Disclaimer: Terra Nova does not belong to me.
Elisabeth is running out of things (excuses) to take care of in the clinic. She knows there are projects that could use her assistance over in the labs that are under Malcolm's direction. There are always projects that could use her assistance over in the labs that are under Malcolm's direction. She helps out when she can or when someone asks her for something specific in terms of her expertise. She does not have any standard commitment of time over there, but she can find some reason to claim to need to be there. She is running. She knows that she is running. She needs to stop. She knows that. She should just stop, but she does not.
She does not want to think about what it will look like to go hiding in Malcolm's labs, but she can't seem to stop herself. She is not hiding behind Malcolm. She is just hiding in general. She and Malcolm were friends before they were anything else (she likes to think that they were friends after everything else - that that is what they are now). She knows that Malcolm has had his moments where he thought that they might be something else (and she has had heated words with Josh enough to know that her son was not oblivious to that fact), but that is not where or what they are. (She has never considered herself available. She was not interested in being available.)
They work together in a way that she does not (professionally) work with anyone else. She likes to be able to have conversations where she does not have to stop and offer definitions and explanations of her words. She already knows that retreating to the labs is going to be enough to send Josh into one of his sullen silences - the realm to which they have arrived after the angry venting and inappropriate comments had run their course and been exhausted. (She has not managed to keep herself so busy that she has not noticed that her eldest is having his own difficulties adjusting to the presence of his father. Josh may, for once, not be paying attention to what she is doing.) Josh is really so like his father in so many of his reactions.
She has a sudden, glaringly realistic vision of how Jim would react if he realized what all of the pieces of the equation were without understanding how they fit together. She has retreated to the lab to avoid talking to him. She has, but it is not because it is where her ex who maybe (okay, admittedly) had some unresolved expectations works there. It is because she is just flat out avoiding him. (She assumes that that does not actually make the explanation better - just a different kind of offensive.)
She understands how it might look from the outside. Malcolm did arrange for her invitation to come here. He did know that Jim would be out of the picture. There are a lot of things that she understands reflect badly, but none of those things actually matter. So what if Malcolm got them here? Their children needed this. They should be grateful. So what if he might have had some ulterior motives? Things between she and Malcolm have been made very clear - and there is absolutely nothing of a personal nature going on outside of a friendship (that she has, quite frankly, needed to help her keep a grip on her sanity over this time of adjustment to an entirely different world).
Malcolm is not even present. He is OTG for a couple of days and the last thing that the poor man needs is to walk back into the settlement and be blindsided by all of . . . this. No one needs to be put in some sort of strange middle position in between her and her husband. Their . . . discussion . . . argument . . . whatever it is that they are not having because she will not hold still long enough for him to speak to her is their problem and no one else's.
The soft utterance of her name following on the heels of the sound of the door tells her that her husband has followed her to her hiding place. There is no one else in the lab to use as a buffer, and he will know exactly what she is doing if she tries to blow him off (and does she really need to add one more thing to the list of things from which she does not know how they dig their way out of). She is going to have to be calm (and choose her words very carefully as she talks to her husband because Malcolm has done nothing to deserve being put in the middle of this).
He is trying to be calm (and choose his words very carefully as he speaks with Elisabeth's husband). What did he do to deserve to end up in the middle of this?
Okay, so he knows that he had some thoughts about what having Elisabeth back in his life might mean (an Elisabeth that was permanently separated from her husband even). He let himself stray down those paths in his musing. He can own up to that (to himself - not to the semi irate man invading his lab space), but it was just daydreaming. Doesn't everybody daydream about things that they really should not every once in a while?
Despite what accusations might be hurled in his direction from time to time, there really was no plotting involved in any of this. There wasn't. He does not plot. The fact of the matter is that they were in need of personnel here. Truth be told, they were in need of far more areas of expertise than they had slots available. That is a perpetual problem for a community that is striking a balance between sustainable expansion and the plethora of needed skills to make and keep that expansion sustainable.
He knew of Elisabeth personally, yes, and that did tip the balance in her favor, but that was only because he knew that she ticked off multiple boxes on their list of needs. He had presented his proposal to Taylor as such, and it had been approved in the proper process of which all vetting of potentials consisted. There had been no underhandedness and no duplicity on his part (and he resented the implication that he would have allowed some sort of a personal side project as it were to compromise the ability of this settlement to function at optimal levels).
He has to live here just like everyone else. If the settlement collapses, then he suffers when everyone else does. There is no going back; they have to make this work. They needed a surgeon. They needed a virologist. Those were needs - not wants (just ask the people who had buried family members in one of the rounds of those fevers that swept through the settlement at intervals). They were sitting ducks here from the perspective of their immune systems. They had no native immunity to any of the viruses that were just waiting to be stirred up and launched into a host. Elisabeth (while she may never have practiced in any official capacity) certainly had the credentials to have spent her days in a research lab rather than an OR. That she could handle trauma surgery in a world where catastrophic wounds from large animals with sharp teeth was an ever present possibility was a pleasant bit of resume padding. His recommendation had not been nefarious. It had been practical.
He refused to apologize for the fact that he was bringing a friend into his workspace as a result of it. He had had no dependents to bring after all. As far as he was concerned, anyone who did not like it could consider Elisabeth and her children the three spaces that he would have been owed. Besides, was he supposed to feel badly that someone with whom he could hold an actual intellectual conversation was spending time in his labs? What was he supposed to do - chat with Horton? Not half likely. That man was a pretentious snob of the highest order. Further, nobody got anything accomplished when he was on site because he took over every work station and co-opted anyone within reach for running his errands. It was always defended because his projects were always just so time sensitive and so apropos to the moment - why would anyone tell the poor man who had had a stroke that his research could not continue merely because they were being so unkind and churlish as to not drop everything to assist him with the heavy lifting as it were? He had Horton issues - so sue him. Any reason to send the man OTG was a welcome reason. Malcolm took advantage of them all - unapologetically.
Anyway, Elisabeth has another child here now of course. The older girl (the one who looks so like her mother when he first knew her that he thinks he would have recognized her as Elisabeth's wherever he might have seen her) found some sort of backdoor into the place. It's fascinating, and he would enjoy getting a firsthand account of all of the details. That, however, will have to wait until things with the rest of the newly appeared settles down. He certainly can't forget about the husband what with the accusations and the being shoved into a wall and all (clearly, Josh had had some words with the man at some point for all that the two of them look to be relating to each other just as awkwardly and off keel as Jim and Elisabeth are).
Really, he must be a bonding activity for the two of them. He is oh so pleased that a united displeasure on their part at his friendship (and why can people not get it through their heads that that is all the two of them are - friends) with their mother and wife (respectively) is serving as some sort of therapy for them. Goody. Isn't that just what he has always wanted? He gets to be a figurative (although that was stepping dangerously close to the line of literal) punching bag all in the name of better mental health.
Is there not a woman over in the ag corps who had a minor in psychology or some such? Why do they not just schedule an appointment and deal with their problems like civilized human beings (by complaining about each other behind each other's backs while lying on a stranger's couch or however it is that that works). Why do they not have a mental health professional officially on staff here? That seems like a rather large oversight now that he is thinking of it. Should that not have been something that occurred to someone early on - that there might be some sort of counseling professional needed to aid in this transition between dimensions and all? Of course, he has been here for years and has not yet come across a need for one, so maybe the Shannons are just an extra level of dysfunctional with which the settlement has not previously needed to deal. He should bring that up with Taylor at the next meeting of department heads (the lack of mental health considerations - not the Shannon's level of dysfunction).
He does, in fact, bring that up with Taylor at the next meeting of department heads. He is informed that they did think of that. There was such a person at one time but said person had passed in one of the fever outbreaks. As there had been no great call for such services, the position had remained unfilled while positions of greater import on their hierarchy of needs had been seen to first. Taylor, of course, does not phrase it in that manner because when does Taylor (outside of their little founding festival and its attending speeches) ever put something eloquently when he can just bark out his gruff proclamations that imply you are wasting his time by asking?
Taylor and the science department function together, but it really is best that they do not try to have any sort of in depth conversations. They tend to devolve into theory versus practice exercises in futility rather quickly. It is during this question session, however, that he learns that Elisabeth's daughter - Maddy, her name is Maddy - does have psychology in her handful of degrees (and he will fully admit to being impressed by the credentials that that young woman has managed to rack up in her relatively few years). Even if her specialty had been children, that is still more than what they had.
It is just a shame that it is likely a conflict of interest or something like that for her to be treating the members of her family. It's a shame really because she and the little one seem to be the most stable of the lot at the moment - not that he is suggesting that any of them are actually unhinged (threats to his physical person notwithstanding). They just do not seem to be coping with this new change in their dynamics very well.
Maddy, on the other hand, seems to have sort of taken it all in stride as best he can determine from their few interactions. He is hoping that there will be further conversations in their future sooner over later. He finds this whole portal phenomenon that she has been studying intriguing (and a little terrifying because the thought of accidentally being transported to an unknown and potentially unforgiving landscape because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time is nothing short of nightmare material even if the actual science behind it is begging for someone to come and unravel it). She has gravitated toward the labs, and he authorized a position for her there (because they need to use what they have at their disposal and the ag corps can have her work but they do not get first dibs on her time). There was some minor fangirling over Horton, but he will forgive her for that because she is still young (and he believes any length of time sharing lab space will quickly cure her of any such tendencies).