It was almost two hours later that Jesse entered the sheriff's office, having succeeded in arranging a conference call between Dr. Caldwell, the head of the Infectious Disease department at Community General, Dr. Erickson, and himself. Together they had agreed on a new course of treatment that they hoped would succeed in controlling the peritonitis. Now he had to somehow come up with a way to tell Mark about Steve, hopefully without letting him know just how close to death his son was. Not that Jesse had any very real expectation of being able to accomplish that; Mark was too good a doctor not to understand the implications of everything Jesse said – or even what he didn't say. Reflecting grimly that there was no way this was going to be anything other than intensely difficult, Jesse walked up to the man sitting at the desk.
"Sheriff Consten?" Jesse asked as the man looked up at him.
"That's me," replied the officer laconically.
"I'm Dr. Jesse Travis. I understand you've arrested Mark Sloan in connection with the shooting of his son Steve."
The sheriff's appraising gaze swept over the young doctor, his expression remaining impassive. "That's right," he confirmed. "What's your interest in the matter?"
"I'm Lt. Sloan's treating physician and a friend of both the Sloans," Jesse said. "I'd appreciate it if you would tell me what evidence you have that makes you think Mark could have had anything to do with the shooting."
"It's not a question of 'thinking' he was responsible, son," drawled the sheriff. "We have proof."
"What proof?" asked Jesse skeptically.
"We have the gun with his fingerprints on it, traces of cordite on his hands proving he fired the gun, and his son's blood on his clothes." There was a gleam of satisfaction in the sheriff's eyes as he saw Jesse looking somewhat taken aback by the cumulative weight of all this. "And then, of course, there's the fact that he confessed."
Jesse was beginning to feel like he'd wandered into one of the more nightmarish episodes of the Twilight Zone. None of this was possible – it violated all the certainties of life. Mark could never have shot anyone, especially not Steve. He struggled against the feeling of unreality, plopping himself dazedly in the chair beside the sheriff's desk.
"Look, this just doesn't make any sense," he declared. "What exactly happened?"
"Lt. Sloan placed an emergency call yesterday afternoon reporting that he'd been shot. The ambulance crew found him unconscious in the woods behind Doc Harley's cabin, where he and his father had apparently been staying. There was a gun belonging to Doc Harley lying in the leaves beside him. We ran the prints on the gun and found that they belonged to a Dr. Mark Sloan. We put out a search and found Dr. Sloan, splattered with blood, making his way around the lake away from town. We ran the lab tests on the blood stains and checked him for traces of cordite and placed him under arrest." The sheriff was obviously very satisfied with the speed and efficiency with which he had dealt with this case.
"What did Mark say?" Jesse asked, feeling more confused by the minute.
"He didn't deny it," the sheriff replied with a trace of contempt. "He didn't say much of anything, although he did eventually claim he was drugged."
Jesse seized on that explanation. "Well, didn't you take him to the hospital to be checked out?"
"There was no need," the sheriff replied calmly. "He wasn't hurt – barring a few bruises; he didn't need a hospital. We had a nurse come up and draw his blood to be analyzed. The results came back this morning; there were no traces of any drugs."
"Did you do a urinalysis?" Jesse asked.
A look of annoyance crossed the sheriff's face. "Look, son," he said, "we don't need a urinalysis. Even if your Dr. Sloan was high at the time, that doesn't offset the fact that he shot his son. In fact, we don't think too highly of doctors who get a little too familiar with their own pharmacies."
"Mark Sloan does not take drugs," Jesse asserted indignantly. "If he says he was drugged, then someone slipped them to him without his knowledge. Have you done anything to check out his story?"
"We went back to the cabin," Consten replied. "We looked around. We didn't find any traces of drugs in anything."
Jesse could tell that the sheriff had made up his mind that Mark was guilty and saw no need to pursue the case further. And since Steve was incapable of telling his friend what had really happened, Jesse wasn't going to be able to help find out the truth until he talked to Mark.
"I want to talk to Mark," he demanded. He tried to control his irritation as the sheriff pondered his request, obviously considering whether or not he should deny it.
"Well, I guess that can't do no harm," he eventually conceded, somewhat reluctantly. He heaved himself out of his chair, and headed toward a door at the back of the office. "Come on, I'll take you back to the cells."
Having crossed the first hurdle, Jesse felt considerable trepidation as he followed the sheriff to the cells in the back of the building. Now he had to face the moment of telling his friend just how badly injured his son was. And if Mark really had shot Steve in some drug-crazed high, he was bound to be even more devastated than Jesse had originally anticipated. He drew a deep breath as he approached the cells and saw a white-haired figure sitting hunched on the bunk-like bed in one of them.
"Hey, Doc," he heard Consten call with spurious cheerfulness as he opened the door, "you got a visitor." The sheriff then turned to face Jesse. "You got 10 minutes," he stated coldly and left, locking the door behind him.
Jesse barely noticed the lawman's departure, his eyes glued to the haggard face that was raised to meet his. He took in at a glance the disheveled, soiled clothes that Mark had obviously been wearing since the previous day, the deep circles under the eyes in a gray, lined face; Mark looked like hell. As the older man looked up and recognized him, he lurched quickly to his feet, almost stumbling in his haste to approach his friend.
"Jesse." His voice was hoarse and urgent. "Have you seen Steve? Is he alive? How bad is it?" Those anguished eyes searched the younger doctor's face, desperately attempting to read some sign of how bad the news was.
Jesse pulled himself together and hastened to offer what limited reassurance he could.
"He's alive, Mark," he responded, knowing that that was the most important and comforting fact he could provide. Mark drew a cautiously relieved breath, but his eyes remained riveted to Jesse's face, warily waiting for the details, picking up from Jesse's failure to continue immediately the fact that the remaining information was undoubtedly more negative. Jesse put a hand on his friend's arm and steered him back to the bunk, gently pressing him back onto it, seating himself beside him.
"Steve's in the ICU, but he's still alive," Jesse continued, trying to ease into the details. He forced himself to meet those pain-filled blue eyes as Mark tensed, preparing to hear the rest.
"How bad is it, Jesse? Please, I have to know everything; they won't tell me anything." The quiet desperation in his tone made Jesse's heart ache in sympathy. Hating the news he had to deliver, he nevertheless realized that it would be kinder to get it all over as quickly as possible; the long period of doubt and uncertainty had probably been a greater torture than even knowing the worst could be.
"He was shot once in the abdomen," Jesse told him, keeping his voice as matter-of-fact as he could, hoping that a detached, medical-report approach would help soften the personal nature of the situation. "The bullet ruptured the appendix, resulting in peritonitis." He saw an anguished spasm, quickly suppressed, cross Mark's face. "He wasn't responding to the antibiotics they had him on, but I've talked with John Caldwell at CG, and we've come up with a different approach that we think should clear it up." He tried to put conviction into his voice, wanting to provide any crumb of comfort and hope that he could. "The surgeon at the hospital here, Dr. Erickson, is a very competent doctor," he assured his friend. "And he's being very cooperative about conferring with John and me."
Mark searched Jesse's face for another moment, then squeezed his eyes shut, trying to maintain some semblance of composure. He understood all the implications that Jesse had been trying to soften. Peritonitis from a ruptured appendix was an extremely life-threatening infection under any circumstances. Steve's condition, he knew, would be further complicated by the gunshot wound and the enormous amount of blood he must have lost – factors that would have left his body severely weakened and much less capable of fighting off the infection. He glanced involuntarily down at himself. His jacket had been taken away as evidence, and his hands had been washed, but he could still see himself liberally stained with his son's blood – the loss of which could well cost Steve his life. It was a moment before Jesse's voice filtered through the wave of anguish that was swamping him, and he realized that his friend had called his name more than once. He opened his eyes again to see Jesse watching him in deep concern.
"He's a strong man, Mark, in excellent physical condition," the younger doctor tried to assure him. "And he's a fighter. He'll get through this." Jesse tried to keep his own doubts hidden, along with his rising fear that it might well be Mark who didn't make it through this. He desperately wanted to get his friend out of here, and to do that he needed to know what had actually occurred.
"What happened, Mark?" Jesse asked gently.
"I've been thinking about that all night, and I'm still not sure," Mark replied, his voice dull and tinged with bewilderment.
"The sheriff said something about you being drugged," Jesse prompted.
Mark's mouth twisted slightly in a brief, bitter half-smile. "I'm sure he said something like I 'claimed' to be drugged," he responded. "He doesn't believe me."
"Well, I believe you," Jesse declared stoutly. "And we'll just have to prove it so we can get you out of here. So tell me what happened."
Mark pulled himself together and focussed on relaying the details that he could remember. He had indeed spent most of the night rehashing everything he could recall of the day's events, desperately searching for an explanation of how this tragedy had come about, and he was now able to relate the facts in an orderly fashion.
"I was coming back to the cabin after fishing," he started. "Steve was in Sacramento testifying at the Tremelan trial, but I was expecting him back by dinner time." Jesse nodded, remembering that Steve's journey to Sacramento had been one of the initiating factors in the Sloans' trip.
"When I got to the cabin, there was a boy there with a gun; he had broken in and found a gun Walter kept in his desk. He was just a kid," Mark continued, his manner returning to something approaching normalcy as he concentrated on the narrative; "he couldn't have been more than 15 or 16." He gave the merest hint of a smile, remembering his first assessment of the boy and the shaking hand that had held the gun. "I think he was more scared than I was."
"What did you do?" Jesse asked curiously.
"I made him lunch," Mark replied. Jesse stared at him, wondering for a moment if the drugs Mark had ingested were still affecting his mind. "I pretended not to notice the gun," Mark explained. "I just walked into the kitchen and pretended that I thought he was just a social visitor. He put the gun in his pocket and followed me in, and we got talking."
Jesse shook his head slightly, reflecting wryly that this was classic Mark, and possibly helped explain the sheriff's disbelief of his story. Who, not knowing Mark, was going to believe that an elderly man, confronted with a unknown armed teenager who had broken into his house, would calmly go about his business and even befriend the kid? He was not at all surprised when Mark got to the point in the story where the kid gave him the gun; of course he would. That was the effect Mark had on people, especially people in trouble. After all, hadn't he been taken hostage at gunpoint Jesse's first year at Community General only to return with the convicted felon who had abducted him as 'a new best friend' as Amanda had put it and eventually prove the man innocent of the murder for which he had been convicted? The momentary lightening of his mood produced by this memory, however, was short-lived, as he abruptly recalled the atypically tragic ending of this particular incident. He listened somberly as Mark related what Skylar had told him about his brother's death, and how he had left the teen alone for a few moments to compose himself.
"I remember coming back and drinking some of my lemonade," Mark continued. "And after that it all gets very confused and hazy."
"You think he drugged your lemonade?"
"I can't think of any other way it could have happened," Mark replied, a hint of bewilderment returning to his voice. "I really didn't think he would do something like that, but I must have been drugged – it's the only explanation for what happened. And no one else was there."
"What did happen after that?" Jesse asked.
"I don't remember much of it," said Mark, his tension increasing again as he faced the worst part of his tale. "I just have a few clear images and a lot of vague flashes. I must have wandered out into the woods with the gun still in my pocket. I remember waving it around… I'm not really sure." He paused, closing his eyes for a moment, trying to draw strength to get through the next part. "And then Steve was there." He stared unseeingly out through bars of the cell, the strain showing clearly on his face. "He must have gotten back early from the trial. Or maybe it was later than I thought; I don't really know. But he was there. And I was holding the gun." Mark faltered then, turning to look at Jesse, his eyes so full of pain that Jesse could scarcely bear to meet them. "I don't remember exactly how it happened… but the gun went off." It was almost a whisper.
Jesse placed what he hoped was a reassuring hand on his friend's arm, but he doubted if Mark even felt it – he was momentarily lost in a sea of grief and horror, his eyes squeezed shut, his head bowed. Jesse wanted so badly to comfort his friend, but he knew there was nothing he could say at that moment that would help. He waited, his hand still gripping his friend's arm. After a moment, Mark raised his head, his face haggard.
"I don't remember what happened after that," he continued, his voice ragged, but rigidly controlled. "I woke up at the base of the drop-off to the lake, feeling like I'd just been through a severe bout of 'flu, bruised all over; my mind was fuzzy and I couldn't figure out what had happened. Then I saw the blood. And I remembered Steve." The face that turned to Jesse's was etched with the pain of that revelation. "I tried to get back up the slope," Mark said, his voice holding a faint echo of the desperation he had felt, "but I couldn't do it. I was trying to find a spot where I could get up, but the sheriff came and arrested me." Having held himself together long enough to get the story out, he fell silent, suddenly totally drained.
"Mark, it wasn't your fault," Jesse tried to assure him. "You weren't trying to hurt Steve. You're a doctor – you know that people under the influence of drugs do things that they aren't even aware of, things they would never do. You weren't responsible."
Mark didn't even look up. "Jesse, I shot my son," he uttered, his voice raw with pain.
Jesse knew there was little he could offer in the way of comfort to ease that anguish, but he tried his best to reassure his friend, both of Mark's own lack of culpability and of Steve's chances for survival. He still hadn't gotten much in the way of response when the sheriff returned, announcing that the visit was over. Jesse rose reluctantly, his imminent departure finally sparking Mark's arousal from his state of non-responsive misery.
"Jesse, please," Mark said urgently, "call my lawyer, Don Freeman. See if he can arrange bail or something." Those blue eyes held more than a tinge of desperation as they met Jesse's. "I have to get out to see Steve. I have to be with him…" The pleading voice trailed off.
"I'll call him, Mark," Jesse promised. "And I'll stay with Steve until we get you out." There was no time for more as the sheriff hustled him out of the cell, locking the door behind him with a clang of finality.
Mark watched Jesse go, clinging to the knowledge that at least there was someone he trusted, someone who cared, who would look out for Steve. It was insufficient comfort, however, to offset the agony he felt. He wanted so desperately to be with his son, to do whatever he could to help him, to help mitigate the consequences of the terrible thing he had done.
Left alone, with nothing else to divert his mind, he found himself reliving yet again the confrontation with Skylar, searching for a way he could have avoided the resulting tragedy. Wracked with guilt and grief, Mark found himself wishing that he had never taken the weapon from the teen. I should have let him shoot me, he thought in despair. The thought that Steve might die, and by his hand, was tearing him apart. His worst nightmare had always been that Steve would be killed in the course of his work as a police officer; but never in the most hideous of those nightmares had he ever considered that he might be the cause of that ultimate catastrophe.
That Steve's death would be the worst thing that could ever happen to him was unquestionable. Mark remembered with vivid clarity the death of his daughter Carol less than a year ago, and knew that not even that horrendous tragedy could match this. Carol was his daughter, and he loved her dearly, and her death had been a devastation and grief from which he would never fully recover. He would have unhesitatingly traded his life for hers; would, indeed, have preferred such an exchange. But she had, many years ago, separated herself by distance and lifestyle from him, coming home only occasionally for short visits, and her absence was not felt in the day-to-day details of living. But Steve was an integral – the best – part of his life; his companionship, support, and love so much a part of Mark's daily world, that his death could never, under any circumstances, be anything but an utter devastation of his father's existence. And to have been responsible for that death was an agony of indescribable proportions – a source of grief and guilt so intense as to be literally unbearable. Mark remembered confronting Carol's murderer and telling him that he would see him put to death, that nothing they did to him would be enough. He wondered what punishment would be meted out to him, and reflected in despair that nothing they could do to him could ever equal the agony of the emotional torment he had inflicted upon himself.
