Phil Andrews stood scrubbing his hands as he pondered his day. He was finally out of the ER and into the OR. Of course nothing was going the way he expected. His plastic surgery rotation had been delayed due to over booking, so here he was, in blue operating scrubs getting ready for another dreaded trauma.

So far he had assisted on an obstructed bowel, the repair of a lacerated liver, and the removal of a gangrenous toe. Most of his job consisted of suctioning out the excess blood, yuck! He dreamed of when he would be a plastic surgeon, minimal blood, no disease ridden organs, and clean, rich patients. The smell of the guy with the gangrenous toe could fell a water buffalo.

"Andrews, hurry up! The abdominal stab wound is here," the resident surgeon he was assigned to called out just as Phil was finishing. He scowled and grabbed his gown, hurrying after the doctor.

They arrived in OR 2 just as the patient was being put to sleep. Good. He wanted as little contact with the patients themselves as possible. That fact alone made his surgery rotation better than his ER rotation.

The patient was a large black man. He couldn't see his face, but he was well over six feet tall. He had apparently been stabbed by a drug dealer, who had promptly been shot. Phil wondered why they were bothering to save this guy, he was probably a rival dealer. He'd be back on the street in no time.

Maybe they would let him close, his thoughts took an abrupt about face. It looked like a clean laceration. They would have to explore a little inside to clean up the damage, but surely it would be simple enough that a third year student could stitch up the cut. Besides, when they saw how good he was at that, they would all agree that he should be in plastic surgery, and he could get some letters of recommendation.

When he asked, the nurses gave him an odd look, but it was hard to read their expressions with those masks covering most of their face. The attending, however was in a good mood and he allowed Phil to close. He was very careful, making each stitch small and precise.

When he had finished, the attending praised him. "Very good, Andrews. There should be minimal scarring."

"That was the idea," was his smug reply. 'See' he thought, 'I don't belong here, I belong in an expensive office doing face lifts, not this.'

"All right Andrews, you're with me," Phil was startled out of his reverie by the voice of his resident supervisor.

"What for?" he asked as they walked down the hall.

"We have to talk to his friends and family, out in the waiting room," he responded. "I'd imagine they are getting quite restless by now. Cops are not known for their patience, especially when they're waiting on one of their own."

A cop. The man was a cop. A cold feeling began to grow in the pit of his stomach. Phil's last run in with a cop had not gone well. Actually, the last two hadn't. He suddenly had the sneaking suspicion that he knew the man on the table. "What is his name?" he asked cautiously, praying it wasn't the same man.

"Captain Simon Banks." Suddenly, a vision of a tall black man getting in his face in the ER filled his mind. He did know this guy, worse, he knew his friends. Before he had a chance to say anything, however, they were there.

Before them stood a room full of cops, but there were two in particular that caught Phil's attention. One was tall, almost as tall as the patient they had just finished working on, and the other was much shorter, but both of them glared at him with looks of pure ice. Phil glared right back, he refused to be intimidated by a couple of strong- arming, pea- brained cops.

As Dr. Maxwell explained to the men about the surgery and how long the patient would be staying, Phil stood silently beside him itching to leave, he didn't get into medicine so he could talk to people, and he really didn't want to talk to these men.

He was hardly paying attention until he heard Dr. Maxwell tell them, "If you have any questions, feel free to ask Mr. Andrews here. He will be more than happy to help you." Then, before Phil could voice an objection, he was gone. Phil turned to face the group of men before him, his mind hurriedly trying to come up with an excuse to leave, when one of them spoke up.

"The Captain's son is being brought over right now. When can he go in to see him?" The speaker was a well dressed man that he didn't recognize. The man was obviously of better mettle than the others, so he decided to be polite and leave at the first opportunity.

"How old is his son?"

"He's seventeen, but he'll be eighteen in a couple of months." That answer came from the short man that he remembered all too well from the ER. Sandburg.

Biting his tongue to remain civil, Phil replied, "I'm sorry. Minors are not allowed in the ICU. One of you can go in for ten minutes every hour once he is settled, however. I'll go check on him now and let you know." With that, he turned and hurried down the hall.

As he passed the nurses station, he heard them giggling. His face flushed bright red when he realized that it had been a set up. They knew about his skirmishes with Sandburg and Ellison in the ER, and had orchestrated this to have a little fun. Phil fumed and thought several uncomplimentary things about their heritage as he planned how to best avoid the cops.

He pulled every delaying tactic that he could. He checked and double checked on all his patients, he wrote up his notes from the surgery, he even forced himself to choke down a cup of coffee from the lounge machine. Of course, when Dr. Maxwell found him, he was not happy.

"Andrews! What are you doing here? I told you to help out the police officers in the waiting room. They haven't seen hide nor hair from you in over an hour. Now go back and do your job." Phil tried vainly to protest. Surely there was someone else who could baby-sit the cops, but no, it was left to him.

He struggled to push down his irritation as he approached the waiting room, he refused to let them see him loose his composure.

As he stepped into the room, he saw Sandburg sitting next to a young black man. 'That must be Banks' son,' he thought. 'He's too young, and this time they will play by the rules.'

He had no doubt that these two had told everyone else about their previous encounters while he had been gone, but that didn't matter. In four more hours he was off for the day, and he wouldn't have to deal with them anymore.

"Is there something I can help you with?" he asked snidely to the only other person in the room, Ellison.

"Yes," he said darkly and backed Phil up into a corner. "You can explain to me exactly why you won't let Darryl in to see his father. He only has a few weeks before he turns eighteen, and he is in good health. He doesn't get to see his father that much and it would be nice if he could see for himself that he is really okay."

Phil kept his eyes on the man in front of him as he spoke until he caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look and he thought he saw Sandburg leaving the room, just as Ellison shifted to block his view. Looking back over to where he had been sitting, Phil noticed that the son was missing, too. Realizing this had been a ruse, he tried to push his way past the man in front of him. He wouldn't move until Phil threatened to call security, at which point he politely stepped aside.

He rushed to the door, but was stopped by a couple of large black men talking in the doorway. He told them to move, but they just continued on as if they hadn't heard, until he forcibly pushed between them. That proved to be harder than it looked, they were bigger than him, and seemingly oblivious to his plight.

As he hurried down the hall, he ran smack into the well dressed man from before, spilling his coffee all over Phil's scrubs. The man was all apologetic and tried to help clean him up, he wasn't in the mood and had to practically fight him off. It wasn't until he managed to get going again, that Phil realized that all the coffee had ended up on him, and none on the other man. That was just another member of the conspiracy.

Phil had rounded the corner and was heading to the room that held Captain Banks, when he was stopped yet again, this time by a woman standing in front of the door. "I'm sorry, but I need to see some identification," she calmly told him with a thick Australian accent.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, getting more and more frustrated with each delay. He knew what they were up to and it was up to him to stop them.

"There was an attempt made on a police captain's life. We have to take every precaution so that the perp won't be able to try again," she coolly replied.

He glared suspiciously at her. "I was under the impression that the person who stabbed the captain was shot and killed."

"Of course," she answered smoothly, "But there is always the possibility that someone else may try to take advantage of the situation. I understand that the last time he was here, someone tried to kill Captain Banks. Now it is procedure to check everyone's ID at the door. So if you would be so kind as to show me yours..." she trailed off expectantly.

Phil grumbled and began searching his pockets. His ID card and his wallet were missing. Those cops, they must've... He glanced up to see the woman still watching him, so he responded, "I seem to have misplaced my ID, I'll be right back." He turned and hurried back down the hall, words of outrage on his lips.

As he passed the nurses station, one of them called out to him, in an overly cheerful voice, "Oh, Phil! There you are. This was dropped off for you. It seems you left your wallet and your ID card somewhere. Those nice police officers were kind enough to return them. It's a good thing we had them around, you might never have seen them again." She smiled a sickly sweet smile and handed him his things. Phil mumbled a reply and dashed back down the hall, looking neither left nor right.

He calmly handed the officer at the door his identification badge and waited as she scanned her list of people allowed to enter the room.

"I'm sorry, Mr.... Andrews," she said slowly and glanced back up at him, "but you are not on the list of approved personnel. I'm going to have to call your supervisor to sort this all out." She calmly began speaking into her radio, completely ignoring Phil.

"What do you mean, I'm not on the approved list," he snapped. "I was one of the doctors who operated on this man. It is my job to check in on him. You're just stalling so that kid can break the rules. Well, I won't have it. That boy is too young to be seeing ICU patients and I want him out of there right now."

"What is going on here, Andrews," barked a voice from behind him. He turned to see both Dr. Maxwell, and the Chief of Surgery, Dr. Johanssen, striding towards him with several security guards.

"Sir," he spat out, "there is a minor in this room with my patient and this woman is hindering my efforts to remove him." Just as he finished speaking, the door to the room opened and out stepped Sandburg.

"You know," he said calmly, "You really might want to keep it down. There are sick people here who need their rest."

Phil could feel his control slipping over the edge. "Where is he?"

"Who? Simon?" Sandburg asked innocently. "He's in there, on the bed, where you left him."

Phil pushed his way into the room and stared. The only one in the room was the patient. He looked under the bed and even in the closet, finally becoming aware of the audience that had accumulated.

"I know he was in here," he snapped. "They," he waved his hand imperiously at the woman and Sandburg, who stood waiting outside the room, "snuck him in here and tried to delay me from getting here."

Sandburg looked at him evenly as he replied, "I don't know what you're talking about. You said that one person could see Simon every hour, this was my turn. If you're looking for Darryl, he's back in the waiting room. See for yourself."

With that they all walked over to the waiting room. There, between the two large black cops that had blocked the door earlier, sat the son. He looked up with big innocent eyes and asked, "So, how's my dad?"

Phil gaped at his audacity. He knew what they had done, why didn't anyone believe him?

"Come on, Andrews," Dr. Maxwell uttered ominously, "I think you need to find something to keep your mind occupied, and off of these intrigues."

Phil followed mutely. He was furious, but he refused to let them to see. 'Those two are trying to destroy me,' he thought. 'What is that saying? Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, but three times is conspiracy. I need to find another hospital, soon.'

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