Mac's bedroom door was closed. She had gone into her room, mumbling something about needing a nap after her session, and pushed the door closed behind her. The car ride back had been silent. The journey from the car to her apartment had been silent, too. She hadn't looked at him either. She sat or stood with her face angled away from him and her arms wrapped tightly beneath her ribs. He hadn't realized how much he could miss a voice.
Two weeks before she tried to kill herself, he had decided that he was okay, that his life was okay, without her. He'd even told his new partner that it had been time for him to move on. They hadn't been friends, best or otherwise, in a while. They'd been reduced to co-workers, sparring partners, and, on occasion, co-counsel, although that was increasingly rarer. The degeneration from friends to casual acquaintances had been slow. Little things, not so little fights, had eaten away at the bones of the friendship until it was a brittle shell. It had almost been a relief to cast it aside.
Or, at least, that's what he had told himself. It was harder to lie to himself when he had set up camp in her apartment. He dragged his fingers down his face, stretching the skin beneath them into a warped mask of his face. This would definitely qualify as a mess. He couldn't really remember a bigger one.
Trust Sarah Mackenzie to throw everything into a tailspin. She was, without question or doubt, the unstable air mass in his life. His life was gaining some semblance of normalcy. He had a decent job that gave him the chance to fly and provided him with the adrenaline rush to which he'd grown accustomed. It was far a field from the life he'd imagined as a little boy. There were no more carriers, no more flight decks, and the courtroom battles had been silenced. But he was growing used to revamping his plans. He thought he was adjusting nicely this time around.
And then she called. Her voice had been shaky and tired. It still sang in his ears, weeks after it had been erased from his answering machine. He could recall it with perfect clarity; her slight exhalation and the way the resigned "I love you" whispered out into his apartment, louder than any scream. Anger and concern warred for supremacy in his emotions. He was angry at her for trying something so unbelievably stupid, so incredibly selfish. When he saw her lying on the gurney, her face pale and sweaty, the paramedics hovering over her, he tried to tell himself that it was just an attempt. That she hadn't been serious and it was just an attention getting technique. A horribly cruel one, but effective. The doctors had disabused him of that notion. They had loaded him down with pamphlets, websites, and fact sheets. It was a shame he was no longer practicing law, he could almost call himself to the stand as an expert witness in this area now.
He didn't know how to help her. He felt powerless watching her struggle with something that he couldn't begin to understand, mostly because she wouldn't let him try. The day he'd come back to her apartment, arms loaded down with Chinese food, to find her leaning halfway out the window, he just reacted. The sight of her balanced precariously against the window ledge had scared him. He had cherished hopes that she' been getting better. It hurt him to realize that he had only been seeing what both she and he wanted him to see.
She never explained what prompted her to apologize. Her
broken sorrys echoed in his memories. God, he wanted a drink. A long,
slow pull of whiskey or bourbon and a puff on a strong cigar. He was so
tired of this. He wanted to run for the hills and never look back. How
easy would it been to just walk away from this mess? To leave Sarah behind
and never go back to find her? He could call Catherine and ask her out
to dinner. He could call Beth and see if she wanted to go out someplace,
any place but here. He could do something that would let him spend the
night far away from this apartment. And his mind, he knew, would
never leave this room.
He pushed himself up off the couch and hesitated outside her bedroom door. He wanted to make sure she was sleeping and not just avoiding him. The information on the websites and booklets that the doctors had given him said that he should talk to her about her experience. Obviously, the people who conducted the studies did not conduct them on stubborn Marines.
She wouldn't talk to him. Oh, she'd speak to him. She'd ask him about his work, the CIA, and his family. It was perpetual small talk, never reaching the underlying problems. Turnabout, he supposed, was fair play. He'd kept his fair share of secrets from her, too. It was a hell of a game to play, though, when her life was on the line.
He took a risk and turned the knob on her bedroom door. The quilts and blankets piled on her bed cocooned her form from view. Only the top of her head was visible. Her soft, even inhalations and exhalations filled the room. After eight years as her partner, he knew she was really asleep, not just hiding from him. She never could pull off the fake sleep.
He pulled the door shut quietly and went back to his spot
on the couch. There was another test flight scheduled for next week and
he wasn't sure how long he'd be gone. At least overnight. The thought
worried him more than it had before. He needed someone to stay with her.
He had systematically eliminated all of their friends, except for Sturgis.
After weighing the pros and cons, he had been tempted to call him but
stopped short of actually dialing the number. With Mac on leave and his
resignation, Sturgis' caseload was probably huge. He didn't need the added
burden of Mac's problems and Mac deserved better care than
he could give her. He had considered the Admiral, but rejected him, too.
Personal reasons more guided that decision than practical ones.
Briefly, he considered Webb, but rejected that idea as
quickly as it came. As much as the guy bothered him, he'd be willing to
set aside personal differences if it meant Mac would get better. But,
he didn't think Webb knew about this. He hadn't asked and she hadn't said,
but he'd gotten the impression that Clay wasn't a factor in her life.
It made him wonder about what he'd seen in
Paraguay and in the hospital. Regardless of what did or didn't happen
between them, Webb's absence, at the hospital and at her apartment, told
him what he needed to know. He couldn't call him.
More than she needed company, he wanted to be certain that she would be okay while he was gone. They both needed to know that someone who cared whether she got better watched over her. He didn't know to where she'd disappeared, but he wanted his Mac back. He wanted the woman who trekked across forests to find a truck; the woman who wore flowered skirts and rode along beside him in the back of a Gypsy caravan. She was the woman he had fallen in love with. The woman sleeping soundly behind that bedroom door was her shell. She didn't fight with him; she acquiesced when he acted overbearing. She ate when he cooked, watched TV if he had it on, read if he handed her a book. She was lost. She was trapped somewhere and it was time for him to find her. She'd found him in the middle of the ocean once. He could certainly find her when she was only a few feet away from him. He'd done it before over greater distances.
He knew whom he could call. The only person in the world, other than the woman he was trying to help, he'd want if he were hurting. Sighing, he cast a glance at her closed bedroom door. When she got better, she was going to kill him. On the bright side, it might anger her enough to pull her out of her stupor. Maybe one day, when she was old and feeble minded and her swing didn't pack as much of a punch, she'd even thank him. He was going to relish that day. If, on that day far in the future, when he had great-grandchildren running around the house, his bones will let him, he has a dance of victory already planned. Picking up the phone, he dialed and waited for the phone to ring.
"Hello?"
"Hi,
Mom?"