Gay Band AU ficlets/snippets
Okay, so possibly most importantly, I'm not dead. Haven't been writing a lot because of meatspace stuff, but I do have these to post. And the second one has footnotes and holy crap I hope they work this time. (they did!)
These are all in the Gay Band AU, original found here, and they're all rated PG at best, and I've put them in chronological order. The original gayband story took place in about April or May of 2011, for reference. Warning for excessive legalese in the second one, and a brief reference to suicide/gay-bashing in the third.
--
Oh. Oh. This was so not fair.
Chris had been out of law school for two years, working with the public defender's office the whole time, and this was the first case of his to make it all the way to trial where he got to sit first chair. He was already nervous as hell, despite having done mock trial for years and having taken trial practice and advanced trial practice and--well, frankly, it seemed his entire life had been prep for being a trial lawyer, complete with jury. And this was just an aggravated-misdemeanor case, but prosecution had decided to play dueling expert witnesses with him. Chris had found a Dr. Mark Piper, a former cardiac surgeon with solid credentials who felt confident in saying that a heart attack could have caused these particular symptoms which could have caused the defendant to swerve wildly. Therefore there was no intent, a requisite of this particular statute.
The prosecution had replied with a disclosure of the resume of their own expert witness, a Philip J. Boyce who had apparently graduated from medical school a mere six years previous, also a cardiac surgeon, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, list of publications, blah blah blah. Dr. Piper had gravitas and was believable no matter what, although Chris felt fairly confident about the doctor's testimony. No one only six years out of med school was going to have that.
Oh, no; Dr. Boyce had something else altogether, as Chris discovered when the prosecution called him to the witness stand.
Good god, the man looked like a movie star.
Normally Chris prided himself on being professional at work; he didn't ogle the secretaries (easy, of course, since they were mostly female) and if maybe he noticed some of the deputies in their tailored uniforms, well, he never let it show on his face. But damn, it was difficult with a witness who looked like that on the stand. Dark hair, startlingly-blue eyes--well, shit.
He knew he should be paying attention to every word of the doctor's testimony so he could cross-examine him properly (he'd love to cross-examine him in Conference Room B, maybe--no, stop it) but it was so difficult. So damn difficult. He hoped that his second chair was taking copious notes.
***
It was only a two-day trial, fortunately, and Chris prepared to deliver his closing while painfully aware that, for some reason, the prosecution's expert witness had decided to stay to watch the closings. He'd expected Dr. Boyce to stay during Dr. Piper's testimony--lawyers often kept experts around to decipher the other side's expert--but Piper had finished that morning and left, and yet Boyce was still sitting at the prosecution table.
Well, all right. Chris had always been good at this, good at talking to people, good at convincing everyone that he was right and there was no way the other person could be. Time for the show.
***
The jury deliberated for a whopping thirty minutes before returning a 'not guilty' verdict, and Chris put his hand on his client's arm before he could stand up and whoop out his joy. "Later," Chris said quietly.
When all the papers were signed, Chris turned to shake the prosecutor's hand, and discovered that, again inexplicably, Dr. Goddamn Movie Star Boyce was still there. "Good trial, James," Chris said. "Gonna appeal?"
James Komack laughed. "Oh, probably not. This was your first trial, wasn't it?"
"First full trial as first chair, yeah," Chris said. "And now I'm 1-0."
"Congrats," Komack said, and turned to collect his papers and files.
Chris did the same, collecting the copies of exhibits and the documents and the five random pens that appeared from beneath his copy of the Iowa Rules of Criminal Procedure. One of them rolled off the table and Chris dove to catch it, but missed. However, someone else caught it and held it out to him, and Chris looked up to see the blue, blue eyes of Dr. Philip J. Boyce. "Thanks," Chris said, a long moment later, belatedly taking the pen.
Dr. Boyce smiled. "No problem," he said, and pulled a business card out of his pocket. "Here. I don't want to get pegged as a prosecution expert. Call me if you need a witness."
"Sure," Chris said, taking the card, and coughed, his throat inexplicably dry. "Uh. My card." He patted his pockets until he found one, corners slightly bent, and held it out. "So you remember who I am. If I call. I mean."
"I probably won't forget," Dr. Boyce said, with a half smile. "See you around."
Chris nodded, and Dr. Boyce turned and left.
He watched the doctor's backside as he walked away for a moment, and then frowned. Was that flirting? It felt like flirting, but who the hell got cruised by the other side's expert witness in a courtroom where random people were still milling around? It might have been 1989 but that didn't mean that Des Moines was exactly a gay utopia. Was he giving off gay vibes? He looked down at his suit--navy blue pinstripe, with a plain blue tie. No, nothing rainbow-colored about his person. And Dr. Boyce hadn't exactly given off gay vibes, unless one considered that the man was simply too gorgeous to be straight. No, probably not flirting. Oh well. He sighed, and then looked at the card in his hand. Standard business card, blah blah. He turned it over on a whim, and saw, in blocky, all-caps handwriting: Or if you don't need an expert: 555-4736.
Oh. Oh.
Well, shit.
--
Christopher Pike opened the door of the Public Defender Suite in the Polk County Courthouse and greeted Marla, the clerk. "Hey, Marla. What's new?"
"Good morning, Chris," she said. "It's you and Liz and Steve today on arraignments, but Steve has a student with him and is only doing the out-of-custody clients."
Chris groaned. That meant that he and Liz were splitting the misdemeanor in-custody docket: usually about a dozen people who qualified for a free defense lawyer provided by the courts. Since it was Monday morning, most of them had been cooling their heels in jail for the entire weekend, and today they would appear for the first time before a judge and plead either guilty or not guilty. "All right. Where are the printouts?"
"I split 'em already," Marla said. "Top or bottom?"
"You asking about my weekend or which stack of papers I want?" Chris asked, smirking.
Marla rolled her eyes and handed him one of the stacks. "TMI, Chris."
The smirk faded into a smile as he flipped through the pages. "DOC, DOC, open bottle, OWI, OWI (1)--yeah, okay, standard weekend fare. Anyone in the conference rooms yet?"
"One, two, and three are in A, B, and C. Do you want a deputy with you?"
"No, I'll be fine. Thanks, Marla." He dumped his briefcase and overcoat into one of the offices, found a pen and his folder of forms, and headed across the hallway to the courtroom.
"Hi, Chris. Haven't seen you for a while." James Komack was prosecuting this morning; he had a student next to him, a young Asian man.
"I've been doing trials mostly," Chris said. "You guys just won't give me any deals, so I've been letting the good people of Iowa decide."
Komack laughed. "What files do you need?"
"Oh, let's start with--" Chris checked his printouts. "McCoy, Nathanson, and Peters."
"Hikaru, you got those?"
The student nodded, and pulled out three file folders, handing them to Chris.
"Thanks," Chris said, and the student nodded again. He headed for the other side of the room, quickly scanning the files. A DOC, and both OWIs. Okay.
Smiling at the bailiff, he passed through the metal detector into the back hallway, to go to the in-custody conference rooms.
The bailiff unlocked Conference Room A; Chris entered and tried, very hard, not to wrinkle his nose. He didn't mind doing arraignments but being stuck in a small conference room with someone who had been in jail all weekend--and who had probably been drunk when he went in--wasn't exactly a picnic. This defendant--McCoy, Leonard Horatio and who on earth was stuck with that name in this day and age?--was in on a DOC, offer of 30 days stayed one year pending no new charges, mmf, etc. (2) Well, that was pretty shitty for a guy in jail for the first time in his life. Yeah, he'd be working this one down. He didn't read the police report; he'd do that after he got the guy's story from him.
"Mr. McCoy?" Chris asked, looking at the orange-jumpsuited man with his head in his hands sitting at the small table.
"Dr. McCoy," the man growled without looking up.
"Fine. Dr. McCoy, I'm Christopher Pike, and--"
"You lockin' me up or bustin' me out?" Dr. McCoy still didn't look up.
"--I'm with the public defender's office. I'll be representing you today."
"Okay, so bustin' me out." Dr. McCoy finally looked up. His eyes were red and bloodshot; he had about three days' worth of stubble, and his hair was a bird's nest, but Chris thought he might be in his late twenties or early thirties. "What do I have to do?"
"Well, I've got some questions for you first." He sat down on the other side of the table and pulled out a client intake form and a pen. "We'll start with the basics."
He got the information out of Dr. McCoy fairly easily. The man was twenty-eight, from Atlanta originally, had a medical degree from Johns Hopkins (he had to mention that to Phil), currently unemployed, and--this part surprised Chris a little--owed epic amounts of child support due to a recent divorce. So recent that a final order hadn't been issued, but Dr. McCoy was able to rattle off the number of the temporary order in Georgia. Chris would call for confirmation before the hearing if he needed to, but hopefully he wouldn't need to.
"Look," Dr. McCoy said. "I'm a trauma surgeon, or I was pretty recently. My damn ex-wife's father got my license suspended for completely spurious reasons. Yeah, I got drunk off my ass in a bar, but if there's a charge on my record, I ain't never going to get reinstated."
The juxtaposition of "spurious" and "I ain't never" amused Chris for a moment, but he said, "Yeah, I know. Which bar?"
He watched McCoy's gaze drop briefly to Chris's left hand before looking back up, defiantly, and saying, "The Blazing Saddle."
Okay, maybe he isn't straight, Chris thought, amused, but didn't let it show on his face. He made a notation on the paper and said, "All right, well, tell me what happened." It figures: the one Friday I don't check in with Mike, there's a damn fight and I have to bust out a Johns Hopkins-educated trauma surgeon.
It was pretty much what he thought: one of the other patrons had started a fight and McCoy had gotten caught up in it because of proximity. Chris flipped through the police report and found that it actually lined up fairly well with what McCoy had said except--ahh. "Yeah," Chris said. "I'm going to go talk to the prosecutor and see what I can get you. It might take a few minutes."
"I got nowhere to go," Dr. McCoy said, rolling his eyes.
* * *
"Child support?" Chris said in a furious whisper. "You're trying to put this guy on paper because he owes child support arrearage (3) in a different state? Of course he owes child support. No smart person pays a cent without a support order in place, and if they were separated for a while before the divorce, he's going to come in with at least a few months' worth of arrearage." God, he hated lawyers who thought they knew something about types of law they'd never practiced. Public defenders didn't do much in the way of child support, but he'd been handling queer-related custody cases pro bono for years.
He sighed. "This is the first time he's ever been involved with the criminal justice system. He's a genius--managed to graduate from Ole Miss at twenty, got through med school at a top-10 school and residencies in record time, and has been a practicing trauma surgeon for years. What on earth were you thinking, offering him a stay of ex (4)?"
"What are you gunning for, Chris?" Komack asked, with a glance at his clerk, who was watching avidly. "You want me to dismiss this?"
"Of course I want you to dismiss it," Chris said. "It's my job. Look, he's got four days' jail credit now. He's not going to plead guilty because he'd like to get his damn license back. And don't try to give me a CFD (5) either, because it's still probation."
Komack sighed. "Chris--"
"And," Chris said, pulling out the ace in his sleeve, "it's in the police report that Mike said that he hadn't started it and was only trying to protect himself. You know what Mike's like on the stand." Big, imposing, and frighteningly believable--he'd testified for Chris multiple times in the past.
"Oh, hell," Komack said, and scribbled in the file. "Let's get him out of here."
"Thanks, James," Chris said, and allowed himself a small smile.
* * *
An hour later, a stunned Dr. McCoy (wearing street clothes and holding his personal effects in a plastic bag) shook Chris's hand and said, "I can't thank you enough."
"No trouble," Chris said. "It's my job. This isn't, though--" He dug in his pocket until he found one of Phil's business cards, mixed in with his own. "Dr. Philip Boyce, cardiac surgeon at Mercy Medical Center. Also my husband. Give him a call."
McCoy did a classic double-take, and Chris laughed. "Iowa has same-sex marriage, Dr. McCoy. Not everyone wearing a wedding band is straight."
"Yeah, I guess not," Dr. McCoy muttered under his breath. "You don't do this for all your clients, do you?" he said in a normal tone.
"I don't see doctors in here very often," Chris said. "I've got another six hours of work to do. You call Phil; obviously you'll tell him I sent you."
"Yes, I--"
"No, really," Chris said, able to spot that lie from fifty paces. "Call him."
"All right," McCoy said, annoyed, and turned on his heel and stalked away.
Chris just shook his head.
* * *
He supposed he really shouldn't have been surprised to come home to find McCoy in his living room.
"Hi," Phil said, and stood to kiss Chris. "I told him he could have the spare bedroom tonight."
"How many damn kids are we going to adopt?" Chris asked with a sigh. "I don't suppose you play an instrument?"
Phil just laughed.
--
Footnotes:
(1) DOC = Disorderly conduct; open bottle = consuming alcohol from an open bottle in public; OWI = operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (other states call them DWIs or DUIs).
(2) Disorderly conduct, probation with thirty days of jail time hanging over his head for one year, the conditions of the probation being no new charges and payment of the mandatory minimum fine (usually $50).
(3) On paper = on probation. Child support arrearage = money owed for months he didn't pay.
(4) Stay of execution, the technical name for the offer.
(5) Continuance for dismissal; probation without a plea of guilty for one year. At the end of the year, if the defendant has met all the conditions of probation, the charge is dismissed.
--
Phil and McCoy were eating lunch together in the third-floor staff lounge; it was one of the rare days when McCoy was on a day shift in the ER, and even though it was 2:30, it was the first time either had gotten to sit down that day. McCoy was chasing a few stray noodles from his reheated spaghetti around in his tupperware, and Phil was contemplating whether he should finish his chips or just throw them out when they both heard, from the nearby nurses' station, "Awwww, that's so gay."
McCoy flinched, and Phil rolled his eyes. Some things just weren't worth fighting, especially after a large roast beef sandwich. But before he could regret not fighting it--as Chris constantly reminded him, every little teaspoon helped--he heard, in an acid tone, "What, is your extra shift wearing a rainbow feather boa and marching in Capital City Pride?"
McCoy bit his lip, and Phil pressed a fist against his mouth so as not to laugh. Those were the not-so-dulcet tones of Christine Chapel, one of the shift leaders and possibly the best surgical nurse in the hospital. Just to make everything better, she continued. "You know what else is gay? About ten percent of the population, which means ten percent of the patients here. That includes a young man we just sent up to the psych ward, a couple weeks after Dr. Boyce and I repaired a hole in his aorta. You know why that hole was there? Because enough people told him that being gay was a bad thing that he thought that being dead would be better."
She paused for a moment, and even though he couldn't see her face, Phil could picture the look on it. She continued a moment later. "Now, I'm not going to tell you that you can't use that word in that way, but I will tell you that using 'gay' as a pejorative is small-minded and unimaginative, in addition to being insulting to an awful lot of people, and I will tell you that people who use 'gay' as a pejorative are responsible for a culture that contributes to that young man's suicide attempt. Now go home before I make you go change catheters all shift. And yes, you still have to work Friday evening."
The nurse who had been on the receiving end of the lecture mumbled something Phil couldn't hear and walked away.
"I want to bake her a cake," Phil breathed.
"Pecan pie," McCoy countered.
"Raspberry cheesecake," Phil said.
"Peach cobbler, with real Chilton County peaches."
"How about an entire turkey dinner?" Phil asked, and stood up. "Nurse Chapel, can you come in here for a minute?"
She appeared a moment later. "Oh, Dr. Boyce. I didn't know you were in here. I, uh, hope I didn't cross any lines. I mean--"
"You didn't," he said. "Did you have plans for Thanksgiving?"
"I--What?" she asked.
"Thanksgiving. Holiday coming up in a couple weeks, turkey, pumpkin pie?" Phil said. "A bunch of us are getting together at my place for food. You're welcome to come. Two o'clock? You don't have to bring anything."
"Dr. Boyce, sir, I--"
"Nurse Chapel, my husband is a lawyer, and I know a passionate defense when I hear one. Please?" He raised his eyebrows at her and tried to smile winningly.
"We'll see," she said, and smiled back.
--
Later, while everyone was sitting around with food coma, Jim appeared to have contracted a case of wanderlust. He'd consumed as much food as everyone else, or maybe more, and certainly enough beer to render a lesser man comatose, but Phil watched him wander from the family room to the kitchen, and to the front hallway, and then the dining room, and back into the kitchen, and then he disappeared for a moment, probably to the formal living room. A couple minutes later, Phil heard Jim play a few notes on the piano, and then, completely unexpectedly, Jim started playing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker.
What the hell? Phil shrugged off Chris's arm, stood up, stepped over Cait and around Spockton and Nyota, and strode into the living room. "James Tiberius Kirk," he said. "What on earth are you doing?"
"Uh," Jim said, his hands stilling. "Playing piano?"
"You've been wandering in and out of this house for months and you never told me you can play."
Jim shrugged. "You never asked."
Phil glared at him. "I'm sure Chris did."
"Not my fault if he didn't tell you."
I'll kill him later, Phil thought. "Do you read music?" he asked instead.
Jim nodded.
"Get up."
"What?" he asked, but moved obediently.
Phil rifled through the music stored in the piano bench, and then pulled out a book with Christmas bulbs on the cover. "Top, I'm guessing?"
"Versatile," Jim said, flashing a shit-eating grin.
Phil smacked him lightly on the back of the head. "Sit down, kid, and play."
Jim looked at the music on the stand and laughed. He sat down on half of the bench, leaving room for Phil, and set his hands on the keys. "You start, old man."
"Shut up, or I'm going to take it double speed." Phil sat on the other half of the bench and started playing the proper, piano-four-hands version of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.
Back in the other room, Cait quipped, "Because, really, the holiday season isn't the holiday season without a couple of queer men playing a song about fairies written by a fairy, right?"
Everyone groaned.
These are all in the Gay Band AU, original found here, and they're all rated PG at best, and I've put them in chronological order. The original gayband story took place in about April or May of 2011, for reference. Warning for excessive legalese in the second one, and a brief reference to suicide/gay-bashing in the third.
--
Oh. Oh. This was so not fair.
Chris had been out of law school for two years, working with the public defender's office the whole time, and this was the first case of his to make it all the way to trial where he got to sit first chair. He was already nervous as hell, despite having done mock trial for years and having taken trial practice and advanced trial practice and--well, frankly, it seemed his entire life had been prep for being a trial lawyer, complete with jury. And this was just an aggravated-misdemeanor case, but prosecution had decided to play dueling expert witnesses with him. Chris had found a Dr. Mark Piper, a former cardiac surgeon with solid credentials who felt confident in saying that a heart attack could have caused these particular symptoms which could have caused the defendant to swerve wildly. Therefore there was no intent, a requisite of this particular statute.
The prosecution had replied with a disclosure of the resume of their own expert witness, a Philip J. Boyce who had apparently graduated from medical school a mere six years previous, also a cardiac surgeon, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, list of publications, blah blah blah. Dr. Piper had gravitas and was believable no matter what, although Chris felt fairly confident about the doctor's testimony. No one only six years out of med school was going to have that.
Oh, no; Dr. Boyce had something else altogether, as Chris discovered when the prosecution called him to the witness stand.
Good god, the man looked like a movie star.
Normally Chris prided himself on being professional at work; he didn't ogle the secretaries (easy, of course, since they were mostly female) and if maybe he noticed some of the deputies in their tailored uniforms, well, he never let it show on his face. But damn, it was difficult with a witness who looked like that on the stand. Dark hair, startlingly-blue eyes--well, shit.
He knew he should be paying attention to every word of the doctor's testimony so he could cross-examine him properly (he'd love to cross-examine him in Conference Room B, maybe--no, stop it) but it was so difficult. So damn difficult. He hoped that his second chair was taking copious notes.
***
It was only a two-day trial, fortunately, and Chris prepared to deliver his closing while painfully aware that, for some reason, the prosecution's expert witness had decided to stay to watch the closings. He'd expected Dr. Boyce to stay during Dr. Piper's testimony--lawyers often kept experts around to decipher the other side's expert--but Piper had finished that morning and left, and yet Boyce was still sitting at the prosecution table.
Well, all right. Chris had always been good at this, good at talking to people, good at convincing everyone that he was right and there was no way the other person could be. Time for the show.
***
The jury deliberated for a whopping thirty minutes before returning a 'not guilty' verdict, and Chris put his hand on his client's arm before he could stand up and whoop out his joy. "Later," Chris said quietly.
When all the papers were signed, Chris turned to shake the prosecutor's hand, and discovered that, again inexplicably, Dr. Goddamn Movie Star Boyce was still there. "Good trial, James," Chris said. "Gonna appeal?"
James Komack laughed. "Oh, probably not. This was your first trial, wasn't it?"
"First full trial as first chair, yeah," Chris said. "And now I'm 1-0."
"Congrats," Komack said, and turned to collect his papers and files.
Chris did the same, collecting the copies of exhibits and the documents and the five random pens that appeared from beneath his copy of the Iowa Rules of Criminal Procedure. One of them rolled off the table and Chris dove to catch it, but missed. However, someone else caught it and held it out to him, and Chris looked up to see the blue, blue eyes of Dr. Philip J. Boyce. "Thanks," Chris said, a long moment later, belatedly taking the pen.
Dr. Boyce smiled. "No problem," he said, and pulled a business card out of his pocket. "Here. I don't want to get pegged as a prosecution expert. Call me if you need a witness."
"Sure," Chris said, taking the card, and coughed, his throat inexplicably dry. "Uh. My card." He patted his pockets until he found one, corners slightly bent, and held it out. "So you remember who I am. If I call. I mean."
"I probably won't forget," Dr. Boyce said, with a half smile. "See you around."
Chris nodded, and Dr. Boyce turned and left.
He watched the doctor's backside as he walked away for a moment, and then frowned. Was that flirting? It felt like flirting, but who the hell got cruised by the other side's expert witness in a courtroom where random people were still milling around? It might have been 1989 but that didn't mean that Des Moines was exactly a gay utopia. Was he giving off gay vibes? He looked down at his suit--navy blue pinstripe, with a plain blue tie. No, nothing rainbow-colored about his person. And Dr. Boyce hadn't exactly given off gay vibes, unless one considered that the man was simply too gorgeous to be straight. No, probably not flirting. Oh well. He sighed, and then looked at the card in his hand. Standard business card, blah blah. He turned it over on a whim, and saw, in blocky, all-caps handwriting: Or if you don't need an expert: 555-4736.
Oh. Oh.
Well, shit.
--
Christopher Pike opened the door of the Public Defender Suite in the Polk County Courthouse and greeted Marla, the clerk. "Hey, Marla. What's new?"
"Good morning, Chris," she said. "It's you and Liz and Steve today on arraignments, but Steve has a student with him and is only doing the out-of-custody clients."
Chris groaned. That meant that he and Liz were splitting the misdemeanor in-custody docket: usually about a dozen people who qualified for a free defense lawyer provided by the courts. Since it was Monday morning, most of them had been cooling their heels in jail for the entire weekend, and today they would appear for the first time before a judge and plead either guilty or not guilty. "All right. Where are the printouts?"
"I split 'em already," Marla said. "Top or bottom?"
"You asking about my weekend or which stack of papers I want?" Chris asked, smirking.
Marla rolled her eyes and handed him one of the stacks. "TMI, Chris."
The smirk faded into a smile as he flipped through the pages. "DOC, DOC, open bottle, OWI, OWI (1)--yeah, okay, standard weekend fare. Anyone in the conference rooms yet?"
"One, two, and three are in A, B, and C. Do you want a deputy with you?"
"No, I'll be fine. Thanks, Marla." He dumped his briefcase and overcoat into one of the offices, found a pen and his folder of forms, and headed across the hallway to the courtroom.
"Hi, Chris. Haven't seen you for a while." James Komack was prosecuting this morning; he had a student next to him, a young Asian man.
"I've been doing trials mostly," Chris said. "You guys just won't give me any deals, so I've been letting the good people of Iowa decide."
Komack laughed. "What files do you need?"
"Oh, let's start with--" Chris checked his printouts. "McCoy, Nathanson, and Peters."
"Hikaru, you got those?"
The student nodded, and pulled out three file folders, handing them to Chris.
"Thanks," Chris said, and the student nodded again. He headed for the other side of the room, quickly scanning the files. A DOC, and both OWIs. Okay.
Smiling at the bailiff, he passed through the metal detector into the back hallway, to go to the in-custody conference rooms.
The bailiff unlocked Conference Room A; Chris entered and tried, very hard, not to wrinkle his nose. He didn't mind doing arraignments but being stuck in a small conference room with someone who had been in jail all weekend--and who had probably been drunk when he went in--wasn't exactly a picnic. This defendant--McCoy, Leonard Horatio and who on earth was stuck with that name in this day and age?--was in on a DOC, offer of 30 days stayed one year pending no new charges, mmf, etc. (2) Well, that was pretty shitty for a guy in jail for the first time in his life. Yeah, he'd be working this one down. He didn't read the police report; he'd do that after he got the guy's story from him.
"Mr. McCoy?" Chris asked, looking at the orange-jumpsuited man with his head in his hands sitting at the small table.
"Dr. McCoy," the man growled without looking up.
"Fine. Dr. McCoy, I'm Christopher Pike, and--"
"You lockin' me up or bustin' me out?" Dr. McCoy still didn't look up.
"--I'm with the public defender's office. I'll be representing you today."
"Okay, so bustin' me out." Dr. McCoy finally looked up. His eyes were red and bloodshot; he had about three days' worth of stubble, and his hair was a bird's nest, but Chris thought he might be in his late twenties or early thirties. "What do I have to do?"
"Well, I've got some questions for you first." He sat down on the other side of the table and pulled out a client intake form and a pen. "We'll start with the basics."
He got the information out of Dr. McCoy fairly easily. The man was twenty-eight, from Atlanta originally, had a medical degree from Johns Hopkins (he had to mention that to Phil), currently unemployed, and--this part surprised Chris a little--owed epic amounts of child support due to a recent divorce. So recent that a final order hadn't been issued, but Dr. McCoy was able to rattle off the number of the temporary order in Georgia. Chris would call for confirmation before the hearing if he needed to, but hopefully he wouldn't need to.
"Look," Dr. McCoy said. "I'm a trauma surgeon, or I was pretty recently. My damn ex-wife's father got my license suspended for completely spurious reasons. Yeah, I got drunk off my ass in a bar, but if there's a charge on my record, I ain't never going to get reinstated."
The juxtaposition of "spurious" and "I ain't never" amused Chris for a moment, but he said, "Yeah, I know. Which bar?"
He watched McCoy's gaze drop briefly to Chris's left hand before looking back up, defiantly, and saying, "The Blazing Saddle."
Okay, maybe he isn't straight, Chris thought, amused, but didn't let it show on his face. He made a notation on the paper and said, "All right, well, tell me what happened." It figures: the one Friday I don't check in with Mike, there's a damn fight and I have to bust out a Johns Hopkins-educated trauma surgeon.
It was pretty much what he thought: one of the other patrons had started a fight and McCoy had gotten caught up in it because of proximity. Chris flipped through the police report and found that it actually lined up fairly well with what McCoy had said except--ahh. "Yeah," Chris said. "I'm going to go talk to the prosecutor and see what I can get you. It might take a few minutes."
"I got nowhere to go," Dr. McCoy said, rolling his eyes.
* * *
"Child support?" Chris said in a furious whisper. "You're trying to put this guy on paper because he owes child support arrearage (3) in a different state? Of course he owes child support. No smart person pays a cent without a support order in place, and if they were separated for a while before the divorce, he's going to come in with at least a few months' worth of arrearage." God, he hated lawyers who thought they knew something about types of law they'd never practiced. Public defenders didn't do much in the way of child support, but he'd been handling queer-related custody cases pro bono for years.
He sighed. "This is the first time he's ever been involved with the criminal justice system. He's a genius--managed to graduate from Ole Miss at twenty, got through med school at a top-10 school and residencies in record time, and has been a practicing trauma surgeon for years. What on earth were you thinking, offering him a stay of ex (4)?"
"What are you gunning for, Chris?" Komack asked, with a glance at his clerk, who was watching avidly. "You want me to dismiss this?"
"Of course I want you to dismiss it," Chris said. "It's my job. Look, he's got four days' jail credit now. He's not going to plead guilty because he'd like to get his damn license back. And don't try to give me a CFD (5) either, because it's still probation."
Komack sighed. "Chris--"
"And," Chris said, pulling out the ace in his sleeve, "it's in the police report that Mike said that he hadn't started it and was only trying to protect himself. You know what Mike's like on the stand." Big, imposing, and frighteningly believable--he'd testified for Chris multiple times in the past.
"Oh, hell," Komack said, and scribbled in the file. "Let's get him out of here."
"Thanks, James," Chris said, and allowed himself a small smile.
* * *
An hour later, a stunned Dr. McCoy (wearing street clothes and holding his personal effects in a plastic bag) shook Chris's hand and said, "I can't thank you enough."
"No trouble," Chris said. "It's my job. This isn't, though--" He dug in his pocket until he found one of Phil's business cards, mixed in with his own. "Dr. Philip Boyce, cardiac surgeon at Mercy Medical Center. Also my husband. Give him a call."
McCoy did a classic double-take, and Chris laughed. "Iowa has same-sex marriage, Dr. McCoy. Not everyone wearing a wedding band is straight."
"Yeah, I guess not," Dr. McCoy muttered under his breath. "You don't do this for all your clients, do you?" he said in a normal tone.
"I don't see doctors in here very often," Chris said. "I've got another six hours of work to do. You call Phil; obviously you'll tell him I sent you."
"Yes, I--"
"No, really," Chris said, able to spot that lie from fifty paces. "Call him."
"All right," McCoy said, annoyed, and turned on his heel and stalked away.
Chris just shook his head.
* * *
He supposed he really shouldn't have been surprised to come home to find McCoy in his living room.
"Hi," Phil said, and stood to kiss Chris. "I told him he could have the spare bedroom tonight."
"How many damn kids are we going to adopt?" Chris asked with a sigh. "I don't suppose you play an instrument?"
Phil just laughed.
--
Footnotes:
(1) DOC = Disorderly conduct; open bottle = consuming alcohol from an open bottle in public; OWI = operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated (other states call them DWIs or DUIs).
(2) Disorderly conduct, probation with thirty days of jail time hanging over his head for one year, the conditions of the probation being no new charges and payment of the mandatory minimum fine (usually $50).
(3) On paper = on probation. Child support arrearage = money owed for months he didn't pay.
(4) Stay of execution, the technical name for the offer.
(5) Continuance for dismissal; probation without a plea of guilty for one year. At the end of the year, if the defendant has met all the conditions of probation, the charge is dismissed.
--
Phil and McCoy were eating lunch together in the third-floor staff lounge; it was one of the rare days when McCoy was on a day shift in the ER, and even though it was 2:30, it was the first time either had gotten to sit down that day. McCoy was chasing a few stray noodles from his reheated spaghetti around in his tupperware, and Phil was contemplating whether he should finish his chips or just throw them out when they both heard, from the nearby nurses' station, "Awwww, that's so gay."
McCoy flinched, and Phil rolled his eyes. Some things just weren't worth fighting, especially after a large roast beef sandwich. But before he could regret not fighting it--as Chris constantly reminded him, every little teaspoon helped--he heard, in an acid tone, "What, is your extra shift wearing a rainbow feather boa and marching in Capital City Pride?"
McCoy bit his lip, and Phil pressed a fist against his mouth so as not to laugh. Those were the not-so-dulcet tones of Christine Chapel, one of the shift leaders and possibly the best surgical nurse in the hospital. Just to make everything better, she continued. "You know what else is gay? About ten percent of the population, which means ten percent of the patients here. That includes a young man we just sent up to the psych ward, a couple weeks after Dr. Boyce and I repaired a hole in his aorta. You know why that hole was there? Because enough people told him that being gay was a bad thing that he thought that being dead would be better."
She paused for a moment, and even though he couldn't see her face, Phil could picture the look on it. She continued a moment later. "Now, I'm not going to tell you that you can't use that word in that way, but I will tell you that using 'gay' as a pejorative is small-minded and unimaginative, in addition to being insulting to an awful lot of people, and I will tell you that people who use 'gay' as a pejorative are responsible for a culture that contributes to that young man's suicide attempt. Now go home before I make you go change catheters all shift. And yes, you still have to work Friday evening."
The nurse who had been on the receiving end of the lecture mumbled something Phil couldn't hear and walked away.
"I want to bake her a cake," Phil breathed.
"Pecan pie," McCoy countered.
"Raspberry cheesecake," Phil said.
"Peach cobbler, with real Chilton County peaches."
"How about an entire turkey dinner?" Phil asked, and stood up. "Nurse Chapel, can you come in here for a minute?"
She appeared a moment later. "Oh, Dr. Boyce. I didn't know you were in here. I, uh, hope I didn't cross any lines. I mean--"
"You didn't," he said. "Did you have plans for Thanksgiving?"
"I--What?" she asked.
"Thanksgiving. Holiday coming up in a couple weeks, turkey, pumpkin pie?" Phil said. "A bunch of us are getting together at my place for food. You're welcome to come. Two o'clock? You don't have to bring anything."
"Dr. Boyce, sir, I--"
"Nurse Chapel, my husband is a lawyer, and I know a passionate defense when I hear one. Please?" He raised his eyebrows at her and tried to smile winningly.
"We'll see," she said, and smiled back.
--
Later, while everyone was sitting around with food coma, Jim appeared to have contracted a case of wanderlust. He'd consumed as much food as everyone else, or maybe more, and certainly enough beer to render a lesser man comatose, but Phil watched him wander from the family room to the kitchen, and to the front hallway, and then the dining room, and back into the kitchen, and then he disappeared for a moment, probably to the formal living room. A couple minutes later, Phil heard Jim play a few notes on the piano, and then, completely unexpectedly, Jim started playing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker.
What the hell? Phil shrugged off Chris's arm, stood up, stepped over Cait and around Spockton and Nyota, and strode into the living room. "James Tiberius Kirk," he said. "What on earth are you doing?"
"Uh," Jim said, his hands stilling. "Playing piano?"
"You've been wandering in and out of this house for months and you never told me you can play."
Jim shrugged. "You never asked."
Phil glared at him. "I'm sure Chris did."
"Not my fault if he didn't tell you."
I'll kill him later, Phil thought. "Do you read music?" he asked instead.
Jim nodded.
"Get up."
"What?" he asked, but moved obediently.
Phil rifled through the music stored in the piano bench, and then pulled out a book with Christmas bulbs on the cover. "Top, I'm guessing?"
"Versatile," Jim said, flashing a shit-eating grin.
Phil smacked him lightly on the back of the head. "Sit down, kid, and play."
Jim looked at the music on the stand and laughed. He sat down on half of the bench, leaving room for Phil, and set his hands on the keys. "You start, old man."
"Shut up, or I'm going to take it double speed." Phil sat on the other half of the bench and started playing the proper, piano-four-hands version of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.
Back in the other room, Cait quipped, "Because, really, the holiday season isn't the holiday season without a couple of queer men playing a song about fairies written by a fairy, right?"
Everyone groaned.