The Keeping of Words | Spencer Reid

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Bianca had nearly dropped the phone, her knees buckling. "Spencer's been shot," JJ explained.

"What?" There was no way she had heard that correctly. She righted herself, gripping the railing to her left. The airport was noisy, perhaps she had misunderstood between the intercom announcements and surrounding conversations.

"It was pretty touch and go, but they think he's going to pull through." They think? As in, there was a chance he might not. "He's in surgery right now, Garcia's on her way here to stay with him." Dating an agent, she'd known that the possibility he could get hurt out in the field would always be there, but there was no way it had actually happened this time. And yet, it had. Hundreds of miles away in Texas, while she was supposed to be boarding a plane across the ocean, he was in a hospital with a severe gunshot wound.

It wasn't even a question, what to do next.

As soon as they hung up, she turned around halfway through the security line, and tore her way back through the airport. So many runs she had been on, but she couldn't seem to make her feet move fast enough over the ground, her suitcase bumping on the ground behind her. At the ticket counter she tried to explain the situation in a breathless rush of words. After a frantic exchange, tears, and paying twice as much as the ticket was worth, she found herself on a tiny charter plane headed for Texas.

It was cold on the little plane, and sparsely populated, though she was one of the only passengers not sleeping at this late hour. How had things gone so wrong? Only two days ago, he'd been standing in her bedroom and helping her pack. Kissing her goodbye after being summoned away on a case. What if it was the last time she saw him? The last time she heard him laugh or held his hand. She wasn't ready for lasts, not when she'd been looking forward to so many firsts with him. She wanted more time with him. Time to move in with him, to travel to new places together, to wander through the parks in the fall. She wanted to write him poems and read them to him, to cook breakfast together in a house they could call their own. She wanted to fall asleep in the same bed and stay up all night talking. She wanted all of those things, but only with him. Always with him.

Once back on the ground she hailed a cab and directed him to the West County Medical Center. She didn't even have enough strength to pray, all of her energy was focused on not crying and not yelling at the driver to go faster.

There was no way she could lose him, not now, not after everything they'd survived together. Not a wish, but a need she had to be by his side, to make sure he was okay. He'll be okay. He has to be okay. He's Spencer. He'll make it. Against the chill of the night air, she pulled her sweater – his sweater, the one he'd packed for her – tighter around her body, repeating those words in her mind, searching for any form of security she could find.

The hospital was imposing, a looming tan-brick structure. In those walls, life began and ended. Lives were saved and lost, and so much could hang in the balance from the moment one entered through the doors. Hurrying out from the taxi she sprinted into the lobby, her suitcase still in tow. She had nowhere else to put it. There were people milling about the front desk, families sitting in chairs and nurses dashing in this direction or that. It was overwhelming, and she wasn't sure entirely where to go or what to ask, until she spied a familiar face.

Morgan was waiting for her, and he waved her over, led her up the stairs. He seemed calm, and the air of ease the agent maintained helped ease her worries a little bit. "He's in room 202," was all he needed to say. Bianca took off and didn't stop running until she reached the door. Spencer was there, reclining in a hospital bed, gauze around his neck. She stepped inside, dropping her things in a heap by the chair as he studied her curiously.