Happy BeMeanToJayDay!

You know that joke: Insert Name Here could read/sing the phone book and it would be awesome? (For me it would be Snoop Dogg)

Well, I told MrsReadalot when talking about WIP's, "you could hit Jay over the head with a phone book and it would be great" It was a compliment, not really a prompt, but she went to town and her awesome story is in her June of Doom 2024 collection. Poor Jay. She is sooooooo awesomely mean to him.

I digress. Prompting MrsReadalot got Barbara clicking and here we are. I hope you like it.

X

TW for OC's Dementia

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

7:10 am

"Hey Sarge, You seen Jay around?

Kevin knew the stink eye was coming and, yup, there it was. He would have grinned at her so she could turn it up a couple of notches, but he was worried about Jay. He didn't show up at Molly's last night to fleece them in a dart tournament, and he was always the first to arrive at work and he still wasn't there.

"Do I look like a babysitter Atwater?"

"Not today Sarge. But he didn't show up to Molly's last night and…"

"Dart tournament."

"Ya."

"Okay. Shoot everyone a text. I'll call Voight. His phone ring through or straight to voice mail?"

"Straight to voicemail Sarge."

"Dammit."

"Okay. Get everyone in here."

XXXXXXX

5:00 pm the previous day

Jay sat at Clarice Nelson's kitchen table and could clearly see what his CI, Roger Nelson, had been worried about. She had been lucid when he arrived but it was clear the older woman was just beyond the early stages of dementia.

He felt bad for her. He'd met her once at Roger's funeral and wanted to check in with her. He knew Roger had been her last living family member and wanted to check if she had any friends.

Knowing social services would eventually need to be involved, he wanted to talk to her first and see if he could help. See if he could talk to her about going into assisted living so it would feel like her decision, and social services could take it from there and figure out the financial side of it.

She had refused his help with coffee and instead set a tray of sickeningly sweet cookies in front of him. To be polite he ate one, slowly, so he wouldn't need to eat another, but as it was, he was sure he would have diabetes by the time he left her apartment.

She'd just been talking about her late husband and the farm that had been in the family for generations and how they'd lost it to the bank. It pissed him off. He wondered if the bank had taken advantage of the older couple.

He took another small bite of the cookie, grateful his back was to her and she couldn't see his face. An explosion of pain in the back of his head had him realizing his stupidity and that you can't turn your back on anyone, little old lady or not. His thoughts on stupidity were followed by gratitude, he wouldn't have to eat the rest of that goddamn cookie.

Another blow came immediately after the first to the side of his head, knocking him off the chair, but his right brow made sure to catch the table on the way to the floor and was leaking blood before he reached it.

The phone book came down on his shoulder next…

A phone book?

That cleared away the fireworks in his head enough to get a good look at the five inch thick yellow pages as it made its way down to his face. He didn't quite get his hand up or even in the right place as his world spun and the edge caught him from his temple and down the cheek to his chin.

A phone book…who the fuck had phone books in this day and age.

He answered his own question. A 75 year old woman.

The book had fallen open, she no longer had a good grip and the pages were tearing but she didn't let up. She went from flopping it down on him to swinging it back and forth, which only made him more dizzy as he tried to track it.

She was able to catch him twice more, once on each side of the face. Neither blow was enough to do much damage in and of themselves but combined with the others, his world spun and flip flopped with each explosion in his brain.

"Mrs. Nelson! Mrs. Nelson! STOP!"

One more weak blow to his bicep and he's able to yank the unruly book away.

His head was exploding. Christ! He wasn't sure if he should be unconscious or not. He'd never been hit with a soft cover book filled with most of the businesses of Chicago. Didn't matter. His head hurt and he just wanted it to stop.

She was looking down at him trying to catch her wind, so red in the face he was worried she was going to have a stroke.

"Mrs. Nelson. Sit down. Please sit down. It'll be okay."

Half laying on the floor and propped up on one elbow, he dug in his pocket for his phone while keeping an eye on the woman and doing a quick scan of the room to see if there were more books within her reach, more dangerous books, like a dictionary or bible.

He fumbled his phone and when he reached for it, she kicked him in the groin with her slippered foot.

"AHmmm!"

He curled in on himself, his head exploding, his nuts exploding, shit…and she was only wearing slippers.

"God…fufck!"

"You're not gonna! NOT GONNA take my apartment too! That asshole Turner took my farm after my sweet Wallace died. I showed him."

She kicked him again but he was covered up so she picked up his phone and threw it at his head. It didn't do any damage, but it did bounce, then slide out of his reach.

"Mrs. Nelson. My name is Jay, remember? I'm a police officer…" he lifted his arm but didn't take his hands away from his groin, "Roger was my friend. I just wanted to see how you're doing."

She paused for a moment, took a step forward and bent closer.

He thought she might be lucid, but hit with only a phone book or not, she got him good more than once and knew he had a concussion and didn't trust his assessment of the situation. If she came a bit closer he would grab her arms and they could put this bullshit to bed.

"Mrs. Nelson, My…"

Her arm swung around brandishing another phone book. The white pages this time, only a couple of inches thick and easier to handle and before it connected with his head he wondered when she grabbed it.

The answer, if he'd had just one more second to ponder the question, would have been, when she kicked him in the nuts.

But then it made solid contact with the left side of his head, the edge cutting across his ear. He immediately felt the blood run in and around his ear. His mind spun with pain and confusion. He curled in a ball and covered his head but she went to town on the rest of him, focusing primarily on his side. She wouldn't break any ribs, but he'd have some nice bruises.

She was a little old lady, maybe 120, but dammit, she wasn't losing any steam, any power in her strikes. She was driven by the rage at what happened all those years ago and her dementia had her stuck there. But he wanted to bring her back to the here and now or at the very least distract her…

"Could I have another cookie!" he blurted out.

…even if it meant eating another one of those fucking cookies. He didn't know what would kill him first, the cookie or the phone book and both were a pathetic way to go.

Asking for a cookie was a bad idea. Apparently she had offered the bank asshole cookies too, so she was withholding them from him, a small mercy, but having the gall to ask for one stoked her rage.

She lost her grip on the phone book, so now it flapped as it hit him. The damage done, if any, would be nothing more than a paper cut but then a page came dangerously close to his eye and he realized that a paper cut might not be such a good thing either.

He closed his eyes to paper cuts and sat up, one hand on the floor holding himself steady, the other reaching blindly for Mrs. Nelson and her damn book, finally knocking it out of her hands.

Watching her as he got to his hands and knees, he reached for the kitchen table with his right hand then sat back on his heels, his eyes involuntary falling closed as he struggled to stay conscious. The gray pulsed then faded and he was left with just the spin of his world and the heavy breathing of the old woman to his left.

He adjusted his grip on the table, opened his eyes and turned in her direction, "Mrs. Nelson, are you…"

That was all he could breathe out before another phone book slammed down on his fingers where they held the table.

The sudden pain in his hand and the yelp that was probably louder in his head than out of it, tilted his world and he ended up on his ass against the wall.

Where in the fuck were all these phone books coming from. It was like they were breeding. He took a moment to be grateful she wasn't going for the cast iron skillet on the stove but still. Who the fuck… distracted by the stupidity of it all the book came down directly on top of his head.

The ridiculousness of the situation he found himself in and what it was doing to his thoughts and his reluctance to hurt the old woman was going to get him killed. He needed to put her on her ass and soon.

"Whew…" she set down her tattered white pages, "I'm tired."

"Oh thank God…Mrs. Nelson, please sit dow…"

Her declaration and the sagging of her body had him relaxing his and if that wasn't his second goddamn mistake for the day.

X

He lay unconscious on the kitchen floor facing left, new blood trails covering the entirety of his face. He lay on his left arm, right arm and both legs splayed on the floor, a trip hazard in the small kitchen, which was the first thing Mrs. Nelson noticed after she'd had a rest.

She set down the blood smeared yellow pages first, then pushed his legs together and moved his arm closer to his body and set about making her spaghetti.

X

When he came to sometime in the night, it was with a jerk as he tried to avoid the yellow pages before they connected with his head. A moment later, after the thunder in his brain settled, he realized that had already happened.

Where the fuck did she get that phone book.

He lay awake, head resting on a pillow of torn phone book pages, trying to figure out the answer to that very question while wondering if his pillow creeped him out or if he thought it was sweet. Priorities. It didn't even dawn on him to call someone.

XXXXXXX

"Hello! Helllloooo! Young man!"

A light tap on his cheek and gentle tug on his hair had him blinking his eyes open only to immediately close them to the spin of the room and morning sun barging through the window.

"No going back to sleep! I'm making pancakes."

He tried again, opening only one eye this time, immediately looking for a phone book in her hands or in the vicinity, not that that had mattered last night when she was pulling them out of thin air.

He lifted his head feeling a few pages of the phone book coming with him and that seemed to be enough to get her to move away.

"I'm up. I'm up."

"I'm making breakfast. Pancakes. Unless you wanted more cookies. I know you liked them."

He was eventually able to get himself seated against the wall as he got his bearings and when he thought he could move without puking, levered himself into a chair at the kitchen table, back to the wall so he could see everything, Mrs. Nelson and her army of phone books.

He cleared his throat which vibrated through his aching head and croaked out, "No thanks Mrs Nelson. I'm good."

"Nonsense. You didn't finish your cookies or eat any spaghetti last night. You're probably starving."

"No really. It's okay…"

"And if you were tired there was a perfectly good couch in the next room. No need to sleep on the floor."

She swerved toward him with a plate and a spatula or maybe a phone book and a spatula and he knew she was probably walking straight and it was his brain coloring outside the lines but before he could think of a way to kindly, gently, set her on her ass, she took her spatula and slid a dozen cookies off the plate, not a phone book, it was a plate, onto the table in front of him and patted his bloody cheek with her arthritic hand.

"Eat up. You're too skinny."

She had turned away but quickly turned back digging in the small pocket of her house coat. He flinched back against the wall knocking his head and causing the room to tilt. He didn't care that his fingers were broken, he held onto the chair, pain be damned, and put his other hand out to ward off the phone book he knew she was going to pull out of that little pocket.

"Here's your phone honey. You left it in the fridge when you went to sleep last night."

Jesus Christ.

Feeling like a fucking asshole, he nodded his thanks, and prayed his phone would turn on after being in the refrigerator for God knows how long. Breathing through his need to puke as the room continued to spin, he closed one eye and waited, then almost puked in relief when his home screen came up. He went to his favorites and called Hailey but she sounded an awful lot like Voight when she answered.

XXXXXXX

7:35 am

"Jay…" he snapped his fingers at the others even though they had all stopped in their tracks when Voight's phone rang.

Hailey…you sick?

Voight put the phone on speaker so they could all hear but it was still hard. Jay was speaking quietly and his words were slurred.

"It's Hank kid…"

Ok…Sarge…Hailey…Hailey knows where I went…am…where I…

"Ruth Nelson. We're on our way. Hang tight."

Silent…Run silent…calm entrance…don' wanna spk spook her. Get her out firs.

Hailey, Kim, Adam and Kevin took off down the stairs.

Trudy…

Kevin was the last to leave and heard Jay's barely audible request. "We gotcha Jay."

"We're on the way kid. Just stay with us. You need an ambo?"

No

"Halstead…"

Don need one…an if I gotta eat another one of those fuck n cookies I'll be dead be fore you get here so…no…

X

Voight wasn't able to get much more from Jay, just measured breathing, quiet assurances to Mrs. Nelson that he would make sure she got to bingo on time and politely declined offers of more cookies. But when Jay heard them arrive he told them it was important they ignored the state of him and just took care of Mrs. Nelson.

Jay and Mrs. Nelson were sitting at the kitchen table, she counting out nickels for bingo from a mason jar, Jay trying his damndest to get out of eating one of the numerous cookies sitting in front of him by shuffling them around until he could stealthily push them off the table since there were quite a few laying at his feet, 'eaten.'

His right hand lay in his lap, pointer, middle and ringer finger all broken given the swelling and discoloration.

"Mrs. Nelson…" he wiped his chin with his cookie shuffling fingers when his split lip opened, "…my friends are here to take you to bingo."

While Trudy, Kim and Hailey set to getting Mrs. Nelson squared away with her nickels, Voight, Kevin and Adam stood back and took in the scene. The kitchen was a mess, but if there was a competition, Jay would win. On top of his broken fingers, the entire left side of his face was covered with trails of blood from a bloody nose and cuts to his eyebrow, hairline, lip and a horizontal cut across his left ear.

The blood from the cuts did nothing to cover the dark bruising. Black eye, a thin bruise from his temple to his chin. Bruised cheek, bruised lip, jaw…the kid was a mess.

Voight looked around the room for a weapon, to see what…He couldn't help it. He didn't in a million years think the woman had beat the hell out of his detective, an ex-Ranger at that, but still his eyes drifted to her knuckles. He quickly averted them before he was caught out, but too late.

"Really Sarge…" Jay slurred through bloody lips.

He could only shrug, "Sorry kid." The whole situation had him at a loss.

"The phone book…books."

Voight looked at the torn up, bloody phone books in the corner. They did a lot of damage, kid was lucky to be alive.

Jay didn't know what was worse. His boss thinking he got the shit beat out of him by Mrs. Nelson or…

"Goddamn it."

It might have been with a phone book, four phone books and a pink slippered foot to the balls, but he got his ass handed to him by a 75 year old woman. When they were all done with their worry, he would never live it down. Fuck.

While Jay filled his boss in on a possible cold case, Trudy, Kim and Hailey escorted Mrs Nelson to her bedroom to collect her purse and jacket.

He sat sideways in the chair and leaned against the wall, head back, eyes closed, "Boss, we need to look into when the Nelsons lost their farm. See if there are any cold cases; missing persons or unsolved murders with those involved. I think she might have killed the person who took her farm…someone named Turner"

"What makes you think that kid?

"She…"

"Oh dear! Look at you!"

Mrs. Nelson stopped on her way out when she got a good look at Jay. She chuckled, licked her thumb and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.

"Such a messy eater."

Patting his cheek, she slid a plate of plastic wrapped cookies to Jay, oblivious to the minute flinch, "Don't forget your cookies."

He closed his eyes as she walked away. There was so much wrong with what just happened. Her wiping off the corner of his lip with her spit, when his whole face was covered with blood, his flinch or the fucking cookies she pushed his way.

He opened his eyes to find his boss and two friends trying not to smile.

Ruz leaned in and he leaned back. Holding up his hands Adam chuckled, "No spit, you got a little…stuck to the blood on your face…" he reached forward and pulled a torn bit of a ripped yellow page off his face and waved it around.

"Ow fuck!"

"Yellow Pages…"

Jay looked at the three of them with a bloody scowl, "Can we just go to the hospital now so we can get my humiliation wrapped up today."

"She's 75, Jay. I'm gonna need at least three days."

"Fuck you Ruz."

"Two yellow pages and two white pages. 8 hours's all I need bro…I'll need to think on it, maybe consult Platt, but in the mean time, I got you Jay." then he pointed to Adam, "…I love ya man, but you ain't no Jay Halstead. One whack from the white pages you'd be down for the count."

"I only need the next fifteen seconds kid. A 75 year old woman might have beat the shit out of you, but you probably solved a cold case in the process of it."

"Oh for fucksake…" he pulled out his phone.

911 what's your emergency

"This is Detective Jay Halstead badge number 51163, roll an ambulance to my location…" then whispered to the three dicks in front of him, "…I'm not riding to the hospital with any of you assholes."

XXXXXXX

The Next Day

Adam walked into Jay's hospital room to find Will working on his iPad, Voight doing paperwork and Jay leaning back on his bed scowling at the ceiling. At least he'd switched out from that stupid hospital dress to black sweats, his boots and a green t-shirt.

He gave them all a second to notice him then hefted the heavy plastic bag he was carrying and plunked it down on the rolling table, jerking them all from their tasks.

Barely containing his grin, Adam couldn't resist yanking Jay's chain, "Shit man, you sure you didn't go 10 rounds with Mike Tyson?" but then rushed on with fly filled ointment to the wound he just inflicted to Jay's ego, "You were right man. The old lady killed that guy. They found him buried on her farm. Skull smashed in…leave it to you man, solving a cold case while getting the shit beat out of ya…speaking of which…I got ya a present…"

Jay's brain was stuck on 'skull smashed in' and thinking back to the cast iron skillet that had been on her stove. Shuddering, he was feeling a little grateful she'd been a bit of a pack rat and held onto her old phone books…grateful until Adam opened his big mouth again.

Opening the bag, Adam pulled out four phone books wrapped in a blue ribbon.

"For, you know, self defense and all, when you don't want to use your gun."

Jay looked from his friend to the two volumes of yellow pages, two volumes of white pages sitting on the table, exactly the types Mrs. Nelson beat him with. He could feel his ears start to heat up in anger and embarrassment but embarrassment moved to the back burner when what Adam did next pretty much signed his own death warrant.

"Oh shit forgot…" with a face splitting grin Adam pulled something from behind his back, slapped it onto the phone books and took off…a pink fucking slipper.

Jay was off the bed and running after him faster than he should have been able but stopped at the door when the world tilted, "Fuck!…"

He turned back to the room holding desperately to the door frame with his injured right hand, his shooting hand, to stay upright, and holding out this left hand to Voight, "Gimme your gun!"

A smirk cracking his normally stoic face, Voight stood, grabbed a phone book and handed it to Jay knowing in his condition he more than likely wouldn't catch Adam.

"This is one of this situations where you don't want to use a gun. Go easy on him kid. He's stupid."

He gave Jay a few moments and hearing nothing from the hall, wandered out with Will, expecting to find Jay sitting on the floor in temporary defeat, but the hall was empty. He raised his eyebrow at the doctor and chuckled at himself that he was stupid enough to underestimate his detective.

"Well shit. I guess we need to rescue Adam from your brother. We'll get some coffee on the way."

"We have time? You think it will take that long for Jay to catch him?"

"I would guess Jay already caught him, but it won't hurt for Adam to get the shit scared out of him…and Jay doesn't need a gun to do that."

"Or a phone book."

"Will, your brother needs nothing more than the raise of his eyebrow to scare the shit out of someone, but Adam brought the phone books so his ass is going to pay the price."

XXXXXXX

XXXXXXX

Okey dokey!

Stay safe peeps! Big smooch!

VOTE VOTE VOTE OH DEAR GOD PEEPS VOTE VOTE VOTE

BLUE BLUE BLUE ALL THE WAY DOWN THE TICKET BLUE BLUE BLUE

BIGGER SMOOCH!