LITTLE TOUGH PART AT FIRST, BUT LIGHTER MOMENT COMING LATER. PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
Elizabeth backed out of the room, no air in her chest, like she'd just fallen hundreds of stories and landed squarely on her back, as if her muscles were seizing, clawing for air. Elizabeth took in the scene in front of her
The shrieks coming from her daughter's mouth were otherworldly, and Elizabeth wondered if eardrums could burst from the sound. Emma strained against the handcuffs, the chair she'd been sitting on halfway across the room behind her. Emma crouched under the table as much as her restraints would allow her, her head under the lip of the table as she screamed. Her knees were at her chest as she squatted underneath the table, as if hiding from something above her. With the weight of Emma's entire body straining against the handcuffs around her wrists, Elizabeth could see metal cutting into Emma's skin along her wrists, as if Emma was willing to break her wrists to escape.
And the screaming. The blood curdling screaming only stopped as Emma took a breath in and began again. Wordless. Shrieks.
By the time Elizabeth reached the door and opened it, her DS agents were right on the other side of the door, their eyes wide as they looked into the room to see where the screams were coming from. Elizabeth walked out of the room, and hastily pulled the door shut behind her.
She closed her eyes, leaning back against the door, trying to catch her breath. Trying to breathe again. Her chest finally sucking air in, she put her hands behind her head to open her airway up as much as possible.
What just happened? She asked herself, trying her best to play back through the terrifying scene she'd witnessed. Her hands were wet with sweat, her eyes couldn't figure out if they should be opened or closed. What held more horror, seeing that scene again in her mind or the screams from the room that continued, so loud the hallway outside acted like an echo chamber
"Bess."
Elizabeth looked to her right, to find Isabel, eyes wide and face full of condemnation.
"What did you do to her?" The words flew out like knives from Isabel's mouth, aimed directly at Elizabeth. Isabel tried to push past her, reaching for the door handle. "What did…"
As if Izzie could do anything to stop that. Elizabeth thought, while grabbing Isabel's arm and pushing the woman away from her and the door. "I didn't do anything." It was true, she tried to tell herself. She hadn't done anything to her daughter in that room. She hadn't even touched Emma. When Isabel had backed away, Elizabeth couldn't make eye contact, instead she stopped leaning against the door and started walking back towards the observation room.
She could hear the door to the interrogation room open as the shrieks from her daughter got louder without the door to muffle the sounds. Over her shoulder, Elizabeth commanded, "Don't let her in that room." And out of the corner of her eye, she could see the agents pulling Isabel out of the room and pulling the door shut.
"What are you doing?" Isabel shouted at her, but at least she used words, unlike Emma's. She could feel the condemnation shooting into her back, but Elizabeth was undeterred. "What did you do?"
The Director was coming out of the observation room, and Elizabeth could tell by the way he swallowed, and pulled his suit jacket closed that he was trying to compose himself.
Just as Elizabeth was.
Needing to get away from the sounds of torment still clawing down the hallway, Elizabeth motioned with her head for him to follow. As her heels clicked along the floor, she could hear Isabel running after her. But she ignored that.
Instead, she took a deep breath and, to the Director, said, "I think questioning her at the moment won't get any information."
"And the award for the understatement of the year goes to…" Isabel's sarcasm would at any other time, have made Elizabeth turn around and fight back.
But she had no fight left. She still was trying to understand what happened in that room. Not what was happening with her daughter. No, but what she'd become in that space.
Ignoring Isabel's comment, Elizabeth said to the Director as they walked, "I'd like to have her involuntarily committed to a psych ward immediately." Her mouth felt dry as she said it, as the screams from her daughter started to fade the farther away they walked. "Once evaluated and treated, we can proceed with further questioning and charges."
"Of course, Madam President." His words were respectful as he agreed with her. "I'll get the paperwork started immediately." He turned and walked back towards the room they'd just came from, while Elizabeth reached the elevator, where Blake and the agents waited for her.
Knowing there was about the be something else thrown at her, Elizabeth held up her hand to signal to Isabel that she didn't want to hear it. "Don't. I did what you wanted."
"What did you say in there?" Isabel questioned. "What on earth could have…"
Elizabeth whirled around, standing face to face with Isabel. The face of the woman who had been there with Elizabeth from the beginning. The person who had held Elizabeth's hair back as she puked from morning sickness. The woman who had risked her own life to bring Emma back from Iran. The woman Elizabeth had at one time called a friend.
"You have no idea what I'm going through right now, Izzie." Elizabeth spat out. She pointed behind Isabel to the room, "I'm done with her, and I'm most certainly done talking to you about it."
With fire in her eyes and words, Isabel refused to back down, "You don't get to choose to be done with her! That girl needs her mother right now, not…" Isabel gestured her hand up and down Elizabeth, "... whoever this is."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and stepped back, "Oh, really? You want to go there?" Isabel opened her mouth, but Elizabeth continued on. "You don't get to tell me how to be a mother to that girl! You don't know what being her mother looks like - you don't know what horrors I've had to know she's experienced, you don't have the nightmares I do because I know what happened. You don't have the feeling of constantly not being enough because nothing you can say or do makes anything better with her." Elizabeth stopped to take a breath, thankful that Isabel had backed away a bit. But the words kept coming, "You don't know what it's like staring into the eyes of the person who may have murdered your husband. And you most certainly" her voice broke, "don't know what it's like when that person is your own daughter." And she quieted down as the words, now spoken out, seemed more powerful than the walls Elizabeth built up. "I did what you wanted, Izzie. She's not being questioned anymore, she's going to get help." She turned away, stepping into the elevator. When she turned back, and could see her friend's face still full of anger toward her, Elizabeth said, "Now if you don't mind, I'm going back to the hospital, hoping not to end the day as a widow."
He could hear the machines. Incessant beeping, enough to drive someone mad. He wanted to tell someone to turn them off - tell Elizabeth she was sleeping through her alarm again. Or make Jason understand that you can't set ten alarms and keep snoozing them all morning.
Sometimes he felt movement, sometimes he heard voices around him. Mostly he felt pain in his chest, tightening and loosening over and over again. And in his shoulder - searing pain most of the time.
If there was time here.
The only thing that made all of that fade away was the memories. And they seemed to come and go in quick succession - if he could call them memories. Maybe he was just reliving them. Because everything else was gone, but he was there. Like, they say you could never go back and experience moments again, but wherever he was, he could.
"Daddy?"
Henry stirred, trying to open his eyes and adjust them to the darkness around him. He turned over, looking down the bed towards the door, where the hallway light flooded into the room like a sunbeam.
"Em, what's wrong?" He whispered, desperately not wanting to disturb the sleeping woman next to him.
"Daddy, I had a bad dream." came the six year old's quiet response from the doorway.
He nodded, slowly sliding his feet over the side of the bed as he sat up, thankful he slept in a t shirt and shorts last night. "Ok, I'll come tuck you back in, ok?" He said, glancing at the red numbers on the alarm clock next to the bed, realizing it was only midnight and he'd only been asleep for an hour.
Suddenly, Elizabeth sat straight up in bed, having sensed the bed moving, and, with a startled voice louder than it should have been, said, "Henry, whatss wrong?" The sleep in her voice slurring her words as she looked out for danger. Despite the fact that there never had been anything dangerous when she'd woken up. It was a joke amongst the older children that they never woke up Mom at night because she always came up fighting. Henry liked to attribute that to her being a mother, and, as if by instinct, woke up trying to protect her children. Had happened the first time Stevie had woken up from the bassinet in the hospital, and continued to this day.
Out of habit, Henry touched her shoulder and said, "She just had a bad dream. I'm going to take her back to bed."
The minute he touched her, she calmed, and laid back down, her head hitting the pillow with as much force as she'd sat up from it. "Ok." came the groggy reply..
Henry walked the few steps over to their bedroom door, squinting against now brighter light. And he looked down.
Crazed blonde curls stuck out in every direction from the little one clad in her blue polka dotted pajama set. She looked up at him, her blue eyes half closed from sleep.
Stretching out his hand, he said, "Come on, I'll come tuck you in."
The feeling of her hand in his - small, little fingers with nails covered in chipping glittered nail polish - fit perfectly there as her soft hand circled as far around as she could. She nodded up at him, and said, "I had a scary dream, Daddy."
"Really, little girl, did you?" He asked, shortening his pace to match her little legs. "What was it about?"
"Well…" She started, but a voice from the bedroom drew both of their attention away.
"Em, do you want to come snuggle with Mommy?"
Henry rolled his eyes as the hand pulled away from him and the sound of pattering feet down the hallway and into the master bedroom behind him.
"Really?" Henry muttered as he turned around, flipping off the hallway light as he entered their bedroom in time to hear his wife groan as Emma jumped on the bed and, probably kneed or elbowed Elizabeth in the process. "I thought we talked about this…"
He could see through the darkness as the bed moved, with Elizabeth adjusting and moving a pillow over from Henry's side of the bed for Emma, who, actually didn't need it as she nestled up on Elizabeth's chest, looking up at her mother adjusting the blankets around her.
He sat on his side of the bed, again seeing the clock and knowing he would have to be up in just a few hours.
And then he heard his wife squeal, "Augh, Emma!" He turned around, to find his wife fully awake, looking down at her daughter, "Where are your socks? Your feet are freezing!"
That brought a smile even as he put his head down to find him one pillow short.
"I put my socks under the bed."
Adjusting to his also shortened amount of blankets, he asked, "Why did you put them under your bed?"
"Well," Emma started, "I wondered if maybe a monster was under my bed, maybe if he was warm and snuggly, he'd just sleep."
Henry and Elizabeth exchanged quizzical glances.
"There's no monster under your bed." Henry said amid a chuckle. "Monsters aren't real"
Emma looked up at him, her face as serious as she could possibly make it, "But you said God is real, but we can't see him. And maybe just cause you haven't seen the monsters doesn't mean they aren't real."
Elizabeth converted her laugh into a snort, and when Emma looked up at her with a confused look, Elizabeth barely choked out, "Henry, you gotta take this one."
Wishing he had a pillow free to smack her with it, he turned over on his side and said, "Em, how about we compromise on this.. How about we…"
"What does con-promimize mean?"
"Well, it means…" Henry could feel nothing other than that it was too late for these conversations. But he found the words, "It means lets make a deal. So what I was saying is…"
"Like deal or no deal?"
And this time, Elizabeth just full on laughed, her eyes meeting his, and the laughter was contagious, making him chuckle to himself as he said, "Ok, listen. Here's all you need to know about monsters."
Emma turned on her side to face him, looking at him as intently as a six year old at midnight could. Elizabeth's fingers gently ran over Emma's hair, and Emma's head laid on the pillow between the two of them.
"It's Mommy and Daddy's job to make sure the house is safe. And I promise that there's no monsters under your bed or anywhere in here, because Daddy wouldn't let them come in."
Emma, as if the answer was perfectly acceptable, nodded, and asked, "You promise?"
He leaned in and kissed her forehead, and quietly whispered, "I promise."
And Emma's eyes started to droop, snuggled next to Elizabeth. Soon, Emma's breathing evened out as she settled back into a sleep at a speed that only a child could do.