There is a place of existence, when your blood pressure is especially low, right on the very edge.
In between possibly.
Many people briefly experience it as they awaken each day, but to remain persistently there for hours at a time, to be able to shift one's eyes to the right and see the fantastic, the dreamlike, and even memory in the darkened corner of your half-closed eyelids, and then shift them to the left to see what is real... and to be able to make the choice to do so does not happen to many.
For days Alex lingered there.
Sometimes truly unconscious, at others in this edge-place.
She could not speak for the tube down her throat.
Not that she had anything to say as she eyed the shadowy images in her periphery. She merely floated. It was not at all unpleasant except when her throat and lips were especially dry.
Often enough someone would swab them with something cool and moist.
She could hear them all around her, both the real and the shadowy, but couldn't ever remember what they said.
Bobby was there reading aloud sometimes, she thought. And her mother chatting about God knows what as she moved restlessly about the room. Her father, going on about police work maybe. Or perhaps that was just what she expected of them.
Once, over in one of the shadowy corners, she saw Chris, that guy she'd dated two years ago. He'd been attentive and sweet, loved the theater and going out to dinner—had green eyes. But his job had moved him to Germany, right? So why was he there?
And then there'd been Meg Goren standing at the foot of her bed too. Alex wrinkled her brow and moved her eyes to Bobby reading the paper in the chair near her. She tried to tell him, 'Look, there's your mother', but he wasn't listening.
She looked back at Meg then and wanted to ask her how it was that she was there being dead and all but then fell asleep before she could form the words.
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Here's how it played out: Marjorie Shendrick had faxed a letter of confession to One Police Plaza just before Bobby and Alex had arrived at her office. She told of her suspicions, of her own research into Zel Larkins' writing, and finally of her ill-fated trip to Christine's apartment early that morning.
In a hastily handwritten codicil to her will, she directed nearly half of her large fortune to The Met's building program, and most of the other to The Mitzvah Society, as well as a large additional sum for the families of the lost FBI agents.
She hoped, she wrote, that this might in some way atone for her hubris.
That closed the Larkins murder. No direct arrest, but a solve nevertheless.
Arano was turned over to the FBI with no further complaint.
Of the ten agents in the opera house that night, only two were found alive. One still in critical condition. Two of the bombers were also believed caught in the blast, leaving two remaining at large despite the best efforts of thousands.
Bobby gleaned most of this from the newspaper, as well as from covert discussions with Lampley and Valdez.
From them he learned that the ATM security tape across the road from the Larkins apartment had shown Christine coming down to the lobby moments after Arano left with the red mailing tube. She'd made a phone call at the desk while there, then went back upstairs.
The front desk phone records had not been checked at the time. Sloppy, he sighed.
Her call had been to Dr. Shendrick who, accordingly, the tape revealed, showed up shortly thereafter to confront her patient. The detectives believed she had taken Christine's body out through the parking garage and into an alley then.
The doorman who was supposed to have been on duty that night had been asleep in the office, he'd later admitted.
Goren re-folded the newspaper then and looked over at Eames. Asleep now. There had been brief periods of semi-consciousness in the week since the surgery, but how aware she'd been was anyone's guess. The meds in her system were pretty strong.
They'd all visited and talked and read to her. Played her some music. Her room became a veritable bower, her name and details of their story having been in the paper. There were bright pink tulips from Lewis, tall gracefully arching orchids with sprouted willow from David Drew... roses from the Carvers, the Deakinses, the squad... and so on...
He'd fallen into something of a routine during the week.
He found that if he rose at the same hour each morning, whatever sleep he'd had the night before, and ate a simple breakfast before going out, it helped occupy his mind.
He'd take the newspaper with him, and one of his medical books usually, and walk to one of the many museums or galleries in town to kill the few hours until they'd allow him in to visit. There were many he'd been planning to visit over the years but hadn't had the time to get to.
One foot in front of the next he would walk before painting after painting, photograph after photograph, sculpture after sculpture. But when he'd stop before, say, a bleak Mondrian and try to consider its negative space, he only saw the twisted pathways of neurons and the mis-firing of synapses float before him.
He couldn't get an accurate estimate from anyone on how long her heart was actually still, on either occasion. And could only ask when her family wasn't nearby.
And so he wondered who she will be if she comes back at all.
After the art, it's time for the hospital, and so, a step at a time, he made his way there.
He's already decided that he will ask for a leave of absence.
Perhaps for a month, maybe two. After his mother, after Alex, he feels his grip is not what it should be. And the old fears are surfacing. Perhaps he'll take a trip. Perhaps try therapy again, though it's so damn hard to find a therapist who knows more than he.
This is all contingent on what he must believe—that she will come back and, after suitable convalescence, be well enough to work again.
He's not going to go through a temporary partner again.
And as he sits daily in her room, his shoulder aching, he feels that something is coming.
Something just out of sight. He doesn't know what and doesn't much like the feeling of his keen instincts turning within.
But something's ahead. Something he's pretty sure he doesn't want to face.
Even when she wakes up.
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Midway into the second week, the doctors felt Eames alert enough to remove the breathing tube.
Her mother held her hand as it was painfully extracted.
"Bear down, try to cough as I pull, Alex. That's a girl," Bobby heard the nurse speak in a slightly patronizing tone.
From his position outside her door he waited and felt he could pretty well imagine the expression in her eyes right now.
"Now I know you want a drink, but we need to be sure that you can swallow, and breathe on your own. So I'm just going to swab your mouth. Sorry, honey."
He listened to her cough as she was checked over.
And finally, "What... are all these flowers for... somebody die?" she rasped softly.
And a sort of relief flooded over him.
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A new routine began.
He still came every day. He updated her on the case and the progress that was being made on locating the bombers and sometimes read the newspaper to her.
Occasionally he'd look over as he was speaking to see her brow furrowed. He knew then that she was having trouble remembering. Her throat still quite raw, she spoke little, but he finally gleaned that she really only had spotty memories of everything that happened at the opera house after she arrived that evening.
"We were handcuffed to a pipe," he'd gently reminded her and showed her the bruises and rubbed places on their wrists. But she didn't remember that.
It was not unexpected that the memories closest to the time of her injury and subsequent surgery should be foggy. This was common enough. He was more interested in the rest of her mind. Where it was, what it remembered.
One afternoon, he walked in to find her sitting up trying food.
"Any good?" he grinned.
She only grimaced and pushed the tray away. She studied him for a moment.
"They told me you were shot," she whispered, still hoarse.
He looked up at her and saw, for the first time, the deep penetration in her eyes he remembered from before.
He nodded.
"Are you all right?" she checked and he could see sincere concern there too.
"I'm fine," he smiled.
She nodded, willing to let him brush it off for now.
"Bobby, while I was dopey... This is crazy... but I thought I saw your mother in the room."
He was surprised by this, "Really?"
She nodded.
"Did she say anything?"
She shook her head at that and looked at him again, "How are you doing, Bobby... I mean, really?"
He looked down at the newspaper in his hand and knew that he must answer her in an authentic way and not in the small-talk sort of way he'd prefer right now.
"I... I called my brother the other night," he admitted, and looked over at her.
She lifted her brows, "How'd that go?"
"Terrible," he smiled. "But I'm going to call him again."
She smiled back, "Brothers can be real pains in the ass.
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She called him late one night after visiting hours.
"Did I wake you?" she asked.
"No, just watching Jon Stewart. Everything okay?" he asked as he switched off the remote.
She was silent a moment.
"Eames?"
"I remembered something..."
He waited.
"After she hit me and ran to the door... she came back and pointed the gun at us... I heard the shot."
"I thought you were unconscious then."
"I guess not. Unless... I've imagined it after you told me about it..."
"That's possible," he allowed, "the brain's tricky."
"I know."
They let that stretch between them for a moment.
"Bobby?"
"Yeah?"
"You're sure you're all right?"
"Absolutely."
He listened then as she turned restlessly in her hospital bed.
"It never gets completely dark here, even at two in the morning there are still lights..."
"Makes sleeping difficult."
"How've you been doing in that department?"
"I've had easier times," he admitted. "But you get to go home tomorrow."
"To the ministrations of dear old mom."
"It won't be for long."
"I know. I shouldn't complain. Everyone's been wonderful. I just want... life back."
"Yeah. I know."
And he rolled over onto his side in his own bed.
"Listen, Eames. Since you're going home and all..."
"Yes?"
"I've been thinking..."
She waited.
"I've been talking to my brother again..."
"That's good."
"I think I'm going to go out and see him for awhile."
He held his breath while she processed.
"Seattle?" she checked.
"Yeah."
"Well, I think that's a great idea, Bobby."
Had her voice been too bright?
"Yeah, I think so too."
"Would your Mom have liked that?"
"It would have depended on the day you asked her."
"Right."
"Well, I should let you sleep..."
"You too."
"'Night, Eames."
"'Night, Goren."
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There comes a time during recovery when the anger really sets in.
And in that most Kubler-Ross of ways it cycles in and out through daily living.
So long days of bad daytime television, scheduled visits from mom (mealtimes, doctor follow-ups, etc), the cards and flowers and visitors now faded with the immediate danger... all pile up on one another.
And cascade right over.
Until the simple frustration of trying to open a can of tuna with an opener that may once have crossed the Alps with Hannibal, boils up into complete and utter fury...
And then, to your surprise, you find you're standing in your own kitchen with broken glass scattered about your feet.
She's well enough to be pissed.
Well enough that her incision is driving her crazy.
Well enough to try to do stuff she shouldn't.
But then going downstairs to get the mail feels like a ten mile hike...
And she's snapped and apologized to her mother and then cried in the bathtub alone at night.
She's also tried to read.
And to write in that covert way she has because, secretly, sometimes she's ten years old and knows if her brothers catch her doing something so sissy, she'll never hear the end of it.
She really wants to go back to work.
And Bobby's been gone for two weeks.
Her only evidence of his existence the odd perfunctory email.
Hell, she snorts to herself, they might not even be from him. She can think of three cases at least right off the top of her head in which perps sent emails in another's name.
Ah, screw it.
She picked up the phone and called Lewis.