It hasn't been a month—aren't you proud? I finally kicked my stubborn muse into gear. This chapter is actually part of one that was much, much longer. So, expect the next chapter much sooner than the others—I hope.
As of right now, there's three more chapters left in this little story, unless I end up with another gargantuan chapter like this one. We're almost to the end, thanks for sticking with me!
CHAPTER VI
The ICU door offered nothing but a hollow clank as it closed behind Don and Alan Eppes, shutting behind it a portion of their lives, their hope. Tired footsteps echoed off of bare walls and down empty halls, their hesitant pace a testament to a father's reluctance, a brother's shame. Had the nurse not been staring intently at their backs, the Eppes men would have remained there, standing a constant vigil as close to Charlie as the cold doorway would allow. But as the hallways uncoiled into the main foyer—nearly deserted of life so early in the morning—both men felt their hearts grow cold as they stared at the emotionless black night through hospital's sliding glass doors.
Alan half turned, glancing back into the hallway, half-hoping to see Charlie turn the corner, unharmed, that this was all a wicked nightmare, an illusion. When he turned back Don was gone. Alan could barely spot the back of his son's white shirt as the darkness enveloped it. Suppressing a cry of half-surprise and disdain he stumbled after Don and found him all but running through the parking lot.
"Donny!" Alan called to his son, his voice seemingly small against the prodigious night.
Alan watched his son storm across the length of the road abreast of the parking lot like a caged animal, his head whirling, searching. Don walked a somewhat crooked path, his head swiveling back and forth wildly. Then, suddenly, he stopped cold. His body doubled over in frustrated realization, uttering an expletive that all but rattled his teeth. Whipping his head up, he swore again, blatantly cursing at the nearly empty parking lot.
Terry had his SUV.
The sound galvanized Alan's latent paternal instincts and he started forward to meet his son at a speed that belied his age. He came upon Don whipping out his cell phone, punching furiously at the keys. His son's hands trembled, making the simple task nearly impossible, blurring the phone to nothing but a smear of iridescent light in his hand. Alan swallowed hard, dread growing in the pit of his stomach as he watched his son nearly tearing himself apart from the inside out.
As Don raised the phone to his ear, the distant shine of a streetlight gleaming off the sheen of sweat on his face.
"Lake," Don heard Terry speak breathlessly into the phone shortly before the last ring.
"Terry?" Her name sounded as ragged as the shaky breaths Don managed to take.
"Don?" His voice unsettled her, made a cold feeling develop mercilessly throughout her body. "Don, what is it? How's Charlie?"
"Terry," he did not hear her question. "You have my SUV?"
She took a moment to gather her thoughts, the question broad-siding her. "I—uh, yeah."
For reasons even she herself was unable to fathom, Terry had driven Don's SUV home that night. Maybe she knew he would be calling--maybe she hoped he would. Maybe she just wanted to keep a piece of him with her, a piece of the whole Don, the familiar agent, her friend.
"Where are you?" He sounded purely exasperated.
"I just got home—Don, it's almost two in the morning, is something wrong?"
Don sputtered. Of course something was wrong. His brother hovered between life and death; that was wrong. He had done nothing to protect him; that was wrong. He hadn't done his job right; that was wrong too.
"Terry, do you have it with you?" Anger tinged his words though Terry knew the tone was not because of her.
"Yeah . . . do you need me?"
"Can you—t-they won't let us stay with him, Terry—can you—"
Terry's stomach flipped. "I'll be there in thirty minutes, tops."
Don staggered over his response, "I-I—uh—thanks."
"No problem, Don. Hold on," she added, pouring empathy into the two simple words, hoping Don would comprehend them.
She disconnected without another word and Don slapped his phone shut, dropping his arms to his sides.
"Donny," Alan reached out to touch his son's arm, the simple gesture igniting a fire that sent Don whirling away, recoiling almost in fear.
"I—I'm sorry, Dad," he gasped, his head tilted to the cement.
"Sorry?" Alan could scarcely believe his ears. "Donny, sorry for what?"
"I … I …"
Alan drew closer, sensing the invisible wall his son had constructed, a feeble attempt to obscure his emotions that now slowly crumbled beneath his father's intuitive gaze.
"You did nothing wrong, Don."
"Shit! Nothing wrong? I failed. Failed you, failed Charlie. I didn't do my job. It wasn't good enough. Nothing wrong? Damn it, I did everything wrong!" Throwing his arms in violent gesticulation further punctuated his wild sentence.
"You can't hold yourself responsible for everything that goes wrong under your watch, Don."
Don's head snapped up, staring at his father with cold eyes.
"Yes I can."
The terse statement, so icy it stung, propelled Alan into a line of action he had not dabbled in for many years. Lurching forward he snagged Don's arm just above his elbow and swung his son to face him with a strength only a father could know. Don didn't respond, not even a flinch.
"Don, look at me."
Slowly Don's gaze wandered upward to meet his father's face and found it molded in a look he had rarely seen, a hardened expression that belied a hidden compassion of the utmost kind.
"Don," Alan's voice resonated from his throat, a deep, velvety sound. "You will not blame yourself for this, do you understand me? Charlie … made the decision to go to the crime scene on his own, just like you made the decision to allow him to. And I didn't ask any questions. There was nothing any of us could have done, Don, we didn't know …"
"We did know, Dad. At least I did."
"So you knew that a deranged man would go after your brother with a gun?"
Don drew a breath to speak but could find no words. His hands flexed, the fingers frozen, grasping for answers just beyond his reach. Alan could feel his son's entire body shaking beneath his hand in pure frustration.
"I--I let it get away from me."
"Don…"
His son tore away from him, turning away to pace in small circles. "There's only one reason Charlie's in that coma right now."
Alan's eyes widened as he heard his son's voice breaking. Don hadn't done that since…
"B-Because I wasn't there for him."
They weren't really tears, more of a sting behind his eyes, but they conveyed the same emotions: anger, agony, defeat, hopelessness, regret. Five notes in a dissonant chord that ripped at Don's mind and heart.
Alan swallowed hard, tortured. He reached out to touch his son again, this time in comfort, but as soon as flesh touched flesh Don shrugged his father's hand away, ashamed.
"I—I'm sorry, Dad," he breathed, shuffling a distance into the darkness.
Alan sighed, wanting to comfort his son but knowing he was not ready, not with his mind in such a state of self-loathing. Letting his gaze float to the sky, the nearly starless night, Alan sighed again and hoped—prayed, even—that Don would recover soon. Charlie's survival depended on it.
For an indeterminable amount of time Alan resigned himself to watching his son pace back and forth across the concrete, his stride sluggish and, though he tried to hide it, pained. Every so often he could see Don's lips vaguely moving as he turned, bathing his face in the moonlight. But Don barely made a sound—not that Alan needed or wanted to hear what he was saying anyway.
Time again regained its elastic quality, thrusting Alan into a noiseless vortex where, despite his thoughts hurtling by at a nauseating rate, the entire world around him ground to an unbearably slow pace. Seconds dragged on for hours; the minutes elongated to an unbearable stretch of black, bleak eternity.
Alan's mind reeled back a few hours to when Don had first approached him with the news. Retrospect nagged persistently at the back of his mind and made white-hot regret surge through his veins. The words he had said, though perfectly understandable coming from any man in such a situation, now burned like acid in his throat.
"I said it, Donny! Why—How—my son … Donny, how … could you …?"
Watching his son pace back and forth, Alan suddenly felt at fault—at least in part—for Don's current emotional state. He wanted to say something—an apology, perhaps—to assure his son that he had done no wrong, that all these horrible events were nothing more than a misunderstanding, a horrible nightmare that would end with dawn's coming . . .
But Alan was too overwhelmed to speak much of anything; his tongue felt large and cumbersome in his mouth. And he doubted if Don could hear anything now.
A pair of headlights, stunningly bright, sliced through the dim light of the parking lot, the vehicle they were attached to nothing more than a looming black shadow. Terry seemed hesitant, somehow, to even approach them. The SUV crawled through the parking lot and stopped at Don's side. He paused in his pacing long enough to drag his head upward to glance at the tinted windows with a sour expression.
The window rolled down and Terry met Don's tired, sunken eyes. Her partner showed barely a hint of recognition, every feature of his face frozen in one blank, emotionless expression. Alan suddenly appeared at his son's side, placing a gentle hand on Don's shoulder that made the younger man flinch.
"Terry," Alan all but whispered, "thank you. Thank you for coming."
"I—it's not a problem, Mr. Eppes." It sounded awkward, but it was all she could offer.
Alan's grip on his son's shoulder tightened as he opened the passenger side door. "Get in, Don."
His son slid into the SUV without a word, even his movements silent. Coupled with his nondescript expression, Don seemed like nothing more than a ghost at that moment.
Alan pulled himself into the back seat and closed the door. Terry slipped the SUV in gear and slowly pulled out of the parking lot. She knew the way from here.
That house. Charlie's house. How distant it seemed now. Inappropriate. Vile. It mocked him. Don forced down acid boiling up his throat as he watched it approach. He didn't want to go to that house. He wanted to crawl to a corner of his apartment, secluded. Away from all the memories, from all the shame.
Terry pulled into the driveway and let the SUV idle. She said nothing, remained staring forward. The tense situation made the air in the SUV slowly turn thicker, stagnant—a growth that abruptly stopped as Alan opened the door. He gave an ample nod to Terry before closing his door and waited for Don to exit the vehicle. His son glanced over at Terry, his hollow expression chilling her to the bone.
"Come on, Donny," Alan spoke softly, opening the passenger side door to face his son directly.
"Aren't you taking me to my apartment?" The question wasn't really directed at either of them, as if voiced from a distance.
Alan reached out and grabbed Don's arm again. "No, Don. I—I need you here with me."
"Damn it!" Don turned toward his father with the first real emotion he had shown in half an hour. "I…I…"
But his father's will was far stronger than Don's own. He all but pulled his son—a son he suddenly feared far more broken than the other lying in ICU—from the SUV and steered him toward the front door, pushing the door of the SUV shut as he went.
"Don, please…"
"Dad … I … can't. I don't want to deal with this right now."
"Deal with what? The fact that your brother's in bad shape? The fact that you feel you failed him in every possible way?"
Don shuddered. From his own mind, the words hurt, but coming from his father, they nearly killed him. He felt pieces of himself, memories and feelings, slowly being ripped away.
Alan stopped walking and swung to face his son. Both hands came down on either shoulder and he stopped to stare into Don's eyes. His son met his gaze, albeit hesitantly.
"Well you know what, Don? You didn't fail him. You didn't fail me. And you didn't fail yourself. The only failing you're doing is beating yourself up like this. And I won't let you go on doing it. Now stop it, before I have to knock some sense into you … the old fashioned way."
Don sputtered, any feeble hope of a reply dying in his throat. Alan kept his eyes trained on him, a looming presence. Don hated himself for it, but he kept on walking toward that house—Charlie's house.
Alan reached the door first and realized that in his haste earlier in the day he had left it unlocked. The handle turned gracefully in his hand and the door yawned open, exposing the dark hallway.
"Donny," the name drew his son's eyes upward slowly. "Go … change clothes, please?"
A wave of uneasiness hit Don like nausea. In his hysteria he had all but forgotten the denim pants heavy with Charlie's blood that had been branded into his memory hours before. The stain had faded to a grotesque brown through the hours, now looking more like dirt than precious lifeblood. Fearing nausea would consume him entirely, he staggered over the threshold and into the darkened hallway before he emptied whatever contents was in his stomach all over his father's feet. Alan flicked on the hall light as Don passed and, no longer needing to hide the worry on his face, let weary lines carve into his features.
Don stumbled through the house, his anger blinding him. Quickly he traversed the family room, its richly decorated hues nothing but monochrome shades in his vision. But upon passing the collection of family photos hanging on the wall he stopped dead. And he saw her. His mother. Staring back at him, her face frozen in a gentle expression, a slight smile at the corners of her mouth.
The room's once monotone colors changed to hues of red. Don's hand crept out to the frame, caressing it in a shaking hand.
"I failed you," he sputtered, hanging his head. "I failed you all."
He released the picture from his grasp and it teetered ominously before slipping off one nail and swinging lopsided against the wall. Don shook his head, his vision blurring, and mounted the stairs on wavering legs.
Alan began to shut the door behind him when, to his surprise, he heard the SUV's engine die. A door opened and closed. Alan stepped out in curiosity and came face to face with Terry, who promptly held up the SUV's keys and dropped them into his hand.
"These are Don's, Mr. Eppes."
Momentarily stunned, Alan could merely sputter his thanks.
Terry smiled, one that did not reach her eyes, and turned slowly to leave.
"Where's your car, Terry?" Alan asked after she had taken a few steps. He felt a twinge of sympathy for leaving Terry in such a predicament in such an ungodly hour.
"It's still at the office—the FBI office," she responded softly.
"Oh, well … would you like to drive me there? I could bring Don's car back here … or you could drive it home, I'm sure we can thing of a way to pick it up later …"
Terry placed a hand gently on Alan's shoulder. "No, Mr. Eppes … don't worry." She pulled out her cell phone. "I'll just call a cab. I can have David pick me up on his way to the office in the morning. Please, you … you shouldn't be worrying about me right now."
Alan smiled, visibly relieved. He watched Terry make the call, her voice tired and nearly unintelligible at a distance. When she disconnected Alan motioned for her to come inside.
"Don't wait out here."
Terry hesitated, astonished that Alan could be so levelheaded in such a situation. Even without having to keep a strong façade for his son the older man's spirit seemed remarkably resilient, the deep, worried lines of his face notwithstanding.
Terry closed the door behind her but lingered near it, feeling like an intruder in the most inopportune moment.
"I'll just wait here, Mr. Eppes … you can head upstairs. I'll lock the door behind me when I leave …" her sentence trailed off.
"Thank you, Terry."
"… Good night, Mr. Eppes."
Alan smiled weakly at her and padded away, disappearing around the corner and up the staircase, leaving Terry in uncomfortable silence. She peered out the small window set in the door, searching through the frosted glass for any sign of her cab's imminent approach.
After a moment her eyes wandered the area, sweeping over a corner of the family room, examining what she could in the semi-darkness. One picture caught her eye, a family portrait taken, she assumed, many years earlier when both Charlie and Don were merely teenagers. It felt strange seeing Don in an element she never had before, his smile bright with his little brother beside him, his mother and father flanking them from behind. A strange feeling crept up the length of Terry's body and she quickly averted her gaze from the picture, feeling the prick of tears behind her eyes. Blinking them away and thrusting the image of the family portrait in the back of her mind, she resumed her vigil at the door, grateful to see two beams of light approaching from the distance. She slipped outside without a sound and crossed the distance between the house and the cab in quick, almost panicked strides.
Don saw sunlight. Bright, unadulterated sunlight streaming in from the partly drawn shades on the window. He had spent the night in his old room, snatching what clean clothes he could from his father's room down the hall. The bloodied jeans had come under attack with a pair of scissors the moment he had taken them off, a means of expending his pent up fury. The pieces now spilled over the lip of the small trash can in the corner of the room.
Don blinked his eyes in obvious confusion, rising from the bed he had just collapsed on the night before, too anguished to draw back the sheets. The sunlight was bright, teeming with afternoon warmth. Dragging his mind from the foggy recesses of sleep Don whipped his head around and focused on the small alarm clock on the bedside table. The little red letters showed 1:32. Afternoon. Don cursed out loud and hit the door at a run, plunging into the hall.
He called out for his father and checked every room, barreling down the stairs in socked feet and nearly sliding the entire length of the family room. The house seemed deserted. Storming into the kitchen, Don hissed in frustration, searching for a note his father may have left to indicate his whereabouts. He found one on the kitchen counter, weighed down by the keys to his SUV. Shoving the keys aside, he picked up the post-it note and quickly scanned it, feeling his heart drop to the pit of his stomach.
Donny. I tried to wake you. You wouldn't, decided to let you sleep. Gone to hospital. Will be back later. – Dad.
Don sucked in a breath through his teeth and crushed the note in a shaking fist. He felt betrayed, angered beyond his limits. His father had left him behind—and he had been too tired to notice. A hundred emotions he had fought through the previous day suddenly came rushing back twofold, assaulting him, snapping him back into frightening reality. He had to get down to that hospital. What if something had happened? Something his father didn't want him to know? Something … Don didn't want to think it.
He donned the first pair of tennis shoes he could find, snatched his keys from the counter, and hurtled himself out the door. Come hell or afternoon traffic, he would get to that hospital, to his brother.