Boxed In
Title: Boxed In pt 4
Summary: AU Season 14. Abby and Luka deal with the realization that their son may be autistic.
Disclaimer: I don't own Luka, Abby, Joe, or anyone else whose name looks familiar. If it's not familiar, I may own the character.
He lay awake staring at the ceiling. An exhaled sigh was given as he turned his head to look at her. She was lying on her side, her back to him, the blanket covering her body and he could see a shoulder in a strap-sleeved shirt poking out, partially hidden by some loose brown strands that fell over her pillow. And yet she wasn't asleep. He knew it, and she knew he knew it, but he also knew not to let on that he knew that she knew that he knew she was awake. The whole game was confusing in the least. But he'd play along. The past eight years had taught him to play along.
He knew why she was awake. The same reason he was. She was thinking about Joe. About the possible outcome that would lie before them like a ticking time bomb. There was nothing they could do but move forward, prepared to face it head-on.
At least, he wanted to be prepared, when the time came. Right now he was screaming inside, frightened and feeling isolated, cursed, hopeless. More hopeless than he had felt in a very long time.
He got up, finally knowing Abby was not going to give in tonight, let him know it was okay to acknowledge that she was awake. So he slipped quietly out of the bed and left the room, letting the door close partially behind him.
Walking out to the kitchen, he sat at the table and sighed, starting to look over some medical journals hoping to find something to distract himself with, but he couldn't get any interest in any of it right now, so big was the dark cloud that seemed to loom over their future.
So, he got up and walked out to the living room, sat down on the couch, turned on the TV and started channel-flipping. Boxing. Infomercial. News in Spanish. Infomercial. Talk show rerun. Football. Infomercial. Dating line commercial. He sighed and turned off the TV, getting up he put on his jacket and walked outside into the cool spring night.
He wasn't sure how long or how far he walked. All he knew was that the sky had gone from the pitchest black it had taken that night to a dull gray-blue that signaled the approaching daylight. This is when he found himself suddenly sitting on the bench at the edge of the park, just four or five blocks from home. Funny, he didn't recall how he got there or where he'd been.
It was then that he felt a tear on his skin and wiped it away. This is when he realized he had been praying. Pleading with God, not for the first time, to spare his son.