Chapter 6: The Missing Piece
Carter sat in the living room on her couch with a bottle of water in his hand. From where he was sitting he could hear her once again restless sleep and his mind shifted from worry to that of what might be wrong with her.
Slowing his mind started to put pieces together. Taking in what he knew and trying to figure out by just what little he knew. She was missing work saying that she wasn't feeling well, that her stomach hurt, she was vomiting, nauseated, suffering from the chills, not sleeping, obviously plagued by nightmares, she was tired and irritable, had emotional outbursts that just came out of the blue. Sounded like PMS or the flu really when you looked at it from the outside.
He listened to her and he watched the minutes on the clock tick by, the flashing numbers of the digital display ever so slowly changing. The sky darkened and soon the room was filled with just the light from the outside street lamps. Carter could tell that Abby was awake again that she wasn't sleeping anymore. He watched her creeping from the bedroom into the kitchen, there was a caution to her step as if something or someone was going to get her. He kept his eyes focused on her, watching her movements; she went to the cupboard and got down a glass filling it with water, looking out the window as she drank slowly. She then leaned forward to check to make sure the window was closed and locked tightly shut.
Carter didn't know if she was even aware that he was there anymore, for when she turned around he could see her eyes and it was almost as if she was looking right through him. That he might have been in that room, but not in her mind. She returned to the bedroom from which she had emerged, not a word spoken between the two of them and Carter left with an eerie feeling that something was horribly wrong with Abby.
He put his head into his hands now as he thought of everything and anything that it might have been that had been troubling her, was it the flu, was she getting sick from something else, perhaps she had been pushing herself to hard after everything that she had been going through. Had he pushed her to hard and should he have given her some more space when she had first gotten out of the hospital or had he not been there enough for her. He had more questions than answers at this point in time.
He got up and turned one of the lamps on next to Abby's bookcase and looked through her books, he would be there all night just to make sure that nothing else was going to happen to her, for his piece of mind rather than for hers. He picked up oddly enough for some reason, a book on psychiatry and diagnosing mental disorders. It was strange how that book had called to him as he sat down in the chair and started flipping through the book.
Abby had highlighted some things in there from the classes she had taken, very studious and it seemed that she caught the important things. But never had Carter ever doubted how smart she was, he knew under that tough exterior laid a very bright and talented woman who just needed the chance to really fly.
He just kept reading, it wouldn't hurt to brush up on what he knew anyway and it was passing the time. With each turn of the page more time ticked off the clock. He could still hear Abby in the bedroom tossing and turning every now and then he would hear her make a trip to the bathroom, the water run and then all would be quiet again.
Then it jumped out at him once particular chapter on stress related disorders. The more he read the more he wondered if this wasn't the cause of her ails, if it was at least there was something that they could do about it. He would be able to get her some help. She'd be able to in time sleep again not plagued by nightmares and perhaps eat something, stop all the symptoms that were plaguing her.
It wouldn't be easy that much he knew and he also knew that she would be reluctant to get help from anyone. You never wanted people to think that you were crazy and people tended to think that if they found out you were seeing a shrink and that was exactly what she was going to have to do.
He had walked in those same footsteps, suffered from the same thing that she was suffering from now. Granted he didn't realize what it was until it was too late and yet it was the same man causing it in her that had caused him to feel the same way. How could one man destroy or try to destroy two people like this. Carter knew what he needed to do and there was only one person who had the answers that he was searching for now. Paul held the key and Carter was going to take it away from him.
There had to be something that was motivating the psychopath to come up with the plan to stab Abby and even more so to return when she didn't die. There had to be a reason that Paul picked Abby out of all the people at County to attack, Carter was most certain that this wasn't just another random crime, that he hadn't just happened to walk out of the mental hospital and stab the first person he came into contact with. Abby wasn't even in the same room or had even treated him, she had no real connection with that fateful valentines day other than she worked there and she was his girlfriend now.
Carter knew that Abby could possibly recover from the PTSD that she had slipped into now, that was the cause, he was most fairly certain of her symptoms now. The pieces of the puzzle falling slowly into line with one missing. There was one piece of the entire thing that was missing and he needed to get to the bottom of it. What he was about to do might not have been right and it might not have been wrong, but in his mind Paul was no longer mentally out of it but seemed to be a man who might have strayed onto a path of revenge for something that he had perceived to have happened.
He would have to wait until morning and he would make sure that someone was staying with Abby while he went and did this. Being alone right now was not something that would be good for her, there were to many other directions that this could all go in. He was most afraid of after all this time having her inadvertently slip up and head down a long path that would leave her at the bottom of a very lonely bottle. He wouldn't and couldn't let that happen to her, she meant to much to him for him to lose her like that.
Carter walked over towards the phone knowing that it was late but needing to make a couple of phone calls. As best he could he explained the situation to Susan, who promised to be over first thing in the morning. Carter was vague as to what he needed to do but he promised Susan that it was something that was very important, and it was, this was something that was very important to him.
