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Neal’s fingers slip over the buttons—5 instead of 8. He has to redial. Clumsily shoves the cordless landline against his ear as it drones, and falls back against the kitchen counter. Heel of his hand planted down on pale granite to hold himself up.
His vision spins.
The dial tone cuts off: “Burke.”
Neal sags in relief. His hip scraping down the side of white cabinets. “Peter,” he exhales. His voice sounds strange in his ears.
Neal’s grip tightens on the phone. His sticky hands squeak against the plastic.
“Neal?” Peter’s dawning concern pours into his tone. “Is everything alright?”
Neal gulps down a breath. His gaze flicks around the room, which slides and melts in response. “I…”
“Are you at June’s? Where are you right now?”
Neal’s eyes sink closed, his head throbbing behind them; the quickening breaths that he’s dragging in through his nose leave a ferric tang in the back of his throat.
“I’m pulling up your tracking data.”
Neal gives up his hold on the counter, his palm painting a long red smear as it slips to the granite’s lip. He lets himself slump towards the floor. Knees folding, legs foreign and heavy.
“What’s going on? Are you hurt?!”
Neal can hear a muffled voice in the background—Elizabeth.
His unoccupied hand drops into his lap; he stares at his curled, trembling fingers. “Are you hurt ?” Peter repeats. “Dammit, Neal! Talk to me.”
“I’m…” Neal swallows roughly, reaches up towards the thumping ache in his head. Pulls back dripping fingers. “My head.”
“You hit your head?”
“’s…bleeding, and I—”
“I’ve got the address. I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No!” Neal all but shouts. “No. You—you can’t,” he chokes. “I—”
“Tell me what’s going on,” Peter demands, and behind his voice Neal can hear the slam of a car door.
Neal’s gaze drifts from his lap. Across the faux hardwood floor. Nausea surges up his throat. “He…he must’ve h-hit me on the head.”
“Who? Someone attacked you?”
Neal tries to propel his tongue to answer, but it won’t move. Nothing will listen to him. His eyes won’t let him stop looking. And his hands won’t stop shaking. And he—
“Fowler,” Neal forces out. “Peter, I—” He draws in an open mouthed breath. “I killed him.”
The silence—road noise—aches against Neal’s ear.
“Fowler attacked you,” Peter repeats slowly, “And you—”
“I came here to kill him,” Neal spits out in a rush, and loses all the air in his chest to doing so. “I must’ve, I must’ve come here to—that’s the only reason I would— I would be here. I—”
“Neal, where’s here? Where are you exactly? Right now. I need you to tell me.”
“Fowler’s apartment.”
“That doesn’t…” Peter’s confusion trails off. “Don’t move,” he says, his voice hardened with fear. “Don’t go anywhere . I’m coming, okay?”
Neal isn’t listening, he rolls his eyes up to what’s above him. Cabinets, can lights, a microwave that’s blinking the wrong time. 2:02. “It…it must be his apartment.”
“What do you mean it must be?”
He squeezes his eyes closed against a sea of floating dots; his head drops back against thin wood. “I don’t know,” Neal replies weakly. “I don’t— I can’t remember.” Saying it draws fear taut around Neal’s chest. “Anything,” he adds, shakily. “I don’t remember a-anything.”
“What is the last thing you do remember?”
“You—you sent me home early.”
“That was yesterday.”
Neal can only make a small whine of distress in response.
“Okay. Okay,” Peter draws in an audible breath, “I sent you home early. Why?”
“Because of Fowler.”
“Then what?”
“Then I must’ve come here. Because you stopped me, I came here to finish the job.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Peter says firmly.
“I brought a gun, and I—”
“How do you know you brought a gun if you don’t remember?”
“I think it’s yours,” Neal squeaks out. He looks at where it’s lying on the floor—dropped from his limp grip upon discovering it there—and shivers. “I must’ve stolen it. I came here. Things didn’t go to plan, and he must’ve tried to stop me, but I—”
His eyes drift to the puddle of blood. Seeping out from under the stiff back of a suited form. Neal’s stomach heaves.
He gags, falling forward. The phone smacks against the floor, as Neal’s hands try to hold him, and his vision plunges black and stomach acid stings at his gums.
There's a burn in Neal’s trachea. The paralyzed feeling of needing to cough, but not being able to.
Somewhere, a buzz of Peter’s voice, garbled through a phone speaker. Grasped in Neal’s hand, yet still out of reach.
-
Neal discovers his tongue. Sticking to the edges of his cheeks. Spongy; coated with a film. Pinned down against his teeth by something rigid.
The air tastes sour.
Light aches against his eyelids. He tries to swallow, but can’t. His throat spasms against whatever’s in the way.
He realizes he can’t breathe. Not through his nose either.
Hysteria, reflexive, drags open Neal’s eyes.
Rectangles of white fluorescence. Ceiling tiles, a fire sprinkler, orange specks in his vision that dance and burn there as Neal’s eyelids unwittingly loll back closed.
His leaden hands claw towards his face, or try to. Obstruction comes in the form of a pair of familiar metallic clinks. A sharp pull against his wrists.
Neal’s hands are cuffed to the bed rails.
He fights back open his eyelids, frantic. Tries to call for help, but whatever’s blocking air has also cut off sound.
His blurred vision drags around the room, catches on the nurse call button. Dangling on a cord from a wall panel behind him. Neal reaches for it. Forgetting, and being immediately reminded, why that’s a fruitless action.
The cuffs are too tight to slip. They’ll have to be picked.
Neal’s fingers curl down towards his sleeves—but he’s in a hospital gown. And nothing else.
Panic overtakes him.
Unknown machinery drones and beeps.
When the door to the hospital room opens, and a voice says, “Mr. Caffrey,” Neal’s fingers are still contorted towards the cuffs on his wrists, as if to pick them with his fingernails.
“Mr. Caffrey,” the voice repeats, closer, “You’re on a ventilator. There’s a machine that’s breathing for you. You need to not fight it.”
Neal shakes his head weakly against the stiff pillows. Unable to stop gagging against the pressure at the back of his throat.
“If you relax, it will breathe for you.”
Neal does not determine how to relax—but the voice assures him that what they’re doing will help. And sometime shortly after, he drifts back into a haze of twilight.
-
The next time Neal is truly aware, the ventilator is gone—leaving behind only a raw feeling in the back of his throat.
The handcuffs remain.
Neal takes in the details around him with a mind that feels like it’s lagging one step behind. The room is cramped, but there’s a real door, not a curtain. That, alongside the sheer amount of equipment, leads Neal to conclude ICU, not ER.
Yet, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him besides the ache in his head.
And the gaping hole in his memory.
He recalls being in the car. The Taurus, with Peter. Peter was talking over the radio. A Mets broadcast. AC was blasting from the vents.
Maybe they were in a car accident.
Maybe…
Neal looks down over himself for some sign of injury, shifts his legs under the bright white blankets. There’s no lump where they pass over his left ankle.
Then he remembers.
A gun in his hand, and knees slipping in blood, and Garrett Fowler’s cold, dead eyes. Viscid and flat.
Neal buries his head back against the pillows; wills himself to drift towards sleep.
-
The gentle clatter of keys, emanating from off to Neal’s side, comes to stop.
“Hey,” a voice says; and Neal pinches his eyes closed harder.
There’s a click as a laptop closes; a familiar fatigued grunt of standing up from a chair.
“I can tell you’re awake,” Peter says. His voice directly above Neal now.
Neal admits reticent defeat.
He rolls his head back against the pillows and cracks open his eyes to a sliver: bright sunlight, pouring in through the window, and Peter’s troubled face. Shadows under his eyes. Drawn complexion. Collar crushed.
Peter reaches for a styrofoam cup off to the bedside. “Water?” he asks.
Neal, despite the ache in the back of his throat, shakes his head.
He is unable to continue to meet Peter’s gaze. Instead, he stares at his hands. IVs taped down in the pit of his elbow and bruising he doesn’t remember getting on his knuckles.
Peter’s presence has banished the handcuffs.
“‘m sorry,” Neal rasps. His eyes sting.
Peter’s frown tightens, uncomfortable. “We’ll talk about it later,” he says firmly.
“Fowler…”
“Later,” Peter repeats. His hand hovers midway through putting back the styrofoam cup on the side table. His eyes hover on Neal as if tearing them away might make Neal disappear. “You’re sure you don’t want water?”
“I…I killed—”
“You’ve got to stop confessing felonies to me, kid.”
If the dry statement is meant to make Neal smile, he doesn’t manage it; he presses his lips together, and his hands waver behind a sheen of tears.
Peter’s palm lands heavily on Neal’s shoulder, as if to hoist him up from wherever he’s drifted. “Neal. What year is it?”
Neal blinks.
His moment of hesitation at the intent question must be enough to solidify Peter’s point.
“What case were we working?” Peter asks.
“The State Senator,” the words slip out confidently and yet Neal can’t draw any image connected with them into his mind. “The corruption case. With Hanson.”
Peter squeezes Neal’s shoulder. “Right,” he says, lifting his hand and tucking it back in his pocket to pivot on his heel. “And we learned OPR was brought in, because they suspected someone in the bureau could be involved.”
“Fowler.”
Peter nods. “He was assigned to the case. So I sent you home early on Thursday. I told you to consider it a long weekend.”
“Then I…” Neal starts shakily
Peter turns. His expression direct in a way that compels Neal to look away. “You didn’t hurt anyone.”
Neal’s face twitches his disbelief. He sinks back, his unfocused eyes sweeping across the dots of the mineral fiber suspended above him.
“You couldn’t have hurt anyone,” Peter amends.
The correction doesn’t seem to create any greater impact. “Maybe the apple doesn’t fall from the tree,” Neal mumbles to himself, sluggish.
Peter bites back a grimace. “It’s Monday now.” He glances at his watch in a twitch. “Half past two. You called me at 10pm Friday night. Do you know what happened? On Friday night?”
“I went after Fowler.”
“Maybe; I don’t know what the hell you were doing. But I’m talking about after that.”
Neal doesn’t reply.
“You called me from Agent Hanson’s apartment. By the time I got there—and luckily I ignored you and did call an ambulance, so they were right behind me—but by the time I got there and got inside, you weren’t breathing. ”
Peter draws in a slow breath; tempering his spike in volume.
“I had them run a full tox screen.” He motions a brusque hand at Neal, “besides the bump on your head, you had enough sedatives in your system that you never should’ve made it off the floor. You went into acute respiratory distress; you couldn’t breathe on your own for two days. You didn’t hurt Fowler. You couldn’t have hurt Fowler. If I were to guess, I’d say you were probably trying to save his life.”
Neal’s mouth opens. Then closes.
“Agent Hanson?” he asks finally.
“Thought he had a bright idea about how to get out of his tough spot. And had a fianceé with treatment resistant insomnia.”
Neal’s brow pinches in confusion.
“The sedatives,” Peter explains. “It’s going to take a week for them to fully work out of your system. And it’ll take a month to fully recover from the concussion.”
“What about the gun?” Neal asks in a rush.
“Fowler’s.”
“What about the anklet?”
“Haven’t worked that one out yet.”
“What a—?”
“Neal, for once, this has nothing to do with you. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Neal’s eyes meet Peter’s in wide desperation. “I didn’t kill him?” he squeaks out.
“You didn’t kill him.”
Neal stares for a long moment, as if trying to find any tell, before he droops in relief. “Okay,” he concedes quietly.
“Damn near gave me a heart attack though,” Peter grumbles, though he fails to maintain his sourness. He glances down, brushes off whatever’s weighing on his mind with a couple of firm pats on Neal’s arm. “How about that water now?” he asks.
Neal nods heavily.
“You don’t have to stay awake,” Peter adds, as he futzes with a posable straw, “but try to remember some of this so I don’t have to give that whole speech again in an hour, okay?”
Neal’s reaction is concerningly earnest. “I’ll try,” he agrees.