Neither he, nor his two companions, mentioned the possibility of an
imminent assassination attempt, as none of them thought their patient
needed the added burden of worrying about a possible hit on the eve of
major surgery. So they had agreed to impart that bit of news once
'Val' was released from the recovery room after surgery.

Skinner was actually heartened by Krycek's appearance. In the four
weeks they had spent apart he had lost the cast, and the many purple
bruises and scabs and red weals that had disfigured him. Pink and
brown scars striped his flesh where the wounds had been, but the
deepest bruises before were a mere jaundiced yellow and splotchy
green. What was odd was the strange distension of Krycek's abdomen,
where the liver was bloating the surrounding skin with infection,
juxtaposed to the obvious loss of weight one week on clear fluids had
carved into his flesh. It made him look like one of those starving
children in Africa.

The trio stayed with Krycek until the nurses came to wheel him into
the operating room. Then Wong posted himself at the door of the OR, to
insure no interlopers crashed the procedure, while Inspector Lloyd
returned to work. Walter settled into the waiting room with his
laptop, doing what work he could.

Krycek came out of the operation in good shape, or so it seemed, and
Skinner quickly fell back into his routine of reading and
puzzle-solving between guard sessions. But, four days after the
operation, Krycek's bowels were still refusing to function properly,
the predominant symptom of which was Alex's inability to pass gas.

When Skinner was informed that Mr. Tucci would not be discharged from
the hospital, as planned, because he was unable to fart, he burst out
laughing.

Krycek was not amused, especially when his physicians launched their
program to stimulate his bowels back to proper functioning and one of
their sallies: a can of soda, boiled through him like acid --and stuck
somewhere along his alimentary canal.

It was like suffering the bends. He couldn't sit up or stand without
doubling over in pain. They assured him the carbonation would fizzle
out on its own, but they didn't say *when,* and, in the meantime, it
was blowing up his bowels like an over-inflated balloon, collecting
gas but unable to expel it.

All in all, Alex decided, he'd rather eat a bullet. 

Unfortunately, Skinner found that announcement hilarious as well.
"Don't be a wuss, Tucci; this, too, shall pass," he jibed.

Skinner had just left Krycek in Stanley's capable --and far more
sympathetic-- hands when Lloyd called to report that Immigration
officers had just reported in on their quest to track down the current
addresses of the last six, up-to-now untraceable, Polish tourists that
had come into the city that week and, unfortunately, one of them had a
picture of Mr. Tucci in his suitcase. His exact whereabouts were,
however, presently unknown, as it had been the hotel manager who had
let them into the room, and not the suspect himself.

Skinner told Lloyd that a pre-emptive move would be their best
defense. And since he was already at the hospital, he would take
charge of the evacuation.

He made a u-turn back to Krycek's room and came face to face with
Dashiell Emmet, R.N., Krycek's principal night-shift nurse, an
abundantly blond, Swedish behemoth who looked as if he had been lifted
bodily from the gridiron and placed, pads and all, in a white uniform
tailored to accentuate his musculature.

Like all of  Krycek's care givers, Dashiell had been apprized that a
possible assassination attempt might be made on his patient. So, when
Skinner told Stanley why they needed to get Val down to his car ASAP,
Dash insisted on coming with, in order to properly care for Val.

"I know you're having a hard time understanding just how precarious
Val's condition is, Mr. Skinner," Dashiell chastened him, "but know
this: if it doesn't improve within three days, and he fails to get
proper medical intervention, he could die."

Skinner was suitable chastened. 

So it was that while Wong guarded the abandoned room in order to decoy
the assassin in case he made it to the hospital, and Lloyd and his men
tried to configure a dragnet which would snare the potential assassin
before he reached the hospital, Skinner and Dash hustled Krycek and
his needed medical supplies down to the parking garage in a
wheelchair.

Once they found Skinner's bu-car, Skinner looked at his companions
sheepishly. He'd parked in the first available space, not anticipating
having to use his car in an invalid's get-away. The rear
passenger-side door was blocked by a pillar, while, in his absence,
another car had parked so close to his driver's side door he couldn't
open it wide enough to wriggle inside. And since he looked anemic
compared to Dash, he would either have to climb over the car and get
in from the front passenger's side door or open the sun roof and climb
in that way.

Alex volunteered to squeeze in through driver's side, but Dash nixed
the idea, since the pressure on Alex's gut could rupture his bowels.

So Skinner tossed the hospital supplies into the trunk, and scaled his
way to the top of his car.

Krycek felt his internal threat radar keen and shifted in the
wheelchair, which Dash was holding at the rear end of the neighboring
car, to look around. He caught the eye of the driver of a car looking
for a parking place, and alarm bells went off in his head.

"That's him! That's the assassin!" Krycek yelped, as the man in
question gunned his engine. "Shit! He's spotted me! Run!"

Dash propelled the wheelchair down the thru-way while Skinner, on the
sedan's roof, cursed his luck and debated whether he should get down
and attempt to shoot the man, or continue getting into the car, which
was their ticket to salvation. He tried to do both, sitting on the
roof of the car and taking out his gun to shoot at the car as it sped
past him, then jumping down and wriggling in through the passenger
side door and thence to the driver's seat. He started the car in
record speed, backed out, and looked around. Krycek, Dash, and hit car
had disappeared.

There were only two options: up or down. He went up. Full speed ahead.

The assassin floored the accelerator and shot forwards like a
juggernaut.

Dashiell shoved the wheelchair ahead of him, trying to make the
shelter of the nearest elevator housing. He couldn't out-run the car,
however, with a last burst of speed at the last second, he jerked the
wheelchair to the left, onto the downhill exit ramp.

The assassin's car shot past them, clipping Dash's right calf. He
listed sideways into the wall, losing his grip on the wheelchair
--which continued rolling down the ramp, picking up speed, with Krycek
clinging to the armrests in sheer panic, afraid to put his real hand
to the furiously spinning wheels to brake lest he suffer the mother of
all friction burns.

Dash forced himself up despite his newly broken ribs, and charged down
the exit ramp after Krycek, who because of his one handed grip on the
left wheel was making a sharp left turn onto the next lower parking
level.

Realizing his mistake --and facing an imminent collision with a parked
car, he clamped his hand onto the right wheel and turned himself into
the aisle. Hand smarting, he promptly let the wheels run, then more
thoughtfully fumbled for the brakes located farther down and to the
rear of the wheels.

The assassin, meanwhile, unable to make such a sharp turn at such a
high speed, shot down the aisle, braked, backed up, and turned his car
into the exit ramp after Krycek, this time holding his gun out the
window.

Dash, taking a short-cut through the double row of parked cars, caught
up to Krycek in time to spot the assassin and his gun lining them up
in his sights. 

Interpolating himself between the assassin and Alex in order to grab 
the wheelchair's handles, he hared to the right, into the open space 
in front of the elevators, just as the assassin fired. Two of the 
bullets ripped through Dash's uniform, one grazing his upper arm, 
the other his left side before a third caught him in the chest. 

He fell again, by the elevator housing, while Krycek sailed out into 
the aisle past the elevators. He used his prosthetic hand to make
another left turn, and another, putting him back into the aisle he'd
come from, only heading in the opposite direction and behind the
assassin.

Skinner arrived on the scene, emerging from the exit ramp in time to
fire a couple more shots at the assassin's car as it approached from
Skinner's left. He managed to hit a tire. 

The assassin's car side-swiped three of the parked cars on his right 
as the sudden deflation jerked the steering wheel in the opposite 
direction, then he jerked left to avoid hitting the nose of Skinner's 
car. He squeezed past the sedan and swerved into the exit ramp 
beyond it, then squealed out of the garage.

As Skinner tooled up the aisle searching for his wayward charges he
called Stanley on his cell phone and passed along the license plate so
the agent could call hospital security and secure the car park's exit
so they could leave without worrying about the assassin sniping them
from some near-by vantage point.

Krycek, in the meantime, had managed to brake the wheelchair and
returned to Dash's side.

Skinner found them in front of the elevators. He stopped the car in
the middle of the aisle and loaded Krycek into the backseat, intending
to leave Dash to the tender mercies of his co-workers, but instead of
taking the next available elevator car back up to the lobby, Dash
headed for the sedan, once again insisting he be allowed to accompany
them.

"Look, Mr. Skinner, my wound is no worse than Val's," he protested.
"Val will have to have another surgery in no more than three days if
his condition doesn't improve. *I* can hold out without medical
attention *that* long. Without my expert eye, you won't know what to
do when, or be able to judge how critical Val's condition is. Besides,
you're not licensed to give intravenous injections, and if you tried
the insurance company would have all our balls in a sling, whether you
managed to hit a vein or not."

"Why can't you just get another nurse to take your place?" Skinner
asked.

"I can't force another nurse to risk their life, and we haven't got
time to find a volunteer. I'm here, and I'm willing to go now."

Skinner looked at Krycek, who threw up his hands. "Don't look at me;
I'm still wondering why I didn't just let the assassin kill me. A
bullet would have been a much more merciful end than bleeding out
internally because my bowels ruptured from unpassable gas."

Skinner sighed. "Fine!" He loaded Dash into the back seat, alongside
Krycek, who pointed out that they ought to take the wheelchair with
them, since, with two of them incapacitated, they'd definitely need
it.

Skinner huffed, but loaded the wheelchair into the front passenger
seat before taking off. "Anything else I can get you, Your Majesty?"
he asked sarcastically.

"Well, now that you mention it, if we're going on the run, an SUV,
station wagon, or mini van would be a better choice of vehicles, and
there's no dearth of them in this parking lot," Krycek observed.

"I'm *not* stealing a car," Skinner said pointedly.

"Fine. I'm just saying, two grown men, over six feet tall,
incapacitated with injuries, it would be nice if both of us could lie
down en transit. Doesn't the Bureau have any suitable transport
vehicles? You could call Stanley to fetch one for us if stealing is
too efficient for you. Does this crate have through-the-back-seat
access to the trunk?"

"Uh...yeah. I think so. Why?" Skinner asked.

"Well, I assume you keep a first aid kit in the trunk?" 

"I didn't check."

Krycek sighed. "I will." Krycek was not so incapacitated that he could
not administer first aid. He used the Saran Wrap that had been
securing his uneaten dinner as a patch, a torn off piece of his own
T-shirt as packing, and a strip of duct tape from the tool kit in the
car's trunk as a bandage to hold the rest of his 'bandages' in place.

Skinner, who was only just appreciating how serious Krycek's condition
was, did recognize that Dashiell needed to lay down, so he took
Krycek's advice and called Stanley to provide them with alternate
transportation. They rendezvoused in Oakland, trading the sedan for a
rental van with two built-in cots, and back door and driver's access.

"Nice, Stanley," Alex congratulated as he eased himself onto the left
side cot. "Maybe I should have asked for an RV."

Stanley shook his head. "I don't think the Bureau would have approved.
Besides, they get lousy gas milage, and have a top speed of about 60.
Not the best choice for a get-away vehicle."

Krycek nodded. "You're right, Grasshopper. You are truly worthy to be
called Shao Lin."

Stanley laughed as he helped Skinner load the hospital supplies and
Skinner's luggage into the cabinets above and beneath the cots. "Take
care of yourself, Master Po."

"Thanks for everything, man," Krycek said, batting Stanley's shoulder
companionably.

"Oh! I almost forgot!" Stanley reached into the passenger seat and
held up a T-shirt. "This is for you. We didn't mention you by name
because we didn't want to compromise your new identity, but all the
guys who were on guard duty and some of the guys who worked the case
signed it."

Surrounded by the autographs of the aforementioned men, a SFPD
commendation certificate was imprinted on the front of the shirt,
which read: 'For voluntary aid to the San Francisco Police Department
and F.B.I. Field Office above and beyond the bounds of civilian duty,
this certificate is awarded to the wearer in appreciation of his
meritorious service.' It was dated April 4th and signed by Inspector
Graham and Walter Skinner. Krycek spotted Stanley and Willis Hammond's
signature, Jackson, Jardine, and Franklin's as well. And, on the back
it said: 'I bled for the SFPD and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.'

Krycek laughed. "Oh, damn! That is so great." He clutched the shirt to
his chest. "Thanks, man."

Skinner and Wong loaded the wheelchair into the aisle between the two
cots, then secured the van's back doors. Skinner shook Wong's hand.
"Good job, Agent Wong. Relay my commendations to Inspector Graham.
We'll be heading out of your jurisdiction and going on 'radio silence'
for the next three days, so we can't be tracked via phone lines or
relay stations. Let the assassin guess where we're going. You might
try setting the sedan out in front of a safe house some place obvious,
and see if you can't snare the assassin that way. But put the entire
West Coast on alert, anyway, just in case he decides to go travelling,
too."

"Yes, sir. I've already alerted the hospitals and clinics in the area
in case you hit more than a tire. You sure you couldn't use another
pair of hands on this operation?"

Skinner sighed. "Reasonably sure. Since I'm on emergency leave, I
won't be missed, and I won't have to justify my actions to OPC when
it's over. Plus it'll spare us the burden of filling out all that
paperwork," he grinned.

Stanley nodded, understanding that Skinner wanted to be able to handle
the situation any way he deemed fit, without the legal constraints of
an official F.B.I. operation. "OK, then." Stanley got into Skinner's
Bu-car and drove off.

Skinner climbed into the cab of the van and took off in the opposite
direction. Krycek immediately requested a stop at a drive-thru --any
drive-thru, and requested an iced tea with an extra straw, then
insisted Skinner go to a store and purchase a couple tubes of crazy
glue and more Saran Wrap. Skinner didn't argue, but did as requested.

Once the requested items had been procured, he asked Alex if he had
any preferences on destination.

Krycek shook his head. "As long as we end up at an emergency hospital
at the end of three days, it doesn't matter which direction we go."

Skinner found himself back on the I-80, heading east. He drove east
for a couple hours, then, not really wanting to leave the state, he
took Highway 395 south.

Meanwhile, in the back of the van, the patient was tending the nurse.
Alex redressed Dash's wound with the fresh plastic wrap, using the
crazy glue to seal the edges. He unwrapped the extra straw and slipped
it between the flesh and the plastic wrap and glued it in place, as
well, then he sucked as much air out of the cavity as he could.

Maintaining suction, he folded the straw down twice and pinched it
with his fingers, used a piece of duct tape to seal off the opening at
the end, and taped the two kinks in place, so no air could leak back
into the wound. This reestablished the vacuum in the plural cavity.

Then he blew air into Dash's lungs to help reinflate the lung that had
collapsed when the slug had pierced the chest wall, allowing Dash to
breathe easier. That done, he returned to his cot.

An hour later, feeling better due to the ministrations of his patient,
Dash pulled out his supplies and gave Alex a suppository. Alex spent
the remainder of the trip quietly lying on his cot, either sleeping or
faking sleep.

The suppository did not relieve Alex's condition. 

They spent the first night in Bishop. Skinner found a place off the
highway with individual cabins and paid for a four bed kitchenette. He
backed into the parking space which fronted the cabin door in order to
unload the wheelchair, taking first Alex, then Dash to their beds,
which occupied the nearer of the two bedrooms. Then he hauled in their
gear. Finally, he polled them for wants and went out for food,
clothing, and over-the-counter pain medicine, which is all he could
get since Dash wasn't a doctor.

When he came back, Alex was slumped naked on the toilet pressing a
wash cloth to his face, practically sobbing, a trail of enema water
dampening the floor from the toilet to his bed, which was also wet.
Dash was dozing in the bed next to Alex's. The enema bucket, an
intimidating plastic structure capable of holding three quarts of
fluid, was hanging from a string which was draped over the frame of  a
picture which was firmly secured to the wall to discourage theft. The
enema tube was lying on the bed. The bucket was empty.

With some patient prompting, Skinner managed to get Alex to explain
that Dash had given him an enema, then fallen asleep. Alex had held
the water for forty-five minutes. He didn't want to yell, but normally
pitched vocalizations had failed to rouse the nurse. Deciding he
didn't need help, Alex had tried to get to the toilet on his own, but
as soon as he started moving, the water had spewed out, leaving a
sodden mess in his wake. And, what was worst, it hadn't helped him a
bit. He still felt as if his bowels were going to explode.

Skinner washed Alex from the waist down and moved him to the spare bed
in Skinner's bedroom. Then he stripped Alex's soiled mattress of its
sodden bed clothes and mopped up the floor between the bed and the
toilet with paper towels.

Alex was so embarrassed he turned his back on Skinner and refused to
say another word the rest of the night.

As for Dash, he woke up while Skinner was cleaning the room, got his
ration of food, and inquired if there had been any results from his
earlier ministrations.

When Skinner told him there hadn't, Dash outlined a regimen of Harris
Flushes, which was a procedure where warm water was rhythmically put
into, then allowed out of the body, alternating with an increasing
volume of enemas.

Skinner performed a three hour flush that night, then Dash gave Krycek
another suppository and allowed them all to sleep the rest of the
night.

The next morning, Dash had Skinner thread the string they had tied to
the handle of the enema bucket through the handle of one of the van's
overhead cabinets, so that, if Dash conked out again, Alex could raise
and lower the bucket from his own cot, and give himself a Harris Flush
on the road.

Krycek spent the entire day with his pants around his ankles, a hose
up his butt, and his face to the wall.

At some critical juncture in the trip, Skinner tuned to a Nevada music
station specializing in 40's swing-type music. The song 'Route 66'
came on, and Skinner started humming along. Just as Nat King Cole
riffed: "Now you go through St. Louis; and Joplin, Missouri; and
Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty. You'll see Amarillo; Gallup, New
Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; don't forget Winona; Kingman; Barstow; San
Bernardino," a road sign serendipitously appeared, and that's how they
ended up spending the second night in Barstow, California, the
pejoratively named 'armpit' of the High Desert.

Certainly, their accommodations, picked for its median location
between Interstate 40 and the Barstow Hospital --which did have the
emergency room services they required--  seemed well suited to the
appellation.

The room's sole window, rendered useless for ventilation purposes by a
bulky air conditioner that blocked its opening, was centered roughly
over the bed currently occupied by their stalwart medical expert. The
room's only egress was so close to the end of Dash's bed the door hit
mattress two inches past the perpendicular.

The heater in the wall opposite the door would have been a fire hazard
had it not been situated halfway to the ceiling. Thankfully, the
weather was mild enough that neither unit was in use since, in
Walter's estimation, they looked to be those appliance's patent
prototypes.

Once Walter got everyone situated, he ate dinner out so as not to
torture his wards, because Dash insisted that he and 'Val' go on clear
liquids to facilitate their impending emergency surgeries.

Afterwards, it once again fell to Skinner to administer the Harris
Flush. Rather than draping the bucket off one of the ancient
appliances, Walter stood at the foot of Alex's bed raising and
lowering the enema bucket to let the warm water flow between Alex's
shapely and once more pristine buttocks.

With half of the water in this more petite quart container 'in
reserve,' Skinner lowered the bucket to the floor to let it refill
once more. When the water lacked an inch of its starting level,
Skinner raised it again so as not to break the suction he was trying
to sustain. Suction, according to Dash, being the aim of this
particular procedure. The suction was supposed to entice the bowels to
synchronize its movements so that the material inside could move
through its length in a slow, smooth, uninterrupted 'rearward' motion.

//Raise the bucket, lower the bucket,// Skinner thought. //Water in.
Water out.... Up...down...up...down.... Exactly when,// he wondered,
//did my life become a Daliesque farce?//

It was hard to concentrate when the focus of his attention was on
Alex's dimpled butt cheeks. And the enema tube that slid delicately up
his puckered hole. A hole Walter had been putting something else into
for months in his fantasies. Something meatier and positively huge by
comparison, and with much more enthusiasm on both sides.

He took a moment to contemplate his poor Rat, acknowledging his
feelings of lust, pity, and admiration, and it occurred to him that if
anyone had told him as little as one hour before this operation had
begun that the sight, the thought, the very mention of Alex Krycek's
name would evoke anything besides a full-blown murderous rage, he
would have called in a Psychiatric Emergency Team and had them
committed. For Life.

//Walt, old buddy, old pal,// he told himself, //you need to have your
head examined.// No one in their right mind should be sloshing water
in and out of somebody's ass and lusting for them at the same time.
All the same, he couldn't stop fantasizing about how it would feel to
slide his erection into that tight, silky, new skin pink and dusky
brown hole.

Krycek, for his part, tried his best to pretend that he wasn't hiding
out in some seedy motel with an enema tube up his ass. Naked and
curled into a fetal position, nose to the wall, he had wrapped his
remaining arm around his waist and was hugging himself fiercely, eyes
almost clenched shut, as if to reassure himself that this was really
just a nightmare from which he would presently awaken.

Skinner's current set of 'bucket reps' finished, he nestled the bucket
into the circle of towels at Krycek's feet and stepped into the aisle
between the two single beds that dominated the floorspace, to take a
cursory glance at Dash.

He seemed to be sleeping peacefully, which suited Skinner, since he
didn't need Dash's medical expertise at the moment, and, as the days
had progressed, his own medical condition had made him fuzzy-headed
and hard to rouse.

Dash had yet to utter a single syllable of complaint, despite the fact
that the only reason he was being denied medical care was Krycek's
inability to fart.

Skinner snickered at the very thought for, despite understanding the
gravity of the situation, it still tickled his funny bone with a
certain juvenile delight.

Krycek, seemingly reading Skinner's mind, and having long since
resigned himself to being the resident 'butt of the Joke,' spasmed his
hand over a palmful of flesh as if to wring the life out of it, and
suffered his abashment silently. He hadn't been able to look Skinner
in the eye for days.