Hey

Jemma was almost giddy.

She felt like a juvenile biologist once again, enraptured in her observe of a rare phenomenon.

Melinda May was never sick.

She had seen the woman shot, and stabbed, sleep deprived and pain delirious. She had seen the woman stumble more than once; with a shard of glass lacerating her liver, with a bullet lodged in her femur – both times she didn’t get back up. And yet, Jemma found herself more perturbed by the site of the specialist swaying momentarily on her feet, a steadying hand reaching cautiously for the desk in the conference room, before quickly righting herself again and returning her attention to Coulson’s briefing.

Jemma always kept an eye out for her team, a duty (and occasional hazard) of her role of chief medical director. However, from that day onwards, she found herself with both eyes trained watchfully on Melinda May, as often as possible. She didn’t know what she was watching for, specifically, and probably would have abandoned her curiosity much sooner if there was nothing to observe. But there was.

Though she had made many noteworthy observations over the past few weeks, she would have to credit Daisy for supplying some crucial perspective to her findings. Initially, her well-aired dissatisfaction with some of May’s new habits didn’t absorb much of Jemma’s attentions.

It’s always ‘some other time’.

Like, I’ve caught her ACTIVELY looking for an exit when we ran into each other – more than once!

But one of Daisy’s more succinct grievances embedded itself in her subconscious.

She was late.

 While Jemma did not provide for all aspects of her teams health care, it was her responsibility to make sure it was appropriately managed. This state of management – but not interference – was one Jemma found herself in nearly a year ago, when a stray bullet lodged in her bicep had unceremoniously dislodged May’s contraceptive implant. Jemma had cleaned and stitched the relatively minor wound, and advised the thoroughly unimpressed specialist of her alternative contraceptive options.  She hadn’t gauged a definitive preference during their somewhat strained exchange, but Jemma had ordered some additional Provera shots on the next supply intake – she was pretty sure they were still unpacked in the labs supply room.

While anyone else might have found this piece of the equation somewhat damning, it encouraged Jemma to liberally apply her usual unbiased scientific professionalism – and it was in spite of this that her list of suspicions steadily grew.

Jemma had only recently resolved to apply a diagnostic approach to her impromptu study, when an irresistible opportunity fell into her lap:

Dr Simmons had just left a morning briefing, when she ran into the conspicuously absent specialist staring sleepily into her morning tea.

‘May!’ Jemma winced inwardly at her own overenthusiasm, catching May on her own was a rare convenience.

‘I think Daisy was looking for you, something about – May?’

The young scientist cut her own introduction short as she reached for the still steaming teapot, noting the raw discolouration around the woman’s eyes and nose, and the uncharacteristic flush interrupting her usually clear complexion.

The dismissive wave of her hand as she responded was decidedly undermined as she grimaced, and inhaled shallowly into her tea, ‘It’s nothing Jemma – some sort of stomach bug’.

‘It doesn’t look like nothing’, an emboldened Dr Simmons pressed a hand to the woman’s forehead, finding it sweat sticky and fevered warm.

‘Jemma – ‘

‘Let me just run a few tests – so I know what to give you to help’, tactics to facilitate a dangerous temptation sprung readily to Jemma’s mind, unexpectedly spurred forward by May’s speedy concurrence.

‘Fine’, the specialist abandoned her still steaming beverage as she rose shakily to her feet, ‘I’m already late anyway’.

Oh, I bet you are….

Damn, Damn, Damn, Damn, DAMN

If curiosity didn’t kill, it most certainly had a way of teaching nosy scientists a lesson.

Jemma had overstepped her bounds, and was now in a snare solely of her own making, unable to backtrack. She had every right – and express permission – to draw May’s blood, what she didn’t have, however, was ANY BUSINESS running the test she had run (especially the second time, just to be sure).

Dr Simmons had printed the results and tucked them into her pocket, wiping the order for the test from the electronic log before she left the lab. She had subsequently spent most of the day trailing around the base, always seeming to encounter her unsuspecting subject when she lacked either the opportunity or the nerve to speak to her privately.

Jemma had been simultaneously occupied with wringing her hands and biding her time as she observed May working from the communal space, across from the lab, late into the evening. There was no one around, and her self-supplied excuses were wearing thin. However, she was happy to let Coulson supply her with a temporary reprieve for the evening, as he entered the common room and presented his ailing partner with a fresh mug of tea, and a tender kiss to the crown of her head.

Her results had gone unnoticed for six weeks, another night would do neither of them any harm.

Jemma found her enjoyment of her early morning tea quickly derailed by an episode of self-disparaging panic.

First, she had to be nosy.

Which she followed up by being too much of a coward to compensate for.

And now, here she was; devolving into an unproductive fluster as she watched May leave base in one of the SUV’s.

If she hadn’t been prepared to have this conversation with Melinda, she most definitely was not prepared to have this conversation with her boss, in the early hours of the morning, on their day off.

Jemma was running through this predicament in her head for what was probably the fifth time as she paced non-committedly in the hallway outside the Director’s Quarters. She forced a calming breath into her lungs as the sounds of an alarm twittered from the other side of the door, hoping that would be the thing to wake Coulson, and not her, she steeled her frayed nerves and knocked on the door;

‘Excuse me, Sir? I’m sorry to bother you!’

Jemma had to bit her tongue from anxiously spewing  the details of her predicament to the decidedly less intimidating form of the door, rather than waiting for Coulson to answer.

‘Just a second!’ When the Director answered the door, hair still tousled from sleep and his shirt only partly buttoned, the young scientist was reminded with painful clarity that what she had interfered in was private.

Wounded professionalism set perilously to one side, her love and concern for her friend and colleague carried her onward, and inward, as she quickly resumed her anxious pacing;

‘Sir, I’m sorry to barge in on you like this – really – and I’m not even sure I should be doing this – But I saw May leave this morning – and I’m not sure if you sent her on assignment – and it made me realize that I really should say something if she was going to be in the field - - Sir?’

Coulson was silent, which was not uncommon; he often granted her and Fitz the time and space to vocalise their musings before urging them towards a more succinct summary. But this was different, she was pretty sure he had stopped breathing, seemingly frozen where he sat perched on the end of his unmade bed, but she could see heat rising in his face, as his knuckles whitened around his phone.

Her heart stopped racing long enough to clench; there was only one person who could elicit such a response from the Director.

He stood suddenly, pushing the phone into her hand and looking wildly around the room, his gaze falling on his jacket hanging from the side of the wardrobe, which he hastily pulled on as he spoke;

‘Take this, grab your field kit – don’t stop, don’t talk to anybody – meet me in the hanger in 5’.

She didn’t have time to form any of the dozen questions it seemed pertinent to ask before he was gone, all but fleeing out the door and down the hallway.

It took Jemma a minute to make out anything on the grainy video feed playing on the phone’s small screen, and when she finally did, she wished she hadn’t. She silently prayed that this wasn’t where May had been headed – because whoever entered the room with that raging monster was unlikely to make it out of there unscathed.