A/N: Sorry for all the time between updates, please don't take away my cookie. I had been on an extended vacation and had no access to the net. No promises here but I will try and update more frequently as long as people are reading it. If you like please let me know! And thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed, it's appreciated!

Chapter 10: Father's and Son's

There was an unbearable tension in the bay right now as they stared each other down. Sizing the other one up, it was almost as if they didn't believe what they were seeing. I wanted to run over to the garbage can that was there and throw up. I knew it was just my nerves but it was still trying me in knots watching them. Neither of them seemed to want to say anything to the other one, or want to be the first one to speak.

I stood there frozen in time, watching and waiting. It felt now like time had completely stood still as they continued to just stare at each other.

"Okay," I said looking at them, "I'm not needed here anymore." I wanted to excuse myself from the awkwardness that I was feeling standing there almost as if I was intruding on something.

"No stay." I finally hear David speak now. "I have nothing to say to him."

I could have sworn that in that instant in time that I saw a flash of hurt in Doug's eyes hearing those words come from David. I didn't know what to do to change the way that David felt towards the man who was his father, nor did I know if I should be the one to try to change anything. "David, give him a chance."

"I think that you need to stay out of it." David said now his attention turned completely towards me, he was starting now to back away from both of us as if what I had said to him cut him, "don't you tell me to give that man a chance."

I inched closer to him, trying to close the gap that was between us as I put my hands up on his shoulder now trying to find a small way to connect with him with out putting myself to close emotionally to him, "David, please there's a lot that you don't know about him. There's a lot that you don't know because Dana twisted the story to fit what she wanted."

He pulled away from me now. Once again, I watched him start to back away from me, away from the situation that we had found ourselves in. "Don't Erica." He said taking a few steps back, "I can't believe that you would befriend him, let him into your life after everything you know I have been thru."

"David," my voice and demeanor had changed since our argument had ended, "you can't blame him for what she did." I say trying to be soft and compassionate with him now, "you can't blame him for what you did. You are a grown man and you make your own decisions, you make your own fate. Who I am friends with, who I work with, none of this is going to change what's going on between you and me. I'm not taking sides here, you are, you were rather my husband, but he's a coworker who has been patient and a good teacher, a mentor for me, taken me under his wing and shown me the ropes here. He's listened to me."

It was almost as if I was now talking to a wall. He continued now taking slow steps away from me. "Forget it Erica."

There was silence from Doug now; I thought that he might have wanted to say something. Maybe I was hoping that he would try and explain why he had done what he had done. Try and get David to see the other side of the story. My eyes quickly look at him. It was as if he was shocked and dumbfounded.

"Wait a minute." I found myself once again grabbing now at him, "you have been yelling at me, chasing me around telling me to talk to you, now here that I have made time and bent over backwards to make that time for you, you are walking away. And why is that? Because I have become friends with your father, a man that you haven't seen in what 20 some years. And you won't give him the time of day because of what Dana said about him, yet you wrote me telling me that you have changed and that you told me that he was a good man. Where did that go?" I was bombarding him with questions now, "what would grams say about this? That you came all the way up here to talk to me, you saw her son but yet you didn't have the courage to talk to him?"

"Stop it Erica, you are wasting your time and mine right now." He turned now looking at Doug, "I'm sorry but right now I don't want to get to know my father." He was looking him in the eyes right now. "It's been too long, too much done and said and I don't have to listen to him, or to you."

I finally hear words come from Doug as I quickly again turn my head to watch him speak.

"Erica let him go, if he doesn't want to talk to me, or see me that's his choice." Doug says with a soft voice, you can tell that he's been hurt by this as much as the rest of us.

I try to will myself to respect what the two men want but there's something inside me that doesn't want to see it go this route. Something is screaming at me that this two need each other, family was important and that's what these two were in a way. Time apart, distance doesn't change family. "You don't get to choose the family that you are born into. You can't change the past, but you can attempt to make amends for what has happened." I am desperate now with the two men as my eyes shoot from the father to the son. "Family David, it's all we have in this world to keep us from being alone. That man for better or worse is your family. You can't just turn your back and pretend that he's not."

"Watch me." I hear him say.

"This is the one thing that if you do David, I can promise you that in the end you will end up regretting it. No one wants to be alone, to spend their lives wishing that things had been different." I find myself clinging to his arm now, wishing that I had the man that I had married in front of me, not the shell of a person that was there with me.

"I can regret something that I never knew." His voice had turned cold as he spoke to me, his eyes diverted away from me now and he wasn't even looking at Doug. I don't think that even if he had wanted to that he would have been able to make eye contact with him.

"It's right here." I say. "It's right there." I find myself pointing now in Doug's direction. "Don't turn your back on this, what happened to the man I knew who had wanted to meet him. The man who had all those questions saved wishing that he could have five minutes with his dad to ask him. You have that now, maybe even more than five minutes to ask him all those questions to get the answers that you wanted. All you would have to do is talk to him." I feel as if I am pleading a case for a man who was being convicted of murder caught with the weapon in his hand.

"That was a foolish dream of mine." He said, "I don't want that. His excuses or explanations I don't need them anymore. I came here to talk to you, not to him."

"I know what it's like David to grow up with out a father." I say as I put my hand under his chin to get him to look me in the eyes, "you know that. Your father is right there. You still have a chance to get to know him, to have a connection. Don't waste that David."

With that said to him, I watched him turn his back to me and start to walk across the bay towards the parking lot, "you know where I am if you change your mind, if I don't hear from you by the end of the week, I will send the papers to your lawyer."

I watch him now reach the car that he must have rented at the airport and watch him climb into it with out saying another word to me. I turn to look at Doug, his head hung low. You can see the defeat and the sadness in his eyes. I debate for a minute about going after David to get him to change his mind.

"You tried that's all anyone can do." I hear him say in a soft voice as he turns away from me and heads back inside the hospital.

I know what I have to do; I just hope that I have the time, the strength and the will to do it. I wasn't going to let it all end like this. I might have been willing to let my marriage go down in flames but I couldn't let this suffer the same fate. I couldn't watch them both hurt like this; it was almost too much for me to bear.