg brushed a tendril of hair away from his face.

"Shh," she breathed, "No. Come here. You need this."

She touched the ice to his lips again, and this time the barest hint of his tongue came forward to ease the ice out of her fingers. She slid the next three ice chips into his mouth in much the same way, pausing only to again brush away a stray piece of hair. Her eyes were glazed – she wasn't looking at Joe as much as she was looking into him. He had the slightest hint of a smile on his face, and let out a small hum of satisfaction as she touched him. He knew, this time, that he could taste her. Her hands, her skin, the ice she put in his mouth – it didn't matter if he was crazy or dead, he now knew that she absolutely tasted like roses.

Dave felt very much like he was intruding on something oddly, deeply personal, something he wasn't meant to see. Slowly, quietly, he reached out to touch Meg's elbow. "Hon, come on. Go. Go get something to drink. I'll dry him off and numb him up, get media out here to shoot the first couple stitches, and then you can do your thing to fix him up. Go. Please?"

Meg seemed to snap out of it, and she placed Joe's hand gently in his lap while she spoke to him. "Okay. Back in a minute. I promised I would take care of you." Joe hadn't let go of her hip, and Meg had to close both of her hands around his before he released her. She rubbed at the spot his had had closed on and winced, an expression not lost on Dave, and wandered out toward the vending machines while casting several backward glances toward the men behind her. Dave's eyebrow still hadn't lowered. Once the door closed, he turned to Joe.

"Well. You've had an effect on her. Usually she's all, 'Shut the fuck up and get on the table,' but she was...overly nice to you. What happened out there?"

Feeling the effect of the glucose, and feeling much less like his throat was made of sandpaper thanks to the ice, Joe thought he would test out his voice. Better with Dave than with her.

"What is she?"

"Uh...what?"

"That...her. What is she?"

"Holy shit, how hard did Randy hit you? You know her, Joe. That's Meg. You've met Meg a hundred times. She's iced your ribs, taped your wrists, force-fed you ibuprofin, argued with you about knee pads...what do you mean, what is she?"

"She tastes like roses."
"Ooo-kay, Joe. Let's get you dried off, let's soften up the edges on that big nasty above your eye, and then let's get some EMLA on it. It's going to burn like a motherfucker, but it's better than the shot."

Dave scrubbed Joe down after placing a warm cloth on the gash above his eye. Ultimately, the whole scene had to be clean enough for media. After a 45 minute wait for the gel to work, it would be in with the photogs, Dave's two starter-stitches, out with the photogs, in with Meg, simple as that. Joe, pleased as punch that he tasted roses, was even kind enough to lay still on the table while the cameras flashed. That process complete, Meg took over, eyes never leaving Joe's prone body. Looking tired but less shaky, she seated herself near his head and slipped on a pair of gloves. Her smaller hands and longer fingers would be much better suited to finish the repair.

"Okay, I'm back. I'm going to take care of you. Except this time, you can't touch my hands, because I need them. Instead, I'm going give you a quarter. One, it means Dave can't be mad at me because it's proof I went to the vending machine."

At that, she smiled at Dave – the first genuine smile she had directed at him all night. She looked dazed and completely beyond rationality. Her eyes might have been on Dave, but her mind was absolutely elsewhere.

"What the fuck did you get out of the vending machine? MDMA? Are you even with us right now? I swear to God, Meg. You and I need to talk. Can you even do this right now? Did you get hurt getting him back here?"

Meg simply kept smiling and continued. "Two – and this is the important part – you're going to hold the quarter. If you need me to stop, I need you to drop the quarter. Drop the quarter if you understand what I just told you."

The quarter dropped to the floor. Dave tamped it under his foot and placed it back in Joe's hand, but not without nudging Meg with his shoulder as he bent toward the table. "Meg, you and I have to talk after this one. Seriously. What's wrong with you?"

Meg didn't hear him; she was entirely in her work, hands and wrists hovering around Joe's face, stitch in, out, her breath caramel-sweet from whatever she had wrested from the vending machine. Caramel and roses. The gloves muted the cold radiating from her skin, and Joe wanted to reach up and pull them off of her so he could feel her completely. 'No, idiot. She's real, she's got a name. And you've got a fiancee.'