CHAPTER 36
THAT'S NOT WHAT WE SIGNED UP FOR
"RISE AND SHINE!" Dan's annoying voice sounded over the loudspeakers at exactly 5 am on Monday morning.
"I told you so!" Bryan laughed, since he had warned Angela this was going to happen.
"I miss those times when you were too sleepy to be a smart ass in the morning." She hissed at him, throwing her pillow across the room and completely missing his bed.
Dan gave them instructions on what to do and at 5:30 am everyone was at the Auditorium.
They were introduced to photos of a few new instructors, or teachers, as they liked to call them. It sounded a little less formal. A little less scary.
He went over their weekly schedule, as if they couldn't have read it themselves.
"This is pointless." Angie sighed, being over Dan by this point.
Then came the surprise. As promised, they were going to re-take the hurdle race in their third week. And today was the day.
As previously instructed, they were all wearing their active wear.
None of them was happy to hear about their assignment. Moreover, because it did not automatically mean that PFT training after that would be canceled.
As everyone stood up and started thinking of their mental strength strategy for the race, Angela and Bryan got called to the back of the Auditorium, by that young guy who had supervised their exam the previous day.
He informed them that Angela's results had been looked over and that 73 % was the final test score she had obtained.
She was not buying it.
"Wait, I left my water bottle under my desk." She told Bryan as he was heading straight to the exit.
As she grabbed it, they made a stop at the bathroom to refill their bottles before the run.
Bryan didn't like to drink a lot before exercising. He'd prefer to drink afterwards. But Angela preferred to be hydrated both before and after training. And also, during.
They got called to the track and divided into groups. A huge bunch of Trainees got pulled aside and told that they would be doing the race on the following day.
"Yo, that's literally the same people they had excused the other time. Remember?" She pointed out to Bryan, remembering a few of the faces.
"No." He shrugged.
"At training! Ugh! How can you not remember? It's already been twice, and this is the third time, that we get split in half and one part of us is told they would be doing the exercise later." Angie looked around the other group of people. "Some people are missing and they're not in our group right now. So, where are they? Like, this guy with the scar under his left ear. Or the girl who always wears braids. I haven't seen them these days."
"How about we focus on the race and not on the competition, huh? We have a title to protect, Champion!" Bryan smirked and waited for her to give him a high five.
"Don't drink that." He pulled her water bottle away from her lips, right before she would drink. "You won't feel any better. You'll just need to pee halfway through the race. Trust me on this one. Try doing this without any water."
Angie shrugged and decided to trust him.
"Goddamn it!" Dan groaned from the distance when he saw her put the bottle down, without even taking a sip.
"Plans gone wrong, Chief?" The young Agent teased him, standing a few feet away.
"Shut up Kris, and go make her drink!" Dan commanded and, unfortunately for him, the first whistle was heard, indicating that all Trainees had to go to the Start line.
"Well, I already did my part. It's your part that failed miserably." Kris said innocently. He loved pushing Dan's buttons, now that he was no longer a Trainee himself.
"Damn it, she's going to crush this now." Dan folded his hands unhappily.
Halfway through the race, Angie and Bryan were not even among the first twenty people. They had their own game-plan.
"Need help?" Bryan called out, intentionally staying behind when they reached the ropes climbing phase, the one where Angela had fallen from in their first attempt of the race. The one where Bryan had grabbed her butt, even if only with the intention to support her and to push her up.
"Nope!" She said proudly. "I got this!"
Her hands wrapped around the rope and she used all of her newly-acquired strength to pull herself up, all the way to the top, without struggling or wobbling around, not even for a second.
"That's my girl!" He whispered to himself before he quickly climbed the rope himself and met her on the other side of the wooden fence after making a jump from the top of it, landing in a puddle of mud.
"Is it time?" She asked as they looked around, trying to mentally remember this part of the race.
According to their memory, they were about two-thirds into the race, if they were now at the point where they had to swing on those huge military truck tires, across a pond and then crawl under razor wire without shredding themselves into pieces.
"Yes." He nodded at her and soon they were among the first 15 people in the race.
After the wire obstacle, they were among the top ten.
"This feels so good!" She smirked, loving the adrenaline that was pumping in her veins, each time they ran past another Trainee, leaving them behind.
When they were fifth in line, Angie extended her hand to him.
"No, this one is all yours. You deserve this." He tried to reason with her.
"Yeah, yeah." She grabbed his hand anyway. "That's what you said last time. And I still dragged your ass through that finish line with me."
And she did quite the same thing this time, as well.
"Goddamnit!" Dan was more than pissed off, when he saw them sprint ahead in the last few seconds and then finish the race first, holding hands one more time.
Angie kept on walking, trying to calm down her beating heart. Bryan was one step behind her. She didn't have to say it, but she was always going to make good on her promise to go through all of the highs and the lows of the Academy, together with him.
It took Emily an hour to get to a state where she could control her muscles, at least enough to be able to stand up and get dressed.
With dried tears on her eyes, and fresh new ones threatening to fall down each time she blinked, she busied herself by packing the few things that she had taken out of her suitcase the night before.
For a long moment, she contemplated whether she should bring the note with her, or maybe set it on fire and watch it burn, like the sensation her heart was experiencing at that moment.
She opted for the first option, mainly because she wasn't keen on finding out if the smoke detectors and the sprinklers in the hotel were functioning to their full potential.
She stuck the note in a sock, because this was the worst she could treat this poor piece of paper.
With a second glance at the plane ticket, she realized it was time for her to head over to the airport. She also saw that her destination was New York City, and yet, she had never mentioned any specific city to Richard. Maybe he chose it randomly? French people loved New York.
Without a phone, she was unable to check whether there was a connecting flight to where she needed to go, ultimately. She could have asked the front desk of the hotel for some help, but she didn't want to spend another second in that hotel. Or in that country. Or in that kind of pain.
She hailed herself a taxi and asked to be taken to the airport. She paid with the little cash she had on her, as she was fully aware that there was a pink monster back home, just waiting for her to swipe that credit card, so she could breach her privacy. Not that this was what she cared about, at this moment.
The first thing she did at the airport was to leave her check-in luggage and to grab her essentials in her bag. Then, she was in desperate need of a pair of sunglasses. Dark ones, so she could hide behind them and cry all the way back to the US.
She refused to eat anything. Food was not what she was hungry for. She only had a coffee, but that didn't wake her up from her nightmare. It only made it worse – showing her that she was, indeed, awake and that this was now her new reality.
Her flight got announced and she found out she was traveling business class – comfortable seats that could turn into beds, special menu for both lunch and dinner, complimentary gadgets.
She sighed, wanting none of that.
The one thing she liked about her flying arrangements was that there was nobody in close proximity to her, so nobody would witness her break down, be weak.
She could not sleep. Every time she tried to close her eyes and to force herself to fight that jet-lag, she found it hard to not see images of him.
She fought that for as long as she could. Until she got sick of fighting and just let it take control over her.
She leaned back and let it all hit her. It ultimately pointed to one thing - her egoism for leaving people. Had she hurt people this much when she left them? She surely knew she had hurt people, but knowing pain and experiencing it were two completely different concepts.
She drew parallels between the most significant time in her life, when she had left someone, and the current situation where she had found herself being the one left behind.
Both scenarios were different. The feelings were different. The love was different. The circumstances were different.
Yet, the pain was the same.
She put herself in the shoes of the other person, imagining them cry uncontrollably, realizing that they had been left by her. And that broke her heart even more, if that was even possible.
There was now an image of that person, crawled into a ball, crying their eyes out and possibly even blaming themselves for what had just happened to them. Another parallel to the current situation – Emily was, once again, blaming herself, even when she found herself to be the one left.
And yet, somehow she put her own feelings aside, and concentrated on the person she had left, all those years ago.
She could see their face clearly. She had never seen them so broken, so sad. Their face had previously been shining like the sun, always happy, full of hope, oozing positivity and life. How could she do this to them? How could she leave? How could she break them so badly?
She put one hand over her eyes as she continued to cry.
And then she also considered the pain she had caused to her team, when she had left them. But that was nothing, compared to how much she had broken that other person, the one with a face as bright as sunshine, eyes full of sparkles and fragile body, full of life. Life that she had forced them to live, without her in it.
When their hearts started beating at normal pace again, both Angie and Bryan stopped walking and sat down, grabbing their water bottles.
"Now you can drink." He said, knowing that she must be parched. He had noticed how much water Angie usually drank, at any given time.
Their PFT would start in about half an hour, so they went to grab breakfast first.
Angie was really bubbly and cheerful at first, but then she started stuttering and her hands started shaking as she picked up her cup of coffee.
Bryan was keeping an eye on her. Maybe it was just the adrenaline from the race.
When they left the cafeteria, he noticed her almost limping, like she didn't have much balance as she walked.
They got to the outdoors training area and started to warm up.
Their trainer started showing them the things they had to do that morning and Angela wasn't even looking at him. Her gaze was to the ground, empty.
The first round of exercise started and it was push-ups and abs work out. Angie pretended, for as long as she could, that she was alright.
"I need medical help." At one point, she turned to Bryan and whispered.
Right after that, she collapsed.
"Wow, hey. Angie?" He tried pinching her cheeks, but she wouldn't open her eyes.
"Help! She needs a doctor." He called out, freaked out to be standing by her non-responsive body.
As if Dan was lurking around the corner, he ran over to them immediately.
"Move." Dan nudged Bryan, but he wouldn't move an inch.
"I said, get out of my way!" Dan said rudely.
"No. You said Move. And it did not work." Bryan replied back. Angie's bad ass attitude was rubbing off on him. She would have been proud.
Dan tried to give him an intimidating look, but that did not work as well.
"I'm not leaving you here to murder her!" Bryan stated, hovering on top of Angela protectively.
"Murder?" Dan raised an eyebrow. "What the Hell are you talking about?"
"We have a doctor here!" One of the Trainees called out, since someone had already called for help.
It was a good thing that most of their PFTs were attended by a person from the FBI's medical staff, just in case someone needed help.
A paramedic ran over to them and sat down, besides Angela, forcing both Bryan and Dan out of the way.
After an initial check, the woman decided that Angela needed a more serious intervention, so she called for an ambulance to come over.
"Ambulance?" Bryan was beyond freaked out. "Dude, she was just feeling so good and then we ate and then she, ugh, oh God."
"Were you with her when she collapsed?" The paramedic asked.
"Yes, I haven't left her side since yesterday. Or, well, since the first day of the Academy." He corrected himself.
"You're riding with us to the hospital." The woman stated and they waited for the ambulance to come.
It took Bryan all of his power not to faint once he got into the ambulance, a few minutes later. As its doors closed, he felt like his soul left his body. His eyes closed and he panicked even more, his mind taking him to a dark place, one he never wanted to be reminded of.
"What's your name?" The paramedic asked him.
"Brya-Bryan." He stuttered.
"Well then, Bryan…" The woman said softly. "I'm gonna need you to calm down and breathe, before I get to sign two fainted people into the ER."
He realized he was being a coward, but something was haunting him. He was Bryan, but she wasn't Angela.
His hand subconsciously laid on Angela's stomach as he tried to catch his breathing.
"Wait!" The paramedic exclaimed, watching this little scene. "Is she pregnant?"
"Obviously!" Bryan replied rudely.
"And she's in the FBI Academy?" She asked, baffled about the parody of it.
The paramedic lifted Angela's shirt up and looked at the girl's stomach. She found no obvious sign of pregnancy – no bump, no abnormal skin elasticity. However, she decided to believe Bryan. Maybe she was just not showing yet?
His hand now rested on Angela's bare stomach and his eyes were closed, through all the ride.
"Please, don't leave me." He begged. "Please, Kimberly, I love you. Both of you. Please, don't leave me. I love you so much. Please!"
The paramedic gave him a concerned look. From what she could gather, the girl's name was Angela, not Kimberly. And she was, at least visibly, not pregnant.
The woman pulled out a syringe and grabbed a few mils of something before she plunged it into Bryan's hand, hoping she would have hit a good vein.
And she had.
It took him a few seconds to absorb the substance before he opened his eyes and felt lightheaded.
The woman supported his weight, allowing him to fall against a cushioned seat before she put a belt on him and was finally able to tend to Angela, since Bryan was now sound asleep.
"What the Hell do those Trainees go through these days?" The paramedic shook her head.
She was on call, working a few shifts per week at the FBI main building, but she had been covering for a colleague on the Academy campus that day. She had no idea the stress and emotional torture that Trainees were under, 24/7.
In the hospital, Angela was signed into the ER, while Bryan received a nice little stretcher, at the end of a hallway, since he was not an urgent patient. Or a patient at all. He was just, well, sedated.
The paramedic had signed Angela's admittance form, putting down the information about a possible pregnancy, along with both names she had heard her being called. From that point on, it was up to the medical staff of the hospital to treat her.
Ten minutes after Angie was admitted, Dan rushed in, with Kris and Jack by his side.
"You're an idiot, dude." Kris told Jack, slapping his shoulder.
"Dude, I just did what Dan told me to do!" Jack shrugged, rubbing his shoulder.
"Oh yeah? Then why is my Trainee in a hospital, huh? How much did you give her?" Dan waved his hands in the air frantically.
"One spritz, that's what you said!" Jack shrugged innocently before he remembered something. "Well, it was very loud, as everyone was talking. When Angela and Bryan went over to Kris, I took her water bottle and sprayed, but I didn't hear it spray. So I figured the spray must have malfunctioned, so I sprayed again and this time I heard it. Then I left."
"You figured!?" Dan was now yelling on top of his lungs. "You better believe that if something happens to her, you can figure yourself FIRED!"
Jack frowned, but there was nothing he could say in his defense, guilty as he was.
"Hey, calm down. Both of you." Kris pushed Dan further away, scared that he might punch Jack out.
The three of them spent the next hour, nervously pacing up and down the halls, waiting for information.
After the first hour, Angela was being moved to a room upstairs, which showed that it was more serious than they could have imagined. Then the guys started pacing around a corridor upstairs, near the room where they saw her stretcher being rolled into.
Bryan was still left in the hallway at the ER and nobody really noticed him being there. A nurse had the job of keeping an eye on him, as the injection he had been given would wear off in about two hours and someone had to be there to tell him what had happened and why he was on a stretcher.
"What the Hell are you doing here?" Dan hissed at a female who was now walking towards them.
"Come on now. You know she can't see you." Jack commented too and earned himself a very icy glare from the woman.
"What have you done to Angie?" She asked softly, her eyes trying to figure out which door lead to Angela's room.
"She's over there, the one with the chart by the door." Kris pointed out. "And the guys are right – you can't be here."
"I don't care what you all say. She doesn't deserve to end up here. You should have been more careful." She was visibly upset, pacing around, playing with her hands in her hair and muttering inaudible insults.
"Hey, come on. I didn't mean for this to happen." Jack walked over to the woman, trying to offer her a hug.
"So it was you who did this? God, I promise you – if she doesn't kill you, I freaking will!" Her hands bumped against his chest accusingly until she finally gave in and leaned into his body, enwrapped in his arms.
Jack kissed her forehead lovingly and held her close to him, feeling her shiver.
"I don't want anything bad happening to her. That's not what we signed up for." The woman whispered in Jack's ear and his reply was simple – one more kiss on her forehead and a tighter grip on her shivering body.
A doctor then came over and asked if anyone was Angela's family. Everyone shrugged and Dan informed the doctor that he was her training officer, but he was still not granted access to her room, nor any information, other than the fact that she had not woken up yet.
"You need to go." Kris walked over to Jack, but he directed his words to the woman in his arms.
"Guys, please, fix this. Or else, I'm coming for you!" She said threateningly before she walked over to the elevator and disappeared.
Emily opened her eyes after a really rough landing, realizing that she had managed to fall asleep. She was glad to have been able to doze off, as the flight would have been excruciatingly painful if she had continued to cry like a baby. Either that, or she could have suffered an actual heart failure, mid-flight.
When she was at the Arrivals area of JFK airport, she started feeling something new. Something was rising up from inside of her. Before she knew it, she was making a run for the closest bathroom, forgetting all about her luggage claim.
Her hair was tied in a messy bun, which allowed her to crumble on top of a toilet before she got sick. There was a doubt in her head – was this sickness due to the rough landing? Or was it due to all the nerves?
"Bad flyer?" A random woman offered Emily a smile when she walked out of her stall.
Small talk was the last thing she wanted.
"Bad person." She stated icily before splashing cold water on her face and leaving.
"Welcome to New York City, where the time is-…" An announcement on the radio speaker could be heard and Emily rolled her eyes.
"The Hell with New York City, your damned time and local temperatures!" She hissed grumpily, finally walking over to the luggage claim.
Half an hour later she realized that her luggage never came out.
"The Hell with your damned airport support as well." She added to her previous grumpy statement.
Everything was getting on her nerves. She hated being back home, even if she was still miles away from her actual home.
The US was depressing her, and yet she consoled herself with the thought that she wouldn't feel any happier if she had stayed in France either, not under the current circumstances.
With only just her handbag, she walked over to a ticket counter, asking for connecting flights.
Given that her flight from France had landed at 3 o'clock at night, local time, she had to wait for another hour for the next available flight.
This time, she did not have enough money to pay cash, so she had no other choice but to swipe her card. She also had to pay it salty, last minute, but at least there was a seat still available on that flight.
