Broken Glass
Kel slammed his office door shut and dropped down on the couch, shaking with rage, fear and exhaustion. Everything was a nightmare. Even his release was bringing him more stress and pain than it was relieving. And now his anonymity was shot all to hell - the stranger, Captain Stanley, had been in more than one gay bar at the exact same time that Kel had been. How simple would it be to let his name and position slip out to one or two drunken assholes in one or two bars? How simple would it be to multiply those numbers over the course of a week? He could be on the six o'clock news inside of a week! He could be stripped of his honors, his practice, his job, all due to some ridiculous sex scandal! And in the meantime, the real monster was somewhere in this damned hospital, being primped and pampered and coddled back to health. Stan's injuries were bad enough that the DA's office would likely postpone a trial date. If news of Kel's extra curricular activites went public before a jury could be sequestered, the whole case could be thrown out. Kel just might have given the defense the gift of his own sexual stupidity.
Suddenly, the office door flew open, startling Kel out of his spiral. A a very angry looking Joe Early stormed in. "I want to talk to you!"
Kel jumped to his feet, half ready to resort to fisticuffs if he had to. "Say, you can't just bust in here like that," he cried. "Whatever happened to knocking?"
"I don't know, Kel! Whatever happened to not barking at your staff in full view of the public?"
"Don't you come barging into my office shouting at me! In case you've forgotten, Joe, I'm the guy who signs your timecard! I think that warants a little more courtesy and respect than this!"
"You'll get some courtesy and respect when you deserve it! Now sit down, Dr. Brackett, because I have a few things to say to you!"
Stunned, Kel plopped back down on the couch and gaped at Joe.
Joe grabbed a chair away from Kel's desk, and settled down in it so he could face Kel head on. He leaned forward, until his nose was inches from Kel's, and spoke softly."I don't know where your head is, talking to us that way, but you'd better not ever do that to any of us again." Kel opened his mouth to protest, but Joe cut him off, suddenly loud again. "And don't tell me you're within your rights, Kel, because you're not! You're about as far out of line as you can be and still have your feet somewhere in the Earth's atmosphere, Kel! You've stood at that base station with us a thousand times and socialized with all of us the same way, and you know it! And nothing's come down from Administration, because everyone would be talking about it by now, so there've been no patient complaints, no policy changes, nothing to warrant that kind of an outburst! No, wait, that's not true, there have been complaints - but all the complaints have been about you! You've been verbally abusive all week, Kel, and it's got to stop - now. Whatever the hell this drama is that's playing out between you and Stanford needs to stay between you and Stanford! Stop taking things out on us!"
"Wait," Kel said, finally finding his voice. "What exactly does that mean, drama between me and Stan?"
"Oh, come off of it, Kel. It doesn't take a genius to put it together, a small child could figure it out in about ten minutes. You had an emergency last weekend, spent the whole week barking at us, and then your 'roommate' shows up here at Rampart in a newly air-conditioned prison jumpsuit, and his body's been riddled with nearly thirty deep puncture wounds to match - yes, Kel, we've noticed you're having problems at home."
"Now wait just one damned minute, Joe! You are not going to sit in my office and give me hell about my personal li-"
"I'm not giving you hell about-"
"Shut your mouth, Joe, and listen-"
"No! You listen to me! Whatever happened between the two of you is between the two of you, that is absolutely right!" Joe paused, but Kel waited, confused by Joe's ready agreement. "Believe you me, everyone here would be much happier if you did leave your personal life out of our working day - but you aren't. We're just doing our work, same as usual. You are the one who keeps bringing your personal life in this hospital, not us! And now you've made a very poor impression on a supervisor for an adjacent department, Kel!"
Bile rose up in Kel's throat, and he swallowed it down with a grimace. "He's no angel," he growled.
Joe stared at him in stoney silence. Finally, he asked quietly, "Now just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
Joe got slowly to his feet. "Okay, fine. But pull yourself together, Kel, now. We have to work with the guy now - angel, devil or otherwise. Figure out how you're gonna clean this up, before someone calls upstairs and puts a choke chain on you."
"He won't do that," Kel said flatly, only half believing it.
"Why not?"
"Because it would make him a hypocrite." Truth be told, Kel had no idea if hypocrisy was enough of a moral deterrent to keep Captain Stanley's mouth shut, but it was the one frayed string of hope he had that his world wouldn't come completely apart, so he was gonna hang on tight.
Joe's features twisted with disgust as he moved towards the door. "That's absolutely rich, considering this conversation. I don't even want to know why you would accuse the new fire captain of hypocrisy, or why you think that's going to protect you from patients complaining about your conduct." He shook his head. "You know, I thought Stanford was being paranoid when he said you wouldn't see him. Clearly, you two are having far bigger problems than a DUI or whatever nonsense he's done. Doesn't matter, though. I just want you to pull yourself together, before you tank your reputation and take the hospital's with it." He left the office, pulling the door up fast behind him.
Kel stared at the back of his office door, dumbfounded. How in the hell did he get to be the bad guy? So he probably had been too harsh with his staff, and he supposed it was possible he'd scared the new fire captain half to death (or pissed him off beyond all reason, or both), but how in the hell was he also the one who'd done wrong with Stanford? Because he hadn't seen him since he'd been admitted? Ridiculous, he'd seen Stan as soon as he'd been brought in! Granted, he'd nearly done something horrible to Stan, but Dix was the only witness - Stan was too far gone to really understand the danger he was in.
But... what if Stan wasn't as out of it as he'd thought? What if he'd known all along what Kel wanted to do - what if he'd heard and understood every single word? Stanford was a master manipulator - it was what made him such a successful lawyer. He could convince anybody of anything, no matter how impossible the task. What if he had everyone convinced that he was the victim of some horrible, tragic treachery that only Kel could have committed?
Kel jumped to his feet and hurried out of his office. He glanced towards the exam rooms, but (to his relief), the gathering at the base station had dispersed. He hustled across the waiting room, through the doors that lead to the hospital's main corridor, to the row of elevators that lined far end of the hall. These elevators were used mostly by day patients on their way to keep appointments with specialists, or by family members come to visit the folks who've been admitted for less serious proceedures, who didn't need to check in with hospital staff before heading to the rooms. The elevators by the base station were equally accessible to the public, but were meant to connect everyone - staff and public alike - to the more serious hospital units, like intensive care and cardiac care, where people would need to check in before proceeding. The likelihood of running into one of his interns (and providing more fodder for the hospital's gossip machine) was greatly reduced by avoiding the base station elevator in favor of the north bank of elevators.
The button for the sixth floor was missing from these elevators. This was by design - people were, of course, allowed to visit patients in the jail ward, but, like anyone else who wanted to visit in restricted areas, they were first routed through the admissions desk at Emergency. A nurse or clerk on duty at admissions would call up to the heavily posted guard, to inform them of civilian traffic, and then said civilians were instructed to take the the base station elevator. The only other elevator with a sixth floor access button was right next to the security office, where a sergeant from the Sheriff's department was posted at all times, and was on the other side of the hospital, closer to the rarely used Vermont Ave entrance than the more frequent Carson Blvd or parking lot facing doors.
That didn't mean the jail ward was inaccessible from these elevators, though. Kel held the close door button down, and waited for the elevator to shut him in. Keeping his thumb on the close button, he pressed the buttons for the fifth and seventh floors, and held all three buttons down until the car began to move. It was a safety design, in case a doctor needed to get to the secured sixth floor quickly, and didn't have time to run to one of the manned elevators.
The elevator stopped, but the doors didn't open right away. This was also by design - any unexpected use of the unguarded elevators is considered an escape attempt, until proven otherwise. Kel knew there'd be a whole battalion of sheriff's deputies assembled on the other side of the door, likely with guns drawn on him. He took the time to unbutton his coat, drape his stethoscope over his neck, and raise his hands just as the doors opened.
Indeed, there were five officers he could easily spot gathered in the wide hall; two flanked the doors, one stood directly in front of him, and two more had their backs planted against the opposite wall. All of them pointed guns at his chest, while the one in the middle had been screaming at him to get down since the doors open.
Kel rolled his eyes, but he didn't get down. "I have to work in this coat, fellas."
One of the officers from his right darted in and yanked him into the hall. Kel found himself spun around, and pinned hard to the cold wall. A big, heavy hand frisked him roughly, then yanked his arm half out of its socket, so he could be turned and patted down in the front. The other four guns followed him to his new position, their cold metal barrels still pointed steadily at his chest. "What are you doing here," the one from the middle finally asked.
Kel kept his hands up, and kept his voice calm and soft. "I'd like to follow up on one of my patients. He was brought in day before yesterday, part of the riot. Multiple stab wounds. Name is Wilson. Stanford Wilson."
Instead of relaxing them, his request seemed to set all five of the deputies on edge. "If that's so, why didn't you come in through the west elevator?"
He was beginning to regret not taking his chances with his staff. He'd come this way to avoid bunch of questions, but instead he was getting a bunch of questions plus the real threat of a bullet to the chest. How fishy would it sound to say 'I didn't want my staff to know where I was going'? But the longer he stood there in silence, the less likely it was the deputies were going to care about any reason he gave them, and the more likely it became that he'd either be trooped down to the security office to explain a lot of shit, or he'd wind up in his own emergency room, answering the very questions to the very staff he'd hoped to avoid. He had to tell them something, no matter how flimsy it sounded. "This elevator was closer."
"You're not gonna tell me you're that lazy," the deputy said. "It's probably ten yards from this elevator to the other one."
Fuck it. Kel dropped his hands with a sigh. "Fine, let's go see your boss."
The deputy closest to him reholstered his weapon and grabbed Kel roughly. The others fell into some kind of formation around him, and together they began to march towards the east elevator, the one nearest hospital security. They hadn't taken more than three steps when a familiar deputy whose name he couldn't place stepped out of one of the rooms, along with an unfamiliar plain clothes detective. "Hey, Dr. Brackett - everything okay?"
The group paused as a unit, and the leader looked at the deputy who'd addressed Kel by name. "You know him?"
"Sure, he's the big guy downstairs." When he was met with a blank look, the deputy snorted a laugh. "He's in charge of the ER. What'd he do, come up the north elevator? It's technically the closest one to his office." He laughed even more. "But if I know you, you were probably trying to sneak up here to lecture somebody that Nurse McCall told you to stay away from, right Doc?"
Kel laughed too, a gutsy laugh powered mostly by nerves and adrenaline. "That is uncanny!"
The deputies around him loosened their formation, and the iron grip on his arm fell away. The leader turned to Kel, and pinned him with an angry glare. "Doctor, you really ought to-"
"Look, I know you were just doing your job, but you've got my identity straightened out now, so any further manhandling at this point is just overkill. Do you really want me to talk to your sergeant about this?" The deputy in charge looked flabbergasted for a minute, but he stepped back and waved his hand, and the other four deputies holstered their weapons. Kel smiled indulgently. "Thank you." He nodded his thanks to the young man who'd identified him, and headed in the opposite direction, towards the west elevator, where he should have gone in the first damned place.
He rounded the corner at the end of the hall and went through the swinging double doors that separated the locked private rooms from the open space of the high security recovery room. There was a kind of quiet chaos in this room, similar but different to that of his own emergency room. There was no privacy for the patients here, save the flimsy cotton curtains that could be pulled around each bed, but they did nothing to muffle the sounds of moaning, angry men, or the snitty way their attendants spoke to them. The familiar hum of medical machinery seemed more ominous up here, almost as if to warn the people on their feet that these sick, bedraggled men were increasing in strength, minute by minute, second by second. Watch out! Don't get caught in someone's snare!
Kel was surprised by how many beds were occupied - he had no idea what the logistics were of treating prisoners at Rampart as opposed to on site, but he hadn't dreamed it would be so difficult to pick Stanford out of the occupied beds. He strolled slowly through the room, searching for the familiar silvery white cap of hair.
Stan found him first. "Kelly," came the hoarse, but urgent whisper. "Up here."
At first, Kel saw no sign of Stanford. He simply walked in the direction of the whisper, and swept his gaze across the room. Soon, the number of occupied beds seem to drop on his right, though the left side was still fairly busy with orderlies and nurses and smart mouthed deputies. And then, finally, in what seemed like a wasteland of empty hospital beds, he saw him.
Though he was still a giant tree of a man, a blanched California Redwood who'd unrooted himself, he somehow seemed smaller, more fragile. Brittle. The giant mechanical bed he lay in seemed to swallow him right up, even though the cotton sheet draped over him barely came to his chest. He was covered in tape and wires and bandages, and his breath was shallow and shaky. He reached out a trembling hand towards Kel, and smiled, just as shakily. "Kelly," he whispered again.
Even as his rage billowed and blossomed in his chest, the sheath of solid ice that encased Kel's heart began to crack and melt at the sight of his lifelong companion. He took one running step towards Stan, and stopped himself. No. Not this time. Not after what he'd done. Kel took a calming breath, and tried again. Slow, measured steps. He had things he needed to ask Stan, things he needed to say. But there was no rush. He had time.
He stood at the side of the bed and looked down at Stan. Stanford's smile, weak and breathy as it was, never diminished. He dropped his waiting hand down over the railing, and took one of Kel's warm, dry hands in his cold, slightly clammy one. He gave it a squeeze. "I guess Joe was right. I'm glad," he said, in a voice so small, so soft, Kel had to lean down to hear it.
Kel took his hand back, gently, but firmly, and turned to grab the curtain that would cut him and Stanford off from the rest of the world. Metal hooks skittered loudly on their metal railing as he yanked the veil in place, sending shivers down his spine that radiated over his shoulders and down his arms, all the way to the fingernails that caught in the heavy linen weave. In the silence that remained, his thoughts were a scrambled slush - now that he was alone with Stan, he had no idea where the hell to start, or if he even wanted to try. He stared at the curtain, and told himself to turn and face the bed, but he couldn't seem to move.
"Kelly?"
Don't you dare say my name. Kel turned his face, just enough to see Stan's worried eyes staring at his back. The curtain hooks rattled as he gripped the fabric tighter. "What are... why are you here?"
For a moment, he thought Stan wouldn't answer. But then he felt fingertips brush his thigh lightly, almost ghostlike over his slacks and labcoat, and then a shuddering breath. "I was attac-"
"No!" Kel snapped his mouth shut, and tried to calm himself. The last thing he needed was an officer interfering in what was already proving to be an impossible conversation. "Here, at Rampart."
"That's what I'm trying to tell-"
"Why not Harbor?" Kel whirled around, feeling wild and desperate. "Or Drew? Or any other County facility? Why my hospital?"
Stanford shook his head. "I don't know. I... when I saw Joe Early, I thought... I thought you'd..." Sadness descended on Stan's tired face. "Then you know," he said.
"Know what?"
"What I've been accused of." He sounded so sad, so exhausted. It was disgusting. "I'd hoped to talk to you before the cops did."
"What the hell for?"
"To explain my side of it. To tell you what really happened."
A bubble of hysterical laughter sputtered from Kel's throat like vomit, and he nearly choked on it. "Oh, do tell, Stanford, what really happened! Tell me!"
Fear and anger flashed across Stan's face at once, but he tamped both down and closed his eyes. "What happened was a mistake, Kelly. A stupid, thoughtless mistake."
Kel couldn't believe Stan's audacity. "Bleaching my good slacks is a stupid, thoughtless mistake, Stan. Taking my car without telling me and then running out of gas fifty miles from home is a stupid, thoughtless mistake. Smashing the glass on my framed diploma is a stupid, thoughtless mistake. Fucking a child in our bed on our anniversary is not a stupid, thoughtless mistake! It's heinious!"
Undisguised horror contorted Stan's face. "What?"
"Don't pretend-"
"Kelly, please!" Stan tried to reach for Kel, but he skittered out of the way. "Sweetheart... is this why you wouldn't take my calls?"
"Don't change the subject," Kel hissed.
Stan closed his eyes and nodded sagely. "Okay. Okay. I have no explanation, no defense, except... I was lonely, Kelly. I was lonely, and missing you, and I thought I would have to go to bed alone again."
Kel felt like he'd been punched in the gut. "How... how is this my fault?"
Stan smiled at him, with eyes soft and open as a warm spring sky. "Oh, Kelly. It isn't your fault. I was just feeling sorry for myself, and I did a stupid thing. That's all."
"No, Stan, that's not all, not by a long shot! How can you even think that?"
"Because that is all. I cheated on you for a flimsy reason."
"You act like it doesn't matter how old he was."
Stan's face turned hard and cold for just a moment, and then he turned away from Kel altogether. "They called me a child rapist." Kel wasn't impressed. "That's what they said when they jabed me with their toothbrushes, Kelly. They're murdering theives, and they took the word of a prejudiced police officer over mine."
Kel narrowed his eyes at Stan. "Are you saying that he's not a child?"
"He might be," Stan said with a haggard sigh. Then he turned back to Kel, with tears that flowed freely from bloodshot eyes. "He said he was a student at Pierce Community College. I never thought... why would I ruin my whole life?"
Kel shrugged. "Because you were lonely."
Stan shook his head emphatically. "But I wouldn't do that, Kel, not that! Why are you looking at me that way?"
Kel dragged the heel of his hand against his own stubble. "You like them young."
Stan's quiet weeping began to give way to soft keening sobs. "Kelly, my sweet... you think I don't care for you anymore. Is that why you've thrown yourself into your work, with no more time for me?" Kel's mouth dropped open, but all language had been stripped from him. "He was smart and studious, and, well, yes, a little young. He reminded me so much of you, when we first met, when... when I was your whole world." Stan broke down then, as silent sobs wracked his body.
Kel sat down on the edge of the bed, gingerly, as if he feared that the bed would rear up and swallow him whole if it knew he was there. He reached a shaking hand out, and gently, fearfully, began to stroke the silken silver strands that fell heavily into Stan's eyes, began to brush them gently from his forehead. "I don't know what to think anymore," he said softly.
Stan took his hand in both of his own, and kissed each finger slowly, before nuzzling up to Kel's loose grip. "Whatever you think, Kelly, I hope forgiveness is somewhere in there. I need you."
Kel pulled away again. "Why?"
Stan looked at him in horror. "The same reason you haven't shaved in days, the same reason you have circles under your eyes, Sweet Baby. Because we can't live without each other. Aren't you tired of trying? I am. I need to get out of here, I need to go someplace safe, where I can heal - where we can all heal and try to put this horrible mess behind us."
Kel frowned. "What do you want from me?"
Stan shook his head, the picture of confusion. "What any man down on his luck wants from the love of his life - support."
"Be specific."
Impatience winked by, in the literal blink of an eye, but Stan's face was sweetness and warmth. "I need to post bail."
Kel stood up, ready to bolt from the jail ward, never to see Stanford again. "You want me to fund you, so you can run out on-"
"No! No, Kelly! Look at me! Look at what they did to me!" Stan tugged at his hospital gown, and revealed several angry red slashes held together with black suture. There were at least ten that Kel could see just on the front of his chest. "Please, Kelly. I'm not a dishonest man - if I have to do the time, then, by God, I'll figure out how. But look at what they've done to me. I won't make it to trial at this rate. I need to get out of here. Please, Kelly. Don't let them kill me."
Kel stared at the angry, swollen slits all over his lover's body for a long time. Finally, he looked into Stan's eyes, and saw, what? Glittering triumph? Smarmy manipulation? Maybe plain smugness, because he had to know, that for all Kel's justified anger, that there was no way Kel would be able to sleep at night without thinking of those scars.