“Come on, Caitlin, today’s the day that I meet my soulmate, can’t I please leave early?” Cisco begged. The cortex was empty save for the two of them.

“Cisco, I’m sorry, but you have to stay. Dr. Wells says he has an ‘important package’ he wants us to take care of.”

“I’ll meet them in half an hour, come on! Let me leave!”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s one of the people bringing the guy in. When I first met Ronnie, I thought I would miss meeting my soulmate because of work. Maybe you’re just meant to meet them here.”

“Come on. No one comes to STAR Labs these days.”

“Well, I just got a text from Dr. Wells, says he and the ‘transport crew’ are going to be here any minute.”

“So is my soulmate! Caitlin, come on!”

“Too late, he says they’re pulling up now. I need you to prepare the med bay.”

He began working on that, as Dr. Wells wheeled in leading a group of paramedics into the main lab area. The people in the back were pushing a gurney, but he couldn't see what or who was on it. As he maneuvered his way to get a better look at whoever it was, Cisco’s timer went off. No one else’s did.

“Well… this is awkward,” he joked, trying to lighten the mood. He laughed nervously. Everyone else stayed silent.

A few months passed, and the patient showed no signs of waking up. His family visited almost every day, and that’s how Cisco learned his name was Barry. Barry was a CSI working for the CCPD. He didn't have much of an online presence, but when Cisco looked him up his Facebook said he liked Star Wars and Lady Gaga. Nice.

Cisco also did some research into the phenomenon of soulmates, and learned that timers were only a recent invention, only since the 50's. Some people chose to have just the one, but others chose to get as many as they wanted! Not everyone had a timer, but most did. Dr. Wells didn’t. Through all his research, though, he never found an example of one timer going off, and no one else’s. There were also timers for platonic soulmates, and Barry had one of those that was zeroed out. His other timer had been fluctuating like crazy, ever since they'd brought him in. Any time his heart rate or blood pressure rose, the amount left on his timer decreased. After his vitals re-stabilized, his timer went back up. They probably wouldn't have even noticed the correlation, but Cisco was a little nosy. With the only thing occupying them for the past 9 months being this guy, what else was he supposed to do? So he checked out the trends, and found that the higher Barry's vitals spiked, the more the time on his timer decreased.

So when Cisco was playing on his phone, blasting Gaga, taking some chill time, he was understandably a little shocked when all of Barry's various alarms went off at once.

"Caitlin! You better get in here!" he yelled.

Caitlin rushed in from her break, and began checking all of Barry's monitors for any irregularities. Of which there were a lot.

"Cisco, write this down. Blood pressure, 310 over 118. Unable to record PulseOx. The ECG is... broken? Cisco, when did you check the machine last?"

"Yesterday! It worked fine then!"

"That's not good." She began checking other equipment. "He drained his IV bag."

"So? That should be good. It means he's getting nutrients. Electrolytes."

"I just put it in 15 minutes ago. Did you mess with this? It should only have been enough to keep the vein open."

"I swear I didn't. This is bad. What if this guy dies? What if we killed him? This is very bad!" he yelled, almost on the verge of panicking.

"Please calm down! I'm calling Dr. Wells. He should know about this. I can't really do anything for him if I don't know what's wrong. After that, I'm calling his sister. And his dad."

While she was on the phone, he began taking a closer look at the equipment. Maybe Caitlin had missed something. And... bingo. She had skipped his timer. So, he turned Barry's wrist over. He had less than a minute left.