(A/N: Set post-season 3. You'll get the details in the story – either this chapter or a later one. This doesn't line up with the movie. Enjoy!)

Mac spun around in her desk chair as other people talked. Conference calls had become the bane of her existence, but they were better than video chats, especially when she already knew the things they were talking about. She'd tried, during previous calls, to do something productive – eat lunch, reply to emails, something besides just drawing random things on scrap paper – but it never really worked. The first time, she'd had a mouth full of pasta when someone asked her a question, and then she accidentally replied to an email from someone on the conference call… Mac had just come to accept that the hour or so every week would be a total waste of her life and moved on.

She tuned back into the conversation when someone new started talking and then checked the email with the agenda. It made her want to bang her head against her desk – any more discussion on firewalls and she would throw her computer out the window – but before she could do or say anything, her phone vibrated. Mac dove for it, silencing the ringer before it could make any more noise, but knocked the stapler off the side of the desk. She closed her eyes as it clattered, and the person speaking stopped talking.

"Is everyone okay?"

Mac sighed. There was no way for them to know who the noise came from, so she just waited until a couple people spoke up and then added her own affirmation in before muting herself. The meeting went back to being boring and Mac turned her attention to her cell phone. The phone call had come from her mother, who, upon getting ignored, had left a voicemail and sent a text. Mac checked the text first, but all it said was to listen to the voicemail. Thanks, Mom, she thought. That was helpful. After double-checking to make sure that her end of the conference call was still muted, she navigated to her voicemail and clicked on her mom's latest message.

"Hi, honey," her mother's voice said in her ear. "I know you're at work, but we're at the hospital with your brother." Mac took a sharp breath as her mother's message played in her ear. Sports accident, unconscious for a while but awake now, room 611. The words in between were just filler words, and Mac had enough trouble keeping her thoughts straight without worrying about extra words. She jotted Ryan's room number down on a sticky note and checked the time. The meeting would be over in minutes, so she started packing up her laptop case. A perk to owning her company was being able to leave without asking permission. It wasn't a perk she used often – Mac liked what she did at work – but it certainly was nice today.

By the time the meeting ended, she was ready to leave, right down to the keys in her hand. She unmuted the line as everyone said their goodbyes, and then bolted out of her office, barely slowing down to tell her receptionist that she was leaving, probably for the rest of the day. The drive to the hospital wasn't much better. She was anxious and people kept getting in her way. She sent a text to her mom as she parked her Beetle and took a deep breath. Her pace was slightly slower going into the hospital than it had been leaving the office, but only because she was less sure of where she was going. As the elevator took her to the sixth floor, she studied the floor names. Ryan was on the 'Medical Surgical' floor. Mac decided that knowing the name of the floor didn't really help things. The doors opened and she glanced over at the nurses' station. If there hadn't been someone there, she wouldn't have bothered, but it felt rude to just ignore the lady.

"Excuse me?" Mac said, expecting her voice to shake and being thankful that it didn't. "My brother's in room 611…" she trailed off, not knowing if she was asking for permission or not.

The nurse looked up and smiled. "You're Ryan's sister?" Mac nodded. "He's a sweetheart. I'll walk you there. I need to check in on him again anyway." Mac nodded again and they set off down the hall. "Ryan was awake by the time they got him here, and he cleared his CT scan without an issue, so he's just under observation for a few more hours and then he should be good to go."

Mac let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "Thank you, really," she said to the smiling nurse as they stopped outside of room 611. The nurse nodded, and Mac opened the door.

Ryan's eyes lit up. "Hey sis," he said cheerfully. "Hi, Molly." It took Mac a second to realize that she hadn't asked what the nurse's name was. "What's up?"

His question was directed back at Mac, so she sat down in the chair next to her brother and grinned. "Nothing much. Your injury got me out of work, so I suppose I should thank you. Pizza and video games?"

Ryan nodded, wincing for a second before accepting the offer. "Are you going to hang out here until then? Mom and Dad went to go fill a prescription, but I don't know if they'll rush back if you're here. They seem to really hate hospitals."

Mac bit her lip for a second before forcing a laugh. "Yeah, I'll stay here. They probably have stuff to catch up on if they want to take advantage of me being at home for a family dinner." She pulled out her phone to text her mom while Molly did whatever it was she needed to do. Mac kept her eyes on her phone and her breathing steady. She knew why her parents probably didn't like hospitals, but Ryan didn't, and he wasn't going to find out now.

"I'm not sure if you're going to want to play video games when you get home," Molly said, finally looking up from her laptop. "Concussions like yours tend to result in a pretty bad headache."

Mac looked at Ryan. "Well, rain check on the video games then? We can still do pizza, and maybe a board game or something."

Ryan nodded. "Sure. It's not often that you hang out at home on a Wednesday." He grinned.

Mac rolled her eyes. "Don't even. It's not often that you're even home on a Wednesday. Somehow, you ended up with a social life."

Ryan was right, though. Mac spent one of the weekend days with her family, usually, unless things were crazy at work. Owning her own company at 25 meant lots of long hours, and while Mac didn't hate it – far from that, actually – it did mean less free time than she expected. Still, she wouldn't trade her job for anything. The company was her baby, built from the ground up after the first website deal with Logan back in college. They surprisingly still made money from that site, as well as the several other sites they'd piggy backed off of it. Logan had gotten emails from a couple friends, asking who made the site. He'd passed their information along to Mac, and when she realized that they were serious, had agreed. Casey Gant got on board a few years ago, asking her to completely redo the website for the publishing company that he now ran, which brought her contacts from both the sleazy and the professional areas of the internet. She was never sure if Logan was responsible for Casey's decision to hire her, but she was grateful for the chance. It was his contract that pushed her to actually do web design and tech support as a job. From there, she was able to contract out things herself, always having the final approval before the client got to see it. It was, after all, her reputation on the line. She moved from contracting jobs to hiring people, and it didn't seem like there was an end in sight.

It also left her with the time and freedom to do a little hacking for Veronica or Keith, on an as-needed basis, which was less frequently since Keith was re-elected as Sherriff. Mac grinned at the memory of learning that Veronica's dad had somehow managed to win the election. They hadn't really expected it, and Veronica had sworn up and down that she wouldn't do anything to screw it up this time. She hadn't – the PI work that she did for the rest of the semester was simple enough. She'd gone off to her FBI internship and come back a little older. It wasn't a huge surprise when she transferred to Stanford, but it was a surprise when she came back for graduation and announced that she was staying. Logan was thrilled, but wary, so Mac was probably the only one that knew how he really felt. They'd gotten closer over the years – working on the website was an excuse that they both used pretty often. Mac used it to make sure he was okay; she didn't know why he used it. It had taken some gentle nudging, but Veronica and Logan finally agreed to try being friends again. That lasted longer than any of them predicted, but they wouldn't be epic if they didn't end up together. It was working well enough, and Mac didn't really worry about them. She was only slightly bummed out about it, and only on occasions like this one, where they went on vacation together.

The thought of them vacationing together like a normal couple made Mac laugh, which came out as a little snort, and Ryan immediately started laughing.

"You just got lost in your own little world there, sis," he said when he was done laughing. "What's going on?"

She shrugged. "Nothing really. I was just thinking about work." Ryan made a face at her, and she laughed. "Not like a project or anything, just that I actually work for myself and not for, I don't know, Kane Software or something."

Ryan grinned. "They wish."

Mac grinned back, glad that her little brother was supportive of her. "Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't that be the strangest thing?" She didn't finish the thought, but the idea of working for the man that inadvertently changed her life gave her a weird feeling. Jake Kane didn't know it, obviously, but had he not covered up Lilly's murder and gone after Keith Mars, then Veronica wouldn't have been an outcast and she wouldn't have become friends with Mac. It wasn't the first time she'd thought about it, but the realization hit her that she could probably say the same about Aaron Echolls. She shivered at the thought.

Ryan shrugged, misinterpreting the shiver. "You're probably making more now than you would working there, and we both know you have more fun, so who cares what's strange or not? Besides, this is Neptune. It's always weird here."

Mac laughed, because he was right and because he didn't know the half of it. She let the subject drop, and they talked and played cards (another conference call distraction she sometimes used) for the next couple hours as nurses came in and out, making sure that Ryan was reacting the way he was supposed to. At one point, Ryan convinced a nurse to bring them both jello, but otherwise, it was pretty dull.

"It's been a while since they said I would probably be leaving soon," Ryan commented as a nurse walked past his room. "I wonder if that meant I just could, or if they'll start the process soon." Ryan sighed and shifted uncomfortably.

"I'll go find out," she said, grabbing her phone and standing up. The nurse had gotten a little bit of a head start, and Mac opted for a bit of a jog instead of shouting down the hallway.

"Excuse me?" she said, catching up to the nurse a few rooms down. "The doctor said they were going to release Ryan, my little brother, and I just wanted to see if there was anything I needed to do before we left. I think my dad's coming back to take care of paperwork, but if I can speed that process up any, that would be great." Mac took a breath and the nurse grinned.

"You can fill out the things that you know, but we really need your dad's signature on the forms. It's not too hard, I promise. I'll come check on you guys in a few minutes, just in case."

Mac smiled at the nurse. There were so many friendly people here, and she was really thankful for it. "Thanks. It's kind of been a long day for all of us and –"

"Mac?"

She spun around at the voice, not bothering to finish her sentence. The nurse must have known that the conversation was over, and Mac heard her move down the hallway. Personally, she was too stunned to do anything besides stand there and stare into the room for a minute.

"Dick?"

(A/N: Right okay so full-length story with a mystery happening here. I'm not nervous at all. Sigh. Shoutout to one of my best friends for letting me ask 23 questions about hospitals and car accidents and to my other best friend for constant encouragement. Also, does anyone remember how much younger Ryan is? I'm not sure it'll matter but I'm kind of curious.)