The After

Chapter 1

Thud. Rustling. Another thud sounded, followed closely by an exasperated groan and frustrated ramblings of "Motherf-" and "God damn it!" The dark wooden apartment door swung open and crashed against the small unit behind it, allowing only the orange stream of light from the street lamps to filter into the hall. Dr Spencer Reid was fighting a losing battle against a stack of papers he cradled under his left arm, his take out cup of coffee and his keys. A chunk of the papers had escaped his desperate grasp and were scattered around his feet. Spencer quickly glanced around to make sure no one was around to watch the calamity. With his keys nestled into the lock of his apartment door, Spencer set his cup down on the floor and gathered up the runaway papers back under his arm with the rest. Using his hip and leg to hold the door open, he picked his coffee back up and darted to his coffee table which was smeared with coffee stains. Spencer set the stack of papers and his cup down, then retrieved his keys from the lock, dropping them into the bowl on the unit the door had crashed into, and gently closed the door behind him

Spencer stood as still as a statue in his hall, his head tilted back, allowing his dark brown curls to brush his blazer collar. He closed his eyes, hands limp at both sides, and let out a long sigh. He enjoyed teaching, that much was for certain, but it was days like this one where he cursed the mandated thirty days off for every hundred in the field. Sometimes talking down an unsub was easier than teaching profiling to a group of people who simply stared back at him, mouths agape. Spencer found it difficult keeping in contact with his team when he was teaching, especially if they were on a case and he was to spend a night on his sofa with a pile of assignment papers to mark. The team had quietened somewhat in the wake of Penelope Garcia's departure to work in the Silicon Valley. Spencer sighed again and tilted his head forward. He brought his palm to his right eye as pressure began to form. His headaches had returned with a vengeance following his intracranial bleed, and he had a new issue to add to it- seizures.

Spencer's knee bounced as he anxiously tapped his foot against the floor. His palms were slippery with sweat as he clasped them between his parted knees, shaggy hair hanging around his face. An Asian man in a white coat exited a room ahead of Spencer and stopped in front of the nervous agent, a clipboard in his hands.

"Dr Reid?" asked the man. Spencer's head shot up and he came to his feet, "Please come in." Spencer swallowed hard and nodded, following the doctor into the room and closing the door behind him. He dropped heavily into the seat next to the doctor's desk. Spencer clasped his hands again as if he were trying to cling on to something.

"We have the results of your EEG, Dr Reid. It showed seizure activity in the temporal lobe where you had the intracranial haemorrhage. MRI scans of your brain show that the haemorrhage is being absorbed back into the brain, which is good-" Spencer quickly cut him off.

"So, you're telling me that I have epilepsy?" The doctor nodded.

"I'm afraid so. But with medication we can control the seizures and you should be able to continue your job at the BAU."

"How will I know what will bring one on? What should I tell my team?" The doctor cleared his throat as he slid a prescription pad across his desk and retrieved a pen from his jacket breast pocket.

"Your seizure history suggests that tiredness and extreme levels of stress bring them on." Spencer snorted derisively, "My recommendation, Dr Reid, is that you aim for eight hours sleep per night, reduce your caffeine intake and try to find ways to manage your stress. I will give you a prescription for Carbamazepine. You need to take it twice a day. I'm also going to give you some buccal Midazolam for prolonged seizures. I will give you a medical alert bracelet and card to keep in your wallet to give first aid advice." Spencer's mouth bobbed, words lost in his parched throat. It was as if all of the moisture in his mouth had been drained away. The doctor handed him a slip of paper with his prescription scrawled on before digging through his top desk drawer and presenting him with a silver bracelet and a small folded card. Spencer had millions of questions racing around his brain but none of them would surface.

"I'll review you in one month's time to see how you're managing your medication." Spencer nodded and slowly pushed up to his feet, his bracelet, prescription and first aid card tightly grasped in his sweaty palms.

Spencer's eyes snapped open and he fumbled in his blazer pocket. He slid an orange cylindrical object out of his pocket and stared at the label. Twisting the white cap off the object, he tipped two white tablets into his palm, the tube grasped between his fingers. He hastily threw the tablets into his mouth, resealed the tube and stepped forward until he approached the coffee table. He set the tube down and retrieved his coffee. Spencer took a long gulp to wash away the tablets, the bitter taste on his tongue and his woes. He knew that he would have to manage his headache sooner or later as he came to find that the headache was usually a warning sign that a seizure was to come. Spencer paced into the bathroom and threw open the doors to the medicine cabinet above the wash basin.

"Shit," he cursed as he found he was out of Tylenol. He slammed the doors shut again and grasped his head with both hands, hair wrapped around his long thin fingers. The pressure behind his eyes felt like his head was going to burst open at any moment. Spencer took his hands away, head spinning and hair tangled. Very quickly, his tiled bathroom floor came rushing up towards him...