Thanks to everyone who read and to Ghostwriter, Callisto's Moon, and MelsieR for reviewing.

Alex double-checked the address and then parked and headed up to the front door, knocking lightly.

"Dr. Freeman?" an older man asked, opening the door.

"Alex, please," he agreed, offering a hand. "Mr. Crom?"

"Michael. Come in. This is my wife Rosa."

Alex shook her hand as well. "It's nice to meet you. I appreciate you both being willing to speak with me."

"It's no problem at all," she said with a smile. "We're always happy to help someone getting started with the foster care system. Please, have a seat." She gestured towards the couches. "Could I get you something to drink?"

"No, thank you." He took a seat on the smaller of the two couches, the one that faced a wall of dozens of pictures of children of varying ages.

"It's not quite everyone who's ever stayed with us, but that's most of them," Rosa said, noticing where his attention had gone.

"Are you fostering anyone now?" He didn't see any indication of it around them, speaking as someone who still more than occasionally had to remind Jamie to hang up his coat, but then again his house didn't have the same sort of formal living area that this appeared to be.

"Two girls, but they're spending this weekend with their mother. Their social worker is targeting the end of the school year for reunification since they've already had to change schools twice and a third move this late in the year would be hard on both of them, but it's still best for all involved that they get to spend as much time together as possible."

Alex nodded, although he hadn't paid much attention to the parts of the foster care class where reunification had been discussed. Oh, he knew that that was the primary objective of foster care and all of that, now, but Sonja had said at the start of the process that Jamie would never be eligible for it—not a surprise given what Alex had recently learned—so it hadn't seemed particularly relevant.

"Are you married?" Michael asked as he and Rosa settled in on the opposite couch. "Sonja only mentioned you when we spoke the other day."

"It's just me," Alex agreed.

"And you're fostering a sixteen year old boy on your own?" Rosa shook her head. "That is quite the deep end. We got involved in the system a little more than thirty years ago now, but I think we only had pre-teens and toddlers for the first few years. And even with two of us that was a steep learning curve."

"He needed a place, and I've got the room. I'd originally thought it would be a temporary situation, but apparently homes for teenagers are in short supply."

"That's an understatement, I'm afraid," Michael said. "Do you mind if I ask how you met him? Sonja said when she gave us your name that it was a specific placement."

"I run the city ambulance services, and Jamie was placed on the high school volunteer squad as a result of a city initiative last year." An initiative that was still technically going on, even if there were no current openings on the squad, and Alex didn't particularly appreciate it no matter how lucky they'd gotten with Jamie. That had nothing to do with the current circumstances, though. "I didn't even know that he was in foster care until his last placement ended right before Thanksgiving, but when I found him hanging around the station with no place else to go..." He shook his head. "I ended up taking him home with me right before the big ice storm just because I didn't know what else to do with him, and he's been with me ever since."

"And you don't have any children of your own?" Rosa asked

"No. It's never even been something I've seriously considered."

Michael tilted his head. "How has it been, having him stay with you?"

"Fine, actually. A lot better than I would have expected back in the beginning. Between hospital shifts and running the ambulance services my schedule is kind of erratic, and so is his since the squads don't have the same schedule each week, but we eat together when we're both home, and he'll generally come out and watch television or whatever with me in the evenings." Not that he got the impression that Jamie approved of his show choices, which, to be fair, Alex wasn't sure he'd paid a lot of attention to local and international news at Jamie's age either, but he usually ended up curled up on the couch or sprawled out on the floor with his homework anyway. "He's a good kid."

"No problems?" He looked a little skeptical. "A honeymoon period is pretty typical, but a few months in is when the cracks tend to start appearing."

"Homework was a fight at first," Alex admitted, "but he's better about getting it done, now." Or at least a decent amount of it done, anyway. For now Alex would accept that. "Curfew comes up more than occasionally, though. He's actually grounded at the moment, and not for the first time, for getting home very late last Sunday."

"And does he follow your rules about being grounded?" Rosa asked.

"I think so? That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, because as I said my schedule is erratic. As far as I know he's cooperating, but realistically I wouldn't know if he wasn't most of the time. If he's hours late, sure, but probably not an hour or two right after school. And I have no idea what I'd do if he does break it. Extending a grounding seems a little pointless if he's breaking it in the first place."

"I take it you don't have family or someone you could send him to," Michael said.

"No, and no friends that I'd be willing to ask to take on that kind of thing unless I was a lot more desperate." Nor was Alex willing to send Jamie to the station, at least not on days when he wasn't supposed to be there. It was a workplace, and it certainly wasn't the responsibility of anyone there—anyone besides himself, anyway—to keep an eye on Jamie. "I don't have any reason to think he isn't cooperating, either," he added. "It's more a concern."

"A reasonable one, especially with a teenager. Rosa and I were lucky in that we had work shifts that usually let us trade off sending the children off to school and being here when they got home."

Alex nodded. He could understand the convenience, but that wasn't a situation that he was likely to find himself in any time soon.

"We have asked children to call, though, when things didn't line up so neatly," Rosa offered. "Assuming you have a home phone? It's not perfect, but especially if you have caller ID you'll know he's at least made it to your house when he was expected to."

"I do, and that's a good idea." Not something he'd thought of before, but even if he was somewhere like on shift in the emergency room where he couldn't actually answer his cell, a message would still have a timestamp.

"As far as the second part, though, we generally tie specific priveledges to good behavior," she continued. "And often the fact that there is a consistent consequence, even if it's just an extension of a previous loss of priveledge, is enough to curb bad behavior. It does need to be something you can enforce, but with foster children..." A shake of her head. "Well, something like taking away a physical object is very fraught, especially since they rarely have many of them."

Alex wasn't surprised that he didn't recognize the music playing when he entered the house, but he also wasn't particularly pleased to hear it. Jamie knew full well that he wasn't supposed to be watching television when he was grounded.

He headed into the living room, only to pause with a frown as he realized that the music was coming from Jamie's room and wasn't anywhere near complex enough to be more than one instrument. He tapped lightly on Jamie's door, and the music stopped after one discordant note.

"Jamie?" Alex asked in the silence that followed.

"Hey," Jamie said, opening the door, although is eyes focused almost immediately on the ground. "Sorry, I didn't know you were home."

"Nothing to be sorry for, I just got here. Was that you playing?"

He shrugged and then nodded.

Alex tilted his head as the obvious occurred to him. "Where did the guitar come from? As last I heard yours was in storage with your other bike."

"I picked it up after my shift."

And that explained, or at least partly explained, why he was refusing to meet Alex's eyes, because he knew full well that he should have come directly home from the station. "Meaning straight home somehow involved a rather long detour?"

Jamie shifted a little. "I don't know. I forgot."

Considering that this was the first thing that Jamie had brought here on his own except for his bike Alex wasn't inclined to be upset with him. Even if he wasn't disinclined to be angry at Jamie for other reasons right now, and even if he knew full well that letting Jamie get away with breaking rules wasn't going to help anything. He hadn't needed Rosa or Michael to tell him that. Still. "That was the only detour you took?" he checked.

Jamie looked back at him and nodded quickly. "Swear."

"All right. But if it happens again, you're grounded for an extra week, is that clear?"

Another quick nod. "Clear."

Alex stepped back. "Okay. I'm going to go put my things away, but if you're getting hungry why don't you go check the fridge and see what looks good for an early dinner? We'll probably need to do a big shopping trip tomorrow, but there should be something that will work."

Jamie brightened immediately. "I'm hungry."

That was no surprise at all, and as he stepped past Alex Alex could see the guitar sitting on his bed. Specifically on the red and silver and black bedspread that Jamie had picked out Thursday night and that Alex was reasonably certain Jamie hadn't had on his bed when Alex had woken him up for breakfast this morning. Alex felt a quick smile tugging at his lips. It was a start. And even if Jamie didn't have anything on the walls yet, he did have a few packs of the putty-type stuff that had replaced thumbtacks while Alex wasn't looking which was also a start.

By the time Alex had put his things away Jamie had found a couple hamburgers in the freezer, and he held them up as Alex entered the kitchen. "Good?"

"Good as long as you're planning to eat a vegetable of some form too," Alex agreed. He held out a hand for the burgers. "Can you start heating up the grill plate while I thaw them out?"

Jamie was much more comfortable using the stove now, even if he generally stuck to leftovers or sandwiches unless Alex was also around, and he pulled the iron plate down out of the cupboard and flipped the stove on.

"How was your shift?"

"Busy. And the accident at the beginning was pretty ugly."

"What qualifies as pretty ugly?" Alex had done a few chores around the house after Jamie had left and then spent most of the morning working with the hospital requisition department to get in his supply requests for the next quarter through, and then after a quick lunch in the hospital cafeteria had gone to meet with the Croms. It would probably be Monday before he had time to look through the callout list.

"A semi jackknifed on the freeway just past the first exit into town, and even though it didn't actually hit anything a couple cars got crunched up behind it trying to stop. And then a couple others ended up in that steep ditch off the shoulder trying to swerve around it, but they were mostly okay. The people, I mean; not the cars. But for the ones that got crunched up us and both backup squads were there too, and I guess we were lucky it was so early and there weren't that many people on the road because Hank said if one more person was hurt we'd have had to call in a squad from Thompson."

Alex nodded. He'd call the city garage tomorrow—well, Monday, now—and get an update on the status of their new engine because they needed their other ambulance back. Not that it would have been precisely a problem to ask a squad from Thompson or any of the other surrounding counties, to help them with a callout, it was something all of the local services had to deal with on occasion, but having to do it because of damaged equipment was very different than having to do it simply because of the severity of an accident. And a lot harder to justify to the city after the fact, even if it had been their maintenance department that had left them short a vehicle in the first place. "Are you okay?" he checked.

"Hm? Yeah." He shrugged. "The worst car was the first one, and even Tyler and Hank together couldn't get anything to budge so we had to ask the fire department to cut the frame apart while we moved on to the next one. Ryan's squad pulled up just as it started to open up so they ended up being the ones to take care of the driver."

Ryan's squad being the first of the backup squads, Alex knew, and he nodded. The microwave beeped, and he pulled the plate of thawed hamburgers from the microwave and handed them it to Jamie before opening up the fridge. "How does finishing off the corn on the cob sound?"

"Okay." He put the burgers on the grill plate and then looked back at Alex, teeth hooking over his lip.

"What?" Alex asked.

"Did you meet with them?"

Alex had never tried to keep his schedule a secret from Jamie, and he nodded. "I did. They seemed like very nice people."

Jamie rolled his eyes.

"Jaim."

"It's just stupid is all," he said, returning his attention to the stove.

Alex put the corn on the grill plate next to the burgers. He knew full well that Jamie didn't think much of the foster care system, but personally he was very glad that he finally had someone besides Jamie's overworked social worker to talk to if—when—he needed advice. And people who had actually fostered teenage boys, at that. The fact that they seemed very easy to talk to was a bonus in his opinion.

Unfortunately he'd realized fairly early on in their conversation that he wasn't really sure where the limits were with privacy in this case. On a personal level he wasn't comfortable revealing very many details about Jamie without his permission no matter what the actual regulations were, a holdover from his position as a doctor and the emergency squad supervisor, he supposed, but there were some things that he would have to tell them about in order for their advice to be relevant. And those things... He kept his sigh to himself. Generic stuff—homework, curfew, chores, general behavioral expectations—sure, that was pretty universal and what they'd spent most of their time today talking about, but it wasn't necessarily where he had the most questions right now. And given that Jamie wouldn't even talk to him about the abuse, the odds of him agreeing to let Alex discuss it with anyone else...well, that was something that he would definitely need to bring up with Jamie's social worker when he had a chance.

"Michael and Rosa Crom; do you know them?" he asked as the corn husks started to char and Jamie carefully nudged them around.

Jamie frowned for a moment and then shook his head. "Nope. Or at least I don't remember that name, anyway. I guess maybe there is one set of foster parents left in the city that I haven't stayed with."

"Well, from what they said they've mostly fostered sibling groups over the years so that's not really a surprise. Don't forget to flip the burgers, too, please. Do you want cheese?"

"Yes, please."

Alex pulled down plates and glasses and then got out the buns and cheese. "Anyway, like I said, they seem like nice people."

"Sure. Whatever. Can we watch a movie after dinner?"

Alex let it go. He probably wouldn't have brought up the Croms if Jamie hadn't asked anyway. "Well, we can watch either the news or a documentary while you do your homework."

Jamie sighed and looked over. "Alex."

"Jamie," he mimicked. "Grounded. If you can't find something to do on your own, I'm sure I can find you something."