This if my first posting to FKFIC, just assume my knees are
shaking and my throat is dry.  And let's all hope that
it comes out formatted right <g>.

This is a little vignette in the day...er night of
Natalie Lambert and takes place shortly after Fever.
And yes, it's taken me all this time to get it right,
but now that I've got the brain lubricated, so to speak,
hopefully all the other stuff in there will land on
virtual paper a lot faster.

Thanks to Kayleen Woolf and Liza Lloyd for beta reading,
and to everybody at the Provo party last week for their
encouragement.

Feel free to send comments, virtual bricks or chocolate
to delggren@loftworks.com.

To James Parriott et al: Thanks for letting me play in your
sandbox, it was fun.

************************************************************

Unexpected Business

It was quiet in the lab, but then 4 a.m often was.  Most people
quit causing havoc around 2 or 3 a.m., generally speaking.  And
that meant Natalie could catch up on her paperwork.  Somehow she
had fallen behind (could it be the recent increase in bodies?)
and her desk was adrift in paper work.  She sighed and dug in and
she was soon absorbed in her work.

Natalie checked her facts once more, looked at the cell
sample through the microscope, and then sent her chair scooting
across the floor to her desk. The chair careened wildly across
the room, and only the well-placed grab at her desk stopped her
from running into the wall. She grinned.  It was silly, but it
made her feel like she was two again and not a medical examiner
hip deep in bodies.

Her moment of juvenile deliquency over, she got back to work.
This data was needed by the 27th precint ASAP.  Natalie pulled up
the proper form and began entering the data.  She was almost done
when she heard the door snick softly into place.  Startled she
looked up.

He stood hesitantly by the door, looking like a shadow would scare
him, and yet... she wasn't sure she wanted be here alone with him.
Something about him was--familiar.  He was dressed all in black.
Black coat, black chinos, black shirt, black shoes.  Black, black,
black.  It definitely reminded her of something.  Nick wore black,
Vachon wore black, LaCroix wore...

"Are you Dr. Lambert?" he asked nervously.

Natalie shifted back in her chair thinking *take control, Nat*.
"Yes.  I'm Dr. Lambert, what can I do for you?"

He opened his mouth, and then shut it.  His green eyes darted
around the room.  His hands clenched into fists  Then he
deliberately opened them and hesitantly spoke.

"They say that you are the one who saved the...community, that
you are a doctor for the...."  He stopped and his eyes finally
met Natalie's.  He blurted out "I hear you are a good friend of
Nick Knight."  She felt her heart lurch.  But she wasn't about to
panic.  If she could stand up to LaCroix, surely she could hear
out a rather nervous looking vampire.  Silence built up thickly
in the room.

"Yes", Natalie finally admitted, "Nick is my friend.  And because
of him, I recently have had some ... unique patients."  She was
darned if she was going to the say the word before he did, just
in case this was not what it seemed.

He looked at her.  She looked at him.  Silence in the room
thickened. Then suddenly he was standing next to her chair,
making Natalie gasp.

"Sorry," he said, "I don't mean to scare you, but I really hope
you can help me.  I got caught in some demolition work last night,
and I haven't been able to get all of the splinters out."
He smiled sheepishly at her.  "My friends tried, but they're
small splinters, and well, we don't have the right equipment.
I was hoping you could get them out."

With that finally off his chest he took off his coat to reveal a
shirt covered with blood from small lesions caused by his
encounter with what looked like a lot of flying wood.

Natalie took a deep breath.  Then another.  She got up, walked
over to the examining table and indicated he sit on it.  Silently
she got out her tools.  She noticed that her hands weren't shaking
and was impressed because everything on the inside was feeling
very quivery.   There were too many vampires in her life.
What was she anyway?  Vampire Central First Aid?  She crossed to
the door and quietly locked it.

"Let's get that shirt off and take a look."  Natalie said.

Twenty minutes later, she pulled the last sliver from her
very patient undead patient. "I think that does it.  You should
heal nicely now.  Do you feel any other irritation?" she asked.

"No, Doctor.  Thank you."  He got off the table with a graceful
movement barely visible to her eye and slipped his shirt on while
she unlocked the door.

She looked at him and said, "I think you should understand that
I'm not hanging out a shingle to become the Doctor for *the*
community.  I don't think that it's exactly safe for you and
your *friends* to drop in for treatment.  And it's not exactly
safe for me either.  If it's serious, call Nick and he'll arrange
things."

"I understand," he said, "and I'll pass that on."  He hesitated
for a moment and then, looking up, his piercing green eyes met
her eyes  once again.  "Thank you, you will not be forgotten
for your service."  A sudden rush of wind was all that was
left to tell her he'd been there.

She sat down in her chair and looked at the clock.  It was 4:35.
Her shift was over.  Waaay over. She sat there and reflected on
her growing undead clientele.  A small smile crossed her face.
*Ha, say what they would about working on the dead, there were
some interesting rewards.  Bet nobody else in the morgue had
walking undead patients, or friends, or...* she shied away from
that thought.

Speaking of Nick, she wondered where he was.  Wasn't he
supposed to give her a ride home?  Damn car, always in the
shop.  The last one had been so reliable, but this one... Well
that's the way it went, find a good car, and somebody was
bound to blow it up.

The sound of the door opening registered in her brain.  She
looked up to find Nick smiling at her from the door.  "Hi Nat,
sorry I'm late, we had some trouble arresting a suspect.
Ready to go?"

"Yup, think I've definitely had enough for now."  With that
she switched off her terminal, got up and walked past him to
the coat rack.

He watched her, feeling his spirits lift as they always did
whenever he was around her.

"Nick, you'll never believe what happened tonight," she said as
she got her coat.  She switched off the light and as the door
swung shut behind them, she started to tell him about her newest
patient.  The look on his face was priceless.

The End