AN: This is the second installment of the story The Nightcaller. Again this is an AU tale. It is set in late 2015.
Hope you enjoy.
Part I
Chapter 1
Manhattan Island
August 3, 2015
7:15am
On the Wind
Kate Beckett-Sorenson sat at her desk and stared at the papers in her hands. It was the legal documents confirming the end of her three-year marriage to Will Sorensen. There were no tears at this point. But the failure of her marriage felt like another wound that would never heal. Looking at the papers, which had been served by the court notifying the parties the divorce agreement and terms had been approved by the judge, hit her like hard blow to her already damaged heart.
Kate Beckett had always said she was a 'one and done' girl. She would wait for the right man, and they would be together forever. She had resisted Will Sorenson but he finally won her heart. They married after a two year courtship, things went well for them. He was a field-agent with the FBI and she a homicide Detective with the New York City Police, 12th Precinct.
They had a small apartment in Manhattan, which on their salaries was not an easy thing for two cops. It was expensive but they loved the island agreeing they'd pay the extra cost to live there, even if it meant having a less.
They came to a divide in the road of this happy existence when Will was offered a promotion. The kicker was, it was in DC. He assumed, Kate would quit her job and follow him. She would have sworn, he would never ask such a thing.
Kate Beckett's rise to detective was the fastest in the history of the NYPD. It wasn't not because she was a woman. It wasn't because she was beautiful. It was because she was smart and had a cat-like sense in a murder investigation. She was livid with her husband for thinking her career would simply be thrown away, because he had a job in another city. But worse, he didn't have the courtesy to even discuss it with her and the implication s for their life.
When the dust settled, Will moved to DC and got an apartment. Kate moved from Manhattan to a more affordable situation, the commute was not that bad.
After the blow-up over the job and the following twelve months she came to a painful and cold realization, she'd made a mistake. The truth was she didn't miss Will. If he called she was happy to hear from him, but if he didn't, that was OK. The truth was, for the first two years of their marriage, they'd lived separate lives, in the same house. Besides their contribution to rent each month, all other money was separate. They still had old friends they saw on their own. Will would take a day off without seeing if she could do the same. At times, she felt more lonely married, then she had when she was single.
All of this came together after an everyday event, a pocket dial. She saw his face light up the screen and answered, "Hey Will." But there was no response and what she heard left nothing to her imagination. Clearly her husband was not missing his wife, no matter how busy he said he was at work. She listened for a few minutes then turned off her phone, and sat down and cried.
From the outside, someone would say Kate Beckett had it all. She was the youngest Detective ever, she was beautiful, she had poise, as well as the necessary grit for her job. But up close, she was a mess. She considered herself a loser. She'd blown the most important decision in life. She had fallen in something, she wasn't sure what it was, but it certainly wasn't love.
The pocket call had been a moment of clarity for her. It brought to light an unspoken truth. Her marriage was over. The call was not an audio version of sex tape. It was much worse. Will Sorenson, her husband, explained to the unidentified women why his marriage was over and why he didn't love his wife any longer. He then reflected that he may have never really loved her at all. He was likely blinded by her beauty, but not her heart. In fact he questioned if he or anyone could ever access, the heart of Kate Beckett.
She was a type 'A', she knew it and so did anyone who ever met her. She was a scrapper, a fighter. But she found herself battling with a foe she could not defeat. She had been trained for street-fighting. To find a way in the worst of circumstances, to not let an opponent overtake her. But on this foe, Kate Beckett could not land a single punch. With the crumbling of her marriage, and the battery of her self-esteem, the new enemy was depression and anxiety. It's was unseen and crept in like a heart-stopping fog.
It first revealed it's ugly head a few weeks after the accidental phone call. She awoke one morning with a sense of dread along with a pressure on her chest, and finally unseen weight on her shoulders. She found normal daylight an offending glare. She'd struggled to engaged with her team. When Esposito and Ryan asked if she was OK, her response was some where between a growl and a flip of her hand, essentially ignoring them.
It had been more than a year but the divorce papers were like scalding water on a open wound. She reeled under the finality of it all. The separation from Will was easy compared with unsolicited visits of gloom and sadness.
Beckett had argued with herself that this was a stupid response to the divorce. They had drifted apart, acknowledged the mistake and gone their separate ways. But the phone call played over-and-over in her head, especially in the wee hours of the night. Her sleep was disrupted, more than she wanted to admit and her found herself battling between depression and anxiety. She felt things were getting, beyond her control.
She thought of her conversation with Lanie a few weeks before, in a moment of weakness, she had said, like the old song, she was, "A lost soul, falling between two worlds." It was the one of the worst experiences of her life.
"Yo Beckett," she snapped back to the present.
"What?" Her tone, flat and hard.
"We just got a call on the location of that slug Adams."
Her gears shifted, "Where?" She perked up with the information.
Esposito gave her the details.
"Okay, I want to converge, not let him get away, we need to get him this time."
"I need you and Ryan to take..."
But before she could do the map in her head, Esposito suggested, "How about you take 5th and we'll arrive via 7th Avenue. The park may slow you down a bit, but we can keep in contact and work it out to so we get there at the same time." She nodded her approval as she grabbed her stuff.
A tip had just come in on Frankie Adams. He'd started out as a small time car thief and graduated to the higher-end game, stealing luxury cars instead of Honda's and Chevy pickups.
Something had come undone in Adams' head. Maybe an increase in drug use, maybe it was just the adrenaline rush of the chase. Six months earlier it appeared he had intentionally swerved to run down a pedestrian at the far edge of a cross-walk. Witnesses said there was plenty of room but Adams made a hard deviation to run over the man. He was DOA on arrival at the ER.
There had been two more incidents with near misses, as the car thief fled from the police. The consensus was, he was delaying his escape, to guarantee that a chase would take place. But a month earlier he'd killed two high school students in a crosswalk, again swerving hard to make sure he hit them. Obviously it was blood lust, or adrenaline, or both that fueled this guys behavior. He had to be stopped, but he had proven allusive.
Beckett itched for him to be in custody. She could feel her pulse quicken when news on the tip came in. She was chaffing to get in her car and then left the precinct parking lot with squealing tires. Once underway her adrenaline level dropped, she felt it being replaced with gloom and she groaned. It seemed at times like she had an extra passenger, her uninvited tormentor. She turned to the empty seat next to her and spat, "Get outta my car!"
The tip was not the first they'd received on Adams, she hoped they weren't being played, but she had to take the chance. Getting him in custody was a necessity.
When she crossed the intersection of 5th and 79th, she never saw the old Buick that ignored the red light and the flashing gum ball on Beckett's car. The impact flipped the cruiser on its side and shoved it onto the edge of Central Park. Beckett did not have her seat belt on, but luck was with her, she remained in the car instead of being ejected through one of the broken windows.
XX
Richard Castle sensed things were not good. His head throbbed, along with his left arm. He couldn't feel anything from the waist down. His thoughts were splintered light reflecting light, they made no sense. He struggled to focus and thought, maybe it's all a dream.
Then he heard voices, but wasn't sure if they were near or far. Then they were clear, "Man, this guy looks like a goner," someone said.
Then a another, slightly higher pitched voice, short of breath, "Let's see if we can get the back part of the car away from the tree, these doors are crushed on both ends."
"That happens when you flip a car a couple of times, and then run it into a tree."
He could hear them working, hear the groan of metal as a winch keened under the stress of its burden. Then the world shook, he felt the car move and a pain shot through his hip and left leg, a burning electrical current. He groaned at its surge.
"Hey man, did you hear that? This guy just groaned." A new urgency in the voice.
The high pitch guy replied, "Man get the jaws of life, now!"
Castle found himself fading in and out and things began to grow darker, then he heard another voice, but it not one of the men, he didn't recognize it, and then knew it was a woman. It wasn't his Mother or his daughter Alexis.
He thought he felt a hand on his shoulder, he struggled to open his eyes. A woman knelt over him, with her back to the sun. He squinted to look at her, but could only make out her shape. Her voice was low, but distinct, "I need you to hold on...don't let go..."
He thought he recognized the voice, but from where? He tried to speak and his voice rasped out, "Where am I?"
She moved closer, he thought he could see her eyes, maybe even feel her hand on his face, he felt her hair against his cheek and breathed, she spoke into his " I need you, do you hear me, I need you...don't let go, please, please don't go."
Again he struggled to open his eyes, then she lightly kissed his forehead. As she pulled away he thought he saw a small tattoo, a cluster of three stars, on her left shoulder. She spoke again, "Hold on, hold on."
XX
"Hey Troy, this is a cop, her badge is laying on the floor." His voice was strained while he contorted to get a view inside of the car, "I thought this looked like Crown Vic, but the plate is normal."
The other medic crawled through the gapping hole, where the back window had been. Beckett had ended up in the back seat, she was crumpled into a ball. He checked her pulse and called out to his partner, "Mack, her pulse is good but she's out."
They weren't sure how they were going to get her out. Their concern was the risk of pulling her clear since they weren't sure if any thing was broken, or worse, if she'd suffered a spinal cord injury.
The one nearest her did a quick inspection, patting her down, feeling for blood or anything jagged, protruding glass or broken bone. He found nothing. In the end they decided to delay moving her until the tow truck arrived. They'd see if they could right the car and carefully take her out one of the rear doors.
After an eight minute wait, and then some quick work, they were on the way to the ER. She still had not regained consciousness.
The word spread fast, Lanie Parrish was the ME and a good friend, she along with Beckett's team were at the ER when the ambulance pulled in. Unfortunately the tip had been a rouse, again.
Lanie looked down at her friend, she pushed back tears, and kissed Kate's forehead, "Oh Sweetie, please, please be well." She leaned back into Esposito who pulled her into his shoulder. He said nothing, his face angry and tight with frustration.
"Damn, damn" Her partner Ryan muttered as he paced, "How could this happen...damn!"
The three watched and waited. They collectively willed her to wake up. She did not.
XX
The weeks following the encounter with the tree had not been good ones for Castle. His left femur had been fractured and required a intramedullary nail to repair the break. There were other things, sprains and bruises, but the main problem was the femur.
He had been released within a week of the accident. The goal was to start some limited Physical Therapy as soon as possible. The doctor wanted him to be cautious but, he also wanted him to bear weight as soon as possible. He had only been in PT for two days when he developed an infection at the surgical site. After 72 hours and then obvious failure of the oral antibiotics, he was back in the hospital.
When the infection was stopped with a cocktail of intravenous antibiotics it was decided a short stint in Rehab with daily PT would help speed his recovery.
In mid-August Castle checked into Fort Tryon Center for Rehabilitation.
XX
A week had passed since the accident and Kate Beckett-Sorenson had not yet regained full consciousness. She drifted between a full coma and a semi-conscious state. Her eyes would open and she would move here mouth but she never fully alert. She did not speak or respond to questions or instructions.
Following a battery of tests, including MRI, CT scans and numerous diagnostics the doctors concluded there was no unseen problem, yet still they could not explain her failure to wake-up.
Lanie Parrish and Jim Beckett bore the brunt of her situation. Lanie would drop by as often as possible and talk with Kate, but there was never a response. After work her Dad would visit her, sitting near, reading to her, hoping she would hear and respond.
On the tenth day the doctors decided it would be best for her to be transferred. She was not in need of urgent care, or the intrusiveness of a regular hospital. Another concern was the associated costs. It was now a waiting game.
On doctors advice Kate Beckett was transferred to a rehab facility.
XX
It was 11:45 pm, he pushed at the walker as he made his way slowly down the corridor. Sleep had again proven to be allusive. Between his leg pain and the dream that triggered a frantic wakening, Castle was driven out of his bed and into his 'zombie walk,' he was so weary.
He rounded a corner and almost collided with a tall thin man, who looked to be in his late fifties. He apologized as did Castle,"Sorry sir, I'm half awake, half asleep, just roaming. I didn't expect to see anyone out here in the hall this time of the night."
"No problem, I was just visiting," he paused and stared blankly down the hall, "just visiting and heading home" He started to leave and then turned back, "Hope you get some rest."
Castle continued to make his rounds. He'd lowered his expectation and now hoped for at least a slice of rest. He knew real, deep sleep was not in the cards for him.
XX
At 6:45am, Lanie Parrish stuck her head in her friends room. The was no motion. She looked at the still figure of Kate Beckett. She moved to the bedside and took her hand.
"Oh, Sweetie...when are you coming back to me?" She sputtered, a hitch in her voice, "Kate I can't bear this much longer, we have so much to talk about. I need you to tell me I'm nuts...I need you to ignore all my advice. I need you back Kate."
The ME was silent for awhile and found herself in usual war with tears. This was tearing her up. She knew there was no reason for her friend to be in this semi-conscious state. Occasionally her eye lids would flutter open, but there was no accompanying response to the world around her.
Lanie thought about the weeks of gloom and depression she'd seen Kate wade through. She wondered if all those things, and now this, were somehow connected. She knew she was over Will and the divorce. But she also was certain Kate was not over the whiplash of the failure. Her friend was proud and determined. She had not rushed into the relationship with Will, nor had she rushed into marriage. Still Lanie wondered if the signs of trouble had not always been there, but simply ignored.
Kate and Will were not needy with each other. Love and marriage, seemed more like merger and contract, from Lanie's viewpoint. They liked each other, they seemed happy around each other, but there was no fire, no consumption of self for the other.
"Kate, I was on my way to work, had a call...Yeah! Someone new got dead...somethings never change. But, the boys miss you, they need your help on this one. A twenty-five year old college student..."
When she'd finished a quick run of details and her expectations, like she'd do at at a one of their crime scenes, she gently kissed the sleeping woman's forehead and left. It her own gloom that swamped her as she made her way down the hallway.
XX
In horror the head exploded, pieces of bone and flesh were projected at him. Before he could flinch or move he felt himself being painted in warm human blood, it splatter across his face. As her lifeless form crumbled to the ground he stared into the wild eyes of Stephen McKuen. He heard his friend call to the young patient, "No!No!" and then McKuen, smiling at the doctor, placed the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It had all played in mere seconds, but the carnage, would last a life-time.
Richard Castle sat straight-up in bed. Sweat covered his shoulders and chest, he glistened in the darkness of the room. The clock on the night stand read, 11:47 pm, he had been asleep for an hour and forty-seven minutes, a new record. He was glad for anything more than an hour.
He left his room and started down the quiet corridor.
XX
It was after midnight and the two men met again.
"We'll I see you're still cruising the hallways late at night." The older man smiled weakly.
"Yeah, seems like sleep and I are, incompatible."
"You know after we met last night I was thinking...you remind me of an author my wife use to read."
"That doesn't sound good. Does that mean she got tired of my work?"
"No, not like that, she passed away a number of years ago."
"I'm sorry Sir, my brain is not working real well these days."
"You don't have to apologize, but it sounds like I was right, are you Richard Castle?"
"I am, but I've seen better days" He pointed at the full leg brace on his left leg.
The older man stuck out his hand, "I'm Jim Beckett, my wife would have loved to have met you."
Castle took his hand, and shook it firmly, "I'm sure it would have been a pleasure. I'm sorry for the loss."
"It's been years, I think I'm good, I think I'm over it," the man went silent for a beat or two, "But then I'm not."
Castle read the pain still evident in the man's voice and could see it in his demeanor, "What brings you to Fort Tryon in the middle of the night?"
"I'm here visiting my daughter. She's a police detective," another pause and gulp for air, he started again, "She was in a car accident almost two weeks ago. She hasn't woken up since."
"Months ago I meet a Detective, at some big thing for the Mayor, your daughter's not Kate Beckett is she?" He saw the expression on the man's face and knew, before he answered, it was her.
"Yes, I'm Katie's Dad." The senior Beckett was surprised at the pain that covered this strangers face.
He let out a painful growl, and then sighed deeply. "I'm sorry Mr. Beckett, you have a lovely and wonderful daughter." Castle stared down at the floor.
"How well do you know Katie?"
"Not that well. We rode an elevator up to the party, she was kinda testy with me. Then we were officially introduced to each other by the Mayor. No one was dancing, so he asked Kate and I to dance. One dance ended up being three dances. The Mayor was happy, it gave his party a push." Castle was quiet for a few beats, "It was an OK evening, but she was the best part," he smiled at the older man, "I had the distinct impression, she didn't care much for me."
Beckett laughed, "Just like her Mom! She was so mean to me. It's the Beckett woman's way of showing they like you. They just ignore the rest."
"Why is she here?"
"She was in a accident on the way to nail a possible murder suspect a few weeks ago, and hasn't woken up since."
It was not often that Castle, the word-smith, was without words, but he was, so he just groaned, but then added a faint, "Again I'm so sorry Mr. Beckett."
"She's healthy otherwise, so she should be with us soon. It's just hard to watch and wait."
"Sir, I'm here, if I can do anything. Help, look in on her, whatever you need, I would be happy to do so. It might give me a 'one-up" on her when she's back with us.
Jim Beckett let out a small laugh, "I see why you two got along so well."
After Beckett's Dad left Castle leaned against the rail and looked down the empty hall. He felt a palpable shadow descend upon him. It was not the first time he had the experience. He replayed the night at the Mayor's party. Their meeting in the elevator, the dancing, the teasing at the bar and then the spat over her shoes. Each time they parted he felt a sense of loss. He thought it was stupid on that first night. He wrote it off as lust. But not tonight, and not again. This was a bone pounding sorrow.
He didn't notice when Jim Beckett returned, when he put his hand on Castle shoulder, Castle flinched, "I'm sorry Mr. Castle, I saw you leaning against the wall, are you OK?" Concern painting his tone.
"No! Yes!" Castle shook his head, "This just makes me sick."
"Me too son, me too."
