TW for discussion of ableism, psychical/emotional child abuse, indirect mention of loss of a child
Twenty minutes to the north, in a small, sterile hospital room, Jemma looked out her own window, staring at the empty sky and waiting for a sleep that wouldn't come. She was tired, exhausted, even. The medicine they gave her made her body feel heavy and made it so that even something as simple as sitting up made her feel like she had run a marathon, or maybe that was simply a side effect of the bullet wound, or the surgery. Whatever the cause, the fatigue that flooded her cells still wasn't strong enough to quiet her buzzing mind.
May had said she would be back, had said that the others wanted to see her, but no one ever came. Not for hours and hours, not until the sun had sunk towards the horizon, glowing a fiery blood red – no, not blood, think of something else – a fiery pomegranate color, did anyone come back. It wasn't May, though, or Skye or anyone else she had thought would come. It was Miss Hand. Miss Hand had come to check on her, and she was glad to see Jemma was all right – she had said so, after all – but Jemma could tell by the stiffness in Miss Hand's voice that something was wrong.
She didn't have the words to ask, didn't have words at all. She had found some to use when May was there, but now that May was gone and Jemma was alone again, with only the tense Miss Hand and busy doctors and nurses who didn't explain all their procedures and exams to her the way she wanted them to, the words were gone, too.
"Skye's okay," Miss Hand assured her, correctly interpreting her fearful eyes and the fast, nervous tap that Jemma rapped out on the side of her bed. "She's in a cast, and she's going to be fine. Bobbi's okay, too." Jemma closed her eyes, exhaled slowly as she nodded and adjusted her tapping from 1-1-1-1 down to 1-2-3-1-2-3. That was good. But it didn't explain why Miss Hand was so agitated. Jemma opened her eyes, studied Miss Hand. She was a fairly buttoned-up woman, often hard to read, especially because so many of her expressions looked the same to Jemma despite meaning different things, but even with her face so stoic, Jemma could tell that there was something she wasn't saying.
She wanted to ask questions, ask where everyone was, ask why no one had been to see her, but she couldn't make the words stop zipping around in her mind and migrate to her mouth. She tapped her questions instead. 1-2-3. Where-are-they? 1-2-3-4-5. Why-am-I-a-lone? Miss Hand didn't understand, or maybe she didn't notice. Jemma hadn't expected to get much of a response, of course. Most people didn't speak her pattern language, and even the ones who came close only got bits and pieces right, more understanding the feeling of the taps than the exact meanings. She knew it wasn't a very effective way of communicating with other people, but for now, with pain and fear and medicine and everything feeling so different and wrong and bad, bad, bad, it was the only language she could speak.
"Jemma," Miss Hand sighed, sinking into the chair by her bedside. She placed a delicate hand on the bed close to Jemma's, not touching her, but close enough that Jemma could reach out if she wanted to. "There's not an easy way to say this. The hospital was concerned about you and Skye and Bobbi, about your injuries. They were… they're trained to be cautious about these kinds of things, when kids come in so badly hurt. I know you know that."
She did know that. It had happened before. A sinking sensation weighed down the pit of her stomach as she closed her eyes again and turned away slightly, pulling her tapping hand in close so she could feel the rhythm – faster now, 1-2-1-2-1-2, on her hip. Her whole right side ached, and a sharp pain still radiated from the place where… no. She had to stay-fo-cused on what Miss Hand was saying. The doctors had been suspicious about their injuries. Something deep in Jemma's bones told her she knew what was coming next.
"They contacted CPS, my supervisor. There's an investigation—" Jemma didn't hear any more of what Miss Hand was saying, even though she knew the woman was still talking. The other sounds of the hospital – the beeping machines, the intercom announcements, the footsteps and conversations passing by in the hall – were all growing louder, roaring in her ears and overpowering Miss Hand's words. The light was fading outside her window, but the fluorescent light of her room was starting to burn at the backs of her eyes. She could feel every place where the sheets, her hospital gown, her bandages all touched her skin and the muscles in her arm start to tighten as the need to tap faster – 1-1-1-1 – increased. There was an investigation. She wasn't going back to Phil and May's. They were never going to see each other again.
"This isn't like last time, Jemma," Miss Hand said quietly, interrupting her thoughts. "As long as the investigation comes out clean, I don't see any reason why things can't go back to how they were, as long as that's what you want. 'Investigation' doesn't have to mean going back to St. Agnes for forever. Just until we can get things cleared up."
The tightness in Jemma's arm intensified, spreading up from her fingertips to her shoulder, spreading out into her chest, her neck. Last time. Last time it had meant the end, but that had been a good thing. The doctors had saved her last time. The Walkers had been good at hiding the bad parts from other people, from her old social worker Mrs. Finney especially, and Mrs. Finney didn't understand 10-year-old Jemma well enough (or care about her enough, Skye had decided later) to comprehend the messages that her muteness, her shaking, her rocking and tapping and flapping were all trying to send.
The Walkers explained those things away, reinforcing Mrs. Finney's impression of Jemma as an odd, difficult, unsocialized child. She had overlooked the bloody, bruised knuckles, rubbed raw from rapping against the sides of her time-out space, and the hollow cheeks, hungry eyes. She had overlooked them, but the doctors hadn't. The Walkers could hide those things from most people, but they couldn't hide them from the doctors, and when Jemma had hit her head too hard against the side of the time-out space, desperate to get away, the Walkers had no choice but to bring her in to the ER for stitches. The doctors noticed her cuts, and they noticed everything else, too. They had filed a report, just like they were doing now, and they forced Mrs. Finney to see. They forced Mrs. Finney's supervisor to see too; they were the reason Jemma never had to go back to the Walkers, the reason Miss Hand became her social worker after that. Jemma would always be grateful to the doctors for saving her from the Walkers.
She wasn't sure she felt grateful to the doctors this time, though. She was grateful to be alive, of course. She could never repay them for saving her life, removing the awful bullet from her side. But May and Phil weren't like the Walkers. They were as far from the Walkers as a family could get, as far as Jemma was concerned. She knew she couldn't blame the doctors; they had no way of knowing that May and Phil were the best adults Jemma had ever met, besides maybe her parents, of course, and she didn't want them to stop their vigilance. She knew they had to do their part to stop the next Walkers from hurting people. But it didn't make her feel any better, not when she knew that she wouldn't be allowed to see any of the few people left in the world she wanted to be close to because of them.
"I'm doing my best to get this straightened out as quickly as I can," Miss Hand continued evenly. "Who knows, it might even be resolved before you're discharged. Then you won't have to go anywhere else while you recover. That's what I'm hoping for, at least."
Jemma didn't say anything to Miss Hand's hopes. She didn't know what to say, and her words were still lost somewhere in the space between her mind and her throat. She imagined sometimes that her words all floated around and got jumbled up inside her body, some tangled in her lungs, some stuck in her windpipe, some never making it out of the maze of her brain at all. Floating words, like onomatopoeias from the pages of a comic book, Bang and Pow and Zap all trapped in their own little spaces, never leaping off the page the way they were supposed to.
She didn't say anything when Miss Hand left, and she didn't say anything when Miss Hand returned an hour later with two police officers in tow. They wanted her to tell them what had happened, but she didn't know what to say. Her words were gone, and even her taps couldn't say exactly how she had come to be in the position she was in.
"Could you write something down for us, Jemma?" Miss Hand suggested, once it was clear Jemma wasn't going to speak. Jemma wasn't sure she could make her hand stop tapping long enough to make it create words. She wasn't sure she wanted to, either – tapping made her feel good, and writing down what happened most certainly wouldn't.
"What about nod or shake your head? Could you do that?" asked one of the police officers, a white woman with choppy brown hair. She spoke gently, and even though her voice was a little gravelly, it was a voice that didn't make Jemma want to clap her hands over her ears. "I'm really sorry we're having to press right now," the woman apologized. "I know you're probably not feeling great, and I know talking to us isn't fun, but it's important that we get everybody's story as soon as we can, so it's still fresh in your memory. Do you think you could try for us?" Something about the woman felt steady, and Miss Hand seemed more relaxed around her, so Jemma found herself nodding slightly. Phil and May always said the important thing was to try.
The questions started easy. Did she go to school the day before? Nod. Did anything unusual happen at school? Shake. They asked about Skye, about her plan to leave, about whether it was Skye's idea or her idea to go along with Skye as she snuck out.
"After you left the house, you went to the park, right?" Nod. "And was Calvin Johnson – Skye's father – was he there?"
Jemma paused, and she realized that her mental image was suddenly hazy. The normally clear picture form that her memories were stored in wasn't where it was supposed to be, like a corrupted file on a hard drive. She bit her lip.
"Did you meet Cal at the park?" the woman asked again, a little more coaxing to her tone this time. Hesitantly, Jemma nodded. She was pretty sure they had met Cal there. Or maybe he met them? Who had been there first?
"Okay, great. So after you met Cal, you all left the park, right?" Jemma felt like she was supposed to nod, but she was becoming less sure of herself the deeper they went. Panic started to flick through her nerves, her arm tightening and her taps flittering anxiously near her hip. She couldn't remember. She had never not remembered something before, but the farther along in the story they went, the more and more blank her mind became.
"Was there anybody else there when you all arrived at the warehouse in Two Rivers?" asked the woman. She said it like she was expecting a certain answer, but Jemma wasn't sure which one she was meant to give. She had no idea if there were other people there. She couldn't even call the image of the warehouse to mind. Had they even gone to a warehouse? Her eyes burned with nervous tears, and she could feel her heart fluttered against her ribs. She couldn't remember.
"Jemma?" That was Miss Hand. "What's wrong? Do we need to stop?"
Jemma nodded, blinking hard against the tears and biting back her quivering lip. Her fingers scrabbled, trying to tap faster than they could go, and she drew her hand in close to her chest protectively, settling her fingers near her collar bone where they could tap right where her pulse could be felt.
"It's okay to be scared," the policewoman said kindly. "What you went through was really scary, and it can be hard to talk about."
Jemma shook her head. That wasn't the problem. She wasn't afraid to talk about what happened, she couldn't remember. It was gone, all of it. Deleted files, empty frame, a black hole of information that had been sucked away from her brain into the vacuum of space. It was completely unnerving.
"It's not hard to talk about?" Miss Hand sounded confused. "Jemma, I don't understand what's—"
"Don't… remember," Jemma managed to choke out. Each word felt like a knife in her throat, a too big, too hot star trying to fit through a tiny keyhole. Talking was too hard, but remembering was even harder.
"Doesn't remember?" the policewoman muttered to Miss Hand. "Did the doctors say anything about a concussion or amnesia?"
"No, I don't think so," said Miss Hand quietly. "Honestly, Izzy, it could be a stress response, or a mental block or any number of things I'm not qualified to identify. I'll let the doctors know, in case they need to monitor something, but sometimes people just… forget… their worst nightmares."
"That's okay," the woman – Izzy, apparently – said, turning to smile comfortingly at Jemma directly. "It's okay if you don't remember. Just tell us anything you do remember, and later on, if you can think of anything else, you can write it down or let us know."
"Skye's was in trouble," Jemma murmured. She found a few more words as she sifted through the blank spaces of her mind, desperately searching for anything to materialize. "Then there's something hot, and everything hurt… then… blood. I remember blood. And Bobbi was there, but I think maybe I imagined her. That's… that's it. Until after my surgery, that's it." It was so little, she knew, and it frightened her to think that there were hours of her life missing from her memory. Jemma always remembered everything – facts about biology and astronomy, everything she read, the good feelings from her parents and the bad feelings from foster families who hadn't taken care of her. The things Skye and Bobbi told her, the shape of Phil's smile, the sound of May's voice, the color of Fitz's eyes. Jemma didn't forget. That just wasn't her. But now there was a gap, a gap where she knew something had happened. She knew she had been shot, that somehow they had escaped Cal, because she was here, in the hospital, with a surgical scar and a pair of police officers, but she didn't remember anything except fuzzy feelings of searing pain and the dark red color of blood that she saw every time she closed her eyes.
"I think that's all we need for now," said Izzy kindly. "That's great, Jemma, really. Don't tire yourself out trying to remember. Just let us or Miss Hand know if something comes back to you, but really, don't worry about it. Just focus on getting better, okay kiddo?"
Jemma nodded, hot embarrassment scorching up her face, but Izzy and the other officer seemed not to mind. They left shortly, Izzy leaving Miss Hand with a quick, quiet "I'll see you at home" that clicked something into place in Jemma's mind. At least she hadn't forgotten everything. This Izzy was Miss Hand's Izzy. Her wife. The Izzy who was friends with May. No wonder she had felt trustworthy.
"Do you have any questions for me, Jemma?" Miss Hand asked, once it was just the two of them in the room again. "About anything? About what's going on, the processes, anything?"
"How does the investigation work?" Jemma hadn't been very aware of the investigation that took place when she was removed from the Walkers' home – she had been younger, and the signs of things gone wrong were probably much more obvious, once people actually started looking. She wanted to understand what was going to happen. Knowing the steps always made new things more manageable.
"Well, the department will assign someone to conduct the investigation," Miss Hand began. "I can't do it, since I'm personally involved in your cases, and, honestly, because of my relationship with Phil and Melinda. The investigator will speak with the doctors and look over the medical files and police reports. They'll probably want to interview May and Phil, do a home visit. They'll want to interview you and Skye and Bobbi, too, I imagine. Do you remember the person who asked you questions about the Walkers right before we met?"
"Yes," Jemma murmured. A straightlaced man with a starched suit had come to her school, pulled her out of class to talk with her. She remembered being upset, because she was missing independent reading time, which was her favorite time of day at Our Lady of Mercy, since no one was expecting her to talk and she could read and learn about things that were interesting, instead of listening to a teacher talk about things she already knew.
The man had been very straightforward and asked her outright about things with the Walkers. She was already back in her bunk at St. Agnes by that point, so she knew she didn't have to be afraid of having to go in the time-out space for saying bad things about the Walkers, so she had no reason to obfuscate the truth. Skye sometimes thought that lying was okay, especially if it meant protecting yourself from nosy grownups, but even Skye had agreed Jemma needed to tell the whole truth about the Walkers after she had heard bits and pieces from a shaky, overwhelmed, wild-tapping Jemma the night she got out of the hospital and came back to St. Agnes.
"They're straight-up evil, Jemma," Skye had said, her mouth hanging wide open. One hand was wrapped tightly in Jemma's, the other balled into a furious fist. "Totally and completely evil. A dog cage?"
"I think it's called a kennel crate," Jemma had corrected her in a tearful whisper. The stitches on her head felt tight and stingy, but at least Skye was holding her hand and helping her tap and breathe. At least she was in a place where she could let her body process the world without someone making her hurt for it. "That was the time-out spot. I had to go there when I was bad. I was bad a lot. They didn't like for me to be out of sorts. That was bad."
"It's not bad," Skye scowled, squeezing her hand tighter, but still being careful about Jemma's tender knuckles. Her hands were bruised from all the times tapping hadn't been enough in the time-out spot, all the times she felt too trapped and had to hit against the sides of the crate just to keep herself from a total, star-death collapse. "What's bad is them locking you up for something you can't control. For you being yourself. Anybody would be out of sorts in a place like that. You're not bad."
So she told the stiff man the truth, and he took notes, and she never saw him again. She never saw the Walkers or Mrs. Finney again, either. Miss Hand met her the next day, and she was a much better listener than Mrs. Finney ever was.
"Well, I imagine it will be close to that," Miss Hand said, slowly drawing Jemma back to the conversation at hand. "So you'll tell the truth about what things are like at May and Phil's. I know you'll be good at that. You'll just tell the whole truth, no matter what it is. The investigator will take notes, and will compile a report. Then, based on the conclusion of that report, we'll get you settled in the right place."
Jemma knew where the right place was. She knew where she wanted to be, where she finally felt like she belonged after years of feeling lost without her family. May and Phil's was the right place. May and Phil's, with Bobbi across the hall and Skye in the next bed over, with all five of them eating cereal in front of Saturday cartoons or sitting around the kitchen table playing Clue. That was right. That was home. And that was all she wanted.
Now, hours after Miss Hand had left, after the lights in her room had been shut off, leaving her with just the faint glow from the hallway and the watery waning moon seeping through the grey sheets of cloud that filled the sky outside her window, Jemma waited and wanted. She watched the clouds ooze across the sky, blocking all the stars from sight again, and she wanted. Wanting was risky, and wanting could be selfish, but oh, how she wanted. She wanted so badly to be back in orbit, to be surrounded by her stars, to have light filling her life again. She was tired of long, dark, starless nights.
Skye couldn't sleep. There were too many things wrong with the room, too many things buzzing around in her head. Sister Margaret had pulled the door closed when it was lights out, and Skye couldn't stop the trapped, panicky feeling from clawing at her chest at the sight of the sealed door. She wanted to open it, just a crack, but she knew one of the nuns would find it and close it again, or Michaela Dodson or one of the other girls in the room would see and tease her about it. To her credit, Michaela had mostly laid off Skye once she'd spotted the cast and the stitches on her stomach, only throwing a few lame insults her way for good measure, but Skye knew that Michaela's good will wouldn't extend to a weird new door-opening habit.
It was too noisy in the room, too, surprisingly enough. When Skye had first gone to May and Phil's, the overwhelming quiet of the house had made it impossible for her to sleep. But now she was used to the stillness, and the creaking building and snuffling sounds of six other sleeping girls were cacophonous to her ears. And on top of all that, her body hurt. Her arm ached, still pulsing a little in the cast, and every time she shifted in bed, the cuts on her stomach stung. There was no way she'd ever be able to fall asleep.
Skye turned her head, trying to find a cool place on the scratchy pillow, and her eyes were drawn to the window on one side of the room. It was a dark night, a cloudy night. She couldn't see any stars or even the moon from where she lay, and she wondered briefly if there were any stars out the window where Jemma was. If Jemma even had a window, that is. Skye hoped for her sake, she did. Having a window always helped Jemma. Skye knew she counted the stars under her breath any time she couldn't sleep, the geeky astronomer version of counting sheep, she supposed. The trick had never done much for Skye, not that she could have used it now if she wanted to.
Something sharp lodged in her throat at the thought of Jemma, stuck somewhere, all alone, maybe without a window, maybe without stars. She wished Jemma could be here with her, as selfish as it was to wish for Jemma to be back at St. Agnes. At least that way they would have each other, the way they always had, through every bad night, every nightmare, every monstrous foster parent, every bump and bruise and broken heart. Frustrated, Skye turned her face away from the window, shifting so she was flat on her back again. Hot tears sprung up in Skye's eyes and began to leak out the corners, sliding down the side of her face until they trailed down into her ears. It tickled a little, and she squirmed against the odd sensation, but she made no move to dry her eyes. What was the point? She had cried so many times in the last 24 hours, for so many reasons, over so many things. What was one more round of crying, alone in the dark, where no one would hear or see, where no one would care?
Melinda had given up on sleep hours ago. Phil had tried to coax her to bed earlier, and while he wasn't wrong about them needing rest, he underestimated how impossible it would be for her to feel at peace enough to drift off. She was sitting up in bed, knees drawn to her chest under the blanket, Phil snoring softly beside her. He had fallen asleep, but she could tell he was having a restless night, too, with all the tossing and turning he was doing as he slept. Normally he didn't move much in the night, but tonight wasn't a normal night.
A few months ago, it would have felt like the most natural thing in the world to have the house to themselves – empty and quiet and calm. Now, however, it felt like everything was tilted, slipping slightly to the edge of the frame, unbalanced, off-kilter. The quiet was deafening, the stillness stifling, the emptiness like a tomb. She couldn't turn her mind off, couldn't stop it from rifling from one girl to the next, worrying first about Jemma, still in the hospital, recovering alone, then Skye, sent back to St. Agnes and feeling abandoned, then Bobbi, her whole word turned upside down again, just when she was starting to get her feet under herself again. Then the cycle repeated, new worries about each of them popping up faster than May could quash them, like some twisted version of whack-a-mole. She was driving herself crazy.
Frustrated and giving up on sleep, she kicked back the covers, slid out of bed, and picked her way across the room and over to the window that overlooked their small backyard. There wasn't much out there at the moment – the cold weather had long killed off even their heartiest flowers, and the vegetable patch was well past harvest. The three yellow rose bushes along the back fence were bare, too, but that didn't bother her much. Not as much as the sickening realization that she might have to plant three more, if something went wrong and they weren't able to get Bobbi, Skye, and Jemma back, if they lost three more kids. She wasn't sure she'd be strong enough to plant those bushes – as painful as it was to have to plant the first three, planting ones for the girls, for children whom they'd met and known and shared the world with, was more than Melinda thought she could bear.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, forcing the notion from her mind. She couldn't think like that, not right now, in the dead of night when everything looked bleak, and not tomorrow in the light of day, where she needed to be focused on making things right and bringing them home. She wasn't somebody who went mushy for the power of positive thinking, but she was pragmatic enough to know that dwelling on the tumultuous what-ifs and worst-case-scenarios would only distract her from doing what needed to be done. She exhaled and opened her eyes, returning her attention to the window. She lifted her gaze from the yard down below and slowly tracked upwards, towards the sky. Thick slabs of granite cloud blocked most of the sky from view, obscuring the stars and filtering away most of the feeble light from the half-moon that struggled against the oppressive sameness of a cloudy sky. The sight was even more depressing than she expected.
Suddenly, without quite thinking through what she was doing, her feet carried her quietly out of their bedroom and down the hall. She stopped by Bobbi's room and grabbed her blanket, then slid into Skye and Jemma's room. Taking the pillow from Skye's bed, she sank limply onto Jemma's bed and turned so she could stare at the map of the stars that hung just within reach above the place where her youngest daughter's head should be resting. There were no stars in the sky, and her little balls of light were scattered to the wind, taken away for the time being, but at least she could lie here and look at Jemma's stars, smell the sweet scent of Skye's shampoo on her pillow, feel the warmth of Bobbi's blanket. She had a long night ahead of her still, but at least she could make it feel a little less empty while she waited for a sleep that may never come.
I'm sorry all the chapters in this update were so dour, it just kind of worked out that way... things will pick back up slightly in the next update, I promise! Thank you all so much for reading!