The slab of meatloaf in the center of his plate was soggy and indeterminately seasoned. The green beans heaped in a sloppy pile next to them were so undercooked that they squeaked between his teeth when he bit into them. The mashed potatoes were lumpy, the dark brown gravy puddled in the rounded hollow atop overly peppered. And never had a meal in the Desert Palm cafeteria tasted so wonderful. Warrick attacked the food with gusto, Tina seated at his side, watching him with both bemusement and concern.
Warrick paused long enough between bitefulls to smile reassuringly at his wife. He was warm and fed, or close to it, and for the first time since he had entered this hospital where Nick and Carrie had been taken, he felt relaxed enough to let his guard down, grateful to be out of the emergency room waiting area now that Nick had been taken up to surgery. The ER was hectic and bewildering, as it always was. The two teams of paramedics who brought in Nick and Carrie hustled them back to the curtained off rooms, accompanied by the doctors and nurses who had met them in the ambulance bay. Neither Warrick nor anyone else who had followed the paramedics in was allowed back, despite the loud protests from Warrick and Greg. If it hadn't been for Tina, Warrick was sure he would have caused a scene resulting in the involvement of hospital security.
Tina Brown had spent the hours since Warrick had been discovered missing at her parents' house in Summerlin. She let them fuss over her and comfort her, but nothing they could do or say could allay her fears that she, a bride of less than three months, would soon be a widow. She had collapsed into her father's arms and wept after she got the cell phone call from Dr. Grissom telling her that Warrick was unharmed and he was going with the team to Desert Palm to be with Nick. She got there just after they had arrived, and just in time to prevent her husband from plowing over an orderly who was trying to bar him from following the paramedics.
She calmed Warrick down by promising to tell him exactly what the doctors would be doing to Nick. She didn't usually work an ER rotation, but as an RN at the hospital, she knew her way around ER procedures well enough and could tell Warrick with confidence what was happening to his friend. Only then did Warrick ease back into the waiting area and finally accept the kisses that his relieved wife showered upon him. Tina walked Warrick, and the rest of the team, through the tests that would be done to evaluate the level of Nick's electrolytes and blood loss. A new IV would replace the saline line the paramedics had inserted. She was guessing, based on Warrick's description of blood loss and vomiting, that a central line would be inserted and she suspected they might give him a blood transfusion as well. There would be medication to increase his blood pressure, medication to decrease his pain. Antibiotics to fight the infection. Then when he was stabilized he would have x-rays taken to evaluate damage to the tibia and scapula and a CAT scan to assess any trauma from the blow to the head.
Surgery was an inevitability. But without knowing the results of the x-rays or examination, Tina was unable to describe exactly what would be involved. At the least, the shoulder wound would be debrided, damaged tissue removed and the wound cleansed of any foreign matter that had entered when the gun was forced into the bullet hole. As for the leg, a lot depended on what the x-rays had shown. If there was no damage to the bone that required surgical repair, then most likely the surgery would involve stitching the sliced muscle inside the leg, and then more stitching to close the wound.
Warrick listened with a growing sense of calm. He couldn't have repeated back what Tina told him, but it didn't matter. He listened well enough to know that when he put it all together it meant that Nick was finally being taken care of, being given exactly what he needed by people who knew exactly what to do.
Carrie, too, was being taken care of. An MRI had revealed a torn meniscus, as Carrie had suspected, but her prediction of a torn ACL as well was, thankfully, not fulfilled. Like Warrick, she had become much calmer when she knew Nick was in capable hands, and she had the added bonus of the Ativan to quell her nerves. She was in a fourth-floor room for the night, and Warrick went to see her after he had finished his meal. Tina had informed him that he had astounded all witnesses by being the only sane person in the history of Desert Palm to request a second helping of "mystery meat." Tina's label for the loaf sounded more like a warning than a term of endearment, and he had chewed up two of the Rolaids she had held out to him just in case. So far, though, he just felt satisfyingly full.
He stood hesitantly in the doorway of Carrie's room, not sure if he should enter. She was lying on her back, her eyes closed. She looked so peaceful, her features so relaxed, that he hated to wake her. He entered the room softly and stood beside the bed. He fidgeted a little, then brought a chair over and sat down. He wasn't as quiet as he had intended to be, and Carrie stirred. She opened her eyes and smiled at him drowsily. Warrick returned her smile.
"Hey. How you feelin'?"
"Mmm…warm," Carrie murmured. "And comfy." They had given her something for the pain, and it not only took away the pain, it made her feel as if she was floating above the crisp white sheets, as if she was swaying back and forth on gently rocking waves. The feeling was a little disconcerting, but it was also incredibly relaxing. She tried to focus on Warrick.
"Nick out of surgery?"
Warrick nodded. "Yeah. Just now. They won't let any of us see him until tomorrow morning, but Tina got an update. She said they removed a good-sized bone chip from his leg, but they didn't need to do anything beyond stitches to the muscle. No bone damage to the shoulder, which is good, but there's quite a bit of soft tissue and muscle damage. He's got a tube in it now to drain the infection. That infection and pain management are the focus now, Tina says. She figures he's here for 10 days at minimum. Maybe two weeks, depending on how things go. A stint at the rehab center after that."
"But he's okay?" Carrie asked nervously.
"Yeah," Warrick assured her. "He is. The CAT scan didn't show any abnormalities. Now he just needs time. Time to heal."
"Th…that's…good," Carrie muttered. She was floating again, and she closed her eyes, let herself drift.
Warrick smiled gently at her, then tucked the pale blue blanket more snugly around her and left the room. He was ready for his own bed, ready to let his wife pet and fuss over him, snuggle against him as he surrendered to sleep. More than ready. But he knew it would be a temporary lull. He'd be back here tomorrow to see for himself that his friend was recovering.
Warrick wasn't the only one who returned to the hospital the next day. Despite Grissom's instructions that his team was to stay home and rest until shift started, all of them had straggled in to see Nick, as had Brass. Nick was so heavily sedated on pain medication that he hadn't even known they were there. But it didn't matter. They knew he was there, and that's all that they cared about. It wasn't until Grissom's second visit late in the morning that Nick was lucid enough to participate in conversation.
Nick's first question made Grissom look away guiltily.
"Did you call my folks?" Nick asked.
Grissom had been a coward about notifying Nick's parents, and he knew it. His memories of the last time they had come to stand vigil were hauntingly vivid in his mind. The pleading in the mother's eyes, eyes so like Nick's. There must be something we can do. The anguish in the father's voice. Ah, Pancho, what the hell you got yourself into? Right or wrong, this time he had waited, waited for an outcome.
"They were notified that you were going into surgery. We didn't call them before that. I'm sorry, Nick. They'd be here for you now if we had. They can't get a flight out until this afternoon."
Nick shook his head, or tried to, anyway. He couldn't seem to get any part of himself to move. "No. You did the right thing. Can you call 'em? Tell 'em not to come. I don't…I don't need 'em here this time."
Grissom raised an eyebrow, but Nick didn't try to explain. He'd wait until he was sure he could talk to his parents with more focus than he was managing now, with more certainty in his voice than he had now. God, he was so tired. The pain medication that was pumping through the IV did its job, and he felt nothing, nothing but leaden. He had to think about each word his mouth formed before he spoke it, and it was a huge effort. As much as he wanted right now to call his parents and assure them that he was okay, he knew he'd have to let Grissom field that one, for the time being, anyway. He would like to promise them that he'd come to the ranch for Thanksgiving, but it was just three weeks away and he had been told that at least two of those weeks would be spent in this hospital room and then "we'll see after that." He wasn't sure what that meant, but he had a pretty good inkling that it didn't mean he'd be going back to his house in two weeks. Rehab, he assumed, but he had been too out of it to ask.
"Are Carrie's parents coming?" Nick managed. Depending on how many of the details they had been told, he wouldn't have been surprised if Carrie's mom and dad had also tried to get a flight to Vegas to comfort their daughter, to see for themselves that she was okay. The thought of Carrie's parents here was somehow comforting. They would fuss over him, which would be nice, but they wouldn't make themselves sick worrying about him like his would. He wouldn't have to watch their anxious faces, worry about them losing sleep at night as they thought about him in this hospital room. Carrie's folks would just be…easy.
Grissom shook his head. "No. I think she said something about flying to Texas to see them and then going back to Atlanta from there."
Nick closed his eyes and his head sank further onto the pillow. He made a noise-part moan, part sigh-and Grissom watched him with concern. He put his hand lightly on Nick's uninjured shoulder.
"I'll let you get some rest," Grissom said. He started to leave, but then he came back to the bed, remembering something. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out the ring that he had brought from his desk drawer in the lab.
"I thought you'd like this back," Grissom said.
Nick opened his eyes with effort and the ring swam in and out of his vision. He imagined himself reaching for it, grasping it and putting it on his finger. But he couldn't get beyond picturing it, his body not responding to his commands.
Grissom recognized his struggle. "I'll make sure it gets with your things," he assured Nick.
"Thank you," Nick said gratefully. He wanted to close his eyes again and sleep, but there was something he had to clear with Grissom while he was here.
"Gris?" Nick said tenuously. "I'm sorry. Sorry I never…never told you about me and Carrie."
Grissom pushed his wire-rimmed glasses farther up onto the bridge of his nose, as he so often did when he was formulating thought into speech. He looked at Nick carefully, making sure that he held his gaze.
"Nick," Grissom said, "there's nothing to be sorry for. Sometimes we all have a need to keep things to ourselves. We keep it even when we know that maybe it would be easier not to. But it doesn't make it wrong."
"Okay," Nick said simply and that was all, but Grissom could see the worry that was in his face, still flushed with fever, ease away. Nick gave up his battle to stay awake, and he closed his eyes, once again oblivious to the presence of anyone else in the room.
Grissom went into the hallway, half expecting to see Caroline Brighton there. She had been released earlier in the morning, armed with a knee brace, a pair of crutches, and some pain medication, but she had yet to leave. She was reluctant to be far from Nick if he should ask for her, which he had done three times already that morning. He never seemed aware that he had called her name, but she was sure he knew she was at his side, stroking his hair, murmuring to him, holding his hand when he moaned in pain as a nurse examined the dressing on his leg and the bandaging around the drainage tube that was in his shoulder.
But that wasn't the only reason Carrie had stayed at the hospital. She frankly wasn't sure where she should go. She wasn't ready to travel yet, and in any case there was no way she was going anywhere with Nick in the hospital. She would see him through his hospital stay and the start of his rehab. She had told her parents she'd be with them for Thanksgiving, but in the meantime she was still a Vegas visitor. Catherine had insisted that she stay with her, but as honored as Carrie felt that the team seemed to have adopted her and wanted to care for her, she really just wanted to go back to Nick's. Catherine and Sara had questioned her, trying to get her to evaluate if that really was a sound idea. They weren't sure she could get around without help, but they had a larger concern. Warrick had told them what had happened at that house, how Turnbull had terrorized Carrie, and none of them could get the picture of Turnbull lurking outside of the bedroom window out of their minds. It didn't seem possible that Carrie could.
Carrie had told them that was all silliness. She was plenty used to getting around on crutches and didn't need anyone to help her, and Nick would rest easier if he knew the place was being looked after. It made sense for her to stay at Nick's. She could tend his plants, take care of his mail. It was a matter of practicality. It sounded good when she said it, Carrie thought, but she couldn't voice her real motivation for wanting to be at Nick's. She knew why she wanted so badly to be there, and it had nothing to do with practicality. The truth was, she just wanted his things around her. She needed his things around her, knew it would give her a sense of calm and assurance when she was worried about him. She needed to putter in his kitchen where he had whipped together one of his savory omelets, needed to thumb through his colorful nature books, needed to curl up in his bed, the familiar scent of him still clinging to the sheets.
They decided on a compromise. Carrie would stay at Nick's and agreed to call upon Catherine, Sara, or Greg if she needed any help. Sara and Catherine went grocery shopping and stocked the fridge and cupboards, made Carrie promise to call if she needed them for transportation. They had returned her rental car for her, useless to her until the brace was off her knee, and she would be many months back in Atlanta by then.
Back in Atlanta. Carrie knew she had obligations there, but for now she'd have to deal with those responsibilities long distance. She called her friends and let them know she was doing well, called the therapist who had taken her case load and got an update on the progress of her clients. She talked to the neighbors who were boarding her horses, got their assurances that both animals were fit, sent them another check to pay for their care. She surprised herself at how easily she abdicated her responsibilities and was even more surprised at how comfortable she felt in doing so. Her single focus now was Nick.
The first week in the hospital was a rough one for Nick. The sepsis was harder to get a grip on than the doctors had hoped, harder to find just the right antibiotic to kill the strain of bacteria that kept Nick in the restless throes of a fever that at one turn would abate and at another would spike so high he lost all sense of where he was or what had happened to him. When the fever wasn't claiming him, the pain was. The morphine pumping through him was enough to lure him into a false sense of security in his more lucid moments. He felt nothing but the now-familiar leaden weight of his own body as he lie still on the bed, and it seemed that all his pain sensors had simply shut down. But then he would move, toss restlessly from the fever, or simply forget himself and shift on the bed. And then, as it had earlier when he tried to move his leg or toes after the bullet had been removed, the jet of pain that shot through him would literally take his breath away. As she had been before, Carrie was there. "Just breathe, baby," she'd say, and he'd find air again, begin to relax under the soothing murmur of her voice, the soothing touch of her fingertips.
Nick didn't remember much of that first week. But by the second, the infection had been almost cleared, his temperature reduced to near normal, the stabs of pain in his leg and shoulder when he chanced movement an annoyance that kept him bound to the bed. He had a morphine pump and could control the amount administered himself now. Warrick, Catherine, Greg, and Sara would all find their way, singly or as a group, to his room when shift was over. They'd fill him in on the cases they were working on, keep things light with laughter and banter. He wouldn't use the morphine pump when they were there, didn't want them to see his thumb press that button that would provide his relief. But as soon as they were gone, he'd give in, embracing the leaden nothingness that replaced the throbs of pain.
He was worried about Carrie. The previous week of vigil had taken its toll on her and she looked drawn and tired, visibly thinner from a week of literally forgetting to feed herself at regular intervals. She'd come in with the team in the morning, one of them stopping by to pick her up. But then he'd convince her to let them take her back so she could rest. He wanted her with him, but his days were filled with regular visits from doctors and nurses who checked his vitals and marked his chart, examined or changed the bandages on his leg and shoulder, questioned him on his level of pain, emptied the bag on what he referred to alliteratively as the "fucking Foley."
But things were calmer at night, toward suppertime, and he needed her then. It was the busiest time for visitors at the hospital, family and friends off work, and he watched them parade past his open door bearing gifts and flowers and treats and balloons. He needed her then. Needed her companionship, needed her touch. He would listen for her approach, knew the sound of her crutches squeaking and plopping as the rubber tips came on and off the tiled floor. He knew he grinned like a jackass when he saw her enter his room.
They had a routine. Carrie would come before supper, bring him magazines and books, would read to him when he was too drowsy to focus on the words and read for himself. She would order a meal and eat with him, assuring him that the food really was quite tasty. He knew better; he'd been downing the stuff three times a day now that he was on solid food again, but at least he knew she was eating a rounded meal, so he never tried to talk her out of it.
She watched TV with him, brought the Scrabble game and played it with him on the bedside tray they served him dinner on. He lost so many times he convinced her he was at too big of a disadvantage and couldn't concentrate through the pain. She scowled at him and told him to press the button on his morphine drip, then. He wouldn't, and she would shake her head at him in exasperation. He talked her into switching to gin, which he was good at and she wasn't, and somehow the pain didn't seem to interfere with his concentration any more.
Nick knew he was being selfish. He realized that her business here was concluded and now she was here on her own time and her own dime. He knew he should try to convince her to pick her life back up and leave now, rather than later. But he doubted that he could get her to go anywhere while he was still in the hospital, and he'd have time enough without her when he got out of here. For now he was going to enjoy her visits. Which he did, immensely.
There were times, though, interwoven in the fabric of the easy companionship, that awkwardness would snake in between them, and they couldn't seem to build a bridge over it. Now they didn't have sex, and they didn't have crisis, to use as an outlet for their emotions. The words that they had murmured to each other with such honest intensity just before Carrie hoisted herself up into the hole in the ceiling of that basement room wouldn't come to them now. There were times, when Carrie adjusted the blanket over Nick and paused to stroke his hair, or when he took her hand as she read to him and she would look up, that their eyes would meet and it seemed that the words might be voiced. But then one or the other of them would look away, usually Nick, and the moment was gone.
By the end of that second week, Nick was in high spirits, knew his time at the hospital was nearing an end. He was anxious to show Carrie his newest accomplishment. "Pull the covers off my legs," Nick said. "Watch what I can do." He sounded proud and eager, like a little kid who had just learned to ride a two-wheeler.
Carrie smiled at him indulgently, but she obligingly pulled back the blanket and sheet so his bare feet were exposed.
"Watch, now," Nick instructed. Carrie saw his left leg and foot twitch with effort as the five toes on his foot rose in unison and pointed toward the ceiling. Nick squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced, and Carrie put her hand gently on his leg.
"I don't know, baby," she said doubtfully. "Looks like that hurt like hell."
"It did," Nick admitted. "But notice I didn't scream or pass out. Doc says if I can tolerate being moved to a wheelchair I can start rehab soon. Couple days, maybe. We're giving the chair a trial run tomorrow."
Carrie looked dubiously at the Foley and Nick followed her gaze.
"That fucking thing comes with, I guess," he said bitterly. "They say it stays until I have enough strength in the shoulder to hoist myself from the chair to get to a toilet. Gonna be a while."
The Foley was still the hardest thing for him to come to terms with. For that first week, when he was so sick, it was needed so his urine output could be carefully monitored. But now it had a more practical purpose. The debilitating pain in his leg whenever he tried to move it had kept him immobile and bound to the bed. He had a newfound respect for the caretakers who not only tended to the catheter, but also wiped his behind for him when he had more serious business to attend to and had to use a bedpan. He had never completely lost his sense of humiliation when they cared for him, but after a while that emotion was replaced by a deeply felt sense of gratitude that there were people in this world who had the compassion to care for a stranger in such an intimate way.
"When you're in rehab and start your therapy, the shoulder will start to gain strength," Carrie said encouragingly. "You're getting better, Nick, and getting out of here soon. That's what matters."
"Yeah, that is what matters," Nick agreed. "How 'bout you? How you doin'? You seemed a little quiet earlier. You okay?"
"Yeah," Carrie said. "I am. I'm just having a down day, I guess. I couldn't stop thinking about Maggie today. About all the women. About the role I played in their murders."
Nick shook his head at her. "Carrie. You didn't play a role in their murders. Richard Turnbull is a sick bastard. He didn't kill because of you. You know that. You even said that. Whatever connection he felt to you had nothing to do with the murders. Something inside of him is twisted, and he would have killed no matter what, even if he had never met you." He looked at her sternly. "You know that's true, Carrie. You can't beat yourself up over it."
"It's not entirely true," Carrie corrected him. "He killed Maggie because of me. He killed Maggie because she was the one he blamed for keeping me from him." She looked at Nick levelly. "Do you have any idea what that feels like, knowing that someone killed because of you?"
Nick knew she thought she was asking a rhetorical question, but the truth was, he did know. She would have totally, totally gotten between us. So, you know, consider that a gift.
"Do you remember hearing about the guy who stalked me, Nigel Crane?"
Carrie nodded, remembering how Nick had avoided looking at her when the name was mentioned in the layout room, surprised he was sharing it with her now.
"He killed a woman because somehow he thought that would please me. And every day since then I've had to deal with the fact that he had done that."
Carrie looked at him in surprise. There was so much about him she didn't know, so much she wanted to know. "How did you deal with it?" she asked.
"Not did," he corrected. "Do." It's not over for me; it's over for Jane Galloway.
"I deal with it the same way that you will. By realizing that it's senseless to beat myself up over something that was totally beyond my control. By realizing that even if some freak thought I was a part of his life, it doesn't mean that I was. By realizing that there are times when you have absolutely no authority over what someone else decides to do. They can kill for you, or put you under the ground, or take you when you're bringing in the groceries. You hate that you have no control, but it helps, in a way, to realize that it was all them, that none of it that happened was anything you could have prevented. So you get pissed, pissed that they took your control away, pissed that you let it fuck you up for a while, and then you move forward. That's all you can do, Carrie."
Carrie looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you suppose I'm in the fucked up stage or the pissed off stage?" she asked, not entirely joking.
"You're too smart for either one," Nick said. "You're in the moving on stage, and if you're not, we'll talk it out until you are." Nick wasn't going to let her make the same mistakes he did.
"I wish you didn't know how to be good at this," Carrie said wistfully, knowing that she was responsible for part of the lesson.
"I'm not as good at it as I'd like to be," he admitted. "Sometimes the past sort of just collides with the present; throws you for a loop, you know?"
He remembered a few times when the impact of the collision had sent him reeling. Nick, I'll have you removed from the case. You're confronting suspects before the evidence is processed. You're flying solo, cutting me out. What's going on? And other times when he refused to let it. Yeah, eighty feet underground, no A/C. Thought I was going to suffocate. I can't even get down there. Claustrophobic. But then, Just keep on going. And he had. He knew that's what he had to keep doing, what Carrie had to keep doing. What they all had to keep doing.
But knowing it and doing it didn't always turn out to be the same thing. He had his own demons to fight about what had happened in that cement bunker. Warrick had tried to gently nudge him into talking about his experience alone with Turnbull, but so far he hadn't been successful. Warrick knew Nick moved at his own pace, but he also knew that wasn't always a good thing. He was surprised that Nick showed so little curiosity about Turnbull. Warrick himself wanted to know everything he could about the demented man who had held him powerless for twenty-four hours. But there was little to learn. The FBI had shown up just in time to take over the interrogation, much to Brass's chagrin, but they could get nothing out of the uncooperative killer. They knew he hadn't used pet licenses in either Atlanta or Denver to target his victims, but they would have to figure it out without him. It was bugging Warrick, too. He hated Turnbull, obviously, but he was also intrigued by him.
Nick wasn't. He had learned after Nigel Crane that sometimes it was better not to know what made a person tick. Otherwise you could drive yourself nuts seeking answers to questions that had none, asking why me? But he did have some questions of his own, and he relied on Warrick to help him find the answers. When Warrick visited him the next day, Nick looked anxiously at the manila envelope he was holding.
"That it?" Nick asked.
"Yeah," Warrick said. He handed Allison Harrington's autopsy report to Nick and watched Nick with growing concern as he quickly took it out of the envelope and scanned the pages.
"What are you looking for, Nick?"
Nick was silent, engrossed in the report. He looked at the photos of the girl on the autopsy table, of the ring around her neck left by the cord that had strangled her, of her torso with its missing tissue. He had remembered how the blood had flown so freely down her chest when he had seen her, remembered how the cat had still been swinging. He put the report down and closed his eyes, trying to block out the visions.
"Talk to me, bro," Warrick said gently.
Nick opened his eyes and picked the report back up. "She was twenty-seven," Nick said. "You said she was a lawyer?"
"Yeah, a tax attorney."
Nick sighed heavily. "She was so young. She had her whole life spread out in front of her."
Warrick didn't answer. There was more to this, he knew. He waited for it.
"I could smell the blood," Nick said finally. "The smell was so…thick…I thought that's what woke me up. He was raping her, and I thought she was alive. I tried to get him off of her, but I couldn't move." He looked at Warrick. "I couldn't fucking move," he repeated, his voice rising in anger. "The bastard was between her legs and I couldn't help her. Then he got off of her and I saw all the blood, saw she was dead. And the cat…the cat was…swinging. And I knew. I knew he had just killed it, just killed her, just sliced her up. Right in front of me. I tried to pretend I didn't know. Tried to pretend he had killed them before he took me down there. But I knew." He had just seen the TOD in the autopsy report, and he had been kidding himself if he thought it was going to say something other than what it did.
Warrick put a hand over Nick's. "Ah, Nicky. There was nothing you could have…"
"I heard her scream," Nick said, and Warrick looked at him sharply. "That's what woke me up. Not the smell. I know now. After the surgery, in the recovery room, I remembered. She screamed and screamed. And begged. But she wasn't begging him. She was begging me. Begging me to help her."
Warrick was speechless. The scenario Nick had described was horrifying, and he was at a loss for words of comfort. He knew that sometimes after a concussion and loss of consciousness that snatches of memory would return later, and he wondered how much Nick would recall. "What else do you remember?" he asked. He hated asking, but he knew Nick, knew if he didn't talk about it now that he had started, that he was going to be very reluctant to revisit it again.
"It's in pieces," Nick said. He remembered hoping that he had not been unconscious for hours, that he had drifted in and out. It was looking like that had been the case, and although that may have been what saved him from head trauma, it wasn't doing much good for his nerves. "No pictures, just sounds. I remember her screaming and begging. Remember the cat. It…screamed, too." He couldn't describe for Warrick the otherworldly yowl of the cat, nor did he want to. What haunted him the most was the thought of Allison Harrington looking to him, him, the only other person in that room who could be her ally, to somehow save her. And he couldn't.
"You talk to Adams about this?" Warrick asked cautiously. Paul Adams was the department psych. It was SOP after an incident such as the one with Turnbull that he schedule visits with the personnel involved. Warrick knew him well, and he respected his ability and compassion. He had popped in and out of his office on a fairly regular basis since May, and he had seen him twice in the last two weeks. Nick, of course, also had a relationship with him.
"Yeah," Nick said. "He's been by a few times." He acknowledged the worried look on Warrick's face. "It's all good, man. I just wanted to tell you about it in case…well, in case I needed you later." Nick's biggest fear was that he had actually seen the murder and the mutilation and that it would resurface at some point and catch him off guard, one of those sucker punches that threatened to take him down.
"Hey, I'm here for you, bro. You know that. Whatever you need. But you gotta keep talking to me, man. That silent thing you do when you're hurting is hard to get a read on."
Nick couldn't help but smile, feeling a little sheepish that Warrick had called him out. "Yeah, I'll work on that."
Warrick noticed Nick looking a little bit embarrassed, and he changed the subject. "So, I hear they're springing you tomorrow."
"Yep," Nick said brightly. "Gonna start rehab." He had proved that he could successfully sit in a wheelchair and tolerate being lifted from the chair to the bed, so he was still on schedule to check into the rehab center in the medical plaza across the street. He was excited about the new journey, but it was a nervous excitement, the nerves fueled by the uncertainty of how this all worked, what was expected of him.
By the end of his first day, though, he knew he would thrive there. They didn't waste any time starting him on his physical therapy, and even though he couldn't do much, it felt good just to be there. At the hospital he had felt…powerless…and here he knew that he had some control back. It was slow going, and he was still taking what he considered too much medication to manage the pain. He regretted it mightily when he decided he knew more than the doctors did and tried to cut back, and he couldn't get through his therapy without it. But even so, each day that he did the exercises to strengthen the damaged muscles to his shoulder and leg, he felt more and more of his strength returning. His therapist assured him that if he kept it up, he'd be back home in time for Christmas.
Carrie came every day, and he was more comfortable having her spend her days here than he was at the hospital. She cheered him on in his therapy sessions, brought him treats she had baked while trying to keep herself occupied when she wasn't with him. His biggest disappointment was that he couldn't be alone with her much. He was unable to wheel himself around in the wheelchair, his shoulder still too damaged to accept the pressure he put on it when he tried to bear down on the wheel rim and propel himself forward. And Carrie couldn't push him, dependent upon her crutches for her own mobility.
They were pretty much a threesome—Nick, Carrie, and the orderly Ramon. Then Nick finally got the head nurse, a no-nonsense woman in her late forties, to warm up to him with no small amount of Texas charm and a large number of Carrie's chocolate chip cookies. He got her to loose her grip on one of the mechanical wheelchairs she guarded so zealously—her philosophy was that they made the patients lazy—and with its use he gained even more control.
Now he could take "walks" alone with Carrie, much to the disappointment of Ramon, he was sure. It was obvious the young man had a crush on Carrie, or maybe it was on him—he was still working out which. Either way, the orderly's dejection was obvious the first time Nick motored by him, Carrie hobbling at his side, Ramon's services no longer needed. There was a small courtyard in the center of the building's wings, and Nick and Carrie liked to go there and enjoy the autumn days. The Indian summer still held, and Nick reveled in the warmth of the sun on his face when he went out. Carrie would sit on the bench under the plaza's lone tree, a large maple with golden and maroon leaves still clinging stubbornly to its branches. Nick had figured out how to maneuver the chair next to and slightly in front of her so that he was in position to not only make eye contact when they spoke, but he found that if he leaned in just right, they could have some pretty good make-out sessions.
At the end of his first week, he was in a celebratory mood when he sat with Carrie in the courtyard. She could tell that he was jubilant about something, and it didn't take much coaxing to get it out of him.
"I peed this morning," Nick announced triumphantly.
Carrie looked at him curiously, trying to decide what expression to put in her voice. "Um…congratulations?"
"No, Carrie. I mean really peed. Hoisted myself off of the chair onto the pot. No more fucking Foley."
His arm had trembled when he had taken it out of its sling and the pain that shot through his shoulder when he bore down on the arm of the chair about made him pass out, but he was determined to do it and by God he had. He would have felt more victorious, perhaps, if he could have taken a proper piss, standing on two legs, but he felt victorious enough. Ramon had told him he was acting like a toddler who was finally out of diapers and got his first big boy pull-ups.
Carrie smiled at him. "That's great. I know you hated that thing. But don't take things too fast, huh?"
"Nah," Nick assured her. "It's good."
The wind kicked up suddenly and some of the crimson leaves on the branches over their heads stirred and fluttered to the ground. Carrie pulled her thin sweater closer around her and Nick watched her with concern. "When you come tomorrow, you'd better bring a warmer jacket," he told her.
Carrie looked at him oddly.
"What?" Nick asked, not able to read the expression in her eyes.
"Nick, I'm leaving tomorrow. You know that."
Nick looked away from her quickly, not wanting her to see the surprise, the disappointment, that he knew was on his face. He knew what day she was leaving, knew it was coming, but he had pushed it far back in his mind, stubbornly had refused to think about it. He had gotten so used to having her at his side this past week that he had forgotten that's not where she belonged. He made himself look at her. She was wearing her hair loose—for him, he knew—and the wind caught one of the pale brown tresses and blew it across her eyes. He reached out and swept it off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.
Carrie watched him expectantly, eyes searching his, waiting for him to voice the truth of his feelings at this instant. But, as he so often did in moments like these, he looked away from her. Carrie shook her head at him, a sign of both disappointment and frustration. But he didn't see.
"We'd better get back inside," Nick said. "There's a storm coming."
