The Flu

"Agent Hand's grandmother sounded nice." Jemma said as Skye ended the phone call.

"She is. I can't believe that Shield couldn't find one person to talk to them before things got this crazy." Agent Hand's family was taken care of. She scrolled through the list of contacts, thinking. "You don't think Agent Hand has a grief stricken girlfriend somewhere who we need to call too, do you?"

"I'm not sure how we would find out about that if there was." Jemma responded. "There isn't anything in her phone?"

"Lots of women's names, but she doesn't seem like the type to mark her girlfriend's phone number with little hearts or something, so I'm not sure how to figure out if one might be a girlfriend. Let me call AC and see if he has a clue." Skye said as she dialed Coulson's number.

"Skye, how's Victoria?" Coulson answered the phone, not able to help a little worry when he saw the number in spite of the previous reassurances that Victoria was doing better.

"She's sleeping. You'll be happy to know that I solved the problem of her family thinking she's dead. I called her grandmother and let her know that Shield just made a giant mistake. And why in the world didn't it occur to someone at Shield to try to call her family and let them know she was okay, anyway, before they could end up crying on television? Agent Hand is not going to be happy if she hears."

"They might have tried to call." How had Skye gotten through when Shield couldn't? But then it hit him, she had Victoria's phone, and of course her family would automatically answer a call from that number where given the situation they might have ignored random incoming numbers thinking they were reporters. Why hadn't he thought to ask Skye or Jemma to look for Victoria's phone earlier, before this disaster could have gotten so out of hand? "Skye, thank you. How did her family sound?"

"They didn't drop dead of heart attacks when I told them Agent Hand was okay or start threatening to sue us for the trauma they've been put through. I'm taking that as a good sign. Her grandmother seems really nice. She wanted to talk to Agent Hand so I put the phone where she could hear. She was able to kind of say a few words. Which, she's really drugged and out of it, but it was enough to convince her grandmother that she's okay, and I think hearing from her family helped a lot because she seems more relaxed now, so that's good."

"That's very good." Coulson agreed.

"I gave them my number and told them they could call back any time to check on her, so hopefully that will help things there anyway. But I was thinking, is there some grief-stricken girlfriend we might need to be seeing about notifying too? Since it doesn't look like Director Fury's going to be handling that any time soon."

Girlfriend. John had made that crack about Victoria maybe getting a date from the picture with her obituary, but he was pretty sure that had just been an attempt at a joke. Girlfriend. Hadn't he heard something about a girlfriend? He tried to respect his fellow agents' private lives, but he could swear that he had heard something about a girlfriend from someone. "I'll go and see if I can find out who she's seeing." Coulson told her. "But thank you for contacting her family."

"I don't know why I didn't think of it before." Skye said as she continued scrolling through the contacts list looking for hints about the possible girlfriend's name. "I guess if I have to I could just start dialing everyone in her contacts' list, but that might take awhile."

"I don't think you need to do that yet. And I want to think she has some sort of Shield connection so she might already know Victoria's alright. Let me check and I'll call back." Coulson said, ending the call as he spotted John coming down the hall dragging a cart loaded down with bowls. "Please tell me you aren't attempting to cook something!"

"Melinda suggested that someone needed to do something about dishes." John said with a frown. "And my cooking isn't that bad."

Phil just shook his head, not wanting to bring up examples of cooking disasters, although he did have to admit that if an open fire was involved, John's cooking wasn't that bad. Although an open fire was definitely something that they didn't need to deal with right now. "Never mind. Skye called and was able to get hold of Victoria's family."

"She…." John suddenly paled. "Maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe I'll have gotten one of the defective shots and will come down with the flu before Vic gets out of being quarantined." Would having the flu save him from her wrath? Probably not but he could hope. "I knew your girls had her phone. I should have thought to tell them to try her family on it when Fury couldn't get through to them?" He smacked his forehead in frustration at his mistake. What had he been thinking? When Vic found out, she was going to have a fit at the thought that her family had gone through so much preventable suffering.

"I think she's probably going to focus more on the people who wrote her obituary and bought a coffin for her, when she finds out about this. She'll probably have calmed down a bit by the time she gets around to you." Coulson said. "Skye asked something, though. She was wanting to know if there was a grief-stricken girlfriend that needed to be called too."

"Isabelle. Isabelle Hartley." John told him. "If she wasn't with Vic's family, she might have got caught in the lockdown. Let me see if I can find her."

"Alright. And I'll see if Skye can get through to her too." Phil said.

"Hopefully one of us can." John said as he dialed. "Trip?"

"John!" Trip called as he answered his phone. "Have you heard anything about what's happening with Nick and poor Sharon? Because my mother isn't happy, and this year's family reunion is shaping up to be more than a little awkward."

"I think Maria's working on that. I'm sure it will be fine. Listen, Trip, is Agent Morse still at the Cube?"

"Seeing as the head doubled the security after you got out somehow, I'm pretty sure she's still here. Do you need her for something?" Trip scanned the open door leading to the cafeteria, looking for the tall blonde, which was a bit harder than it would be normally with all of the extra agents who had been trapped there by the lockdown.

"I'm pretty sure that she knows Vic's girlfriend and I'm hoping she might know how to get hold of her, to make sure she knows that this entire disaster's a mistake. Can you find her?"

"I see her." Trip said as he finally spotted the agent in question, sitting in a corner, sipping a drink and watching the crowd with what looked like amusement. "Just a minute." he told John as he dodged his way through the room and around the crowd of agents, working his way towards her table. "Agent Morse!"

"Hey, Agent Triplett, right?" Bobbi said as she looked up with a smile. "I would tell you to set down but it seems like we have a serious seat shortage in here at the moment. I'm beginning to think that Agent Garrett might have had the right idea in breaking out of here."

"Please don't tell him that." Trip said with a shake of his head. "John's why I was looking for you, though. He thought you might know how to get hold of Agent Hand's girlfriend. Can you talk to him?"

Bobbi nodded, worry suddenly washing over her as she thought of the situation with Izzy. "Agent Garrett?" She said as she took the phone.

"Agent Morse, you know Vic's girlfriend, don't you?" John asked her.

"Izzy, yes. What's going on?" Bobbi asked. She had seen Victoria's funeral on television, but there had been rumors going around the base about some sort of mix-up too.

"The disaster to end all disasters." John said with a shake of his head. "Nick probably better tell Director Carter to keep going wherever he is. After letting Sharon go, of course." He added in case Trip was listening. "Do you know if Izzy knows that Vic's okay or not?"

"She's okay?" Bobbi demanded. "You're sure?"

"I've talked to her on the phone. I'm very sure. But if you weren't sure, I'm guessing that her girlfriend doesn't know that the funeral was a mix-up?"

"Izzy called me when she saw the obituary. She wasn't taking it well." And that was putting it mildly. Bobbi had never heard Izzy like that before, so broken sounding, not even when her mother had died. "This entire thing was a mix-up?" Anger seeped into her voice. "How did they mix things up so badly?"

"Don't ask me. I was breaking out of the Cube when it started going totally crazy. At least I have an alibi for that. Do you think you can get hold of Izzy and let her know what's going on, that Vic's okay? Was she stuck in the lockdown?"

"No. I think she might have been in London. She was somewhere Hunter was, anyway. I heard him in the background. I've been trying to get hold of her, but I think she has her phone off. I'll keep trying. I'll come up with something. What was Fury thinking, letting things get this crazy?" She demanded.

"Whatever he was thinking, he's trapped in a car with Peggy Carter behind the wheel. I'm pretty sure he's suffering for it now. Listen, if you can keep trying to get ahold of her, I would appreciate it. And Coulson's here, and his girls are looking after Vic. They can try on her phone. Would she have been at the funeral? They called and let her family know what's going on. Would she have maybe been with them? Maybe she already knows?"

"If she did, I think she would have called me. And she didn't sound like she was in any condition to go to a funeral when I talked to her. Tell Couson's people to try calling her and I'll see what I can do here." Bobbi said before ending the call. What could she do here, though? She had tried to call Izzy. She had tried to call Hunter. Neither one of them was answering, and she didn't dare risk calling Jane and dragging her into this, not with how she was sick. Phoning didn't seem like it was going to work. That left only one option. "Come on." She said as she stood and motioned to Trip to follow her. "Surely between the two of us, we can figure out how Agent Garrett got out of here, and hopefully they haven't found and blocked it yet."