For the second time in the day, her phone is ringing in her ear. But this time, she's just parking the car outside the hospital as she waits for the other end to pick up. After the second ring, he answers. "Esposito." He says, sounding busy.
"Espo, hey, it's Beckett." She says as she climbs out of the car, grabbing her bag from the back seat.
In the background, she can hear him call over Ryan. They should have left for the night by now, they probably caught a case if they're still there at this time. "Yo Beckett, we've been dying for details here." Esposito continues, and Beckett can clearly hear from his tone on the phone that she's on speaker.
"Yeah, what's going on?" Ryan says, "How's Castle?"
Kate sighs as she walks through the sliding doors of the hospital, "Still in the hospital on sedation. I'm going to see him now."
"So, what happened? Montgomery won't tell us anything." Ryan continues.
"That's what I'm calling about, Ryan." She says clearly, slowing to a stop in the waiting area of the ER. "I need you to get me everything you can on an Eric Lowery. The local police are boxing me out and something tells me they wouldn't know what to do if they didn't anyway."
"Eric Lowery..." Esposito draws out as he types in the name, she guesses. "All I can find right now is a news article about some remains they found. Looks like they identified him through dental records."
Kate pushes out a frustrated breath, gritting her teeth at another dead end. "Crap," she says through clenched teeth. "Guys, Castle was onto something, and it involves this guy, Eric Lowery. I feel it in my gut, okay? And whatever it is, it nearly got him killed."
"We'll do whatever we can, Beckett." Esposito says firmly, putting as much seriousness into his tone as she can hear. "How's Castle, really?"
But feeling drained and not wanting to explain his situation as it really is, she disregards him as best she can. "I don't want to talk about it, Javi. I'm going to sit with him now and try to find something on his laptop that might help. Martha took Alexis out for the night to this restaurant she said she found, and I don't want to spend any longer in my hotel room than I already am."
"Well, call us when he wakes up." Ryan says after a tense moment of pause in the conversation. "We're all pulling for him."
"And we'll dig up whatever we can on this Lowery guy." Espo says. "Keep in touch, Boss."
"Yeah," She says as an offhanded dismissal and presses end on the screen of her phone, sliding it back into her bag, which contains Castle's laptop, mainly grabbed out of the want to fight temptation some more, her leather-bound folder holding all the case photos and notes she's taken, and a mostly blank notepad.
She's never gotten the chance to just sit with him. It seems selfish of her, almost. If it were her in that bed, they'd probably scold him for spending too much time at her bedside, waiting for her to wake up. She hasn't spent much time at all next to him. She's been busy looking into what happened, talking to Alexis and Martha, which seems to get easier and easier as their friendship blossoms mostly thanks to their joint vested interest in them being in Vermont, and it's shameful for her to admit to herself, but simply not being able to bear the sight of him so broken and helpless.
But after not hearing back from Josh from her text message she had sent him this morning, she needs to be around another person. And while she doesn't have the energy to question why, the one person she needs to be around right now is Castle, in a coma or not.
Walking down the hall, feeling like an emotional husk, she comes to a stop outside his room when she sees a tall silhouette standing at the foot of his bed through the paper blinds put up against the window. Instinctively, her hand reaches into her bag and grabs onto the grip of her carry piece. Her muscles tighten as they ready themselves for a response to this person. The rounds should have ended two hours ago and Castle's attending nurse is sitting behind the desk in the ICU already.
In one quick motion, she grabs onto the handle and flings open the door, ready to pull her pistol out, but lets go of the grip when she sees her boyfriend standing at the foot of her partner's hospital bed, holding his medical chart. "Josh?"
A smile blooms onto his face and he puts the chart back into the slot of his bed. "Hey, you." He says and takes a few large steps over to her. Reacting on instinct still, she tilts her head back and presses a chaste, empty kiss to his lips. "I got someone to cover my shifts for the next few days. I thought I'd come and surprise you."
"So what are you doing here?" She asks, the words spilling out before she can catch them. A part of her is happy to see him, but she has her mind focused around someone else right now.
"I didn't know where to find you. I figured you'd be here." He says, not being swayed by her unwanting tone.
"Oh," is all she can manage when she sees his proud smile.
And after too long of a pause, not knowing what to say at all, he continues. "You aren't happy to see me?" He asks, sounding surprised.
"No," she reassures him, somewhat honestly. "No, it's not that. It's just... surprising." She minces her words and pulls her bag off her shoulder and sets it down next to the wall. "I'm glad you're here." She says, quickly leaning back up and pecking him on the cheek.
"Your partner looks pretty rough compared to the last time I saw him." Josh says, looking over his shoulder to Castle, who's still looking as broken, weak, and helpless as when she last saw him.
And when she looks at him, with that invading tube protruding out of his mouth, his usually stylish hair wrapped and hidden in a bandage over a freshly scarred and scratched face with his arm in a sling and a bandage covering the other, she can't look away and makes no effort in hiding the heartbreak the sight brings her. "They're keeping him under for at least another week. They want to uh..." She trails off, waving her hand at the bed before tucking them into the back pockets of her jeans, "they need to give his body more time to heal before they try to wake him up."
Josh nods and looks back around to her, "I saw in his chart that they found some internal bleeding and some slight pulmonary contusion. It's normal to keep patients like this sedated so the body doesn't have to work too hard."
Kate nods and crosses her arms, still not taking her eyes off Castle's face. She can still see his ruggedly handsome features, even under all that invasive medical equipment keeping him alive. "They still don't know the extent of the brain damage."
She can see Josh give her a comforting nod and feels him put his hand on her arm, "They'll run some tests once they take him off the sedative, see if he responds to commands, that sort of thing. But I'm sure he'll be fine, Katie."
And when that name leaves his tongue, her emotional husk-like state doesn't even try to hide the cringe. "Please," she says, lifting a hand to him, "can you not call me that?" She asks, trying to be as polite as she can.
But Josh's brow creases and his hand falls away. "What do you mean?"
"It's just..." She tries to explain without hurting his feelings, "my dad calls me that." She tells him, hoping and praying that no further explanation is required on her part. He made the effort to come all the way up here, she doesn't want to let him down by her reaction any more than she already has.
After a moment though, he seems to accept it, defeatingly, and continues. "Well, why don't I take us out to dinner? We can find a place here in town."
Kate pushes out a hard chuckle and gives him a disengaging smile. "I-I can't, Josh. I'm sorry." She says and crosses her arms back around herself.
"Come on, Kate. You look like you could use a night off. Castle's going to be fine, I'm sure." Josh says, reaching for her again.
But she shrugs her shoulders, trying her best not to seem like she's shaking him off. "I can't, okay?"
"Kate, your partner is fine here. We can go out to dinner then spend a next few days together. It'll be nice."
"Josh, I'm not on a vacation up here." She says, trying to keep her voice under control around her partner. "I have to look after Alexis and make sure Castle can recognize his daughter when he wakes up. I have to make sure Martha isn't pulling anyone's hair out, including her son's waiting for him to wake up. I have to look into what happened. The local police are totally incompetent." She rambles off, listing a litany of reasons why she can't go along with him.
"I'm sure Castle's family can handle going a few days without you. And whatever he was doing, did you ever stop and think that if he didn't call you, maybe he didn't want you to know about whatever he was doing?"
"He'd tell me." She defends him, giving Josh a soft but stern half-lidded gaze. "He was probably just scared and didn't want me to be in danger."
"What's going on here, Kate? I know you two work together and everything but-"
"It's what he'd do for me!" She softly exclaims with burning eyes, looking up to an increasingly looking hurt Josh, whose reacting with an angry twisted reaction. After staring him down for a moment, she's continuing. "If it were me in that hospital bed, he wouldn't stop until he had answers. He'd dedicate himself to it. Just like I am with finding out what happened and making sure his family is taken care of while I do it." She can feel tears wanting to jump from her lashes, but is holding her breath trying to draw them back in. "So I'm sorry, but I can't leave."
She turns away and looks back over to her partner, stepping around Josh who remains facing the door. The room is silent except for the hiss of Castle's ventilator for a tense few moments. And Josh's low voice doesn't seem to shake her when he speaks again. "Do you love him?"
She feels her legs stop, her heart coming next. She spins back around to face him with a straightened brow while biting down on the inside of her lip, staring him down and refusing to give him an answer.
"Just tell me the truth, Kate. Do you love him?"
"It's not like that." She shakes her head, almost talking over him with her defense.
Josh clearly hears her, seeing him nod and look down to the floor as his jaw clicks. And after a moment, she can clearly see what he is going to say next is going to bring him hurt. "You just don't love me."
She gnashes her teeth briefly and looks away, feeling her insides thicken with ice. "Is there an answer I can give you that won't hurt?"
Josh's eyes drift shut, seeming fed up. "Will you stop trying to spare my feelings and just be honest for once?"
Kate nods, shuffles her feet, and looks down to the floor as she recrosses her arms, the ice forming inside her chest catching up to her and making her feel cold. "I should." She says on a shrug. "I feel like I'm supposed to, but it's like I have this... wall."
He gives her another nod, trying to stay as stoic as he can, "And you put that wall there to keep me out, right?"
"I put it there to keep everybody out, Josh."
"Just not him." He says, motioning to the unconscious man in the bed next to them.
"Especially him, Josh." She urges him.
"Are you really saying you've never looked at him that way? I mean, the guy's rich, famous, he's a best-selling writer, he's-"
"You know I don't care about that." Kate defends herself with a shake of her head. Josh silently challenges her by lifting his brow. "Alright... yes," she admits in a quiet voice, "there was a time when I thought we could give it a shot together." She guiltily confesses. "But, then he got back together with his ex-wife and left for the summer."
"And now?" He continues to challenge her.
"Josh," She sighs a sigh thick with emotion, "I didn't plan it like this, okay?" She shrugs and lets her arms fall down to her sides. "We spend nearly every day together. And for as long as I've convinced myself I had to go it alone, there hasn't been anyone that's... been..."
After she trails off and refuses to give Josh the answer, he pushes her again. "Been what?"
Kate feels a smile sneak its way onto her face, "Been stubborn enough to keep coming back. A part of me wishes I felt differently about him and that he really was the annoying, self-centered jackass he shows everyone, but... I don't and he isn't." When she sees Josh holding back as much hurt as he can, she's continuing, letting the words flow out of her before she can even think of what she's saying. "And it would be easy for me to say that if I could go back, I'd do things differently and make sure he doesn't get to me the way he has, but-"
"I get it... Kate." Josh interrupts her. "So, I never really had a shot then, did I?"
Kate swallows against her heart lodged in her throat and shakes her head smally. "I'm sorry, Josh."
Craning his neck and looking away from her as quickly as he can, Josh nods and gives her one last look. "Me too." And with that, turns to leave and is out the door of Castle's room and is out of sight before she realizes what just happened. It still doesn't hit her as she hears the door to his room shut closed.
She looks over to Castle's limp, unconscious body, tears dripping from her lashes in small pairs. "God, I hope you didn't hear all that." She says and plops herself down in the chair at his bedside. Not at all caring and with nothing holding her back, she pulls the chair closer to his bed and reaches through the railing, grabbing onto his cold hand, tightly folding her's around it. She sits, softly petting his knuckles with her thumb, waiting for his fingers to twitch inside her grasp in the back of her mind.
When she realizes and admits to what she's waiting for, she throws herself back in her chair. When her eyes fall upon her bag, her restraint is broken and shattered into pieces. She leans over and picks up her bag and flips it open, pulling his laptop out, opening it, and not hesitating to click open his next journal entry, dated Feb. 28, 2011.
The fact that it hurts this much is probably a bad sign.
I keep telling myself that if she's happy, that's all that should matter, even if it isn't with the person I want it to be with. If she can live a life she deserves and be happy doing it, I shouldn't be so selfish and start putting conditions on it. She doesn't deserve that or need that. Josh clearly cares about her and wants what's best for her. And if he can give that to her, I probably wouldn't forgive myself if I was the one that ended up standing in the way of that. But in the same tone, I also wouldn't forgive myself if it was me that ended up being the demise of their relationship.
After all, I doubt she ever told him about the kiss. And I don't think he was the one that pulled us out of that freezer, seeing us nearly frozen to death in each other's arms. The one time it happens and my arms were so numb I can't remember how it felt. Just my luck. I think I'm still numb from that stupid freezer.
But I know what it's like to be that man. I know what it feels like to have the woman you love stolen from you. And if Josh is smart enough to be a doctor but too stupid not to feel that way, there are bigger issues at play. But I've felt that kind of hurt before. It's a pain I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Because at the end of the day, I have to be the bigger man and admit that Josh is a good guy. Probably better than me for a laundry list of reasons. He's a doctor who helps people all over the world and rides motorcycles. Isn't that every girl's dream?
But this whole bomb thing got me dwelling on things. On where I want to be when my time actually does come and what I would want to have said. I ended up writing her a letter but it quickly turned into... something else. I didn't have the nerve to destroy it like I probably should have. I'm thinking of just keeping it around and having it sent to her in case I actually die, that way I won't have to be around to see her want to kill me when she reads it.
Funny, the only way I can work up the courage is if I picture myself as dead. At least then, it wouldn't be this hard to come to grips with her wanting to be happy and not having it be with the person I really want it to be with.
Kate reads the last line on the screen, knowing what he's saying in his journal. Her brimming eyes break away from the screen and look to her partner, then back down to the screen. Feeling her heart squeeze, she puts her fingers down onto the keyboard, typing out a reply to his journal on the line below.
You make me happy, Castle.