Chapter Thirty-Eight: Wednesday, January 4, 2006, New York

Simon felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see his father, lines of concern etched onto his face. Most of the others had headed to the cafeteria for lunch. They'd invited him along, but…he was hungry; he just didn't think he could eat. He'd been playing the last twenty-four hours over in his head, trying to make sense of it all.

"You should be resting," his father repeated what he'd said, earlier.

"I am resting."

"I meant, in bed."

"I know. I'm not tired." It was half true. What he didn't feel like was sleeping. Everything seemed so surreal. If he could just talk to Caroline, hear from her that she was all right.

"Can we talk?" Dad asked him.

Simon nodded. He'd been expecting another "talk" from his parents. He sat quietly while his father pushed him out of the surgical waiting room and into a quiet alcove near windows with dozens of large potted plants.

Dad took a seat on the wide windowsill. "Simon, I…I don't know what I want to say exactly. I just feel like I have to say something."

"I know you don't approve of my choices," Simon told him, hoping to cut the conversation short. "You don't have to. All you and Mom need to do is accept that I've made them. I hope you change your mind about me and Caroline," he added. "But whether you like it or not, she's the one I want to be with. I'm in love with her. Nothing you say is going to change that, so you may as well stop trying."

"You're right. I don't approve. You're also right that I don't have to. Whether your mother and I like it or not, you're a man. You can move wherever you want to move, live where you want, work where you want, go to school or not."

"I'm going to go to school, Dad."

"I hope you do. But…Simon…there's something…." Dad shook his head, clearly struggling for words. "I'm having a hard time saying this," he admitted. "I've been playing the last twenty-four hours—the last few days—over in my head and I can't shake the feeling that…it just seems to me that whatever Caroline wants, the adults around her just give it to her. That can't be healthy."

Simon blinked. Of all the things he might have anticipated his father coming at him with, that hadn't even occurred to him. "I really don't think it works like that, Dad."

"She wanted you to move to New York and overnight, you have a place to live and a job. Two jobs. Instead of questioning what most parents would call poor judgement, her mother is pulling strings to get you into college. She's supporting your moving here to be with her daughter, a…let's just call her sixteen," he said in frustration, obviously tired of everyone pointing out that Caroline was only a couple of days away from her sixteenth birthday. "But you're nineteen. You'll be twenty in March. And I get it," Dad cut him off, before Simon could remind him that in a few years, three-and-a-half years wouldn't mean anything. "In five or six or seven years, that won't be a big deal. But it's a big deal now and I don't… I can't understand what her parents are thinking."

"That's a question you're going to have to ask them," Simon told him, his tone colder than he'd meant it to be. "All I know is that I love her and she loves me. Isn't that all that matters?"

"Oh, Simon," said a new voice. Mom.

He looked up to see her standing behind his wheelchair.

"Sixteen is too young to know what love is. You're too young to know what love is. And even if you were older, love isn't all that matters." She came around to sit next to Dad. "There's so much more to a relationship, because love…as wonderful as it is, those butterflies in your stomach, missing someone when they're not there, the warm feeling you get when they're near…." She smiled at Dad. "Those things are all very nice. But real love is knowing somebody. Knowing you can depend on them through the hard times—and there will be hard times, Simon. You'll have disagreements. And she's so young, you really had no idea who she's going to be in two years or three, or ten."

"Mom, I get all of that."

"Do you really?" she asked him. "Does she? Do either of you have enough life experience to understand what you're doing?"

He huffed out a sigh. "We're not actually getting married, not right this very second, anyway."

"But it's what you want, right?" Mom asked.

"Of course, it's what I want. When she's older. When I'm older. But you guys are acting like it's happening tomorrow."

"We just don't want to see you make a mistake," Dad told him. "And…I've got to be honest with you, son, I can't shake the feeling that there's…." He shook his head. "I'm afraid for you."

"It's not like what happened last night is going to happen all the time. I get that Cathy's with the DA, so there may always be people who don't like her, but most of them aren't going to actually do anything about it."

"Please just come home," Mom reached for him.

Despite his anger, Simon let her take his hand.

"At least while you're recovering," she went on. "If you still want to move out here in a couple of months, we'll…we'll talk about it."

"Mom." Simon squeezed her hand. "There is no 'we' in this discussion. In fact, it's not even a discussion. You and dad need to either accept—to respect —my choice or…or just give me the space I need to live my life. It's up to you." He kept his tone as even as he could and made point not to yank his hand away from her. "I love you, but this is my life." He maneuvered the wheelchair awkwardly out into the hall and caught the attention of a passing nurse to ask if he could help him get back to his room.

….

"Maxine?" Kyle rubbed a hand over his face. The bed….it wasn't a bed under him. It was a sofa. He was in the waiting room. At St. Vincent's. It hadn't been a dream and— "Nicole?" Panic gripped him.

"It's all right," his aunt assured him. "A nice young woman named Samantha took her down to the cafeteria with the rest of them to get something to eat."

Kyle sat up. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

Maxine handed him a much-welcomed cup of coffee. It was hospital swill—but it was swill meant for patients, which meant it was slightly less like day-old tar than the stuff he'd gotten used to drinking, back before he got hired by…. "Dr. Alcott." He looked up as his boss came into the waiting room.

"Kyle. And you must be Maxine Gray," Peter extended his hand to Maxine. "Peter Alcott," he introduced himself. "Catherine Chandler is my god daughter—and as happy coincidence would have it, her husband is the son of one of my oldest friends."

"How's Elliot?" Kyle asked.

"Stable. Still unconscious, but we're not worried about that just yet. Amy and Catherine are back with him, now."

"What happened?" Maxine asked. "All anyone has been able to tell me is that he was shot."

"That largely sums it up," Dr. Alcott told her.

Unsurprisingly, Maxine was neither convinced nor mollified. "Elliot's secretary phoned my house at six o'clock in the morning say there had been an attempt on his life—and to assure me that my daughter and nephew were unharmed. She made a similar phone call to Mr. van Axel. I would like to think that, as I have gathered you are an old family friend, you can do better than 'he was shot'."

Dr. Alcott nodded; his expression remained calm and patient, as did his tone. "Elliot was struck with a high caliber bullet from an assailant on the roof across the street from his apartment," he said. "His collar bone was shattered. There was significant damage to his rotator cuff and the surrounding tissue. He lost a lot of blood, but all things considered, he's lucky. Kyle was on the scene and was able to stop the bleeding while they waited for paramedics to arrive." He shot Kyle a nod—and Kyle didn't miss the way Dr. Alcott had left Vincent out of the narrative. Or the part where he'd said Cathy was married to the son of one of his oldest friends, which had to mean he knew what Kyle had seen last night. "The most important things are that I expect Elliot to make a full recovery and that it's over."

"Thank you, Doctor. Now, Kyle, what do you say we get you down to the cafeteria and get you something to eat?"

"Um…yeah, give me a minute, okay?" he asked her, then added, "I'll be right down."

Thankfully, Maxine took the hint, hopefully thinking he just wanted to ask Dr. Alcott something technical or sensitive. She wouldn't necessarily be wrong in that assumption. Kyle waited until Maxine was out of the room. "Last night, I saw something I'm having hard time explaining."

"Indeed you did, my boy." His tone was warm, but something in Peter's face reinforced the idea that Kyle had better tread lightly.

"How is someone like that possible?"

Peter's expression softened. "It's not my story to tell—but the simple truth is that we don't know. Vincent was found as an infant, right outside this very hospital. I'm sure you can reach the same conclusion the rest of us have as to why—but beyond that, we know nothing."

Kyle mulled it over a moment. He had a thousand questions, but one seemed more salient—and possibly more intrusive—than the rest. "I've gotta ask, his and Cathy's kids…?" He'd met a couple of them in passing, but….

"They are their father's children as much as they are their mother's. Go on and get something to eat. We'll have plenty of time to talk later. Now that you're in on our little secret, you may find yourself called on to help with the…shall we say the 'family side' of our little practice, especially as Vincent and Catherine's children grow up and, quite possibly, have children of their own."

Children of their…oh. "Does the kid know? Simon?"

"Not yet."

Kyle rubbed his hand over his face again. His stomach rumbled. Right. Food.

…..

Simon smiled when he saw the tall, brown haired young woman sitting on his bed, flipping through a magazine, apparently waiting for him. "Mary."

"Hey, Simon." She got up and wrapped her arms carefully around his shoulders.

"I didn't expect to see you—I'm good from here," he told the nurse.

"I've got him," Mary promised.

The nurse offered over a smile and went back to his duties, while Mary helped Simon into bed. "I'm trying not to run into Mom and Dad," she confided.

"I think they'll give me some space, at least for right now. We had kind of a blow up."

"They love you, you know."

He nodded. "I just need them to respect my decisions."

"Good luck with that. Now—what happened? All I know is what Ruthie told me over the phone, which wasn't much."

"I….it's kind of a blur, honesty," he lied. He hated lying, especially to Mary who might be the only person in his family who understood right now, but something told him there was more going on than he understood. "I was at my new place when George—George Huang, he's with the FBI, but he's also my Chinese tutor….maybe I'd better back up a little further…."