Terry quickly answered question 1: "Charlie's at home; Amita drove him." Don looked at her skeptically, sensing there was something more, then circled question 2, handed back her notepad. There were two people in the world he trusted to tell him the truth, always, even when a lie would be kinder. Charlie wouldn't lie because he was just incapable of it—he physically seemed to reject falsehood; his body language gave him away every time. Terry, on the other hand, could lie but never did; she thought people should make decisions based on truth, so they could fully understand the consequences.
It took her a while to write out an answer to his question. That meant it was bad news: simple questions with complicated answers always were. While she wrote, Don thought about honesty being the best policy. Terry's was a noble attitude, although not one that he could ever quite endorse. There had been problems with Kim long before he'd moved to California; no, he didn't miss Fugitive Recovery at all; really, Charlie, Mom didn't suffer much at all in the end. Yup, Don thought disgustedly, among my many other dubious talents is the fact that I can lie like a rug.
When Terry finally handed him back the notebook, she'd filled seven pages. She'd explained who Anthony Padgett was, how he'd been foisted off on Charlie because none of the other professors wanted to deal with his outbursts and temper tantrums. How the boy had been on medication for schizophrenia praecox but had gone off his meds, worried that they blurred his thinking. After two weeks clean, he'd actually become nervous about his un-medicated behavior; he'd felt himself slipping into madness and had promptly gone back on his medication, taking more than a standard dose in a naïve attempt to make up for things. When in custody, Anthony had explained all of this and the doctors had concurred: it was the extra medication that had prompted his attack on Charlie, whom he'd been watching for weeks. Don remembered that his brother had gotten hang-up calls on his cellphone; he recalled hearing someone slam the front door while he and Charlie were both in the kitchen. They would never know how much of that was actually Anthony, of course, because the student had no clear recollection of even coming to the house. Charlie had been able to explain the latter half of the attack and there was Don's head injury to account for the first half, but there were gaps in the narrative. "What happened to your left hand?" Terry had written at this part in her account; Don wished he could answer that.
The last three pages were Terry's condensation of various medical reports. Meticulous in all of her paperwork, she had unthinkingly placed them in alphabetical order: Alan, Charlie, Don. When he got to that section, Don stopped reading and dropped back into his pillows. Terry had grabbed his hand and been so alarmed by the rapid pulse hammering beneath his clammy skin that she'd regretted not taking Dr. Powell's pager number.
"I didn't know about Dad," Don had said, quietly. Somehow, not being able to actually hear himself made it easier to talk. Terry reached for the notebook, but he held onto it. She would write something sympathetic and gentle and absolutely true, and he didn't want to hear it. Read it. Whatever. Nothing would erase the fact that he had totally forgotten that his father had been injured, and badly. "I mean, I knew. I had to know, I was there, but…I forgot? How did I forget that, Terry?" He answered before she did. "I was worried about Charlie. I'm always worried about Charlie, ever since he started working with us on that rape case. When he's working on something, he forgets to look both ways before crossing the damn street, so I just kept waiting, you know, waiting for something to happen to him. Something related to one of our cases and to his own genius carelessness. I didn't even see this one coming, Terr, didn't even see it."
Don looked at her for an answer, bewildered by his failure. Joining the FBI had seemed the most logical career move in the world: some people might think it was a jump from minor league ball, but to Don it had seemed like the natural continuation of a life spent looking out for others. But looking out for your parents—that still seemed wrong, a looking-glass world inversion of things. Having to stand by and watch his mother get sicker and sicker had rattled Don more than he'd thought possible. He'd kept himself from falling apart only by constantly reminding himself that he wasn't a doctor, wasn't an expert, couldn't do any more than what he was doing. It was a cold comfort, and it didn't help him now. This time he had been the expert.
Terry was still trying to decide what to say when a nurse came in and counting tablets into a small paper cup.
"These should help the middle ear swelling," he explained, "You should see results in about an hour or so." Terry immediately reached for her notebook to write this down for Don.
Her partner just waved her away; he was already trying to pretend everything was fine. My God, was he trying to impress the nurse? Someday, Terry knew, the 'strong for others' act that did so much to reassure witnesses and clients was going to backfire. Her psychology training assured her that it would be sooner rather than later, but what could she say? She gathered up her notebook and stepped out into the hallway to give the nurse some room. She and Don no longer had the kind of relationship that brooked suggestions about his behavior. Too much had changed in ten years.