The pain... no, she can get through it.
She plants her hand on the carpet again and surges as much determination through her muscles as she can, her arms shaking. She can get through this.
But the second any sort of pressure is set upon body, the surging pain courses through her muscles and tendons, sending her back down to the floor. She falls back down to the floor, sprawled out just two feet away from her bed, away from the salvation that just twenty minutes ago, felt like her prison. Her breath is coming in ragged, painful huffs as she tries to contain herself. She can't get overly emotional now. With all the work she has ahead of her, she needs to stay strong.
It was something so simple, so easy. Just a simple trip to the bathroom without that pitiful wheelchair sitting farther away from her than her bed is. She felt fine the past day or so, no pain, no shortness of breath. A simple trip across the hall to the bathroom was supposed to be easy. She made it to the door, but was clamoring for support, and was on her knees by the time she finally gave up and decided to just head back to bed. She calls it fortune that it was more a trip to test her mettle than it was to actualy relieve herself.
She's so weak, her body so pathetic and limp... things are never going to be the same, are they?
She's given up and decides to lay face down on the floor, her chest assaulting her with every wease she takes, her bandages fallen off and scrunched up underneath her baggy shirt. She loses track of time for the next couple of, what feels like minutes, as she turns and cluches her chest with her arms, emotion finally winning the battle and overwhelming her. She wants to cry out, to scream for help, but even though she's fallen already, she can't let go of her pride.
So, sprawled out pathetically on the floor, she lets hot, stinging tears fall from her eyes and go down her sweat-stained cheeks. She hates her body right now, betraying her like this.
The sound of a pair of workboots coming down the hardwood of the hallway makes her heart pound, but she doesn't have the energy to give it one more try. She's drained. Her dad finally reaches her door and it opens. "Katie, I'm-"
And at the sight of his only daughter sprawled out on the floor, the familiar knot in his stomach chruns. Even from here, a distance of six feet away or so, he can hear her whimper in pain as her legs are sprawled out across the floor, her hair falling down to the floor and covering her face, her arms on the floor with one hand reaching for her bed.
He's not strong enough to deal with this. Not without Johanna.
Paralyzed by terror, Jim stands in her doorway for far too long of a moment before something inside of him finally breaks and he drops the grocery bag on the floor and goes to her. "Katie, sweetie," He says and grabs her arms, pulling her up.
Her tears of weakness and whimpers of pain, coming out in sobs as her dad helps her up, just add to the helplessness that's draining all remnants of her usual confidence and determination.
"Come on, you're okay." Her dad says as he wraps his arms around her, helping her just the few feet she needed back to her bed.
Once upright and across the distance to her bed, she falls out of her father's arms and face first onto her mattress. Once onto the heavenly plushness of her comforter, she lets out a long pant, relaxing her sharp-pained muscles. Her dad helps her adjust herself back to where she was when he left, sitting back against the headboard, her laptop sitting against the wall with the bear sitting on top of it, and the TV turned off sitting on top of the dresser in front of her, with the window cracked open on the wall to her right.
The covers put back over her legs, she lets her eyes close as she catches her breath. "Thanks, Dad."
Jim is still slow to catch his own breath as he soothes over his daughter's covers and grabs the TV remote sitting just out of her reach. "Katie, you told me you'd stay in bed while I was out."
"I'm fine, Dad." She objects, just as stubborn and obstanet as she was growing up. It isn't until now that she manages to remind him just how much of a pain she was as a teenager. He thanks God in times like this that she's a cop and actually enforces the law instead of breaks it.
"You're not fine, Katie. I thought we agreed on that."
"I was just going to the bathroom, Dad. I've done it millions of times by myself before." She argues and grabs her stuffed bear's head and brings it to her lap, holding her arms over it and pouting.
"But you've never been shot before, Katie."
"I've felt fine the past two days, Dad."
"That's because you stayed in bed." He argues back and goes across her room, picking up the grocery bag from the floor. He comes back, finding her reaching under her shirt, adjusting her bandages. "Now, sweetie," he tells her, putting the grocery down to her nightstand and sitting down on the edge of her bed, "I know how used to doing things on your own you are. But you heard the doctor, Katie. You just have to give it time and you'll be on your feet again soon, but you can't push it."
"Dad, it was just ten feet, okay? I can't walk ten feet and I've been in recovery for-"
"A week, Katie." Jim cuts her off. "We've only been here for two days. It's going to take time. A lot longer if I have to come home and find you on the floor again, okay?"
Her eyes seem to soften as she looks down to her stuffed bear, flicking its magnifying glass with her index finger. "Are you sure the doctor said there wasn't any nerve damage?"
"I'm positive, Katie." Jim nods. "You just need to stay off your feet for a little while longer while your body heals, and after that just... take it step by step, okay?"
After a pause, Kate nods and looks out the window for a second. Jim goes to the grocery bag to pull out her filled prescriptions.
"Be careful with these, Sweetie. These pain killers are strong. I don't want you taking more than what the prescription says, okay?"
"Yeah," she says as her dad puts a single pill in her palm and then a bottle of water he twisted the cap off of.
After she downs the pill, Jim rummages around the grocery bag until he spots something sitting on the back edge of the nightstand next to her phone. With a warm smile, he reaches over the bag and takes it in his hand. "Wow," he says to himself as he brushes his thumb across the glass of his watch, "looks brand new."
Kate smiles to herself and takes another drink of water. "Yeah, Castle had it restored."
Jim looks back over to his daughter. She hasn't mentioned her partner since they left the hospital. "Really?" Kate nods in a slow, small motion and squeezes the bear in a loose hug on her lap, her eyes drifting away into memory. "That was nice of him."
"He had it pulled from the wreckage after my apartment blew up." She explains, thinking just how much he knew her to think that the one thing in that apartment she'd want back is the memento of how she pulled her dad back to sobriety. "He remembered why I wear it, so he had it restored for me."
"Hmm," Jim hums and brushes the glass, reading the time as just after one in the afternoon, "you never told me he was that thoughtful."
Kate rolls her eyes with a smile and looks out her window, "What are you, his cheerleader now?"
Jim shakes his head, letting the quip roll off his back. He likes Rick. From what Kate has told him, Rick is the kind of father he wishes he could be at times. Especially at times like this. He'd have the kind of courage and strength he needs to get her through this. "You know, your mother gave this watch to me as an anniversary gift." He says, taking her wrist and gently putting the watch on.
"Mom always said she gave it to you because she was sick of having to remind you of what time it was." She tells him with a smile, shaking out her wrist to adjust the watch.
Jim smiles and silently stands up, not wanting his daughter to intuitively pick up on the painful memories in his face of his late wife. Rick probably wouldn't leave. But Jim, he has to. Rick would stay and talk to her, go about the conversation and share memories with his daughter, however painful they might be to him because he would know that she needs it. But Jim... he just doesn't have that kind of strength. He makes it to the door before Kate's voice, in a nervous, quiet tone, calls. "Dad?"
His hand on the door jam, he looks back. "Yeah?"
"H-how did..." she starts, her eyes down on the watch and her arm hugging the stuffed bear to her. She closes her lips and sighs, letting her question dry up in her throat.
"What is it, sweetie?" Jim prods.
She's never asked her father this. She's asked her mother. She knows how uncomfortable her father is with these topics, how much he doesn't like talking about Mom. A part of her feels he's never actually dealt with her death, but who is she to talk? Like she has? But with Sherlock sitting in her lap, Castle's voice sitting inside, and with nothing better to do but sit here and stew in her thoughts and wait for the phone to ring, she has to find out. "How did you know Mom was it?"
An uncomfortable smile comes to Jim's face. He's always tried to stay out of personal matters as much as he can with Katie. A lesson he learned from her teenage years from her mother, to trust her to make the right decisions. But he knows, the hospital showed him as much, that Josh isn't it. It's a push and tug, a promise to keep to his wife to let her make her own decisions, or let her inherited blindness guide her down the path to making the wrong one.
"Well," Jim starts and comes back to sit down on her bedside, "it was pretty easy when your mother told me she was it." That earns him a bright smile and a silent laugh, "assertive woman, your mother."
"No, Dad, I'm serious." She says looking over at him, her smile still on her face.
Jim sighs heavily and feels his gut churn. "Katie, did you ever wonder why we'd never visit my family during the holidays? That we always visited your mother's side of the family?"
"I mean, I always wondered, but I guess I never put that much thought into it. Why?"
He sighs, now deciding to tell her about his own side of the family, and what made him fall as hard as he did for Johanna. "Katie, I was raised by a single mother. And... I was raised by a bad single mother. She blamed my father for where we were in life, for every mistake she made. She... she never owned up to anything. And when I was eighteen and found out the truth about him, I left and never saw her again. She was a bitter woman who blamed everyone else for her problems."
"What about your dad?" She asks, wondering why he's going off on this tangent, but curious at the same time.
"He was a Marine. My mother married him for the steady paycheck and to have a man in uniform. But once she realized that being married to a Marine wasn't all she hoped it would be, she left a year after I was born and I never got to meet him before he was killed overseas. Once I found out the truth... that my dad had tried for years to contact me before he died... I left and never spoke to her again."
"Dad, I'm... I'm sorry, but what does this have to do with Mom?"
Jim sighs and feels a warmth in his heart. "It was Christmas, and I was working late the night before at the law firm. Your mother and I were still friends at the time, and she came up to my desk and asked me if I was going home for the holidays. I mentioned that I was planning on coming in and finishing up some paperwork and she... she demanded... that I come with her and spend Christmas with her and her family. So, I agreed and when I got there... I've never felt that kind of... family before then."
Kate smiles a watery smile and looks away. "Mom always did stress family time."
"Family breakfast on Saturday morning was a tradition that your mother was brought up with, you know."
Kate's smile grows with more emotion, "She never missed it."
"To answer your question, Katie..." Jim starts painfully, his heart aching with memory, "I knew your mother was it when she showed me something that I'd never known growing up. That family is something you can't really go without."
Kate smiles and nods, squeezing the bear in her lap again and looking down to her wrist at her dad's watch. "When my apartment blew up, I went to stay with Castle for a while. Castle has this way of... bringing out the brightness in things without realizing it. It always stuck with me just how much his family loves him, how important they are to him. The first morning I stayed with him, I made everybody breakfast... just like Mom used to do. I've always wanted to do that when I have a family of my own."
Jim nods, not knowing what to say. His wife would. Johanna was always the one to guide him through these situations. The emotional withdrawal is a hurdle he's never really gotten over, left over from being raised by a single mother. Johanna was the one to counteract it in his life. But now that she's gone...
All he can do is put a hand on his daughter's shoulder and stand up. "Let me know if you need anything, okay, Sweetie?"
She silently nods and looks over with bright, excited eyes when she sees her phone ring. Jim keeps making his way out of her bedroom as she picks up her phone and looks at it, hearing her let out a small sigh, flip her hair, and put her phone to her ear. "Hey, Josh." Jim silently closes her door behind him. "Yeah, I'm fine." He hears her say through the door.
Drained, he lets hopelessness flood him.
He can't do this.
His only daughter sprawled out on the floor like that will haunt him forever. His wife is gone, her guidance, her strength, her grace... and her heir of it all, his daughter, is a long road down getting back on her feet. The sight of her at that podium, her doubling over, the sound of the gunshot, getting rushed into the ambulance... why hasn't Rick called?
It's a stupid question. He saw it. Just before they left for the cabin, he saw Josh pull that ring out of his pocket. He guessed he was planning on asking her before she left. He doesn't know why he didn't. Or maybe he did and Kate just isn't telling him. It's not that he doesn't like Josh, it's more that he knows Rick. In a lot of ways, he seems a mix of himself and his wife. The lighthearted brightness of his wife, and the lonely childhood of being raised by a single mother. Rick is the kind of father he wishes he could be.
But he never will be.
And as he goes back into the kitchen, his gut churns in guilt again as he digs in the last of the grocery bags he left sitting on the counter, pulling the bottle out.
One hand on the neck, the other white-knuckling the cap, the dark amber colored temptation sitting just a twist away. The never-ending game of tag that the drink offers.
In a flash, he slams the bottle down and rips his phone form his pocket, his thumb going quickly through the contacts. The phone buzzes in his ear a few times before it answers. "Hello?" A young female voice answers.
"Hi," Jim nervously says into the line, "is this Alexis?"
"Yeah? Who's this?"
"It's Jim Beckett. Kate's father?" He says, pushing his hand through his white hair.
"Oh, uhm... how is she?"
"She's fine. Is your father around?" He asks her quickly.
"I'm sorry, but..." she seems to hesitate, "he's out of town on business." He's at a complete loss. This was his only hope. "Can I call you when he gets back?"
"Yeah, that's fine. Thanks, Alexis." He says and ends the call, letting his phone fall out of his hand and down onto the counter as he braces himself.
He's not strong enough to do this alone.
His hands shove deeper into his pocket as he looks up the steps of the temple. Times like this, he wishes he was religious. Maybe he'd find his answers easier.
He shakes his head and looks down, going up the steps, passed the other tourists. It's cloudy, a light drizzle in the air. The weight in his heart hasn't gone away. Maybe, he'll have to live with it. The crowd, in awe of the temple, the color and decoration of the pillars, the woodwork and inlay. They don't have things like this in the states, and least of all in New York. Trips like this remind him just how polluted and condensed the city is. Tokyo reminded him a little of home, but the people seemed nicer, more considerate.
He reaches the top of the steps and sees a crowd of small children gathered around a well at the enterance, dropping in coins through a barred grate, listening to them clang lightly as they go down. He smiles slightly to himself as he steps up to the well.
He pulls his hand out and brings a picture along with it, looking at her. He took it out of weakness. A trip taken to get over everything that happened between them, to give her a chance to move on without him screwing everything up, to give her a chance at a life that will make her happy, and he's here holding a picture of her in his hand, just as in love with her as he was when he left.
He breathes deeply, looking at her eyes in the photo and digs in the pocket of his jeans for a coin. His eyes go between the well and her picture.
He feels a hand pull on his jacket, and he looks down, seeing a small blonde child looking up at him with bright eyes. "Make a wish, mister."
He smiles at the girl and looks over to the picture one more time before dropping the coin through the bars. "I just want her to be happy."
A/N: A small reminder... I've never been outside of the US. So if things seem vague, or downright inaccurate, forgive me. I'm going off of a map I have on the wall and images searches.
So, what'd ya think? :)