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Burning Bridges -*- Copyright 2004 by Ellen Hayes.
Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when used for satirical purposes.
This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and possibly sex. If you are legally not allowed to read materials containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading this. I am not responsible. Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish, state, and country.
All rights reserved. See the bottom for distribution rights.
Burning Bridges
"At least it ain't me," Kathy said to herself as she squatted down and aimed. "Oh God, no," she commented out loud as she stood up and tried to avoid getting in everyone else's framing. "This'un." She took a couple of shots as she moved laterally in front of the stage. "Yeah..."
"Well, Kathy's having fun," Debbie observed with a smile.
"Are you?" Sabrina asked.
"Yeah, I guess," Debbie continued smiling.
"You don't sound so sure."
She sighed as her smile slipped. "Just worried, that's all."
"What, about-"
"Someone tried real hard to hurt him," Debbie explained, very quietly, into Sabrina's ear. "He almost died."
Sabrina sighed, and smoothed her hands along her skirt, feeling guilty again about being there and trying to have fun.
"I just don't want it to happen to anyone else," Debbie added as she leaned away again.
Yah huh, Sabrina said to herself as she looked at Debbie. PURELY altruistic, I'm sure...
"Um, uh, you, uh, wanna, um, dance?"
Kelly looked over, and it was James, one of Tuck's friends' Little Brothers. "Ummm..." She glanced around, and Kim caught her eye and nodded. "Yeah, I guess," she agreed.
He tried, sort of, to take her hand as they went to the part of the gym floor where people were dancing; she dodged his first attempt and he didn't try again.
The floppy didn't work; the system booted from the hard drive like it normally did, except it wasn't SUPPOSED to with a floppy in the drive!
"Damnit!" He hit the reset switch, and when it came up, he hit Del to get into the BIOS.
It asked him for a password.
"What the HELL?!?" THAT hadn't been there two hours ago either!
Bob looked at the girl, and couldn't figure out who she was, until she moved to talk to one of Tuck's female friends. That's HER? The 'dyke' that hung around with them all the time, actually looked like a WOMAN tonight. WEIRD...
"What're you lookin' at?" Misty, his date, complained.
Debbie finished, "So you ought to be careful tonight," and Kate Warren nodded as she looked around nervously.
"Are you enjoying yourself?" Kathy asked.
"Yeah, kinda," admitted Kelly. "I wish Tuck'n them were here."
Kathy patted her shoulder. "We all do," she said somberly.
Debbie was actually enjoying the dance, and hoping the break in the music wouldn't last long, when something exploded.
She wasn't the only one to drop to the floor, she noticed.
As everyone stopped, there was a yelp, a scream, and a camera flash in a corner of the gym.
You dumbfucks, Kathy thought as she took another photo of the two freshman 'jokers' who had just set off a firecracker and scared the crap out of everybody. And who were now lying on the floor in varying states of agony, the one she'd clotheslined and the other one she'd crotch- kicked so hard he'd bounced off the wall.
The second one made a squeaky noise like a cartoon victim.
"Now THAT was FUNNY!" she said before she could stop herself.
"We need to get some more of these," George mentioned as they prepped the last recorder they had.
Mike agreed, "Yeah, well..." Tuck had made them.
"Shhh-IT!" George cursed as he realized what he'd said.
Jody finally admitted to herself that everything sucked, especially her mood, and it was time to go home. The mood of the party had matched hers at first, with everyone angry at the way the cheerleaders had been unilaterally suspended and then banned from Homecoming; now, she just felt miserable, sick, and not drunk enough to get over her bad feelings even though she was having problems standing up. "Fuckit," she slurred as she stood up. "'M'go'home. No'm not," she realized slowly. "Bathroom."
"I can't believe someone would do something like that!" Anne-Marie said again, trying not to cry. "That was so CRUEL!" And the dance was breaking up, now, an hour early; nobody really wanted to stay any longer. "They RUINED it!"
"Yeah, well, they're paying for it," Sabrina told her. "Mister Dobson's about ready to expel them, and he did hand 'em over to the cops." She chuckled. "One of 'em was whining about illegal search and seizure when they frisked him; they found two more firecrackers in his pocket, as well as a lighter."
"It's not illegal?"
Debbie, who Anne-Marie hadn't seen come up, answered, "A, not at a school function; we have no rights like that. B, no, because of 'probable cause'. And Kathy was right there... She's mad as hell too."
Sabrina asked, "Do you think they did it to her especially?"
Debbie shrugged, but there was sort of a smirk on her face as she replied, "If they did, I bet now they wish they hadn't..."
Kathy knew that she probably wouldn't be allowed to publish the last shot she got of the dorks, as they got stuffed into the back of a squad car, but that was alright with her; she'd be perfectly happy to keep this one for herself.
Jody didn't feel any better after puking, but she was definitely more sober, and even more tired than she'd been when she decided to go home.
"Hey, come on, Jode. You can't leave now!" Shane complained.
"Yeah? Fuckin' watch me," she said tiredly. "All I wan'do right now is sleep. ALONE," she said loudly and clearly, suspecting that was part of Shane's problem. "'Side, I still don't feel good."
"I can find a club that's not too crowded," Debbie claimed.
Kelly looked at Anne-Marie, who didn't look very enthused at the idea either.
"Just give the whole dance thing up, Deb," Kim sighed, looking down at her shoes.
"I could stand to go dancing, though," Kathy mentioned as she checked her watch. "If we can find someplace to let us in, that's not closing right away."
"I know a couple," Debbie claimed. Kelly wasn't sure whether to believe her or not; from the way she talked, she knew everything about everyone and everything. "Does anyone else want to go?"
Kelly glanced again at Anne-Marie, who was looking at her for a moment, until she looked at the tall freshman, who was looking back at her...
"Naw," Kelly startled herself by saying. "Uh, I'm tired, an' I wanna get out of this dress an' stuff." It was true, though.
"I mean, this isn't really cool for dancing at like a club or something, right?" Anne-Marie added.
Cody nodded agreement, but Debbie argued, "Sure it is! They'd be just as happy to get us as they would anyone else, and dressed like this at least we look like we're respectable."
"I dunno," Cody mentioned as she hugged herself. "I mean, these are expensive..."
Debbie sighed, but didn't argue any more, as more of the girls agreed that they'd rather go home and/or change into 'normal' clothes instead of going out elsewhere dressed like they were.
Luckily, Jody didn't live too far away from Ashlee's house, so it was a short and easy drive. She was glad for that; she wasn't entirely sober yet, and she didn't want to get in a wreck.
"How was she?" Audrey asked.
Kathy restrained a frown. "Kelly was fine tonight. I think she might actually have enjoyed herself, too."
"Aw, man," Kelly complained.
Audrey giggled as she turned around. "Oh, you know- Hey, who did your makeup? This looks a lot better than what I did."
"Friend of ours, Debbie," Kathy answered. "Kelly didn't run fast enough before the dance, and she got caught." Audrey giggled some more as Kelly glared at Kathy.
Debbie recovered her cellphone by the third ring. "Hello?"
"It's Kath; I'm home at the moment. If you'd like to leave a message, please-"
"Are you coming or not?" Debbie interrupted.
"I'll be there as soon as I can," Kathy said. "I need to change and make sure the cameras and stuff are put away."
"No developing anything tonight before you come," Debbie ordered. "You can do that tomorrow."
"Jeez you're a pain in the ass," Kathy complained. "Alright, lemme get something on..."
"Oh, Ashlee..." Mike said as they cruised past her house at a nondescript twenty-five miles per hour. "This should be a somber night for you, you know?" Laughter eventually followed, as the others in the van guessed what he was thinking.
"Can I do it?" Jill asked.
Kelly still wasn't sure what to make of the dance. It had been the first 'real' one she'd gone to, with people she hadn't grown up with in Yakutat, and it had definitely been different. On the other hand, she wasn't sure if she liked it at all.
Jill watched as Mike and Dan did SOMETHING to the phone company box that was standing alone like some kind of weird techno-gravestone. Dan had hooked up a truly decrepit laptop - black and white only screen! - to something inside, and Mike had hooked up a very strange looking phone handset to something else, and then they motioned her towards the laptop. She looked, and it was a name, phone number, and address.
"That's the directory entry for the phone you're calling from," Mike explained, very softly. Jill nodded. "Do it."
She took a deep breath, re-read the information again, and then dialed 911 on the handset.
"Finally!"
"Fuck off, Deb," Kathy stated as they walked into the dance club. "Hey," she waved to Amanda and Julia. "Pam?"
"Took off, claimed she needed her sleep," Kim answered. "Sabrina went home; she says she's still recovering from fasting all day for Yom Kippur."
Kathy nodded, "I can believe that..." Twenty-four hours of fasting would about do her in, she figured.
"Letsgoletsgoletsgo!" Mike encouraged as everyone ran back to the van and dived in. He stayed behind long enough to make sure the box was closed up, then he piled in on top of Jill; George slammed the side door, and away they went. "Speed," Mike warned.
"Twenty-six," Dan smirked, a little breathlessly.
Sarah was beginning to remember why it was so hard to quit; it gave her time to think. Especially now, when smoking indoors was banned virtually everywhere; when you had to stop everything and go outside, it was a natural break in things, and could serve as a 'timeout'. She was lucky this hospital had a balcony. She was also beginning to recognize some of the staff, who were also making use of the smoking balcony. Sarah couldn't help but smirk at the irony of it, sometimes.
I just don't know... He'd looked so damned at ease with the children, holding one and feeding her, and dealing with the other one. She'd forced Bill into taking a greater-than-usual role in caring for their children, and that had been wonderful. She wasn't sure why Eugene doing that but even better upset her so much.
Does he HAVE to do it in girl's clothes, though?
She'd only been with him the one time, and she'd had to leave early because she knew she was losing her temper but she didn't understand why. And he'd dressed as femininely as possible, to annoy her. She'd guessed that at the time; later comparisons with Bill's observations had confirmed that. That sort of behavior was nothing new; all of her children did things deliberately to piss her off sometimes, just as she'd done to piss off her own family at times when she was younger.
Still, watching HIM, her SON, sit around like he was in an advertisement for Motherhood or Parenting Magazine's fashion section... That had been the worst part.
No... the worst part was the way he just DID it, she admitted. Like it was NO BIG DEAL, to be sitting in the middle of a fucking MALL dressed like that, singing to the baby...
"What? It's simple," Debbie frowned.
"Simple," Kathy repeated skeptically.
"Yeah."
"So maybe you should call one of 'em and tell 'em this simple idea? Like, RIGHT now?" Kathy ordered.
"You said-"
"Deb, he's been unconscious for TWO DAYS. Don't you think his parents are kind of worried by now? Call 'em," she demanded.
Shannon had gone outside, because she had to throw up and the bathrooms were full. She wasn't at all expecting someone to grab her arm. At first she thought it was Shane, but after she'd swung at him she found out that it was a cop. "Oh, no- nnng-"
She had the satisfaction of throwing up on the cop's leg when he threw her down on the grass, but then it got really confusing and not at all fun.
"Who?"
"Debbie Carstairs. Kathy said you were trying to think of a way to wake Tucker up without him panicking, right?"
Bill's eyes moved sideways as if he could see the girl that was calling his house phone. "You had an idea?"
"Shit, I'm tired," Jill said as they stripped their gear off in the back of Dan's minivan.
"Yeah," George said dramatically, "but it's that GOOD kind of tired, you know?"
"Yeah," Jill found herself agreeing. As she frowned at George, she realized, to her dismay, that she did feel good. Still nervous, tired as hell, and parts of her hurt from the kind of minor accidents you get while doing things in the dark, but nonetheless good.
The only downside was that she had inadvertently agreed with George.
"Ert." Mike's mind left his body behind, and came back with an answer. "Sounds like it oughta work, yeah," he said. "Who came up with this?"
"Debbie Car-"
"DEBBIE?!"
"Don't take that tone with me; I've already used it," Mister Tucker complained. "I think we'll try it in the morning, so you can get some sleep tonight."
"I could use it," Mike admitted, before he yawned.
"Mom?" Shannon whimpered into the phone.
"What? What the hell are you doing calling at this hour?! Where are you?"
"Mom don't yell at me, please!" Shannon begged.
Kathy was hoping like hell that Ryan, whom she'd just met, would ask for her phone number. It seemed strange to her, but her asking for HIS phone number would make her feel self-conscious about her height. And he'd been one of the very few people lately who hadn't done that. Of course, it helped that he was actually slightly taller than she was.
"Fuck... I am so tired," Mike sighed VERY quietly to himself, as he got into the shower at his own house.
Her son was still out of it, to the point that the nurses had to come in every so often and move him around, in the hopes that he wouldn't get bedsores. Sarah didn't think that was too likely; Bill had said that they'd get Eugene up before noon, and she was confident that he'd figure SOMETHING out. Even if she didn't want to know what it was.
She just watched him now. His breathing was starting to get heavy, like it always did when he got sick.
"If you find anything out, Kim, let me kn- let US know," Debbie corrected.
"If I can," Kim agreed, before she started to yawn.
Jill turned around, and it was some guy she vaguely remembered, who was holding a kn-
She gasped as she felt the warm wetness where her belly button had been, and staggered backwards, but he stepped forwards, smiling, and she woke up as she threw herself out of bed trying to get away from a dream.
"Motherfucker," she whimpered, trying not to cry, because that might wake someone up.
Mike put down his orange juice and commented, "You know, though, he still might wake up in a panic..."
"Well... Hell." He just might, at that.
"So what I was thinking was, if you have more people there, maybe we can hold him down some, and-"
"Wouldn't that be enough to set him off all by itself?" Bill didn't wake up 'nice' when he was in the throes of one of his own nightmares.
"I dunno..."
Sarah had time for just one more cigarette before they all arrived this morning and tried Debbie's weird idea on her son. At least if this idea doesn't work, it shouldn't hurt anything. The worst that can happen is nothing.
She wasn't getting buzzed any more from the smoking, which she realized was not a good thing. I am stopping after this pack. Losing it in a crisis like this is one thing; I don't need to be doing this again all the time.
Pause, as she watched the Sunday bustle. It seemed just as crowded as it always did in daytime. She supposed that it never really slowed down here, at least not during the day.
Why is Debbie helping? Eugene had basically admitted he was gay and in some sort of relationship; she wasn't sure if she hoped it was with Michael, or dreaded that possibility. But it was certain that Eugene and Debbie had broken up, a long time ago. The way he'd acted when she'd sent him that card told her that they hadn't 'gotten over it' yet either. Gotta be SOMETHING there, or she wouldn't have helped. She snorted to herself. Married! And with a set of RINGS to 'prove' it! And why the hell does she carry stuff like that around, anyway? What IS she doing?
"Hmm hmm," Mike said to himself as he checked the taps. The data were flowing in faster than he could deal with them, right now; but Tucker still had a gig or so of space left, so he thought it could wait until later in the day. Coming over at seven in the morning hadn't been such a great idea after all.
"This is too simple," Sarah mentioned as she looked at her son.
"Yeah, well... Sometimes it's the simple things," Michael commented.
"Everyone ready?" Bill asked, not looking at her. He'd been exceedingly annoyed when he'd smelled the tobacco on her, and he'd been short with her since they arrived, speaking to her as little as he possibly could.
Sarah sighed, and firmly pressed the Play button on the Walkman. "Go."
Nothing at all happened for the first song, which she could just barely hear over the other sounds in the ICU. She blocked out the nervous 'humor' bouncing back and forth between Bill and Michael, and concentrated on Eugene's face, trying to detect ANY signs of impending consciousness.
There weren't any.
What...?
"Waitaminute, he twitched..."
Dana flipped the ECG's printer on, and it began spewing paper.
'Melt With You'? Oh god.
"Tuck! Tuck, wake up... it's me, Mike. Wake up, Tuck," Mike said urgently into Tuck's ear. "It's Mike, Tuck. Wake up!"
Mike? Why are you playing that horrible shit into...
What's going on, anyw-
Memory returned in a rush.
She'd thought that having the kid's doctor, his parents, and two of his friends or siblings (she wasn't sure which) was complete overkill; he had broken ribs, a recently-collapsed lung, and other injuries, so what could happen?
The androgynous teen on the bed twitched his legs once, then SURGED upwards so violently that he almost went over the foot of the bed despite all four people falling on top of his limbs and abdomen. They were all yelling at him to calm down, but he was still moving, making unnatural animalistic sounds as he tried to get loose.
"EUGENE TUCKER! KNOCK IT OFF!" Bill roared at the top of his lungs, and finally his son stopped refighting his assailants.
"You're safe in the hospital, mano; we got you," Mike snapped, ignoring the blood dripping from his mouth.
His son was gasping in panic, but his eyes were OPEN, and Bill was sure he could see his son in there.
"At ease, kid," Bill ordered, and Eugene actually relaxed for a moment before his eyes got wide and he started convulsing and coughing furiously. "Let him go!" came out a little late, as everyone had let go of Eugene already; he folded up into a ball and wrenched the oxygen mask off his face before hacking out a glob of something that was almost black. Mike dove and came back up with the oxygen mask, which he slapped into Eugene's hand when his coughing slowed; Eugene jammed the mask back on and tried to breathe.
"I don't think he was ready to wake up yet," Mike mumbled as he gently probed his lips. He thought it was clotted by now...
"He needed to get up," Mister Tucker said.
"I don't think he agreed with you."
"He always did hate Modern English," Sarah said to Dana, as she wiped her eyes.
"No kidding." Dana would never have thought to try some sort of disliked music to wake someone up, but it had worked in this case. Sort of. Eugene hadn't done TOO much damage to himself, but he'd done enough, and that was after the morphine she'd ordered into his IV port before they'd tried it.
"Mother of God..." Dana mentioned as she scanned the ECG strip. He'd gone from a resting pulse of around 55 or so, to 65 or so when he first moved, then shot up to 170 in less than a second. He still hadn't recovered from that; the monitor showed he was trotting along at 85, though his pO2 was hovering around 93 percent. He was still having trouble breathing, though; several days of congestion, mucus, asthma byproducts, and possibly blood had to be impairing his ventilation. He needed to cough it all out, which was going to present a problem.
"Didn't you do this yesterday?!" Kim gargled unpleasantly into the phone.
"Yeah, but that was yesterday," Jill claimed. Apparently, just being exhausted wasn't enough to keep the nightmares out of her head. She thought about claiming she had some 'news', but decided not to mention last night. Until she realized that Ashlee's party and the disruption thereof would certainly count as news. "Besides," she said, "I have something to tell you."
"What?"
"Not over the phone, Ki-"
Kim started being unpleasant, so Jill just called, "See you in half an hour!" and hung up.
FLASH TOALL UPDATE X TWO AWAKE X NO BRAIN DAMAGE APPARENT X WILL
MOVE FROM ICU TO NORMAL ROOM TODAY X HALLELUJAH X TSIXT END
"YESSSSSSSSSSS!" Susan shrieked as she danced around, holding the printout to her chest.
<Cops? Why?>
<D-O-B-S-O-N called cops from school,> Mike explained.
<Shit.>
Tuck closed his eyes, which Mike couldn't stand. "Tuck!"
His eyes popped open, and he looked annoyed.
"It's SUNDAY, Tuck. You've been out since Thursday." Tuck's eyes widened. "We NEEDED to get you up, dude; or the head-cutter was going to go in and look for blown fuses or something." Tuck's eyes went huge and the biomonitor blipped before Mike could insist, "They DIDN'T, Tuck; they didn't cut on your brain."
The monitor slowed down, and Tuck closed his eyes again, but Mike held himself in check this time.
After only a few seconds, though, his eyes opened again.
"Talk to Dana about it," Mike said, and looked around for her. "Doc Treble?"
Dana said, "At least another day, Eugene..." He didn't look pleased. "Well, that's what happens when you don't regain consciousness for three days. And in a few hours, they can switch you to a private room, instead of staying in ICU."
His eyes closed, and for just a moment he looked far older than his parents.
Shit, I HATE calling her... but she's the fastest way to get the news out... Before he thought any harder, Mike dialed her number.
"Hello?" came just after the second ring.
"Debbie, it's Mike. Tuck's awake, no brain damage."
"He is? Great!"
"Can you pass the word along to your friends?"
"Sure, no problem... can he receive visitors?"
"Not yet. But he is awake and his brain's fine."
"Any word on... who did it?"
"Tuck's not sure of all the names; he remembers faces, though, so we're getting last year's yearbook. He knows Kyle Dawson was one of 'em, though."
"Kyle Dawson," Debbie confirmed, her voice devoid of emotion.
"Affirmative. Stay away from him," he warned her. "The cops are already looking for him, planning to arrest him."
Jody had managed to grab the old newspapers for the last few days from her bitch stepmother, and when she got back to her room, she started reading through them.
"He's awake, in Respiratory ICU, and he says he remembers the attack and the assailants, enough to pick them out of a yearbook," Bill explained into the phone. "We'd appreciate it if someone could come down and interview him. And, he's gonna need an interpreter, American Sign Language."
Detective Stratton mentioned, "You didn't say he was deaf."
"He's not; he's got bad respiratory problems right now, and not for the first time, so it's easier- WAY easier for him to sign than talk, right now. You know how it is when you have a sore throat, right?"
"Huh," commented the detective. "So why'd he learn sign? He sick that much?"
"Yeah, pretty much. Less now than he used to be, but... To tell the truth," which wasn't always what he did when speaking to the police, "he's been sick so much, and so bad, as a child, we weren't sure he was going to live this long."
Realization of that, and the fact that all of it might have come to nothing over the belligerent bigotry of some of his 'peers', made him angry all over again.
"Fever at one-oh-two-point-four, that needs to come down at least a degree or so. He's got pneumonia, so-"
"How can you tell?"
"Patient history." She wouldn't dare to be so confident with just any kid, but she'd been treating this one for nearly a decade, and she KNEW him. "Anyway, he's got a chronic or recurring histoplasmosis, so he needs to be on preventative antibiotics to keep the secondary infections away. Which he gets if it's not aggressively treated at the start. Kid has- THIS kid, when he has a bad asthma attack and there are any complications, he's got a recurring pneumonia that flares up, then he'll pick up anything else respiratory in the vicinity. If we treat him now, he's less likely to end up with strep throat or another flavor of pneumonia or God only knows what else." All of which he'd gotten sometime in the past from less threatening asthma attacks. "And we've got to restart his antiasthmatics, so-"
"He wasn't on them?"
"He'd been in remission for two years; I'd rather not have a kid on steroids if they don't need it, and like I said, he hadn't had an attack or anything in two years. So, back on those... Oh, he is NOT going to be happy," she realized out loud. He'd given her ROSES when she'd allowed him to stop taking the daily medications, she remembered with a slight smile.
"So, did you like the dance last night?" Jill asked Kelly as they waited on drinks.
"Uh, yeah, I guess," Kelly said.
"You don't sound sure about that," Kim noticed.
"I dunno, I mean... I dunno." Even thinking about it last night, she hadn't decided what had 'gone wrong'. Something had, though.
"So what hurts, Eugene?"
<Ask me what doesn't hurt.>
Bill sighed. "Okay, Eugene; what DOESN'T hurt?"
<Hair.>
"That's it?" he asked when his son didn't sign anything else.
<That is it. I think everything else hurts if I think about it. More M-O-R-P-H-I-N-E,> he spelled out.
"We'll ask Dana. I think we're a little worried about you going back into..."
<Hurts less there,> Eugene signed with a warning look at Bill.
"Yearbook?" Susan asked, looking around as if she could see it in the kitchen.
"Yeah. He signs he can point out who did it; he's not sure of-"
"OhYEAH!" Susan roared, slamming a fist triumphantly down on the counter, before she started laughing in relief.
"OHHH yeah," Brian agreed, sounding like he was smiling as much as she was. "Anyway, he's not sure of the names, but he's pretty sure of the faces..."
"Yearbook. Right," she giggled.
"Mom and Dad're coming home, me an' Mike's staying here," Brian continued. "Dad says, can you take him and the yearbook back?"
"Sure, no sweat... Lemme go look for it and I'll call you back, okay?"
"So, like, was it-"
"Hey!" someone called, and Jill looked away from Kelly to see Debbie coming up to their table. "Good news!" she said, flushed and smiling. "Can I sit down? I'm starved."
"You're always fucking starved-"
"Yes!" Jill said loudly over Kim and pointed to the fourth seat, next to Kelly.
"-and you never gain any fucking weight! How the fuck do you DO that?!" Kim finished.
"Stay active alla time, Kim. I've said that before. Wait," Debbie said as she held her hand up. "Good news, and you want to hear it. Tucker woke up this morning."
They got a lot of attention as they all started yelling happy questions at Debbie, who was answering them loudly (and happily), but Jill did not give a shit this time. He's okay!
"Because, Holly, maybe if we apologize, he won't do something?"
"How do you know where he is?"
"They said it in the newspaper, where he went-"
"Did- Did they say anything about... you know-"
Jody shook her head. "Just where he was taken... They didn't even say his name, but they mentioned the helicopter flight and where it went."
"Dork..." Tucker hated his yearbooks, Susan had belatedly remembered, so the second place she looked was in her parents' room. Lined up with all the rest of his yearbooks was last years' edition.
Sarah glanced at the yearbook, then hugged her daughter.
"And the cops are coming?" Susan confirmed.
"Yeah; Bill will probably go back for the interview..." The less she was around cops, the more likely she was not to piss one off.
"I think that means you have time to take a nap, Mom," her daughter said as she bustled Sarah towards the stairs. "You look like sh- crap, and I bet you feel worse."
"I don't feel good," Sarah admitted. "But your father's in there now, changing..."
"Then eat something, which I have oh so cleverly already prepared," Susan smirked, "and when he comes down, you go upstairs and lie down for a couple hours."
"Alright, alright," she sighed, but with a smile. "I love you, Susan."
"I love you too, Mom. Now git!"
"You're wearing your uniform?" Holly questioned.
Jody sighed. "Look... they said, we're 'representatives of our school' if we're in uniform, all that bullshit, right? So if I'm wearing this, it's like I'm apologizing for all of us, even the ones that aren't here."
"Mom! Where's the yearbook?!"
"Oh, damnit," Sarah sighed as she closed the cover and stood up. "In here!" she yelled back. As Susan came in, Sarah explained, "I was looking at it while I ate."
"I don't see you eating," she smirked as she took the yearbook.
"Susan!" Her daughter just stuck her tongue out and left.
Jody's phone rang four times, then the answering machine picked up. "Jody?" Ashlee said raggedly. "It's me, Ashlee? PLEASE pick up the phone if you're there..." Ashlee sighed, then said, "Okay, but call me if you're okay. Something... something happened last night, and I dunno who all is involved, they wouldn't tell us... Please call me when you get this, okay? Please?"
"And sandwiches for you guys," Susan smirked as she handed Bill the brown paper bag - grocery sized, he noticed - that had been in the back seat.
"You're a marvel," Bill told his daughter, and kissed her appreciatively on the cheek.
"You'll find the bill on your Visa statement next month," she grinned at him.
"Get out."
"You're in MY car," she riposted, unable to keep from snickering. "YOU get out!"
"Ahrrr," he snarled playfully as he got out.
"Bag!"
"Got it," he lied as he turned around and took the large bag off the seat where he'd been moment ago. "We'll call."
"Give Tuck a kiss for me," she called as he shut the door.
"I DON'T think so."
Mike caught Tucker sniffing at the air, oxy mask off, as he sat down. "Your sister made lunch for everybody," he explained as he wiped his mouth again.
Tuck looked interested for a moment, then signed, <Who is this girl? What did she do with my sister? And how do we keep my sister from coming back?>
Mike laughed hard at that, but when he could focus his eyes again, Tucker had slumped in the bed, as if he'd expended not only all his energy but everything else with that short burst of humor.
"Hey, mano," he said gently, "It's okay."
Tucker just slowly shook his head.
"You're alive."
Michael had been shooed out of the ICU cubicle when the police got there; that was one reason why Bill had placed microphones around Tucker's bed, feeding into a recorder.
"So what happened after that?" Detective Stratton asked.
The kid shrugged, then signed. The interpreter said, "I don't know. I was... Unconscious."
"What happened when you woke up?"
The kid actually started shivering.
"Hello?"
"It's Dad, Suze. Go wake your mother up; cops are gone and we've got names."
"He talked?"
"Ohhhhh yeah he talked. Get ready to copy."
Susan scrabbled for a pen and some paper. "Oh man..."
Sarah had gotten out of the car wanting nothing more than another cigarette. Even her daughter had glared at her when she smelled the odor on her clothes, when she came home. At least she didn't say anything, Sarah sighed. Paradoxically, the cigarettes were helping with the stress of Eugene getting beaten into the hospital, but she was getting almost an equal amount from her family. I could definitely use some pot, she sighed as she dug in her purse, but Bill would absolutely go through the fucking ROOF if he caught me. I think one thing at a time...
The extra five or ten minutes outside, smoking and sipping on a Diet Coke, made her feel better and more in control of things. Never did figure out how to do this without smoking, damnit, she realized. Wish I could... Yoga only went so far in relaxation.
When she finished this one and stuffed it into the sand in the ashtray outside, she felt herself tense back up. Goddamnit, Sarah, stop it. He's awake, Bill's with him, the cops are on the fuckers... just chill out, she told herself as she walked through the lobby to the elevators and waited for an up elevator to come along, which (of course) took forever.
As Sarah got on the elevator, she thought she recognized two of the faces, and a uniform, from the yearbook. Her heart started to race.
"Excuse me," she said gently, "do you girls go to McAllen High?"
"Yeah, we're cheerleaders there," the taller one perked at her, smiling. The other one nodded, looking curious.
"My son... he went to McAllen," Sarah said slowly, trembling. "He's in ICU, because some people attacked him. At McAllen." Her foot was wet suddenly, and she looked down. She'd crushed the open soda can in her hand without realizing what she was doing, and the dripping fluids gave her an idea. "I hope I can find them, the ones that did it, before the cops do," she said as she took the crumpled can with her other hand. "I'd like to... discuss some things with them," she smiled, and raised her hand, which was bleeding like she'd guessed, up to her face, and carefully licked the blood off.
The elevator door opened, and she smiled again at the two girls, and carefully got off the elevator, turning just before the doors closed to say, "Be seeing you," and to tip them a salute.
The door shut on the two terrified girls, and she managed to control herself enough not to go back after them.
Her entire body was vibrating with suppressed rage.
Deep breathing... deep breath, in... out...
When she could, she turned around and headed towards her son's ICU bay.
"BILL!"
Oh shit she's pissed-
"I need to hit something," Sarah seethed as she appeared around the corner. "I just met two of those little cheerleader cunts in the elevator!"
Dana was busy writing, so she didn't look up as Sarah raged, but the confused flurry of bleeps from the monitor caught her attention. Eugene had just had a heart arrhythmia. What did she say? Dana wondered as she turned around to look.
"Sarah, you need to get the hell out of here," Bill told her as he reached inside his long coat. "Take this..." He handed her a wooden handle of some kind that had been hidden inside. "Go into the stairwell and beat it out on the railings. NOT here," he insisted.
"Jesus!" Dana exclaimed from behind him. "What the hell-"
"Someone put him in this state," he said to her as he turned around. "They do not get a second chance."
Dana shivered at the cold calm way in which he stated that fact. He didn't even sound emotionally involved.
Bill's eye caught something, and he glanced over at Mike. Mike nodded and tapped at the jacket he was wearing. Good man, Bill nodded back.
They'd made it to some other floor, and escaped the elevator. Now, they were looking for a way back down and out of here. "Stairs," Holly breathed in relief.
Jody opened the door and was stepping onto the grimy cement landing when she heard some serious banging.
"Come ON!" Holly pushed, and as Jody took another step, they both heard a shriek of rage echoing around the stairwell.
"Keerist," Bill sighed. Tuck had just about left before they could talk him into staying in the hospital for another day, and push him back into bed. He's still got a chest tube inserted! Well, with any luck, Sarah put the fear of us into them, and they WON'T be showing up. If they want to keep their pretty faces.
Bill resented his son being terrified.
"Oh god, oh god, oh-"
"Shut UP!" Jody hissed at Holly. If she had to listen to Holly's hysterics any more, she was going to lose it too. "Come on, she can't be in both stairwells at once!" Nevertheless, she carefully opened the door and listened, before she started sprinting down the stairs.
Dana wasn't at all comfortable with the feeling in the room after Sarah had left. Bill and Mike were looking grim at each other a lot, and Eugene seemed like he was trying to go back into a coma.
"Don't sweat it, kid," Bill leaned over and said to his son. "I think we can get you out of ICU today, and into a room. Safer," he told Dana.
That one word hung in the air for a long time.
"He'll be safer in a private room," Mike spoke up. "And the staff won't be so pissy about us staying with him."
There is that, Dana had to admit. She'd had to argue with every single shift as they came on, repeating what she'd printed on Bill's laptop printer and stapled to the front of his chart.
"And he's not going to heal," Bill added, "if he's stressed out, wondering if they're going to find him. And we know they made it to this floor, looking for-"
"You don't know they were looking for him," Dana realized.
"There's no one else on this floor with a connection to two McAllen students," Bill relied.
"How do you KNOW that?"
"I checked," he said simply. "What do you have to do to get him moved?"
Dana felt her mouth get tight in anger, but Bill wasn't the sort to change his mind on something like this. "I'll get it started; it'll probably take a few hours." He nodded.
"It was a STUPID idea-"
"No it fucking WASN'T!" Jody yelled back. "Why the fuck do you think we got suspended, huh? Some kind of shit with his parents or something, they threatened the school with a lawsuit... MAYBE if we could APOLOGIZE to them, they won't put us in fucking JAIL?" Holly didn't say anything to that. "Did you ever think of THAT?"
"I don't think saying 'sorry' is gonna work on them, Jody," Holly said grimly as she pulled up to the exit gate.
"Just get us the fuck out of here!"
"Let's do it."
Adam Stratton was the last in the group; he'd conducted the pre-arrest briefing sitting down in his car, but that was one of the privileges of rank.
He wasn't sure how he felt about the little kid in the hospital. It was obvious that he was queer as a three-dollar bill, and that always bugged him. On the other hand, it was one thing not to invite a little queer kid to after-game parties; it was another thing entirely to beat him so bad he ended up in surgery. This was America; if you didn't like someone else's lifestyle, you just didn't associate with them. And he was definitely professional enough to deal with the kid on a 'work' basis.
They stopped in front of the door, neither of them directly in front of it, and Fredrickson knocked emphatically. After about half a minute of standing around and waiting, wondering if he was here, the patrol guy knocked again, longer this time. Finally, the door opened and a bleary-eyed male in his forties stared at them.
"We're looking for Kyle Dawson, is he here?"
"What do you want with him?"
"Is he home?" Adam repeated. If he was, he wasn't getting out the back way; he'd sent two officers to the back of the house, keeping one for the front door.
It had been a lot less than Dana's estimated 'few hours', which Bill was VERY glad for. ICU wasn't secure enough, in his opinion; and the newspaper had already printed enough information for a cheerleader to figure out where his son was. He and his family were prepared for some truly unpleasant excitement, if it came to that, but Bill preferred that it did not.
"Bill, I need to get some sleep," Sarah groaned at him.
"I could use some too. Kids?" he asked, looking at Mike and Brian. "Can you hold the fort here, until evening?" The two of them looked at each other.
"Yeah I guess," Brian sighed.
"Hey, look, how about you go home," Mike said to Brian, "and I get some of his friends in here, an-"
"No," Sarah countered. "He still needs to sleep, as much as he can. No visitors to keep him awake for a while."
"And I'd prefer that family be the only ones around until we get the main perps locked up," Bill added. "Anyone else standing around in here would just confuse the issue, if it came to that."
"Leave your laptop?" Brian suggested.
"Bring one ea- Any word on Tucker's laptop?" Mike interrupted himself.
Bill shook his head. "Nothing yet. I'm keeping an eye out for it, though, definitely."
"How?" Sarah asked incredulously.
"Later. Involves some geek stuff," he said to his wife, giving her the short form that he'd learned to use. She REALLY didn't care to hear the details.
"No, now," Sarah insisted.
USUALLY she doesn't care for the details...
"Look, what are YOU doing here?" Susan asked Dan and the black guy Tuck hung around with sometimes.
"Debbie called us, said that Tucker was awake and naming names," Dan said, "but that was all she said. We're supposed to come here for further information."
"Debbie said to come here-"
"No, we always do that. You know that," he accused her.
"Ffffffuck," she sighed to herself. "Did Debbie call anyone else and tell them to come over here? No, never mind," she waved the question away as she opened the door. "Do you know if anyone... No, wait. Get everybody over here," she decided. "We're gonna do a lecture like we did when Tuck got his medical tests back..." Which reminded her that she was supposed to get some results of her own back this weekend.
"Can I use the phone?" Dan asked.
"Debbie? It's Kim... Dan called me and said that they're having a kind of lecture-thing, at Tuck's house, to discuss things about him?"
"Yeah?" She'd heard about the one about his biology, though frustratingly no one would tell her any details.
"I think you ought to come to this one."
"Me? There? Are you insane?"
"You went there last week, and-"
Debbie sighed and interrupted, "I don't want to get into that again. And I don't want to do it again either. His mom's meaner than mine, I swear."
"It's his sister, Susan, that's doing it," Kim said. "Wait."
"Goddamnit Kim-"
"Debbie?" asked a different voice. "This is Susan. I think you ought to be here, yeah."
"Shit. I've got consults for the rest of the afternoon..." She did have a feeling that this was going to be important, and if she could, she'd reschedule the next one and skip her lunch, which was the 'next appointment'. She'd learned to schedule things like that so she'd actually get a break during the day; otherwise, she wouldn't, and then she'd end up hungry and overly tired and bad-tempered and sometimes not realizing why. "Can I call you back?"
"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what a feminist is, I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat." -- Rebecca West, 1913
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- @>--,--'----- Ellen Hayes o===[-------- __ vicki .sig +
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