Here's another chapter for you guys. As I mentioned/teased last time, Lindsay's behaviour is about to spiral out of control and Danny is going to confront her about it. D/L get a little roughed up (emotionally, that is) in this one, so be warned!
I hope you like it.
For the next two days, Lindsay truly was trying to move on in her life. She went to work and did her job without any problems. She came home and played with her daughter and cuddled up with her husband watching TV, even getting back into the habit of yelling at the TV when her favourite couple on a particular TV show she loved was ignored. At night, she would feel her husband wrap her up in his arms and she was thankful that she was still around to share her life with her family.
Everything was going fine, and then the nightmares began.
At first, she would just relive the whole episode exactly as it happened, and she would wake up startled but would quickly realize where she was and would calm down and go back to sleep. After a couple of days, the nightmares changed, now focusing on what could've happened. In some, she died and she would see glimpses of the life of her family afterwards: Danny looked like a mere shadow of his former self as Lindsay saw her daughter grow up without her. In others, Danny was the one who had been killed by Shane Casey and as she watched Lucy grow up without her father, Lindsay saw the pain in her own expressions.
These dreams caused Lindsay to wake up crying, and each time Danny would wake up and comfort her, but as he went back to sleep, Lindsay would lie awake for hours, afraid of what she would see when she closed her eyes again. Periodically, the nightmares would change into completely different scenarios: Lucy would vanish from the nearby park when one of them, or both of them, was turned away for only a second and they would receive a ransom call from Shane Casey. In another scenario, they were on vacation on Long Island and while touring the lighthouse, they were trapped up in it with Shane Casey threatening to kill their entire family. However the nightmares played out in her mind, it was no less frightening to Lindsay because each time, Casey succeeded in hurting, or worse killing, those closest to her.
Each morning, Lindsay could see just how worried Danny was for her, especially as the nightmares got worse, but she rebuffed his attempts to talk and he wouldn't push her to talk about it. Though Lindsay had told him that she would talk to him if she was having problems, she was in denial that she did in fact have problems. Lindsay had convinced herself that she could stop the nightmares on her own using the same technique that she had been taught by her therapist as a teenager. Each night before she went to bed, she told herself she wouldn't have nightmares that night, and each time it failed, but since it had taken a while to work the first time around, she figured it was only a matter of time before it worked.
Lindsay was so deep in denial and so convinced that she had everything under control that she never realized that she was throwing herself into her work and pulling away from her family. She barely noticed that she was spending less and less time with Lucy and Danny, instead choosing to be alone in the bedroom she shared with Danny, lying on the bed to think and willing herself not to fall asleep. At first, Danny was willing to give her some space, but it was getting to the point where Lindsay was barely talking to him about anything. With each passing day, things were getting worse and worse, and Danny knew it was time for him to step in, whether Lindsay liked it or not.
The day that Danny finally decided to confront his wife just happened to be her day off. A while back, she had mentioned that she planned on running some errands on her next day off, so he wasn't surprised when he called home and only got their answering machine. Instead of leaving a message, he decided to hang up and call her cell phone and tell her that they really needed to talk that night, but before Danny could place the call, he saw Flack walking through the lab, seemingly on his way to Danny and Lindsay's office. It had only been a few days since the end of Danny's lab restrictions and it was the first time that he had actually seen Flack since that day in the interrogation room.
"Grab your kit Danny, we got a dead body in an apartment over in Brooklyn," Flack said as he poked his head in the door. He started to walk away again, but stopped when Danny said called out his name. With his friend's attention, Danny began to speak.
"Don, I'm sorry about what happened in the interrogation room, I was way outta line."
"Hey, I did the same to you."
Danny shook his head emphatically. "No, you didn't. You were messed up because someone you loved was taken away from you and you had every right to be. I was fortunate enough to be give another chance with the woman I love, and I was squandering that. You were just trying to open my eyes and make me realize how blessed I am to still have Lindsay in my life. I'm truly sorry man, what I said to you was beyond a low blow and you didn't deserve it."
Flack felt his eyes begin to well up at Danny's openness and sincerity. "Thanks Danny, I appreciate the apology."
"So are we cool again?" Danny asked hopefully.
"We're good Danno. Now grab your kit and I'll meet you by the elevators." Don smiled at his best friend as he left the doorway and headed for the elevators.
Danny quickly whipped out his phone and called Lindsay's cell phone, again getting the answering machine. He told her that he'd be going out to a scene and would be in and out of the office all day, and he asked her to call him back when she had a chance because he wanted to talk to her about something. Ending the message, he put his phone back on his belt, grabbed his kit and went to go join Flack.
Danny spent the rest of his shift chasing down leads in his case, so he didn't have a chance to check his cell phone until hours later, and he was a little surprised to see no response back from Lindsay because usually when one of them had a day off, they would call each other at least once during the day just to touch base. Stopping off at his desk once more before heading home for the night, Danny saw that no messages had been left for him at the office. He called home again and still only got their answering machine.
Danny tried not to panic, because he just assumed that Lindsay had forgotten her cell phone at home, something that he had done about three months ago.
He'd gone out for groceries with Lucy on his day off and came home to find several increasingly frantic messages from Lindsay trying to figure out where they were and why Danny wasn't picking up his cell phone. He reached into his pocket and didn't find his cell phone there, later finding it on the kitchen counter, where he had left it inadvertently after Lucy fell down and hit her head on the coffeetable leg. Danny immediately called Lindsay back and apologized profusely, and though Lindsay was still irritated with him, she was more glad that everything was alright.
Danny knew that a similar mistake could've befallen Lindsay, but his gut told him that something else was going on here.
He hurried home, hoping to find his two girls safe and sound back at home, but the only things that greeted him when he opened the door were silence and darkness. Danny turned on a light and saw that there was no note left for him in the usual spot next to the answering machine, and he saw that the only two calls had been from him. On the off chance that Lindsay forgot her cell phone he tried calling it to see if it would ring in the apartment, but he still only heard silence. It went to her answering machine again, and he left another message.
"Hi Lindsay, it's me. Where the hell have you been all day, and why aren't you calling me back? If you don't want to talk to me, that's fine, just please send me a text letting me that you and Lucy are OK and I'll leave it at that until you come home. Just let me know that you're OK. I love you."
Danny ended the call and glanced over at the clock on the cable box. 7:10 pm. He promised himself that he'd give her until 8:00 pm to either contact him or show up at home before he started calling Stella and Flack to help him find her.
Before letting the matter rest for the time being, Danny quickly called his parent's house to check that she wasn't visiting his mom. His dad picked up the phone and said that they hadn't heard from Lindsay at all that day. Danny quickly thanked his dad and hung up before he could ask any questions. Reaching for the light, he turned it off before feeling his way over to the couch and collapsing on it as tears streamed down his face.
He heard a key in the lock, and glanced over at the cable box again, seeing that it was 7:51 pm. He remained in darkness as he heard the door open and the stroller creak as it crossed over the threshold. Lindsay's footfalls told him she was coming to turn on the light nearest to him, so he beat her to it, causing Lindsay to jump back in surprise.
"Danny, what the hell are you playing at? I'm not doing too good right now with surprises, so…" Lindsay trailed off as she saw Danny get up and blow right past her to go pick the sleeping Lucy up out of her stroller, kissing her on the cheek and then checking her over to see that she was alright. Lindsay saw this, and it made her angry.
"She's fine. She's been with me all day, nothing happened to her."
Once again, Danny ignored his wife, taking Lucy into the nursery to change her, put her into her pyjamas and place her in her crib. Lindsay spent the time in between packing the stroller away in their front closet and putting all the uneaten food back in the fridge and the dishes in the sink. As she exited the kitchen, she heard Danny shut the nursery door, something that they usually didn't do unless they were about to get into an argument.
Lindsay quickly tried to deflect whatever was coming at her. "Danny, I…"
"Where the hell have you been?" His voice was low, but the hardened edge to it could be mistaken for nothing else but anger.
"I was out."
"Where the fuck have you been Lindsay?"
"I needed the day to clear my head, so I took Lucy to the park for a while. I walked around a mall while she was napping and then I took her to the children's museum not far from the lab after that," she told him matter-of-factly, like it was part of her daily routine.
"Why haven't you been answering your phone?"
This time, Lindsay's answer was laced with defiance. "Like I said, I was trying to clear my head, so I kept it off all day so I wouldn't be bothered."
Danny's voice finally increased in volume. "Am I a 'bother' to you now?"
"Don't be so melodramatic. I'm fine, Lucy's fine, everyone's back in one piece, so why don't you lay off alright?"
Lindsay started to move towards their bedroom, hoping to make it by him, but he just stepped right in her way and spread himself out so it was impossible for her to get around him.
"I've called you a couple of times, both here and on your cell phone, trying to figure out if you're alright, worried sick that something bad happened to you, to Lucy, or to both of you, and you're trying to brush it off like it's nothing? You disappeared with our daughter for the whole day and nobody knew where you were – nobody could reach you! I was getting ready to go call Stella and Flack to help me figure out where the hell you were." Lindsay rolled her eyes, trying to convey to her husband how ridiculous it would've been for him to have involved their friends. "Frankly, I don't give a shit if you think that would have been ridiculous and overbearing of me, but I had no idea if you were alive or dead. Don't you realize just how stupid and reckless that was?"
Danny's accusation fuelled Lindsay's anger. "Are you saying that I can't take care of our daughter?"
"This has nothing to do with your parenting skills!"
"Yes it does! A person can't just be stupid and reckless at one time and not be at another. And anyways, who are you to talk, Mr. I-walk-away-from-people-I-claim-to-love?" At her words, Danny felt his heart being ripped out. She knew exactly how guilty he felt about that mistake, so to hear her throw that back in his face was almost too painful to bear. He was about to respond to that when Lucy started to cry.
"You know what Danny, after everything I've been through lately, I don't need to put up with this shit." Lindsay started to move away from him, but he grabbed her wrist to keep her in place for the moment.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know, but I know I need to get the hell outta here. Why don't you go comfort Lucy, since you think I'm such a bad mother." Lindsay pulled her wrist from his hand and went to collect her jacket and keys, but before Danny could stop her, Lucy's cries grew more urgent. Deciding that it was best to let Lindsay go, he retreated back into their apartment. As he entered the nursery, he heard the front door open and slam shut, but he shoved his anger aside to go deal with Lucy.
After five minutes of speaking calmly to her and reassuring her that everything was alright, Lucy finally went back to sleep. Danny placed her back in her crib and quietly shut the door again before sliding down to the floor on the adjacent wall and starting to sob, knowing that his wife was in all kinds of pain but not knowing how to get through to her.
Yikes! Don't worry, I'm not leaving D/L in such a horrible, angsty place, but Lindsay needed to get erratic in her behaviour (however much it may pain me to do so).
Next chapter: We'll see what happens to Lindsay once she storms out of the apartment.
Thanks for reading!