Sandy's first impulse is to chastise Seth for swearing.
It's a ludicrous impulse, but in his defense, his mind is either slow or reluctant to catch up to what's actually happening, would prefer it if foul language was the most pressing issue on the table.
Later, he'll be thankful that he was able to bite back the knee-jerk dad response, that he didn't whip his head around and bark "Seth!" at his son who was sprawled on the floor clutching his face, blood rapidly welling up between his fingers.
That wouldn't have struck the right note of parental concern that the occasion called for, and he was sure Seth would've given him grief about it later.
"There I am, bleeding out on the floor, and rather than figuring out a father-son home blood transfusion or calling the rabbi to get the ball rolling on my shiva-because let's be real, he's going to have his work cut out for him, finding a minyan in Newport-my own father decides that my potential last moments on Earth are the right time to yell at me for dropping a single f-bomb on my way to the grave."
So while it wasn't exactly a banner day for his parenting, he at least dodged that bit of mockery from his son.
ooo
Sandy is bungling things.
He wants to defuse Kirsten's anger, wants to comfort her, but he's making the kind of rookie mistakes you make when you haven't been married for almost twenty years, when you don't know your wife well enough to know when the best thing to do was to get out of her way, let her storm off and be alone for awhile.
What she really needed was space.
Space and crowd control, someone to escort Caleb off the premises, someone to get Seth excited about introducing the rest of the kids to the proud Jewish tradition of enjoying Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant, someone to wait by the Jacuzzi with a bottle of Cabernet and two glasses for when she was ready to talk.
Instead, Kirsten stomps off to the bedroom and he follows at her heels, glibly invoking his attorney-client privilege, assuring her that they'd figure things out, like this was the kind of thing they could sit down and hash out within an hour, not a brand-new teenage sibling and not a profound betrayal that pressed on the still open wound of her mother's death.
And not like she hadn't already been hanging onto her relationship with Caleb by her fingertips.
Sandy grits his teeth whenhe hears Caleb's footsteps behind him, hears the hint of exasperation in his voice-far outweighing any contrition there-as he says "Kirsten, please, listen."
Caleb never seemed to know when to quit or when to ease off with Kirsten,never hesitated to make demands,no matter what was going on or what he'd done or what she said she wanted or needed.
Or he knew, but didn't care.
"Oh no, I never want to see you again, you son of a bitch," Kirsten snarls, lunging towards Caleb.
Sandy is just able to intercept her, grabbing her by the shoulders and holding her back.
Part of him wonders whether he should just let her go, let them have it out, all the years' worth of grief and anger that Kirsten must have built up by now.
From Caleb, pushing and pushing her.
From the way she forced herself to quietly tolerate it.
"How could you do that to me? To Mom?" Kirsten's voice wavers as it rises.
"Kirsten, please, I can explain."
Sandy wonders if she can hear it too, the impatience in Caleb's voice.
"Just get out!" Kirsten tears herself out of Sandy's grasp, or maybe Sandy lets her go, steps back to let her let it all out, to let them finally commence the having it out, but on her terms, not Caleb's, and not with him trying to play intermediary.
He doesn't know what he imagined her terms would be, but he feels like he's watching from a surreal distance as Kirsten, normally so controlled and so contained, grabs a vase of flowers from the table and, in one swift, cathartic motion, hurls it in Caleb's direction.
It's surreal too, like a sound effect from a movie, the impact of ceramic shattering against drywall.
And then there are other sounds.
A loud "Oh fuck," and a heavy thump.
Whatever the thump is isn't fully computing yet, and Sandy readies himself to turn and scold Seth, let him know that walking in mouth blazing wasn't going to help anything.
He stops short when he sees the blood draining from Kirsten's face, righteous rage at her father suddenly cut off at the knees.
"Seth?" Kirsten's fury gives way to wide-eyed panic. "I-I didn't know h-he..." Her eyes meet Sandy's, but before she can finish the thought, something else kicksin within her and she pushes past him.
Confused, mental tiresspinning in mud, Sandy's gaze follows her, and that's when it registers.
Seth is crumpled on the floor, groaning, hand covering one side of his face.
Sandy utters some choice words of his own as he bolts to Seth's side, kneeling on the floor opposite Kirsten.
There's a rush of multiple sets of footsteps from the kitchen.
"Ohmygod, Cohen." Summer skids to a stop in front of Seth's prone body,Marissa and Ryan on either side of her.
"Are-are you-?" Kirsten's voice breaks around the question.
"Should we do something?" Marissa asks.
"Why are you looking at me?" Summer's voice gets high.
"I-I'm fine, Mom." Seth lifts his hand and squints at it for a moment, wincing as he takes in the sight of the blood soaking his fingers. "I mean that doesn't look so good, I'll admit, but all things considered, it could be worse." He places his hand back over his face before Sandy can get a good look at the damage, but Kirsten must've seen something, because she gasps, hand rising to cover her mouth.
"I don't know; you're a candy striper."
"I mostly just read to them. I don't think he needs The Old Man and the Sea right now, Coop."
"I dunno," Seth pipes up. "That sounds kind of nice."
The competing conversations are too much for Sandy, as is the impulse to get swept up in them, to not have to look under Seth's hand and have to start dealing with whatever it is he's going to find under there.
One thing at a time.
"Girls, can you run and get me some clean towels from the kitchen?" Sandy asks. "Ryan can show you where they are." His eyes rise to meet Ryan's for a moment, and he gives him a little nod.
"On it, Mr. C.," Summer says, and Sandy hears three sets of footsteps retreat from the room.
"Seth, honey, I'm going to move your hand a little, just so I can get a better look at things, okay?" Sandy grasps Seth's wrist, slick with blood, and gently lifts his hand away from his face. He bites back what would've been a sharp intake of breath, fighting to keep his expression neutral as he rests Seth's hand on his stomach for the time being.
"How bad is it?" Seth asks.
"You're gonna be fine," Sandy assures him. He accepts a blue and white hand towel from Summer and quickly angles his body to try to obscure her or anyone else's view of Seth's face.
"Thanks, Summer," Seth says.
"He is like, weirdly calm about this," Sandy hears Summer stage whisper to Marissa.
Dissociated.
Seth is dissociated, Sandy thinks, not entirely there at the moment, which was probably a lot better than the alternative.
Sandy arranges the towel over Seth's wounds and positions Seth's hand over it, pinning it in place.
"Can you feel thebumps?"
"Yeah."
"You want to press down around them, but carefully, okay? We want to try to stop the bleeding as best we can."
Sandy's heart is pounding in his chest and his attention is fragmented, shifting erratically, distracted as the competing conversations start up again, and he fights to keep focused on what needs to happen next, at the same time that he's also wondering if it's even registering with Seth that the bumps they're talking about are shards of ceramic poking out of his skin, and wondering at what point he would realize that they were shards of ceramic poking out of his skin, and wondering what kind of reaction that might elicit, how much time dissociation was buying them before the panic or the physical pain kicked in.
And then there was the question of what to do about Kirsten beside him, panicking herself, and-he's realizing now-almost certainly a little drunk. She usually started a little early on Thanksgiving and Christmas, bracing herself for a visit from her father, but Sandy guesses he hadn't clocked how many glasses of wine she'd put away before dinner. Her words slur together slightly as she tells Seth that she's sorry, and she starts to cry harder as Seth assures her that it's okay, that it isn't her fault.
"Um, should I call someone?" Marissa asks. "Like, an ambulance or something?"
"No way." Seth's one visible eye goes wide.
"We do need to get you to the hospital," Sandy considers, "and you might've hit your head when you fell."
"I didn't; I swear," Seth promises. "You can just drive me, right?"
"I can take him in," Ryan offers.
Each of the Cohens come out with a simultaneous response:
"I'll take him."
"Seth-Ryan time, emergency medicine edition, sweet."
"Daddy and I will drive you."
"I need you to stay here." Sandy levels his gaze at Kirsten, his tone perhaps a little sharper than intended.
"What, why?" Seth demands.
"We'll talk about it later." Sandy pats Seth's arm. "Right now, we need to get going."
"Sandy..." Kirsten draws back, through her tears looking hurt and confused.
And Sandy doesn't have the time to explain, to reassure her that he knows it was an accident, that he knows that she's sorry, that he will not hold a grudge with her over hurting their child, because he knows how much she loves him and he knows how devastated she feels right now.
Not doing those things now will mean that there will be much to undo later, Kirsten's hurt and her guilt compounded by his rejection of her in this moment, but priorities demanded that he tend to the family member bleeding on the ground before anyone else.
"He doesn't need you carrying on like a drunken mess in the emergency room," Caleb booms over his shoulder. "See what happens when you won't just talk to me? See what you've done to your own son? Kirsten-
Each of the Cohens react to this simultaneously.
Kirsten scrambles to her feet, a blur of motion.
"You need to get out, now."
"I'm fine, Grandpa, thank you so much for checking in."
Sandy hears a door slam, and he can feel rather than see Ryan start to walk towards Caleb, can feel rather than see the tense line of his jaw and his clenching fists as he got ready to do whatever it was he was about to do, maybe become the second person in their family to take a swing at him that day.
"Ryan, hang on, it's okay," Sandy's eyes meet Ryan's again and stay there for a beat, trying to soothe the simmering anger and the wariness and the anxiety he sees there before he turns to address Caleb. "Cal, get out of our house, now."
"You tell 'em, Dad." Seth uses his free hand to pumphis fist in the air.
Seth could get pretty punchy when he was dissociated, his two modes being either completely vacant or hopelessly goofy.
"I'd be better off going to prison," Caleb mutters.
"Oh great. I'm dying and Mom's got a surprise baby sister, but we should all feel sorry for you, I guess."
"Cal, I am serious-"
"I'm leaving." Caleb mutters something else under his breath, but he walks away, Marissa and Summer parting to either side of the hallway as he stalks past them.
"Should we, like, go?" Summer asks Marissa.
Sandy turns his attention back to Seth.
"Seth, Ryan and I are going to help you to the car, and then I'm going to drive us to the hospital, okay?"
"I can really take him." Ryan crouches down on the other side of Seth.
"I need to do it."
"But Kirsten-"
"Is an adult, and she'll be fine." Sandy's tone is firm. "I need you to stay here, okay?"
Ryan blinks, eyes betraying that he has questions, but he doesn't push back.
He rarely pushes back.
And Sandy knows that he's using that, using Ryan and his obedience, his sense of duty to them.
Kirsten is in no position to go with them, but Sandy doesn't want her to be totally alone in the house either, and while it wasn't right, asking Ryan to babysit another drunken mother figure, he can't think of a better option at this point.
And he knows Ryan, knows that he will understand what Sandy is asking of him, will think that Sandy is saying it's okay, saying it's his job, to babysit another drunken mother figure.
Another thing that will be worse later, will be a struggle to undo, if he can even undo that stubborn knot in Ryan's brain, but he doesn't have the time to deal with that now either.
"Um, Dad?"
"Yeah, kiddo?"
"I um, I didn't want to say anything before, like with Mom..." Seth swallows thickly. "...but it um, it kind of feels like there might be something in my eye."
And there it is, just the slightest wobble of panic in Seth's voice, just the thing to break the dam and let out everything contained behind it.
Sandy would take a dissociated Seth or a punchy Seth over a panicked and bleeding and fully aware of his pain or the fact that there was a small jagged piece of ceramic embedded in his left eye Seth.
Oh fuck was right.
"I know, sweetie." He runs a comforting hand up Seth's arm and squeezes his shoulder lightly. "They'll take care of it at the hospital and everything will be fine, okay?"
"They're great with eyes there," Summer chimes in. "They did amazing with Chet when he ran through that plate glass door at Holly's after Homecoming."
"See?" Sandy grunts as he and Ryan start to clumsily help Seth to his feet, minding his one hand still securing the towel to his face. "There's even a rousing endorsement from...some guy named Chet."
ooo
"Um, did we bring another towel?" Seth's voice sounds a little muddled. "This one's about hit its limit."
Sandy swears under his breath, realizing he'd somehow neglected to grab the rest of the towels.
Slowing to a stop at a red light, he takes the opportunity to reach across Seth and fumble the glove compartment open, grabbing a thick stack of fast food napkins.
"Best I can do," he offers, watching as Seth drops the blood soaked towel to his lap and presses the napkins to the largest cut above his eye.
The light turns green, and they ride in silence for a few moments.
"Listen, Seth..." Sandy frowns, noticing for the first time the smears of blood under his fingernails and decorating his hands. He squints, mesmerized for a moment before he shakes his head, tearing his eyes away from his son's blood all over his hands.
"Yeah?"
"At the hospital..." Sandy hesitates, not quite sure how to say it. "They're going to ask you what happened."
"Okay...?"
"Well, because you're a kid-"
"I'm not a kid."
Seth had always had a thing about that, even when he was much more objectively a child.
"Okay," Sandy concedes patiently. "Well, because you're...underage."
It takes a moment or two, but something clicks.
"Ah. Right. And because my dad is bringing me to the emergency room with multiple gaping head wounds..."
"Well...yeah."
"So this is where we, like, get our stories straight then?" Seth asks.
"No, I didn't mean that. I just-"
"I mean, they're probably gonna think you did it, right, being the dad and all?"
"I can deal with that," Sandy assures him.
"Wait..." Seth's voice drops. "They wouldn't like, arrest Mom if they knew, would they? It was an accident."
"I don't know," Sandy says honestly. "Someone could claim it was child endangerment, but I don't know that it would go that far. It could still get complicated though."
"God, can you imagine how embarrassing that would be at school, my mom being arrested for child endangerment? Everyone already thinks I'm a giant wuss, but then with the state officially declaring that I can't even take my own mom in a fight?" Seth pauses. "You think I could take Mom, right?" Not getting an immediate answer, he adds "I'm not saying my fragile self-esteem rests on your answer, but I'm also not not saying that."
Sandy's not sure what he thought he was doing exactly, asking Seth to lie for them.
What if Seth did want to talk to someone about everything he'd witnessed, everything that had happened to him?
Even if she hadn't meant to hurt anyone, Kirsten hadn't given a second thought to Seth or Ryan or anyone else who might've been collateral damage when she launched the vase into space.
Was it really okay to pressure him to come up with a different story?
And why?
Because he suspected that Seth did understand, that he didn't feel unsafe or like Kirsten had intentionally harmed him?
Who was he to decide that?
He feels like he knows Seth, but there would probably always be something that also felt unknowable about him, about the way he took things in, about the way he dealt with pain and chaos and conflict, about how he felt about the concept of family and family loyalty and keeping secrets for people who tell you that they love you or make you fear the consequences of telling the truth.
Maybe Seth needed someone to talk to about seeing his mom lose control or about his dad all but outright asking him to lie about it.
And how could he assume that Seth didn't feel like violence or instability were a part of his family, that they weren't one ofthose families?
Sandy couldn't claim they weren't that family.
They were already that family.
Maybe they'd excised that piece, but they only fooled themselves if they thought it was ever fully gone.
"Dad?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Could I take Mom in a fight?" Seth sounds concerned. "Like, what do you think?"
"Seth, I'm sorry. I shouldn't be..." Sandy exhales sharply. "You can tell them what happened. I should never have asked you to lie."
"You weren't asking; you were hinting at it and hoping I'd get the message," Seth points out. "And I don't want Mom to get in trouble. It's not like she meant to do it."
"It's still okay to be upset about it," Sandy assures him. "Or upset with her."
"I'm not upset with her." Seth makes this sound like it's the most absurd idea he's ever heard. "Why would I be upset with her?"
It's eerie, how indifferent Seth seemed to being hurt, to being placed in harm's way, to the blood gushing out of his face and dripping off his fingers, despite the bevy of napkins that he kept arranging and rearranging over his wounds.
Dissociation could probably get some credit for that, but Sandy suspects that it's deeper than that.
Wouldn't it be normal to be a little upset or a little angry or, at the very least, a little surprised, even just for a moment, over his mother's lashing out, over the ceramic shards embedded in his face and his eye, over his father and his politicking of the situation?
His wounds weren't even closed and Sandy was already working an angle with him.
"And I mean, I'm not exactly interested in going to foster care," Seth adds. "Although maybe if Ryan's mom's gotten her shit together, I can go be her foster kid and Ryan can still be your foster kid. Kind of like a switcheroo movie. That could really shake things up."
"What?" Sandy squints, befuddled.
"Sorry. Bad and uh, convoluted joke." Seth gestures to himself. "Recent head injury and all." His breath hitches. "Wait, they wouldn't take Ryan away because of this, would they?"
And there it is again, a note of genuine alarm in his voice.
"No one is taking you away from us, and no one is taking Ryan away either." Sandy continues to kick himself for opening up this line of conversation, for giving Seth something else to worry about. "I'm sorry I made you think that." He sighs. "Like I said, things could just get-"
"Complicated," Seth supplies. "And I think Mom's got enough complications for the moment, what with the whole teenage baby sister thing and all."
"It's just...it's okay if you do want to tell them what happened," Sandy tries again. "You might want someone to talk to."
"You think I wanna narc on Mom to the State?" Seth snorts. "I didn't know my own father thought that little of me."
"No, I just meant...you might want to talk to someone about what happened, about how it felt," Sandy explains.
"It felt fine. She was mad. Grandpa's a dick, more so than we already thought. I get it."
Seth could do that, take things in and come out with such a cold unfeeling analysis: A B = C. Your mom is mad at your grandfather, so of course she would slap him in the face and hurl home decor at his head.
So what then did he expect, what did he accept, if people got upset with him?
What limits were there for the way people treated him?
"So I'll just make it clear that I'm not scared of you." Seth winces as he adjusts the heap of napkins pressed to his brow. "But also, like I'm not trying to make it seem like I'm not scared of you."
Sandy hazards a glance at him. "You can do that?"
"Sure." Seth's voice is the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
Sandy swallows around a lump in his throat.
Seth had so much practice with hiding, with lying.
Sometimes the thought struck him out of nowhere, and sometimes he lost sleep over it, wondering what would've happened if that mask of his hadn't slipped when he was ten, just for those brief seconds, just long enough for Sandy to catch a glimpse of what was underneath.
Seth might've been able to do it for years, perfectly calibrating his words and his reactions and his expressions of emotion so that no one would ever suspect a thing.
Maybe he would'vemade it clear that he wasn't afraid of Steven, but also, like he wasn't trying to make it seem like he wasn't afraid of Steven.
Seth had spent so much of his life figuring out how to make people see what he needed them to see.
What an impact that must've had on him.
How far away he must've felt, how removed, from his own family, from his mom and dad.
God, he'd been so alone.
"You...you don't have to lie for us, Seth. I shouldn't have brought it up." Sandy blinks back sudden tears, the stress of everything and an uncomfortable swell of emotion that he definitely doesn't have time to wallow in catching up with him in a rush.
"It's not a big deal, Dad." Seth shifts in his seat. "It's a good thing we're almost there though. These napkins are not cutting it."
ooo
He's taken into triage quickly, and then almost immediately called back so the doctors can get to work on him, so either it's a slow Chrismukkah for emergencies, or his face really is a pretty gruesome scene.
Seth isn't sure, having managed to evade his reflection thus far.
He's been able to let everything pass by in a kind of goofy haze, like all thestitches and the giant needle and its local anesthesia and thefaces looming in front of him and squinting in consternation as they contemplated hiswounds and the digging around in his actual eyeball weren't things even happening to him, and he doesn't want to do anything to challenge that unreality.
All told, blanking out could be a good time.
Sure, his parents and his old therapist didn't appreciate it when he did it in the middle of them trying to talk to him, but they couldn't deny it was useful now, as he can notice the rather sizeable dark splotches on his dad's shirt and understand that it's his own genetic material he's looking at, but rather than spiraling into panic or fear or revulsion, the dumb haze in his brain lets him treat it like it's his own little Rorschach test, as he tilts his head one way and it's a raccoon on a unicycle and then tilts his head another way and it's a butterfly in a boxing match with a snowman.
He thinks they're nearing the end of things when a nurse affixes a thick white bandage over his eye and the doctor is talking to his dad about wound care and what to look out for in the coming days and offering up a prescription for some pretty gnarly painkillers, which his dad swiftly rejects, instead requesting some like, extra-strength ibuprofen-which, there go his New Year's plans.
But it feels like it's almost over, and it seems like his dad had been worried for nothing, as nobody expressed particular concern about how he'd gotten injured, seeming far more interested in just patching him up and sending him on his way, but then a woman walks into the exam room, a laptop under her arm and a kind of familiar perfunctory friendliness about her that sets off an alarm somewhere deep in Seth's brain, siren just starting to penetrate the haze.
She introduces herself as Jessica, unfailingly polite as she finds an excuse to kick his dad out of the room for the time being.
Seth watches his dad leave, realizing as he does so that he doesn't like that his dad is leaving, that maybe some of the goofy stupid haze in his brain was dependent on his dad being there to supervise operations for the both of them.
Like, he knew he didn't like hospitals and he didn't like doctors, and he knew that if he let himself really think about and remember why that was, he'd be in a world of trouble, but he'd been able keep all that at a distance, because his dad could handle everything and he could just sit there, tilting his head back and forth like an idiot.
Only now his dad is gone, and the goofy stupid haze is rapidly receding, and at least the big needles and the drugs they'd given him had taken care of the physical pain, except maybe that would've been a convenient little distraction from what's rising up in him now.
He takes a long slow inhale of breath, displeased to find that it's suddenly difficult to do so, that his chest is tight and his breath is shallow, that all he wants to do is bolt from the room, that he is suddenly far too aware of the fluorescent lights and the exam table under him and why exactly it was that he didn't like hospitals and he didn't like doctors and he very much doesn't like people named Jessica with their laptops and their pleasantries delivered in something adjacent to a monotone and the way they look at you, eyes narrowed, already suspicious.
ooo
As Jessica gives him her spiel, explains who she is and why she wants to talk to him and how Child Protective Services is there to help, Seth wishes he were sitting anywhere else in the room other than the exam table, his feet dangling in the air.
He hasn't felt short for a long time now-maybe since he hit that crucial growth spurt between seventh and eighth grade-but he feels little again, scrutinized by this woman whose job it is to figure out if she can see it on him, whatever she thinks it is that's happening to him.
It had felt like people could see it on him, like they'd look at him and just know.
He used to feel like that kid fromPeanuts, the one who walked around surrounded by a cloud of filth at all times, figured it was at least part of why most people in his life were either mean to him or ignored him.
Seth's hands clench into fists on his lap, his fingernails digging into his palms.
He can't think about that now.
He hasn't thought about that in a long time, not really, not even after the Alex thing, but he looks down and his size eleven loafers have transformed into the red and white Keds that he wore when he was ten, and his breath catches in his throat.
And the things is, if he thinks about that, if he starts to freak out, this woman will think it means something entirely different than what it actually means, and she will think that someone is hurting him now, and he will again be responsible for throwing his family into chaos, but this time because he couldn't act normal for like, ten minutes and one conversation.
Speaking of acting normal, it occurs to him that Jessica is looking at him like maybe she said something requiring a response, and he is just sitting there blinking vacantly at her, which will not help with the whole 'appearance of normalcy' thing.
He shakes his head. "I'm sorry, what?"
Jessica's mouth settles into a solemn smile, like "Of course you're shaken up, after what you've been through."
"I said the holidays can be pretty stressful," she says slowly. "It's supposed to be this big happy time, but a lot of families find them to be pretty difficult to get through."
"They're okay." Seth frowns. "I mean, this one obviously could've been better," he acknowledges, gesturing to his face.
"Can you walk me through what happened?"
Seth hesitates, eyeing her. "What are you writing about this?"
"I'm just relaying in your file here what you're telling me. I have to write up a report on all my hospital interactions."
"How uh, how far does that go back, my file?"
Jessica arches an eyebrow. "Is there something you're concerned about?"
"No, no," Seth says quickly. "It's fine. I mean, it was a long time ago, and it really has nothing to do with anyone in my family now. I just..." He looks down at his hands, jaw twitching. "I guess I like to know when people I'm talking to know my whole life story."
There's a long pause.
Seth hears a sound like Jessica is opening and closing her mouth a few times, maybe selecting whatever CPS would consider to be the appropriate response.
"So you can see it, right?" Seth's eyes dart up quickly before he looks away again. "An old report?"
"I can see it." Jessica'sconfirmation seems reluctant, and an uncomfortable silence follows before she clears her throat. "I mean I did see it," she corrects. "It's kind of standard to review a person's file before you talk to them." She pauses, mouthrumpling into a sympathetic smile. "I'm sorry you went through that."
Seth shrugs, looking away as somethingtwists painfully in his chest.
It always feels weird to say thank you to a thing like that.
And he never should've said anything about it.
"That kind of thing can really tear a family apart," Jessica adds.
"More or less than 'the holiday season', in your professional opinion?" Seth's eyes flick back up to Jessica, and he watches her frown, her forehead creasing, before something in her face shifts and her lips twitch.
"You're funny," she says flatly.
"Like actually funny, or funny like you find it very annoying that I'm trying to be funny right now?" Seth feels the tightness in his chest start to ease a little. "Believe it or not, I've gotten both before."
Dr. Max had mixed opinions on the subject, but Seth had always found it helpful, finding some small way to entertain himself amidst the horrors.
It was more grounding than naming all the objects in the room anyway, helped him feel at least the smallest bit in control of the situation again, if he could find something to amuse himself.
Lips twitching again, Jessica gives him a pointed look.
"Why don't you just tell me what happened?"
ooo
"...so anyway, he's something of a mad genius when it comes to the art of the mosaic, but I told him, 'Ryan, listen, next time you take out the sledgehammer, warn a guy first, okay?' So I think we'll be good from now on."
Jessica stares at him, blinking, looking thoroughly unimpressed, and like any sympathy she'd had for his early childhood victimization or whatever sketchy thing was happening to him in the present day had run out at some point in his roughly twenty minute rambling monologue in response to the question of "Why don't you just tell me what happened?"
But he's relieved to find that she's also looking at him like he's won their war of attrition, like she's ready to throw him to whatever wolves were lurking at home.
People thought the key to a good lie was to keep it simple and not say very much, but the real trick was to talk circles around everyone until they were so exhausted by you that they no longer even cared what was true.
"You know, Seth..." Jessica closes her laptop, looking thoughtful. "I can't make you tell me what really happened, but I'm on your side here, okay?"
Seth resists the urge to wrinkle his nose at that oft-expressed but seldom-seemed-true sentiment.
"I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble-I'm just trying to make sure things are safe at home...that you feel safe at home."
"I do feel safe at home." Seth looks up, making deliberate and steady eye contact with her. "What happened was an accident. No one there would ever hurt me, I swear." His head bobs as he thinks about it. "If anything, my parents are probably too easy on me, very permissive." He lowers his voice. "Overcompensating for the whole 'traumatic childhood' thing, if you ask me."
"Okay, I hear you. But if you ever want to talk..." Jessica trails off.
"You will, naturally, be my first call," Seth finishes for her.
"Right."
It's probably against CPS policy to roll your eyes at the poor mistreated children you were supposed to be protecting, but Seth can certainly have that effect on people.
He watches as Jessica stands up, tucking her laptop under her arm.
"The doctor will come back in a few minutes. He mentioned having some discharge paperwork for you." Maybe seeing something on Seth's face, she pauses, eyes narrowing at him. "Something wrong?"
Seth isn't sure how to answer that. "Um, could you..." He sighs and swears under his breath. "If you see my dad out there, can you ask him to come back in?" He looks away, feeling his face flush.
"I don't see why not." Jessica draws out each word, like she's trying to piece something together, but then she nods to herself, and from the corner of his eye Seth sees a look of comprehension, a Right, duhkind of sentiment, settle over her face. "Of course. I'll see if I can find him before-I'll just see if I can find him."
"Thanks." Seth's voice comes out barely above a whisper, and he hears the door open and then swing to a soft close behind her as his gaze fixes on his shoes.
Loafers.
He's wearing loafers.
Why is it sohard to remember that?
ooo
"Hang on; you're looking a little farkakte there, son."
"It's fine."
Still, his dad starts to futz with it, making a face as he smoothes down the tape holding the bandage in place over his eye and adjusts the strap on his actual eyepatch, because that was a thing that was happening right now, an actual eyepatch.
They should probably call Jessica back in to see this whole display.
Even the most hardened CPS worker probably couldn't witness Sandy Cohen in full Mother Hen mode without dismissing any concerns that he was a danger to anyone.
"You think I'll be out of this thing by the end of vacation?" Seth asks. "I don't wanna look like I'm taking the Harbor High Pirates thing too literally."
"You have always been knownfor your school spirit." His dad steps back to scrutinize his work before going in for a little more futzing.
Seth quietly resigns himself to the futzing, as there was no stopping his dad when he got on a roll with things like that.
It had been kind of a crushing blow, the relief that had coursed through him when the door to the exam room opened and he looked up to see his dad and not anyone else.
He doesn't understand what's happening to him.
He'd slept with two girls, even spent multiple nights overnight at one of their apartments-in the numbered streets no less-and only one of those nights had gone horribly awry, which, given the circumstances, seemed like a pretty respectable showing.
And he'd sailed off on his own, conquered the Pacific Ocean-for the better part of a day and a half anyway-and though it was a journey fueled in part by a mostly passive death wish that might've made fear a moot point, he hadn't been afraid. And he'd found his own way to Portland, spent almost forty hours on a Greyhound bus next to a rotating cast of weirdos. Granted, he'd chugged espresso and popped caffeine pills so he'd stay awake thewhole forty hours-lest he make himself an easier target than he already was-and he'd had a key to the Range Rover nestled between two knuckles the whole time, ready to go should things get dicey, but still, he'd made polite chit-chat with the weirdos, he'd survived, he'd thrived.
And then he'd made it in Portland, mastered the grill, found gainful employment, did his own laundry, spent the entire summer without his parents and had been ready to keep that lifestyle going until Ryan decided to move back, and now here he is, terrified of thirty seconds alone in a room with a guy who was just coming in there to hand him some pieces of paper.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, yeah." Seth blinks, and he'd shake his head except his dad is still kind of manhandling it. "I mean, besides the obvious, I'm fine." He forces a tight-lipped smile under his dad's steady gaze. "When can we get out of here?"
"Soon. We're just waiting on the paperwork, and then we need to swing by the pharmacy for your prescription."
"Ah yes, the super ibuprofen. The ultimate Chrismukkah gift this season."
"And your antibiotic eye drops. Only the best for my son."
"Ugh, I hate eye drops. I blink too much and then I never know if enough's actually gotten into my eyes." Seth's mouth curls up. "It's a whole scene."
"Eh, I'll help you with 'em. I'm an old pro." His dad steps back again, finally seeming satisfied with his handiwork. "It'll be good to get home though." He looks away. "I know Mom's eager to see you."
Seth eyes him with his one eye capable of eyeing. "You talk to her?"
"Yeah, while you were uh,...while I was out in the waiting room."
"She okay?"
"She's okay," his dad says, but it's delivered in his That's not for you to concern yourself withvoice, so it could mean anything. "I mean, she's worried about you of course, and she feels really bad about what happened, but she'll be okay." His dad gives him a searching look. "Does that feel okay, going home?"
CPS interview, part two, apparently.
"Yeah, of course." Seth juts his chin at him. "So like, regular feeling really bad about what happened, or 'finally getting me a car' feeling bad about what happened?"
ooo
Sandy tucks the white paper bag from the pharmacy in the center console and buckles his seat belt.
Seth has the sun visor flipped down and is turning his head this way and that as he assesses himself in the little mirror.
"Do you think I can get away with telling Alex that I got into a bar fight?" His face scrunches up.
"Where is Alex these days?" Sandy asks. "You didn't wanna invite her to Chrismukkah?"
"She's away for the holidays." Seth flips the visor up as Sandy pulls out of the parking lot. "But I'm not sure she's really the family holiday type anyway." He snorts. "I've somehow kind of recovered from your surprise visit the other night; I'm not sure the timing is right for her to see me in a yarmulclause."
"But you lovethe holidays," Sandy says, sounding troubled. "Any girl worth your time has to be someone you can be yourself around."
"I don't think 'myself' is that appealing to a girl like that. She says she likes that I'm a nice guy, but I still doubt she's that impressed that I had to be picked up from a sleepover by my dad."
"Speaking of which, I hope there haven't been any more sleepovers." Sandy makes sure to include a warning in his tone of voice.
"Definitely not." Seth snickers. "I more than learned my lesson last time. We are a strictly curfew-abiding couple now." He pauses. "I mean, we abide by my curfew. She doesn't have a curfew, of course, what with the whole 'emancipated' thing."
"Of course." Having resumed his nightly check-ins with the boys before bed, he's pretty sure Seth is telling the truth, but Sandy isn't so sure that he won't pull something again the moment the dust settles and he sees his opportunity.
Maybe he'd learned his lesson, but maybe he also had something to prove.
It seemed to be a running theme, needing to prove something to Alex, needing to be someone different, needing to make up for whatever it was she had witnessed about that night at her apartment-Seth was still vague on those details.
And Sandy wonders if Seth has something he needs to prove to himself. He claimed that that night at Alex's apartment was a one-off, that it wasn't a big deal. He even referenced it with Sandy here and there, more proof that he was fine, that it was just a story about humiliating himself in front of a girl and needing to get himself back in her good graces, nothing more than that.
Seth was good at that, taking a thing and imposing a meaning on it and then saying it so often and in so many ways, but still with such nonchalance, that it was easy to get on board with his version of events, unless you really forced yourself to stop and think about it.
Sandy's gotten better at that over the years, seeing through the nonchalance, knowing when and how to force himself to stop and think about it, and he's just not so sure about this one.
ooo
They're a few blocks from home when Seth starts to picture it, his mom's face when she sees him, with the eyepatch and the giant pillow of gauze taped to his face, and his mom's face when she watches his dad wrestles the antibiotic eye drops into him twice a day, and then he remembers her face from that afternoon, as she knelt over him, crying and voice wavering and hitching as she apologized over and over for a thing she didn't even need to be sorry for.
It was hard to explain, how viscerally awful it felt to have her be so sorry to him and so upset with herself, hard to explain how small and rotten he felt doing that to her.
He just wants to forget the whole thing ever happened, but for that he needs her to forget it ever happened, and while he was 50-50 on whether she would ever actually directly acknowledge what had taken place, she wouldn't be able to fully forget about it with him blundering around the house and serving as a walking, talking, be-eyepatched reminder of everything that needed to be banished from their collective memory.
That was hard too, entering a room like that.
And he knew he'd see it on her face, see it in the way she'd look at him and then look away.
"Hey, uh, Dad?"
"Yeah." His dad glances at him and then back to the road.
They're a few blocks from home.
"Can we..." Seth breaks off, a shallow rough sound escaping his mouth. He hopes it wasn't audible. "Can we maybe not go home right away?"
"Is there somewhere you need to go?"
Seth wishes he had an answer prepared for that one.
"Or is it that you don't wanna see Mom yet?"
"No, no." Seth swallows, throat feeling tight and eyes watering, grateful to the bandage and the eyepatch for giving him some cover as his dad looks at him quizzically. "I do really want to see her. I swear I'm not mad or anything-"
"Seth, it's okay if you-"
"I'm not." Seth's voice rises a little, wanting his dad to just let things lie, just take the things he said at face value for once. "I think I just need a few minutes." He sniffs, glancing down as he does so and drawing back as the light catches his vest just right, illuminating the dark splotches on his own clothes.
It shouldn't be a surprise, but he guesses he hadn't even realized how much blood he'd gotten on him.
"I want to see her," Seth repeats. "I just don't know if I'm ready for everyone's...feelings, I guess."
"Okay."
"Okay?" Seth asks warily.
"Yeah." His dad shrugs like this all makes sense to him, although Seth has no idea if it does make any sense to him. "I get that that could feel like a lot right now."
They turn left where normally they'd go straight, and the car lapses into quiet as they meander down random streets.
The roads are pretty empty, not surprising given that it's Christmas.
"Mind if I put on some music?"
"Whatever you want."
"Now I know you must be brooding, giving me free reign over the music."
Seth manages a weak smile at that, and his dad turns on the radio.
"Shouldwe go anywhere in particular, or just keep driving around?"
"Not much open on Christmas," Seth points out.
"True."
Things go quiet again, and clearly his dad's engaging in some kind of brooding too, because Tevye is belting it out on the stereo and he's not belting it out right along with him, practically unheard of in a Cohen family vehicle.
"Egg rolls?" His dad comes out with a few minutes later.
"Hmm." Seth's eyebrows raise as he considers the idea. "Carrying on with at least one Jewish tradition?"
"ProudJewish tradition," his dad amends, mouth quirking intoa little smile. "So whaddyasay?"
"It might be nice to be amongst our people," Seth muses, fiddling with the plastic medical bracelet looped loosely around his wrist.
"So egg rolls?"
Seth doesn't have to look over to know that his dad's little smile is turning into an excited grin, knowing he was getting close to closing the deal.
"Egg rolls," Seth agrees.
"A proud tradition, my son."
"You're gonna tell me all about it now, aren't you?"
"Oh yes. That's part of the tradition too."
"Well, we wouldn't want to disrespect tradition, now would we?"
"That's the spirit, son."
His dad flicks the turn signal and Seth settles back in his seat to hear all about it.