Series: Snapshots of the Past
Story: Checkmate
Chapter 5
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
Previously: Abbey offered to take Liz out to dinner to explain her stand on medicinal marijuana; Jed was intrigued by Abbey's campaign strategy to register all the non-registered voters in the district while trying to get signatures for her public policy initiative
Summary: Zoey manipulates a willing Jed; Jed asks Leo's advice regarding his own campaign; Liz considers a summer "job" at the hospital and reminds Abbey that she's not a little girl anymore; Abbey helps Liz understand her position; Jed admits something to Leo
"What have I told you about climbing up there, young lady?"
Jed stood across from his youngest daughter. His arms were folded in front of his chest and his eyes erupted with displeasure until Zoey snapped her head towards him, giving him a glimpse at her chocolate-covered mouth, hair, and clothes. Only then did a small smile break his stern glare, despite his best efforts to hide it.
She had climbed up on a chair and made herself at home on top of the kitchen table. Her fingers dripping with frosting, she held up a few brownie crumbs and smacked her lips as she replied. "Sowwy."
"I turn my back for one moment...you know you're not allowed to be up there." With a disapproving shake of his head, Jed approached. "And I baked these brownies for Uncle Leo. I told you you couldn't have any until he got here."
"Sowwy," Zoey repeated, her contrition obvious in the way her pretty green eyes fell to the ground.
Jed didn't ignore her gesture of remorse. He sighed, then slipped a finger under her chin to lift her head. "Well, don't just leave it at that. Were they any good?"
His tone was calm and jovial and with the sudden realization she wasn't in trouble, the toddler looked up at her father, enthusiastically giggling as she nodded. "Hmmm Mmmm!"
"I expect you to tell Mom that when she gets home. In the meantime, let's get you cleaned up and changed." Zoey held out her arms and when he scooped her up, she playfully smeared her chocolatey fingers over his face. "Hey! You're going to pay for that, you little hooligan!"
Jed hit the steps so vigorously that his bounce provoked a cackling scream from Zoey. Finally, after reaching the top, he noticed the messy handprints on his collar. The little girl simply shrugged as he set her down on his bed to examine his shirt.
"Daddy messy."
"Yeah, thanks to who?" He lightheartedly rolled his eyes when Zoey laughed. "Okay. So we get you into a new outfit and we get me into a new dress shirt."
He held opened the closet door and one shirt immediately caught Zoey's attention. "This one?"
"You like this one?" She nodded. "Okay, this one it is." He laid it out on the bed. "Now what about you?"
"This one!"
"The red outfit? With the horse on it? That one's old. We bought you a dresser full of new summer clothes. Don't you want to wear one of those?"
She shook her head. "No."
"That's a shame because the red shirt has a hole in it. Mom said you can't wear it anymore. Sorry."
Zoey led Jed into her room. With the clean tip of one finger, she pulled out the forbidden shirt from its hiding place in the toy chest and pressed her index finger to her lips just as she had seen Lizzie and her friends do in front of her whenever she intruded on girlish gossip. "Shhh."
And that's how the corruption began. At least, on this day. A sly grin and a secret pact about an old and worn T-shirt that she had outgrown long ago, transformed Jed from parent to confidante. He wasn't oblivious to the way his daughters could manipulate his authority as they effortlessly played the strings of his heart. Sometimes, he rebelled against it. Other times, he welcomed it.
A half an hour passed before father and daughter made their way downstairs. Jed, now dressed in the button-down sky-blue shirt Zoey suggested, trailed behind his daughter on the trek to the family room. Once there, Zoey held the hem of her faded red T-shirt and traced her fingers over the black stallion on the front.
"You're gonna get me in trouble." Jed sat on the sofa and stared at her as she fumbled with the lint on the horse. He picked her up when she began to climb up beside him.
She squirmed in his lap to face him and said, "Is okay, Daddy. I sit in time-out with you."
He laughed. "You bet you will. And I'll tell you what else. You're going to tell Mom it was YOUR idea and that I told you to wear something else..." he paused as soon as he heard the knock at the door. With Zoey in tow, he rushed to answer it. "LEO! You're early."
"Hey!" Jed took the suitcase from his friend and Leo immediately kneeled to greet Zoey. "Hiya, Zoey! You've gotten so big since I saw you last year." Zoey turned a bashful smile to him as he kissed her cheek and ruffled her hair a little, then stood back up.
"I told you I'd pick you up at the airport," Jed said, directing Leo into the living room.
"I know, but I took an earlier flight."
"Why?"
Leo was too proud to admit that a fight between him and Jenny had forced him to leave the house the night before. Instead, he shrugged and answered, "Just cause."
"Everything okay?"
"It's fine."
"When are Jenny and Mallory coming?"
"Friday. Mall's last day of school is Thursday so they're flying out the next morning." The silence around him was deafening. He glanced around briefly. "Where is everyone?"
"Lizzie went with Abbey to the hospitalto drop off some files, then they're going to stop for a bite to eat. Ellie's at a friend's house. Abbey's going to pick her up on the way back."
"Great."
The two men walked into the kitchen where Jed slipped on a pair of oven mitts. "Hope you're hungry. It'll just be me, you, and Zoey for dinner and Abbey made a huge lasagna."
"Oh, well, if Abbey made it, sure," Leo teased. "If you had made it, it'd be a slightly different story."
"Don't you start with me," Jed warned as he opened the oven to peek at the dish. "I'm a fine cook. I even baked some brownies this morning. Your favorite with the chocolate swirls and the nuts."
"So I see." Leo admired the gooey mess on the table with a smirk on his face.
"Yeah, Zoey got to those, but I managed to salvage a few she didn't touch."
"Were they any good?" Leo asked Zoey.
"Uh huh!" Zoey replied as she stretched her tiny body to reach the top of the back of a chair.
"She's absolutely adorable..."
"Don't let that sweet face fool you," Jed interjected. "She can be tricky when she wants to be."
"A daughter of yours? I can hardly believe it!"
Jed acknowledged the sarcasm with a barbed stare. "She gets it from Abbey," he said, pulling off his oven mitts. "Hey, follow me into the study. I want to show you something."
"Something good or something bad?" Leo asked as he and Zoey fell into step behind Jed.
"That depends on what you think."
"About what?"
"About whatever it is I'm about to show you." Jed turned the corner and opened the door to the study. "Check this out."
"Wow." Leo looked at two large maps hanging off the tacks on the wall. Both were so vibrant and colorful, they commanded his attention from the moment he walked into the room.
"You know about Abbey trying to get a public policy initiative on the ballot?"
"Yeah. She and Jenny were just talking about it on the phone the other night."
"This is her map of the entire state," Jed said, pointing to the map on the left. A vertical line of masking tape separated that one from the map on the right. That's the one he pointed to next. "This is my map of our district, and if you turn that page over, you'll see some of the other districts where I have some pull."
"Is she going to mind you showing me hers?"
"Not at all. She hung it up with pride."
"So what's your question?"
"Tell me what my map is missing because however I mix the numbers, hers are still higher."
"By numbers you mean votes?"
"Yeah."
"What difference does it make? You're asking for their vote to put you in office. She's asking for their signature on an entirely different subject. It won't affect the outcome of your election."
"It might, in a roundabout way. If she succeeds in getting it on the ballot in this district, all my voters are going to be looking to me for a response before election day. What I say could very well affect how they vote, so I'd rather avoid the possibility altogether. So, on the off-chance I undermined their interest in Abbey's cause, I need to be ready."
Leo perused the clipped pages. "Frankly, I'm not certain why you have other districts included in your map. Hers I get because it's statewide, but these people in different towns...they won't be voting for you, right?"
"Look closely, Leo," Jed suggested. "There's a method to my madness."
Squinting his eyes to help him see the smaller symbols and digits, Leo examined both maps. The intricate details were similar, yet independently impressive. Jed had countered Abbey's campaign to recruit unregistered voters with a pledge from friends and colleagues outside the district who agreed to endorse him to constituents they already knew.
His map outlined a strategy where every marker plotted one degree of separation from person to person. A diagram that almost resembled a family tree with uninterrupted squiggly lines accurately charting relationships between residents in the district and those he knew outside the borders.
"So..." Leo started. "The Bendeldons live on Elm Street in your district, but what? You don't know them?"
"Not yet. I'll start making my rounds next week and I'll introduce myself then. But in the meantime..." Jed turned to page five. "Peter Williams, one of my old pals from Hanover, has been playing poker with Joe Bendeldon every Sunday afternoon for the past ten years. Peter's already talked to him. He says the vote's mine."
"That's an interesting way to go. The primary for state government is in September, right? You're already campaigning for the general?"
"It doesn't hurt to start early. I never needed to in the past, but I think it's best this time."
"What's this?" Leo pointed to three blue arrows that followed a black line to the end of page one and continued along subsequent pages.
"That house belongs to the Harrisons. They're new to this district and it's no secret they're conservatives. Fortunately, Professor Al Mackenzie who lives in Hanover is an old fishing buddy of a fellow named Rob Taylor from Derry who is the brother of Andrew Taylor in Merrimack who just married the eldest Harrison daughter, Amanda."
"And Amanda's parents..."
"Live right there, in the Harrison house."
Leo furrowed his brows. "Yeah?"
"I didn't say it was a done deal. Al's just going to help me out."
"This is how state government is elected in New Hampshire?"
"Not usually." Jed admonished him with a glare. "But this isn't exactly Illinois, Leo, and Manchester isn't Chicago. It's a small state with even smaller districts. I'm going to be doing what I do every election year. I'll go around, meet the constituents, shake their hands, and drop off issue cards. I just want to cover all my bases in case..."
"In case what?"
"In case the Republicans, for some reason, choose someone who agrees with Abbey and has no problem taking advantage of the fact that I don't. If it turns into a fight over medicinal marijuana, every vote is up for grabs."
His voice held a hint of fear Leo detected immediately. "Why don't you just tell Abbey you'd rather she not do this?"
"Why would I do that? I already told her I was fine with it and I am."
"Then why do you sound scared?"
"I'm not scared, Leo. Abbey doesn't have the support she needs. Her goal is to make noise and that's what she's doing. I'm just gearing up for the what-ifs."
While Jed explained the situation to Leo, Abbey was preparing to explain it to Lizzie. But before the two made their way out of the hospital, a familiar sound impeded their progress. Lizzie stood grounded to her spot, watching as Abbey rushed back to the nurse's station.
The whole thing was over in seconds, but it seemed like so much longer, especially to the fourteen-year-old who always hated hospitals and even on this night, tried her best to avoid being there.
She assumed the smell would assault her senses. It was supposed to remind her of the nights they spent in the E.R. when she was a little girl suffering from a bad case of the flu or a severe stomach ache or even the sprained ankle she got when she jumped out the tree her father had told her to avoid.
She expected it to spark the memory she had buried deep in her mind - the memory of her mother, lying battered and bruised in a dreary hospital room after surviving a violent attacked by a psychopath, or of the time she visited her little sister in the neonatal ICU. So tiny and weak, the newborn baby girl was attached to a web of machines.
But she remembered none of those things. The distinct scent that lingered in the cardio-pulmonary wing of the hospital wasn't as offensive as she thought it would be. In fact, she hardly noticed it.
Since they had heard the code seconds earlier, nothing else had mattered. She had barely moved. They chaos and hysteria around her was now slowing down, but doctors and nurses still floated past, each rushing with the same kind of urgency she had only ever witnessed on Trapper John, MD.
"Excuse me," a girl called out to her.
Lizzie looked up, surprised to see the blonde teenager who worked there. She stepped aside to allow the girl access to the desk, and when things settled down enough to jolt her from her spot, she approached Abbey. "Mom, what's going on?"
Abbey left the side of Dr. Ryder and faced her daughter. "It's okay. They had an emergency in one of the rooms."
"What happened?"
"A patient was having trouble breathing momentarily, but they helped him."
"So everything's okay now?
"For the most part."
Liz turned her glance to the blonde teen she had seen moments earlier. "That girl over there, in the pink and white checkered uniform. She works here? She's like...my age. Who is she?"
"She's a candy striper."
"Oh, a volunteer?"
"Yeah." Abbey swung her purse over her shoulder as they began walking towards the elevator.
"How do you do that? I mean, she really is my age, isn't she?"
"I don't know how old she is, but candy stripers can be as young as 14."
Amazed, Liz's eyes lit up. "Really?"
"Yeah." Abbey curiously arched her brow. "Lizzie, are you interested in...maybe you'd like to find out more about it? It's a great way to spend the summer."
"Would I get to work with you?"
"Well, I sometimes work 17-hour days and I doubt you'd want to be here that long, so we'd have to depend on your father's summer schedule. I'm sure he'd be happy to give you a lift to the hospital on his way to work."
"Would I still get to see you do your job...you know, during the day?" It was obvious one motivation was spending more time with her mother. Lizzie hadn't yet reached the point of teenage seclusion.
"I'll tell you what. Unless I'm in surgery, you can work with me for at least some portion of each shift. How does that sound?"
"Will the hospital be okay with that?"
"We can go see the volunteer coordinator right now if you want."
Lizzie nodded. "Okay!"
"You know, most fourteen-year olds don't want to hang out with their mothers, especially at work. I'm THRILLED you want to do this, Baby Doll."
"Yeah," she replied, her enthusiasm fading slightly.
Abbey put an arm around her as they continued walking. "We can have lunch together and you can catch me up on what all the candy stripers are up to. I'll tell you what we're..."
Liz stopped. "Mom, can I be honest about something?"
Abbey looked at her, concerned. "Always. You know that."
Liz hesitated slightly. "Um."
"Elizabeth, what is it?"
"It's just...I am fourteen and I'm going to be starting high school in the Fall."
"Yeah?"
"So, could we kinda chuck the 'Baby Doll' stuff? I mean, it's cute and all, but I'm too old for it."
Initially speechless, Abbey paused to gather her thoughts. "Oh...well...yeah. Of course. If that's what you want."
"I hope that doesn't make you mad."
"Don't be silly. I'm not mad at all. I love you. Whatever you want...Liz." It was a struggle to refrain from using other terms of endearment, but she did.
She was honest when she said she wasn't angry. It wasn't anger that controlled Abbey's emotions. It was the prickly sadness that accompanied the reminder that her little girl was growing up - a lot faster than she wanted her to.
There wasn't much time to think about it though because as mother and daughter sat across from each other in a booth at Friendly's, the conversation took a different turn and soon, they formed a new bond.
"So you're saying that the people you want to give the drug to are going to die anyway?" Lizzie asked, calmly trying to grasp the complexities of Abbey's argument for medicinal marijuana.
"Some of them, yes. And the ones who aren't dying, are sometimes so sick that some of them wish they were. The people who would benefit from it are people who are on chemotherapy or are ill because of other symptoms of their disease or side effects of alternative medication."
"And it makes them feel better again." It wasn't a question. Liz was starting to understand.
"Yes," Abbey confirmed. "It helps with their pain, their nausea, their fatigue. They are battling serious diseases that can keep them bedridden for months at a time. Marijuana can help their overall quality of life tremendously."
"If marijuana helps with nausea, how come you don't give it to me when I have the stomach flu?"
"Because it isn't a safe drug for healthy people. When you have the stomach flu, your body is trying to purge your system of toxins. You have to let it do that and trust that when it's over, you'll feel well again. Some of the patients I'm talking about may never feel well again. They'll be sick until the day they die. That's the difference."
"I mean, I get what you're saying, but if it's as good as you think it is, then how come Dad's against it? He wants to help people too, so why wouldn't he support it?"
The true heart of the matter. Jed's opinion meant the world to Lizzie and most of her doubts stemmed from his. Abbey took a deep breath before answering. "Because of lack of scientific evidence, your dad disagrees with me. I have the opinion I do because of what I know about the body's physiology...about how it works and what happens when a new agent is introduced to stimulate the immune system or the..."
"Mom, I don't really understand that."
"That's okay." Abbey chuckled. "You don't have to. I just don't want you to think I'm a hypocrite when I tell you to stay away from drugs while I rally to make this legal."
"I don't think you're a hypocrite. I was just mad the night I said that. It makes sense though now that you explained it to me. But I'm still confused about what this means for Dad. He won't lose his election, right?"
"Lizzie, I promise you. If your father was in danger of losing this election, I would stop what I'm doing immediately."
Back at the farm, Leo asked Jed a similar question. "If your opponent does challenge you on this issue, are you going to tell Abbey to back off?"
Jed shook his head. "This is as important to her as my seat is to me. It's not like she's taking votes away from me. She's just trying to spread her own message, completely independent of mine. I'm not going to make her feel guilty about it. I can't derail her efforts."
"What if it costs you votes?"
"I won't let it," Jed answered firmly.
Meanwhile, at the restaurant, Lizzie handed an extra spoon to Abbey, then took a bite of her Swiss Chocolate Almond Sundae. "So if I wanted to help one of you, I wouldn't be hurting the other one?"
"No, you wouldn't. I know how much you love helping your father with his campaigns. I expect you to do exactly what you've always done."
"What if, this time, I want to help you also?"
"You do?"
"Yeah. I want to learn more about what you're both doing, so I want to help both of you. If you want me to."
"I would love the help, Lizzie!"
As they enjoyed the rest of their sundae, Leo stood inside Jed's study and glanced at the maps one last time. "I still think you're not being straight with me."
"About what?"
"You're worried."
"I am not. It's the what-ifs, Leo. I'm preparing for the what-ifs."
"If you weren't concerned, you wouldn't have come up with this who-knows-who strategy," Leo insisted.
"I have to be honest. I'm getting tired of you mocking my strategy."
"It's a good strategy for a race this size. It's just...I don't know...it's unlike you."
"What does that mean?"
"I've known you for 20 years, Jed. You like to persuade people yourself. You do it with your words, spoken from your heart." Leo held up page five of Jed's map. "Not like this. Not with these lines. They don't represent you. They don't represent what you stand for, what you want to accomplish."
"I'm still going to talk to these people. I just might need some back-up. That's all."
"You're worried."
Resting his back against his desk, Jed scanned the room. His eyes landed on Abbey's map and he said softly, "Yeah. Maybe a little."
TBC
