"Playing Doctor" (2/6) By Emily Siazon

Summary and disclaimer in part 1.

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Ms. Parker felt woozy as she opened her eyes. The last time she felt this bad, she'd drunk Robby "the bottomless pit" Robinson under the table at a fraternity party. She groaned and tried to sit up, but found herself being held down by the blurry figure sitting by her hip.

"Don't get up. You'll only feel worse," a disembodied voice ordered. She looked around to see who it was, but since all she could see was the blurry figure on her bed, she guessed it was him. She was about to close her eyes again when her brain demanded to know why a man was in her house.

That last thought was like a splash of cold water. Ms. Parker snapped out of her sleepy haze and turned around to find Jarod looking down at her. "Nice to see you finally join the land of the living."

******

Sydney could clearly hear the sounds of computer keys tapping as Broots worked across the room. He'd just found the red notebook with details on Jarod's last pretend and was on his way out the door to ask the people involved some questions.

"Find anything?" he inquired before heading out. He really hoped that the younger man did since he wasn't looking forward to questioning strangers; terrorizing witnesses was more Ms. Parker's thing.

"Uh, well, I hacked into the American Medical Association website to find members with the name James H. Meredith. Two match that description, a podiatrist in Iowa and an optometrist in Florida. So I, uh, guess that whatever reason Jarod wrote those names down for, it couldn't have been because he was seriously injured."

Sydney let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "That's good. Anything else?"

Broots let out a weary sigh and briefly closed his eyes to give it a respite from the bright glare of the computer screen. "I'm currently combing through all the data base from those two states to find a match. It's a lot, so it might take a while."

Sydney gave him a reassuring pat on the back before heading back out the door. "I'm sure you'll find him."

******

Ms. Parker's hand shot towards the nightstand and her 9-mm-only to find that it wasn't there. She glared at her surprise visitor. "What did you do with my gun?"

Jarod's amber eyes widened in an effort to look innocent. "I removed them to make sure nobody gets hurt. I didn't think you'd mind."

"Well I do," she snapped as she tried to get up and get another one of the guns she'd hidden throughout her house.

His grip on her arm was surprisingly strong as he held her down. "Don't. You're still too sick to get up."

"Don't tell me what to do," she answered stubbornly, shaking off his hands before taking a second try at getting up. She failed miserably. She looked back up and glared at Jarod. At least he didn't tell her "I told you so."

"I told you so," he said, a mischievous smile on his face.

Ms. Parker wanted to smack him but didn't have the strength, so instead she leaned back into her pillow and asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I thought we'd play doctor again."

The words "playing doctor" invariably brought to her mind the phrase, "show me yours and I'll show you mine," but by the innocent look on his face, she doubted very much that it was what he meant. She was about to tease him for his choice of words when her brain caught on to the full extent of what he'd said. "We never played doctor!" She would have remembered something like that.

"Yeah, we did. Don't you remember? We played it when we were ten after Sydney made me do a SIM as an ER doctor. I gave you a fake examination, made a diagnosis, and everything."

"Oh that," Ms. Parker answered, sounding quite relieved. "Now I remember. I didn't have the heart to tell you that you were doing it wrong."

"Then how else do you play doctor?"

It was her turn to have a mischievous smile on her face as she said, "That's for me to know and for you never to find out."

******

"Jarod?" the young woman that lived in the house where the attempted burglary occurred asked with a puzzled frown. "Who's that?"

"You mean you've never seen this man before?" Sydney asked, bringing the picture he always carried around of the Pretender closer to the woman's face.

She took another look and shook her head. "Nope. Never seen him before in my life."

Sydney frowned, wondering what was going on. The people Jarod helped had always remembered him quite clearly before. He couldn't understand what brought on this sudden change. "Thank you for your help."

******

Ms. Parker waited until Jarod excused himself to go to the bathroom to use her phone. Having known Jarod for so long, she wasn't surprised to find her cell phone gone and the rest of the phones out of order; nonetheless, it still pissed her off to no end.

The minute he got back to her room, she angrily began to shake the now useless piece of plastic at him as she demanded, "Jarod, what did you do to them?"

Jarod wasn't taken aback that she'd tried to turn him over to the Centre while he was at the john. He'd anticipated it and it was the reason he'd disabled her phones in the first place. "I can't exactly take care of you if I'm behind Centre walls, now can I?"

"You plan on staying?" To say that she was surprised by this little bit of information would be an understatement. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out why he'd want to help her after all the trouble she'd caused him over the years. "When did you plan on sharing this with me?"

"Surprise!" he mumbled dispassionately, his expression making it clear that he hadn't quite planned on revealing that piece of information in this manner.

Good, she thought. Served him right for coming without asking her permission. "I hate surprises," she grumbled, burrowing further into the sheets. "So how long do you plan on staying?"

"Until you're well enough to be on your own."

That raised Ms. Parker's suspicion. Both of them knew damn well that she'd be a lot more determined to catch him once she got her strength back. He wasn't stupid, so how could he possibly plan on escaping unscathed? "You have something up your sleeve, don't you?"

Jarod smirked at her as he parroted her earlier answer. "That's for me to know and for you never to find out."

******

Broots heard his computer beep as it finished searching the Florida and Iowa archives for anything related to Jarod. Fourteen names came up on his screen, all blinking as they waited for his cursor to click on one of them.

Being a computer programmer, he had learned early on the advantages of being methodical. It therefore came as no surprise when he predictably made his way one by one down the screen, his frown increasing as none of his preliminary searches matched Jarod's description.

Broots then decided to go back to the name Dr. James H. Meredith; just because he had the title of a doctor preceding his name didn't necessarily mean that he was a medical doctor. Broots widened his search for the elusive man and watched with a small smile as his computer beeped and began a nationwide search of this one man.

******

"Jarod?" Chief of Police Geraldine Summers asked. "Why of course I remember him. He was helping me with the fourth of July sabotage case."

"Are you sure?"

She looked at Sydney strangely. "I may be old, but my memory's still working, you know."

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that. It just that I heard he was working on the recent burglaries."

"Oh no. That's Joe's-" she pointed at the younger man sitting across the room, "-job. We thought it was too high-profile a case for a rookie to work on."

"Any ideas on where Jarod had gone?"

"He mumbled something about his mother being sick and having to rush home while he dropped off the evidence he had on him." The chief sat up straighter and leaned in closer to Sydney. "He's not in any trouble, is he?"

"No, nothing like that. I just wanted to talk to him before he. . . saw his mother." Sydney stood up and bid her farewell. He almost bumped into a number of things as he made his way out of the small but clean precinct, his mind occupied with this latest tidbit of information.

If Chief Summers was telling the truth-and he had no doubt that she was since there was no reason for her not to-then something important from Jarod's past must have resurfaced. It was the only explanation he could think of for the younger man to stop in the middle of a pretend. But what could be so important?

End Part (2/6)

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Author's Notes: Please send feedback to

Part 3