Found

Bret lifts his eyebrows as Charlotte nears, a small grin forming. As she leans against him to kiss his lips, he cocks his head, his eyes closed as he sets his coffee mug down on the counter behind himself. Both hands free, he wraps his arms around Charlotte, gently rubbing her back as he returns the kiss with equal passion.

Finally drawing back, Bret sighs deeply and rests his forehead against hers, looking her in the eye. "You're better than coffee, you know that?"

Grinning, he pulls her into a hug, squeezing her tight. "Mm....okay...shower." Letting Charlotte go, he grabs his coffee mug to down the rest of the contents before putting it in the sink, and heads out of the kitchen, calling over his shoulder. "Give me five minutes!"

It's actually ten minutes, but Bret is quick, and soon he's grabbing his jacket and his keys. "My turn to drive." He tosses her a quarter. "Your turn to flip."


Distraction = my middle name. Checkup first. Rick. Then lunch. C U then.

It's eleven o'clock when Kyle parks his truck in the TJY parking lot. For all that had happened, he was feeling pretty good, and with a few pain killers, his hand wasn't giving him too much trouble either.

Bounding down the hallway he skids past the infirmary door, only to look back and see Misty, putting on the breaks and backing up, throwing her a silly salute.

Rick looks up from where he's working and raises an eyebrow. "Someone must feel good today."

Kyle shrugs and hops up on the table.

Rick chuckles and shakes his head. "Alright. Let's see how that throat of yours is doing. Have you been doing what I told you?"

Kyle bites his lip, looks to Misty, then back at Rick, giving an unsure nod.

Rick smirks at him. "Kyle..."

"Mostly?" he whispers.

"That's what I thought. And by the sounds of things, it hasn't gotten much better, has it?"

Kyle shakes his head.

Rick sighs and brings a light, starting to examine Kyle's throat. The more he sees, the more he wants to examine, and he winds up taking a whole lot longer than planned. But looking at a couple charts, he believes it was worth it.

Kyle feels as though his throat is on fire after all is said and done, and he doesn't understand Rick's growing enthusiasm.

Rick stares at his notes, and is quick to go to Misty. "Hey...remember when Kyle was poisoned, we thought something was a little different about it?" He nods. "There was. I believe...that they added something to that lethal mixture. Something that they knew the antidote wouldn't get. And it's not enough to kill, but enough to cause trouble." Rick shows her a few of his notes. "Kyle's still got some of that poison in his system. Something about the mixture attacked his weakest spot - his vocal cords. Only problem is, that it's not going away. It's just slowly making things worse."

He glances over to Kyle. "We have to get it completely out of his system somehow, or it's not gonna take long and he'll never be able to talk again. Hard part is finding the cure. Good thing is, once we find it, I believe he'll have a full recovery. We just have to find that cure before there's permanent damage."

Kyle swings his legs as he sits on the table, trying to overcome his worry. He couldn't understand what Rick was saying to Misty, but he had a bad feeling about it. What was going on? Was the news bad?


Carson wipes off the front counter for Mabel, his mind everywhere but his work today. He hadn’t gotten into trouble for being late, since Herb had known he’d been helping with Jess…but his tardiness had affected his work throughout the morning, just seeming to encourage everything to go wrong.

He couldn’t get his mind off of what had happened earlier. He should have known better. He shouldn’t have approached Misty. Though her forgiveness, he felt was genuine did ease some guilty feelings, what remained was still an open wound.

“Oh, Carson!”

He whips back to attention and looks over the counter to a middle-aged woman who had just come in. It was his former landlord. He raises his eyebrows. “Mrs. Flowers.”

She chuckles, obviously loving the accent. “I’m glad I caught you here…” She reaches into her purse and rummages around. “I had some new tenants move into your old apartment…that was quite a while ago, you know. But they kept most of the stuff where it was I guess…that is, the furniture you left.”

She pauses, squinting into her handbag and rolling her eyes. “I know it’s here somewhere,” she mutters. “Anyway, so they were moving the entertainment center last week – you know, where your television set was. And they found something…” Her face is still buried in her purse and finally she pulls the object out. “Ah hah!”

She holds it up so it glints in the light. “I knew it had to be yours because before you were there that place was stark clean.”

Carson looks at the object, stunned for a moment.

Mrs. Flowers’ face drops a little. “It is yours…isn’t it?”

“Y…yes…I mean…yes…it is.” Carson numbly reaches out to take the gold chain and locket from her hand.

“I took the liberty of cleaning it up,” Mrs. Flowers informs. “It had gotten a bit dusty behind that big ol’ thing.” She gives Carson a sly grin. “That picture in there…old love of yours?”

Carson barely hears her as he flips the locket open with his thumbnail. A young Misty stares back at him. Breaking his gaze away from it, he looks up again at Mrs. Flowers, and forces a grateful smile to let her know she’d done a good thing. “You could say that,” he finally replies. “Thanks. I thought I’d lost this for good.”

Clutching the small treasure, Carson retreats to the kitchen where he finds the corner chair. Though supposed to be working, his mind wanders for a few minutes. He rests his elbows on his knees and flips the locket open again.

A slight smile quirks the very corner of his mouth as he replays the memories in his mind. He’d refused the necklace more than once, but Misty had found a way to get him to not only keep it, but wear it. The only other keepsake he’d ever had, had been his own ID bracelet, and he’d given that to her. He wonders now if she had discarded that as he had this necklace on such a night he didn’t want to remember.

Carson finally shuts the locket and collects the chain in his palm to place it in his jeans pocket. Misty was gone now…wearing her close to his heart would just create a new wound. But he wouldn’t be throwing it away again.