Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds. No copyright infringement is intended

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The tall woman dressed in blue scrubs, wisps of her dirty blond hair coming loose from its clip signed her name, S Darnell RN after her chart entry and replaced the chart in its place on the chart rack. She looked at the clock on the wall of the nurses' station, 2300 hours, one more hour until her shift was over and she could go home. She hated evening shifts but this week they had been unusually brutal. She barely got to see her kids before they were off to school and they were in bed by the time she got home. Nursing certainly wreaked havoc with your family life. "I'll be glad when this one's over," she told Shirley Payne who was tallying her in and out sheets. "I've got a couple of days off and I'll at least be able to see my kids."

"Tell me about it," Shirley replied. "I think Lyle's forgotten that I exist. He's gone when I get up in the morning and asleep when I get home. I think I've forgotten the last time we had sex. Tell me again why I chose this profession."

"Because you wanted to lovingly heal the sick," Beth Claridge, a tiny black woman, similarly dressed in blue scrubs, who'd just come from completing her last round, said, as she deposited her flashlight on the desk.

"Yeah," Sandy said with disdain, "and a lot of healing we did. We lost twenty-one out of twenty-six." A somber pall fell over the trio as they thought of the many victims they had lost in those two horrible days. "All those precious little children; when I got home that night, I woke mine up just to hold them. Rick and the kids thought I was nuts and I couldn't tell them why."

The door to one of the rooms down the hall opened and Dr. Linda Kimura emerged and headed down the hall towards the elevator. As she passed the nurses' station she said, "Good night ladies," and asked to be beeped immediately if there were any changes.

"Of course doctor," the trio replied in unison.

"She's been putting in a lot of extra hours this week," Shirley remarked.

"Yeah, well she is head of the team and it is anthrax after all," Beth replied.

"Oh come on Beth," Shirley countered. "When have you known her to be here almost twenty-four/seven when the danger has passed and the patients are on the mend? I'll tell you when…never. She's a dedicated doctor, don't get me wrong, there's none better, but once the cure took hold she could have left it in our more than capable hands to pull the patients through."

"She does seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time here," Sandy agreed, "and most of it seems to be with one particular patient."

"Can you blame her? That," Shirley pointed to the room down the hall, "has never been what I've thought of when I've thought FBI. I usually think of guys in black suits with sunglasses." The other two laughed at her description. "But he is a fine specimen and personally, I think he's got Dr. Kimura's hormones working overtime."

"Oh come on guys, they were assigned to work together," Beth reminded them.

"And it wouldn't be the first time two people 'assigned to work together' became attracted to one another," Sandy added making quotation marks with her fingers.

"Lena from day shift was telling me," Shirley whispered, "that she was sure she saw Dr. Kimura checking Dr. Reid out, if you know what I mean," she nodded her head and winked.

"I hear ya," Sandy said. "Kelly was telling me that he had a bunch of friends visiting him and they were giving Dr. Kimura the lowdown about Dr. Reid which she was apparently eating up with a spoon."

"You do have a point," Beth weighed in reluctantly. "I mentioned to her last night that Dr. Reid was refusing any morphine and sedatives and she snapped at me that he was perfectly within his rights to refuse if he so chose. Dr. Kimura never snaps."

"Well, ya gotta admit, if she's gonna fall for someone why not him, he's really sweet," Shirley said.

"Yeah, but he must be ten years younger than her. Dr. Kimura doesn't strike me as the type to be looking for a boy toy," Beth said.

"Boy toy," Sandy scoffed. "Kelly was telling me that he's some kind of genius and apparently he's got three doctorates and two Bas. You wouldn't think he'd even talk to us lower forms of life but he's very nice. And man, he's not hard on the eyes so it wouldn't be that Dr. Kimura would only want him for his looks. They could also connect very well on an intellectual level."

"Dr. Kimura's a great lady and she deserves someone special in her life and if she could snag a doll like Dr. Reid, I say more power to her," Shirley stated.

"Hey ya got no disagreement from me," Sandy said as she pulled another chart from the rack and started to make her nurse's note from her worksheet. "It sounds like he's being hailed as kind of the hero of this whole thing despite the fact that he got himself infected with anthrax. Dr. Kimura said he told her where to look for the cure and he was the one who helped figure out who was behind all this."

"Yeah, if I'd been in his shoes, I would have gotten out of there ASAP," Beth said. "I wouldn't have been that selfless. I guess I'm not the hero type."

"I suppose we should be glad that there are people out there like Dr. Reid who are braver than we are. Maybe that's part of what turns Dr. Kimura on about Mr. FBI, other than him being a total babe of course."

"Guys, we don't even know for sure if she is turned on by Dr. Reid," Beth reminded them.

"Nooo," Shirley said, "we don't really know for sure."

"Shirley," Sandy said suspiciously, "I know that look on your face girl. What are you thinking?"

"I was thinking," Shirley smirked, "we should put our money where our mouths are. Let's start a pool. This could prove veeery interesting."