The Ghost of A Loss

Chapter Three

"You're damn lucky – you know that, don't you?" Peter Burke clasps his hands behind his head as he leans back in his chair, legs stretching out in front of him.

"You call this lucky?" Neal counters, wincing as he shifts himself to a slightly more comfortable position in the narrow hospital bed.

"The doctors say they've never seen anyone with the volume of blood-loss you had make such a good recovery." Peter smiles encouragingly at his friend, but receives only a sour look in response. Apparently Caffrey's recuperated just enough to know he feels miserable.

Three days have passed since their encounter with Kevin Meehan, and the two men are back on familiar footing. Well, except for the fact that Peter looks positively fashionable compared to his younger partner, whose unshaven face and uncombed hair make him almost unrecognizable as the suave Neal Caffrey.

Neal shifts again, his breath catching as the stitches in his abdomen pull. Peter's at his side in an instant, helping Neal settle himself without tangling the wires and tubes attached to his body. A sideways glance at the monitor reveals the jagged, uneven dancing of Neal's heart. It gives Peter a chill to think how precarious Neal's hold on life still is. It was so close.

"Hey," Peter offers, "why don't I leave so you can take a nap. El got home last night and I imagine she'll want to drop by later."

"Tell her I'm sorry she cut her trip short."

"I don't know if she's too sorry," Peter says with a smile. "Sometimes her parents can be a little . . . intense," he explains.

Peter didn't call his wife until after Neal's first 24 hours in the ICU. When he did, he calmly explained to her what had happened and assured her that Neal was on the mend. The conversation went well until his voice cracked, ever so slightly, as he was describing Neal's injury. She and her sister drove straight through so she could be with her husband as soon as possible. He can't imagine what her parents thought. He doesn't really care; it's too good to have her home.

Neal's eyes have drifted shut, and Peter stands, preparing to leave. Only Neal's hand, clenching the bed sheet, gives away the fact that he's awake and in pain. Peter will stop and mention it to Neal's nurse on his way out.

"Peter!" Neal's voice is quiet but imperative. Peter turns back to the bed, a question on his face.

"Don't go yet."

"Is something wrong?" Peter's rests his hands on the bed rail. "Do you need me to get someone?"

"No, I'm good." Well, maybe good isn't the right word, Neal thinks, but he doesn't want to give Peter anything else to worry about. The man is such a control freak, always having to make everything right.

"The other day, with Meehan," Neal begins. He's lost count of how many days have actually passed, so vague is good, he reasons.

"Neal, we don't have to talk about this. You don't need to give a statement until you're up to it."

Neal suspects his friend is purposely misunderstanding him and continues on without a pause.

"No," he says, "not that. You asked me a question. At least, I think you asked me a question." Neal isn't sure which parts he remembers from that day are real and which aren't, but he needs to answer the question anyway.

"Yeah, you were a little out of it," Peter agrees. He tries to smile, but isn't too successful. The sight of Neal's blood smeared all over that dirty floor is still too fresh in his mind.

"I thought you were dead," Neal states bluntly.

Peter is taken aback. He looks at his friend's face, still paper-white from blood-loss, in disbelief.

"You thought I was dead?" He wants to make sure he heard Neal correctly.

"I was waiting for Meehan to make a move," Neal explains. "I was ready to jump as soon as his finger twitched. I figured if I timed it just right . . ." Neal pauses to draw a shaky breath, "if I timed it right, I could keep him from killing you. But I was late, and the gun went off, and there was blood everywhere."

"Your blood," Peter points out to him.

"Peter, there was blood all down the front of your shirt."

"From a cut, Neal. It took all of three stitches to close it." Peter tilts his head back, displaying the ER doctor's handiwork.

Neal looks down and away, obviously puzzled. "I saw you fall," he says finally, looking up again. "Your body was shoved back against the wall. And there was all that blood. You were dead."

Peter's instinctive reaction is to reach over and shake Neal. How could such a smart man be so stupid, he wonders. He'd been through 24 hours of hell because Neal mistook a scratch for a kill shot?

Peter opens his mouth, ready to explain to his partner just how ridiculous the whole situation is, but one look at Neal stops him. He takes in the confused blue eyes, contrasting starkly with the white skin. He sees Neal's hand fidgeting unconsciously with the bed sheet and the uneven lines on the heart monitor. Turning away from his friend, he takes a few breaths to calm his own feelings.

"Peter?"

"Yeah?" Turning around, his eyes meet Neal's.

"You were dead; I was sure you were dead. It was unthinkable, almost unbearable. I wanted to kill Meehan. I would have killed him if I could have gotten to him. That's why I did what I did." Neal continues to look at Peter, his blue eyes holding the brown ones steady.

Peter doesn't respond, he can't respond, too many emotions are flooding through him. He remembers holding Neal back, out of the flames, when the plane blew up and Kate died. He thinks he understands Neal's actions now.

"I wanted to die," Neal states baldly.

That statement Peter can answer.

"You did die, Neal." Neal's eyes widen in surprise but now he has no response. One look at Peter's face tells him this is not the time for a smart comeback.

"When you jumped at Meehan, he pulled the gun away from me and shot you. There was blood everywhere, your blood," he adds again for emphasis. "The shot nicked an artery." Peter pauses, drawing another deep breath. "You were talking to me, or trying to, but you weren't making much sense and we couldn't stop the bleeding." Peter stares beyond the hospital bed, his mind back in that dirty hallway three days ago. "You were holding onto me and suddenly you went still, completely still. You were dead."

He returns his focus to Neal. "Somehow they brought you back, but I didn't know that, Jones pulled me away. I spent three hours believing, no," he corrects himself angrily, " being certain, certain that you were dead. I sat in that damn waiting room for hours, expecting someone to come and tell me. And there was nothing I could do but wait." Peter's voice is tight and despairing. "It was the worst three hours of my life." He turns away from the bed again, running his hand through his hair.

"Peter, I'm sorry."

Whirling around, Peter grabs the bed rails so tightly his knuckles turn white. "Don't be sorry," he says with a vehemence that surprises them both. "Just don't ever do anything that stupid again!"

A long minute passes; neither man speaks. The tension slowly leaves Peter's taut body and he smiles sheepishly. "I'm sorry, too," he admits. "I'm sorry I put you in that position." Neal nods a gracious acceptance, a matching smile on his face.

Peter sits back down in the chair, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"After you were shot, you kept apologizing to me. Do you remember why?"

It's Neal's turn to look embarrassed. "I thought you were dead, remember? I was apologizing for getting you killed."

"But if I was dead . . . ?"

Refusing to meet his friends questioning look, Neal looks down at his hands. "I was talking to your ghost," he says quietly.

"My what?"

"I thought you were dead, remember?" Irritation replaces embarrassment in Neal's face. "Since you were dead and you were talking to me, I assumed you were a ghost," he concludes.

A variety of emotions cross Peter's face, ending with puzzlement. "So when I told you to stay with me . . ." Peter isn't sure he can finish the thought. "That's when you died."

"Except I didn't die," Neal points out.

But Peter knows differently – he was there, he felt it happen. His breath catches and he has to remind himself to breathe. Neal was willing to give up everything for him.

"Peter? Are you okay?" Neal is looking at him anxiously.

"Neal, why would you do that?" He doesn't explain his question; he doesn't have to.

"I trust you."

And there it was – you trust a partner, you trust a friend.

"Neal," Peter says, after a moment of silence. "When you're cleared to come back to work, you're getting nothing but surveillance van jobs."

"Peter," Neal begins, but doesn't get a chance to finish.

"If you haven't got enough sense to take care of yourself, you're stuck in the van."

"Peter!"

"Are you going to argue with me Caffrey? I can do whatever I want with you, you know that."

"I'll work in the van," Neal counters, "as long as you do, too. You're the one who screwed up the deal with Meehan."

Peter takes a breath, ready to argue. Then, surprising himself, he laughs. "Deal," he agrees.

Neal smiles in return, but once again his eyes close. Watching closely, Peter realizes this time his friend really is asleep. As he quietly gets to his feet to leave, he glances at the heart monitor again. The dancing green line is smooth and regular.

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End note: Thank you, everyone, for your kind thoughts for little Miss Mozzie. Right now she's holding her own so we have a little more time together. I'll take what I can get. Also, thank you for putting up with my overabundance of angst. I promise I'm going back to work on the other story now!