**NOTE - This piece is a continuation of the episode "Do You Believe in Magic?"**
Denouement
by Ann Raymont
Tom flexed his shoulder gingerly. Muscles responded to mental command--
everything still functioned. He'd been hurt a lot worse playing football.
Of course, this time there was the less familiar sensation of his own blood,
thick and wet, welling out of the knife wound, saturating the cloth of his
favorite shirt.
The adrenaline rush from the fight faded as quickly as it had surged,
leeching away his strength too, and warmth, and leaving him swaying in the
room, weak and chilled and a little disoriented.
There was something he was supposed to remember.
Thinking hard raised a new ache. His head pounded more fiercely than the
hole in his shoulder. He shut his eyes, as if that would silence the pain,
and a vision sparked across his memory-- the silver handle of a walking
cane, swinging in a lethal arc aimed for his skull.
The murder weapon.
Gears in his slightly concussed brain shifted rustily. Murder
investigation. He had come here with a piece of evidence--a finely carved
wooden arm. Part of a ventriloquist dummy. Turning his head carefully, to
keep the headache at a manageable level, Tom stared at the dummy across the
room.
It stared back. Unblinking.
With a shrug he immediately regretted, Tom turned away. He remembered now,
it was the evidence bag, containing the wooden arm that he had sworn to
Harry he would return safely.
It still lay on the closet floor where he had dropped it when Veronique
attacked him.
Tom shuffled across the room, bent over to retrieve it, and the edges of
his vision went black. He felt the room slip sideways and instinctively put
out his left arm to steady himself. That caused another gush of blood to
saturate his shirt and seep down his chest.
The room righted itself and Tom found himself on his knees, sagged against
the doorframe of the closet. With no compelling reason to be anywhere else
in a hurry.
He felt cloth under his right hand on the closet floor. Didn't look to see
what it was --Veronique surely had other things to worry about now. Tom
wadded it up and pressed it against his shoulder with a grimace. Truth be
told, he didn't think it had been bleeding that much, but if he was going to
sit there until his headache cleared, it couldn't hurt.
Minutes passed. Tom looked at his watch-- the numbers blurred and then
wavered into focus. It reminded him of waiting for the affects of too many
beers to wear off before driving home from a bar.
This is as good as it's going to get, he told himself. He scooped up the
plastic evidence bag with his left hand, used his right to lever himself up
against the wall. Secure on his feet, vision mostly unblurred, Tom made his
way out of the murderer's apartment. It was just the knock on the head, he
told himself, that made him think that the ventriloquist dummy smiled as he
left the room.
The parking lot looked long since deserted. There was a certain
satisfaction in the fact that Harry and Cass thought him superman enough to
withstand a blow with a weapon that had killed someone else, and that a
stabbing was small potatoes. On the other hand, a ride to the emergency
room might have been worth a little hovering.
Still, if Cass had driven back to the precinct to file their report and he
could just head straight home from the hospital ... Tom closed his eyes
wearily. THAT would be heaven.
" " "
"No, you can't drive yourself home, Sgt. Ryan."
The ER resident was quite clear on that point. The fact that Tom hadn't
lost consciousness, that the X-rays revealed no fractures, failed to sway
the doctor, though Tom tried.
"If you can find someone to drive you home, and if someone will stay with
you overnight to make sure you can wake up," Dr. Elliott continued, "then
you can go. Otherwise, we'll need to admit you for observation."
"Fine!" Tom dug out his cell phone with his right hand, tugged out the
antenna with his teeth. As he stared at the numbered buttons, the curse
against the medical profession died on his lips. He could not remember
Harry's number. Or Cass'. Or anyone else's for that matter. Even his own.
His skull was full of cotton.
Reluctantly, he set the phone back down on the gurney beside him. Doctor
Elliott nodded. "I'll have someone find you a room."
There didn't seem to be any point in shrugging back into his blood-stained
shirt, but Tom didn't fancy hospital gowns one bit. Whatever they had given
him before embroidering a pattern of 20 stitches underneath his collarbone
had now worn off and it was no fun getting that left arm back in the sleeve.
His fingers shook as he started to fasten the buttons.
"Let me."
Now Tom was sure he was brain-damaged. That sounded, and smelled, like
Cass. Slowly, he looked up.
It was-- his partner-- Sgt. Cassandra St. John.
"What are you doing here?"
"It's my day to rescue you." Her fingers felt cool against his as they
eased the shirt button through its buttonhole and then slid up his tensing
stomach muscles to the next. "I tried you at home -- you weren't
there--figured you might still be stuck here. Came to find out."
"You could have called my cell phone," Tom pointed out reasonably.
Surprising himself with his clarity of thought.
"I wasn't sure you would ask for my help," she answered, brushing back the
fabric of the shirt, smoothing it over his ribs as she worked her way up.
Rescuer indeed. He wouldn't be stuck in a hospital bed tonight if she
would take him home and stay the night. But how could he ask Cass to do
that, and not misconstrue the reason why? She was a detective--she wouldn't
miss the clues that his body was giving her now.
Before Tom could say anything, she finished buttoning his shirt and then
cupped her hand gently on his bruised jaw. "I saw Dr. Elliott," she said.
"He told me I could take you home and put you to bed." She grinned, and
then the grin fled and she leaned closer and brushed her lips against his.
"I didn't know she'd clubbed you with that cane, Tom. I just thought you'd
gotten scratched with the knife, or I wouldn't have left you there."
"Well, you're here now," Tom said, his voice gruff. "That's enough."
" " "
Finally, Tom was home and in bed. Minimal drugs had taken the edge off his
headache, but not left him sleepy. Cass started to brush his hair off his
forehead, caught herself, and then sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand
falling back to rest gently on the thick dressing on his left shoulder. She
studied his hazel eyes. "You aren't fading out yet, are you?"
Tom shook his head. Cass stretched out beside him, putting her head on his
good shoulder and her hand someplace else, and whispered, "Know what I
really want for my birthday?"
She got it. And later on, she got the big screen TV too.
The end.