As I woke the next morning, I realized he was still clutching me to him, his face against my neck. Smiling, I scratched the back of my half-conscious husband's head and kissed his forehead. "Good morning, love. Sleep well?"

"Hrrm?" he muttered, lifting his head to look at me through half-lidded eyes. "Oh. Yes, very well." His head fell back on the pillow, and he closed his eyes as I kissed him. "That was so good," he whispered sleepily.

"Yes." In avoidance of the morning chill, I pulled the covers around us and snuggled against him. I was a little groggy myself, both from the remaining effects of my journey and what had transpired the night before.

"Let's spend the whole day here, hmm?" he murmured, kissing my forehead. "Do that again, and then rest up from it all day."

I laughed softly. "We'll have to eat."

"So we'll go out for dinner. Order champagne and eat like rich sinners... and then come back here and go back to bed..."

"Sky, stop it!" Laughing at his flights of fancy, I persuaded myself to get up and begin to get dressed. "If I sleep all day I'll never sleep normally again, and you shouldn't spend all day in bed either. Don't you have something to do today?"

"I already told you what I had to do today," he replied stubbornly, punctuating his sentence with a drowsy yawn. "You're ruining it for me."

Returning to the beside, I shoved him lightly in the shoulder. "Get up, put some clothes on, and get your mind out of the gutter. It's already 8 o'clock and I have paperwork to do for the mission."

Sky had barely opened his mouth to utter some sarcastic remark when the phone rang. Grabbing a bathrobe to protect my modesty, I ran to the kitchen to answer it.

"Hello?" The voice on the other end was male, strangely familiar, and decidedly urgent. "Is Sky there?"

"This is his wife. May I ask who's calling, please?"

"It's Nicely-Nicely Johnson... you remember, from the mission? Do you happen to know where Nathan Detroit is?"

"In bed, asleep, I would presume," I replied, confused.

"That's what I thought, but Miss Adelaide didn't show up at the Hot Box for rehearsal this morning--my girlfriend works there and she called me about it--and when I called Nathan to ask him, there was no answer. And his door is locked... Listen, could you just get Sky on the phone?"

Placing my hand over the receiver, I called for Sky. After a brief talk with Nicely, Sky promised to be over right away, hung up the phone, and ran back to the bedroom, throwing on his clothes with unprecedented urgency. "Get dressed," he ordered. "We have to go see what's wrong with Nathan."

I rolled my eyes, exasperated. "Sky, I'm sure they just went out somewhere..."

"It's not like Nathan to be awake before 10 on a Saturday. Come on!" He bolted out the door, leaving me no choice but to follow him.

We arrived a few minutes later at Nathan's apartment. Nicely was waiting for us outside, standing apprehensively on the other side of the hallway. "I knocked on the door, but he didn't answer. I'm afraid something happened to him..."

Sky raised his hand and knocked three times on the door. "Nathan! Are you in there?"

No answer. He pounded the door with all his might. "Nathan! Answer the door!"

There was a faint stirring of something inside, and then a soft, pained moan. "Who is it?"

"It's Sky! Nathan, is that you? Open the door!"

Some shuffling and gasping noises were heard, and in a few moments the door swung open, revealing Nathan slumped face-first on the floor. A long, tapered streak of blood from the center of the room to the door indicated he had to have been crawling his way across the room for quite some time. His face was badly bruised, and his breathing was quick and shallow as though he were still in immense pain.

Before Africa this would have rendered me immobile, but now I immediately dropped to my knees, stilled my shaking hands, and gently lifted his shoulder and pulled back his shirt to look at the wound. There was too much blood to tell immediately what had happened, but I could discern an awful bloody wound across his left shoulder. From the sheer size of it, he had to have been shot. I opened my mouth, but words didn't come; I was too shocked.

"Nicely, call an ambulance," Sky ordered from behind me. When Nicely didn't move, he barked harshly, "Go!"

Nicely ran into the apartment to find a phone. Sky knelt beside me, examining the wound and wiping away some of the blood with his handkerchief, though more of it welled up almost immediately. "Nathan, what happened?" To me he remarked, "Shotgun. Big one, by the looks of it."

"Son of a bitch..." Nathan muttered, his head sinking down as he lost the strength to keep it upright.

"Just relax and tell us who did this," Sky encouraged him.

When he spoke, it was a gasping staccato, and he winced at every breath. "Damn son of a bitch broke into my house and took my wife. I tried to protect her, but I... he hit me a couple of times in the jaw and fired a few shots into my chest. Then I passed out..."

"Shh," Sky whispered, looking at me helplessly. In my state of shock I pressed the heel of my hand down on his shoulder in some desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, thinking too late that this would be painful for him and that there was little, if anything, I could do for him now.

Despite the blunt force on his wound, Nathan only twitched a bit in response. His voice was growing weaker. "...and the next thing I remember is you pounding on the door and yelling. I don't remember getting from there to the door. I remember thinking that maybe I could staunch the bleeding with a towel, but I couldn't make it to the bathroom... and I couldn't get to the phone, because it's way up on the table.."

"That's enough," Sky soothed again. Though I kept my hand against Nathan's shoulder, I felt sick and dizzy now; not only from the sight, but from the thought that someone had broken into a home, half-killed someone I knew, and kidnapped his wife. Hearing of crime rarely shocked me, but I had never had it so close to me, and had certainly never seen a man shot. If it hadn't been for Africa I would have been completely useless.

As I was beginning to waver, I heard footsteps behind me. Sky gently wrapped his arm around my waist and helped me to my feet. "Let's go home," he said.

I looked at my hands, covered in Nathan's blood--blood that had been spilled by an armed criminal who had also stolen his wife. I'd barely passed the doorway when I began vomiting.