Thank you all for your kind reviews and while contraceptives haven't been mentioned (such a mood killer) it's probably safe to assume that they have been operating in the preventive mode. I hope you enjoy this chapter and be assured that the next update will come quicker than this one did. Thanks again!
Jack left Kate in the kitchen while he went back upstairs to take a shower and prepare for a day with his son. While he appreciated the offer, he decided that letting the barber fix Conner's hair would be the better option, the neatness freak in him not liking the idea of a haircut taking place any place in his house. Kate was amused that the idea of a few strands of stray hair possibly floating around bothering him so much. She could tell Jack was an extremely anal individual even if he had been acting strictly on impulse the last week. His home was neat and organized and his son was always dressed well and well groomed and they had their routines which she guessed was how Jack managed to juggle things and not completely miss out on his son's upbringing.
Conner was in the living room with Kate watching cartoons when Jack came down the stairs. The child saw his father dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with a pager strapped to his belt and immediately began crying.
"No daddy you promised." Conner cried.
Kate was confused, but only for a moment. The way Jack was dressed clearly indicated that he was headed to work not to the barber shop or zoo and she felt sorry for Conner who was close to being crushed with disappointment. She watched Jack kneel down in front of him and could see this wasn't a decision he was happy about either.
"I'm sorry Conner. I wish I didn't, but I have to go to the hospital." Jack apologized and tried to take hold of his son's hands.
Conner jerked his hands away and shoved at Jack's chest.
"You're a liar!" Conner screamed.
"I know you're disappointed son, but don't talk to me like that. It's disrespectful." Jack said in a calm tone, understanding how disappointed the child was and trying to stay patient with him.
"Shut up!" Conner screamed.
"That's enough Conner. Go upstairs and get your backpack, I'm taking you to grandma's house." Jack said sternly.
"No! You get it!" Conner refused and threw himself back into the couch cushions refusing to move.
Jack sighed and left to retrieve the backpack. He threw a few toys in it and some pajamas in case he didn't get back before bedtime. He came back down the stairs and found Conner still in the same spot. He looked at Kate and realized he should probably explain why the plans changed so suddenly.
"There was an accident about an hour ago. A school bus full of middle schoolers rolled. They're jammed and need surgeons. I have no idea when I'll be home." Jack told her.
"That's terrible. I hope the kids are okay." Kate said.
"Yeah, me too, let's go Conner." Jack said.
"I want to stay with Kate." Conner whined.
"No." Jack stated in such a way that it was clear there was no room for argument from either one of them.
Jack reached for Conner's hand and pulled him up and off of the couch. Conner immediately went limp, dropping to the floor and refusing to cooperate.
"Conner, I don't have time for this." Jack grumbled as he picked the child up and kissed Kate goodbye.
"I'll call you if I get a chance." Jack said.
"Good luck." Kate said and kissed him one more time feeling sorry for Conner, wanting to offer to keep him for the day, but not wanting to overstep the boundaries that were obviously there.
Jack headed toward the foyer with the angry, upset child in tow. Conner kicked and squirmed trying to break out of Jack's grip.
"Knock it off Conner. I am sorry about this, but I will make it up to you I promise." Jack said.
"No you won't! You always say you promise, but you don't! You hate me! I want to go to Aunt Jenna's house I hate grandma's house!" Conner screamed still fighting his father.
"You are pushing it buddy, you better settle down right now or you're going to be in trouble." Jack warned.
"No! I hate you!" Conner screamed and slapped Jack in the face.
Kate gasped and Conner froze knowing he'd gone too far and was about to be in trouble. Jack calmly set him down, more hurt than angry. He hated disappointing his son and constantly pawning him off on people and wished he could throw a fit right along with him, but he had to be the grown up, the parent and not allow his child to be disrespectful, not to mention violent.
"You know you just lost your play time for the next two days. No hour of television, no video games, no toys. Dinner, bath and in bed by 6 o'clock. Now, unless you want to add another two days march your butt out to the car and don't say another word." Jack ordered in the tone that Conner knew not to talk back to.
Kate watched the sad, disappointed and now quietly crying little boy walk out the front door with his frustrated, upset and wishing he could cry father and wanted to speak up, but decided it was too soon and let them go. The door closed, leaving her alone for the day to not only deal with her pain, but to replay that scene in her head over and over.
Jack walked Conner to the front door of his parent's home and rang the doorbell. His mother opened the door and motioned for them to come in. Jack entered the home and kneeled down to Conner's level.
"I'm sorry buddy and I know you're too young to understand. Have a good day and remember that I love you." Jack told him as he hugged Conner and kissed him on the cheek.
Conner wiped his kiss off and sulked away. Jack stood and faced his mother.
"I appreciate this mom. I'll make arrangements for him as soon as things settle down." Jack said.
"It's fine Jack and I'm glad you are finally seeing those people for who they are." She said striking a nerve in Jack immediately.
"I'm in too big of a hurry to discuss Emily's family with you today mom, plus I really owe you for this so I'm going to let that one go. He needs a haircut really bad if you've got time to take him and he's being punished so if I'm not back he's to be in bed by 6 PM. Okay?" Jack asked.
"He'll be fine Jack. Go, I'm sure your father is looking high and low for you." She told him.
"I'm sure he is. Thanks again mom." Jack said and kissed his mother on the cheek before rushing out.
By the time Jack got to the hospital some of the most serious injuries had been triaged and prepared for surgery. He went straight into a pair of surgical scrubs and 14 hours later he walked across the parking lot to his car, tired, hungry and aware that he had to be back in the morning. There were four more injured, broken kids waiting to be repaired, but were too unstable for surgery today and he was keenly aware that his own child was injured and broken emotionally, the look on Conner's face when he left him that morning haunting him during the moments he was able to catch a short break from the chaos. He'd spoken briefly to his mother around 7 o'clock that evening and as instructed Conner had been in bed for an hour. He wouldn't stop to pick him up, but would bring him clean clothes in the morning.
He walked through the front door of his home around midnight. He looked at the kitchen for a moment and decided he needed sleep more than he needed food and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. Kate was curled up in a ball in the middle of the bed, a book discarded a few inches from her. He sat on the side of the bed and shook her gently. She opened her eyes and looked confused for a moment and then sat up.
"What time is it?" Kate asked.
"It's midnight. Get under the covers and go back to sleep." He said as he stood and began unbuttoning his shirt.
Kate stood, took her jeans off and made herself comfortable under the blankets. She watched Jack strip down to his boxers and then join her. He laid his arm out until she snuggled in beside him and then brought it down and around her.
"Nite." He mumbled and before she had a chance to respond he was out.
Jack slept without moving for about four hours before his eyes popped open. He was exhausted enough to fall asleep, but too stressed and anxious to stay that way for very long. He looked down at Kate draped over his chest and remembered she had a t-shirt on when they went to sleep and wondered when she'd stripped down to her just her panties. He guessed she must've gotten too warm, but didn't want to give up the closeness to cool off. He also wondered how he was supposed to wake up with a naked woman draped all over him and not be completely turned on by it even if he was exhausted and hungry and expected to be back to work in a few hours. As much as he wanted to play with her body and initiate sex, he decided it was best to let her sleep and settled for watching her sleep.
She didn't stir and never noticed how intently he was watching her. She looked so peaceful and beautiful and a person that didn't know would never be able to guess that her heart was broken and that her mind was caught some place between shock, denial, guilt and anger. He finally closed his eyes again and slept, his stressed and anxious brain soothed and calmed by focusing on her.
Her sudden movement woke him up. She sat up and he wasn't sure if she was awake.
"I'm coming baby, hang on." Kate called and started to move off the bed.
Jack grabbed her arm and sat up beside her.
"Where are you going?" He asked softly.
"Didn't you hear that? TJ is calling me." Kate answered.
"Kate, I think you're dreaming." Jack said calmly still not sure if she was awake or talking in her sleep.
"No I'm not Jack. He's calling for me, I heard it. Let go of me." Kate insisted and pulled away from him.
He turned a light on and watched her slip her t-shirt on and walk across the bedroom floor, stopping, confused about where she should go next. She finally looked at him, awake, sad and resigned.
"He's not here is he?" Kate mumbled.
"No." Jack said softly.
"Of course he's not. How stupid would that be? I'm uh…I'm sorry I woke you up." Kate managed to choke out before disappearing into the bathroom, embarrassed and crying.
Jack sat in the bed for a few minutes hoping she would come back out. When she didn't he finally slid out of the bed and walked over to the closed bathroom door. He knocked softly and called out to her, but she didn't answer. He turned the door knob and it wasn't locked so he let himself in. She was sitting beside the Jacuzzi tub, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs and head down, resting on her knees. He sat beside her, looking into her red, swollen eyes as he gently brushed her hair back away from her face.
"Why are you sitting in here on the floor all by yourself?" He asked.
"It seemed so real Jack." Kate said.
"I know it did." He said in a comforting tone.
"Why can't my brain just accept that he's gone and stop torturing me? God I miss him so much I feel like I'm going to go crazy. How do I make myself want to go on?" She pleaded with him, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks.
Jack wrapped his arm around her and pulled her toward him until she let her head rest on his chest. He let his fingers glide gently up and down her arm while they sat together in front of the Jacuzzi tub, him in his underwear and her in a t-shirt and panties. She was too sad and broken at the moment for him to suggest they actually get up and vacate the bathroom so he just sat on the floor with her and held her, understanding how bad she was hurting and knowing he could do nothing to make things any less painful for her.
"I remember what its like to be so trapped inside your head that all you can think about, obsess about, is how one bullet would silence all of it and how that doesn't even seem scary because where your trapped hurts so much you just want relief. It's okay to feel that way Kate. Sometimes things really do hurt so much we don't have any desire to get out of bed, but I promise if you keep fighting and pushing that it does get easier, that all that noise in your head gets quieter and that feeling miserable still happens, but it becomes less frequent." Jack said his tone so distant she could tell he was back in his own memories, drawing on his experiences and how he survived it in an attempt to find anything that would let her know he understood.
"Jack, what happened to your wife?" Kate asked.
"It doesn't matter Kate." Jack said.
"It matters to me. I want to understand what you've been through because then maybe I can believe that I'm going to get through this because right now Jack those razor blades in the third drawer are awfully tempting." Kate admitted, no longer crying, just tired and numb and ready to quit.
"Kate, I understand the thoughts you are having. You're hurting like you never knew you could and you want to make it stop. I don't understand why knowing how my wife died helps you to stop having those thoughts." Jack said.
"Because it allows me to focus on you and your pain instead of just myself." Kate told him.
"You don't need to focus on me." Jack objected.
"That's not fair Jack. You know all about my pain and you claim that you love me, but you won't share anything about yourself with me." Kate argued.
"What do you want to know? You want all the gory details or just the highlights?" Jack asked obviously aggravated with her pushing him to talk about something he wasn't ready to open up about.
"Forget it Jack." Kate said as she pulled away from him and attempted to stand up.
Jack grabbed her arm gently and pulled her back down beside him.
"It was an acute subdural hematoma, a head injury, bleeding on the brain." Jack said.
"Car accident?" Kate asked.
"No." Jack said quickly the issue clearly painful and sensitive to him.
"Jack, I'm sorry. This is obviously very difficult for you. You don't have to tell me about it until you're ready to." Kate offered.
"It's my fault she's dead. I failed her Kate. I wasn't there when she needed me the most." Jack admitted his eyes filling with tears as his voice trailed off.
Kate didn't say anything. She didn't know what to say. Not only had he lost his wife, he blamed himself for her death and she guessed this was something he kept to himself, kept locked up inside because he didn't appear to have anyone in his life that he trusted enough to share it with. She sat quietly beside him, giving him time to compose himself, time to collect his thoughts, time to put a bandage over the wound she'd reopened. He fidgeted and squirmed and then he finally relaxed again, resigned to the fact that he'd opened the box and might as well spill the contents.
"Her pregnancy with Conner wasn't easy and her doctor cautioned her about getting pregnant again, but we got careless. She was nearly 4 months along when she died. She was so sick and so weak with morning sickness that lasted all day and all night on top of sugar and blood pressure issues. I was working as usual and ignoring her phone calls and pages because I was too busy and because I thought Jenna was with her. She must've slipped or passed out in the bathroom and hit her head on the countertop on the way down. When I got home that night the baby was screaming unlike anything I'd ever heard and I knew something was wrong. I found her in the bathroom, she was barely alive. She died in my arms waiting on the ambulance while my six month old baby cried, hungry and wet, but his cries never registered, all I could think about was Emily and trying to convince her to hang on. One of the paramedics brought Conner to me. He hadn't eaten in hours and had cried so much he made himself sick and I couldn't let go of her and take him, take care of him. I didn't touch him again until the day of the funeral. I couldn't stand the sight of him so I not only let my wife down, I abandoned my son." Jack explained.
"I'm sorry Jack, that must've been awful for you, but how is your fault?" Kate asked.
"Where would you like to start? I'm a doctor, I knew better than to get her pregnant. She'd been calling me and paging me all day and then it just stopped. I should've realized she wouldn't just stop unless something was wrong. Jesus, if I'd just bothered to return one call maybe I would've been concerned enough with no answer that I'd at least send someone to check on her, but I didn't. I was busy putting some stranger back together while my wife lay in the floor dying for hours." Jack told her his tone as angry as she'd known him to be.
"It sounds to me like it was a tragic accident." Kate said.
"Don't. I don't ever get to call what happened to her an accident. If I do, that means I learned nothing from the experience." Jack told her.
"Okay Jack, but I think that you have given me some really great advice through all of this and it's a shame that you can't apply some of it to yourself." Kate said.
"I do apply it to myself and I promise I'll never let you down like that Kate." Jack said softly.
He was looking into her eyes with a look of honesty and sincerity that she was sure she'd never seen from any person she'd ever been close to and she felt her stomach jump. She'd heard Jack tell her that he loved her, but it wasn't until that moment that she truly believed that he did and with all his heart. She felt overwhelmed with the need to return his love, to coddle and protect him and as she watched him, never breaking eye contact with him, she was saddened at the idea that he'd been suffering so deeply and doing so completely alone for five years, and she wished she could find the words or the actions to let him know that he wasn't alone anymore.
"Thank you for sharing that with me Jack. I know you don't believe it's possible, but it really does help me." Kate said maintaining eye contact with him.
"So does that mean I don't need to remove all the sharp objects from my house?" He asked and sadly he wasn't teasing.
"Would you have really ever put that bullet in your head Jack?" Kate asked.
"No." He answered.
"Exactly. Do you want to go back to bed now?" She asked.
"I'd love to, but I probably should take a shower and get ready for work." Jack said.
"Do you have time to drop me by my house on the way? I think I'm ready to pack things up." Kate said.
"Are you sure?" Jack asked.
"No, but it can't be worse than sitting in this big house alone with my thoughts. I've got a car, if it's too much I'll just leave." She said.
"I left Conner at my mom's all night. I was going to take him to breakfast and then to school. Want to come?" He asked.
"I'd love to." Kate said and smiled at him.
"I'll give you my pager number and you've got my cell phone number and I won't ignore either." Jack said.
"I'll be fine Jack." Kate insisted.
"I have no doubt you will, but shit happens Kate and if it does I want you to call me. Are you planning on coming back here when you're done?" He asked.
"Do you want me to?" Kate asked.
"Of course, I thought we had that worked out. It'd be kind of cool to replace that drawer of abandoned panties with ones that belong to you." He said and winked at her.
"I guess whether or not I come back depends on whether or not you're planning on letting me enjoy that shower with you." She said in a sweet, sexy tone.
"I see how you are. Stripping me naked emotionally isn't enough, you have to have me naked physically too." He teased.
"If I had things my way you'd never be allowed to be dressed." She teased back and kissed him.
"That might make my patients uncomfortable." He said and kissed her back, deeper, longer, teasing her now.
"Please Dr. Shephard, women probably throw themselves down flights of stairs just hoping they'll need to come and see you. Imagine how thrilled they'd be to find that you do your consults in the nude." Kate giggled as he nuzzled and nibbled at her neck.
"There is so much wrong with that statement Kate that I think maybe I should just keep your mouth and your dirty mind otherwise occupied." He said in a raw, husky tone, locking her up in a deep, passionate kiss and slowly pulling her to her feet.
He walked them over to the shower and turned the water on. He pulled her t-shirt up and off and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her breasts into his bare chest and kissing him gently before pulling back enough to look into his eyes.
"I do too." She said drawing a confused look from him.
"You do too what? Think I should keep your mouth and mind occupied?" He asked.
"Well, that too." She laughed.
"What else?" He asked.
"I do love you Jack, so much that it scares me to death." She admitted.
"Then I guess we'll just be scared together." He said smiling at her and she could've sworn she caught a twinkle in his eyes.