TITLE: OFFICER KRUPKE
AUTHOR: Kiki Cabou
FEEDBACK: Delectable. Please R/R or send it to kcabou@hotmail.com.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, don't sue.
SUMMARY: On a stakeout, Reyes finally talks to Doggett about what happened to his wife.
ARCHIVE: Anywhere. Just let me know.
RATING: PG for some sadness and the "s" word.
CATEGORY: Vignette/Drama/Humor/DRF
SPOILERS: None, really, because … (keep reading)
This takes place in my own private universe where Doggett's wife is not in the picture, and has a different name than Barbara. If you're desperate to know the inner workings of my mind on that issue, you can e-mail me, but I hope you're not that bored. Anyway, the scenario with Luke is different, too. It's not what happened on the show, but it just sort of tapped out of my fingers that way. I couldn't tell you why. I started this late at night and finished it a few days later. It might suck, or it might not. You be the judge.
PLEASE be the judge. Reviews n' such make my day.
*** *** *** *** ***
OFFICER KRUPKE
*** *** *** *** ***
Steam floated out of the giant stacks of the factory in the distance. The tightly packed buildings were in varying shades of black and gray. It was misty around here, in the factory district in Baltimore, Maryland. A fog had settled down pretty low, giving the surrounding buildings an otherworldly appearance. It was also the wee small hours of the morning, when most people were still snuggled down in bed, breathing quietly against their pillows and dreaming just one more dream before the sun came up.
The only illumination on the scene was the small light above the dashboard of a burgundy Accent, parked unobtrusively in an alley, facing the street. Monica Reyes yawned and moaned and arched her back against the fake leather passenger seat of their rental car, hearing her vertebrae pop. John Doggett, at the wheel, was asleep, head tipped back against the headrest and snoring loudly. Neither of them had seen anything the whole night. This stakeout was proving useless.
Even Reyes, with her vested interest in the paranormal, had lost interest in the reason they were there --- a possible drug ring. "Possible" because customers had described the thugs who sold them their crack as "disappearing like ghosts." This had happened repeatedly and no one had ever found out what was actually going on, so it had become an X-file.
Doggett snored again with amazing volume, and she turned and looked at him, amused. Her tired face crinkled into a smile. He was quite a funny man, for someone who didn't mean to be.
She checked her watch. Four a.m. It was an ungodly hour of the morning, but she was used to ungodly hours since becoming a part of the X-files. This assignment was looking ready to fall into the abyss of them shrugging their shoulders in Kersh's office. Finishing it would just be a matter of logistics.
If she woke Doggett and they got on the road right now, there would be enough time for them to get back to their perspective cars and homes by six, freshen up, then go back to work and crash in the office before making their "report" and taking their chew-out for wasting the Bureau's time and money.
It sounded like a plan. She set it in motion.
"John?" she asked quietly.
"Chhhaaack…"
She rolled her eyes. "John."
"Chhk---"
"John," she said, a little louder, and shook his shoulder.
"Huh? Mm? Wha---?" he mumbled, coming to consciousness. His startling blue eyes snapped open and he took in the scene in front of him, and then Reyes, to his right.
She smiled at him.
"Good morning," he said quietly, with a smile of his own.
He was pretty out of it. Reyes could tell. His eyes looked a little glazed and sleepy. Still, she admitted she liked his "waking up" voice. Scratchy and warm as a wool sweater. She wondered vaguely what his wife thought of that voice. She wondered vaguely where his wife was now.
"John?" she asked gently.
"Hm?"
"It's time we went bye-bye."
He came fully around at the "bye-bye" remark and blinked. "Monica, wha--- I don't get it. You didn't see anything?"
"No. I think it was just some junkies looking for attention."
"Mm. So no ghosts."
"Probably not."
"And we wasted an evening staking out a factory that's probably totally abandoned."
"Right."
He sighed. "What time is it?"
"Four."
"A.M.?"
"Yep."
"Hoo boy. And today is work?"
"Today is work."
"Shit."
Reyes snorted. Doggett had a knack for reflecting other people's hidden sentiments.
"I'll say. Hey John?"
"Yeah?" he asked, squirming in the seat, trying to get comfortable.
"I know I shouldn't be asking this, but…"
She bit her lip. It wasn't right, but her curiosity had been peaked already, and that look he gave her on waking up … she had to know.
"Whatever happened to your wife? I mean, I know you guys divorced after … after what happened. I was just wondering if you still keep in touch."
Doggett was silent for a minute, not sure whether to be angry or annoyed or just sulky. He shook his head. One thing Monica had, among her myriad idiosyncrasies, was the talent for asking whatever she wanted, without regard to the question's effects. Not that he held it against her. It was just four a.m. and he couldn't believe she couldn't keep her mouth shut for once in her life. The pain … It sent all that pain rushing back to him. A deep and powerful sadness was mixed in there somewhere, too.
He sighed. He had to tell somebody. No one really knew the truth about what happened. Who better to find out than Monica Reyes? She was his friend, after all. A good friend. Someone he cared about. She deserved to know.
"John?"
He looked at her, a little surprised and embarrassed that he'd been silent that whole time.
"We never divorced," he began.
Monica's eyebrows shot for her hairline.
"But --- But everyone at the office says ..."
"Everyone at the office says what I want them to say. I tell people I'm divorced because it's hell of a lot easier than ... than telling them I'm a widower."
Her jaw dropped slightly. She hadn't expected this kind of admission.
"I'm so sorry. I'm kind of ashamed --- I don't even remember her name."
"Her name was Jane," Doggett said. "Jane Beatrice Krupke."
"Krupke?" Reyes asked, her face breaking into a bit of a grin. "Like from West Side Story?" She began to sing, very badly: "Hey, Officer Krupke, krup you!"
"Yeah," Doggett said, smiling. "Like that. She was a good Irish girl. Third generation NYPD. That was where we met."
"Wow."
He nodded. "I'd just made detective, and she was a veteran street cop. She was Officer Krupke and I was Detective Doggett. Both of us had been with the job five years and we both got transferred to same precinct. Smashed into each other in the hallway our first day," he recalled, laughing. "I dumped my entire cup of coffee on her blouse and she was carrying one of those jelly donuts. Ended up all over my shirt." He laughed again, this time joined by Reyes. "We both started apologizing at once, I offered to take her to lunch to make up for it, she accepted, and that was the beginning of the end of my bachelorhood."
"You guys got married pretty quickly?" she asked, getting comfortable in her seat. She had the feeling they would be here for a bit.
"Quickly? I'm surprised we didn't just run off for Vegas. We knew each other for ... gee, four months, I think, and then I gave her a ring. It was a little one, all I could afford, and she threw her arms around me right in front of the lieutenant, and we just kinda jogged for the courthouse, hand in hand. Right through downtown Manhattan. I mean, we were idiots. We didn't give a damn. We grabbed some poor UPS guy on the way and convinced him to be our witness."
Reyes stared. "Are you serious?"
Doggett nodded. "He stood right there next to Jane with the package he was supposed to be delivering. And when we said our vows, he cried. He didn't even know us! It was hilarious. God, the whole thing was so fast. Not that I minded, though. I just saw a good thing and ran with it. And man, was it ever a good thing. Except for the guys at the precinct."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, they came up with all this juvenile nonsense. You know, twisted storybook stuff."
"Like what?"
He rolled his eyes. "See John. See Jane. See John boink Jane. Crap like that."
Reyes laughed. Doggett would never admit it openly, but he liked it when she laughed. It made her whole face light up.
She forced herself to settle down and went on. "So you two bought the house?"
"Yeah. After we'd been married for two years, we had the money for the down payment. I turned into Mr. Fix-it. She decorated, designed, and I built stuff. We added the second floor. I remember helping the construction guys build the staircase. It was kind of exciting. And you know, aside from our jobs, we were just like everybody else. It was nice. We went out, had fun whenever we could. We fought, too."
"Well, that's normal."
"You've been married?" Doggett asked, surprised.
"No," she said, laughing, and showed him her empty hands. "Anyway, I'm sorry. Go on."
"Well ... there's not much beyond that except Luke."
He stopped. His mouth snapped shut and his face became passive, almost like he'd shut a door in hers. There was a long pause.
Reyes put a hand on his shoulder. "John, it's all right. You don't have to say anything else."
"No," he said. "I do. I need someone objective to tell me whether ... whether or not ... Oh, hell. Just listen and be the judge, okay?"
"Okay," she said, puzzled, not really sure what he was going to tell her, not really sure if she wanted to hear it. "Go ahead."
Doggett licked his lips and began. "We were happy. We were normal. We were Mommy and Daddy, and Luke was the best kid in the world, period. He was sweet, and smart, and had his mother's dimples. And hell, he grew up so fast. Seemed like one day I was changing his diaper, and the next I was explaining to him why kindergarten was going to be fun, and to be nice and friendly to everybody. He was still calling me Daddy at seven. I didn't mind. I liked it.
Then he went missing. Jane had taken him to the park to play with his friends, and lost sight of him in the trees for thirty seconds. Thirty goddamn seconds turned into three days of worrying and tears and Jane heaping the blame on herself and me trying to shovel it off.
The day I got the call was the day everything ended. It was like our life stopped. We kept living, but it was ... it was like an act, you know? Jane reported to the scene along with the other cops, and she was the first to see the body. That's what she called it when she called me at work. The body. Not Luke, not our little boy. Just "the body." She was crying.
I got down there and saw the body, and it took a second to hit me that by just waking up that morning, I'd outlived my own child. But I had. She had, too. We both went home on orders to take the rest of the day off, to take time.
We didn't want time. We wanted our son. I remember we sat on the couch for a few hours, just holding each other. The house seemed so empty. So big and cold.
Things just went downhill from there. We did the whole cop thing. We toughed it out. Picked up and moved on. Jane gave his toys to charity. I reworked his bedroom into the downstairs office. We buried him in a local cemetery under a magnolia tree. I go back every year."
Reyes suddenly realized she was holding his hand. Doggett didn't seem to notice. He was just telling his story to the factory across the street.
"What happened to Jane?" Reyes asked, interrupting without meaning to.
"She got sick," was the terse opening. "Cancer. About six months after we buried Luke, she, um, she felt kind of sick, so I took her to the doctor."
Reyes looked down at the floor of the car.
"I don't think you want to hear specifics," he continued.
"No. I do," Reyes responded, surprising herself. "You have to tell somebody. What kind did she get?"
There was a pause as he stared at her again.
"Ovarian. She had cysts all over the place --- in the tubes, in the uterus --- it was looking pretty disastrous. They gave her radiation and chemotherapy to shrink them. Her hair started falling out. After a few treatments, she had most of them removed, but two months later, they were back. Bigger this time. They had to give her a hysterectomy and remove one of her ovaries.
I was sitting with her after the surgery. When the doctor came in and told her that they had to take out, she didn't cry. Before, she'd been really angry and upset and fighting as hard as she could against the disease, but now, there was nothing. It was like, I don't know. Acceptance.
She'd quit her job --- she'd been too weak to work for couple of months, and our bedroom looked like a hospital. The nurses had trained me for home care. I learned everything I ever wanted to know, and a lot of stuff I didn't, about giving injections, bandaging, everything. It was pretty awful.
I took her home after the operation and put her to bed, and got her strength back up for a bit. A few days later we went back for a post-op checkup and the doctor ..."
A knot formed in his throat. He swallowed to get rid of it, and went on, his voice becoming quiet.
"The doctor came into the waiting room. I was sitting out there, while Jane was off somewhere with a nurse, or something. I can't remember, exactly. He told me that the cancer had metastasized. It had gotten into her bloodstream. He wasn't sure there was anything left to do. He gave her lots of prescriptions for pain medication and antibiotics and maybe two months to live.
So, I took her home. I lied to her. I told her the doctor said she was healing slowly, that eventually she would be fine."
He cleared his throat again.
"Don't ask me why I lied to her. I still don't know. A month went by. She'd had a few good days, but the bad days were starting to become the norm. Her hair had completely fallen out, and she was wearing those stupid turbans all the time to keep her head warm."
Reyes squeezed his hand.
"That's when it happened. It was September. I was just carrying on kind of in a fog, working every other shift, coming home every day between the home nurses the hospital was providing. I just pretended she would be all right. This one morning, I came into our room and found her lying in bed.
She wasn't even reading this time. She usually read in bed, but this time, she was just kind of looking up at the ceiling. I told her I had to give her two squeezes. She said, 'fine,' because for the past week, I'd been giving her a big morning i.v. injection of this crap the doctors said was supposed to help immune function, and a very small injection of morphine for the pain.
Both of them were in clear bottles, and looked the same. And I should have known something was up, because Jane just looked at me and smiled. I hadn't seen her smile in weeks. But I just took it at face value. Gave her the little injection of morphine, first. Then I got out the bigger needle, plunged it into the crap, sucked up about 50 megs of it and squirted it into her i.v.
She asked me to lay down with her and take a nap before I got started on the chores. I told her sure thing, and got into bed with her, wrapped my arms around her. She said she loved me. I told her I loved her."
His voice was breaking.
"We both fell asleep. Had a good rest. And when I woke up about two hours later, she was stiff, and cold ..."
He couldn't go on for a moment.
Reyes found herself gawking a little. "She died in her sleep?"
Doggett shook his head. "I woke up scared as shit because I couldn't wake her. It's not like I didn't know it would happen, but I wasn't ready. Not then. I panicked. Called an ambulance. I pocketed the morphine and the other clear crap. ... They got her to the hospital, but it was pointless, really, because she was already gone.
I waited out in the hall for like, hell, an eternity. And the coroner took a look at her and did a couple of tests. Then he came out. I stood up. He said she hadn't died because of the cancer, but because she'd committed suicide.
And I was just blown away. I said, 'What?' And he said that she'd killed herself by giving herself at least 50 milligrams of morphine. And I said, 'But I give her all her injections.'"
Reyes gasped.
"I felt in my pocket and looked at the labels on the bottles. They were both peeling. They'd been switched.
I killed my wife, Monica."
It took Reyes a few seconds to process everything she'd just heard. Finally, she responded.
"You didn't kill her, John. You helped her. If you didn't switch the labels, then it must have been her. She wanted to die --- she knew it was coming, and she didn't want to go in some hospital room, in pain, all alone. She wanted to go in her own bed, peacefully, with her husband's arms around her. She went the way she chose, thanks to you.
I'll tell you one thing. If I had been in her shoes, my last act would have been to tell you I loved you and call you my hero."
She looked deep into her partner's eyes with her soulful brown ones and gave him a tiny smile. Doggett just looked at her, exhausted, half in disbelief, half in fatigue. All his tears had been spent long ago. Finally, in telling his story, he'd found understanding, instead of accusation. It stunned him. She moved toward him and sat on the edge of her seat. He moved toward her, too, narrowly missing banging his knee on the gear shift.
"C'mere," she whispered, and put her arms around him. He returned the embrace.
She spoke over his shoulder. "You did everything you could, and then when you couldn't do any more, you gave her what she wanted. You let her go. You were her hero, John, I'm sure of it," she said.
"You think so?" he asked, his jowls pouching a little against the fabric of her sweater.
"I know so. I just never knew what you went through --- and all alone…"
"Well, I didn't want you to know. You just asked what happened to my wife. If that was a mistake, then ..."
"It wasn't a mistake. I'm glad I know, now," she said, breaking the embrace. "How do you feel for telling me?"
"Better, oddly enough."
She smiled. "Good."
"Thanks for hearing me out."
She ruffled his hair. "Any time."
They gave each other awkward smiles, and then there was a long pause. Doggett cleared his throat and seemed to find the dashboard fascinating. Reyes contemplated her hands. Finally, he looked over at her and the silence was broken.
"So. You good to go?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said, snapping out of it. "Starving, though. You wanna grab something to eat on the way home?"
This was the way back to Normal, the town they had left behind at the beginning of the conversation. Reyes, despite a prickling conscience, was not altogether sorry she'd opened her mouth, but definitely eager to put a band-aid of civility and fluffy talk on the wound she'd uncovered.
Doggett, in contrast, had almost forgotten the exchange completely, given that the situation was already such a part of him. He found that it was beginning to bother him less and less, particularly now that he'd spoken of it to someone. Maybe time really did heal all wounds, he mused.
His belly was rumbling, and he remembered that his refrigerator at home was empty. But his wallet was fine.
"Sure," he replied to her. "Where do you want to go?"
"How about IHOP?" she asked, as she buckled herself in. "I could use some pancakes."
He buckled up and started the car. "Me too. I'm buying, by the way."
"Well, then breakfast will be just the way I like it. Free!" she said, and gave him a sleepy grin.
Doggett couldn't help it. He broke into a grin of his own. They peeled out of the alley as dawn broke over Baltimore.
"Free …" he whispered.
He sneaked a glance at his partner, with the new sun catching the highlights in her hair and illuminating the laugh lines under her closed eyes (she'd dozed off). He felt his pulse quicken and began to wonder what it would be like to wake up with her in some place that was a little more comfortable than a rental car.
All things considered, Monica was one of the most giving, friendly, beautiful, original people he knew. After Jane died he knew he should have picked up and moved on. He hadn't. But here in this car, with this woman, after so many years of being alone, he was beginning to feel something.
An odd twinge of release. A sense of peace. And a sudden wave of joy.
"… I'm finally free."
END
AUTHOR: Kiki Cabou
FEEDBACK: Delectable. Please R/R or send it to kcabou@hotmail.com.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, don't sue.
SUMMARY: On a stakeout, Reyes finally talks to Doggett about what happened to his wife.
ARCHIVE: Anywhere. Just let me know.
RATING: PG for some sadness and the "s" word.
CATEGORY: Vignette/Drama/Humor/DRF
SPOILERS: None, really, because … (keep reading)
This takes place in my own private universe where Doggett's wife is not in the picture, and has a different name than Barbara. If you're desperate to know the inner workings of my mind on that issue, you can e-mail me, but I hope you're not that bored. Anyway, the scenario with Luke is different, too. It's not what happened on the show, but it just sort of tapped out of my fingers that way. I couldn't tell you why. I started this late at night and finished it a few days later. It might suck, or it might not. You be the judge.
PLEASE be the judge. Reviews n' such make my day.
*** *** *** *** ***
OFFICER KRUPKE
*** *** *** *** ***
Steam floated out of the giant stacks of the factory in the distance. The tightly packed buildings were in varying shades of black and gray. It was misty around here, in the factory district in Baltimore, Maryland. A fog had settled down pretty low, giving the surrounding buildings an otherworldly appearance. It was also the wee small hours of the morning, when most people were still snuggled down in bed, breathing quietly against their pillows and dreaming just one more dream before the sun came up.
The only illumination on the scene was the small light above the dashboard of a burgundy Accent, parked unobtrusively in an alley, facing the street. Monica Reyes yawned and moaned and arched her back against the fake leather passenger seat of their rental car, hearing her vertebrae pop. John Doggett, at the wheel, was asleep, head tipped back against the headrest and snoring loudly. Neither of them had seen anything the whole night. This stakeout was proving useless.
Even Reyes, with her vested interest in the paranormal, had lost interest in the reason they were there --- a possible drug ring. "Possible" because customers had described the thugs who sold them their crack as "disappearing like ghosts." This had happened repeatedly and no one had ever found out what was actually going on, so it had become an X-file.
Doggett snored again with amazing volume, and she turned and looked at him, amused. Her tired face crinkled into a smile. He was quite a funny man, for someone who didn't mean to be.
She checked her watch. Four a.m. It was an ungodly hour of the morning, but she was used to ungodly hours since becoming a part of the X-files. This assignment was looking ready to fall into the abyss of them shrugging their shoulders in Kersh's office. Finishing it would just be a matter of logistics.
If she woke Doggett and they got on the road right now, there would be enough time for them to get back to their perspective cars and homes by six, freshen up, then go back to work and crash in the office before making their "report" and taking their chew-out for wasting the Bureau's time and money.
It sounded like a plan. She set it in motion.
"John?" she asked quietly.
"Chhhaaack…"
She rolled her eyes. "John."
"Chhk---"
"John," she said, a little louder, and shook his shoulder.
"Huh? Mm? Wha---?" he mumbled, coming to consciousness. His startling blue eyes snapped open and he took in the scene in front of him, and then Reyes, to his right.
She smiled at him.
"Good morning," he said quietly, with a smile of his own.
He was pretty out of it. Reyes could tell. His eyes looked a little glazed and sleepy. Still, she admitted she liked his "waking up" voice. Scratchy and warm as a wool sweater. She wondered vaguely what his wife thought of that voice. She wondered vaguely where his wife was now.
"John?" she asked gently.
"Hm?"
"It's time we went bye-bye."
He came fully around at the "bye-bye" remark and blinked. "Monica, wha--- I don't get it. You didn't see anything?"
"No. I think it was just some junkies looking for attention."
"Mm. So no ghosts."
"Probably not."
"And we wasted an evening staking out a factory that's probably totally abandoned."
"Right."
He sighed. "What time is it?"
"Four."
"A.M.?"
"Yep."
"Hoo boy. And today is work?"
"Today is work."
"Shit."
Reyes snorted. Doggett had a knack for reflecting other people's hidden sentiments.
"I'll say. Hey John?"
"Yeah?" he asked, squirming in the seat, trying to get comfortable.
"I know I shouldn't be asking this, but…"
She bit her lip. It wasn't right, but her curiosity had been peaked already, and that look he gave her on waking up … she had to know.
"Whatever happened to your wife? I mean, I know you guys divorced after … after what happened. I was just wondering if you still keep in touch."
Doggett was silent for a minute, not sure whether to be angry or annoyed or just sulky. He shook his head. One thing Monica had, among her myriad idiosyncrasies, was the talent for asking whatever she wanted, without regard to the question's effects. Not that he held it against her. It was just four a.m. and he couldn't believe she couldn't keep her mouth shut for once in her life. The pain … It sent all that pain rushing back to him. A deep and powerful sadness was mixed in there somewhere, too.
He sighed. He had to tell somebody. No one really knew the truth about what happened. Who better to find out than Monica Reyes? She was his friend, after all. A good friend. Someone he cared about. She deserved to know.
"John?"
He looked at her, a little surprised and embarrassed that he'd been silent that whole time.
"We never divorced," he began.
Monica's eyebrows shot for her hairline.
"But --- But everyone at the office says ..."
"Everyone at the office says what I want them to say. I tell people I'm divorced because it's hell of a lot easier than ... than telling them I'm a widower."
Her jaw dropped slightly. She hadn't expected this kind of admission.
"I'm so sorry. I'm kind of ashamed --- I don't even remember her name."
"Her name was Jane," Doggett said. "Jane Beatrice Krupke."
"Krupke?" Reyes asked, her face breaking into a bit of a grin. "Like from West Side Story?" She began to sing, very badly: "Hey, Officer Krupke, krup you!"
"Yeah," Doggett said, smiling. "Like that. She was a good Irish girl. Third generation NYPD. That was where we met."
"Wow."
He nodded. "I'd just made detective, and she was a veteran street cop. She was Officer Krupke and I was Detective Doggett. Both of us had been with the job five years and we both got transferred to same precinct. Smashed into each other in the hallway our first day," he recalled, laughing. "I dumped my entire cup of coffee on her blouse and she was carrying one of those jelly donuts. Ended up all over my shirt." He laughed again, this time joined by Reyes. "We both started apologizing at once, I offered to take her to lunch to make up for it, she accepted, and that was the beginning of the end of my bachelorhood."
"You guys got married pretty quickly?" she asked, getting comfortable in her seat. She had the feeling they would be here for a bit.
"Quickly? I'm surprised we didn't just run off for Vegas. We knew each other for ... gee, four months, I think, and then I gave her a ring. It was a little one, all I could afford, and she threw her arms around me right in front of the lieutenant, and we just kinda jogged for the courthouse, hand in hand. Right through downtown Manhattan. I mean, we were idiots. We didn't give a damn. We grabbed some poor UPS guy on the way and convinced him to be our witness."
Reyes stared. "Are you serious?"
Doggett nodded. "He stood right there next to Jane with the package he was supposed to be delivering. And when we said our vows, he cried. He didn't even know us! It was hilarious. God, the whole thing was so fast. Not that I minded, though. I just saw a good thing and ran with it. And man, was it ever a good thing. Except for the guys at the precinct."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, they came up with all this juvenile nonsense. You know, twisted storybook stuff."
"Like what?"
He rolled his eyes. "See John. See Jane. See John boink Jane. Crap like that."
Reyes laughed. Doggett would never admit it openly, but he liked it when she laughed. It made her whole face light up.
She forced herself to settle down and went on. "So you two bought the house?"
"Yeah. After we'd been married for two years, we had the money for the down payment. I turned into Mr. Fix-it. She decorated, designed, and I built stuff. We added the second floor. I remember helping the construction guys build the staircase. It was kind of exciting. And you know, aside from our jobs, we were just like everybody else. It was nice. We went out, had fun whenever we could. We fought, too."
"Well, that's normal."
"You've been married?" Doggett asked, surprised.
"No," she said, laughing, and showed him her empty hands. "Anyway, I'm sorry. Go on."
"Well ... there's not much beyond that except Luke."
He stopped. His mouth snapped shut and his face became passive, almost like he'd shut a door in hers. There was a long pause.
Reyes put a hand on his shoulder. "John, it's all right. You don't have to say anything else."
"No," he said. "I do. I need someone objective to tell me whether ... whether or not ... Oh, hell. Just listen and be the judge, okay?"
"Okay," she said, puzzled, not really sure what he was going to tell her, not really sure if she wanted to hear it. "Go ahead."
Doggett licked his lips and began. "We were happy. We were normal. We were Mommy and Daddy, and Luke was the best kid in the world, period. He was sweet, and smart, and had his mother's dimples. And hell, he grew up so fast. Seemed like one day I was changing his diaper, and the next I was explaining to him why kindergarten was going to be fun, and to be nice and friendly to everybody. He was still calling me Daddy at seven. I didn't mind. I liked it.
Then he went missing. Jane had taken him to the park to play with his friends, and lost sight of him in the trees for thirty seconds. Thirty goddamn seconds turned into three days of worrying and tears and Jane heaping the blame on herself and me trying to shovel it off.
The day I got the call was the day everything ended. It was like our life stopped. We kept living, but it was ... it was like an act, you know? Jane reported to the scene along with the other cops, and she was the first to see the body. That's what she called it when she called me at work. The body. Not Luke, not our little boy. Just "the body." She was crying.
I got down there and saw the body, and it took a second to hit me that by just waking up that morning, I'd outlived my own child. But I had. She had, too. We both went home on orders to take the rest of the day off, to take time.
We didn't want time. We wanted our son. I remember we sat on the couch for a few hours, just holding each other. The house seemed so empty. So big and cold.
Things just went downhill from there. We did the whole cop thing. We toughed it out. Picked up and moved on. Jane gave his toys to charity. I reworked his bedroom into the downstairs office. We buried him in a local cemetery under a magnolia tree. I go back every year."
Reyes suddenly realized she was holding his hand. Doggett didn't seem to notice. He was just telling his story to the factory across the street.
"What happened to Jane?" Reyes asked, interrupting without meaning to.
"She got sick," was the terse opening. "Cancer. About six months after we buried Luke, she, um, she felt kind of sick, so I took her to the doctor."
Reyes looked down at the floor of the car.
"I don't think you want to hear specifics," he continued.
"No. I do," Reyes responded, surprising herself. "You have to tell somebody. What kind did she get?"
There was a pause as he stared at her again.
"Ovarian. She had cysts all over the place --- in the tubes, in the uterus --- it was looking pretty disastrous. They gave her radiation and chemotherapy to shrink them. Her hair started falling out. After a few treatments, she had most of them removed, but two months later, they were back. Bigger this time. They had to give her a hysterectomy and remove one of her ovaries.
I was sitting with her after the surgery. When the doctor came in and told her that they had to take out, she didn't cry. Before, she'd been really angry and upset and fighting as hard as she could against the disease, but now, there was nothing. It was like, I don't know. Acceptance.
She'd quit her job --- she'd been too weak to work for couple of months, and our bedroom looked like a hospital. The nurses had trained me for home care. I learned everything I ever wanted to know, and a lot of stuff I didn't, about giving injections, bandaging, everything. It was pretty awful.
I took her home after the operation and put her to bed, and got her strength back up for a bit. A few days later we went back for a post-op checkup and the doctor ..."
A knot formed in his throat. He swallowed to get rid of it, and went on, his voice becoming quiet.
"The doctor came into the waiting room. I was sitting out there, while Jane was off somewhere with a nurse, or something. I can't remember, exactly. He told me that the cancer had metastasized. It had gotten into her bloodstream. He wasn't sure there was anything left to do. He gave her lots of prescriptions for pain medication and antibiotics and maybe two months to live.
So, I took her home. I lied to her. I told her the doctor said she was healing slowly, that eventually she would be fine."
He cleared his throat again.
"Don't ask me why I lied to her. I still don't know. A month went by. She'd had a few good days, but the bad days were starting to become the norm. Her hair had completely fallen out, and she was wearing those stupid turbans all the time to keep her head warm."
Reyes squeezed his hand.
"That's when it happened. It was September. I was just carrying on kind of in a fog, working every other shift, coming home every day between the home nurses the hospital was providing. I just pretended she would be all right. This one morning, I came into our room and found her lying in bed.
She wasn't even reading this time. She usually read in bed, but this time, she was just kind of looking up at the ceiling. I told her I had to give her two squeezes. She said, 'fine,' because for the past week, I'd been giving her a big morning i.v. injection of this crap the doctors said was supposed to help immune function, and a very small injection of morphine for the pain.
Both of them were in clear bottles, and looked the same. And I should have known something was up, because Jane just looked at me and smiled. I hadn't seen her smile in weeks. But I just took it at face value. Gave her the little injection of morphine, first. Then I got out the bigger needle, plunged it into the crap, sucked up about 50 megs of it and squirted it into her i.v.
She asked me to lay down with her and take a nap before I got started on the chores. I told her sure thing, and got into bed with her, wrapped my arms around her. She said she loved me. I told her I loved her."
His voice was breaking.
"We both fell asleep. Had a good rest. And when I woke up about two hours later, she was stiff, and cold ..."
He couldn't go on for a moment.
Reyes found herself gawking a little. "She died in her sleep?"
Doggett shook his head. "I woke up scared as shit because I couldn't wake her. It's not like I didn't know it would happen, but I wasn't ready. Not then. I panicked. Called an ambulance. I pocketed the morphine and the other clear crap. ... They got her to the hospital, but it was pointless, really, because she was already gone.
I waited out in the hall for like, hell, an eternity. And the coroner took a look at her and did a couple of tests. Then he came out. I stood up. He said she hadn't died because of the cancer, but because she'd committed suicide.
And I was just blown away. I said, 'What?' And he said that she'd killed herself by giving herself at least 50 milligrams of morphine. And I said, 'But I give her all her injections.'"
Reyes gasped.
"I felt in my pocket and looked at the labels on the bottles. They were both peeling. They'd been switched.
I killed my wife, Monica."
It took Reyes a few seconds to process everything she'd just heard. Finally, she responded.
"You didn't kill her, John. You helped her. If you didn't switch the labels, then it must have been her. She wanted to die --- she knew it was coming, and she didn't want to go in some hospital room, in pain, all alone. She wanted to go in her own bed, peacefully, with her husband's arms around her. She went the way she chose, thanks to you.
I'll tell you one thing. If I had been in her shoes, my last act would have been to tell you I loved you and call you my hero."
She looked deep into her partner's eyes with her soulful brown ones and gave him a tiny smile. Doggett just looked at her, exhausted, half in disbelief, half in fatigue. All his tears had been spent long ago. Finally, in telling his story, he'd found understanding, instead of accusation. It stunned him. She moved toward him and sat on the edge of her seat. He moved toward her, too, narrowly missing banging his knee on the gear shift.
"C'mere," she whispered, and put her arms around him. He returned the embrace.
She spoke over his shoulder. "You did everything you could, and then when you couldn't do any more, you gave her what she wanted. You let her go. You were her hero, John, I'm sure of it," she said.
"You think so?" he asked, his jowls pouching a little against the fabric of her sweater.
"I know so. I just never knew what you went through --- and all alone…"
"Well, I didn't want you to know. You just asked what happened to my wife. If that was a mistake, then ..."
"It wasn't a mistake. I'm glad I know, now," she said, breaking the embrace. "How do you feel for telling me?"
"Better, oddly enough."
She smiled. "Good."
"Thanks for hearing me out."
She ruffled his hair. "Any time."
They gave each other awkward smiles, and then there was a long pause. Doggett cleared his throat and seemed to find the dashboard fascinating. Reyes contemplated her hands. Finally, he looked over at her and the silence was broken.
"So. You good to go?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said, snapping out of it. "Starving, though. You wanna grab something to eat on the way home?"
This was the way back to Normal, the town they had left behind at the beginning of the conversation. Reyes, despite a prickling conscience, was not altogether sorry she'd opened her mouth, but definitely eager to put a band-aid of civility and fluffy talk on the wound she'd uncovered.
Doggett, in contrast, had almost forgotten the exchange completely, given that the situation was already such a part of him. He found that it was beginning to bother him less and less, particularly now that he'd spoken of it to someone. Maybe time really did heal all wounds, he mused.
His belly was rumbling, and he remembered that his refrigerator at home was empty. But his wallet was fine.
"Sure," he replied to her. "Where do you want to go?"
"How about IHOP?" she asked, as she buckled herself in. "I could use some pancakes."
He buckled up and started the car. "Me too. I'm buying, by the way."
"Well, then breakfast will be just the way I like it. Free!" she said, and gave him a sleepy grin.
Doggett couldn't help it. He broke into a grin of his own. They peeled out of the alley as dawn broke over Baltimore.
"Free …" he whispered.
He sneaked a glance at his partner, with the new sun catching the highlights in her hair and illuminating the laugh lines under her closed eyes (she'd dozed off). He felt his pulse quicken and began to wonder what it would be like to wake up with her in some place that was a little more comfortable than a rental car.
All things considered, Monica was one of the most giving, friendly, beautiful, original people he knew. After Jane died he knew he should have picked up and moved on. He hadn't. But here in this car, with this woman, after so many years of being alone, he was beginning to feel something.
An odd twinge of release. A sense of peace. And a sudden wave of joy.
"… I'm finally free."
END