The Wake-Up Call

AN: Read this fic through right to the end before you judge it. I consider this my attempt at a festive fic. Call me weird. Anyway, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Don't own the characters, not making any money, blah, blah, blah...

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She awoke because the phone was ringing. Muzzy and confused, Calleigh struggled out of tangled blankets and fumbled blindly for the source of the noise by her bedside.

"Hello?" She frowned, still half asleep, feeling very, very drowsy. She was so warm…

"Calleigh," Tim's voice, firm and clear on the other end, "you gotta get down here right now."

"What…? Why?" Calleigh frowned, yawned, rubbed her eyes. Damn, she did not want to get out of bed.

"Triple homicide down town," Tim told her, grimly, "we need all hands on deck. This is huge, Calleigh. You need to get up right now."

"I'm tired…" Again, Calleigh fought the urge to collapse back into her sheets. It was far too early to be up.

"Calleigh…" Tim allowed a chuckle to creep into his voice, "come on, you have to get up. What happened to the humming bird on six cups of coffee?"

"She hasn't had her six cups yet," Calleigh muttered, reluctantly pushing her duvet aside and managing to get into a more upright position.

"Well you can get some once you're up," Tim told her, "now get out of bed and get down here, you understand? Are you up?"

"I'm up, I'm up…" Calleigh swung her feet round to touch the carpet, which also felt cosy and inviting… Sweet Lord, she desperately needed caffeine if she was half as asleep as she was fairly sure she was.

"Don't go back to sleep," Tim warned, from the phone.

"I wont…" Slowly, Calleigh stood and stretched, feeling a little disorientated.

"Promise me, Calleigh," Tim suddenly sounded serious, "promise me you wont go back to sleep. They need you down there."

"Okay, okay, promise…" Calleigh mumbled, digging out her shoes, already swapping her pyjama bottoms for a pair of sweat pants. It was about half five in the morning – she doubted anyone would be looking their best, let alone care if she wasn't quite as sharply dressed as she normally was.

"You good to go?" Tim asked, "don't forget to let your cat out."

"Since when did you become concerned for the welfare of my cat?" Calleigh asked, bemused, then suddenly felt the need to choke. She bent double, over taken by the unexpected coughing fit.

"Calleigh?" Tim sounded alarmed, "Calleigh, you okay?"

"Sure," Calleigh managed, "I think I'm coming down with something. There's a chest cold going round at the moment."

"Yeah," Tim did not sound reassured, "look, just hurry up and get down here, okay? We're over run."

"I'm coming…" Calleigh sighed, "I'm putting the phone down, okay? I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Good."

"And I wont forget my cat."

"Very good. You going?"

"I'm going, okay? See you there."

Calleigh put the phone down, rubbing her eyes, which were still stinging from the coughing fit. Her nose was beginning to run too, and she had an odd, bunged up feeling in her chest. Definitely coming down with something. Making a mental note to get some cough medicine while she was out, she got out of her room, and headed downstairs, still feeling too sleepy for her own good. She could pick up coffee on her way there… oh, the glamorous life of a CSI… She moaned softly as she stubbed her toe on the way to the kitchen, finding Victoria, her white long-haired Burmese, huddled beneath the table.

"Come on, sweetheart," Calleigh yawned again, frowning at how hot it was. Had her air conditioner finally given out?

Victoria didn't put up much of a fight as she scooped up cat, work bag (stored near the door for emergencies) and car keys, and walked out of the house.

She had barely placed Victoria down on the garden path before a fireman grabbed her and yanked her back, just in time to avoid a ball of roaring hot flame as it came crashing down off the roof of her apartment block.

They told her, later, thatthe fire had begun in the neighbour's apartment, the one two above her own. No one was quite sure how it started, though a little CSI-type sleuthing led to the fairly inevitable conclusion that the husband had passed out in bed with a lit cigarette. The fire killed him, his wife and their teenaged son. None of them had woken up. They said it was a miracle that Calleigh had – by the time they'd been alerted to the fire, the apartment above hers had been on the verge of collapse, and certainly would have come down on top of her, cat and all. Even if it hadn't, the smoke inhalation would have killed her had she slept much longer.

"You are one very, very lucky woman," the chief fireman had told her. "Much longer, you would have been done for."

"What woke you up?" Ryan sat down beside her in the open ambulance door, later that morning.

Calleigh glanced at him briefly, accepting the coffee he offered, before going back to staring up at the clear December sky. "Phone call," she muttered, and tried to push away the vague, disturbing memory of who it had been from.

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AN: Okay, so not particularly festive. But... I don't know. Kind of... in that sort of direction... alright, alright, my muse needs her body clock reset- I should have written this one round Hallowean, I know. This probably explains why most of my Christmas fics tend to get written in July... Still, did I spook you out just a little? Did you guess? How long before you worked it out, or didn't you? Hehe! This is fun! And there are two days left to Christmas! Whooo!