Chapter Six
Someone to Watch Over Me
"Okay, Cavanaugh…you…me…we need to talk," Seely said without knocking before he entered her office, slammed the door, and sat down on her couch. "Now," he finalized the situation.
"About what?" Jordan asked, hoping she was keeping an innocent look on her face.
"You know what. Or rather who."
Jordan didn't have to ask. The frustrated, over-worked, long-suffering look on Matt's face said it all.
Woody.
"It can't be that bad, Matt."
"Oh yeah?" the detective countered, sarcastically. "You obviously haven't seen him in awhile."
In truth, she hadn't seen Woody regularly in several weeks. After his surgery and his apparent memory loss, Jordan didn't know what to do or how to handle a situation she had never been in. She had hesitantly followed the surgeon to his hospital room. Woody had been sitting up in bed, resting from the operation.
"Detective Hoyt, this is Dr. Cavanaugh…she's listed as your next-of-kin," Dr. Roland had announced from the doorway.
"Hi," she had nearly stuttered…never more unsure of anything in her life. How do you re-introduce yourself to the man that you had made love with less than twelve hours ago…knowing that not only does he not remember anything about the event, he also doesn't remember anything about you. "I'm Jordan."
"You're my next-of-kin?" He looked at her with wide, blue eyes…confusion mirrored deep in them. Jordan had felt her heart break just a little for him.
"Yeah." She walked across the room and sat beside him on the bed, gently taking his hand.
"Are you my sister or something?"
She bit back a chuckle. Definitely not his sister….but she was "something." She just wasn't sure what. "No. I'm not your sister. We're friends…good friends. We work together. I'm an ME."
"And I'm a detective…or so Dr. Roland says." Woody ran his free hand down his face. "I don't mean to complain, but this is confusing as hell."
"I'm sure." Jordan tightened her hold on his hand. The last thing Woody needed to feel was alone. "But don't worry too much about it right now. Just concentrate on your back and it getting better. I'm sure your memory will return with some time."
Woody sighed and leaned back on the pillows. "That's what the doctor says…that maybe going back into surgery was just too much for me to handle…he said I got shot last year? On duty?"
The rise in his voice told Jordan he was asking a question. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of exactly how much to tell him…and how. "Yeah…you were. They had to take a bullet out of your back, but you were fine." She swallowed hard against her glaring omission of vital facts. There would be time to tell him everything, but now wasn't the appropriate one.
"Good," Woody closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. He had been shot. He was fine. And evidently this Jordan knew more about the shooting than she was letting on. She just wasn't telling him right now.
But she would. He'd make sure of it.
"Can I come in?" A voice from the doorway asked.
"Sure." Jordan motioned for Matt to come inside. "Woody, this is Matt Seely. He's your partner at the Boston PD."
"How you feeling, Wood?" Matt asked from the other side of Woody's bed.
"They've got me too doped up to feel anything much right now. But Dr. Roland did say that I can go home in a couple of days if there are not anymore complications."
Matt and Jordan had both nodded, relieved at the good state of his health when they had been concerned about the worst.
"But I have a question," Woody had asked. "Where is home?"
That one simple question had sent both Jordan and Matt crashing back into reality. Woody had unexplained amnesia. Woody wasn't totally Woody any longer. He knew his name and that was about it. Gradual exposure to familiar places and items might prompt him to remember certain things, such as his job as a detective or where to find the supermarket, but the cold, hard truth was Woody might never regain his full memory. There might be large gaps in it for the rest of his life.
Woody knew this. Jordan and Matt did, too, along with a few chosen others the ME and the detective felt should know about Woody's situation. But as the day for hospital discharge grew closer, Dr. Roland and the hospital psychologist cautioned Jordan and Matt against leaving Woody alone. "Someone needs to stay with him…or he needs to stay with someone for a while. At least until we know he's going to be okay physically…that the surgery worked well and the scar tissue clean up was completely successful. If he fell, he wouldn't remember who to call or what hospital to go to…or the history behind his injuries. Mentally and emotionally, we're dealing with an entirely different set of issues."
And boy were they.
The hospital psychologist and Dr. Stiles had clued Jordan and Matt in on what to expect. The constant questions…the fact that they may tell him something and five minutes later he would forget it and ask the same question. "As he gets his memory back, this will improve. Until then," Dr. Stiles told Jordan and Matt, "it's kind of like dealing with a two-year old… 'why, why, why'. Think you two can handle it?"
"Do we have a choice?" Matt asked.
"Well…you do…I don't. I'm his next-of-kin," Jordan replied, dryly.
"Think of it as good, future training for when you have children," Stiles quipped, giving Jordan a wink on his way out the door. Jordan made a face behind his back. "So….." she had asked Matt, "who gets to take him first?"
Matt had sighed. Before Woody had lost his memory, he had confided to Matt the difficulties of his and Jordan's relationship. He knew Woody had been tremendously upset with the ME…and was trying to move on with his life. And despite the fact that he and Hoyt had had their differences in the past, he wanted the best for his partner. And he wasn't sure that seeing Jordan everyday was the best … if he did get his memory back suddenly and was with her, Woody might lose it emotionally. "I'll take him," he said quietly. "He can stay at my apartment with me… I have a spare bedroom. As he regains his memory, we can re-introduce him to his place."
"Are you sure?" Jordan asked sharply.
"Yeah. I can take him to work…I mean, he's an adult, not a baby…."
Or so Matt had thought.
The issue with Woody's amnesia was not just the memory loss. Matt could handle the constant questions. But the memory loss had done more than just wipe out Woody's past from his mind. It had also lowered the filter in Woody's emotions. The long-pent up anger that Woody had from dealing with the initial Riggs shooting…and all the post-trauma stress that went with that…his father's death, his mother's cancer, Cal…came flooding out. All the walls that Woody had built up in the past to try to keep himself emotionally stable were gone….crumbled to the ground…like last year's sandcastle.
And since Woody was living with Matt, Matt became the bull's eye for Woody's temper. Woody would always apologize, and Matt knew that Woody didn't mean to be so angry or have such a bad attitude, but the red-haired detective had taken all he could. Woody needed to find somewhere else to bunk for a couple of weeks while Matt took a time-out.
That was what brought Matt to Jordan's office. Woody would and could take his ill-temper out on anyone but Jordan….the minute she would come into the room, he would immediately calm down.
A fact that had surprised the hell out of Seely. He assumed that a great deal of Woody's pent-up hostility had to do with her, and even though Woody couldn't consciously connect himself and Jordan, maybe subconsciously he would and turn his fury on her.
But that didn't happen.
"I need a break, Jordan. Could you take him for a couple of weeks or so? I've had him for a month and he's about to get the best of me…he's resentful, angry….furious with everything and everyone but you. Could you watch him for a while?" Matt asked from Jordan's couch.
"Me? I mean sure….but if he regains his memory he probably won't be so nice to me, either."
Matt sighed with relief and stood. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it…for right now, for my sanity's sake, I just need a few weeks away from the ragin' Wisconsin native."
"I understand that you're going to be my babysitter for a while," Woody said.
Jordan felt her heart break a little more for him again. She had gone to Matt's apartment after work to pick Woody up. Matt had let her in and she found Woody sitting on the edge of Matt's couch, his duffle bag at his feet, and Woody looking down at his shoes like they were the most interesting thing he had ever seen.
He had looked like the lost orphan from his childhood that she had pictured in her mind so many times before when Woody would talk about his past. She stifled the strong urge to take him in her arms and hold him…tell him that everything would be alright…she was there and she wasn't going to let anything else bad happen to him.
Much like he had done so many times in the past with her.
Kneeling beside the couch, she gently raised his chin with two fingers so he would look her in the eyes. "Not exactly a babysitter…You're a little big for me to put over my shoulder and burp."
At least she got a small grin out of it. Not the full dimples, but his lips did turn up at the corners. He reached down and grabbed the duffle bag and helped her to her feet. "And at least you're easier to look at than Seely…" She got another grin and the fluttering sensation in her tummy that Woody was flirting with her … A shot of excitement flew through her. Watch it, her conscience told her. Once he remembers, the flirting stops…and the hurting starts again…
"Thanks," she replied, feeling her cheeks warm with a welcome blush…a sensation she hadn't felt with him in a long time.
"Let's go," he said, reaching for her hand. "But where," confusion rose in his blue eyes again when he turned back to face her, "where are we going?"
"I'm going to take you back to your place," she announced as she led him out in the hall and down to the parking deck. "I'm thinking that being in familiar surroundings might help you remember a little…"
"If you're sure," Woody replied, getting into the passenger side of her El Camino after slinging his duffle bag in the tiny back seat. "You're in charge…you're the one watching over me."
