Chapter 34: Aftermath
Clayton braced one hand against the wall of the shower and closed his eyes as the hot spray pounded him. He didn't want to see the pink-tinged water as it swirled down the drain; didn't want to think about why it was pink, nor did he want to think about whose blood it was.
He'd never forget Allie's scream as she turned the corner on that hallway; never forget his first sight of Alex Cabot's bleeding body. She looked like she'd just collapsed, but there was so much blood…it had only taken fifteen minutes to find her in the hallway outside the gym, but in those fifteen minutes…
His right hand curled into a fist; the hot spray stung the cuts on his knuckles. He welcomed it, smiling grimly; he'd split his knuckles on Clancy's face and Christ, but it had felt damn fucking good. He'd been furious the moment Clancy had opened his mouth and told Alex Cabot she looked like hell; Clayton had actually thought she looked wonderful, standing up and moving around; but then she'd looked up at him and Clancy and he saw the pain she was fighting just to stand upright. And yet she'd still been able to shoot Clancy down with a sarcastic remark; and he'd seen, for just a moment, the gutsy woman who had successfully faced down and evaded a bloodthirsty Colombian druglord for five years.
And then Clancy ripped her guts out.
He still couldn't wrap his head around that. How could anyone, even a son of a bitch like Clancy, say something like that to the woman who'd endured it? Yes, Clancy was an asshole, a self-serving, egotistical asshole. But what he'd done, what he'd said—the bastard had a sadistic side Clayton had never seen before and didn't like at all.
The water ran cold; he welcomed it for a few minutes before shutting off the water and toweling off. On a black plastic trash bag on the floor was his dress uniform, saturated and stiff from Alex's now-caked blood. He badly wanted to burn the clothing; he'd never be able to wear it again without remembering his desperate run for the medlabs. He hadn't realized he had her blood all over him until he stepped back, vaguely hearing Allie crying, and then he'd seen blood all over his hands, his uniform, his stars and bars.
He changed into off-duty clothes and then carefully knelt over the pile of clothing, taking his insignia and rank and stars from the jacket. He'd have to clean them later, but he never, ever wanted to put this dress uniform again. He jammed them almost angrily into the trash bag, then picked up the bag and headed for the garbage. Since Joe HQ was underground, there was an automatic lift that took it to the surface, where it could then be collected. He stuffed the bag into the chute, then headed for his office.
He was in the middle of writing up a formal complaint against Clancy for his behavior when he heard a tap on his door. He considered not answering it for a moment, then sighed. "Come in."
Allie and Dash came in, and his spirits lifted. Although Allie still looked pale and thin, and Dash didn't look much better, both were smiling and relaxed and holding each other's hands. "Obviously you two finally had a chance to talk," he said by way of preamble.
"Finally," Allie swatted Dash in mock annoyance. Dash's rueful face didn't quite mask his happiness at having Allie by his side again. "If he'd had the sense to come to me first he could have saved himself all that moping and guilt."
"Keep that in mind for next time, okay?" Clayton said to Dash.
"There won't be a next time," Dash said. "This whole mess was my fault; if I hadn't split the team up back in the village none of this would have happened."
Clayton sat back, folded his hands. He'd been doing some serious thinking, and had come to the conclusion that while what had happened was a disaster, it could have been a whole lot worse. "And if you hadn't, Allie might have been caught with you. I'm not saying that having Alex Cabot in my infirmary in the condition she's in now is preferable, but at least there's only one, and not two of you."
The thought of Allie lying raped and mutilated in the medlabs froze Dash.
"What are you going to do about all of this?" Allie asked Clayton.
He shook his head. "At the moment I don't know what else to do," he said frankly. "I'm filing a complaint against Clancy for that whole mess that just happened. Doc is supposed to be coming to me with Alex's medical report as soon as he's finished the emergency surgery—"
"I'm done," came a tired voice from the doorway, and Doc stepped in. "No, thank you," he declined the chair Clayton offered him. "I came to report and then I'll go crash. I'm so tired right now I could fall asleep standing up but every time I close my eyes I see…" he shook his head as he dropped Alex's medical folder on Hawk's desk. "I want that back in the medlabs the minute you've finished with it. Clancy should never have seen it. Doctor-patient confidentiality; I only hope that Alex will wake up and hate me for it."
"Is she in a coma again?"
"No. Yes. I don't know. Damn it." He scrubbed his sleeve over his eyes and sighed. "This incident might have been a good thing; the stitches Lifeline placed in her were to close the ruptured blood vessels and stop the bleeding—his specialty is emergency medicine, doing only what is necessary to stabilize a patient until experienced help can get to her. The stitches I put inside her held, so she didn't have the same steady hemorrhaging she had when she first got here." He paused, looked at the chair. "I think I'll sit." Action suited word.
"So where did all that blood come from?" Clayton would never be able to forget that image.
"She tore all the stitches that Lifeline put in her external soft tissue to hold the torn skin together. I was able to piece it all back together and do a little—remodeling—so she looks much closer to normal. I don't know if she saw what she looked like before Clancy insulted her, but I can tell you she looks a lot better now than she did. When I first saw Lifeline's stitches I thought that her—appearance—might bother her and she might consider getting help later from a specialist in feminine medicine; I didn't want to take out all those stitches Lifeline had put in because she'd started to heal already." He paused.
"All right. So what's wrong with her now? I hear a 'but' in there somewhere."
He blew out his breath in a sigh. "When I finished with her she woke up briefly as we were transferring her from the operating table to a bed. She was still drugged and under pain meds and not fully conscious, and for the past couple of weeks every time she's been in that state she's fought every male who's tried to come close to her. Her mind knows on some level that she's vulnerable and she tries to fight to protect herself. This time, though…there was no reaction. She didn't try to fight. Like she's made some sort of internal decision that she doesn't feel she's worth protecting anymore. I don't like what that implies about her mental state."
Hawk didn't like it either.
"I realize her life is in danger, but…my recommendation is to get her to see a rape counselor, or someone who's experienced in handling victims of this type of trauma. As a military doctor…I don't see patients like this often, if at all, and I don't want to say the wrong thing, drive her deeper into this depression she's in."
"Couldn't get any more wrong than Clancy," Flint growled.
Doc nodded. "I agree, that was a tasteless a thing to say to a woman in her condition. And his comment about her looking like shit when she walked in…that was tasteless too."
"When she's able to sit up Courtney and I will see what we can do about her hair." Lady Jaye said determinedly. "And Scarlett said some of her things are still in the ICC apartment? Maybe just having a few of her things back will help."
"I'll email Scarlett and let her know." Hawk was already typing on his computer.
Allie was sitting by Alex's bed when the blond woman opened her eyes. "Hey," she said gently. "How are you feeling?"
Alex's voice was hoarse. "Like shit. At least most of the pain is gone."
Allie grabbed the bottle of water from the bedside table and pressed the button to raise the head of the bed so Alex could sip from the straw. "You're getting enough painkillers to tranquilize an elephant. I should hope you're not feeling any pain."
"I still look and feel like shit."
"Hey. Those are just Clancy's words. Forget them. Forget him."
"Yeah, well, he was right."
"He was not right," Allie said fiercely. "You're going to be fine."
Alex lay back after she finished the water. "When I first started out in the Manhattan DA's office I was fresh out of law school and the ink wasn't even dry on my license. I was young and ambitious and I thought I could change the world. I told myself I didn't have time for a life, so I threw myself into my work, my cases. I became known as the 'Ice Princess' around the office because I never went out, never dated, had no social life. The people who didn't like me called me the 'Ice Bitch' behind my back. I didn't want anyone to know it bothered me so I never told anyone…until I was working late one night with Olivia. She mentioned that she knew Harry Cooper from Vice was getting on my case and she wanted to get him to stop. That was when we started circulating the rumor that I was lesbian."
"Not that it's any of my business, but…are you?" Allie asked.
Alex laughed bitterly. "I dated casually—there was this one defense lawyer I saw for a short time, Trevor Langan. But there wasn't really anyone who caught my interest, who attracted me. Olivia was the closest friend I'd had, and I knew she was bi, and with her I found out I was too. Then I came to the DRC and I met Kris. Oh…Kris," and tears spilled from her eyes. "He was the most caring, compassionate man I'd ever met. Strong enough to snap bones, but he was so gentle with his patients—I liked him first, then loved him. But I never told him. And then he got married to Severine, and I couldn't compare to her. She was everything I wasn't. She had training in medicine, had a daughter Kris adored, she was caring and compassionate and loving while I was the one who had to commit emotional butchery just to get people to testify." She stared at the sheet covering her, picked at a stray thread. "I guess I shouldn't feel bad about what Clancy said. I've had to cut people up emotionally, break them down, in order to get them to testify. Now I know what it feels like."
"No!" Allie said fiercely. "You were doing it for their own good. You were doing it to get justice and put their rapists behind bars. Clancy…was just being Clancy. Your run-of-the-mill asshole. Don't even think about what he said; he doesn't matter."
"Olivia…Olivia didn't want me to go. I could see it when I told her I was leaving for the DRC. She and I both knew it was dangerous. And now…now I'm useless. She's never going to say 'I told you so' but Clancy was right, no one, man or woman, is ever going to touch me again with the way I look now." She finished, so softly Allie had to strain to hear her, "Ettienne can't even bear to look at me…I haven't seen him since I woke up."
"Oh Christ." Alex looked up, startled. "Alex, that man has been champing at the bit wanting to get in here to see you. The problem was that when you first woke up you went into automatic defensive reaction every time a man came near you, and Doc decided to ban all the men. That's part of the reason why Courtney and I have been spending so much time here with you, because we're the only two women here right now besides the medical staff and because Hawk took us off duty pending an investigation into our numerous violations of mission protocol." And the fact that Ettienne's absence was bothering Alex when her focus should have been on recovering— "Alex! Do you like him?"
"It's a moot point. It doesn't matter."
"Have you not heard a single word I said? Ettienne's been dying to get in here and see you, but Doc banned him! If it hadn't been for those orders he'd have been the person you saw every time you opened your eyes!"
"He doesn't know what I look like now."
"No he doesn't because he hasn't been allowed in here the last two weeks. But all the way back here from the DRC, he was the one who held you when you cried, spooned water into your mouth because your lips were so cracked and bloody you couldn't drink from a straw, held you still so Lifeline could change your bandages—so believe me, he knows what you look like. When we ran out of painkillers on the last leg of our journey here and you were in agony, so was he. He didn't eat. He never slept; he was terrified you wouldn't make it."
Her voice softened. "Alex, I'm sure you know by now this is a classified military installation. Civilians aren't allowed here. Part of what made our decision to bring you here anyway in defiance of our orders was Ettienne insisting that if we didn't, he would resign his commission and stay with you. Flint asked Ettienne if he was saying that just to 'get in your pants' and Ettienne said that he'd be shocked if you ever even wanted to look at a man again. But it didn't make any difference to him, he was still ready to stay with you even though he knew it meant you would possibly never look at him that way, never want him to ever touch you.
"I will tell you a lot of women over the years have fallen for that Cajun charm. At first I thought his fascination with you was because you didn't fall for it, but he really likes you. In you he's found someone who challenges him without making him feel inadequate. You have a great deal of emotional and mental strength, and he respects that, while at the same time he can enjoy not feeling like you can challenge him physically. You know why Dash likes me? Because I can put him on his back on the mat when we train. I don't do it often because he ranks me and he needs to have everyone's respect if he's to be an effective leader; having a girlfriend who can kick his ass into next week wouldn't help that, but he does like having someone around that he knows he doesn't have to hold back with, and he's proud that I can beat him. Ettienne's got too much stubborn Cajun pride to deal with a woman like me, but someone who has emotional and mental strength to complement his physical strength…that's what he likes about you." Allie patted Alex's knee under the sheet. "Get some rest and I'll talk to Doc about letting Ettienne here to see you."