Chapter 11: The Daily Grind
(Friday, 25 July, 2003. 0900 hours.)
Steve nervously paced his barren white cell. This was only his second consecutive drug-free day, and in one hour, he was due to meet with his intended victim for the first time since he had tried to kill him. He wished he had another day or two to collect himself before meeting his boss, but he knew it had to be done quickly before the drugs completely left his system, otherwise, there would be no possibility of further treatment even if it was necessary.
Steve had already been told how the meeting would go. He would be restrained in a chair, not a wheelchair, thankfully, but restrained nonetheless. While a part of him initially chafed at the indignity, he knew they couldn't risk the possibility that they had somehow missed some secondary programming that still made him a threat to the Chief, so he had held his peace. At least they were letting him wear regular clothes-jeans and a button-down shirt- instead of his pajamas, and he was being allowed to walk into the room under his own power before the Chief arrived.
No topic of conversation would be off limits, and Steve already knew what he wanted to talk about. He wasn't sure what instructions they were giving the Chief, but Steve had a hunch that he would be allowed to steer the conversation himself. He could ask any questions he wanted, and he had a list in his head already.
The two of them would be alone in a room together. If and when Dr. Lewis believed it was safe, she would send someone in to remove Steve's restraints. If she determined it was not safe for the Chief to be alone with Steve while he was unrestrained, the Chief would have to leave, and Steve would be medicated again and made to suffer through several more days of therapy.
The past two weeks had been more hell than Steve would have thought a living man could endure. It wasn't that any particular experience had been all that bad, but he had been forced to bear so much in such a short span of time.
The day after discovering he had tried, and thankfully failed, to assassinate the Chief, he had suddenly found himself reliving the grief of his sister's death all over again. They'd just been talking, him, his dad, and Jesse, about something amusing that had happened when he was a kid, and all of a sudden, it was there, the memory that Carol was dead.
"I tried to tell her to shift her weight to her back foot," Steve said sheepishly.
"I know," his dad laughed, "but she couldn't hear you over the waves." Looking at Jesse, Mark said, "Carol did very well at first, but then she had this spectacular wipeout, lost the top to her bathing suit, and had to wait out in the surf until Steve brought her a towel. Once she wrapped herself up, she ran dripping up the beach, crying, with Steve running behind her, apologizing and trying not to laugh. She yelled, 'It wouldn't be so funny if I had drowned!' and slammed the door in his face. The top to her suit washed up on the beach right in front of the house two days later."
Suddenly, Steve became very quiet.
"Son?"
"I should have taken better care of her, Dad." He looked sadly up at his father and best friend, and said, "I couldn't have saved her if I'd known she was in trouble, she was just too far away, but I should have taken better care of her when I had the chance."
"Son, you were good to your sister," Mark reassured him. "You were good to her, and she knew it."
"I should have taken better care of her."
"Steve . . . "
"Please, Dad, I don't want to talk about it right now."
After a few silent minutes, his dad and Jesse had left him be. He'd lain in his bed, trying hard not to cry, but the drugs in his system made him like a cork in a stormy emotional sea, and for several hours, he'd drifted from grief to guilt to anger over the death of his sister. Finally, he was emotionally and physically exhausted, and he'd fallen into a long, dreamless sleep.
When he'd woken up, a woman named Dr. Kathleen Lewis was there to talk with him and help him deal with the grief and guilt. Steve could tell immediately that Jesse didn't much like Dr. Lewis, but to Steve, Kat, as she encouraged him to call her, had been nothing if not kind and compassionate.
Steve smiled. Kat had been an unexpected bright spot in his ordeal. He knew better than to expect any kind of real relationship to ever develop, but he had come to look forward to his daily meetings with her. She was pretty, in a severe way, and kind and patient, and he just felt better for talking to her. He found, maybe because she was a stranger, that he didn't want to hold back when she asked him how he felt about something.
It had taken a lot of hard work to get him past the shame of what he had done and the fear of that horrible room with the Water and the Voice and the Face and the Pain. Even now, after all that had happened, Steve wasn't totally convinced that he had nothing to be ashamed of, but at least Kat had gotten him to accept that nobody could blame him after what he'd been through. The fact that he'd been tricked into accepting it was beside the point.
"Steve," Kat began urgently before she even sat down, "I need some advice. You're a cop, and I thought you might be able to help me."
"Kat, what's wrong?"
"I have a friend, she's a little younger than Jesse, and she's in some really serious trouble. She's hiding out right now, and she's asked me for help. I need to tell her what to do."
"Well, what kind of trouble is she in, Kat? What happened?"
"She's been living with this boyfriend of hers, and he's real trouble. For the longest time, it was like he was controlling her. She couldn't do anything without his permission. I didn't even see her for weeks at a time. And he beat her up, Steve, more than once."
"Then she needs to get away from him."
"That's what I kept telling her, but it's too late for that now." Surprisingly, Kat was on the verge of tears. "Her family, that's her mother and her kid brother, had finally coaxed her to come home. They thought she was safe, but he came after her at the house. He just barged in with a baseball bat looking for her. She was upstairs, and her mom told him to go away or she would call the police. He hit her mom, hard, I guess, and she died. My friend got her mom's gun from the bedroom, and came downstairs, and found him threatening her kid brother. She didn't know what else to do, so she shot him. Now her mom is dead, and so is her boyfriend, and she's hiding from the police and doesn't know what to do."
"Kat, if it really happened just that way, she needs to turn herself in immediately."
"But, Steve, she killed him!"
"I know, but given the circumstances, she really didn't have much choice. If it really happened the way you just told me, there's a small chance the DA might not press charges. Even if he does, a jury would never convict her based on what you just told me. As long as she didn't provoke the arguments or previously threaten him, it was pure and simple self-defense."
Kat had pursed her lips and nodded thoughtfully. "Did you really believe the Chief had killed your dad?"
Steve instantly went on high alert. "It's not the same, Kat."
"Why not? And before you answer, keep in mind you were still too drugged to have a will of your own, let alone form a plan."
It had taken several hours of arguing, but finally, Steve had surrendered and agreed that he wasn't quite the cold-blooded murderer he was beating himself up for being. From there, it had been a gradual process of accepting that he had nothing to be ashamed of. Now, it seemed likely that once he could meet with the Chief and see that his superior was all right and did not blame him, Steve could forgive himself for what he had been made to do.
There had been a couple of really awful days in the past few weeks, and though they had slowed Steve's treatment somewhat, they hadn't materialized into the setbacks everyone had feared they would become. They had come back to back, which made them even worse, but somehow better because in Steve's mind they would be eternally blended into one horrible, frightening incident instead of two separate nightmares.
The first had come just a couple of days after he remembered Carol's death. As per the usual routine, Jesse had strapped him into the wheelchair and administered the drugs. They began to take effect in just a few moments. It was yet another new mixture. They changed his meds every few days because the drugs were so potent that taking the same medication for any length of time could cause lifelong addiction and possibly irreversible brain damage.
"How do you feel, Steve?"
Steve frowned and scratched his arm. "Itchy."
Jesse laughed slightly and said, "Maybe we can get you some moisturizing lotion after your shower today."
"No, Jess, I mean I feel really itchy."
Jesse checked where the IV entered Steve's skin and sure enough, it was already red and puffy. By the time he had removed the IV and got his friend back into bed, Steve was had broken out in hives and begun wheezing. The first dose of epinephrine slowed the reaction somewhat, but still, in a matter of minutes, the hives had spread to his throat and mouth, and Jesse just barely managed to intubate him before his tongue swelled, closing his airway completely. A second shot of epi stabilized him briefly, but by then, the small amount of the psychoactive drugs that had made it into his system had saturated his brain and he began to have seizures.
For twelve hellish hours, his dad, Jesse, and Amanda had sat with him as he drifted in and out of consciousness wracked by convulsions and pain. They found they couldn't even touch him to hold his hand or brush his hair off his face. His skin was so sensitive that any contact, even the most lovingly gentle, had the potential to trigger another seizure.
It was sometime after ten o'clock that night when his condition started to improve. Jesse had finally coaxed Mark to step out long enough to have a bite to eat and a cup of coffee, and Amanda was alone with him. She had been telling him about her last visit home to her boys, and how they said they missed him and had sent their love, when suddenly, in just a matter of minutes, his too-rapid heart rate came down and his much-too-low blood pressure went up until they were both within normal range. In less than two hours, his hives were gone and he was breathing unassisted. By morning, except for being utterly exhausted, he looked as if nothing had happened.
Steve grinned. After all the work they had gone through to help him recover his proper memories, no one was at all concerned that he couldn't recall much about the time between his two allergic episodes. He had been allowed to sleep through most of the day following the first bad reaction, waking up just long enough to eat a few meals, brush his teeth, and talk with Kat about how he felt to come so close to death so suddenly. She was surprised to find that it hadn't fazed him all that much, but when he'd told her about other experiences he'd had, she could understand his philosophical attitude. She was even more surprised when she later found out that the stories he had told her were all true.
On the second day following the anaphylactic shock, Steve asked to see Amanda. At first, it was awkward, but once a few things were brought out into the open, the warmth and closeness they had always shared was still there.
"I didn't forget you, Amanda," he said as soon as he saw her.
"Oh, Steve, I know that," she assured him kindly.
He studied her through narrowed eyes and said, "I don't believe you do."
"Steve," she said in that compassionate tone of hers as she came to sit on the bed and take his hand, "I have been here every day, watching what you have been going through, and sometimes, not being able to watch. I know you have had to deal with . . . so much lately, and with everything that must be on your mind and in your heart, it would be selfish of me to expect to take a very high priority. I know you didn't forget me, and I knew, when you were ready, I'd be able to come see you. I would have been here sooner, but Dr. Lewis thought it would be best if I waited until you asked for me."
"I know you were here the other day when I got sick," he said.
"Oh, that, well, Dr. Lewis thought . . . that is . . . "
"She decided to let you come see me in case I didn't make it, didn't she?"
"Now, Steve!"
Steve smiled slightly. "Tell me it isn't so, Amanda."
"You know I won't lie to you. That's why she let me come in, but Steve, I realize life has thrown more at you than you can deal with lately, and I know having me hang around wouldn't have helped . . . "
"But, Amanda . . . "
"No 'buts', Steve. I know you didn't forget me. You were just waiting until you could be civil, that's all." She smiled and squeezed his hand gently. He smiled back, and everything was ok again.
Steve smiled again, remembering the special warmth he'd shared with his friend as they spent a pleasant morning together. She'd told him about the summer camp her boys had gone to and the presents they had made. CJ had wanted to send the pencil cup he'd made for Steve with Amanda, but when she'd explained that she wouldn't be allowed to give it to him while he was in treatment, they had decided to save all the presents for a special welcome home party when he was better. They had lunch together with Mark and Jesse, and then she had given him a hug and a kiss, his father had given him a squeeze on the shoulder, and they had left him alone with Jesse.
"Ok, buddy," Jesse had said as he took out the hypo full of a complex cocktail of psychiatric drugs, "this is a different mix from the one we used the other day. You've tolerated all of these drugs well before, so it's not very likely that they will cause you any problems this time."
Five minutes later, Steve was curled in the fetal position on the bed, suffering with agonizing stomach cramps. He'd already lost his lunch, and whatever might have been left of his breakfast, and every few minutes he would suffer another round of dry heaves that would leave him shaken and exhausted. He'd endured nearly twenty-four hours of pure torture without the benefit of either morphine to ease the pain or compazine to reduce the nausea because both drugs were likely to interact with those already in his system. At least his father and friends were able to offer him some comfort this time by sponging away the perspiration from his face, holding the emesis basin for him, and rubbing his back.
Steve shook his head, wondering why he seemed to dwell on the worst moments of his recent treatment. Most days had been perfectly uneventful. Naturally, every day had had its difficult moments, but most of the time, his days followed a dull routine. He would have breakfast early, followed by a short visit from his father and friends. Then Jesse would dose him with the drug of the day, and after he had ridden out the initial effects of the medication entering his system, he would spend the remaining time until lunch in the treatment room with Jesse trying to piece together what had been done to him. He would eat lunch with his father, Jesse, and Amanda, and then spend the afternoon with Kat, trying to work out how he felt about all he had been through.
Steve smiled, remembering one of the meetings he'd had with Kat. They had been discussing the time Quinn Trask had kidnapped Jesse, dumped him in Utah, drugged him, and convinced him he had been kidnapped by aliens. It had been part of an effort to ruin Jesse's credibility so that his unfavorable reports on a drug he had been testing wouldn't delay the marketing of the medicine. Steve had mentioned that the only reason Jesse had been left alone in the first place was that he had brought only light beer and Steve preferred the real thing.
"It took me a while to stop believing that they had been able to take him because I couldn't drink light beer. I felt really guilty about that for a while."
"But you don't any more?"
Steve shook his head. "No, I don't. Jesse pointed out to me that if I had been there when Trask had come for him, I probably would have been taken, too, and no one would ever have seen me alive again."
"So, your friendship survived that incident."
"Yeah, it did. Our friendship has survived a lot." Steve had laughed slightly then.
"What? Why are you laughing?"
"It just occurred to me, of all the times we have gotten together for one thing or another, Jesse has never brought the beer since then."
"Why do you think that is?"
Steve smiled. He knew. "Jesse's a little superstitious." He had then proceeded to tell Kat all about the dreaded 'Curse of Carmel'.
"Steve? . . . Steve!"
"Huh? Oh, Jess, what?"
"It's time. The Chief is here. Are you ready?"
Immediately, Steve felt his heart jump to his throat. Ignoring his anxiety, he nodded. He had some questions that needed answers, and no case of nerves, no matter how bad, was going to keep him from asking them.