Picture Perfect
By Jen
Episodes referenced to: "Another Mother."
Post-"Mirror Image."
Your usual disclaimer: These characters are not mine.
They are property of Donald P. Bellisario and Universal Television\MCA. I am
earning no money for this; it is just an extension of own (sometimes over
active) imagination.
Notes: It's finally finished!!!
That
aside, this story involves an interesting (I can think of no other word)
divorce and how it affected one little girl. No, we don't have any total horror
inflicted dramatics. It is loosely based on a story one of my friends (of child
of divorce) shared with me. And no, it didn't happen to her. And to answer
another question, my parents are very happily married. :)
This
story, and others I've written can be found at my temporary website: http://www.angelfire.com/home/jenr13/index.html
Last,
but not least, feedback is appreciated. Drop me a line at JenR13@aol.com.
Chapter One
May 14, 1991
"Scott?"
He found
himself on a couch, something in his lap.
He jumped immediately, almost as if he had been asleep. Sam Beckett looked down on his rumpled white
lab coat and decided he must have been.
A look down at his lap found a chart in it, opened. He squinted down at it.
"Scott, you
have to find more time to sleep. I told
you residency was going to be a bitch.
You can make it through as long as you take what you can get."
{Residency?} Sam looked up to find a blond-haired women
staring down at him. She offered him a
hand up. He took it, not knowing what else
to do.
"Your
patient in exam room 3 is threatening to leave again. Told him, 'leave before you're sober and the next time we see you
it will be a body bag.' But Patrick
never listens to anyone but you."
{Patrick?} "Oh boy," he whispered and wished he could
gain more information in the first few minutes of any leap. So far he had learned his name was
Scott……{Scott what?} He glanced down,
breathing a sigh of relief when he found his ID clipped to his lab coat. Scott Stevens, it read back at him and the
man in the picture was young, he couldn't be more than 26, 27 tops. Brown hair, brown eyes, attractive, but
tired looking.
Well, at
least he wasn't a woman.
He got a
strange look from the woman as he studied the ID, so he let it drop and looked
around him. He was on a couch in what
appeared to be the doctor's lounge of a hospital. He had had his feet up on a table and noticed a cup of coffee
sitting near his feet.
"Scott, are
you okay?" The woman's tone sounded
worried.
"I'm fine,"
he answered, pushing himself off the couch.
"I think," he muttered to himself as he banged his leg on the table.
"Patrick in
3?" the woman reminded him, her eyebrow slightly raised.
"Right." {Now if I only knew which way that
was….} He picked up the chart and
exited with the woman, hoping perhaps she could give him a clue to where three
was.
As he
followed her, the woman looked at him strangely. "Three is that way," she said, pointing behind her. "Are you sure you're okay, Scott? I mean you looked like shit this
morning. Did Christine have another one
of those nightmares?"
"Nightmares,"
he repeated softly. "Yeah, I guess she
did." He had no idea who Christine was
or why she would have nightmares, but he seemed to have given the right
response because the woman nodded sympathetically.
"Maybe you
should think about taking her to see a shrink, Scott. I know she's only four, but she can't go on like this. She'll never get over it."
{Get over
what?} "Yeah, well I guess I'll think
about it."
The woman
smiled and pointed to a room ahead of them.
"There's 3," she said with a slight smile. "You need some sleep, Scott.
Don't need you to get sick now.
This isn't exactly the best place to be when you're rested, never mind a
walking zombie."
Sam watched
her walk off, wondering who she was. He
needed Al to show up and give him some information. He'd gathered Christine must be his daughter, so he checked his
hands, but they were barren; no ring of gold stared back at him. {Maybe I'm divorced} he thought as he walked
toward exam 3, chart in hand. Reaching
the door, he finally looked down at the chart to get a better idea of who this
"Patrick" was.
As he
opened it, his own days of residency came back to him. Glancing around at the busy hallways, he was
glad that at least this time he could handle this leap. {Couple of twelve hour days with little to
no sleep, no problem.}
"I want to
get the hell out of here. I gotta pick
up Amy from day care," was the slurred greeting Sam got as he walked into the
room. His patient was drunk, obviously,
with a nice looking gash above his left eye.
Sam could understand way the woman didn't want him to get into a car,
let alone let him go get his daughter and let her get into the car. Luckily, he wasn't violent; in fact, he did
listen to what Sam said, and agreed to call his wife so she could pick up
Amy. A few stitches and a half-hour
later, he was more coherent and close to sober. Just as he was finishing up and about to move on to his next
patient, Al decided to show up, cigar and handlink in hand.
"Where have
you been?" Sam hissed as he signed the chart at the bottom and grabbed the one
that a nurse was offering.
"Well,
hello to you to you, too, Sam. You can
thank our visitor for that. The guy's a
wreck, and looks like he hasn't slept in a week. It took forever just to get his name. When he leaped in, he was close to collapsing, and then, he, uh,
did." Al punched a couple of buttons on
the handlink.
Sam moved
back toward the lounge, and noticing it empty, stepped inside. "What do you mean collapsed?"
"Just
looked up, eyes rolled into the back off his head, and-" he made a motion with
his hand, "he was out for the count."
"Just
great," Sam muttered to himself as he opened the chart in his hands to examine
its contents.
"It's May
14, 1991 and your name is Scott Stevens.
_Dr._ Scott Stevens. You're 28,
and a second-year resident whose specialty is going to be in emergency
medicine." Sam looked up from the chart
to find Al whacking the handlink. "You
have a daughter, Chris-, Chris" -another well placed whack on the handlink
"Christine, who's four. Oh, and you're
divorced. Happened about nine months
ago."
{That would
explain the absence of the wedding ring.}
"Why I am here?" It was the most
important of questions, yet, sometimes he felt like he was better off not
hearing the answer. It was like a test
you just failed; you didn't want to look up the answers because then you'd find
out how bad you actually did.
"Well,
Ziggy's thinks it has something to do with the daughter. What, she doesn't know. And we're not going to know more until Scott
wakes up."
"Figures,"
Sam said, walking out of the door toward another exam room. He'd only been there for an hour, yet he had
learned the layout pretty quickly. "Is
that all you can tell me?"
"Well, the
guy in the waiting room keeps murmuring something about 'Christine' and
'nightmares.' But Ziggy doesn't know
where they fit in."
"Nightmares?"
Sam repeated. "When I first got here
some woman was saying something about Christine having nightmares."
"All little
kids have nightmares, Sam. Maxine had
them almost every night when she was four.
She was afraid that something was living under her bed."
{Maxine?}
Sam thought to himself and then remembered.
{Four daughters. Al has four
daughters.} He was still getting used
to that fact. He had almost laughed out
loud when he learned that Al had named two of his daughters after two ex-wives
that existed in another lifetime. Al
had just looked at him. Sam _did_ enjoy
hearing the tidbits and snippets of parts of the girls growing up. Sure was different then hearing Al talk
about the stories pertaining to his ex-wives.
Al looked
at him strangely and then back down at the handlink. "Ziggy's got nothing. The
divorce was filed about a year ago and came through three months later. Though, here's something."
"What?"
"Seems the
document was only signed by Scott. He
got the court to declare spousal abandonment on his wife, Cara. She disappeared about a year ago. Nothing more on it though. The divorce went through, no problems, just
the normal processing period."
Sam smiled
to himself, realizing that Al didn't know in another lifetime, he had gone
through that waiting period four times.
"Geez, Sam
what is with you today? The divorce
went through, that's it. Ziggy doesn't
have anything else."
"So, I
don't know what I'm here to do and I'm going to have to go home to a
four-year-old."
Al
nodded. "Well, the angel routine worked
on Teresa. Though it depends on the
kid. If I spouted some story like that
to Christina when she was four, she would have looked at me like I was crazy."
Sam looked
at him like he was crazy. "At four?"
"Don't
underestimate the four-year-old, Sam."
Sam just
sighed as he walked into the exam room to find a couple dressed up, the wife
(he supposed) throwing up in a basin.
Al took one look and hit the handlink.
"I'm going
to see what's up with Scott in the waiting room," was his good-bye as Sam heard
the chamber door close. He sighed. It seemed as if this was going to be a long
day.
***************
It was a
long day. Sam had through some careful
digging discovered his shift ended at eight, at which time he headed home; he
found his address on his driver's license.
Of course, just as he remembered he didn't get out of work on time. He had located his car (after getting a
strange look from the woman he had first met when he leaped in. He learned her name was Linda, and she just
smiled and told him to get some sleep) and was fumbling with the map he had
found in the glove compartment. Al
hadn't told him where he was, but by looking at the map he had discovered he
was in New Jersey, currently sitting in a parking garage located in
Hackensack. He had just about located
how to get home when Al showed up.
"A map,
Sam? What about just following your
gut?"
Sam just
glared at him. "Are you going to help
me out or just stand there?"
"It's about
15 blocks from here. You could walk
home if you wanted to."
"Could you
be more specific?"
Al watched
Sam squirm for another moment that gave him directions to the small blue
house. Sam fumbled for his key chain
and was about to open the door when someone opened it for him.
"Daddy!" he
heard as he felt something attach itself to his legs.
"She
wouldn't go to bed. I tried, Dr.
Stevens, but she wouldn't listen."
Sam looked
up from the ball of child to find out the other voice belonged to a young
teenage girl. "That's ok," he said,
bending down to pry the girl off of his legs.
It was when he did that that she got a good look on him.
"Who are
you?" the little girl, Christine asked, puzzled.
The teen
sighed. "Christine, no more games.
That's your father and _he_ can put you to bed. I have to get going and started on my
geometry homework."
As she
spoke, Sam located his wallet to pay the girl, but realized that he had no idea
how long she's been there and how much to pay her.
"Give her
about $3 an hour Sam. Figure she's been
here since three," Al broke in. "It's
'91. Babysitters don't start hiking
their rates for a couple more years."
Sam counted
the amount and handed it to the girl, who smiled, satisfied and ran across the
street to a brown house that he assumed was her own. Now he had no choice but to turn to the little girl in front of
him.
"Who are
you?" she repeated, again, her little voice sounding a bit impatient. She didn't run away, in fact she stood her
ground. Then she realized that Sam
wasn't alone. "And who's that?" She
pointed toward Al, taking a step closer to him. She shook her head.
"Bright colors aren't in this season.
Mary's older sister, Lisa, said so.
And she knows _everything_!
She's eighteen!"
Sam had to
laugh at her statement as he ushered her inside, closing the door behind
him. Al followed stepping through the
door.
"Hey how
did you do that?" She looked at Al with
childlike curiosity. Then she put her
hands on her hips. "Who are you?" She directed her question to Sam this time.
He bent
down to her level, glancing at Al.
"Ever play pretend?" he ventured, and Al nodded. Christine smiled.
"That's my
favorite game!" she said happily.
"Well," he
continued. "My name is Sam and this is
Al. For a few days everybody is going
to pretend I'm your daddy." He had used
the same wording with Teresa and it had worked, perhaps he could be two for
two.
"Why?" was
her answer, just like Teresa. Little
kids sure seemed to like that question.
Al jumped
in with this one. "To give your daddy a
break," he said. "He's been working
hard."
Christine
nodded. "He fell asleep in the middle
of our story last night. I had to wake
him up. He needs a nap."
Sam
smiled. "Well, sometimes it's hard for
grown-ups to get a nap, so Sam is here to, uh, give your dad a little break."
"That's
good, Al," Sam said as they watched the little girl take it all in. Finally she looked up at him.
"Will you
still read me a bedtime story?" she asked.
"Actually,
Al here, tells the best bedtime stories.
He does a better job then I do."
Sam shot a glance at Al, who had now crouched down to Christine's level
as well.
Christine
turned to Al. "Will you?"
"Sure,
kid," he said.
"You have
to hold the book and turn the pages for him, though," Sam reminded the little
girl.
"Why?"
"I'll show
you why," Al said as he held up his hand.
Christine touched it, smiling as she watched her small hand go through
it.
"Ok, I'll
turn the pages. I do the same thing for
Daddy when he gets tired." With that
she ran up the stairs calling "Come up!" as she ran.
"Lots of
energy," Sam commented.
"I remember
when Maxine had that much energy. Or
any of my girls." He sounded a bit wistful.
"What
happened?"
"They did
what any kid does. They grew up."
********************
