Chapter 8 – Who knew that Shakespeare was right?

He was still floating.

He didn't know where he was, or what had happened, but he remembered that at one point he had been floating. And now the sensation was still the same.

But something was different.

It was silent, for one.

And it was warm, and comfortable.

He was lying on something soft, and something was covering him. A blanket maybe. Whatever it was, it was a warm and comfortable gentle pressure against his chest. Compared to the pressure of Herb's body atop of his chest after that gun had jerked in his hand, it was heavenly.

From one moment to the next, Shawn was sitting bolt upright, feeling the bile rise in his throat as the memories came back. It wasn't a gentle process, no. Within a second, the memories were there in all their brutal clarity.

Him and Herb struggling for the gun.

The feeling of something pulling at his hand, the movement tightening the pressure of his finger on the trigger.

The jerk of the gun as the shot exploded between their bodies.

Herb's weight settling atop of him as he died.

Herb's blood running all over his hands in a warm steady flow, filling his nostrils with the smell of copper.

Shawn struggled out from underneath the blanket. He didn't even ask himself how he had ended up on a bed in the first place, or where the hell he was. He only had one thing on his mind.

He needed to get the blood off his hands. Maybe then that stench of copper would finally go away.

Something tore at his left arm, but Shawn didn't notice. In the dim light of the room, he stumbled and limped over the cold tiles and over towards the door to his left.

It was a bathroom. He couldn't tell how he had known, but somehow he had. A bathroom.

Shawn didn't bother with turning on any additional lights, the little light streaming in through the door was enough to make out the sink. That was all he needed. Something was restraining his right arm; for some reason he had some sort of sling around it, but he clumsily tore it away and turned on the water.

There was a container with antiseptic soap next to the sink, and Shawn lathered up his hands and started scrubbing at them furiously.

It was too dark in the bathroom to make out the blood on his hands, but Shawn didn't need to see it to know that it was there. He could smell it. He had felt it flowing over his skin, and now he needed to wash it off again.

Over the sound of the water and his furious scrubbing, Shawn didn't hear the door to his hospital room open. He didn't hear steps come into the room, halt, then turn towards the bathroom. He didn't even hear the voice calling out his name.

Shawn continued scrubbing at the blood on his fingers until a pair of hands was suddenly pushing at him. The water was turned off and the hands were on him now, trying to still his arms. Shawn's left wrist was encased in a firm grip, but he was still flailing around with his right hand, trying to wipe at the blood, when suddenly the lights in the bathroom lit up and a hand grabbed his right elbow.

"Shawn! Snap out of it!"

Panting heavily, Shawn found himself looking into his father's eyes.

"Shawn, stop! I want you to focus. Can you do that for me?"

Slowly, Shawn nodded. He could do that, of course. But he needed to wash off the blood, his father had to understand that.

"Shawn, do you hear me?"

Shawn nodded again. "Yeah." His voice came out as a hoarse croak.

"Good. We need to get you back into bed, kid."

Shawn shook his head. "No. No, I need to…the blood Dad. I need to wash off the blood."

"Hey." Henry's voice suddenly sounded softer than Shawn had ever heard it. "There is no blood anymore. The nurses washed it all off."

"No…" He could still smell the blood. His hands had been covered in blood.

"Shawn, look at your hands. Look at them!"

Slowly, Shawn looked down at his hands. They were wet and dripping onto the tiled floor. Some traces of soap still clung to his skin, but his hands were clean. A bandage was wrapped around his right wrist and it was partly soaked. But even the bandage was a clean white color with no trace of any red spots. There was no blood, not even under his fingernails. But how could that be? His hands had been drenched in blood.

"What…but there was all the blood."

"A nurse washed it off, Shawn. It's all right, the blood is gone."

And it was gone. His hands were clean, there was no trace of blood anywhere on them. But there was a thin rivulet of blood flowing down his left forearm.

"You pulled out your IV, kid. Come on, let's get you back to bed and call a nurse."

Numbly, Shawn nodded. He didn't understand what was going on here, but the blood was gone. That at least was something. He could go on from there.

Only now did he notice that he was wearing nothing but a hospital gown – one of the kind that didn't really close all the way in the back and left his backside uncomfortably cold. He was barefoot and his left ankle was wrapped in a brace-like bandage. The discarded sling from his arm was lying on the ground in front of him. Henry bent down and picked it up.

"Come on, back to bed."

He wrapped an arm around Shawn's waist. "Lean on me, that ankle has to hurt."

With his father's aid, Shawn hobbled back to bed. Henry pulled back the blanket and helped Shawn sit down.

"I'm going to call a nurse."

Henry pressed the call button on the side of Shawn's bed, then he sank down into a chair with a sigh.

"They said you probably wouldn't wake up for a while, otherwise I'd have been here. I was just getting coffee."

Shawn's eyes fell onto the paper cup which his father seemed to have hastily discarded onto the small table in the room. A huge brown stain of spilled liquid had poured over the light surface of the table. He nodded because he didn't really know whether his father's words had been a statement, an explanation or a question.

But he was spared the answer when the door to his room opened and a middle-aged woman came into the room.

"Good morning. It's still a bit early, what is the problem?"

The nurse, whose nametag identified her as Carol Yates, stepped up to Shawn's bed and eyed him critically.

Henry stepped in to spare his son the need to explain.

"He was a little disoriented when he woke up. He tore out his IV and got rid of his sling. You might need to change the bandage around his wrist, too."

Nurse Yates nodded. "All right, we can easily fix that." She looked at Shawn. "How are you feeling now? Still disoriented? Any dizziness?"

"No, I'm all right."

Nurse Yates nodded and stepped away from the bed. She opened the small supply cupboard next to the door and took out some items. She came back to the bed with a cotton pad which she pressed onto the still bleeding puncture wound in Shawn's elbow.

"Press that down tightly for a moment, would you?"

When Shawn automatically tried to bring up his right hand to hold the pad in place, nurse Yates stopped the movement and gave him a scolding look.

"I was talking to your father, Mr. Spencer. You are not supposed to use that arm. Actually, it should hurt you to move it in the first place. Which is why you are going to sit still until I'm finished, all right?"

Shawn nodded. "Yes."

"Good."

Ten minutes later Shawn's Shoulder was back in his sling, his wrist had been rewrapped and a new IV line had been inserted into Shawn's arm. Nurse Yates had been quick and efficient, but after Shawn's self inflicted wounds had been taken care of she had vanished again.

Which left Shawn alone with his father.

"How are you feeling?"

Shawn attempted to shrug, but his right shoulder hurt and the shrug ended before it had really begun. How did he feel? How was he supposed to feel after being chased around a mountain by two maniacs, one of whom he had shot? He was alive, that was something. It was more than Herb could say.

"I'm all right. Lassiter got off worse."

His heart started racing. Lassiter! How could he have forgotten about the detective?

"How is he?"

Henry forced himself to smile. "He'll be fine. One broken and one cracked rib, his left wrist is broken and the bullet wound in his shoulder needed surgery. His prognosis is good, but he's still out from the anesthetic. He should wake up in a few hours."

Shawn sank back into his pillow with a sigh. "That's good. What time is it? How long was I asleep?"

"It's half past six in the morning. You were brought here around half past ten last night, and the first time I was allowed to see you was an hour later. They gave you a mild sedative, but it sure knocked you out; you were already fast asleep by the time I got into your room." Henry folded his hands over his stomach. "Gus should come back soon."

"Oh no." Shawn's face twisted into a grimace. "Dad, you called Gus? He had his big date last night, he didn't want to be called."

"For somebody who didn't want to be called, he sure answered his phone quickly."

Shawn rolled his eyes. "No small wonder if he sees your name on his caller ID. Great, I'll never hear the end of that one, thank you so much Dad."

"He won't hold it against you."
Shawn laughed mirthlessly. "Sure, you should know."
"Yes, I should know."
Shawn frowned at the determined tone in his Dad's voice and turned so that he could look at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Henry sighed. "I promised him."

Shawn thought about that for a moment, but no matter how much he turned it, it didn't make sense.

"Gus won't hold crashing his date against me because you promised him? Dad, that doesn't make sense. What did you promise? To call him?"

Henry nodded. "Yeah."

Shawn still didn't understand what this was all about. His confusion must have been obvious on his face, because after a moment Henry sighed again and leaned forward.

"Remember when you took off on your bike, directly after you graduated high school?"

"Directly after you arrested me, you mean?"

Henry didn't rise to the bait, he merely nodded. "Yes. You just up and left from one moment to the next. It took you nearly two months to write the first letter to Gus, to let him know that you were doing all right."

Shawn shrugged with his good shoulder. "I still don't see what that's got to do with anything."

"Well, maybe Gus was worried when you just left like that, without a word? Can you imagine that? He dropped by the house one day, about two weeks after you left. Gus figured that if anything happened to you, sooner or later I'd be notified. That day he made me promise that I'd call him immediately if I ever got a call saying that something had happened, or that you were in hospital."

"Dad, that was twelve years ago."
Henry shrugged. "It's still a promise. Gus is still your best friend. I don't see what has changed. Besides, I'm not stupid. I wouldn't want to face Gus if I hadn't called him immediately."

Shawn sighed in defeat and ran his uninjured hand over his face.

"Whoa kid, stop."

Henry's face on his wrist stopped the movement of Shawn's hand, and he looked at his father in obvious confusion.

"What's wrong?"

"I take it you didn't look into the mirror during your earlier trip to the bathroom."

Henry started to look around the room, then he got up and vanished into the bathroom again. When he came back, there was a small hand-held mirror in his hand. He sat down again and gave the mirror to Shawn.

"The doctors are pretty sure that there won't be any scars, it's mostly superficial abrasions, but right now your face looks as if you had fallen into a meat grinder. You shouldn't be picking at the wounds, otherwise they might leave scars after all."

Slowly, Shawn brought up the mirror and looked at his face. The left side of his face looked all right. Normal, except for a small bruise on his cheekbone. But the right side of his face…

Shawn remembered how he had slid along with his cheek against the ground during their first fall down the mountain, but as their flight from the two armed killers had gotten more intense, he had all but forgotten about that injury. There had been more important matters to think about.

But his entire right cheek, the right side of his chin and forehead, all that was nothing but an intersecting maze of scratches. Some of them had scabbed over already, but some of the deeper ones hadn't. The wounds had been treated with some disinfecting solution which had left an orange hue to what little skin could be seen between the scratches.

His father hadn't been wrong with the meat grinder comparison.

Shawn looked at the wounds for a little longer, then he put the mirror down with a sigh. Henry picked it up and put it on the bedside table.

"It'll take some time to heal, but you'll be all right. Your shoulder was dislocated, but I guess you already knew that."

"Lassiter set it."

"Yeah, that's what the doctors guessed. Did a good job of it, too. But you pulled some muscles and tendons, so you should keep the arm still for a few days. Your right wrist is sprained and badly abraded from the cuffs, so you won't really be able to use that arm much, anyway. There's some ligament damage to your left ankle, but it won't need surgery. At least not if you don't strain it."

"That's it?"

Henry sighed. "Mild concussion, shock, about a hundred scratches and bruises, one of which on your side is shaped suspiciously like a boot. But yeah, that's it. It could have been a lot worse."

Shawn nodded numbly. "Yeah. I got lucky."

Henry leaned forward and leaned his arms on this thighs. "Listen Shawn, I need some answers. Karen needs some answers. Up until the moment you called me, nobody knew that anything was wrong. Lassiter was halfway coherent before he was sedated for the surgery, but still nobody knows what exactly happened."

Shawn nodded. He had absolutely no desire to relive anything that had happened the previous day. None at all. He had hoped that Lassiter could do all the explaining, but if the detective had just gone through surgery, there was no way Shawn would be able to evade that particular conversation.

"Maybe you should call the Chief, then. I don't particularly want to tell it over and over again."

Something flickered across Henry's face at those words, but it was gone too quickly for Shawn to determine exactly what it had been. After a moment, he got up from his chair.

"I'm going to call her. Try to get some more rest in the meantime."

Shawn sank back into his pillows and looked after his father's retreating form. As if he was going to get any rest now, with the outlook of reliving the previous day again in all its gory details.

Forty-five minutes later, Chief Vick and Juliet had arrived in the hospital and were sitting beside Shawn's bed. Both women looked tired, but Juliet even more so than the Chief. Gus had been last to arrive, and since no chair was left for him he was leaning against the wall facing Shawn's bed. He hadn't said a single thing about his interrupted date from the previous evening, but Shawn was sure that sooner or later the topic would come up.

Shawn didn't quite meet anybody's eyes. Instead, he pretended that the plate with breakfast on the tray in front of him was the most interesting thing in the world. Granted, it was actually kind of interesting, because Shawn had absolutely no idea what it was supposed to be. It was a thin, greyish mush. Not jell-o, though for some reason it smelled strangely like lemons. It could be porridge, but actually it looked more like a soup. But who would hand out soups for breakfast? Whatever it was, Shawn had absolutely no intention of eating it.

Nobody had spoken since Gus' arrival, but now Chief Vick shifted in her chair and cleared her throat.

"Mr. Spencer, I would really like to know what happened yesterday. When Detective Lassiter didn't come back from his coffee break, I didn't expect the reason to be quite so serious."

"How is he?"

The Chief's gaze softened slightly and a smile tugged on the corners of her mouth. "As of fifteen minutes ago, I would say he's well, if a little…incoherent. It might take a little while longer for the anesthetic to wear off, it seems he has an interesting reaction to being sedated. But his doctor assured me that given some time for recovery, he'll be fine."

Shawn nodded. "What about those guys?"

It was obvious that the Chief much rather wanted to hear the things she didn't know, but she decided to indulge Shawn just this once.

"Border patrol stopped two cars that matched the description Lassiter gave. They had hidden the jewels inside the gas-tank. All four thieves are arrested and accounted for. They're still being held by border patrol and will be transported back to Santa Barbara this afternoon. O'Hara has been working the crime scene last night."

At the word crime scene, Shawn's stomach contracted painfully. The Chief was talking about the place where he had shot Herb. Unbidden, the images started to flash before his eyes again and Shawn took a deep breath to keep his stomach from heaving.

"What about the other guy? Did you catch him?"

This time, it was Juliet who spoke. "No. The only trace of him we found were shell casings on the road, from the shots he fired. We got one bullet that hit the truck, but it's not yet clear whether or not it's too damaged to compare it to other bullets on record. There were no tracks we could follow on the scene, but there are still units canvassing through the mountains. But by the time we arrived on the scene, he was long gone."

"We're going to need a description, Mr. Spencer."

Shawn shook his head. "I never really got to see him, Chief. Not his face at least. It was too dark."

Vick nodded with a disappointed sigh. She gestured for O'Hara to take out her notebook.

"And now Mr. Spencer, I'm going to need you to tell me exactly what happened that caused you and detective Lassiter to end up where we found you. I want every detail, and I want you to start at the very beginning."

Shawn drew a deep breath, then he started to tell. He knew that it was pointless to leave anything out, as soon as Lassiter woke up again he'd go through pretty much the same conversation anyway. So he told them everything from the moment he had figured out the case and where those jewel thieves had stored their getaway cars. He told them about the hubcaps falling and their getting caught, about the car-ride into the mountains and about being handcuffed to Lassiter to the sink.

The curse of a brilliant memory was that Shawn could still recite every single detail of what had happened the previous day, but all through his account of the events he didn't look up. Not even when he heard Juliet's startled gasp as he described the first tumble down the mountain and how he had nearly drowned in the spring.

The only thing he left out was his fight with Lassiter, right before the detective had been shot. He didn't leave out the fact that they had had an argument, anybody in the room could have probably guessed that the two men being forced to endure each other that closely for an entire day would not manage to do so without getting into a fight. But he left out what they had been fighting about, and also that he was sure that it had been their shouting which had told Herb where to find them in the first place.

The most difficult part was telling them what had happened after their second fall down the mountain. He didn't want to think about struggling with Herb for the gun anymore. He didn't want to think about what it had felt like to feel the gun jerk in his hand and to feel Herb's blood run down his hands. Actually, Shawn only wanted to close his eyes and skip this part entirely, but he knew that he couldn't.

Herb's body had been found, Chief Vick wouldn't let him off the hook until he told her how the man had died. It might be best to owe up to what he had done right away, even if he did so in clipped tones and short sentences.

He wanted to kill us.

Lassiter was in bad shape.

I made a grab for his gun.

We struggled.

The gun went off.

Nobody interrupted him, but Shawn also couldn't bring himself to look up and see the reaction on their faces. Besides, he could already guess what they looked like. Unreadable in his father's case. His Dad would save his reaction for later. The Chief would look serious, Juliet's eyes would be widened slightly, and Gus would look positively horrified. No need to look if he already knew it.

It didn't take long for Shawn to finish his account of what had happened after that. With a sigh, he leaned back in his bed and stared at a point somewhere above and to the left of Gus' head.

It took a minute until somebody spoke again. Not surprisingly, it was Chief Vick who did. "What I don't understand Mr. Spencer, is why you called your father. Why didn't you or Detective Lassiter call the station, or O'Hara, or me?"

Shawn chuckled mirthlessly. "We had just been speeding down a mountain road to escape the guy with the gun. I wasn't really fit for driving a car. Lassiter was shot. It was totally chaotic. My Dad's number was the first number either of us remembered."
Vick nodded. "And you are sure that you cannot give a description of the second man?"

Shawn shook his head. "The only time I saw his face, it was dark. He was a white guy, that's all I can say. White guy who wore jeans and boots. I would recognize his voice for sure, but not his face. I'm sorry."

Vick nodded and got up from her chair. "Very well, Mr. Spencer. We're going to need this in form of an official statement, but that can wait until you are released from hospital. For now, we are going to try our best to find this other man, though I have to say that with so little to go on, I'm not overly optimistic about that. Once you are out of here we will also have a very serious conversation about your involvement in police investigations."

Shawn didn't like the sound of that, but he had expected it. Vick couldn't afford to employ police consultants who killed people.

"Get better soon, Mr. Spencer."

Shawn nodded at the Chief. "Thanks."

Vick turned back towards Juliet. "And you go home and get some rest, O'Hara. I need you rested when the first results from forensics come in. Gentlemen."

A chorus or murmured goodbyes guided Chief Vick out of the room. Juliet gave Shawn a smile that was probably meant to be encouraging, but which merely looked tired. She said her goodbyes and followed Vick out of the room.

Which left Gus and his Dad. Shawn didn't quite dare to look at his Dad just yet, so he hesitantly looked at Gus.

"Sorry about crashing your date."
Gus sighed and shook his head. "Never mind. It wasn't going so well, anyway. Besides, rushing off because your best friend is in trouble is an impressive excuse to leave early."

He didn't sound as convincing as Gus would have probably liked, but they were spared any further need to attempt conversation by Henry. It seemed that his Dad thought that now was an appropriate moment for his own reaction.

"Gus, would you give us a moment?"

Gus nodded. "Sure. I'll go drink a coffee. I need to call in at work, too. I'll be back in a little while."
He left the room, and as the door closed behind him, his Dad got up from his chair and walked over to the foot end of the bed. Shawn only needed to take one look at his Dad's face to know what he was in for now. It were subtle signs, but Shawn had learned to read his father over the years. Narrowed eyes, the vein on his forehead that was throbbing slightly, jaw set firmly and his lips pressed together in a thin line. After a closer look, it weren't even subtle signs this time, but obvious ones.

His father was furious.

Shawn sighed and tried to press himself further into his pillows. "Just get it over with."

"What?"

Tightly controlled voice, too. Not too loud, but every single letter pronounced sharply. This was the real deal on the Henry Spencer fury-scale.

"I can see that you're angry, you're nearly bursting with the lecture you need to deliver, so just get it over with."

Henry exhaled loudly and ran a hand over his balding head. "What did you expect? Did you think I'd throw you a party after what you just said? Did you think I'd say 'Good job, nobody died, and only one bad guy got away'?"

That wasn't even true. Somebody had died, but Shawn knew that his father didn't mean it that way. It was the cop thinking, if an Officer had been in danger and survived, you tended to blend out the dead bad guys. One more reason why Shawn thought he could never become a cop.

"Listen Dad, don't you think I'd change things if I could?"

"But that's exactly the problem, isn't it?"

Henry started pacing up and down in front of the bed. "That's exactly what your problem is. You just stumble into things blindly, without a plan and without the proper preparation, then you feel your way along and hope that you catch the bad guy without anybody getting hurt in the process. But in police work you can't rely on a quick tongue and dumb luck! Something like this just had to happen sooner or later!"

Shawn sat up straighter in his bed. "You're just glad that it's all my fault again. No matter how many cases I've solved without any incidents, no matter how often I've actually helped the police when they were stuck, you're glad that I've screwed up on this one just so that you have something to berate me for. What's next? The usual lecture about why this wouldn't have happened if I was a cop?"

"Of course it wouldn't have happened if you were a cop! If you were a cop you'd have had backup, you'd have had a weapon, you wouldn't have been the unarmed civilian because of whom Lassiter had to surrender his weapon in the first place!"

They were both yelling now, but Shawn no longer cared. Conversations with his Dad were only remarkable if they didn't end in yelling. And Shawn was royally fed up with his father trying to place all the blame on him. Especially since his father was completely missing the point of what had gone so horribly wrong yesterday.

"Yes Dad, I know. I screwed up everybody's life by not becoming a cop. But you know what? Lassiter is a cop. Lassiter had a gun, and it didn't help him any, either."

"Because Lassiter screwed up!" Henry stopped his pacing and pointed a finger at Shawn. "Lassiter went into an unknown situation without backup and with a civilian in tow. He should have known better. He should have called for backup and as soon as he is coherent again, Karen is going to chew him out for it. But I have a newsflash for you, Shawn. Lassiter is not your babysitter. Just because he misjudged a situation it doesn't mean you're free of blame!"

"Of course it doesn't!" In his anger, Shawn tried to gesture with his left arm and tore at his IV again. With a frustrated sigh, he let his hand sink back atop of the blanket. "As far as you are concerned, I'm never free of blame. Whatever I do, you always find something to blame me for. That's nothing new!"

Henry kicked his foot against the nearest chair in frustration. "What do you want me to do? Do you want me to sit by and watch you pull your little charade until somebody gets killed?"

"Somebody got killed, Dad!"

Shawn didn't know where that outburst had come from, but it was enough to silence his father for a moment. Shawn seized the opportunity.

"Somebody got killed, Dad. I killed somebody. We struggled for the gun, I pulled the trigger and now he is dead. So don't go around and try to tell me that nobody got killed, all right?"

Henry sighed and ran his hands over his face. "Listen Shawn, what happened was an accident. That guy would have killed you and Lassiter. You didn't have any choice but to make a grab for the gun."

"And what does that change, Dad? He's still dead. I still killed him. And the last thing I need right now is to have you giving me the lecture about how everything in everybody's life would be better if I had become a cop. I hate it that no matter what I do, no matter what happens, you always reduce everything to the fact that I didn't become what you wanted me to be. I'm sick and tired of it! Just leave me alone with that self-righteous crap, all right?"

Henry laughed out without any real mirth. "Of course you're sick and tired of it. You're always sick and tired of things you don't want to hear. Yes, you killed a man yesterday Shawn. You killed him in self-defense, but that doesn't change the fact that he is dead because you pulled the trigger. But let me tell you something Shawn: if you keep involving yourself in police work, you have to take this. You damn well better learn to face the fact that something like this can happen. You can't just pick out the good parts, the fun and the glory. If you do a cop's job, you'll have to face the ugly sides of a cop's job as well. Sometimes, people shoot each other. Sometimes, the perp pulls a gun on you. And sometimes, when you really don't have any other choice, you have to shoot the bad guy before they shoot you. If you're not ready to face that, then you have no place doing what you're doing!"

At those words, Shawn saw red. "Did you ever pause to think that exactly this is the reason why I never became a cop?"

Seeing the expression on his father's face, Shawn laughed. "Of course you didn't. You thought it was all about you, didn't you? You thought I didn't become a cop just to spite you. Another explanation probably never even occurred to you! Finally understand it Dad, I am not you! I am not a cop, and I am not somebody who shoots somebody else, shrugs it off and then goes back to normal. That's not me."

Henry raised both eyebrows. "Oh no?"

"No, but you wouldn't know! You never cared to find out who I really am!"

"You're wrong there, kid. You never dared to find out who you really are! You never stuck to one thing long enough to let it have any influence on you, you never settled on anything because you were afraid to wake up one morning to find out that you had become somebody you didn't want to be. You never grew up! So don't blame me now because this time real life caught up with you before you had the chance to run away!"

"Just leave me alone with that, all right? I've disappointed you, yet again, nothing new there. You don't understand the first thing about me, or about what happened yesterday. So just leave me alone, all right?"

Henry threw his hands in the air. "You know what? I will. I'll just leave you alone!" He grabbed his jacket from the back of his previously vacated chair and shrugged into it. "But don't think I'll come running again the next time you call me because you got yourself into trouble again. If what happened yesterday doesn't make you reconsider this whole fake-psychic charade, leave me out of it in the future!"
Henry turned around and stormed out of the room without so much as another look at his son.

Shawn watched as his father slammed the door shut, then he sank back against the mattress with a sigh. He hadn't even noticed how tense he had been. Conversations with his father tended to do that to him.

Maybe a minute after his father had stormed out of the room, there was a knock on the door and Gus returned. He looked a little confused.

"Any specific reason why I met your father in the lobby, storming out of the hospital with an expression on his face that would have made little children cry?"

Shawn shook his head. "You don't want to know."

Both Gus' eyebrows went up in silent confusion. "Okay."

Shawn sighed and forced himself to smile at his friend. "All right, how about you tell me about your date with Kendra. What did you mean, it wasn't going so well? You prepared for this date like never before. What went wrong?"

Gus sat down in the chair Henry had previously vacated. "You want to talk about my date? After everything that happened…you know…yesterday, you want to talk about my date?"

This time, the smile came easier. "Yes Gus. That's exactly what I want."

Gus leaned back in his chair and watched Shawn for a long moment, then he shrugged. "All right. So, actually it started when I picked her up already. She's still living with her parents, can you believe that? At her age? And while I was waiting for her to get ready…"

Shawn was only half listening to what Gus was telling him. He lay there and ignored the stinging sensation in his cheek, the throbbing of his shoulder and the muscle pain he felt everywhere as he listened to his best friend rant on about how annoying Kendra had turned out to be. It was soothing, this little piece of normality. He could nearly pretend that the past day hadn't happened, and that life could ever be normal again.