Authors note: this chapter and the one that follows deal with issues of war, PTSD, violence and domestic abuse and may be a trigger for some readers.
Around three in the morning Voight sent them home to catch a few hours of rest. Jay contemplated going back to the hospital but in the end he decided against it. He had a feeling things could jump off at any time with this new case and he needed to be on his game.
He was glad Erin had calmed down quickly, although he understood her reaction since he had invaded her privacy. As he pulled up to his apartment an idea struck him as to how to even the playing field for her. On his way to bed he stopped at his closest and dug the narrow black metal box from the back. He opened it, scanning the contents, removed a small red velvet box, then replaced the lid. He set everything on the chair and headed to bed. Exhaustion overtook quickly and Jay was asleep in minutes.
/
"You better be here to tell me what I want to here Rhodes or you can just turn around and leave," Erin threatened the next day.
Connor, having gotten to know Erin much better over the last few days, chuckled nervously. He knew she was mostly bark but he was glad he didn't have to test the sincerity of her threats today. They'd run a few more test earlier in the day and everything looked good to him.
"First thing tomorrow morning you are officially rid of us," He said confidently.
Erin beamed. "Really?"
"We're not that bad are we?" Connor fiend hurt.
Erin pretended to consider her answer. "No," she laughed. "Of course not. Everyone's been wonderful but I'm going crazy sitting here. The food on the other hand..."
"Ha!" Connor laughed. "Like you would know. Do think I don't know you're team has brought you three meals a day?"
"And sometimes snacks?" She offered innocently. She really had to give it to her boys. Connor wasn't exaggerating, they had made sure someone stopped by or came to visit every meal with amazing food for her. She wondered now if they were just buttering her up for what they were saving her work wise when she got back. She suddenly saw an image of her desk full of every awful case they didn't want to deal with. Surely they'd brought food because they actually felt bad for her?
"I get it. But just because I'm releasing you doesn't mean you can go back to leaping tall buildings in a single bound," he cautioned.
"A little hard to do with this," she said dryly, sticking up her foot.
"I wouldn't put it past you. You're all a little crazy in intelligence," Connor joked. "But seriously. You need to rest. No pressure on your foot. No bending or lifting, at lest for another week. Once the cast comes off you're going to have physiotherapy to complete before you'll be cleared for duty."
"But you think that will happen right?"
Connor understood not getting that clearance was like a death sentence to a cop like her.
"Yeah," he said relaxing his stance and turning from doctor to friend. "You follow directions and I think you'll be back to wearing your cape within a couple months."
"Months?" Erin bemoaned
"Don't push it Lindsay, injures like this can get the best of you if you're not careful. Do it by the book or you'll be filing Platt's paperwork for the rest of your career."
The over dramatized threat did the trick.
"Ok," she sighed. "By the book." But she had one encouraging thought, if she was going to be out that long the boys couldn't offload their unwanted cases onto her.
"I've made arrangements for crutches, although with your sprained wrist you won't be able to maneuver around much on them for another week or so and I spoke with the orthopaedic surgeon who operated on your foot. You have to book a follow up with him in about six weeks to get your cast off, probably a brace or waking cast on and make a plan for physiotherapy. I filled out the paperwork Voight dropped off for your medical leave. In the morning I'll sign off on your discharge papers."
"Medical leave." She sighed. "When do you think I can do desk duty?"
"Hard to say. You need to keep that foot elevated. It was a bad break. Let your abdominal injuries heal and if there's no swelling in your foot or other complications that arise maybe when your cast comes off. But don't quote me on that. You'll have to consult with the surgeon."
Erin nodded letting his words sink in. She was going to have to find a way to cope with being sidelined for so long.
/
Jay came in after dinner that evening and had some more clean clothes for Erin. She had texted him her release news and he'd happily made a pit stop to pick up something for her to wear home in the morning. Hank gave him the go ahead to take the morning off and get her settled at home tomorrow.
"Hey. I'm sorry I'm so late," he greeted her tentatively as he walked towards her bed. But Erin threw her arms out for him to embrace her, wanting to put last nights argument firmly behind them.
"Hey," she said pulling him tight to her. "It's okay, when Atwater and Ruzek dropped off dinner they said things were pretty crazy. I'm sorry I got so mad," she apologized again.
"No Erin, you had every right. I shouldn't have gone through the box without your okay. It was intrusive. And I umm, I figured fair is fair," he hedged and reached down to pull something out of the bag he'd brought. Jay held up the metal box, minus the little red velvet box he'd taken out of it last night. He hoped he'd be able to share that story with her sometime in the nit to distant future.
"What's this?"
Jay shrugged. "Basically my version of what I snooped in at your house."
Erin's eyes went wide. "Jay, I..."
"I want you to Erin. It's only fair. We trust each other. We said always. I don't want anything between us, he reasoned.
Erin took the box from Jay, considering his words. She ran her hand over the cool smooth top. If she did this, opened it, she'd have to tell him for sure. Everything.
"You're sure?" She questioned.
He shrugged. "I'm not saying it's gonna be easy or pretty but yeah. I think we need this. We can't pull back everytime something tough comes up Erin. We have to learn to rely on each other as a couple the way we do as partners."
"You going all psychologist on me again?" she laughed.
He smiled. "I know it sounds ridiculous but you know it's true."
She nodded then blew out a breath and undid the latch holding the box closed. Slowly she lifted the lid. There wasn't much inside. Some papers, pictures, dog tags, a flat box embossed with the US army logo she guessed held some kind of medal. It felt uncomfortable looking in this box. Maybe, had she been in the same circumstances Jay had been at her apartment she'd be more at ease but here, with him watching her, it was hard knowing she was delving into something potentially painful for him.
Jay shifted and gently pulled the box from her hands sensing her discomfort. He reached in and pulled out a few pictures and papers. On top was a letter. He turned it to face her. It was Terry's acceptance letter to the academy. She smiled sadly at him as he set it aside, no explanation being needed since he'd let her be by his side while he dealt with Terry's death.
"My mom," he said off handed, trying not to have an emotional reaction to her photo, as he held up a picture. "You've already seen pictures of her and the rest of my family at the cabin. You know how she died." He said less confidently. Erin nodded. She had no need to make him relive that. Based on her own experiences watching Camille loose her battle to cancer, she could imagine how painful it was for Jay. She knew he'd had a good relationship with her. It was evident in the way he treated women and the fondness in his voice whenever she came up in conversation. She let Jay flip past the picture.
The next one he stopped at he had tipped away from her and stared at for a few minutes quietly. Erin watched emotion play across his face. Regret, anger, grief. Whatever was in that picture struck deep within him.
He turned it to face her and Erin's breath caught in her throat. The picture depicted seven young men all with their arms flung over each other's shoulders, all dressed in fatigues. It was Jay's rangers unit. She understood the emotion that played across his face now. A weight pressed on her chest, she'd been so curious about his time in the army but now that she was staring at this picture she didn't know if she could ask him for this piece of himself.
"Jay, you don't have to do this," she again offered.
"I just don't want you to think less of me," he admitted. Erin was completely taken aback.
"Jay I don't think that's possible," she said in disbelief.
"You haven't heard what I did yet," he said bitterly.
Erin grabbed his hand. "You did what you needed to do to deal with the situation. No one can hold you at fault for that. I don't need to know the details to know that. I've known you long enough to know what kind of man you are.," she reassured him.
Jay sighed. Erin took the picture from his hand carefully and looked over the faces. She recognized a few. Jay of course, she couldn't help but smile at how good he looked in his fatigues. Mouse, and two others, Tom MacKnight and Brian Sullivan. She'd met them briefly one night when they'd all turned up to Molly's before she and Jay we're seeing each other. They had all got together for some kind of boys weekend. They did that a couple times a year.
The other three she didn't know.
"Chris Mendes," Jay said pointing to one of the men she didn't recognize. "He died when our convoy was ambushed, the one that led to Mouse's medical discharge, near the end of my last tour."
"Derek Lee," he said pointing to the other one. "He, umm, he didn't handle coming home so well. Went back to Georgia, where he's from. Cut off all ties with us, with everyone, left his wife. About a year later we got word he'd died in a car accident. He was coming home from a bar, wasted, he shouldn't have been driving. At the funeral we found out he'd pretty much spent his days sitting in the dark bar drinking away his memories." Jay paused. "I should have checked in on him more."
"Jay," Erin began to comfort him and try and absolve him of some of his guilt and sense of responsibility.
"No Erin. I knew. I knew all about PTSD I knew he wasn't right the last time I saw him."
"You had your own issues to deal with Jay," she said remembering their conversation at the cabin and how Jay had difficulty coming home from war.
"Yeah but I should have been there for him. It was my job," he berated himself. "Jake Hollingsworth," Jay said, pointing at the last face in the picture and changing the subject, then paused.
Erin looked up at Jay as he swallowed hard then blew out a breath. Again she tried to let him off the hook. Seeing him like this was difficult for her. He was so confident, sometimes to the point of cocky. He was her rock solid partner. She wanted to protect him from the pain she could see on his face, absolve his guilt and erase the terrible memories. She felt helpless watching him and guilty for making him feel like he needed to relive all this to build a relationship with her. "Jay it's okay. I get it. We don't need to do this. You don't need to relive all this."
But he didn't really seem to hear her. He seemed so far away and spoke without seeing her. "We were doing recon. I can't say for what, classified," he said bitterly. "But we were outside a complex of buildings. I was on the roof on the west side. Mac and Hollingsworth were trying to sneak in, get some pictures. Only thing was they somehow knew we were coming and there was a fire fight. I had no line of sight on the ambush, they set off smoke grenades to cut off my sight lines. And by the time I'd scrambled down the roof to help they'd grabbed Hollingsworth. We," Jay paused. "Anyway we couldn't get him back so we regrouped and made a plan to go after them."
"We thought he was in a small village, had some Intel they had him in cave covered by a hut. We were told it was heavily armed and to prepare to go in meeting resistance. Mendes tripped a trigger wire as we snuck in and flash bangs started going off. It was chaos and smoke. I gave the order to breach the hut. Mouse kicked in the door to the hut and Lee rounded the door frame. He entered and was immediately staring down the barrel of an assault rifle. He reacted. Took two shots to the vest and we all fired." Jay stopped. "All Lee saw was the gun," He said again. "I cleared the room with Mouse while the rest of the team provided cover. The cave was just a hole in the ground they used to keep supplies hidden in, no sign Hollingsworth had ever been there. We found out later our informant had a beef with some of the men in the village and figured he'd use us to get his revenge. When the smoke cleared." Jay shook his head, "He was only eight or nine," he whispered. "Who puts an assault rifle in the hands of a little kid like that?" He demanded angrily. Jay ran his hands through his hair.
Erin watched in heartbreak as Jay struggled to rationalize what had happened.
They'd killed a little boy.
"Jay he shot at you. You reacted the way you were trained to. You couldn't see," she said, knowing all too well how quickly you needed to think and react in those situations.
"He was just a little boy," Jay whispered again. Erin had no doubt the image of that boy haunted him and the rest of the unit.
Jay's expression suddenly changed as anger and revenge took over his emotions. "We tracked them to the mountains." He said coldly. "They had him hidden up there." Jay was silent for a long time, again she read a flurry of emotion on his face. "They tortured him... It was awful... They'd had him for days and just," Jay's voice trailed off. "I didn't know humans could be that cruel, that barbaric. He was barely alive when we got there." Jay looked at the picture of his unit. "I was angry. I blamed them for what happened to the little boy too, we all did," he confessed. "I needed to make them pay. We needed to avenge him, the boy and Hollingsworth. What they did to Hollingsworth, they needed to pay for that. We justified it. You know? We all did. It was twisted, confused logic. We were no better than them," Jay confessed.
Erin took his hand. "It's okay Jay." But he continued, unaffected by her show of support.
"We got Hollingsworth out. But he didn't make it. We didn't get there in time." Jay looked up at her with sad eyes and gave an apologetic shrug. "When I got home I went to see his wife. They had two kids. I didn't know what to say to her but I just... I felt a responsibility to her you know?" Erin nodded. "As soon as she saw me she lost it. Yelling at me to leave, throwing things at me, asking me why I let him die. It was..." Jay swallowed hard.
Erin maneuvered herself so she could put her arms around Jay. "Something broke loose inside me. It was too much. The guilt. Why should I get to come home and not him? He had a family, people who needed him, I had none of that, no one who needed me, no reason to be standing there in front of her when she should have had her husband. I'll never forget the look on her face Erin," he whispered into her hair.
"Anyways that's when I went up to the cabin," He said clearing his throat and trying to pull himself from his memories.
Erin ran her hand up and down Jay's arms. She had an overwhelming need to absolve him of his guilt and reassure him he was an amazing man but she had no idea how to say it without somehow dismissing his feelings or the enormity of what he'd been through. So instead she ran her hands slowly over his arms, chest and face hoping her touch could convey her feelings.
They sat in silence for a long time wrapped up in each other on the edge of the bed while Jay brought himself back to the present. Eventually he was brave enough to lift his head and look at Erin. He braced himself for the changes he expected to see in her eyes now that she knew what he'd done. She looked up at him and he was bewildered by what he saw. Erin eyes were full of the same love, respect, and trust that had always been there.
She smiled at him sadly as she caressed his jaw line. "I wish I could think of something to say to make it better. Make it okay," she admitted. "But all I can think of is to tell you how much I love you."
She watched as his eyes glossed over and the corner of his mouth lifted in a somber smile. He cupped her cheek, stroking it softly with his thumb then pressed his lips to hers. He held still like that for a few moments before embracing her again.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Eventually they moved from the edge of the bed and Jay helped Erin lay down. He happily laid beside her on the narrow bed and they fell into a comfortable silence intertwining their fingers allowing their thumbs to softly brush against one another continuously.
After awhile Jay pushed himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. His eyes were full of questions. Of course they were. Erin took a slow breath. He wanted to know what he'd seen. He wanted her to talk to him about what was in her box and her mood this last week. He wanted to know why she hated her birthday, Nadia's murder aside. His desires were fair. She had promised him she'd go to him when she was struggling. And she'd just told him she loved him again tonight. He'd just shared his most personal struggles with her. Not talking now would be a slap in the face to him.
But it was hard. So hard to put everything into words. A weight settled on Erin's chest and her heart beat quickened.
Easy Erin, she tried to calm herself. You're not a child. He can't come back and hurt you anymore. You can protect yourself. And even if you couldn't, you think Jay and Hank would let that monster near you if they knew, she coached herself.
Jay watched Erin with increasing concern. He read the fear on her face, something he rarely saw there. "Hey," he said gently turning her face towards him. "Whatever it is Erin, I'm here."
Erin nodded meekly. "I want to tell you," she began. "But it's hard," she confessed.
Jay nodded and ran his hand up and down her arm. He seemed to silently encourage her.
"I don't even know where to begin," she whispered.
"How about with the picture. Who are the two little girls? One of them is you right?" He probed gently.
Erin nodded "Yeah."
"And the other one?"Jay encouraged.
"Shelby," Erin whispered, her voice cracking with emotion. "Her name is Shelby.," Erin said with more conviction. "And she's my sister."
