Part Seventy-Four

After

Olivia was thoroughly pleased with herself for both eating a reasonably healthy lunch and keeping it down. While she and Elliot had burned off most of the afternoon alternately napping and making love, he'd wound up going to bed for the night just after seven because he had to get up so early. Olivia wanted to stay with him, but she couldn't force herself to go to sleep that early, especially not with the extra sleep she'd gotten throughout the day while she was tucked contentedly into Elliot's arms.

After she took Moose for a long walk, she sat down on the couch and sorted through the rest of the paperwork the doctor gave her. Moose was snoozing next to her, his warm, heavy body reminding her of the security she felt in Elliot's arms. As she read deeper in the papers, she realized she'd been terribly remiss in not staying informed. She'd tried, she really had, but there was so much being thrown at her in such a short period and she was so sick initially that she hadn't stood a chance.

Not to mention that if she'd had any idea of what was in store for her, she might not have wanted to keep fighting to live. Apparently her depression, her mood swings, her nausea, could all come from the transplant itself, as well as the medications to control rejection. She'd made it just over four months after the surgery and it seemed that rejection was less common if she could survive to a year, an idea that would hearten her if she wasn't currently suffering a fairly high percentage of the symptoms of rejection. And, she was extremely unhappy to read, her transplant was likely only going to last a decade, maybe two. She couldn't imagine going through this all again - not getting sick, not needing to find a new kidney, not dealing with the trauma of the first few months after the surgery. She felt like there was going to be a ticking clock going in her mind at all times, her subconscious mentally checking off the days and reminding her with each one that she was possibly a day closer to getting sick all over again.

She finally tucked the papers back in the folder from DeMarco's office, put the slip for the blood work out on the kitchen table so she'd remember to take care of that after she took Moose for his check up, and rejoined Elliot in the bedroom. She snuggled into his side as tightly as she could and reminded herself he was the reason she was going to get through all the pain and sadness and depression and fear of the future. Because as hard as it would be for her to keep going, it would be harder on him if she gave up. His arms wound their way around her in his sleep, as though he could hear her thoughts, and she smiled against his chest. All the struggle in the world was worth a single night with him.

She only knew it was too early to wake up when she heard him calling her and she would have pointed that out if she hadn't been too tired to speak. She did manage to pull her eyes open to find Elliot was dressed and crouching next to the bed.

"Hey, I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye." He looked about as excited at the prospect as she was and so she nodded her understanding rather than pile more guilt on him. "I tried to get Moose to come up and stay with you, but he's guarding the back door at the moment."

She nodded again, a small smile forming as she came more fully awake. "No luck on the dog psychiatrist, huh?"

He shook his head with a grin. "I'll be home as soon as I can." Leaning in to press a kiss to her forehead, his face turned serious. "Call the doctor. I don't want to have to worry about you."

"You're going to worry about me anyway." She snagged his hand and gave it a squeeze. "I'm getting the blood drawn after Moose's appointment. We'll probably know something Monday or Tuesday." Nevermind that she had at least four days to worry herself through first, she wanted to make him feel as comfortable as possible leaving for the weekend.

He held her eyes for a long time, reminding her of the way she'd stared at him in the shower, and she knew there were too many emotions surging through him for him to decide which one to feel. So she helped him out, giving his hand another tight squeeze. "I'll be here when you come home." She waited for his nod and the answering squeeze of her hand. "I love you."

He nodded again as a smile wormed its way across his face. "I love you too."

She was still tired, but she knew she wasn't going to get back to sleep, not after she heard the front door close behind him and his Jeep start up. It was going to be a long three days. She already felt nervous and she wanted to go downstairs to sleep on the couch, knowing that Moose would probably join her then if he didn't have to stray too far from his new guard location at the back door. But she also remembered the gun in the nightstand. It definitely helped to know it was there, but it would be too far away if she went downstairs. She could always take it with her, stash it under the couch cushions maybe, but with Moose's recent behavior and decided tendency to eat everything, she was too afraid of what would happen if he discovered a nine-millimeter chew toy.

Even so, she felt too cornered alone on the second floor. Taking the gun from the nightstand, she ventured downstairs and started making her way through the rooms. There had to be somewhere safe from Moose that would also be accessible in an emergency. Locating the right place might be a good way to distract herself.

She finally decided on the top shelf of the pantry for several reasons. The first two being there was a door on the pantry and Moose was afraid of the kitchen, so Olivia could feel relatively certain no dogs would be harmed in the storing of the weapon. There were also two doorways to the kitchen - one from the hallway by the stairs and one from the dining room, which would give her an alternate route to get to it in case her first option was blocked for some reason. She and Elliot tended to wind up in the kitchen most of the time they were in the house, making it seem the most likely place they would be if they suddenly needed access to the gun.

It was quarter to three when she was satisfied the gun was both safe and accessible and finally sat down on the couch. Moose happily trotted over to join her, settling his head in her lap. She scratched behind his ear and smiled down at him. "You're safe now, Moose, ok? We both are." She shook her head at the way he stared up at her and she wished he could understand and answer her. "We just have to stop being scared of our own shadows." He stared at her for another minute, determined the conversation was not going to include the words treat or walk, and closed his eyes again.

Her phone rang just as she was about to join him in a nap, but she woke up instantly seeing Elliot's number on the screen. "Ben?"

"I thought you'd be asleep."

"Everything ok?" She didn't even need to hear his response, she knew from his tone that he was fine, and she felt herself relaxing between the warmth of the dog on her leg and the comforting voice in her ear.

"Yeah, we're about to head out, so everyone is calling home to remind someone how much they'd rather be there."

"And you're just being a good little soldier, huh?"

"No, I'm just not sure I can survive three days without seeing you."

It wasn't his words alone that brought a smile to her face, it was the idea of him saying such a thing to her in a room full of his coworkers. "I'm sure we'll survive, but neither one of us is going to be happy about it." She took a deep breath and said words that made her feel as exposed and vulnerable as Elliot probably did in front of his friends. "I miss you already."

A muffled shout sounded through the phone. "I have to go. I love you."

She could hear the commotion of people moving and she wished she had more time to say everything she meant to. But she didn't, so she settled on what she could. "I love you too."

Between the vet visit and going to the lab, Friday passed quickly. The vet was satisfied that Moose was healing, although she was pretty much useless in offering any assistance with Moose being afraid of the kitchen. The lab was exhausting in its own right, both due to the less than happy reason she was there compared to the last time she'd been there and the drawing of nine tubes of blood that Olivia was certain sapped all of her remaining energy. She was trying to nap on the couch with Moose lying on the floor in front of her, but Allyson had some kind of construction crew over that was doing nothing as far as Olivia could tell besides making a great deal of noise immediately outside the front door.

Unable to get any rest with the racket, Olivia decided to take Moose for a walk. Unlike with the landscaping crew, the dog paid little attention to the group of painters on the joint porch besides to wag his tail happily when one of them mentioned how big he was. She was surprised at how easily Moose was led away from strangers who were much closer to his house than the other crew who'd elicited such a strong reaction.

"You're a very weird pup, Moose, you know that right?" She looked down at the dog who glanced at her as always when she spoke to him. His only response was to keep wagging his tail, hard enough that the back half of his body shook with the motion. She snickered at him. "I love you anyway, crazy dog." He cooperated along the way, his speed back to normal since he was no longer limping.

She wanted to stay out for a while, both to give the painters a chance to finish whatever they were working on and to help burn off some of that weight she was all too prone to gaining. But her energy started to flag long before she got far and she was dragging Moose back home not fifteen minutes after she'd left. The short walk had been enough time for the painters to tear down the small fence between the two doors and strip the column where the house number had been. The fence was lying intact on a tarp in the yard with one of the men sanding it down while the other two were sanding the column and trim around Allyson's door. Without the small fence and the second set of numbers to delineate a different house, Olivia remembered her first impression on seeing the house and thinking it was enormous. She glanced around at the matching houses along the street and realized it must have been intentional, to create the illusion that the houses were twice as big as they were.

She was yawning as she led Moose past the men and closed the door behind her. She half expected Moose to launch into a new protective mode and block the front door, but he simply returned to his post by the back door. Hoping to avoid the noise of the electric sander the painters were using, Olivia relocated to the den, turned on the TV for background noise and settled down for a nap.

She drifted in and out of sleep all evening, awakening each time slightly more confused about what day and time it was. She wasn't used to sleeping in the den. She wasn't used to the din of the TV in the background. She wasn't used to knowing Elliot wasn't going to be coming home.

By two in the morning, she was wide awake and well aware it was going to take days and several naps to get over having completely confused her sleep schedule. The late night repeats of sitcoms had started to grate on her nerves, but she didn't want to sit in the silent house either. Her thoughts turned to Elliot and she wondered what he was doing, if he was able to sleep, if he was sitting awake wherever the hell he was and thinking of her.

She remembered the ring that was sitting on the dresser upstairs and the way he'd drained their bank accounts to buy it. Ten thousand dollars seemed like a lot of money for a ring, although she admittedly had no experience with such things. She picked up her phone, noticing the missed calls from when Elliot had been trying to reach her. He'd called over ten times on Wednesday and she'd slept through all of them. But she was on a mission and so brushed off the guilt she felt when she deleted all the voicemails without listening to them while she started looking up what sort of engagement ring all that money would buy.

By the time the sun started to peek over the horizon, she was overwhelmed with the choices. That kind of money bought a lot of options and as she drifted back to sleep, she really hoped Elliot hadn't gone overboard with a gaudy ring she wouldn't like, let alone ever wear. She wouldn't have the heart to exchange it, not when he'd gone to the trouble to pick it out, and so she'd be stuck with whatever he'd chosen. But, she realized, Elliot knew her, sometimes better than she knew herself, and she figured he probably picked something exactly right, even if she herself had no idea what such a ring might look like. Her mind wandered to what their lives would actually look like in the future, the two of them and Moose, someday moving back to New York, living their real lives with their real names and their real friends and she started to smile. It was the first time she slept more than an hour without having a nightmare.

Moose climbed up on the couch with her, snuggling in between her and the back of the couch, his enormous body eventually pushing her to the very edge. It was the tumble to the floor that awoke her rather than the sound of her own shout and it took her a long, confusing moment to figure out what was happening. Moose spread out to cover the rest of the space, his face looking down at her on the floor, his eyes seeming to question why she was on the floor while he was on the couch. She chuckled at him, leaning forward to give him a kiss on his head while she rubbed the sore spot on her arm where she'd bumped the coffee table on her freefall.

Moose was acting normally on Saturday, as normally as the past few days with his fear of both the kitchen and the back yard. He paid no attention to the painters who reappeared in the afternoon, even with the ridiculous amount of noise they made. But by the time Olivia finished her dinner, Moose had picked up a new pattern, trotting nervously between the front and back doors, barking unhappily every few laps. She tried to open the back door, thinking maybe he needed to be let outside, but he wouldn't let her. She tried to take him out front, got as far as hooking his lead and stepping onto the still-under-construction front porch - which for all the hammering and banging appeared to be in exactly the same condition it had been in the day before - but he stopped there, refusing to be led beyond the bottom of the front steps. He assumed a low crouch, his energy seeming to be focused on a van parked across the street halfway up the block.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the van, and for all the attention Olivia paid to the neighborhood, it could have belonged to someone who lived there. Still, she found herself making a mental note of it, squinting to see if she could make out the license plate. Moose finally allowed himself to be dragged back into the house, but his neurotic pacing between and barking at the doors continued the rest of the evening.

She changed into her pajamas, which for the evening at least consisted of one of Elliot's tee-shirts and a pair of his boxers because it made her feel almost like he was there, and decided she'd make one more attempt to let Moose out. She tried the back door simply because it would be easier to have Moose confined in the yard, but he once again refused to allow her access to the door. He did let her open the front door and she noted, as did he, that the van was gone. He simply walked down the stairs, relieved himself, and returned to her side as though he hadn't been misbehaving all evening.

With a sigh, she thought of how nervous Elliot was and she double checked that both doors were locked before she curled up on the couch. Moose laid down in front of her and Olivia reached out to pat him. She hoped that it was a combination of his accident in the kitchen and Elliot being gone that was causing him to act funny. Otherwise, she was going to have to face the fact that she couldn't necessarily handle the dog, no matter how much she loved him. It wasn't something she wanted to think about and she tried to put it from her mind as Moose's head leaned into her hand.

Moose's bark was always loud, but being startled awake by it in the middle of the night nearly scared her to death. She jerked upright at the sound, not sure if she was more afraid from the shock or of the fact that he was staring at her, leaning in and barking in her face. She didn't have enough time to panic or even think about what she'd do if he attacked because as soon as she sat up, he galloped to the front door, barking and jumping at it.

Her heart was racing as she stood up, sleepily thinking he wanted to go out, but as she approached the door, her instincts told her something was wrong. Perhaps it was the way Moose had crouched down, flattened his ears against his head, and started growling.

Rather than getting any closer, she moved toward the hallway, her bare feet making no sound as she hurried to the kitchen, into the pantry, grabbing Joe's gun from where she'd stashed it. Feeling somewhat more protected, she stepped toward Moose. His eyes didn't waver from the door and she wondered if he even realized she was there. He let her unlock the deadbolt and reach for the knob. She waited for him to throw himself against the door, but he didn't move, except to crouch a bit lower. He'd stopped growling, but his entire body was shaking with energy and she was very, very glad he wasn't staring at her like that.

She swallowed hard, clicked the safety off on the gun, and pulled the door open. It was almost too quiet, her ears hearing only her own rush of blood for a long time before finally picking up the quiet sound of a motor running, then glass shattering,

Moose shot out like lightning, his cumbersome body frighteningly silent as he raced past her. A moment later, a scuffle of some sort, and as she stepped onto the front porch with the weapon drawn, she saw two dark figures racing toward the street from the far side of Allyson's house with Moose giving chase. She heard squealing tires a moment later, Moose's ferocious bark sounding as he raced after them.

She was still standing on the porch, her heart pounding, her hands shaking so hard she couldn't put the safety back on the gun.

Allyson's porch light came on, the other woman emerging from her door in much the same shaken condition. "Abby? Someone threw a rock through the window! I think they were trying to break in!"

Olivia nodded, sinking to her butt on the steps, trying to calm her adrenaline rush. "Moose scared them away." She was immeasurably grateful when Moose came lumbering back and flopped down next to her on the porch.

"What should I do? Should I call the police?"

Olivia just nodded again, wrapping her arms around Moose and hugging him close. Her mind was reeling, trying to fit together the pieces in her head. Maybe the van she'd seen had been casing Allyson's house. Maybe Moose's pathological fear of the back yard hadn't been as irrational as she thought. Maybe the unlocked door and Moose's accident hadn't been quite so accidental.

Or maybe, she was just depressed and looking for some sort of justification for her emotions in a random piece of bad luck for her neighbor.