After being released, Don had spent one night in a local hotel, and admitted the futility of it. Because of the head injury, he wasn't allowed to drive; he had to rely on someone to get him back and forth. Most of all, Charlie somehow seemed worse when he was there; he went from meager communication to none at all, and stared out of the window or pretended to sleep whenever Don was in the room.
Don was sick with hurt and confusion. He had decided that Charlie blamed him for bringing him into the case to begin with, and for him being stuck in a hospital bed when Charlie needed him, and he didn't know how to fix that, especially when his brother wouldn't talk to him. He finally had to admit he wasn't helping Charlie at all by being there; in fact he seemed to be making things worse. When his team headed back for L.A. the following day and Megan offered to drive him back in his SUV, he let his father talk him into going home and getting some rest.
Before he left, he stopped at the room. As he stepped through the doorway he saw Charlie glance at him, and then immediately close his eyes. His father looked up from the magazine in his lap. Don crutched forward, awkwardly, to stand beside Charlie's bed. He glanced at Alan, uncertainly. "I'm heading out."
Alan nodded. "How are you set up for food?"
"Megan's going to stop and help me stock up."
Alan stood and hugged him. "If you need me, call. I can leave for a while if I have to."
"I'll be okay."
Alan stepped back, and Don stared down at his brother's inert form. Charlie's eyes were still closed, and pain and fatigue lined his face. His skin, where it wasn't bruised, looked so pale it was almost translucent, and Don had the odd impression that the brother he knew had gone somewhere else, and this battered fragile body was merely the shell that was left. "Hey, Charlie."
Charlie's eyelids quivered. He tried to will them shut, but they opened in spite of himself. The sight of Don's face brought a stab of pain, and he swallowed the lump that rose in his throat.
Don looked at the anguished brown eyes, sadly. "Get better. I'll see you at home, okay?"
Charlie couldn't trust himself to talk. He closed his eyes again, tightly, and the reaction brought a look of sheer pain to Don's face. Alan felt his heart constrict in sorrow.
Don sighed. "Bye Chuck." He turned away, a defeated slump in his shoulders, and Alan followed him to the doorway.
Charlie's eyes opened, and fixed on his brother's back as Don crutched out of the room. The symbolism couldn't escape him; the brother he knew was gone. "Bye," he whispered, and turned his head to hide the tears that spilled from his eyes.
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Charlie was in the hospital for a week. It took two days before he could tolerate water, and another two days of clear liquids before he could handle soft food. He was beyond thin, he was emaciated, and Alan winced every time he looked at him. More disturbing to Alan was Charlie's mental state. He was clearly depressed; he spent most of his waking time staring blankly at the wall, his responses to conversation and questions were monosyllabic, and at times, when Alan glanced over at him, he would have silent tears streaking down his face, his head turned away. By the third day, exhausted and heart-worn, Alan was crying along with him.
Because of the lack of nutrition, and his emotional state, Charlie's recovery was slow, but it was steady. His toe was looking good, the doctor told Alan; blood flow was re-established. He might not regain full feeling in it, but because it was a small toe, that was not much of an issue. He was extremely weak, and that was an issue, because he needed crutches for at least a few more days, to keep his weight off his injured leg and foot. Three days before he was released, they had him starting to navigate with the crutches, and by the time the day came, he could still only manage a few feet before he was exhausted. Alan sighed, and wondered how he was going to get Charlie all the way to the front door.
The morning of his discharge, Charlie signed the papers with a sense of deja-vu, thinking of his release the previous week. This time there was no Edgerton waiting; he really was going home. He couldn't help but think what would have happened if he had told Edgerton no. Don would have been disappointed in him, sure, but Charlie would still be blissfully unaware that his brother didn't really care about him. He would have gone on thinking that he had a brother that cared, that Don's teammates were his friends. What was worse, he wondered, being a clueless but happy pushover, or knowing the truth? He thought he knew the answer to that, but it was too late to change it now.
He hadn't talked to his father about any of it, although it wasn't for lack of trying on Alan's part. Charlie knew that he must be disappointed about Amita, and he couldn't bear telling him that his relationship with his brother had also disintegrated. His father had been so happy that they were finally spending time together after so many years apart; that Charlie resolved to keep up appearances for his sake. There was an unsettling feeling in the back of Charlie's mind that his father was the only person left in the world that still cared about him, and he dreaded disappointing him any further. Somehow, Charlie resolved, he would swallow the pain, and move on. Somehow.
He crutched his way into the bathroom to change, panting with the effort, and taking off the hospital gown, he stared at himself in the mirror. The bruises on his face were fading to an odd mix of purple, yellow and green. His torso looked like a road map, covered with healing lacerations and stitches, punctuated by protruding ribs and bruises. A wreck of a body. A wreck of a life. He resignedly slipped a shirt over his head, and awkwardly managed his sweatpants by using the toilet as a chair, then made his way out of the bathroom.
"Ready?" asked Alan. The attendant was standing by with a wheelchair. Charlie nodded, and sank exhausted into the seat.
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The sight of home brought an unexpectedly intense wave of relief, which died when they pulled in the driveway. There was another wheelchair waiting in the drive, and behind it stood his brother. Charlie eyed it and Don stubbornly, and set his jaw. "I don't need that. I can use the crutches."
Alan looked at him with exasperation. "Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, you could barely make it to the bathroom this morning."
Charlie watched Don wheeling the chair forward, hobbling on his cast; then he reached around in the back seat. He grabbed his crutches and opened the car door, blocking Don from coming any closer, and stepped shakily from the seat, dragging his crutches behind him, over the seat, and through the door.
Don, apprehension in his gut, plastered a smile of welcome on his face, thinking Charlie was using the crutches to help himself into the chair. He gulped, trying to hold the smile, as Charlie stood, and he could see how unbearably thin he was. "Hey Chuck, welcome back."
"Thanks," muttered Charlie. 'Might as well be civil,' he thought grimly. ' Two could play at this charade. Be civil, but keep him at an arm's length. Act normally, but don't volunteer conversation. Show him you don't need him. Maybe he'll go away.' He put his head down and ignored Don and the wheelchair, crutching around him shakily.
Don stared at him, and then looked at his father, who shook his head helplessly. Don turned and looked behind him to see that Charlie had stopped, chest heaving. He had gone just a few feet, and had several yards to go before he even reached the door. Don turned the chair around and hobbled after him. "Charlie, you don't need to prove anything. Just sit in the chair, okay?"
Charlie paused, catching his breath, and started forward again, his thin shoulders hunched over the crutches, his arms shaking with the effort. He could hear Don behind him, slowly wheeling the chair. Had it been a happier time, he might have smiled at the ludicrous picture they made, him on crutches, his brother hobbling behind him in a cast, with the wheelchair between them. He wasn't happy, though; at the moment he was desperate. His breath was coming in painful gasps now, and his vision wavered, and he staggered. Don was suddenly beside him, and Charlie pushed forward in renewed effort, almost in a panic.
The house in front of him spun and dipped; he reeled, and felt strong arms around him. The feeling of physical support from his brother's arms brought home with a blow the fact that the emotional support was not there – emphasizing the sham that their relationship had become, and Charlie felt a renewed stab of despair. Defeated, he let his brother guide him into the chair, and sat slumped, with his head down and his crutches in his lap, breathing heavily, as Don pushed the chair up to the door, and Alan followed with their bags.
As they got to the door, Charlie's determination returned. He didn't want his brother's help; he could at least get inside on his own. He could see the sofa in his mind. He stood abruptly, too suddenly, and swayed, feeling the world receding in a dark whirl. Unknown to him, he suffered the final humiliation, as he was carried inside in his brother's strong arms, and laid gently on the sofa.
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Don sat in a conference room a few days later, leafing through reports. He had gone back to work on light duty, which for him meant paperwork, unending mountains of paperwork. Field reports, financial reports, human resource reports. He was itching to get rid of the cast; his leg didn't hurt anymore, and he was pretty mobile especially without the crutches, which he only used if he had to cover a good distance, like the walk from the parking lot to the building. They had told him six weeks in the cast at the hospital, and he was determined to try and talk his own doctor into less. Four more weeks of this paperwork would kill him, he was sure.
In spite of his distaste for the job, he was spending a lot of time there. He had been stuck in his apartment the previous week while Charlie was in the hospital; he was sick of it; it seemed lifeless and lonely, and it was uncomfortable at Charlie's. Don still stopped in there, drawn like a moth to the flame, but most of the time ended up talking to his dad. Charlie didn't seem to want to see him, these days. The door to the conference room opened suddenly and Megan entered with another stack of paperwork. Don groaned.
"You'll want to see these," she said, in response to his groan. "These are the reports from the Mansour case." She met his eyes levelly as he looked up, suddenly grim, and laid the reports next to him, sliding into a chair across the table. Don glanced at the stack of files. There was going to be a high level hearing over this in a few days, to discuss Edgerton's actions in the case. Edgerton was on administrative leave in the meantime; Don had not heard a word from him since they had come back to L.A., and he didn't want to. He felt fury rise in him again at the mere thought of the man, and he set his jaw, trying to hide his expression.
Megan studied him as he looked down, finishing the last page of the report in front of him. Don had been reserved and subdued since Los Padres, directing his team with quiet efficiency, plowing through paperwork. He was all there mentally, but seemed to be operating from distance. He hardly spoke at all about Charlie; they were all concerned about him and curious to know how he was doing, but Don offered little information. Maybe it was none of her business, but that was just too bad, she thought, she was going to ask anyway.
She took a deep breath. "So, how's Charlie doing?"
Don glanced up, and then back down at the report, taking his time with an answer. "He's graduated to a cane."
Megan nodded with an encouraging look. "That's good, what else?"
"He got his stitches out."
"Yeah?" Her slightly raised eyebrows asked for more information.
Don opened his mouth, about to toss out something else noncommittal; then closed it again with a sigh. "He's struggling."
Her eyebrows rose further. "How do you mean?"
He looked away and shrugged. "I don't know – he's living in that garage. He barely has the energy to stand, and he's at his chalkboards all day, or on his laptop. He's hardly eating, he looks like some starved refugee, and all he does is work on that Cognitive Emergence stuff. About the only time he leaves the garage is to get a shower – he's even sleeping out there, on that old lumpy sofa. Dad's beside himself."
Megan frowned. "Have you talked to him about therapy sessions?"
"Dad has. Charlie refuses to go – says the physical therapy sessions for his leg are bad enough."
"Maybe he'd listen to you." She frowned as a flicker of pain crossed Don's face.
"Yeah, well, he's not talking to me these days."
Her frown deepened. "Why not?"
He ran a weary hand over his face. "Damned if I know. I think he blames me for bringing him in on this case."
That didn't sound like the Charlie she knew. "That doesn't sound right. It was Edgerton's case anyway. He's the one that asked for him. Have you tried to talk to him about it?"
Don looked down at his paperwork. To be truthful, when he thought about it, he really hadn't, not seriously. It was too hard to face the expression of hurt in his brother's eyes, and the rejection that he knew would come. "No, it's just, I don't know. I can tell he doesn't want me there. He hardly says two words to me. How do you start a conversation with that?"
Megan looked at him steadily. "Any way you can." Don's head came up and they locked eyes for a moment, compassion in hers, and comprehension dawning in his. Megan stood. "Let me know if you need help with those reports."
------------------------End Chapter 23-------------------------------------------------------------