Chapter Text
She glanced at her alarm clock. It was 3 am now and she was lying in bed, unable to sleep. Isobel, who led the team to hunt down the serial killer yesterday and didn't return home until 11 pm, was sure that tonight would be different, since the exhaustion of work would outweigh her fear of darkness as well as this room and the recent pressure from her superiors, so that she would get her restful sleep for the first time in days. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the exact opposite of what she intended.
She turned on the lamp, pulled the quilt, and wrapped herself in it. Isobel couldn't take her eyes off the locked door and the wardrobe next to it, even though she had checked both countless times before she went to bed. As soon as she closed her eyes, David Owen would open the door or crawl out of the closet and stab her again and again with a dagger in his hand.
God, Isobel, he's already in jail. What are you so worried about? Can't you just cut yourself some slack and give yourself a break? Okay. Just this once. No more sleeping pills from tomorrow.
With a sigh, she reached for the sleeping pills on the bedside table, poured out two, and swallowed them with the cold water in the glass.
The alarm went off. Ouch. A splitting headache was the first thing she felt when she woke up. Fever at this point? Nice. Still weighing whether sick leave was needed in mind, she tried with all her strength to get out of bed, but her aching, limp, and burning body failed her. Apparently, though she was unwilling to be absent when her superiors were breathing down her neck, she seemed to have no choice.
Isobel reached for her phone on the bedside table. The glare of the phone stung her eyes and exacerbated her headache. Squinting, she managed to text the ADIC to take sick leave and then threw her phone aside.
Strangely, despite physical dullness, thoughts filled Isobel’s mind. Just have given them another reason why I’m not qualified for the job. With unexcused absences and bold and impulsive decisions, she didn't see any reason for her superiors to keep her.
Even though the hallway seemed remote, she needed to get ibuprofen from the medicine chest in the adjoining room. Isobel lay down for a while, hoping to regain some strength. Slowly she got out of bed, everything so vague and strange, and she leaned on the wall and edged away towards the adjoining room.
Jubal glanced at Isobel's office and frowned. She was always the first to come. They had just got a case. He decided to give her a call to check on her.
She had just dug the ibuprofen out of the medicine chest when the cell phone in her bedroom began to ring. She whispered an expletive, which rarely happened to her. With the fastest speed she could get to, Isobel shuffled back to the bedroom. It was the second call when she reached the phone after blindly fumbling the bed. Everything was too hazy. She could no longer recognize the caller’s name. Maybe this time it’s more serious than before. She slid to answer relying on the memory of the slider’s location, turned it on the speaker, put it on the bedside table, and swallowed the medicine before taking a drink of water from the glass.
"Hey Isobel, we got a case." Jubal's voice came over the phone, "Jubal, I asked for leave today," followed by a fit of coughing, "Isobel, are you okay?" She took another sip of water to moisten her throat, making another effort to sound better. "It's just a common cold. I'm fine. Just focus on the case and keep me posted.” A rush of vertigo hit her, she held on to the wall. Dammit, she had moved too fast just now. "Well. Have you taken any medicine? If you don't have any, I can get you some." Isobel could sense his tense through the phone. Her temples were popping, buzzing getting louder and louder, and she just wanted to end this conversation now. "I just took ibuprofen. I promise I’m fine..." Her vision had grown so distorted and blurred, and before her brain could possess what was going on, everything went black. A thud and the sound of breaking glass stung him through the phone, and his anxious voice coming from the phone filled her deathly stillness room.