I woke up to someone screaming a steady stream of profanities at our bedroom window. Groaning, I looked at the clock. It was three in the morning. Three in the morning! It was way too early for this nonsense. Of course, I knew exactly who it was who was screaming at us. There really was only one person it could be.
Jesse was already getting out of bed and moving toward the window. I scrambled to follow him. "Jesse," I began, but he'd already opened the window and climbed onto the porch roof to talk to the NCDP currently screaming at us. Well, mostly screaming at Jesse.
"Thomas," he said calmly.
I cursed and followed my husband. Why would he go onto the roof? Obviously, Thomas hadn't been able to get inside the house, or he would have done it already. Jesse would be safe inside the house.
But no. He had to be a stupid macho man again.
"Susannah, go back to bed. I'll handle this."
I snorted. "Like hell you will. You can't talk to him, Jesse. He won't listen. Especially since you're only wearing boxers." Not that Thomas would really care what Jesse was wearing - or not wearing. He probably wouldn't even notice. But Jesse was a pretty reserved guy. He wasn't one to go outside in only his boxers, not even to get the mail in the morning. But I knew that he wanted to help Thomas move on as quickly as he could. And he probably honestly thought that he could get through to Thomas.
He ignored me. He did that a lot, though. He just completely tuned me out whenever he wanted to. He was such a man. "Thomas, I know that you're upset. You have every right to be. Your daughter died, and I'm partially responsible for that. There is nothing wrong with you being upset."
"Um, but there is something wrong with him trying to kill people because he's upset," I added. Again, I was ignored.
Thomas didn't say a word. Instead, he launched himself at Jesse, knocking my husband backward a few steps. He raised his fist, ready to punch Jesse.
"Hey!" I yelled, getting his attention. He'd hardly looked in my direction since he'd shown up. He was too focused on Jesse.
Thomas looked at me, and I kicked him in the chest, sending him nearly off the roof. He snarled at me. "Chloe's dead because of him!" I was really glad that nobody could hear him, with all of his screaming, but if we kept this up, one of my neighbors was going to hear all the commotion that Jesse and I were making. Again. If only we could soundproof the roof.
"No," I said gently. "Chloe's dead because she got cancer. That is not my husband's fault. That is not Dr. Martin's fault. They both did everything that they could to save her." I was close enough to him that I could have shifted us both into the shadowland, and we'd be done with all of this. But I didn't, for a couple of reasons.
One, I'd promised Jesse that I wouldn't ever shift unless I absolutely had to, unless my only other option was death. Jesse didn't like how dangerous shifting was, and insisted that I avoid it at all costs. Two, I wasn't sure my body could handle it at the moment. With everything going on, I didn't want to risk it.
So instead, I punched him. I know, I know. Violence was never the answer. But it wasn't like I hadn't tried to reason with him first. "I know you're upset," I said. "I get that, I really do. You love Chloe. She's the world to you. And when she died, you felt like you died, too. It was a tragedy, what happened to your daughter. Anybody would be upset. That's perfectly normal, to grieve for a lost life. But Jesse – and Dr. Martin – didn't kill her. They used every resource that they could to try to save her. But in the end, the cancer won. That's all there is to it. The cancer won. You can't blame my husband for that."
Thomas snarled. "Shut up!" he screamed, and then he was launching himself at me.
I didn't have enough time to move out of his way.
"Susannah!"
Next thing I knew, I was on my back on the roof, with Jesse on top of me. "Are you all right?" he asked.
I nodded. "Yeah, I'm-"
Jesse went flying.
Straight off the roof.
I heard him hit the ground. "Jesse!" I screamed, scrambling to the edge of the roof. He wasn't moving.
I hurried to the ladder – we'd had to cut down the tree to keep it from destroying the foundation, so we kept a ladder propped against the roof for situations just like this – and climbed down.
As I knelt beside him, I saw that he was still breathing. My pounding heart steadied a tiny bit at that. He was alive. Thank God he was alive. I couldn't even think about what I'd do if he died. "Jesse. Jesse, can you hear me?"
Nothing.
Shit.
I ran into the house and quickly called the paramedics. I told them that my husband had fallen off the roof and was currently unconscious in the backyard, which most likely meant that he had at least a moderate concussion, if not a severe one. I also grabbed him a pair of pajama pants. I knew he wouldn't want to be carted off to the hospital in nothing but his boxers. I mean, he worked with the staff there.
Within the next half hour, we got Jesse checked into the hospital. He'd woken up just as I'd returned to the backyard, which was a good thing. He'd tried to argue with me about going to the hospital, but I had a feeling that he'd seriously injured his ribs, so I didn't give in to him. He would have done exactly the same thing had it been me who had fallen off the roof. Once at the hospital, they immediately started doing X-rays to find out the extent of the damage. I knew he was in good hands. This hospital loved him.
The paramedics wanted to know exactly what had happened.
So I told them again, that he fell off the roof. They wanted to know what he was doing on the roof at three in the morning. Because, you know, normal people are asleep at three in the morning, not hanging out on their porch roofs. I explained that our cat, Spike, had gotten himself stuck and cried out for help, so Jesse had gone to rescue the old cat. He'd lost his footing and fallen to the ground. Anybody who knew Jesse well enough would know that he had a major soft spot for that ugly animal.
When it was all said and done, Jesse had a moderate concussion – from the fall – and four fractured ribs – from the asshole who made him fall. They were going to release him at ten.
I managed to get a hold of Father Dom around six to ask for the day off. He went above and beyond and gave me the rest of the week off. Then I called Brad to tell him what was going on, and to try to convince him that the triplets didn't have their regular after-school program today or tomorrow and that it had nothing to do with the fact that my husband had gotten injured. He seemed to buy it, that the two things weren't related in any way. He promised to bring them to the house later – they wanted to wish their Uncle Jesse well.
Jesse wasn't happy. It would take almost six weeks for his ribs to fully heal, and he was forbidden from working for the first two weeks of that. Jesse loved his job, and he hated the idea of sitting around the house, doing nothing, for two weeks.
I wasn't all that happy, either. I was really getting tired of Thomas Clarke. He'd disappeared right after kicking Jesse off the roof, so he probably thought he'd managed to kill my husband. Or he at least thought that he'd injured him pretty bad. But now an exorcism was out of the question, even if Jesse would agree to one. I couldn't do it on my own. Father Dom was no help, at his age. And now Jesse wasn't, either. None of us were in any kind of condition to do an exorcism on our own.
I didn't know what we were going to do.
So you get two chapters tonight. I'm sorry that they're a little shorter. I like my chapters to be a little longer, but I know better than to try to force it. I'd rather have a shorter chapter that's better quality than a longer chapter that's crappy.
