Graham thumped pale, short-haired Mike on the back to wake him up, and Mike stumbled forwards. Graham took full advantage to laugh at the stumble. "You look tired, Mike," he teased. It was an understatement. There were bags underneath Mike's eyes, but he still seemed smiley and happy. "Late night?"
"Oh, yeah," Mike returned good-naturedly, nudging the taller man with his shoulder and laughing. "Late and nasty."
"Same kinky creature?" Graham asked knowingly. The tall and combed blonde-haired doctor wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. I shook my head and looked back to the computer, offering Dr. Brennan's webcam a dramatic roll of my eyes for Zach before looking back down to the papers I was filling out.
"The girl's a serious perv swerve," Mike swore up and down, grabbing a cart by the front and wheeling it up past Brennan and I, who were working on neighboring tables.
Graham lifted a hanging clipboard from the wall to begin another analysis on their John or Jane Doe. "Feeling wrong feels so good."
"It's…" Mike started to say, but he stopped when he heard a soft laugh coming from Brennan. He looked up, realized Brennan and I were both still here, and he started to blush, looking down quickly and walking around to pull back the plain off-white sheet of the new unidentified victim. "Sorry, ladies."
"No, it's fine," Brennan said casually, actually offering encouragement for them to continue by following up with, "Males often bond by exaggerating sexual conquests."
"Oh…" Graham glanced at Mike and then looked back. "Mike's not exaggerating. This girl is seriously turned on by coffins. Mike'll take her into the cooler-" he started to go into detail and I cleared my throat. Maybe Brennan was cool with it, but knowing the mechanics is a lot different from hearing a play-by-play of kinky sex in a room full of corpses, and while I can be cool with a lot of conversations, this is not something I feel comfy hearing about.
"Doc," Mike whined at Graham, taking advantage of my interruption.
"Some libidos are inflamed by a proximity to death," Zach offered over the Skype speakers without any warning. Graham jumped and he stared at the back of the computer with wide eyes. I smirked over the top at him and then motioned down at the laptop.
"Say hello to Zach, our anthro buddy in D.C.," I introduced, setting down my pen, standing up straight, and picking up the computer to turn it around to face the other two doctors.
"Congratulations on your coffin sex." Zach told Mike with a completely serious voice.
Graham snorted and Mike looked at Brennan, ducking his head in embarrassment. "I've got work to do," he mumbled, turning away and almost running out of the room. It made me laugh. Despite that I was surrounded by John and Jane Does, still unidentified after the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina, I felt awfully relaxed – like I was on a vacation, even. Which made sense, because this is Brennan's and my vacation.
Zach cleared his throat for attention and I fixed the laptop, turning it back around to face me again so that I could pick up the pen I'd been using and continuing to fill in the administrative tag. "Yeah, Zacky?"
"Some of the information you sent for analysis seems to have come from remains that have already been embalmed," he told me earnestly, seeming half puzzled and half apologetic.
I glanced up after filling in the second to last line on this particular tag and shrugged to Zach. "Sorry, I didn't do it to make your life difficult. The hurricane flooded the city until it could have been mistaken for Atlantis. Potentially hundreds of bodies were unearthed from cemeteries and burial plots that just haven't been identified and reburied yet. They need identified anyway."
"I could fly down there to help," Zach suggested hopefully, with a hesitant tone like he knew he would likely be shot down in flames.
I just smirked slyly at the camera. I knew Zach way too well to be fooled by that, even for a moment. "Nice try, but we're flying home Thursday morning and I'm pretty sure that your chances of getting laid are pretty slim." I mean, what were the odds that the first time he really shows interest in coming out are right after he hears about another doctor's successful sexual exploits?
I knew I would be right, but my point was driven home even further by the sigh and wince as Zach was called out on it. I snickered.
Graham slipped back into the room and caught the short exchange between Zach and I. Sometimes it was still really hard for me to believe that I'd found people I could have these normal interactions with. "Normal" for me was just what it was, but for most people my age, it would seem odd or morbid or unappealing. Maybe living with Brennan and working in a lab isn't what many people in my position would enjoy, but I don't think I've ever been happier or better off.
"You know," Graham said, looking over a cart for something. "There are reasons they call this the Big Easy, even after Hurricane Katrina." Not finding what he was looking for, he set his hand down on an empty space between some tools. His weight was too much for the cart and the wheels slipped on the sloped floor under it. This room had been meant from the beginning to be hosed down and drained clean, and so I wasn't surprised that it gave out. Graham was healthy and fit, but he was also a tall, fully-grown adult. He blinked, stumbling, and looked down at everything that had fallen and skittered on the linoleum.
Graham dropped down onto his knees to start picking up while scooting out of the middle of the room to make way for James, the second-in-command but fully certified medical examiner at the morgue. Following behind him was tall European detective Rose Harding, a local officer helping out with recovery.
"Dr. Brennan, Miss Kirkland, meet John Doe three sixty-one," James announced, reading the label off of the front tab of a file before letting it drop onto the end of the most recently-delivered body's slab.
"We found this one in the Ninth Ward, sticking out of the mud," Harding added for context over James' shoulder – which wasn't hard; like me, the detective was tall and a little lithe, whereas James was shorter than average.
"Good afternoon, Detective Harding," Brennan greeted on autopilot as she adjusted the wrists of her gloves before pulling down the top of the sheet. "Male, forties…"
"Badly decomposed," James offered with a little bit of a wince. "He looks pretty banged up." Graham stood up on two feet, the medical supplies picked up and on the once again upright tray.
"Yeah." Harding agreed, sparing barely a second-long glance at the body before looking back away and, at the moment, to me. "Be nice to know if it was hurricane, flood, or foul play that killed him."
I huffed. "I'm all for catching murderers, but so far this year I just keep getting tangled up in homicides. Hopefully the only tragedies to uncover here are casualties of Katrina." Mentioning my history with investigations in passing was almost normal – everyone here knew me by name, if not by appearance. As the seventeen year old at the famous Jeffersonian Institution, I'd won myself some recognition. Between explaining why I'm in pajama-wear and regaling other staff with stories about some of the cases I'd worked on, I couldn't have forgotten my recent history if I'd tried.
It was actually… almost nice to be asked curiously what my life was like. It made me forget that a lot of my life had actually been overall miserable, and it reminded me that, despite everything, I'm doing a hell of a lot of good in the few ways I can.
"Detective Harding, have you been into the cooler lately?" Graham asked jokingly, looking over at the detective while he stayed safely on the other side of the room. "Apparently some libidos are inflamed by the proximity to death."
"Oh God. Abort mission, Legiere," I stage whispered across the room so that everyone around could hear.
Harding rolled her eyes and gave him a long, intimidating stare. "God, Graham, thinking about sex in this place should be illegal." She let up on him a little bit, smirking. "If it ain't already."
"Hear that, Zach?" I asked, looking down to Brennan's laptop again. Zach looked sufficiently chastened, even though Harding hadn't been talking to him. "You wouldn't get laid, you'd get arrested."
A few minutes passed with less verbal camaraderie. Harding left – she had other things to supervise, too – and Sam passed through the pitched curtain in front that made it more like a private room, isolating our party from the others doing recovery and identification.
"Oh, Sam, I'm going to need x-rays on this one," Brennan called to Sam, an orderly at the hospital who also helped with a few less complex medical tasks. He wasn't as much of a doctor as he was a priest, politely respecting the dead and performing public service by voodoo rituals meant to either draw out evil or preserve the souls. As far as I'm concerned, as long as he doesn't try to get me to start practicing religion, and he doesn't compromise the remains, then I'm all good with him. He's nice, anyway.
James looked up to Sam, who had on scrubs and a face mask around his neck, held with elastic. "Looks like there's something lodged behind his teeth," he told the orderly. Sam nodded in acknowledgment.
"You've been working forty-eight hours straight." Graham eyed Brennan like he thought that she might drop down onto the ground at a millisecond's notice. "You need the evening off."
Brennan didn't even glance up. Of course she hadn't been working nonstop for two days, but aside from necessary sleep and food breaks, we'd barely left the hospital since the second day we were in New Orleans.
"We only have one vacation day left," she protested.
Graham took a minute to figure out the relevance before his head jerked up, startled. "What – are you… doing penance for FEMA or something?" Okay, I guess we do have an odd idea of "vacation." "Why don't you let me cook you dinner tonight?" He offered hopefully.
"I don't know…" Brennan murmured, still half focused on work.
"Come on," Graham said almost pleadingly. It kind of hurt to watch, and I rolled my eyes.
"Dr. Brennan, for the sake of time, I'm just going to simplify, that, uh, he's almost begging and it's not a date unless he says it is." That was probably going to help with her dilemma – seeing as she's already dating David, she wouldn't want to be wined and dined by another guy. "People can go out together without having sex, and unless he says otherwise, then it's a friend preventing you from starving." That was probably naïve and a little overly simplistic, all things considered, but I liked the way I summed it up. "And if he does something you don't like, he knows I'll kick his ass. And apparently I'm pretty renowned for that here."
Graham held up a hand in mocking surrender to me, pretending to be a little offended. "I'm a Southern gentlemen, ma'am. Her honor will be respected." He laid on the Southern accent a little too thick for humor.
Sam scoffed as he passed, taking out another cart for x-ray work. "Yeah…"
Brennan looked up from the chart she had been marking and she looked at Graham and started to respond, then stopped and glanced over to me. She had been making a point out of knowing where I was and what I was doing. I think it's more so she knows I'm safe than because she thinks I might deliberately get myself in trouble. Everyone seems to be worrying more about me than they should, especially since the reasons they're worrying (living on my own in a dangerous place, nearly dying, medication overdose, injuries, et cetera) barely need to be worried about anymore. It's nice to know they're concerned, but I don't need them to use me as a buffer or to psych themselves out of other things.
"Don't worry about me so much," I urged Brennan. I didn't say it so emphatically because I wanted her to go out with Graham for a while – I won't stop her, but I'm not all that invested in it. It was because, as a general rule, she should stop worrying about me so much. "I can always take the afternoon to go do touristy things. New Orleans is the city of walking long distances and complaining about it later."
Brennan looked back to the other doctor. "Tell you what, Graham. We'll see what the x-rays tell us about this one." She was referring to three sixty-one, which Sam had just taken out. "And then, maybe, we'll get a bite to eat."
"Dr. Brennan!" Blood-slick hands slipping over skin, body hung to a wall, shirt drenched and torn…
"Get off!"
I woke up suddenly, eyes snapping open, and almost instantly regretted it as the flood of light almost blinded me. I squinted with a groan, rocking my head to the side and recognizing pale blue tiles on the floor. Hurt throbbed through my body, but while my brain was getting the signals, they felt numbed. Like they'd either been there long enough to get used to, or like I was drugged and distanced from the sensations… or like I was feeling them through pain medication.
I tried to sit up and almost yelled in surprise when I saw the state of my clothes. I was still wearing the loose sweatpants, white camisole, and long-sleeved blue jacket, but none of it was the right color except in spots. Most of the colors were tainted with red, stained with splotches of dark blood. My cast was loose, partially ripped from the inside of my arm towards my palm, like someone had been trying to pull it past my wrist… also spotted in blood.
A metallic tang hit my tongue when I bit on my lip to stop from making noise. There was pain in my left leg like I'd stumbled and landed on my ankle wrong, and what felt like a sharp ache in my stomach like cramps from hunger or PMS. My bottom lip stung. My right arm was smarting under my jacket, and my throat was sore and dry.
I forced myself to sit up anyway and looked around. The lightly-colored tiles were darkened with blood that rubbed off of my spotted skin and clothes. I know I'm unusually pale from malnourishment, but the drying blood flaking on my arms just made it stand out more. Lying around me, scattered, was industrial bandages, smaller band-aids, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, surgical thread, needles, a syringe – a first aid kit, basically, with the box upside down on the floor beside the sink.
Sink. I'm in the hotel bathroom.
Slam the door. Lock. Get the lock or he'll get through.
I shook my head just a bit to shake off the flashbacks that seemed to draw me in. They were hard to understand; colors and shapes were distorted, moving quick and blurring, and every time I recalled them my heart sped up and adrenaline shot through my veins as an automatic response. I'd been in serious danger. Of course, the adrenaline only made it harder to focus and clearly try to analyze what little I could make out.
I swallowed, but my mouth was dry and my throat even more so. "Dr. Brennan?" I tried to call loudly, but instead barely rasped with a scratchy and quiet voice.
I grimaced and rolled to the side, throwing my right hand up onto the sink and pulling, using it as a way to get to my knees. My balance was thrown and I was shaking. Getting my head higher from the ground only made me dizzier, and I put my other arm up to the sink, too, grabbing on with my left hand and throwing my right arm further up as a brace, forearm pressing to the edge.
"Ah!" Something sharp dug deep into the flesh of my arm and, aided by the slipperiness of blood which was still warm – damn, I'm still bleeding – my arm fell. I held on tight with my other hand, spiting the way my wrist protested.
I held my arm up so that the sleeve of my jacket fell down. There was a short nail – an actual nail, a piece of hardware – sticking out of my forearm, several inches down from my wrist and to the side of any major arteries, at an angle with the tip piercing the skin, blood welling up around it sluggishly.
"What…" I started to say, but stopped, sniffed, and coughed. "What the hell…?"
No one was there to answer, not even my own mind, which usually supplies me with my memories at short notice with no problem whatsoever. This was frightening. Why was my head being silent? Why didn't I know why there was a fucking nail in my arm? I grabbed onto the nail and pulled it out quickly, whimpering a soft protest. Fresh blood welled without the stopper, but it seemed as if most of the wound had given up on profuse bleeding.
The sink was running. I tried to get one knee up, a foot under me to stand.
Screaming, hurting, aching, fear, agonizing pain from…
Brennan, where's she at?
Shove out the door, running to get through and escape, knocking my hip on a table in the front hall in haste and barely noticing.
I stood shakily in front of the sink and held my hands numbly underneath water that had begun running cold a long time ago, even though the hot water tap was twisted. How long has it been running? A lot of the blood on my hands was dry but it was taking off some, making it run pink down the drain and taking away dirt and grime, too.
I looked at myself in the mirror. My jaw was bruised, as well as my face, and my head hurt. My lower lip was split a bit off-center. Trying to think more clearly, I wouldn't have been surprised if I had gotten a concussion somehow. Around my throat, the skin was already an unappealing dark grey and purple, having bruised from what looked like a stranglehold. I touched the bruise over my jugular gingerly with wet and now cold fingers, jumping at the touch of cool temperature on my neck.
Brrring! Brrring!
The shrill, obnoxious trilling of the hotel phone made me jump and I started, twisting abruptly to look out the open bathroom door. "Dr. Brennan?" I called. Now that I'd been standing I felt like my blood had begun circulating the way it was supposed to. I didn't feel like a wobbly building, but my legs were still a little uncertain and I took slow and small steps forward, reaching out away from the sink towards the wall, forgetting to turn off the tap.
I coughed to clear my throat and stepped out into the hall between the door and the main room, with the beds, the television center, and the table, and the windows and phone and fridge and… basically all of the hotel staples.
The door was locked, the deadbolt twisted and the chain lock pulled taut, golden rings splotched with red.
Brrring! Brrring!
I sniffed and walked slowly out to the main room with my hand on the wall for stability. I was acutely aware of the signals my nerves were broadcasting, but feeling them as if they were muffled meant that I didn't have to stop and feel every little nuance unless I let myself.
Both beds were still made up, but Brennan was collapsed on one face-down, her head to the side on the pillow and one of her legs off the edge of the mattress. Her hands were fisted weakly in the comforter and the pillowcase was bloody. A cut on her forehead was bruised and already cauterized, but should probably be checked out.
"Dr. Brennan!" I tried to wake her up to make sure that she was alright, right before I saw the very subtle rise and fall of her shoulders and back. I stumbled to the side of the bed and rested my hand on her cheek, feeling the maybe a little bit feverish temperature before trying to slide my fingers through her knotted and dry hair (discolored from blood, I assumed) to her throat to find her pulse point. She was… well, evidently not fine, but she was alive and currently safe.
Brrring! Brrring!
I swallowed, throat still itchy and raw, and picked up the phone with a little bit of a tremor in my hands. I couldn't tell if it was a drug-effect thing or a fear thing. Remembering which button to push to accept the call took more effort than it should have, but I raised it to my ear.
"H-Hello?"
"Dr. Brennan and Miss Kirkland's airport shuttle is here." It was a female, sounding disinterested but polite, and probably from the clerk down at the front desk.
"Huh? No…" I looked to the unconscious anthropologist and raised my free hand onto her shoulder, giving her a nudge to try to rouse her. "We don't leave until… until Thursday."
The woman at the front desk several floors down paused before slowly saying, "Today is Thursday." The digital clock's blinking letters flashed at me 5:37 in glowing red.
I looked to Brennan. "Then… what happened on Wednesday…?" How could I have clocked out for an entire day? The last thing I remembered was Tuesday afternoon, and now… I'm missing almost thirty-six hours, a day-and-a-half long gap in my memory, and I woke up bloody and beaten in the bathroom.
The clock changed to read 5:38. I couldn't help but feel like it was mocking me.
"Hello?" The voice called uncertainly, now a little more interested but also a little nervous. It reminded me I'd been on the phone, and I held the device tighter in my hand, giving Brennan another nudge with the other. "Are you there?"
"Call an ambulance," I said finally when I gave Brennan an even harder shove and she remained out cold. Then I ended the call and let the phone drop down onto the carpet.
I was never one for hospitals, but I was also never one for stupidity, so I let them take my clothes and put me in another of those gowns. It went almost to my knees but stopped, and left my arms bare. It was grating on my nerves to have to tell the doctor when he asked what was new on my arms, but at least my back was mostly covered up by the gown.
I sat on the edge of a patient table with my shoes off, kicking my feet distractedly and letting my heels bang softly on the table when they came back. The doctor was a shorter man in his thirties, and he looked kind of like Owen from Torchwood, though he was definitely American and a lot more polite.
"I hate to say it, but I think you actually got off lucky, all things considered," he sighed, sitting back down on his rotating and spinning stool. He used his ankles to catch on the legs to make it stay facing me. "Stomach's still closed, wrist isn't any more damaged. No signs of infections, no major arteries pierced in your arm. The bruising around your neck appears mostly superficial. I don't think any real damage has been done to your throat…"
I let myself tune him into white noise. I already knew this. It's my body and I'm very acutely aware of the signals I'm being sent. "I don't know what happened from Tuesday afternoon to four hours ago." I mumbled, focusing only on my own thoughts. I looked down and tapped my fingers against my fabric-covered thigh as a grounding sensation. A bandage was taped down over the inside of my forearm to hold the skin closed around the nail's point of entry. "How did I lose that much time? What happened to me, why was Dr. Brennan caught up in it?"
"You assume you pulled her into something instead of the other way around?" The doctor asked in wry bemusement, somehow unable to think of why a teenager would be responsible for this mess.
I snorted. "It would be my luck." He had no idea how true it was.
"It's a tough town," he offered. As far as doctors go, I really didn't mind him. He had done what he could to keep attention off of the marks on my arms and back, but had been insistent enough to get my respect, and thank God he'd had the sense to page a female doctor for help. "We don't have that many cops around anymore, and, uh…" he looked over my shoulder and grinned. "They weren't very good to begin with."
I twisted around enough to see Detective Harding had stepped through the ajar door, not knocking in case she interrupted something she might have wanted to hear. "You shouldn't insult the ones that stuck around," she advised with a warning raise of her eyebrows.
The first thing to tumble out of my mouth was, "How's Dr. Brennan?"
Harding's expression changed as she looked from the doctor to myself, turning more sympathetic. "She's awake, and amnestic, like you. Worst thing on her's a fracture on her arm. She might have been given a concussion, but she seems fine now."
"What kind of fracture?" I asked urgently, leaning forward just a little bit as Harding walked around the patient table. I subconsciously licked at my lower lip, tasting the tang of blood and the soreness in my split lip.
"Hairline stress fracture to the… distal radius?" She guessed, seeming pretty confident. I relaxed greatly, leaning back and letting the muscles in my arms drain of tension. It could sure be a hell of a lot worse, and Brennan wouldn't actually be limited in what she did by it. "I sent your clothes out for blood samples," she told me, making a move to pat my shoulder kindly. I held my shoulders in place stiffly until she took her hand off. "Maybe we'll get lucky and they won't all come from you or Dr. Brennan. Still hazy on the details?"
I shook my head and coughed to clear my throat. After drinking some water, it was easier to talk and to breathe, but there was definitely a little bit of soreness. I suppose that's what happens when someone tries to wring my neck. "I'm not hazy on details, I'm full on amnestic. I have no idea how I ended up back at the hotel," I chuckled bitterly. "Let alone how I ended up looking like a horror movie extra." I looked up to the doctor as I thought of something. "Oh, you should scrape under my fingernails for epithelial cells."
The doctor nodded in agreement and glanced at Harding, who nodded her assent. "Go for it. Nothing?" She asked, turning the conversation back to my memory – or depressing lack thereof.
"I…" I closed my eyes and thought back.
Slamming against the wall, raising hands protectively above my head.
Aside from almost completely nonsense flashbacks, there was nothing that I could actually remember, and what I was seeing, I couldn't trust, especially without remembering any of the context. I decided to go with the last thing I was certain of.
"I remember Graham accidentally pushed over a cart at the morgue," I said, opening my eyes and looking to the doctor as he came back to the side of the table. I held out my right hand cooperatively, since that was both my dominant hand and the one without a sprain. "And I remember telling Dr. Brennan that she didn't have to worry about me so much. After that, I just… woke up, and here I am."
The rubbing underneath my nails stung just a bit and I had to fight to keep from pulling back. Every time I tried to flinch away, the doctor held onto my wrist just a bit firmer until he felt me relax again.
Harding looked at me with something too close to pity for my tastes. "That was the day before yesterday."
"Yeah, that's what bothers me. I asked for a rape kit, which was… really, really uncomfortable…" To say the least! For someone who dislikes having her hand touched, having a rape kit completed was mortifying and awkward and redefined "discomfort."
"But there's no sign of sexual activity, forced or otherwise," the doctor finished for me as I fidgeted slightly.
"Sir, you can't go in there!" A female nurse protested, following quickly after a set of heavier and faster footsteps. All three of us looked over to the door curiously before it was pushed more widely open by none other than Booth.
"Kid, you okay?" He asked, standing in the doorway for a minute and shaking his arm free of the black-haired nurse when she caught up.
Oh, fantastic, I internally groaned.
"Booth."
"Hey, it's me… so, you know how I'm in New Orleans with Dr. Brennan? Well, thought I should let you know, we're in the hospital. Before you ask why, don't bother, because I have amnesia and she's unconscious."
"Booth, I told you not to come," I said, rolling my eyes and lifting my aching shoulders to convey accurate exasperation. "I called you out of courtesy, not as a "please hop on the first flight across the country."" To be more amusing and maybe detract from the severity of the situation, I half-seriously added, "I didn't think I got more than one of those per month."
Harding stepped back so that she wasn't directly in between the two of us and she looked over Booth with a little bit of suspicion. "Who's this?"
I sighed, shaking my head and looking up to the ceiling. Why? "Detective Harding," I started wearily. "Meet Special Agent Seeley Booth, FBI."
Harding shifted, shuffling her feet around to face Booth while planting her hands on her hips. "Rose Harding, Louisiana P.D.. What's her relation to you?" While I appreciated that she was being helpful and ensuring my safety and all that, I'm pretty sure if Booth were a threat, I would have pointed it out by now.
"Consultant," I said quickly. Although it was part of the truth, I averted my eyes back down towards the ground. The doctor released my hand and shoved his heels on the ground, pushing his wheeled chair back towards his desk.
But that didn't completely work out the way I had intended, because Booth had responded at the same time, but with a different answer. "Daughter."
I sucked in a breath through my teeth. I felt Booth giving me one of those looks but I rolled my shoulders and stared at the ground. Awkward. The room settled into a silence where the doctor was very carefully not saying anything and Harding didn't seem sure what to make of the situation.
Booth cleared his throat to dispel part of the heavy and ringing silence, quickly coming past Harding. I saw his shadow moving and a moment later saw his shoes, but I kept my head down, unwilling to look up yet. The FBI agent stopped by the table, one of his hands going without thought behind me to both lean against the furniture and to guard my back.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
I lifted my head, observing my nails for something else to look at. A couple of them were chipped. All had the blood washed away with wet wipes, because after seeing for real how much blood I'd had on me, I'd been about sick of being covered with it. "Telling Dr. Brennan I'd be fine if she went out for a while…" I guessed what he'd ask next, and I answered it in advance. "That was Tuesday, around five."
Booth immediately looked over my head to my doctor. "Why can't she remember anything?" He demanded, speaking a little too quickly and with too much anxiety.
"Well, it could be the head injury," the doctor offered. Really, head injuries were hard to read, and there were too many variables to know why I had lost my memories, especially without having any context to work off of. "Also, the-"
"I'm beat up, alright?" I interrupted, looking up to Booth. "My head hurts, but if I was concussed, I think I slept it off." I learned a long time ago that the fastest way to make him stop asking questions is to just tell him what he wants. The sooner this was over with, the better, and the less awkward questions may be asked. I raised my right arm to show him the wrapping. "There's a puncture wound on my arm, I was strangled, the bruises on my face are probably from being punched. Ninety-nine point seven fever, and I feel like I've been drugged. I… I can't find the Oxycodone bottle, which is worrying me a bit."
"You're worried about a bottle?" Booth repeated, stressing himself a lot more than he needed to and voicing his incredulity far too loudly. I grimaced and hoped he'd quiet down. "You should really be more worried about losing a whole day!"
"You think I don't know that?" I snapped back at him with a scowl, feeling my posture snap straight and fiery before my body protested and I relaxed again, letting my shoulders slump. I sighed. "What bothers me is that I have no idea how I forgot so much, but amnesia is a possible side effect of narcotic overdose, and I have no way of knowing how much I took or why."
"Amnesia caused by any traumatic event, injury or drug, can erase memories before the vent, not just after," the doctor interjected with an explanation that I already knew. "You shouldn't assume you started popping pills. Besides, it wouldn't explain why your colleague was battered, too." He paused, stopped, and his eyes flickered over me contemplatively, and hesitated to add, "Unless-"
"No," I interrupted sharply, glaring fiercely. Drugs can make people do really stupid things, but I know myself, and one of my most dangerous traits isn't a lack of impulse control; it's loyalty. Brennan is someone I'll protect, and nothing could have made me turn on her – and it didn't explain the damage done to myself. Brennan doesn't have a sprained wrist, and if she needed to fight me off, she would have known to try to reopen the stab wound, yet there's almost no damage on my torso lower than my collarbone, other than the painful cramping that I'm pretty sure has to do with hunger.
"No," I repeated, just knowing for a fact, and in my mind I shouldn't have even had to explain this. "No, even drugged out of my mind, there's no way in hell I'd attack her."
"Great." It was sarcastic. "We'll just wait for a tox screen," Booth added, sounding a bit resigned to having to use patience. For the one devout person on my team, he doesn't have a lot patience. Isn't that supposed to be a virtue? Then again, I'm Atheist, so what the hell do I know.
"It's gonna be at least twenty-four hours," the doctor warned.
That didn't go over all too well. "Twenty-four hours?" Booth repeated, his voice raising, letting himself get worked up again. He's touchy today. Then again, he did start his day with a phone call telling him that his partners are hospitalized amnesiacs.
The doctor shrugged, apologetic, but he wasn't going to go out of his way to make Booth feel better about it when it wasn't his fault to begin with. "Most of the labs in the area were destroyed by the hurricane," he pointed out mildly, matter-of-fact.
"We'll find out what happened," Harding promised, I think talking more to me than to the other two and trying to be reassuring. She glanced up at Booth and offered a tight, uncertain smile, probably wondering why I hadn't admitted that we were related. "You just take care of your… uh… daughter."
I ground my teeth together to not visibly react to the detective. She didn't mean to be cruel, and if I weren't me, then it wouldn't even be worth thinking about twice.
Booth reached around with his other hand, leaning in front of me and starting to reach for the side of my jaw. Without realizing what he was doing at first, I turned my head so he didn't get to touch my face and ended up twisting so that I was facing him. He leaned down, keeping his hand hovering to the right of my jaw to stop me from turning away again, looking over the bruises on my face protectively with a bit of anger at whoever had done it. As I processed it, I felt humbled and a little bit pleased that he cared enough to be angry at an unidentified person – then I recalled that it was exactly how I'd felt when he'd been bombed in Brennan's apartment.
Then again, I have a reputation for being bad with emotions, so I scowled at him and tipped my head to the side so the bruises on my cheek were in better lighting. "I hate that you've figured out how to do that," I grumbled.