"But, most of the time it takes people to hit rock bottom for them to start believing in themselves, and start seeking help."
Tyrann Mathieu
"Guv?"
Jack looked up from a mountain of paperwork as Smithy shadowed the doorway. He wore the face of one bearing bad news.
"Barton Street took a call, an attempted suicide. It's Mickey. Mickey Webb."
Now he sat on an orange chair, plastic creaking beneath him as he shifted seeking some position of comfort. The clock ticked ominously in the background. He watched Mickey sleep in the bed beside him and wondered what he could have done differently to prevent them from ending up here.
A slip of sea blue gazed back at him as Mickey slowly opened his eyes.
"You bloody fool."
Mickey blinked, blearily taking in the bearings of his surroundings.
St Hughes. Of course.
He'd even managed to screw this up.
"What the hell did you think you were playin' at?"
Mickey stared at Jack a while. He looked older, greyer. As if it had been years since he'd seen him instead of months.
"Well?!"
"I was tired," he said flatly, each word an effort, "I just wanted a break."
"A break? You nearly died!"
"Good."
"You selfish bastard." Jack fumed. Anger overriding his worry.
" Me?" snapped Mickey, "I ain't the one who was selfish"
"Washing a bottle of pills down with half a brewery an act of charity then was it?" scoffed Jack.
Mickey rolled onto his side away from him. He focused on the patterned curtain separating him from the next bed. It started to blur.
There was a knot tight in his stomach, fury twisting against his insides.
His shitty childhood. Losing Kate. Chandler.
Gregory. Losing his mum. Rachel Heath.
Delaney. Losing Liz.
It. Wasn't. fair.
None of this was fair.
And what was the breaking point in his life really?
What had led him here, to wallow in this bleakness in a hospital bed?
To try wash his life away with scotch and pills?
A prostitute and a DCI. And a desperate need to be wanted.
And he had the audacity to sit by his bed and pity him.
"What you doing here anyway?"
"What do you think I'm doing here?" snapped Jack, "I was worried about you!"
Bitterness pulsated through Mickey's veins.
" I wouldn't be 'ere if it weren't for you."
"You what?"
"You 'eard." Mickey glowered and spat his derision to the curtain.
"You an' your tart. Wanted to play 'appy families with your tom yeah?"
"Mickey," Jack warned
"Nah, s'true innit? You couldn't leave 'er alone! It was all my fault yeah? You put it all on me. Somebody messed up in custody, yet you blamed me."
"What's to gain going over this 'ey?" asked Jack, "It's ancient history"
"Not for me!"
Mickey's strangled cry cut through the air.
Jack faltered.
"I was tryin' to make it up to you weren't I?"
Still Mickey refused to look at him.
"You made me feel like nothin'"
Jack winced.
"What happened after that, it ain't history for me,"
"No." said Jack softly, "No I don't suppose it is."
He reached a hesitant hand out, squeezed the younger man's shoulder in a feeble offering of comfort. Mickey finally turned around to face him. His eyes were bright and glassy, awash with unshed tears.
"You come to make it better Jack?"
"What?"
"I said, you come to make it better?"
Mickey's voice was thick but threadbare, the dam of emotions ready to break.
"You can't," Mickey whispered.
"I tried so hard Jack. I really did." A tear slipped down the bridge of his nose, " I tried so hard to act normal. I thought…. I thought if I could just focus on the job you know, it'd be ok. But it's exhausting, pretending all the time. Actin' like it never 'appened. Trying to block it out. Then I thought Liz would be the one to make me feel better, but she was usin' me too weren't she? An alibi for the bent copper. And y-you thought it were me…"
The words were unsteady, shaking and broken.
"How could you think it was me Jack? after everythin'? Chandler, all of it, and you thought me? You ruined it. What was left of it. You ruined it! After all I'd been through, all I lost, me mum, the job, Liz, I had no one, not even you!"
He was frantic now, two years of sorrow bleeding out, his face wet, anguish seeping from every pore as his chest racked with heavy sobs.
"It's okay," Jack reached in, tried to pull him into an embrace.
"It's not," sobbed Mickey, savagely pushing him away "It's not okay! It'll never be okay. He raped me. It don't just go away. It never goes away!"
"It keeps 'appening. All the time. In here." Mickey dug a finger violently into the side of his temple, "An' it won't stop."
Jack looked around helplessly.
On the bedside cabinet was a pile of leaflets, at the top lay the number for a counsellor. Jack picked it up.
"They gonna turn the clock back are they?" Mickey asked sarcastically.
"You know they're not. But it might help having someone who can listen."
He held the paper with the counsellor's number out.
The silence stretched out between them punctuated by Mickey's ragged breathing as the sobbing eased.
"How do I talk about it?"
There were things Delaney had done to him, things he had said, that Mickey had never told anyone.
Words and actions that never made it into his statement. The thought of anyone finding out made his stomach churn.
In the night they came back.
How could he sit across from a stranger and share all that?
"What do I say Jack?"
This time when Jack reached for him Mickey did not resist. He let himself be pulled into the embrace.
The paper crumpled against his neck.
Maybe if he spoke about it, he could take some of Delaney's power.
"Just tell them everything you told me."
And slowly, Mickey reached out for the piece of paper.