"I cannot do it, Cathy... Bartholomew needs psychiatric help. I'd advise you follow me, far away from him until he accepts help. But I know you'll stay with him. A mother's love."

Her husband's words stung as she sat in a chair beside her resting son. Bart needed a mother's tender loving care. He didn't need the cold, clinical touch of a psychiatric ward. He'd be treated as a mental patient. At least here he was understood.

"Cathy...? Where are you? Cathy, I didn't mean to hurt the infant."

Cathy emerged from her seat instantly and took to the edge of her grown childs bed. "Honey, call me "mom" just as you always have."

Bart peered past his mother until she gained comfortableness to address the situation. "Honey... I know you didn't mean to hurt your niece, Deidre. It was an accident from not taking your medication."

Christopher popped into her head again. "Cathy, stop making excuses for your son. He's not a little boy anymore spitting out yucky pills. He's a grown man with accountability. "

Cathy stared ahead in a gaze as her husband's voice kept following her. Only the shout of her son seemed to break the trance.

"Thank you for believing in me, mother. I just have one simple request."

Cathy almost lunged in Bart's direction. ANYTHING to distract her from her husband's warnings in her head. "Sure, sweetie. Anything you need."

Bart looked up at her, almost innocently. "Hold me?"

Cathy melted. She could see her child inside a grown man's body. THAT was the Bart she was trying so hard to protect, so hard to save. Maybe Chris thought Bart was a lost cause, but he couldn't see the lost puppy. "Of course, Bart!"

Bart experienced paralysis anxiously pacing over his decision to stay. He could still hop out of bed and prevent the embrace. He'd never been the type to flat out ask for affection. He never needed it! He didn't approve of a woman's touch outside the marital bed. Lying with a woman was a sin. Sin was a deliberate thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the eternal law of God. Malcolm only condoned the love and touch of his beloved mother, Corrine, Sr. This sort of embrace could only be clean-handed if it was simply motherly love. A mother's touch was the only contact with a woman that could evade perversion and wickedness.

Cathy wrapped her arms around her son's chest from behind, hugging him close.

"Ah... yes, the eye that scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures."

Cathy loosened her arms around her son, slightly uncomfortable with the randomness of his morbid proclamation. "Is that the word of Malcolm?"

Bart vibrantly laughed richly. "No, mother, that was Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."

The doe-eyed matriarch rubbed her son's chest a bit and stabbed her index finger on a sharp crucifix draped down her son's neck. She rose to dress her bloody finger. Starting to sense the signs of a bad omen.

"Mother? Why have you turned from me?"

Bart sat up and watched his mother flash him a dripping finger. Bart clenched an angry fist around the the cross necklace. His other fist shook angrily at the sky. "Great grandfather... why must you punish my mother for her whoredom? Is her taking care of me not redemption enough!?"

"Bart!" Cathy's wrinkled eyes showed offense.

Bart shrugged both shoulders, there was nothing he could do. He felt powerless to the will of God and the quicker she accepted this, the better.

"I apologize for my great grandfather. But Foxworth is HIS house..."

The distraught matron put both hands on her hips. "Bart! You stop this nonsense at once!"

Bart took a step toward his mother. "Mother, do you not see this as a good thing? Malcolm is willing to exonerate your lustful sinning. This is him asking for a blood atonement!"

"Darling, he cannot be reasoned with when he's entered this state. You need to come to me. "

Cathy chased out her husband's words from her head. Instead she focused on her son's manic episode. "Sweetie, your cross is very very sharp. If you held it the wrong way you'd cut yourself as well..."

Bart stared bug eyed into his mother's face. Refusing to blink. He gripped the crucifix as tightly as he could. "Only Christ could draw blood from a stone"

Cathy shrieked at the top of her lungs in horror. Bart released the cross and displayed his palm for his mother. He started to grin proudly at no detection of injury.

This demonstration was enough to make Cathy burst out the doors and run down the hall. She searched frantically through the cabinet. She found a medicine bottle of untouched Prolixin. Bart's schizophrenia prescription. She tapped three tablets into her palm and found her son in the hallway.

"Bart, I am asking you to take these now!" Cathy was almost yelling her voice was so forceful.

"Malcolm spoke to me... he still believes you are the Devil's spawn." Bart stared at his mother's bloody finger as she opened her palm with the pills. "I will only swallow these. . . if you pay penance. You must join me tonight in reconciliation for your forbidden understanding of carnal knowledge."

Cathy could barely choke out a 'yes' She wanted to be agreeable to get him stabilized. Bart opened his mouth and allowed his mother to place the pills onto his tongue. "Ahh, tastes like Eucharist."

Bart put a hand to his head after feeling woozy. "I'm going to retire to my bedroom now... Join me, Cathy."