Crash!
Bang!
Whap!
Ka-THUD!
Oof!
"God-DAMN it, J.D! Turn that down!" shouted Buck from the bathroom
down the hall. "Big Al’s gonna have your hide for a washcloth if you don’t
turn that damn TV down!"
"Yeah, well, I would turn down
the volume if Ezra would quit complainin’ about my
‘choice of programming’," retorted J.D. over the noise of the TV, making
exaggerated quote-unquote gesures with hooked fingers
and scowling at an indignant and furiously sputtering Ezra Standish.
"Mr. Dunne, I was not casting
aspersions upon your ‘choice of programming’," Ezra snapped
back, mimicking J.D.’s hand gestures, "however questionable it may...
well, that’s not the point. The point is that Mr. Tanner apparently sees fit to
quite loudly criticize the fighting techniques of various actors, and I merely
opined that your choice of programming was conducive to such inconsiderate
behavior on Mr. Tanner’s part, especially considering his fondness for all
things martial in nature."
"Ez, it ain’t my fault that these guys
suck," Vin interjected. "I mean, that last
hand-foot-knee combination was just about the sorriest thing I ever seen in my
life."
"It’s classic Batman, Vin, for cryin’ out loud!" groaned J.D., rolling his eyes.
"And how the heck can you see what they’re doing with all those
sound-effects balloons popping up?"
"They call it ‘suspension of disbelief,’
Mr. Tanner," Ezra added helpfully, which earned a ferocious glare from the
team’s resident sharpshooter, who tried to figure out a way to respond but
couldn’t. Standish gave Tanner his best smug smile and returned his attention
to the television.
Pow!
Crack!
Doosh!
Bam!
Thwack!
"J.D., for the love of GOD, turn that down!" shouted Buck again, still from the
bathroom. Frowning, but sensing that talking had ceased at least for the five
minutes it would take Buck to forget that he’d told him to turn the TV down,
J.D. lowered the volume.
"You need an enema, Buck?" bellowed
Nathan, eliciting everything from full-blown laughter to stifled snickering.
"What in the hell’d you eat?" the EMT
asked.
"A bit too much of my famous four-chile chili," Josiah answered, grinning. "I put
in extra habaneros this time, along with these
special-grown chiles a friend of mine makes- he’s a geneticist,
and he’s got his own hydroponic garden in his backyard. I got some of his root
stock last year, and sweet Lord be with us, his chiles can eat Teflon off a non-stick cookin’
pan."
"Damn," Vin
whispered reverently. "I knew there was somethin’ different about your
chili this time."
"’Something
different’?" responded the profiler, his deep voice resonant with injured
pride. "Just ‘something different’, Brother Vin?
Ten years of painstaking genetic research, a season’s worth of careful
nurturing in a high-tech hydroponic garden and there’s just ‘something
different’?"
Sanchez’s great hands flexed menacingly, and Tanner realized with a sensation
close to fear that Josiah’s hands could easily encircle his neck, and snap it
with only minor effort.
"Now, c’mon, Josiah," interposed
Chris, breaking his silence to save his best friend from impending bodily harm,
"you know Vin don’t have any taste buds to speak
of. At least, not any human ones."
"Don’t help me Chris," Vin mumbled.
"Indeed, that would explain Mr. Tanner’s
repellent taste in food, or what the confections and fast-food empire passes
off as food; it may even shed light on the mystery which is his belief that
Taco Bell constitutes gourmet dining."
"Hey!" Having his running
commentary on Batman interrupted was one thing; having his eating habits
insulted was another. "I do not consider Taco Bell to be gourmet
dining!" Vin fairly squealed with indignation.
"Oh, please, Mr. Tanner," replied
Ezra, scowling at the sharpshooter. "You almost blew our cover on the
Marconi case when, right in the middle of a most excellent degustation at Lorenti’s, you remarked to Mr. Marconi that the Chateau-du-Chien ‘76 Pinot Grigio would
nicely complement a Chalupa- a Chalupa
with cheese sauce, no less. Cheese sauce, Mr.
Tanner."
"I was joking!"
"I beg to differ, Mr. Tanner- you were
in deadly earnest."
"Well, it would!"
"SHUT UP!" shouted Nathan
from his easy chair. "Good Lord, listenin’ to
the bunch of you yammer at each other ain’t doin’ a
thing for my blood pressure. I bet if I took it right now, I’d break the gauge
on the cuff."
"Speakin’ of
which, Nate," Vin said, trying to calm his
friends before they- to wit: Josiah and Ezra- got violent, "I got my blood
results back from the doctors- you know, the semi-annual exam thingy? Five
years in a row- perfect cholesterol, blood pressure, try...
try... triglycerides, I think... um... what else? Oh yeah- good white blood
cell count."
The stark fury that contorted Nathan’s face
indicated that had been the wrong thing to say, and Vin
belatedly remembered the EMT’s frustration at his ability to eat
indiscriminately and not dissolve into a pile of sugar, lard, high-fructose
corn syrup, additives, and preservatives. As Nathan’s agitation rose, the
atmosphere in the room became decidedly uneasy.
"Damn, Buck!" J.D. screeched,
pulling his shirt over his nose as Wilmington walked past. "What the
hell did you eat? A dead animal?"
Buck ignored his roommate and turned to
Josiah with a menacing, "When my gut don’t feel like it’s got a bomb goin’ off in it, you an’ I are gonna have some words."
"THAT’S ENOUGH!"
The noise in the room flicked off as if by a
switch, and Chris went even quieter than he’d been previously. Only the sounds
of Batman battling the Penguin’s henchmen flickered through the sudden silence,
a strange and ghostly intrusion.
Nathan took two deep, calming breaths and
assessed the six men in front of him. If it wasn’t for him, Jackson thought,
all of the six would have been dead or crippled long since by bullet wounds,
knife wounds, broken bones, burns, lacerations, contusions, internal bleeding,
infections, and- in Vin’s case, maybe- heart disease. Jackson had started to
keep a running list of injuries, using his most recent edition of the ICD as a
guide, and he figured that at the rate his friends racked up injuries, they
would make it through the whole book in three more years. He had to keep that
from happening, though- something about an EMT’s oath, responsibilities,
ethics, and so forth.
"Look, guys," Nathan said into the
stillness, "we’ve been lucky so far with injuries and so forth,
right?"
Six nods indicated agreement.
"Okay, so if it’s been established that
conventional weapons have a hard time gettin’ rid of
us, I think we owe it to ourselves to, well... be more careful with what we
eat, how we spend our free time. What’s that you’re always
saying, Josiah?"
"’My body is my temple’," supplied
the profiler.
"Exactly! Just think how we can improve our arrest record and
our lives in general by fixing some... lifestyle habits," Nathan
continued, warming to his topic as he saw all his friends listening for once,
"I’m not talkin’ major overhauls or anything,
just resting more, meditating, developing a comprehensive workout plan,
focusing on mental fitness, eating well-"
"Hope you don’t mean I won’t be able to
eat my lucky Snickers bar before every sting," interrupted Vin.
That was the drop of water that shattered the
floodgates, and objections poured forth.
"Surely you don’t expect me to forego
the late-night social scene? Why it’s absolutely-"
"You think I’m gonna run, Nate? You shi-"
"I hate Brussells
sprouts, Nathan. No way-"
"I’ll only quit eating chili if we can Feng Shui the office."
"You sayin’
there’s something wrong with our arrest record?"
The stream of negations continued, a flood
before which Nathan Jackson was helpless, and he realized that any minor,
sensible changes to a health-oriented individual were mindboggling revolutions
to six men who considered something out of a vending machine and a cup of
coffee to be a nutritious breakfast. An assortment of proverbs surrounding
horses, water, and drinking came to mind, and Nathan turned to shout something
to J.D.
"Hey, J.D.-
what’s that dumb thing you always say? Something about
friends and noses?"
"Oh, ‘You can
pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s
nose.’ That the one?"
"Yeah... yeah, that’s it," Nathan
mumbled around the lip of his beer stien.
"That’s the one."
THE END