AN- Thanks again for sticking with this story and reviewing! Big thanks for this chapter to doctorsuez for being a great sounding board and helping me work it out.
Chapter 9 - Daisy
Daisy Wick looked hesitantly at the man in the seat next to her as they drove away from Reagan National.
"Thanks for picking me up, Lance," she said quietly.
"You're welcome," he replied.
Lance Sweets had no idea what to say. He was a trained psychologist, and very good if he did say so himself. He was one of the youngest profilers ever hired by the FBI, placed in a sought-after position in the prestigious DC Field Office and assigned to work with one of the top investigative teams in the country-but when it came to his own life, he was a twelve-year old stammering kid completely at a loss for words. He decided to take the safer route.
"Why didn't you come back with the others?" he asked. "Dr. Brennan's been back almost a month."
"There were some things I had to work through…" she said. "Lance, I'm sorry I've been so distant. I know that we started to work through some things when I came home for Christmas…"
"But then you completely cut off contact two months later," Lance retorted.
"It wasn't just you, Lancelot," she said softly, hoping that the use of her pet name for him would soften his reaction. "I stopped talking to everyone."
He looked at her and then back at the road, more confused than before.
"Something happened, Lance," she said. "Something really bad, and I just couldn't talk about it. I wanted to tell you…" She reached across the console encouraging him to let her take his hand. "I need to tell you, but not here, okay? When we get home, we'll sit down and I'll tell you everything."
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February:
Booth sat down to check his email and was surprised not to see one from his wife. It had been a couple of days since he'd heard from her, and she had promised to check in every day. He was beginning to think that the nagging feeling he'd had in his stomach all week had nothing to do with the guys in his unit.
He scanned his in-box and saw a couple of notes from Parker and one from Jared. There was even one from Cam. What caught his eye was an unfamiliar name from the same server that Bones' emails came from.
The ever-present knot in his stomach turned to ice.
He opened the email.
It was from a Dr. Amelia Grayson with the Maluku project. She said she was writing about Bones, and that she needed to speak with him right away. She left a number at which she could be reached.
Without reading the rest of the note, Booth quickly wrote down the telephone number and went in search of a sat phone.
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"So, how was the house hunting?" Angela asked, sitting down on the armchair with her husband across from where Booth and Brennan sat on the sofa.
"It went well," Brennan answered. "I think we've found the perfect place."
"But Bones decided to let the real estate lady sweat it out a little," Booth added with a laugh. "I thought she was gonna pop a blood vessel when Bones told her we were interested, but not yet ready to make an offer."
"Where is it?" Angela asked.
"Forest Hills," Brennan answered, as Booth winced.
"Swanky," Hodgins replied with a grin.
"Yeah, yeah," Booth said. "Hodgins I don't want to hear it." He felt his wife tighten her grip on his arm and new she was getting nervous. They'd invited Angela and Hodgins over so that they could tell them about what had happened to Brennan in Maluku, and there was a possibility she'd lose her nerve if they didn't get on with it. "Listen guys," he said. "The house is great, but that's not why we asked you to come over tonight."
"Angela," Brennan said, "there's something I need to tell you."
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Once Lance had helped Daisy carry her things into his apartment, they moved to sit down.
"Do you want anything?" he asked. "Something to eat? A drink maybe?" He was nervous. Whatever it was that she had to tell him, it was epic … Daisy Wick didn't stop talking over just anything.
"No," she answered. "I don't need anything. Just come and sit down, please," she said, patting the seat next to her on the couch.
He noticed that there was something different about her. Why hadn't he noticed it at the airport? Her whole countenance had changed. She was quieter, yes… but it was more… she was calmer, less ebullient. She was less… Daisy. He walked over and sat down next to her, once again allowing her to take his hand. This time it seemed more as if she were using it to anchor herself than to comfort him as she had in the car.
"Dr. Brennan and I were working alone in one of the more remote areas of the dig," she began. "We were inside a cave, probably about a hundred feet from the main entrance. Things had been going really well. Dr. Brennan was much happier and much more open after she returned from Germany, and we had made a really major discovery. I even felt like she was happy with my work…"
"Wait. Dr. Brennan went to Germany?"
"Yes, about a month before I came home for the holidays, she left the dig. She was gone for about six weeks. She never really talked about why she'd gone, just that she'd been in Germany. I suspected it had something to do with Agent Booth, but I never pressed her for details. Looking back, I wish that I had. Maybe things would have been different…"
She stopped, obviously lost in her thoughts. He waited a minute before encouraging her to continue.
"Daisy," he said. "What happened in the cave?"
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February:
Booth dialed the phone with shaking hands. He didn't even bother to consider the time difference. He waited while the phone rang many times. He'd wait all night if he had to. That was when he realized it would be nearly midnight on the island.
It was a few more minutes before someone picked up. He identified himself and asked to speak to Dr. Grayson, and was surprised when he was asked which Dr. Grayson. It took him a minute to think back to the email and remember the woman's first name. He waited several more minutes before Dr. Grayson came to the phone.
His knees buckled when the doctor told him that there had been an incident. She told him that his wife had been injured while working in a remote area of the dig site. She kept her descriptions vague, and he was too shocked to ask for more detail. Bones was hurt, nothing else mattered.
"She told me to tell you, and I quote, if you do something stupid like trying to go AWOL, a court-martial will be the least of your worries because I'll kill you myself," the doctor told him.
Booth smiled and allowed himself to breathe for what felt like the first time since he opened the email. That sounded exactly like his Bones, and maybe that meant that it wasn't as bad as he feared.
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"Miss Wick and I were working in a remote area of the dig, about a mile away from the main location," Brennan said. "We had come across a rather significant find had chosen to stay behind when the others went back to camp for the night."
Booth squeezed her hand, encouraging her to continue.
"Miss Wick had located a cave very near the site where we had been working, and she went off to investigate. She had gotten, perhaps about one hundred feet from the entrance when I heard her call out to me. I went to join her to see what it was that she had found," she said, taking in a deep breath as Booth rubbed her hand between his. He leaned in and placed a gentle kiss against her temple. "I was approximately halfway between Daisy and the entrance to the cave when a massive explosion occurred," she told them as her voice began to falter.
"It turns out that the cave had been used as a hiding place for the local militant army, and the guerillas had it booby-trapped," Booth said, picking up the story. "Just as Bones entered the cave, Daisy stepped on a trip wire."
"The explosion caused the walls of the cave to collapse," Brennan said. "And Daisy was caught beneath the rubble."
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"I went off by myself," Daisy said, swallowing a lump in her throat as her eyes began to fill with tears. "Dr. Brennan was perfectly safe, working on our find but I called her to see what I thought I'd found in the cave. She was there because I called her…. I… I set off the explosion, Lance."
Lance sat and listened to Daisy tell her story. She had obviously been through something horrific, but both she and Dr. Brennan had survived. He was working through possible scenarios that would result in the obvious trauma that both women had suffered. Brennan had been through similar events, traumas that would incapacitate most people, but she always persevered and did so without the help of a professional.
This time was different, this time she had sought help. When he had first learned that Dr. Brennan was currently in therapy with another doctor, he had been almost jealous. His feelings were hurt that she would open up to another therapist, and even more that she refused to resume their sessions with Booth.
He held Daisy's hand and let her continue her story.
"I was trapped under a pile of boulders," she told him. "Dr. Brennan was trapped, also. She was injured, she'd been knocked out. She was bleeding, and I couldn't move to get to her."
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"We were each buried under the rubble," Brennan said. "I was struck in the head, or fell into the rocks," she went on. "I still don't know which. In any case, I was unconscious for an indeterminate amount of time. When I finally awakened, I was able to move the boulders under which I was buried," she said.
Hodgins winced at the thought of his friend once again being buried under a pile of rubble, and pulled his wife close to his side.
"Freeing Miss Wick was much more difficult," she said. "I was unaware of it at the time, but I had suffered some internal injuries that were ultimately exacerbated by the strenuous activity of removing the debris which was trapping Daisy."
Booth began to feel the same old feelings of guilt and inadequacy that he felt each time he heard about something happening to his wife. Years ago, he had appointed himself her protector. It was his job to make sure that she was safe, at least in his mind. He'd gone through his own therapy back on base when he was having trouble focusing on anything but the fact that Bones was hurt and worse, that she was hurting emotionally, and he couldn't be with her.
Brennan saw the look in his eyes and knew exactly what it meant. She'd gone through something similar, and was still going through it, actually. She had gone into therapy because she couldn't bear the guilt, the thought that she couldn't save her child… worse, the fact that saving her child hadn't been her first thought when she was in that cave.
"It's not your fault," she said, softly. She turned to him and placed a sweet kiss against his lips. "You can't always be there, Booth. It's inevitable. Things will happen. We aren't together twenty-four hours a day…and there are going to be times when one of us won't be there to protect the other."
"Damned regulations," Booth muttered. "I should have been there."
"Even if you hadn't been bound by your commitment to the Army," she told him, "you wouldn't have been there. You would have been here."
"But I could have come to you, after," he said. "I could have been there for you like you were for me. I should have been there for you. Some husband I turned out to be."
"Stop it," she ordered. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You are an incredible husband, and you know it. Better than I deserve. What happened was terrible, but it happened. And we're dealing with it…and we're moving on."
Jack and Angela watched their friends in what turned out to be a very intimate moment. Both were concerned for the other couple, but for very different reasons. What they would both have agreed on, had they been able to speak about it, was that there was something missing from the story.
"What you went through was horrible, Dr. B.," Hodgins said. "I don't even want to think about what it must have been like, but I don't understand. Your injuries were obviously not life-threatening, and yet this situation was most definitely life-changing. What are we missing?"
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February:
"That's my Bones," Booth said with a slight chuckle. "If she's threatening me with bodily harm, then she must be okay."
He waited for a moment for Dr. Grayson to answer in the affirmative. When she didn't answer at all, he went on.
"She is okay, isn't she?"
"Physically," Dr. Grayson said, "she'll heal. Emotionally, it's going to take some time."
Booth realized the implications of what the woman was saying.
"The baby?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
"I'm sorry," were the only words the doctor said.
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"After I was released from the infirmary," Daisy said. "I couldn't face Dr. Brennan. I couldn't go back to the project, so I came home. I went to San Diego and stayed with my parents. That's where I've been for the last four months."
Sweets was beginning to understand Daisy's sudden disappearance. Selfishly, he realized that it had nothing to do with their tentative reconciliation over Christmas, and that made him happy. He knew that she was still hurting, but the psychologist in him was asking 'why?' He'd seen Daisy go through tough times before and he knew all about the aftermath of Dr. Brennan's ordeal with the gravedigger. Both of them had been behaving uncharacteristically. Something else happened in that cave, and he had to know what it was.
"It's my fault, Lance," Daisy said, now openly sobbing. "I went off on my own. I wanted to find something that I could put my name on. I was looking for recognition. I'm the one that drew Dr. Brennan into that cave. I'm the one who tripped the explosion, and I'm the one who caused Dr. Brennan to lose her baby."
Baby?
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"Yes, Jack," Brennan said, squeezing Booth's hand. "There is more to the story. It is what explains my erratic behavior and mood swings since I've been back. I know you've both been wondering why I'm seeing a therapist who isn't Sweets…"
Booth leaned over and kissed her temple as she continued.
"We were in that cave for three days," she said, "without food and without water. I was twelve weeks pregnant at the time. The lack of sustenance, combined with the stress of the situation and my injuries, along with the strain caused by moving the boulders, caused me to lose the baby."
AN- And there you have "it." I hope it lived up to your expectations… there is still more to the story, but now we know know Brennan has been dealing with. Please take a minute to drop me a note and let me know what you think.
