Braided Lives

by A. R. Moler

  Jennifer slowly stretched out beside Peter again. Danny relaxed a little. He toed off his shoes and laid down facing Peter's back. It was a bit of a tight fit, three adults in the space of two hospital beds. Sliding an arm under Peter's neck, he wrapped it down over Peter's torso, then he reached across and curled his fingers around Jennifer's hand. Peter was practically wedged between them, but it must have been a good thing, because Danny felt some of the tension begin to leave his lover's body.

  ***

  Hot water sluiced through Jennifer's hair in the shower. The general consensus between the medical people of Division P seemed to be that Peter was stable and out of danger, but that it would probably take several more days for him to regain his normal strength.

  A meeting was scheduled for the afternoon to discuss the events leading to Isabelle Rea's death. Jennifer wondered how hard reviewing those events was going to be for Peter, or Danny.

  Jesus, she wished she could sort out her feelings for them. Here she was back to the same set of problems she'd been thrashing through her brain for days now. No, make that weeks. She was still volleying back and forth between wanting to actively be part of their lives and feeling like a third wheel.

  Danny had begged her to come back to Peter's quarters after she was done showering and changing. Peter was supposed to be resting and Jen wondered if he was likely to be as bad a patient as Danny had been.

  ***

  Feet propped on the coffee table, Peter sat on the sofa with his laptop on his legs, staring at the screen. He was making a fairly vain attempt to start a report on what had occurred with Isabelle. Stephen Benford had been dispatched to Memphis to notify her family in person. Peter had given momentary thought to offering to perform that sad task, but when even walking across the room left him with muscles shaking so hard he could barely remain standing, jumping on a plane was not an option.

  Danny was hovering, making phone calls, checking email, staying within sight of his lover. Peter's concentration was crap, and he didn't seem to be able to string more than about three words together in the report. He felt numb, hollowed out, like all the energy he'd poured into Isabelle's body had left some sort aching void. Danny came to settle on the sofa beside Peter.

  "Talk to me," prompted Danny. Peter just shook his head. There weren't any words that worked. Danny slid an arm around Peter's shoulders, pulling him close. Peter felt the intimate brush of Danny's mind against his own, and promptly shut his shields. Danny frowned.

  "Keeping me out is not going to help," Danny said.

  Peter set the laptop on the table. He didn't want Danny's help. He didn't want to feel better, he wanted to hurt, to bleed… to feel something!

  "Leave me the fuck alone," Peter snapped and stalked out of his quarters.

  ***

  Danny sat immobile for a minute. What the hell? He knew what it was like to lose people. Isabelle hadn't been the first. She probably wouldn't be the last. Danny had watched more than one person die in his life. He knew guilt and anger and anguish. He'd even crawled inside a bottle a couple of times. Was Peter likely to do something stupid? Shit, maybe he should have brought the bottle of tequila to Peter's quarters and gotten him rip roaring drunk. The healer hadn't shut Danny out of his head in any private moment since Kosovo.

  ***

  Trudging along the hallway of the residential wing, Peter had absolutely no clue where he was going. Just away. Away from what? It wasn't like he could actually escape from the reality of letting one of his people die under his hands. He'd fucked up. She shouldn't have died, but she had. He probably should have died and he hadn't.

  "Peter!" Someone shouted his name. He glanced back. It was Danny, jogging toward him.

  "Leave me alone! I don't want to talk about it! And I don't want your help!" Peter raged.

  Danny laid a hand on Peter's shoulder. That was it.

  ***

  Danny saw the blow coming. Peter didn't make any attempt to disguise the desperate anger driven attack. Danny blocked the punch fairly easily, but then missed the second one. It hit his mouth and he immediately tasted blood amidst the pain. Shit. He took Peter to the ground, trying to tread the fine line between restraining the man and defending himself. Peter thrashed and struggled for a minute or more before going still.

  His breathing was a series of ragged uneven gasps in Danny's arms, where they lay sprawled on the floor of the hallway.

  "Are you through?" Danny asked.

  "Uh-huh," Peter mumbled.

  Danny untangled himself and got to his feet. He held out a hand to Peter to help him up. The look that Peter gave him was raw, but the shields were still firmly in place, and Danny couldn't decipher any good starting place for helping his friend.

  Peter got up on his own, but then stood in the center of the hallway, shaking.

  "Will you please come back inside and sit down at least?" Danny pleaded.

  Peter gave a tiny nod and they both went back into the apartment.

  ***

  Jesus God, leave two guys alone in a crisis that didn't involve guns and they'd be sure to screw it up. When Jennifer arrived at Peter's quarters, hair in a long damp braid and clean clothes on, Peter was sleeping in a tight ball on the sofa and Danny was in the bathroom cleaning blood off his face.

  "What the hell happened?" Jennifer demanded. "I thought you two were going to hang out and let Peter rest."

  "I tried to get him to talk about what happened. First he clammed up, then he went stomping down the hall. We ended up in a fist fight -- well sort of, anyway. He started swinging and I… I took him down as carefully as I could," Danny explained.

  "Why on earth would you expect him to talk to you?"

  "I know what he went through was really hard. I thought it would help." Danny leaned back on the bathroom sink, hands in his pockets. Jennifer could tell he was both mad and upset. "He shut me out, shields up and all…"

  "Danny, it's been less than forty-eight hours since he got an up close and personal glimpse of death. He hasn't even begun to reach the talk about it stage. I'm actually surprised he's functioning at all." Jennifer dragged Danny into the kitchen and fished some ice cubes from the freezer, wrapping them in a dish towel. She put them in his hand.

  "He's seen people die before…" Danny muttered defensively.

  "How many and under what circumstances? Was he touching them? Trying to keep them alive at the time?"

  "I don't know."

  "Even if he didn't know her all that well, this was intense for him. His hands were all over her. I'm pretty sure the way he sees it, he was the one blockade between her and oblivion. I watched it all play out. Even if in reality there's was nothing he could do, he probably thinks there was. He hasn't begun to process all the pieces yet," Jennifer said.

  "Last night he was upset and exhausted but he was talking at least a little…"

  "He was relieved you were back and the rest of it was just pretending. Danny, I've dealt with rape victims, people who were beaten nearly to death, people who've watched their loved ones murdered. The first couple of days, depending on the severity of injuries, they usually blindly go through the motions of normality or they shut down so hard that about the only thing they're still doing is breathing."

  "But…" Danny looked absolutely helpless. "What do I do? What do we do?"

  "Just be there. He's a lot like me. Hot tempered, passionate, capable of laser beam focus. Once his body catches up, I think he's going to come unglued. He may need some professional help. I assume he knows Stephen Benford pretty well?"

  "Yeah, and Stephen's good at what he does. The two of them have spent a lot of time analyzing the whole trauma syndrome thing for psi. It's ironic I guess, that Peter's getting slammed face first into an experience that's making him go through it," Danny said. He crooked a finger at Jennifer and she walked across the kitchen to him. He folded his arms around her and hugged her tight to his body. "I need you. Peter needs you. God… Jen, please don't ever think you don't belong
." He tipped her face up toward his and kissed her.

  ***

  The conference room held eight people. Andrew Bottman, Director of Division P, looked calmly unhappy, but Danny could tell there was simmering anger beneath the façade. Danny sat beside Peter. Craig, Trevor and Sandra were all there, as well as the helicopter pilot and the ATF agent who had been sent with Isabelle on what was supposed to be transport to more specialized care.

  There were rounds and rounds of commentary and discussion as to why the decision had been made to send Isabelle to Division P rather than attempting to bring P's medical specialists to her. It all seemed to stem from a batch of miscommunications along with a lack of understanding for Division P's SOP for seriously injured personnel. Isabelle had been taken to a trauma center straight from the injury in the field, which sounded like a sane and appropriate response. The hiccup was that a standard trauma center experience involved being touched and handled by possibly dozens of different and generally headblind individuals. Not all psi responded the same, but statistically the majority did very badly under such circumstances, just as Isabelle had. Belatedly, somebody had bothered to read the details of the contract for Division P agents. The instructions were clear that, in the case of profound injury and unstable vitals, medical help was required from specially qualified personnel, especially if no one emotionally close to the injured agent was available. Somehow that had gotten mangled and translated into the necessity for taking the agent to the right people.

  Granted, there was no guarantee that sending Peter or Trevor or any other psi to Atlanta would have resulted in a different outcome, but the general consensus was that it would have improved her chances. The ATF agent present was not the one who had made the decision; he was merely an agent who had been at the scene of the stabbing.

  Danny had a suspicion the person who had made the decision was going to get chewed up and spit out by Bottman. That guy deserved it.

  Peter had very little to say, just some bare facts presented from his view point. Nobody pushed for more; the healer looked about like death warmed over. Danny silently fretted. After the angry outburst and subsequent skirmish in the hallway, Peter had slept for another couple of hours. Jennifer had gently roused him and convinced him to eat a little before the meeting. The normal aftermath of doing a large amount of healing resulted in Peter eating like a ravenous fifteen year old in the middle of a growth spurt. Not today. That was one more thing to tie Danny's gut in a knot. It probably wasn't going to gain him any brownie points with Peter, but Danny was leaning heavily toward grabbing Trevor after the meeting to take a look at Peter.

  "Stephen called me from Memphis to let me know that he and the local ATF director had broken the news to Isabelle's family. Her body will be released tomorrow to be sent home. Liberal leave is available for anyone who would like to attend the funeral," said Bottman.

  The meeting broke up and people began to filter out of the room. Danny beckoned Trevor to hang around for a moment.

  "Can you have a quick look at Peter?" Danny asked. "He looks like crap, and I can't figure out if it's got physical components or just psychological ones."

  Peter was still sitting at the conference table, staring at the paperwork in front of him, chin propped on folded hands. He looked vaguely startled when Trevor grabbed another chair and sat down beside him.

  "Problems?" Peter asked.

  "You tell me," replied Trevor. He wrapped one hand around Peter's wrist and laid the other against the side of Peter's neck. Peter gave him a stony glare. "You can wall me out of your head all you want, your body doesn't lie. I bet if I tested your glucose level you'd be damn near tanked again."

  "Is he in danger?" asked Danny.

  "No, but he's pushing in that direction. What part of 'no glycogen stores left' are you not getting, dude? You're burning muscle," grumbled Trevor.

  "Glycogen?" Danny said.

  "It's more or less the reserve of energy that your liver keeps handy to even out your blood glucose level. He hasn't got any at the moment; it's one of those weird healer abnormalities. If you burn through it all, like he did the other night, it takes a while to replace it. In the meantime, the body acts like it's in starvation mode and starts burning up muscle protein to keep the brain happy and functioning. Did you even eat today?"

  "Yes, I did. Will you stop acting like I'm invisible or deaf?" snapped Peter.

  "Obviously not enough. I ought to make Danny help me drag you back to the infirmary and hook you up to an IV again. You should probably be on bed rest."

  "I spent most of yesterday asleep."

  "It's probably the only reason you're even walking and talking today," Trevor said.

  "Do not tell me what to do."

  "Peter, you may be my boss, but right now, you're also a patient. So stop behaving like an ass," replied Trevor.

  "Let's go to the cafeteria. I need a cup of coffee and you need food, unless you'd rather punch me again," Danny said. Trevor gave Danny a questioning look. Danny just shook his head; he didn't want to get into the whys at this point.

  ***

  Rolling a plastic bottle cap around the table top with one finger, Peter stared at the last couple of uneaten bites of the sandwich. He had no real appetite to finish it. Danny sat beside him in silence. Peter noticed Craig coming toward them.

  "I need a signature, since you're the chief medical resident," said Craig. He laid a clipboard on the table beside Peter. The attached sheet of paper read "Body Release Form" and had been duly filled out with all of Isabelle's information. All it needed was Peter's signature at the bottom. Craig offered him a pen. Muscle memory took over, otherwise Peter's hand would never have been able to execute the simple task.

  Images began to flood Peter's head: Isabelle's face beneath the ambu-bag, the fluttering stuttering halt of her pulse, the way he'd tried to constrict blood flow to her limbs and force it back to her brain, the bright crackly energy he had flooded her synapses with that had faded to dimness then darkness. He was a healer, a healer who'd held other people on the correct side of life and death more than once. Why not her? What had he done wrong? Peter stood up from the table and began to walk in the direction of the residential wing. He didn't want to be in the cafeteria, with the bland normality of life clunking its way along.

  Somewhere along the way, the walk turned into a stumbling run. He tripped and fell. When he tried to get up, his body refused. Hot scalding tears ran down his face as he curled forward, head on crossed arms, knees tucked under his body.

  "No… No… please, God, no…" Peter whimpered before the sobs began to choke him. He was stuck in an endless loop of loss. It hurt to breathe, his pulse pounding viciously in his chest as he screamed inside his head. It should hurt even worse; the pain was tearing him into pieces and it wasn't enough. For some reason, there was warmth around his body and he didn't know why. He couldn't begin to fathom why there should be warmth, or love. The sobs kept coming, an endless fury of grief and anger that ripped and tore and trampled until gray exhaustion claimed him.

  ***

  Maybe the sound of her heartbeat lulled him under the last crashing wave of sorrow. Jennifer lay on the bed in Danny's room, with Peter's head on her chest. She had known that when Peter finally broke, it would be bad, but she hadn't quite been prepared for Danny to come, carrying Peter's sobbing body in his arms, far quieter tears streaming down his own face.

  Danny had laid his lover on the bed between Jen and himself and held Peter while he sobbed and shook and rocked. Whatever little energy Peter had was burned away by the intensity of the emotional storm, and he lay so limply afterward that Danny had gone seeking Trevor.

  Now, an hour later, Peter was still draped over Jennifer with an IV line in his hand, the tubing trailing up along her shoulder to join to the pole and bag of dextrose that hung there.