Chapter 37

When Sara walks through the door I'm ready for her. I've got everything I want to say planned out and I'm prepared for a long and loud argument. But I don't yell at her. I don't shout and I don't say any of the things that I've been running through my head as the best things to say.

She walks in and I look at her and she looks horrible. There are bags under her eyes, she looks thinner, paler, and almost completely worn out. Sara is a direct reflection of what I feel and possibly what I look like. Neither of us seems to be real healthy these days.

Why didn't I notice her appearance before at the hospital? She was there every day. I just saw her yesterday. I looked at her. I saw her.

I look at Catherine and she doesn't look any better off than Sara or me.

"So what's been going on?" I've missed a lot.

My legs didn't propel me up in anger when Sara came in. My body didn't do much of anything. That probably surprised Catherine and Sara. I'm feisty, right? I'm supposed to get angry and loud. I'm not supposed to ask a question calmly.

Later we can attribute all of that to the myriad of drugs they have me on. It's the anti-depressant, the mood stabilizer, the painkiller, the anti-inflammatory, the antibiotic. It's not me handling this with some speck of ease. It couldn't be me.

"How much do you remember?"

Well Sara just asked the million dollar question didn't she? How much do I remember? What has decided to stick in my brain and what's gone away again?

"Everything is still fuzzy." I remember cutting my hands open.

"I remember going away with you both and the flashbacks." I remember more about my childhood now than I ever really wanted to remember. All that could have stayed forgotten.

"I remember what I did to Catherine," something I still feel bad about, "and going to see Nikki. She had a visitor that night." Where did Nikki run off to anyway?

"I remember getting into the ambulance but not arriving at the hospital. I remember waking up from surgery but I don't remember all of it." The last clear memory I have is looking down from the balcony at the hospital and deciding that I wanted my life.

"Sara you took off the straps." That's it. That's all of it. "So what am I missing?"

How did my biological father end up in the emergency room with me?

Sara finally sits down and does so practically in my lap. "Do you remember what happened when you first woke up after you got to the hospital?"

"No." My guess is I had already too much blood at that point. I hear consciousness is a requirement for memorization.

"He tried to see you then." Sara sounds angry. Maybe I did want to be awake for that one. Hopefully she punched him.

"He recognized Sara," Catherine fills in when I guess she thinks Sara is taking too long of a pause. "Well they recognized each other."

"I couldn't refuse his help, Melinda. You were dying. He recognized you the minute he saw you." Sara starts playing with a ring on her thumb. "You look a lot like him."

"So does he have a name?" We don't really need to get into the part where he gives me his blood. I don't need the details of that.

"Robert Gary," Sara offers slowly.

That's not too bad of a name, nothing that really stand out either. "Did you know his name before?"

Sara nods. "Went to school with him."

"So why didn't you ever press charges?" She doesn't want me to ask these questions, I can tell. All of her attention is on that ring. She's started to tap her foot on the floor. She wants to run away. I put my bandaged hand over her ring.

She looks at me. "I was too scared. Mom wouldn't support me. I couldn't do it on my own."

A part of me thinks I shouldn't ask this, but I'm going to anyway. I want to know. "So what happened exactly?"

"That's not—" Catherine starts to say but is cut off by Sara.

"Mom had just finished giving me a lesson," I know those lessons. "I ran over to a friend's house. She was having a party. I got drunk and Robert took advantage. I fought him but he was too strong."

"So you saw him in school everyday until Laura kicked you out." I can fill in a lot of the story. I know Laura. She'd have made Sara suffer as much as possible for getting pregnant even if Sara had no part in it. "He knew you were pregnant with me back then. He knew who I was and now he wants to play Daddy?"

Sara gives a derisive snort. "He says he's changed. He has a family of his own. He's older and more mature."

"His wife know what he did?" I bet she doesn't. I'm not sure that's something I'd share.

"He said she does," Catherine answers. "Neither of us have met her."

Maybe love really is completely blind. It would have to be for someone to decide to willingly marry a rapist, but what does that say about me if I want to meet him? Well I'm already crazy. I've got a good excuse.

"What do you want me to do?" I ask Sara. I'm well aware that I've been dragging her and Catherine through the depths of hell recently and I'm sort of wanting to stop that.

"What you want to do." There's a practiced answer if I've ever heard one.

"So what do you want me to do?" I want the truth.

Sara puts her hand softly on the one that is holding onto her ring. "I want you to tell him to fuck off."

That's what I want to do. "I need to know why I shouldn't do that." There has to be a reason out there why I should meet him other than him sharing his blood with me, cause that's just not doing it for me.

There's complete silence. I guess that means none of us have a good enough reason.

"He's your father and if you don't do it now, then you'll think about if for the rest of your life." Nikki says as she steps into the room with us. "He doesn't deserve that much thought from you."

That's a pretty good reason. "So how long were you listening?" I ask her knowing that she's never been one to hide away and leave things for other people to resolve on their own.

She smiles at me. "I never left."

"Okay," I release a long breath. "Then I should do this?" I ask Nikki. "I should meet him so that he doesn't go to the courts like he actually has parental rights?"

"I'll kill him before he gets any." I believe Sara's serious about that.

"Can he get any?" I'm not big on the laws of the land. I've never had experience with guardian rules. "I mean, is that legal? Would he have a case?"

"He might," Catherine answers. "By what the law says, he is your father."

The law fucking sucks. "So he wants to do this when exactly?"

"Tonight," Sara tells me. "He'll file if he doesn't get to see you tonight."

Well there's nothing like a little bit of pressure, but at least now I'm on an antidepressant. That's stopping me from going completely crazy again. The doctors say I'm clinically depressed. They also say that I'm suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and have this other theory that I'm Bipolar. That's why they put me on Eskalith. I hear it's a lithium pill. It's supposed to control my mood swings. I think the official description of it is mood stabilizer'.

They say it's really rare for someone my age to get diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. They say it might be linked to my special history. They say a lot of things.

"So I guess I meet him tonight."

Hopefully he doesn't expect us to have a very long conversation. I'm not thankful for him reappearing in my life. I'm not happy that he wants to meet me or that he may have ended up with a decent life. He's ultimately one of the main reasons why I was born.

I don't want to die. I know that, but I can't help but think that maybe it would have been best if I was never born. Laura wouldn't have gotten a chance to bring out the sickness in another child. It wouldn't have ended up that I basically killed her whether it was in self-defense or not. Sara would have her bliss with Catherine and all they would have to worry about would be Lindsey and their work.

I wouldn't have to go through any of this. Doctors wouldn't be telling me that I have a disorder that will last throughout my entire life. A father who is a real bastard wouldn't be asking to see me. None of this would be happening.

It doesn't sound all that unappealing, not being born.

"You really don't have to do this," Catherine lays her hand on my thigh. "We can figure something else out."

"No need." I shake my head. "If he wants one meeting, I can give him one meeting."

"He doesn't deserve that much," Nikki says having not moved from the corner she appeared from. "But you deserve at least that. You deserve to face him and yell at him as much as you want to."

"You're not going alone." Sara squeezes my hand a little and that causes a shooting pain to move up my arm. I try not to show the pain on my face. Sara doesn't need to know how much pain I'm still in. Now isn't the time for that. This is the only contact I have with her. I don't want to let that go.

"There's no way you're going alone," Nikki adds.

"I hadn't expected to be," I grin slightly. "I sorta thought Catherine and Sara would be there brandishing their guns and looking very menacing like."

"Damn straight," Catherine actually has a small grin now too. Maybe this thing with Mr. Gary won't kill us after all.

"I could dig out my leather jacket," Even Sara's willing to let go a bit now. So maybe hell isn't strong enough to keep us down.

"I wouldn't go for leather in this heat." Nikki finally moves further into the room. "I'm sure the guns will work. Do I get a gun too?"

"If she gets one then I should get one." It would only be fair.

"Neither of you are properly trained." Catherine's smiling now. "That would be very irresponsible."

I shrug. "We might not be properly' trained but that doesn't mean we don't know how to use one." Maybe that was saying too much. I would guess by the looks I'm getting from Sara and Catherine it was.

"You've used a gun before?" Sara's really starting to master that mom' tone.

"I've never used one," I quickly reply.

"But you know how to?" Catherine asks and I get a feeling of being double teamed. I don't like the feeling.

"I haven't always been surrounded by the best of crowds. A gun offered a certain amount of protection."

Catherine drops her head into the palm of her hand. "Do you still have one?"

"No." They don't need to know that I sold it to a drug dealer I knew because I needed the money. I can leave that part out and possibly tell them about it when I'm like fifty.

"What did you do with it?" Did Sara know the exact question to ask?

I shrug. "Got rid of it."

"How?" She pushes.

"Sold it."

"To who?"

She does interrogations a lot, I think. "A drug dealer. He knew me and said he'd buy it from me since I was hard up for some money. I wasn't getting a lot of monetary support at home."

They don't like it. I can tell they don't like the idea of it at all, me selling or having a gun, but what did they expect? Sara may have not stooped to that level when she was living with them, but I did. I did a lot of stuff I should have never done. I'm sure they don't want to know half of it.

"We can talk about this later," Catherine has the mom' voice mastered but she's been using it longer. "It's not important now."

That's right, it's not important now. I have to think about what I'm going to say to my father when I see him, cause I am going to see him. I'm going to be introduced to him just like I was to my mother, without a clue as to what to do and with enough anger to get me into trouble.