Story: Checkmate
Chapter 11
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
Previously: Jed did well at an impromptu debate with his political rival; Lizzie overheard a fight between John and Jed that changed her feelings towards her grandfather (Chapter 13 of On My Honor)
Summary: Liz finally opens up to Abbey; Abbey promises to look after John
AN: We've received several emails about the back pain so we just want to let everyone know that Jed's back pain isn't an early sign of MS. We won't be dealing with the MS until the 1990s.
There were many things Jed and Abbey tried to teach their children. Life lessons that would shape them into successful adults had to start early, they believed. And so, they emphasized the virtues of hard work, perseverance, kindness to others, and pure, uncensored honesty in every endeavor.
Elizabeth embraced most of those lessons, but the one that was sometimes lost in a cloud of good intentions, was the last.
"Lizzie?"
Her head hung low and as she looked up from under her dark lashes, her blue eyes met her father's with a steely expression he didn't even recognize.
"What?"
"I'm asking if you're okay." Jed was sitting on a wooden chair beside John's hospital bed.
Dressed in her candy striper uniform, Liz stood near the door. "I am."
"Then come on over and join us."
It took her mere seconds to respond by shaking her head. "I can't. The magazine cart isn't empty yet. I have more patients to see."
"You can take a break, Sweetie," Abbey assured her.
Explaining this wasn't going to be easy. Ever since she overheard the fight between John and Jed, Liz dreaded spending time with her grandfather. She avoided him when he was in recovery after his angioplasty that morning and now that he had been moved into his own room, she still couldn't bring herself to muster up the interest to talk to him.
Whenever she looked at that man, she heard the echo of the poisoned words he hurled at his son. Words, Liz believed, he could never take back, for they left an ache in her own heart. She couldn't imagine the way they had wounded Jed's.
Once again, she shook her head. "I would, but Mrs. Jones really hates it when she doesn't get her Cosmo on time."
John never bought the lie. He immediately sensed Liz's discomfort and instead of letting her walk out of the room undisturbed, he prodded her a little more. "Elizabeth, it seems I've barely seen you at all lately. Don't you want to catch up? Tell me what you've been up to?"
"I can't," Liz repeated.
"Sure you can. They give candy stripers breaks, don't they? You're volunteering your time. It's not like you're on the clock."
When it looked as though John was backing her into a corner, Abbey intervened. "Lizzie, you're probably right. Mrs. Jones can get cranky from time to time. Why don't you go take care of her and then get yourself something to eat."
She had an out. With a grateful smile, she accepted. "Okay."
"Hey!" Jed called out to her.
Liz hesitated, then turned to ask, "What?"
"Don't you need some money?"
"Oh." She approached him, relieved that he wasn't trying to stop her. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Don't worry about it," Abbey said, standing up to accompany Liz. "I'll come with you."
"I can go on my own."
"I start my shift in an hour anyway and I'd like to check in on Mrs. Jones myself." Liz nodded apprehensively as Abbey addressed the two men. "Would you guys like anything from the cafeteria?"
"No, but make sure Lizzie sits down and actually takes a break," Jed replied. "I'm starting to worry that pretty soon, she'll be spending as much time at the hospital as you do."
Abbey wrapped an arm around Liz. "She's a great doctor-in-training, don't you think?"
Liz rolled her eyes. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that this isn't for me."
"You'll change your mind," Abbey whispered as she ushered her out the door.
"Mom, seriously..."
"I'm only kidding. You know that."
It wasn't a long walk to Mrs. Jones's room. A few steps from the nurse's station and a sharp right turn would have taken them there, but before they reached their destination, Abbey took a detour. She grabbed a hold of Liz's hand and led her into the staff lounge.
"Am I allowed to be in here?" Liz asked.
"You're fine."
"Why are we here?"
"I wanted us to have some privacy so that you can explain to me what's been going on lately."
"Nothing."
"Stop," Abbey warned before Liz continued. "Lizzie, something is obviously bothering you and I'm pretty sure it has to do with your grandfather. Tell me what it is."
"It's nothing, Mom."
"Don't tell me it's nothing. You were rude to him the night he came over for dinner and you barely said two words to him in there today. Has he done something that's made you angry? If he has, you can tell me."
"He hasn't done anything."
"Then let me ask you something else. How much did you hear between your grandfather and your father that night?"
"What night?" Liz turned from Abbey's prying stare as she feigned total ignorance.
"You know what night." When she didn't respond, Abbey walked up behind her. "The night they were arguing on the front porch. What did you hear?"
"We've already been over this. I heard him say that Ellie doesn't like Dad."
"And then what?"
Liz twiddled her fingers around one another. "Nothing. Dad stood there. I couldn't really tell, but it kind of looked like he tried to say something a couple of times. He never did though. And then Grandfather eventually left and Dad sat down on the chair on the porch. It creaked...and he kept tapping his feet. I remember he wouldn't stop tapping his feet."
"Is that all you heard?"
"Isn't that enough?"
Abbey put a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Lizzie, the relationship between your dad and your grandfather is difficult to understand. They've never really gotten along."
Liz raised her head, but in an effort to halt the surge of anger brewing inside her, she bit down on her lower lip while Abbey continued. Slowly, her mother's voice began to fade and soon, it was completely drowned out by the voices from that fateful night.
Jed's tone was so clear in Liz's mind. It was harsh, yet soft. Perhaps that was because his sentences were broken, a direct result of the painful argument they were having.
He lashed out at John out of hurt. That was obvious to Liz. "You said I never liked you. I'm just curious, what was it I was supposed to like? The way you beat the crap out of me whenever I spilled something on the floor? The way you slapped me if I ever dared to disagree with you? The way you punched me if you felt I disrespected you?"
Jed's fury was nowhere close to John's cruel response. That was what Liz would never forget. The bitterness that seeped out of him when he yelled at his son would haunt her forever.
"You were a rambunctious little boy with a mind all your own," he had said. "You were selfish and demanding, just like you are now. The form of discipline I used..."
Jed cut him off by blurting out what Liz had been feeling as she listened through her open bedroom window. "Don't call it discipline. That's not what it was. You enjoyed humiliating me every chance you got."
John enjoyed humiliating him. Liz was stung by that word. The twisted accusation left a seed of hostility that had been nurtured over the past year. She couldn't forgive her grandfather for what she heard that night, nor could she ignore the obvious pain she saw in Jed's face when she walked downstairs after John had left.
To protect his pride, she lied to him, denying she ever heard any mention of abuse. She initially denied it to Jed. Since then, there were times when she even denied it to herself.
But now, she couldn't hold back any longer. As Abbey spoke of a natural conflict between father and son, she found herself losing the battle to suppress her emotions. She tried to listen to her mother, to understand the explanation offered, but it seemed like a futile attempt to shelter her from the truth.
"Your dad didn't have an ideal childhood, but he loves his father very, very much, even if they don't get along," Abbey insisted.
Finally, she had had enough. Liz spun around so fast that her sudden wave of energy shocked Abbey. "He used to HIT him! He BEAT him!"
Abbey suspected Liz knew more than she admitted, but when the fourteen-year-old confirmed those suspicions so strongly, she had to take a moment to catch her breath. Calmly, she said, "I know."
"Am I the only one who didn't know?"
"No one knows. Your dad doesn't want anyone to know. That's why we didn't tell you."
"It's not like I would have told anyone."
"I know, Sweetheart. That isn't why we kept it from you. It was never an issue of trust."
"Then what was it?"
"It's not something he likes to talk about. He feels weak and ashamed occasionally, even though he has no reason to." Her eyes followed Liz's clumsy walk to the sofa. "Can you tell me what you heard that night?"
"Just what I told you. Daddy said that he used to beat him if he spilled something on the floor. He'd even punch him sometimes." Liz twisted her head to look at her mother. "Why?"
"I don't know why. Your grandfather is a complicated man."
"No he's not. He's just a jerk!"
Abbey couldn't argue with that. Standing behind her, she ran her fingers through Lizzie's long chestnut tresses before she walked around to join her on the sofa. "Just between us. I always felt like he was a jerk too."
"There was a boy in my class in third grade. He stopped coming to school one day and one of my friends said it was because he wasn't living at home anymore because his dad always hit him."
"Why didn't you ever tell me that?"
Liz shrugged. "I thought she meant like a spanking or something. You and Dad never spanked us so back then, I thought it was wrong and that parents got in trouble if they did that."
"What happened?"
"I never thought about him again because we weren't really friends or anything. But then, in junior high, that boy...Gary is his name...he came back. He said he had been adopted by his aunt. I asked him why he couldn't see his father anymore."
"And?" Abbey tucked her daughter's hair behind her ear.
"That's when he told me what happened in third grade. He said that he forgot to clear the table one night and his dad got really angry and broke his arm."
"Oh, Lizzie."
Her lips trembling, she turned to face Abbey. "Do you think that ever happened to Daddy?"
"No. No, I don't, Angel. I don't think that happened to your father. John wasn't a great parent, but your dad has never told me of any serious injuries as a result of the way he was treated." It was technically true. But while Jed hadn't mentioned any significant physical injuries, Abbey knew the psychological torture he suffered was actually much worse.
"That doesn't mean it didn't happen. Maybe he just hasn't told you."
She was right. Jed had never been completely open about the abuse, not even with Abbey. Everything she had learned, she had essentially forced out of him. Still, she wanted to protect Liz from the same infuriating thoughts that had consumed her all these years, so she countered her daughter's argument. "I prefer to assume it didn't happen."
"I want to assume that too," Liz replied. "But I still don't understand. Why does Dad even want to be here? Why does he care if Grandfather's sick?"
"Because that's the way your dad is. John is still his father and there's a part of Jed that will always feel loyal to him, no matter what he's done."
"When did it stop? I mean, when did he finally leave Daddy alone?"
It was a question Abbey couldn't answer. She wanted to say it was when Jed left for college, but then she remembered an incident when she and Jed were dating. He had run into a door, he told her. Later, she found out the red mark that colored his face was the result of the back of John Bartlet's hand.
She remembered when she and Jed were engaged and making wedding plans. They had invited the two families for dinner, but sometime during the meal, Jed had been a little too outspoken, according to John. If it hadn't been for Jed's sharp reflexes, John would have decked him that evening.
Finally, she remembered the night that John had persuaded five-year-old Lizzie to lie to her babysitter so she could spend Christmas with him. After Jed burst through John's front door to pick up his daughter, John slammed him into a wall so hard that blue and purple bruises dominated Jed's backside for the next two weeks.
John hadn't raised a hand to Jed since then, but there wasn't a single part of Abbey that believed he wouldn't if he was pushed to his limit once again.
"I don't know when it stopped," she told Lizzie.
"Why do I have to be nice to him? Mom, why do I have to spend time with him?"
"You don't have to spend time with him if you don't want to. But you do have to be nice to him out of respect for your father. For whatever reason, your dad still loves him. That means we have to try to get along with him as well."
Liz nodded. "I'll never love him though. Daddy never did anything to him. Daddy never hurts anyone. He never hits. He doesn't even like to hurt anyone's feelings. He doesn't like to yell at me even though I don't always do what he wants me to. So many times, he's apologized to me for getting mad."
"That's because he doesn't want to ever treat you the way he was treated. He does lose his temper sometimes, but he always regrets it, especially when it comes to you girls. He loves you with all his heart."
"We love him too because he is the way he is. And I bet he was the same way when he was a kid too. That's how I know he didn't do anything. He didn't deserve it!"
"No, he didn't. No child deserves that kind of thing, Lizzie."
"Then why aren't you more upset about this?"
The question surprised Abbey. "What?"
"You act like all he did was borrow money and not pay it back or something!" Liz leapt from her seat. "He didn't! He hurt Daddy, I saw it myself! Why is he allowed to come over and why are you nice to him?"
"Hold on a minute."
"I don't understand any of this! You should be more upset! You should be MAD! Instead, you joke with him and laugh with him like it doesn't even matter!"
"Hang on!" Abbey stood as well, her frustration fueling her temper. "You have NO idea how I really feel about that man. There are times when I want to STRANGLE him for the hell he put your father through! I can't stand him. I think he's a selfish bastard who never should have been allowed to raise children!"
No one had ever challenged Abbey on her feelings towards John. No one ever dared to assume that she didn't despise the person who hurt the man she loved. She regretted her explosive reaction, but she couldn't stand the thought of Liz believing she had excused or even forgiven John.
Liz shuffled her feet and sheepishly said, "I didn't mean..."
"I know." Abbey took a few calming breaths. "I'm furious about what's going on. If I had it my way I would banish him from our lives forever. We'd all be better off, including your father."
"So why can't we just never see him again?" Her face crumpled when she asked that question. A mixture of curiosity, fear, and anguish spilled from her eyes.
Abbey reached out to her, taking her hand and guiding her back to the sofa. "Because he's sick and your father cares about him. As long as your dad loves him, I'm going to do whatever I can to help him. But be clear on this, Lizzie. It's not because I think what John did doesn't matter. It's because I love your father very, very much."
"When did you find out about it?"
"A couple of months before we got married. I walked in on a fight between them and afterwards, I had to drag it out of Jed."
"What did you do?"
"I let him know I was always going to be there if he wanted to talk. Ever. He rarely did though. After the wedding, we moved to London and we didn't have much contact with John. In fact, he never even got to meet you until your Grandma Bartlet died when you were five."
"I remember. That's why you didn't want me to see him."
"Yeah. That's why."
"I still don't get it. How come Dad never told me?"
"It's a private thing between his father and him." Abbey put an arm around Liz. The teenager leaned her head against her mother's shoulder. "You didn't tell Ellie, did you?"
"No."
"Good."
"It drives me crazy though because she always talks about how much she misses seeing him. When he came over for dinner a couple of weeks ago, Ellie was so excited. I just wanted to tell her what a jerk he is and that she should hate him as much as I do."
"You can't do that, Sweetie. It'll break her heart, just like it broke yours."
Lizzie relaxed slightly as Abbey began to stroke her hair. "It didn't break my heart."
"I think it did. You know why?"
"Why?"
Abbey paused before she answered. "Because when I think about it, it still breaks my heart."
Liz lifted her head to see a pool of tears shining her mother's eyes. She hugged her, then rested against her shoulder again. "Yeah."
"Also, you and your dad are as close as I am with my dad. I know what it feels like to learn something like this about your husband. I can only imagine how much it hurts to learn it about your father. It has to break your heart."
"Maybe a little," Liz admitted.
"That's natural," Abbey affirmed. "There's something else you said that I don't think you mean."
"What's that?"
"I don't think you really hate your grandfather. You just hate what he did and what kind of parent he is." That was being a bit optimistic.
Without hesitation, Lizzie replied, "No, I hate him. I hate him a lot."
Truth to be told, so did Abbey. But her optimism was out of love for her daughter. She wanted so badly to comfort Liz, to say something that would magically ease her outrage and erase that night from her memory.
From the moment Elizabeth was born, Abbey wanted nothing more than for her children to live in a perfect world - a world where Santa was real, where the Easter Bunny came every Spring and horrific scenes only played out on Halloween, where every little girl's life was guaranteed to be a fairytale, a place where a grandfather was a trusted paternal surrogate, and a family could function through the years without violent outbursts of anger from any of its members.
They didn't live in that world and as Liz raised her hand to wipe away a few tears before they trailed down her cheeks and stained her mother's blouse, they were both reminded just how far from perfect their world really was.
"I hate him sometimes too," Abbey confessed.
"Does Dad know you feel that way?"
"I'm sure he does. I've never said it though. I think if I did..."
She stopped then as a crowd of doctors and nurses rushed past the door. The echoing sound of machines and commotion drew mother and daughter out of the lounge and once they reached the hallway, Abbey's gaze wandered towards John's room. Jed was standing right outside.
"What happened?" Abbey called out to her husband.
"I don't know!" Jed shouted. "He was fine and he sat up for a minute and then he turned really pale and he felt sick and dizzy...I don't know!"
Abbey sprinted into the room and joined her colleagues gathering around John. Liz ran into her father's arms, clutching his jacket with her fingers so tightly that she nearly ripped the fabric. Frightened, Jed did nothing to loosen her grip.
Soon, the monitor stopped beeping and Robert Nolan smiled at his patient. "Not getting enough attention already?"
"Not the kind of attention I want anyway," John replied.
"Feel better?"
"I...I think so."
Jed peered over his wife's head to get a good look at John's face. "What's going on? What happened?"
"His blood pressure dropped a little," Robert answered. "No big deal."
"That happens sometimes," Abbey added.
"He'll be okay?" Jed breathed a sigh of relief when Abbey nodded.
The momentary scare had taken a lot out of him and his exhaustion was visible to anyone who noticed his dark circles and droopy eyelids.
"Can we talk out in the hall a second?" she asked him.
"Of course." He nervously followed her, expecting to hear bad news about John's condition. He held his breath as he prepared himself. "What is it?"
"Visiting hours are almost over. I think you should say goodbye for tonight."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Jed, it's late. You can come back first thing in the morning, but right now, you need to pick up Ellie and Zoey from the sitter and you have to get Lizzie home."
"Is there something you're not telling me? Something about my dad?"
"No." Abbey's hands slipped down his arms to his palms. "Honey, he's fine. I would never lie to you about this."
"Yeah. I know you wouldn't. I just assumed the worst."
"That's because you're tired. You've been here since early this morning. You need to get some rest."
"He might need me."
"I'm going to be here. I'll be here all night. I'll check on him every half hour. Okay?"
"Okay." He agreed reluctantly. "Before I go, what were you and Liz doing in the lounge?
"Just talking."
"Is everything okay?"
"I think so." Maybe someday, she'd convince Liz to tell him the truth about what she heard that night, but now wasn't the time.
"Okay."
"Hey, how's your back?"
"It's fine." He leaned to his side to prove the pain that had plagued him after their lovemaking the week before had vanished.
"I still think you need to get it checked."
"I know you do."
"If it's a bulging disc, which I'm fairly certain it is, it's just going to act up again."
"Abbey, please. Not now, okay?"
Something was wrong. Ordinarily, he would have just teased her for nagging. "What's really going through your mind?" He turned from her then. "Jed?"
"What time do you start your shift?"
"Pretty soon."
"And what time do you get off?"
"8 a.m." She walked around him. He tried to avoid her again, but she grabbed his wrist and held him steady. "What's up?"
Jed stalled at first, but when she raised her brow, he started talking. "I realize you care about all the patients in this hospital."
"Yeah." Confused, Abbey slipped a finger under his chin to lift his head.
"I know how you feel about him and you have every right to. I don't blame you if you don't care about what happens to him. It's just...he's my dad, you know?"
There was that unfractured loyalty she had described to Liz. It was always there, but it was never more apparent than it had been these last few weeks. She wrapped her arms around him and said, "I'll take care of him the same way I would take care of you. I promise."
"And you'll call me if something happens?"
"Of course."
Jed turned his head and kissed her cheek. "Thanks."
"You don't have to thank me, Jed."
"Not just for this. For everything you did for him. You helped him - and me - through this, Abbey, and that couldn't have been easy."
"I love you." Abbey pulled out of the hug. "Because of that, it was easy."
Though she downplayed her feelings towards John, she wasn't lying. It was because of Jed that she had invited John back into their lives. Her love for him was the driving force, the motivator that would help her through a night of truths and confessions. It was the reason she hadn't yet disowned John. It was why she was preparing for a special conversation with him - one she had been waiting an awfully long time to have.
TBC
