Everything In Between, chapter 8
Previous stories and chapters: speak_sing
He itched. Jack had been scratching at himself, at his arms and neck and legs head and face and chest, for a few hours. He hadn’t drawn blood yet, but he was close, even though they‘d trimmed his nails as much as they could without hurting him. He tossed and he turned and then he got up and paced, did his best to run and ended up jogging in a circle around his cell. He was panting, breathing through his mouth, and hitting his head solidly against the wall when the door to his cell was flung open and hands grabbed at him, voices babbling over his head as he was wrestled to his cot. He fought. He thrashed around, eyes unable to focus. There were too many of them, and he managed to get an elbow in a stomach and his hands around someone’s neck when he was sat on and slapped in the face.
“Dawes! Dawes! It’s Nasir, Dawes. Look at me.”
“Buh?” Jack’s arms had been wrestled across his chest, kept there by Nasir’s strong grip as the orderlies pulled his sleeve up and jabbed a needle into his bicep. “Ah!”
“Calm down, Dawes, they’re just helping. It’s a relaxant, Dawes.”
“No!” Jack shouted, but whatever they’d given him was taking effect, and when his gaze popped into focus, Nasir’s face was only a few inches from his.
“Yes,” Nasir told him. “You’re panicking, Dawes. You need to calm down.”
“D-don’t p-p-p-panic,” Jack protested, shaking his head as he twitched. His heart felt like it was about to burst and he couldn’t stop twitching. He felt like he was suffocating.
“Yes, you are. You’re having a panic attack. If you don’t calm down, we’ll have to transfer you to the hospital wing and keep you under surveillance for forty-eight hours. Rachel and Ava will be here in,” he twisted a bit to glance at his watch, “seven hours. If you don’t calm down, you won’t be able to see them. Look,” he went on, reaching a hand out and snapping his fingers. “Mrs. Fine sent us this picture. Look at them, Dawes.” He held the picture in front of Jack’s face. Ava was curled in Rachel’s arms, smiling up at her, and Rachel was smiling back down at the girl. Jack closed his eyes. “Look at them. You’re going to miss out on this if you don’t relax,” Nasir said when Jack looked at the picture.
“I c-can’t,” he moaned.
“You can. You need to. Where’s the doctor?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Downstairs,” was the reply.
“N-no,” Jack mumbled. “No d-d-doctors.”
“It’s Doctor Morgenson,” Nasir assured him. “We called him a half an hour ago. He’ll be right up.”
“In t-troub-b-ble . . .”
“You’re not in trouble,” Nasir laughed. “You just need to calm down.”
Jack hunched his shoulders as much as he was able and shook his head, still staring at Rachel and Ava’s picture. They looked so happy without him. Without him. Without him. Nasir continued holding him down for a minute or so, then gently eased off of him and stood up. He let the picture go when Jack grasped for it.
“The sedative’s kicked in. You can get back to your posts,” the guard told the orderlies. “I’ll watch him until Doctor Morgenson gets here.” After the cell door closed, he sat on the floor, leaning up against Jack’s cot. “I thought you’d be nervous, so I’ve been keeping an eye on you tonight. She’s still tiny.”
“Who?” Jack mumbled.
“Ava. She’s still tiny. Five weeks, right?”
“Yeah. Head feels funny.”
“Good. You know . . . For what you’re not there for right now, Dawes . . . In the long run, it’s not a lot. Babies’ memories don’t really develop until about six months. You should be out of here long before then.”
“Quit trying to comfort me.”
“He’s got a point,” Morgenson said from the doorway. Jack could barely keep his eyes open to look at the man as Nasir stood up and let him in, then stepped into the hallway.
Jack rolled his eyes away, returning them to his picture. “Get the lecture over with.”
“I’m not here to lecture you, Jack, I’m here to make sure that you’re not a danger to yourself. I’m here to calm you down.” Morgenson brought the desk chair closer as Jack rolled his eyes. “You’re nervous about today, Jack. That’s perfectly understandable.”
“I don’t get nervous.”
“When you haven’t seen your wife and child in a month, it’s a reasonable reaction. Jack, you are not above feeling human emotions. If anything, I would say that you feel them more strongly than most people do --- hard enough to deal with in normal circumstances, but more so when you’re unused to the emotion in question. You’re still not used to caring for people so deeply, are you, Jack?”
“You mad at me?”
“No. I expected that you would need me tonight.” Morgenson leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees as Jack yawned. “I spoke with Rachel tonight ---”
“She knows about Veronica. She won’t want me anymore.”
“She’s certainly upset about it, but she still loves you, Jack. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be coming to see you.” Morgenson cleared his throat when Jack tried to interrupt him. “Was sleeping with Veronica a smart thing to do?”
“. . . Worst mistake of my current life,” Jack admitted sullenly.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Morgenson leaned back. “Why was sleeping with Veronica the worst mistake of your current life? Why do you think it was a mistake? I don’t want to hear why everyone else thinks it’s a mistake. I want to know why you think so.”
Jack blinked for a bit as he thought. Then, “She’s a dirty whore. Could have given me a disease. Coulda knocked her up. Said I didn’t want anyone but Rachel, wouldn’t be with anyone but Rachel. Rachel’s going to cry. She’s going to sit there, and she’s going to cry, and it’s going to be my fault. Couldn’t keep my dick in my pants. Couldn’t . . . couldn’t think of a better way to get the information I needed and to get all the anger out. Couldn’t think. Love them so much . . .” Then his face twisted into a snarl and he tried to raise himself up. “The fuck did they give me?! Fucking truth serum?!”
“I’m sure there’s a bit of that in the mix,” Morgenson said, pleased, as Jack flopped back onto the bed and panted. “We like our patients to be as truthful with us as possible.”
“Fuck.”
“Stop swearing; it’ll set a bad example for Ava.”
He was having a difficult time keeping his eyes open, for some reason, so Jack closed them. “Mem’ry don’t start for a year.”
“The courts won’t care.” There were a few moments of silence, then Morgenson shifted in his chair. “It’s all right to love your family, Jack, and it’s all right to be nervous about seeing them, nervous about how they’re doing without you right now. And even if they’re doing fine, it doesn’t mean that they don’t want you around anymore. They all love you.”
“Don’t deserve it . . .”
Morgenson smiled as he stood up and tucked the covers around Jack’s shoulders. “Maybe, but that’s what you’ve got. We’ll start working on how to handle the responsibility later. Good night, Jack.”
Jack was smiling as the doctor left. “’Night . . .”
***
“Why didn’t Mr. Wayne send a plane?” Janet mumbled for the eight time.
“Because,” Rachel snapped, “he’s not our servant, for one, and Ava’s too small to fly, for two. Bruce is letting us stay at Wayne Manor as a favour. Stop. Whining.” She closed her mouth, determined to not be drawn into another argument, but start talking again right away, in a softer tone. “I know you don’t want to be doing this, Janet. I’m sorry. If I felt safe leaving you at home, if the courts wouldn’t pitch a fit over it, I would. I don’t . . . I don’t want to put any of us under any more stress than we need to be under, but I need to see Jack, and you need to not be left on your own. Stay with Mom. Stay in your room.” She looked in the rear-view mirror, adjusting it down a bit to check that Ava and Susie were still asleep. “I just need you to deal with this for one night. Please.”
“Will Dick be there?” Janet asked in a small voice after a while.
Right, they’d had a sort of romance going on. “He lives with Bruce,” Rachel said slowly, “so he’ll probably be there. I’m sure he’d be glad to stay somewhere else if you need him to.”
“No,” Janet said quickly. Rachel glanced at her and she was hunched in on herself, staring at her feet. “No, he doesn’t . . . I mean, he shouldn’t have to . . . I mean ---”
“Dick cares about you, Janet. If him being there will make you uncomfortable, he’ll go somewhere else for the weekend. Or, you can stay with Mom.”
“He doesn’t care,” Janet whispered.
Rachel glanced at her with a frown as she changed lanes. “Of course he cares, Janet. He tried to visit you in the hospital, but Bruce made him stay in Gotham.”
The girl shook her head. “No,” she whimpered. “I’m . . . I’m damaged. He won’t care about me anymore. I’m broken.”
The emergency lights went on and Rachel pulled off to the left as quickly as she could. Janet was shaking with tears by the time she got the car safely stopped on the side if the freeway, and Rachel unbuckled and leaned over ,taking Janet in her arms and holding her while she cried.
“No, sweety, you’re not broken, we still love you . . .”
“I am,” Janet sobbed. “I was . . . They, they . . . I let them . . . Susie . . . I let them . . . No one wants a girl like that!”
“Oh, sweety,” Rachel breathed. “Is that what you think happened? Janet, look at me.” She tilted Janet’s chin up until the girl look at her. “You . . . They would have raped you anyway, Janet. They would have hurt Susie until you went with them, if they couldn’t force you out of the room any other way. You didn’t want them to touch you, Janet, and they did it anyway. You did nothing wrong, do you understand?” Janet clung to her and cried, shaking her head. Rachel held her tightly. “Janet, Dick is worried about you. He calls every week, to see how you’re doing. He’ll ask how Ava and Susie and I are, but then he goes straight to you. He wants to come up to Loleta to keep you safe. He doesn’t think you’re a bad person, Janet.”
“He doesn’t know I let them,” Janet whispered.
“You ‘let’ them,” Rachel said firmly, “in order to keep you baby sister safe. You could have let them hurt her, but you didn’t. Janet, I’ve persecuted a lot of rape cases. They had to manipulate you into going with them, and that makes it rape.”
“I liked it.”
“You liked it when you were on drugs, drugs you didn’t want in the first place.”
Janet whined high in the back of her throat. “I wanted them! They said they’d make me like it, make it not hurt . . .”
She trailed off and it was a few more minutes before Rachel said anything. Finally, she reached for some napkins from their last stop and wiped at Janet’s tears. “They would have shot you up anyway,” she said quietly, looking into Janet’s brown eyes. “You went with them to keep Susie safe, and you let them give you heroin to keep you safe. That wasn’t wrong of you, Janet. If you had fought them, they might have killed you.”
“I still want the drugs,” Janet told her, her voice hitching.
“That’s why they call it an addiction,” Rachel countered gently. “And that’s why you go see Helna, why you see Pamela.” She smiled and brushed the bangs from Janet’s face. “Dick wanted to know what your favourite flower was, when he called yesterday.”
Janet started a bit and looked at Rachel suspiciously. “Really?”
Rachel nodded. “Really. He doesn’t think you’re a whore, or, or damaged goods, or sloppy seconds, or whatever it is that you think he thinks you are. Nobody worth knowing thinks that. And anyone who does, is an idiot. Trust me. I know an idiot when I hear about one.”
That made Janet laugh, and she nodded as she wiped at her face. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I just, I get so mad, and I can’t, I don’t know why, I mean I do, but I . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry, too. I haven’t been paying much attention to you. You’ve seemed like you’ve been doing just fine. You haven’t. I’m sorry, Janet.”
The girl ducked her head, then cleared her throat and pulled away. Rachel straightened. “Are you sure Dick wants to see me?”
“He’s chomping at the bit,” Rachel said dryly as she started the car and shut the emergency lights off. Janet was quiet as Rachel eased back into traffic.
Then, “Do you want me to drive?”
“I’m fine, thank you. We’re almost there. About half an hour.” Then she smiled. “You can drive some on the way back, though.”
“Okay,” Janet murmured. “Whenever you need me to.”
***
“You awake, Dawes?” Nasir was saying an hour later. He glanced over his shoulder at Rachel, a half-smile on his lips. “He got a little antsy last night; we had to sedate him. Barely got him down here. Hey, Dawes. Wakey-wakey! I’ve got a baby here with your name on her . . .”
“Nnf?” Jack mumbled, trying to force his eyes open and sit up at the same time. He was breathing heavily with the effort. “Gi’ . . . me . . .”
“Yeah, sure, no problem. Here they are. One wife, one baby, and one . . . small . . . ginger . . . thing. As ordered.” He drew back a bit when Susie growled at him. “Are you sure this thing’s had its rabies shots?”
“She’s perfectly harmless,” Rachel assured him as she gripped Ava’s carrier more firmly and swallowed. Jack was just . . . laying there, obviously exhausted; but he was in the visiting room, on the extra-deep couch, waiting for them. She’d been afraid that he would refuse to see them, either because he didn’t think it was safe, or because he didn’t want them anymore. She was terrified that Jack would decide that he was much better off without his family, without her.
“Well, good, come in, come in. We’ll get you some breakfast, if you haven’t eaten. He hasn’t, not for a while.” Nasir watched with a smile while Rachel sat gingerly on the couch; Jack immediately wiggled up until his head was in her lap, and she caressed his face gently as she smiled down at him.
“Hate me?” he whispered as Susie unbuckled Ava.
Rachel put one hand to her lips to keep from crying. She shook her head. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t. Do you . . . do you still want us?”
She got a look that said he thought she’d lost her mind. “You guys want me?”
“Of course we do. I love you, Jack. We all love you. We want you to get better, we, I want you to trust us more. Trust me more.” She paused and looked over at Susie, who was showing Ava to the guards on the other side of the two-way mirror. “Do you want to come back home? To us?”
“’Course,” Jack mumbled. He reached up to play with her hair and she kissed his fingers as they brushed against her cheek. “Gotta be a Daddy . . .”
Rachel took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “Are you going to stop seeing Veronica?”
Jack’s eyes widened momentarily, and then he nodded. “Promise. I’m . . . I’m sorry, Rachel . . .”
Rachel leaned down to give him a kiss, misjudged how much her bust had increased, and gave Jack a face-full of cleavage instead. He made a very appreciative noise and gave her a few kisses before she was able to pull back, embarrassed. He was grinning up at her when she took her hands from her eyes.
“I love you, Jack,” she whispered. Then she raised her voice. “Susie, come here.”
Jack turned his head to watch the girl bring Ava to him, and reached an arm out. “Oh, baby . . . C’mere, baby . . .”
“I missed you, Daddy,” Susie said nervously as she handed Ava over.
Jack lay Ava, still sleeping, on his chest and stared at her. Susie bit her lip and looked at Rachel, who reached out and took her hand. With one arm gently over Ava, Jack also reached out and pulled Susie up against the couch until she limbed on and lay down next to him. “Missed you, too, popsicle,” he mumbled before he yawned.
“Are you tired?”
“Yeah . . . Just a little . . .”
“I’m tired, too.”
“Go to sleep,” Jack told her. He started humming, then singing softly. “Goodnight, sweetheart, well, it’s time to go . . . Goodnight, sweetheart, well, it’s time to go . . . I hate to leave you, but, I really must say . . . Goodnight, sweetheart, goodnight . . .” Less than a minute later both of them were asleep, and Rachel was gently running her fingers through Jack’s hair. Less than five minutes after that, she was asleep, too.
He itched. Jack had been scratching at himself, at his arms and neck and legs head and face and chest, for a few hours. He hadn’t drawn blood yet, but he was close, even though they‘d trimmed his nails as much as they could without hurting him. He tossed and he turned and then he got up and paced, did his best to run and ended up jogging in a circle around his cell. He was panting, breathing through his mouth, and hitting his head solidly against the wall when the door to his cell was flung open and hands grabbed at him, voices babbling over his head as he was wrestled to his cot. He fought. He thrashed around, eyes unable to focus. There were too many of them, and he managed to get an elbow in a stomach and his hands around someone’s neck when he was sat on and slapped in the face.
“Dawes! Dawes! It’s Nasir, Dawes. Look at me.”
“Buh?” Jack’s arms had been wrestled across his chest, kept there by Nasir’s strong grip as the orderlies pulled his sleeve up and jabbed a needle into his bicep. “Ah!”
“Calm down, Dawes, they’re just helping. It’s a relaxant, Dawes.”
“No!” Jack shouted, but whatever they’d given him was taking effect, and when his gaze popped into focus, Nasir’s face was only a few inches from his.
“Yes,” Nasir told him. “You’re panicking, Dawes. You need to calm down.”
“D-don’t p-p-p-panic,” Jack protested, shaking his head as he twitched. His heart felt like it was about to burst and he couldn’t stop twitching. He felt like he was suffocating.
“Yes, you are. You’re having a panic attack. If you don’t calm down, we’ll have to transfer you to the hospital wing and keep you under surveillance for forty-eight hours. Rachel and Ava will be here in,” he twisted a bit to glance at his watch, “seven hours. If you don’t calm down, you won’t be able to see them. Look,” he went on, reaching a hand out and snapping his fingers. “Mrs. Fine sent us this picture. Look at them, Dawes.” He held the picture in front of Jack’s face. Ava was curled in Rachel’s arms, smiling up at her, and Rachel was smiling back down at the girl. Jack closed his eyes. “Look at them. You’re going to miss out on this if you don’t relax,” Nasir said when Jack looked at the picture.
“I c-can’t,” he moaned.
“You can. You need to. Where’s the doctor?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Downstairs,” was the reply.
“N-no,” Jack mumbled. “No d-d-doctors.”
“It’s Doctor Morgenson,” Nasir assured him. “We called him a half an hour ago. He’ll be right up.”
“In t-troub-b-ble . . .”
“You’re not in trouble,” Nasir laughed. “You just need to calm down.”
Jack hunched his shoulders as much as he was able and shook his head, still staring at Rachel and Ava’s picture. They looked so happy without him. Without him. Without him. Nasir continued holding him down for a minute or so, then gently eased off of him and stood up. He let the picture go when Jack grasped for it.
“The sedative’s kicked in. You can get back to your posts,” the guard told the orderlies. “I’ll watch him until Doctor Morgenson gets here.” After the cell door closed, he sat on the floor, leaning up against Jack’s cot. “I thought you’d be nervous, so I’ve been keeping an eye on you tonight. She’s still tiny.”
“Who?” Jack mumbled.
“Ava. She’s still tiny. Five weeks, right?”
“Yeah. Head feels funny.”
“Good. You know . . . For what you’re not there for right now, Dawes . . . In the long run, it’s not a lot. Babies’ memories don’t really develop until about six months. You should be out of here long before then.”
“Quit trying to comfort me.”
“He’s got a point,” Morgenson said from the doorway. Jack could barely keep his eyes open to look at the man as Nasir stood up and let him in, then stepped into the hallway.
Jack rolled his eyes away, returning them to his picture. “Get the lecture over with.”
“I’m not here to lecture you, Jack, I’m here to make sure that you’re not a danger to yourself. I’m here to calm you down.” Morgenson brought the desk chair closer as Jack rolled his eyes. “You’re nervous about today, Jack. That’s perfectly understandable.”
“I don’t get nervous.”
“When you haven’t seen your wife and child in a month, it’s a reasonable reaction. Jack, you are not above feeling human emotions. If anything, I would say that you feel them more strongly than most people do --- hard enough to deal with in normal circumstances, but more so when you’re unused to the emotion in question. You’re still not used to caring for people so deeply, are you, Jack?”
“You mad at me?”
“No. I expected that you would need me tonight.” Morgenson leaned forward, clasping his hands between his knees as Jack yawned. “I spoke with Rachel tonight ---”
“She knows about Veronica. She won’t want me anymore.”
“She’s certainly upset about it, but she still loves you, Jack. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be coming to see you.” Morgenson cleared his throat when Jack tried to interrupt him. “Was sleeping with Veronica a smart thing to do?”
“. . . Worst mistake of my current life,” Jack admitted sullenly.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Morgenson leaned back. “Why was sleeping with Veronica the worst mistake of your current life? Why do you think it was a mistake? I don’t want to hear why everyone else thinks it’s a mistake. I want to know why you think so.”
Jack blinked for a bit as he thought. Then, “She’s a dirty whore. Could have given me a disease. Coulda knocked her up. Said I didn’t want anyone but Rachel, wouldn’t be with anyone but Rachel. Rachel’s going to cry. She’s going to sit there, and she’s going to cry, and it’s going to be my fault. Couldn’t keep my dick in my pants. Couldn’t . . . couldn’t think of a better way to get the information I needed and to get all the anger out. Couldn’t think. Love them so much . . .” Then his face twisted into a snarl and he tried to raise himself up. “The fuck did they give me?! Fucking truth serum?!”
“I’m sure there’s a bit of that in the mix,” Morgenson said, pleased, as Jack flopped back onto the bed and panted. “We like our patients to be as truthful with us as possible.”
“Fuck.”
“Stop swearing; it’ll set a bad example for Ava.”
He was having a difficult time keeping his eyes open, for some reason, so Jack closed them. “Mem’ry don’t start for a year.”
“The courts won’t care.” There were a few moments of silence, then Morgenson shifted in his chair. “It’s all right to love your family, Jack, and it’s all right to be nervous about seeing them, nervous about how they’re doing without you right now. And even if they’re doing fine, it doesn’t mean that they don’t want you around anymore. They all love you.”
“Don’t deserve it . . .”
Morgenson smiled as he stood up and tucked the covers around Jack’s shoulders. “Maybe, but that’s what you’ve got. We’ll start working on how to handle the responsibility later. Good night, Jack.”
Jack was smiling as the doctor left. “’Night . . .”
***
“Why didn’t Mr. Wayne send a plane?” Janet mumbled for the eight time.
“Because,” Rachel snapped, “he’s not our servant, for one, and Ava’s too small to fly, for two. Bruce is letting us stay at Wayne Manor as a favour. Stop. Whining.” She closed her mouth, determined to not be drawn into another argument, but start talking again right away, in a softer tone. “I know you don’t want to be doing this, Janet. I’m sorry. If I felt safe leaving you at home, if the courts wouldn’t pitch a fit over it, I would. I don’t . . . I don’t want to put any of us under any more stress than we need to be under, but I need to see Jack, and you need to not be left on your own. Stay with Mom. Stay in your room.” She looked in the rear-view mirror, adjusting it down a bit to check that Ava and Susie were still asleep. “I just need you to deal with this for one night. Please.”
“Will Dick be there?” Janet asked in a small voice after a while.
Right, they’d had a sort of romance going on. “He lives with Bruce,” Rachel said slowly, “so he’ll probably be there. I’m sure he’d be glad to stay somewhere else if you need him to.”
“No,” Janet said quickly. Rachel glanced at her and she was hunched in on herself, staring at her feet. “No, he doesn’t . . . I mean, he shouldn’t have to . . . I mean ---”
“Dick cares about you, Janet. If him being there will make you uncomfortable, he’ll go somewhere else for the weekend. Or, you can stay with Mom.”
“He doesn’t care,” Janet whispered.
Rachel glanced at her with a frown as she changed lanes. “Of course he cares, Janet. He tried to visit you in the hospital, but Bruce made him stay in Gotham.”
The girl shook her head. “No,” she whimpered. “I’m . . . I’m damaged. He won’t care about me anymore. I’m broken.”
The emergency lights went on and Rachel pulled off to the left as quickly as she could. Janet was shaking with tears by the time she got the car safely stopped on the side if the freeway, and Rachel unbuckled and leaned over ,taking Janet in her arms and holding her while she cried.
“No, sweety, you’re not broken, we still love you . . .”
“I am,” Janet sobbed. “I was . . . They, they . . . I let them . . . Susie . . . I let them . . . No one wants a girl like that!”
“Oh, sweety,” Rachel breathed. “Is that what you think happened? Janet, look at me.” She tilted Janet’s chin up until the girl look at her. “You . . . They would have raped you anyway, Janet. They would have hurt Susie until you went with them, if they couldn’t force you out of the room any other way. You didn’t want them to touch you, Janet, and they did it anyway. You did nothing wrong, do you understand?” Janet clung to her and cried, shaking her head. Rachel held her tightly. “Janet, Dick is worried about you. He calls every week, to see how you’re doing. He’ll ask how Ava and Susie and I are, but then he goes straight to you. He wants to come up to Loleta to keep you safe. He doesn’t think you’re a bad person, Janet.”
“He doesn’t know I let them,” Janet whispered.
“You ‘let’ them,” Rachel said firmly, “in order to keep you baby sister safe. You could have let them hurt her, but you didn’t. Janet, I’ve persecuted a lot of rape cases. They had to manipulate you into going with them, and that makes it rape.”
“I liked it.”
“You liked it when you were on drugs, drugs you didn’t want in the first place.”
Janet whined high in the back of her throat. “I wanted them! They said they’d make me like it, make it not hurt . . .”
She trailed off and it was a few more minutes before Rachel said anything. Finally, she reached for some napkins from their last stop and wiped at Janet’s tears. “They would have shot you up anyway,” she said quietly, looking into Janet’s brown eyes. “You went with them to keep Susie safe, and you let them give you heroin to keep you safe. That wasn’t wrong of you, Janet. If you had fought them, they might have killed you.”
“I still want the drugs,” Janet told her, her voice hitching.
“That’s why they call it an addiction,” Rachel countered gently. “And that’s why you go see Helna, why you see Pamela.” She smiled and brushed the bangs from Janet’s face. “Dick wanted to know what your favourite flower was, when he called yesterday.”
Janet started a bit and looked at Rachel suspiciously. “Really?”
Rachel nodded. “Really. He doesn’t think you’re a whore, or, or damaged goods, or sloppy seconds, or whatever it is that you think he thinks you are. Nobody worth knowing thinks that. And anyone who does, is an idiot. Trust me. I know an idiot when I hear about one.”
That made Janet laugh, and she nodded as she wiped at her face. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I just, I get so mad, and I can’t, I don’t know why, I mean I do, but I . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry, too. I haven’t been paying much attention to you. You’ve seemed like you’ve been doing just fine. You haven’t. I’m sorry, Janet.”
The girl ducked her head, then cleared her throat and pulled away. Rachel straightened. “Are you sure Dick wants to see me?”
“He’s chomping at the bit,” Rachel said dryly as she started the car and shut the emergency lights off. Janet was quiet as Rachel eased back into traffic.
Then, “Do you want me to drive?”
“I’m fine, thank you. We’re almost there. About half an hour.” Then she smiled. “You can drive some on the way back, though.”
“Okay,” Janet murmured. “Whenever you need me to.”
***
“You awake, Dawes?” Nasir was saying an hour later. He glanced over his shoulder at Rachel, a half-smile on his lips. “He got a little antsy last night; we had to sedate him. Barely got him down here. Hey, Dawes. Wakey-wakey! I’ve got a baby here with your name on her . . .”
“Nnf?” Jack mumbled, trying to force his eyes open and sit up at the same time. He was breathing heavily with the effort. “Gi’ . . . me . . .”
“Yeah, sure, no problem. Here they are. One wife, one baby, and one . . . small . . . ginger . . . thing. As ordered.” He drew back a bit when Susie growled at him. “Are you sure this thing’s had its rabies shots?”
“She’s perfectly harmless,” Rachel assured him as she gripped Ava’s carrier more firmly and swallowed. Jack was just . . . laying there, obviously exhausted; but he was in the visiting room, on the extra-deep couch, waiting for them. She’d been afraid that he would refuse to see them, either because he didn’t think it was safe, or because he didn’t want them anymore. She was terrified that Jack would decide that he was much better off without his family, without her.
“Well, good, come in, come in. We’ll get you some breakfast, if you haven’t eaten. He hasn’t, not for a while.” Nasir watched with a smile while Rachel sat gingerly on the couch; Jack immediately wiggled up until his head was in her lap, and she caressed his face gently as she smiled down at him.
“Hate me?” he whispered as Susie unbuckled Ava.
Rachel put one hand to her lips to keep from crying. She shook her head. “No,” she murmured. “I don’t. Do you . . . do you still want us?”
She got a look that said he thought she’d lost her mind. “You guys want me?”
“Of course we do. I love you, Jack. We all love you. We want you to get better, we, I want you to trust us more. Trust me more.” She paused and looked over at Susie, who was showing Ava to the guards on the other side of the two-way mirror. “Do you want to come back home? To us?”
“’Course,” Jack mumbled. He reached up to play with her hair and she kissed his fingers as they brushed against her cheek. “Gotta be a Daddy . . .”
Rachel took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “Are you going to stop seeing Veronica?”
Jack’s eyes widened momentarily, and then he nodded. “Promise. I’m . . . I’m sorry, Rachel . . .”
Rachel leaned down to give him a kiss, misjudged how much her bust had increased, and gave Jack a face-full of cleavage instead. He made a very appreciative noise and gave her a few kisses before she was able to pull back, embarrassed. He was grinning up at her when she took her hands from her eyes.
“I love you, Jack,” she whispered. Then she raised her voice. “Susie, come here.”
Jack turned his head to watch the girl bring Ava to him, and reached an arm out. “Oh, baby . . . C’mere, baby . . .”
“I missed you, Daddy,” Susie said nervously as she handed Ava over.
Jack lay Ava, still sleeping, on his chest and stared at her. Susie bit her lip and looked at Rachel, who reached out and took her hand. With one arm gently over Ava, Jack also reached out and pulled Susie up against the couch until she limbed on and lay down next to him. “Missed you, too, popsicle,” he mumbled before he yawned.
“Are you tired?”
“Yeah . . . Just a little . . .”
“I’m tired, too.”
“Go to sleep,” Jack told her. He started humming, then singing softly. “Goodnight, sweetheart, well, it’s time to go . . . Goodnight, sweetheart, well, it’s time to go . . . I hate to leave you, but, I really must say . . . Goodnight, sweetheart, goodnight . . .” Less than a minute later both of them were asleep, and Rachel was gently running her fingers through Jack’s hair. Less than five minutes after that, she was asleep, too.