"Who the frak was it?" the Admiral demanded, stepped uncomfortably close to his son.
"That pansy Wallace Gray, if you can believe that," the Colonel supplied.
The Admiral narrowed his eyes, fixed his XO with a deadly glare and the muscles in his face quivered from the force with which his jaw clenched.
"Wally Gray?" he ground out, balled his hands into fists at his side.
"Oh, good, the gang's all here," Doctor Cottle grumbled facetiously as he stepped out from behind the curtain which separated his patient from the rest of sickbay.
The four officers immediately turned their anxious faces to the gruff, white haired doctor who'd addressed them. He removed a cigarette from a pack in the pocket of his lab coat, put it between his lips, lit it and took a long drag.
"How is she, Doc?" Lee asked on behalf of the assembled parties.
"She took a beating," Cottle replied, acid in his voice. "But that woman's tough as hell - she'll be alright. I'm gonna keep her here for a couple hours for observation - she's got a nasty bump on her head. But she should be able to get outta here this afternoon."
Cottle drew another lungful of smoke, exhaled a bluish cloud and met the fiery gaze of his superior. He knew the Admiral well enough to see the apprehension behind the anger in his eyes and the bad-tempered doctor felt a sudden twinge of pity for the man.
"She wants to see you, Admiral, but keep it short. She wouldn't let me give her anything for the pain until she talks to you and I've still gotta ..." Cottle trailed off, looked down at his boots. "I've gotta sedate her to take care of one of her injuries - the sooner the better."
The grouchy doctor turned on his heels and headed off without another word. The Admiral glanced at the curtain beyond which Laura Roslin lay, then looked back to the others.
"You three stay here," he commanded. "I'll wanna talk to you after I've seen the president."
Tigh, Lee and Kara acknowledged his order with nods of their heads, each turned in search of a seat, settled in to wait. The Admiral crossed the short distance and disappeared behind the blue drape.
**********
When he first laid eyes on her, Bill's guts twisted at the sight of Laura as she lay propped up with pillows on the narrow bed. Her eyes were closed and her brow furrowed, as if she were concentrating intensely - though he recognized the expression for what it was: a grimace born of trying to fend off pain. And from the looks of the woman, he had no doubt she was in pain. The normally porcelain skin of her lovely face was already discolored with the beginnings of dark bruises under her eyes, her bottom lip was swollen, split but no longer bleeding, and dried blood clogged her nostrils. Her slender neck bore blotchy marks, red with purpling edges. Her left hand rested atop the sheet on her belly, the middle finger braced with a splint. And for the first time since he'd known Laura Roslin, Bill thought she looked ... fragile.
When confronted with the physical evidence of Laura's brutal assault, the fury Bill had felt since learning of the attack threatened to come to a head. He could imagine just what she'd been through, at the hands of Wallace Gray, simply by mapping her visible injuries. He knew she'd been struck in the face at least once, had mostly likely been choked and he guessed that she'd broken a finger in attempting to fight back. Bill was overcome with rage at the thought of that man - any man - having committed such an act of violence against Laura as to cause the considerable damage he was seeing. He tore his gaze away from her, stared at the floor as he tried to banish the images of the attack his mind had conjured. He began to breathe in through his nose, out through his mouth, a steady rhythm designed to quell his boiling blood.
"Admiral."
Bill's head snapped up on hearing Laura's quiet greeting and he worked to keep his face neutral, his emotions in check.
"Madame President," he returned, stepped up to the side of her sick bed, took her uninjured hand in his.
She cast a quick glance down at their joined hands, looked back up to lock eyes with him. The whites of her eyes were striated with broken blood vessels, the green of one eye nearly obscured by a pool of blood that had leaked from one of the many burst capillaries. The small smile she had for him looked ghoulishly out of place on her battered face.
"You should see the other guy," she quipped.
"I plan to," Bill said darkly, ignored her attempted levity.
"Bill, don't," Laura said wearily, winced as she tried to shift her position. "I'm not ... going to press charges."
"What are you talking about?" he asked, narrowed his eyes. "That son of a bitch -"
"Listen to me," she interrupted. "Wally knows about my relationship with Richard, my relationship with you."
"What the hell does that have to with anything?"
"Bill," she sighed. "If he's charged with a crime, we'll have to get him a lawyer, put him on trial -"
"And?" he cut in.
" - and I don't want ... I can't have that information coming out during court proceedings."
"Laura - "
Laura pulled her hand from his grip, lifted it to cover her eyes.
"Bill, I cannot allow him to undermine my presidency or cast doubt on your leadership," she said quietly, a slight tremor in her voice.
Bill hung his head, raked a hand through his hair.
"We can't just let him go, Laura, let him walk right back to his life like nothing's happened -"
"No, of course not," she agreed in a whisper, raised her other arm and swiped at the sudden tears in her eyes with the heels of her hands.
His anger and frustration evaporated as he watched Laura struggle to regain her composure. He sat on the edge of the bed, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, leaned down and pressed a lingering kiss to her temple. Her control appeared to break at Bill's tender touch and she wrapped her arms around his neck, clung tightly to him, pressed the side of her face into his shoulder and cried soundlessly. He slid one arm around her shoulder, the other between her head and the pillow beneath..
"Oh, Laura," he whispered sorrowfully into her hair.
As he held her, Bill's heart clenched at Laura's rare display of emotion. He wasn't able to offer her any soothing words, feared he'd lose the tenuous grip on his own control if he attempted to speak. He cradled her head, let her cry until a hiccupped sob caused her to flinch in pain. He carefully removed his hands from her body, watched with concern as she eased back into the stacked pillows with her eyes squeezed shut, wrapped an arm around her ribs and wiped at her face with the other hand.
"You okay?" he asked quietly. "You want me to get Cottle?"
"Broken rib," she explained, shook her head in response to the second part of his question. "It just hurts when I cry," she sniffled. "Or breathe," she added with a crooked smile.
Bill chuckled as he stood to retrieve a box of tissues from the table beside her bed. He pulled a couple out and handed them to Laura who nodded her thanks and began to dab cautiously at her wet eyes. She hissed when she attempted to wipe her broken nose, crumpled the blood-tinged tissue and dropped her hand to her lap.
"I'm sorry, Bill," she said, stared at her fingers as they worried the used tissue. "I'm just ... a little frakked up right now, I'm sorry."
Before Bill could respond, Doctor Cottle pulled back the curtain and stepped through, waved a medic in after him.
"Get her IV drip going, Ishay," he brusquely directed the young woman, nodded to Laura. "We've gotta get you sown up, young lady," he said more softly than usual.
"Great," Laura muttered, held her arm still while Ishay pushed a needle into a vein on her hand.
"You're not gonna feel a thing," the doctor assured her as he tugged metal stirrups from the end of the bed and locked them into place.
"What ... " Bill started to ask, pointed to the addition Cottle had made to the bed.
Doctor Cottle looked up at Laura, raised his eyebrows at her in silent question. When she closed her eyes and nodded her consent, Cottle turned to Bill, tossed his head indicating the slit in the curtain he'd just come through and headed back out.
"I'll see you later," Bill said to Laura, turned to follow the doctor when she'd acknowledged his words with a curt nod.
**********
When Doctor Cottle and the Admiral emerged from behind the drape, Lee and Kara rose from the hard plastic chairs they'd occupied and walked over to join them.
"Well?" Lee asked.
"The doctor's about to fill us in," Bill replied, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Where's Colonel Tigh?"
"He went up to check on things in CIC," Lee said and Bill nodded, returned the glasses to his face.
"Okay, what's her condition?" he asked of the doctor.
"The president hasn't suffered any internal injuries," Cottle sighed, "But she's got -"
"Wait, Doc," Kara interrupted. "No internal injuries? You sure? 'Cuz she threw up a lot of blood."
"She was throwing up -" the Admiral snapped his head toward Starbuck, began to question her statement.
"As I was saying, there are no internal injuries," he raised his thick white brows at Adama, turned to Kara and said sarcastically, "I'm sure."
"Then what - "
"I'm gonna ask that all questions from the peanut gallery be held until I've finished," Cottle said, irritated by the interruptions.
The Admiral, Lee and Kara all nodded their heads in acceptance of the grumpy doctor's terms.
"Go on," Bill ordered.
"There doesn't appear to be any permanent damage to her trachea, but the president has two broken ribs, a broken finger, a knot on the back of her head," he informed the group. "Her nose has been broken and as I'm sure you all know, trauma to the nose generally results in excessive bleeding - she vomited blood because she'd swallowed a lot of it," he said, looked pointedly at Kara.
He lit another cigarette, sucked on the end while the officers took in what he'd said. The Admiral fixed him with a stare, the junior officers looked first at each other, then back to him. Cottle exhaled, shook his head and wagged a finger at Lee when he appeared ready to ask a question of the doctor.
"Not done yet," he warned. "In addition to a split lip and various cuts and contusions, her rapist inflicted a -"
"Rapist?" the three people to whom the doctor was speaking simultaneously chimed in a stunned chorus.
The Admiral turned on his son.
"You said -"
"The president told me she had not been ... raped," he offered quickly in his defense. "But ..." he broke off.
"But what?" his father growled.
"But..." Lee went on hesitantly, "There was blood ... ah, between her legs, on her thighs, when I found her."
Bill closed his eyes, sucked in a shaky breath at what his son had to say and some of the color drained from his olive-toned face.
"She told me that the guy wore a ring," Kara interjected, "That he ... scratched her with it."
Bill grunted, shook his head at her explanation and Kara thought maybe she'd been too willing to accept the president's excuse. She turned back to Doctor Cottle when he cleared his throat.
"If I may?" he asked rhetorically, sighed. "Rape is, by definition, a physical invasion of a sexual nature committed on a person by force. The invasion in this case was done by hand."
He paused, let his words sink in.
"This asshole Gray did have a ring on one of his fingers," Cottle continued angrily. "And because he was so ... rough -"
"Motherfrakker," Lee mumbled.
" - the irregular ridges of the ring lacerated the vaginal wall," he said. "That accounts for the blood between her legs. And it's a hell of a lot more than a scratch - gonna take about ten stitches to close."
"Gods," Kara muttered, shook her head.
Lee watched as his father's face went stony on hearing the last bit of news.
"Now," Cottle went on, "Like I said, the president should be released later today, but I'm gonna want to keep her close - is she still staying on Galactica?"
"Yes," the Admiral replied, nodded. "The maintenance work on her ship won't be complete until the end of the week."
"Good," the doctor said. "I gotta get back to work."
"Keep me posted," the Admiral said absently as Cottle turned to go.
Lee put a hand on his father's shoulder, angled his head to search his weathered face.
"How ya doin', dad?" he asked softly, worriedly.
"I'm fine," he quickly responded, swiveled his head back and forth between Lee and Kara. "Now who's gonna tell me how the frak this happened?"
**********
After having listened to both Lee's and Kara's accounts of the night's events, Admiral Adama was once again consumed with savage fury. He stood stock still, stared at a spot above Lee's shoulder as Lee and Kara fidgeted with nervous anticipation, waited for an explosive reaction.
Tory Foster, who had arrived in sickbay while Bill had been back with Laura, sat dazed in one of the chairs off to the side.
"Why was the president at Joe's Bar in the first place?" the Admiral asked slowly, put the question to the three young people.
"I called her," Tory whispered, looked up at the others.
"Why?" Bill asked, narrowed his eyes at the aid.
"It's a long story," she sighed, shook her head from side to side.
"Give me the abridged version," he demanded sharply.
Tory nodded, looked down at her clasped hands, appeared to be deciding how to begin.
"The president had been spending a lot of time with Mr. Gray since, ya know," she eyed the Admiral meaningfully "you and she ... "
"Got it. Go on."
"Well, he apparently read too much into it and went berserk when the president tried to set him straight."
"What do you mean, exactly?" Bill asked.
"Mr. Gray ... kissed the president, said he was in love with her," Tory clarified. "And he went frakkin' ballistic when she rejected him - screamed at her, threw stuff, threatened her. Security had to forcibly remove him from her office -"
"When was this?"
"Two days ago," she answered. "Then I saw him in the bar, drunk and alternately bad-mouthing and crying over the president - he made quite a scene. That's when I called her. And she came down to deal with
him - because I called her."The young woman's dark curls bounced as she shook her head, horrified by the fact that she'd been complicit in Wallace Gray's attack on the president.
"Why wasn't I informed of the altercation on Colonial One?" the Admiral asked angrily.
"She didn't want you to know," Tory answered easily, shrugged her shoulders. "She wasn't afraid of Mr. Gray, said he'd cool off."
Bill closed his eyes, sucked in a calming breath before he opened them again.
"I wanna keep this under wraps for now," he said. "Major, arrange a detail to safeguard the president's secuirty while she's here."
Lee nodded, "Yes, sir."
"Miss Foster," Bill addressed Laura's aid, "You're gonna have to clear her schedule for today, say she's sick - whatever. And she'll need a change of clothes for when she's released - can you take care of that?"
"Yes, sir," Tory replied, stood. "I'll get right on it."
"Kara, I want you to stay here. Let me know as soon as Cottle has an update."
As Kara nodded, moved to take a seat outside the president's "room," the Admiral turned and stalked quickly towards the exit. Lee jogged to catch up with him, grabbed his father's arm to pull him to a stop.
"Where are you going, dad?," he asked suspiciously.
Bill shrugged out of Lee's grip, glared at him.
"To the brig," he bit out, set off down the corridor at a brisk clip.
"Frak," Lee cursed under his breath. He turned around, hurried over to the nearest comm unit.