A/N: We continue the episode

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck

Sarah stood in front of the gated door, dressed in a dark blue pant suit, and her fake glasses. She'd had trouble finding them this morning, until she remembered she had last worn them in the spare room with Chuck. She had found them under the bed, which made sense, because apparently Chuck had a dirty librarian fetish, and when she wore them-

The gate buzzed, letting her in and pulling her from her thoughts.

"Good morning," she said in a slightly British accent. Dr. Kesey's file had said she had spent a great deal of time in London, so she did her best to pull off what she thought the woman would sound like. "Dr. Rachel Kesey, the clinical psychologist."

"Miranda Ivey," the lady replied that had welcomed her. "We spoke on the phone."

"Yes," Sarah confirmed. "Thank you very much for this opportunity."

"Well, we're glad to have you," Miranda replied. "Shall we?" Sarah nodded, and the two began to walk down the hallway. They entered a large room with patients sitting at tables. Some patients were alone, some were sitting with others. Orderlies were standing around the room, observing. "Here is our day room, where you'll lead group sessions in between one-on-one visits in your office. That's where we're heading next.

"Right," Sarah replied. "I was actually thinking maybe I could spend the day settling into my office, going through my patient files, if that's-"

A patient slapped a table, and stood. He was a large man. "That's mine! Give it back!" he screamed.

Shit, Sarah thought to herself. Well, the real Dr. Kesey would do something. She looked over at Miranda. "Uh, what's his name?"

"Vincent," Miranda replied, fear breaking through her mask.

Sarah nodded, and started toward the man. "Vincent," she said in the most soothing voice she could. "Calm down, Vincent. Calm down." He paused his outburst, and Sarah thought she had gotten through to him. She spoke calmly. "Hi, Vincent. My name is..." And that was when someone touched Vincent, and he flung out his hand, hitting Sarah in the face. Her glasses went flying, and because she was hit unexpectedly, she crashed her head into a chair.

She tried to get up, but everything was blurry. She heard voice in the back ground. "Get the sedatives, now!"

"Come on, man. Come on. Don't do this!"

She wasn't sure what was going on. Her head was killing her. She reached up to her hairline and gently probed where the pain originated from. Her hand felt sticky. She knew that feeling. It was the feeling of blood. The chair had cracked her hard enough to split open her forehead.

}o{

"You wanted to see me, Chuckster?" Chuck looked up from his computer where he was trying to find anything to help Sarah in this case. Morgan was standing in the doorway, grinning.

"Yeah, Buddy, why don't you have a seat," Chuck told him.

Morgan smiled as he walked over and sat down across from Chuck. "Listen, if I said something about a dream I had about Ellie during my… altered state of reality, yesterday… I'm sorry. It was just a dream, and I respect her more that that."

"You shouldn't be dreaming about Chuck's sister," Anna said. Chuck looked up and saw her standing in the doorway, her arms crossed.

"No, you're right, Anna," Morgan agreed. "It was very disrespectful."

"First, I'm going to forget about it," Chuck began.

"Probably best," Morgan said, nodding.

"Second… Anna, I need to talk to him about things he told me in confidence yesterday-"

"Nope, it's fine, Chuck," Morgan said. "She can hear anything you have to say to me, unless it's personal to you."

"It's not, but Morgan-"

"It's fine," Morgan insisted.

"Okay," Chuck said. He looked at Anna, who nodded at him to go forward. Chuck took a deep breath. "Morgan, you need to cut down on the NSAIDs."

"Don't know what that is," Morgan admitted.

"All the Ibuprofen," Chuck informed him.

"Who told you I'm taking that? They're lying," Morgan insisted.

"You did, yesterday," Chuck reminded him.

"Don't remember it, didn't happen," Morgan replied.

"Also, it was on your chart, that you pointed out to me," Chuck added. Morgan sat there, quietly. "Morgs, you're hurting yourself," Chuck said gently.

Morgan burst into tears. "I'm so sorry!" he bawled. "I'm a drug addict."

"Uh, Morgs, I'm pretty sure Ibuprofen isn't addicting," Chuck said, confused.

"Don't sugar-coat it, Chuck. I have a problem." He reached over, grabbed a tissue, blew his nose in a manner that sounded like a goose honking, and looked up at Chuck. "I'm gonna get clean."

"Again, you really can't get clean from Ibuprofen," Chuck told him.

Morgan stood up, and paused, as if not sure what to do. "I know I've disappointed you."

"What? No," Chuck said.

"And I know I've disappointed Ellie," he continued.

"She has no idea," Chuck told him.

"You don't have to hide it from her, she deserves to know," Morgan insisted.

"Morgan, you are not the first person to take too much Ibuprofen because of your job, and what it does to your body," Chuck said.

"Chuck, can you give us a minute?" Anna asked. Chuck started to say something, but she gave him a look that made him stand and leave his office. As he left, he realized it was his office. As he turned to say something about that fact, the door to his office shut, and he heard the door lock.

He started to knock on the door when he heard Anna yelling. He walked away from the door and went over to the conference table. "I hope Sarah is having better luck than I am," he muttered.

}o{

Sarah watched the doctor in front of her use a small flashlight to check her pupils. "Look straight ahead," he told her, peering into her eyes.

"I feel so stupid, first day on the job, and I get cold-cocked," Sarah said. The doctor smiled. "I guess you see this kinda thing often?"

"Well, no one would get hurt at all, if Miranda hadn't slashed our staff to the bone," the doctor grumbled. "But she'd probably just use hiring more orderlies as an excuse to cut our salaries again." He clicked off the light and turned to the nurse. "Tanaka, no concussion. Patch her up." He got up, and walked out of the room.

Tanaka walked over to Sarah, holding a piece of gauze and some medical tape. "Ignore him, he keeps a stick up his ass twenty-four-seven," she grumbled, making Sarah laugh. "Trust me, it's not you. Dr Brooks…" she trailed off and shook her head. He's just like that with everyone, and frankly, it does get on your nerves."

"He does seem a little tightly wound," Sarah admitted.

Tanaka snorted. "Turns out the patients are not the only ones here with issues," she told Sarah, conspiratorially. Sarah frowned. "You hurting?"

"No, nothing like that," Sarah said. "It's just first I heard things about this place, and now I have a head wound."

"Heard things?" Tanaka asked.

"Yes," Sarah replied. "I was told that one of your orderlies died recently." Tanaka's face tightened. "I heard it was suicide."

"Miranda doesn't like us talking about that," Tanaka said quickly. She taped down the gauze, leaning forward to take a better look at it. "But yeah," she said softly. "I think Kayla had been struggling for a long time. Seriously, don't talk about it, Miranda gets really upset when we do." Tanaka sat back and smiled at Sarah. "I think you're good to go."

"Thank you," Sarah said. She got up and left the room.

}o{

Sarah was in a deserted stairwell. She had been standing there a few minutes to make sure no one was using it. She had heard nothing in the time she stood there. Pulling out her cell phone, she called Chuck.

"Hey," he answered. "I think I need you to know that I snapped a pic of you this morning in your pantsuit and glasses."

"Well, when I get home, you can lie on the couch and tell me about how that made you feel," Sarah replied, grinning.

"I felt bad that I did it without your permission," Chuck admitted.

"Wait, you're not flirting or bantering, you're being serious," Sarah replied.

"I am," Chuck admitted. "I don't have the right to snap pictures of you without your knowing."

"You think I didn't know?" Sarah asked. "Take a look at them Chuck. Are you sure there isn't one where the tip of the pen I'm holding is near my lip?" She thought she heard him drop his phone. "You there?"

"I am!" Chuck said. He had dropped his phone. The voice sounded far away. "I should have asked," he said, clearly holding the phone now.

"Well, we can talk about that later," Sarah said.

"Is that before or after I lie on the couch and tell you how I feel?" Chuck asked. "Oh, and where will you be?"

"Hopefully on the couch with you," Sarah told him.

"Will you still have the pantsuit and glasses on?" Chuck asked.

"Do you want me in that… or nothing at all?" Again, it sounded like he dropped the phone. "Okay, we need to talk about the case."

"YEP!" he chirped in a high pitched voice. God, she loved this idiot.

Sarah told him what all happened. "Seriously, are you okay?" Chuck asked her.

"I'm fine," Sarah insisted. "Well, physically. I'm torn inside on what to believe. Given what nurse Tanaka just told me, it is looking more and more likely that Kayla's death was a suicide."

"But Bruce wants to know the why, right?"

"He does," Sarah agreed. "That's what Bruce wants; answers."

"Okay, let me do some digging and talk to people," Chuck told her. "I'm gonna see if I can figure out what changed for Kayla two weeks ago. I'm gonna check out her apartment compound and talk to people. Maybe I'll swing by the impound lot and search her car, see if there's anything in there that can tell us what was on Kayla's mind before she died."

"Okay, and I'll talk to people here," Sarah told him. "Chuck…"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful," Sarah said. "I'm not there to watch you."

"Want me to take Anna or Casey with me?" Chuck asked.

"No, just… I love you."

"Love you, Sarah. See you soon."

}o{

Sarah sat in her office, alone. She had spent the past little bit talking to the patients about Kayla. She looked over at the empty chair, thinking about what she had discovered.

Cassie session

"So, Cassie," Sarah began, gently. "When you found out that Kayla had died, how did that make you feel?"

"Sad," Cassie replied. Sarah nodded sympathetically. She was using her interrogation training for these interviews. When you ask a question and are silent, most people felt the need to respond. "Really, really sad."

Sarah was controlling her expressions, but she thought they were about to get somewhere. "But I have chronic major depression, so what else is new?" Cassie finished. Sarah nodded.

Well, that checked out.

Ted session

"So you had a lot of dealings with Kayla then?" Sarah asked.

"Oh, yeah," Ted answered, waving a hand covered in a knitted glove. Sarah noticed his hair was a bit wild. He was animated, and somewhat jittery.

"Did you know she was depressed?" Sarah asked.

Ted made a pffth sound. "Kayla? Depression? No. Happiest girl ever," Ted insisted.

"Really?" Sarah asked, thinking they were finally getting somewhere.

"Besides, I know for a fact Miranda had her killed," Ted went on.

"Miranda? The hospital administrator?" Sarah clarified.

"That's what they want you to think," Ted said, getting stirred up. "But here's the thing." He leaned in close, and Sarah did as well, wary this time after being hit in the head earlier. "She didn't work for the hospital."

"She didn't?" Sarah asked, wondering how this patient had all of this information.

"Nope," Ted continued. "She works for the Illuminati."

Sarah looked down at the file and flipped to the end. There, in the notes, highlighted in yellow, were the words she was looking for.

Paranoid delusions.

Steven session

"So, Steven," Sarah asked to the man who looked completely non-responsive. "It says here that you used to run a surfboard company." Steven said nothing. "Mr. Li?"

All of these interviews had turned up nothing. But then… then she might have hit the mother lode"

Becca session

You know, change can be difficult for all of us, so when Kayla died..." Sarah trailed off. Becca was fidgeting… something was clearly agitating her. "Is talking about Kayla upsetting for you, Becca?" Becca looked away from Sarah. "Is there something you'd like to share?"

"Not with you," she nearly spat out.

"Really?" Sarah asked. "And why is that?"

"Because you're lying," Becca accused Sarah. "Y-You're not who you say you are."

Sarah paused for a moment and thought about the best way to proceed. It is true that sometimes strangers can seem dishonest," Sarah began.

Becca cut in. "I watch House, every day at four. Dr. House is smart, but his R's are too hard, because the actor who plays him is British. Your R's aren't too hard. You're not British." Damn it. Why had she tried to do the British accent? "A truth for a truth," Becca insisted. "Tell me who you are, and I'll tell you what I know."

Sarah sat there a moment, and decided she had nothing to lose. If she told Becca the truth and Becca started telling everyone that Sarah wasn't who she said she was, Sarah could always use the fact that Becca was a patient against her. Sarah didn't like it, but she felt pinned in.

Sarah took a deep breath and began. "All right, Becca. I'm a private investigator. Someone who loved Kayla very much has asked me to look into her death. Your turn."

Becca didn't look happy, but began to talk. "I saw Kayla do a bad thing."

Sarah perked up with that. "What kind of bad thing?"

"Bad-bad," Becca said, clearly bothered. "I saw her sneaking into the med room, where they keep all the drugs."

Sarah sat in her chair, and knew what she needed to do. She got up, went to the door, opened it, and looked down the hallway. No one was watching her so she headed down the hallway, back into the stairwell.

It was becoming obvious to her how much she relied on Chuck. Not just emotionally, or at home, or at the office, but in the field. She could discuss things with him, use him as a sounding board. And sometimes, he came up with off-the-wall ideas… and those ideas sometimes could be spot on.

"Hey, you got a second," she asked, peering down the hallway to make sure she was alone. She could see into the area where the drugs were being held, and there were a lot of them.

Which made sense, given how many the hospital was giving out per day.

"For you, always," Chuck told her, as he got out of the car he had been searching at the impound lot. He swore he could feel her smile into the phone. "What's up?" Sarah told him about her conversation with Becca. "So you think Kayla was maybe using drugs? But how would that work? Her tox screen came back negative."

"Yeah, negative for commonly abused drugs," Sarah reminded him. "Some medications here don't show up on standard tests."

"Well, I could ask the medical examiner to test for psych meds," Chuck said. "But that means I'd have to talk to Jeff…"

"The sacrifices you make for me," she replied, grinning.

"But, Sarah, it's also possible she wasn't using," Chuck said cautiously. "She could have been selling. Which – if she was – our client is notgonna love that."

"No, he wouldn't," Sarah said. "I mean, who would."

"Point," Chuck agreed.

"As for selling the drugs, or even accessing them… the security on the drugs here is understandably fairly tight. I think it would have been very difficult for Kayla to run an operation like that by herself."

"Oh, crap," Chuck groaned. "So you think she might have had help?"

"It's possible," Sarah admitted. "One of the doctors here was complaining about his salary."

"Which could mean you're in jeopardy," Chuck pointed out. "Let me get Carina or Casey to get in there and help you."

"Chuck, we have no reason for them to be here," Sarah reminded him. "We have no way of making them a cover. Besides, no one knows who I am." She was silent a second. "Except Becca."

"I'm sorry, who's Becca?"

"She's a patient," Sarah said. Chuck looked at his phone. "Listen, nerd, I connected with her, and maybe I pulled a you."

"Wow, I have rubbed off on you," Chuck muttered. "Listen, stay safe, okay?"

"I will, Chuck, I promise," Sarah told him.

"So you think she was running a side business with the doctor and they had a falling out?" Chuck asked. "And that's a pretty serious falling out for Kayla to end up dead."

"It's possible," Sarah admitted. "But, right now, all of this is hypothetical until we can actually find some proof that she was murdered."

"The problem with that is, everything I found so far makes it look like a suicide. There was no sign of struggle in the car, but I did find this," Chuck told her. He pulled the phone away from his ear and sent her a text. She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the picture.

"That's a ticket from a parking lot," Sarah said.

"Exactly," Chuck told her. "It had a one-hour validation stamp on it. I called the lot, gave them the number, and it came back to a psychiatrist's office, a Dr. Anton Weiss."

"Weiss?" Sarah asked. "He was in Kayla's phone records. Kayla called numerous doctors and hospitals, so I just assumed it was work-related. But if she's calling a psychiatrist days before she died..." Sarah trailed off, realizing something was going on here.

"Well, it could have been personal," Chuck finished for her. "And if it was, and we get this doctor talking, maybe we can find out if Kayla was actually suicidal... and why."

"Okay, I need to get back," Sarah told him.

"Sarah… be careful," Chuck told her.

"You do know I have training, right?" she asked him.

"I know, but… just…"

"I'll be careful, Chuck, promise," Sarah said. "Love you."

"Love you," Chuck told her. They hung up. Sarah looked around, then headed back into the other hallway.

A second later, a door behind where Sarah had been standing opened, and Zondra stepped out.

"You'd better be careful, Blondie," she muttered, and walked down the hallway.

A/N: Dun Dun DUNNNNNNNN

Next time:

"Yes, no…maybe," Dr. Weiss said. "There was one thing I didn't tell you that I thought maybe you should know. Kayla let it slip that she was trying to decide to talk to her boyfriend about what was going on."

"Why would she do that?" Chuck asked. "I didn't think he was a doctor."

"No, Bryce isn't a doctor, as far as I knew," Dr. Weiss said.

"Sir…did you say Bryce?"

"Yes," Dr. Weiss replied. Chuck felt his blood run cold.

"We were hired by a Bruce Anderson," Chuck told Dr. Weiss. "He claimed to be her boyfriend."

"I could of swore Kayla said his name was Bryce Lapkin," Dr. Weiss replied.

"Do you mean Bryce Larkin?" Chuck asked.

"That's it!" Dr. Weiss replied.

…..Come on back next time, same Chuck time, same Chuck channel. If you have a moment and wish to leave a review, feel free to. I do appreciate them.