Part 24

JD had given up sitting and now he paced restlessly back and forth. Not that there was that much room, but he had to move around. The normal restless energy of a young man in his early twenties was compounded by stress and anxiety.

It had been almost three hours since Vin had literally flung the telephone down on the desk and gone racing out of ICU. JD had started to follow, then pulled himself up short as he thought about Buck. JD still hadn't figured out everything that had happened while he was in Florida, but he knew enough. He knew his best friend needed him.

That didn't ease his anxiety. Buck slept, the respirator still doing the job of breathing for him, the monitors carefully tracking his vital functions. JD had heard nothing from his teammates. He didn't even know if Ezra was alive or dead. 'He has to be alive...they'd have come and told me if he...'

He stopped to straighten the blanket around Buck's shoulders. It didn't need straightening but JD had to do something. He stared at the familiar features, so unfamiliarly quiet and still, praying for a flicker of response, another wink, anything, so that JD would know the man he had come to care for as best friend and big brother was still there.

He forced himself to sit down again. The whooshing of the respirator was so loud in the quiet room. He couldn't hear anything else. Trying to block it out, he said, "Y'know, Buck...you should have come to Miami." His voice sounded strange, flat and almost tinny. He coughed self-consciously. "The room next to ours, there were five girls there from some school in Texas. You'd have loved 'em, they were wild. There was this party one night..." JD launched into an account of his vacation. He spoke automatically, not really remembering the events as much as reciting them. He talked about the parties around the pool at the hotel; the dances on the beach with the only light that of big bonfires; the long warm afternoons spent playing volleyball and splashing in the silken waves. He told Buck about Casey's two classmates and the other person they'd shared the two-room suite with-someone who was the cousin of a friend's sorority sister. Jamie was younger than the rest of them, not quite eighteen-and sheltered. She'd had way too much to drink one night and a couple of guys had been intent on taking her for a walk on the beach. Knowing full well what they had planned, JD had played big brother for the girl, taken her back to the room and spent the night holding her head as she prayed to the porcelain god. Casey'd been kind of annoyed with him, but JD had known it was the right thing to do. "She talked a lot, you know? I mean, she didn't know who I was half the time. Her mom died a couple of months back and she didn't want to go home and see the house without her mom there..." JD stopped.

He knew the feeling. After his mother had died, their small apartment was no longer a haven from the world, but a cold, lonely place that mocked him for what he no longer had and hadn't valued enough when he did have it. JD had learned that "home" wasn't a place, it was a feeling. A feeling he lost with his mother's death but found again in a city two thousand miles from where he'd grown up, with six of the most annoying, irritating, crazy, wonderful friends anyone could ever ask for.

More than friends. Family.

And one special big brother.

"What the hell were you even doing there, Buck?" he asked, feeling tears tickling his eyes. He wiped them away impatiently. "You were supposed to be in Wyoming with Chris and Vin." The guilt he'd been feeling came to the fore. "I didn't even call you," he half-whispered. "I wanted to-" so many times, when he'd felt lost in the crowd of people so busy working at having a good time. "I can't turn my back on you for a minute, can I?" he tried to joke. "Chris should have known better than to leave you and Ezra alone in Denver. The miracle is that only our place blew up-" his throat closed up. He tightened his fingers around Buck's hand.

He felt a faint pressure on his hand and looked up quickly to see Buck's dark blue eyes watching him. "Hey, you're awake!" JD jumped up. "How do you feel? Do you need anything?"

Buck shook his head slightly. His eyes asked a question. He raised a finger and pointed at his roommate.

"Me? I'm fine. You're the one in the hospital," JD tried to laugh it off.

Buck was having none of it. His hand tightened on JD's. Those eyes that were all-seeing where his friend was concerned didn't waver from JD's face.

JD looked down. "I was scared, Buck. Heck, I'm still scared. But all that time trying to get here, and I didn't even know if you were going to still be...and now, with Ezra-" Too late, JD tried to stop the flow of words. He threw a frightened glance at Buck's face, almost groaning as he saw the determined look in his eyes.

~+~+~+~

"What the hell is taking so long in there?" Vin demanded.

"They'll let us know something as soon as they can." Nathan tried to sound positive and soothing. It didn't have much of an effect on the other two, both of whom had nerves worn thin from the last few days.

Chris didn't say anything. He just stared straight ahead, his bandaged hand resting in his lap. They'd been forcibly ejected from Ezra's side when a nurse had noticed Chris dripping blood all over the floor. Another nurse had cleaned and bandaged the cuts-none were serious-and directed them to wait in an alcove where there were a few chairs and the coffee machine.

Vin poured another cup of the strong dark brew, not so much because he wanted it as because from there he had a clear view of the treatment cubicle where Ezra was. He stiffened. "Here comes the doc," he said, gulping a large mouthful. It was too hot and he winced.

The doctor-he was about Chris' height, with bright carrot red hair and freckles-came in. He made eye contact with all three of them individually before saying, "He's stable."

"I hate that word," Chris said in that eerily calm voice that meant he wasn't calm at all. "What the hell does that mean? Is he going to be all right?"

"What's wrong with him?" Nathan questioned. "Ezra's never had a heart problem."

The doctor sighed. Vin noted his nametag read, "Dr. Howard" and wondered how many times the man got called "Howdy Doody" in the course of an average week. Then he forgot everything else as he heard the doctor's words.

"Mr. Standish was poisoned."

"Poisoned?" Nathan repeated in shock.

"Poisoned?" Vin was totally confused-how could Ezra have been poisoned? Where? When?

"Poisoned?" Chris hissed in fury.

"Essentially, yes." The doctor poured himself a steaming cup of coffee and gulped half of it in the first mouthful. "Mr. Standish can thank Dr. Baker for the fact he's still alive." The doctor shot a smile at Vin, apparently not holding any grudge for Vin pulling a gun on him. "And you too, of course." The smile vanished. "If we'd kept on treating him as his symptoms dictated, we probably would have killed him."

He looked at the three ATF agents. The fury was rolling off Chris in waves. Nathan just looked puzzled and concerned and Vin was busy going over the last eighteen hours in his head and feeling awful that he hadn't realized something was wrong with Ezra earlier.

"T-27 is a drug in development here in Denver at Riverside Pharmaceuticals," the doctor finally said when none of the other men seemed inclined to speak. "It's still in the experimental stages-actually I think they just got the FDA approval to go ahead with field trials. It's intended to treat certain kinds of cardiac arrhythmia in patients who have shown abnormal sensitivity to-" he seemed to realize two-thirds of his audience didn't understand a word he was saying. "Well, it's a completely different chemical base than the drugs most prescribed."

"It's supposed to treat cardiac arrhythmia?" Nathan asked, puzzled. "But Ezra-"

"Well, yeah. If administered to a person having arrhythmia. But if you administer it to someone with a perfectly healthy heart-normal heartbeat-the drug actually causes cardiac instability. Initially, a rapid heartbeat-ventricular tachycardia-leading to ventricular fibrillation." He paused to explain, "The heart is beating so fast it's just twitching, not contracting. Not doing the job."

"That's when you had to shock him," Nathan said.

The doctor nodded. "But, the drugs we used to try to stabilize his heart don't interact well with T-27. They slow the heart down-too well. Bradycardia. Had we kept on with the drugs we were using, we would literally have paralyzed his heart."

"But how did Baker know that was what was wrong?" Vin asked.

"Well, that's where Agent Standish's guardian angel comes in to play," Howard said, perfectly serious. "Baker worked for a while at Riverside Pharmaceuticals. T-27 manifests as a very distinctive pattern in blood chemistry. Agent Standish was showing some of that pattern when he was in the hospital before. Baker realized the pattern was off, and it was earlier today that he remembered where he'd seen a similar pattern before. Of course, he couldn't see any way Agent Standish would have come in contact with the drug, but-"

"You mean...when Ezra was in the hospital before-he didn't have food poisoning? He'd been poisoned with this T-27 or whatever?" Chris lurched to his feet. "What about Buck?"

Howard held up a hand. "No, Mr. Statndish did have food poisoning. But he'd also been exposed to T-27. The food poisoning probably saved his life. He couldn't keep anything in his system long enough to do serious damage." He sighed. "This time it would have been different. He has to have taken in a pretty substantial dose...probably at least ten times the therapeutic level...within the last eight to twelve hours. And it had to have been consumed orally."

"You mean, somethin' he ate?" Vin shook his head. "Can't be. He hasn't ate anything."

"Eaten or drank. T-27 is an odorless, tasteless powder. But there's no doubt that he ingested it. I just got off the phone with Dr. Hastings at Riverside. She's the head of the labs and the one that originally developed T-27. She didn't believe me at first, but then Baker called her too. Anyway she faxed us the chemical breakdown and our lab here isolated it in Mr. Standish's blood."

"Is he going to be all right?" Chris demanded. "How do you treat it?"

"I believe he will be. We're going to have to watch him closely-the next twenty-four hours are critical until the drug works itself out of his bloodstream. We'll move him up to ICU shortly."

Someone called his name then and he gulped down the rest of the coffee. "You gentlemen might as well go on upstairs and make yourselves comfortable. Mr. Standish will be up soon." He headed back to the treatment room.

Nathan looked from Chris to Vin. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded. "How could Ezra have been poisoned by some experimental drug? Those things are supposed to be kept under lock and key, for God's sake! And he's exposed not once but twice?"

"We're going to find out," Chris growled. "You two get over to his place. Tear it apart if you have to. I'll call in and have a tech crew meet you there. We'll get the hospital-or this Riverside Pharmaceuticals-to give our lab guys the breakdown-Vin? What?"

Vin looked up at him, his blue eyes glittering coldly. "That damn tea!" he swore. "That's the only thing he drank this morning. It has to be in the tea!"

Chris knew something was wrong the second he stepped through the double doors leading to ICU. The door to Buck's room was open and he could hear raised voices within. Chris' exhausted body responded sluggishly to the surge of adrenaline. Before he could get down the hall, JD stuck his head out of the room. The young man's panicked expression lightened somewhat when he spotted Larabee. "Chris!"

Chris reached the young man's side in a few long strides. "What's wrong?" He started into the room.

"It's my fault," JD said miserably. "I slipped and told him about Ezra. Now he's upset. Chris, I think he's really hurting but he won't let the nurse give him anything-"

Chris took in the scene quickly. The nurse-she was a young one he'd seen before-had a syringe in her hand but every time she made a move toward the IV Buck would shake his head wildly. The movement had to be agony with the tube in his throat; Buck's face and neck were beaded with sweat and harsh lines of pain furrowed his forehead. His eyes-as expressive as ever-fell upon Chris and he seemed to -+9*immediately relax slightly. Shaking his head, Chris rounded the bed to grasp Buck's outstretched hand. "You are one stubborn cuss," he lectured gently. "Buck, you've got to stop fighting them all the time. And you've got to stop fighting that tube."

Buck locked eyes with Chris. His widened, as he tried to communicate something. He glanced at JD, then back at Chris.

Chris sighed. "Ezra is going to be all right." He forced a grin. "Looks like you'll have him as a roommate for a while."

Buck's eyes flicked over to the empty bed on the other side of the room, then he looked back at Chris. His gaze was demanding. Sighing, Chris settled into the chair, grasping his friend's hand tightly, and told him as much as he knew.

~+~+~+~

"I'm sorry, Chris," JD repeated.

They were out in the hallway. Buck had finally surrendered to the painkillers being pumped into his system, and the nurses had asked the two ATF agents to step out while they prepared the other bed in the room for Ezra. Chris refused to let Buck out of his sight, so he leaned against the wall and rubbed his eyes wearily. JD's voice seemed to come from so far away. It took him several minutes before he could respond. "Sorry for what?" He could hear the exhaustion dragging his own voice.

"For telling him about Ez. I didn't mean to, I was just so worried when you guys went racin' out of here..."

"It's okay. I would have told Buck myself. Nothing good ever came from hiding things from him." Chris frowned as he thought about that statement and then wondered how much Buck was hiding from him.

"Where's Vin? Still down with Ezra?"

Chris shook his head. "He and Nathan are on the way to Ezra's condo...see if they can figure out how he got poisoned."

"Nathan?" JD questioned. "How did Nathan get here?"

Chris opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again. After several seconds, he laughed. "Actually, JD...I don't have a clue!"

"Vin...I don't see anything in here but tea," Nathan said in frustration, gesturing at the teabag he'd just dissected on Ezra's kitchen table.

The two of them had beaten the Forensics team to the condominium. Vin used his key to let them in and led Nathan straight to the kitchen, pulling out the canister where Ezra stored his special tea. Nathan had wanted to wait for the investigators but Vin had to know if the drug was indeed in the tea. Finally acquiescing, Nathan pulled a bag at random from the few remaining in the canister, donned gloves and a surgical mask from his ever-present med kit, and tore the bag apart. "They'll do a chemical analysis but I sure don't see any signs of anything in here."

"Damnit, there has to be!" Vin ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "Nathan, I was with him all morning, most of the afternoon. All he had was some tea. Oh, and water at the hospital, but he got that from..."

"Vin?" Nathan asked when Vin stopped talking.

Silence.

"Vin!"

Vin blinked and shook his head, like someone awaking from a dream. "Damn," he breathed. "It was in the water."

"What? That's impossible-" Nathan followed Vin's gaze to the kitchen sink.

It took almost a full minute for him to realize what Vin meant.

"The water filter!"

tbc...