Fall

by Katherine Rhodes

  “You said you talked to her.,”

  “She…unknowingly bared her soul to me. She’s absolutely typical of the foster system. Alain was the first one who ever showed her any real affection, no matter how fucked up it was, and she went with it. She married him.”

  Staring at him, I found a chair by feel and sat down. “How bad? How bad was it, Reid?”

  “Oh. It was bad. He treats her like shit all the time. From what I could get, he uses her for sex, for cleaning, for a punching bag.” He leaned back against the wall. “I’m sure if you put someone on him, to tail him, you’re going to find he’s also all about tagging ass.”

  My head fell into my hands, and I groaned, “Shit. How did we not see this until she was sitting in a wheelchair with bruises and stitches?”

  “Because she didn’t want you to, Wren. She didn’t want anyone to know. Pride.”

  “Pride goeth before a fall,” I whispered.

  “Indeed, and this fall has taken her to the very bottom,” Reid said.

  “Stay here until she’s out?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t planning on leaving.” He walked over and sat in the chair next to me. “We need to figure out what to do now. She’s in no position to make informed decisions.”

  “I know where she’s supposed to be, so I’m not going to delude myself about this. We have the room. It’s hers.”

  “Your house?”

  “Keep the sins together. There is strength in numbers.”

  The sound of the bed being rolled into the room roused both Reid and me from our totally uncomfortable positions in the chair.

  The sky outside the window was showing signs of sunlight, which meant we’d both been there for at least eight hours at that point.

  The orderlies set up everything in the room, hooking up oxygen, saline bags, heart monitors, and every other sort of monitoring equipment they thought they might need. The nurses swooped in and started attaching everything to keep an eye on Paige.

  And then, Fischer walked in, wearing surgery scrubs and his lab coat.

  Reid jerked. “What the hell…”

  “They called me in,” he said, swinging his stethoscope from around his neck and giving her heart a listen. He nodded, and swung it back around. “The MRI showed a small brain bleed and they wanted me to scrub in to be safe. It’s a small, small one, and should be mostly healed on its own tomorrow. She’ll have another scan in two days to check that.”

  “Holy shit,” Reid said. “I completely forgot that you’re a neurologist.”

  “Board certified neurological surgeon,” he said. “I usually work on emergency cases at CHoP.”

  “Completely forgot,” he said.

  “Paige,” I said. “How is she?”

  “Multiple fractures in the ankle, that needed about ten pins to hold it together,” Fischer said. “Dislocated shoulder, broken clavicle, sprained elbow, bruised spinal column, concussion, brain bleed, and severe laceration to the scalp, which was stitched neatly and carefully by Doctor Rojas. She has a tooth in the back that was cracked and crushed, so we did a quick and careful extraction and she’ll have to see a dentist about that.”

  “And…”

  “The baby is fine,” he said. “I had a prenatal specialist come in and sit in on the operation to monitor her for the anesthesia.”

  Reid let out a half sob. “Thank you.”

  Fischer gave his shoulder a squeeze. “We knew she wanted that baby. I wasn’t going to let anything happen.”

  “Do we have anyone at all to contact for her?” I asked. “If she was in foster care…”

  “No one,” Lily said, walking back in, looking exhausted. “She has no one listed anywhere except Alain. And we can’t change that until she wakes up.”

  “Takes about two hours,” Fischer said. “Wren, why don’t you and Reid go home? You’ve been here all night, and I know you’re exhausted.”

  “Like you’re not?”

  “I’m the doctor, I know when my limit’s reached.” He walked over and dropped a kiss on my head. “I called Linc. He’ll come and sit with her instead. Reid, you need sleep too. She’s in good hands here, and you can trust us to do what she needs.”

  “I know.” Reid ran a hand down his face. “I promised her I would help.”

  “You did.” Lily nodded hard. “You did more than I could. You got there, you got me, and we got her here. Seriously. You two go home. I’m going as well.”

  “Alain?” I asked. “Where is he?”

  “We haven’t seen him. I put cops on the house, and had CS lock the door.” Lily rolled her shoulder and rubbed her neck. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. We needed to secure that place, and if he drove by it scared him off. All we can do is hope he shows up somewhere and we can nab him.”

  “Restraining order?” Fischer asked.

  Lily nodded. “In progress.”

  “And someone on the door?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not until I have that restraining order. I have the night court judge working on it, so we should have it in about three hours.”

  “Shit,” Reid said. “I should stay—”

  “Go home,” Fischer said. “Lincoln will be here.”

  “And I’m staying until he shows,” Lily said. “We can’t do much of anything until we have that restraining order and she wakes up to sign the paper for a warrant for him.”

  I nodded. “It’s a good idea.”

  Reid looked at the three of us and glanced at Paige in the bed. “Don’t exclude me from this, you guys. I know she’s yours, and needs to be with you, but she trusts me, and she needs that right now.”

  Fischer nodded. “We know. We won’t, because we trust you too. And she does need everyone around her right now. She might have fucked up a few times, but this is beyond the pale.”

  Lincoln looked up as I walked back into the room, eight hours later. He smiled and stood.

  “How is she?”

  “She was awake for a while around noon, but she wasn’t very coherent. She fell back to sleep, and she’s been asleep since.”

  “The doctors have been through?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Everything looks good. They are going to wait until the swelling goes down before they cast the ankle. They want another X-ray of it before they do to make sure it’s still going well.”

  “You okay?”

  “Just tired. Talk to Lily yet?”

  “Not yet,” I answered, sitting down in the other chair. “She needed to sleep as well.”

  He pointed to the wall next to the door. “One of her officers delivered that about ten this morning. Temporary restraining order. Good for one hundred feet and one week. I’ll get my lawyer to find someone who can handle this for her.”

  “Gonna head home?” I asked.

  “Nope, I’m staying. I’ve been catching a nap here and there, so I’m good. Once the cop on the door showed up, I didn’t feel guilty about nodding off.”

  I grabbed his hand and laced our fingers together and just sat there for a few minutes.

  “What are you thinking, babe?” He didn’t move from where his head had dropped back against the wall, but he knew my mind was going a million miles an hour.

  “She’s another one of us,” I said. “For you guys, it was uncomplicated…well, sort of. Fischer and I just hit it off. You came along and it still wasn’t a problem. Bastian was an easy mix in, because you don’t mind either or both and neither does he. And that seems to have given you all your abilities back. Seeing the sins, the visions, the blades…”

  Glancing over at the bed, I sighed. “What do we do about her? New information pops into my head all the time now since the reekail incident, and I know I have to bring her into the group. But…how? We’re all still at least a little mad at her…”

  Lincoln shook his head. “I’m done being mad. I really am. The kids are all with us, safe, and adjusting as well as we can expect.”

  It was quiet again. “I’m at
a loss.”

  “Are you afraid that if you don’t have sex with her, we’re going to be missing some critical part of us?”

  “Yes. And it’s not even just that. I don’t…know that I could just have sex with her to…”

  Lincoln squeezed my hand. “Let’s worry about that when we cross that bridge, Wren. She needs to heal and we still have three more sins after her. Who knows—maybe a solid platonic relationship with her will do everything we need.”

  I raked a hand down my face. “I want my memories back. Damn, Lincoln. I believe all this shit is real, but I need those memories. Not dribs and drabs.”

  Glancing at him, I let out a sigh. “My brother asked me to help him.”

  It was almost a cartoon the way Lincoln’s head swiveled around slowly to stare at me. He blinked once, twice. “Help him do…what?”

  “Keep Hades running smoothly.”

  He waited a moment, then shook his head. “By doing what?”

  “Sorting souls if he gets called away to help with something else.” I slumped in my chair a bit. “I apparently have a throne of my own, as the twin sister of the devil.”

  “Explains a lot,” came a mumble from the bed.

  Linc and I were out of the chairs and over to Paige in the blink of an eye. She had one eye open, and the other swollen shut, red and purple.

  “Don’t move, Paige,” I said, carefully lying a hand on her good shoulder. “You’re a wreck.”

  “Reid…”

  “He had to go home and sleep,” Lincoln said.

  “How…”

  “Fischer was called into consult on your head.” I pointed to the gauze covering the wound. “You have a brain bleed they need to monitor.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “The baby…”

  “Fine,” Lincoln said. “Just fine. Fischer pulled strings to make sure that everything went well. You’re fourteen weeks and the baby looks good.”

  She sobbed and hiccupped and cried out in pain all at the same time. “I’m an asshole…”

  “No, Paige. You aren’t.” I smiled at her. “You’re here. We have a temporary restraining order on Alain, so you’re safe for now. I’m not going to tell you what all went on, Fischer will be in later to do that. I’m also going to avoid all the legal shit, but we have just one request for you. Can you make one of us your emergency contact. I don’t care if it’s me or, Linc, or hell Fischer, but…”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I want the legal shit too. How do I keep him away from me? And the baby. He’ll try to make me miscarry.”

  “Do you trust one of us enough to grant power of attorney?” Lincoln asked.

  “Yes, any of you.” She tried to nod, but I put my hand on the side of her face to stop her. “Any of you.”

  Lincoln nodded. “I’ll take it. And I’ll have someone in here before we leave to draw up the papers. I’ll get the restraining order permanent, and I’ll handle all the other legal stuff, like getting Alain off of everything. We’ll make Wren your emergency contact.”

  “Divorce.” She stared straight at Lincoln. “Get me a divorce. I don’t want him associated with me at all. And under no circumstances is he to be on the baby’s birth certificate.”

  “Done,” Linc said, patting her hand. “Consider it all done.”

  “She is up,” Fischer said, walking in. “Excellent. The nurse said her vitals picked up.” He smiled at her. “How do you feel?”

  “Like my soon-to-be-ex-husband threw me down the stairs. Oh, wait.” She let out a sigh. “Tell me what happened to me, Dr. Skillman.”

  Fischer took the chart at the end of the bed and after a moment of looking at it, he put it back and stuck his hands deep in the pockets of the lab coat. “Hang on, Paige. This is quite a bit.”

  By the time Fischer finished with everything that had happened on the way to the hospital and in the emergency room, Paige looked even more pale and terrible than she had. She probably would have been trembling if there had been any energy left in her.

  Instead, she just stared up at the ceiling, swallowing once in a while.

  “So, another MRI tomorrow and possibly a cast.”

  “Best case scenario.” Fischer nodded. “And the most likely. You did good getting to the phone, and getting help. And I hope that you’re on the path out of that marriage?”

  “I can call Lily any time you’re ready and get whatever else you think you need.” I pointed to the small bag that Reid had rescued. “But I think that has most everything.”

  She flicked her one-eyed gaze at each of us for a moment. “Why do you care?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?” Fischer asked.

  “I constantly fuck up your family,” she answered. “I let Ben slip away, I revealed where Ellie was—”

  “And they’re both home now, doing homework, safe, and sound. Don’t worry about that.”

  “But I do…I screwed up. My pride screwed me up. It made me put children in danger. It made me stay with a man who doesn’t even remotely love me. It made—”

  I put a hand over her mouth to stop her. “And now? You know all that. You’re going to fix this. Just let us handle everything while you heal.”

  “I can’t stay here…I don’t have the kind of insurance that will let me stay.”

  I leveled a look at her. “Really, Paige? You’re worried about that?” Turning a bit, I glanced at Lincoln.

  He waved me off while never taking his hands off the phone, fingers flying. “Done.”

  “And where do I go after this?” she asked, her voice growing tired. “I have nothing…”

  “We have room,” Fischer said. “You’re welcome to stay with us. In fact, we insist you do.”

  Her good eye focused on me. “Are you really the devil’s twin sister?”

  I chewed my lip. “You did hear that.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked back up at the ceiling. “I need to sleep for a while.”

  Fischer nodded. “Good idea.”

  “I’m going to head out and get all the paperwork going,” Lincoln said. “As soon as we have the POA, we can work on everything else. Wren?”

  “I’m going to hang for a little while.”

  “You don’t have to,” Paige said.

  “I want to,” I snapped.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

  Fischer leaned into her ear. “Quit it, Vanagloria. This isn’t the time or place for you to show yourself in all your glory. Just sleep for now.”

  Paige blinked at him. Once, then again, then closed her eye and sank back into the bed a bit more. She was asleep in just a few minutes.

  Paige

  “You hate me.”

  Wren’s head snapped up from the tablet she was staring at. I’d been watching her for at least ten minutes. She was clearly reviewing patient files and working on something else. I just watched her for as long as I could keep myself from saying anything.

  Putting the tablet to the side she shook her head. “I don’t hate you.”

  “I screwed up.”

  “Mistakes happen, Paige.”

  “These were nearly the lives of children.”

  “Stop, please. I don’t hate you. I don’t want you to hate yourself.”

  I looked back up at the ceiling. “What do you want?”

  “What?”

  I desperately wanted both of my eyes open so I could stare at her, but I was probably a good two solid days from that. It still hurt, and involuntary blinking was sheer Hell. Everything still hurt like fuck. My face, my hair, my shoulder, ribs, leg, back.

  Fischer had cleared the brain bleed this morning—it had been nothing more than a pin prick and healed on its own. He also went with me to get the cast put on, and make sure that my shoulder was healing well.

  Lincoln had come through with the POA, the permanent restraining order, insurance paperwork, and the divorce papers. He whipped through them with efficiency and told me that he already had a docket spot
for the preliminary hearing for the divorce.

  Bastian had come by with flowers and chocolate and the three kids in tow. Ben had a card for me, and the twins had a puzzle book for when I could see with both eyes.

  “What do you want?” I asked again.

  Wren looked honestly confused. “For you to get better?”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. That’s it.”

  “There has to be something you want from me. Nothing comes without conditions.”

  “Oh.”

  The single word rushed out of her quietly. She stood and walked to the bed, dropping the railing a moment later. Without an invitation, she climbed on and settled in, crossing her legs.

  “I don’t want anything from you, Paige. Except maybe your friendship. I have everything I need. I’m wealthy, I’m loved, I’m comfortable. If anything, you need things from me, and I’m willing to do that.”

  “I don’t need anything from anyone.”

  Her sigh was soul deep. “Don’t do that, Paige. Pride has fallen. Please let me help you get back up.”

  “And then I’ll owe you.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said. She licked her lips and put her hands on her knees. “How many different foster homes did you have?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Let me play at my job?”

  I huffed. “Fine. I had twenty-three from the day I was born until I left the system at eighteen.”

  “Did any of them last?”

  “I was at one for eighteen months when I was about five. Every other one was short term.”

  She nodded, her face a perfect mask. “Did you ever look up why you were moved each time?”

  “I never had to, I knew. I was the easiest one to shuttle on if something went wrong. I wasn’t assertive and I wasn’t a problem. Others who were more trouble were kept because it would be harder for them to find a place to stay.”

  “How many were abusive?”

  “Some to nearly all. The only good ones were the one when I was five and the next to last when I was seventeen.”