by Tara Wimble
“She verbally assaulted her.” Janice scoffs. “I’m not sure that’s a credit to me.”
Vianne tilts her head. “Are you sure? Because despite the worry that she was about to get a lot more Sorenson than she bargained for,” Vianne smiles, obviously amused at the thought. “-she was acting on your behalf. Like a knight.”
“I didn’t ask her to do that.”
“If we had to ask our friends to stick up for us, I don’t think they’d be as good friends as we thought they were.”
Janice laughs shortly. “I suppose Sara’s got into a few fights then.”
“More than a few.” Vianne smirks. “But Lexie isn’t romantically involved with you, so the situation isn’t the same. She did what she could.”
“I don’t know how I feel about it.”
“Because she’s your friend or because the person she was defending you against was Hope?” Vianne asks. “Because if you think Hope doesn’t think that you can fight your own battles, you’re wrong.”
“I always admired Lexie’s ability to just- to step up until I saw that-” Janice stalls. “I feel like she took the choice from me.”
“Would you have said what she said?”
“No.”
“Did you want to say something?”
“I had a lot of things that I wanted to say.” Janice bores into the table.
“Like what?”
“Why?” Janice voices. “Why didn’t she just tell me? Tell me and we could have avoided all of this.”
Did she think that Janice wouldn’t have understood? Did Hope really think she was such a child that she didn’t know the way the world turns out sometimes?
“You can still ask.”
“Not yet. Not when I’m such a mess.” Janice says. “I just feel like I’m losing on all fronts and-” A creeping dread fills her for no reason. “-I don’t feel like I’m going to have friends who are a credit to me when the dust settles.”
“You have to help that if you can.” Vianne suggests. “You might be angry or upset but you’ll always feel worse without friends there to help you through it. Talk to someone. Talk to Lexie. Figure it out. There’s a solution in there somewhere.”
If not?
Janice nods and drinks the rest of her juice in silence with Vianne watching her.
What if the solution breaks them apart even more?
***
THE dread she felt when she sat with Vianne knocks the wind out of her again when she gets back to her room. Robin looks to be a hurricane, the eye of the storm that they've been whirling around with their problems for weeks, now reeking a storm of her own. When she sees Janice she strides towards her and forces her to flinch backwards.
“You couldn’t have warned us that her sister was here?” Anger doesn’t sit well on Robin’s face. Not much does other than a lazy smile or sleepy gaze so when Janice faces up to her, her stomach turns uncomfortably.
“I would. But sometimes it’s better for everyone if you don’t mess with people’s personal shit.” Janice pushes past her into the room and looks for something, anything, to bring up a shield between her and this conversation. Defend yourself, she thinks.
“Do you even know what you just did?” Robin babbles and it escalates when Janice refuses to look at her. “The extent of the trouble- Janice! Fuck!”
A rod is forced into Janice’s back to straighten her up and turn her around because she’s never heard Robin curse before. She wasn’t even sure she could.
“Robin-”
“She was in the room Janice.” Robin lays it out for her. “She was in the room and we walked in there trying to-”
She gestures down and Janice notices the creases in her shirt and the notch on her belt being too loose and her stomach drops.
“Robin-”
“You basically outed us!”
That's what the dread was before. That's the imbalance she sensed from miles away. Oh God. What did she do? “I swear to God I didn’t think-”
“No, you really didn’t.” Robin cuts across her leaving her no room to continue. “And now Lexie is chasing after her sister because she’s just crushed some sort of bond of trust between them because she wasn’t ready.”
Janice feels like Robin is scooping out her insides and dropping them to the floor like ice cream cones.
“I wasn’t ready.”
Agency for agency. She might not have thought this would happen but she didn’t give them a choice. Like Lexie didn’t give her one. Like Hope. Janice’s suddenly become the enemy.
Robin doesn’t give away that she’s been crying but Janice knows that the walk from Lexie’s dorm isn’t long but Robin hasn’t been waiting for her for an hour. “I wasn’t ready.” She mutters.
“Robin, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not that easy.” Robin wipes her cheek. “It stopped being that easy when you- why did you?”
“This wasn’t about what Lexie did- this was a mistake!” Janice defends. She’d never do this. She’d never purposely out someone no matter how pissed off she got at someone. She feels sick thinking that Lexie is having a conversation with her sister that she wasn’t ready to have. Hearing the tone in Robin’s admission makes her want to disappear out of guilt.
But Robin thinks that it’s all connected.
“She believes, deep down that she was looking out for you.”
“She talked to Hope about something she didn’t fully understand.” Janice retorted. “I’m pissed at Lexie but I didn’t mean to out you, just like I may be pissed at Hope but I don’t need someone else to fight my battles okay?”
All of the progress that she'd thought she'd made with Vianne starts to fall away. Will anything ever stick?
Robin shakes her head. “If we don’t, who will Janice? Maybe she didn’t go about it in the right way but her intentions were right.”
Janice closes her eyes. “I didn’t know that she’d find you two, as you were.”
It’s going to eat at her from the inside. She feels like shit.
“No.” Robin agrees. Hollow on the inside and channeling a foreign upset towards Janice. “But you didn’t think to warn us either. And it’s not just Lexie you’re screwing with now, it’s me too.”
She covers her eyes for a second like she can’t bear to look at Janice. It’s like a punch to the stomach.
“Sometimes I think you forget that Hope isn’t here with us. She’s not in college Janice. She has a life and responsibilities that extend past you and people to support her.” Robin doesn’t relent. “I’m on your side. I’m here supporting you because you’re my friend but Lexie is my girlfriend. I can’t help either of you if you won’t let me.”
“Roby...”
Her plea is ignored.
Robin pulls on the hat, the one Janice knitted her before they left for Christmas, and sighs. The trace of the crying she must have done before coming back to the room rears its head and Robin wipes her nose with the heel of her palm.
“Look, I have to go and introduce myself to Lexie’s sister and Hope that she doesn’t completely freak out over the fact she found out we’re together enough to tell her dad,” Robin’s defeated face brings back the guilt that Janice has knowing it wasn’t just one person affected by this. “When I get back, can you try to be asleep or something? Because I can’t-”
She waves in Janice’s direction. “-deal with this if you’re not going to face up to it.”
***
CHRISTENNE pulls them up before they leave the next afternoon and for a second Hope is expecting her to say they’ve been taken off the route they’ve changed too. A cruel twist of fate. Instead she gives them a warning.
“Keep your gear sorted out today.” She warns. “The night shift had a bit of trouble with some gangs last night and the dust isn’t settling.”
Nothing like a delayed ‘welcome back to the big leagues’ present to get their day started.
“Shots fired?” Vianne asks, wanting to be aware of what they�
��d be potentially driving into today. Hope’s taught her well.
“A few. No casualties and I want to keep it that way.” Christenne dismisses them and Hope follows orders. Before they leave the parking lot she has Vianne check over all of her gear and guns. Better to be safe than sorry.
“You heard from Sara?” Hope asks once they get inside. Vianne starts the engine and smiles.
“This your way of making sure we don’t start the conversation about your love life?”
Hope puts on her shades as they drive out of the lot. The sun is peaking and glaring down on their car with a death wish. “I don’t think there’s more than can be said.”
“You’re not moving on.” Vianne observes. “That prompts talking about.”
“Can’t leave it like this.” Hope leans a hand against the window and rolls her sleeve up. “Not a quitter.”
Vianne laughs lightly. “I think I got that from your reputation already.”
“Not until she calls at least.”
Vianne glances at her like she’s waiting for confirmation of something. Hope’s just not sure what. “You think she’ll end it?”
She dreads the thought of it. “She has every right too.”
“Yeah but she didn’t look too into what her friend was saying.” Vianne reminds her. “She called you remember.”
Hope can’t really forget but the Hope in that phone call was shadowed by the outburst. “She hasn’t actually spoken to me. And I’ve got two of her friends giving me two perspectives on what she really thinks.”
“Which one do you believe?”
Lexie is her first guess. Rage is always more convincing than passivity. “Which one do I believe or which one do I want to believe?”
“Either.”
“I think she’s probably getting out at a good time.”
“What the fuck, Hope?” Vianne half slams on and Hope pushes against her seatbelt.
“What? You want to honestly sit there and tell me that you didn’t want to knock me down a few when Janice found out about Henri?” Hope exclaims. “Because I know I would have.”
Vianne bites the inside of her cheek and Hope knows that she’s right. It would have been a sight to behold having her partner swing at her while Sara tried to hold her back. Although she can’t argue that she deserved it, she can’t deny she might have swung back.
“It could have been avoided.” Vianne states. “Why didn’t you just tell her? Were you afraid she wasn’t going to think you were gay or something? You know how college kids are.”
Hope rolls her eyes. The ratio of men to women she’s dated falls around 1:3.
“Exactly. I know how they are and I didn’t expect-” Hope sighs. “I didn’t expect any of this.”
Her voice gets quieter but Vianne still figures it out. “You thought she was going to bail after the sex.”
It’s hard hearing it out loud. “I’d pretty much bet on it.”
It’s not that she didn’t think much of Janice or the possibility of her sticking with her, it’s just that Hope has a way of driving people running in the end. Nothing much has changed.
“And you were gonna be alright with that?”
Maybe. No. Yes. Now? She’s moping which isn’t something she’s used to and it makes her angry at herself more than anything. All because Janice managed to throw the pattern off. She stayed.
“Before it I thought about it? Yeah.” Hope admits. “Even after it happened. She’s a college kid, I’m-”
Vianne glances at her. “Definitely not a college kid.”
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.”
“She came out of nowhere and I thought it was fun. She’s funny and Henri-” Hope closes her eyes and prays for the crackle of the radio to interrupt her. When it doesn’t, Vianne prompts her to go on. “-she was a welcome distraction.”
“Until she stopped being the distraction.”
“She never stopped.” Hope says. “She came along and he was already gone before he signed the divorce papers and I didn’t question what would be wrong about just doing this.”
Janice was attractive and flirting and Hope didn’t think a lot into it other than, ‘why not?’, instead of admitting that maybe she should have slowed down and waited.
“Until-”
“Until she said yes to coming to the benefit.” Hope admits. “Then I started panicking.”
“If she hadn’t come with you would you have ever told her.”
Deal breaker question. It wouldn’t have been any of her business if she’d never come with her. No one would have brought it up with her. It would have been Hope’s secret. Her lie. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m thirty one and divorced. It’s not the most attractive thing in the world.”
“I don’t know.” Vianne tries to cheer her up. “You still look pretty hot to me.”
“I’m telling Sara.” Hope mutters.
Vianne rolls her eyes. “Come on. You thought she’d end it? She’s smitten. Yes, that’s the word I’m using.” Vianne stops her interruption. “Just because she’s in college doesn’t mean she’s opposed to commitment. I think she gets you more than you think she does and she wouldn’t have run away from you at this.”
“She already did.” Hope knows what Vianne is going to say and waves her off. “I know she only did because I didn’t tell her. Whatever.”
“Whatever- now you have to fix it on her terms. That is, if she’s stopped being a distraction.”
Hope shakes her head.
“So, explain it all.” Vianne turns her attention back to the road. “From what I know, what little I know about her, she’s not opposed to honesty.”
“She tell you that or her hothead friend?” Hope scoffs.
“Yeah, next time someone runs at you like that I’m gonna cuff them.”
“I’ll tell Sara to watch out then.”
“You better.” Vianne’s joke softens after a few moments of silence and she reaches over to hold Hope’s shoulder in support. “It’ll be okay. Janice will call and Henri will stop calling. He has stopped, hasn’t he?”
“He got what he want months ago.” Hope answers. “The divorce was final, he moved out, he came around for the damn dog- he only stuck around to see what else he could ruin in my life before he transferred out.”
“Then everything is looking up then. You got the medal, you got the route, you’re probably going to get that promotion.” Vianne lists off. “All you need now is the girl.”
The way she puts it is so fairytale ending that Hope starts laughing as the radio comes to light with darker news.
Hope turns it up. “Possible shots fired. A neighbor thinks they heard something. Christenne wasn’t kidding.”
Vianne keeps driving as the dispatch confirms that they’re the closest unit to check it out.
“Come on,” Vianne switches the lights on, raring to go, smiling at Hope’s relief to the end of their talk. “If anyone asks, it was my idea.”
*
No one is more surprised than Laurel when she breaks her wrist after getting into a competitive ping pong match with Janice. If anyone asks, Janice had warned her beforehand, after all Laurel had seen the aftermath before Christmas, but it hadn’t made an impact.
Laurel’s wrist through the glass door of the common room, however, did make an impact.
It's late afternoon and Janice is waiting for the nurses to finish cleaning out Laurel’s knuckles before they start stitching her up. Amy is here as well since she sprinted from class when Janice called her, holding Laurel’s other hand and making Janice feel a little like a third wheel. If she’s being honest it’s mostly out of guilt that she came with her because she hasn’t spent a lot of time with Laurel since coming back and the other half was a desire to avoid Lexie.
Laurel groans. “I can’t believe this happened. My dad is going to freak out.”
“Your dad?” Amy laughs. “Janice looked like she was going to pass out from
the guilt.”
She probably did which would explain why one of the medics gave her a once over before they bundled Laurel and Janice into the back of their ambo.
“I really Hoped I’d get through freshmen year without a trip to the hospital.” Laurel admits. Amy shrugs, like she didn’t expect that to happen.
Janice rolls her eyes and watches the intern take out another piece of glass. “Please, with me and Robin as your friends? That was kind of unrealistic.”
Laurel laughs. “You want to trade places?”
“I’m good tha-” She’s cut off by a voice calling for people to move out of the way.
A parade of interns and doctors clear a path and a few of them ready themselves in scrubs and gear. Janice watches with a curious interest at the assembling of the guard when the metaphorical explosion of action hits.
Suddenly all Janice sees dark blue marching past and an EMT calling out stats she can barely understand despite her devotion to Grey’s Anatomy. “G.S.W to the right knee, she was still moving it when we arrived on the scene but we haven’t gotten movement since. She’s got internal bleeding from the first impact against-”
A doctor rushes over and confers with the EMTs “We need to stabilize that knee right away, get me an x-ray and someone call the OR tell them we’ve got a cop shooting.”
Janice flinches at the sound the gurney makes as it clatters past them and at the amount of blood that is already slick against the sterile gloves of the attending doctors. Someone shot a cop-
A cop.
Laurel spots it before she does. “Janice-”
There she is, catching up to the gurney ignoring the protests of the interns that try to stop her, blood pouring from a gash by her ear and her thigh.
“Janice!” Amy yells as she jumps from the stool next to Laurel and takes off after the parade of doctors.
People glare at her before she’s even opened her mouth. “Hope!”
The crowd of officers come to a standstill in front of an elevator. Janice sees the team of doctors and nurses disappear behind the steel doors. Then she sees Hope.
Hope pushes an intern away from her face, unconcerned for the damage to her ear, and alert when she hears her name being called.