Note: I am making up so much medical stuff that it’s kind of ridiculous. Anyone who knows anything about anything, just take a brief leave from reality. I’m not talking unicorns or anything, but it gets a little hinky.

Lindsay popped her pain pills in her mouth and swallowed a big gulp of water. Her doctor had put her on different pills starting that day, a different type completely. She hoped it did something for the pain in and around her stitches. Maybe it would fix the nagging pain in her chest, and the sneezing jag that started up now and then.

Someday, they’ll come up with an all purpose pill, she thought wistfully, one that’ll just take care of anything… She was tired of keeping this pill and that pill straight.

She sneezed and closed the medicine cabinet.

Danny came in and slammed the door behind him.

She yelled out her greeting and got no response. She opened the door to find him on the couch, holding a cold beer to his forehead with his eyes closed.

“What’s up?” she asked. She walked slowly over to him. He got up to help her. She tried to shoo him away, but he ignored her. He laid her down on the couch with her head pillowed in his lap.

“You take your new pills?” he asked, closing his eyes again and replacing the beer.

“Yes,” she said. “They should kick in about a half hour from now.” She felt a sneeze coming on and turned away from Danny’s stomach and covered her nose.

“Still got that cold?” Danny asked.

Lindsay sneezed in response.

“Guess so,” Danny chuckled. He guessed that it was sticking around because her body was working on healing the gaping hole in her stomach.

“I sent Flack home, before you ask. If that’s what you’re worried about. By the way, what’s got you so worried?” she asked. She was feeling a little woozy.

“I got some … uh … sorta bad news.”

“What is it?” Lindsay asked. Danny cleared his throat and took a sip of the beer. He opened his eyes and stared down at her, reaching a hand out to softly brush the hair out of her face. “Danny, you’re freaking me out a little,” she said.

“We can’t work together and have a relationship, Linds.”

Lindsay’s eyes opened wide. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Danny snorted. He took another swig of the beer. His sexual harassment awareness class had informed him of all work-friendly relationships. When the teacher had explained that co-workers could not have any form of sexual relationship, he had given a quick, reflexive look at Mac, who was sitting two seats over. Mac hadn’t moved, hadn’t reacted in any particular way. Danny was dreading going into work the next day, when he’d planned to speak to Mac about the obvious breach of protocol.

“So … which one are we going to chose? Work or relationships?”

Danny blinked and looked back down at Lindsay, who was smiling up at him sneakily.

“Clown,” he muttered. “Look, I’m gonna get some rest. You wanna come to bed with me?”

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom. I’ll be in in a minute.” She planned on splashing her face with cold water to alleviate the dizziness that had recently struck her.

Danny helped her up and sent her on her way to the bathroom, where she finally succeeded in shooing him off. He kissed her head and walked to the bedroom.

He flopped down on the bed and kicked off his shoes. He was at work unzipping his jacket when he heard the thump from the bathroom. “Linds?” he called out, “You alright in there?”

When he got no response, he got up and headed over. He turned the doorknob and pushed at the door, but found it blocked by some sort of weight.

“Lindsay, open the door,” he said, his voice suddenly commanding and serious.

She gave no response.

Danny finally pushed the door open and slid in, only to find Lindsay, bleeding from a cut on her head, unconscious on the floor.

Danny dropped to his knees and pulled out his cell phone simultaneously. He called 911 quickly and checked her pulse. He found a slow one on her neck, then leaned in to check her breathing.

“911, what’s your emergency?” the operator asked.

“My girlfriend passed out; she’s recovering from a stab wound, she has a slow pulse and she’s not breathing,” Danny said quickly. He gave the address and told them to hurry before hanging up and starting CPR.

“’C’mon, Linds, this isn’t funny,” he muttered, praying that it was some terrible joke she was playing. He pushed on her chest and breathed for her.

She regained her breath but not her consciousness, and when the paramedics arrived, they found a terrified Danny ordering her to stay alive.

“How is she?” Sheldon asked breathlessly as he breezed into the emergency room.

Danny looked up from his hands. “I dunno, man, I dunno.”

“I was two minutes away when I heard – I’m going to go talk to the doctor, OK? Everything’s going to be fine, Danny,” he said, clapping Danny on the shoulder.

Sheldon returned a few minutes later and slumped next to Danny. “She had a reaction to the new medication,” he explained, “or, at least, they think so. They pumped her stomach.”

“Was she allergic?” Danny asked, his voice sounding strangled and tired.

“They won’t know until her tox results come back,” Hawkes explained, “there’s a chance she took something by accident which reacted with the drug.”

Danny nodded and buried his face in his hands again.

They waited for hours and hours. Flack and Stella were stuck at a crime scene, Mac had duties at the lab. For four agnozing hours, Danny and Sheldon sat in complete oblivion to what Lindsay was going through. Finally, Danny heard his name.

“Detective Messer?” a doctor asked, “May I see you for a moment?”

Danny got up and walked over to the slight young woman in the lab coat. He wondered if she was barely out of college, barely fit to take care of his Montana. He was about to make a snide remark when the woman spoke, expertly and quickly.

“It seems that Detective Monroe has been dosed with an airborne form of TB. We’ve never seen this particular strain before,” the woman explained. “We’re going to have to test you as well. We’ve never seen this form before – she seems to have breathed it in through her nose. It’s affected her sinuses.”

“Jesus,” Danny muttered, running his hand over his face. “Is she – I mean, she’ll be OK, right?”

The doctor nodded. “It doesn’t seem to be as serious as other types of Tuberculosis that we have seen, or transmitted the same way. It wasn’t what caused her to pass out, at any rate.”

“Then, why –“

“She was allergic to the medication, as we guessed. Have you had any symptoms like she has? Excessive sneezing? Mild temperature?”

Danny shook his head. “What did … um, what did it do to her?”

“We’re not exactly certain,” the doctor admitted, showing the first sign of weakness yet, “It seems to have affected her as a persistent cold. We can treat it with antibiotics, but we will have to test the people she’s come into contact with recently.”

“How long has she had it?” Danny asked nervously. He realized that Lindsay had been in relative isolation since the stabbing, rarely leaving the apartment. If she’d been infected before then, there were any number of people who could have contacted it.

“We suspect that it’s been in her system for a little more than a week. It hasn’t had enough time to spread through other parts of her body, considering how weak the organism was when it entered.”

Danny thought hard. Over a week ago? We went to the movies … Iron Man … I woulda got it, too, if it was that … she moved in with me the night after that, to get her head straight… It musta happened that day. Otherwise, I woulda got it, too.

“Hawkes,” Danny said hoarsely. Sheldon looked up and walked over to him. “We gotta check her apartment again. She got some form of TB there.”

Sheldon nodded and headed out. He got to Lindsay’s apartment quickly, and put on full protective gear. He was aware that if there had been something, he and Adam would have become sick much earlier. Most likely, the organism had died.

Sheldon found the empty Fed Ex box in Lindsay’s trash can. He’d passed over it earlier, assuming it to be something personal of Lindsay’s. Besides, why check Lindsay’s trash? He and Adam had been investigating a stabbing, not a biological attack. What worried him was how a living organism had made it through the mail.

He brought the box back to the lab and analyzed it. He checked the results against Lindsay’s results, which had been sent over by Danny a few minutes earlier.

Once the results came through, he studied the dead organism. It had been altered slightly. Clearly someone with knowledge in biology or chemistry would had to have created it. He felt a sinking feeling when he realized who the culprit must have been.

“Are you certain?” Mac asked.

“Yes. The TB could not have lived more than four hours. Lindsay is the only one infected. Danny was tested, just as a precaution, but results were negative,” Sheldon said.

Mac frowned. “And the package was definitely meant for her?”

Sheldon nodded. “Mac, it sounds just like him. There were two more packages, both unopened, both of which contained a much more sinister version of the bacteria. He was trying to kill her. I’m sure of it. He wanted to take his time, infect her with a small dose at first to bother her, a stronger one to make her weak, and a deadly one to take her out.”

Mac turned away. He couldn’t believe he’d ever hired someone like this. “We’ll have to postpone the trial,” he mused, “We need to create a stronger defense, charge him with two counts of attempted murder.”

Sheldon nodded and turned on his heel to leave the hospital. Mac looked down the hallway to see Danny sitting in a chair outside of Lindsay’s room, looking in through the glass sadly.