My Life Had Stood
Chapter 14: Explanations
Alsie sighed, on her way toward the elevators. Visiting hours were only for another forty-five minutes, and she had excused herself so Garcia could spend time with Spencer. She'd given having an early day the next morning as a reason to leave so suddenly after the bubbly woman got there.
She didn't mind Garcia - the woman was actually refreshing, and not at all the type of person Alsie would expect to work in the FBI, let alone the BAU. So optimistic. And friendly.
Alsie's heels clicked on the hospital floor as she approached closer to the elevators. Her brown eyes flitted over the corridor and the personnel doing their jobs. The sounds and atmosphere reminded her of three years ago when she'd been brought to this same hospital after an accident.
She pressed the button for the elevator, her right hand straying to her abdomen. The scars she'd received three years back still lingered beneath her blouse. After stepping into the elevator, Alsie closed her eyes and smiled. An ambiguous smile.
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The sun barely visible on the horizon as it crept steadily higher, its vicinity an array of yellows, reds, and orange. It was a poignant sunrise, perfect like a still from a movie. Rossi barely noticed it. He hadn't even slept yet, his eyes staring at the front inside cover of the book James had had at the hospital. A copy of one of his own published works.
As much as he tried to fathom things, he couldn't get around the fact that he had signed the book. Rossi rubbed his forehead, his signature staring back at him. How, he asked himself for the millionth time, how could he have met James before and not known he was his son?
Rossi's eyes blurred as he read the inscription above his signature. The blurb he had wrote had even been addressed using the name James, rather than Kevin. That meant James not only approached him for a book signing, but had actually given his name as James at the time.
"How could I not have noticed?" Rossi mumbled, his gaze moving to a photo of Carolyn. It was one taken a few years after James' birth. His eyes watered staring at the photo, remembering her. Carolyn had died clinging to the hope that she'd be reunited with their son. She had passed never knowing James was alive. Nor what he'd done.
Rossi wondered which one of them was the luckier one. Him or Carolyn.
"...I promise I'll find any and every one responsible for hurting James." Rossi vowed to Carolyn, picking up her photo. He held it gently. "And for robbing us of the opportunity to raise our son. He would've been so different if we could have raised him..."
Rossi covered his mouth, swallowing back a sob. A few tears dripped onto the photo before he wiped his eyes. Despite finding out James was alive, Rossi felt like he was mourning his son anew. Mourning the man James could've been if he and Carolyn had been able to raise him.
He sighed, his cell phone ringing. He continued to look at Carolyn's photo for a few more moments. The sound of his phone was something he wished would go away. It took a few seconds for his surfeited brain to remember he was on vacation, and that none of his team would call him now unless it was urgent.
He answered his phone just before it's last ring.
"Hello? Yes, this is David Rossi." Rossi said upon hearing an unfamiliar voice on the other end. He paused, becoming suddenly alert when the speaker introduced herself and that she was calling on behalf of the prison James was at. "What is it? What happened?"
Rossi paled, nearly dropping the photo of Carolyn as he listened.
"What?! How did the inmates find out? Who told them? What about James? Is he injured?" Rossi asked, half of his questions coming out without thinking. He was already standing and getting ready to leave before most of them were answered. He froze as he heard James had been sedated and placed in the prison's psych ward. "Why was he put there? What...I'm on my way."
Rossi hung up, cursing even as he headed out.
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Clack!
Dr. Morland Somerfield hung up the phone with a flourish, his old age, while visible in his looks, wasn't apparent in his abilities. He still had the same stamina as he did twenty years ago, though his outlook was tempered now by experience.
Connell had failed. Not only to prevent James from coming in contact with the BAU, but also to eliminate James. Worse, Connell had revealed James' name to the prison inmates in his attempt to kill the man. Somerfield couldn't think of a more foolish thing Connell could've done.
"Now the BAU will figure out someone knows James identity aside from them." Somerfield had growled at Connell. "And that this someone knew who James was before they did!"
Somerfield felt like wringing Connell's neck. The man, though intelligent enough to become a medical doctor, hadn't the same smarts as Tobias Connell. Perhaps because the two were uncle and nephew rather than father and son.
Tobias Connell had managed 36 years ago to convince a respected doctor that an FBI agent was a child abuser. And had been convincing enough to trick that doctor into switching that agent's son with a stillborn.
His nephew, Kenneth Connell, was an utter disappointment compared to that.
Somerfield wondered whether it'd been folly to bring in Kenneth Connell as Tobias Connell's replacement. Perhaps he should've learned from experience that trusting a Connell was itself folly.
Somerfield gazed out his home office's window, his cold eyes considering his options.
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"I came as soon as I heard." Hotch hurried to Rossi, the two of them waiting for those in charge of the prison, and specifically the cell block James had been assigned to, to arrive. "Has anyone said what happened?"
"...apparently James had some sort of psychotic break." Rossi said, repeating what the prison doctor had told him when she'd called. "He's being kept restrained and sedated."
Hotch grimaced, and offered a sympathetic reply. He paused remembering what he'd been told over the phone. "What about the fight James was in? And his identity being found out by the other inmates?"
Before Rossi could respond two men, one the warden of the prison and the other head of James' cell block, entered the room.
"Welcome, Agent Rossi, Agent Hotchner." The warden greeted the two agents, then bid them to sit.
"I prefer to stand." Rossi said, refusing the offer. "And I'd prefer to know who leaked my son's identity to the other inmates."
"Dave..." Hotch tried to stem the older man's anger, the amount of venom in Rossi's tone alarming. He seemed ready to accuse the two officers of leaking the information.
"It seems that information may have come from another inmate." The warden replied, taking the accusatory tone of Rossi's with a grain of salt. "We don't know how he may have gotten that intel, but he did have a couple visitors this past week. One of which was his lawyer."
"You think it was one of them?" Hotch asked, his gut roiling. The warden nodded, further saying that he suspected the lawyer. Not that they could question them due to attorney-client privilege.
"What about James? Was he injured by the other inmates?" Rossi asked after stifling the peak of his anger. Ever since hearing what Alan Richards had to say, he found himself questioning his trust in anyone outside the BAU.
The warden handed Rossi a folder. "That's the incident report. James wasn't injured by the inmate that attacked him."
"It says he brutalized the inmate's eye with a shiv. The guards restrained James and threw him in solitary confinement..." Rossi read the file, returning his eyes to the warden. "Why? If James was defending himself..."
"None of the other guards were told James was your son. So the guards who came across the attack only saw one inmate stabbing another. And they followed protocol."
"It wasn't until I came on duty and questioned the other guards about James' not being in his cell that anyone questioned the incident." The head guard continued. "I went to remove him from solitary after discovering what happened."
"And? What happened then?" Hotch asked, noting Rossi returning to the incident report and reading the rest of it.
"It's in the report. Ah..." The guard started to reply, only to be interrupted by Rossi's curse as the agent finished reading the file.
"Rossi?" Hotch turned to his colleague, concerned.
"You found him bloody and clawing at his own eyes?" Rossi repeated what he'd just read. His anger and disbelief growing: when they had arrested James none of them had profiled him as being at risk for a psychotic break.
"Where's James being held now? Take us to him." Hotch demanded immediately after seeing the look on Rossi's face. It was one he'd probably mirror if he was in Rossi's position.
"All right. It's this way." The warden replied, bidding the two agents to follow.
It didn't take long to reach the infirmary of the psych ward of the prison. The warden introduced the agents to the doctor in charge of James.
"Agents, this is Dr. Leah Clemens. She's the psychiatrist here."
Dr. Clemens shook Rossi and Hotch's hands, flashing an apologetic smile to Rossi. She then led them to James' bed.
Rossi froze, seeing his son in restraints with a bandaged wrist and vicious scratches around his eyes. One of James eyes showed signs of having been bandaged.
"Dave, I..." Hotch started, the sight of James and Rossi's reaction affected him the same as if it'd been his son.
Rossi shook his head and said he was fine. He approached the bed, his fatherly affection for James for the first time free from the guilt at what James had done. He hadn't realized how reluctant he'd been to accept this James as his son James, until this moment. This moment when he saw the man not as an unsub, but as his son lying unconscious and injured.
"Could you give us a moment." Rossi heard Hotch whisper to Dr. Clemens, though he hardly registered it. Or the door shutting as Clemens complied.
Rossi cleared his throat and stared down at his son, realizing at that moment that Hotch too had left the room. Just to give Rossi some time alone with James. Rossi's eyes grew moist, James lying so still from sedation reminded him of when Carolyn died. He realized then, that though James took after him in eye and hair color, his son had Carolyn's chin and nose.
"I'm sorry." Rossi whispered, not trusting himself to speak louder without sobbing. "I'm sorry for never realizing you were alive, and for trusting Dr. Richards. I should've known, as your father, that you were alive. I..."
Rossi wiped his eyes and cleared his throat, trying not to lose what was left of his composure. He took a few steadying breaths as he heard the door opening.
"Rossi, Dr. Clemens has something to tell us. James said some things before being fully sedated." Hotch said, reluctant to interrupt the older man, but what he heard from Clemens was enough to override his reluctance.
"What is it, Hotch?" Rossi asked, making sure he was composed before following the man out of the room.
"Dr. Clemens should tell you." Hotch replied.
Rossi's brow rose then furrowed as he turned from Hotch to Clemens. He didn't know if he could trust another doctor in regards to his son. "What...?"
"Something your son mumbled while being sedated was strange." Leah Clemens began, pushing her flaxen hair behind her shoulders. "He said something about not wanting to be placed in the box, and that the monsters would get him. Also, the guard that had placed him in solitary said he shouted about going blind not long after being placed in solitary."
Rossi met Hotch's eyes, their attentions piqued by this information. They hadn't been able to garner why James had been obsessed with his victims' eyes. Or why such an obsession had developed.
"How long after being put into solitary did James start having a reaction to it?"
Clemens paused before replying, not from hesitance but from her own repugnance at what the guard had said. This was one time she hated working in a prison. "Almost immediately. He shouted and begged according to the guard that placed him in there. The guard just laughed."
"What?" Rossi glared at Clemens despite her not being the one at fault. He wanted nothing more than to find that guard and punch him.
"Rossi, there's more to it." Hotch interrupted, prompting Clemens to continue before being sidetracked by questions.
"Yeah, um..." Clemens considered her words carefully. "I can't give you names or identifying information, but what James mumbled reminded me of a patient I had years ago. Before I started working here." Clemens took a breath. "This patient described a room with a box partially filled with lukewarm water. And that she saw demons when inside it."
"Demons?" Rossi narrowed his eyes, considering Clemens.
"They were hallucinations, obviously. But my point is, this patient had been a subject in an experiment on sensory deprivation many years before we met." Clemens continued, watching as the two agents' faces filled with alarm. "And I think James may have been subjected to similar experiments."
"Son of a..." Rossi swore, his anger renewed as he considered James. What he had imagined James had gone through in the Wagner household seemed insignificant to what Clemens implied.
"I also think James may have been very young during the experiments. The way he spoke and his tone of voice was like a child's. Maybe a preteen. He called out 'mommy' once or twice, pleading."
Rossi's jaw grew taut; the hatred he felt for Amy Vaughn, having been tempered by empathizing with how it felt to lose a child, returned in full force. He had actually started feeling sorry for the woman who'd taken James; Understanding the extremes grief could take a parent to well enough.
Now he wasn't sure if Amy Vaughn had deserved empathy. If she had allowed James to be used in experiments...
"Dave..." Hotch followed Rossi as the latter left Clemens, stalking toward the prison exit. They went only a few feet before Rossi turned back to Hotch.
"You call the director and tell him that we're taking over the investigation into James' kidnapping. I don't care about protocol or whatnot. Too many have lied concerning James so far, I can't leave it to another team to find out the truth. I can't."
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A/N: End chapter
Thanks for all the reviews so far. I've been experiencing writer's block for a few days, but I already have up to chapter 17 of this story written so there won't be much delay in posting chapters. (I plan on posting a chapter per week at least.) The reason I haven't posted all the chapters as I wrote them is that's what I've done in the past with my other stories, but I usually ended up having writer's block and thus not finishing them. With this story, writing so many chapters ahead and updating once and sometimes twice a week, has actually made writing less stressful when I experience writer's block. (I've rewritten chapter 16 about five times over the past two weeks.)
Anyway, what do you think about the story so far? What about Alsie? And James? (Oh, it's so tempting to hint at what's going to happen in the story in these author notes...)
Also, I plan to at some point, re-check each chapter and fix any errors. (Particularily the one where Spencer was transferred to a Virginia hospital rather than a D.C one (Thanks ahowell1993 for pointing that out.))