http://owl.heggen.net

by Kim Heggen

February 2000 (begun)

So… once again, the format of the serial tempts me away from the things I really should be working on. (Sorry, Mackie!) It’s such fun to write a story this way; it is a leap of faith with both feet. Even with a outline, I’m never really quite certain where I’m going to end up… but I know I’ll have fun. I hate writing in isolation; it’s much more enjoyable to send off little story tidbits, to tease and tantalize the readers a bit. Terminal serialitis, that’s what I’ve got, and there’s no cure.

It’s been a rare privilege to write these ongoing sagas for this fandom… to sit cross-legged in front of the fire, here on our virtual hearth, where I can tell stories and hear the murmurs of encouragement. Where else would I find this many people who will listen to me talk? <g>

Onto the specifics! This will be long. It will (I hope) be heart-wrenching. Many, many Jim-owies will be involved. There will be a brief return of a previously introduced original female character, but don’t worry, she ain’t gonna steal the show. Call it a PG rating. Standard disclaimer applies; my only compensation is the warm glow I get from writing and reading feedback.

This is set pre- TS by BS, for some specific reasons which I know and you won’t get to find out until the end (nyah nyah nyah) While it is also set following “Strong Enough To Be Your Friend” and “And Time Will Wash Me Clean”, it isn’t necessary to read either of those to understand this one. ‘Course, I wish you would read those, too…

I dedicate this tale to Iris Wilde and wnnepooh, ‘cause I know they’ll be brave enough to read it in progress and will bite their nails at the cliff-hangers in proper serial fashion. And I dedicate it as well to Mackie, for putting up with me on the FPP crew with great long-suffering patience.

It’s winter here as I write (duh!) but we now journey to summer in Cascade… Oh, and just to be confusing, this is first-person again but alternates between Jim and Blair, so you’ll have to pay attention.

As I walk into the bullpen, Simon looks up. He’s standing by Brown’s desk, haranguing him about something. Brown looks both sheepish and glad to see me. Hey, when you’re under fire, it’s always cheering to see an additional target show up.

Simon gives me a tired smile and turns toward me. “Hey, Jim! How was the fishing?” Brown, I notice, seizes the opportunity and slips away. Simon appears not to notice.

I grin and hang up my coat. “Not bad. I’ve got a couple of nice steelhead in the freezer. Too bad you don’t like fish, Simon… you could come over and help eat them.”

He splutters. “Don’t like fish? When did I ever say that?”

I scratch my head. “I was sure I remember you telling me that once.”

He plays along. “I’m sure there’s something in the department regs about sharing your catch with your Captain.”

I can’t keep a straight face any longer, and laugh briefly. “Tell you what… just as soon as Sandburg gets back, we’ll have you over for a fish feast.” I sit down at my desk, and Simon comes over.

“Yeah, where is your shadow? I thought he was only going to be gone for a week.”

I begin to sort through my messages and the pile of correspondence on my desk. “He left a message on the answering machine. He had his flight changed to tomorrow. I guess he had some golden opportunity come up that he didn’t want to miss.” I raise my head and look at my boss. “Why? Something going on that you need him for?”

“No, just curious. And nothing’s been going on.” He levels a stare at me. “It’s amazing how quiet it’s been with you two both gone. Sometimes, I wonder if you and Sandburg actually just solve cases or if you somehow attract them.”

“Sometimes I wonder that too, Captain.”

Leaning against the wall in the airport terminal, I shift my weight and check my watch for the five thousandth time. One of the departing flights is late by several hours, so every chair in the waiting area is occupied. I forgot to bring a magazine or anything, so it’s been a long, boring wait. I was hoping we would get out of here before rush hour hit, but it’s just now five o’clock and Sandburg’s plane has finally landed. Bleah. Maybe we should just go find a friendly pub or something and wait out the traffic.

Stop it, I tell myself. You just had a peaceful, relaxing vacation. Don’t negate that by worrying about traffic.

It was an amazingly idyllic week. When Sandburg first told me he was going to be gone on this New Mexico trip, I had first intended to just work as usual. But he and Simon both nagged me to take the week off, get away by myself. “Remember,” Sandburg had reminded me, “isolation is good for your senses. Get out of town by yourself, Jim. How long has it been since you’ve done that?” He’d patted me on the arm.

So, pretending to be reluctant, but secretly delighted at the prospect, I packed up the truck and headed into the mountains. Just me and the fish, and the stars overhead. I got in some good hiking, and slept and ate better than I had in weeks. Sandburg was right; I needed some time off by myself. And just as he predicted, my senses feel sharper, cleaner, more responsive to my command.

Just as I reach the point where I’m thinking seriously about throwing my dignity to the winds and sitting down on the hard carpeted floor (something that Sandburg would never have hesitated to do) the uniformed airline employee picks up the microphone and announces the arriving flight.

“United Airlines flight 8363, from Albuquerque via Los Angeles, now arriving at gate 44.”

I heave a none-too-quiet sigh of relief and decide to remain standing a few more minutes after all. No sense in sitting down just to get up again in a few minutes.

The blue door opens, and passengers file off the plane into the terminal. I look through them rather than actually at them, my eyes waiting to catch a certain springy step and a familiar cloud of hair. One attractive dark-haired woman distracts me briefly, but then my vision and attention are back to scanning the crowd for my partner.

He’s one of the last ones off the plane, looking dusty but cheerful. He’s wearing faded khaki shorts and a weirdly printed T-shirt, in what is probably a last burst of weather optimism considering the threatening clouds outside. His nose is sunburned and peeling; I can actually feel the heat radiating from it. A bulging duffle bag swings from one shoulder while he carries his backpack clutched in the opposite hand.

In a few seconds, he’s crossed the room to stand by my side. As I reach out one hand to punch him on the shoulder, a wave of unfamiliar smells assaults my nose.

“Sandburg, have you bathed at all this week?” I ask by way of greeting, trusting that Blair will see the pleased smile that lurks beneath the teasing. “You smell like you’ve become a wildlife habitat, instead of just helping to restore it.”

“Ha, ha, very funny. I see a week by yourself has sharpened your wit.” He tosses his duffle bag at me. “Just for that, you can make yourself useful.”

I catch the lumpy bag with a practiced hand. “This all your stuff?” When I dropped him off eight days ago at the airport, he’d only had the backpack and duffle.

He shakes his head. “Got to go down to baggage claim. I boxed up all of my dirty laundry to make room for souvenirs and stuff.”

As we head down the long hall of the terminal, I give the faded and stained bag a little shake. A sharp musty smell wafts from it. “Sandburg, if your dirty laundry smells any worse than this, it’s riding in the back of the truck.”

My box turns up in the last batch of luggage on the oval conveyor belt. I snag it and heft it onto one shoulder. “Okay, I’m set now.” Jim eyes me dubiously.

I’m actually rather proud of my creative packing solution. I didn’t anticipate I would end up picking up so many little odds and ends, and wouldn’t have had room to bring them all back if I hadn’t thought of this. Of course, I could have packed the artifacts and souvenirs and carried my laundry… but I’d rather lose my filthy clothes in a baggage snafu than have to explain to United Airlines that they’ve lost a box of indescribable objects such as kachina dolls and blue corn.

Take that talisman that the old medicine man gave me. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I didn’t understand half of what the old man was saying about it. Something about it helping me to find my destiny. Maybe he means that it’s going to help me figure out what Incacha meant by the whole business of passing the way of the shaman to me that day.

Now I’m starting to feel the fatigue of the journey settling in. I had to get up early in order to catch a ride to the airport, and I was up too late last night saying goodbye to the rest of the Sierra Club crew. By the time we get to the truck, my butt is dragging. The old blue-and-white beater is a welcome sight, and I gratefully heave the smelly cardboard box into the back. Jim chucks my bag back there as well, and we climb into the cab.

“So what did you do while I was gone?” I ask. “You didn’t change your mind about the vacation, did you?”

He smiles slightly. “No, Mom, I was good.”

“Cut it out, Jim. I was just worried that you’d head back to the station as soon as my back was turned.”

“Relax, Chief. The only suspects I arrested in your absence have fins and scales, and are currently awaiting trial in our freezer.”

I have to laugh at that one. “Okay, okay.” I settle comfortably back into my seat and gaze at the passing terrain. It’s good to be back in a part of the world where God used some green in his palette, rather that a zillion shades of unrelieved brown. “Man, I had a blast on this trip, Jim. You’d have enjoyed it.”

Taking his silently quirked eyebrow for consent, I proceed to chatter about my week in New Mexico. I’d read about this trip last spring in the Sierra Club magazine and had set aside a week of summer to go along. We paid a modest fee to chip in for expenses, but since we put in many hours of volunteer work the total cost was much less than a tourist trip would have been. The low price tag made it affordable for me, and I had the satisfaction of getting to do something worthwhile at the same time. We worked on trail repair and restoration of wildlife habitat, as well as some site clean-up at one of the national parks.

“The best part, though, was getting to go out yesterday to see the Anasazi cliff dwellings,” I explain happily to Jim. “The entire Sierra Club crew got a special tour. The Anasazi are all gone, no one knows where, but there are a group of other Native Americans that consider themselves the caretakers of the site. They take the responsibility very seriously and don’t let just any yahoos out there.” I reach up with both hands to scratch my itching scalp, which is practically crawling with the need for a shower. Contrary to Jim’s earlier snarky comment, I have bathed this week… once. The scratch turns into a good stretch.

Jim wrinkles his nose. “Sandburg… do you remember those deodorant commercials from the early 80’s, the ones that said ‘Raise your hand, raise your hand if you’re Sure’?”

“All right, all right.” I lower my arms and give him a good glare.

Despite my secret hope that Blair would tag along to the station the following morning and help alleviate the current wave of boredom, he begs off.

“Got to spend the morning over at the U.,” he explains, as he shoulders his backpack and slips out the door. “I’ve got a bunch of loose ends to take care of before the new term starts next week. I’ll try to catch up to you around lunch time.” The backpack appears a little plumper that usual, and I suspect his real motive for deserting me this morning is to show off his oddball souvenirs and to tell his tales to a more appreciative audience than myself.

So we agree to try to meet for lunch, and he drops a hint about having some new ideas about things to explore with my senses if we have time. I climb into the truck alone and head off to the station.

The morning crawls by sluggishly, leaving in its wake a trail of reluctantly completed paperwork. I make a few follow-up calls on some cases I was working before vacation but nothing much turns up; even the criminals seem to be off somewhere taking a sabbatical from their usual activities. Maybe it’s the weather… it’s been warm, humid, and oppressive, with clouds gathering and the faint grumble of a thunderstorm off to the west. It’s certainly got me feeling a bit out of sorts; my head is plugged slightly and I can sense the faint beginnings of headache waiting to ambush me as soon as the conditions are right.

I reach the bottom of my slim to-be-completed pile and cast about for some way to use my time well. With some reluctance, I pull out a manual on suspect interview techniques that Simon suggested (rather transparently, I think) that I take the time to read. Even after all this time, I think he wishes that my techniques were a little more orthodox. But why spend a lot of time talking to a suspect if I know he’s lying? Or if I can find out more by sniffing the soles of his shoes as he passes by? I know the answer, sure: I need to be able to explain my “hunches” to a judge, to make the discovered evidence fit in with the story. But it just seems so damn needlessly meticulous at times. I feel like I’m back in junior high algebra… “Show your work, Jimmy, or I have to assume you copied off of your neighbor.”

The manual proves to be Sominex in printed form, a soporific treatise that could have been written by the Internal Revenue Service. I heave a sigh that I hope (irrationally) that Simon can hear, and settle down to study. I start out sitting upright, but the warmth of the day and the pace of the text conspire against me and I slump like melting chocolate. When I feel the hand on my arm, I straighten up in a hurry.

“I wasn’t asleep.” Okay, I know I sound a bit defensive. But it’s not Simon after all, or any of my fellow detectives; it’s just Sandburg. He stands by my desk, his face crinkled with amusement.

“I’m glad to see you’re working up an appetite for lunch, Jim,” he pokes me verbally.

“Yeah, bite me.” I close the manual with a too-loud snap and lean back to give those neck vertebrae a good pop. Sandburg hates that. “You should have stayed where you were, Chief. Hope your morning was more interesting than mine.” I cough briefly to relieve a sudden tickle in my throat. Damn, am I getting a cold? Just what I need.

Blair opens his mouth, but his reply is drowned out by the head-splitting ring of my desk telephone. I snatch it up. A case? Oh, please let it be a case, any case.

I’m not disappointed. I get the details and scribble an address down, then hang up the phone and rise from my desk in one fluid motion.

“Lunch will have to wait a bit, Chief.”

Jim relents enough on the way to the crime scene to let us stop at a Taco Tim’s drive-through for some crispy food-like items. It’s not what I would have chosen, but when I begin to raise objections he points out that: a) he’s not that hungry, and he’s only stopping so that he doesn’t have to listen to my stomach growl at him, and b) he’s paying. Since I used up most of my available cash on this New Mexico trip, this latter argument scores major points with me. I unwrap the deep-fried bean burrito thingy and stare at it ruefully while Jim fills me in on the case.

“It’s a probable murder. The officer on the scene told me that the body is probably at least twelve hours old, so there’s no need for us to rush.” He takes a bite of his own Mexi-goodie. “He was found by the cleaning woman,” he mumbles around the food.

“The body?”

“No, Einstein, the officer. Of course I mean the body. She was making her usual weekly visit, and opened the door with her key. Found the guy at the kitchen table with a gunshot wound, stone cold dead.” He pulls the truck into the driveway of a palatial suburban home. There are several patrol cars already here; I guess Major Crimes isn’t the only division having a slow day.

I tag after Jim as he stops to chat with the patrol officers. They pretty much repeat the information that we already know: no evidence of forced entry, no one else in the house when the maid came in. I can see the maid, talking quietly with one of the officers at one end of the porch. She looks shaken and pale, but to her credit doesn’t seem hysterical. Jim glances at her, probably listening to her heart rate or something, and we troop inside.

The victim sits slumped in one of the kitchen chairs, listing to one side. There’s a modest amount of blood spattering the otherwise spotless white floor and the country-style oak table. Jim heads unerringly for the poor guy and I follow somewhat less enthusiastically.

Jim crouches down and studies the victim. I study the counters, the walls, looking anywhere but directly at the body… but out of the corner of my eye I can tell that he’s got a gunshot wound to the left side of his head. “Find anything?” I murmur.

“No powder burns on the skin, no smell of metal or powder on his own hands. Doesn’t look self-inflicted… besides, there’s no weapon anywhere to be seen. I’d say he was shot by someone he knew.” He coughs and straightens up. “We’ll have to see what we can dig up on his background.”

Gratefully, I turn my back on the grisly sight. “Who was he, anyway?”

“Nathan Roche. He owned that huge bookstore downtown… Rock Bottom Books. He was worth a pretty penny, but he was fairly well liked in the community.” Jim shakes his head. “Why would anyone kill a bookstore owner?”

I shrug, having no useful answer to that rhetorical question. Naomi always likes to say that violence never settles anything. I would phrase it a bit differently: to me, it seems that violence settles an issue a bit too well. As in, permanently, with no room for second thoughts or regrets.

Jim sighs, which turns into another cough. “We’ll see what the autopsy shows. Let’s go talk with that poor lady from the cleaning service.”

I poke my head into Simon’s office. “You were looking for me, sir?”

Simon puts down the phone, which he’s apparently just picked up. “Good timing, Jim. I’m just putting off calling the mayor.” He shakes his head. “He and Nathan Roche were good friends… went to high school together, apparently.” He scowls slightly. “I hope you’ve got some helpful information for me; the man’s been calling every five minutes wanting to know of the status of the investigation.”

I sit down in the “officer-being-chewed-out” chair, and accept the warm mug of coffee that Simon hands to me. Despite the muggy weather, the heat radiating from the blue ceramic feels good. “Sorry, Simon. I don’t have a whole lot for you, yet.”

“Is it murder, or suicide?”

I sip at the fragrant brew. “The autopsy will be done later this afternoon… but it doesn’t look like a suicide to me. We found no sign of forced entry, no murder weapon, no evidence that anything was taken. Roche lived alone, but the maid went through the house with us and she reported nothing missing that she could see. Forensics is still checking the premises, but I don’t think they’ll find much.” The words lie unspoken between us; Forensics won’t find much of anything because I already searched the house with my enhanced smell, vision and hearing. “Sandburg’s out there on the computer, trying to find out who Roche’s family and associates were. After we talk to some of them, I should be able to tell you more.”

Simon half-growls under his breath, then picks up the phone… then he sets it down again. “Jim, you feeling okay? You look like you’re getting sick.”

I shake my head. “Bit of a cold, maybe. Nothing much.” As if to belie my words, I erupt in a brief fit of coughing that threatens to send the coffee slopping into my lap.

Simon snorts. “Well, don’t give it to me. That’s the last thing I need.” Once again, he picks up the phone, presumably to call the mayor.

“Good luck, sir. I’ll keep you updated.” I make my escape back into the bullpen.

Sandburg’s at my desk using the computer, scribbling a few notes as I walk up behind him to read over his shoulder. He’s surfing the ‘net, apparently reading media articles on our victim.

“Oh, hey, Jim. There’s a lot of stuff out there on this guy. I didn’t realize he was so well known. Did you know that Rock Bottom Books started out as a 1200-square-foot bookshop in Old Town in 1974? And that it’s now one of the largest bookstores on the West Coast? No wonder they’ve gotten so much of my money for the last few years.” He hands me the sheet of yellow notepaper. “For what it’s worth, that’s what I could find about his private life.”

I scan the paper. “No family?”

“His parents were killed in a plane crash when he was about twenty,” Sandburg supplies. “He hasn’t got any siblings. He was married once, but was later divorced.”

My right eyebrow shoots up. “And the ex-wife?”

He sighs. “Dead of breast cancer about three years ago.”

“Business associates?”

“Oh, lots of those.” Blair gestures to the monitor. “And a whole store full of dedicated employees. We could always start there.”

“Sounds good. You know where this place is?”

Blair stares at me. “You’ve never been there? The most amazing book store in the city, practically a national treasure, and you’ve never been there?”

I shrug. “I don’t know, maybe I have and it just didn’t make a big impression on me. C’mon, Chief, we going to stand around and yak all day or are we going to solve this case?”

My partner continues to shake his head, and starts to comment further, but my phone rings. It’s Kris from the morgue, giving me some irritating news.

“Sorry, Jim… but Dan just went home early with the flu or something. He isn’t going to be able to do that autopsy until tomorrow at the earliest.”

I resist the urge to growl at her; it’s not her fault. Huh… maybe Dan’s the one who spread this little virus to me. “Did he think he’d be back tomorrow?”

“Not sure. He said he would try; if not, he’ll get someone to do the autopsy for him.”

I thank her and put the phone down. “Let’s get going to this bookstore of yours, Sandburg. Maybe they’ll have some nice manuals on how to interview a suspect.”

After we interview what seems like half the employees of Rock Bottom Books, Jim finally calls it a night and lets us head home. He’s uncharacteristically quiet on the drive back to the loft, even for him, but I just assume he’s thinking about the case and trying to put it all together. For a man who can sometimes be so utterly concrete, Jim continually surprises me with these amazing intuitive leaps that he manages to come up with. For instance, I wouldn’t be alive if he hadn’t been able to track down Lash on the basis of some ducky-smelling water.

I throw together some dinner for us and we eat in the same contemplative silence. After dinner, I retreat to my little room to look over the newly revised text that I’m planning to use for my Intro section this term. Jim heads for the couch and immerses himself in something that involves explosions and car chases.

Thumbing through the chapters and taking the occasion note on a section that has had content significantly changed, my evening slips away. I finally lean back and stretch luxuriously before getting up and going back out to the living room.

Jim is sound asleep on the couch, his head thrown back and his mouth wide open. It’s so tempting to toss some small handy object into that gaping maw, but then he’d probably choke and I’d have to resuscitate him. I settle for sitting down on the couch next to him and nudging him.

“Hey, Jim, wake up. Time to go to bed.”

His eyes open and focus on me, somewhat blearily. “What?”

I point to the clock on the VCR. “Bedtime, partner. It’s almost 1 a.m.”

Jim seems to shrug himself back into full consciousness. I notice that his cheeks are a little flushed and his eyes are fever-bright. When he speaks, there’s a slight hoarseness to his voice.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Beats me. Enough for me to review my entire Intro text, anyway. You feeling okay?”

He nods and gets up. “Just a cold or something. I’ll feel better after a good sleep.”

As he heads for the stairs, I call after him. “I’ve got some great natural cold remedies, Jim. If you’re not feeling any better in the morning, we should try some of them on you.”

A groan from Jim. “I think I’ll make a point of feeling better, then.”

Despite my pounding head and aching chest when I awaken the next morning, I make a point of getting up at my usual time. I’m in the kitchen staring at a glass of orange juice with barely suppressed nausea when Sandburg makes an appearance.

“Hey, Jim, how are you feeling this morning? That cold still bothering you?” He puts the kettle on the lit burner, then reaches up to open a cupboard.

“I’ll be fine,” I answer, a bit more abruptly than I’d intended, then cough a few times as sort of an auditory exclamation point. I return to my scrutiny of the juice, wondering if I’ll be able to drink it and wondering if it will only make a reappearance if I do succeed in forcing it down.

“I wish you’d let me help you, man. I was just at the Chinese herb shop before I left on that vacation, and I got some really promising products. The Chinese have been using these things for thousands of years, you know, Jim.” He pulls a box of teabags out of the cupboard, then snakes his arm back in and comes out with a wooden box labeled with Chinese characters. “I mean, we have to be careful. You know you can’t use that Senquil crap that messed you up so badly last time.”

“I was think about sticking with some Tylenol and orange juice, Chief.” Against my better judgment, I look more closely at the little wooden box. It’s a beautifully made, well crafted little container; as I watch, Sandburg slides back the top to reveal a coarse brownish mixture. A pleasant spicy-bitter mixture aroma wafts up from it.

Abruptly, I realize I’m in no mood for the usual banter, the typical arguing and posturing. Let’s face it: I feel like crap, and I’d like to feel better. I don’t want to miss work over a trivial illness, not when I finally have a case to work on. Even if this stuff doesn’t work, I doubt it can make me feel much worse… and it’ll make Blair happy if I try it. At some level, even I have to sit back and trust someone else’s judgment once in a while.

“All right, I’ll try some. How do I take it?”

Blair’s face lights up. “Brewed in boiling water. It’ll probably taste nasty, but we can add some tea and honey and lemon for flavor. Just sit down, Jim, and let me take care of it… and you.”

Just as the water comes to a boil, the phone rings. Jim pounces on it while I slowly pour the boiling water over the concoction in the bottom of the mug. I’ll let it steep for a few minutes, like the directions said, then see if he’ll really drink it.

I tune out most of Jim’s conversation, but it’s clear that he’s talking with someone from the station. His replies are clipped and terse, and even though he takes the phone and paces to the other end of the living room I can see that muscle on the side of his jaw contract a few times.

“All right, I’ll be down there as soon as I can, and we’ll see what else we can find out,” he says. “Thanks for calling, Dan.” He puts down the phone. I look over at him, one eyebrow raised.

“You busy today, Chief?” He coughs a few times.

I shake my head. “I’m caught up until classes start next Thursday, although I’ve got a syllabus to proofread by this Friday. Why?”

Jim sits down at the table again. I add some honey and lemon to the dark infusion in the mug and slide it purposefully in front of him. He picks it up absent-mindedly.

“That was Dan,” he explains unnecessarily. “He’s feeling better today, and he got down to the morgue early and did the autopsy on Nathan Roche.” He sips from the mug and makes a face. “Sandburg, this tastes terrible. Does it have to taste this bad?”

I slide the honey jar across the table to him. “What did Dan find out?”

Jim spoons another generous dollop of honey into the mug. “Poor guy was dying of a brain tumor. Dan said it was extensive and had to have been producing symptoms. He called the hospital and sure enough, the guy’s had several CT scans ordered. We’ve got the name of his personal physician now, so we can go interview that guy today.” He frowns. “All those people we talked to yesterday at the bookstore… I certainly didn’t get the impression that any of them thought their boss was dying, did you?”

“No. They seem to worship the ground he walked on, though. If he’d been acting sick, you’d think they might have noticed. But they were all pretty upset to hear about him.” Out of curiosity, I pull Jim’s tea-and-Chinese-remedy mug back towards me and taste the contents. The dark brown liquid is appallingly bitter, with a taste that penetrates to every crevice of my mouth. “Faughh. That’s awful.”

Jim snatches it back. “Stop it. You’ll catch my cold… or give me something worse instead.” He makes a face and heroically drains half the mug in one gulp. “Bleahh. This stuff must work by scaring the germs away.” He shudders.

I grin up at him. “That’s the theory, anyway. But Jim… you still look sort of awful. Do you have a fever?’

He shrugs. “Maybe a low-grade one. I’d rather not check. If I know I’m burning up, I’ll feel worse. Let’s get a move on.” He finishes the contents of the mug and is halfway to the door while I’m still looking for my shoes.

About half an hour later, we’re down in the morgue with Dan. I eye the sheet-covered body uneasily. Why Jim insists on coming down here in person, I’ll never understand. Why I inevitably accompany him is even harder to fathom.

I’m saved, though. Dan ignores the body and pulls out some pieces of X-ray film that he hands to Jim. “This is his latest head CT, sent over from the hospital. You can clearly see this big mass up here on the left, in the temporal lobe. It’s even bigger on autopsy.”

Jim studies the film. I study Jim… he’s got beads of sweat along his hairline, growing almost as I watch. Other than that, he looks like he’s feeling a little better. “What kind of symptoms would this cause?”

“It depends. Headaches, almost certainly, possibly very painful ones. Maybe seizures. The temporal lobe is the location of a lot of our emotional processes, so the guy may have been angry or depressed or even irrational.”

Jim nods slowly. “Okay. That might explain something.” He points to the physician’s name in the corner of the CT. “That’s Roche’s doctor?”

“Barry Loberg, yeah, that’s him. I think he’s over at the Sunset Clinic.”

“Thanks, Dan.” Jim hands back the piece of film. “Oh… anything from the wound itself?”

“Nine-millimeter, from moderately close range. We’ll know some more ballistics later today.”

“All right. Keep me posted.”

We file back upstairs to the bullpen. The message light on Jim’s phone is blinking, and he sits wearily down to answer it. As he punches the buttons and listens, I watch his face change expression from fatigue to surprise.

“We need to get back out to Roche’s house, right away,” he says, hanging up. That was one of the neighbors, one of the people that I gave my card too. She thinks she may have found the murder weapon in her azaleas.”

He rises to go, rubbing at his upper lip… and as he takes his hand away I can see that there is a bright smear of blood on his finger and nostrils. I grab at his arm.

“Hey, Jim…” I hand him a wad of Kleenex from the box on the corner of his desk, then pantomime wiping my nose. Irritated, he does the same with the Kleenex, then stares at the crumpled bloodstained tissues.

“A nosebleed,” he grumbles. “I haven’t got time for this.” But he sits back down and pinches his nose for a few minutes. “Too much sneezing, I guess,” he mumbles through the Kleenex.

“Maybe,” I respond half-heartedly, though I haven’t heard Jim sneeze once the last couple of days.

After I get my irritating little nosebleed stopped, we drive back out to the crime scene. Roche’s house looks quiet and tidy, its peaceful appearance giving no hint of the violence that occurred within just a day and a half ago. I lead the way over to the house to its immediate left, the residence of one Mrs. Lucy Stewart.

Mrs. Stewart herself answers the door, after sliding back what sounds like five different deadbolt locks. She’s one of those fluttering, nervous little women of indeterminate age that always make me think of a high-strung Pekinese. She gives a little startled shriek at the sight of us on her doorstep. Okay, so Sandburg can be a odd sight, and I’m not feeling my best, but I don’t think we’re that frightening to look at.

I show her my badge, and she calms down enough to lead us to the azaleas around the side of her house. The shrubs in question are on the far side with respect to Roche’s house, implying that the killer might have cut through her back yard. Maybe that’s why she’s so nervous; I don’t think they get a lot of armed intruders in this neighborhood.

“It’s right under there,” she says in a stage whisper, pointing with one trembling hand. Blair gets helpfully down on his knees and lifts the lower branches of the shrub, and I then catch the glint of metal. I pull out an evidence bag and scoop up the handgun. Yes, this could be it; I’ll have to get it to Forensics as soon as possible.

“Oh, it’s horrible, horrible. Take it away, Detective, get that horrid thing out of my garden!” She’s shuddering. Blair speaks up, which is fine with me as I’m seized by a coughing fit that almost makes me drop the damn thing back into the azaleas.

“Mrs. Stewart, how did you happened to notice that the gun was there?” he inquires, with one of those winning smiles.

“Why, it wasn’t me who found it… it was Clarissa who deserves the credit.”

I manage to get the bag sealed without any further mishaps. “Clarissa? Who’s she? I thought you found it.” Great, another witness to interview… and with my luck, she’ll be this woman’s rich elderly auntie, and I’ll offend her, and she’ll complain to Simon… and he’ll make me study more manuals.

“Why, she’s my very dearest darling! Clarissa, come here! No, naughty girl, come over here and talk to the nice policeman.”

I turn towards the brick walkway just in time to see a little white Pekingese come bounding over the lawn toward us, and to hear my partner bust out laughing.

“Jim, I think you should let me interrogate the suspect,” he chokes out.

“Har de har har,” I growl. “Mrs. Stewart, it was your dog who found the gun, then?”

She scoops the little animal into her arms and begins to talk baby-talk to it. Sensing that we’ve reached the end of the usual part of this conversation, I thank her and we head back to the truck with the evidence. Sandburg is still laughing.

But I’m not. Whatever relief Blair’s herbal potion was giving me earlier, it’s gone now. My head hurts, my chest aches, and I’m feeling terrible.

We drop the weapon off at Forensics, with a stern injunction for them to call me right away with the results. With that mission complete, I put Sandburg to work researching Roche’s life and times once more. When he looks occupied, I slip back down to the morgue and look for Dan.

I find him at his desk with his feet up, eating his lunch. The powerful odor of peanut butter pours into my irritated sinus passages, strangely nauseating even though I usually like the stuff.

“Hey, Jim, twice in one day. I’m honored.” He gives me a grin.

“Dan, I meant to ask you this morning, but I forgot… you went home sick yesterday. You feeling better?”

“Much. I had some stomach-flu thing. Pretty short-lived, but damned unpleasant. Only way I could have done that autopsy yesterday would have been if I wheeled the body into the men’s room. But I’m fine now.” He takes a great toothy bite out of the PB&J, as if to prove his point. “Nice of you to ask, though.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Unable to think of anything else to say, I turn about and start to leave.

“Jim,” he calls me back. I look over my shoulder at him. “Jim, you didn’t come all the way down to Stiffsville to ask me if I was feeling better. What gives? And come to think of it, you don’t look so hot yourself.”

“I’m coming down with something,” I admit. “It’s no big deal. I was just curious to see if you might have had the same thing, so, uh, I would have an idea how long I’d be sick.”

Dan eyes me meditatively, speculatively, looking at me over his can of Dr. Pepper. “What’re your symptoms?”

“Headache, some fever, a lot of coughing. Body aches.” And one nosebleed, I add silently. And the bloody gunk I coughed up in the bathroom on my way downstairs… but I don’t need that getting back to my solicitous sidekick.

“Sounds like the flu,” he says sympathetically. He puts down the sandwich and pop can and rummages in a desk drawer. “Hang on a minute. Ah, here it is.” He pulls out a stethoscope. “Here, let me have a listen to you.”

I draw back slightly. “No offense, Dan, but how long has it been since you’ve examined someone who wasn’t already dead?”

“You never forget the basics. Okay, deep breaths now.”

I breathe dutifully, coughing a few times and he moves the cold stethoscope around my chest.. Dan listens with his eyes closed, then nods. “You sound all right to me, Jim. Go take some Tylenol and get Simon to send you home, and you’ll be okay.”

“Can’t do that. Got work to do. And Sandburg fixed something for me this morning that actually helped, even if it did taste like paint thinner. I think I’ll track him down and see if he’s got any more of it on him.”

Dan shrugs. “Suit yourself. I’ll keep you posted on anything else I find on our unfortunate friend here.”

Looking flushed and a bit glazed, Jim wanders back from wherever it is he disappeared to and sits down at his desk. He opens the phone book and starts leafing through the “Physicians” listing. I look over his shoulder as his finger lands on a listing for a Dr. Barry Loberg. Oh, right, our gunshot victim’s doctor.

As Jim picks up the phone he turns to me, with an expression on his face that is just a hair short of being actually sheepish. “Uh, Chief? Did you happen to bring any more of that Chinese herbal tea stuff that you cooked up for me this morning? I think I could use some more.” His tone is deceptively casual as he stabs at the touch-tone buttons.

I jump up out of my chair. “Right here in my backpack, Jim. You really want some?” I’d like to milk this a little bit, but he looks so tired and ill that I just can’t bring myself to give him to much of a hard time. I’ll get him feeling better first, then rub it in later.

I leave him on hold with the Sunset Clinic while I go off to the break room to brew a fresh batch of the Chinese cold cure. This time, I make sure I add plenty of honey to kill the taste. If this keeps up, I’ll have Jim taking vitamins and actually paying attention to what he eats… although it’ll take more than a successful alternative cold cure to get Jim to give up Wonderburger.

When I return, Jim has broken through the layers of receptionists and the-doctor-can’t-come-to-the-phone-right-now- can-I-take-a-message people and seems to be actually speaking with Dr. Loberg. I slide the warm mug of herbal remedy in front of him and sit down to listen.

“Dr. Loberg, I presume you’re aware that Mr. Roche had a brain tumor?” A pause. “Well, we found it on the autopsy. The medical examiner said it was large enough to be causing some pretty significant symptoms.” Another pause. “I’m aware of the issues surrounding patient confidentiality, Doctor, but your patient is deceased and I don’t think you can consider his autopsy results a secret.” A longer pause, during which I can see fresh beads of sweat welling up along Jim’s hairline again. Jim scrawls a couple of long words down on the blotter on his desktop.

“How long did he expect to live?” Jim swallows audibly. “I see. Any history of depression or of other mental illness?” A brief pause. “All right. Thank you, Doctor. We’ll be in touch.” He clicks the phone back down onto its cradle, then leans back.

“Roche’s doctor just confirmed that the brain tumor was diagnosed about six months ago. It was biopsied and shown to be inoperable and probably incurable… uh, something called a glioblastoma multiforme. At his last visit with Dr. Loberg, he’d been told he probably had less than three months to live.”

I whistle softly. “You think it’s a suicide of some kind, then?”

“Seems likely… but he would have had to have help.” Jim reaches up and scrubs at his forehead with the back of his hand. “You got that stuff, Sandburg?”

“Oh, yeah, Jim, right here. Drink up.” I slide the mug closer and grin mischievously.

I’m just thinking that it might be time to grab some lunch when Jim’s phone rings its shrill tone again. He answers it with his trademark growl of “Ellison!”, and I watch as his eyebrows raise in response to the information.

“Thanks, Ed. Let me know if anything turns up on those other prints.” He hangs up.

“Prints?”

“Forensics found two sets of prints on the gun. One belongs to our dear departed Nathan Roche, and the other isn’t turning up any matches in the system.” He takes a deep breath, presumably to say more, and erupts into a coughing fit. His fist clenched over his mouth, he waves his free hand frantically toward the box of Kleenex on the corner of his desk. I reach over and hand him several of the blue tissues.

“Jeez, Jim, you sound terrible,” I comment when he’s finally able to breathe again. He reaches for the mug of herbal remedy and gulps the last of it down, making a face.

“Just a tickle in my throat. You know how that is.” He’s still breathing heavily as he leans over to throw the wad of Kleenex into his trashcan. “Okay. So, this is starting to look more and more like some kind of bizarre suicide.”

“Unless he was being murdered, and he struggled with his attacker and got his own prints on the gun,” I counter quickly.

Jim shakes his head. “Doesn’t make sense. What’s the motive, Chief? We’ve seen no good reasons for anyone to kill this poor guy, yet he had one good reason to do away with himself.”

I shudder. “Poor guy. Y’know, Jim, many primitive cultures handle terminal illness a lot better than we do. They recognize that there’s a time to move on, and give their dying loved ones the help they need. Here, a person is expected to be a tower of strength and fight to the end. Maybe it’s just too much to ask of most people.”

“Hey, Ellison!” Brown’s voice breaks into my soliloquy, and we both look up. He’s looking quizzically in our direction. “There’s some guy here to talk with you. Says he’ll only talk to the lead investigator in the Roche case.”

Jim snorts. “Lead investigator? That’s a bit misleading. All right, send him to the small conference room, and we’ll be right there.”

My head pounds as we make the short walk down the hall to the conference room. I sigh inwardly, hoping that this will prove to be a helpful conversation instead of some nut-case or psychic. With Blair following on my heels, I cough a few times, then I push open the door and enter the room.

He’s seated at the table, waiting for us. Tall, but almost skeletally thin, he’s got sandy blonde hair and an enormous mustache that hides his mouth. He’s practically twitching with nervousness.

I sit down across from him and Sandburg slides into the seat to my left. I don’t waste time with small talk. I think that after we finish talking to this guy, I’m going to call it a day and go back home to my bed. Enough is enough.

“I’m Detective Ellison. I’m in charge of the Roche investigation. You have some information for me?”

The man nods abruptly, a quick jerk of his head. “My… my name is Alec Buford. I’m from Vermont… at least, that’s where I live these days.” He hesitates for a few seconds, then begins to speak more quickly in a rush of words tumbling past each other. “Nathan Roche was my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were children, since I was seven years old and he was six. We… went to school together; he graduated a year early just to walk across the stage after me. Even as adults, we’ve always kept in touch, always known when one of us needed the other.”

I look down at the man’s hands where they lie trembling against the table. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I say carefully. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill your friend?”

Buford stares past my shoulder, his eyes unfocused, and ignores my question. “He called me a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t heard from him for ages. He wouldn’t tell me what was going on, but I knew something was up. He asked me to come out and visit him for a few days. So, as soon as I could get away, I booked a flight and came out here.

“He told me right away. Told me he had cancer, that he’d been to see all the specialists, that there was nothing to be done. I was… stunned. Then he tried to change the subject, said that he’d asked me to come out so that we could be sure to have one good last bash together. Said he wanted to have his wake while he was still alive. So, we went out drinking. Sometime after midnight, we ended up back at his place with a bottle of Irish whisky.” He stops, rubs one hand along his forehead. I feel a chill of dread snake along my spine, suddenly realizing where this might be headed.

“We talked until dawn, remembering all of the good times, all of the sad times. We… we were both getting pretty sappy. Then he told me that he needed a favor from me.”

I look out of the corner of my eye at Blair, and his face is ashen. He knows. He knows what this man is going to say next.

“He told me about the pain, about the headaches. About the way the doctors said he’d die in the end, confused and helpless. And he asked me to end it for him.”

My voice, though I pitch the tones low and keep the volume soft, seems to reverberate in the small and sterile room. “Did you shoot Nathan Roche?” I cannot bring myself to say the word, kill.

He reaches into his jacket, and I can feel my high-strung partner start violently. But it’s not a weapon that Buford pulls out, it’s a small brown leather book. Buford looks down at it for a long moment, and I can see tears welling up in his eyes. His voice is hoarse as he finally answers.

“To save him from the endless pain, the humiliation… it’s all in here.” He gestures at the book. “It’s Nathan’s diary… he wanted me to have it, in case I was caught, to help explain… but I couldn’t hide what happened, couldn’t let you people go chasing for the murderer…” He chokes on the words. “Yes. I sh-shot Nathan. By his own request, and after I spent all day trying to talk him out of it.” He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand.

Blair finally speaks, his own voice cracking slightly. “Why… I’m sorry, but if he felt so badly, wanted to die… why did he involve you? He could have…” His voice trails off, as if he is unable to complete the sentence. As if he’s unable to comprehend the sad fact that suicide exists in our world, that sometimes the human soul caves in under the unspeakable pressures of life. In light of his earlier comments about primitive tribes dealing better with this sort of thing than we modern Americans do, Blair’s depth of emotion surprises me a little.

Buford’s voice grows a bit stronger. “He was going to… do it himself. But the more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t let the world know. The bookstore, all of his other friends… he didn’t want them to know that he’d given up.” A bitter, humorless laugh. “We were known for our practical jokes in high school. Nathan tried to convince me that disguising his suicide as a murder would be the ultimate practical joke.”

He slides the brown leather volume across the table to us. “It’s all in there,” he says dully. “Nathan was very careful to document everything.”

I pick up the book, but leave it closed. “Was the gun yours?”

“No… it was Nathan’s. He bought it about a month ago.” A pause, and I can sense Buford drawing himself together. “Am I to be arrested, then?”

Next to me, I catch a fast, staccato rhythm: Sandburg’s heart rate, somewhere up near the ceiling. Yes, he would find this confession pretty upsetting. If I’d had any inkling of what this man was going to tell us, I’d have made an excuse to not include him.

I nod, suddenly unspeakably weary. “You’ll have to be charged.”

He swallows. “With what?”

“I’m not sure. This isn’t exactly an ordinary case. I need to talk to my captain. In the end, it’ll be up to the D.A. However… I doubt that you’re a danger to society. They could probably be persuaded to release you on your own recognizance, depending on the charges.” I rise up from the table, trying to ignore the sensation of my blood pounding unpleasantly in my temples. “Wait here.”

Sandburg follows me out into the hallway. I lean against the wall for a moment, and I can feel rather than see him at my elbow. “Jim, you okay?”

“Yeah. Just a bit tired.” I turn to look at him, to study the eyes that gaze up at me, dark with concern. “Sorry, Chief.” I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for… for getting lightheaded, or for the conversation he’s just witnessed.

He touches my arm, a feather-light brushing. “Let’s go find Simon.”

Simon chomps harder on the cigar. “Jim, this whole thing has the potential to be a serious political hot potato. You know that this whole death-with-dignity business is a big deal these days. We need to handle this carefully.”

“This guy’s no Jack Kevorkian, Simon. He’s not trying to make a political gesture or anything. I mean… what he did, it wasn’t legal. And it did spend taxpayer’s money on a murder investigation. But he did carry out his friend’s wishes.” I sigh and shift my weight imperceptibly from one foot to the other.

Simon places a hand on my shoulder. “Not your problem, Jim. I’ll take it from here. Finish your report, and go home. You look like hell.”

“Thanks,” I answer sourly.

“Don’t mention it. I just don’t want to catch it, whatever it is.” He gives me a tired, wry grin. “Sandburg, take this man home and make him rest.”

Dulled by fever and general malaise, it takes me almost forty minutes to complete the paperwork that accompanies Buford’s confession and arrest. Stopping every five minutes to cough doesn’t help matters much, either. Finally, I’m able to rise up from my desk. I reach automatically for my jacket, on the hook where it usually hangs, and I’m puzzled when my hand contacts the wall instead.

“Jim,” Sandburg says softly, “you’re wearing your coat, man. Remember?”

Oh, yeah. I’d gotten some chills and put it on. I’m still wearing it. Slowly, I let my hand drop. “Let’s go home, Sandburg.”

When we get to the truck, I fumble out the keys… but the chills have hit again and my hand shakes so badly that I cannot get the key into the lock. Blair gently takes the keys from me and, with one hand on the small of my back, walks me around to the passenger side of the truck.

“I can drive,” I grumble as he opens the door and motions me inside.

“The hell you can, Jim. You’d be in the ditch in an instant.” He shuts my door and goes around to the driver’s side, and I settle back with a sense of having just cooperated with the inevitable.

Actually, it’s just as well. Despite my jacket and the late-summer mugginess, despite the blast of warm air pouring from the truck’s heater (which can’t be comfortable for Sandburg, and I bless him silently), and despite my attempts to dial down my sense of cold, I shiver, shake and cough through most of the drive home. Just as we pull up in front of the building, my tremors start to lessen.

Sandburg comes around to open my door, and I don’t resist very much as he helps me out and into the building.

I lead Jim upstairs, where he collapses heavily onto the couch. He looks awful: his face has that pasty look that you see on the face of someone who’s just about to pass out, and I can feel the heat radiating off of him. All right, this man is going to bed, just as soon as I can force him to.

“Jim, you hungry? Think you could eat something?”

He shakes his head without speaking, a brief negation.

“I’ll make some more of that tea for you, at least.” He doesn’t answer, so I head into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Then I return to the living room with a spare blanket from the closet. Jim doesn’t even protest as I carefully remove his shoes and swing his legs up onto the end of the couch, tucking the blanket closely around him.

“There. That should be a bit better.” I force a bit of cheerfulness into my voice. “Are you still cold?”

“Mmmph.” He mumbles something into the blanket.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, since you’re no longer having chills that can be measured on the Richter scale,” I say lightly. “Jim, man, I think you’re going to be down for a couple of days, whether you want to be or not.”

The only reply I get is a groan, followed by a muffled cough.

The kettle’s starting to come to a rumbling boil, so I walk back to the kitchen and measure out the herb mixture. I smile to myself when I think of the little shop that I bought it from. It’s one of those Asian grocery-and-herb shops with every imaginable imported goodie, run by a proprietor who seems to speak about seven languages. I’m not sure where he’s from, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him converse to the customers in Japanese, Mandarin, Korean, and what sounds like a Southeast Asian language. Plus English!

I pour the boiling water over the dark and pungent mixture, and doctor it up with honey and lemon. Then I carry it out to the living room and set it by Jim’s elbow. He’s fast asleep on the couch, snoring lightly and looking flushed and uncomfortable.

“Hey, Jim, wake up. Time to drink your medicine.”

He opens one eye and glares at me balefully. “Why can’t I have a beautiful red-haired nurse? Why is it always you?”

I have to laugh at that. “Because you were an asshole in a former life, man. Now sit up and drink this.”

I waken early the next morning, to the sounds of water running in the bathroom. I’m not surprised to hear Jim up so early; he’d napped on and off yesterday afternoon and evening and finally headed upstairs around eight. Maybe he’s feeling a little better. I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed.

The unmistakable sounds of violent retching, muffled by the closed bathroom door, reach my ears as soon as I push my bedroom doors open. Okay, so maybe he’s not feeling much better. I sigh and throw on the first rumpled clothes that come to hand: the wild shirt and shorts I was wearing when Jim picked me up at the airport the other day.

I knock tentatively on the bathroom door. “Hey, Jim, you okay?”

A weak voice answers. “Vomiting is generally considered to be a private act, Chief. Go away.”

“I think you should see a doctor,” I persist.

“I think you should go back to bed,” he counters. “Let me suffer in peace.”

“Too late, I’m up. You want anything to eat?”

Silence, then a sudden rush of renewed regurgitation from behind the stubbornly closed bathroom door.

I guess I’ll be eating breakfast by myself this morning.

I sit down with the paper and a bowl of muesli. Eventually, Jim emerges, wearing his robe and looking ghastly. He shuffles over to the couch and sits.

“Sandburg,” he says quietly.

“Mmmm?” I mumble around a mouthful of cereal. “What?”

“Don’t let it go to your head… but I think you might be right. About the doctor, I mean.”

“Of course I’m right.” I look at him through narrowed eyes. “The question is, what’s going on that’s made you change your mind?” This change of heart worries me more than the way Jim looks… he would never agree so easily to go see a doctor if he thought he just had the flu.

He sighs and leans his head back so that he’s talking to the ceiling rather than to me. “I’ve got blood in my urine. A lot.”

I gulp down my mouthful of half-chewed cereal, causing myself to cough and sputter until I sound almost as bad as Jim. “Oh, shit. Where’s the phone?” I jump up and run to where I last saw it, buried under a cookbook on the kitchen island.

“Chief, calm down,” he says in that same reasonable, weary tone. “Getting all excited isn’t going to help matters.” He stops to cough. “My regular doctor is Mitch Byrnes. His number’s in the Rolodex, if you want to go ahead and call for an appointment for me.”

I fume silently as I look around at the assorted examples of humanity that I see around me in Jim’s doctor’s waiting room. None of them look all that sick to me… at least, none of them look as sick as Jim. Who do they think they are, making him wait while they tell the doctor about their backaches and their ingrown toenails and their imagined chest pain?

Okay, so I’m not exactly feeling rational. I steal a glance at my partner. He’s listing a bit to the left, propping up his chin with his hand while he rests his elbow on the arm of the chair. His eyes are closed, and he’s breathing shallowly and quickly.

Just then the pert medical assistant calls out, “Mr. Ellison!”

I debate, briefly, whether I should follow Jim back or wait in the waiting room. The unsteadiness he exhibits while clambering awkwardly to his feet helps me decide. I spring up and accompany him, one hand placed unobtrusively on his elbow.

She leads us into an exam room and takes Jim’s temperature and blood pressure. “Oh, my, one hundred and four. You’re pretty toasty.” I crane my neck to try to see the blood pressure reading, but can’t quite make it out from my spot in the corner of the room. I do see her smooth forehead crease into a tiny frown as she takes it.

Briskly, she interrogates Jim, getting the high points of the last couple of days. I wait, ready to break in if he leaves out some significant detail, but instead I’m surprised as hell when he admits to the medical assistant that he’s been coughing up bloody mucus. Dammit, Jim, what else have you been hiding from me?

She closes the chart with a snap, and stands up to leave. “All right. Here’s a gown to put on. The doctor should be with you shortly.”

As soon as the door closes, I turn to Jim with the intent of chewing him out about being so secretive. But he looks so ill, so lost and pathetic, that I swallow my angry retort and instead move to his side. “Here. You need to lean on me while you get changed?”

He nods. “Thanks, Chief. Just… make sure I don’t fall over.” Slowly, he gets out of his jeans and T-shirt and into the blue print hospital gown. When he’s finished, he climbs back up onto the exam table, shivering slightly in the cool room. He’s still breathing with those quick, shallow breaths, but he does seem to be coughing less.

We settle in to wait in silence.

Why do doctors always keep patients waiting in those chilly, sterile rooms? I feel like an idiot, sitting here in this too-well-ventilated hospital gown… especially with Sandburg across the room looking concerned and earnest. I don’t dare let on how miserable I am, or Mr. Lost-Puppy eyes will start hauling in half the medical staff.

Finally, the door opens and Mitch Byrnes, my usual sawbones, slips in. He’s this huge rawboned young man, fresh out of residency a couple of years ago, with aggressively wavy red hair and little round spectacles.

“Detective Ellison!” he greets me. “Not feeling too well? What can I do for you today?” He scans the chart, then frowns. “Your respiratory rate’s a bit up, and so’s your temp. What’s going on?”

“Well, I’ve got this cough…” That’s as far as I get before Sandburg interrupts me.

“Doctor, he’s really sick. He’s had fevers, and headaches, and he’s been throwing up. And he’s got blood in his urine, and he’s been coughing up bloody gunk.”

I have to admit that does sort of sum it up. Dr. Byrnes looks at me, and I shrug slightly. “Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.”

He examines me carefully, starting with my ears and throat and ending with my lungs and abdomen. I can see him shaking his head as he takes the stethoscope earpieces out of his ears.

“Whatever else is going on here, you’ve got some kind of pneumonia. Jim, I don’t know if you realize it, but you’re breathing about twice as fast as you’re supposed to. And I hear something rattling around in there.” He lays one hand on my shoulder. “Jim, I want you to come on into the hospital, at least till we know what’s going on. If the tests turn out normal, I won’t keep you there for long. But you need bloodwork and a chest X-ray, and some IV fluids. And I know you. If I let you out of my sight for long, you’ll find a way to get out of all of this.”

Blair looks relieved. I merely nod wearily. “If you really think so. But you’ll feel silly when you send me home in the morning.”

His glance, cool and measuring, slides over me. “Maybe. I’ll take that chance.”

Dr. Byrne admonishes me strongly to go straight to the hospital. He orders me specifically not to stop off at the loft on the way. “You can send someone else,” here he looks meaningfully at Blair, “back for anything you need. Get over there now, Jim, or I’ll call up your boss and sic him on you.”

So, twice in one week I let Blair drive the truck… since he now seems to be convinced that I’m going to lose consciousness at any moment. I roll my eyes and make a few feeble protests, but I’m secretly relieved to turn the keys over to him. Anything to keep him distracted from me, from my condition.

All the way to the hospital and through the paperwork process of getting me admitted, I concentrate on my breathing. At first, I manage to convince myself that my breathing is labored because I’m thinking about it. By the time they’ve forced me into a wheelchair and are taking me up to my room, I’m no longer so sure. I’m definitely aware that I’m breathing really fast, and I’m not able to slow the rate down even when I consciously try to relax.

When we reach my room, I’m allowed to change once again into a hospital gown and robe and climb gratefully into the crisp cool bed. The admitting nurse, who looks vaguely familiar, (I look for her nametag, which reads “Bonnie”) briskly runs through the standard list of questions and checks my vitals. She also puts my index finger into a clip with a cord that runs to a small black box, turns it on, and waits for a few seconds. A “90” appears; she shakes her head slightly and leaves the clip attached to my finger.

She finishes writing on the clipboard and frowns a bit. “Weren’t you here a couple of months ago, Detective?”

Huh? Oh, she means the seizure thing. “Yes… yes, I was. But I haven’t had any more trouble with that. This… this is something else.” It’s getting harder to talk in complete sentences. It’s a good thing I’m not a wordy person.

“I’ll send IV Therapy to get your IV started, Detective. Dr. Byrne has ordered some blood to be drawn, and antibiotics and IV fluids for you. And…” There’s that frown again. “And a chest x-ray. I think we’d better get that right away. Have you been breathing this fast all day?”

I shrug. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

Bonnie looks me over once more, brown eyes reflecting some of the same concern that I see on Sandburg’s face. He’s taken over the chair in the corner, for once curiously silent.

“X-ray should be up first, then. We’ll take a portable. I don’t think I want to let you out of my sight to go downstairs for the films.” She points to the call button. “Push that if you need anything,” she says as she leaves.

Sandburg rises from his chair and comes over to perch on the side of my bed. He still looks mildly worried, but more relaxed than he did earlier this morning. “Hey, Jim, when she asked you if you’d been taking any medications, you didn’t mention my wonderful Chinese herbal cold cure,” he jokes.

Even feeling as ill as I do, I can’t resist teasing him a bit. “She meant real medications, Chief, not witch-doctor hocus-pocus.”

I’m rewarded with a smile and a snort. “Fine. See if I do anything for you next time you’re sick.”

I reach over and fiddle with the bed controls, making the head of the bed lie down flat. A nap while I’m waiting to be irradiated and punctured sounds like a plan. As soon as the bed becomes horizontal, though, I grab for the controls and return it to its former position. Whatever is going on in my lungs feels ten times worse lying flat, and for those few seconds I had a terrifying feeling of suffocation.

“Playing with the bed controls? Jim, you’re like a little kid. Want me to see if they have a Nintendo, too?” Thankfully, Sandburg doesn’t seem to realize how bad I’m feeling.

I close my eyes. “Ssh. I want to listen and see if they’re saying anything about me out there.”

What starts as a ploy to gain relief from an incipient storm of Sandburg chatter turns to reality, as I am curious about what’s going on with my body. With the ease of long practice, I extend my hearing range out to include the nurses’ station. After a few more seconds, I’m able to catch hold of Bonnie’s voice.

“…I’m just saying that I’m concerned about having him here on the floor. He’s breathing sixty-four times a minute, and very short of breath. And his O2 sats were only 90 even with that respiratory rate.” A pause; I can’t quite make out both halves of the conversation, but I think I’m hearing Dr. Byrne’s voice on the line.

Bonnie again. “All right. That sounds good. We’ll get the X-ray and the labs still, and get things started, but I’ll call the ICU and see when they can take the transfer.”

Jim seems to drift off for a while during his attempted eavesdropping, and I get back up to let him rest. After a few more minutes, an X-ray tech rolls in a huge machine, and proceeds to treat Jim with all the courtesy of a drill sergeant..

“Sit up! We need to slide this under your back!” she announces. Jim opens his eyes and blinks, looking about foggily.

I cross the room to put one hand on his shoulder. “Have a nice nap, buddy?” He shakes his head, whether in response to my question or in general denial, I’m not sure. “C’mon, Jim, lean forward here for a second.” I help the tech position the film holder behind Jim’s broad back.

“All right, you’ll have to leave the room,” she snaps, as she swings a lead apron around her own body. “Hospital regulations to protect you from excessive radiation exposure.”

I open my mouth to protest… after all, maybe the rules are to protect me from radiation, but who’s going to protect Jim from her? Before I get anything out, she narrows her eyes at me. “Git. Now.”

I git.

Out in the hall and left to my own devices for a few minutes, I decide to walk over to the nurses’ station and see if they can tell me where I can get a cup of coffee… preferably without having to pay for it. I’m still perilously short of cash from the New Mexico trip.

Thinking of that expedition to the Anasazi cliff dwellings makes me think of the talisman given to me by the tribal shaman, that I’ve taken to wearing on a thong around my neck. I smile absently as I reach inside my shirt and give it a light pat.

At the nurses’ station, I wait to catch someone’s eye. There’s a ward clerk on the phone, and a couple of uncertain-looking young people in short white coats that are probably medical students. They’re pointing to the dry-erase board on the wall, talking about the day’s admissions. Involuntarily, my eyes flicker to the list of names, automatically searching for my partner’s name and room number.

In smudged green dry-erase ink, it reads, “Ellison, 4506 Pneumonia ICU TRANSFER”

My heart gives a painful lurch. Some other Ellison? But no, that’s Jim’s room number. Suddenly afraid that they might have already somehow transferred him, in the minute and a half that I’ve been out of the room, I run back to his door.

The tech is just leaving, pushing the ungainly portable X-ray machine out through the doorway. I ignore her and slip inside.

He’s still there, still sitting up in bed. He hasn’t moved, and appears to be drifting back off to a fitful sleep. But now my eyes, no longer blinded by relief and cheery optimism, see the signs that I wasn’t allowing myself to see before: the bluish tinge of Jim’s fingernails, the labored breathing, the dreadful transparent pallor of his face.

I gulp painfully and sit down once again on the edge of the bed, touching him on the shoulder with feather-lightness. “Hey. Earth to Jim. You with me here?”

It’s not what I want to do. What I want to do is to run back out in the hall and holler until I get some answers, until someone appears who knows how to fix Jim and make him better. But none of that will do Jim any good whatsoever… so I try my hardest to keep the rising panic out of my voice, to be the calm and reassuring friend.

Jim’s eyes flicker back open. “Hey, Chief,” he says hoarsely. “Dr. Byrnes been here yet?”

“No, only the X-ray tech. How do you feel?”

“I’ve felt better,” he admits.

There’s a light knock at the door, and a young woman in a pink smock comes in carrying a tray of vials, syringes and tubing. She looks a good deal more pleasant than the X-ray tech, and I smile at her tentatively.

She walks over to Jim’s bedside and sets down her tray. “I’m Lora, and I’ll be starting your IV and drawing your blood.” She runs one finger lightly down Jim’s left arm. “My goodness, you certainly have nice veins. You’ll be easy!”

In no time, she’s got the IV in (I look away during this part) and has filled several glass tubes with dark red blood. She gives us a cheery smile and departs.

I sit quietly during this process, but as soon as she leaves I jump up again and start to pace around the room. Jim frowns slightly, watching me. After a few minutes he finally comments.

“Sandburg, you’re going to wear out a hole in the linoleum. Sit down.” He coughs. “I thought you would settle down and rest,” he pauses to catch his breath, “once I was in the hospital.”

“Jim, how can I relax, man? You’re sick. Really, really sick. They’re going to transfer you to the ICU.” No, I hadn’t consciously decided to tell him; my mouth is leading a life of its own.

“I know,” he says quietly. “I heard my nurse talking about me.”

“And you didn’t tell me,” I respond flatly. “Thanks a lot, Jim.”

“Chief, you would have found out eventually.” Another pause for breath. “I’m sure they’ll move me soon.”

I nod dully, my hands clenched into fists at my side as I stare out the window with my back to Jim.

“Blair.” His low voice reaches me from across the room. “Come over here and sit down. You’re making me even more tired, just watching you.”

Maybe he meant the chair in the corner, but I take him literally and return to my unofficial station on the edge of his bed. “Sorry, Jim,” I mumble.

“For what?” Now it comes out in a whisper.

I manage a slight smile. “For being a pain, I guess. I don’t know.” For not being able to make you better, I add silently.

I study his face: the pallor, the worry lines around his eyes, the smudge of yesterday’s beard that he’d been too tired -- and too sick -- to deal with this morning. I try to remember the way he’d looked a few days ago, when I came back from New Mexico, when he looked vital and energetic. I’m chilled when I realize that it already takes effort to conjure up the picture of that healthier Jim in my mind.

Impulsively, I reach out my left hand and lay it along the angle of his jaw, feeling the warm blood beat steadily under the skin, noting the sandpaper roughness of his cheek. He closes his eyes again, and leans into my touch just a fraction. For long moments we sit there, without speaking, feeling the connection pulse between us.

And then it’s not enough, and all I can think is that they might take me from his side… now, while he needs me and I need to know that he’s all right. I move my hands to his shoulders, grasping them as a drowning man might grasp a lifeline, feeling that solid muscle beneath my hands… then, self-conscious, I lower my eyes.

“Hey, Chief, I’m going to be okay. You know that, don’t you?” That same calm, low voice.

Actually, no, I don’t know that, that’s the entire problem here, Jim, don’t you understand?… but I nod anyway, still without looking at his face. I feel the muscles of his right arm bunch and shift as he raises his hand to force my chin up, bringing my eyes into contact with his. And those eyes… I hadn’t been paying proper attention to those eyes. The rest of him might be looking worse by the minute, but strength and determination gazes out at me defiantly from those blue orbs.

Unaccountably, my own eyes fill with tears that I blink hastily away. I know I’m not fooling Jim, though, because those strong arms of his then come up around my own shoulders as he pulls me the remaining few inches to his chest in a surprisingly strong hug. I bury my face in the blue print hospital gown, feeling the too-rapid rise and fall of Jim’s chest next to me, and trying to take as well as give comfort.

I pull away after a few seconds, embarrassed, but somehow feeling better. I wipe my eyes surreptitious with the back of my hand and grin loopily. “We’d better stop this, or I’m going to ruin your chances with all of these cute nurses,” I joke feebly.

His eyelids crinkle as he smiles in return. “Just make sure you keep that X-ray tech for yourself. I think she’s your type, Chief.”

The ICU is physically close to the medical ward that I was originally admitted to: only a short gurney ride down the hall… but as they wheel me into my room I’m unable to shake a sensation of having left one world and entered another. Instead of a nice solid opaque door that closes, I’ve got a sliding glass door with a flimsy curtain. Instead of my own bathroom, I’ve got a sink and a fold-down toilet which looks like it should be in a prison cell. Instead of a television, there’s an array of monitors, some already beeping ominously even though they aren’t attached to me yet.

I’ve been here before, more recently than I care to think about. But that time I had simply woken up here, grateful to be alive and looking forward to being transferred out. That’s the correct progression: half-dead to ambulance to ER to ICU to regular ward to home. This time, I’m going the wrong way.

I let the ICU nurse help me into the bed, and I sit quietly while she hooks me up to the monitors. As she places several round sticky electrode pads on my chest, I glance over at Sandburg.

“Good thing… this is me, not you, Chief.” It’s still difficult to get a longer sentence out. “They’d be doing a little shaving.” I point at the monitor leads stuck to my relatively hairless skin.

He smiles briefly at the jibe, but then his face returns to the expression of tension that it assumed when we first began the trip down the hall to the ICU. I sigh inwardly. I wish I could reassure him.

I wish I could reassure myself.

My ICU nurse finishes attaching things to my body, and stops to study the readouts on the monitor. Frowning, she reaches over my left shoulder and turns a knob. I hear the hiss of escaping gas as she places a clear plastic mask over my face.

“I think you’ll feel better with a little oxygen.” She glances back at the readouts, makes one more adjustment with the knob, then nods with apparent satisfaction. She shows me the call button and admonishes me to call if I need anything.

Although the constant hiss of the oxygen is distracting, I feel a little better… more clear-headed, less frantic. I consciously try to slow my breathing, to take deep, careful enriching breaths of the oxygen.

Soon after they get me settled, Dr. Byrne shows up. Through my sliding-glass door, I see him out at the nurses’ station, reading a chart and stopping to peer at an X-ray viewbox. Finally, he enters my little cubicle, his usually animated face sober.

“Hey there, Jim. I see they’ve got you all hooked up.” He clears his throat. “Jim, you’re pretty sick,” he states bluntly. I notice he’s carrying my chart under one arm. “I’m planning to call in at least one specialist, maybe two.”

“Why?” I manage to croak out, my throat suddenly dry.

“You’ve got a pretty whopping case of pneumonia, but it’s not behaving like a common garden-variety bacterial infection. Both lungs are affected, and on the X-ray it looks more like a viral process of some kind. It may not respond to the standard antibiotics that we’ve got you on. I’d like to have one of the pulmonary docs take a look a you.”

“And?” I question softly.

“And something’s going on with your kidneys, Jim. You knew about the blood in your urine, but they’re apparently not functioning very well right now. Your BUN and creatinine – those are serum tests we use to measure kidney function – are through the roof. That’s one of the reasons that you feel so lousy; you’ve got metabolic poisons building up in your blood with no way to get rid of them. So, it would probably be smart to have one of the renal docs take a look as well.”

I nod, trying to look as if I’m taking this all in stride. “I see. How… how long do you think I’ll be here?”

Dr. Byrne’s gaze flickers away, and I hear his heart rate take a momentary jump. “I’m not sure,” he says neutrally. “It could be a couple of days. It could be a lot longer. Jim, I’ll know more in a few hours.” He points to the pitcher of ice water on the nightstand. “We’re going to have to fluid restrict you, to keep your kidneys from getting overloaded. And Jim, I can’t let you eat for a while, until we know just how bad your lungs are going to get.” His eyes meet mine again. “There’s a chance you might end up on the ventilator, and it would be safest for you if we kept your stomach empty.”

I close my eyes, but I can still hear Dr. Byrne breathing across the room. “As long… as long as you’re calling specialists… can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Dr. Philpott, the neurologist.” My eyes flicker open again. “Can you let her know I’m here? She… helped me a lot, earlier this year, and I’d like it if she knew.” It occurs to me that it might be a good thing for there to be one physician, even an unofficial member of the team, that knows all about my unique abilities.

He nods acquiescence. “I know Heidi well. I’ll give her a call. Even if those seizures don’t resurface, it might be good to have her input at some point.” He touches me lightly on the shoulder. “In the meantime, try not to worry too much.” His gaze travels over to Blair, seated on the other side of me. I can’t see Blair’s face at this angle, but I can hear his rapid intake of breath at this comment. “Either of you. I’ll try to keep you posted.”

After he leaves, I turn to look at my partner. Blair is looking away, with his eyes closed and one knuckle wedged into his mouth. He’s biting down hard, and I can see his jaw trembling. I reach with my left hand, and gently remove the damaged digit from his mouth. The deeply indented bite marks are plainly visible, mute testimony to my friend’s worry.

Before I can say the right thing, or even the wrong thing, there’s another light rap at the sliding-glass door and I turn my head to acknowledge the sound.

It’s Simon. I smile weakly behind the oxygen mask as he pushes the door open with exaggerated care and steps into the room.

“No cigars in here, sir,” I quip. “I’m a bit flammable at the moment, I’m afraid.”

As Sandburg is sitting in the room’s only chair, Simon elects to sit on the edge of the bed. “You know, Jim, you just had a vacation… but if you had really wanted another one, I could have pulled some strings for you.”

“Yeah, I always spend my vacations at hospitals.” I cough into the mask.

“What do the doctors say, Jim?”

Blair speaks up, his voice surprisingly steady, and gives Simon a short but accurate synopsis of today’s events. I’m content to sit there and let him explain things while I concentrate on breathing. When he finishes, the worry on Simon’s face is unmistakable.

“When are the specialists coming by?”

I gesture vaguely. “Soon, I guess. I don’t know.”

“I see.” Simon’s glance flickers over to Blair, where he sits at my left, his knuckle once again between his teeth. “Sandburg, you look like you could use a bite to eat. Why don’t you come with me down to the cafeteria? My treat.”

“I’d rather stay here with Jim, Simon, but thanks.”

“Sandburg,” he growls. “You aren’t going to do Jim any good if you’re exhausted and starving. Get up and come with me. Now.”

Blair’s eyes flash, and for a moment I get a glimpse of the old Sandburg, the one who rarely paid much attention to Simon’s instructions unless he felt like it. But habit, and I suppose respect, wins out, and he rises slowly to his feet. As he leaves to follow Simon, he squeezes my shoulder wordlessly.

“Hey, eat for me, too,” I half-whisper. “I’ll see you in a few.”

But I know perfectly well that food is not the main goal on Simon’s mind. Oh, they’ll stop at the cafeteria, so as to keep me from getting too suspicious. But I have a sneaking suspicion that I know what Simon’s really up to.

He’s off to interrogate my doctors.

Although I’m reluctant to leave Jim, I can see Simon’s logic. If Jim is going to get any sicker, I won’t want to leave his side for more than a few minutes. Better to catch a quick bite now, and hope that I’m overreacting.

We ride the elevator down to the cafeteria in silence, each of us busy with our own worries about the man that we’ve left upstairs. It’s mid-afternoon, but the cafeteria is still occupied by a number of people having a late lunch, many of them in the green scrubs and long white coats of residents. Simon’s earlier offer of paying for lunch revives my flagging interest in food, and I quickly reach for a slice of pizza and a large ice tea. After a minute’s consideration, I add a piece of decent-looking apple pie and join Simon at the cash register. With a pang, I notice the covered tray of glazed buttermilk donuts as I walk past, remembering how Jim had waxed rapturously over just such a treat when he’d lost his eyesight temporarily and had been forced to rely on his other four senses.

I had thought we would take our food back upstairs, but Simon motions to a table and I follow him dutifully enough.

“I guess it wouldn’t be fair to take this upstairs and eat it in front of Jim.” I take a handful of napkins out of the diner-style dispenser. Simon, I notice, has selected a tuna salad sandwich and chips to go with his coffee.

“No, it wouldn’t, but that’s not why we’re not going back upstairs just yet.”

I take a slurp of the iced tea, enjoying its cool lemony astringency. “It’s not?”

“No, it’s not. Sandburg, how the hell did you let him get so sick? Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice grows harsh, seeming to slice across the space between us.

My piece of pizza, which I’d just picked up, falls back to my plate with an audible slap as I drop it. With a shaking hand, I reach for one of the napkins to wipe the pizza grease off of my now nerveless appendages.

“Simon, I didn’t know! I didn’t know!” My voice cracks. “I thought he just had a cold. He kept insisting that he was all right.” And I believed him, even when I shouldn’t have.

Something in my face or in my voice must have hit home, because his expression softens. “Blair, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I should have told him to go to a doctor sooner. When did he finally decided he was sick enough to consult someone?”

I pick an olive off the pizza slice and half-heartedly put it in my mouth, not really tasting it, and not wanting to meet Simon’s searching gaze. “This morning. His doctor sent him straight over here.” I look back up. “How did you know we were even here? I never called you.”

He sighs. “It wasn’t easy. When Jim called in sick this morning, he mentioned he was going to the doctor. I kept calling the loft for an update. Finally, I called his doctor’s office; his staff told me that they thought he’d been admitted.”

“Oh.” I’m suddenly unable to say anything more intelligent.

“Sandburg, does this have anything to do with his senses? Do you know anything about this that the doctors don’t know, that you need to tell them?” Simon’s voice is even, but I feel uneasily like a teenager being questioned about his prom night activities.

“Simon, if this has anything to do with his senses, then it’s nothing I’ve ever heard of or understand.” I stir my iced tea absently with the plastic straw. “He was fine last night, just some headache and a little bit of cough. Everything else happened today.” I’m forced to stop as my voice breaks again.

“All right. Eat your lunch, Blair, then I think we should go back upstairs and get a little more information.” Simon takes a large bite out of his own sandwich. “We may need to ask some questions, questions that I think Jim’s going to be too sick to ask for himself.”

The lung specialist, one Dr. Poland, arrives to examine me only a minute or so after Simon and Blair leave. He’s soft-spoken and thorough, looking me over head to toe and asking me a lot of questions about my activities of the past few weeks. His manner is reassuring after Dr. Byrne’s palpable nervousness; this man is clearly used to taking care of some very ill individuals.

When I ask to see the chest X-ray, so that I can understand a little better what he’s talking about, he obliges me by fetching it and holding it up in front of the light for me. “See, what you’ve got are these many little fluffy infiltrates – that’s fluid or mucus in those areas – and this pattern over here, and here that we don’t see very often.” He lays the piece of black film negligently down on top of my bedspread.

“Which leads me to some questions that are particularly difficult to ask, Mr. Ellison.”

“Please call me Jim,” I whisper hoarsely.

“Jim, then. One of the pathogens – infection-causing organisms that can cause this kind of picture on an X-ray – is PCP… also known as Pneumocystis carinii. It’s an infection found only in people whose immune system is suppressed. Jim, is their any chance you could have HIV?”

Thunderstruck, I can only stare at him for a few seconds before I can answer. “No… I mean, I suppose it’s always possible, but…” Now, I’m suddenly extremely grateful that Blair and Simon are down in the cafeteria. “I’ve… had a few encounters in the last couple of years, but nothing particularly high-risk. And I gave blood as recently as three months ago.”

“And no little warning letter from the Red Cross, I presume. Well, we may test you anyway, just for completeness. And we’ll look for a lot of other things as well. I want them to draw some more blood on you now to see how well you’re actually breathing.” He writes a few thing into the chart, then departs, taking it with him and leaving me alone with my fears.

As we re-enter the ICU, Simon stops a passing nurse. “Excuse me, I’m Captain Banks with the Cascade PD. I need to talk to the physician in charge of the patient in bed 6.” He flashes his badge.

She’s a bit startled, but proves to be helpful enough. “That would be Dr. Byrne, and the pulmonologist Dr. Poland.” She motions toward a small conference room near the doors. “If you can wait in there, I’ll have them come meet you.”

As she walks briskly away, I lean closer to Simon. “That’s cheating.”

He grins. “But it works, son. It works.”

We make our way to the conference room, and are joined remarkably quickly by the two physicians. One is Dr. Byrnes, who frowns as he recognizes me; the other is a tallish man with dark hair and a youthful, rounded face.

Dr. Byrne clears his throat. “Captain, is Detective Ellison the focus of some sort of investigation?”

Simon smiles ingratiatingly and puts his badge away. “Only the medical investigation that you are conducting, gentlemen. I’m sorry; I simply wanted to get someone’s attention quickly. I am Detective Ellison’s immediate supervisor; this is Blair Sandburg, a consultant to the department who works closely with Detective Ellison.”

Dr. Byrne nods and sits down. “Yes, we’ve met, though I was under the impression that this young man was Detective Ellison’s roommate. Captain, I really should have you talk with Detective Ellison yourself –”

Simon frowns.

“—but I just spoke with him, and he warned me that you would probably be looking for some information. He’s given both of us permission to discuss any aspect of his case with either of you. So, ask us your questions.”

Simon shakes his head. “I don’t really have any questions that I can formulate. I just want an update on his condition, and to know what your treatment plan is.”

“I told you all that,” I grumble under my breath.

Simon ignores me. “Also, it’s possible that we can help you,” he goes on to say. “Jim’s got a pretty good memory, but he doesn’t remember everything. Especially when he’s not feeling well.”

The other doctor, whom I assume is the pulmonologist, nods. “Fair enough. Well, from the standpoint of his lungs, he’s in rocky shape at the moment. He’s got some sort of atypical interstitial pneumonia, and we’re not sure yet what sort of bug is causing it. Most likely, it’s a virus of some kind. Influenza can do this, so can adenovirus, PCP and a few of the fungi. The hantaviruses can do this as well, although he hasn’t left the state and I don’t think we’ve ever seen a case in coastal Washington… it’s been associated mainly with contact with mice in the Four Corners area. My money is on something like an adenovirus, although why such a healthy young man should have this kind of pneumonitis is beyond me.” He opens Jim’s chart. “Right now, he’s keeping up fairly well with his oxygen needs and doing okay at getting rid of his carbon dioxide… but he’s only doing that by breathing rapidly. Sooner or later, it’s likely that he’s going to tire out. When that happens, we’ll have to put him on the ventilator.”

I swallow. “A breathing machine.”

“Just to assist him,” the pulmonologist reassures me. “If we have to do that, we’ll do everything we can to make it as comfortable for him as possible.”

“And the rest of his body?” Simon asks quietly.

“The nephrologist – that’s the kidney specialist – is in there with him right now,” responds Dr. Byrne. “She’ll be able to advise us on the state of his kidneys later. But the labs indicate that he’s got some degree of nephritis – inflammation – and he’s definitely not getting rid of his metabolic waste products for some reason. That accounts for the nausea and the body aches. Also, his blood acid levels have been building up, and we’re probably going to have to give him some bicarbonate to balance that out.”

I’m still digesting this when the specialist speaks up again. “One more thing. The quickest way to find out what is going on in his lungs would be to go down there directly and look with an instrument called a bronchoscope. That way, we could suction out some of the material and send it to Microbiology to have them determine exactly what we’re dealing with.” He takes a deep breath. “When Dr. Mallory finishes her exam, I’m going to go back in there and talk to him about letting me do that.”

“All right, let’s lift the sheet and let me take a look at your legs to see if they’re swollen.”

Dr. Mallory leans over my bed and pokes at my shins, frowning when her finger leaves a slight indentation. If I were feeling a bit better, I might be more appreciative of the view to be seen down her low-cut top, but my libido is not exactly at it’s best. She’s cute, though: young, blonde and sweet-faced. Definitely easy on the eye.

And about eight months pregnant. And bearing a prominently displayed diamond wedding ring. Oh, well.

“Well, that’s about all I have to do to you.” She recovers my legs with the sheet and straightens up. “Jim, you’re in moderate acute renal failure. Your kidneys haven’t shut down completely, but they’re only working at about quarter capacity.”

I nod, mainly to save breath. She continues.

“Currently, you’re not in bad enough shape to need dialysis or anything like that. But it could happen. For now, we need to keep a close eye on the ins and outs of your fluid balance, and adjust your medication doses according to your kidney function.”

“Why… why are my kidneys sick?”

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “Most likely, it’s a side effect of whatever infection or process is going on in your lungs. If that’s the case, once you’re over the illness they should recover.”

That sounds relatively encouraging. I smile at her, or try to anyway. Then my sliding glass door opens and Blair and Simon slip back in.

Dr. Mallory puts out her hand to them. “I’m Dr. Susan Mallory. I’m a nephrologist, a kidney specialist. Dr. Byrne asked me to take a look at your friend.”

“Thank you for coming so promptly.” Simon shakes her hand fervently.

She shakes her head. “No problem. I was in the ICU anyway to see another patient.”

There’s an awkward moment, during which I’m sure Simon and Blair are both hoping for more information on my status. Dr. Mallory looks from one worried face to the other, and finally clears her throat. “Well, I need to go write in your chart, Jim. I’ll leave you to your friends.” She makes her escape, moving somewhat awkwardly around my increasingly cluttered room and out the sliding glass door.

As she leaves, she almost collides with Dr. Poland, the lung specialist. He’s carrying a clipboard and a pen and he approaches my bedside after a nod at my friends. His lack of introductions to them confirms my earlier suspicion that they were planning to corner my physicians and interrogate them.

“Jim, we’re going to need to do some fairly aggressive things here to get a handle on your infection.” He sets the clipboard down on my bedside table, momentarily ignoring it. “I want to perform a special kind of test on you, to look directly down into your lungs and suction out some fluids that we can analyze.”

My eyes flicker over to my partner, standing rigidly by the foot of the bed. His face betrays no surprise and his heart rate doesn’t change. I suppose Dr. Poland must have discussed this with them.

“Why?” I croak.

“Your lungs seem to be getting worse, and we need to find out what’s going on here. Your oxygen needs are going up. Whatever this is, your immune system doesn’t seem to be fighting it off very well. That makes me wonder if this is some exotic infection.” His eyes slide away from me for a moment, and he frowns slightly. “I also have to wonder if it is a more ordinary infection, and there’s something just wrong with your immune system. Your tests remind me of those we see on the transplant patients. They take specific medicines to keep from rejecting their transplants, things like prednisone and Imuran.” He gives a short, humorless laugh. “You haven’t started any new medicines lately, have you, Jim?”

I shake my head mutely, and he reaches over to pick up the clipboard. “This is a consent form that I’ll need you to sign, Jim. We’ll give you some medicines to sedate you a little first –”

“No sedatives!” I surprise myself with the strength of my voice.

“Eh? Well, you don’t have to have them, but the procedure can be a bit uncomfortable without them. Not sedating you will make it safer, though. At any rate, we’ll spray your throat with something that will keep you from gagging. Then we slide the bronchoscope down into your windpipe. You’ll be able to breathe around it. It’s a fiber optic instrument, and we’ll be able to see your airways directly and take samples of the mucus.”

“Okay.” I pause for breath after merely one word. “Where do I sign?”

He hands me the pen and clipboard and points to a line. I sign before I lose my nerve.

Dr. Poland seems relieved. “I’ll go get the things I need. The sooner we do this, the better.” He departs with a sort of wave.

Blair finally moves from his position at the foot at the bed, and comes up to sit in his old spot in the chair at my elbow. I reach out a hand to touch him briefly on the arm. “Hey, Chief.”

He says nothing for a moment, but captures my hand before I can pull it away and gives it a squeeze. “Hey, Jim.” He looks down at our joined hands, and seems to be struggling to speak. “Jim, I just thought of something… something that maybe I should have mentioned to the doctors.” His voice is low and slightly shaky.

“You’ve been implanting exotic viruses in my toothbrush?” I whisper.

He shakes his head violently. “Jim, how can you joke about this?” He swipes at his eyes with the back of his free hand. “No… when we first got here, when they asked if you were taking any medications… we told them no, just some Tylenol.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So that’s not all you’ve been taking.” Abruptly, as he’s suddenly realized that he’s still holding onto my hand, he jerks away from me. “You also took all of that Chinese herbal medicine, my cold cure. I don’t remember… three, four doses?”

“Something like that.” I struggle to think clearly through the fog of illness. “But it’s safe, isn’t it? That’s why you gave it to me. All-natural, right?”

He shakes his head stubbornly. “I should still tell them. What if something’s wrong, and you’re reacting in some strange way to that stuff?”

Simon, whom I’d momentarily forgotten, breaks in at this point. “Sandburg, have you been feeding your weird witch-doctor potions to Jim? How do you even know what’s in that stuff?”

It’s nothing that Simon hasn’t said before, but this time the words are serious, not teasing; derisive and angry rather than merely exasperated. Accusing, almost.

“I don’t know, Simon.” There are tear in my young friend’s voice. “I thought it was safe, all right? I wouldn’t have given it to him otherwise; you know that. And it seemed to help… didn’t it, Jim?”

I nod. “Made me feel better. Blair, I was sick before you gave me that. Don’t blame yourself.” I want to say more, but the ever-increasing need to simply breathe robs me of any eloquence I might normally have.

“I’m going to go back to the loft and get some of it.” Blair’s voice is stronger now. “Maybe they can test it, make sure it’s not anything dangerous. I’ll feel better then.”

I’m strangely reluctant to let him out of my sight, but I can see that he needs to do this. I clap him on the shoulder. “See you when you get back,” I whisper hoarsely to his already departing figure.

My breath catches in little gasps as I leave the ICU. I struggle to keep my emotions under control until I’m a safe distance from Jim, so that he won’t overhear me… not that we’ve ever exactly established what that safe distance is. Walking hurriedly past the bank of elevators, I head for the protective anonymity of the stairwell instead… where, if I’m lucky, no one will see the tears on my face or hear my ragged breathing.

Walking down six flights of stairs helps me to regain some outward calm. By the time I reach the main entrance of the hospital, I’ve schooled my face back to a careful blankness which contrasts weirdly with the turmoil in my heart. I can’t stop the frantic half-finished thoughts which swirl about one another, fighting for an exit into my conscious mind.

Did I do this to him?

Did I poison my friend?

It doesn’t make any logical sense; the doctors have been talking about all sorts of infections but haven’t said a word about toxins. And I’ve drank some concoctions pretty similar to the stuff I was giving Jim without any ill effects. But I can’t overlook anything that might help him.

Before I know it, I’m in my car and headed back to the loft. I drive as quickly as I dare without breaking too many traffic rules. It won’t help Jim any if I’m pulled over for speeding, even if the cops do mostly know me and probably wouldn’t ticket me under the circumstances. Right now, I begrudge any minutes spent away from his side, and I’m terrified that I won’t get back before the pulmonologist begins that procedure. I suddenly realize that I want to be with him during his ordeal, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone stop me from being there.

Finally, I reach the loft, and I run up the stairs and snatch frantically at the cupboard door in my haste to reach my goal. My hands close on the beautiful little wooden box, and I glare at it accusingly. “You had better not be the cause of this.”

It doesn’t answer. I resist the urge to dash it into a million pieces on the floor, and instead stuff it into my backpack as I head out the door.

I go tearing back to the hospital and arrive twenty minutes after I’d originally left. This time I take the elevator, as I’m already out of breath just from anxiety. As I push the button that opens the automatic doors to the ICU, I’m relieved to see the curtains still open in Jim’s little cubicle. Simon stands silhouetted on the other side of the sliding glass door.

Swallowing my quick flash of fear, I slip into the room and try to smile at Jim. Simon is talking to the pulmonologist.

“So, if this doesn’t give us the answer, then what next?”

Good for you, Simon. Stall them a little bit until I can get there. I clear my throat, which has suddenly gone dry, and break in before the specialist can answer Simon’s question.

“Dr. Poland, I was hoping I could stay with my friend during this, um, whatever-you-call-it…”

He frowns. “Bronchoscopy. I suppose, if you can stay out of the way. Since we’re going to try and keep him conscious, it might help him to have someone here to reassure him.” He glances over at Jim. “How do you feel about that?”

Jim nods. “Let him stay. Please.” I almost have to look away from the pleading in his eyes.

I take another deep breath. “And Dr. Poland, I have some more information for the medical team…”

He waves me away, a bit abruptly. “Tell it to Dr. Byrnes while I get things set up in here. He’s the attending physician; I’m just the consultant. I think he’s out at the nurses’ station writing in the chart.”

I nod acquiescence and leave the room again. I spot Dr. Byrne’s wavy red head bent over a chart as he writes furiously. I sit hesitantly in the chair beside him, suddenly glad that I can make this confession to Jim’s affable and approachable personal physician rather than the specialist. I draw the little wooden box from my backpack and set it on the table.

“Dr. Byrne… I need to show this to you.”

He looks up, startlement in his eyes which are then drawn to the box. “What is it?”

“It’s… something that I bought at an herb shop, in Chinatown. It’s supposed to be a natural cold remedy. I’ve… I’ve been giving it to Jim for the last couple of days. It seemed to help…” I trail off as my voice cracks, then force myself to continue. “I need to know if this is what’s making him sick.”

His hand closes around the box, and his voice when he answers me is gentle. “Blair, he’s got some kind of raging infection in there; I don’t think it’s possible that anything you could have given him could be the cause. But I’ll get this to the lab and have it analyzed; we can’t afford not to check out every lead. And it’ll make you feel better.” He opens the lid and studies the contents. “You do have to be careful with some of these herbal medicines. Most of the stuff grown in this country is legit, but there’ve been some problems reported with the imported herbs. You know, contaminated with various things.” He slides the lid back in place. “I’ll get it to the lab, Blair,” he repeats. “I’ll let you know what they find.”

“Thanks,” I breathe, and rise to return to Jim’s room.

I watch around the edges of my oxygen mask as Dr. Poland explains what he’s going to be doing to me.

“I’m going to spray your throat with something to numb it up first.” He brandishes a can. “Then we’ll slip down the bronchoscope. It’ll feel pretty strange. But it shouldn’t actually hurt.”

“All right.” I try to make my voice sound stronger. “Go ahead, I’m ready.”

Dr. Poland moves the oxygen mask to one side, and my hungry lungs can immediately tell the difference. I can feel my breathing speed up again as my body tries to compensate. I open my mouth widely for the cold spray of the local anesthetic, then close my eyes and lean my head back as instructed.

I can hear Blair’s soft breathing. He sits off to my left, gripping my hand in his… close by yet out of the doctor’s way. He hasn’t said much since he returned from his brief errand, but I’m grateful for his simple presence. Even with my eyes closed, I can still sense the sorrow and tension that has been visible on his face for the last several hours.

I dimly feel the cool metal as it slides down my throat. I clutch at my friend’s hand, squeezing the lifeline that he offers as I try to wish myself elsewhere. After the first few minutes, I don’t feel all that much. There’s some rather unpleasant sucking sounds, and it’s a little harder to breathe although someone is blowing oxygen at my mouth and nose. Thankfully, my enhanced sense of touch doesn’t seem to affect the pain thresholds of my internal organs.

After what seems like hours of this, I heard Dr. Poland grunt with satisfaction. “That’s six samples; that should do it.” Some of the spray anesthetic has worn off, and I can definitely feel the instrument as it slides out. But it’s a mercifully brief sensation, and soon I’m sitting up again and coughing into the tissue that Blair is holding in front of my mouth. I’m too exhausted to protest his ministrations, even when he tenderly wipes my chin with the wad of tissues.

“Yuck.” I hear him speaking as if from a great distance. “Is that what you were getting out of him?”

“Mostly, yes. He’s got a lot of gunk down there.” The doctor’s voice sounds much fainter than Blair’s, and I try to remember what to do about that. Hearing, hearing… something about a dial? Whatever it was it seems like too much work now. Better to rest.

“Sharon, turn up at that oxygen. His sats are dropping.” The hiss of the gas and the roar of the blood in my own arteries fill my ears and I give myself up to the soft darkness of unconsciousness that waits for me.

I’m not sure which I notice first: the sensation of Jim’s hand growing slack and limp in mine or the ominous tone of the beeps coming from the monitors. As I watch Jim’s face, relaxed as if in sleep, the pink color drains out of it… to be replace by a ghostly bluish tinge. Horrified, I stand up and back away, just as the pulmonologist begins to shout.

“He’s apneic. Dammit, where’s that bag and mask?”

Someone tosses him a different kind of oxygen mask, one with a large clear plastic balloon-like contraption on the end of it. The nurse rips the old mask off of Jim’s unresisting face and replaces it with the new one, holding it tight against his cheeks and chin with practiced fingers. The doctor begins to squeeze the bag rhythmically, and Jim’s chest begins to rise and fall in the same cadence. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his color improves.

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. He’s going to be all right. He’s got to be all right.

As if noticing my presence for the first time, the pulmonologist stares at me briefly. Then he looks past my shoulder and shouts.

“We’re going to have to tube him and put him on the vent. Get his friend out of here.”

I feel a hand on my elbow, and look around to see who it belongs to. Oh. It’s Dr. Byrne; he must have come into the room without my noticing. He pulls gently on my arm.

“Come on, Blair. Let them do their work.”

I want to resist, but Dr. Byrne propels me firmly out of the room and the team draws the blinds behind me. He escorts me down the hall a little ways to the family waiting room and leads me to the couch where Simon sits waiting. I sit down, less as an act of will and more as a reflex.

“Sandburg, what’s happening in there?” Simon’s voice sounds harsh in the silence.

Until Dr. Byrne hands me the box of tissues, I don’t realize that there are tears on my face. I tug a couple of the blue Kleenexes free of their moorings and use them to mop up the offending drops, giving my nose a good blow before I look back at Simon.

“He stopped breathing,” I answer raggedly.

“It was bound to happen eventually, considering how hard he’s been working to breathe,” soothes Dr. Byrne. “They’ll put him on the ventilator, then he’ll be able to just concentrate on resting and getting better. We’ll be able to sedate him safely now, and he’ll feel better.” He looks at his watch. “In an hour or so, we should have some of the results back from the lab on the samples that Dr. Poland took. Blair…”

He looks at me, and I glance away from his penetrating gaze. “Blair, you’re exhausted. I think you should lie down here for a while and rest.”

The clock in the dark, quiet little room reads 2:30. As in, 2:30 in the morning. No wonder I’m so shaky.

“Not until I’m sure that he’s okay, that they’ve got him stabilized again.” I feel the sting of fresh tears on my eyelids; angrily I blink them away.

Dr. Byrne sighs. “Tell you what. I will go back in and get you an update. I will also grab a blanket and pillow for you. If I bring you the update, the blanket and the pillow, will you lie down and at least try to rest?” He looks past me at Simon. “That goes for you as well, Captain. You’re both exhausted.”

I nod dully. “Sounds like a deal.”

Simon and I sit in silence in the darkened room, waiting tensely for the doctor to return. Through the blur of my now-realized fatigue, I realize dimly that I ought to try to make conversation with him, that we ought to be talking to each other to keep our spirits up and to keep our minds off of Jim’s crisis… but for once in my life, I know no words that seem appropriate. I can’t offer information; I have none. I can’t be reassuring, for I feel no assurance. Even empathy for Simon’s undeniable worry is out of my reach; I’m too wrapped up in my own pain, my own spiral of dwindling hope.

The door opens again to admit Dr. Byrne’s red head. The stack of blankets and pillows that he’s carrying obscures part of his face. Suddenly glad of something to do, I jump up to take the bedding from him.

“Thank you,” I offer quietly. “How… how is he?” I hand a pillow to Simon and keep one for myself, and set the stack of blankets down on the couch for now.

“Doing a bit better. They got the breathing tube into him without any problems, and the ventilator is breathing for him now. They’re going to go ahead and put in a central line… that’s a special kind of large IV, into the large vein up by his collarbone. That makes it easier for us to monitor him, and… if his kidneys give out completely, we can do dialysis through this in a pinch.” He motions to the couches. “Get some sleep. I’ll pop in and keep you updated, but you both need to rest.”

Obediently, suddenly unutterably weary, I stretch out on the smallest of the couches. Despite the turmoil of the past few hours, despite Simon’s loud snoring that begins immediately, sleep claims me.

Woosh, sigh.

Woosh, sigh.

Woosh, sigh.

Layers of mental fog surround me, opaque and impenetrable. My eyelids, strangely heavy, remain closed despite my brain’s command that they be open. My lungs, drained of their own volition, fill and empty anyway. My heart continues to beat, too fast.

There are people in the room with me, but no one smells familiar. Instead, my nose remains assaulted by scents of latex and antiseptic as it searches fruitlessly for that combination of olfactory sensation that is associated with my best friend.

The void calls me back, and I slide off into its emptiness… to a world of confused dreams and mangled memories, of color and light and sound.

Woosh, sigh.

Woosh, sigh.

I sit up, pushing tangled hair out of my eyes, momentarily unsure of where I am as someone clicks on a light. I hear snoring, which stops abruptly.

Dr. Byrne crouches by my side. At the sight of his serious facial expression, I come fully awake.

“What’s wrong?” I croak. From the raw feel of my throat, Simon wasn’t the only one in the room snoring. I do that sometimes, when I’m ill or very tired. “Is he worse?”

The doctor makes a dismissive gesture. “He’s about the same. No… I came by to talk to you because I got a call from the lab. About the Chinese ‘herbs’ that you gave me.”

Now I hear Simon sit up on the other couch. I clear my throat. “Can they tell what was in that stuff?”

He nods, his head backlit by the diffuse glow from the lamp. “A number of mostly harmless herbs, and a bunch of ginseng… and a very large amount of pure prednisone.”

I frown. “Prednisone? What’s that?”

“It’s a powerful medication. In smaller doses, it relieves inflammation. In large doses, it affects the immune systems. We use it, along with other drugs, on patients who’ve had an organ transplant, to keep their immune systems quieted down so that they don’t reject the transplant.” His voice grows gentle. “Blair, it also leaves the patient more susceptible to infections. Especially unusual viral infections.”

Sick with dread and guilt, I flop bonelessly back onto the couch… deaf to all except the soundless screaming of my own conscience.

This is my fault.

I gave this stuff to Jim; I practically forced him to take it the first time, smug as I was in the knowledge that only I knew what was best for my Sentinel.

This is what my safe, “alternative” remedy has done to my best friend.

The blood roars in my ears and my belly churns with sudden nausea. Gradually, I become aware that Dr. Byrne is still speaking.

“… talked with the state Poison Control Center, and they confirmed that there have been a number of similar cases of Chinese herbs being purposely contaminated with prednisone. You see, it makes the patients feel better for a while, and worse when they stop… so they keep buying it and taking it.”

I force myself to breathe, to keep functioning, to pay attention. “He did feel better when he took it,” I whisper, numbly. It fits, it all fits.

Simon misunderstands me. “Dammit, Sandburg, you’ve got to stop playing witch doctor like this! Maybe it made him feel better for a while, but that stuff is dangerous. Where did you buy it?” He stands up, looking for all the world as if he’s going to raid the Number One Oriental Grocery Store all by himself. At four in the morning.

Dr. Byrne raises a hand. “It’s important to point out that this by itself isn’t enough to make Jim sick. He simply had the bad luck to be ill with… whatever this is, when you started giving him that tea, Blair.”

“But it made things worse,” I counter miserably.

He sighs. “We don’t know that, Blair. For a man Jim’s size, a few doses of this stuff might not make all that much difference. Some people are more sensitive to prednisone than others.”

And some Sentinels have all sorts of odd reactions to medications, I add to myself glumly.

Simon sits back down, looking more under control. “When will we have more results? I thought you said we’d know something by now.” He gestures at the wall clock.

“Well… so far, everything’s coming back negative, or at least nonspecific. There are some specialized stains… slides, that is, stained by special techniques… that we won’t have for a few hours, though; the only person that does them wasn’t available right away.” He moves to the door and flicks the light back off. “I promise I’ll wake you when we have something.”

The next sound that wakes me is Simon’s low and rumbly voice, talking with someone. I roll over and try to get my eyes to focus, try to get my brain to track the conversation. Ugh. My head aches, my eyes are sticky, and my sinuses feel clogged… as if I’ve been crying in my sleep all night. Maybe I have been; the pillow is damp.

“…certain this needs to be done?” Simon is saying softly. “Pardon me, Doctor, but it sounds very risky. I thought that you were supposed to get all of the answers when you stuck that tube down him.” Even through the veneer of politeness that coats his voice, I can hear little notes of accusation.

Though it’s fairly dark in the room, I can see the dim outline of someone standing a few feet away conversing with Simon. “Yes… we’d hoped that we’d get some useful information out of the samples we took during the bronchoscopy… but so far, everything’s come back negative.”

I sit up and switch on the tiny lamp that sits on the end table. “How is he?”

Both men turn toward me, and now I recognize Dr. Poland the pulmonologist. He clears his throat. “He’s… having some trouble. We’re having a hard time keeping his oxygen saturations up, even with almost pure oxygen. And he’s acidotic… the metabolic poisons in his blood are building up, even though we’re giving him bicarbonate to counteract it.”

My stomach tightens. “What time is it?”

The question sounds silly as soon as it leaves my mouth… but I can’t shake the feeling that Jim will somehow improve as soon as the sun comes up. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” is the quote that comes to mind. My own near-death and subsequent revival happened early in the morning, though understandably I don’t remember much about the whole event.

“It’s about 6:30,” the doctor answers gravely. Apparently, he must be used to inane questions from friends and relatives. He pauses for a moment, then continues on with the explanation that he was giving Simon.

“What we’re talking about doing is sending him down to the OR with one of the surgical teams, to perform what is known as an open lung biopsy. Open up an incision in his chest, get a little piece of actual lung tissue. That way we should be able to find out exactly what’s happening so we can figure out how to fight it.” Dr. Poland glances down at his hands for a moment. “It sounds risky, I know, but if we don’t identify the organism I’m afraid he’s just going to slip away from us.”

I close my eyes briefly, refusing to let those last few words enter my conscious thought. When I open them again, both Simon and the doctor are looking at me.

“Blair,” Simon says gently, “this has to be your call, son.” His bitterness of last night has apparently left him. “You’re his best friend, closer to him than anyone else.” He leans over to place one hand on my shoulder, his concerned brown eyes boring into mine.

I take a deep breath. “Do it. Make the arrangements. But I want to see him first.”

The specialist nods. “He’s been conscious part of the time; it would be good for someone to explain this to him. He’s too groggy to sign a consent form, but a verbal go-ahead from his would make us all feel better.”

After hunting around for my glasses I follow Dr. Poland back into the ICU and into Jim’s room. Dr. Poland whispers something to the nurse at Jim’s bedside and both of them slip out of the room , leaving me alone with my friend. I sink down into the chair I had been sitting in during the bronchoscopy – was it only a few hours ago? I wrap my fingers around his left hand, somehow miraculously free of IV’s and wires, and force myself to look at him. Really look at him.

I haven’t been in here since the bronchoscopy, when Jim stopped breathing and they’d chased me out of the room. Now a plastic breathing tube snakes down into his throat, causing his chest to rise and fall in an unnaturally even cadence. The hospital gown is drawn back from his left shoulder, revealing a small square bandage and a thick plastic IV line coming from underneath it. Yet another tube trails from one nostril.

Except for the artificial breathing, he’s utterly silent and still: no voluntary motion of his body remains to betray the presence of the living spirit I know so well. Yet I know he’s there somewhere, perhaps lost and wandering in his mind under the sedation and the sickness. I squeeze his hand in mine, placing my free hand along the angle of his jaw as I begin to speak to him.

“Jim, it’s me.” I stroke his chin with my fingers, feather-light. “I know you’re tired, and a bit out of it, but I’m pretty sure you can hear me.” I keep my voice low but intense, trying to use that same tone that he’s become familiar with when we’re working on his senses. “You’re very, very sick.”

Tears well up in my eyes then, and my throat closes up on me. I have to close my eyes and sit there for a few minutes until I can speak again. This time I know my voice is shaking with emotion.

“The doctors are trying hard to find out what’s wrong with you, but they’re still not sure. They want to take you to the operating room and take out a little piece of your lung so they can figure out what’s wrong.” I lean in closer, almost whispering in his ear. “It’s risky, but they say they need to do it. I told them… I told them to get set up to do it. But if you want me to tell them no, I will.” I choke on the last few words. “I… need to know I’m doing the right thing here, buddy.”

Now the tears run down my face despite my best efforts, dripping onto Jim’s face and onto our joined hands when I straighten back up. With my free hand, I wipe the salty moisture from his face and them from mine… a futile gesture, since there seems to be more on the way. I struggle for control for a few moments, squeezing his limp cool hand in mine… then I give up and rest my head on the corner of the bed close to his ear, weeping as silently as I can and feeling the tears soak into Jim’s bed and the edge of his hospital gown. Finally, feeling cried-out and strangely light-headed, I raise my head slightly and look at him again.

With my face half-buried in the rough hospital sheet and my glasses blurred by tears, it takes me a moment to register the simple fact that Jim’s eyes are open. With a soft strangled noise of surprise, I sit up.

I’ve been drifting forever.

The boat is small and empty. No water supply, no rations, no life vest. No other people, just me. That seems odd.

Wait, there’s a paddle here, too. Just one pitifully inadequate little paddle, but I grasp it as if I’m afraid I will drown without it. The wood is soft and fine-grained, surprisingly warm to my touch.

And something’s not right about the waves. Granted, I’m not fond of open water, and I can’t imagine what I’m doing out here in this little dinghy by myself in the first place… but I’ve never seen or heard waves like these. They’re too regular, too even. Swish, swoosh, swish, swoosh, over and over.

I peer over the edge of the boat, studying the deep sea. Blue, cool, and strangely inviting, it beckons me into its embrace. I lean closer, and catch a glimpse of my reflection.

And it’s funny, because even though the pounding pulse of the waves never changes, something in the intensity of the rhythm must be different now because the salt spray is hitting me in the face. Even more strangely, the droplets that strike my skin are soft and warm, and not the cold harshness I expect from the sea.

Then the boat is gone, and I’m underwater… swimming strongly toward the surface and shaking the water out of my eyes as my head breaks through into the sunlight.

Or is it sunlight? It’s a glaring light, cold and white, but strong enough to penetrate through my still-closed eyelids. I can still hear the waves, but I no longer feel the water. And the water is no longer hitting me in the face, yet I can feel its lingering traces drying along my cheek. My hand still grasps the paddle, only it doesn’t quite feel the same now… and over the repetitive white-noise sound of the waves, I hear soft whimpers and irregular breathing. Someone is crying.

Though it seems to take tremendous effort, I open my eyelids.

My eyes meet an ordinary acoustic-tile ceiling, not the bleached blue of the South Pacific skies of my dream. I can feel the plastic tube in my windpipe, not-quite gagging me as it pumps its lifesaving oxygen into my lungs in the relentless in-out rhythm that must have been making me think of ocean waves. And this is definitely not a wooden paddle that I hold in my hand, but warm human flesh, far warmer than mine.

I hear a gasp and turn my head slightly to meet the sound… and am rewarded by the sight of my best friend’s face, only a few inches away. Tear-stained, with his mouth twisted in what in obviously a failing effort to hold back the sobs, and his forehead etched with lines of deep worry… he nonetheless manages a watery half-smile as our eyes meet. I drink in the sight of him: hurting yet unbroken, with a sensitivity that hides a core of steel … and unspeakably precious to me in ways that he’ll never know.

“Jim,” he whispers. He lifts my hand up to his face, which is what I wanted to do with it anyway if my muscles would obey me, and cradles my chilled extremity against his warm cheek. “Jim, you’re awake. Can you hear me?”

I manage a nod that is probably barely perceptible. His face breaks into a broader smile, a real one this time. “Thank God,” he breathes. “Jim, did you hear anything I was saying to you earlier? Just squeeze my hand once for yes, two for no.”

That sounds like more than my feeble strength will be able to handle, but after a few seconds I send the right messages to the right nerves and squeeze his hand twice. The successful action brings a fresh waves of tears down Blair’s face, which he rubs away absently.

“All right. I’ll go over it again and try to get all of the details straight.” A shaky laugh. “Squeeze my hand twice if you need me to stop and explain something.”

Then he tells me of the doctors’ proposal that they take me to the OR and do the open lung biopsy. “It’s your only chance,” he finishes. “I’ve told them to go ahead, but I can still call it off. Do you want me to call it off?”

As strongly as I can, I grip his hand and squeeze it twice.

And then the waves close around my head again.

I watch Jim’s face for a few more moments after his eyes close and his hand goes limp in my grasp… studying it, memorizing every little line and shadow. Finally, I give his hand one final squeeze and stand up to go in search of Dr. Poland.

He’s out at the nurses’ station, writing in Jim’s chart. He looks up when I approach, the question clearly written on his round face.

“He’s conscious, or he was.” I sit down next to the specialist, feeling suddenly very weary. “I told him what you were recommending, and he wants to go ahead with it.”

“Good.” Dr. Poland nods decisively. “We should be able to have him downstairs in about a half an hour.” He taps his pen on the chart. “We also got a call a few minutes ago from Heidi Philpott; she just got back into town and is going to come by as soon as she can get away.”

“Good,” I agree half-heartedly. “Um… Doctor?”

“Yes?” He looks over at me, his expression one of fatigued irritation mixed with sympathy.

“If it’s hopeless… I don’t want him to…” I struggle to put my half-formed thought into words. “I mean… we just finished a case that made me think about this sort of thing. I know that Jim wouldn’t want to be kept alive on machines…” I trail off.

He sighs. “This won’t come to that. Right now, his brain is probably his healthiest organ. If we can support the rest of him long enough, he’ll do okay. If we can’t… well, if we can’t, you should stay with him as long as there’s a chance that he knows you’re there.”

“Thanks,” I whisper. Taking his words literally, I return to sit by Jim’s side.

It seems like only a few minutes later when the surgical team comes to take him away. I clutch his hand as they approach… then I reluctantly release it and stand, backing up into the corner of the room. Numbly, I watch as they unplug him from the ventilator; as they transfer him onto the gurney, one of the green-clad staff takes over the work of breathing for Jim by squeezing a bag that attaches to the end of his breathing tube.

When they seem to have him settled, I clear my throat. “Um… how long do you think this will take? Before he’s back up here?”

The young man who is squeezing the bag looks up at me. “Not long. Probably less than an hour, since he’s already intubated and sedated. We’ll bring him straight back up here afterwards rather than to the recovery room.”

“Thanks.” I follow as far the automatic doors that guard the ICU as they trundle him off down the hall, and I catch a last glimpse of him as the elevator door closes on the little group. I heave a shaky sigh, and turn to head back to the waiting room.

But I stop at the door for a moment, pondering. I realize, suddenly, that I don’t want to go back in there… back to wait, sitting passively on the couch with Simon. I don’t want to wait, I want to do something. Even if it’s something as seemingly trivial as making peace with my own personal demons.

I re-enter the main part of the ICU and stop the first familiar-looking nurse I see. “Um…” I glance at her nametag, pinned to her colorful scrub top. “Donna, is there someplace quiet I can go? A good place to go and be by myself for a while?”

She studies me for a moment, and I’m acutely self-conscious of my tear-stained face and my rumpled, slept-in clothes. Then she nods, sympathy clearly written on her broad face. “Down on the first floor, by the chaplains’ office. It’s called the Quiet Room. Sort of a chapel. No one will bother you there.”

“Thanks.” I debate about poking my head in the waiting room to tell Simon where I’m going, but I decide against it. If things go okay for Jim, Simon won’t really notice my absence… if the worst happens, maybe I’ll be granted a few more minutes of denial.

Alone in the semi-dark room, I sit in lotus position on the carpeted floor and close my eyes. I have no candles, no soft music, nothing to aid my relaxation by scent or sound or flickering light. I am alone with my own private despair, my own aching guilt.

My thoughts seem to lie in a jumbled mess, a sort of mental rubble pile: each time I pull out one fear to examine it more closely, half-a-dozen others come sliding out of the heap to confront me. I force myself to be still, to let the each anxiety wash through me, and in a sense, over me. Only when I am quiet and centered do I allow the worries to crystallize verbally in my mind.

I’m afraid that Jim will die

I’m afraid that he will die before I can ever tell him how much his friendship has meant to me.

I’m afraid that he will die, and it will be at least partly my fault… for talking him into taking that bogus herbal crap that I never should have given him.

I’m afraid that Jim will die now, in this hospital, from this mysterious virus or whatever the hell it is… not out in the field, saving others with his last dying breath. Or worse, die after a few weeks of living as a hopeless vegetable. That’s not right. It’s not supposed to happen to someone like Jim.

Opening my eyes at this last point, I giggle hysterically at myself. Okay, maybe I’ve slipped over the edge just a bit (a bit? Try a lot) but dammit, it’s not fair. I’ve seen Jim risk his physical safety over and over again, and do things that should have killed him… but he has always walked away. How can I reconcile my memories of this almost-superman with the pale and still figure that disappeared into the elevator only a few minutes ago?

The giggles turn into fresh tears, and I close my eyes and let them run down my face unchecked. Oh, Jim. Oh, my friend, my partner.

I shift out of lotus position, moving my cramped limbs until I’m sitting on my butt with my legs drawn up in front of me. I bury my face in my knees, and try to remember some of the childhood prayers taught to me by my mother’s family, so long ago. But only snatches remain, nothing that gives me any comfort.

I reach into my shirt and pull out the talisman that I brought back from New Mexico, closing one hand around it. I raise my face again and whisper to the emptiness of the room. “God… or whoever, or whatever… if there’s any one listening, just please don’t take him away. He’s not finished yet.

“Take me, or take his Sentinel abilities… take away my whole flippin’ thesis… but let me keep my friend. Nothing… none of it is worth anything without Jim to share it with.”

True words, indeed… a truth that I don’t fully realize until I say it out loud. Just like I observed once after we returned from Peru, the entire Sentinel thing really boils down to friendship. Even if he dies… I choke mentally on the phrase, but force myself to confront the thought anyway. Even if Jim dies, and I eventually have the heart to write up all my material and submit my thesis… no amount of recognition or acclamation can bring him back.

For a few more minutes, I sit in the darkness, just breathing quietly… waiting for an answer, I suppose. But none seems to be forthcoming, so I eventually rise stiffly from the floor and return upstairs.

I push open the door to the waiting room, trying to quash the feeling of dread that comes to me as soon as I return to the ICU and its environs. Simon looks up as I enter.

“They should be bringing him back up fairly soon. Dr. Byrne came out and said that he made it through the worst of the surgery.” He places one hand lightly on my shoulder. “How are you doing?”

“I’m all right. I… just needed to be by myself for a little bit.”

“I understand.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze and then releases it.

I reach back up to my neck for the little leather talisman hanging on the thong, and lift it off over my head so that I can hold it in my hand. Somehow, it’s comforting, especially when I picture the old man who gave it to me. I roll it back and forth in my hands, trying to let the fidgeting motion bleed away my tension.

Simon notices. “What’s that, Sandburg?” He smiles faintly. “If you tell me that’s your stash, I’m afraid I’ll have to bust you… although it smells a bit odd for pot.”

“Nothing like that.” I hold it up and stare at it, at the worn brown leather and the drawstring-type closure at the top. “An old man in New Mexico gave it to me when I was there. He told me it would help me find my path.”

“What’s in it?”

I shrug, grateful for the diversion and the seemingly ordinary conversation. “Who knows? Sacred herbs, a piece of turquoise, his great-grandfather’s teeth? That’s not important.”

There’s a knock at the door, startling us both. Self-conscious of being seen toying with an odd little leather bag, I lift up the thong to slip it back over my head… only to have the talisman itself snag on my glasses. The slender thong parts with an audible snap and the bag falls to the floor, rolling under my chair.

I swear under my breath and dive to retrieve it, just as the door opens to admit Dr. Poland and Dr. Byrne.

“They’ve closed, and they’ll be up in a few minutes, gentlemen.” Dr. Poland looks cautiously pleased. “They got the biopsy, and he’s no worse. No better, but…”

He trails off as he stares at the object I hold in the palm of my hand. A faded square of leather, now opened… and in the middle of it, a tiny shriveled mummified mouse.

Dr. Poland stares at me. “What is that?” he asks after a few heartbeats.

“It’s… well, it was a Native American talisman, given to be in New Mexico by a tribal shaman.” I shake my head, puzzled by the stiff little rodent in my hand. “A dead mouse. Weird… who would have guessed that’s what was inside?”

Now the doctor is looking at me strangely. “How long have you had that?”

“I brought it with me when I flew back on Monday. Why?”

He reaches over to the box of tissues on the end table and fishes out a wad of them. Then he pounces on the mouse, scooping it up with the tissues and peering at it.

The whole scene has a somewhat surreal feel to it. My best friend may be dying, and his lung specialist is playing with a dead rodent and asking me how I spent my summer vacation.

“Blair,” he answers slowly, “one of the viral diseases that we considered as a cause for Jim’s illness, and one of the things that can cause such a rapid and severe deterioration, is hantavirus. We don’t really have it up here in this part of the country; most of the cases have been associated with people who have been to the Four Corners area of the Southwest.”

I swallow convulsively. “That’s where I was last week. But I’m feeling fine.”

“It’s the mouse, Blair. That’s what concerns me. Hantavirus is spread by contact with rodents, especially mice. Granted, most of the cases have been associated with live mice, but it’s hard to know for sure with a disease this rare. I’ll need to have this sent to the lab, see if they can culture the virus… or anything else.”

Numbly, I nod. “If… if the virus is in the mouse, how come I’m not sick?”

“I don’t know. It could be that the prednisone made him more susceptible, but probably it was just bad luck on Jim’s part.”

I must look stricken, because the doctor places a hand on my shoulder. “Blair, this isn’t your fault. It’s just a freak occurrence. The important thing is, now we have a good idea of what’s wrong with him. The biopsy and the cultures of the mouse should confirm it.” He lets his hand drop, looks at me again as if he’s about to say something, then simply nods and slips out the doorway.

My gaze drops down to my hand, empty now except for the little square of greyish leather… from what desert beast I’d rather not think about. With a sudden flash of anger I fling the empty square to the floor.

“Sandburg?” Simon calls quietly.

I ignore him, and instead stare again at my hand. Smooth and unmarred except for writing calluses and the tiny scar along my thumb that I acquired two years ago from a recalcitrant can of black beans, it appears remarkably innocent. Not at all what I’d expect from a hand that less than a minute ago was holding a miniature withered corpse, a vector of horrible death.

As I study my hand, I flex the fingers one by one. They move and bend just as they are supposed to. In fact, my whole arm works normally, as does the rest of my body. Intact, functioning, healthy… the exact opposite of Jim’s failing organ systems. That just doesn’t seem right, since he didn’t do anything wrong to get himself into such a state. And here I sit, with an invisible mark of Cain upon my head, breathing and moving and feeling.

My fingers clench tightly into a fist, then I pull my arm back and punch my knuckles into the hard plaster wall just to my left. The wall surface is rough and gritty, perfectly suited to peel a layer of skin from my fist. The old-fashioned lath and plaster refuses to cave in under the force of my blow as modern drywall would; instead it beckons me to come back for another.

And another.

And another.

Someone is shouting at me, but the words wash over me without stopping to make any sense. Strong arms attempt to restrain me, but I wriggle free to continue my single-minded punching that splatters little flecks of crimson blood along the wall.

If Jim were doing this, he would undoubtedly be able to feel each individual sensation: the skin tearing, the soft flesh and muscle bruising, the bones cracking. For me, the feeling comes as one undifferentiated haze of welcome pain… pain that somehow brings me a sense of clarity.

And, as weird as it sounds, the agony brings me a sense of peace. Now, at least, I am suffering, if only in a small way.

The restraining arms finally succeed in pulling me away from the wall. As if from a great distance, I hear a familiar voice filled with its own unacknowledged pain.

“Dammit, Sandburg, stop it! Stop it and listen to me before you kill yourself!”

The voice belongs to Simon. I blink and realize that I’m kneeling on the floor in front of the couch. Simon crouches next to me, pinning my arms back with his own.

“Blair, this is not your fault. Didn’t you hear the doctor? Even if the virus was in the mouse, you couldn’t have any way of knowing that.”

My voice sounds curiously calm to my ears. “I know.”

“You sure as hell aren’t acting like you believe that. You’re doing a fine impersonation of a man who’s slipped completely over the edge.” He begins to release my arms, then hesitates. “If I let you go, do you promise not to hurt yourself any more?”

“Yes.” Now it comes out as a whisper. Simon releases me from his grasp and raises himself to the couch. Awkwardly, cradling my now-throbbing right hand, I climb up next to him.

“Let me see that.” He grasps my arm at the wrist and maneuvers the damaged appendage onto his lap. I hiss with pain as I unclench my fingers and try to move the stiffened joints. I can hear Simon cursing under his breath as he tries to examine my hand without hurting me further.

“Blair, you need to go wash this off… then as soon as we can we need to get some ice on it. You might have broken something. It’s a good thing you’re not particularly muscle-bound, or you could have done some real damage.”

“That was the idea,” I mumble quietly.

Simon shakes his head. “Come on, let’s go get you patched up. Jim should be back upstairs by now.”

Again, the cloudless blue sky. Again, the trackless ocean and the unceasing lap of the waves.

The boat lurches softly side to side, and I turn behind me to look for the paddle. I don’t see it anywhere; maybe it has fallen overboard. Too bad; how can I hope to get anywhere without it?

I turn back to the bow, and now I see the growing hole in the bottom of the boat. The water comes in slowly but inexorably; soon the boat and I are sinking further beneath the waves with each rise and swell.

Clutching a lumpy ice pack to my right hand, I stand in front of the sliding-glass door that leads to Jim’s room. “How is he?” I ask softly of the nurse who is just exiting.

“No real changes. We just got him settled back him a minute or so ago.” She sits down in front of a small built-in desk just outside the room. “You can go in there if you want.”

I nod and start to push the door openly, awkwardly left-handed. Just as the door slides enough to admit me, a chorus of loud alarms go off from the monitors over Jim’s bed. I step back, thinking that I’ve somehow broken something… then I’m shoved aside by the nurse as she pushes her way past me.

“Get the code team in here, STAT! He’s in V-tach!!” She shouts this in the general direction of the clump of doctors gathered at the nursing station, then runs to the head of Jim’s bed. I shrink up against the wall, watching in helpless panic as at least five people run into Jim’s room, one of them pushing a large red cart.

Simon appears at my elbow. “What’s going on, Sandburg?”

“I don’t know,” I answer miserably. “It looks bad… it looks really bad.” Horrified yet unable to look away, I watch as one of the ICU team shouts instructions. “Give me 100 milligrams of lidocaine in that central line, now!”

“We don’t have time for that! Get the defibrillator in here now!”

My hand throbs in rhythm with my heart; my vision tunnels, my hearing fades, and the room spins softly around me as I slide into oblivion.

Bright, white fluorescence from buzzing tubes overhead. A bench of polished hardwood under my legs; deep pile carpeting under my sneakers. Not exactly things that you usually find in your average hospital room.

The sharp bang of a gavel, and the command. “All rise.” I’m in a courtroom, with no sign of Jim or the medical team that was working on him.

I stand, looking around the room as I do so. I see row after row of pale wooden benches, but there are no other people. The edges of the room seem curiously indistinct, and I’m unable to look at them for very long. I see no sign of a bailiff or a court clerk, or even an attorney.

When I look back to the front of the room, a judge now occupies the customary space behind the bench. At least, I think he must be a judge. He’s wearing long black robes, but I’m unable to truly get a good look at his face. Each time my vision slides close to him, I find myself studying the woodwork behind his head or the collar of his robe instead.

The same voice that spoke before now speaks again.

“The court is now in session for the case of the People versus Blair Sandburg. The Honorable Judge Dios presiding.”

“What!!” I’m already standing, so leaping to my feet in indignation isn’t really an option. “What are you talking about? What have I done? What kind of charade is this?”

Now the judge speaks, in a voice both authoritative and curiously familiar. “If the defendant does not wish to be bodily removed from the courtroom, he must be silent. He will be given a chance to speak in his own defense.”

I bite my lip, forcing back the automatic angry response. The judge gives me a cool nod. “The defendant may be seated.”

I sink slowly back onto my bench, and the judge continues. “Let the charges be read.”

The first voice, presumable belonging to a clerk or bailiff that I can’t see, takes over. “The defendant is charged with one count of the willful transportation of a deadly virus across state lines –”

“But I didn’t know that I was carrying the virus! You don’t even know for sure if it was hidden in the mouse!” I plead.

“Mr. Sandburg, one more outburst and I will hold you in contempt of court. Now, be silent and listen to the charges.”

The invisible clerk clears his throat. “The defendant is also charged with one count of the practice of medicine without a license. Finally, he is charged with one count of the attempted murder of one James Ellison.”

Numb and speechless, fearful of drawing even more wrath upon me, I can only sit and shake my head. The charges seem outrageous, nonsensical at first. Murder? Practice medicine? He must be talking about that Chinese herb-tea garbage.

“Blair Sandburg, how do you plead to the charges?”

I stand up. “I may have brought back the virus, and I did give Jim that tea, but I didn’t…”

“How do you plead? I must advise you, the court will be more inclined to mercy if you are honest.” My head swims as the blurred face stares at me, and I force myself to think about the charges.

A small eternity later, I gulp and answer. “I plead… I plead guilty to the second charge, the one about trying to practice medicine. I guess I was trying to play doctor, to try to make Jim feel better. But I didn’t try to kill him, and I didn’t know that the mouse was carrying the virus!”

The judge nods. “You may be seated. We will now hear the evidence.”

The clerk’s voice returns. “Last week, while returning from a two-week vacation in New Mexico, the defendant brought back a Native American talisman that contained a dead mouse. The mouse’s body was contaminated with a small amount of hantavirus. Because the defendant’s immune system was strong and sophisticated from contact with many different organisms over the years, the defendant did not contract the illness. The virus was still viable enough, however, to make James Ellison ill.”

The judge looks at me. “Blair Sandburg, do you have anything to say in your own defense?”

I struggle to open my suddenly dry mouth. “Like I said… I brought the talisman back, but I swear I didn’t know what was in it. You have got to believe me.”

“That makes no difference. Regardless of your intentions, regardless of your knowledge of the virus, James Ellison is dying. The court finds the defendant guilty of the first charge.” The judge bangs the gavel decisively. “Sentencing will be postpone until all of the charges have been heard and ruled upon. The defendant has entered a guilty plea for the second charge. Read the evidence for the third charge.”

Again the disembodied voice reads out the charge. “On at least three different occasions the defendant personally prepared a liquid, purported to be a traditional Chinese medication for the common cold, and gave it to James Ellison. The liquid actually contained large amounts of prednisone, a powerful medication that disables the immune system. Mr. Ellison was unaware of the true content of the medication.”

The judge’s indistinct face turns toward me once more. “Blair Sandburg, do you have anything to say in defense of this charge?”

“I didn’t know! Don’t you understand? That stuff was contaminated, probably even before it got to this country! Mr. Yan told me it was good for colds, and I trusted him. I… I was trying to make Jim feel better, dammit!” Angry tears spring to my eyes, but I blink them back.

“The evidence, however, is irrefutable,” answers the judge impassively. “You neglected to be cautious when trying a new medication on an individual known to react strangely. You prepared the drink and gave it to your friend, who trusted you just as you trusted the Chinese shopkeeper. I find you guilty of the third charge as well. Please come forward for sentencing.”

Rising shakily on nerveless legs, I walk slowly forward and stop just in front of the judge. I look up, but I still can’t make out his face.

“Blair Sandburg, you have been found guilty of three serious charges.” A couple of heartbeats pass before he speaks again. “I sentence you to the loss of your friend and partner James Ellison, who must die and leave this earth.”

Blue and cold, strangely comforting, the waters close over my head. I struggle to swim, to kick my legs, and in a few minutes am rewarded by a glimpse of the sky and a gulp of air. Again and again, I bob up in my quest for the life-sustaining gas; each time it becomes more difficult.

Images flash behind my closed lids: memories of riding about in a jouncing blue-and-white truck; yelling loudly for the home team at a basketball game, sitting on a balcony watching the sun set. And beside me, in every fragmented picture, sits a laughing curly-headed young man whose face is familiar to me as my own.

I hang desperately to the memory of that face as I kick for the surface once again.

“No,” I whisper. “No, you can’t do this! You can’t do this to him!” You can’t do this to me.

Without realizing it, I’ve fallen to my knees. I raise my now-tear-streaked face to the judge’s bench. “Please, isn’t there something I can do? Anything? Can’t you punish me? It’s not Jim’s fault! Or punish the people who put the prednisone in the herbs? How come nothing’s happening to them?”

“Blair Sandburg, this is your story, and your trial. It is no one else’s. And your friend is desperately ill. His body lacks the strength to fight off the illness of its own accord. His enhanced senses make him uniquely vulnerable to unusual medication reactions, as you well know.”

“I know,” I whisper. “I know I should have been more careful.” The words seem pitifully inadequate as soon as they leave my mouth.

“He lies now in a state between life and death, with doctors trying to restart his heart. Even if they manage to restart it, it will be only a matter of time before he succumbs to his illness.”

I take a deep breath. “If I am the one who screwed up, then I am the one who should pay.”

“You will. You will mourn your friend, and grieve for your loss for a very long time. Your work will stagnate. You will always blame yourself.”

My vision blurs again with tears, and my voice thickens. “Take me, then. Take my life, or my sanity, or my life’s work. None of it means anything without Jim to share it with.”

There is a pause; when the judge speaks again his voice is gentler. “You would give up much for your friend. How have you, who profess to be the objective observer, come to care so much? You, who have been brought up not to form attachments to other people… you have learned to love?”

I can only nod mutely.

“There is one way, then. Taking your life in lieu of that of your friend would accomplish nothing; your skills will be needed to save his. But…” The judges pauses again, and this time I can feel my heart thudding painfully in my chest. “I will suspend the sentence for now.”

“Suspend?” I croak out in disbelief.

“With the aid of others who can supply the knowledge that you lack, it lies within your ability and strength to save your friend. I myself with leave you with a little bit of that knowledge, to be used when the time is right. You must remember: look through your own notes from two years ago, when you were speculating on the exact mechanisms of some of your friend’s senses.”

Without any obvious action, the judge is suddenly standing beside me. He rests one hand on my shoulder. “Blair Sandburg, you have learned to love. You must still learn the importance of sacrifice. Be aware, as you leave, that the sentence is only suspended. Jim’s life, his happiness and his entire future remain in jeopardy. No sacrifice will be asked of you now, but the bill remains unpaid. You will know when it comes due.”

Sensation returns first. I’m laying on my back with my head propped up on something; my legs also seem to me elevated. Hearing comes next: I can hear the incessant beeping of a monitor.

I open my eyelids. A familiar upside-down face, obviously worried, peers down at me. Simon.

“Blair, can you hear me?” His voice sounds hoarse and strained.

“Simon… wha’ happened?” I struggle with my tongue, thick and clumsy.

“You fainted.” He slides an arm around my shoulders and gently maneuvers me into a sitting position. The rooms spins for a moment, then rights itself.

“Jim…” I can’t bring myself to form the question even in my own mind.

Simon nods grimly. “He’s still hanging in there. They got his heart restarted, right after you hit the deck. But… nobody seems very optimistic.” His voice trembles slightly; through the fog of my own feelings and the half-remembered dream I force myself to remember that Jim is Simon’s close friend as well as mine, that Simon has known him for several years more than I have. He must be incredibly worried.

Before I can put any of this into words, someone else kneels in front of me. A woman, small and pert, short dark hair sprinkled with grey, metal-rimmed spectacles. A familiar face: Jim’s friend Dr. Heidi Philpott.

“Blair, are you all right now?” She reaches out one hand and touches me on my head, ruffling my hair. “I walked in the room, and you passed out. I’m not used to having that effect on handsome young men.” Her tone teases me lightly, but the grey eyes are serious.

I nod. “I’m okay. But Jim…” I swallow hard.

“I know. Dr. Byrnes filled me in while you were, er, becoming acquainted with the carpet. But don’t give up hope. These are good people in here.”

I climb shakily to my feet, leaning on Simon just a little. My head buzzes, and I’m still a bit woozy. Yet Dr. Philpott’s belated appearance reminds me of something, some thought that I must cudgel my tired brain into remembering.

Something to do with my dream.

Staggering just a bit, I manage to get over to one of the chairs and sit down into its worn blue cushion. What was it that the judge said? He said I would remember, or that I needed to remember… something about last year’s research on Jim’s senses. I almost laugh out loud… what aspect of Jim’s senses haven’t I looked into during the last year? It’s not exactly as if this has been a dull and boring few months.

I do remember, some time back in November, toying idly with a theory. I’d been talking to one of my friends from the Psychology department. Most of my Rainier buddies are quite used to my Sentinel obsession, and I come in for quite a bit of teasing about my eternal search for the pot of gold that never materializes. If they only knew!

Anyway, Mindy had said something that had me wondering at the time. One of my few friends who doesn’t give me a hard time about my research, she suggested that perhaps a Sentinel would have enhanced control over his autonomic nervous system as well as his conscious senses such as hearing and vision. “Just think,” she’d said, “if you really found a Sentinel, his hearing and sense of touch would be so good he’d be able to feel everything going on in his body.” She and I had gone on to speculate further about this. If you could feel your arteries constrict, you’d be able to control your own blood pressure. That’s what biofeedback is really all about.

I’d thought about these concepts a little more a few months ago back when Jim and I were struggling with the seizure problem, but never really came up with any way to test any of this. Now… I can see where some of this idle speculation might bear fruit.

“Dr. Philpott, can we talk for a few minutes?”

We head for the conference room first, but it’s occupied by someone. Despite the good doctor’s protests that I should be sitting down and resting after my embarrassing little fainting spell, I propose that we head down to the cafeteria. In one sense, I’m still reluctant to go very far from Jim’s side… but I’ve got the germ of an idea, and I need to talk it over with someone else who might have a clearer head than myself. Which at this point would include almost anyone, considering my lack of sleep.

We obtain cups of coffee and head for one of the tables. The doctor sits down across from me and looks up expectantly as I settle myself into the chair. I take a deep breath and look into her eyes.

“What can you tell me about the immune system? Maybe if I know more about how it works, I can help. Jim may have more control over these functions than we realize; maybe I can help him get his immune system geared back up to where it’s supposed to be.” Back to where it was before I helped to screw it up with my bogus herbal remedies.

She shakes her head and gives a half-laugh, half-snort. “Blair, immunology is a highly complex subject. I don’t think it would be possible to give you a crash course in it that would be at all comprehensible.”

“I don’t need all the details.” My rate of speech picks up as the concept begins to take a firmer shape in my tired brain. “I don’t understand the anatomy of the inner ear or the structures of the retina, but I’ve been able to help Jim make the most of his senses.” I lean forward. “I just need enough knowledge to be dangerous. Enough to provide Jim with… with an analogy for what he needs to do.”

She sighs. “Blair… he’s very sick. He’s unconscious, both from the illness and from the sedatives that they’ve had to give him to keep him from fighting the ventilator. He won’t be able to understand what’s going on.”

“I haven’t exactly got this all worked out yet,” I conceded. That’s an understatement. This… thing, this brief glimpse of a possibility that I’m holding on to with my teeth and toenails… it’s far too embryonic to be considered an idea. “Just… please tell me what you can about the human immune system.”

Her gaze is steady and silent as she studies me across the table. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she says finally.

“I have to try something. I can’t stand by and watch him die.” My voice shakes.

She pokes at her cup of coffee with a plastic stirring stick, then looks up at me. “Let’s go find a blackboard or something.”

Cold water and exhaustion combine to make my movements slower and slower. Each time I go under, it takes me longer to come back up. Each time I break through the shimmering surface it becomes more of a challenge to take in a gulp of air before the water closes over my head again.

Somehow, I continue the cycle: hang weightless in the water until my lungs seem ready to burst, then kick upwards with my once-powerful leg muscles in search of blessed oxygen. I know I can do this for longer than I would be able to swim… but how long?

As I propel myself up once again, my arm brushes against something rough. Instinctively, I grab for it, and my fingers savor the texture of the wood as I cradle the splintery timber against my chest. It must be a piece from the boat, and it’s surprisingly buoyant. By draping my arms over it, I’m able to keep my head out of the water and let my cramped muscles rest.

“Buddy,” I whisper, “you’d better be getting ready to come after me, ‘cause I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out here.”

After about forty-five minutes of detailed explanations involving terms such as interleukins and natural-killer cells, my head is swimming and I call a halt to the impromptu lecture.

“I think I’ve got the big picture, anyway.” I put up a hand as I interrupt Dr. Philpott in mid-sentence. “You’re certainly right about immunology being a complicated subject.”

She gives me a wan smile as she sets down the chalk. “Not bad, considering I came pretty close to failing it as a subject in med school.” She sits down at the table. “How do you plan to do this?”

I stare at my notes for a few seconds, thinking. “Assuming nothing has changed with Jim,” assuming he’s not trying to die again, whispers my brain, “I’d like to try to get his doctors to ease up on the sedatives a little. I don’t really want him fully conscious anyway; this sort of thing will work better if he’s a little looped.” I try to smile; the action cracks my dried lips. How long since I’ve eaten? “He might listen to me a lot better than he does in his usual state of mind.”

She walks over to me and touches my head softly. “You’re very fond of Jim, aren’t you?”

I swallow and look away, trying to talk past the painful knot in my throat. “Very fond of him. He’s… he’s my best friend, my brother. I don’t know what I’ll do if…” I close my eyes and take a couple of quick, light breaths to regain control of my emotions. “Anyway, I’ve got to try this.”

The reassuring hand that rests on my curls lifts as Dr. Philpott walks towards the door. “I’ll talk with the ICU team about getting the sedatives decreased. You get your notes in order and figure out exactly what you’re going to say… practice your hypnosis routine or whatever. I’ll meet you in the ICU in an hour.”

With my stomach fluttering, I slip into Jim’s little ICU cubicle. Dr. Philpott is there, but none of the others are about. The chair I sat in when I explained the surgery to Jim is still there, up by the head of his bed, and I make a beeline for it.

Dr. Philpott speaks up quietly. “They’ve turned his Versed down to almost nothing. If you talk to him, he should be able to hear you. His blood pressure’s been a bit better this last hour, so I’m hopeful that he’ll wake up a bit for us.” She moves to the foot of the bed, points to the call button. “We’ll leave you alone with him for about an hour, and the ICU nurses will be able to watch his monitors from the remote units on the nursing station. But you push that button if you think there’s a problem.” She pauses at the door. “Good luck, Blair.”

“Thanks.” My voice sounds weak and strained to my ears. As the doctor leaves, I pick up Jim’s limp hand and hold it in mine… a bit self-consciously, which is silly since no one else is here and Jim certainly doesn’t seem to react. With my free hand, I arrange my notes on his pillow, next to his sweat-dampened head, where I can see their scribbled words easily.

Then I wait for a few minutes, sinking down until my chin rests against the edge of the mattress, thinking about how to get started. I can’t just sit here and say, “Dammit, Jim, get better! Tell your body to make more of this kind of cell and this kind of hormone!” No, Jim operates best by analogy and suggestion, such as the long-ago illustration of his body’s perception of pain as a kind of dial with adjustable settings.

For this situation, something more complex is required. Jim’s body is under attack (the virus, although I’m still waiting for final confirmation that we really are dealing with my mouse-transported hantavirus), and its defenders are capitulating, having early on been sabotaged by friendly fire (that cursed prednisone). From his years in the Army, Jim ought to take well to a military analogy, even if I’d feel more comfortable telling him an Aesop’s fable or a Grimm’s fairy tale. Once upon a time, there lived a warrior whose best friend tried to kill him by accident…

Well, maybe the military model isn’t so bad.

For the details of my analogy, I’ve chosen the battle of Gettysburg. No, it’s not exactly modern warfare, but at least I remember enough about that one to make the whole story sound plausible. In a voice at first halting and hesitant, I begin to speak softly in his ear, laying the groundwork for our scenario. His body is represented by the Union forces, puzzled by the bold advance of the Confederates into southern Pennsylvania; to the Southerners I give the role of the virus. I almost did it the other way around, but the South did lose that battle and I hate to tempt fate.

I tell it as a story, gaining momentum as I go until I feel as if I’m lecturing in front of a group of my students. But I keep my voice soft and melodic, speaking almost into his ear, as I weave the tale of his body’s brave defenders and how he must send them ammunition and reinforcements. He gives no sign that he hears me, and remains utterly still except for the artificial motion of his chest brought about by the ventilator. I have no outward evidence that he hears or understands my words… or, if he does hear my voice, in what way his brain is processing them.

I continue for an hour or more, gradually warming to my task, expanding the illustration until every element of his body’s immune system has its military counterpart. Finally, with my voice fading hoarsely away, I bring the tale to a temporary close and drift away to sleep myself with my head resting on the edge of his bed.

I shift my weight again along the length of wood. While its support offers a welcome respite, the relentless sea still tugs at my tired limbs while its chill saps the strength from my body. Willing my arms to maintain their grip, I slip into a brief half-sleep, fitful with sudden muscle twitches and strange colorful dreams.

A cold wave dashes me in the face, and I shake myself fully awake as something pokes me in the back. To my astonishment, it seems to be another plank like the first, straight and well-planed along its length. And then I swivel my tired head and look around, and see that I am adrift in the midst of a sea of such planks, each bumping and jostling its neighbor with a chorus of watery creaks. Wrapped around one of the nearest is a length of rope.

With renewed vigor, I swim over to the rope and inspect it, unfurling it from its position wound around the board. There must be fifty feet or more here, although it certainly didn’t look like very much as first glance. Good, strong, one-half-inch nylon rope. Now, I can tie myself to one or more of the planks and remain afloat even when my tired arms give out.

But why stop at merely anchoring myself? Surely, I can do better than that with the resources that I now have. With utmost care to avoid losing the precious rope, I begin to lace together the numerous boards, running the rope between and under them. I attach eight, ten, no, fourteen of the planks together, until I have a firm raft. Gratefully, I prostrate myself onto its surface and sink back into a heavy sleep.

A light touch on my shoulder awakens me. It’s one of the nurses, whose cheery pink flowered scrub outfit contrasts incongruously with the somber reality of the ICU.

“Sorry to wake you, but it’s time for us to shift him around a bit and change the sheets.” Her eyes twinkle at me. “Besides, you’ll get a crick in your neck sleeping that way.”

I stretch and rub my eyes, then scoot my chair back up against the wall to give her room to work. “Do you think there’s any change?” I hate to be a pest, always asking if he’s getting better, but I can’t help myself.

“His blood pressure and heart rate look good; so does his oxygen level. In fact… we haven’t had to go up on the pressors, the medicines that keep his blood pressure up, for at least three hours now, and his pressure’s been climbing anyway in the last hour. The doctors have given us orders to start weaning the pressors down, bit by bit. And he’s starting to do some breathing on his own. The ventilator’s just adding about every other breath.”

Well, that sounds hopeful, anyway. I watch silently as the nurse briskly and efficiently changes the sheets, then repositions Jim in the bed with pillows under his knees to keep his long legs flexed comfortably. As she finishes, he startles both of us by slowly moving his arms, bringing his hands up to his face.

“Hey, none of that!” The nurse captures his hands before he can touch the ventilator tube. “You need to leave that alone, Mr. Ellison. Don’t pull it out or we’ll just have to put it back in again.” She frowns. “We’ll have to go back up on his sedation, I think.”

“Couldn’t you let him wake up?” I plead. “I’ll stay right here with him and keep him from doing anything with that tube.” I want so much for him to awaken, to look at me again with comprehension, even if he cannot speak.

Her face softens. “If you can stay right there by his head and keep him calm, I’ll see what we can do. But we have to give him a little bit of Fentanyl – that’s a pain reliever, related to morphine – because that tube is terribly uncomfortable, and he’s got that biopsy wound now too. It’s not just to ‘keep him quiet’, it’s to make him comfortable.”

I nod my understanding. She leaves, taking the rumpled sheets with her, and I resume my position just a few inches from Jim’s left ear.

Finally free of the deep blue cold of the sea, my tired and aching limbs revel in the sun’s warmth. With every minute I bask upon my makeshift raft I can feel the strength returning to my body and the alertness returning to my brain.

Since my nap, I’ve been noticing some odd things. For one, the sea seems to be calming down to a more regular, quieter rhythm. For another, the gaps between the planks of my raft have disappeared; so has the rope that previously bound them together. Now, two sturdy crosspieces held in place with real nails bind the structure together.

Now, I turn my head to the left, and notice with a shock an object that wasn’t there a minute ago: a jar. An ordinary, quart-size mason jar, full of sloshing water. I sit up and taste the water warily, expecting the harsh tang of salt against my parched tongue. I nearly weep with relief when pure, sweet water meets my lips instead. Water, more refreshing and delicious than any I have ever tasted, fills my mouth. I finish the jar in a few gulps and replace it on the deck of the raft, somehow knowing it will be refilled.

With both of Jim’s hands imprisoned in my own, I settle back down to waiting. I’m foolishly glad for that little burst of motion and activity that he demonstrated a few minutes ago; not only does it remind me that my friend is indeed at home somewhere in his body, it makes it necessary for me to maintain physical contact with him. It’s a contact that I need far more than he does; the need to hold his flesh against mine and reassure myself that the blood still beats beneath the too-cool skin. My right hand is puffy and swollen, black and blue from my early fit of madness involving the waiting-room wall, but it’s still strong enough to keep Jim’s hands pinned if he tries to move again.

The necessity of keeping Jim from dislodging any of his complicated hardware keeps me from being embarrassed when the door slides open and Simon walks in.

He looks at Jim rather than me as he talks. “Blair, they’ve got the results of the biopsy back. Dr. Poland says that they’ve definitely identified hantavirus in the samples.”

I take a deep breath before I ask the inevitable question. “And the mouse?”

Simon’s mouth twitches. “Autopsy of the dead mouse shows the same virus. It’s… it’s a reasonable assumption that the mouse was the source.” Now he looks at me. “I’m sorry, Blair.” His tone is gentle.

I look at my hand again, covered with ugly bruises. For a moment, the impulse to hurt myself, to damage my own flesh in a bizarre recompense for the suffering that Jim is enduring, returns. But Simon is watching me closely, and I have no energy to spare now for such distractions since I have taken on the assignment of watching Jim. If I want to protect him from further harm, I cannot afford to hurt myself.

“He moved a little, earlier,” I finally say. “They wanted to sedate him again, but I said I’d sit with him and keep him from pulling anything out.”

Simon moves to the other chair and sits down. “Sandburg, Dr. Poland told me a little bit about hantavirus. He says that he’s heard of very few patients surviving once they got to this stage.”

Don’t listen to him, I project silently to the man on the bed. You’re getting better. Don’t listen to him.

“I think, under the circumstances, we need to send for his family. We should have done it earlier, but it never crossed my mind. I’m so used to thinking of you as his family.”

I shake my head. “Simon, he sees his brother about four times a year… and you know how his father is. They don’t exactly get along very well at the best of times.”

“That’s not a decision for us to make, son. They’re his only blood relatives that we know of, and they deserve to be involved.”

I turn my attention back to Jim, studying the sleeping face that seems to me more peaceful than it did a few hours ago. “Hey, buddy, what do you think, huh?” I squeeze his hands carefully. “Do you want me to call Steven and your dad?”

When his hand grips my injured one twice, hard, I nearly fall out of my chair with pain and astonishment.

Jim’s blue eyes blink open.

I drift on my raft for more countless hours, more endless blue sky and lapping green waves. Several more times, the water jar reappears, full to the brim. Food begins to show up as well: hard ship’s biscuit and dried fruit. I eat and grow stronger.

When the raft changes to a dinghy, and the oars appear, I’m not surprised. Soon after, when the dark smudge of land appears on the horizon, I set my muscles the task of taking me home, of rowing my craft towards the hope of salvation.

Pull, splash, pull, splash… the oars dip in and out of the water for a small eternity. But finally I pull up against a nicely constructed wooden dock in a quiet harbor. Strangely reluctant to leave my faithful, miraculous boat, I lay the oars carefully aside and tie up to the dock with the nylon rope (which has recently reappeared). Thus secured, I set out to explore my surroundings.

By now it’s getting dark and the sun has almost set. I rise from the boat and scramble to shore. A bare dirt path starts at the end of the dock, and I follow it for lack of any better direction to go. It leads me deep into the woods, which don’t look anything like any tropical jungle I’ve ever seen and look an awful lot like our evergreen conifer forest back home.

After many twists and turns, the path deposits me in front of a little cabin. I knock on the half-opened door, but receive no answer. No invitation, but no warnings either; therefore I enter. Inside, the cabin is larger than it really appears on the outside, and brightly lit. On the far side of the room stands a narrow bed with crisp white sheets. There’s something familiar here, some sight or smell, but I’m too tired to question any of this, and slide into the bed with a sigh of pleasure.

Awakening slowly, I find the familiar reality of my hospital room, and the welcoming sight of a beloved face that hangs near my own.

Blair, I mouth the word, although no sound comes from between my lips.

“Jim?” I whisper, half-afraid to speak more loudly. “Jim, can you really hear me? Are you awake?”

His hand squeezes mine again, not as vigorously as before, and he manages a barely perceptible nod of his head; he moves his lips around the tube as if trying to say something.

“Don’t move too much,” I caution. “You’ve got all sorts of hardware in you, and if you go shaking your head you might knock some of it loose.” I raise my face to look at Simon, still waiting tensely at the foot of the bed. I wonder if my facial expression is anything like his, a mixture of joy, relief and uncertainty.

“Simon, he’s awake. Come around here where he can see you.” As Simon comes up to the head of the bed, I can see Jim’s eyes swivel to meet him as soon as he comes into range. Then, I’m treated to the sight of our tough-as-nails boss taking Jim’s right hand in his and pressing it to his own forehead.

“Jim, thank God,” he says hoarsely.

I smile through a mist of tears that now fill my eyes. “Does this mean I don’t have to send for his father and brother, Simon?”

“I think,” Simon says slowly, “that maybe, just maybe, Jim can call them himself in a few days and let them know himself.” He lays his free hand on Jim’s shoulder. “I’ll go tell the doctors you’re awake.”

Dr. Philpott runs into my little cubicle, waving a lab computer printout and whooping with joy. I’m a bit startled to see her here; Blair told me she was here helping with my case but my brain is still so fuzzy that I’m having a hard time keeping track of things. I thought I remembered seeing her here earlier, but I thought that was another feverish dream just like all of the others.

I raise my eyebrows inquisitively, since speech is still impossible until they get this tube out of my throat. She hands the paper to Blair to read, which I find drowsily amusing. The kid’s smart, but why would my lab results make any sense to him?

The little doctor gets enough breath back to talk. “Jim, that’s your latest blood count and your latest blood gas. Your body is pouring out white cells of all kinds, and the acidosis is reversed finally. Your body’s fighting off the virus!” She turns to Blair, still perched faithfully at my side. “Blair, your hypnosis trick must have helped, somehow. The recovery is incredible.” She sighs. “But I can’t write a paper about you, dammit.”

I point to the tube in my throat, and raise my eyebrows again. I’m not a chatterbox like Sandburg, but a man can only communicate so much with pointing and writing. I long to be able to talk again.

Blair has an answer for this one. “Probably later today. I asked Dr. Poland, and he said if your x-ray looked better they would take that out today.”

It’s been three days since I woke up. Blair has sat by my side constantly, keeping up a stream of chatter. Not all of it has just been idle talk. He explained to me the desperate idea that he had come up with, and how he used analogy and suggestion to recruit my immune system to function better. Twice more, they gave me a light sedative while Sandburg talked to my white cells or whatever it was that he did. I can’t remember any of it. I’m just glad to be getting better.

My kidneys are still not working very well, but the cute little kidney specialist seems encouraged by the numbers. She did have me undergo dialysis once, when I was still pretty groggy, but now says that she doubts they’ll have to do that any more. And today I actually had to pee, which was a most welcome feeling.

Blair has been alternating between fits of elation and deep guilt. He finally told me, late last night, the name of the illness that felled me (which I’d already overheard from the ICU team) as well as how I came to be its victim. He knelt at my bedside while he made this confession, hiding his face in my sheets after he had finished. Maybe he expected me to be angry or hurt, but I can feel neither of those emotions right now. I nearly died, and when a person has come so close to death, there is no room for anger, or hurt or revenge… only love, relief, and gratitude.

I could say none of these things to him as he wept out his guilt and fear, kneeling there on the cold linoleum. Perhaps my enforced muteness made me safer, as I could utter no words of blame… but it also took from me the power to speak words of comfort. I could only listen, and shift to lay my arms across those trembling shoulders, trying to send waves of forgiveness into that aching soul.

Today he seems better, less haunted, as he hands the paper back to Dr. Philpott. “Jim, I talked with Dr. Byrne this morning. He thinks that once you get out of here, you’ll need a couple of weeks to recuperate before you can work again.”

I nod. Unfortunate, but inevitable, and you can bet Simon will have me married to a desk for a while. Even desk work sounds good, after this.

“Anyway… classes start next week at the University, and I’ll be tied up during the week, at least some of the time. But one of the professors has a nice little cabin up near Snoqualmie, and she offered to cover my lectures for a couple of days when you’re well enough to go up there and do a little fishing. Sound good?” His voice rises hesitantly on the last note, and I realize there’s still some unfinished business here.

I smile, the only answer I can make.

“Now, this is a perfect way to end a day of fishing,” Jim sighs, settling himself more comfortably against the log.

To call it a day of fishing is something of an exaggeration. We drove up here last night, and despite a week lazing about at home on the couch I could tell that Jim was exhausted when we finally pulled in after the four-hour drive. He didn’t even protest as I led him inside and settled him into a chair to wait while I wrestled with the baggage and gear. When I came into the cabin’s tiny living room to tell him that dinner was ready, he was sound asleep.

But today he perked up a little, and insisted that he wanted to try fishing the little stream close to the cabin. I agreed, provided he let me carry all of the gear. He fished for about an hour, then gracefully called it quits and retired to a blanket in the shade while I pulled in seven perfect little trout. When we walked back to the cabin in the late afternoon, I insisted that he go take a nap before dinner.

Now, our bellies full of crispy corn-meal-coated fried trout, eked out with fried potatoes and fresh fruit brought from home, we lounge against a big old log in front of the wood fire. I cooked the trout inside, on the more reliable propane stove, but the cool clear night seemed to call out for a campfire. Hidden next to me in the dark are a package of marshmallows and a box of graham crackers, as well as several Hershey bars. I happen to know of one tough ex-military big-city detective with a serious soft spot for s’mores, and tonight he’s going to get as many as he can eat.

I glance surreptitiously at him in the flickering firelight. He’s lost a lot of weight since the virus hit him, and I keep trying to find ways to get him to eat more. At first, the kidney specialist had him on a bland no-salt low-protein diet, and Jim just picked at his food. But in the last few days she finally lifted most of the dietary restrictions (no potato chips for a while, though) and I’ve been gratified to watch his appetite pick up.

Jim’s eyes meet mine, and I realize that he’s caught me watching him again.

“All right, Sandburg, out with it.”

“Out with what?”

“You keep looking at me like you’re going to say something, then you clam up. You’ve been doing it all week.”

I start to protest, then I realize that he’s right. And come to think of it, there is something I want to tell him.

“Jim… when you were sick… I had a dream.”

He snorts a little. “So did I. I had some very bizarre dreams.”

I smile into the darkness. He’s told me about the recurrent castaway dreams he had while he was in the ICU, dreams brought on by the ventilator and the sensory isolation. “This was different, Jim. It was very realistic.”

When I fall silent, he reaches over with his foot and prods me. “Go on,” he says lightly. “Unless you’re waiting for me to fall asleep so that you can hypnotize me into giving you my share of those marshmallows and chocolate that you think you’re hiding over there.”

I laugh and open the marshmallow package, threading one onto the green stick that I’d cut earlier. I hold it in the fire, watching it idly as it toasts.

“The dream, Sandburg,” Jim prompts.

“When they brought you back up from the OR, after the lung biopsy, you had a cardiac arrest,” I explain slowly. I’m not sure if Jim has been told this or not. I never got around to mentioning it to him, and I don’t think that the doctors did either.

He whistles softly, and is silent for a few minutes. “I guess we have something in common, then,” he says finally.

I brush off the reference to my own near-death, a subject that I’d just as soon not talk about. “I guess the whole thing was too much for me, because I fainted. And while I was out cold, I had this dream… about a courtroom and a judge.”

With a couple of pauses to assemble s’mores and to thread fresh marshmallows onto the stick, I relate the story of the dream. Jim listens silently, probably in part due to the gooey roast marshmallows I keep handing to him.

“Blair…” he says finally. “Chief, you were exhausted, and feeling guilty over my illness. It’s no wonder you had a dream like that. Come on, you’re an anthropologist… you should be able to recognize all of those symbols. Don’t let it unnerve you.”

I shake my head. “I know that is was mostly just my subconscious out to get me… but it was so real. And the judge was right. He told me how to save your life, Jim.”

“Chief, you must have known that anyway. One part of your mind reminded the other, that’s all.”

“Maybe.” I stare into the fire, the marshmallows momentarily forgotten. “But I keep thinking about the last thing he said to me. He said that the sentence was merely suspended, that someday the payment would come due. That your life would be in jeopardy, and that I’d be asked to make a sacrifice.”

Jim leans closer to me and rests a hand on my shoulder. “If you think about that too much, Chief, you’ll make yourself crazy.”

The marshmallow suddenly flares up, momentarily startling us both. I blow out the flames and survey the damage. Well carbonized, but still edible. I fan it with one hand to cool it, then stuff the crunchy-sweet morsel into my mouth, hissing at its heat.

“I’m not going to think about it,” I answer Jim, with a decisiveness that I don’t really feel. “Not after tonight, anyway. But… real or imagined, Jim, my dream was right. I screwed up, Jim, and the books are out of balance. You’re alive, and getting better every day…” I take a deep breath, and skewer another helpless marshmallow. “You’re going to be fine. But when I thought you were dying, I did some serious thinking.”

“I hope you didn’t strain anything in the process.” The smile and the gently teasing tone don’t really match the words.

“Har, har. I’m serious, Jim… or at least I’m trying to be.” I pelt him with a marshmallow from the bag. He snatches it and eats it before it can fall into the fire.

“Sorry, Chief. Go on.”

“What I’m trying to say… I realized that our friendship is more important to me than my teaching, than my thesis… than our police work together.” My cheeks burn in the darkness; why is it that I could say all of these things to myself but have such a hard time saying them to Jim? “You’re my best friend, and my brother, and if you had died there in that hospital bed…” I can’t finish, not unless I want to further embarrass myself by breaking down. And there’s been entirely too much of that lately.

Jim take the marshmallow stick from me just as I move it towards the flames, and lays it carefully down on the log. Then he scoots closer to me, slipping his right arm around my shoulders.

“I thought we had all this out back there in the hospital. When are you going to stop beating yourself over the head for all of this?”

I’m unable to answer, and stare instead at the dancing flames. Jim continues in a soft voice.

“Chief, you’re a friend in a thousand. So you made a couple of mistakes in judgment. So what?”

“That’s not what I mean,” I respond, stubbornly, trying to force my mouth to come up with the words. “I just keep getting this feeling that there’s something I’m supposed to do for you, now. To pay for your life.” It sounds silly and superstitious, and I bite my lip and turn away from the dark concern of his gaze.

“Something that you’re supposed to do for me,” Jim repeats softly, then falls silent. For a few minutes, there’s no sound except the crackle of the flames and our own quiet breathing. Jim’s arm stays companionably around my shoulders, and I throw back my head and stare at the stars.

“Do me a favor, then, Chief,” he continues. “Do this for me.”

“What?” It comes out harsher, more sullen than I intended.

“Let it go, forget about it. I don’t want you to live with this hanging over your head.” I turn back towards him in time to see him smile slightly. “I have the feeling that may be harder for you than dramatically saving my life.”

I sigh. “Maybe.” But the words, the gentle admonition to lay my worries for the future to rest, bring comfort, as I suppose they are meant to. I relax against my friend, enjoying the heat and the fire, the closeness, the moment.

“Oh, and Sandburg?”

“Hm?”

“Another s’more or two wouldn’t hurt either.”

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© 1999-2001 by Kimberly Heggen. All rights reserved.
The characters of Jim Ellison, Blair Sandburg, Simon Banks, and the remaining recurring characters that were blatantly lifted from the scenes of the television show The Sentinel are the property of Pet Fly Productions. No ownership of these characters is expressed or implied.
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