Chapter 20 "Harden My Heart" ( May 6 1984)

(Song suggestion- "Harden My Heart" by Quarterflash)

Janine

By the end of the two and a half weeks after the incident, I had grown tremendously impatient with Egon's needless blame for my trip to the hospital. Despite my ceaseless attempts to persuade him otherwise, I could not reassure him that it wasn't his liability. Egon, additionally, had emotionally withdrawn from me almost wholly and became more introspective.

On Wednesday of that week,. I suggested that we eat outside at a nearby park since the temperature was not too warm yet. We purchased sandwiches from a nearby deli, and I couldn't wait to get some fresh air after being cooped up in a building.

As expected, Egon was reluctant at first but he went along, bringing some work to complete.

" This is not a working lunch, love," I scolded gently as I laid out a plaid blanket on the grass.

My boyfriend persisted in working on the diagram on his notepad, and It severely agitated me as I hoped this would be our time to talk and laugh together.

"Come on, honey. I have barely seen or talked to you in a week. I miss you," I whined, taking his notepad from him and putting it away in my backpack. We sat down on the blanket, and I put my head on his shoulder, until he moved away.

"Egon?"

My brilliant physicist's beautiful chocolate brown eyes conveyed guilt. Before the accident, there was always love there. Every time I examined his eyes and saw blame, I felt antagonized.

"Do you love me? I demanded.

Egon's anguished expression on his long face filled my heart with pain as he answered with his voice warbling, " since when is my love for you in question? I thought you knew how much I love you."

"Yes, but I am becoming resentful of you with your misplaced guilt. How do I get it through your head? You aren't responsible for my accident," I begged, biting my lip afterward. This is not how I wanted the time together to go, and I felt a pain because I moved my hurt arm the wrong way.

"How can you forgive me when I can't do the same for myself," he questioned as he clasped my right hand in his larger one and squeezed it.

Pleadingly, I said while making eye contact with my sexy wavy-haired boyfriend,

" Don't you see there isn't anything to forgive? This is damaging our relationship. You are now distant, and have shut down from me. We spend less and less time together."

"Janine, I can't justify my relationship with you, if I can't protect you. I failed miserably almost three weeks ago. I should never have allowed Peter to train you," Egon angrily replied, his face reddened.

"That is ludicrous," I exasperatedly replied, shaking my head back and forth, "you don't have to justify your relationship with me."

"That's how I feel, my angel," he softly whispered, and looked down at my cast on my left arm.

"What does that mean," I pleaded, searching his eyes for an answer.

"I don't deserve to be with you," Egon stated in his deep voice.

"No, That's my decision; I told you that last year," I countered, examining his ashamed face.

" Janine, I love you too much to continue to hurt you," Egon remarked, standing up from the blanket.

" We love each other and we belong together. This doesn't make any sense," I cried, rising to stand next to him. Egon turned away from me.

"Please, please drop this guilt," I begged, seizing his arm with my right hand.

"Don't you see that I can't?" he raised his voice. Egon's face had a bewildered expression that I had never seen. Next, he removed my hand from his arm.

"I thought you agreed that we were meant to be together, and we have been talking about our future," I shrieked, losing my cool and becoming panicked. My left arm started to hurt, too and my breathing became shallow.

An ominous feeling loomed over me like a cloud over a sunny day, and I felt like it was about to storm.

"How are you so sure we are supposed to be together, Janine? Especially when you could have died on that bust because of me," Egon argued. His brown eyes were full of fear.

"What," I questioned in disbelief, but I couldn't form any further reaction to his comments because I was stunned, mentally and physically, as I couldn't move. Tears fell from my face.

His words were incredibly damaging to me recently because we recently concurred that we were each other's soul mates.

"How did one little injury destroy that," I wondered to myself, and he rose from the blanket.

"This makes zero sense," I noisily sobbed, "Egon, if you walk away, you have lost me forever. I can't keep giving you chances."

To my extreme stupefaction, my boyfriend uneasily confided, " I know."

Egon walked away, and I began to weep vehemently

Peter

SLAM

Egon came back in a huff without Janine. When the physicist slammed the door, he employed such force that the firehouse shook for a moment while Ray and I were solving the latest problem of Ecto One.

"Houston, we have a problem," I gloomily predicted, just by the door slamming.

When I removed my face from the hood, I viewed our business partner's expression- a mixture of displeasure, sadness, and fury. His face had transformed to a beet red. Egon ceased walking when he reached us at the car and firmly stated, "I am taking the afternoon off."

"What, you never take off, Iggy," I questioned jokingly, primarily out of nervousness because Egon's body language was screaming negativity. I thought about ways to disarm him and calm him down, because obviously something had gone down with Janine.

Disregarding me, he coldly repeated the statement.

"But why," Ray removed his head from the hood and quizzically asked. He had grease stains all over his old gray t-shirt and a pair of black jeans with holes in the left knee.

With that, Egon strode out of the firehouse once again. Ray and I exchanged a glance as the lanky theoretical physicist left the firehouse to take the afternoon off alone, perhaps for the first time in his life. Appalled and speechless, we stood there for a moment or two and then persisted in our work on Ecto One.

"I hope he hasn't done something stupid," Ray muttered to me.

"Where is he?" Janine screamed, coming into the firehouse like a raging tornado ten minutes after Egon left. I glanced upwards from the toolbox where I searched for a wrench to see a positively feral gleam in our quick-moving secretary's eye that she was incensed. Suddenly, I felt a wrenching ache in my gut, indicating something clearly was amiss.

" Uh oh, I think you got your answer," I drily remarked to the chubby Ghostbuster, but he was too busy to answer.

"Where is he," Janine shouted voraciously.

"Who," Ray distractedly inquired, turning a loose part to tighten it.

"Egon, that scared son of a bitch," Brooklyn demanded, throwing her backpack on her desk with her one good arm. She marched to the stairs and ran up them quickly, then ran around shouting Egon's name upstairs. Tornado Janine had landed!

"What happened, Janine," I loudly inquired as we heard her stomp around the second floor. She opened and closed each room's door and the rooftop, descending the stairs more enraged when she started. The winds of the Tornado Janine were swirling rapidly around us when she finally planted herself next to Ecto One. Instantly, I felt sympathy for our redhead secretary right.

"Where. Is. he.," she demanded, with her hands on her hips and her blue eyes flashing like lightning bolts. I had seen Janine pissed off before, but she was even more irate than at that time. Conscientiously, I decided to forgo the teasing.

"Brooklyn, what is wrong? Can I help," I questioned, knowing that there wasn't anything I could do.

"Iggy left ten to fifteen minutes before you came back, and he said he was taking the afternoon off. Now tell us what is going on," Ray informed her, and with a slight outraged cry, Janine turned on her heel to leave.

"No, please, tell us what is wrong first. We are concerned about you," the youngest Ghostbuster with two different color eyes firmly insisted, seizing her right arm forcefully but without hurting her. However, he did prevent our red-headed secretary from leaving.

"I don't even know exactly," she cried; deflated, Janine leaned her body against Ray's lightly, concealing her face with his chest, and she began to sob uncontrollably,

"I've lost him. It's over for good now."

Ray allowed our petite secretary to cry for as long as she needed as we exchanged a concerned glance. It appeared that our most recent concern had happened- Egon had finally completely withdrawn himself from Janine after all. We had seen the gradual signs but privately hoped that he wouldn't punish himself for something that wasn't his fault. Talking sense into Iggy wasn't a plausible option as he refused to listen.

"Do you want to talk about it with me, the great Dr. Venkman," I jokingly offered with a small smile. Janine halted her crying, and I hoped she would crack a smile unwillingly.

"No," she adamantly stated, moving away from Ray and sitting at her desk, "there is nothing new to say. It is the same old b.s. From him."

Anxiously, I looked at the floor as Ray began to speak.

Janine quickly interrupted while holding up her right hand to stop him, "You don't have to explain. I know you and Peter have attempted to persuade him because you two want to help, and I love you two to pieces for it. Egon's fcked me over for the last time."

Her words were crisp and clear in meaning- Egon was out of chances, and she was done with him.

"Maybe you should wait a few days before making that decision," I suggested. Janine shook her head dynamically from side to side.

"No, Peter. I bent over backward for him last year because I love him so much, but I can't do it anymore. Love isn't worth going through so much pain," she decisively stated and then excused herself and went to the bathroom hurriedly. I heard her weeping as she ran there.

Ray and I hung around my office until she returned a little later with red eyes, and I felt sympathy for her situation.

"Brooklyn, are you going to be able to work the rest of your shift," I quietly inquired, walking to her desk to examine her pretty sad face.

"Yes, Dr. Venkman," Janine replied without emotion in her voice, but I paused for a second to scrutinize her.

"Are you sure," I repeated my inquiry.

"Yes, Dr. V., " our Brooklynite blandly responded, not looking up from her computer, "but I would like to talk to a psychiatrist, but one who is not involved with the situation. Would you mind making a recommendation for me so I can set up an appointment?"

Ambivalently, I nodded and then returned to my work upstairs. We only had one bust to complete in an hour, so I had time to work on paperwork on psychological experiments on volunteers from Columbia.

"Would you make two appointments for tonight after six, J?"

"Right away, Dr. V. Thank you for the recommendation," she agreeably responded, giving me a slight half grin as she looked at the paper and my sloppy handwriting. Janine did a lousy job of concealing her emotions.

Ray

Janine did her job that day, but she was brooding, melancholy, and quiet. It was pretty bizarre for our lively and sassy secretary. With her small radio on her desk, she sang along moodily to the songs with a sorrowful tone to her pleasant voice. One tune, in particular, caught my attention, Quarterflash's "Harden my heart," which I am sure Janine felt was appropriate at the time because I could hear her crying softly through the tune, particularly the part that went,

" I'm going to swallow my tears."

She was off the next day to recover from Egon's actions. It was eleven in the evening, and he hadn't returned yet, and Janine had left hours earlier. I didn't worry, because these were my close friends.

At two in the morning, Egon arrived back at the Firehouse disheveled- his white button-down shirt unbuttoned at the top, untucked with some stains on it, his tie was off. Around his neck, a heavy scruff of hair was growing on his face. His eyes were red, and his overall expression pernicious. The usual somber theoretical physicist was also drunk out of his mind and smelled like he bathed in a bottle of Jim Beam.

"Ugh, Spengler, you smell like a liquor cabinet," I complained, inhaling the smell of alcohol from twelve feet away from me.

I waved my hand to waft the offending smell away from me. Egon looked like a complete wreck and wholly lost.

He didn't respond but stumbled toward our room. Peter and I peppered him with questions, but he didn't remark. Instead, Spengler collapsed on the floor unconscious before he made it to our room.

Lucy

After her shift, Janine appeared at my apartment with her spirit ravaged. She didn't want to go home yet because Wendy and her fiancee were there, and they had just gotten engaged last week, so they were ecstatically in love. Janine revealed that she did not think she could stomach their joyfulness at this time before she spilled her guts out.

As I listened to her story, I became livid but I offered the requisite sympathy. Right then and there, I vowed to set her up with every good male friend I knew so she could finally get over Dr. Egon Spengler, and she wouldn't be so heartbroken all of the time. Janine seemed furious and not sad.

We reheated some of my roommate's leftovers to eat. Around ten, Janine's rage had quietened, and I allowed her to leave my apartment. That was when Ray called to inquire if I would cover her shift tomorrow.