I'm Not Over
Dr. Hanson's Office – noon
29 years old. She was officially twenty-nine years old today, grown-up, wiser, one step closer to the woman she'd always dreamed of being. Her career had flourished, school had been a breeze, and everything in between had come and gone as nothing more than a fond memory. A few short relationships, a few long ones, a couple of blessings, a couple of regrets. At twenty-nine she could admit to having found true love, lost it, almost settled down twice, and still enjoyed her single life whenever it returned. She had a nice apartment in the city, a well paying, well respected position, and she could have anything or anyone she wanted at the very drop of a hat, or dime in some cases. Lily Hanson had made it to the peak she had once wanted to find.
But in all of the climatic wisdom and good spirits, she found utter loneliness, pain, the burden of something important to any twenty-nine year old woman in America: fate. Her heart had decided to take a chance on it a long time ago, and the result was everything she could have asked for and more, and then, fate came in another form and took it all away. Tommy was too young, no better a victim than her dad had been all those years ago. Her brother's fate was the same as his father's, and it was something she was almost certain he prided himself in, wherever he was now. But for those of them still remaining, for her and her mother, for friends like Jeff and Shane, the loss of Tom Hanson was the breaking point for everything, and it seemed it was only now just starting to heal over.
Her feet were kicked up on the desk after finishing her second cancellation call for the day, and staring out of the large window of her office, she watched the winter clouds scatter overtop of City Hall. Washington was an interesting place, but she hated it nonetheless. In truth, she'd come here for the job, for the hope that Sheldon's plans of joining the CIA were absolute convictions, and that maybe, just maybe, she would be able to repair what she'd broken. It had been her fault and she lived with the thought every single day of her life. Her fault she walked away and left him with a tear in his eye, her fault she couldn't deal with the pain of trying to love a man who reminded her of her dead brother too much, her fault that she was such a baby about the only real thing to have ever happened in her world.
Harwich Port Cemetery- Chatham, MA.
March 20th, 1996
Her eyes were burning and frozen at the same time while she kept her gaze focused on the photo of her brother, the person she had known better than she knew herself. He looked so happy in the picture, one her mom had taken at Christmas that same year, and a second photo next to it, one she could hardly even move her eyes to. It was a photograph of Tommy in his uniform, smug, grim, tired looking already at only 25. He would have been 26 in three weeks. But he wouldn't be now, because Thomas Hanson would never grow past the sixteenth of March in a year that could have been the best, one she truly had envisioned would be. Lifting her eyes as the sermon continued and her mother's hold on her arm tightened, Lily looked up with foggy sight to see Jeff on the opposing side of Tommy's coffin, almost as if he were too scared to call himself family anymore. Shane stood next to him, her face buried in the arm of his coat as she cried, but Lily's eyes immobilized on him, only waiting until they would join for the first time in almost three weeks.
She'd broken up with him, and nearly had the task of crushing him into a million pieces completed on this day. He'd never looked so terrible in the four years she had known him, not when his own father died, not when his sister had almost been killed, not even when she broke up with him. Yet now, the pain of losing her and Tommy seemed to be plastered all over him, and it must have been the sense of her staring his way that finally made him lift his gaze to hers, the only thing separating them was also what had brought them together. Both of their eyes were filled anxiously with tears, staining their freezing cheeks, the howl of the bay breeze, the icy waves against the rocks at shore, the pastor's solemn tone, sniffling and sobs filling the air in a harmonic and altogether disillusioned ode. Lily wanted to run to him, to beg him to take her away and take her back, to apologize and kiss him, to love him for real again. But she didn't and instead focused back on the photos of Tom, the white roses as the only reminder of why he wasn't standing next to her now, telling her to suck it up and give Sheldon a hug. "Oh just forgive him…" he'd always say when Jeff did anything stupid, "Would you love him if he was half the moron he is now?"
Laughing inside she heard the closing of the ceremony commence, watched as a hundred guests shook hands, bit their lips against the cold, hugged, cried, shared remorse and moved away in the direction of a tinted car procession. Lily watched as Shane came to her, hugged her as tight as she could, made a promise of getting together that week, of relaxing when she was done with exams, of something she hardly understood. The entire time her eyes were still focused on Jeff's, tears forming at the corner of her eyes to match his, and eventually when Shane let go and walked away towards the marina, he came closer. He almost appeared swollen in nature, as if he'd spent three weeks in a boxing ring, getting the life beaten out of his every pore. And in a strange way he had, they both had.
When she began to cry at the sight of him, he attempted to move down to her height a ways, wrap his arms around her waist for what he sensed would be the last time, and hug her, just hug, no romance, only remorse. Turning her face towards the ocean and pressing her cheek into his coat sleeve, she tried to pretend that she wasn't there at all, that she was on a boat, drifting out to sea in the middle of an easterly squall. That Jeff was there with her, insisting she wear his hat for safety, Tommy catching as many striped bass as he had room for, even her dad, comfortable with a beer and a good book. She needed the fantasy in that moment, to float away from the pain in his arms. But reality was stronger in Lily's life, it always prevailed, and she pulled herself from him after a minute or so, wiping away the tears that he couldn't get for her, and then only looked directly at him. He tried to speak to her, about how much he really did love her, and that he couldn't understand why she was giving up on the only thing they had left, and yet she heard none of it, she only saw his face, the one that would be burned into her memory for as long as forever would allow.
With a definitive step towards him, she balanced on the tiptoes of her black heels, and brushed her cheek against his until her mouth was settled at his ear, and whispered just as she had planned seconds before, "I will always love you first…Sheldon Jeffery Sands." A peck came and went like heat and fog blended on his cheek, and then with a swift turn of her feet she walked away from him. Not another word said, not another thought exchanged as she tunneled away into her regrets for what was to become the longest eight years imaginable.
The wind was picking up in the trees down below, and a sprinkle of rain mimicked her own falling tears as she stood against the pane glass. It was something she couldn't help, and something she knew would only be cured by leaving work early and going home to her mom for comfort and rest. Reaching across to her desk again she dialed Allison in the lobby. When she answered, Lily could have sworn she heard the voice of a man, guessing it was Daniel, Allie's boyfriend, she only smiled and told her to cancel her appointments for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Before she left for the day she knew she needed to make a phone call to Sheldon's boss Jack, to tell him about the progress she'd made, about the medication she was planning to prescribe, and that she still needed to see him a few more times before she decided on whether he would be a continued asset to the Agency. In her heart, she knew he would be; but in her mind, she only prayed that blindness could be useful in CIA situations and conditions, with the fear that it probably wasn't at all.
Jack Morrison was sweet on the phone as she had seen so many times before, he cared about Sands whether he showed it often enough or not. And because Jeff had been his best agent for almost eight years, Jack wanted nothing more than to be sure he got the best treatment, best therapy, and best help in the long run. Responding to a few concerns of Jack's, discussing the medication further, and also talking about Shane for a short time, Lily couldn't help but be intrigued by the lack of knowledge on the agency's part. For all of their "intelligence", it was surprising no one seemed to know just how close Dr. Hanson and her patient had been before. When the phone call was finally ended, she realized it hadn't been as short as it felt, and in actuality had pushed her back another hour to almost 1:30. She quickly grabbed her purse, replaced her heels and darted out of the office and into the empty waiting room.
Allie was cleaning up the magazines when she finally found her, smiling and continuing while Lily moved to the front desk to collect all of her messages and dates for the week on top of a stack of contracts. When she turned to move away though, she noticed as if by chance, a name. Sands. It was settled after two others, Carter and Miles, on a manila folder in the center of Allie's desk. Trying not to be too nosey, she leaned in closer and noticed the heading in small print: CN #345892.
CN…CN…she tried to think of what it stood for as her hand moved down to slightly open the folder. The first page of the documents was a list of locations, all placed in either Tampa or Clearwater, Florida. Her brow twitched at this, then back to the heading CN #345892…CN….CN? Case number? Yeah. Case Number. Flipping through the papers quickly as she heard Allie finishing, she saw that there was a first class American Airlines ticket to Tampa, Florida for 9 o'clock that same night, issued to Daniel Carter. Daniel…Allie's Agent Daniel…who speaking of which, had risen from the coffee table, dropped a few pieces of trash in the nearby can, and walked up right behind Lily as she snatched the folder away by instinct. She tucked it into the piles of papers she had and only smiled warmly to her secretary as she walked away for the day.
A good ten minutes later she made it out of the parking garage elevator and was nearly jogging in heels to her car, fumbling with the keys, dropping a dozen things in the process and eventually sliding inside to the cold leather. She turned the heat on, the Dropkick Murphy's playing somewhere low on the stereo, and her hands still clutched around the folder. Without turning the car on completely, she sat in silence, rifling through the papers one last time for certainty of what she thought was going on. There were more details of hotel rooms, rented Ford Explorers, reservations at restaurants, and even Bucs tickets for the following weekend. None of it made sense, except to the point that it was a case, and that Shane had been chosen to manage it with Daniel and some Agent Miles as her team. Relaxing her head against the seat she began to wonder why she had been so drawn to snatch the folder, what the reasoning behind her head was for it. And just as she was leaning over to shove it into her bag and drive home, her grip loosened slightly on the folder and a single paper slid out onto the floor of the car. She reached down to grab it, and looked it over once for good measure, only to come to a conclusion she couldn't have possibly imagined coming to in a million years. Her head spun on impact of the statement on the paper…
"We've done some further investigating with the Boston P.D ma'am, and we've been informed that the man who killed Thomas was in fact the same man he was after, the center of his case with Detective Sands."
"His e-enemy?" She stuttered as Lily caught her gaze from across the living room where she too was being questioned about her brother. Her mother was lost, she hardly recognized her anymore. Another loss was the worst possible situation for them now.
"Yes ma'am…a Jimmy Tuzla…he was working a case against him for almost two months…Jimmy Tuzla…Jimmy Tuzla…"
