Dr. Elaina Marks pulled into the employee's parking lot at the Culver Institute, and as she got out of her bronze sports car, she looked around, automatically taking inventory.

David's car wasn't here yet. She checked her watch, but she was still a little early; he wasn't yet late. No doubt he had been working late last night, too. He almost always worked late these days, obviously putting off going home to an empty house.

Her lips tightened in concern as she started for the building. David was truly obsessed with their current project, and everyone who was a friend, which was a good percentage of the staff at the lab, realized why. Elaina thought that he shouldn't even be working on this research at all; it was a constant, daily reminder of his own failure. But every time she had suggested that, he shut down instantly, his answer simply a terse "no" that closed the subject.

She had known David most of her life, had known him as a child and later had been at med school with him. She also secretly had been in love with him for years, but she never had stated it, the reason being Laura. Laura and David had been so obviously in love, so deeply into each other. David had many friends; he was perceptive, intelligent, and deeply caring, truly interested in people. But his heart belonged completely to Laura, and everyone knew that. So, through med school and on into their work, Elaina had simply enjoyed working with him. She liked Laura, too, and respected both of them. She truly had resigned herself to the role of colleague and friend, and if the candle in her soul was still lit, she kept it well hidden.

Then came the accident almost a year ago. Since then, private love had been pushed aside for an even stronger emotion at the moment, concern. David simply was not dealing with Laura's death well at all. He had taken a month to even come back to work, and since then, he usually turned up at the lab seven days a week, only leaving when exhaustion demanded it. He had even been found asleep in a chair a few times.

The research grant into abnormal strength had been offered to the Institute within his first week back, and to everyone's shock, he had promptly volunteered himself and Elaina for the work, dropping his previous research in mid stream. She had protested; nobody else was quite sure how to approach that touchy subject, leaving the ball firmly in her court. David dug in his heels, even getting annoyed at her, although as always, his fits of temper, though strong for a moment, blew through quickly and never lasted. He never had been able to stay mad at anyone very long. He always had felt everything intensely, all sides of the emotional spectrum, but since Laura's death, the other aspects of his personality were rarely seen, leaving only the fierce drive to solve this medical question and the brief flares of anger whenever she pushed him to abandon it or whenever his guilt surfaced enough to be acknowledged. Joy and playfulness, which he once had had in even stronger measure, had all but vanished.

Ten months, Elaina thought as she finished crossing the parking lot and opened the door. Ten months of studies of nothing but success. This project was chewing him to pieces, yet he refused to back away. She wished fervently that they simply could solve the question, could find something medically indisputable that these dozens of people had that he lacked, and maybe then, he finally would be able to accept Laura's death and his own innocence and start to heal. Any thoughts of a possible future relationship with him weren't even on her radar at the moment. For now, she just wanted him to find some peace and stop torturing himself with hyperanalysis of that accident. She wondered how many hundreds of times he had relived it by now, both awake and asleep. It was eating him alive.

Once inside the building, she checked their messages and the day's agenda, sighing as she saw the name Maier listed. Maybe David would let her take that interview alone. She could suggest that, at least, though she knew he was much more likely to make himself sit through it just because this story was so similar to his own accident. Up until the ending, anyway. She headed off to track down the myoglobin analysis, and by the time she picked it up, the lab was in full morning arrival bustle. Brief conversations with Jerry, Angie, and then Ben held her attention for a few moments, but then Ben pointed out David.

As soon as she had had a minute to watch him and weigh his responses, she knew that this was a bad day, even worse than usual. She followed him into their area, watching his flat-footed trudge as he headed for his daily reminder of how many other people had succeeded where he had failed. "Dreaming again?" she asked. He gave a short nod. "Bad as before?"

"Yeah."

She headed for the coffee pot, knowing well how he liked it. "Thinking of going back to the shrink?" She carefully made the suggestion while she was at a distance and doing something else, trying not to corner him. Getting him to see a mental health professional in the first place had been one of her few successes in the last year, and it did seem to have done a little bit of good. He still hadn't seemed anything like himself, but it had helped some.

"Oh, what's the use?" He sounded too depressed this morning to even resist the suggestion that strongly. Not good. Not good at all. She wished he would show some spark of life. "The doctor said I could expect the dreams to recur every now and then."

She handed him his coffee cup. "You were doing better for a while. It's been almost a year."

"Eleven months. Tomorrow." He stared into the cup, and his tone was still flat. Elaina studied him, easy enough to do openly at the moment since he still hadn't made eye contact with her since arrival. This morning was very bad, one of the worst she'd seen in months.

Of course, it was right then that the intercom went off informing her of the arrival of Jessie Maier and her son. Elaina felt her stomach sink to her toes. "David?" she said and waited to be sure she had his attention. He still didn't look up, trying to scrape a nonexistent spot off his coffee cup, but he at least responded with a half-hearted hmm. "Look, I think we should put off this particular interview for today."

That brought the most reaction she'd seen in him yet today as, predictably, he pulled back and shut down on her. Any time anybody, and she was pretty much the only one who dared to anymore, suggested that he back away from this research, it invariably only made him dig in harder. "No, no, we're going to do it. So why don't you bring them in while I go buy a donut?" He stood up and started to leave, refusing to stay to argue with her.

"Why don't I bring them in while you go buy a donut," she repeated, exasperated.

"Hey." For the first time that morning, David met her eyes in unspoken half apology. She knew that he did realize deep down that he was being difficult this whole past year and that she truly cared. "You want anything?" Elaina looked at him with fond concern, knowing that he wouldn't react well to her protesting any further, knowing that protesting further was useless anyway. "I'll bring you a surprise," he concluded, a statement that they both knew was a lie. It wasn't much of a joke but it was at least an effort, and she smiled as he walked on out of the lab.