Broken Glass
For three days, Kel watched Stanford pull Dixie into his web. It shouldn't have worked: she knew his dirty little secret now. She knew, because she'd been there, in her fuzzy bunny houseshoes, when Agent Murray Lawson laid it out on the line. She saw for herself that it cost almost eleven hundred dollars to release Stan into his care - which put the full cost of his bail somewhere in the ball park of two brand spanking new, fully stocked Cadillacs right off the show room floor, or maybe the total estimate of the house they'd bought together (before the neighbors got together and essentially torched the place, anyway). She knew the cost of Stan's bail, and the long, dry legalese of his alleged crime, and she knew the plainer accusations those torch wielding neighbors had apparently scrawled on his walls. She knew, but still, here Stanford sat, shoulder to shoulder with Kel, scooping hot, creamy, buttery eggs into his gaping maw like there was no tomorrow, and there she stood, wiping her hands on her apron, and smiling beatifically at them while Stan ate.
Dixie's smile dropped like a rock when she saw Kel's plate. It was overflowing with bacon and eggs and enough toast to build a treehouse fort. She pointed one of her dragon clawed fingernails at his nose. "You're not eating again," she said darkly.
Kel pushed the plate to her. "I had what I wanted."
"Uh huh." She pushed the plate back to him. "We gonna have this argument again?"
"We wouldn't have to if you wouldn't press the issue, Dixie."
"Let him be," Stanford said between giant spoonfuls of his own eggs. "He's never been big on breakfast anyway."
"Well, maybe not, but he's not been big on any meal since... since you've been gone."
It was the first time she'd shown pause at anything Stan had said or done since she'd moved him into her apartment, the first time she seemed to realize that she was siding with the enemy. Good. Kel hoped she felt like shit for remembering that the reason for Stanford's 'being gone' was the ruination of everything good in Kelly's life.
Stan grunted. "He'd been over eating at home, actually. I figured it was because he was working too hard."
"I'm sitting right here, you know," Kel said.
Stan turned to him and smiled, and rubbed his giant hand on Kel's back. "Let him be, Dixie," Stan said indulgently, like a father shooing off an overbearing mother. "He's having a hard morning."
"Yeah, well, it's only gonna get harder if he collapses from low blood sugar," she said under her breath.
Kel ground his teeth so hard he could hear them squeak. He wanted to grab the brandy bottle and smash it over Stan's head. No, smash it over Dixie's head. She wore enough hair spray, the bottle would shatter right in two. And then he'd have a nice sharp edge to finish Stan off with.
Damn, he shouldn't have let her talk him into letting Stan live that night at the hospital.
"Say, Dixie," Stan said with a voice that would melt a diamond. "Do you suppose I could have another batch of eggs, before you go? They're so good, especially after prison food."
Kel cut his eyes at Stan. Keep it up, wise guy. He reached for the brandy bottle.
"Kelly," Dix said sternly. "So help me, if you try to come into Rampart drunk, I will lock you in the custodial shed for a week."
Kel smiled and dropped his hand. "Oh, I wasn't gonna drink it."
"I'm sure you weren't, but all the same, I'll thank you not to get into my car smelling like a distillery first thing in the morning. Especially since you plan on skipping breakfast."
Kel stood up. "Actually, I'm going in alone this morning, Dix."
"Oh no you are not-" she said quickly, and ripped off her apron.
"Dix, for goodness sake, give me some space. Make Stan some more eggs, he's gonna eat nothing but peanut butter sandwiches all day while we're gone."
"Kel-"
"I'll be good, I promise. Besides," he said quietly. "I told you, wasn't going to pour myself a damned drink."
She frowned at him. "You know, if you'd just go ahead and yell at him, you might feel a little bet-"
"Don't, Dix." Kel shook his head emphatically at her. "Don't tell me how to feel better. Don't try to analyze me. Don't try to sponsor me, or save me, or any of that. Just... let me have a day to myself, okay? I promise to come back in one piece. But don't try to tell me about my feelings, because you don't know. You really don't know."
She sighed. "Fine. I'll see you at work. Drive carefully."
Kel smiled grimly. "Sure." He looked over at Stan, who was watching him with those same soulful eyes. Kel thought he ought to try being civil to the man who'd created this mess, at least in front of their benefactor. "Have a good day," he said.
Stan didn't say anything. He just smiled, and looked even sadder. Kel rolled his eyes and walked out.
The drive to work was slower than usual. Normally, Kel wouldn't have noticed, being accustomed to driving all the way from Hollywood. But he was alone for the first time in days, which meant he didn't have to listen to a pointless conversation designed to make his passenger feel like she was making a difference in his sad, sad life. And now, sitting in a car filled with silence, his mind kept winding its way back to when his nightmare redoubled on him, and expanded and exploded like an acid-dipped kaleidescope.
She'd been quiet while Kel had paid Stanford's bail, quiet and horrified to hear the accusations. Child molester. It was like finding out the nice guy across the hall actually was the Bogeyman. And she'd been quiet and horrified when they'd driven all the way out to Downtown Los Angeles, to wait while Stan's bail was processed. The cops were almost as frightening as the people they wrangled into the holding cells down the hall, and more than once, Dix grabbed hold of Kel's arm in alarm.
When Stan had finally appeared, he looked bedraggled and exhausted, and so contrite. He kept his head down, and shuffled through his outprocessing, like he expected to be beaten to the ground at any time. When the door to the waiting room opened, he stepped out exactly enough to let the officers shut the door behind him. Then he just stood there, like a lost pup. In the end, Kel got up and stormed out of the police station. He didn't care if Dix or Stan kept up, or made it to the car, or made it back to her apartment. He was tired, and he'd done his duty.
But they did come out, Dix leading Stan the way she often led patients to and from bed after a long stint in the observation rooms. Kel could feel his blood pressure rising to dangerous levels as Dixie led her charge through the parked cars, pausing from time to time to let him rest and wheeze and generally look pathetic. Finally, they made it into the car, and then Stanford began speak. His voice was soft and weak, his words halting and filled with worry and self loathing. He was weaving his magical spell over them, trying to ensnare them with his charm. Only, Kel could see it now. He could see it in the rear view mirror, could see the way Stan pleaded his case, softly, but urgently. He could see behind the veil.
Dixie, on the other hand, was enraptured. She was caught up in his spell. He'd dazzled her the way he dazzled everyone. And so when they'd stopped in front of her building, and Stan asked where they were, Kel's answer of "Dixie's place" had gone unheard, unnoticed. "Home," Dixie had said, clear as a bell. "Come on. It's late, and me and Kel have an early shift in the morning." They got out of the car together, both doors open and shut in cadence, and walked up the path to the building side by side, like they'd always been a pair, just waiting for Kel to get the hell out of the way. It wasn't until Dix paused to look back at the car that he realized he, too, was supposed to go up to her rooms.
They'd stood there, looking awkwardly at each other that first night, while Dix stammered through possible sleeping arrangements. She finally, after some quiet protest from Kel, decided she could take the couch, and let her two guests take her bed - "It's just a full sized mattress, but this couch is barely comfortable enough for Kel to stretch out on, there's no way Stan's going to fit here, and no offense, but I'm not sleeping in the same bed with a jailbird." She disappeared into her bedroom, changed for bed, returned to the living room with a few of her own pillows and a book, and shooed them into the confines of her room.
The moment the door closed, Stan had dropped all pretense of remorse, and turned on Kel. He was burning with a thousand questions, and he hurled them all at Kel at once - what are we doing here, what was she doing with you, when are we going home, why'd it take you so long to get me out of there, how are we supposed to talk to each other, what is going on??
And Kel's explanation hadn't been enough. It had only bought him the night, a strange night in a smallish woman's smallish bed, with his betrayer at his back. They didn't touch, but Kel could feel Stan's solid strength behind him, firm and looming, impenetrable, even with over a dozen punctures sewn shut all over his body. In the morning, the questioning began anew, only it was punctured with requests for proof, to see the shell of their home. How did Kel know it was uninhabitable?
When Kel and Dix were alone together, he begged her to take Stan up to see the house. He couldn't bear to go himself, but he needed Stan to understand that it was this, or a hotel, and that she could better explain why she wouldn't allow them to stay in a hotel. She agreed, but only after Kel agreed to be dropped off at Joe Early's condo, where she was relatively sure Kel would be 'kept out of trouble'. For three humiliating hours Joe and Kel sat and stared at each other like hostile strangers, until Dix finally returned with a soft spoken, weak-kneed Stanford in tow.
And now, as he pulled into his parking space on the hospital campus, Kel began to see a pattern forming around him. Wherever he went, somehow, his friends had concluded that he was the bad guy in all this. Even Dix, who knew horrifying details on just exactly how Kel was not the bad guy, was having a hard time keeping straight how Kel hadn't brought this mess on himself. In a few short weeks, he'd gone from being a reasonably well liked fellow to the wild man who laid waste to all his friendships without a care in the world.
Pariah.
The sound of sirens closing the distance snapped him out of his cascade of self pity. He could go back to worrying about the tatters of his social life off the clock.
Kel kept his head down and pushed through the day. He locked himself away in his office and tried not to pull his hair out over stupid, pointless policy changes that came across his desk, and forced himself to read through inch thick memos that all but tied his hands as to the kind of care the administration thought his department ought to give. He skimmed over the latest medical journals which were piling dangerously high in a corner of his desk, and tossed them carelessly to the opposite corner of the desk, having failed to glean any reasonable information about the latest techniques being applied in Bumblefuck, Nowheresville USA. He tried not to feel like a failure, and failed at that too.
When he couldn't put it off anymore, he went out to face his public - the patients and their doctors. He supervised a clutch of irritating new interns as they fumbled their way through their first weeks in the field, and chewed the inside of his cheek so hard he could taste blood. He assisted a pair of seasoned residents who were nearly on their way out of the program, and watched with dismay as they made the same stupid mistakes the newbies just finished splattering all over the walls. He talked to a handful of patients in the observation rooms, and nearly got into a yelling match with one of them, who refused to have her blood pressure taken yet again, despite the fact that her laundry list of symptoms and complaints warranted extremely close monitoring of her blood pressure. When the woman asked for the doctor in charge of the unit, and turned automatically to the first older man she saw, Kel stormed out of the room, out of the ward, out of the hospital, cussing up a blue storm.
He shoved past the interns and ambulance men wheeling some other fool into the hospital, and nearly bowled over a hapless paramedic who'd been making love to his squad up until the moment someone in a lab coat stepped outside. John Gage, of course - like a long legged, club footed pup, he was always underfoot, and usually under somebody's skin. "Watch it!" Kel barked. "Why don't you look where you're going!"
John stared at Kel for a long, long moment, slack jawed and wide eyed, before sidestepping him in silence. Kel's anger was slowly replaced with regret as he watched John walk slowly into the hospital. Another friend insulted, another black mark against him and his temper and his ability to be a civilized human being. He sighed, and went back inside, to apologize.
He didn't get very far. John was talking to Dixie, animated, and red faced, and pantomiming a push. And Dix was nodding, sadly, sympathetically, and obviously hanging onto his every word. She turned in Kel's direction, and froze. John followed her gaze, and drew up to his full height. Kel felt a rush of fear and resentment, and stood stock still. He wanted to apologize, yes, but he wasn't going to grovel to someone who wouldn't be receptive. He waved a little, hoping to thaw the thick wall of ice forming between himself and his support staff. John turned more fully to face him, and waved back. Maybe it would be alright. Kel screwed up his courage to physically close the distance between them. But then he saw Dixie touch John's arm, and the two of them turned away together, and disappeared into the staff lounge.
The rejection stung, but it was better this way. No one heard Kel's apology, or John's rebuff. And anyone who'd seen the altercation from beginning to end would assume that all was well between them. At least this way, Kel's shame wasn't literally out for all to see - this time, anyway.