At the end of that day, Janeece stayed a little later than usual, leaving just her and Chris on the same floor together. She loitered in the room's doorway, inadvertently catching her gaze of him from behind. She could make out the firm, powerful muscles of his shoulder blades, admiring the undulations they created under his shirt.
"S-Sir?" Her voice came out thin and shaky and she hoped it was from the amount of caffeine she'd consumed and not from the sight in front of her.
"You're still here?" He turned round to look at her, an air of worry clearly showing on his face. "You should've gone twenty minutes ago, you know. And shouldn't you pick up Cheryl?"
"I-I can spare a few more minutes," she anxiously replied, "as long as you can."
He peered at the time. "Sure. Whatever it is that's bothering you, if it can't wait…"
She smiled a little, coming further into the room as he offered her to sit down.
"What's bothering you exactly?" He frowned at noticing her shivering a little, and he knew full well it wasn't because it was cold.
She swallowed hard, preferring not to look into his big blue eyes. "Y-you would think I was being petty."
"Not if it's a personal issue," Chris placed a hand on top of hers, "and it's something you want help with."
"M-my boyfriend ditched me," she wept out, suddenly bursting into a flood of tears.
He did not anticipate her to break down in such a way and he was unsure of how he should initially comfort her. She was upset, but he didn't consider them close enough to engage in any body contact. "Janeece, I'm sorry," was all he could say at that point in terms of support. "Were you with him for very long?"
Janeece had leant over, her small yet curvaceous body convulsing with each sob. "Three years," she managed to say once she felt able to talk, "he's Cheryl's dad."
Her situation was something he could so easily relate to, and that drew him closer to her. Not knowing what else to say, he placed a hand on her back, rubbing her there, as more tears forced their way through from behind her eyes. He could empathise with her completely.
He understood situations where parents became estranged – his case with Clara's mum was almost identical, as was Selena's mum with her partner. "If there's anything you want me to do for you…"
"A-anything like what?" She looked to him with red, watery eyes.
He smiled a little, before getting a tissue for her. "First of all, I think you need this," he playfully stated, handing it to her. "Are you having any form of trouble with looking after Cheryl?"
"Why do you say that?"
"For a start, I think you've spent so much time looking after her you're not looking after yourself." He noticed two deeply concentrated dark circles under her eyes. "You should get a babysitter…or get your mum to look after her for a bit while you get yourself sorted."
She shook her head sadly. "Mum's not very well," she dimly replied. "The last thing I would wanna do is burden her with Cheryl."
"The guy you were with," Chris noted, "did he come by and help you out with her?"
She nodded. "Not all the time, only on a few days. Mostly towards the end of the week as that was when I got more tired from work."
"…And there's no one else you can turn to?" He wanted to get that part crystal clear.
"No one else, no."
He thought for a few moments. "I could come over on the later days of the week to help you out with her," he suggested slowly, "but there are two provisos I wanna put in place."
Janeece's eyes widened and she smiled a little more. "Go for it."
"Firstly, I'm doing this for you as a friend. Secondly when I'm there that means I'm letting you take time out."
"Are you sure you can handle her on your own?" She asked worriedly. "She can be a bit troublesome at times."
"I'm sure she'll be ok," he replied reassuringly, "it wouldn't be the first time I've dealt with a little one."
Clara hung around outside the building, waiting for him to come out. Eventually he did. "You took your time," she noted icily.
"I now work as the acting Head," he steadily replied, "so I won't always be able to come out the same time as everyone else."
"Well, yeah," she shrugged as he unlocked the car, "ten or fifteen minutes later would seem a bit more reasonable, but twenty-five minutes?"
"Something came up," he got into the driver's seat and waited for her to get settled in the seat next to him.
"…And it was obviously something that couldn't wait," she assumed.
Chris frowned at being probed by his own daughter. "Don't tell me you had a lesson in interrogation at some point today."
"No," she replied, "I just don't find it fair that you spent so much time trying to help someone when you should've come out the same time as everyone else."
"Well, tough," he shot back at her. "When I stand in as a boss and people feel they can come to me for help, that's what happens. It's called prioritisation and when you've grown up enough, maybe you'll find out what it is."
Clara was taken aback at his comeback. She assumed he'd had a rougher day than she thought, and simply said nothing to it. She shrank in her seat, and the pair remained in silence throughout the drive home.
When they got back, Clara immediately flew into her room and shut the door. Not that Chris was particularly bothered about stopping her or following her to find out what was going on with her. He figured it was still from losing Selena, and he decided to leave her to her own devices. Grief was a natural process and in time she'd recover.
Time to herself was probably all she wanted, and she was giving mixed messages as to whether she wanted him to be there for her or not.
She emerged from her room sometime later, wearing her nightclothes. That to him was nothing unusual, as she did that when she felt tired or wanted an early night.
She slipped onto the sofa where he was, preferring to perch on the other side so as to deter any affectionate actions from him. She'd taken her laptop with her, with its screen fully up.
"You haven't eaten since we got back," he vaguely noted, "don't you want anything?"
"I'm not hungry," she stonily replied.
"Not even when you take your last lot of meds?" He suggested. "Taking them on an empty stomach isn't good for you, you know that."
"What are you, my doctor?"
"No, but that was sort of what the doctor said." He felt compelled to get closer to her, but he knew it wasn't what she wanted. She was positioned like that for a reason, and it was clearly to keep him away. "I know you don't want me to overprotect you all the time, but this isn't the right way of going about it…"
She peered up at him from above the laptop screen. "Is that why you think I'm like this?" She asked him, incredulously. She went back to what she was typing. "Then you're even thicker than I thought."
He decided not to take offence to her remark about him being thick. "So why are you like this," he casually wanted to know, "if you don't mind me asking?"
"Actually I do mind you asking," Clara glared up at him, not fazing him at all from the dark, stony hue in her eyes.
"I don't get it," Chris stated, "you behave as though you've got an issue with me, yet you won't come out and say it."
She drew in a small sigh. "I don't feel comfortable in telling you," she sharply sat up and snapped her laptop shut, "in fact, I'm done for now. Hopefully I won't wake up in the morning."
He made to notify her about her dosage before she went to bed, but she was already onto that.
"Oh, and I'll take the stupid medication," she shot at him, "only to stop you from keeping on at me."
During his lunch break the following day, Chris sped up to the doctor's surgery. It was the only other time he could go up there during work hours, but he was hoping he wouldn't be there for too long.
He was lucky to even see the right doctor.
"What can I do for you?" He asked him softly.
"I'm worried about Clara," he replied. "I think something's wrong with her."
"Ok, well, you are her carer so I can discuss her case with you," he brought up her notes. "What specifically is bothering you about her?"
"The medication she takes," he started, "what side-effects do they have?"
"Chris," the doctor looked to him reassuringly, "she is safe on the ones she takes. The side-effects are minimal." He frowned slightly. "Would you rather she gets retested, to put your mind at ease?"
"She's been acting strangely," he explained. "She recently lost a friend to terminal cancer and that's hit her pretty bad. But…she'd been taking a lot of anger out on me and I don't know why."
"The tablets she takes can cause mood swings, but she hasn't been on them very long for that sort of thing to happen. Grief, on the other hand, can affect people in different ways and it can make them susceptible to anger. Have you tried talking to her?"
"I've tried that," he sounded close to giving up, "but she clams up the minute I suggest her talking to me."
"The only other thing I can suggest is a mental assessment on top of a retest," the doctor supposed, "at least that way she would open up to a stranger and not yourself."
"She would twig at being taken to see some therapist though," he replied.
He shrugged. "Explain that it's a follow-up for her condition," he suggested, "she might come quietly that way."
As he parked up outside the school quarter of an hour before the end of lunch break, Chris saw Clara hanging around on her own. She was sitting on the top step, her overall posture a little weighed down and beset with hidden feeling. He went over to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Are you ok?"
"What does it matter to you?" She mumbled dimly.
"Oh, good. So you're feeling a little better then," he unhanded her and went in through the front entrance. He knew full well that he'd find out what was hassling her when she had to go to the surgery. Either that or it'd inadvertently come out in the open that night.
