Piggyback
Bobby looked up from his desk as the door to the infirmary opened and Lester hobbled in, followed by Ranger with Steph in his arms. By the look of it, she was also injured. From the blush deepening on her cheeks and the way Lester was flashing that chagrin smile, Bobby had to assume that the pair had once again been doing something ill-advised. Possibly even idiotic.
"Do you want the story, or just what hurts?" Lester asked, levering himself gingerly onto one of the exam tables while Ranger set Steph on the other.
Bobby looked from his best friend, to Steph, to their boss, and determined from all three of their expressions that there was nothing particularly urgent that he needed to attend to, so with a sigh, he stood, and rounded the desk to stand between them. "Lay it on me," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Well," Steph said, shifting slightly and wincing when she attempted to use her left leg as leverage to scoot up the table a bit. Bobby closed the distance and started gently untying her boot while she started telling the tale. "We were going after Lenny Bourgardi, and were snooping through his house when I heard a noise from the attic hatch in the hallway-"
"So we were like, obviously we have to check it out!" Lester cut in, waving a hand around exuberantly.
If Bobby didn't already know that this tale ended in the pair of them injured in his office, he would have been set on edge by the two short statements they'd shared so far. Hadn't they watched enough horror movies to know that nothing good ever came from investigating a noise in the attic? If it were Bobby, he would have high-tailed it out of there. The black guy always dies first!
"Right," Steph agreed, nodding as Bobby pulled off her second boot and set it aside, returning to the table to start his examination of her feet and ankles, checking for injuries. "Only problem was, there was no cord dangling to pull the stairs down."
"And no other mechanism that we could find, either," Lester added in seamlessly.
"And there was a padlock on the hatch."
Bobby nodded that he was following and used the brief pause in their explanation to rotate Steph's ankle, eliciting a tiny hiss of pain from the woman. Likely sprained, he thought. He crossed to the fridge for an ice pack while Lester continued the next part of the story.
"Our first solution was for me to give Steph a boost so she could reach it, but her lock picking lessons with Hector haven't been going so well, so that wasn't going to work to get us into the attic. At least not in a timely manner."
The medic let out a groan, turning from Steph to look at Lester, hoping that his friend's logical next step was not what his mind had just supplied, but knowing that if there was something stupid to be done, these two would try it. When they were paired together it was like they shared a single brain cell. And neither of them knew how to operate it. Tank had once likened them to orange cats, which were apparently stereotypically idiots. Unfortunately, given his notes in each of their files, he couldn't disagree with the assessment.
"You didn't," he pleaded.
This earned him another chagrined smile. "At least you've learned not to say 'Tell me you didn't,' now," Lester pointed out. "You know I hate lying to you."
A long suffering sigh fell from Bobby's lips and he met Ranger's gaze, like he was a camera and Bobby was a character in The Office. The boss just inclined his head, indicating for him to continue with both the examination and listening to their tale of woe.
"So, obviously," Lester said, "Since I have the superior lock picking skills, it made sense for Steph to give me a boost so I could reach the lock."
It did not. It made no sense at all for Steph to give Lester a boost. Sure, she'd been working out, and her strength training had come a long way from where she'd been a year ago. But dear God! Giving Lester, a man almost twice her size, a boost? It's a miracle they weren't more seriously hurt. As it was, Bobby made a mental note to keep a closer eye on Steph for the next few days to check for anything she might be neglecting to mention out of embarrassment for the situation. The last thing he wanted was for her to be in pain because she was too embarrassed to admit she'd hurt herself. And it wouldn't do Lester any good to find out he'd really hurt her later down the track either.
"Babe?" Ranger questioned, raising an eyebrow at her.
The pink on her cheeks and travelling down her chest turned crimson. "I lifted almost as much as Lester weighs in the gym when Tank took me for that session a few weeks ago," she pointed out, avoiding meeting anyone's gaze and instead, staring past Ranger's hip to the cabinets on the other side of the room. "I figured it would be fine. And Lester made a good argument."
Silently disagreeing, Bobby returned to his physical examination, working up her legs, pressing and manipulating joints to be sure there was no pain from either pressure or movement. "You didn't think to grab a chair or a ladder?"
She shook her head, now gazing down her body towards him as he repositioned himself at her side to start checking her upper body. "It never crossed my mind," she said. "I suggested Lester give me a boost, and when he pointed out the lock and my lack of skills, switching positions seemed logical."
"Logical," Ranger repeated, deadpan.
"At the time!" Steph grumbled.
"We were caught up in the heat of the moment," Lester defended. "What if we went and found a chair or a ladder, but by the time we got back whatever was making the noise was gone?!"
Taking a deep breath to try to curb the urge to yell at them, Bobby said calmly, "Statistically, it would have been safer."
"But what if it was Lenny?" Steph countered, leaning up on her elbows to send him an amusing attempt at a single eyebrow raise. She'd never managed it before, but she kept trying anyway.
Bobby and Ranger shared a look. "Was it?" Ranger questioned.
Steph flopped back down on the table with a huff, which was all the answer they needed. There had been no Lenny Bourgardi in the attic of Lenny Bourgardi's house.
Crossing to the fridge to retrieve another ice pack for the egg he'd just noticed developing on her forehead, Bobby let out a sigh. If he was being honest, the relief that neither of them were seriously injured far outweighed his annoyance that the pair had once again put themselves into a needlessly dangerous situation, but if he didn't at least go through the motions of the Disappointed Dad act, they might get in their heads that it was okay to do it again. And it really wasn't.
"So what was it?" he asked, plopping the ice pack on Steph's head and moving to Lester's exam table, holding out his hands expectantly.
Dutifully, Lester pointed to his right knee and the side of his head, letting the medic know what hurt so it could be examined and treated. "A pigeon."
"The attic was padlocked shut to contain a pigeon?" Ranger asked, sounding as sceptical as Bobby felt.
"God no," Steph assured him, sitting up and shuffling to lean against the wall. "The pigeon got in through the open window and was knocking things over. The attic was padlocked because there was a whole lot of Apple products."
"But not, like, computers and iPads," Lester added helpfully. "We're talking apple pies, apple strudel, apple puree, packets of apple crisps, several boxes of just apples. Pink lady, red delicious, granny smith, all kinds."
"There were computers and iPads underneath the top layer of actual apples," Steph said with an eye roll. "Why would someone lock away a bunch of apple based food in the attic?"
Lester shrugged. "Fetish?"
"Hang on," Bobby said, looking from one to the other. "How did you get into the attic? I thought you injured yourselves trying to boost Lester up to pick the lock?"
Steph's blush returned even as her lips parted in a grin, matching that of her partner in crime on the other table. "Well, we actually didn't injure ourselves until after Lester got the lock open," she explained. "I managed to boost him up, and he got it unlocked, and we were so proud of ourselves that we kinda did a little celebratory dance, and lost our balance."
"And we fell," Lester added. "But we worked so hard to get the hatch unlocked we couldn't not go up and investigate!"
"So you…." Ranger prompted, waving his hand in a circular motion, prompting them to finish the story.
"I gave Steph a boost up, to pull down the hatch and we climbed up the ladder that dropped down," Lester said. The unspoken duh at the end of his sentence came through loud and clear.
"You gave Steph a boost with your knee injured?" Bobby asked, pointing to the limb in question.
"I've done more with worse," he shrugged. "Tis but a scratch."
Bobby sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off the headache he could feel budding behind his eyes, and cast Ranger a plaintive look. Surely this had to be the last straw and Ranger would reassign them both before tomorrow morning so that the medic could finally rest easy while they were out chasing skips. Separately. With partners that had more impulse control.
Ranger gave a barely perceptible nod.
Thank God!