Disclaimer: All still apply.

SACRIFICES

(PART SEVEN)

Mark looked on, absolutely mortified by what was happening. Jesse lay sprawled across the bed, sobbing as though his heart was breaking, while Steve just watched him helplessly. Like his son, Mark just couldn't understand what had gone so wrong so quickly. All Steve had done was apologise.

The older doctor had to force himself to move. While he could see how much his son was hurting, this situation was doing no good to Jesse's all too fragile mental state. Wordlessly, he took hold of the handles of the wheelchair and guided Steve from the room.

"Call Doctor Bentley and have her go to Jesse's room immediately," Mark told a passing nurse. He didn't want his young friend to be alone at that moment, but he couldn't leave Steve.

The detective kept his head bowed during the short trip back to his room, not wanting anyone to see his tears. Jesse hated him. His dad had been wrong and Jesse really did blame him for what had happened. They were finished, before they'd even had the chance to start.

As Mark helped him back into his bed, he turned accusing eyes towards his father.

"Just talk to him?" he spat, taking his hurt out on the nearest target. "Did that seem to go well to you? Did that look like forgiveness?"

"Steve, I'm sorry." Mark bowed his head, knowing how inadequate his apology must have sounded, but meaning it from the very bottom of his heart.

*****

Amanda had the foresight to ask the nurse what was wrong, when she received the call to go straight to Jesse's room. She had a strong suspicion that she wasn't needed for medical reasons, if Jesse's life had been in danger then Mark would have called her himself, so she didn't want to walk into the situation blind.

What the nurse told her wasn't exactly helpful, only that Steve had been to visit Jesse and that it had to have been the shortest visit in history.

Amanda made it across the length of the hospital in record time, then gently eased open the door to Jesse's room. The young doctor lay exactly as he had when Mark and Steve had left him. Unable to stand the sound of his sobs, Amanda quickly crossed over to his bed, sat down beside him and gathered him into her arms.

"Sshh," she murmured, rocking him gently.

Jesse didn't even have the will to try and fight her. He lay limply in her arms, barely even aware of her presence, as his tears soaked her lab coat.

"It's okay, let it out. That's it sweetheart, let it all out."

Amanda drew on her experiences as a mother to keep up just the right flow of soothing words. After all, fear was fear, whether it be of non-existent bogeymen, or nightmares that were all too real.

Eventually, she felt the sobs begin to subside and Jesse began to struggle in her arms. Knowing that, by releasing him now, she would risk losing even the slight bond that they had forged, she tightened her grip.

"It's alright, honey, It's only me. Trust me, Jesse, you know I won't hurt you."

The young doctor ceased in his efforts to escape her embrace, but he did turn his tear stained face up to hers.

"A... Amanda?" he stammered, as though surprised to see her there.

"Yes, honey, it's me. Do you feel like telling me about it?" She used the same tone she always used when asking CJ to talk about a bad dream, non-threatening and non-demanding.

"It hurts, Amanda." The words had spilled out before Jesse had even realised he was saying them. "I gave him everything. I let that guy break my hand because I wanted him more than anything, more than I wanted to be a doctor."

"Oh, Jess."

"He doesn't love me any more, Amanda." Fresh sobs began to hitch in his throat. "When he... When he found me, he looked so... It was so humiliating... I couldn't protect myself... He... He's ashamed of me... I saw him... I saw his eyes... He doesn't love me any more."

Then Jesse was lost to his tears again and Amanda could only hold him close and whisper over and over again that everything would be alright, even though she didn't believe those words for a minute.

*****

"Jesse's problems have nothing to do with apportioning blame," Amanda told Mark some time later.

Jesse had eventually cried himself to sleep, but she had stayed with him until Mark, unable to stand Steve's stony silence any more, had asked to speak to her in private. Now they were safely ensconced in Mark's office.

"Are you sure?" Mark asked, praying that she was right. "I was there, Amanda, and the mere sight of Steve was enough to send Jesse over the edge."

"I don't doubt that for a moment, but it wasn't for the reasons that you think." She sighed heavily. "Jesse believes that Steve doesn't love him any more."

"What?"

"Think about it. Until today, Steve hadn't even tried to visit him."

"But that was because he was feeling guilty." Mark leapt to his son's defence. "He was trying to protect Jesse by distancing himself from him."

"You and I both know that, but has anyone explained it to Jesse?" Amanda looked at him sadly. "You were there when they found him, Mark. I know you didn't see him actually tied up, but you saw his reaction to it. He was naked and helpless and too many people saw him like that. He's ashamed, Mark. Guy Patterson took his every last ounce of dignity from him and when he saw Steve today, he thought that he was ashamed of him too."

"Amanda..." Mark suddenly found that he didn't actually have anything to say.

"Mark, I don't think that any of us can fully understand just what Jesse went through. The whole situation must have been so degrading. He needs help, Mark and not the sort of help that we can give him."

"Let me try and talk to him." It was hard for Mark to accept that, for once in his life, he could do nothing to take away his friend's pain.

"It won't work," Amanda insisted. "You were one of the people who saw him. You're the last person he's going to want to see."

Distressed by the very thought that he might have added to Jesse's pain, just by trying to be there for him, Mark could only nod in mute agreement.

*****

Sometime later, Mark found himself outside Jesse's room, looking in on the young man. Jesse seemed to be asleep, but his slumber was anything but restful. A frown creased his all too young face and he shook his head occasionally, his lips moving, but no words coming out. It was obvious that he was caught in the grip of a nightmare.

Mark was desperate to go to him, to stroke his brow and chase away the bad dreams, but Amanda's words were like a lead weight, holding him down. His very presence would only hurt Jesse even more. With a heavy heart, he forced himself to walk away.

Needing to do something, anything that might even remotely help Jesse, he went back to see Steve. He steeled himself for a hostile reception and wasn't disappointed.

"Can't you just drop it, dad?" his son snapped, the moment that he stepped through the door.

"I'm sorry, Steve, but I can't do that." He sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly feeling about a hundred years old. "There's something we need to talk about."

"If it's about Jesse, then I don't want..."

"Oh, for goodness sake, Steve, will you stop being so Damned selfish for just one minute and listen to me?"

Mark's outburst shocked Steve into silence. He couldn't remember the last time his dad had yelled at him like that. Something had to be seriously wrong.

"I'm sorry," Mark said, before Steve could offer his own apology. "I know that you're hurting, but Jesse's hurting a whole lot more."

He saw the dark look that flashed across his son's features at the mention of the young doctor's name, but he also saw how Steve forced himself to bite back any angry retort he might have made.

"It's not what you think, Steve," Mark continued, genuinely grateful to his son, for the effort he was making. "Jesse doesn't hate you. He loves you and he doesn't blame you in the least for what happened."

"So why was just the sight of me enough to send him into hysterics?" Steve demanded, still reeling from the shock of Jesse's reaction.

"It's not easy for me to say this, but Jesse's problems are more psychological than physical. He can't come to terms with what happened to him."

"Or with the fact that it was all my fault. Dad, I don't see where you're going with this."

"Jesse has said less than half a dozen words to me since we brought him in. He can hardly even bear to look at me and he's certainly not blaming me for what happened." He saw from his son's face that he had given him something to think about. "Steve, what Patterson did to Jesse was not only frightening and painful, but it was also utterly degrading."

Steve's face clouded over at that. He remembered only too well how Jesse had looked, tied to that chair. Then he remembered how hurt he had been that the young man had barely looked at him, once he'd removed the blindfold. And he remembered Jesse's tears.

"He's deeply ashamed," Mark went on sadly. "I was there when the police rescued him and I have never seen anything like it. He was literally hiding in a corner. He couldn't bear the thought of anyone even looking at him. And it's still affecting him now. Anyone who saw him in there, you and me included, saw him at his absolute lowest."

"But it wasn't his fault," Steve protested. "For God's sake, they tortured him!"

"Jesse isn't exactly thinking rationally at the moment," his father reminded him. "He is ashamed of what they reduced him to, ashamed that he couldn't fight them, that he let it happen. And Steve, when he saw you earlier, he thought he saw that same shame in your eyes."

"Oh God," Steve whispered.

"It's not your fault," Mark assured him. "Jesse's just trying to find some way to deal with this. How would you feel, if people were to see you like that, naked and completely helpless? It's humiliating and I think he's come up with this defence, because he just doesn't know how he can face us after seeing him like that."

"But dad, he must know that we wouldn't blame him just for being a victim."

"Of course we wouldn't, but Jesse is in a whole world of hurt and he's just trying to find some way to protect himself. Patterson couldn't have known it, but by doing that to Jesse, he inflicted the worst possible kind of torture on him. Worse than any physical pain he might have put him through. After how he suffered with Marcus Marriott, he just wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with it."

"I've got to talk to him." Steve used his good arm to try and push himself out of the bed, but Mark placed a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"That's not a good idea, son."

"But I've got to let him know that I'm not ashamed of him. I love him."

"Steve, I don't think that there's anything you can say right now that will help Jesse," Mark tried to explain. "He's too withdrawn and I'm afraid that you'll just upset him further."

"But..."

"I'm sorry, son, but I can't allow you to visit." Mark said, regretfully. "Jesse's welfare has to be my top priority. Now, I've arranged for him to see a counsellor tomorrow afternoon. It's going to take time, Steve, and lots of it. But it will be alright, I promise you that."

Steve just looked at him, not willing to voice his fears that that was one promise his dad would be unable to keep.

TO BE CONTINUED...