Marvin Vanduran had just received the call he had hoped for and just because it hadn’t come from Lucinda was not a reason to ponder. Rollie needed his help on something going down on their movie set and at the same time; he could be with Lucinda and find out just what the hell was up with her. He had put up with her stalling long enough. Sanchez had told him to bite the bullet and just tell Lucinda how much he loved her. Gotti had told him to come in through the back door, win her over with patience. But Rollie! Now there was the advice he had been looking for and Tyler’s words resounded in his ears as he looked at the clock on his desk nearing six in the evening; "Lucinda’s like a kookaburra sitting in a tree…laughing at everyone below her- clip her wings, mate or she’ll fly away, given the chance!"

"Right!" he declared out loud, slamming his hand down on his desk and rising; "Gotweld, you have the COM, I’m outta here!"

Lieutenant Gotweld nodded somewhat dismayed at the eleventh hour decision and his Captain's use of Naval command terms but Vanduran was already striding outside his office, his jacket over his shoulder. He walked past his detectives, his patrolmen and bee-lined for the parking lot. He could make it to Virginia that night on a nine-thirty flight and be with his little kookaburra by twelve.

Angie was coughing at dinner that night, her lungs still reactive to the thick smoke she had inhaled at Eventyn that morning. She and Rollie had decided to play the whole plan very low keyed for the time being but it was hard after the trying day they had both had. Eventyn Plantation had serious damage to the third floor and Gary Sanderlin was extremely dismayed with the setback to production and filming there but at the same time, the invited news crews had hyped the story about a haunted movie shoot and strange mishaps into national news coverage. Stu Westburn was busy with Rollie’s initial plans of pulling all of his equipment out of the location sites as well as some alterations with the programming aspect related to the jasper chip.

"You okay?" Rollie asked, touching her hand across the table as she looked up, putting her napkin to her mouth.

"Oh, jeez, this stuff is still in here! Why aren’t you coughing?" she managed to get out before succumbing to another dry coughing spell.

"Guess it was those teenage smoking years…I dunno…but maybe you should get checked out, sweetie."

"If it keeps up, I will…" she replied and coughed again, grabbing her water and trying to suppress the urge to cough again.

"Tyler!"

Rollie looked up at the call of his name. It was Sanderlin, with some sort of suit guy, a clipboard in his hand.

"Gary! Can’t I enjoy a little dinner before getting back to work?" Rollie complained, frowning. Looking around the makeshift catering tent, he noticed that there were about six similarly dressed men with clipboards taking information from crew and cast.

"Can it, Tyler! Answer the insurance agent’s questions and both of you report to the emergency room for blood work. I don’t want workmens' compensation issues coming up a year from now. We are fully insured and I want every single person on this movie to report as ordered," Sanderlin snapped as he left their table.

As the insurance agent began his list of questions, he had already placed a green armband around Angie’s wrist and was snapping Rollie’s on his wrist as well. They would be taken down in vans to the emergency room for Carbon Monoxide testing- every last person on the set that day. The only laughable thing that Rollie could see was that every bloody newsperson that had been there would also have to undergo the gauntlet as well. At least, it would make the evening go better watching them all have to be subjected to testing as well.

After dinner, they were herded into groups, all green bands in one van, orange in another and so on depending on their location to the fire. Angie waved at Lucinda as the hyper actress grasped John Grant’s hand and they entered the orange band van together.

"I wonder if they were, uh- together when the fire broke out?" Angie asked, somewhat sarcastically to Rollie as they sat beside each other in the van as it pulled away from the parking lot. They had all been moved off of Eventyn earlier that day to the Chickahominy location shot from the first day of shooting.

"Could be…but I doubt what you’re thinking! I think we were the only two involved in some unrelated working conditions when the fire broke out," Rollie answered, grinning slightly as he winked at her.

"Oh God! I am wondering what Mrs. Gallagher is going to say when we tell her we will be late tonight?" Angie said, with a sigh as she shook her head.

"She was fine with it, she already knew about the fire, strangely enough…" Rollie replied, "guess she saw it on the midday news…"

"I want to get my hands on Judd Tolsen so bad!" Angie said suddenly, gritting her teeth. The fact that she had been right about him from the get-go, her ‘gut-feeling’ about him was little comfort as she thought how much he must have enjoyed his fine performance. She still was not fully comfortable with Stu but had some nagging embarrassment about how she had cursed at him that day after finding out his role in all of this. Would she ever be able to trust him? Rollie seemed to be able to put it behind him, could she?

"Oh, stand in line, baby!" Rollie told her as he hugged her, her coughing jag starting again.

Rollie strolled out of the exam room in the ER over to the waiting area set up for the movie crew and cast. He was holding his arm, making a face as he came over and joined Angie, busily using the inhaler that had been given to her by the physician who had examined her.

"Ah, did she hurt you?" Angie asked, smiling as Rollie kept touching the pressure Band-Aid that had been applied.

"Nah, I’m a man of steel!" Rollie replied, making a fist.

"Mr. Tyler? You forgot your sucker…" a nurse said, approaching him and holding a half eaten sucker on a stick in her hand.

"Thanks," he replied, sheepishly as Angie put her hand to her mouth, suppressing her giggle. Looking around the room of iron men, she noted quite a few were still in the throes of their candy awards of valor.

"Hey guys, what about all of this!" Lucinda cried out, giggling as she came up to them, touched her Band-Aid and then looked back to John Grant who was busily on the phone, deep in concentration.

"I’d say, stay tuned because I think your business is more cool right now," Rollie replied as a familiar face poked his head up over the sea of roaming people in the Medical College of Virginia ER that night.

Lucinda’s eyes followed the direction of Rollie’s and she literally made a choking sound as Angie looked up, seeing the object of her reaction….Marvin Vanduran was making his way through the crowd, taking no prisoners.

"How, why, uh…what are you doing here?" she finally stuttered out, as he reached the three of them and stood, exasperated in front of them.

"My God, it was on the news in the airport and then, look at you! LOOK at you!" he replied and then pulled her to him, hugging her tightly.

"Phase one…" Rollie told Angie, in a whisper with a smile as they pulled up stakes and moved to another section of the holding area. If Vanduran played his cards right, Lucinda would be speechless for some time to come.

By one in the morning, almost everyone had gone home, released. Rollie and Angie still sat in the room, Lucinda and Vanduran having left some fifteen minutes earlier.

"What the bloody hell is taking so long with us!" Rollie asked out loud and began his pace again as Angie stood up and walked back up to the nursing station for the umpteenth time. She came back, shrugging her shoulders as Rollie let out his breath and suddenly decided that they were bolting.

"Medical science be hanged!" he said, under his breath. He had things to set up, plans to form!

As he grabbed Angie’s hand and started for the exit, a doctor stepped in front of him, blocking the way.

"Mr. Tyler, Mrs. Tyler?" he asked, firmly.

They both nodded. No one else had been notified by a doctor, they were just tapped on the shoulder by the nurse and told they could leave.

"Come with me into exam two," he told them, turning around without another word.

They followed, mystified and humble now, sitting down beside each other as the doctor pulled up their charts and then sat in a chair in front of them. At this time, a second person entered the room. From what Rollie could make out from the badge, it was a Joe Tanner from ‘CD Department’.

"I’m Doctor Balken. We’ve looked at your blood test results and you both are in the safe level for Carbon Monoxide in your blood system."

Angie blew a sigh of relief as Rollie frowned. Why the show of medical force for a negative test?

"However, and I must stress that this is all confidential as per state law, I wish to inform you that I have brought in Mr. Tanner from Chemical Dependency to talk with you about your illicit drug use. Especially, in light of Mrs. Tyler’s pregnancy- you must understand, folks…Mescaline is serious trouble. I know you movie people think you get creative on this stuff but it can really do some damage to a growing fetus."

Dr. Balken’s words were hitting them both like the proverbial ton of bricks.

"Pregnant?" Angie asked, her eyes wide open in shock.

"Mescaline?" Rollie asked, flabbergasted.

The cab dropped them off at the Jefferson around two in the morning. They had not spoken in the car. They had listened to the CD counselor, protesting their innocence but the proof was in the doctor's hands- the lab results confirmed Mescaline in their blood system, a level that verified an ingestion twenty-four hours or less.

Rollie and Angie took the elevator in stunned silence, only looking at each other when the door slammed shut and Angie began to shake;

"My God, Rollie….we’ve been drugged! All those weird things I saw this morning, and you! Who would do this?"

"Bloody Sanderlin and his lot, that's who! Couldn’t just leave it at Stu’s ghost work, had to go with some personal experiences, real 'life' stuff to feed the media. I’m going to kill him, that bloody son of a bitch!"

Angie looked up at him, his face masked in rage as she suddenly took his clenched fist that had just hammered the door of the moving elevator and rested it against her abdomen.

"Rollie? I can’t be pregnant…it’s a mistake, it has to be. I don’t have any feelings like I am pregnant…" she protested, her mind preoccupied with her own condition.

"Are you scared?" he asked, softly then, knowing she had kept most of her feelings about the blighted ovum experience inside, a place that he had never been able to reach since it had happened. His fury was gone, replaced with his overwhelming love for her and he suddenly pulled her to him, hugging her tightly.

"Yes…." She answered, her lips near his ear.

Mrs. Gallagher was asleep with Aidan in the adjoining suite when they entered and checked on him. Quietly, without speaking, they undressed and went to bed, holding each other as they thought about the horrific events of the passing day.

Rollie fell asleep finally, his last conscious thoughts of a new child, one that he would be there for the entire pregnancy…to share in all the experiences that he had missed with Aidan. He banished all thoughts of Mescaline doping for the time being…he would begin the dreaming with hope.

Angie fell asleep finally, her last conscious thoughts of an empty womb, a mistake of genetic chemistry and strangely then; the sudden image of a face, the comforting image of Siobhan O’Bralley and she drifted off.