"You can open your eyes. I know you're not sleeping." Marina crossed the length of the room and stood by the hospital bed. Her eyes roamed over his body, surveying the bruises and bandages, all miraculously small reminders of a horrifying accident that could have easily ended much differently. She wanted to be grateful, wanted to feel relief that she wasn't hurt, but there was no room for relief in her mind yet, only worry. Would this ever end? And worse still, was that what tonight had been about? Had Shayne done this as a way to end his own suffering and, in his mind, everyone else's?
She looked down at him and felt her jaw tense at his still closed eyes. Rage suddenly surged through her body and she found her fist gripping a handful of the thin hospital gown. "Damnit, Shayne, open your eyes and look at me!"
He did. The eyes that were normally filled with pain and anger now stared up at her with shock.
She huffed at his expression. "What was this, huh? What the hell were you thinking?"
"Marina," he began, "I didn't … What you said tonight, I know I wasn't in a good place and you're right. I didn't want Henry to see me like that. That's not who I want him to think I am, so I just decided to leave before you came downstairs with him."
"That's just great, Shayne. That's fantastic. So you just bail. You abandon your son. You abandon me. Forget everyone that cares about you … you're miserable and that's all that matters, right? You just want to go wallow in whatever it is that you're wallowing in and to hell with the rest of us because we couldn't possibly understand or want to help or …"
"I wasn't abandoning anyone. I just needed some time, some space. I can't keep doing this. I can't be there, surrounded by all of it. Everywhere I look, everything I see, it's all …." He tried to breathe in deeply, but stopped, the pain in his side shortening the process markedly. "I wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but I should have told you that I was leaving. I shouldn't have just walked out like that."
"You scared the hell out of me. When I got that call, I thought you were - They told me that you'd been hit by a vehicle and I was afraid that I was coming down here to …" She looked into his eyes, readying herself to ask the question she wasn't sure she wanted to. "I know how much you're hurting, Shayne and if I knew how to fix it, if I knew something I could do or say to make it better, I would, but I don't. Tonight, the driver said you …" She swallowed hard. "Did you …"
He hung his head, guilt washing over him once more. "I didn't. It's … I'm not going to lie to you and say it hasn't crossed my mind, but tonight … I didn't … I wasn't trying to do that. I knew when I walked out of your place that I'd had way too much to drink to drive, so I thought maybe I could just walk, but the more I walked, the more I realized there was nowhere here that I could go, nowhere that was far enough to get away from the memories and I knew I needed to go somewhere else, somewhere far enough away that maybe I could forget - just for a little while. I saw the headlights and I stepped closer to the road, but I was just trying to flag them down. I just wanted to ask them where they were headed and maybe see if I could catch a ride." His words faded as the memories seemed to abruptly fade to black. "I don't really remember anything after that."
"It's a miracle you weren't killed," she said softly. "The doctor said your injuries are minor, but" She turned the card over in her hand as she glanced down at the slightly raised lettering. "He was concerned about your blood alcohol level and he thinks maybe you should talk to someone about some healthier ways to cope with …"
"There are no ways to cope with this, Marina!"
The anger was almost instantaneous, and any flicker of hope she might have been nurturing was extinguished in that moment.
The look on her face sent a rush of guilt through him again. It was yet another reminder of why he didn't belong here. "Look, I get what you're trying to do here, but you're wasting your time. There are no fresh starts for me. I already got my do over. It's one per customer."
"That's not true. Dinah used to talk about how you were when she found you in Germany. It sounded a hell of a lot like this, and she somehow managed to get through to you. She got you to want to live again, to believe in something again."
"Yeah," he said sadly, "she did, but you're not her."
It was a reality she should have accepted long ago, back when her husband had been unable to shake his connection with a woman from whom he'd been divorced for years. But now, hearing the words fall from the mouth of another man, another person of such importance to her, it was almost more than she could stand.
"Is that mine or yours?"
She shook her head, willing herself to focus on the words that had come from his lips. "What?" she muttered.
"The phone," he repeated, "Mine or yours?"
"Oh." Her heart began to beat a bit faster. Somehow she hadn't expected he would call this soon. "It's yours," she said quickly. Her hand fumbled as she reached for his phone and held it out towards him. "Here you go. I'll just be outside." She felt the tightness in her chest as she stepped out into the waiting room and heard the soft click of the door as it closed behind her. This phone call was her best chance at keeping her son's father alive.
He wanted to let it keep ringing until his voice mail clicked on, but he knew better. Part of him was surprised it had taken this long, more grateful than surprised really. His family had been known to smother him with their version of love and concern. If he didn't answer this call and confirm that he was still among the living, he would never make it out of this hospital without one of them as a chaperone.
"Hello," he said begrudgingly, fully expecting to hear his mother's worried tone or his father's barely veiled disappointment calling back at him.
"Shayne?" Mallet slowly poured the pasta into the barely boiling water as he waited for a reply.
"Who is this?" He forced his body to sit up straighter in the bed, the sudden rush of adrenaline overcoming the pain that accompanied the sudden movement. He recognized the voice, though it was one he thought he wouldn't hear again.
"It's AC Mallet. I just wanted to … I …"
And then it all became clear. Marina. "Marina called you, didn't she?"
"She's worried, Shayne. She didn't know what else to do and she thought maybe if I could talk with you that …"
"That what? That you'd be able to get through to me? That you'd be able to tell me there's life after you lose someone? Or is that not the plan? Were you gonna be good cop or bad cop in this particular movie because I'm not sure if I can keep a straight face if you start threatening me here."
"Shayne. Can you stop now? This isn't a joke. I didn't call you to try and threaten you or to spout platitudes and Marina didn't call me and ask me to do this. She was just worried. She's worried that Henry isn't going to have a father. She knows that I walked away from him so that you could have a chance to be with your son and now she's afraid that Henry will lose us both. If there's one thing I know about you, it's that you love your son. I know you want what's best for him, so I'm asking you to pull it together. I know you're hurting and …"
"You don't know. Don't say you know. You have no idea what it's like. You let her go, Mallet. You let her walk away from you. Hell, you agreed to it and you just stood there and let it happen. I didn't get a choice. She didn't even tell me. She disappeared and I'm left with nothing. I've got no answers. I have no idea where she is. I have no idea if she's safe. I have no idea if she's happy. I have no idea what she's thinking or how she feels. I just know that I'm lost and that I don't know how to go on and …" He forced the words to stop, realizing Mallet didn't need to know his innermost feelings about the woman he knew he'd love until the day he died. "And as far as Henry is concerned, Henry has a lot of people that love him and maybe having me around isn't actually good for him right now. I know Marina wants me to be there for him, but I don't know if I can and I just …"
"Your son needs you, man. Marina needs you and Dinah would want you to be there for them. She loved Henry. She helped me bring him to Springfield. She would hate knowing that he's not going to have you in his life, so you can't do this. You can't …"
"Don't you think I know that? Don't you think I know how much she loved him? I think about her all the time, Mallet. When I'm with Henry, I think about her. I think about what she went through to bring him here. I think about what she went through to find out the truth about who he was. I think about how much she wanted me to accept the fact that I needed to be a part of his life, and it kills me, because I know that being with him and being apart of his life makes me think about her, and not being with him and not being a part of his life makes me think about her. Everything here makes me think about her and it's too much. It's just too damn much."
Mallet braced his hands on the countertop, the helpless feeling he heard in the man's voice something he recognized on the deepest level. "Maybe you should talk to someone. Is there somebody there that you can …"
"You and Marina have been talking a lot, haven't you? She's been trying to push me into a shrink's office for weeks. Talking about it isn't going to fix this. It isn't going to change anything. There's only one thing that could make this go away and unless -"
"Change of plans." Her voice rang out over the creak of the door as she stepped into the room. She was behind him at the stove before he knew it. "Barely made it under the awning before the bottom fell out. Looks like we're gonna have to have lunch inside today." Her hand flew to her lips as she saw the phone pressed to his ear. "Sorry," she whispered. "I'll just be in the living room."
Mallet nodded, his mind racing as he clamped his hand over the phone and quickly ended the call.
Shayne stared down at the screen as it turned to black. He would know the voice he'd heard anywhere. It had been soft, clearly in the distance, but it had been her. He would bet his life on that and if Dinah was with Mallet that meant she could be found. The pain no longer mattered. Nothing did. He was on his feet in seconds, his hands reaching for the clothes he spotted in the clear bag on the chair. Marina said she wanted to help him, but she didn't know how. He certainly had an answer for her now.