Show the Fire

by Susan Fanetti

  “Yeah. I’m…yeah…just…yeah.”

  Len sat next to him on the sofa and grabbed his chin, yanking his head to face him. He gave him a hard once-over. “You high?”

  They were all on the lookout for it. Tasha had been monitoring his dosage carefully, but she’d also told him, Isaac, and Show that the meds Badger needed to endure the pain were among the most highly addictive, and she had them on watch. Now Len looked hard into his eyes. His pupils were pinpoints. “You’re high.”

  Badger knocked his hand away. “No. Or…whatever. I needed it, and not like that. It’s like I didn’t grow enough skin back. It pulls, like it needs to stretch but won’t. All the time. Sometimes I need help to deal. S’all it is. Took a dose. From what Tasha gave me. So fuck off. I’m no junkie.”

  “Badge, you gotta be careful.”

  “Yeah, I got the lecture already. From Tasha and Isaac both. Don’t need it again. So fuck off.”

  Badger was more changed than any of the other men who’d come out of that hell alive. None of them were the same as they’d been that morning, but Badger—there was no trace of the sweet kid who for months after he’d been patched would raise his hand at the table before he spoke. No trace.

  “Okay, little brother. Just checkin’ in. You say you got it, then I believe you.” He stood up. But before he could head back to the dorm, Badge said one thing more.

  “You know what they did with it?”

  “What?”

  “What they cut off me. They took it off in one piece. I don’t even know how to say what it felt like…Then they put it on the floor. Spread it out like a mat. I could see my fuckin’ nipples, just there on the floor…it was surreal. And then one of ‘em dropped his pants and took a huge, wet shit on it. On my skin. On my ink. While I watched.”

  “Christ. Badge, I…” What could he say to that?

  “I’m not a fuckin’ junkie. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Len felt like he should say more, but Badger went back to staring at the blank screen. He needed to talk to Tasha, and to Isaac. The kid was not okay.

  ~oOo~

  “How do we know if he is?” Isaac sat in his desk chair. Len and Tasha sat on the sofa in his office.

  Tasha answered. “I’d be surprised if he wasn’t. OxyContin is highly addictive, and he’s been on it for weeks. As long as he’s in legitimate pain, it’s appropriate for him to take it. I’ve been cutting his dosage down, but withdrawal is hard, and I don’t know if he’s ready to deal with that so soon after everything. This is the first I’ve heard of him acting high, though. And not like himself.”

  “He’s been different since we got back, but yeah. He was belligerent last night, and that’s not Badge. It wasn’t, anyway.” Len didn’t want to share what Badger had told him—that felt like it would be a betrayal—but he did think he needed to share one thing. “Doc, he says his skin feels like it doesn’t fit. It pulls, or something.”

  “His entire chest is scar tissue. Thick and hard. It’s not as flexible as healthy, unharmed skin. I gave him a cream to help, but—” She sighed. “This is why he needed the hospital. He needed a skin graft. His chest is always going to hurt, for the rest of his life. It’ll lessen, when the wound heals completely and the scar sets, and that’s when we should deal with the Oxy. I’ll wean him off with lighter drugs. In the meantime, we just keep watch. It’s not the best practice of medicine, but it’s the best I have under the conditions we have.”

  Isaac sighed and put his head in his hands, just for a second. Then he sat straight again. “Okay. We keep watch. We don’t let him get lost. Fuck. What about Cory? Are they gonna let her out?”

  “I talked to the psychiatrist assigned to her. She’s not going anywhere until he’s confident that she’s not going to try it again. And Cory’s not cooperating.”

  “I don’t understand how she can ignore her kids.”

  “Isaac, people suffer in their own ways. We’re not in her head. You know she loves her boys. Don’t judge her. That won’t help her or her kids.”

  “What will?” Len thought about Nolan, how much pain he’d seen in the boy’s eyes the day before. He needed his mom.

  “Her doctor thinks she should see her boys. I said I’d bring them up. Later today, if we can get Nolan on board.”

  “I think he’ll go. I’ll talk to him.”

  Tasha nodded; Len had told her about his talk with Nolan. But Isaac’s brows came together. “You? You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Yeah. I spent some time with him yesterday. We talked some.”

  “Okay. Let’s try to make something better. We need some good news somewhere.”

  And then this time seemed like as good a time as any, and Len grabbed Tasha’s hand. “Isaac. We have something to tell you.”

  “Len, what?” Tasha’s hand went stiff in his.

  “Boss…we got married. About two weeks ago.”

  Isaac said nothing, like he hadn’t heard. His expression didn’t change at all.

  “Isaac?” Tasha’s voice was quiet; Len heard a little shake at the end.

  “You…what?”

  “Sorry we didn’t say anything, but it wasn’t the right time to say—with Hav, and—”

  “Not the right time to say, maybe it’s not the right time to do.”

  Tasha answered that before Len could. “We decide when’s the right time for us to get married. Nobody else. Don’t be a dick about this, Isaac. We’re happy. It’s a good thing at a dark time. So take the high road here.”

  Len smiled at Tasha, feeling love and pride and some things he shouldn’t be feeling sitting in Isaac’s office. At least not while Isaac was in it.

  Finally, Isaac nodded. “You’re right. Sorry. And congratulations.” He walked over and held out his hand; Len stood and shook. Then they embraced. Isaac hugged Tasha, too, and then he asked, “You still keeping it a secret?”

  “Not so much secret as unannounced. It still feels strange to me, like we’d be seeking attention or something. It’s just the wrong time. But I’d like to wear my ring, so if people notice, they notice.”

  “I’m taking her to Tony’s on Saturday, too.”

  Isaac laughed. “Around here, they’ll notice the ink before the ring.”

  Len laughed, too. That was probably true.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Tasha and Len did take Nolan and Luke to see Cory that afternoon, but they were turned away. Cory was having an especially difficult day. When Tasha came back out to the waiting room and shared that news with Nolan, he simply turned on his heel and, his baby brother in his arms, walked back toward the elevator.

  She started to follow after them, but Len grabbed her hand. “What the fuck, Doc? Did they say?”

  “Henderson said that she had a breakdown about the visit, and they have her heavily sedated again. He wants to aim for next week to try again.”

  Len was staring at Nolan’s back. “Maybe Lilli and Isaac are right. What she’s doing to her kids is some fucked up shit. Guess I thought she was stronger than this.”

  Nobody got it. Tasha did, even though she was least familiar with Cory. She thought maybe Shannon did, too, though they hadn’t talked outright about it. Lilli clearly did not. Maybe that was it. The woman these men knew best as a mother was Lilli; she was their model, and she’d embraced motherhood wholeheartedly from the day of Gia’s birth and become a supermom. Everybody was holding Cory to that standard. Sometimes, Lilli and her constantly perfect self was really fucking annoying. Though even she had set Gia aside for Isaac when he was hurt. So Tasha thought she, too, should dig down and find some damn empathy.

  “Shannon told me something that made me think there’s more to this than people realize. She said that Cory’s been a little off since Luke was born. He was only a couple months old when Hav died. I talked to Henderson about it just now, and it got his interest. If she was dealing with undiagnosed postpartum depression before she lost Havoc, then God, Len. Depression that deep is like h
aving metastatic cancer of the soul. She’s not selfish. She’s not weak. She’s sick. Her mind is trying to kill her.”

  Nolan turned around and yelled down the hall. “Can we GO?” The last word echoed faintly. Then he turned his back to them again.

  “Okay, Doc. Okay. But that boy”—he nodded down the hall toward Nolan’s starched-stiff back—“is in trouble. He and his mom are close. He and Hav were close. And he doesn’t have either one now.”

  Tasha nodded in agreement but had nothing to say. She didn’t know what to do for Nolan. The ironic thing was that Lilli might have been a help to him, if she could get out of her own head about it. She had lost a parent to suicide. She should be able to empathize with Nolan’s fear.

  They had started down the hall toward the elevator; now, as a dawning thought rose in her head, she grabbed Len’s arm and stopped him. “Isaac. Isaac needs to talk to him.”

  Len didn’t catch on right away, but confusion smoothed from his brow after a beat. He shook his head, though. “Isaac’s situation was a lot different. Isaac’s father drove his mom to do what she did. And she left him alone with that bastard. No. Isaac is the worst person to talk to Nolan. Second worst. Lilli’s obviously got some rage herself. I’ll talk to him again.”

  Nolan had given up on them and pushed the button. The doors opened, and he got in. “We’ll be waiting outside whenever you’re done whispering about me.” He stepped back, and the doors closed.

  Tasha turned back to Len. “Why you?” Len didn’t have family drama. His parents had died, but of natural causes. He had a sister in Oregon, and they didn’t really talk, but it had been a matter of two loners drifting apart rather than any dramatic schism. They each knew where the other was, but that was about the extent of their connection. “How can you relate?”

  He chuckled sadly. “Because I loved Hav, too. And I was there.”

  ~oOo~

  It was ten days, and the middle of December, before they tried again to bring Cory’s boys to see her. But this time, she was ready. Again, Tasha and Len drove them to the hospital. Len had talked to Nolan, but Tasha couldn’t discern much of a difference in Nolan’s outlook. He was angry and bitter and sad.

  They were sitting in the waiting room again when Dr. Henderson came out and greeted them all. Then he turned to Tasha. “Dr. Westby, I’d like you to come in first. Cory hasn’t had any visitors until now, and I think she’d do better if she stepped up to seeing her sons, if you understand.”

  Tasha looked at Nolan, raising her eyebrows. “That okay with you?”

  “Whatever. But if she bails again, I’m not coming back.”

  She hadn’t ‘bailed’ before, but Tasha wasn’t going to fight with him about word choice. “Okay. I’ll be back.” She handed Luke to Len and followed Henderson through the locked doors into the psych ward. It wasn’t like psych wards looked in movies. No moaning people wandering the hallways or slamming their heads into walls. It looked like any other ward on any other floor—just behind a locked door.

  He led her around the corner and down the hall, into a small, private room. Cory sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, dressed in a yellow track suit that was incongruously perky and not at all, from what Tasha knew, her style of dress.

  She was pale, her dark hair flat and lank, but she seemed more animated than she had since Havoc had been killed. Tasha assumed the animation in her eyes was fear and anxiety, but even that was better than the emptiness of before. “Hi, Cory.”

  “Hi, Tash.”

  “I’ll be at the nurse’s station, Cory. Press for help if you need it.” With that and a pat on Tasha’s shoulder, Henderson left the room and closed the door.

  Tasha crossed the room and put her hand on Cory’s shoulder. “You look better. How are you feeling?”

  “I…don’t know. It’s hard to know. Lost, I guess. Nolan’s here?”

  “Yeah. Waiting. Luke, too.”

  “Loki. He’s Loki.” Her face collapsed, like a sudden seism, and then she shook her head sharply and composed herself. “That’s what Hav wanted to call him. I wouldn’t let him.”

  “I like it.”

  “My milk’s gone. I can’t…I can’t even feed him.”

  Tasha was surprised they hadn’t allowed her to express, at least to keep her production going, even if the milk she would have produced would have been too full of meds to give to Luke—Loki. “He’ll be okay on formula, Cory. He had breast milk for more than four months. That’s a good start.”

  She nodded, her head moving slowly. “Is Nolan okay? Does he hate me?”

  “He doesn’t hate you. He’s sad. He needs you.” She hoped Nolan would show some sense coming in here. If he resisted Cory in any way, he could really set her back. That was a lot of pressure to put on a grieving kid, but Tasha knew it was true. He had to forgive her.

  Again, Cory’s face collapsed into a clutch of pain, and this time she didn’t shake it off. She dropped her face into her hands. But she was quiet, not crying. Just hiding.

  “Cory?”

  She looked up. “I don’t remember how to live without him. I only had him for a year, but it’s like he recorded over everything that came before him. Including me. I’m just…static without him.”

  Tasha sat down on the bed and took one of Cory’s hands in her own. “You have him. You have memories. And you have a little boy who’s half him and looks just like him. And you have Nolan, who loved him, too. And you have the Horde. You can’t live the life you had before him. You need to make a new life. But right now, you just need to let yourself live.”

  “Not that easy.”

  “No. I’ve never been through what you have, Cory. I don’t know what to tell you. Except that you’re loved, and you’re needed. Maybe you just wake up every day and live for Nolan and Loki until you can live for yourself again. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe they’re better off with somebody stronger.”

  “That, I know, is bullshit. Your strength or lack of it is irrelevant. You’re who Nolan loves. You’re who he needs. And he does need you. I see it every day. He’s lonely without you.”

  Cory flinched, and then took a slow, deep breath. She reached out and pressed the call button. Henderson’s voice came through the speaker.

  “Cory?”

  “You can get my boys. I’m ready.”

  Tasha patted her leg and then stood, but Cory grabbed for her arm. “Wait. Stay a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  A few quiet minutes passed between them, and the door opened. Henderson came through, and then Nolan, holding Loki. Nolan stopped about three feet into the room, seeming to be frozen in place.

  Henderson left again without saying anything, but with a meaningful look at Tasha. Tasha wasn’t sure what to do. The tension in the room in those first seconds was massive and oppressive, as Cory and Nolan stared at each other.

  Then, her voice small and low, Cory said, “I’m so sorry, little cub.”

  Nolan blinked. And blinked. And then he squeezed his baby brother tightly in his arms, tucking his head into the crook of Loki’s tiny shoulder, and began to weep. Cory got up off the bed and went to him. She pulled both of her children into her arms.

  And Tasha backed quietly out of the room.

  ~oOo~

  Cory came home a week later, just a few days before Christmas. The Horde had cancelled their annual Christmas party at the clubhouse; nobody had the stomach for a celebration. But Lilli and Isaac had small children who didn’t understand about grief and loss, so they were keeping the holiday, and the Horde family was joining them for gifts and dinner on Christmas Day.

  Lilli, Shannon, and Tasha started up their shifts with Cory again as soon as she came home, making sure she wasn’t alone. After Shannon and Tasha sat her down, Lilli found some equanimity about Cory, some understanding. And Cory was stronger. Quiet and sad, but stronger. She leaned on her friends, and she leaned on Nolan. Having his mother lean on him instead of away from him seemed to be hel
ping him, too.

  Christmas Day was quiet. Even Gia, usually an excitable, energetic little girl, seemed to key off the somber mood of the grownups around her. She spent most of the day wearing a garland of Christmas ribbons from her presents and sitting on the floor next to Loki in his carrier, ‘reading’ her new books to the baby and to Bo.

  Nolan hung out with Dom and Badger for the most part, checking on his mom frequently. But he was calmer than he had been since they’d lost Havoc. Tasha even heard him laughing a couple of times.

  For most of the day, Cory sat in a chair near the little ones, making an obvious effort to be present with her family, but the strain was increasingly evident as the day progressed. Shortly after dinner, Shannon packed Cory, Nolan, and Loki into her car and took them home. Tasha and Lilli cleaned up while the men talked and played with Gia and Bo.

  Zeke had gone home to Illinois for Christmas. Tasha still didn’t know him well; he, like Len—or like Len had been—tended to keep to himself at little. He was certainly the quietest Horde.

  Gia had gotten Hungry Hungry Hippos for Christmas, and Tasha stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room and watched Show, Isaac, and Len play the game with her while Dom, Tommy, and Badger cheered her on. Bo sat on his father’s lap, watching intently.

  That moment, at the end of Christmas Day, was the happiest moment for the Horde that Tasha could remember since the lockdown. Those big men banging away at little plastic hippos, Gia screaming with aggressive delight in their midst, made Tasha smile. This is what their family could be. Should be.

  Len looked over and caught her watching. He grinned—that beautiful, beautiful smile. It was a good moment. Tasha knew to appreciate them when they came.

  Lilli and she had about gotten the kitchen clean, and Tasha was starting a fresh pot of coffee, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. Nadia. She hadn’t talked to Nadia in almost a month. Things with her friends hadn’t been the same since the night they’d tried to do an intervention on her. But they were trying to mend fences. Mending with Nadia was turning out to be more difficult, because Nadia was more difficult. And maybe Tasha was, too. But it was Christmas, and they still loved each other, so she answered. “Hey, Nad. Merry Christmas.”