38. What I Want

don't worry - the 1975


I'd rather be anywhere than here.


That was my thought as she stared at fuzzy cartoons on the hospital's pitiful excuse for a television. Is this what kids watched nowadays? What was wrong with the cartoons I grew up with? A dagger of pain shot through my ribs and I immediately amended my hyperbole.


I'd rather be almost anywhere than here.


"Can you see the magic wand?" asked an animated fish on the TV monitor, which hung from the wall on the other side of my little hospital room. Almost everyone from the office had visited already, bringing food or flowers or cards, but none of them had thought to bring double-A batteries for the hospital remote, whose own batteries were dead as a doornail. Broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder was nothing in comparison to the grating voices of these cartoons.


"It's right behind you, fucking idiot," I told the fish, who had been looking for items in plain sight for at least ten minutes. I chucked my plastic lunch spoon at the screen. It bounced off harmlessly.


"I don't think it can hear you," said a voice from the doorway. I didn't need to turn to know who it was but I did anyway. The one visitor who hadn't yet made an appearance.


"Then it should stop asking me questions," I said. Reid chuckled.


"It's good to see you," he said.


"Ditto," I replied.


Silence.


He looked much better than when he had carried me into the ambulance last night. It was almost as if he had slept for the first time in five days. I probably looked roughly the same, the only difference being that some intern doctor had wiped the dried blood from my face. Well, except, he probably couldn't see me all that well last night. I was suddenly very self-conscious of my body and face, both of which were patterned blue and purple and both of which were now extremely well illuminated by the hospital lights. And I was sure the paisley-patterned hospital gown was doing nothing for my figure.


"Garcia couldn't locate him with the call, but she narrowed down the area significantly," Reid said, "Turned out that fact that we couldn't trace it was almost as helpful because we knew it had to be someone with an advanced understanding of computer technology and tracing programs." I didn't really want to hear any of this, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Were we really this awkward in the daylight?


"And we figured out that he had hacked your phone, which was also helpful in narrowing the suspect list," he continued, as if providing testimony for the benefit of a jury, "Initially, after we realized you were gone we detained Max Es-"


"Wait. You detained my friend?"


"It was standard procedure. He was the last person you talked to-"


"You detained my friend!" I was practically yelling, which was not exactly hospital etiquette, but oh well, sucks. I had just almost been murdered. I was doing whatever the hell I wanted for a while.


"We didn't know he was your friend. All we knew was that he had ties to you and Eliza," Reid said.


"He is my friend!"


"Well, I know that now. He was only at the station for a couple of hours. I told him you were back last night." He was biting back a smile, apparently enjoying the fact that I had enough energy to argue with him.


"Good."


"Anyway, it came down to the phone call. That's how we figured out it was a meat locker."


That's why it was so fucking cold. I shivered just thinking about it. Reid noticed and was about to say something when I cut him off.


"My phone," I remembered, "It's still at the..."


"They got it when they searched the place for evidence. Under the sink?" He sounded almost proud.


"Yup."


There was another beat of silence.


"Your singing helped too," he offered, another cast hoping to reel in a conversation. He ran a hand through his hair.


"My what?" A tug at the string.


"Your singing."


"What singing?"


"You don't remember?"


"I swear to God, do not tell me I sang." I wrassled with my memory for a scrap of understanding but I came up short. I didn't remember singing. Was he just messing with me? Then again, there was a lot I didn't remember.


"Well, you were pretty drugged up--"


"Oh my God. What did I sing?"


"That Elton John song." Elton John? I groaned loudly like a teenager embarrassed by their kooky parents in a teen movie. In the background, my despised cartoon fish chittered away.


"It wasn't that bad."


"Wow, glowing praise."


"Well, I mean--"


"Spencer, shut up and get me some jello." He laughed and the sound swelled my heart.


"Yes, ma'am." He turned to leave but quickly turned back. He had on a dark green sweater vest.


"I didn't mean what I said that day," he said. I knew immediately the day to which he was referring, that day in the kitchen when we had gotten as close to breaking up as was possible for two people who never dated.


"I was just scared something like this would happen and I thought it would be easier if-- But it wasn't. I just, I mean..." he stuttered. Hazel eyes were trained on mine so earnestly I thought I might melt like ice cream under a magnifying glass. With every word he said I felt as though I sensed ten words underneath it, suppressed. Easier if we weren't involved. Less dangerous if I didn't fall for you. But I had already fallen for him a hundred times.


I love you, I said in my head. I do. C'mon Spencer, read my mind.


He stepped closer hesitantly so that he was at my bedside. My hospital room was full of color and not just from the balloons and flowers. There was a painting on one of the walls, one that sort of reminded me of something one might see at a motel. It was a red sailboat on the smooth glaze of a blue lake. No more concrete walls for me. I was free. I was doing whatever the hell I wanted for a while. But I only wanted one thing.


"I don't want you to worry about anything while you're trying to recover," Reid promised, "I--"


"Kiss me," I said and in it, I heard the echo of every moment I'd wanted to say that but didn't, but couldn't.


He did.

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