Shouldn't have pissed off that tsi-noo demon this morning.

Shouldn't have gone drinking last night, either. His head was hurting; it felt a bit like hell had cracked open and decided to party, courtesy of John Constantine.

And shouldn't have chased through that red light five seconds ago. Almost got hit by that fuckin' Mini. Christ, John, you're being a bit reckless, aren't you?

Just keep running.

Since we're peddling regrets, might as well go for the big one: shouldn't have smoked twenty cigarettes a day. Sometimes thirty. Can't count sometimes. His lungs were tight and struggling (just keep running) and at thirty-nine years old, and not for the first time, John found himself wondering how the fuck he'd ended up charging down a crowded London street, brown trenchcoat flapping, cars screeching on brakes and horns, and pedestrians shouting obscenities after him. While the tsi-noo fluttered ahead, its wings cramped and flapping invisibly over today's crowd of bone-headed, ignorant wankers.

Just keep running.

He could simply let it get away. Or he could chase it down, which happened to be John's choice today: he'd be damned (har, har) if he let it get away to gnaw on some poor sod's soul. Especially since it'd just finished with Mikey. So he kept running, one foot in front of the other, slopping through yesterday's puddles and getting drenched with cityshit and feeling the pulse racing through his head. The bastard was on the run; it didn't want to face him in the open, surrounded by London's hale and healthy.

While John ran, his mind ran too. And it reached its own unpleasant realisation at around the exact same time that the demon did: there was a hospital on this block. Filled with nasty reeking dying weak people. Perfect for the thing to feast on and get its strength back. So John followed it like a bat out of hell in a bad coat, ploughing into the hospital wheezing and out-of-breath. The tsi-noo, on the other hand, swerved into a stairwell and then banked down the hallway.

Pediatrics ward.

Buggerbuggerbugger--

Casey's day, meanwhile, had been nothing short of scintillatingly mind-numbing. Though her cigarette count was far below John's (only five on two cigarette breaks so far, and she still had a good 8 hours left on shift), she was about as ready for the day to be over. Granted, she hadn't been chasing some winged son of a bitch all around the better part of central London, but there were only so many hours you could take in a hospital before it amounted to pretty much the same level of wanting to drink yourself to sleep for the rest of the goddamn year.

Still. There was work to do. She tossed out the cup of tea she'd been choking down (vile stuff they served here; she could feel her own stomach lining being eaten away as she walked), headed back towards Peds. If she had any luck, Eddie would be asleep by now. The kid had been puking blood for two days, and waiting on his meds to kick in every day, despite upping the dosage on his morphine drip to dull the pain, was going to drive Casey up a wall. She couldn't do a damn thing about it, except wait for Dr Wallace to change the diagnosis, or change the prescription. Fat chance. She could tell you there were no less then four guardian angels and one bonafide demon roaming around the ER, but she couldn't do a thing to help a kid's corroding stomach. Well. Just the way the dice landed.

The ward was, on her way down, quiet. Unusually quiet. To be precise, horror-movie quiet. Casey was no stranger to that. Before any of the possibilities could fully form in her head, her feet were already picking up speed, sneakers slapping on the linoleum and scrubs scratching against her skin as she picked up into a dead run. This wouldn't be the first thing she'd encountered in the ward. Oh, no. That--that Thammuz or what-the-fuck-ever he was was always lurking around, and she'd be damned if he was in there with the kids while she wasn't. That asshole was not getting one up on her, no more than he already had.

So, of course, when she burst through the door into her ward and saw the winged, leering, crouching form huddled over the sleeping, prone figure of one Eddie Thomas. One of the little girls mumbled something about wanting some water, and Casey, in a stunning display of maturity, shouted,

"JESUS FUCK."

He'd slowed down while coming up the stairs, and Constantine hated himself for that -- but he laboured his way up, hands dragging on railings, and then he laboured his way down the hallway, just in time to come barrelling in through the swinging ward doors, right on the woman's heels, his shoes skidding on the polished floor. No time to explain. Shit, there never was an easy way to explain this sort of situation. All the times he'd had to talk himself out of rooms he wasn't supposed to be in, with people who didn't have a clue...

... Except for the part where she was staring right at the thing, when normally most other human beings wouldn't be able to. It was all chittering sounds and scuttling edges; it seemed to move even as it stood still. Blurred outlines and noises. John hated these things.

In a split second, he considered asking her if she could actually see it, but the point seemed null and void since the tsi-noo was rearing up from the kid and it looked mighty interested in the two adults who were watching it right back.

"Nasty bugger, inn'e?" John asked, and well, if that didn't sound like cheerfulness on his voice, the merry fucker. "Tell the kids to stay close to the walls, love."

Not exactly the best approach, John, not with a scared shitless telekinetic staring down a demon over one of her kids. With another loud swear--and a reproving gasp from the children, now all awake--one of the windows in the door next to the man's head cracked; it was only with a physical effort of closing eyes and clenching fists did she manage not to let it shatter all over him. A good thing, too. Between the two of them, he looked the only one semi-capable of handling whatever the fuck was going on.

"What the shit is this," she snapped, and though she glared daggers at him in consternation (and, though of course she'd never admit it, fear), she hurried over to one of the beds, half a dozen pre-adolescents staring up at her in surprise and confusion. They certainly couldn't see what she and John were staring at, but Eddie wasn't moving on the bed--Jesus, Eddie wasn't moving, what the hell was she going to do--and their favorite nurse looked like she'd just swallowed the nastiest medicine Dr Wallace had ever given them. And she was swearing. Casey knelt down in a hurry, gave John one last glare for good measure, before gathering up in her arms the two little girls in the beds closest--youngest, no older than 6 and 7--and hissing as kindly as possible to the rest of the children. The--whatever-it-was was clicking and clacking and staring the hack in the trenchcoat down, and it gave her just enough cover to grab the children, tell them one of the Bad Men was here, and her friend in the coat was going to help take care of it, so they needed to stay close to the walls and don't look.

She didn't say anything more. Whatever happened to this guy wasn't her business, as long as he got that thing the hell out of her hospital. Emily tugged at her scrubs and Casey turned to let no less than four little children cling to her waist, crouched down in front of them against the wall, and kept one wary eye behind her. Jesus. She was not prepared for this kind of shit.

No one was, when it happened. John could tell you that ninety percent of today's problems stemmed from being unprepared, and sinceno one was ever properly prepared, ever, the only thing left to do was hone an exquisite ability to improvise when the time came. This? This was one of those times.

But he was glad for her obedience, and especially intrigued about the part where the window had snap-crackled at him, but that could wait. Right now, John busied himself with walking towards Eddie's bed. He kept his eyes locked on the demon, advancing forward before turning to take a few steps backward in the other direction, drawing it away from the Yank nurse with the kids.

Oho. There. Teddy bear.

John reached out and plucked the inoffensive toy from one of the beds, and waggled it in front of him, fingers tight on the plush material. The demon watched. John was cutting a ridiculous scene for any of the children who happened to disobey Casey's command and peer out from behind their fingers; they couldn't see anything, after all. It was just a man capering with a bear. But to the demon, it was a tasty little snack. Nothing quite like the sentimental value and comfort and warmth of a childhood toy to nibble on...

"C'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon," the blond in the coat said, his voice a curious mixture of boredom and insolence. "Still cranky about this morning? C'mon. Bet you're fuckin' starved after Mikey, you. stupid. little..."

Tsi-noos really don't like getting insulted.

In the blink of an eye (specifically: John's and Casey's, since the children's sight didn't quite matter at the moment), it detached itself from the wall and finally, finally, flew right towards him. Capering teddybear-man went down hard, with the weight of something invisible on his back.

Two of the girls screamed at the loud whump, clawing and clutching at Casey's scrubs as if they provided some further protection from the unseen thing. But even Casey herself offered little, arms over their heads but eyes turned to stare, disbelieving, at the man and the demon behind her. She'd been incredulous enough when he'd started wagging the teddy bear around like some kind of bizarre lion tamer on crack, but now--Jesus. And she still couldn't do a damn thing. Say a word and the demon would get distracted, maybe come for her. She didn't give two shits if it tore her apart (well, maybe a shit, but not a big one), but if it laid one slimy, skittering finger on one of her her kids, hell if she wasn't going to come right the fuck back from wherever she ended up, and that just wouldn't be pleasant for anybody. Best to stay pressed against the wall, kids under her arms, mumbling to them the promises she always did whenever Thammuz or some other vaguely malevolent force decided to poke its nasty head into the peds ward. Nothing was going to happen to them. And if Trenchcoat Guy had to go to keep that promise--well. Worse had happened.

But she still watched, unblinking, eyes darting between demon and the brow-beaten guy beneath him, feeling as helpless as ever. Maybe if she could move something, throw something; hell, blow something up if she got scared enough. There was nothing for it now. She had to watch.

John was okay with that. It's what he would've done in her place.

All he needed was time, and that distraction, and to let the winged thing get close enough for him to do some damage -- which happened quickly enough, as it were, with John rolling arms-locked with the creature across the floor of the hospital ward. A bed overturned. But most importantly, he managed to dive one arm into the recesses of his coat, and pull out... what was that? some sort of icicle-looking thing, not quite a dagger, but sharp, and that was what mattered, and he dug it into the demon, prying through ribcages or whatever they had instead of ribcages.

John rolled out of the way and stood up as it started thrashing, its wings convulsing. He watched it closely, chest heaving, and already dusting off his sleeves. No blood this time. Well. That was a relie--

oh fuck

It got up again. It looked mad. But bright side! It was focusing completely on this annoying human pissant who'd decided to get in its way! John had, sort of almost maybe on purpose (at least, later on he'd say it was on purpose) managed to make it forget about Casey and the children entirely.

"Uh, you, y'might want t--"

You didn't have to tell her twice. Or once, really. Casey had already gotten the two littlest ones up in her arms and made a chain of the other four before the words were entirely out of John's mouth. Whatever was going through his head, whatever was about to happen, she didn't even want to know. The bed toppling over, John stabbing something they couldn't see--it didn't take much effort to herd the kids out of the ward, crying and wailing about the Bad Man, the Bad Man was coming for them, Casey help--

"Guys," she said sharply, perhaps too sharply, but there wasn't much to be said for level-headedness when you'd just watched some half-crazed Englishman shoved an icicle-thing into the chest of a demon. It took two more half-shouts to get them quiet, halfway down the hall. A passing nurse gave Casey a look--"What the bloody hell is the matter with you?"--before sniffing self-righteously and walking on her prim way. A loud THUD from the room Casey had just fled from silenced her. Or rather, sent her scurrying in a scared, incredulous fit in the other direction, but at least the smug self-righteousness was silenced. Casey could've almost grinned.

She bent down to the kids, catching her breath and setting the two in her arms down. They clung to her neck and shoulders, and only several moments of peeling off limbs got them to disentangle their arms. "Ok, guys, I need you to do something for me, ok? Ok?" A large amount of sniffing and wiping eyes, but they all, eventually, nodded. Casey gave them her most reassuring smile, pushed matted hair out of their faces. "First of all--first of all we just need to stay calm, all right? It's ok. Ok. And I'm going to...to find one of the other nurses to watch--" There was the distinct sound of a whine starting. Another thud from the vacated room. Shit. Improvise.

Doctor's lounge. Down the hall. They could dock her pay for all she cared, it was the best damn option she could think of right now. She hauled the two up in her arms again, and in a would-be-calm strut, marched the kids round two corners at a speed that nearly tripped up Kevin in the back our times, and shoved them into the lounge before she was even fully inside herself. Another doctor looked up from his case file with all the shock as if the janitor had just come in to change the bin bag, sipped his tea, and said, "Hello, Casey."

She almost collapsed in hysterical gasping laughter right then. Hello Casey indeed. Fuck. And that guy was still in there. Maybe. Hopefully. One of them was, and she'd rather it'd be him.

The first violent thud had been a certain pesky event of the demon tackling John Constantine into another one of the undersized hospital beds, its myriad of limbs (it suddenly seemed like it had too many) pushing and prying for his eyeballs. But the icicle was still there, jutting out of its side, and with the demon so close once more, the man managed to reach forward and give the sharp-edged item a vicious twist. Right into where its heart should be. Was. Used to be. Once upon a time. And as the winged thing went staggering backwards, flapping piteously and trying to make an exit, well....

The second thud was John tackling the demon across the room, accompanied with multitudes of inventive swearing, his momentum carrying them both towards the window. He knew he couldn't duke it out in here -- not properly, at least. But that didn't mean he had to enjoy what came next.

Crash.

By the time the nurse managed to return, the room would be conspicuously empty of both figures. There were just two overturned beds, scattered blankets and pillows, and the chill breeze from a broken window.

"Fucking 'ell." The attending physician scrubbed his hands through his hair, and behind them, Casey could hear the mounting muttered swears of the janitor amidst the shocked and horrified whispers of the Peds staff. The room was indeed empty when she came back, the children safely deposited with another nurse and a tin of cookies in a room clear across the ward, but it might be more problematic now with nothing there to explain it. She had a hunch 'skulking demon beating the shit out of some guy in a trenchcoat' wasn't exactly going to cut it on the damage report. "What in the holy hell happened here?"

Casey paused, took a deep breath. "Somebody broke in."

He stared at her. "Broke in."

"Uh. Yep."

"And took out half the room and a sodding window."

"Um." She nodded, shrugged. The physician was going to rub his head bald if he kept on running his hands through it. Casey heaved a sigh, leaned against the doorframe, and the window she herself had cracked let out a little crick of noise. Remember that guy who nearly died saving you? Oh, yes, him. She slid past the small crowd, tired and shell-shocked, with a vague "Taking my break" mumbled over her shoulder. The attending didn't even notice.

It was goddamn freezing outside, even with a peacoat and scarf, but you couldn't expect much more from London weather. At least it wasn't hailing. Her hands shook a little more than she would have liked as she took out her cigarettes and a lighter, lit up, and wandered (stalked) around the edge of the hospital building to the alley beneath the window of her ward. Or what used to be the window. Some sign, anything, that this fucking guy had managed to live through that--something that'd let her sleep at night, anything, even--

And there he was. Heaped against the wall, all tattered folds and hard lines and splayed legs, smoking a goddamn cigarette. Was he serious?

"Jesus Christ," she said, eloquent as ever. She didn't even seem shocked; just pissed. "What in the fuck... Jesus."

"That's good," he said vaguely, around the crooked Silk Cut between his lips. Already halfway gone. "Don't get all despairin', get mad. Keeps you goin' longer."

There were a few new bruises on him since he'd smashed down hard into the cement, but with the demon -- thankfully -- below him as a sort of infernal cushion. Broke most of the fall, as did its wings. It was gone now. He'd been too tired to move from the alley after that. And when it came to questionable muck, well, it wasn't a half-bad alleyway, after all. Must be due to the hospital. They liked keeping things clean around here. The only problem was the cold, but at least the lit cigarette and familiar quiver of nicotine in his system warmed him up a little. And John had suspected the nurse would nose around eventually.

"So was that a complete an' total new paradigm shift for you, or have y'seen that sort of thing before?"

He sounded tired.

"Believe me, buddy, takes a hell of a lot more than some weirdo with an icicle to scare me." She made it nonchalant, no mention of the giant demon part of it. Not mentioning it made it, for a few moments, less real. And it was possible to process what wasn't quite real. She swore again, taking a knee in front of him and, with all the practicality and firmness that nurses mastered, lifted his chin to examine his face whether he wanted her to or not. "Jesus," again. His question went unanswered--clearly she was handling this better than someone who'd never seen the like; it should be obvious--and she supplied one of her own. "You pull these crazy stunts often?" Slightly less than gentle fingers examined an old cut on his chin. "You could at least try to get these wounds, I dunno, healed before you go off chasing some fucking hell beast."

And then, whether she was welcome or not, she plopped down right there in the alley next to him, and took a long, long drag on her cigarette. And another. After a moment of eyeing his shabby coat, she unwound her scarf and handed it over. "Put this on, Christ. You're probably bleeding internally, but something tells me you're just gonna sit there. So might as well not freeze to death."

John let her examine his face with the traditional medical disinterest; he knew she was certified hospital personnel, after all, and people like that seemed to have a tendency of raising eyebrows around him. As for the man himself? He seemed ambivalent, giving only a lazy shrug of his shoulders at her questions. His body always seemed in a perpetual state of breaking down on him; sometimes he went months without direct confrontations (those months were the best), but sometimes, like this November, bruises and cuts just piled on top of each other. At her small sign of charity, however, he accepted the scarf and gave her his own broken smirk back.

"Didn't mean to wake it up today, but it got one o' me mates." No, amend that. Mikey wasn't exactly a friend. Or else John would be in much, much worse shape right now. "Or a man I knew. Provides me with items t'fuel these crazy stunts."

A thought struck, and he suddenly swore. "An' now all his assets will go to his sister. She hates sellin' to us back here in London. Absolutely brilliant." The man grimaced. His thoughts seemed strangely scattered, and hard to pin down. But eventually he trailed off into silence and the cigarette swung into another corner of his mouth, smoke meandering into the brisk autumn air. He offered a hand to shake.

"John Constantine. Hope they aren't askin' too many inconvenient questions up there."

He nodded towards the window above. On other lips, that sentence might have meant sorry for the inconvenience, I do hope your hospital ward is quite all right. But in John's grizzled, dry tone, it probably had more to do with I hope you didn't tell them I was there.

You couldn't help but grin in the face of sheer bull-headed insanity like that. She had no idea what in the unholy hell John was talking about, but it didn't seem to directly relate to her anyway; she took the offered hand, rough in her soap-dry one, and shook. "Some asshole broke in," she said, eyeing the window a story above with a wry, mock-innocent smile. "Just lucky I got the kids out in time." Another drag on her cigarette as she drew her hand back, a low cough, and then, as an afterthought, "Casey Jones."

A couple puffs later and she was lighting up a fresh fag, one hand offering out the pack of cigarettes as she lit her own. "What the hell was that thing?"

Oh, look! More nicotine! Flicking away his spent cancerstick, John (again, gratefully) accepted a fresh one. Turns out this woman knew the exact way to his heart. Whoudathunkit.

"Tsi-noo demon," he explained, after a ponderous moment. "Dull things. Work offa instinct. Have no hearts o' their own, so it's all hunger an' fight-or-flight an' more hunger plus, mark this, they really bloody well don't like being disrespected. Aren't that many around anymore. Fuckin' stupid of Mikey, really, to find one now."

Then he looked at her. Really looked, blue eyes narrowing slightly to take her in. Blonde. American. And somehow, for some half-cocked reason or another, capable of seeing things she shouldn't. "They're normally invisible to, y'know, the normal everyday peon. I'm guessin' there's more to you than meets the eye."

Which meant she had some sort of ability which might, perhaps, make her useful to him. At some point. One day.

There weren't many people in Casey's world who didn't revolve around nicotine; this was London, after all. She'd quickly learn that people became more companionable when you offered them a smoke. And for her part, it kept would-be jittering hands and a chattering tongue still. Which was also good.

She nodded after his explanation, not really taking it in. It had been a filler question, mostly; she would file away the information, but she had very little reason to think she'd actually use it. God forbid one of those things cropped up in her ward again; even knowing what it was, she'd still accidentally shatter windows and frantically get the kids the hell out of there. Icicle-stabbing--or whatever it was he'd done--just wasn't on the agenda. Still. "Sorry about--Mikey," she said awkwardly. The apology didn't sound quite natural in her mouth, and she moved on quickly, but the sincerity was still there. Sort of.

"Yeah. Well." She shirked his gaze, tapped ash from her cigarette and checked the mouth of the alley to see if any of her colleagues were coming in to ask what the hell was going on. Cops would be coming by soon to check the scene. And she didn't have to meet his eyes that way. Danger, John Constantine, danger. Then again--some woman's delicate sensibilities probably weren't high on his list of things to avoid. "Shit happens. I see stuff. You plow shit out of windows." She crossed her ankles, free hand quashed between her legs to keep it warm. "Shit happens."

John chuckled. "'Plowing shit out of windows' wasn't on the job description twenty years ago. Remind me to read a little fuckin' better next time."

Not that there would be a next time. He was tied to this insane profession hand-and-foot, and he wouldn't have it any other way -- and at least this way, his only regret over losing one Michael Stockard was in not filching the bastard's holy water before he chased his killer down the street. John had lost a salesman, not a friend. (How many of his real friends were left, anyhow? That specific list had been getting smaller and smaller.)

And because he could sense this conversation winding down, with the impending arrival of the Plod and their awkward questions, John dove right into what he needed to know: "You see anythin' useful sometimes, Casey?"

... What? He had to ask. If there was even the slightest remote chance that this American bird could have visions of his looming death, or entities that may or not be involved in the end of the world, he'd want to know. And possibly have her call him. Things like that, he sort of liked knowing.

"Well, seeing shit was never on mine, but they always throw stuff in the fine print." She let out a noise in the back of her throat, half chuckle, half sigh. It was a noncommittal sound of agreement, and she'd learned years ago people took it anyway they would. Which was just as well; it usually kept her from having to say too much else.

His words caught her, stopped smoke in her throat mid-inhale, and she ended up nearly swallowing the cigarette whole in a choking attempt to ascertain just what the hell he was asking. Anything useful? Like anything she saw could be useful! Demons hounding her, possessing animals to follow her home, looming over people in the hospital just to fuck with her head, sidling into her home and watching her sleep, hungry, leering, waiting. The only thing it was useful for was driving her fucking insane. She put out the cigarette in a small patch of black ice, the ash sizzling under her numb fingers as her face scrunched up, involuntarily or not, into a disgusted, irritated grimace.

"I see what's around me," she said after a moment. The words came slowly, and though she looked no less frustrated, her face softened from grimace to pained scowl. No reason to go biting off the head of the guy who'd saved the kids' lives, after all, even if she'd be damned before she went spilling her heart out to him. "The more it effects me, the more I see. Can't see the future or whatever. Only what's going on now." Her hands came up abruptly, pulling hair out or her jacket to start tying it back up into a messy ponytail, as if this were a completely normal conversation under completely normal circumstances. But her movements were jerky, her fingers stiff. It took some time to get the hair tie around the messy blonde mass. "Get it?"

Can't see the future or whatever.

His first thought was: Oh, damn. John could've used a new seer -- the last one scarpered and went off the grid in 2002 to breed pedigree iguanas in Florida. There's just no accounting for taste. But every psychic he knew who could see the future turned out to be a crazy fucker in the end, so maybe it was well enough that she wasn't one. It just sent you off the edge.

So his second thought was Well, that's good.

He said so.

"Got it. That's good: standard ole special Sight. I can't always see 'em at first -- they've got to make 'emselves known to me or summat, but most of them do eventually. They like showing off." Beat. "But I guess you knew that already."

She scoffed again, grinned, reached for her cigarettes and stopped herself halfway, thought better of it. They'd be coming to look for her soon, make sure she was emotionally stable--and more important, mentally. With her records on file, she'd be in mandated therapy sessions for the next three months if she couldn't help it. She may not have been a precog, but she knew that much was in store.

"Yeah. They kind of got a habit of being real cocky shits," she said, all bitter laughter and rolled eyes. Again, with the sublimation. It made handling the wicked, unbelievable truth a much less daunting task. "Then again, I guess I haven't got a really great track record in that department, either."

She paused, flicked a fold in her scrubs idly, suddenly tired. It was not the best sequence of things she'd said so far. She had a pretty lousy track record in that area, too. "Why?"

John shrugged noncommittally. He was good at that. "Just curious. More psychics appear in this town, it's in me best interest to hear about it. Just in case."

He left the rest of that sentence empty; she could fill in the blanks herself, depending on how vivid her imagination was. Her job to do the imagining, not his. Finally, John reached out and ground his fading cigarette into the mottled brick wall, then climbed up from his crumpled pile with a weary sigh, cracking joints and patting down his pockets. Didn't even realise he was doing it. He unwrapped the scarf from his neck and handed it back to the nurse, but not before pressing the last warmth out of it and into his chilled hands.

"Right. Best be on me way." Normally, he'd ask her out for a drink. But it was the afternoon, he was tired, and... jesus, just, there were a lot of reasons.

"Gimme a ring if this sort of thing appears again, though." John did a vague wave around them, indicating the alleyway. "I can handle it. Most o' the time."

Optimist, huh? He didn't even mention telephone numbers. Constantine was easy to find if you started looking. This was both a gift and a curse when it came to his job.

She stood up with him, hands tensed in a practiced way, ready to catch him should he fall. John looked like it could happen at any moment, really; if she was going to see this guy on a regular basis--Jesus, what a thought that was--for whatever reason, she was going to have to relearn all that trust fall shit from way back when.

"Right," she said, as noncommittal as his shrug. There was a moment of goodwill-toward-man after he returned her scarf where she almost pushed it right back at him, but is hands were gone and he looked so damn tired. The cigarettes came out of her pocket instead, and with a lopsided, awkward smile, she tossed the half-empty pack his way. It was something out of a movie, but damned if nicotine wasn't always a good answer. She offered up a small shrug as a 'don't mention it,' and, after a moment of thought, "Thanks. For the--ah." A glance up at the broken window above them. He'd get the point.

"Yeah. I'll call you." Without a phone number. That seemed slightly irrelevant at the moment. "Get going before the cops get here."

She didn't wait for him to leave, or say goodbye, or any of that sort. It wasn't in her nature for one, and she wasn't quite ready for the wall of reality to come crashing back down just yet. She merely wound the scarf back round her face and throat--it smelled not only of her conditioner and spilled coffee, but of Silk Cuts and jackets nearly as broken down as their owners--stashed her lighter in her pocket, and wove her way among the gurneys and ambulances back into the E.R. and upstairs.

Jesus. She still wasn't even sure what had happened.