Chapter 7: Hospital Game

Hospital, New Haven. January 1, 2004 – Thursday morning, barely.

Peter paced the waiting room floor. He'd followed the ambulance to the hospital. Jones was now using Peter's car to drop Tricia and an arrest warrant at the Sinclair residence. Agent Rice and her team were escorting Collins back to his home in New York.

He kept reliving those last few minutes of the op, when he realized what Neal was about to do, and couldn't stop him. Like Gardiner, he hadn't been able to think of a better exit strategy. But they had been so close to getting a warrant. Hearing the inhaler, hearing Neal struggle to breathe, hearing the sirens and the EMTs loading Neal into the ambulance, and not being able to do anything... It had been hell.

Peter's phone rang, and just seeing the caller's name relaxed him a bit. "Hey, hon."

"Happy New Year, Peter. How are things going?"

"It's 2004 already? I haven't been watching the clock. Happy New Year, El. The good news is, our missing person is on his way home, and one of my agents is currently arresting a white collar criminal."

"Congratulations. And the bad news?"

"I've been the White Collar taskforce leader for two weeks, and already a member of my team has been hospitalized."

"Oh, Peter, I'm so sorry. How serious is it?"

"I don't know yet. The doctor is still checking him out. He should be fine. It's just... it's nerve-wracking."

"Is it Neal?"

Peter sighed. "Yes. Yes, of course it's Neal. He's reckless, impetuous, foolhardy, impulsive... did I say reckless?"

"But how did he do on his first real case?"

"You should have heard him, El. He was brilliant. At the end, strategizing an exit plan with an FBI legend, cool as could be. And the team's coming around, starting to support him. And there was this cat..." Peter paused. He didn't normally share many details of his cases with Elizabeth. Partly for security, but also because they were often boring to a non-agent. It was hard to convey the thrill of the capture if you hadn't experienced it. And the rest of the work simply didn't lend itself to good stories. At least, it hadn't before Neal joined the team. "I'll tell you about it when I get home."

"I look forward to it. You know, I'd like to meet Neal sometime. All of your team, really. It would be good to put faces to names. We should host a party."

"Oh, I don't know, El. There's so much going on, and Neal will just be getting out the hospital."

"Not tomorrow. What I'm thinking about would take a few weeks to plan. But what do you think about having everyone over to the boss' home for a little socializing one evening?"

"Um..."

"And I love you, anyway. We'll talk about it when you get home."

A cup of coffee and ten minutes of pacing later, Peter heard what Jones and Wiese had identified earlier as the School for Wizards theme. Neal's phone. His phone and wallet had been given to Peter for safekeeping when they got to the emergency room.

Peter grabbed the phone, intending to silence it rather than answer. Unless it was Kate Moreau. Or Mozzie; Peter had spoken with him once and couldn't help being fascinated by the man's circuitous thought processes.

The phone's display indicated it was Henry Winslow. Peter pressed the answer button without even thinking about it. "Hello?"

"This is Henry. I got a text from Neal, and a voicemail from a hospital in Connecticut. Is he okay?"

It had crossed Peter's mind that Henry Winslow could be an alias for Mozzie, but this was an entirely different, younger voice. If the driver's license that Neal had used in St. Louis was accurate, the man whose identity he sometimes "borrowed" was twenty-seven. "Still waiting to hear from the emergency department staff, but they thought he would be all right." Curious about where this Winslow lived, Peter added. "I can call you when they move him to a room, if you want to stop by. Are you far?"

"Fishing for information. I'm guessing you're FBI. Either Peter Burke or Clinton Jones." There was background noise, voices and music. Winslow was probably at a party.

"Special Agent Peter Burke."

"What happened to Neal that landed him in a hospital?"

"I can't share information about an active FBI investigation, but I can categorize what happened as a reckless stunt."

"Let me guess. He was trying to help someone? He gets into the most trouble when he's being the least selfish."

"That about sums it up," Peter confirmed.

"Please tell me he succeeded. Neal can go into guilt overdrive about these things."

"I think he accomplished what he wanted. Sounds like you know him well."

The party sounds receded. Winslow had moved to another room. "I'm his oldest friend. He's like a brother to me, and I try to look out for him. Your job involves looking out for your team, and to do that you need to know a few things about Neal."

"Like the guilt overdrive? I can't say I agree with you on that one. I sat through his confession for immunity, and didn't see any signs of remorse."

"Then all he talked about were things. He doesn't care about things. Oh, he may appreciate a work of art, but forging or stealing it is purely an intellectual pursuit. You'll understand that as you get to know him better. But what you need to know tonight is that he spent a while in a hospital as a kid, and he invented what he calls the Hospital Game. Every time he's been in a hospital since, he's refined it. He's very, very good at it. It's one of those games that sounds terrifyingly dangerous to an adult with all his faculties. But if you're a kid, or if you're an impaired adult, it can be very tempting. God knows I've played it a few times, when I wasn't thinking clearly."

"How does it work?" Peter asked.

"Imagine hide-and-seek. Then... Do you play chess, Peter?"

"I don't get much time to anymore, but I did in college."

"And have you heard of three-dimensional chess?"

"Made popular by the Star Trek series. It was supposed to add another level of complexity to the game."

"Suppose you did that to hide-and-seek," said Winslow. "You kept adding levels of complexity. And you play it with someone very intelligent, and who's had a lot of practice. You know about Neal's family utilizing the services of the U.S. Marshals. Imagine that someone who couldn't tell Neal about the danger, but wanted to protect him, taught him hide-and-seek as a competitive sport, in case the family was ever discovered and needed to escape."

"I can imagine that." It sounded like something Ellen would have done, and a former cop would have been a great teacher for that kind of game. It explained a lot about Neal's skills escaping capture as a thief. It also gave Peter a sense of foreboding about this game. And he was curious how Winslow knew Neal had been in WITSEC. Neal claimed he hadn't told anyone.

"In the Hospital Game, when Neal is bored or annoyed with the poking and prodding, and he's well enough to walk, he slips out of his room and hides. He'll move onto multiple locations as needed to avoid discovery. He'll disguise himself, or con hospital personnel into believing he was moved to another section of the building. The only limitation in the game is that he can't leave the hospital. When he stops feeling well enough to play, he's supposed to go back to his room. But the flaw is, by the time he realizes he's not well enough to play, he's probably not well enough to get back, and if he's in a great hiding place, he could be in really bad shape by the time he's found."

Peter wasn't particularly religious, but couldn't help saying, "It's a miracle he's still alive."

"I've learned that if a hospital recommends keeping him for observation, it is much more conducive to everyone's sanity to check him out and take him home."

"Thanks for the warning." Peter looked for the signs pointing to the cubicles where emergency patients were treated. He wanted eyes on Neal. He also had more questions for Winslow.

But Winslow was already saying, "I have another warning for you. After this one, I don't think you're going to be as grateful."

"What is it?"

"Like I said, I try to look out for Neal. One way I do that is to check out everyone who comes into his life. He speaks highly of you, but he can be sentimental sometimes and that can affect his judgment. I can tell he wants to think that you're good, that you're his friend. I'll be monitoring you, and I'll warn Neal if I find you're not as good a friend as he thinks."

"What do you mean, monitoring me?"

"You've got nothing to worry about if you've been honest about being one of the good guys."

"What is it with Neal's friends and questioning whether I'm a good guy? First Mozzie, now you. I did Neal a huge favor setting up this deal with the FBI. I'm helping him turn his life around. I don't stand to gain anything from it. I've been acting as a friend."

"Nothing to gain? With Neal's skills, the FBI has a lot to gain. And so does he, if this deal works out. But I don't believe it's in the character of the FBI to accept him in the long term. You'll keep treating him like a criminal, even if he does everything you ask. Think of it like the transition from child to adult. At the age of eighteen, a person is no longer a minor, and you expect them to act like an adult. But if you keep treating them like a child, even calling them a child, you're causing confusion. What you expect conflicts with what you do and say. You made this immunity deal that supposedly marked the end of Neal's criminal career, but how many times since then have you thought of him as a criminal? How many times have members of the FBI called him a criminal?"

"Do you wish we hadn't offered him the deal, and kept tracking him down until we sent him to prison?"

"No. You'll ruin everything if Neal goes to prison."

"What does that mean?" Peter asked.

"Let's stick to the point. You made him a consultant. You have a responsibility to treat him like a consultant. If you treat him like a criminal, essentially brainwash him into thinking that's all he'll ever be, then don't be surprised if he acts like a criminal. Not just a criminal like he was before – out to take something because it's there and he enjoys the challenge – but one with a grudge because he feels betrayed by his so-called-friends in the FBI. He'll go on a crime spree like you've never seen. And then you'll have to arrest him. You'll have to arrest someone you claim to consider a friend, and you'll do it knowing it's all your fault."

"You're taking some big leaps here. Our role is to stop crimes, not cause them. If I see anyone pushing Neal back toward a life of crime, I'll step in," Peter said. "On the other hand, it isn't easy to take someone we've been chasing for a year and simply forget he was a criminal. We'll treat him fairly. We'll treat him as he deserves, based on how he acts going forward."

"I'll accept you have good intentions, but I'm not going to simply trust you to follow through, especially when things get challenging. Just remember, I'm going to be watching, and I will do everything I can to get Neal away from the Bureau if that's what he needs. You make sure he has no regrets about taking the deal, and you'll never have to worry about me."

"Listen, Winslow, I get that you feel like Neal's big brother, but you need to remember who really is Big Brother in this picture."

"You're not the only one with resources, Agent Burke." He ended the call before Peter could respond.

To hell with Neal's assurances. Henry Winslow was dangerous, and Peter was going to find out everything he could about him. But first, he needed to make sure Neal wasn't playing the Hospital Game.

A/N: In Season 4, Peter said he checked out everyone who enters Neal's life. I wanted to turn the tables on him, making him the new person in Neal's life who's being checked out by someone who considers himself Neal's guardian angel. I didn't think Peter would care for it.