Secret Santa Gift for Bittersweet ...
Profiler: What About Now?
Author: kosmickway
Rating: G
Pairing: George/Grace friendship
A/N: Takes place fourth season. Takes some liberties with canon.
Summary: Why is George suddenly finding himself dependent on Oxycotin? And what is Grace going to do about it?
“What about now? What about today? What if you’re making me all that I was meant to be? What if our love never went away? What if it’s lost behind words we could never find?” -Daughtry, “What About Now”
“This broken heart can still survive with the touch of your grace.”
I’m too sensitive for my own good. My mother always said so. I cry at weddings and funerals, at sentimental Christmas specials, at really great musicals. When someone close to me hurts, I hurt too. And at the moment my two closest friends in the world- Grace and Rich- are in the midst of major emotional upheaval. That’s why I’m not paying attention to the road as I’m driving to work and why I nearly run over the kid on a skateboard.
One minute the road is clear, the next minute there’s this kid, helmet and knee pads on, thank God, just cruising down the street and as totally oblivious to me as I am to him. I slam on the brakes, steer hard to the left, which takes me out of the path of the kid and right into a damn street lamp.
The crunch of metal on concrete is sickening. The whole car jerks like it’s having a seizure and, despite wearing a seat belt, I get thrown rather violently against the driver’s side door. My head cracks against the window and I wonder idly if I haven’t broken it with my damn hard head. The car, too old to have air-bags, groans in protest and ceremoniously grinds itself to a halt with a wheeze.
The door of the house nearest the lamp post opens and a man comes rushing out, dressed for work in khaki trousers and a polo shirt. He has a cell phone to his ear, which must mean he’s calling an ambulance. I want to tell him not to bother but I’m not entirely sure that he shouldn’t bother since my entire bone structure feels like it’s been wrenched solidly out of its proper housing then rudely thrown back into shape again.
I’m fumbling with the seat belt, trying to undo it and get the door open but my hands don’t want to cooperate with me. They’re shaking just enough to keep me from unclasping the seat belt and that’s starting to piss me off considerably.
The guy opens the car door and kneels down next to it.
“You okay, buddy?”
“Not sure yet.” I give him what I hope is a fairly normal smile but from his face I can tell it looks more like a grimace. “Sorry about the lamp post,” I hear myself saying, ludicrously, as if he’s the person to apologize to.
“Are you kidding? That lamp post has seen worse accidents than this one.” The guy watches me trying to undo the seat belt which still won’t unlatch and says, “Hey, maybe you should wait for the paramedics.”
“I’m okay,” I insist, though I’m still not sure if I am or not.
“You weren’t talking and driving, were you?” he asks, eying the cell phone on my passenger seat. “They’ll cite you for that one.”
“No. Kid darted in front of me on his skate board.”
“Tad Thompson. Little fucker.” The guy shakes his head. “Pretty much everyone on the street has had to dodge that little daredevil at some point or another. Sorry you had to today.”
Sirens are getting closer. I wonder if any of the guys I know from APD will be responding. That reminds me of John, which reminds me of work, which reminds me that I’m going to be late and that I’d better call someone.
***
Grace answers the phone with a curt “Morgue.” I picture her standing at her desk with the phone cradled between her ear and her shoulder, hands already bloody with the first autopsy of the day.
“Grace, it’s George.”
“Bailey’s having a cow. He’s been wondering where the hell you are.”
“Atlanta General. I got in a car accident on the way to work.”
Her voice fills with worry. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’m okay. They’re just checking me out. But I need you to come get me- my car’s being towed.”
“Of course. I’ll be right there.”
And she is right there. Twenty minutes later she comes walking brusquely in, looking for me. When she sees me her face relaxes.
“Are you okay?” she asks, hugging me. She’s warm- running hot is natural for her with the pregnancy- and slightly tense under my hands.
“I’m okay,” I assure her. “Just scratches. I’m sore as hell.”
“You can bet that’ll get worse. Did they check you for concussion?” she asks, fingering the steri-strips that are holding closed the cut near my hairline.
“They do know what they’re doing here, Grace,” I remind her, amused. “Yes, they checked for concussion and whiplash and all of the usual car accident stuff.”
“You won’t mind if I check you myself though?”
“I get the feeling I don’t have a choice.”
“You don’t. I talked to Bailey. He knows you’re going home.”
Home. No. Not home. That’s the last place I want to be. I’m not ready to tell her that, though, so I use work as my excuse.
“Grace, I’m fine. I just want to get to work.”
“Tough. You had an accident, your car is totaled, and you’re going home.”
Her hard headed-ness, a trait I normally find completely endearing, if not just the tiniest bit frightening, is now just starting to get on my nerves.
“Grace, I’m going to work. I am okay. Seriously. And I don’t want to argue this with you. You’re not my mother.”
“Well, thank God for that,” she snaps, her own temper starting to visibly sizzle. “Look, as your doctor, I’m advising you to take the rest of the day off, go home, and-“ She cuts herself off mid word and shakes her head. “You’re not listening to a word I’m saying, are you?”
“I hear you. I just don’t agree. Look, let’s compromise. Half a day and I’ll check back in with you. We’ve got too much going on for me to take off.”
“Of all the stubborn, hard-headed, generally insufferable people I know-“
”You love me the most. You’re just mad that you can’t push me around.” I give her a quick squeeze around the shoulders to let her know I’m kidding. “Come on, let’s head back to the office. I’ll even let you put me under the X-ray machine once we get there.”
Grace laughs and pulls out her keys. “Let’s go.”
***
I hate to admit it but Grace is right. By 2:00 I’m so sore that sitting down is generally agonizing. Even though I’d managed to talk Grace out of running me underneath the X-ray machine, I’m wondering now if that was the best idea. Every part of my body aches.
Grace has the good sense not to say I told you so. She just walks into Bailey’s office, then walks back out and gestures for me to head for the elevator while she gets her purse.
Within twenty minutes we’re at my apartment and I’m waiting for the shoe to drop. She’s going to notice something’s wrong the moment she gets into the apartment and I’m not looking forward to explaining it all to her. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone- hell, I’m trying hard not to mention it to myself!- but it’s obviously come time for me to tell it to someone. There’s no way she isn’t going to notice that half the furniture, the drafting table, and the framed blueprints on the walls are gone.
If she notices, she doesn’t say anything, at least not at first. She bustles around and settles me on the sofa, grabbing pillows, a blanket, my cell phone, a bottle of prescription pain meds, a glass of water and the TV remote. She’s fussing around me the same way I imagine she fusses over Jayson when he’s sick or injured, all those motherly instincts kicking in to shower down on me.
I watch her as she moves restlessly around the living room. She’s five months along but barely showing, the result of constantly being on her feet day in and day out, I imagine. We haven’t talked at length about this new pregnancy, nor about her marriage and its current state, but I’ve been able to tell from the lines around her mouth and eyes lately that she’s tense and tired, unhappy and unwilling to show it.
“Grace, sit down,” I finally tell her from my place on the sofa. “I’m fine.”
“Take some of the Vicodin and I will.”
“Sit down first and I’ll take the pill.”
She makes a face at me but finally sinks down onto my favorite armchair. “If I get stuck you’re going to have to help me up,” she warns.
And then she takes a good look around for the first time and her eyes narrow. “George-“
”Go ahead. Ask”
“Did you redecorate or are there a lot of things missing from this living room?”
“Things are missing,” I reply. “All of Rich’s things.”
“But why-“ And then she catches it- she’s not stupid- and she raises a hand to her mouth. “Oh God. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’ve got enough to worry about,” I reply, gesturing at her stomach.
“And you think I can’t multi-task? Jesus, doll, how long has this been going on?”
“He moved out last week.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” she explodes.
“What could you have done?”
“I could have helped you. At the very least we could have gone out and gotten shitfaced- well, you could have. I could have watched.”
“Wasn’t going to help anything.” I know. I tried it already.
“Since when doesn’t a vodka help?”
“Being left by the man you’re in love with isn’t any easy thing to fix, Grace.”
Grace sighs softly at that. “I know that. Believe me, I do.”
I could kick myself. Of course she knows. Her shithead husband just left her for another woman, literally pregnant and metaphorically barefoot. I shift on the couch to see her better. “You haven’t told me much about it.”
“You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
I fiddle with the remote because this is hard, harder than it should be when Grace is my best friend who shares everything. That still doesn’t make it any easier to say. “He couldn’t handle it any more ... the hours, the pressure of me always having to work a case, the days I was out in the field and he was home alone. He said it always felt like my mind was somewhere else.”
“And he was right,” Grace murmurs.
“Yeah, he was right. He was also right when he said I wasn’t good to him.”
“Of course you were good to him. But he needed more than you could give him. Is that about right?”
“Yeah, that’s about right. Is that what Morgan-?”
“Yeah,” Grace says. She touches her hand to her stomach. “That’s what Morgan said, too. Word for word. That and half a dozen accusations about being a bad mother.”
“He’s full of shit,” I tell her, instantly feeling my face start to flame with fury. “He’s got nothing to stand on there.”
Grace laughs sourly. “I am the woman who’s cutting open dead bodies instead of watching her son’s pre-school play.”
“Doesn’t make you a bad mother.”
“Doesn’t make me a good one either.”
I shake my head. “You’re too hard on yourself, Grace.”
“Says the man who claims he wasn’t good enough to his partner when we all know that you devoted your life to making Rich happy.”
“Well, it’s like you said, Grace, it’s the little things. The unveiling of the Marsden Center, the party at Atlanta General’s new children’s wing, the Architectural Digest dinner. I always fucked up one way or another. He just couldn’t take it anymore.”
Recalling it all now, the hurts, big and small, the fights, the recriminations- it’s all making me long for a drink. I reach for the water bottle instead and pop the Vicodin Grace has been eying for the last five minutes and swallow it down.
When it kicks in a few minutes later there’s nothing but blessed relief. The pain in my body vanishes, almost as if it had never been there, and the world starts to get hazy around the edges. Suddenly it doesn’t all seem like such a big deal anymore. I feel peaceful. I feel, thank God, numb.
***
That’s how it all started, the Vicodin haze that settled into an even mellower Oxycotin fog, a blanket softly muffling the edges of my world. That blanket felt good. It was the best thing in my life.
As Grace’s divorce grew more bitter and her pregnancy grew more complicated, we backed away from each other, tending to our own wounds, forgetting that helping each other was the best thing to do. The whole team backed away from one another, dividing among fault lines- Bailey began to attach to Congresswoman Karen Archer and John to his new girlfriend, Kate. Grace was fighting battles at home and Rachel was trying to tiptoe out of the mess that Joel Markes was making of her life. And me, I was lost in the heavy smothering folds of the Oxycotin blanket, the only thing that made Rich’s absence bearable.
It all came to a head when I fucked up. We were on a case in Yosemite and looking for a suspect. It had been a particularly bad day for me- the long flight had made my hip ache something fierce and I was missing Rich more than ever, especially here in Yosemite where we’d spent a week camping two summers ago. So I covered myself in the Oxycotin blanket and tried to shut out the world. My head was pleasantly foggy as I swam through data, digging up what Bailey wanted me to unearth. I delivered the data to him, no problem, and sat back to enjoy the sensation of being blissfully disconnected.
It was the wrong address. How I managed to give Bailey the wrong info I’ll never know but it figures- Murphy’s law, right?- that the address would belong to a gun-toting survivalist who went ape-shit on the team, hailing down bullets before anyone could react.
Gale force doesn’t even begin to describe the strength of Bailey Malone’s anger when his team is in danger. He’s so mad at me that for a moment I’m afraid he’s going to flat out fire me. And there’s John, not a violent man by any means, looking like he wants to pound me into a thousand tiny pieces because I managed to screw up in the biggest way possible. I was sent back to Atlanta on the next plane, Bailey’s scathing comments ringing in my ears.
The Oxycotin had long worn off by the time I made it back to Atlanta and I didn’t want to risk taking another out of the Altoids tin in my pocket. I’d have to deal with the headache on my own.
An agent walked upstairs with me. It was humiliating being escorted in a building where I’d always had free reign and even more so to be wearing a visitor’s pass instead of my usual credentials. I couldn’t even go in to my office on my own- an agent had to stand at the door and watch me. I started blindly grabbing things off my desk- CDs, PC magazine, fire-wires, all of the trappings of a tech guy’s life- all while fighting tears of shame.
There was a soft sound at the door and I knew it was Grace but I didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to see her. It was too humiliating that she see me like this. Bailey had already called to let her know what had happened- I’d heard him on the phone with her. It was Grace I didn’t want to face, not now, not barely suppressing the need for another pill, not with tears ready to spill over and shame flaming my cheeks.
She stepped closer and closer still until I finally had no choice but to turn around. And there she was, no recrimination on her face, no rebuke on her lips, just my best friend who took me in her arms and held me for a long moment, whispering, “It’s okay,” in my ear over and over again.
***
She came over later that night with Chinese from our favorite restaurant and a six pack of diet soda.
“No sense replacing one dependency with another,” she explained, gesturing at the soda. “Besides, I may just explode with envy if I see someone drinking while I can’t.”
She set the food out on the table, settled into a chair, and began picking through it with chopsticks. When she noticed I wasn’t eating, she gave me the evil eye, which, coming from Grace, could be quite evil indeed.
“You need to eat. I don’t care whether you think you’re hungry or not. Your body needs fuel. You’re going to start going through withdrawal here pretty soon and you need energy to fight that. So eat up.”
I decided to humor her rather than argue and put enough food on my plate to satisfy her.
“See, that is how I know something’s wrong,” she said in between bites. “You used to stuff your face more than any other person I knew.”
“I’m just not hungry.”
“It’s not just the damn pills that are doing this. Tell me what’s really going on.”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. That’s a big nothing, George, so big it launched you into pill popping. Spill, baby. What the hell is going on?”
“I can’t-“ I sighed. “It’s hard to explain this, Grace. Not because I can’t but because it’s you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘because it’s me’? Do you think there’s anything at all you can’t talk to me about?”
“Look, we’re both going through some major life fiascos here. And of the two of us I’d say that yours is a hell of a lot worse than mine is.”
She shot me a withering look. “It’s not a contest, honey. This-“ She gestured to her belly. “- This is normal. It’s not a fiasco yet. As to Morgan-“ She grew silent and shook her head. “That’s been a fiasco in the making ever since Jack nearly killed him three years ago. It’s just been building and building since then. Jayson staved it off for a while but this has been years in the making. I’m almost used to it by now.”
“Still I don’t feel right sitting here and telling you that the reason I’m popping pills is because I’m lonely and miss my lover when you’re pregnant and alone. That’s like crying over a tiny rainstorm to someone going through a hurricane. It doesn’t equate.”
“Losing Rich- George, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. Yeah, I’ve lost my husband to another woman. But Morgan and I have always- well, we’ve had trouble, at least from my point of view, for a long time now, maybe as far back as Zane’s death in Miami. But yours- it’s so sudden. I can’t even imagine how much it must hurt to have no warning.”
“If I’d read the signs correctly I would have known. But you know as well as I do that we get caught up in work and before you know it it’s been days since you’ve seen your family for anything more than ten minute intervals and a week since you’ve had dinner together. Rich gave me plenty of warning. I just wish I’d read the writing on the wall.”
Grace sighed. “You and me both, honey. You and me both.”
I finally took a bite of food. “What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. What are we going to do?”
“Well, we have limited options at this point. There’s no solace in the drink for either of us. No sex either. Definitely no drugs. Therapy might help. But at this point all I can think of is that we’re just going to have to suffer.”
“Which neither of us deserves.”
“I agree.” Grace sighed and chewed thoughtfully. “I suggest we start doing what we should have done from the start.”
“Which is?”
“Be there for each other a bit more and worry about ourselves a bit less. If that had been the case I would have noticed you were struggling a lot sooner.”
“And you? What can I do for you?”
She gave me a rueful smile. “Help me paint the nursery?”
And there it was, that way she had of always making me laugh. “You got it.”
Grace reached over the table and took my hand, which was starting to shake with withdrawal tremors. “We’ll get through this now. Count on it. Believe it.”
And somehow or another, I did.
END.
Author: kosmickway
Rating: G
Pairing: George/Grace friendship
A/N: Takes place fourth season. Takes some liberties with canon.
Summary: Why is George suddenly finding himself dependent on Oxycotin? And what is Grace going to do about it?
“What about now? What about today? What if you’re making me all that I was meant to be? What if our love never went away? What if it’s lost behind words we could never find?” -Daughtry, “What About Now”
“This broken heart can still survive with the touch of your grace.”
I’m too sensitive for my own good. My mother always said so. I cry at weddings and funerals, at sentimental Christmas specials, at really great musicals. When someone close to me hurts, I hurt too. And at the moment my two closest friends in the world- Grace and Rich- are in the midst of major emotional upheaval. That’s why I’m not paying attention to the road as I’m driving to work and why I nearly run over the kid on a skateboard.
One minute the road is clear, the next minute there’s this kid, helmet and knee pads on, thank God, just cruising down the street and as totally oblivious to me as I am to him. I slam on the brakes, steer hard to the left, which takes me out of the path of the kid and right into a damn street lamp.
The crunch of metal on concrete is sickening. The whole car jerks like it’s having a seizure and, despite wearing a seat belt, I get thrown rather violently against the driver’s side door. My head cracks against the window and I wonder idly if I haven’t broken it with my damn hard head. The car, too old to have air-bags, groans in protest and ceremoniously grinds itself to a halt with a wheeze.
The door of the house nearest the lamp post opens and a man comes rushing out, dressed for work in khaki trousers and a polo shirt. He has a cell phone to his ear, which must mean he’s calling an ambulance. I want to tell him not to bother but I’m not entirely sure that he shouldn’t bother since my entire bone structure feels like it’s been wrenched solidly out of its proper housing then rudely thrown back into shape again.
I’m fumbling with the seat belt, trying to undo it and get the door open but my hands don’t want to cooperate with me. They’re shaking just enough to keep me from unclasping the seat belt and that’s starting to piss me off considerably.
The guy opens the car door and kneels down next to it.
“You okay, buddy?”
“Not sure yet.” I give him what I hope is a fairly normal smile but from his face I can tell it looks more like a grimace. “Sorry about the lamp post,” I hear myself saying, ludicrously, as if he’s the person to apologize to.
“Are you kidding? That lamp post has seen worse accidents than this one.” The guy watches me trying to undo the seat belt which still won’t unlatch and says, “Hey, maybe you should wait for the paramedics.”
“I’m okay,” I insist, though I’m still not sure if I am or not.
“You weren’t talking and driving, were you?” he asks, eying the cell phone on my passenger seat. “They’ll cite you for that one.”
“No. Kid darted in front of me on his skate board.”
“Tad Thompson. Little fucker.” The guy shakes his head. “Pretty much everyone on the street has had to dodge that little daredevil at some point or another. Sorry you had to today.”
Sirens are getting closer. I wonder if any of the guys I know from APD will be responding. That reminds me of John, which reminds me of work, which reminds me that I’m going to be late and that I’d better call someone.
***
Grace answers the phone with a curt “Morgue.” I picture her standing at her desk with the phone cradled between her ear and her shoulder, hands already bloody with the first autopsy of the day.
“Grace, it’s George.”
“Bailey’s having a cow. He’s been wondering where the hell you are.”
“Atlanta General. I got in a car accident on the way to work.”
Her voice fills with worry. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’m okay. They’re just checking me out. But I need you to come get me- my car’s being towed.”
“Of course. I’ll be right there.”
And she is right there. Twenty minutes later she comes walking brusquely in, looking for me. When she sees me her face relaxes.
“Are you okay?” she asks, hugging me. She’s warm- running hot is natural for her with the pregnancy- and slightly tense under my hands.
“I’m okay,” I assure her. “Just scratches. I’m sore as hell.”
“You can bet that’ll get worse. Did they check you for concussion?” she asks, fingering the steri-strips that are holding closed the cut near my hairline.
“They do know what they’re doing here, Grace,” I remind her, amused. “Yes, they checked for concussion and whiplash and all of the usual car accident stuff.”
“You won’t mind if I check you myself though?”
“I get the feeling I don’t have a choice.”
“You don’t. I talked to Bailey. He knows you’re going home.”
Home. No. Not home. That’s the last place I want to be. I’m not ready to tell her that, though, so I use work as my excuse.
“Grace, I’m fine. I just want to get to work.”
“Tough. You had an accident, your car is totaled, and you’re going home.”
Her hard headed-ness, a trait I normally find completely endearing, if not just the tiniest bit frightening, is now just starting to get on my nerves.
“Grace, I’m going to work. I am okay. Seriously. And I don’t want to argue this with you. You’re not my mother.”
“Well, thank God for that,” she snaps, her own temper starting to visibly sizzle. “Look, as your doctor, I’m advising you to take the rest of the day off, go home, and-“ She cuts herself off mid word and shakes her head. “You’re not listening to a word I’m saying, are you?”
“I hear you. I just don’t agree. Look, let’s compromise. Half a day and I’ll check back in with you. We’ve got too much going on for me to take off.”
“Of all the stubborn, hard-headed, generally insufferable people I know-“
”You love me the most. You’re just mad that you can’t push me around.” I give her a quick squeeze around the shoulders to let her know I’m kidding. “Come on, let’s head back to the office. I’ll even let you put me under the X-ray machine once we get there.”
Grace laughs and pulls out her keys. “Let’s go.”
***
I hate to admit it but Grace is right. By 2:00 I’m so sore that sitting down is generally agonizing. Even though I’d managed to talk Grace out of running me underneath the X-ray machine, I’m wondering now if that was the best idea. Every part of my body aches.
Grace has the good sense not to say I told you so. She just walks into Bailey’s office, then walks back out and gestures for me to head for the elevator while she gets her purse.
Within twenty minutes we’re at my apartment and I’m waiting for the shoe to drop. She’s going to notice something’s wrong the moment she gets into the apartment and I’m not looking forward to explaining it all to her. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone- hell, I’m trying hard not to mention it to myself!- but it’s obviously come time for me to tell it to someone. There’s no way she isn’t going to notice that half the furniture, the drafting table, and the framed blueprints on the walls are gone.
If she notices, she doesn’t say anything, at least not at first. She bustles around and settles me on the sofa, grabbing pillows, a blanket, my cell phone, a bottle of prescription pain meds, a glass of water and the TV remote. She’s fussing around me the same way I imagine she fusses over Jayson when he’s sick or injured, all those motherly instincts kicking in to shower down on me.
I watch her as she moves restlessly around the living room. She’s five months along but barely showing, the result of constantly being on her feet day in and day out, I imagine. We haven’t talked at length about this new pregnancy, nor about her marriage and its current state, but I’ve been able to tell from the lines around her mouth and eyes lately that she’s tense and tired, unhappy and unwilling to show it.
“Grace, sit down,” I finally tell her from my place on the sofa. “I’m fine.”
“Take some of the Vicodin and I will.”
“Sit down first and I’ll take the pill.”
She makes a face at me but finally sinks down onto my favorite armchair. “If I get stuck you’re going to have to help me up,” she warns.
And then she takes a good look around for the first time and her eyes narrow. “George-“
”Go ahead. Ask”
“Did you redecorate or are there a lot of things missing from this living room?”
“Things are missing,” I reply. “All of Rich’s things.”
“But why-“ And then she catches it- she’s not stupid- and she raises a hand to her mouth. “Oh God. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’ve got enough to worry about,” I reply, gesturing at her stomach.
“And you think I can’t multi-task? Jesus, doll, how long has this been going on?”
“He moved out last week.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” she explodes.
“What could you have done?”
“I could have helped you. At the very least we could have gone out and gotten shitfaced- well, you could have. I could have watched.”
“Wasn’t going to help anything.” I know. I tried it already.
“Since when doesn’t a vodka help?”
“Being left by the man you’re in love with isn’t any easy thing to fix, Grace.”
Grace sighs softly at that. “I know that. Believe me, I do.”
I could kick myself. Of course she knows. Her shithead husband just left her for another woman, literally pregnant and metaphorically barefoot. I shift on the couch to see her better. “You haven’t told me much about it.”
“You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
I fiddle with the remote because this is hard, harder than it should be when Grace is my best friend who shares everything. That still doesn’t make it any easier to say. “He couldn’t handle it any more ... the hours, the pressure of me always having to work a case, the days I was out in the field and he was home alone. He said it always felt like my mind was somewhere else.”
“And he was right,” Grace murmurs.
“Yeah, he was right. He was also right when he said I wasn’t good to him.”
“Of course you were good to him. But he needed more than you could give him. Is that about right?”
“Yeah, that’s about right. Is that what Morgan-?”
“Yeah,” Grace says. She touches her hand to her stomach. “That’s what Morgan said, too. Word for word. That and half a dozen accusations about being a bad mother.”
“He’s full of shit,” I tell her, instantly feeling my face start to flame with fury. “He’s got nothing to stand on there.”
Grace laughs sourly. “I am the woman who’s cutting open dead bodies instead of watching her son’s pre-school play.”
“Doesn’t make you a bad mother.”
“Doesn’t make me a good one either.”
I shake my head. “You’re too hard on yourself, Grace.”
“Says the man who claims he wasn’t good enough to his partner when we all know that you devoted your life to making Rich happy.”
“Well, it’s like you said, Grace, it’s the little things. The unveiling of the Marsden Center, the party at Atlanta General’s new children’s wing, the Architectural Digest dinner. I always fucked up one way or another. He just couldn’t take it anymore.”
Recalling it all now, the hurts, big and small, the fights, the recriminations- it’s all making me long for a drink. I reach for the water bottle instead and pop the Vicodin Grace has been eying for the last five minutes and swallow it down.
When it kicks in a few minutes later there’s nothing but blessed relief. The pain in my body vanishes, almost as if it had never been there, and the world starts to get hazy around the edges. Suddenly it doesn’t all seem like such a big deal anymore. I feel peaceful. I feel, thank God, numb.
***
That’s how it all started, the Vicodin haze that settled into an even mellower Oxycotin fog, a blanket softly muffling the edges of my world. That blanket felt good. It was the best thing in my life.
As Grace’s divorce grew more bitter and her pregnancy grew more complicated, we backed away from each other, tending to our own wounds, forgetting that helping each other was the best thing to do. The whole team backed away from one another, dividing among fault lines- Bailey began to attach to Congresswoman Karen Archer and John to his new girlfriend, Kate. Grace was fighting battles at home and Rachel was trying to tiptoe out of the mess that Joel Markes was making of her life. And me, I was lost in the heavy smothering folds of the Oxycotin blanket, the only thing that made Rich’s absence bearable.
It all came to a head when I fucked up. We were on a case in Yosemite and looking for a suspect. It had been a particularly bad day for me- the long flight had made my hip ache something fierce and I was missing Rich more than ever, especially here in Yosemite where we’d spent a week camping two summers ago. So I covered myself in the Oxycotin blanket and tried to shut out the world. My head was pleasantly foggy as I swam through data, digging up what Bailey wanted me to unearth. I delivered the data to him, no problem, and sat back to enjoy the sensation of being blissfully disconnected.
It was the wrong address. How I managed to give Bailey the wrong info I’ll never know but it figures- Murphy’s law, right?- that the address would belong to a gun-toting survivalist who went ape-shit on the team, hailing down bullets before anyone could react.
Gale force doesn’t even begin to describe the strength of Bailey Malone’s anger when his team is in danger. He’s so mad at me that for a moment I’m afraid he’s going to flat out fire me. And there’s John, not a violent man by any means, looking like he wants to pound me into a thousand tiny pieces because I managed to screw up in the biggest way possible. I was sent back to Atlanta on the next plane, Bailey’s scathing comments ringing in my ears.
The Oxycotin had long worn off by the time I made it back to Atlanta and I didn’t want to risk taking another out of the Altoids tin in my pocket. I’d have to deal with the headache on my own.
An agent walked upstairs with me. It was humiliating being escorted in a building where I’d always had free reign and even more so to be wearing a visitor’s pass instead of my usual credentials. I couldn’t even go in to my office on my own- an agent had to stand at the door and watch me. I started blindly grabbing things off my desk- CDs, PC magazine, fire-wires, all of the trappings of a tech guy’s life- all while fighting tears of shame.
There was a soft sound at the door and I knew it was Grace but I didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to see her. It was too humiliating that she see me like this. Bailey had already called to let her know what had happened- I’d heard him on the phone with her. It was Grace I didn’t want to face, not now, not barely suppressing the need for another pill, not with tears ready to spill over and shame flaming my cheeks.
She stepped closer and closer still until I finally had no choice but to turn around. And there she was, no recrimination on her face, no rebuke on her lips, just my best friend who took me in her arms and held me for a long moment, whispering, “It’s okay,” in my ear over and over again.
***
She came over later that night with Chinese from our favorite restaurant and a six pack of diet soda.
“No sense replacing one dependency with another,” she explained, gesturing at the soda. “Besides, I may just explode with envy if I see someone drinking while I can’t.”
She set the food out on the table, settled into a chair, and began picking through it with chopsticks. When she noticed I wasn’t eating, she gave me the evil eye, which, coming from Grace, could be quite evil indeed.
“You need to eat. I don’t care whether you think you’re hungry or not. Your body needs fuel. You’re going to start going through withdrawal here pretty soon and you need energy to fight that. So eat up.”
I decided to humor her rather than argue and put enough food on my plate to satisfy her.
“See, that is how I know something’s wrong,” she said in between bites. “You used to stuff your face more than any other person I knew.”
“I’m just not hungry.”
“It’s not just the damn pills that are doing this. Tell me what’s really going on.”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. That’s a big nothing, George, so big it launched you into pill popping. Spill, baby. What the hell is going on?”
“I can’t-“ I sighed. “It’s hard to explain this, Grace. Not because I can’t but because it’s you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean ‘because it’s me’? Do you think there’s anything at all you can’t talk to me about?”
“Look, we’re both going through some major life fiascos here. And of the two of us I’d say that yours is a hell of a lot worse than mine is.”
She shot me a withering look. “It’s not a contest, honey. This-“ She gestured to her belly. “- This is normal. It’s not a fiasco yet. As to Morgan-“ She grew silent and shook her head. “That’s been a fiasco in the making ever since Jack nearly killed him three years ago. It’s just been building and building since then. Jayson staved it off for a while but this has been years in the making. I’m almost used to it by now.”
“Still I don’t feel right sitting here and telling you that the reason I’m popping pills is because I’m lonely and miss my lover when you’re pregnant and alone. That’s like crying over a tiny rainstorm to someone going through a hurricane. It doesn’t equate.”
“Losing Rich- George, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. Yeah, I’ve lost my husband to another woman. But Morgan and I have always- well, we’ve had trouble, at least from my point of view, for a long time now, maybe as far back as Zane’s death in Miami. But yours- it’s so sudden. I can’t even imagine how much it must hurt to have no warning.”
“If I’d read the signs correctly I would have known. But you know as well as I do that we get caught up in work and before you know it it’s been days since you’ve seen your family for anything more than ten minute intervals and a week since you’ve had dinner together. Rich gave me plenty of warning. I just wish I’d read the writing on the wall.”
Grace sighed. “You and me both, honey. You and me both.”
I finally took a bite of food. “What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. What are we going to do?”
“Well, we have limited options at this point. There’s no solace in the drink for either of us. No sex either. Definitely no drugs. Therapy might help. But at this point all I can think of is that we’re just going to have to suffer.”
“Which neither of us deserves.”
“I agree.” Grace sighed and chewed thoughtfully. “I suggest we start doing what we should have done from the start.”
“Which is?”
“Be there for each other a bit more and worry about ourselves a bit less. If that had been the case I would have noticed you were struggling a lot sooner.”
“And you? What can I do for you?”
She gave me a rueful smile. “Help me paint the nursery?”
And there it was, that way she had of always making me laugh. “You got it.”
Grace reached over the table and took my hand, which was starting to shake with withdrawal tremors. “We’ll get through this now. Count on it. Believe it.”
And somehow or another, I did.
END.