A/N: I talked my muse out of the original course of these events and am happy with the way it's playing out now. Everyone should be able to review as usual now. :-)
By the time Bobby woke, the doctors had made up their minds and he was in a regular hospital room. By Mike's estimation, Alex would be about halfway there, maybe a little more. Carolyn stepped up to the bed when she realized Bobby was awake, sliding her hand into his and squeezing. "How do you feel?"
He shrugged. "Not so good. Are we, uh, ready to go?"
Mike said, "I've been ready for the last twelve hours. But you aren't."
"What are you talking about?"
"They admitted you."
"What?" He looked around the room. "No. No way. I'm going home."
He sat up and the room tilted and began to spin. Carolyn pressed him back into the bed. "Just sit still. Alex is on her way back."
Bobby frowned for a moment before panic set in. "Why?"
He couldn't think of a thing that would make her come all the way back to Syracuse. She certainly hadn't seemed concerned about him, taking Maggie away and not even staying to talk to him. Carolyn answered, "I told her to get her ass back here, that you aren't doing well and they were going to admit you."
"You lied to her? That'll go over big, and she'll probably blame me..."
She squeezed his hand and again pressed him back into the bed when he tried to sit up. "Calm down. I didn't lie. You aren't doing so well and they did admit you."
Once he had calmed a little and seemed to relax, she sat down. Bobby rubbed his temple. "I'm not staying. And you shouldn't have done that. There's no need to drag the kids out in this weather."
"She left the kids home," Mike replied before he thought about the next question that would naturally follow.
"With her dad?"
"Uh, no. He wasn't available. But she found a babysitter."
"Her sister."
"Uhm, no."
"Lewis?"
"No. She couldn't get in touch with him."
Bobby couldn't think of another suitable babysitter that his wife would trust with their children. "Stop messing with me, Mike. Who's watching my kids?"
Mike glanced at Carolyn, who leaned back in her chair with a smug go-ahead-and-tell-him look on her face. Bracing himself, he replied, "She called Denise."
"D-Denise? H-How did she know to call her?"
Mike shrugged. "I don't know. She called me and asked if the kids knew her and if they would be okay staying with her. I gave her the number."
Oh, fuck... This was slowly going from bad to worse. What the hell was Alex going to think now? "Was she...mad?"
"It was hard to tell."
His head was still spinning but he realized he was in deep. "Oh, damn."
"Look, I know I told you Denise was your business and I was going to stay out of it, but level with me. You haven't been sleeping with her, have you?"
"What? No! Of course not. Not since I married Alex."
"So what's the problem?"
"The problem is that Alex knows I used to sleep with her, and she was very jealous of her. She's not going to understand this."
"I told you to tell her," Mike said reasonably.
Bobby's eyes flared and Mike backed away from the side of the bed. "Fine. This is between you and her."
He grabbed the white and orange book he'd brought up from the emergency room and dropped into the chair near the window. Red dog. Blue dog. Old dog. New dog. Shit...
Mike swore he felt the temperature in the room drop when the door banged open and Alex entered. He took one look at her face and he got up from his chair, casting a look of sympathy in Bobby's direction. Alex pointed at him. "Sit down," she ordered. "You're not going anywhere."
Great. She wants witnesses. This room was the last place in the world he wanted to be, but it never crossed his mind to disobey and he sat down. She turned toward Bobby, who watched her silently with worried eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared him down. He averted his eyes, but remained silent. "Start talking," she demanded, struggling to hang on to her anger after seeing the look in his eyes, certain she had put it there. A cold fist gripped her heart and her hold on her anger faltered. But she forced it back and waited for him to start talking.
Bobby had no idea what to say, knowing that the wrong thing would be catastrophic. Saying nothing, however, was just as bad an option. He focused on his hands, running two fingers along a jagged laceration that ran along the back of his arm from his left wrist halfway to his elbow. He hadn't noticed it before. Silently, he counted the stitches.
Alex waited, forcing herself to be patient. Telling herself he needed a starting point, she said, "Start with the accident."
She wanted to know how Maggie got hurt. He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. Focusing away from her, he tried to remain detached as he explained, "I...can't tell you how we ended up this far north. The snow just started when I stopped for gas, and it came down heavily, accumulated fast. We were off the main highway, so I headed back toward 81 to catch 17 back to the city. I...uh, I didn't make it to 81." He rubbed his hand over the sutured laceration, feeling the scrape of the knots against his palm. "There was a white car on its roof in the middle of the road. It was covered in snow. By the time I saw it, it was too late; I couldn't miss it. So...I turned the wheel...hard." He bit his lip. He wasn't having much success keeping the emotion from his voice. "With road conditions being what they were...the Blazer went into a...a spin...off the road. I pulled it out of the spin, right into a tree." He swept his hand over his hair, grazing the bandaged sutures on the side of his head. He winced at the white flash of pain that shot across his skull. He didn't remember the accident at all, but he'd been able to recreate what happened from reading what was left of the tracks in the snow. "It, uh, it was the right thing to do...but I-I'm sorry...I'm sorry Maggie got hurt."
As she listened to his voice, Alex felt most of her anger abate, replaced by a shallow sense of guilt. Some of this he had brought upon himself, but not all of it. He was sorry...that Maggie was hurt. Her anger had done some serious damage this time, she realized. "What about you?"
He looked up, surprised by the question. "Me? What about me?"
Carolyn slid over toward Mike and tapped his head. She motioned for him to follow her. He hesitated, until she glared at him. Then he got up and followed her out of the room. Their departure went unnoticed.
Alex stepped closer to the bed, but not close enough to reach out and touch him. She still hung on to some of her anger. "Yes. You."
He shrugged. He didn't matter, though he knew better than to tell her that. He chose, instead, to say nothing and let her interpret his shrug however she would.
His silence annoyed her. "You don't think it would have been better just to hit that other car?"
"No." He shook his head, making the spinning worse. He closed his eyes for a moment, until the world settled. This was an answer he was certain about. Slowly easing his eyes back open, he searched her face for a moment before looking away again. She was still angry. "It wouldn't have been better, for anyone. There was a family in that car. The driver was dead, but his children were still alive in the back seat."
Children... Her heart skipped a beat. "How old?"
"Wally is about three and a half. Krissy is maybe six or eight months. Maggie was a big help taking care of them."
Even injured, Maggie's concern extended beyond herself. Tears formed in Alex's eyes but she choked them back. Maggie grew to be more and more like her father every day, and Alex never saw that as a bad thing. In spite of his upbringing, Bobby had become a sensitive, caring man. Maggie was going to be the same way, only without the demons and insecurities that plagued her father.
"Tell me about your injuries," she urged, her voice suddenly losing its hard edge.
Again he shrugged. "I'm all right."
She could not keep the natural bite of sarcasm from creeping into her voice. "That's why they admitted you, huh? Because you're all right?"
His shoulders sagged and he stared at his hands again. He noticed the change in her tone, but he was not certain how to interpret it. He couldn't believe it was a good thing. He forced himself to answer her. "I, uhm, I dislocated my hip and wrecked my knee. A concussion...but...nothing broken..."
Nothing but your spirit, Alex realized. And that's my fault.
Before she knew what she was doing, she moved a little closer. Finding herself at the bedside, she stayed where she was. "What about your arm?"
"Apparently, it's okay. I think the cast protected it, but they put a new one on."
"Did they treat you for anything else?"
"Hypothermia...shock...some lacerations...I guess that's it."
She reached out and touched the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers. He still would not look at her. She urged him into the next topic. "Now...your mother..."
She saw the tremor that shook his body at the reminder. He shut his eyes tight and she slid her hand over the top of his, closing her fingers around it. She stepped closer, pressing her body into the side of the bed and moving another step toward the head of the bed, closer to him.
She couldn't say exactly when she lost her hold completely on the remaining shreds of her anger or when his emotions broke past his control. She slid her hand up his arm and he leaned toward her, burying his face in her chest as she wrapped her arms around him. One of his arms slipped around her waist and held her close. She stroked his hair and waited for him to settle back from his grief.
It was a long time before he withdrew from her, and she was reluctant to let him go. She took a step back from the bed. He laid against the pillows, still unable to look at her. He knew it wasn't over. She decided not to address the emotional meltdown that sent him to Syracuse. There was one thing she had learned from the years she'd been with him. One way or another, Bobby always ended up where he needed to be. If he hadn't been on that road in the storm, those two little ones would have frozen to death. She could not be angry with him for that.
"There's one more thing I have to address with you. Denise Rhodes."
He nodded, but said nothing. She waited. Finally, he said, "I have never been unfaithful to you, Alex."
She wasn't sure that was what she needed to hear; she knew that he would never be unfaithful to her. But she really wasn't sure just what it was that she did need to hear. "You never told me you were still in contact with her."
"I'm sorry." She knew his moods and the meaning behind every tone he injected into his voice. He was sincere. "I-I thought it might upset you. The kids love to see her; she's good to them. And...I, I was never willing to completely let her go. She was always there when I needed her. It would have been...wrong...to just cut her out of my life. I can be a real bastard, but...I...I couldn't do that to her. She deserved better from me." He poked at the sutured laceration. The sharp pain drew his focus from his misery. "Denise...is only a friend any more. She...she listens to me...she talks to me...but...that's all. Sometimes...I buy her lunch, or she meets us in the park. The kids ask to see her. She took Maggie to Radio City a few months ago. There's nothing...but friendship between us, I swear."
She leaned over to look at his face, and she believed him. "The kids never said anything. Did you tell them not to?"
"No. Never. I would never put them in that position. I didn't hide anything from you. I just...never said anything. And Tommy's told you about her. I don't know why Maggie never did, but he did."
Alex furrowed her brow, trying to remember Tommy saying anything about Denise to her. "No, he hasn't."
Bobby nodded, again regretting the movement. "He did. The last couple of times I took them to the park. He calls her 'Nees."
Understanding dawned. "I thought he fell or something and was telling me about his knees."
Bobby almost smiled, but his mind was still heavily weighted by dark thoughts. With the eye of a profiler, he studied Alex, trying to determine her state of mind. Still defensive, still angry, definitely. He saw no forgiveness, perhaps because he didn't look hard enough, didn't think he deserved it. He looked away, back to the suture on his arm. Seventeen stitches. With the edge of his fingernail, he flicked at a knot. A small trickle of blood began to run from the edge of the wound.
Silently, Alex grasped his hand, drawing it from the injury. "Quit playing with that and talk to me."
Any outsider hearing her request would think it wasn't much to ask. Any one who knew Bobby, who really knew him, would know that it was. His mind was still racing, wandering rapidly from one thing to the next, and he was unable to untangle one thought from another. His mother's final break with reality and the pain, physical and emotional, it caused his children, her death, the accident, Maggie's injuries, Alex's fury, Denise...
He turned toward Alex, his eyes diverted from her face. He watched the hollow at the base of her throat. "You don't have to worry. I...I mean...you..." He paused and took a deep breath, struggling to calm his racing mind. "I really screwed up this time...and Maggie...Maggie was hurt...but I...I can't...after everything..." He trailed off, knowing his words were as jumbled as his thoughts. "I'm sorry," he finally said. Nothing else made any sense to him, and he was sorry, for everything.
Alex watched him avoid her, and she wasn't sure how to address that. She didn't want to drive him further away. The only thing she knew for certain was that anger was not the proper response right now. Anger was what she felt most strongly, though, and she resented having to scuttle it away in order to deal with him. Her conscious mind told her resentment wasn't the right response, either. Every emotion that cropped up seemed to be the wrong one. She wanted to yell at him; she wanted to lash out with sharp words she intuitively knew would cut deep. But a damaged soul bleeds much more readily than a whole one, and a tender heart, already bearing years of abuse, does not recover so quickly. Those thoughts calmed her, driving away the anger and resentment.
She reached out and he flinched unexpectedly. She withdrew her hand and frowned. Years of abuse were suddenly coming back to haunt him, driven by the death of his mother, no doubt. Memories long suppressed were suddenly surfacing and they were taking their toll on him. Alex did not know how to reach him. Take it slowly, a voice whispered in her mind. Reach out and let him reach back. Words right now will have little meaning, but still, be careful what you say. Remember, there is still a wounded boy hiding deep within this big, sensitive man.
She sent a hand forward, slowly, along the sheet. His eyes darted toward the movement, and he watched her hand. When she touched him, he raised his hand, and his fingertips traveled along curved fingers that turned with her hand. He gently explored the furrows of her palm.
She didn't pull away and that surprised him. His fingers traced the lines of her palm. She has a long lifeline. That's a good thing. She'll have lots of years with the children.
His hand continued along her arm. Soft skin, smooth with strong defined muscles. They could do damage...or soothe a very big hurt. And her shoulders, erect, proud, bearing a heavier burden than she probably ever intended to bear, thanks to him. His fingers moved along the curve of her collarbone to her throat. He could feel her swallow, feel the beat of her heart beneath the tips of his fingers as they moved across her pulse point on their way to the back of her neck, beneath her hair. He drew in a slow breath as her hair filtered through his fingers and his mind slowly settled. He relaxed against the pillows and his gentle, caressing hand dropped away from her slowly. He closed his eyes.
He didn't dream. Not really. He wouldn't call it a dream. It was more like an assault of images and sounds from his life, coming and going, tormenting and torturing. He stirred restlessly.
His mother's voice screamed through his mind. Robert! Why can't you just be good, like your brother?! Tommy's sudden cries of terror quickly followed, punctuated by Maggie, comforting him in spite of her own confused sobbing. He saw his son's blood and bruises, intermingled with his sister's, followed by decades of his own blood, flowing like a river through the memories of his life. Then it was snowing and spinning, and the spin was stopped suddenly by something big and dark and silent...something which moved in the shadows, still threatening as the shadows melted together and shifted, changing, shrinking in size but not in ferocity. The shadow stepped into an undefined light, and it became Alex.
He sat up suddenly, fighting his way back from the nightmare images. Fire erupted in his hip, traveling down his thigh to his knee and he doubled over. The pain chased away the memory of sleep. No one moved in the dim light of the room.
Once the pain subsided, he slid from the bed, grunting at the pain of protest from his knee and fighting against the spinning in his head. Limping painfully, he searched the room until he found a clean pair of jeans and a gray sweatshirt. They must have brought him clothes from home. Somehow, he doubted his clothes survived the emergency room. Sitting in the chair beside the bed, he peeled away the tape on the back of his hand and pulled the IV from its place, dropping it to the floor, still running. He was dressed before he noticed the steady stream of blood running from the spot where the IV had been. Quickly, he pressed a finger against it to staunch the flow of blood. After a minute, which he spent conducting a successful hunt for a band-aid and a piece of gauze, he removed his finger, replacing it with the gauze, folded in quarters and held in place by the band-aid.
The IV fluid that continued to run onto the floor mixed with the blood that had dripped from his hand. He watched it as he pulled on his socks and shoes. He'd just finished when the door opened. He looked up, annoyed that he had to force his vision to focus. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Mike asked around whatever he was eating.
Bobby picked up Go, Dog, Go and tossed it at Mike's form, missing him by several feet. "Get your stuff together. We're going home."
Mike watched him, noticing his unsteadiness. If Bobby was fine, he'd never have missed hitting him with the book. "I'm not so sure that's a great idea," he answered, noting the pool of blood on the floor.
"Did I ask?"
Picking up the book as he swallowed, Mike said, "Okay. My stuff is together."
"Then let's get out of here."
Mike watched Bobby try to stand before he felt bad and stepped forward to help him. "Don't you think it would be nice to wait for Alex?"
Bobby stopped moving and looked at Mike. "She...she's still here?"
"Of course she is. She's talking to the doctor right now."
"Is she...mad?"
"Not at the moment, but she will be when she gets back in here."
Bobby waved a hand. "I am not staying here. I'm going home."
"Just how do you plan on getting there?"
"You're going to take me."
Mike tightened his grip on Bobby's arm when he faltered. "That would involve getting the keys from either Carolyn or Alex and I really don't see that happening."
Turning his head to look at Mike, Bobby blinked a couple of times as he processed that information. "I need to go home."
Before Mike could answer the door opened again. The soft click of the light switch was followed by a stern, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Turning to face his wife, Bobby shook off Mike's support, trying to prove he was feeling better than he was. "I'm going home."
Alex watched him put out a hand to steady himself against the bed. Looking at the floor, she saw the patient end of the IV tubing as it continued to dribble its contents into the bloody pool with every turn of the pump. Her mind was busy trying to process what actually would be best for him: a hospital admission he neither wanted nor consented to but probably needed or taking him home to recover where he could be with his children and she could take care of him.
A hand touched her elbow before she could arrive at an answer. The doctor she had just finished speaking to stepped past her and Carolyn stopped at her side. She mouthed 'thank you' to her friend before moving around the doctor to re-enter Bobby's line of vision.
"You should probably get back in bed," the doctor urged.
Bobby shook his head. "I'm going home. I did not consent to being admitted."
Alex asked, "Is there anything necessary that you are doing here that we cannot do for him at home?"
"Other than due diligence by medically trained eyes and the ability to control his pain better by the use of IV medication, no."
She shifted her attention back to Bobby, who had accepted Mike's support to keep him steady. "I'm not so sure leaving is a good idea, Bobby."
"I want to go home," he insisted.
"He can stay with us," Mike offered, opening the door for Alex to let Bobby know she was willing to forgive him and hoping she would take the opportunity.
"No," she said firmly. "If he's going to come home, he's coming home." Looking back at the doctor, she said, "Go ahead and discharge him."
She knew that he was not going to stay in the hospital and she could not remain here with him. She was getting ready to make the drive home and had planned on asking Mike to stay with Bobby. Seeing his determination, she knew the only way he would stay was going to be under sedation, and she didn't want that. She preferred to take him home, where he was most comfortable, and they had a lot to work through. She also realized that Maggie and Tom really needed to see him, and he needed them more than he needed IV fluids and pain control.
She stepped up to Bobby and placed her hand flat against his chest. "Sit down before you fall down."
"I'm fine."
She arched her eyebrows. "Now is not the time for you to be stubborn with me, Bobby."
She wavered in front of him and he blinked hard. She shifted to the left and then to the right. Reaching out, he grabbed her, holding her still. "That's not funny."
"Sit down."
Given that he perceived himself on shaky ground with her, he decided that it would be counterproductive to argue. He sat down, a little more heavily than he intended, jarring his hip. He was unable to fully suppress a groan of pain. The doctor looked at Alex, who said, "Just give him something to get him home. He'll be fine after that."
"I'll have the nurse bring him something with his discharge papers."
"Thank you."
Bobby pulled his left hand over his face and then ran it through his hair. He was getting all kinds of mixed messages from Alex and had absolutely no idea if she was still angry or not. His guess was yes and he was not going to push his luck.
Thirty minutes later, Alex made a left out of the hospital parking lot behind Mike and Carolyn. She'd entertained the notion of letting Bobby go with Mike and taking Carolyn with her, but she decided against it. She wanted to talk to him, but negotiating the slick, snow-covered roads took all her concentration. By the time they turned onto southbound 81, he was asleep.