Hand in Hand
Pairing: Grace/Boyd
Rating: PG
Summary: Set in the middle of the season six episode, Double Bind - a little B/G interlude.
Author's notes: Special thanks to shadowsamurai83 for the beta
Disclaimer: Waking the Dead belongs to the BBC. I'm playing with them for a bit and promise to put them back in their boxes when I'm done.
If I been hard on you I never chose to be
I never wanted no one else.
I tried my best to be somebody you'd be close to
Hand in hand like lovers are supposed to
Hand in Hand, by Dire Straits.
"Spence!" Boyd called out while fumbling through the first aid kit, looking for something to put over his bleeding hand. He needed to go to the hospital, but didn't want to bleed all over his car. And there was absolutely no way he'd go in an ambulance.
"Sir?" After putting Dr Parke in a holding cell, Spence had just walked back into the bullpen and was about to sit down. He looked at his boss and for the first time, he actually felt sorry for Boyd. His boss had been subdued, even quiet, and he'd been like that since the argument with Grace, just like they all had been. He'd watched Boyd interview the elderly psychiatrist. It wasn't his usual style of interviewing. Normally, he'd have badgered the person into an admission, but on this occasion, he'd done nothing to provoke Parke into stabbing him with a pen.
After wrapping a dressing over the hand, Boyd turned to his DI. "I'm going to hospital. Get the paperwork started on charging Parke for assault." At least he could get him done for assault and that should be enough to get him struck off for good and maybe even some prison time.
"Right." Spence looked at the blood already seeping through the bandage. "Do you want Stella to drive you?"
"No." Although probably a sensible idea, he rejected it. It wasn't the best use of resources and the prospect of listening to Stella chatter inanely to him for several hours wasn't particularly appealing, whereas being alone best suited his reflective mood. It would give him to time to think.
Spence turned back to the board. "Anything else you .…"
But Boyd was already through the doors and up the stairs, and didn't hear the second part of Spence's response.
- - -
Grace smiled with satisfaction as she left the Psychiatric unit.
For the first time in a while, she felt that she was actually doing some good. Mark Lennon was going to get the help that he needed and seemed to want. She'd left Mark and his mum, Gloria, to settle into the unit. The doctors there were very good and would help him.
Taking a shortcut, she walked through the hospital toward the car park and her thoughts returned to the case.
The Rolf Voller case hadn't been solved yet. Someone had murdered him. Had it been Daniel Lennon? That wasn't clear. Just because he'd been in the hospital for forty years for murdering his parents hadn't meant that he'd killed the Austrian nurse. Raymond Parke was a possibility but then so was anyone in the squat. They needed to find Daniel before he fried his brain completely on LSD. He was the key.
As she rounded the corner, she stopped in her tracks.
Peter Boyd.
She recognized the unmistakable figure of DSI Boyd sitting in Casualty, his salt and pepper hair and beard prominent. What was he doing here? A male nurse was standing next to him, bending over, looking at something she couldn't see because of row of seats.
Grace walked back around and into the waiting area. "Boyd?"
She still couldn't see what was wrong. He wouldn't have been in the waiting room if it had been serious. If it had been, it would've been like several years ago when he'd been stabbed by Reese Dickson. Then he'd been rushed to hospital, unceremoniously dumped on the table, and his clothes cut off so he could be examined by the gaggle of doctors that surrounding him. Memories of seeing him at the hospital that day still haunted her occasionally, despite the passage of time and everything that had happened between them. There was no way that she'd ever forget seeing him stabbed, his shirt covered in blood, and the blood seeping from his stomach wounds.
"Grace?" The DSI looked up, a little surprised at hearing her voice, but then he remembered she'd taken Mark to get treatment. "Oh, hi."
Grace peered around the nurse to take a look at the gash in his hand. "Looks nasty."
Boyd shrugged.
"Wiggle your fingers please." The nurse watched intently at his hand. Satisfied, he then pinched the end of each finger and his thumb. "Any tingling or loss of feeling?"
Moving his index finger and thumb had been painful but bearable. "No."
"Mr Boyd, you were very lucky. The nerve wasn't damaged, but you'll need a couple of stitches." The nurse changed the bandage and then filled in the chart. "When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?"
"About six years ago."
"You don't need a booster then. I'll be back soon with a Medical student to stitch it up."
Boyd frowned, not from the hand, but from the prospect of being in the hands of a student.
"It's either a Med student or wait five or six hours for an RMO." The nurse fully understood the man's reticence as he easily imagined what the policeman was thinking. He could picture the needle shaking uncontrollably as a very nervous Medical student was just about to be put into the man's hand, but they had to learn sometime.
The nurse needn't have worried. Boyd didn't need much persuading. He had no intention of staying here any longer than he needed to. "Med student."
"Good." Nodding, the nurse left.
Grace sat down next to Boyd. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," Peter answered quietly, but he didn't look at her. His eyes were fixed on his injured left hand. The same nervous embarrassment that had afflicted him the night before when he'd tried to call her had returned. After reading her textbooks, he'd found that everything that she'd said to him had been true. He'd treated her badly in exactly the way she said he'd done for the reasons she'd said. His plan had been to apologize and try to justify what he'd done but there was no justification, and so he'd faltered at the last moment and had hung up.
He was a coward. Maybe he deserved the pain of Parke stabbing him.
Grace looked at the bandage on his hand, trying to figure out what had happened. That way she avoided talking about the horrible things she'd said to him. The reasons had been true, but the way she'd said them had been very unprofessional. She'd let her anger at Peter transferring his problems onto her explode back toward him. He hadn't deserved that. She'd tried to make sense of it all but failed.
But there was hope that their friendship hadn't been permanently damaged. The smile they'd given each other as she'd left CCU to take Mark to hospital had been proof. Spending so much time at CCU meant that he was perhaps the closest thing she had to a friend. She didn't want to lose that. After Mel's death, that friendship had become strained, but she now realized in just the one day that she'd been away that they needed each other more than she'd ever contemplated before. It was the realization of how much they relied on each other that had shocked her. They needed to sort it out between them for both their sakes.
An awkward silence followed.
After contemplating the red on the bandage, Boyd couldn't stand the silence between them anymore. It was his fault and he had to do something about it. He asked about the one thing that they seemed to both care about deeply - the case and the reason why Grace was here. "How's Mark?"
"He'll be okay." Her timid reply matched his almost lifeless tone. She wanted to say that he'd be okay too but she couldn't. She couldn't get passed the horrible things she'd said to him.
"Good."
After another period of quiet between them curiosity got the better of Grace and she pointed to his hand. "What happened?"
"Parke stabbed me."
"What?" That old doctor? She couldn't believe it.
"Parke stabbed me with my pen."
"Why?" Boyd could be very aggressive in interviews, badgering suspects until they broke. Grace wondered if he'd pushed Parke too far. She didn't know. She'd have to find out from Stella later.
Boyd's shoulders sagged. "Don't know." He really didn't have a clue. As far as he remembered, he'd been calm and quiet, and even he recognized it hadn't been his normal interviewing technique. Peter looked at his hand, grimacing as he attempted to move his thumb. Pain was about the only thing he could feel at the moment and he whispered, "Perhaps I deserved it."
"No, you don't."
Shrugging, Boyd didn't believe her despite her immediate rebuttal. Looking at the bloody bandage on his left hand and his two red knuckles on his right hand, Boyd shook his head, thinking that Parke had been right all along. The old man had called him a wanker and had stabbed him with his pen, and then he'd retaliated instinctively by hitting the strange psychiatrist. He hadn't hung around to see if Parke was all right, quickly leaving the interview room, not really caring about the old doctor.
"'A whisker away from insanity'," Peter scoffed aloud. Parke had meant that he was close to being insane. That might be true after everything that Grace had said, but Parke was just as mad as the people he treated.
"Sorry?"
"I'm a whisker away from insanity. It's what Parke said to me." He wiggled his thumb, needing to feel something even if it was pain. "He called me a wanker too."
Grace shook her head, wondering what strange affliction had affected a lot of psychiatrists just recently.
"He's right."
"I don't believe that."
"What? That I'm insane or I'm a wanker?" Boyd grinned, his mood lifting a little.
"Both." Smiling back, Grace had no doubt he could be a wanker, just like anyone else, and although he had his problems, she knew he wasn't insane.
Rubbing his good hand through his hair and after taking a deep breath, Peter found the courage to say what he couldn't the night before, "You're right."
"About?"
"Me. Everything you said. It's true."
"Peter …." She was going to say the same but didn't get the chance. The nurse came back.
The nurse returned with a young Medical student following behind. "Excuse me, Mr Boyd. Could you follow me?" He pointed to a treatment cubicle.
"Give me a second, please," Boyd said to the nurse and then turned back to Grace. He wanted to make it right as soon as possible, wishing to say so much more but settled for a hopeful plea. "Will you wait?"
She squeezed his good hand and he returned it. His thumb rubbed over the back of her hand.
Their eyes locked as their hands lingered together, longer than necessary, but neither wanting to lose the connection. For a brief moment, the hospital disappeared around them, leaving them seemingly alone and what was unsaid was understood by both.
Grace smiled warmly, although disappointed that the nurse had returned at that moment. "I'll be here. I'm not going anywhere."
Nodding, Boyd returned her smile, understanding what she really meant. She wasn't going to leave him or the CCU. "Thank you, Grace." When he got back, he'd try to explain how much that simple statement really meant to him and a whole lot of other things too.
Boyd stood up and then left with the nurse.
FIN