Jim grabbed Ivy by the shoulders and shook her, a little harder than he needed. Her eyes seemed to clear a little. Ivy jerked her body away from Jim's grasp.
"What are you talking about? What do you think I know?" he demanded as Ivy shifted away from him on the bed.
She sat cross legged on the bed, smoothing the blanket with her hands. She swallowed and blinked her eyes. She shook her head a little and looked around like she was not sure where she was sitting.
"Oh God, Jim. I am so sorry." She crawled to the edge of the bed where he sat. "I'm not thinking clearly, I've been….."
"From the looks of this room, I think I know what you have been doing. How long have you been in here." He rose from the bed and turned on the light.
Ivy lifted her arm to shield her eyes. She stood up unsteadily and walked to the bathroom, without a word to Jim.
Jim walked downstairs to the kitchen and found some garbage bags under the sink. Returning up stairs he began to clean up the room. He stripped the bed and remade it with sheet from the hall closet. As he cleaned off the side table he noticed the pill bottles. He knew that Ivy had problems, but he had never really known the extent of them. He glanced at the bathroom door and flipped open his phone.
"Hey, is Gil still in the office. Yeah, I'll hold….. Gil, can you tell me why someone would need depakote, lexapro, synthroid and norethin. Drugs, uh ,huh. Call me back." he flipped the phone shut.
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"Ellie and I are visiting Ivy today." Laura told Jim as he was walking out the door to work.
"Fine." He said over his shoulder. He had just received a call that one of the officers in the department was being questioned by IAB for the extortion case Jim was working and he was barely listening to his wife.
"Fine." Ellie mimicked in her five year old's voice. "fine, fine…."
Jim got in his car. Jim loved his job, but it was not a job you could balance family with easily. Laura had been disappointed with his choice of career. When he had met Laura, he thought he was going to be a lawyer. Defend justice, maybe work in the DA's office, but he knew he was better suited to being a cop. He loved the adrenaline of making the bust. He hated the corruption he saw in the police department itself and was taking steps to uncover it.
Laura had married Jim following graduation from college. He told her about his plans to attend the police academy on their honeymoon. The life she thought she was going to have faded. Her father had been a cop. She knew the life she would now live. She knew Jim was not her father. Jim would not turn a blind eye to the things her father saw on a daily basis. Laura had envisioned a life like Ivy's. Living in one of the big houses out of town. Having plenty of money. She and Ivy had been friends all though college and Laura spent more time with Ivy's family than her own during college.
Jim knew that when he got home tonight he would have to listen to Laura talk about Patrick and Ivy's house, her car and their lifestyle. It wasn't Ivy's and Patrick's fault, Laura was never satisfied with anything. The only thing Laura had that Ivy and Patrick didn't have was Ellie.
Jim had been running down a lead all day on some officers involved in the extortion case, when he go the call on his radio.
"Brass, get to a phone and call your wife, sounds like something is up." the dispatcher said.
Jim got to a pay phone and called his house.
"Jimmy, I went to visit Ivy today, but she didn't come to the door. Her car is there, something is wrong. Can you go check out. I'm worried about her." Jim could tell by Laura's tone of voice she was genuinely worried.
" Where's Patrick?" He asked.
"Out of town at some training thing in Newark." she said. Jim could hear Ellie in the background. "Look call me when you check it out."
Jim drove out to the O'Malley's home. A house in a neighborhood that a fireman could never have afforded unless his wife had inherited a ton of money or unless his father in law was a senator. Patrick was Jim's best friend. The money had not changed their relationship.. Patrick still worked in the same stationhouse in the neighborhood he had started out. In fact, it was the one that served Jim's part of town.
Patrick and Ivy were Elli's godparents. Ivy's father could have set Patrick up in a state position, but he just wanted to be a fireman. Ivy never seemed disappointed in Patrick, the way Laura did in Jim.
At the house Jim knocked on the door a few times. He called out to Ivy and went to the back door. He pulled the spare key from under a rock by the door. Patrick had used the key one night and Jim had told him it was a bad idea to hid a key under a rock. Patrick had laughed and told him to quit acting like a cop.
Jim opened the door and walked around the house. In the kitchen he found her. She was slumped on the floor against the cabinets. The knife was in her right hand. Blood was all over the floor. He grabbed the wall phone and dialed the ambulance. He checked her pulse, still alive. He reached for some dish towels and made a tourniquet around her wrists. She had sliced up not across, she was serious. He clothes were covered in blood. Jim wondered how she had lost so much blood and was still alive.
The ambulance came and picked he up and took her to the hospital. Jim called Laura from the hospital.
"You need to get here. She's gonna need you." Jim told his wife.
"What happened?" Laura asked
"I'll tell you when you get here." He sat in a plastic chair and waited on his wife.
Jim had not been able to reach Patrick and he hoped he could get back to the house before Patrick arrived home. Jim would need to explain the situation to his friend.
Jim was waiting for Patrick on the front porch.
"What's up buddy." Patrick asked when he approached Jim. Jim could smell perfume on Patrick.
"Where have you been" Jim narrowed his eyes at Patrick. "You wife is in the hospital, she slit he wrists with a paring knife."
Patrick turned sharply at Jim's words. Jim's blue eyes were hard and cold.
"Did you know she was pregnant? She had a miscarriage today. What's going on with you two?" Jim snatched Patrick up by the collar and noticed the lipstick on it.
"How long? How long have you been running around on her?" Jim asked "Is that what you were doing in Newark."
"I was at an EMT training meeting. I had to teach CPR. Had to get up close and personal with some of the trainees, come on Jim."
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"Come on Jim you don't need to clean up after me." Ivy came out of the bathroom looking a lot more like herself. She was dressed and her red hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Jim noticed that the red was now shot with silver.
"Twice in twenty years isn't so bad. This is nothing like the first time," He smiled at her. Jim was the only person she had allowed to talk about the suicide attempt.
"It wasn't a miscarriage. He made me have an abortion." she said quietly.
Jim's head snapped up at her and his phone rang at the same time.
"Brass"
"Jim, that combination of drugs, usually taken for Bi- Polar disorder. The norethin is a hormone. Everything okay?" Gil asked.
"Thanks." Brass turned just to see Ivy walk out of the room.
She was in the kitchen making coffee, when he joined her. He didn't sit. Jim stood looking at Ivy. He flexed his fingers and paced a little.
"Jim sit down. I feel better. I shouldn't have been drinking. It interferes with my meds. I had an episode. That's what Patrick always called them. "Episodes" ." she laughed. "I'll call the firehouse and reschedule the service. Everyone will understand my "grief" . After all I nursed him for two years."
Jim sat and accepted a cup of coffee from her. She looked at him.
"Who was on the phone?" she questioned
"Work" he gazed at her, wondering what her life had been like in the last ten years. He had only called occasionally and had casual conversations with her. He knew she and Ellie still communicated. She would update him on Ellie when he called.
Jim had been presented with a lot of information to process in the last hour and he just stared at Ivy.
"I will ask you one more time and you better not lie to me. I will know if you are lying. Did you know that Patrick was Ellie's father?" she leveled her eyes at him as if she were aiming a gun at him.
