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Chapter Ten
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He stood frozen in the doorway that lead out into the garden, looking at her, his stomach in knots.
"Doctor Reid, are you all right?" Doctor Norman asked.
"Spencer, you've gone awfully pale," his father added.
Without thinking, Spencer answered, "How would you know?"
His father turned away. "Of course. I'm sorry."
Spencer blinked at his father's tone, realizing how peevish his words must have sounded. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way." Which was true; while he didn't feel any particular remorse, his words had not been meant as an accusation and it was only accurate to say so.
"You're right though," his father said. "We haven't been around each much in the last twenty-two years. I really don't know how… I mean, what your normal…"
Reid, however, was no longer listening to his father's awkward apology. Turning from the door, he blindly staggered away to the other end of the room.
"Doctor Reid?" Doctor Norman asked again, worried now.
Reid swallowed harshly and abruptly sat down on a nearby chair. "I'm sorry, I… I feel very strange."
Doctor Norman stepped out into the hall and told an orderly to bring a glass of water. Then he pulled over another chair and sat down facing Spencer. "Can you tell me what's bothering you, Doctor Reid?"
"I don't know."
They had told Doctor Norman the entire story of course. It would have been irresponsible to simply spring this on Diana without any consultation with her therapist as to her state of mind, not to mention the man would have to know in order to deal with the aftermath. Doctor Norman had been stunned naturally - Diana had never in all the years he'd treated her ever even hinted that her beloved son was adopted - but he recovered quickly, and right now he thought he had a fair inkling as to what the younger Doctor's problem was. "Spencer?"
Reid looked up; Doctor Norman had never called him by his first name before. He would have been rather amazed to learn that it had to do with the astonishing respect the renowned psychiatrist had for him.
"Is this the first time you've actually talked to your mother since you found out you were adopted?" Norman asked.
"Yes. I mean, I've written her letters, but I haven't… spoken to her. I haven't seen her."
"And have you talked with anyone - even a good friend, say - about how you felt about being adopted?"
Spencer glanced up a bit dazedly. "No. Honestly, I haven't even really considered it myself. All these weeks, I've been dealing with finding out I'm related to a co-worker, but I…"
The older doctor's smile was kind. "Never got around to coming to terms with finding out Diana isn't your biological mother," Norman finished for him.
"I suppose not."
"You're not my patient, Spencer, but I hope you don't mind if I point out that you do that quite often."
"I'm sorry?"
"The entire time I've treated your mother, you've always put her - and from what I can tell, everyone else's - emotional considerations ahead of your own. It's very commendable, and also understandable since Diana is the patient and naturally our focus falls on her first, but your needs are hardly unimportant, Doctor Reid. You shouldn't simply dismiss them as being less significant and worth dealing with. And not just for practical reasons, either. To keep seeing your needs as less leads to seeing yourself as less, and that invalidates who you are. I hope you realize that."
Spencer nodded weakly. He understood what the man was trying to say, but at the moment, he really wasn't in a fit state for an intensive round of self-examination.
But Doctor Norman would not be deterred. "Can you tell me the basics of how you're feeling right now, Doctor?"
How did he feel?
Afraid. He knew he would still love her, nothing would ever change that, but this did sever one of the perceived bonds between them that he'd always taken for granted. He was scared that would change how he saw her, at least in the short term.
Worried. He prayed he wouldn't look at her with resentment, as the burden that had never been his but that he'd had to carry, the false mother that had kept him from knowing his own.
"Slightly ill," he finally said, not knowing what words were coming until they were out of his mouth. To his embarrassment, he discovered it was true. He only realized after he actually said it out loud that he'd unknowingly been breathing more deeply for the last few minutes, trying to still his churning stomach, and he felt clammy and a touch shaky. How ridiculous is that? A grown man, come specifically to visit his mother, literally sick at the thought of seeing her. A part of him, a part he knew was small and childish and petty, was desperate not to be like this in front of his father, to maintain whatever superiority the moral high ground and strength gave him, and so he was extremely grateful to take the glass of water Doctor Norman placed in his hand, and began sipping slowly but steadily in an attempt to regain his composure.
"It's been a hard couple of weeks. There was this case in Seattle," he explained, which wasn't a lie, technically, but it was an obvious obfuscation. "And I got caught out in the rain last night." God, was it only last night? "Perhaps I'm coming down with something."
"Would you like some aspirin?" Doctor Norman asked.
"No, that's all right." Reid's discomfort at all this attention wasn't doing much for his efforts to calm down.
"Would you like Doctor Norman and I to speak to your mother first?" his father asked him.
Yes. Yes, please, Spencer frantically wanted to say, but he told himself couldn't start shirking his responsibility now.
Couldn't he? A surge of anger hit him. "My" responsibility. Why mine? Why is it always mine? She's HIS wife. She's NOT my mother.
He clapped a hand over his mouth, positive he was about to be sick all over the floor of the patients' common room. His jaw clenched with a sharp twinge as shock and guilt wracked him at how quickly and easily he could dismiss years of love. How could I have ever thought that? How could I ever possibly have thought that? She took care of me! She has always loved me. What kind of person am I?
What hurt worse though, was that those thoughts still clung on at the back of his mind. He couldn't quite pull them free.
Taking a deep breath, he stood and steeled himself for the task ahead. He had to talk to Di…his mother. And if his apparent resolution was more to do with not wanting to seem weak than with one hundred percent fully selfless love, well then, so be it. It had to be done and if he started running from his responsibilities now, he'd never stop, and he would not be a weak man. On that, he absolutely refused.
-x-
She was sitting on a bench in the shade, reading. Edmund Spenser, as it turned out - the man she had named him for, though some caprice of hers at the last minute had made her insist on the different spelling. It was The Faerie Queene, one of his favourites, almost as if she'd known he was coming.
A mother always knows…
"Hello, Mom."
She looked up and a glorious smile lit her face. "Spencer! I wasn't expecting you. What a wonderful surprise!" Reid saw her joy falter slightly though, when she spotted Doctor Norman and her ex-husband standing behind him.
"What is the matter, Spencer? Why is your father here?"
Spencer sat on the bench beside her and took her hand. "Nothing's the matter, Mom. Not really. It's just that… well, we need to talk to you."
"If you're here to take me away, I must decline. I simply cannot leave my students at this juncture. We're just starting the lectures on fantasy imagery in Renaissance literature and they would be lost if our classes were interrupted now."
Reid shot a pained glance towards Doctor Norman. He'd been told she'd been getting so much better, that lately she'd seemed to understand that she was no longer teaching, talking instead of perhaps attending classes at UNLV herself when she was stronger. Doctor Norman looked pained and Spencer recognized the expression and sighed inwardly. Bad days and good days…
"It's okay Mom," Reid said. "We wouldn't dream of taking you away." He didn't add 'from your students' because his mother's therapists believed it would do more harm than good in the long run to reinforce her delusions. (Though, admittedly, he sometimes had different thoughts on the matter.) "Mom…" He hesitated, unsure of how to start, and wished his father would jump in. After all, he himself had been an infant - didn't that make it logical for his father to be the one to tell the story? He would have been far more familiar with what happened than his son.
"Mom," Spencer started again, "Do you remember when…" he nearly said when I was born, but that was wrong, wasn't it? She wasn't there for his birth. "When I was a baby?"
"Of course I do, Spencer. What a silly question! You were such a bright baby, so calm, always watching everything, your eyes so knowing. Anyone who looked at you could tell you were something special."
"Thank… thank you, Mom," Spencer said, choking on the words. He didn't know why it suddenly hurt so much to hear her praise, but it did. "That's not what I meant though. Do you remember…" he started to ask again, but trailed off. The words would not come.
"Diana, do you remember Janine?" William Reid asked when his son couldn't finish.
"Janine?"
William Reid sat down on the bench on his ex-wife's other side. "Janine Rutherford. She used to work at my firm."
"Oh yes, now I recall. She was a very intelligent girl. I liked her."
"But do you remember why she came to live with us for awhile?" William pressed.
"Yes, of course I do. She came to help us."
William Reid sat back, sighing with relief, but Doctor Norman shared a glance with the younger Reid. They both knew better than to assume anything.
"Help with what, Mom?" Spencer asked warily.
"Oh, Baby, with you. She helped us protect you."
"Protect me?"
Diana Reid placed her hands gently on her son's face. Of all the people in his life, she was the only one completely unafraid to touch him. "People wanted you, Spencer. The government. Such a smart, smart boy - they would take you and train you to do horrible things. That's why we had to hide you to keep you safe."
"And Janine was part of that plan?"
"Of course, Baby. She pretended to be pregnant. Then, when we brought you out of hiding, everyone would think you were really her baby and that she'd only given you to us. That's why we pretended you were dead. That's why we changed your name."
Spencer couldn't keep the stricken look off his face. "Changed my name?" he whispered hoarsely. "What…what was it before?"
"It was Christopher. Your father picked it out," she added blithely, missing the devastation her words were wreaking on her son. "It was an adequate enough name I suppose, and you did share it with a poet - though a modern one, which I didn't entirely approve of. Still, I was glad of the chance to change it. Spencer is so much more creative."
"Is it, Mom?" he asked faintly. "That's nice."
"Nice? Now why would you use such a pedestrian word, Spencer? Your vocabulary is so much more expansive than that."
"I'm sorry, Mom. I'll try harder."
"My poor baby," Diana soothed, stroking her son's hair. "You're terribly exhausted, aren't you? I can always tell. I do wish you would leave that job. It's not at all good for you."
"I'll think about it, Mom."
"Will you, Spencer? Sometimes you say things that aren't true."
"I'm sorry, Mom."
"I know you are, Baby. Hush now."
"Mom…"
"What is it, Baby?"
"Mom, there's going to be this story in the news…"
-x-
He sat in the passenger seat of his father's sedan, his mother's indignant ravings still ringing in his ears. Emotionally wrung out, to an observant passer-by he would have seemed almost catatonic.
"It's a good hospital," his father said. "You did a good job picking it. They'll take care of her there. They'll calm her down and she'll be all right eventually."
Reid said nothing.
"I think you were right though," William Reid went on, trying a different tack. "It wouldn't have hurt anything to, well, go along with her just this once. She would have been a lot more easy to… she would have felt better if we'd told her the news report was merely part of our original, uh, cover story, to keep you safe."
Reid wasn't certain of that; it was likely that it would have made her worry more about him in the end, but he didn't have the energy to say so.
They were on a quiet suburban street. William Reid pulled the car over. "Look at me, Spencer," he said. "It doesn't matter who she thinks you are; the things she loves about her son are the things she knows of you, the things she feels when she sees you."
Spencer still couldn't speak. He wanted to pull away from his father, to fight with him, to shout and scream furiously at this man who had taken everything from him: his childhood, his sense of worth, the most basic parts of his identity, and now even his mother's love, but suddenly he found himself blinking too fast, trying to keep tears from traitorously trickling from his eyes, and hot humiliation burned his cheeks as he felt his self-control not just failing, but crashing utterly. A sob wrenched agonizingly in his chest and when a warm hand descended on the back of his neck, to his surprise he didn't flinch. William Reid was a stranger, and yet not. In some nearly all-but-forgotten way, this was his father. He was the first man in Spencer's life, and ultimately the most defining. The protector, the comforter, the dresser of skinned knees (not that Spencer had many), and the soothing presence in the dark chasing away nightmares (of which Spencer did have many). This was the reader of bed-time stories, the one who introduced him to science fiction and the only man who had ever carried Spencer on his shoulders. Even the smell of him was familiar: musty law books, his particular brand of after-shave, the creamer he used in his coffee - the combined scent that once upon a time had meant comfort and home. Everyone had always thought Reid had wanted Gideon or Hotch or even Rossi to be some sort substitute for his father, but he never had. He had wanted his father to be his father. And so now, when he felt that same man pulling him towards him, Spencer Reid helplessly turned towards the soft voice from his childhood murmuring reassurances at him, buried his head against his father's shoulder and bawled like he hadn't since he was a very small child.
