Note from Author: Thank you Edgefire for your comment on the last chapter! You are so sweet, my old friend. Here's a little indulgent throwback to Tim and Todd :) Thank you all, a million hugs for reading!
Cabbie
Caged: Reclamation
Chapter 21
The doctor had been up in his bedroom, lying quietly in the dark. He made plans for the week, thinking about what to make for dinner the next day, reflecting on a strategy shift for a couple of patients, debating whether he and Shane should head back to California to visit family sooner rather than later. The typical summer night offered no real breeze through the open windows but did let him enjoy the aromatic blooms from the garden and the sounds of nighttime fauna roving the hills.
Despite the idyllic space, Tim Graham carried a heavy heart, driven into introspection and old grief, aloneness setting that off. Shane Lansing, his husband, worked the emergency room tonight and wouldn't be home until morning. Despite the underbelly Shane saw there, he had a lighter view of the world. The opposite of Dr. Graham. It was why they loved each other.
The doctor had glanced at the clock, seeing the midnight hour, the slow passing of time, sleep evading him as he considered the paella recipe. Then… something other than lilacs and brandywine and the rhythmic hoot of the owl that lived in the ancient oak came into the room.
The screech of the garden gate.
The disruption was unmistakable and marred the otherwise perfect peace beyond the porch. Tim sat up and with arms locked around his knees, listened. No more noise… just the owl.
Except that gate had been opened and shut. An intentional act. Couldn't be Shane because he would never come home early and go right to the garden without a text or call. Any such surprise alteration of schedule at this hour would have him crawling into bed, pulling Tim into a hug, and giving him a love bite on the shoulder. No. Wasn't Shane out there.
Someone definitely lurked though.
He got up and pulled on sweats and a tee-shirt and his comfy outdoor canvas shoes. He looked outside and couldn't see anything from the bedroom window but that's when he smelled the tobacco.
Someone smoking.
He huffed and considered grabbing the .22 rifle but that was probably overkill. Reality was, between Shane and him, there were two or three or even four super quirky friends (honestly, not to be judgmental… they were dentists… just saying) who might stop by. Not beyond them to do such a thing. Nobody had ever done it before but it was possible. Plausible. And someone who carefully closed the gate to a private garden probably wasn't a killer.
So no weaponry.
A twinge of memory slowed him to the edge of tears because that cigarette sure smelled like an unfiltered and goddamn that made him think of Todd Manning and he tried to shake the intrusive thought away as he headed down the stairs to confront whoever decided to make camp in his garden.
But he couldn't stop the recollection.
Losing Todd had been a true gut-punch. Jedediah called him, sobbing, called from Cuba. Tim had hung up the phone after trying like hell to be a calming voice and just cried. Head on folded arms on his desk here at the house and cried like he hadn't cried in forever, knowing he would never be the same again. It took a few days to get back to work and months to stop thinking about it at all times of the day. Shane had been less than understanding. Tim tried to explain but the poor man was hurt and convinced the doc was really in love with the seducer after all but soon Shane brought tea and biscuits and kisses and apologies for being a jealous asshole over a dead—
….a dead patient who reminded me of everything humans are, of their worst, of their best, of my own forever flaws and perfections, of the heaven and hell that is this America. He is every patient and none of them. He's a lost lover and never a lover. He's a friend who hardly knows me and one who knows the essence of me. He is who any of us could be.
But for the grace of God, go I.
Yes, and this America, this hell… finally killed him. Do you understand? Do you, do you, do you….
When he stepped out onto the porch and then into the garden, he saw long legs, a slender body languishing on their bench like a cat, a cigarette's glow, and in a few more steps down the dirt path into the greenery, oh my god, oh my GOD, there he was. In that moonlight. Open, guileless eyes searching the shadows for monsters… or angels.
Like always.
Hey Superman...
Tim filled the coffee maker with water and began making sandwiches with turkey and left-over bacon, repeatedly looking for and then finding Todd in the living room. It was a disorienting vision, a delusion, it had to be, but no. The doctor was numb with the shock of seeing him, wavering between wanting to cry and exploding in wild laughter so therefore perpetually in the middle, silent.
God! How is this real?
Only God could answer. It was a miracle, a goddamn Lazarus-arises miracle that Todd Manning lived and breathed in his house.
Tim watched him study framed photographs of Shane and Tim on their various adventures tacked up on the far wall. He still bore a slight limp though Tim could swear it was not as profound as it used to be. There was also a palpable effervescence filling the humid-warm house, an energy beneath his silence that he always gave off, a quality that said something might happen in the next few minutes, just you wait.
And yet, he was terribly vulnerable in the way he stood so still, so focused, lips parted unconsciously with his hands in his pockets. He wore modest clothes, clothes bought at a regular person's store rather than shipped in from New York City or Paris or London or Milan. The plain black tee-shirt was only partially tucked in, the remaining soft folds falling over a studded belt that echoed 1980's punk styles and held up newish Levi's that hung sort of loose on his almost adolescent narrow hips, bottomed out by clean black Adidas. Tim thought if he walked up to him and pushed him, he'd simply disappear into nothing. A ghost. An ethereal frailty.
All very unlike the Todd that Tim knew.
The kicker of course, the thing that made a person doubt what he saw, that maybe the being that stood in the living room was not in fact Todd…
...was the near-shaven head.
In all the years Tim knew him, Todd always wore his hair long. No matter the circumstance, nobody was gonna cut that goddamn hair. Yeah, the hair showed that he had been through a real war for lack of a better word and it had fundamentally changed him. That and thinness emphasizing his unique features… high cheekbones, full lips, a fighter's chin and nose, that deep scar that radically altered the beauty… made him seem somehow fragile. As if he finally, actually, looked like his true inner self.
Yes, absolutely, there was a palpable difference in him that Tim could not identify and it almost… almost… made him unrecognizable.
Clearing his throat, Tim placed the tray of sandwiches on the table, the sound drawing Todd's attention. Light eyes found Tim's blues and he smiled a small smile like he just found a ladybug on his hand. He held the doctor's gaze as he moved to the table, an echo of that moment long ago when he tried to seduce the doctor, a misguided expression of fear that Tim had stopped caring about Todd as a patient. Yes, yes, that gaze as he moved across the room revealed Todd… was still Todd, Tim thought. He still had such magnetism, such power. For all the seemingly delicate physical presence… for all his inner fragility…
He was still a king… and in an instant Tim remembered that's what always got to him about Todd. Something Shane had once noted about him.
If only he'd use that mad control he has to change the world into what he wants it to be. The world would bend to him. Instead… he just reacts. Everything he does is a goddamn reaction.
Todd pulled the chair out and sat before carefully picking up a sandwich. The two ate in silence, not unlike a therapy session might go, Todd obviously hungry though, finishing one and picking up a second. Tim smiled as Todd finally gazed at the bread, really seeming to taste it. And liking it.
"I made the bread myself," the doctor said.
Swallowing first, Todd said, "I can tell. It's…. um… fresh and… real." He ate thoughtfully, then thoughts must have intruded because his expression changed, eyes drifting to the side, away from Tim, blinking, the chewing slowed.
Tim got up and then returned with the pot of coffee, pouring it into the mugs, Todd then quirking, scanning the table. He asked. "Milk? Not cream. Please?"
"Sure, sure," Tim said quickly, hopping back to the kitchen.
Once he happily had his cafe con leche cradled in his two hands, Todd then sat back and eyed Tim, a sharp gaze there. "You don't believe what you see," he said.
"No. I'm stunned. I can't even be myself."
Todd smiled again, an oddly peaceful smile. He sipped and then carefully set the coffee mug down. "I'm not a ghost."
Tears welled in the doctor's eyes and he reached across the table to hold Todd's forearm marked by the terrible scar from long ago the healing of which had bonded them. "I know you're not," he said softly. "It's hard to believe I'm touching you though. That you didn't die. I grieved your death for a long time. I'll have to learn to live with you again. My thoughts about you, my conversations with you… with the ghost of you…I have to let that Todd Manning go. Thank god."
That got Todd to smile again, "What did you say to me? To my… dead self?"
"A lot of goddamn lecturing." After a soft laugh from Todd, the doctor then jumped into the conversation they needed.
"Tell me what happened."
Todd closed his eyes tiredly, sighed just as tiredly, then lowered his head and lifted his arm just enough to allow him to kiss the doctor's hand. He lingered there a second or two, warm lips on cool skin, before sitting back once again. "I am so glad to see you," he said, smiling a little. He left his arm outstretched so Tim could continue holding him. He added, "It's not um…" Searching, searching. "...com...complicated."
Tim didn't say anything, just kept his eyes firmly on Todd's.
It wasn't, yeah? Complicated? A near death, a saving, a finding.
You're a monster… so fucking OWN IT.
He glanced away, eyes on those framed pictures. Bookcases flanked the display, hundreds and hundreds of books, Todd figuring the two men didn't blend their collections but rather, each had their own shelves. A million, no, billions of words in those shared books. His story didn't need that kind of number but it sort of felt like it did. He eyed the doctor's heavy hand, the reddish hair there. A fatherly hand.
"Téa died in my arms and… suddenly, I had nothing. Every purpose for being here… for being… good... vanished. So I followed through on a…"
Prison for a bombing. Prison for a bombing.
"I uh… brought… terrible people to a house… and watched a clock run down…time clicking... down, down, down, until a fiery explosion would wipe them from the face… of the earth. I had nothing left so I thought I would…"
His lip twitched and he petted the back of Tim's hand with just his fingertips, an apology in it… an assurance without words that his suicide, because that was what happened, did not mean Tim was nothing…
"I decided to stay for the ending."
He machine-gunned the words, awful on his tongue, realizing the worst part was that. Because exactly, what… his children meant nothing? Rico? Viki? Tim? He had known they were alive, he knew they would be hurt by his act. But it hadn't entered into his mind that day, at least, not in a way he remembered.
A fucking monster. The King of Hell, right?
Tim nodded and he could not stop the tears from rolling down his face. "I'm so so sorry, kiddo."
"It was crystal clear. Made perfect… logic—um… sense. They were evil. Monsters. I should… I should die with them."
"You survived it though."
Todd scoffed and got up. He wandered from the table and went back to the pictures.
"You got married," he said flatly after some moments in silence. Translation: he missed huge things that happened. He couldn't even think about missed things with Lucia and Reese. Different little humans, now. Different from when he left for Cuba. Starr was a whole other level of missed things.
"I did," the doctor said quietly. "Shane and I wed in Newport, Maine, where we have a cottage and a sailboat. He sails, I do not. I bring the jackets and bread and—"
Todd tilted his head and he turned, a smile emerging from the dark cloud he threw himself into, finishing the sentence, "Love."
"Yes. Though I think we both bring that." After a beat of quiet, Todd looking at the pictures again, Tim noted, "I'm surprised you remember where I live. You were here only once, I think."
"You invited me right after I got out of…um... prison. I always wanted to come back but Dr. Lansing moved in and I didn't wanna… " The word bounced away. Then bounced back. "Intrude."
Tim added a truth, pushing back. "You didn't want me to see you, your heroin addiction, your association with Moreno and MK."
No denying that. Todd avoided Tim like the plague and so only grunted in response. Yeah. He moved to the bookshelves and studied the titles of the books. "Which bookcase is yours?"
"You can't guess?"
Todd flashed a smile then said softly, "Lots of… psychiatric shit here. This is definitely yours. Next to the cookbooks."
Tim chuckled, "Yup."
"California cooking, baking bread, Greek gourmet. I didn't know you liked any of that. Looking here… I feel so… self-absorbed." Todd said, his voice almost dreamy.
"Don't. We are… who we are. Friends no matter, wartime friends where the only thing that counts is the right-now, surviving. You know me in much deeper ways than casual friends know me. Books… are meaningless."
He kept reading the titles, finally turning to look once again at the doctor.
"How old are you?"
Tim smiled. "I'm 50."
"I always thought you were ages older."
Softening, Tim said, "Just ten years separate us."
"I love you, you know. Around you… I felt like... I mattered."
"I know."
Todd shook his head, a look of chastisement on his face. He reached out and caressed one of the framed pictures, the wedding picture, suit-dressed Shane and Tim smiling like crazy, hands interlaced, hair wind-blown, blue sky, a bay behind them. He then said in that same thoughtful tone, "Pedro Moreno sent me to a… um… a… a convent to… to heal. The sisters made homemade bread and their own… yogurt… and raised chickens and grew vegetables and I miss it because they did not see a monster in me and every night a yellow bird sang in a cage and I rarely had a dream. They called me… Angel… without um… without irony because… they did not know me."
He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and then sat in a sofa chair. He patted the puffy arms and looked at Tim. "This is yours, isn't it?"
"Yup."
"Do you listen to Dr.—"
"You can call him Shane."
"Does… Shane… pour his heart out to you from the couch while you sit here?"
Tim now laughed aloud and went to the couch. "Sometimes," he said.
Todd's small grin faded and he grew serious, touching the threads on the chair's arm for a minute or so. "I was… asleep… for a long time. Five months or so… and then I woke up and… I couldn't walk, had this… word… thing. Then Jed came."
Tim couldn't cover the shock, "Jed? He knows?!"
"He knows. He found me. Put things together thanks to some reporter…"
"You were in a coma."
"I don't know what it was. I had a friend… sort of… more like a mother-sort of friend… and she asked, wondered, if it was like… like maybe I was catatonic. I remember things so I couldn't have been entirely unconscious."
"Well, people have had those experiences before, a certain undetectable consciousness while in a coma. You do have a history of catatonia, and this bombing… Téa's death… could have triggered it. It's true."
"We'll never know."
"No."
"So here I am."
"A reporter, you say. Your survival will be public then."
"No, the reporter never learned anything. Jed and Pedro… um… sent him on a different path. Guy stopped… um… hunting."
"I'm going to assume you're hiding. Why?"
He looked aghast, "Isn't it obvious?"
"No."
"I killed 13 people in a… um… a bombing. The… um… the… FBI will be interested, yeah? They'll put me away. I can't do that to my family. I just can't."
Tim sniffed and sighed heavily, eyes looking into the distant, thinking about it. He drew back to Todd. Face serious and brows knitted. "Except the story is you overdosed on heroin. No news story or agency that I know of is tying you to the bombing."
"As long as I'm dead."
The doctor sat back, and Todd got up again, wandering to study those pictures again. He caressed again the frame of the wedding photo. He and Téa didn't have such a joyous shot.
Delgado…
"I was worried about you, in Cuba."
Todd remained quiet, gazing at Shane's books now, fingertips riding the spines. He rolled his shoulders, as if stretching, as if nerves were prickling under his skin. He stayed quiet. Reading titles.
"Téa told me you stayed with a male prostitute. That you researched a child trafficking ring, that you might have been exposed—"
"I remember everything."
The tone was cold, a deep simmering in the words. Everything. It took a moment and then Tim bit down on his teeth, his jaw working, his fists tightening because he wanted to jump across the space between them... because he fucking knew it. He knew the war Todd had been through had been exactly that. The secrets his brain kept from him had blown up and no doubt, as the doctor feared, THAT was at least partially the reason he saw the bombing through to the end. "Todd," he grunted, empathetic pain in it.
"My father… um… lent me out to the man who… um… led the monsters. Caro… Manuel Caro. He's the guy I was chasing all this time. It's a strange coincidence I learned in… um..." The name fluttered out of his head, the choice of Spanish and English colliding.
"You were raped by someone else? As a child?"
"A deal. A payment of sorts. I was currency for Peter... I was maybe... 12. I was wrong to think the… abuse… ended when I was 9. It never ended. Not until the last time… at 14. I remember now… um… trying to be… cooperative, to make things… better. Not in a childlike way either."
Tim couldn't say a word.
"Caro was the… brother… not by blood, but like foster or something of… um… Pedro Moreno. Long story."
"Jesus…" Tim couldn't begin to wrap his head around the difficulty of this, the obvious complication of it. Did Todd say this Caro "was" the brother?
"Was Caro in the house?"
Todd laughed softly and then didn't, what he laughed at unclear, vaguely bitter. He didn't explain, walking to the table for more coffee.
"Todd? Did he die in that house?"
"No."
Conversation over on that point. Tim didn't press.
"I learned all this in La Habana… and a bit of it while I lay in the arms of Rico... el pinguero… but that is not accurate…"
"Not a prostitute."
"No… just another survivor, another… bit of currency." He paused and mixed up sugar into his coffee. Adding more milk. He sipped the coffee as he stayed standing. "Caro raised Rico, put him in movies, movies that featured dead… children."
"Snuff films?" Tim choked the words out, the bigger picture beginning to clarify. The war was not just a war. Todd had been through a fucking holocaust.
"That's the ticket," he said quietly. "Rico survived so much worse than me. I killed those… um… monsters for him, for the kids who died, for me, so that my own children would never have to live in a… um… a world… a universe... with those bastards in it."
"Where is Rico now?"
"I don't know. He left… no… I made him run because I blamed him for Téa dying and…" He didn't finish, drinking the rest of the coffee. He stared at the empty cup. When he looked up at the ceiling, tears came, eyes reddened. He wiped at his face and nose with his arm, like a kid. "I gotta find him but I need to get to Téa first, only… I don't know how. I can't go to prison. I can't do that to them. It's like another death, yeah?"
Before he knew it, Tim was up and wrapping his arms around Todd and promising they'd figure things out. "You're here and it's a miracle. It's what we start with." And Todd found himself crying more with a hurt that felt like it came from a place that was young and innocent and bleeding pretty damn profusely. Scraped knees and a tingly elbow and a missing tooth.
"It's okay, kiddo, it's okay."
When they finally separated, Tim offered the guest room to him. "Rest here tonight," he said, and Todd agreed and then they walked upstairs with Todd saying as he took tired steps, "My dog is in the Jeep. Gotta get him."
"I'll get him," Tim promised.
The room was cozy, as Todd expected, the large bed and quaint furniture looking exactly like what he thought Tim's house would look like in his musings before that one visit. He collapsed on the bed, stomach down, and sighed.
"You got a bag?"
"Yeah."
"I'll get the dog now then. Gimme your keys."
"Not now. Wait. Please."
Tim hesitated a moment then sat on a small couch and crossed his arms. Todd dug into his pockets and dumped the car keys and cell on the nightstand before cuddling with the pillow and gazing at the doctor. "This feels… familiar."
Not smiling, the doctor nodded.
Hundreds of times, it seemed, he lay on a bed and the Doc waited for him to talk. Todd then realized that unsmiling quiet meant Doctor Graham had thoughts on things. He was about to throw gauntlets. And it made Todd want to laugh, a little hysterically, sure, but there it was. He cuddled a bit more, pulling his knees up a little.
"Go ahead," he said. "I won't break."
"Why are you stateside? Why not stay safe in Cuba, hidden, being Angel-without-irony from the nuns?"
Well, Manning?
Todd's cell phone buzzed and he lazily drew it to him. Saw that Jed had texted and called, panicked... where are you, Pops… and Todd said softly, "It's Jed…" and texted back, truthfully, Came to Doc's house, no room for Pedro, all ok. Sorry. Love you.
Tim patiently waited for Todd to put the phone back on the nightstand, gather himself, reposition himself with the pillow. Hard eyes then met Tim's.
"Téa is in trouble. I'm here to… fix things."
"What kind of trouble?"
Todd rolled his eyes and rubbed his head, groaning, "Misguided… snake pit… shit."
"Lots of words?"
"A lot of… fucking… words."
"Okay… so then what? You fix it and...?"
"I don't know. I... uh… " He paused. "I feel stupid… like a punk…" He spat the word, old revulsion for the prisoner that would let himself be raped or give sexual favors for protection, a hate he reserved for himself, for Brandy, and for a while… Rico. It bubbled out of him. "I'm hoping the FBI won't care about the bombing. That… I'll be in the clear."
"And if you aren't? If they still seem to be interested in you?"
"I'll go back to Cuba."
"You know you're hurting them, right now, every minute you're alive without them knowing."
Todd knew this, of course, obviously.
You're a monster. OWN IT.
"Prison is worse for them."
"Is it? Or worse for you?"
Todd said nothing. Closing his eyes. Thinking about that lobbed accusation. Selfish self-preservation. Definitely Jed would agree. He'd be standing next to the doctor and jumping up and down in full fucking agreement.
"The thing with abused children," Tim said thoughtfully, "is that staying safe becomes their primary function. Problem is… they grow up and staying safe is still their primary function. Even at the cost of loved ones. And that is because staying safe means the now-adult is always in a fight or flight mode. Can't think clearly. Can't think through choices with all burners on and all the pots boiling over. Try to be realistic in evaluating what you do. Be calm and deliberate. Not terrified and running."
"Death penalty is… fucking…." Search, search, goddamn… "It's concerning, Doctor Graham."
"It is. But it's not a foregone conclusion. And even so… if it's settled ultimately, it's another thing to live through, to make peace with. There is still love and life… even in that space, until the last moment on this earth."
They were quiet in the low light of the room. Todd smoothed the blue-green quilt beneath him, fingertips following the stitched pattern. He had a hard time figuring this out. He used to always tell Téa that, that he'd figure things out and Téa would get angry because he was cavalier about whatever major goddamn tangle he was trying to put off dealing with but this… this was an impossible knot he couldn't find the free end of to even start the job of untangling.
"When I woke up," he said, voice tempered, gentle, "I believed Téa died. It hurt… so much. I couldn't… I couldn't even… try to get better. And then I learned that she and-and- Esperanza, that they lived and…" He huffed and sat up, shoving himself against the pillows, a rush of adrenaline at the mere recall of the relief… "the relief was so big… I couldn't hold it, couldn't grasp it. It took days to…"
Eyes stayed clasped to Tim's.
"I saw that in Jed…when he found me… when he realized I hadn't died after all. I see it in you… but I… uh… inside, inside me, I don't know why you are so relieved I'm alive. I am capable of…terrible, terrible things."
Without prodding he could feel the life of Ivan leaving his body, the exhilaration of it, the literal orgasm he experienced. It had been easy to do. He never even questioned whether to do it or not. The same with the Canadians. How very different from other deaths he caused. When he was younger. Before he knew what he was. He turned and saw a trail of death behind him.
God… damn.
A monster.
Tim crumpled at hearing Todd's sorrow. Still the same cry since he emerged from the methamphetamine-induced fog way back. That he did not deserve to be here for a million reasons, a myriad of unspoken justifications.
"Do you still doubt people love you?"
"No."
"Then the logic doesn't work."
Todd scooted back down again, cuddling the pillow. "You weren't even a little relieved I was gone?"
Tim shook his head, "No. I had a thought that at least the pain ended for you. I'm sorry, no, I am sick that being saved feels like mixed blessings to you. My GOD, for all the wrong that Pedro Moreno is? I am so grateful he chose to save your life! For whatever reason he did it… doesn't matter. He saved you! You're in my house! You're here. And once they have you in their arms again, your family will never let you go. Like Jed is already doing. Running back to Cuba might actually be very difficult to do."
Well, shit.
Todd focused on that reality. Tim was right, wasn't he? Getting away from Jedediah would be impossible. And he knew it. That speech on owning all the bad, while totally inarguable damnation, was also a plain old exasperated concession.
Fine. You're a fucking monster. Whatever. Get your ass home anyway.
And with a rush of affection, tired of the tangle, he reached up and looked at the phone and clicked through to the texts… stared at the words of love from Jed until they blurred and he dropped the phone.
"What you're saying is that I'm not going back to Cuba. Prison or no prison."
"Welcome home, kiddo."
The clock ticked loudly and Tim watched over very-much-alive Todd as he drifted to sleep, tiredness taking advantage of the silence. Tim found he had a hard time leaving, huddled on the small couch. He felt like if he left, so would the hallucination breathing deeply and twitching on top of the covers. He got up at last and carefully took off his patient's shoes, the socks, the man not waking. Tim noticed a warning tattooed on the top of his foot. One word. Epilepsy. Just in case. Tim closed his eyes a moment, feeling the weight of that word.
And it reminded him that someone else needed attention.
Tim took the car keys from the nightstand and walked downstairs, out the door and down the driveway to the Jeep, finding Abram in the back seat. The good-natured black pitbull terrier hopped out, stretching and giving himself a good shake, and followed Tim back into the house. He took care of business in the side bushes, took a quick lap of water from a bird bath near the front door, and then marched into the house with all the confidence of a working doggo. The moment he walked in, he sniffed around and then ran up the stairs to where he quickly found Todd. He got up on the bed, plopped his big head on Todd's bent legs, and that was that.
No question, Todd was in a bind. Nothing new. And it was going to take some careful steps before he could even think of resuming a normal life.
Later, when checking on Todd who had stripped to his boxers and now slept on his back, arms and legs spread on the queen-sized bed, snoring lightly with his dog at his side, he felt a hand on his shoulder as he stood in the doorway to the guest room. Six in the morning.
"Well, you weren't kidding," a whispered voice said. "Holy shit."
Tim smiled and turned a little. "He's had a rough road getting here."
"Is he drug-free?"
"I think so—not sure 'bout his overall health though. Something delicate in him. You'll give him a once-over before he leaves?"
"Got my bag. And I pulled his medical files like you asked."
"Thank you, love."
"I take it he's got a rough road ahead?"
Tim sighed, "I don't think there's any other kind for him."
To be continued...
