Together Again (Never Too Late Book 5)

by Aiden Bates

  They headed up through the maze of corridors to the girl's room. "So, who is this girl?"

  "The age is right for her to be Asra Randall, but she says her name is Merab Nixon." Ryan sighed. "It makes sense for Nixon to be giving her victims new names. It's not like she knew the old ones. Anyway, Pat grabbed her on her way to work on one of the fields and convinced her to help."

  Pat blushed. "You helped with that."

  "Anyway, we couldn't have done it without her." Ryan sighed. "Can I borrow your guest room tonight, Tessaro? I don't want to expose DJ to the diphtheria."

  "Yeah, of course. The keys are in my bag of stuff."

  They made it up to the children's wing. Poor little Noah was still there, although he was in better shape than he had been. The team stopped in to say hello, and then they headed over to Merab's room.

  The girl—tall, beautiful, and perfectly healthy—had been reclining on her bed and reading a Bible when they showed up. She jumped up when they arrived, though. "You're okay!" she said, and ran forward to give Pat a hug. "I was so worried about you."

  "I was worried about you, too." Pat smiled at her. "How are you doing? I know that was hard for you."

  She looked away for a second. "I was terrified." And then she turned her gaze back to Pat. "But then you—you were there. I thought they were going to shoot everyone, because of what happened. You stopped them. You saved all of their lives. All of my brothers and sisters, and my mom. You didn't have to do that."

  "Of course I did." Pat grinned at her. "What happened to you, what is happening to all of you, it's not your fault. It's not any of your fault. You're all scared, and most of you are pretty sick. Those cops didn't know the whole story. They're trained to shoot if someone's shooting at them, but they didn't know what was going on. Like I told you, no one actually wants to see any of you hurt." He cleared his throat. "You already met my partner, Detective Tran. This is my colleague, Detective Nenci, and my omega, Elias Salazar. He works for an organization called HomeSafe."

  Elias stepped forward and put a hand on Pat's shoulder. What was he supposed to say to this girl? He'd been in similar situations, but nothing quite this fraught. "Merab, hi. This is a difficult situation for you. I've, ah, I've worked with a lot of young people in similar situations."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Are there really all that many kids like us?"

  "More than you think." Elias chuckled. "You're going to hear a lot of things over the next few days. Some of it might not make a lot of sense. Some of it will be scary, and some of it will probably make you angry. That's okay. That's normal." He took her hand. "The important thing for you to hold onto, through all of this, is that you have always been fiercely loved."

  She blinked. "My mom has always loved me. I know that."

  "Good." Elias blinked back tears. "Remember that." He pulled a card out of his pocket and wrote his cell number on the back. "If you need anything, even just to talk, give that number a call." He gave her a grin. "I'm not usually very far from this guy, so you can call for him too."

  Pat winked. "My cards are in a bag right now. But Merab, just call. We mean it. You did something amazing today, and you saved your family because of it. You're a hero."

  Merab nodded, and gave Pat another hug. "Thank you."

  The quartet left again, and Merab went back to her Bible.

  ***

  Sure, stopping the local units from shooting at the Nixons had been the right thing to do. It had been so right that Pat hadn't thought about it. He'd just done it. When the adrenaline wore off, though, and he got back to Providence, he had to admit that the cost had been high.

  Not too high. It hadn't been so high that he wouldn't have done it again. It had still been high enough that he found himself biting back on snappish retorts, though, and he felt like he needed to say something.

  "I'm going to apologize in advance," he told Elias, as they returned to the giant condo for the night. "I don't want to be snappish, but I can already tell that I'm getting kind of pissy, and I don't want to treat you badly. If you want to leave me alone or send me back to Boston until this heals, that's fine."

  Elias just kissed him. "Don't be silly. I'll let you know if you're getting out of line, and you'll let me know when you need help with something. Like pants."

  Pat grimaced. "I'm really no good at that."

  "I know. It'll take practice." Elias rested his head on Pat's chest for a second. "I was terrified. When they told me someone had gotten you like that? I thought the worst."

  "I know." Pat hung his head. "Bet you're regretting being with a cop already."

  "I knew what I was getting into." Elias stepped back. "But you know what? Not everyone would have tried to save that family. Plenty of people would have fallen to the ground, because you know they were bleeding heavily and had an arrow sticking out of them, and just been sad at what happened. You found the strength to stop it. You're an incredible man, Pat. And I love you. Now come on, let's get you cleaned up and into something more comfortable. I'll order us some food."

  Elias helped him get rid of the scrubs, and then he got into the shower with Pat to help him scrub down. Pat didn't actually need help cleaning himself. He was a grown man, and he still had one good arm. It seemed to make Elias happy to do these things for him, though, and Pat would have been lying if he said it didn't feel amazing to have Elias' hands on him at a time like this.

  Oh. Maybe that was the idea.

  "Now you're catching on," Elias said with a sly grin, and sank to his knees.

  After they'd exhausted themselves in the shower, Pat retreated to the couch while Elias placed an order for delivery. They enjoyed a quiet night in, and Pat was only a little ashamed to retreat to bed early.

  The next day, they headed back to the office, but they didn't stay long. Most of the infected kids had been taken to Mass General, because Mass General was the designated treatment center for an outbreak of infectious disease. Some of them were just mildly ill, and were being treated with antibiotics. Some were doing worse, and needed more intensive treatment. Sometimes that meant IVs full of fluids. Sometimes that meant ventilators or tracheostomies.

  Elias was now the point person on the case. Pat and Ryan were handling the aspects that related to the police investigation, but Elias' role was more important right now and the police were there to support him. They sat in a meeting with Elias, the children' doctors, officials from the CDC, and people from the Department of Children and Families to discuss the case.

  What they learned wasn't good. Some kids had a good prognosis and would probably make a full recovery. Others had been left without treatment for too long, much to Pat's dismay and guilt, and would bear the ill effects of their misadventure for the rest of their lives. Even that was an optimistic outcome for some of the children, whose survival was listed as doubtful.

  The problem was the toxin released by the bacteria that caused the disease. Some of the children, the ones with the better prognoses, hadn't had the toxin released into their systems yet. Once the toxin was released into the blood, anything could happen. The toxin could attack muscles and cause weakness, which might last for a few weeks or forever. It might attack the kidneys. It might attack the heart, causing inflammation or heart failure or death. It might attack the lungs, damaging the victim's ability to breathe for the rest of their lives.

  These children shouldn't have to face this alone. The quarantine rooms allowed them to at least be able to be treated with their "siblings," although officials from DCF were balking at that. "These aren't their real siblings," said one of the caseworkers. "Our priority needs to be getting these children reunited with their real families, so that they can heal in the proper place and time."

  Ryan's lip curled. He'd been in the care of DCF, Pat knew. "Okay, but here's the thing. These kids don't know that. They believe, deeply, that they were removed from their birth families due to abuse. It's not true, and I get that, but that doesn't change the fact that those other children that a
re with them are the only support that they have or understand. They're not going to take comfort from strangers that you say are their 'real' parents."

  Elias shook his head. "Detective Tran is right. While we do want to reunite the families, we need to do that in a way that is in the children's best interests. That means minimizing their trauma to the extent that we can. My agency is sending counselors in so that we can tailor the approach to each family and each child. We don't want to set their recovery back, physically, by making them fight their doctors."

  Dr. Rees, from Springfield, nodded. "We do have one child who doesn't seem to have contracted the illness at all. I brought her with me from Springfield; she's sitting outside with Detective Nenci."

  Pat groaned. "You left Nenci alone with another human?"

  Elias elbowed him. "So, Merab is medically cleared?"

  "She is." Dr. Rees nodded. "I don't know where she's supposed to go, however."

  Ryan leaned over and pointed to something on the page that the DCF person beside him was looking at. "Merab is the name that Nixon gave to Asra Randall."

  Elias cleared his throat. "I haven't discussed this with my alpha yet, so it's a little awkward, but I'd like to point out that I am authorized to provide temporary foster care. I can offer Merab my spare room while we try to sort out her situation with her birth family."

  Pat spoke up quickly. No, Elias hadn't checked with him. He didn't need to. "We have the space, and Merab knows me. She seems to feel safe with me. I'm okay with that."

  "There's no 'seems to' about it." Dr. Rees snorted. "The poor girl asked about you ten times on the way down here." He looked up at the rest of the table. "I won't lie. If the rest of those kids are anything like Merab, they're in for a world of shock. They've had no contact with the outside world. They haven't seen any modern media. They read hardcore religious work and the Bible. They don't socialize outside their family. They're going to need a lot of help. If there's someone that they feel comfortable with, who can ease their transition, then I'm all for it."

  One of the DCF people turned to Ryan. "Would that constitute a conflict of interest in any way?"

  "Nope." Ryan shook his head. "Tessaro's injured, and Merab's a witness, not a suspect."

  "Then we're content that she should go and stay with you, Mr. Salazar. It's a reasonable solution." She sighed. "Inasmuch as there are any reasonable solutions. Where is the perpetrator now?"

  "Ms. Nixon is being kept under heavy guard, and under sedation, at another hospital." The MGH doctor rubbed at his face. "We didn't want to have to sedate her, honestly, but she became hysterical at the thought of being separated from 'her' children. We thought that she might hurt herself."

  Pat shook his head. "Man, there just aren't any happy endings here, are there?" He rubbed at the back of his neck.

  "The happy ending is that those kids have been removed from her care." One of the CDC workers gave him a hard look.

  Pat fought down the urge to wipe that look off of the man's face. "They were. She's the only mother that those kids have ever known, and they've been removed. They're going to have to hear that everything that they've ever known was fiction, made up by a traumatized and frankly kind of addled mind. They love her. And honestly, even though it was obviously not… not healthy, she loved them."

  "She stole them from the people who loved them!" The other CDC worker slammed his fist onto the table.

  "She did." Elias spoke quietly and simply. "Like my alpha said, she's traumatized. She's addled. She believed—wrongly, but nevertheless—that they were being harmed. She did the wrong thing, but not out of malice. Removing those children from her care, it's the right thing, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't come with a cost. And it's the kids that will pay that cost. It's up to us to try to minimize that cost to them, because we're the adults."

  "No one's saying that Nixon should get those kids back." Ryan made a face. "Hell no. What we're saying, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, is that we need to acknowledge that the way that those kids feel about her isn't necessarily the way that we feel about her, or that their families want them to feel about her. She's not a monster; she's a sick woman who tried her best to take care of them. And if we want those kids to recover—to fully recover, not just in body—we need to acknowledge her place in their lives and in their hearts."

  Rees nodded. "I mean that girl out there is heartbroken. As far as she's concerned, the entire world has just ended. We need to make sure that those kids are the priority, and that they don't feel under attack."

  The woman from DCF stood up and rubbed her temples. "You're right. You're all right, and I know you're right. It's hard to turn it off, and to say, 'We can't trash the one who took them in front of the kids because they think she's their mom.' But that's not the way to bring them around, you're right."

  Pat relaxed. "I'd like to try to go and talk to Nixon, if that's okay."

  One of the other doctors grimaced. "I'd like to give her another day or two to recover before she talks to law enforcement. I know you're not going in as an adversary, but just to be on the safe side, I'd rather let her recover and make sure that she can cooperate with her lawyer and patient advocate."

  Pat held up his hands. "Fair enough. Can you pass her a message?"

  The doctor frowned. "I won't threaten her for you."

  "Just please let her know that we're doing all we can to get her children well and keep them safe. You can give her my card, and my number if you want." He managed a tired grin. "I know that she did the wrong thing, but I also know that at the end of the day, she surrendered because she was worried about those kids. If she's being kept apart from them, she's going to be panicked. If she's able to get some information, she might calm down a little and you can maybe step down the sedation, I don't know. She might be more cooperative with her treatment."

  "I'll see what we can do." The doctor relaxed, and gave Pat a speculative look. Pat wasn't sure what that was about, and at the end of the day it wasn't his problem. He was just going to worry about the job in front of him.

  Once that meeting was over, Pat and Elias got to tell Merab that she was going to come and stay with them while everything got sorted out. They went upstairs to see her siblings after that, and while she resented the quarantine protocols she was willing to go through them if she got to bring comfort to her brothers and sisters. "Everything's going to be okay," she told them, or at least the ones who weren't being sedated for their own protection. "We're all going to get through this, together."

  She introduced Pat to the one who had shot him, a boy of about fifteen who Nixon had renamed Eliezer. The poor boy quaked when Pat entered the room, but Pat patted his head and told him it was okay. "You were scared, and you were trying to defend your family."

  "They told me they were going to send me to jail," Eliezer stammered. "For shooting you."

  "It was an accident." Pat shook his head. "I'll talk to everyone involved, and hopefully we can get any charges dismissed. Usually, yeah, trying to shoot a cop has consequences. In this case, though, I'm pretty sure that no one wants to see anything bad happen to you. Least of all me. Okay?"

  The boy closed his eyes and nodded, and then he relaxed against Pat. "What's going to happen to us?"

  "We're working on that, Eliezer. We're working on that. But the important thing is that we're going to keep you safe. Before anything else happens, though, you have to get better. So, you just rest and relax, and you be good with your brothers and sisters. I'll come back down here tomorrow and check up on you all, and hopefully you'll be breathing better and moving that foot a little better too."

  Eliezer blushed. "And then?"

  "And then we'll take it from there. But you're not going to be alone, and me and Elias and Ryan, we're all going to be right there with you." He leaned a little closer. "And we're going to look out for your mom, too. Okay?"

  "Thanks, Mr. Pat." Eliezer lay back down and went to sleep.

  The trio left, dis
posing of their paper gowns and gloves. "Did you mean that?" Merab asked. "Did you really mean that you're going to look after Mom?"

  "We're going to do our best." Elias nodded. "She's sick too, and she's got a few legal problems. But the thing is, none of us wants to see her hurt. Okay? We want to see her get better. She loves you all."

  Merab walked out of the hospital with them. "She didn't really adopt us, did she?"

  Pat put a hand on her back. Merab was pretty perceptive for having been raised in isolation. "No, sweetheart. She didn't."

  "Did my birth parents, did they really hurt me?"

  Elias and Pat looked at each other. Then Elias spoke. "No. They were investigated when your mom took you. She, uh, she was hurt pretty badly, when she was young. She thought she was saving you. She truly did."