Who We Are (4/35)
Title: Who We Are (4/35)
Author: ladygray99
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Charlie/David
Word count: 4,417
Warnings/Spoilers: Attempted Suicide and the after effects there of. See Part 1 for Spoilers.
Summary: Sometimes life makes you look in the mirror and if you don’t like what you see there are only a couple of options. - David and Charlie talk and Colby puts in an appearance.
Previous Chapters:1 2 3
Notes:Written for choc_fic 's 100 Days of Color. Feedback is love.
Beta: swingandswirl and riverotter1951
Chapter 4
“Dude!” David jerked his head around to where Colby was behind the wheel. “You have not heard a thing I said, have you?”
“Sorry. What?” David rubbed his face. He hadn’t slept much again, and when he had slept his dreams had been filled with blood.
Colby sighed. “How’s Charlie doing?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t seen him today. He was happily whacked out on post-op pain killers last night.” Colby made a tight u-turn. “What are you doing?”
“We’re taking lunch a bit early and you can pop in and see Charlie.” David thought about arguing but his plans for lunch had been to see Charlie anyway. “Do you think he’d mind if I popped in too?”
“Uh... I’m not sure, he’s kind of had... ups and downs lately.”
“Wow, really?”
David reached across the charger and flicked Colby’s ear as punishment for the sarcasm. Colby swerved a little. “Not while I’m driving.”
“Tell you what, let me go in and see how he’s doing first.”
~
The duty nurse in post-op scowled at David and Colby as they flashed their badges but let them through. Colby lurked around the corner while David went in. Charlie was sitting up, the one arm still thickly bandaged and the IV drip going into the other. His eyes were half closed and a math journal was spread across his lap.
David tapped the wall lightly. Charlie looked up and smiled. “Hey.”
“Hey there. How are you feeling?”
“Still a little groggy but they’ve cut back the pain killers already.”
“Suck. Hey, are you up for company?” Charlie gestured to a chair. “I mean other than me?”
Charlie’s face quickly darkened and looked scared. “Like who?”
“Colby’s lurking in the hall. He’d like to say hi.”
Charlie let out a breath and looked immediately brighter. David wondered who he was scared of seeing. “Yeah, sure.” Colby must have been listening in ‘cause he poked his head around the corner. Charlie smiled. “Hey Colby.”
“Hey man, how are you doing?”
Charlie shrugged. “Oh, you know, still here.” Colby picked up Charlie’s chart and after giving it a quick once over reached inside his jacket and pulled out a tube of Oreos he’d gotten from the vending machine and tossed them onto Charlie’s bed.
“Though you might appreciate those.”
Charlie quickly snagged the package. “Thank you. For this I’ll do your taxes.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
Charlie picked at the package for half a second with one hand then attacked it with his teeth.
David reached for the Oreos. “Here, let me.”
Charlie waved him off. “I’ve got to get used to doing things one handed.” Charlie managed to tear into the wrapper and quickly shoved an Oreo into his mouth. His eyes instantly rolled back in his head and a smile spread across his face. The smile was followed by a somewhat inappropriate amount of moaning. David was more worried about Charlie’s arm however. He hadn’t seen it move since the surgery.
“How’s your arm?” David asked once Charlie had passed the initial Oreo bliss.
“Hurts.” He twitched a couple of fingers. “They ended up putting in all kinds of grafts and weird stuff which is why I’m still in post-op and not upstairs with all the other crazies.”
“You gonna be able to use it?”
Charlie shrugged. “They said there’ll be diminished strength and fine motor coordination but if I do my physical therapy right I should be able to still type, tie my shoes, stuff like that.” Charlie twitched his fingers again. “Basically it’s a good thing I’m a mathematician and not a concert violinist.” Charlie nibbled on another cookie before his eyes went wide. “Incoming.” He shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth and the packet under the blankets.
David turned around. Through the glass walls he could see a middle aged woman heading towards the room. She had a pleasant smile that didn’t seem to reach her eyes.
She entered the room and Charlie squared his shoulders. “Good afternoon Mr. Eppes, how are we this morning?”
A tight smile pulled across Charlie’s face. “Doctor Eppes and I am fine, thank you.”
The woman looked at David and Colby still smiling but with disapproval in her eyes. “And are these your friends?”
Charlie nodded to David and Colby. “This is Special Agent David Sinclair of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Special Agent Colby Granger also of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
David flashed his ID subtly showing off his gun as he did it. He did not like the vibes he was getting off of the woman.
“Oh my, has Mr. Eppes done something wrong?”
“Doctor Eppes is one of our top consultants especially in the areas of violent and serial crime.”
“He’s pretty good with terror cells as well,” Colby added.
“And I am sorry Ma’am but we were in the middle of a discussion with Dr. Eppes. If we could have five more minutes with him? Privately?”
“Of course. But just five. Mr. Eppes needs his rest.”
“Of course.”
The woman left and Charlie sagged back into his bed then reached under his blankets.
“Who was that?” Colby asked.
“Hospital shrink. I know I tried to kill myself and all but seriously if anyone is going to talk me out of trying again it’s not going to be that woman.” Charlie shoved a couple more cookies into his mouth.
David grabbed Charlie’s chin and yanked his head around to look at him. “You are never trying that again you hear me, you don’t get to look at anything sharp, you don’t get to pick at a zit. I don’t care if you’re an atheist, you kill yourself and I will hunt down whatever tiny spark of you there might be left in the vast cosmos and I will then proceed to kick your ass so hard it’ll make a believer out of you. Got it?” Charlie’s eyes were wide and David could feel his heart racing in his chest at the very thought of Charlie even thinking about hurting himself again.
Charlie nodded as much as he could with his head still in David’s grip.
David let out a long sigh, resisted the urge to lean forward and lick the chocolate crumbs off Charlie’s lips, then let him go.
Charlie swallowed but didn’t look away. His eyes were locked with David’s and David was not about to break that.
Colby coughed a little. “Hey, we’ve got to get back to the office.”
David finally looked away. “Yeah, okay.”
“Thanks for coming by Colby and for the cookies.”
“No problem. And don’t take too long getting your head back together. Team’s not the team without you.”
Charlie smiled. “That’s nice to hear.”
~
David was aware of Colby turning to look at him every few seconds. “Do you mind watching the road?”
Colby grinned. “Oh you’ve got it bad.”
“What?”
“Charlie and David sitting in a tree.”
“Oh shut up.”
“Tell me you weren’t trying damn hard to not kiss him goodbye there.”
“He’s a friend. He’s a friend going through a rough time and I am trying to be a supportive friend in return. If it was you I’d drop by to see how you were doing.”
“If it was me I would have eaten my gun and it would be a moot point.”
David dropped his face into his hands. “Don’t even say that. There were two guns in the house. My spare and one of Don’s.”
“Shit. I guess he hasn’t been hanging around us quite long enough to have thought about it.” Colby pulled up to a red light. A thought flicked across David’s mind and took the opportunity to reach across the Charger and punch his partner in the arm. Hard.
“Oww.” Colby rubbed at the spot. “What the hell was that for?”
“For going through my porn.”
“Hey, spy. I didn’t want to. Believe me I didn’t want to. And it’s not like it was just you. I had to look at Don’s porn to. How do you take orders from a guy once you’ve seen his Playboys, really?”
“I’m sure Don’s wasn’t that bad.”
The light turned green. “Well that’s the thing. Don’s porn was normal. Like text book, generic, normal. It was too normal. I’m mean everyone’s got something they’re really into but not Don apparently so I figure either Don has the most generic sex life in history or he’s into something so weird he’s scared to bring it into his own apartment. And considering the number of girlfriends he’s been through my money’s on the weird.”
“Colby, I love you man, but the last thing I want to do right now, or ever, is speculate on Don’s sex life.”
~
David slipped into Charlie’s room and behind the curtain half pulled around his bed. Once Charlie was released he was seriously considering writing a memo to the hospital’s security team.
A little light was still on by Charlie’s bed and he was leafing through some trashy looking tabloid. David pulled up a chair. Charlie put aside the magazine.
“You came back.” A smile was just touching Charlie’s lips.
“Yes. I’m sorry about earlier. You scared me.”
Charlie stared at the ceiling. “I know. I’m sorry. I guess... I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
David took Charlie’s good hand. It was so wonderfully warm. “You’re going to get through this Charlie.”
“People keep saying that. No one’s told me how yet. Even that damn shrink. It’s all you’ll get through, you’ll get better, this isn’t the end.” Charlie turned to David. “How?”
“I don’t know. I think you just do. I think time just passes and you start to feel better.”
Charlie switched his gaze back to the ceiling but didn’t try to take his hand from David’s. “You know, I was kind of looking forward to getting married. I was really warming up to the idea of not dying alone in the old mathematicians’ home. And kids. I was kind of liking the idea of kids.”
“You can still do all those things if you want.”
“David, 5.4 million of my fellow Californians don’t think I should be allowed to marry to say nothing of having kids.”
“Yeah, well, they’re idiots and you can still have children if you want. There are lots of options and they don’t get a say in that.”
Charlie closed his eyes and his breath came out ragged.
David squeezed Charlie’s hand. “Charlie, what happened?”
“You were there.”
“No I wasn’t. If I’d been there we wouldn’t be here. What really happened? You went to work and..?”
Charlie didn’t say anything for a long time. David just waited. “Liam Goodwin came to office hours,” Charlie finally said quietly.
“Who’s Liam Goodwin?”
“Student.”
“You’ve got a lot of students.”
“Yeah, but Liam’s... special. I met him a few years back when he was a freshman. I got stuck doing an orientation tour. All CalSci students qualify as geniuses but something about Liam just... sparkled. I’ve been keeping an eye on him. He’s so bright, did his undergrad in three years instead of four, moved straight to his masters, always pushing himself but not beating up on himself like a lot of the other student. I’ve been thinking about bringing him in on cases actually.”
That piqued David’s attention. “Really?”
“He’s observant, good at making connections, thinking up new ways of analyzing data, filling in blanks in the data.”
“What happened when he came to office hours?”
“I noticed him.” Charlie’s voice cracked.
“Sounds like you noticed him a long time ago.”
“He was wearing this blue shirt and it brought out his eyes and I noticed him and the thing is you’re right I must have noticed him years ago. He’s a very attractive young man. I help all my students but I always had just a little extra time for him, pushed him just that little more, felt that little bit happier when he’d knock on my door. And I must have noticed him, I couldn’t have not but I finally noticed myself noticing him and he was standing there in front of me and I couldn’t deny it and I couldn’t ignore it and by the time I got home... I just couldn’t live with it. Final straw.”
David decided to screw propriety or what any nosy nurse might think. He got up and sat on the edge of the bed and carefully pulled Charlie against him. Charlie snuggled in tight.
“The thing is,” Charlie continued. “I don’t remember it feeling like me. I sat on my bed for the longest time and I could smell Amita’s body lotion and it was like it was someone else who wrote those notes, like I was watching someone else. I got out the pocket knife Don gave me and I never used so I knew it was still sharp and I went into the bathroom and just stared at myself for the longest time and felt nothing.” Charlie looked up at David. “The knife didn’t hurt going in. I saw the blood come out. I was so detached from the whole thing I didn’t even feel that. The only thing I felt was when I fell I banged my elbow. How funny is that? Couldn’t feel a knife in my arm but could feel my funnybone get hit.” David ran his fingers through Charlie’s hair as much as he could. It really did need a wash and a brush. “Maybe I do need to a trip to the funny farm.”
“Think of it like a vacation. Use the time to catch up on your theoretical work, or that coherent cosmos thing of Larry’s.”
“What do you know about Larry’s theory?”
“I pay attention you know. I’m up with what all the hip mathematicians are working on.”
David felt Charlie’s little chuckle roll through his body. “You do pay attention, don’t you?”
“I try as best I can.” Charlie nodded then pressed his head into David’s fingers like a cat demanding a head rub. “When are you getting transferred?”
“Day after tomorrow if my arm looks good.”
David rubbed Charlie’s head a little harder and Charlie seemed to melt. “I did a bit of digging into that place you’re going, St. Clare’s.”
“Let me guess, it was built on an ancient Indian burial ground?”
It was David’s turn to chuckle. “No. Actually it has a pretty good reputation. No major incidents. It’s one of the places LAPD sends their guys so they’ve got experience working with law enforcement types.”
Charlie groaned and buried his face into David’s chest. “Is that what I am now? A law enforcement type?”
“You gonna try and tell me you’re not?”
Charlie didn’t answer. “This feels really nice, David,” he finally said.
“Yeah, it does.”
Charlie shook a little. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Why not?” Charlie went quiet again and David stroked his back. “You don’t have a good answer do you?” Charlie shrugged a little. “That’s because there’s nothing wrong with this and you know it.”
“I...” Charlie stumbled. “They’re putting me in an insane asylum, David. That’s not part of the plan. Every moment off my life has had a plan, right since I could add and now it’s all gone and they’re locking me away...”
David’s escape plan roared back to the front of his mind at the fear in Charlie’s voice. “Just for a little while. Just until you can look in that mirror and understand that the person looking back is someone worth keeping around, no alterations required, and I’ll visit you every day. I’m not going to let you disappear.”
Charlie shook a little more and pulled himself even tighter against David’s body. David held tight and didn’t let go until Charlie had stopped shaking and fallen asleep.
~
David stood at the door to the bathroom taking deep breaths. ‘It’s just a bathroom, just a clean bathroom.’
He pushed open the door and flipped on the lights. For a second the light flared in his eyes and he saw the room bathed in red. He blinked until the blue towels and white tiles reappeared. The room still smelled mildly of bleach. David did his business as quick as he could and ran for it.
He was definitely going to have to get that apartment hunt back on.
~
David stepped into Charlie’s room just as Dr. Patal was stepping out. They only exchanged quick nods as David had heard the doctor just get paged.
Charlie was sitting up in bed looking somewhat amused. Alan was sitting by the bed in one of the thin plastic chares. “Hey, Charlie. See you had a visitor?”
“Yeah, Dr. Patel wanted to make sure I wasn’t wasting some of his better work.”
David grabbed the room’s other chair. “Well it’s nice of him to check on you.”
“Turns out he read my book.”
“Is that why you look so amused?”
“His younger brother gave it to him in hopes that it would help him meet a girl so he’d stop sleeping on his brother’s couch between shifts and mooching meals.”
David couldn’t help laughing. “Sounds familiar. Maybe it’s an older brother thing. Did he like the book?”
Charlie shrugged. “He thinks it’s mildly full of shit but honestly on a lot of levels I think it’s mildly full of shit. I mean who the hell am I to give anyone advice I how to live their lives? Really?”
David didn’t want to make too detailed a comment since he hadn’t actually read The Attraction Equation himself, even though a copy had sat in the break room for months. “Well when your publisher asks for a second edition you’ll have far greater personal insight to draw from.”
“I’ll be surprised if my publisher doesn’t try pulling the book once they hear about this.”
“Well then they don’t need to hear about it.”
“It’ll be kind of hard to hide the ruddy great gash in my arm forever.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage something.”
Charlie just shrugged a bit. “How goes the apartment hunt?”
“Do you have any idea how many really crappy apartments there are in LA?”
“Mathematically speaking? A lot?”
“You know you don’t have to move out, David?” Alan offered from the other side of Charlie’s bed. “We’ve got plenty of room. The place is practically the LA FBI annex anyway.”
‘Oh, Alan I don’t think you’d be offering that if you knew how often I’ve thought about indecently touching your youngest son.’
“Thank you Alan, but I think I need to be looking for a place a little closer to the office.”
“Be careful David, marrying yourself to the job might seem like a good idea now but ten years down the road you might find things you’re missing.”
‘Like a warm soft mathematician in my bed?’
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
~
David stood outside St. Clare’s Psychiatric Treatment Facility with Don and Alan. Officially an ambulance had to transfer Charlie but everyone agreed to let his family walk him in. Alan had spent the night fussing over packing Charlie a bag, debating the things Charlie might want verses the things that he’d be allowed to keep. In the end the bag got mostly filled with a lot of blank note pads and newer math journals.
Charlie got out of the back of the ambulance his face oddly neutral. David surveyed the situation. The only one who was armed was Don and Don wasn’t going to shoot at his own brother. The car was maybe a 500 foot sprint. David was pretty sure he could out run Don but not while dragging Charlie.
Charlie took the bag from his father, walked up the front stairs and into the lobby of St. Clare’s with David, Don and Alan right behind.
On the other side of the large plain lobby was a pair of double doors.
Charlie looked at the double doors with the bars across them. He looked at the two large orderlies in white and the efficient looking nurse with a clip board. Charlie started to back away. “No. No, no. I can’t. They won’t let me go.” The orderlies started to move forward. “I’ll be good. I won’t do anything stupid again. I promise.”
Don put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Charlie, you’ve got to.”
Charlie squirmed away from Don. The orderlies started moving with more purpose.
“Charlie, please.” Alan looked on the verge of tears.
David grabbed Charlie’s good arm and quickly dragged him over to a wooden bench, against one wall. He waved the orderlies off for a second. “Charlie.”
“Don’t make me go in there David.”
“Charlie, listen to me.”
“I’ll never get out. My brain isn’t normal, they won’t let me go.”
David took Charlie’s head in both hands, forcing his attention. “Mexico, Charlie.”
Charlie blinked. “What?”
“Listen to me. Mexico. That’s mine and Colby’s distress word. Mexico. Now I am going to come and see you every day. Every single day. That’s a promise. If someone is maliciously hurting you, if you ever get honestly scared for your life all you got to do is say Mexico and I will get you out of here, even if it means bringing a SWAT team through those doors. I’m not going to let them keep you.” Charlie swallowed hard. “Mexico, okay. Can you say it?”
“Mexico,” Charlie whispered.
“Mexico. Just got drop it in a sentence. Whatever it takes.”
“Mexico,” Charlie said again.
“That’s right. And I’ll tell Don that’s our distress word now.” Charlie nodded a little. “Hey, I let you cover my back in a fire fight and you didn’t puke on your shoes. You Charlie Eppes, in your soul, are a bad ass and you can face down anything and survive anything and do what needs to be done.”
Charlie took a deep breath. “Mexico,” he whispered one more time.
David pulled Charlie into a hug. Charlie hugged him back for a long time then ever so slowly let go.
Charlie’s face looked calm and controlled but David could still see terror in eyes that normally dance with genius. Charlie walked back to Don and Alan. He gave each of them a hug and exchanged a few words that David couldn’t hear, then handed his bag to one of the orderlies like he was a bell hop and made his way through the double doors with his head held high.
“What did you say to him?” Don asked, staring at the bared doors that had just swallowed his baby brother.
“Gave him a distress word. Gave him Mexico. Told him I would visit and if he got scared for his life he just had to say Mexico and I’d get him out.”
Don looked at David. “You can’t just take someone out of an institution.”
David looked back. “Want to bet money on that?”
~
David couldn’t sleep. It was staring to become a habit. He gave up and decided to wander the house. He didn’t get far before realizing a light was coming from Charlie’s room.
His heart leapt for just a beat as his imagination stirred up scenarios of Charlie’s daring escape.
He pushed door the open. Alan sat on the bed his arms wrapped around a battered, brown teddy bear. His eyes were distant and old.
David sat down next to him.
“He’s named Fibonacci,” Alan said obviously referring to the bear. “That’s when it really hit home that Charlie was different. What four year old names their teddy bear Fibonacci?” Alan patted the bear on the head. “The thing is I can look back, I can see now. I always just thought Charlie was more interested in the math and that’s why we had to throw girls at him, I didn’t think...” David didn’t know what to say as Alan stuttered. “And it’s not like I would have cared or been disappointed. I just wanted to see him happy.”
“I know.”
“God, I don’t know how many times we almost lost him growing up. And now this.”
“How did you almost lose him?” David asked. He knew about Charlie’s fall down the steps but Alan implied there was more than one incident.
“When he was about four we were visiting family friends and we told him and Donnie to go play. He managed to get himself locked in a closet full of junk. He panicked and I don’t know what happened but by the time Donnie found him he’d managed to get some cord wrapped around his neck. He was barely breathing. We had to keep all the windows in the house open for weeks. He’s still claustrophobic. When he was eight he ran away from Donnie’s birthday party. We were camping up in the hills and he walked off. He was miles away, middle of the night, just walking down the road when we finally found him. He told me he was walking home ‘cause Donnie didn’t want him there.” Alan’s voice suddenly cracked and he wiped at his eyes. “Then when he was ten some boys at school pushed him down the stairs. Punctured his lung on his own ribs. Almost punctured his heart.”
“He told me about that.”
“Did he tell you about the tumor?”
“No,” David replied quickly.
“When they did x-rays to check his ribs the radiologist noticed a shadow. It was right about where the ribs went in but even after they healed the shadow was still there. They cut out a mass the size of a golf ball. It wasn’t malignant or anything, more of a cyst. The doctor said it had probably been there for years but I had still been smoking when the boys were little and...” Alan’s voice cracked again. David rubbed circles on Alan’s back. “I wish Margaret was here. She was so strong and she understood Charlie. I tried. I always tried but... He was three the first time he beat me at chess. I didn’t stand a chance by the time he was five.”
“He loves you, you know that, right?”
“But he doesn’t trust me,” Alan replied. “If he trusted me he could have come to me before...” Alan squeezed Fibonacci tight. “David, I am so afraid I’m going to outlive my boys.”
“No Alan, no. Not if I have anything to say about it. No.”
Previous Next
Author: ladygray99
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairings: Charlie/David
Word count: 4,417
Warnings/Spoilers: Attempted Suicide and the after effects there of. See Part 1 for Spoilers.
Summary: Sometimes life makes you look in the mirror and if you don’t like what you see there are only a couple of options. - David and Charlie talk and Colby puts in an appearance.
Previous Chapters:1 2 3
Notes:Written for choc_fic 's 100 Days of Color. Feedback is love.
Beta: swingandswirl and riverotter1951
Chapter 4
“Dude!” David jerked his head around to where Colby was behind the wheel. “You have not heard a thing I said, have you?”
“Sorry. What?” David rubbed his face. He hadn’t slept much again, and when he had slept his dreams had been filled with blood.
Colby sighed. “How’s Charlie doing?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t seen him today. He was happily whacked out on post-op pain killers last night.” Colby made a tight u-turn. “What are you doing?”
“We’re taking lunch a bit early and you can pop in and see Charlie.” David thought about arguing but his plans for lunch had been to see Charlie anyway. “Do you think he’d mind if I popped in too?”
“Uh... I’m not sure, he’s kind of had... ups and downs lately.”
“Wow, really?”
David reached across the charger and flicked Colby’s ear as punishment for the sarcasm. Colby swerved a little. “Not while I’m driving.”
“Tell you what, let me go in and see how he’s doing first.”
~
The duty nurse in post-op scowled at David and Colby as they flashed their badges but let them through. Colby lurked around the corner while David went in. Charlie was sitting up, the one arm still thickly bandaged and the IV drip going into the other. His eyes were half closed and a math journal was spread across his lap.
David tapped the wall lightly. Charlie looked up and smiled. “Hey.”
“Hey there. How are you feeling?”
“Still a little groggy but they’ve cut back the pain killers already.”
“Suck. Hey, are you up for company?” Charlie gestured to a chair. “I mean other than me?”
Charlie’s face quickly darkened and looked scared. “Like who?”
“Colby’s lurking in the hall. He’d like to say hi.”
Charlie let out a breath and looked immediately brighter. David wondered who he was scared of seeing. “Yeah, sure.” Colby must have been listening in ‘cause he poked his head around the corner. Charlie smiled. “Hey Colby.”
“Hey man, how are you doing?”
Charlie shrugged. “Oh, you know, still here.” Colby picked up Charlie’s chart and after giving it a quick once over reached inside his jacket and pulled out a tube of Oreos he’d gotten from the vending machine and tossed them onto Charlie’s bed.
“Though you might appreciate those.”
Charlie quickly snagged the package. “Thank you. For this I’ll do your taxes.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
Charlie picked at the package for half a second with one hand then attacked it with his teeth.
David reached for the Oreos. “Here, let me.”
Charlie waved him off. “I’ve got to get used to doing things one handed.” Charlie managed to tear into the wrapper and quickly shoved an Oreo into his mouth. His eyes instantly rolled back in his head and a smile spread across his face. The smile was followed by a somewhat inappropriate amount of moaning. David was more worried about Charlie’s arm however. He hadn’t seen it move since the surgery.
“How’s your arm?” David asked once Charlie had passed the initial Oreo bliss.
“Hurts.” He twitched a couple of fingers. “They ended up putting in all kinds of grafts and weird stuff which is why I’m still in post-op and not upstairs with all the other crazies.”
“You gonna be able to use it?”
Charlie shrugged. “They said there’ll be diminished strength and fine motor coordination but if I do my physical therapy right I should be able to still type, tie my shoes, stuff like that.” Charlie twitched his fingers again. “Basically it’s a good thing I’m a mathematician and not a concert violinist.” Charlie nibbled on another cookie before his eyes went wide. “Incoming.” He shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth and the packet under the blankets.
David turned around. Through the glass walls he could see a middle aged woman heading towards the room. She had a pleasant smile that didn’t seem to reach her eyes.
She entered the room and Charlie squared his shoulders. “Good afternoon Mr. Eppes, how are we this morning?”
A tight smile pulled across Charlie’s face. “Doctor Eppes and I am fine, thank you.”
The woman looked at David and Colby still smiling but with disapproval in her eyes. “And are these your friends?”
Charlie nodded to David and Colby. “This is Special Agent David Sinclair of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Special Agent Colby Granger also of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
David flashed his ID subtly showing off his gun as he did it. He did not like the vibes he was getting off of the woman.
“Oh my, has Mr. Eppes done something wrong?”
“Doctor Eppes is one of our top consultants especially in the areas of violent and serial crime.”
“He’s pretty good with terror cells as well,” Colby added.
“And I am sorry Ma’am but we were in the middle of a discussion with Dr. Eppes. If we could have five more minutes with him? Privately?”
“Of course. But just five. Mr. Eppes needs his rest.”
“Of course.”
The woman left and Charlie sagged back into his bed then reached under his blankets.
“Who was that?” Colby asked.
“Hospital shrink. I know I tried to kill myself and all but seriously if anyone is going to talk me out of trying again it’s not going to be that woman.” Charlie shoved a couple more cookies into his mouth.
David grabbed Charlie’s chin and yanked his head around to look at him. “You are never trying that again you hear me, you don’t get to look at anything sharp, you don’t get to pick at a zit. I don’t care if you’re an atheist, you kill yourself and I will hunt down whatever tiny spark of you there might be left in the vast cosmos and I will then proceed to kick your ass so hard it’ll make a believer out of you. Got it?” Charlie’s eyes were wide and David could feel his heart racing in his chest at the very thought of Charlie even thinking about hurting himself again.
Charlie nodded as much as he could with his head still in David’s grip.
David let out a long sigh, resisted the urge to lean forward and lick the chocolate crumbs off Charlie’s lips, then let him go.
Charlie swallowed but didn’t look away. His eyes were locked with David’s and David was not about to break that.
Colby coughed a little. “Hey, we’ve got to get back to the office.”
David finally looked away. “Yeah, okay.”
“Thanks for coming by Colby and for the cookies.”
“No problem. And don’t take too long getting your head back together. Team’s not the team without you.”
Charlie smiled. “That’s nice to hear.”
~
David was aware of Colby turning to look at him every few seconds. “Do you mind watching the road?”
Colby grinned. “Oh you’ve got it bad.”
“What?”
“Charlie and David sitting in a tree.”
“Oh shut up.”
“Tell me you weren’t trying damn hard to not kiss him goodbye there.”
“He’s a friend. He’s a friend going through a rough time and I am trying to be a supportive friend in return. If it was you I’d drop by to see how you were doing.”
“If it was me I would have eaten my gun and it would be a moot point.”
David dropped his face into his hands. “Don’t even say that. There were two guns in the house. My spare and one of Don’s.”
“Shit. I guess he hasn’t been hanging around us quite long enough to have thought about it.” Colby pulled up to a red light. A thought flicked across David’s mind and took the opportunity to reach across the Charger and punch his partner in the arm. Hard.
“Oww.” Colby rubbed at the spot. “What the hell was that for?”
“For going through my porn.”
“Hey, spy. I didn’t want to. Believe me I didn’t want to. And it’s not like it was just you. I had to look at Don’s porn to. How do you take orders from a guy once you’ve seen his Playboys, really?”
“I’m sure Don’s wasn’t that bad.”
The light turned green. “Well that’s the thing. Don’s porn was normal. Like text book, generic, normal. It was too normal. I’m mean everyone’s got something they’re really into but not Don apparently so I figure either Don has the most generic sex life in history or he’s into something so weird he’s scared to bring it into his own apartment. And considering the number of girlfriends he’s been through my money’s on the weird.”
“Colby, I love you man, but the last thing I want to do right now, or ever, is speculate on Don’s sex life.”
~
David slipped into Charlie’s room and behind the curtain half pulled around his bed. Once Charlie was released he was seriously considering writing a memo to the hospital’s security team.
A little light was still on by Charlie’s bed and he was leafing through some trashy looking tabloid. David pulled up a chair. Charlie put aside the magazine.
“You came back.” A smile was just touching Charlie’s lips.
“Yes. I’m sorry about earlier. You scared me.”
Charlie stared at the ceiling. “I know. I’m sorry. I guess... I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
David took Charlie’s good hand. It was so wonderfully warm. “You’re going to get through this Charlie.”
“People keep saying that. No one’s told me how yet. Even that damn shrink. It’s all you’ll get through, you’ll get better, this isn’t the end.” Charlie turned to David. “How?”
“I don’t know. I think you just do. I think time just passes and you start to feel better.”
Charlie switched his gaze back to the ceiling but didn’t try to take his hand from David’s. “You know, I was kind of looking forward to getting married. I was really warming up to the idea of not dying alone in the old mathematicians’ home. And kids. I was kind of liking the idea of kids.”
“You can still do all those things if you want.”
“David, 5.4 million of my fellow Californians don’t think I should be allowed to marry to say nothing of having kids.”
“Yeah, well, they’re idiots and you can still have children if you want. There are lots of options and they don’t get a say in that.”
Charlie closed his eyes and his breath came out ragged.
David squeezed Charlie’s hand. “Charlie, what happened?”
“You were there.”
“No I wasn’t. If I’d been there we wouldn’t be here. What really happened? You went to work and..?”
Charlie didn’t say anything for a long time. David just waited. “Liam Goodwin came to office hours,” Charlie finally said quietly.
“Who’s Liam Goodwin?”
“Student.”
“You’ve got a lot of students.”
“Yeah, but Liam’s... special. I met him a few years back when he was a freshman. I got stuck doing an orientation tour. All CalSci students qualify as geniuses but something about Liam just... sparkled. I’ve been keeping an eye on him. He’s so bright, did his undergrad in three years instead of four, moved straight to his masters, always pushing himself but not beating up on himself like a lot of the other student. I’ve been thinking about bringing him in on cases actually.”
That piqued David’s attention. “Really?”
“He’s observant, good at making connections, thinking up new ways of analyzing data, filling in blanks in the data.”
“What happened when he came to office hours?”
“I noticed him.” Charlie’s voice cracked.
“Sounds like you noticed him a long time ago.”
“He was wearing this blue shirt and it brought out his eyes and I noticed him and the thing is you’re right I must have noticed him years ago. He’s a very attractive young man. I help all my students but I always had just a little extra time for him, pushed him just that little more, felt that little bit happier when he’d knock on my door. And I must have noticed him, I couldn’t have not but I finally noticed myself noticing him and he was standing there in front of me and I couldn’t deny it and I couldn’t ignore it and by the time I got home... I just couldn’t live with it. Final straw.”
David decided to screw propriety or what any nosy nurse might think. He got up and sat on the edge of the bed and carefully pulled Charlie against him. Charlie snuggled in tight.
“The thing is,” Charlie continued. “I don’t remember it feeling like me. I sat on my bed for the longest time and I could smell Amita’s body lotion and it was like it was someone else who wrote those notes, like I was watching someone else. I got out the pocket knife Don gave me and I never used so I knew it was still sharp and I went into the bathroom and just stared at myself for the longest time and felt nothing.” Charlie looked up at David. “The knife didn’t hurt going in. I saw the blood come out. I was so detached from the whole thing I didn’t even feel that. The only thing I felt was when I fell I banged my elbow. How funny is that? Couldn’t feel a knife in my arm but could feel my funnybone get hit.” David ran his fingers through Charlie’s hair as much as he could. It really did need a wash and a brush. “Maybe I do need to a trip to the funny farm.”
“Think of it like a vacation. Use the time to catch up on your theoretical work, or that coherent cosmos thing of Larry’s.”
“What do you know about Larry’s theory?”
“I pay attention you know. I’m up with what all the hip mathematicians are working on.”
David felt Charlie’s little chuckle roll through his body. “You do pay attention, don’t you?”
“I try as best I can.” Charlie nodded then pressed his head into David’s fingers like a cat demanding a head rub. “When are you getting transferred?”
“Day after tomorrow if my arm looks good.”
David rubbed Charlie’s head a little harder and Charlie seemed to melt. “I did a bit of digging into that place you’re going, St. Clare’s.”
“Let me guess, it was built on an ancient Indian burial ground?”
It was David’s turn to chuckle. “No. Actually it has a pretty good reputation. No major incidents. It’s one of the places LAPD sends their guys so they’ve got experience working with law enforcement types.”
Charlie groaned and buried his face into David’s chest. “Is that what I am now? A law enforcement type?”
“You gonna try and tell me you’re not?”
Charlie didn’t answer. “This feels really nice, David,” he finally said.
“Yeah, it does.”
Charlie shook a little. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Why not?” Charlie went quiet again and David stroked his back. “You don’t have a good answer do you?” Charlie shrugged a little. “That’s because there’s nothing wrong with this and you know it.”
“I...” Charlie stumbled. “They’re putting me in an insane asylum, David. That’s not part of the plan. Every moment off my life has had a plan, right since I could add and now it’s all gone and they’re locking me away...”
David’s escape plan roared back to the front of his mind at the fear in Charlie’s voice. “Just for a little while. Just until you can look in that mirror and understand that the person looking back is someone worth keeping around, no alterations required, and I’ll visit you every day. I’m not going to let you disappear.”
Charlie shook a little more and pulled himself even tighter against David’s body. David held tight and didn’t let go until Charlie had stopped shaking and fallen asleep.
~
David stood at the door to the bathroom taking deep breaths. ‘It’s just a bathroom, just a clean bathroom.’
He pushed open the door and flipped on the lights. For a second the light flared in his eyes and he saw the room bathed in red. He blinked until the blue towels and white tiles reappeared. The room still smelled mildly of bleach. David did his business as quick as he could and ran for it.
He was definitely going to have to get that apartment hunt back on.
~
David stepped into Charlie’s room just as Dr. Patal was stepping out. They only exchanged quick nods as David had heard the doctor just get paged.
Charlie was sitting up in bed looking somewhat amused. Alan was sitting by the bed in one of the thin plastic chares. “Hey, Charlie. See you had a visitor?”
“Yeah, Dr. Patel wanted to make sure I wasn’t wasting some of his better work.”
David grabbed the room’s other chair. “Well it’s nice of him to check on you.”
“Turns out he read my book.”
“Is that why you look so amused?”
“His younger brother gave it to him in hopes that it would help him meet a girl so he’d stop sleeping on his brother’s couch between shifts and mooching meals.”
David couldn’t help laughing. “Sounds familiar. Maybe it’s an older brother thing. Did he like the book?”
Charlie shrugged. “He thinks it’s mildly full of shit but honestly on a lot of levels I think it’s mildly full of shit. I mean who the hell am I to give anyone advice I how to live their lives? Really?”
David didn’t want to make too detailed a comment since he hadn’t actually read The Attraction Equation himself, even though a copy had sat in the break room for months. “Well when your publisher asks for a second edition you’ll have far greater personal insight to draw from.”
“I’ll be surprised if my publisher doesn’t try pulling the book once they hear about this.”
“Well then they don’t need to hear about it.”
“It’ll be kind of hard to hide the ruddy great gash in my arm forever.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage something.”
Charlie just shrugged a bit. “How goes the apartment hunt?”
“Do you have any idea how many really crappy apartments there are in LA?”
“Mathematically speaking? A lot?”
“You know you don’t have to move out, David?” Alan offered from the other side of Charlie’s bed. “We’ve got plenty of room. The place is practically the LA FBI annex anyway.”
‘Oh, Alan I don’t think you’d be offering that if you knew how often I’ve thought about indecently touching your youngest son.’
“Thank you Alan, but I think I need to be looking for a place a little closer to the office.”
“Be careful David, marrying yourself to the job might seem like a good idea now but ten years down the road you might find things you’re missing.”
‘Like a warm soft mathematician in my bed?’
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
~
David stood outside St. Clare’s Psychiatric Treatment Facility with Don and Alan. Officially an ambulance had to transfer Charlie but everyone agreed to let his family walk him in. Alan had spent the night fussing over packing Charlie a bag, debating the things Charlie might want verses the things that he’d be allowed to keep. In the end the bag got mostly filled with a lot of blank note pads and newer math journals.
Charlie got out of the back of the ambulance his face oddly neutral. David surveyed the situation. The only one who was armed was Don and Don wasn’t going to shoot at his own brother. The car was maybe a 500 foot sprint. David was pretty sure he could out run Don but not while dragging Charlie.
Charlie took the bag from his father, walked up the front stairs and into the lobby of St. Clare’s with David, Don and Alan right behind.
On the other side of the large plain lobby was a pair of double doors.
Charlie looked at the double doors with the bars across them. He looked at the two large orderlies in white and the efficient looking nurse with a clip board. Charlie started to back away. “No. No, no. I can’t. They won’t let me go.” The orderlies started to move forward. “I’ll be good. I won’t do anything stupid again. I promise.”
Don put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Charlie, you’ve got to.”
Charlie squirmed away from Don. The orderlies started moving with more purpose.
“Charlie, please.” Alan looked on the verge of tears.
David grabbed Charlie’s good arm and quickly dragged him over to a wooden bench, against one wall. He waved the orderlies off for a second. “Charlie.”
“Don’t make me go in there David.”
“Charlie, listen to me.”
“I’ll never get out. My brain isn’t normal, they won’t let me go.”
David took Charlie’s head in both hands, forcing his attention. “Mexico, Charlie.”
Charlie blinked. “What?”
“Listen to me. Mexico. That’s mine and Colby’s distress word. Mexico. Now I am going to come and see you every day. Every single day. That’s a promise. If someone is maliciously hurting you, if you ever get honestly scared for your life all you got to do is say Mexico and I will get you out of here, even if it means bringing a SWAT team through those doors. I’m not going to let them keep you.” Charlie swallowed hard. “Mexico, okay. Can you say it?”
“Mexico,” Charlie whispered.
“Mexico. Just got drop it in a sentence. Whatever it takes.”
“Mexico,” Charlie said again.
“That’s right. And I’ll tell Don that’s our distress word now.” Charlie nodded a little. “Hey, I let you cover my back in a fire fight and you didn’t puke on your shoes. You Charlie Eppes, in your soul, are a bad ass and you can face down anything and survive anything and do what needs to be done.”
Charlie took a deep breath. “Mexico,” he whispered one more time.
David pulled Charlie into a hug. Charlie hugged him back for a long time then ever so slowly let go.
Charlie’s face looked calm and controlled but David could still see terror in eyes that normally dance with genius. Charlie walked back to Don and Alan. He gave each of them a hug and exchanged a few words that David couldn’t hear, then handed his bag to one of the orderlies like he was a bell hop and made his way through the double doors with his head held high.
“What did you say to him?” Don asked, staring at the bared doors that had just swallowed his baby brother.
“Gave him a distress word. Gave him Mexico. Told him I would visit and if he got scared for his life he just had to say Mexico and I’d get him out.”
Don looked at David. “You can’t just take someone out of an institution.”
David looked back. “Want to bet money on that?”
~
David couldn’t sleep. It was staring to become a habit. He gave up and decided to wander the house. He didn’t get far before realizing a light was coming from Charlie’s room.
His heart leapt for just a beat as his imagination stirred up scenarios of Charlie’s daring escape.
He pushed door the open. Alan sat on the bed his arms wrapped around a battered, brown teddy bear. His eyes were distant and old.
David sat down next to him.
“He’s named Fibonacci,” Alan said obviously referring to the bear. “That’s when it really hit home that Charlie was different. What four year old names their teddy bear Fibonacci?” Alan patted the bear on the head. “The thing is I can look back, I can see now. I always just thought Charlie was more interested in the math and that’s why we had to throw girls at him, I didn’t think...” David didn’t know what to say as Alan stuttered. “And it’s not like I would have cared or been disappointed. I just wanted to see him happy.”
“I know.”
“God, I don’t know how many times we almost lost him growing up. And now this.”
“How did you almost lose him?” David asked. He knew about Charlie’s fall down the steps but Alan implied there was more than one incident.
“When he was about four we were visiting family friends and we told him and Donnie to go play. He managed to get himself locked in a closet full of junk. He panicked and I don’t know what happened but by the time Donnie found him he’d managed to get some cord wrapped around his neck. He was barely breathing. We had to keep all the windows in the house open for weeks. He’s still claustrophobic. When he was eight he ran away from Donnie’s birthday party. We were camping up in the hills and he walked off. He was miles away, middle of the night, just walking down the road when we finally found him. He told me he was walking home ‘cause Donnie didn’t want him there.” Alan’s voice suddenly cracked and he wiped at his eyes. “Then when he was ten some boys at school pushed him down the stairs. Punctured his lung on his own ribs. Almost punctured his heart.”
“He told me about that.”
“Did he tell you about the tumor?”
“No,” David replied quickly.
“When they did x-rays to check his ribs the radiologist noticed a shadow. It was right about where the ribs went in but even after they healed the shadow was still there. They cut out a mass the size of a golf ball. It wasn’t malignant or anything, more of a cyst. The doctor said it had probably been there for years but I had still been smoking when the boys were little and...” Alan’s voice cracked again. David rubbed circles on Alan’s back. “I wish Margaret was here. She was so strong and she understood Charlie. I tried. I always tried but... He was three the first time he beat me at chess. I didn’t stand a chance by the time he was five.”
“He loves you, you know that, right?”
“But he doesn’t trust me,” Alan replied. “If he trusted me he could have come to me before...” Alan squeezed Fibonacci tight. “David, I am so afraid I’m going to outlive my boys.”
“No Alan, no. Not if I have anything to say about it. No.”
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