Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to the TV series, Criminal Minds.

Angel

Part 5

By
N. J. Borba

Upon entering the hospital room, Emily instantly felt sick to her stomach. Seeing her old friend hooked to so many machines broke her heart. His gaunt face and sunken eyes made her want to scream. Emily wondered why she'd been able to save his life earlier in the year but not again, not this time. A different kind of guilt gnawed at her as well, because she was happy she hadn't been there to watch Mathew deteriorate in a similar manner. Having seen him in the morgue had been bad enough.

Emily wasn't sure who she felt worse for, though, John or the young woman curled up in a chair beside his bed. Angie glanced her way as Emily moved further into the room. The girl stayed in her seat, looking worried and fragile. "He's asleep," she whispered.

"That's probably a good thing," Emily said as she pulled a chair up to the other side of John's bed. After placing her purse on the floor and sitting down, she couldn't help regard the young woman across from her. Upon their first meeting Emily had noticed only herself and John in the girl's face. Now, in the dimmer light with shadows cast about the room, Emily could see bits of Elizabeth Prentiss in the girl. Even some of the grandfather she'd loved dearly and visited often in the Alps.

"He's on some pretty heavy medication," Angie spoke again, nervously biting her bottom lip. "The nurses asked me a lot of questions I didn't know how to answer. Apparently he put down my name as a contact and that I'm his daughter. I guess the nurses must think it strange I don't know much about him."

Emily shook her head. "I'm sure they just think you're upset by all this," she tried to reassure the girl.

Angie nodded a little. "I'm sorry I bothered you. I thought about calling my dad, but I don't really want to put any of this on him."

"It's okay," Emily replied. "I understand." She wondered if Angie knew her father had been in touch with her, writing letters about the girl's childhood. It didn't seem like a good time to bring it up so she tried to fish for as much information as she could about John's condition. "Did the doctor or nurses say anything about his condition?"

"Machines are keeping liver function working," Angie's voice was a whisper again. "But his heart is weak. And his lungs, kidneys… the chemo treatments apparently made his whole system weaker. They doubt he'll make it through the night."

As that grim news sunk in, John's fifteen-year-old face flashed in front of Emily's eyes. She recalled that their first meeting had been at some Embassy gathering their parents had dragged them to. She'd been left sitting at a table, alone and dressed in a black skirt and white blouse of her mother's choosing. As the grownups retired to the study for drinks, Emily wandered the foreign house and discovered a boy her age standing in a dark hallway. His suit had looked about two sizes too small for him, but she'd smiled and approached him.

"Want to join me?" she asked, waving a cigarette in his face. It was from a stash she'd taken out of her father's library. The boy followed her to the home's back patio and she started the introductions. "I'm Emily, what's your name?"

"Matthew Benton," he replied.

"So formal," she teased while lighting up. Emily took a few puffs and held it toward him. "Want some?"

He took the offering and inhaled deeply. Then he nearly choked to death, dropping the cigarette and doubling over.

"Amateur," another voice joined their private gathering.

Emily's eyes instantly locked with the dark-eyed stranger. "And I suppose you're some expert with all of your, what… fifteen years of experience?" she challenged.

"Same as you, Emily Prentiss," he shot back.

She didn't like that he seemed to have an advantage over her, already knowing her name. "Do you have a name, expert?"

"John Cooley."

He'd been a typical looking rich kid, clean cut with jacket and tie all nicely done up. And she'd soon learned of his rebellious streak. Matthew had one as well, though it took some time for him to grow into it. The three of them had been so full of life back then. Full of a lot of anger, too, but that had actually been the glue that held them together. Emily had quickly discovered that both boys wore tough masks in public. But each had a kind, vulnerable heart.

They'd bonded over their mutual hatred of the nomadic, diplomatic lifestyle their parents had signed them up for. They hadn't been very original in their rebellion, though. Most of which consisted of cigarettes and drinking, because skipping school or mass were far greater sins in their parent's eyes.

"I'm sorry…" John moaned from his bed, eyes half open in slits.

Emily was somewhat roused from the past as she sat forward and took his hand in hers. She was suddenly reminded of the picture she still carried with her. The one with Matthew, John and her standing in a line, their hands clasped and held up in triumphant manner. They'd always talked at length about how much better they'd be at life than their parents. They were going to triumph over their parent's oppression. But mostly they'd just made a mess of their lives. "Hey," she spoke softly to him. "Don't talk, just rest."

"I'm sorry, Emily," he didn't seem to hear her, or was ignoring her. "I should have been there for you. You must have been so scared. You always pretended to be tough, but Matthew and I both knew you were just as vulnerable as we were. Always thinking we had everything planned out… gonna be better than our parents…"

She listened to him ramble. No doubt the drug effects were causing most of his drifting thoughts to come out in word form. Emily decided to play along. "We didn't know shit about life, did we?" she chuckled softly, shaking her head. "Big ideas, but no follow through." When she looked to him Emily found he'd drifted back to sleep. Her eyes rose to meet Angie. "You should go home, get some sleep," Emily instructed. "He could be like this all night."

"I'd rather stay," Angie's response was defiant.

"There's one thing John and I no doubt passed along to you," Emily said in the form of a lament. "Both of us were always too stubborn to know when to give in."

The girl almost smiled. "My dad always said that stubbornness was something that must have been genetic, not like him or my mom at all."

A smile did sprout on Emily's visage. "Sorry about that."

Neither one of them spoke again for hours, each dozing off at various intervals. John was awake and asleep in random spurts all through the night. But at three in the morning he woke with eyes wide open, staring intently at Emily. "Don't ever tell her she was a mistake," he spoke clearly. "Maybe we were stupid kids who did something we weren't ready for, and maybe we did it for a dumb reason… but you had a choice. And you chose to save her life, Emily. That wasn't a mistake."

The heart monitor gave a slow steady beep after that. A nurse entered the room, followed quickly by two other nurses and a doctor. Emily didn't watch what they were doing as they tended to John. She knew as soon as he'd spoken the last word that he was gone. The girl across from her was crying and Emily didn't know what to do for her, how to comfort her. She'd just lost a man she'd barely known. But he'd been a huge part of her quest to find her real parents, and losing him was a definite blow.

A weary medical team left John in the bed after almost ten minutes of trying to resuscitate him. Nothing more could be done. They left him with eyes still open, staring at nothing. Emily went to him and closed them. She smoothed a hand gently over his bald head, remembering how she'd done a similar thing for Matthew. It didn't seem possible that the two of them were gone now. But it did feel like her childhood was finally, truly over.

"I'm not very good at this," Angie said from her spot across the room.

Emily faced her. "Who is?" Even with all the death she saw on a daily basis, it was never easy.

"My mom was in a car accident," the younger woman kept speaking as she wrung her hands and stood beside John's bed. "I stayed with a neighbor lady while my dad went to the hospital. He came home and told me she was dead. I spent the whole week in my room, because…" she took a shaky breath. "She was always the one to wake me up in the morning for school. That's the only thing I remember about her now, coming into my room and singing this silly song… wake up, wake up you sleep head…" Angie swallowed. "For seven days I didn't know how to start my day without her."

With a heavy heart Emily could only think to say, "I'm sorry," the universally lame response to someone's loss.

Angie nodded, swiped the tears from her cheeks and grabbed her things. "If you decide to have a funeral or memorial for him, you'll let me know?"

"Sure," Emily replied as she watched the girl exit her life again.

xxx

Emily thanked the housekeeper who waved a hand toward the study where her mother supposedly was. As she walked down the long hall that was sheathed in renaissance art, Emily had doubts about what she was about to do. John's death and her continued inability to function around Angie had led her to her mother's doorstep. It seemed strange to want to talk to the one person she'd never felt comfortable talking to before. And yet, she knew her mother was the only person she could get answers from at the moment.

It was six in the morning and she hadn't gone home to sleep or change since spending the whole night in the hospital. But if she turned back now, Emily knew the courage would never get worked up again. She found the older woman at her desk, a plate of breakfast untouched beside her. Half a bagel, poached egg and a bowl of fruit; it was pretty much the same breakfast she'd been eating for years. Emily somewhat envied the kind of regiment her mother possessed. She wished there was something constant in her own life.

Elizabeth looked up. "Emily?" she was surprised to see her daughter. Their encounters the last few years had been few. "What are you doing here…" she asked, noticing her daughter's red eyes and disheveled appearance. "…so early?" the ambassador added, not wanting to sound ungrateful for the visit.

"Do you remember John Cooley?" Emily asked, sliding in to a chair across from her mother.

The ambassador sat back a little and removed her reading glasses. "Jared and Annabel's son," she nodded. "Jared and I worked together in Rome. I felt awful when I heard the two of them had been killed in a train accident outside of Paris a few years back."

A slow nod came from Emily. "Well, John's dead now as well," she revealed. "I was with him this morning when he passed."

"That's terrible," Liz sounded genuinely regretful. "The two of you were friends in Rome, weren't you, along with that Benton boy?"

"I'm impressed you were aware of that," Emily noted.

"I know more than you think," Elizabeth responded. "I know you hung out with those boys quite a lot. I even know about you taking your father's cigarettes to smoke."

Emily chuckled mirthlessly. "Wow, I feel like I should award you a Mother of the Year plaque for your level of awareness," she snapped.

"I can tell you're upset right now," the elder Prentiss female did not rise to her daughter's challenge. She had no desire to rehash old arguments. "You've just lost an old friend of yours, so I'll forgive the sarcasm this time."

"The hell with sarcasm, Mother," Emily growled. "You don't know anything about what happened when I was fifteen. You know very little about my life at all, because you never really cared. I was just sort of an ornament for you to parade around. Having a family made you look more human, didn't it?"

Liz frowned. "I'll not have you talk to me like this in my home."

"Fine," Emily searched through her purse for the photo that she'd been clinging to for days. "I'm sorry I lost my temper, but I do want to finally tell you the truth about something. Why, I'm not sure? Maybe because it's your right," she shrugged, handing the picture over. "Or maybe it's to clear my conscious."

The older woman stared at the photograph. "How old were you here? Five or six?"

"That's not me, mother. Read the back," Emily instructed.

"Angie?" Liz looked to her daughter with curious eyes. "Who's Angie?"

"My daughter."

A shake of the ambassador's head was followed quickly by her shoving the picture back across her desk to Emily. "I'm not sure what stage of grief this is, but wanting me to believe you have a five year old daughter that I never knew about… that's rather absurd, don't you think?"

Emily ran her tongue along her bottom lip and smiled. "I don't have a five year old daughter, mother. That was taken when she was five, but now she's twenty-three. I got pregnant when I was fifteen and gave birth to her about seven months after my sixteenth birthday," she clarified.

"That's impossible," Elizabeth responded.

"Remember how I pestered you into letting me attend that boarding school in Baltimore?" Emily asked, hoping to spark her mother's memory. "Remember how you and daddy never came to visit me there that year? Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter… you always had some function to attend and couldn't make the trip. And it wasn't until we moved to New York that following summer that you finally saw me again. That makes almost ten months in which we didn't see each other. Plenty time for me to have a baby."

Elizabeth stared at her uneaten food. "You need to leave now."

"But I'm not done," Emily stood her ground. "I just revealed my deepest secret to you because I couldn't walk around with it any longer. And I was hoping you might reveal something to me in return, maybe something you've wanted to get off your chest for years. Like the real reason daddy killed himself."

"What?" Liz was shocked. "Why would you say that? Your father's death was an accident."

"No, he was depressed," Emily kept pushing. "I heard you say so yourself once. I overheard you."

The ambassador sat rigidly in her chair. "You must have misinterpreted."

"Depression is a serious medical condition, mother. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"It was then," the woman broke a little. "It wasn't widely recognized years ago."

"But he was depressed and he drank to try to cover that, didn't he?" Emily persisted. "Don't you think that's something I had a right to know? That is a huge part of my medical background. Those things can be genetic, mother. And I've been unhappy for a long time," she confessed. "I isolate myself from people, I've lied for so many years about what happened with Angie, and I drink to numb it all."

"I suppose that's my fault?" Liz was defensive again.

Emily pursed her lips. "I didn't say that, but…"

"No," Elizabeth stopped her. "I'll not have you say these things. I did the best I could for you and now I see all I've received back from you is lies. You have a child? You got me to send you to a school across the ocean so you could perpetrate that lie? You've brought this all on yourself, Emily. You can't hide behind your father's illness and drinking and think that will explain it all away. You're not a child any longer and I don't have to sit here and have you heap this on me."

"I understand," Emily rose to her feet as that lie pushed through her mouth. She didn't really understand, but she was done talking to the brick wall her mother always threw up when it came to discussing anything of real merit. "Thanks for this little chat, mother. It was far more enlightening than I thought it would be. Clearly you take no blame in any of this, just like you never have. It's always my fault."

"Please," Liz sighed. "That dramatic martyr routine was hardly amusing when you were a teenager."

A dry chuckle escaped Emily's throat. "I'm sorry I bothered you this morning." With that she left her mother to her breakfast and documents. But the irony of those final words that had escaped her lips was not lost on Emily. It was almost like the conversation she'd first had with Angie, the girl searching for answers, and the mother pushing her away. It was a cycle of behavior she couldn't seem to overcome.

But there was one way to try. The same way as always.

xxx

Derek found her sprawled on the floor of her living room after having to force her front door open. At ten o'clock in the morning when she hadn't shown for their morning team meeting, Morgan had been worried. He'd called numerous times to no avail. By noon he'd decided to take his lunch break to look for her, stopping at the usual spots. She wasn't at Dugan's and her car was in the parking garage of her apartment building. So he'd knocked until his knuckles grew numb. Then he'd forced the door.

"Emily?" he called to her limp form. Derek sat her up, propping her against his side. "Come on, it's time to wake up."

"Noff," she moaned in protest. Derek's heart leapt into his throat, grateful that she was at least alive.

The smell of alcohol was thick in the room. A red wine stain marred the white carpet. And an empty bottle of vodka resided on the glass coffee table. At two o'clock in the afternoon she was passed out drunk. But he couldn't think to berate her at the moment, because he feared for her life. "Okay, it's shower time," he hefted her into his arms, stood and made his way upstairs. They'd shared her shower before under much nicer circumstance. This time he climbed in with her, both fully clothed, and turned on the coldest water possible.

Another groan of protest escaped, but she could do nothing to stop the spray of freezing water. Emily opened her eyes, doubled over and expelled the meager contents of her stomach into the tub and down her front. "Ima mesh," her words were barely distinguishable.

"Yes, you are," Derek agreed as he finally decided to strip her clothes off. There were other times he'd very much enjoyed that pleasure, but this was not one of them as he struggled to separate a nearly comatose Emily from her wet, clingy clothing.

With success finally on his side, Derek took the time to gently wash the stink of alcohol and puke from her body. Then he wrapped her in a robe and plopped her onto the queen sized bed in her room. He ditched his wet clothing as well and found a pair of sweats and t-shirt he'd left there weeks ago. Once dry and changed, Derek sat down on her bed and pressed two fingers against her neck to check for a pulse. "John's dead," she whispered, eyes closed and face smashed against a pillow.

"John Cooley?" Derek ran a hand over her damp hair. "Your friend?" he watched her nod. "I'm sorry, Emily."

"Don't be sorry," she replied wearily. "He's the lucky one."

"Don't say that, Emily. Please don't."

"Angie's not lucky. She lost her mother and now John. And I should have hugged her or something, but I just stood there and did nothing. I'm not any kind of mother to her…" Emily was silent for a long time after that and Derek figured she'd passed out again. But he was mistaken when she spoke a few more words. "Why do I keep thinking this will help?" She rolled on to her back and opened her eyes so she could face him. "Why does the first drink taste like it will solve everything?"

"Because you're an addict, Emily," he gave it to her straight, bushing wet hair away from her eyes.

"Why do you keep picking me up and dusting me off?"

He smiled. "Guess I've gotten used to having you in my life."

She turned to her side again. "You could do better."

Derek settled himself on to the bed beside her, curving his body to mold against her back. He slung a protective arm around her waist, careful not to put too much pressure on her in case there was anything left in her stomach that wanted to make its way out. "You need to get some help, Emily. More than just talking to me."

"I talked to my mother," she whispered. "Didn't help."

"I mean a doctor," he countered, figuring a lot of this round was due to that conversation with her mother. "Or a support group… something like that."

"Okay…" her breathing slowed so quickly that Derek was alarmed. But he felt for her pulse again and was satisfied that she had just completely passed out. Derek stayed there with her, not worried about calling into work. He simply prayed that her agreement a second ago would actually be followed through.

"Rest now," he whispered while pressing a kiss to her cheek.

To be continued…