R is for Risks and Rewards
by Jules
It wasn't even noon yet and Don Eppes was already drenched in sweat.
"Dad, this thing weighs a ton!"
Don couldn't really remember why he was doing this, other than that it was his free day today, he didn't have any other particular plans aside from catching up on some of that sleep that was eluding him lately and that he never could turn his father down.
Alan Eppes had recently developed a renovating spree, overhauling faulty equipment all over the house. Fixing loose floorboards, repairing dripping taps that were bound to start dripping again in a matter of weeks. And restoring the furniture. Today's turn was the armoire in the living-room which, according to his father's immeasurable wisdom, needed to receive a new finish. For which it needed to be carried outside.
"It doesn't weigh a ton, Donnie. Maybe 250, 300 pounds."
"Whatever."
His biceps and deltoid muscles were very much ready and willing to argue and disprove that point, but the rest of his body just wanted to move this monstrosity to where his father wanted it moved--the paved yard on the other side of the house, of all places--and collapse onto the next available flat surface. And then, once his body had recovered its most basic functions, he would send a silent prayer to any deity that might care enough to listen to him, hoping that once he reached his sixties, he'd be just as vibrant and persistent as his father seemed to be.
Given the rate with which his stamina seemed to trickle out of his body alongside his sweat, that was probably wishful thinking.
"Almost there," his father said from behind the wide expanse of wood between them. "Careful, you got the step coming up."
Don felt behind him with his foot and they negotiated the step and the last couple of feet until they'd reached the exact position his father had decided on.
"Alright, Donnie. Your side goes down first."
His arms and shoulders, endlessly delighted about the option of releasing their burden, liquefied before he could really stop them and in a mad attempt to prevent the armoire from crashing down--pretty sure that he would follow the furniture's demise at his father's hands, it had been one of his mother's favorites--he shifted his grip. And a blindingly intense pain erupted somewhere in his back.
He blacked out for a moment and suddenly found himself down on one knee, his forehead firmly pressed into the cool wood. He thought he'd cried out, could still feel the residual vibration in his vocal chords, but right now there sure wasn't any air moving in or out of his lungs.
"Donnie? What happened?"
He felt his father's presence beside him, flinched at the hand on his arm, expecting more pain.
"I... don't know," he gasped once his respiratory system agreed to resume working. "But it hurts." He blinked his eyes open, watched the dark spots dance around merrily and forced himself to hold onto his breakfast and what was left of his pride. "A lot."
"What did you do?"
"My back... I..."
"Alright, don't move." He watched the blue blob that was his father's shirt disappear out of his peripheral vision, only to see it reappear seconds later. "I mean, you can move, right? You're not, you know...?"
Don felt an inappropriate giddiness rise to the surface. "Yes, I can. Though I don't particularly care to try right now..."
"I don't have to call an ambulance, right?"
"Dad, just back up the car, okay?"
The hand patting his arm was back. "Alright, son. You just stay where you are. We'll get you fixed up."
He listened to his father's steps as he hurried down the driveway, heard the car door open and shut and the engine revved and put into reverse. His eyes strayed down again and with a mixture of disgust and delight, he noted that both feet of the armoire were intact, no splintered wood visible as far as he could see.
Seemed that the old adage was true after all. Some days, you just should've stayed in bed.
--00--
"I think I'm getting old," Don muttered.
"What did you say?" Robin Brooks asked from her vantage point at the foot of the exam table.
"I said," Don repeated and remembered to turn his head this time so his voice wasn't muffled by the pillow, "that I think I'm getting old."
"And what brought you to that assumption?"
"Look at me," he said, raising his hand slightly off the mattress and let it fall down again. "Put my back out carrying furniture. Soon enough, I'm gonna need a cane when walking. Help to get my shopping upstairs. My expiration date is long since gone, gone, gone."
"Don, if this is your idea of a midlife crisis, please tell me now so I can prepare myself accordingly."
"Aw, don't do that, Robin." He pressed his face back into the pillow. "Don't kick a guy when he's already down."
She rubbed his leg through the thin blanket. "Don, you're woozy."
He mulled that over for a moment and nodded. "Yep. Doped to the gills. Totally pain-free."
Which, considering the amount of pain he'd been in earlier, wasn't a bad thing at all. The ride to the ER had been sheer torture and, adding insult to injury, the ER had been extremely busy. He didn't remember much of the waiting time he had to spend sitting in the hallway other than that he almost started to cry in relief when he finally was lead into an exam room and could lie down. He also wished he couldn't remember most of the following exam, but all that probing and prodding and x-raying was unfortunately still pretty vividly etched into his memory.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, his father had reappeared by his side, informing him that he really had to go to that business meeting and asking if he was going to be alright. Of course, he'd said and didn't realize until later that now he was out of a ride home, with his car still being at the house. Not that he thought he'd be able to drive himself once he was finally out of here. So he'd called Charlie, but his little brother reminded him that even though he was making enough money to buy a brand new car--one brand new car a month even, for all Don knew--he was still car-sharing with their dad and therefore couldn't come to pick him up, because the car and their dad were in downtown LA while he was at CalSci.
Which was a pity, really, because Don generally liked his brother.
Charlie then had offered to ask Larry Fleinhardt if he could swing by but just at the thought of Larry's classic car and its awful suspension, Don had said that it was alright, that he'd find a way and Charlie shouldn't worry.
And just as he'd ended that call and come dangerously close to throwing himself a pity party, because no one seemed to care that he was lying here hurting, that pesky doctor with the prodding hands from earlier had come back with his x-rays, reprimanded him for using his cell phone inside the hospital building and declared his back badly wrenched.
The following application of several shots to his back--Don was pretty sure they could've put all that stuff into one syringe, they just liked to torture their patients--was another memory he didn't particularly care to revisit any time soon.
And once he'd been left alone again, he'd pondered his remaining options. Which were calling his office and exposing himself to the very certain ribbing about his misfortune his coworkers would give him and no matter how good-natured that would be, he wasn't really in the mood to be mocked. Or playing the tough guy he always claimed to be and simply call himself a cab.
Which was why he'd called Robin in the end. Because he and Robin were dating for over six months now, which accounted for a steady relationship in his book and aside from being lovers, Robin also was the closest thing to a best friend he had and friends helped each other out. And yeah, that sympathy angle always worked with the women and Don had felt more than ready for some sympathy about then. Only Robin had sounded neither especially worried or sympathetic on the phone, only stressed, and he had a very faint recollection that he might have begged her to come, but he couldn't really be certain, because around that time the shots had started to take effect and he'd become a little fuzzy.
In any case, it was now several hours later and Robin really had come to pick him up. Which meant that he'd achieved at least one of the goals he'd originally had for this day, namely catching up on his sleep deficit and that Robin seemed to care enough not to leave him here stranded, as opposed to his blood relatives.
"You know, you really look like a pincushion back here," she said while she ran a warm finger over his exposed back, right were those shots had gone in earlier.
Don grunted. "Way to go to cheer a guy up. No rest for those who suffer, huh?"
Her hand reached up further and patted his shoulder. "Don, you can either be woozy and pain-free or you can be grumpy and suffering. But you can't be both. That defies logic."
He made a mental note not to try arguing with female lawyers anymore. He should've known that better by now, his mother had been a lawyer as well and he'd never won an argument with her either.
"Can I settle for pain-free and grumpy? And who said pain-free excluded suffering? I am suffering. I'm freezing here."
He was whining, he knew that even before he heard Robin sigh. He closed his eyes and imagined the little eye-roll that very certainly went with that sigh, it always did. And held his breath as her hands pulled the blanket up to his shoulders and she bowed down to press a quick peck into his hair.
"I'm going to take a look and see if I can find the doctor with your release papers, okay?"
And with that, she was gone.
He really was getting old. That sympathy play sure used to work better.
--00--
He finally was in his own bed, curled around his pillow with a heating pad on his back, which he liked very much. And Robin was sitting beside him with her back against the headboard, which he liked even more. And then there was that dopey feeling and he wasn't all that sure if he liked that or not, because while he certainly still felt no discomfort from his back whatsoever, those drugs also seemed to take away more than just the pain.
"Robin, can I... can I ask you something?"
"Sure," she answered and never even looked up from the book she was reading.
"Would you marry me?"
And Robin froze in mid-motion, her index finger poised to turn to the next page and Don knew that he should really shut up now, but his brain had other ideas.
"You know, we could move into your house, maybe get a dog. Children."
With very measured movements, she put her book onto the bedside table, scooted down under the covers and turned onto her side to face him.
"Don, can we discuss our shared future and how many children we're planning to have and who takes out the garbage when you have more blood than narcotics in your system?"
He felt a lazy smile spread over his face and closed his eyes. "You would, wouldn't you?"
She sighed and rolled over to switch off the light, then reached behind her almost as an afterthought to grab his right hand and drape his arm over her waist, their fingers twining over her stomach.
"Did you ever do something really crazy?" he whispered into the darkness.
Her fingers tightened around his. "Yeah. I hooked up with you."
Don had the distinct feeling he'd just been insulted. But before he managed to formulate any kind of an answer to that, sleep blissfully sucked him in.
--00--
The alarm clock read 10:08, which couldn't really be true because then he'd been sleeping for over ten hours and after ten hours of uninterrupted sleep, it was really impossible that he felt like last week's roadkill warmed over. But then, it was definitely light outside, which pretty much eliminated the option that time had decided to run backwards while he'd been sleeping.
10:08am it was then. Deductive work, nice and easy. And suddenly, Don remembered why he felt like roadkill and also that he'd made a complete idiot of himself last night. He would've groaned, but he really felt he should save that kind of energy for something worthwhile. Like drowning himself in the shower.
There was a piece of paper on his nightstand, sticking out from under the alarm clock and Don reached over to pull it free. The letters swam in front of his eyes for a moment, then cleared enough for him to decipher. He read, pressed the sheet against his chest, took three deep breaths and read again. Nope, still the same.
Don,
Shower (cold!). Coffee (lots!). Reality check (...??). Rinse and repeat. Call me. Meeting until 1pm.
Love
R.
Well, at least she still wanted to talk to him. And 1pm meant almost three hours to become human again. He could do that.
Clutching the sheet of paper tightly in his hand, Don curled up on his side to go back to sleep.
--00--
There had to be something wrong with that alarm, because he knew for a fact that he'd just closed his eyes, so it couldn't be 12:23pm now when it had just been 10:08am. He pried his eyes open further. Still light. Or again. Definitely pm.
Now he just had to find that cell phone that had interrupted his sleep, shut it off and all was going to be right with the world again.
Deductive work, Eppes. You can do it, you're trained in that.
Follow the sound. Yeah, that was it.
Unfortunately, Murphy's law still had a very firm grip onto his life, so by the time he'd finally convinced his back--which was hurting again, although not as bad as it had before--that a vertical position wasn't all that bad and he'd made his way out into the hallway where his cell phone lay by the coat rack, of course the phone had stopped ringing.
But then, he knew Murphy's law and snatched the cell phone nonetheless before he tottered back into the bedroom and gingerly lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress. Only to hear the land-line in the living-room start ringing.
Resigning himself to the fact that he very obviously wasn't meant to outsmart fate, he trudged back--at least his apartment wasn't that big--and picked the cordless phone off the station before he carefully collapsed into his easy chair.
"Yeah?"
"Don?"
"Yeah, Charlie?"
"Don, are you okay?"
"Yeah. Why?"
Static silence.
"Well, for starters Dad told me what happened and you did sound a little off yesterday when you called me and Megan just phoned and asked after you because you hadn't reported in or called in sick yet..."
Oh. It totally made sense that when you were sick, you had to call in sick at work, as in using a phone. It really did. Unless you worked for another three letter agency, the one that very secretly boasted to have individuals on their staff who were capable of ESP. Maybe there, just thinking about it from your bed, safe in the knowledge that you had a doctor's notice in your pocket, would do.
Don scratched his sluggish head and swore to himself that the next time he decided to drink more than he should--if he ever decided to again, his body was loudly telling him he was getting old after all--he was going to enjoy it as if it were the last binge of his entire life. Because it just wasn't fair to endure an agonizing afternoon in the ER, getting tortured by needles, drugged up to an extend that made him destroy--oh, he hoped not!-- his love life with a handful of words, which was a tragedy in itself, since the establishment of said love life had needed a whole night of talking... and then wake up with the hangover from hell. What had happened to enjoying the journey more than the destination?
This was worse than torture, really, because it was involuntarily self-inflicted and if he thought about that any longer, he might get afraid of himself.
"...which wasn't really that much of problem since I'd told Larry and he'd told Megan, so they all knew you'd probably wouldn't come in, but still..."
"Charlie. I need you to do me a favor."
"Don, are you sure you're alright? You sound awful."
"I'm fine, Charlie. Really." Well, he was breathing on his own and mobile without assistance. It could always be worse.
"Whose definition of 'fine' are we talking about, yours or Dad's?"
Don pressed his face into the cool faux leather surface of the chair and grinned muzzily. "Mine. Version 1...," he thought for a moment, "... g."
"That a new one?"
"Yep."
"And?"
"'I'm not dead, but I wish I were.'"
Charlie chuckled. "You know, I'm really looking forward to how you plan to explain that to Dad, especially how you're going to convince him that this description actually equals 'fine'. So, what favor do you need?"
"I need you to bring my car around."
"Do you really think you should drive? I mean, the way you sound..."
"Charlie... you take the spare key, you get into that car and drive it over, okay?"
"Wow, testy?"
"Hungover. Med haze."
"What did they give you?"
"No idea. Just... get that car over here, will you?"
"Yeah, Don. See you in a few."
He sighed. It would take Charlie about 20 minutes. Just enough time for him to take that shower he'd been longing for. Phone in hand, face still pressed into the chair upholstery, Don closed his eyes. And woke up to Charlie's insistent knocking at his door 20 minutes later.
--00--
Usually, Don liked candlelight dinners, because they were romantic. But the residual haze that still lingered at the corners of his vision--it had been over 24 hours, what HAD they given him?--only intensified the sense of unreality the candlelight produced and he frequently had to close his eyes.
"Are you okay?" Robin asked for the second time in the last half hour.
"I'm fine," he answered, smiled and continued to rearrange the food on his plate.
If he wouldn't get those carefully prepared words out any time soon, this was definitely going into the dating books as a fail-proof way NOT to do it.
Don had spent most of the afternoon getting mentally and physically ready for the evening. After Charlie had left, he'd finally taken that shower and drunk a pot of coffee before he dared to call Robin. That conversation had gone over surprisingly smooth and they'd made that date for the evening. Then, he'd slept some more, guzzled down more coffee and took another shower. After that, his reflection in the bathroom mirror had told him he still looked like roadkill, but at least he wasn't feeling THAT bad anymore.
The mental part had been fairly easy in comparison. He'd do anything, begging, crawling... anything.
"I'm sorry," he finally said. Which was the truth.
"For what? Making a fool of you?" Robin had been smiling all evening and now her smile widened even further.
"Yeah, well," Don lay his fork aside, appetite forgotten for the moment. "I had planned this a lot more romantic than it happened eventually."
She nodded and took a sip of her wine. "On the other hand, you're rather cute when under the influence."
Cute? Ouch.
"I would really like to start his whole thing over, you know?"
Robin folded her arms in front of her on the tablecloth and leaned forward slightly. "Why, Don?"
"Why?"
"Yeah, why do you want to marry me?"
"Because...," he started playing with the flower decoration, suddenly more nervous than he'd thought he'd be, "because I've either waited too long or not long enough before. Because I've been an idiot and screwed up perfectly fine relationships, just because I was afraid to take a risk. Because I love you. Because I'm tired of waking up alone."
"You don't have to wake up alone. You know where I live," Robin pointed out.
"Robin, I want to share my life with you."
She reached out and wrapped the fingers of her right hand around his, a small, almost sad smile around her lips. "We haven't really shared much yet, have we? A dinner here and there, a couple of nights a week. What about weekends at home or away, what about vacations? We didn't have a fight yet either."
He didn't know what to say.
"What's different now than those times before?"
That was easy. "I am."
"Don, I love you too. But marriage... I don't want to be a rescue for an impending midlife crisis. I don't want to be married because you feel your time is running out."
"If I had a midlife crisis, I probably would grow my hair out, buy myself a motorbike and vanish onto the great quest to find Route 66."
Don scrubbed his palms over his face, feeling impossibly drained all of a sudden. And looked up again as Robin burst out laughing.
"What's so funny about that?"
"Ah," she said and graced him with a beautiful smile. "Looks like I'm prepared after all. I do have a motorbike in my garage, you know."
He chuckled at that, heaved a big sigh and looked at her across the table, steeling himself with what he hoped was his most solemn, earnest and determined expression.
"I love you and right now I'm seriously lacking words to express how much I love you. And I've never made any rash decisions in my entire life, but if I have to in order to bring that point across, I bundle you up and drive us to Las Vegas and marry you on the spot."
He watched the emotions play over her face, watched her smile widen and falter alternatively, watched the slight blush creeping into her complexion.
"You would?"
--00--
The sky was slowly lightening up, streaks of pink and light green appearing at the horizon.
"We are not getting married, are we?"
"Well, we could."
"But we're not."
Don pulled her a little closer. "Well, at least not today."
They were leaning against the Suburban, arm in arm and very close to stave off the early morning desert cold.
"Did we really have to drive all the way to Las Vegas to come to that conclusion?" Robin asked and burrowed deeper against him.
"No," he said, "we drove all the way to Las Vegas so I could bring a point across."
She rubbed her chin against his shoulder. "You are a very romantic man, Don Eppes."
"I know."
"And complicated."
He sighed. "I know."
"I still have to come up with an excuse why I won't go to work today."
"Stomach bug?"
She chuckled. "Are butterflies bugs?"
"Yep."
They were silent while the sky lightened up further.
"You know, a lot of people get married in Las Vegas."
"Robin, my father's been pestering me about grandchildren practically ever since I sprouted my first facial hair. I don't think I can pull this off and expect to live and I didn't plan to make you a widow that soon."
Her arms around him tightened and he wished he could take those last words back, that he could take those dangers and risks and uncertainties of life away, knowing full well that he couldn't. Life was all about risks and rewards.
"I'm only going to do this once and I want to do it right," he whispered into her hair. "And my dad throws a great wedding. You'll see."
"Yeah," she whispered back and they fell silent again, watching the first rays of sunlight.
"You know," he said after a while, "you never answered that question."
"Which one?"
"Did you ever do something really crazy?"
"You mean, aside from driving all out to Las Vegas not to get married?"
"Yeah, aside from that."
"Yes," she said and angled her face up to kiss him. "I hooked up with you."
-The End-