From the Shadows

Chapter Eleven

"You were told to run away, soak the place and light the flame, pay the price for your betrayal, your betrayal. I was told to stay away, those two words I can't obey, pay the price for your betrayal, your betrayal." Bullet for my Valentine- 'Your Betrayal'.

JJ immediately knew that she had crossed a line that she couldn't take back, especially with a man who has an eidetic memory. Her stomach knotted at the sight before her. Spencer was visibly simmering, an active volcano ready to erupt at any given moment. His hazel eyes burned with a raging fire. She had barely stopped to consider what she was about to say, or the consequences. But as she watched the shaking, furious man on the floor, she realised then the grave error that she had made. Spencer had half sat up, his left arm barely able to prop him up, his eyes fixed on JJ as he breathed heavily to try and contain the swell of rage in his chest.

"Spence..."

""Get... Out..." responded Spencer breathlessly, his voice hoarse from the effort to contain his anger.

"Please, Spence. I didn't-"

"I said... Get... Out..."

"Spence, I'm-"

"I said... GET OUT!" roared Spencer, spit flying from his mouth. His eyes were wild and a vein bulged in his neck. JJ's mouth bobbed. She couldn't find any words, as though her brain had turned to mush. There was almost an audible growl emanating from Spencer's throat. His shaggy hair hung over his face.

JJ slowly came to her feet and backed up. Spencer was sweating profusely and his eyes were glazed over with agony as he tried to fight past his braced knee and broken wrist to drag himself to his feet. JJ's fear was quickly abated as she noticed Spencer's eyes roll back into his head as he slumped to the floor. JJ knelt down next to Spencer and cautiously pressed two fingers just to the side of his Adam's apple, relieved to feel a strong pulse. Her best friend had simply passed out, undoubtedly from pain and stress. She gently tapped him on the cheek to try and rouse him.

"Hmm," mumbled Spencer, his eyes fluttering as he returned to consciousness.

"Spence, I-" JJ quickly closed her mouth. She reached up and pressed her palm into the orange button on the wall. Spencer had not yet returned to the present so she used the opportunity to leave, "I'm sorry," whispered JJ as she dragged her jacket from the back of the chair and darted from the room.

A pair of nurses slid past JJ into the room and crouched down beside Spencer who was sprawled, panting on the cold, tiled floor.

"Dr Reid? Are you okay?" Spencer let out a low moan, "Let's get you up." Arms hooked underneath Spencer's armpits and eased him up onto trembling legs. Agony shot through Spencer's knee, causing him to gasp and collapse against the nurses.

"Whoa, easy, cowboy. Come on." Spencer clung to the nurses as though his life depended on them as he was hoisted back up onto his feet. His breaths came quick and fast as he was guided back to the bed. One nurse turned his upper body whilst the other gently lifted his legs so that he was lying down. The male nurse sat next to the bed and eyed Spencer with a mixture of concern.

"What were you doing down there?"

"Had to... Get away..."

"From what?" The female nurse busied herself reconnecting the EKG wires and tucking the oxygen cannula under his nose, hooking it around his ears and adjusting it under his chin. The male nurse wrapped the blood pressure cuff back around Spencer's upper arm and clipped the oxygen saturations machine on the tip of a long, cold finger. Spencer remained silent, staring at the ceiling.

"What did you have to get away from?" asked the male nurse again who taped some gauze to the bleeding wound on the back of Spencer's hand.

"Everyone." The male nurse nodded in silent understanding.

"Okay. Well, it might do you some good to talk to someone. First, I need to put you a new cannula in and get the antibiotics running again. It's important." The nurse was interrupted by the presence of another woman in the room. She was a small Asian woman with kind, sparkling eyes. She frowned at Spencer. Spencer groaned and rolled his eyes. The male nurse slid a new cannula into the side of his wrist, eliciting a hiss from the man in the bed, then secured it with dressing tape.

"What happened here, Dr Reid?" she asked, collecting the clipboard from the end of the bed.

"Had to get away from everyone."

"Okay. Well, I'm Dr Lee. I need to change your antibiotics. The swab from the bite wound to your neck was positive for Eikenella corrodens and Staphylococcus aureus-"

"Staph aureus is isolated in up to thirty percent of infected human bite wounds and is associated with some of the most severe infections. Similarly, E corrodens is isolated in thirty percent of human bites, but is associated with chronic infections and the formation of abscesses," rambled Spencer. Dr Lee's eyebrows shot up into her hair. Spencer looked at her. In fact, he stared at her. His hazel eyes examined every part of her face, profiling immediately kicking in, "There's something else, isn't there?" With a wave of her hand, the nurses cleared out the room. Dr Lee perched on the stool recently vacated by the nurse.

"Dr Reid. As you know, we have had to run a wide range of tests on you to check for infectious diseases. You came back negative for HIV, hepatitis C, herpes simplex, syphilis, tuberculosis and actinomycosis. We have renewed your tetanus too." Spencer swallowed the lump forming in his throat.

"You didn't say hepatitis B."

"I'm afraid you have hepatitis B. At the moment, you are asymptomatic. You could develop liver injury such as cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma further down the line. It's likely that you'll develop a low grade fever, jaundice and hepatomegaly. We're going to prescribe you a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor to treat the infection. Your attacker also caused some mild damage to the great auricular nerve but this won't have any long lasting effects." Spencer laughed darkly.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better? I have become part of the one third of the global population to have this infection. All because no one believed me when I said I was being stalked."

"Dr Reid, this is manageable."

"But it should never have happened!" yelled Spencer as he sat bolt upright in the bed and glared at the petite woman next to him. He groaned and dropped back into his pillows, grasping his head in his hands.

"Would you like something for the headache?"

"No," responded Spencer through clenched teeth, "Just leave me alone... Please." Spencer's voice cracked at the last word as tears spilled from his eyes that were tightly pressed shut. His body shuddered with wracked sobs. Dr Lee gave the distraught man a sad smile as she eased herself from the stool to go and consult the pharmacy to order and prescribe the required antivirals and antibiotics.

NB: hepatomegaly is an enlarged liver. Actinomycosis is rare but very serious type of bacterial infection. Hepatocellular carcinoma is a cancer of the liver.