An Internal Affair

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You never really realize what you have until it’s gone, Andrea thought with a sigh after she caught herself for the umpteenth time rolling over to the left side of the bed, expecting to find Chad lying there. She always found herself ready to share an observation, a joke, a question with him – it was only when she opened her mouth to speak that she realized that he wasn’t there, and then felt foolish for behaving that way. It was hard, getting used to the fact that he wasn’t there and might never be again.

It was the third week after his fall, and he still hadn’t woken up from the coma. The guilt she felt over it was nearly overwhelming at times, and she was halfway to believing what Eddie had said… if Chad woke up, he’d blame her for the accident and rightly so. She never should have told Chad about her problems with Eddie, and just paid Slim off. Then none of this would have happened… but it was useless to agonize over what she should have done. Andrea still visited Chad on a daily basis; she’d sit at his bedside before work, and stop by for hours afterward. Most of the time, one or more of the members of his family was there with him.

They didn’t seem too much inclined to talk to her, and she couldn’t really blame them. Word of what had really happened had leaked out, even though she made no real effort to hide Eddie’s part in it. Annie had told her right away that she wasn’t to blame for what Eddie had done, and reassured her that none of them felt that way – they were simply worried about Chad. She wished she could believe it and always left his bedside with an upset stomach and an inability to sleep, curled up around his pillow trying not to cry as she breathed in his scent.

Second Team was a regular fixture at the hospital, and Andrea knew it was a constant surprise and consolation to James and Laurel to see how close knit the SWAT team really was, and how highly their son was thought of. At work, she ignored the sympathetic looks as well as the gleeful ones – the cops at Central had never liked Chad when he’d been with IA and quite a few were inordinately pleased at the thought that he might never wake up. Graves finally forced her to go on leave after he’d caught her being too rough with a suspect; she was told that she was simply too volatile, and needed to ‘get her head on straight’ before she’d be allowed back. Well, she’d need to testify at Eddie’s preliminary hearing when he recovered from the severe beating he’d received after Chris Choi had ‘accidentally’ left the door to the interrogation room unlocked while he went with his partner, Spivak, to get coffee across the street.

Andrea sighed as she locked her door and walked through the hospital’s parking deck on her way to visit Chad. She nodded to Rita as she passed the nurse’s station, and again at Laurel as she walked self-consciously into the room to sit on the other side of Chad’s bed. “Still no change, huh?”

Laurel shook her head, tiredly. “None. One moment I’m talking to him, and it really seems as if he’d about to open his eyes and respond.” Chad’s mother rubbed her eyes. “It’s so hard, seeing him like this. He was always into everything as a boy, and running around – I’ve never seen him so…” she stopped to clear her throat. “Meg and Becky said they’d be here in a few minutes.”

“I thought I saw them downstairs, actually. They’re probably getting coffee or something,” Andrea said awkwardly.

Chad’s sisters came in quietly with their coffee to settle around the bed, and Laurel stood. “Well, I’m going home for now – your father should be here in an hour,” she told her daughters. “I’ll see you later, Andrea?” Laurel bent over the bed to kiss her son’s forehead, stroking his hair gently. “I’ll see you tomorrow too, Big Trouble,” she said fondly, using the Shelten family nickname for him that had always made Chad roll his eyes whenever he heard it.

Andrea was rooted to her chair when she saw Chad’s eyelids flutter. Had she just seen…? Laurel stood and turned to gather her sweater when Chad opened his eyes slightly. “Mom?” he asked weakly.

Laurel picked up her cardigan. “Yes, dear?” she asked absently, and then dropped her armful with a gasp as she realized Chad was awake. “Oh, my darling… my little boy,” she breathed, starting to cry as she bent back over to kiss his forehead repeatedly. “How do you feel?”

Chad blinked. “Hurts. Wha…where…?”

“Sweetheart, don’t you remember? You’re in the hospital,” Laurel said gently, brushing away her tears as Megan ran full tilt out to summon the nurses.

“ ’M tired,” he complained softly. “Don’t feel…feel good, Mom.”

All Andrea could do was to stare at him, drinking in the way his mouth moved when he spoke, and the color of his eyes – she’d forgotten that they were such a beautiful shade of blue. Chad’s eyes rested directly on her a split second before three nurses came charging in the room to check his vitals, and blocked his view of her. When they left to call a doctor, Chad had been heavily dosed with painkillers and was unconscious once more. Andrea came up to kiss his cheek and whisper goodbye, then she slipped from the room unnoticed by the other women.


_ _ _ _ _ _


The light was so bright that it hurt his eyes and made it hard to think. Voices seemed to come from everywhere and he tried to speak, but couldn’t make them listen. Everything hurt. Flashes of memory came back to him; he saw a woman’s frightened face, heard a confused babble of voices somewhere around his shoulder, and then he was falling. After that was just darkness and pain… but why were they shining a light in his face? He could barely make out faces of … someone, he couldn’t tell who they were. Looked vaguely like doctors, but why would doctors be leaning over him? That didn’t make sense.

Chad tried to move, but it was like something was holding him down; the sound of Andrea’s voice soothed him and drew him away from the panic that had welled up inside him. He tried to find her in the darkness, but whenever he got close enough so that he could nearly touch her, she’d be gone again and he’d have to try to listen carefully for her voice. Other voices joined hers, overlapping as they called to him, and he never seemed quite able to reach them.

It was like swimming up from a dark well towards sunlight, like the time he went to visit his uncle’s farm in Illinois and Andrew had dared him to hold his breath for the two minutes it took to swim beneath the surface of the lake and through the small cave in the rocks… his clothing had gotten snagged on a branch and he’d started to panic, chest hurting and needing air desperately. When he’d finally managed to free himself and swam back up to the surface, air had never tasted sweeter to him – and the scared look on Andrew’s face had made up for it all. Now, his mother’s voice provided the pull he needed to get free of whatever had held him down and he opened his eyes to call to her.

Then she was crying for some reason, and kissing his face – where was he? He tried to ask, but the pain made it hard to breathe as her hand stroked his hair. Chad felt as if all his limbs were dead weight; he hurt, and he was so tired… he wanted Andrea. Movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention and he tried to focus on whatever it was; he relaxed slightly to see a very familiar pair of big brown eyes looking right at him. Andy. But then several women blocked his view of her – nurses? – and he felt so tired that he couldn’t stop his eyes from closing. He tried to protest; he didn’t want to go back to sleep but he couldn’t help it.

When he woke the next time, Andrea was gone and his father was sitting there waiting to talk to him. “Nice of you to join us.”

“Hey, Dad,” Chad tried to say but it didn’t come out exactly right due to the amount of drugs he’d been filled with, and he frowned. “Sssound fin..fuh…fanny.” He recognized his surroundings and closed his eyes as the memory of what had happened rushed back.

His father smiled at him. “It certainly does. Someone’s here to see you,” and he motioned for whoever it was to step forward.

Steve Ramiro came to the edge of the bed. “How you feeling, Chad?”

Chad frowned up at his lieutenant. “Like fffell off bill-billing.”

The other man couldn’t help but grin. “Yeah, guess that sums it up pretty well.”

“Drugs’re nice, th-though… some good shh-shi-ssshi’,” he slurred, then frowned again. “Rope…ropes cut, sssir.”

Ramiro pressed his shoulder gently. “I know; we’ve got him in custody.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “Look, you need to rest now. The boys are real glad that you’re back with us, and I know for sure that Faith-”

Chad tried to struggle upright at the mention of his climbing partner. “Is, is she…?”

“Easy, easy… she’s just fine. She can’t wait to see you,” he was reassured quickly. “Hawkins’ll bring her by tomorrow, how’s that?” Ramiro nodded to Chad’s father and left as yet another nurse bustled up to him and reached for his IV with more drugs.

“Don’ wanna sl…slee…sleep ‘ny more,” he complained weakly, irritated that he couldn’t seem to form a complete and halfway coherent sentence. He was hushed in a tone that would normally have made him angry, but it just sounded like one of his little sisters scolding him and the thought was strangely comforting as he drifted off once more.

Every time he woke up, someone was there by his side… but he was starting to get upset that the someone was never Andrea. The first few times he tried to ask for her, he couldn’t get the words out correctly and they always thought he meant Andrew, or even Annie. Chad couldn’t understand why she wasn’t there – hadn’t he seen her looking at him when he’d first opened his eyes? At first he figured that she must have been visiting him while he was still asleep, but had to leave for work before he woke up… then he started listening to the murmurs of the nurses and the people who did come to see him.

The doctors would come in and talk about him when they thought he couldn’t hear, saying all the standard crap they spouted whenever his family would ask questions: it was too early to tell, they should be optimistic… but he could tell that none of them expected him to be able to walk ever again.

After more than a week of hoping that Andrea would visit him and trying to fight the despair he felt at not being able to move, he stopped looking for her. She wasn’t coming.

She wasn’t even working, from what he heard. It was funny how they thought that just because he’d fallen from the side of a fucking building, his hearing had been damaged along with the rest of his body. It was hard to pretend he didn’t care that Andrea didn’t seem to want him anymore now that he was like this, especially when he’d see the looks on everyone’s faces and the way that they carefully didn’t say her name.

Practically the only ones who didn’t treat him as if he was a complete idiot were Second Team, and Lipson especially. After he’d gotten her to stop crying all over him – he’d joked that she was trying to drown him – she and the others would crowd into the small cubicle and ask him things like how the food was, and if he really thought he’d get away with lying on his ass all day while they were out enforcing justice or some such thing. Hawkins was fond of holding his X-Rays up to the light and making fun of how much metal was holding him together, and he’d laughed despite the pain when the nurse had caught Williams trying on a hospital gown.

Annie liked to spend time with him too, and he always enjoyed her visits because she was the only member of his family who didn’t just tear up at the sight of him and pet his hand like was some sort of stuffed animal. She teased him about drooling while he was asleep, something he vociferously denied, and would bring DVDs with her so they could watch movies together. Of course, he was still so weak that he kept falling asleep during the first thirty minutes, but she’d always stop it and leave the rest for later.

He was feeling particularly sorry for himself one morning when she came to see him, waving a DVD in the air. “Check it out, Big Trouble… I got us a new movie.”

“Oh, it’s you…don’t wanna watch,” he grumbled. His meds were wearing off and he was growing steadily more uncomfortable by the minute.

“Well, look who’s grouchy today? Need more morphine?”

Chad shook his head. “Not just yet. Can’t talk right with that stuff.”

Annie plopped into a chair next to him after planting a kiss on his forehead. “Mom says hi…and what’s with the ‘oh, it’s you’? Who did you want me to be?” She frowned slightly. “Andrea, maybe?”

“I didn’t say that.”

His sister cocked her head to the side, something Andrea always did. “You know, I haven’t seen her around lately.”

Chad looked away. “She’s just too busy right now.”

“Uh huh. She hasn’t come to see you since your lazy ass woke up, has she?”

“I’ve been on so many drugs I couldn’t really tell,” he lied defensively.

“Uh huh.”

He was getting more and more irritated by the second. “Stop ‘Uh huh’-ing at me and put in the damn movie, will you? Jesus.”

Annie smiled. “Temper, temper, Big Trouble. Do you want some Jello? Will that soothe the savage beast?” she teased, reaching for a spoon.

When she started pretending it was an airplane, Chad’s patience had reached its end and before he realized what he was doing, he lunged up and struck the spoon out of Annie’s hand, sending it flying against the wall. “Get the hell out of here,” he yelled, collapsing back against the bed as his movement caused pain to flare through his limbs. “What are you looking at?”

His sister wore a pleased look on her face. “You just moved.” He blinked as the realization sank in.

“I… I guess I did.”

His elation was tempered by Annie’s smug comment of, “Rita said you probably would if I got you angry enough.”

tbc…
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