I love these guys, and most days I love this job. Ain't nothing like saving the whole world

(or even just New York City!). But some days it really bites. Like the days when things go wrong. Big time wrong. So far one or more of us has always managed to pull things out in the end, but any bettin' man will tell you those odds won't hold forever.

I told Pete he of all people should know 'if onlys' do nobody any good. He even agreed with me, but then pointed out that knowing it in your head doesn't carry over; every single time you have to learn it all over again in your gut. I couldn't tell him he was wrong. I did think, though, that I had convinced him that I didn't blame him, that Ray didn't blame him, and that Egon wouldn't blame him if when he gets out of the hospital. He had a split second to make his decision, and he did the best he could. I couldn't say I would have done any different.

But then he found Ray's notebook.

They'd thrown us out of the hospital, almost literally; told us to shower, eat, sleep, don't come back until tomorrow for normal visiting hours. Yeah, right. I guess after a few days they were tired of us haunting the hallways. Anyway, Ray disappeared again, saying he had an errand to run. Pete was channel surfing, hardly seeing anything on the TV as the channels went by.

Me? I was trying to think of something I could cook up that might tempt the two of them

(not to mention myself) to eat. Not that I was likely to have much success. Besides the fact that Ray was gone and Pete was oblivious even to the flickering right in front of his face, the refrigerator was almost empty. It had been Egon's turn to do the grocery shopping.

I couldn't make up my mind whether to go to the store, or just to order a pizza. Again. I went up to ask Pete what he thought. There was no sound, so I realized he must have shut off the television. As I got to the doorway, I saw him idly pick up a green spiral notebook from the coffee table and start flipping through the pages. Before I could speak, his whole body went rigid with tension; what I could see of his face looked white with shock. I said his name, but I don't think he heard me. He deliberately went back to the front of that spiral notebook, and started turning the pages slowly, one by one, scanning the contents. I went over and put a hand on his shoulder, and he jumped. For about a split second, I thought his eyes looked dark with pain, but then the shutter slipped down and I couldn't tell what he was thinking at all.

"Hey, Pete, what is it?" I asked.

"So, Ray doesn't blame me, eh, Winston?" he said. "Isn't that what you told me?" He thrust the notebook at me blindly and shrugged his shoulder out from under my hand.

As I automatically fumbled at the notebook to keep it from falling to the floor, he left the room. Quietly.

I had to look at the notebook. I had to, you know? I mean, what could have caused that kind of reaction?

There was nothing of interest on the outside; it looked like a standard college-ruled, spiral-bound notebook. About a third of the inside was filled with Ray's familiar handwriting. I started to read.

Ray had said that he didn't blame Pete. He had sounded totally sincere. "Gosh, Peter, of course I don't!" You know how he is. I believed him. Yet as I read through the pages, I began to wonder. Why would he do this? And if it made me wonder, it must have hit Pete like an express train.

Pete!

Belatedly, I went flying out of the room after him. The last thing we needed was for him to disappear or do something heroically stupid in self-imposed penance. Egon once said Pete has a tendency toward self-flagellation because of an exaggerated sense of responsibility, and hence, guilt when things go wrong.

I wish Egon were here to fling around a few more ten dollar words. But then we wouldn't be in this bind, now would we?

Anyway, I got lulled into thinking maybe I was wrong about how he was going to react, because I found him downstairs talking quietly with Janine, one arm around her shoulder, handing her a tissue. I backed off, because I knew neither one of them would be comfortable with that kind of pose in front of an audience. Janine has been very upset, I know; it has to be pretty bad for Pete to offer that kind of comfort and for her to accept it.

Janine doesn't take anything from anybody, so she doesn't like looking vulnerable. Her usual conversations with Pete remind me of brother-sister bad-mouthing, but don't let either one of them catch any outsider trying the same stuff! Pete can be annoying as heck at times, but he can also be one terrific friend to have when the world seems upside down. Not that I'd ever tell him that in so many words, mind you. I have my own image to maintain. Ha! Actually, telling him that would make him insufferable? Make that more insufferable when things got back to normal.

Maybe I'd tell him that anyway. Later.

I decided I needed to talk to Ray when he got back from his 'errand'. I wondered why he hadn't taken his little notebook along. Oversight, probably. Almost guaranteed he was doing another one of his 'witness interviews'?

I went and called for a pizza. Forget about going to the store. I wanted to keep an eye on Pete and I didn't want to miss Ray when he came in.

I managed not to miss Ray.

He came in looking all anxious. His eyes lit up when he saw that I had his green notebook.

"Oh, gosh, thanks, Winston!" he said. "I was afraid I'd lost that!" He held out his hand eagerly. "Where did you find it?"

I waggled the notebook at him. "What is this, Ray?" I asked.

He blinked at me, confused, his hand still outstretched. When I didn't give him the notebook, he drew his hand back and ran it through his red hair.

"I know it's a long shot, but?" He sighed. "You remember that specialist says he doesn't know why Egon won't wake up." I nodded to show I was listening. "We checked him with a PKE meter, we looked at him with the ectoscopes, I've run every test I can think of?"

He trailed off, and I nodded again, sympathetically this time. Ray really had run every test he could think of, and every test Pete or I could remember either Egon or Ray ever running on anybody since the Ghostbusters came into existence. We hadn't found a thing.

"There was no sign of the slime that bothered that lady so much," Ray continued. "So I thought-- well, I thought maybe if I talked to everybody who was there, I might find somebody who saw something we didn't, something that might give us a clue to help Egon." His face fell. "So far there hasn't been anything like that, Winston. I'm sorry."

I didn't know what to say. I handed him the notebook.

"Where did you find it?" he asked again, looking for the last page he'd written on.

"Pete gave it to me," I said flatly.

His head came up, his eyes wide. "Peter? Peter read this?"

"You left it on the coffee table, Ray. I think he just picked it up out of idle curiosity at first."

He ran his hand through his hair again. "Oh, man," he said, highly agitated. "Do you know where he is? Knowing Peter, he probably took it all wrong!"

"Took it wrong? What else was he supposed to think, Ray? Every single one of your little interviews ends with the notation that the witness said that what happened to Egon was Pete's fault! What does that have to do with Egon not waking up? Please don't tell me you're subscribing to that theory of Pete's-- that I finally talked him out of -- that Egon does blame him and doesn't want to wake up because he doesn't want to face the fact that one of his closest friends nearly got him killed? And how could you leave that lying around like that?" I demanded, my voice rising with each word as I gestured wildly at the notebook. I was really wound up.

"Of course not!" Ray cried. "Peter couldn't let the ghost get that little girl! Not after we'd seen what happened to that woman it engulfed! Egon was trying to get around behind the ghost, getting to it from the other side, but Peter couldn't see him, had no way of knowing when he'd get
there!" He waved the notebook around. "Gosh, Winston, nobody who really knows Peter would ever believe he would deliberately do anything to hurt Egon! Or anybody else, for that matter!"

"Nobody in your little notebook says anything about it being on purpose," I told him pointedly. "The phrase I remember seeing more than once was, 'he screwed up'. I think you're going to have to do some mighty fancy tap dancin' to convince Pete you don't think he's the slime of the
earth right about now!"

Except of course when we went looking for Pete, he wasn't there for Ray to tap dance for.

********
It all started when we got a call about a big brown ghost sliming people in Manhattan. Pete rolled his eyes when Janine relayed that information--sort of a 'been there, done that, don't wanna do it again' type expression --although he was already zipping up his jumpsuit at the time. Then Janine told us the people who had been slimed had become dizzy and disoriented, and Ray, who was horrified, declared that we had to figure out how to help them right away.

"Man, you're right, Tex," Pete said. "Imagine being dazed and confused without even a good high first!" I chuckled, Ray swatted his arm and Egon looked at him in amused exasperation.

"A little alacrity, gentlemen?" Egon said, which was humorous, too, since we were loading our gear in the back of Ecto at the time.

I drove. Ray rode shotgun, looking like he was willing the car forward. Pete sat behind me, moaning about the likelihood of getting slimed again, while Egon checked the calibration on his PKE meter. A pretty normal ride, in other words.

I didn't have any premonition that anything was going to go so disastrously wrong, and I don't think any of the other guys did, either. At least nobody quoted that famous line from the Star Wars movies. One or the other of us has, on numerous occasions, and--fairly frequently--been
right.

When we arrived, there was good news and there was bad news. The bad news was that seven people had been slimed. The good news was that the first two to get hit with the stuff seemed to be recovering their wits. There were all kinds of people pointing the way. Of course, they seemed
to be pointing in about seven different directions, but we just figured we would follow the loudest screams. That usually works, and this time was no exception.

The banshee screams were coming from a pretty young blonde backed into a corner by the ghost. We couldn't fire, because they were much too close together and we didn't want to risk neutronizing her. As we watched, the ghost didn't just slime that poor woman, it engulfed her completely. Ray was horrified, Pete was outraged (like I said, she was very pretty) and Egon looked like he was calculating what best to do. I was trying to keep my eye on everybody and everything at once, in case there was more than one ghost, more going on than we knew about. What a mess. The ghost suddenly went zip! Straight up, too fast for us to catch in our streams, even though we'd all been aiming in that general direction, expecting something like that. The young woman stood there like a lovely statue, slimed and blank-eyed. Not dazed, like the others, but empty, like nobody home.

Grimly, we turned her over to the waiting paramedics (after Egon took and recorded his readings, of course) and followed the latest batch of screams. The ghost might have left our line of sight, but it obviously hadn't left the area.

Readings said the ugly sucker was a class five, but it was certainly smarter than Slimer. It kept turning up in places where our maneuverability was limited -- either where there were too many people (idiots who didn't evacuate either because they didn't believe in ghosts or because they were gawkers wanting to see us at work, but who ran screaming as soon as the ghost showed up in their vicinity) or because space was limited or because there were too many chances for a ricochet shot that would do more harm than good.

One stream wouldn't hold the darn thing. We got it in two streams once, but not for long enough. And all the time it was making strafing runs at whoever was handy, dripping ectoplasmic goo everywhere. Somehow, all four of us managed to stay unslimed. That must have used up most of our luck. Anyway, it finally seemed to miscalculate, popping up in a large, high-ceilinged room only sparsely occupied. Well, sparsely for the size of the room, anyway.

Still, it moved awfully fast, and we were still having trouble getting more than one stream on it quick enough to contain it. Egon spotted a door on the other side of the room, and found out from someone who knew the building that there was an easy way to get around to that door so he could
come in behind the ghost while we kept it occupied.

We'd been watching the ghost pretty close, you know, and I think it was Pete who first connected the dots. The way it had approached that young woman hadn't looked anything like the strafing runs we'd seen since. I can still see it. The ghost escaped my stream just before Ray's hit it, too. Pete had an hysterical teenaged girl hanging onto his arm, so he was trying to dislodge her without hurting her, keep his eye on the ghost, and keep track of Ray and me, all while watching for Egon to come through that door. The ghost headed straight for a crying toddler crouched under a chair right near the door. It was not a strafing run.

Like I said before, Pete had a split second to decide what to do. Egon wasn't visible; the ghost was going to get that little child. He fired at the ghost. It didn't stop it in its tracks any more than any other single stream had before, but it did deflect it from that baby girl. Only Egon chose that second to come through the door.

If I close my eyes and replay it, I think if Egon had stayed where he was when he realized what was happening, he might have been okay; but, instinctively probably, he dove for cover.

Pete's stream hit him, just for a second, because Pete cut it off immediately with a cry of dismay, but Egon's dive turned into an uncontrolled flight and he hit his head on a table leg. A solid mahogany table leg.

Most of the rest is a blur. We caught the ghost in record time, got another set of paramedics to Egon, followed the ambulance to the hospital. Pete didn't even stop to give the building manager an invoice. The stream had only hit Egon a glancing blow; its effect should have worn off in minutes. The blow to the head wasn't serious, either - no fracture, no hemorrhaging, maybe a mild concussion - but Egon didn't wake up. It's been nearly three days, and he still lays there, unaware of us. No subdural hematoma, say the doctors, no obvious reason he shouldn't be awake and asking us if we finally got the ghost. No physical reason, that is; I already told you what Pete was thinking.

Anyway, Ray and I asked Janine if she knew where Pete had gone, but she hadn't seen him leave. "That sneak!" she said. "I bet he left while I was in the bathroom!" Her eyes narrowed. "Is something wrong?"

I cut off Ray's agitated but not terribly coherent apology, and explained, briefly, why we were concerned that Pete had left without letting any of us know where he was going. Ray handed over the notebook without meeting her gaze. Janine's eyes flashed as she read a few entries and her lips tightened; I thought for a second that she was really going to let Ray have it. I should have known better, of course; he looked so miserable already her face softened almost immediately. She still cuffed him on the arm and told him, "That was really dumb, Ray," but her tone was
mild. "So where do you think he went?"

We made a few phone calls, and I took a drive around the block in case Pete was just walking, but we didn't find him and he didn't come back. When I woke up this morning his bed hadn't been slept in. It's almost time to go back to the hospital, and we still don't know where Pete is.

********

I had sorta thought maybe Pete would already be with Egon when Ray and I arrived at the hospital. Well, I hoped, anyway. But when we got there, the only person with Egon was a nurse, checking his IV's and oxygen and what-not. She actually seemed surprised we waited to come back until they told us we could. Don't it figure.

Janine stayed at the firehall in case Pete came back. I figured she'd lay into him, then drive him here in her VW if she had to handcuff him to her to get him here.

Anyway, Ray and I decided to take turns going in to sit with Egon. Ray went in first, which left me sitting in the waiting room with a cup of lousy coffee.

After a few minutes, a man walked up to me and said, "Excuse me, you're one of the Ghostbusters, aren't you?" When I nodded, he asked, "Is Dr. Venkman with you? I'd really like to thank him."

"Not right now," I said. I guess I looked puzzled, because he introduced himself.

"I'm sorry, I'm Randall Cupertino. You know, Susan's husband?" It took me a minute, but then I remembered that Susan Cupertino was the young woman who had been engulfed by the ghost.

I murmured, "Nice to meet you," even though I still didn't have a clue as to what he wanted to thank Pete for.

"Do you know when I can talk to him? I'm so grateful! Dr. Bailey said he spent all night talking to Susan and now she's starting to wake up!" he told me excitedly. "She squeezed my hand, not five minutes ago, and the doctor says she's definitely responding to outside stimuli for the first
time since she was brought here. I don't know what Dr. Venkman said, but I've just got to tell him he's a miracle worker!"

Well, now I knew where Pete had been all night. But where was he now? More importantly, maybe - did he know how much good he'd done? I put off Mr. Cupertino by promising him I'd send Pete his way the next time I talked to him and telling him he ought to get back to his wife.
Ray came out the next time the nurse went in, so I told him about what had happened. He beamed. "Peter is really something, isn't he? It's so great that he can help people like that!" Of course, Ray's face fell a few seconds later when he realized we still didn't know where our friend was, or if he knew that what he had done had borne fruit.

Anyway, I sent Ray off to get some fresh coffee or something for me while I went in to sit with Egon for a while. I debated whether I should tell him what was going on or just talk about stuff, but we haven't gotten where we are by lying to each other or keeping secrets when things are
important, so I laid it all out - what Pete was afraid of, what Ray had been doing, Pete finding the notebook, jumping to conclusions and disappearing, Cupertino's visit, the whole enchilada since Egon hit his head. I thought that might make a difference, but I didn't notice any change. I tried to tell myself it takes time.

After a while, I came out of Egon's room, feeling kinda discouraged. Ray wasn't back yet, and Janine wasn't there, but Pete was sound asleep, draped across one of those awful waiting room chairs. He was wearing the same clothes he'd had on the day before. I didn't know whether to let him sleep, grab him up in a bear hug, or slap him upside the head for scaring the wits out of us!

I let him sleep until Ray got back. Nobody could have slept through that - "Peter!" at the top of Ray's lungs. I was tempted to remind him we were in a hospital! Pete did that well enough, though.

He jumped at Ray's shout as if he had been poked with a live wire, looking around wildly, blinking and befuddled for a few seconds. "Geez, Ray, don't you know there are people trying to sleep in this hospital?" he said. "Wanna keep it down to a dull roar, anyway?"

Ray apologized, but he was his usual irrepressible self, wanting to know where Pete had been, if he was okay, had he eaten, had he talked to Egon yet today?

"Down, Tex," Pete moaned. He sighed. "Walking, fine, no, not yet, okay? I haven't even had any coffee yet," he added mournfully.

"Oh!" cried Ray. "I'm sorry, Winston! I got talking to Mr. Cupertino and I totally forgot about the coffee you wanted. I'll go get you both some now. You're going to go in to see Egon, aren't you, Peter?"

Pete made some noncommittal noise, so I nodded at Ray to go ahead and waited until he was gone again before turning to Pete. He was rubbing his face, raking his hands through his hair, looking at anything but me. "Sometimes that boy is just a bit-- much," he said wryly. "Especially
first thing in the morning."

"It's almost lunch time, Pete," I said. "But then I hear you were up all night."

"Yeah, and even with a pretty girl," he replied lightly. Then he frowned. "How'd you know?"

"Cupertino came looking for you. Wanted to thank the 'miracle worker' - said his wife is waking up and squeezing his hand. He's pretty excited," I told him.

Pete grimaced. "Some miracle worker," he grumbled. "Why would it work for her when it wouldn't work for Egon?" he added plaintively.

Oh, boy. "Uh, maybe you just haven't been persistent enough."

"Yeah, right. And maybe I just screwed up again?" The first part was clearly audible; the second was not and obviously meant mostly for himself.

I hauled him out of his chair and pointed him in the direction of Egon's room.

"Get in there, homeboy. Ply that golden tongue."

He looked at me like I was nuts, but he went. I watched him stand just inside the door for a minute, visibly bracing himself, but then he went over and sat down next to the bed, so I went back to the waiting room. I could hear Pete's voice, but not his words, as I walked.

About ten minutes later, Ray and I were sipping more bad coffee when Pete came out, grinning from ear to ear. "Hey, guys! He's in there, yawning and stretching like he just woke up from a nice nap!"

********

I just read back through what I wrote at various times over the past few days, and I was tempted to clean things up, mark things up, interject stuff? I left it alone. Small chance Pete will ever find and read this notebook, but if he does - well, I won't mind giving him a smile or two, and I don't think he'd let on, anyway.

Egon is home and fine. He says he was having a very complex and interesting dream, that he solved some seemingly insoluble problem and felt great about it, but that it all faded when he woke up, yawned, stretched and looked around to see Pete's exhausted face beside his bed. He was quite dismayed to discover that he had been 'dreaming' for several days. No real explanation from the doctors as to why he took so long to rejoin the world, but they can't find a thing wrong with him, although I think they did about a hundred tests, and he certainly seems his usual self -
well, except for the way he still keeps watching Pete, who watches him...

Ray and I caught the tail end of a pretty intense hot cocoa session about three o'clock this morning, so I think things are well on the way back to being normal. (If four-way hugs and cocoa mustaches can be considered normal?) As normal as things ever are around here with the four of us! And Janine. And Slimer. (Lord help me, I have the strangest family--) We also got a big, fat check for bagging that ghost. And Egon's medical bills were paid, so Pete is not complaining about any dent in our budget. Not that he'd complain about paying medical bills for one of us, but he sure hates it when the bank balance gets low.

Susan Cupertino is home, too. Pete recommended a therapist for her to help her cope with how the ghost made her feel. I got the impression she's gonna be okay; her husband pumped Pete's hand until I thought he'd shake it off, and Susan kissed Pete's cheek before they left. Janine scrubbed the lipstick off Pete's cheek with a tissue like she was dealing with one of her nephews.

So. One more time we beat the odds. I like it that way. I like it a lot.