Archive of Our Own

I didn’t think he’d have it in him. 

Neither does Peter, from the looks of him.  He can’t look at me as he hands me over to the marshals.  I stare at him, silently and without blinking.  I must look insane to anyone observing the scene.  But there’s no one here to watch us at three in the morning in the deserted parking garage below Federal Plaza.  I stare at him and I wait to meet those warm, wise eyes.  Peter denies me their kindness.  Perhaps his kindness lies in sparing me their fear.  The handcuffs ratchet closed around my wrists and Peter doesn’t check to make sure they’re not too tight.  They are.

You’ll be safe in Tennessee, Peter tells me.  Nobody there knows you helped the Feds. 

I say I’m sorry.  Again.  He scribbles his signature on a document.  I keep staring at the side of his face, at the tension in his jaw.  I ask—I beg—him to let me apologize to Elizabeth before I’m being moved.  There’s no time to wait for her release from the hospital, Peter insists.  He still won’t look at me and I know he’s lying.  I know Elizabeth is fine.  Physically, at least.  They’ll let her go in the morning.  That’s why I have to go now.  Peter won’t allow her to change his mind.  He won’t give her an opportunity to convince him how foolish it is to send me away, to put a thousand miles, four state lines and feet and feet of steel and concrete walls between us.  He won’t be reasoned with.  Not by Elizabeth, not by anyone.  Least of all by myself. 

Take care of yourself, Caffrey, Peter says. 

He dares to catch my eye.  Just briefly, just long enough to let me know that he is sincere—and sincerely worried.  His hand shakes a little when he passes the document in his hand on to a marshal.  Then all I have left to do is stare at the back of his head as he briskly walks away.

I call his name.  My voice echoes off the bare walls of the parking garage.  I sound desperate.  I don’t care.  Neither does Peter.  He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t turn around.  The only reply I get is the sound of his car doors unlocking when he pushes the remote on his car key.  I fall silent then and don’t speak another word for the fifteen-hour drive to Tennessee.  I’m awake for every minute of it.

When we get there my hands are numb and my wrists ache where the cuffs have worn grooves into them.  My fingers are still tingling when I sign the inventory of my possessions.  They raise their eyebrows at the tailored suit, which I’m carefully folding as I undress.  One of them comments on my cufflinks and tie bar but I’m not listening to them and their thick Southern accents.  I don’t look at them either.  I don’t bother finding their names on their uniforms.  They are nothing to me, just like I am nothing to them. 

I am a convict.  Faceless.  I’m nothing but a case number to the guard who takes my booking photo.  I’m a chart full of acronyms and stats jotted down by the nurse practitioner who has cold hands and gives me a rushed physical.  Age, height, weight, vitals.  My body is conning her.  The numbers on her chart lie.  I’m a dead man.

Everything looks good, she says as she closes the file.  She checks her watch.  She wants to go home. 

Me too.

Instead, I am marched down the hall to take a quick shower.  I’m finally allowed to dress.  I missed dinner service.  They stop by the mess hall and push a wrapped sandwich and a bottle of water into my hands.

The prison ward is hot and overcrowded.  I feel like I can’t breathe as soon as I set foot into it.  But I raise my chin and look straight ahead, undaunted and unimpressed to anyone looking at me.  The noise level momentarily drops and curious, judging pairs of eyes follow me as I’m escorted to my cell up on the second level.  There is no hesitation in my steps until I realize that I have a cellmate.  I speak up, addressing the guards directly for the first time since arriving here.

Yes, they’ve read the marshal’s request—Peter’s request—but that there cell is the best they can do.  Walter is a good old fella and up for parole in three months. 

The door locks behind me.

Walter is no immediate threat to me.  I know that from the moment he puts his book aside and extends his small, arthritic hand.  I shake it and give him my first name with a small nod.  Then I give him my sandwich.   For the sake of politeness, he offers to vacate the lower bunk for me, but I won’t make a frail seventy-year-old climb up to the top bed.  I can see his relief.  I ask to borrow from his pile of books and his face lights up. I am not a threat to him.

Others are.  Two weeks into my stint Walter is bullied into leaving the door to our cell open. 

There are three of them.  One of them has a cousin in Queens who knows a guy who knows another guy who’s heard a rumor.  Now they want to know if I’m that FBI snitch.  That’s all I gather before the first punch lands.  If this is an interrogation, they are terrible at it.  They don’t recognize the fine line between softening somebody up and switching off his lights.

I come around in the infirmary with a pounding headache.  Somebody pries my swelling left eye open, shines a penlight into it. The light hurts. I want to swat it away, but the instant pain in my right shoulder stops me.  A male voice behind the light tells me to keep still, explains that my shoulder is dislocated.  For the fraction of a second the voice sounds like Peter’s in my ringing ears.  My heart leaps and I desperately try to see beyond the blinding light.  But then the voice calls me Mister Caffrey and I feel like a fool.  I want to tell the voice to call me Neal. I want to be funny and quip that Mister Caffrey is my father.  But that wouldn’t be the truth.  It wouldn’t be very funny, either.  So I shut up. 

The penlight switches to the other eye.  When it disappears for good I try to blink the dark spots away.  The man in the white coat leaning over me even looks like Peter.  At least when judged by my one good eye and with dark blotches dancing around my vision.  Fuck.  The goon squad must have rung my bell pretty good.  I haven’t thought about Peter in days. 

The white coat addresses someone named Leslie.  I’m pretty sure he is not talking to me, but a shred of doubt remains until the nurse practitioner moves into view behind his shoulder.  They talk briefly, come up with a master plan of how to put Humpty Dumpty back together.  I don’t catch all the details, but I figure I’ll know soon enough.  I close my eyes and try to relax on the exam table.  Notpeter, MD, and Leslie work with practiced efficiency.  They stitch up my chin, clean my face, roll my shoulder back into place.  They apologize when I grunt in pain.  I try to tough it out, but Leslie really needs to do something about her cold hands.

They are still putting my arm in a sling when the warden and two guards come to question me. 

Cut myself shaving, I tell them. 

The warden stares me down.  My good eye stares back.  I’ve made my clichéd point.  He chews the inside of his cheek, puffs out a long, exasperated breath and leaves.  I’m back in my cell after a night of observation.

Establishing yourself as the guy who doesn’t rat a fellow inmate out is a good thing. I wouldn’t say I’ve made friends.  Friendship is for good people.  For people out there.  For people like Peter.  Friendship doesn’t apply to anything inside these walls.  Neither does living.  But for the next few weeks I’m left to exist.  I’m not eating at the cool kids’ table but I’m tolerated as a harmless sideshow act who amuses the depraved masses with card tricks and Sinatra tunes.  I wear the jester’s coat well.  It’s a piece of body armor I’ve never underestimated.

Establishing yourself as the guy who is unlikely to kiss and tell is fatal. 

Vanity is one of my lesser sins.  I know what I look like.  I also know that not cutting my hair for a couple of months and not shaving for a few days doesn’t change much about how others perceive me.  At least I’m tall.  Not as tall as Peter, but tall enough when I keep my back straight.  I stand with my feet apart to appear confident.  I like to think that most people buy it.  But then my shoulders are a little narrow and I’ve lost some fighting weight since I got here.  All things considered, I’m sure tough guy is not the first thought that pops into people’s heads when they look at me in here.

I let my guard down.  It’s hot and dusty in the exercise yard and I’m restless and sweaty and I just want to get out of the sun for a few minutes.  I don’t wander far.  Out of sight of the crowd but with their soccer game still within earshot.  It doesn’t matter how close I am.  Nobody hears me after a large, hairy hand clamps over my mouth. 

The two of them have done this before.  I know, because it takes practice to work out the mechanics and logistics of holding a man down while peeling him out of these damn orange overalls.  They’ve come prepared.  Seeing that shiny condom wrapper disposed onto the ground is the only bright spot in the agonizing minutes that follow.  I struggle through every second of it.  Because the last thing you want is to establish yourself as the guy who enjoys it.

It’s over fast.  A test drive.  Perhaps aimed to make it brutally clear to me that nothing that is going to happen down the line is up for debate.  Perhaps intended to establish the pecking order amongst themselves.  Number two doesn’t get his turn.  He vents his frustration with a kick to my groin.  When they walk away, my hips are raw and bleeding from being pushed against the crumbling concrete bench.  There will be bruises almost everywhere tomorrow.  Everywhere but my face.  They’ve done this before.  They know what the guards don’t see won’t make them ask questions.  I’m grateful for their considerateness. And ashamed of the gratitude I feel.   And ashamed.

Hidden inside my clothes I trudge back to my cell.  Walter glances up from his book, takes one long look at me over the rim of his reading glasses.  Without a word he gets up from the lower bunk and I curl up there with my back against the wall.  Walter fills my water bottle, places it in the crook of my arm and then he leaves to give me space.

I’m not sure if Walter alerted the guards.  Maybe my poker face is not what it used to be and everybody knows everything by simply looking at me.  After dinner that night the warden orders me into his office.  He doesn’t mention the assault, but he offers to move me to isolation. 

For how long, I ask him. 

For as long as the circumstances persist, he says. 

I have two years left on my sentence, I reply. 

He nods.

There must be a misunderstanding, I tell him and smile.  The misunderstanding is that there is no way in hell I will spend the next two years in a windowless room with nothing that remotely qualifies as human contact.  No.  Fucking.  Way.

The warden studies me for a long time.  He is a hard man, but not a bad man.  There is concern in his eyes and respect.  Respect for the fact that, even though I’ve gambled away my civil liberties, I’m still a man of free will.  I think Peter would like this guy.  He closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose.

Very well, Mister Caffrey, he sighs.  He wants to know if I need medical attention.  I don’t.  He asks if I’d like a shower and a change of clothes. 

Yes.  I want to scrub their sweat and their stench off of me.  I don’t use those exact words. 

My offer stands, he tells me.

It won’t be needed, I insist.

___

Two months later I prove myself a liar. 

I’m back in his office because I can’t take it anymore.  Can’t take them anymore.  I stopped fighting a week ago.  The bruises and scratches wouldn’t heal.  They just changed color as new ones were added on top of layers of old ones.  I thought not fighting would make it hurt less.  It didn’t.  When I gave them my body willingly, their hands and lips and words began to take my soul.

I knew this morning that I had to end it.  Because as I lay there in nothing but my socks, on the floor of the storage closet, on the pile of dirty laundry they had thrown there to make me comfortable, as they called me good boy and bitch and fag, as they took their sweet time, all I could do was stare at the crack of light under the closed door, waiting for it to open, waiting for rescue.  Waiting for Peter. 

I could picture him so clearly, with that look of disappointment in his eyes as he glances down at the scene to take it all in, to understand what I’d gone and done this time.  I could hear his voice, hard and uncompromising as he tells them to leave and promises to deal with them later, then with soft restraint as he tells me to cover myself and get up off the floor.  I wanted to, but I couldn’t move, because all I saw was the unspoken revulsion in Peter’s face at the sight of me and the filth I had become.  I couldn’t bear it.  Not from Peter, who always saw me for who I really was. 

I had to end it.

Now I’m sitting across from the warden and I’m shaking.  I try not to, but that only makes it worse.  He has one of his guys go grab me a blanket.  It’s 75 degrees in here and the blanket doesn’t do a thing to help, but I take it anyway.  I thank him and I mean it.  Simple gestures of kindness are a rare gift in here.

I will have to go on record as requesting the relocation, the warden tells me.  I nod without looking at him.  I need to submit to a medical exam, he explains.  Something in my bearing must give away the dread I feel because his voice softens. 

It’ll be all right, the warden says. 

There won’t be any evidence, I whisper.  I don’t mean to, but my voice comes out that way.  I’m desperate for a glass of water.  I’m desperate. 

The warden walks me from his office to the infirmary.  I’m not sure if that is part of protocol or if he is being nice.  When we get there he hands me over to the nurse’s care and asks the doctor to step outside the open door to have a word with him.  I don’t take my eyes off them as Leslie leads me over to a chair to sit down.  I strain my ears but the two are out of earshot.  I don’t have any more luck trying to read their lips.  The warden has turned his back to me and the doctor contributes little more than an occasional nod to the conversation.  Reviewed by two functional eyes and sans a concussion the doctor looks nothing like Peter.  At least not until he throws a curious, probing glance in my direction that could have come straight out of the Peter Burke playbook.  Caught staring, I turn my head.  Next to me, Leslie is impatiently checking her watch.  My eyes seek out the wall-mounted clock.  Her shift must have ended ten minutes ago.  I wish she had left.  I could do with one less person to see me like this.

A short time later, when the warden has left and the door to the hallway is closed, I’m glad Leslie stayed.  As soon as she realizes why I am here, she cares.  She gently helps me undress and is mindful of my sore body when I climb onto the exam table.  She keeps me covered with a sheet as much as possible and keeps a stilling hand on my shoulder when those damned shakes won’t stop.  I appreciate her good intentions, even if her cold touch on my bare skin only makes me shiver harder. 

Leslie nods her encouragement when I answer the doctor’s questions in my broken, dry voice that won’t project above a whisper.  She smiles softly at me as she and the doctor exchange fleeting glances.   They know I’m lying.  They know that the how and the when and the where and the how often I’m willing to admit don’t add up to tale spelled out by my body.  They don’t call me on it.  They only scribble notes onto my chart and they catalog and photograph and sample.  Leslie holds my hand through the worst of the humiliation. Yeah, I’m glad she stayed.

They draw my blood and make me pee into a cup.  It hurts.  But that’s okay because after that they let me shower in the privacy of the small bathroom.  I take my time, turn the water as hot as I can bear it.  Showering makes everything better.  I close my eyes and pretend to be somewhere else.  In that cute, expensive boutique hotel room in Paris or at the first apartment I shared with Kate, or in my shower at June’s. But nothing feels right.  My senses deny my mind the escape.  The pungent smell of bleach in my nose, the sting of the coarse bar of soap on my skin won’t let me be fooled.  I cry then, silently, and let the water sweep my tears away and down the drain where they belong.

I refuse to leave the numbing bliss of the shower stream until Leslie pokes her head in the bathroom door to check on me.  The scalding water has left my skin hot and pink and tender all over.  Leslie has a half pitying, half reproachful click of her tongue for me when she towels me off and applies ointment to the open sores weeks of abuse have left on me.  I sit impatiently through this final ordeal, waiting for her to stop touching me where I don’t want to be touched. 

I don’t want to be touched anywhere. 

I hurry to pull on the fresh clothes Leslie brought for me and choke down the handful of pills I’m given before I’m fully dressed.  I run my hands through my wet hair and expectantly blink at Leslie who jots a few more notes onto the chart.  She checks her watch for the first time in an hour.

I didn’t mean to keep you late, I say and find my voice has regained some strength. 

She smiles distractedly as she finishes her notes and dismisses my polite concern with a small shake of her head.  Without looking up she unemotionally tells me that the test results will be back soon and that I’ll be on an antibiotic and preventive drug regimen for a while.  She’ll set up an appointment with the visiting mental health professional before the end of the week and she’ll check on me daily to make sure I’m physically healing.  Leslie ends her explanations with a heaving sigh and puts her pen down.  She raises her eyes, pensively looks me over where I’m perched at the edge of the exam table. 

Mister Caffrey, she says softly and chews her bottom lip. You’re the worst I’ve seen in a long time.  I wish you had come sooner. 

I stare at her, at her bright, hazel eyes that try to understand me.  Then I look at the chart in her hand and at the digital camera sitting on the on the desk in the corner and I wish I hadn’t come at all.  She follows my line of vision and nods her silent understanding.

Take care of yourself, she tells me.  Eat, you’re underweight, she says.  Sleep, you look like you need it, she adds when the guard leads me out of the infirmary and to my isolation cell.

I sleep.  Deeply and free from dreams.  For days.  With sheer exhaustion or from whatever Leslie and Dr. Notpeter are slipping into the drug cocktail I swallow twice a day.  The first few days pass quickly this way, my waking hours broken into small, manageable pieces by the guards that bring me food and by my daily visits to the infirmary where Leslie tends to me and sometimes talks about her upcoming wedding.  

I’m forced see the shrink twice that week.  He’s barely out of graduate school and he still thinks he can make a difference in here.  I go easy on him.  I nod my head a lot and I pretend to listen.  I delicately word the lies I dish out.  I wouldn’t want to crush the kid’s enthusiasm.  I thank him politely and try to look a little less broken when I walk out of his office and back to my cell.  It’s quiet there.

For those first few days, I embrace the quiet, the reprieve from the constant, multitrack din of caged men.  No flushing toilets, no restless banging against bolted down furniture, no vulgar catcalls, no muffled sounds of self-gratification.  No anonymous cries of human despair echoing down the dark hallway at night.  Cries I wish I had the courage to shout into the darkness, to give a voice to what’s eating me up inside, to release the paralyzing tightness in my chest for even one second.

After a week, the silence begins to swallow me.

I exercise.  I try to wear my body down, every day, empty it of any energy still held in those wiry strings of muscle that line my shrinking frame.  Sometimes it helps.  Some nights my wakeful mind succumbs to sleep for a few hours.  I wake in cold sweat the next morning, with lingering dreams of their hands and lips and cocks.  With visions Peter watching it all and silently shaking his head.

I don’t know when exactly the pain in my stomach starts.  It manifests itself as a deep-seated feeling of dread, something psychological rather than physical.  I ignore it for as long as I can.  I’ve always been good at isolating and locking away the problems I’m unwilling to deal with.  Maybe Peter has learned as much from me.  Maybe that’s why I’m in here now.  Maybe I’ve been that knot in Peter’s stomach all along.

The ill-defined sensation of dread turns into something physical before long.  Lying on my cot in the dark I curl around the pain as it takes root deep inside me, hoping to corral it there, hoping to curb the sudden flares of agony that sporadically spread from it, that pull at my heart and my spine and my groin like greedy tentacles.  During the day I squirrel away small bits of food.  Sometimes eating helps, sometimes feeding the monster appeases it.  Sometimes it spits my humble offerings back at me.  I should tell someone.  I should get help.  I won’t.  I’m afraid.  Afraid that this torturous creature at my core is the only thing that still makes me feel something.

___

Peter visits. 

It’s been five months since I watched him walk away from me.  When I’m told someone’s here to see me, I am flustered.  Peter is not.  He has come prepared, with a banker’s box of files and meticulously policed facial expressions. 

I know I don’t look good, but I don’t realize how bad I look until I walk into the visitation room and see Peter’s self-possession slip for a brief moment.  I watch his eyes brush over my unshaven face and my unkempt hair, then down my body.  I shudder at the thought that he can see every paling bruise, every scar, every fading bite mark that I conceal under my clothes.

Peter’s composure is restored to its stone-faced foundations before the guard has finished his pat down.  He gestures at the seat across the table from him and doesn’t take his probing eyes off me as I settle onto the bench and rest my sweaty hands in my lap.  It takes all my courage to make eye contact with him.

He takes a seat on his side of the table and asks me how I am.  His uninflected voice doesn’t waver.  

I ask about Elizabeth and don’t answer his question.  I sound insecure and I clear my throat to make that stop.  Peter tells me she is fine.  His tone makes it clear that this is as far as he will let me intrude into his private life again.  It hurts and I wonder if hurting me is the reason he has come here.  I glance over my shoulder at the door and contemplate asking the guard to take me back to my cell.

Peter catches my movement and a flicker of panic rushes across his features.  He came all the way down here.  He wants me to stay.  I feel a rush of power that I haven’t felt in months.

Caffrey, he calls me and there is urgency in his tone.  I make a point of looking at the door again.  I pout.  It’s childish, but I don’t care.  I want him to call me by my name, the way he used to when we were friends.

Neal, he finally relents.

Peter, I reply and my tone has a slightly mocking, triumphant quality when I let my pitch rise on the last syllable to make it sound like a question.  Peter narrows his eyes.  He hasn’t come to dance with me.  

Then why has he come?  Why now?  And who is he, this man sitting across from me?  Is this the man I used to know?  Peter, who once got me out of a place like this, who joked with me and chided me and trusted me more than he should have.  Who forgave, until he couldn’t.  Who cared.  Even loved?

Or is he the man who is haunting me in the waking nightmare my life has become?  Is this the warped ghost of Peter Burke, whose resemblance bled into the impassive face of a doctor probing me with latex-covered hands?  Is he the man whose laughter joined the jeering chorus at my back when I was on the floor, swallowing bile and blood and them as someone kicked my thighs apart?  Is this the man whose steps I hear approaching my cell at night, rousing me from sleep with a sudden rush of hope, making me listen to the suffocating darkness, making me curse the erratic hammering in my chest that drowns all other sound?  Those nights I stand with my forehead pressed against the cool metal of the cell door.  Listening.  Imagining Peter mirroring my posture, his forehead inches from mine.  Some nights I swear I can feel his warmth through the heavy layer of steel, hear his breathing as he wills himself to remain motionless, as he silently debates what to do about me.  Some nights I fall asleep this way, sliding down the door when my legs refuse to bear me longer.  I wake with a start when I hit the floor, panicked that I’ve missed the footsteps leaving.  Sometimes I call his name then, hoping that my cries will carry far enough along that dark narrow hallway to still catch him, to convince him to come back for me.  Sometimes I simply sob.

Neal? 

I’m not entirely certain how often he calls my name until it registers.  When Peter swims into focus, his face is naked with concern for what he sees in my eyes.  What does he see?  Anger?  Defiance?  Insanity?  Terror?

Why are you here?  I ask, even demand.  My voice is thick and throaty, like I’ve just been crying.  Fuck, have I?  I make a conscious choice not to wipe at my eyes to check.

Peter continues to stare at me.  I watch him reconstruct his defenses, one facial muscle at a time, I witness the pity and confusion give way to detachment.  He leans back a little, puts an inch more space between us.  His lips open, then he hesitates as if second-guessing his wisdom to speak.

We need your help.  The words suddenly spill out of his mouth, perhaps against his better judgment. 

Who is we?  I want to know.  We used to be us.  Peter and Neal.  Burke and Caffrey.  Butch and the Sundance Kid. 

The Bureau, Peter states flatly.  Diana.  Jones.  He adds, as if I may have forgotten.  My small nod prompts the tiniest glimmer of relief in Peter’s expression.  I’m following.  I’m not rejecting him outright.

Listen, Caffrey, he leans in.   

I listen.  I concentrate.  I watch his lips as they move rapidly because I fear to lose track of what he tells me.  No one has spoken to me in a long time.  Not like this.  Not like it has the slightest consequence for their lives if their words get through to me or not.  I’m trying hard, but my brain lags at least two sentences behind my ears.  I struggle to retain the most vital pieces of information.  Sabotage at the White Collar division … investigations undermined … tanking case clearance … threats to restructure the unit … imminent transfer of Diana and junior agents … internal investigation of Hughes and Peter … My stomach cramps.  I dig my fingernails into my thighs, try to keep the pain out of my face.  The grunt that issues from my throat must sound like bitter dismissal to Peter.  He falls silent.  He looks at me and he looks wounded.

You’re the only one I can trust, he speaks.  With this, his eyes silently qualify before they are cast down, avoiding mine.  I seize the opportunity to study him without subjecting myself to his scrutiny.  How much did it hurt him to come here, to admit that—after everything—he still needs me? I’m waiting for a trace of self-congratulation to stir inside me, for any hint of satisfaction gleaned from Peter’s desperation.  I’m searching for any flare of red-hot anger in my chest at his audacity to come here and ask me a favor after what he put me through.  There is nothing.  I’ve never been able to hate this man.  No matter how hard I’ve tried.

I do it, I tell him. 

Peter’s eyes flicker up to meet mine. There is that small, tender half-smile on his lips.  The kind of smile he always reserved for those rare moments when I surprised him, in a good way.  He holds my gaze for a long time as if trying to decide if I mean what I said.  I give him a small nod that somehow unleashes the full-blown investigative agent that always lurks below the laid-back, congenial Burke exterior.

On his feet now, with his arms braced on the table surface, Peter rattles off the facts.  He runs me through the contradictory pieces of evidence that have made a mess of his unit’s—our unit’s—cases.  His fingers dance over the tabs of the file folders in the banker’s box and he pulls documents with a swiftness that leaves no doubt that he has pored over every leaf of paper and every printed word and every pen stroke recorded there.  I love watching Peter when he gets like this, all concentrated brainpower and effortless efficiency.  God, I miss watching him.  

I miss him.

Peter suddenly stops.  He looks down at me, confused, self-consciously so.  I realize I must have been staring at him, with a half-witted, dazed expression in my face, with my mouth hanging open.  I feel the heat rise to my cheeks.  I close my lips and awkwardly clear my throat and I blink too quickly for too long. 

Peter’s mien takes on a comical hue as he swings violently between concern and utter bewilderment.  Hesitantly, his fingertip taps at a file fanned out on the tabletop.  Focus, damn it, the small tap tells me.  And Please, Neal, it begs.

The pecking fingertip gives me something other than Peter’s face to gape at.  Good.  Visual aids are good.  They help me concentrate.  They help me keep it together.  I feel Peter’s eyes on the crown of my head as I hunch over the papers, shuffling them around, aimlessly at first, then increasingly with method as my shaky logic catches the thread of Peter’s narrative and tenuously hangs on.  Peter is patient with me, even though I can see the nervous energy in his fluttery fingers that hover over the files spread out in front of me.  He rephrases and repeats his explanations, twice, then again if something in my demeanor hints that I’m not following.

Five more minutes, the guard suddenly announces. 

With a deep sigh, Peter falls silent.  He methodically returns the files to the banker’s box, and looks positively apologetic when he shows me the 8-pack of wax crayons I have been approved to call my own from now on.  Peter pushes the box across the table and his fingers settle over mine.  He leaves them there only briefly, but longer than necessary.  At least that’s what I tell myself.  The next touch I feel is the guard’s firm hand on my shoulder, urging me to get up from the bench.

How much time to go through the files, I ask Peter, when I really want to know how long I must wait to see him again. 

Ten days is all he can give me, Peter says.  There’s a glint of hostility in his face directed at the man who handles me and pushes me toward the door.  Then Peter’s focus is back on me and he is running his eyes over me once more with all those unasked questions at the tip of his tongue. 

Ten days is all I need, I repeat back before he is foolish enough to ask any of them.

For the next week the pain in my stomach becomes my trusted ally.  It keeps me on my toes, figuratively, and sometimes brings me to my knees, literally. It wakes me up at night after I’ve dozed off on a bed of files that are scattered over the concrete floor and over my cot.  I’ve known kinder wakeup calls than a debilitating cramp in my midsection.  I’ve known crueler, too.  And, anyway, I should know better than to fall asleep when I have a deadline. 

I’d give one of my crayons for a taste of that paint stripper that passes for coffee around the FBI office.  I chug milk instead, from the 8-oz cartons that the night guard supplies me with because he likes me or because I never give him any trouble.  The milk is part of my delicate deal with the simmering agony inside me that demands to be fed but will make me pay dearly should the wrong menu choices make it down my throat.  At least the monster and I agree that prison food is inedible.  I can’t rouse suspicion, can’t let the guards know something is wrong.  Not yet.  So I eat what little I can choke down and flush the rest of the food they bring down the toilet.

I have three days left and I crack Peter’s case.  I’m sitting on the floor with my legs crossed and I’m waiting for the high to hit me.  I want that rush of pride, that Gotcha! moment that makes me feel giddy and inflates my chest with a disproportionate amount of self-satisfaction.  The high doesn’t happen.  Maybe the rush has always been to see my pride reflected in Peter’s eyes, for that heartbeat’s moment’s worth of hubris that he permits himself to indulge in before he dutifully cuts me down to size and tells me that it’s our darn job and that he wants my report on his desk by the morning.

I spend the next two days hunched over the brand new legal pad that I’ve saved for this very purpose.  I use my fingernails to shave wax off the blue crayon, sharpening its tip to a fine point.  I write the first few pages of my report in flawless copybook lettering, pausing occasionally to resharpen my crayon and to sort through the chaos of notes and messy scribbles I’ve left on the back of photocopies and in document margins, pausing frequently because the sharp, sudden flare-ups in my stomach double me over.

I know I’m in trouble when the fever sets in.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to focus.  I draw my letters one by one, determined to keep them neat.  I feel like a first-grader, the crayon awkwardly held by sweaty fingers that cramp in stubborn resolve to stay within the paper’s ruling.  I lick my lips in concentration and don’t notice until they are chapped and tender.  I finish the report.  I go through it once more to add footnotes and cross-references.  I don’t know how much time I will have with Peter, how much I can explain in person.  How much I’ll be able to explain.  I’m not feeling good.

Twenty-four hours until Peter’s visit and I start vomiting blood.  I don’t know what Leslie’s professional assessment of my condition would be, but I’m guessing seriously fucked about sums it up.

I pack the banker’s box, filing everything in the place Peter had assigned for it.  I put the legal pad on top, its pages filled with thick-lined, childlike writing that takes me back to my grade school days when I counterfeited classmates’ homework in exchange for their lunch money.  Today I’m not certain what my payment will be, whether these last ten days have earned me anything or if Peter merely came to collect interest on a much larger debt he holds against me.  Perhaps my only reward will be the knowledge that I can still do something of consequence, that my actions still ripple beyond these four walls, that I still have substance, that for ten days I was more than a nearly hollow shell locked inside a small room.  When I sink onto my cot, dizzy and in pain, I’m feeling content for the first time in months.

I sleep deeply and without dreams that night and even the agony inside my belly fails to break through the tar-like blanket of complete exhaustion that keeps me under.  I wake when my door is unlatched and a tray of breakfast and a change of clothes are placed on my table.  The guard asks if I want a shower before my meeting.  I assume the pervasive smell in my cell tells him yes, but from my position on the bed, with my elbow draped over my eyes I politely decline.  I know that my legs will carry me down that hallway exactly once, and it will be to the visitation room, not the showers.  The guard grunts his disapproval and leaves.

Sitting up is nauseating.  Getting to my feet makes my head spin.  Past the ringing in my ears and the blackness dancing at the edge of my vision I realize with sudden panic that I’m going to be sick.  I don’t make it to the toilet.  I feel my knees slam into the concrete floor and a few painful seconds later I’m braced on trembling arms with acrid liquid dripping down my chin, panting and staring at the repulsive puddle on the floor.  I laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.

I crawl to the toilet paper dispenser.  The single-ply coarse paper does nothing to absorb the mess.  I clean the floor and slowly pull myself to my feet by the edge of the wall-mounted table.  I’m expecting another wave of vertigo to wash over me, but I am spared.  I’m standing with all the grace and sure-footedness of a baby giraffe, but I’m standing. 

I cover the short distance to the sink with growing confidence in my abilities.  The small, nearly blind mirror is kind to me.   It throws back the fuzzy reflection of a man having a wicked hair day and the beard of a Williamsburg hipster, a little worse for wear, but still recognizable as remotely human.  I turn on the faucet, give the water the head start it needs to become lukewarm.  I strip naked and the cool temperature in the cell gives me an excuse to be the shivering bag of bones that I am.  I scratch a dry patch of skin on my ribs.  Bag of bones is close enough to the truth. The mirror spares me the grim details.

I lather up the washcloth and start at the top, steadying myself with one hand on the edge of the sink as I work my way down.  I pay attention to every square inch of skin I can reach, on occasion scrubbing hard in foolish faith that the month old scars and bruises will finally wash away.  When I’m done I don’t feel clean, but I smell it.  I towel off in a hurry, and slip into my fresh underwear and overalls.  I’m in dire need of a shave but the beard masks my sunken cheeks and there’s something to be said for that.  I wet my fingers, rake them through my unruly locks to restore a semblance of order.  I brush my teeth and spend a good ten minutes trying to scrub away the crayon shavings that are lodged deeply under my fingernails.  I turn off the water, reasonably convinced that Peter will be able to stomach my company for a short while.

Stomach is the word of the hour.  Mine makes itself known again, sending spikes of pain through me, sharp enough to make me dizzy.  Bent at the waste I settle onto the chair by the table, praying for a bit of reprieve.  The agony dulls to a constant but manageable burn.  I reward it with a few sips of milk a nibble of toast from my breakfast tray.  When the guard knocks on the door to escort me to the visitation room, I don’t bother hiding my uneaten food. 

I rise to my feet and the room is canting left and right.  I hope I can find my sea legs before I make it into the hallway.  If sober men can act drunk, then lightheaded, wobbly messes like me can pretend they are able to walk down a straight hallway.  The logic makes sense to me.  But then I’m still running a fever, so who knows.  I grab the banker’s box and if feels heavier than it should.  Luckily, the weight in my arms helps to keep me moving.  I let gravity do the work for me, let the weight of the box pull me forward, and all I have left to do is point the box in the right direction and put one foot in front of the other to keep up.  I make it halfway down the hallway and almost feel like my self-congratulatory self.  

I’ve always known that running away from Peter Burke is a marathon.  Turns out that shuffling toward him at the edge of consciousness is a marathon, too.  Three sharp turns and three endless hallways later, I have sweat pouring down my back and I’m fighting to keep my meager breakfast where it belongs.  We arrive at the visitation room and the guard gives me a funny look before he steps aside without searching me. 

Even from the door Peter looks like crap.  And that’s coming from me.  With blood-shot eyes and his tie too loose and stained with yellow mustard, he looks like someone who just woke up from a nap in the parking lot of a highway rest stop.  He seems equally unimpressed with my appearance.  When the banker’s box leads me to his table, Peter hastily parts with his paper coffee cup and meets me halfway.

Neal?

Peter’s eyes dance over me, disbelief, even shock written all over his face.

I’ve got your guy, I announce.  Your gal, to be exact.  It doesn’t come out as triumphant as it sounded in my head on the trek over here.  Peter acts like he hasn’t heard me, still preoccupied with making sense of the odd, sickly creature that bears an uncanny resemblance to his former consultant.

I solved the case, I repeat.  I feel a small pinch of indignation at not receiving the instant, euphoric recognition I was shooting for.  That pinch to my ego is accompanied by a more substantial cramp in my midsection that twists my face with pain and makes me want to curl around the box I carry.  I lose my balance, stagger to the side.  The shift in motion makes my stomach reel and I am nearly hysterical with the sudden dread of falling apart in front of Peter.  Through the ringing in my ears I hear him call my name.  He sounds miles away but then he moves into view at the edge of my shimmering vision.  I feel him lift the box out of my hands.  

And then the floor leaps up to meet me.

Nothing compares to the instant terror of waking up flat on my back with unwanted hands on me.  I lash out blindly.  I try to push them away, but the hands are strong and insistent.  I feel cool air on bare skin and initiate DEFCON 1.  I launch an all out evasive maneuver, surprising my attackers with a sudden roll to the side.  I collide with the plastic of a railing and for a second the support under me tilts precariously.  I wait for the impact that is sure to follow.  Instead of a hard crash there is an uproar of voices around me and more hands grapple for a piece of me.  

Someone calls out to me, calls me Mr. Caffrey, tells me to stay still.

Nice try.  I don’t think so.

Then there’s a female voice, close to my ear, asking me to calm down, explaining that I’m in the hospital ER.  She’s not making any sense because I’m certain that the blink of an eye ago I was in prison and talking to Peter.  But the voice that keeps speaking to me isn’t Peter’s.  It’s not even Leslie’s.  Neither is the distinctly warm hand on my forehead.  The voice is surprisingly pleasant when it tells me in no uncertain terms that I must lie still or be restrained.  I know when I’m beaten.  Panting and trembling with exhaustion I settle down.

I crack an eye open, then two.  The view of the fluorescent lights some distance above is partially obscured by what must be the source of the pleasant voice.  The nurse flashes me a small but pretty smile and restates the need to relax.  The warm weight on my forehead is briefly lifted when she removes a bloodied wad of gauze and presses a fresh compress in its place.  I grunt because it hurts and because I can’t remember for the life of me how the hell I cracked my head open.

I lift my head as far as I can.  My overalls are cut away and an IV needle is stuck in my arm.  At the far end of the plastic tubing a kid in scrubs attaches a new bag of clear liquid.  On the other side of me a white coat and his stethoscope try to figure out what brought me into his ER.  He gets his first clue when he presses his palm into my belly and I nearly jump off the gurney.  They let me curl onto my side and the pleasant voice has a tray at the ready when I start retching.  Through the tears that the pain drives into my eyes I see two uniformed guards hovering by the door.  I try to scan more of the room, looking for any sign of Peter, but the nurse blocks my view when she wipes my lips and replaces the dressing on my forehead once more.

I’m given a few seconds to catch my breath, before being wheeled into an elevator that shrinks to claustrophobic dimension after two prison guards, two nurses and an attending file into it.  The room I am taken to next is small and filled with flatscreen monitors and expensive looking equipment.  The doctor moves into focus.  He opens my mouth, sprays something bitter into the back of my throat.  The poor man has no idea what he is unleashing when he tries to stuff a tube down my throat.  The guards step in to secure me.  I have not an ounce of strength left to fight them off.  I try to suck in lungfuls of air but the weight of a guard on my chest leaves me gasping helplessly.  Blackness slowly seeps into the edge of my vision.

Let’s put him under, is the last thing I hear before I’m gone.

When I wake I am alone.  I know that without opening my eyes.  I don’t feel anyone around me.  I don’t feel much of anything.  I’m warm and dry and dressed.  I’m not pain.  Not yet.  A dull throbbing in my head is waiting to blossom at the first opportunity.  Ditto for my belly.  My throat is parched and oddly numb and there is still the familiar pressure of a cannula inserted into the crook of my left arm.  On my right arm an even more familiar sensation:  cool steel around my wrist.  No surprise there. 

I’m still at the hospital.  It smells like hospital.  Sounds like it, too.  Faint noises of people talking, of supply carts and IV poles being pushed over linoleum flooring, of the occasional pager going off just behind a thin wall.  I open my eyes.

The wall is made of glass.  Guess I am not so alone after all.  None of the people behind the glass are watching me.  The blonde at the nurse’s station has her back to me, sorting through a stack of patient clipboards piled high on her counter.  A haggard old man in a bathrobe is slowly shuffling his slippers as he tries to sneak a pack of cigarettes past the nurse.  It would have been less conspicuous to hide the pack under his high-domed mesh-back cap instead of in his bathrobe pocket.

Further away, where the hallway turns at a right angle, I spot a familiar face, turned away from me and almost hidden around the corner.  Even half-drugged I no longer understand how I ever saw a resemblance between this man and Peter.  Dr. Notpeter, dressed in the requisite white coat and with a patient file pinned under his elbow, apparently holds a day job outside the prison system.  He is talking to someone outside my field of vision and judging by the way he keeps shaking his head in a calm but adamant fashion, the conversation isn’t going his way.  I’m not particularly interested, but the case of the smuggling smoker and the oblivious nurse continues to proceed at a glacial pace and makes for less than thrilling diversion while I wait to regain full control of my doped senses.

I turn my attention back to Dr. Notpeter.  The patient file has now been extracted from under his arm and become either object or evidence in the heated but civil discussion that continues between the doc and his unseen opponent. The latter must have launched into a lengthy, well-reasoned argument, because for a minute or two Dr. Notpeter remains still, his head slightly tilted as he listens.  I find myself secretly rooting for the doc to come out on top of the debate, but, at last, he deflates in surrender.  The victor claims his prize, his arm reaching for the file in the doctor’s hands.  I would recognize that Brooks Brothers sleeve anywhere.

My heart doesn’t sink.  It plummets at terminal velocity. 

Peter steps out from behind the corner, his eyes still fixed on the doctor, who offers few more words before he completely disappears down the hidden hallway.  Remaining rooted in place, Peter tracks the doc’s movements for a short while.  Then, with a heaving sigh he lowers his eyes and opens the file.

I have to stop him.  Every second Peter is allowed to keep reading, every second he delves deeper into the illustrated chronicles of my failure as a man, chips away at my capacity to ever face him again.  To be in the same room with him.  To speak to him and look at him without seeing anything but pity and carefully guarded repulsion in his eyes. 

Look at me, Peter! 

I shoot up on my bed and my head is spinning out of control.  I shout his name.  All that escapes my useless, violated throat is a husky, voiceless croak. 

Peter doesn’t look up, already too far into his reading to dare and glance in my direction.

Look at me, Peter!  Look at me before there’s no going back!

I tear at the handcuff around my wrist, but it won’t budge.  The cuff is loose, but not loose enough to slip it.  I look around my bed, frantically searching for a tool to pick the lock.  Anything.  I grab the straw from the water cup on the bedside table, then toss the flimsy plastic aside.  Twisting on the bed, I rip the tape off my left elbow, taking fine hair, even skin with it.  The pain barely registers.  I yank the IV cannula from my vein, pull the tubing away from it.  The heavy gauge needle might just do.  I curse at my fingers that shake uncontrollably when I insert the slick needle into the lock.  I wiggle it around, trying to hit the sweet spot.  I can almost feel the lock release.  And then the needle drops to the floor.

I wail, a hoarse, soundless cry that doesn’t reach beyond the glass wall.  I see Peter, still absorbed by the file in his hands, by the trashy fiction recorded there, that I never—Not once!—admitted to.  He slowly turns on his heel, away from me.  He’ll be gone in a second.  For good.

Look!  At!  Me!

This is my last chance to stop him.  I will drag this damn bed with me if I have to.  I swing my legs over the edge and push off.  If my feet ever make contact with the floor before my legs crumple, I cannot say. The punishing blow of hitting the linoleum tiles is nothing compared to the searing pain in my wrist.  But it’s all good because, finally, someone hears me scream.

The smoker has stopped his tedious trek and is gaping at me through the glass.  His face lacks any interest as he watches my attempts to clamber to my feet.  My legs kick out clumsily and find no hold on the smooth floor only renewing the agony in my wrist with every slip.  Dizzy, nauseous and out of air, I let gravity have its way.  As the room and everything beyond it steadily dims to gray, I see the old man turn to the nurse behind the desk. 

And Peter is gone.

___

I’ve lost all sense of time and place when I regain consciousness.  Three blackouts in who knows how many hours will do that. I’m very sleepy.  No, more than that.  I’m drugged.  Weightless.  Lulled into oblivion by your friendly neighborhood pharmacist.  I turn my head and feel my brain slosh around my skull, sluggishly like molasses.  I find that image funny.  The impulse to smile is only curbed by my inability to control my facial muscles.  I’m neither bothered nor concerned by that.  Nothing concerns me.  I doze off again.

I’m more lucid.  Not quite awake, but I’m no longer trapped inside my head.  My eyelids are too heavy to lift, but I can smell and hear and I can feel my toes.  I’m still at the hospital.  Still flat on my back in linens that smell of commercial detergent.  Still thirsty.  But things are different than before.  It’s quiet now, no muffled noises hinting at a busy world behind a wall.  Perhaps it’s nighttime and I’ve lost the entire day, maybe more than that.  What’s the last thing I remember?  Lying on the floor in a hospital gown, half exposed, with pain shooting down my twisted arm from my wrist locked to the bed railing above.  I remember the unpitying face of the smoker.  I remember craning my neck to stare at a distant spot outside the glass wall.  A spot where Peter had stood and … Oh god.  Stop!  Don’t go there yet.

A quiet, pathetic whimper issues from my throat.  It’s followed by the sound of chair legs scraping over the floor to my left.  I’m not alone. 

Someone is standing over my bed.  I don’t move and keep my breathing even.  I will the person to go away and leave me alone.    I don’t have another fight in me right now.  I don’t have much of anything in me.  I want to keep it that way.  I want to milk every damn molecule of drug coursing through my veins for every damn second of blissful nothingness it buys.  That’s all I ask:  a few more hours, a few more minutes to spend in the void before I have to hurt again.  Before I have to think again. Before I have to pull myself together and function, somehow.

I get my will.  The person lingers by my side a short while longer then the chair legs scrape the floor again, softly this time, as if the chair is repositioned with consideration.  I turn my face away from the chair and sink into the linen-scented pillow with a deep, relieved breath. The drugs are tugging at my consciousness.  I don’t put up any resistance.  I let myself fall with open arms.

I’m chilly.  I’m standing in a small room, barefoot and wearing nothing but a hospital gown.  I look around to figure out where I am, where I’ve wandered off to and why.  Cheap tiles on the floor.  Whitewashed walls.  A fluorescent lamp on the ceiling.  No windows.  No door?  I’m puzzled.  A noise behind me.  I spin around.  He’s here.  The Alpha.  The one who always has first dibs on me.  It’s been too long, he says.  He’s missed me.  He smirks and comes closer, his leering eyes roaming over me.  I back off, shaking my head no.  I am done with this.  I shouldn’t have left, he says.  Good boys don’t leave.  My retreat is stopped by someone at my back.  An arm reaches around my chest from behind, pins my arms.  The Alpha has brought his Lackey, the one I fear the most.  The Alpha gets off on friction, the Lackey gets off on watching me suffer.  I can’t breathe.  He’s dressed so prettily for us, the man behind me breathes past my ear.  His callous hand has slipped into the open back of my gown, working me, roughly and secretly, because he doesn’t get to touch me first.  I’m paralyzed with fear.  The Alpha closes in, crowding me.  His hand slides around the back of my neck.  He makes me kiss him and all I want to do is scream.  He tells me he’ll forgive me.  He’ll let me make it up to him, he says, and his lips are on mine again.  I’m being pulled to the floor, pushed down on my back, because the Alpha missed my pretty face and because he wants to see how much I enjoy it.  It’ll be good, he promises.  It’ll be like the first time, he says, because it’s been so long.  His hands glide over my body, like they need to remember what I feel like.  I’ve never forgotten what his hands felt like.  He tears my gown aside, tells the Lackey to pin my hands over my head because he likes how that makes me look.  I close my eyes.  I don’t want to watch.  I feel him braced over me now, his face inches from mine.  He commands me to look at him.  I shake my head, I know what his face looks like when he’s on top of me.  It’s permanently tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.  Look at him, the Alpha’s Lackey whispers into my ear.  You’ll like what you see, his hot breath tells me.  He always knew how to make me obedient.  He twists my right wrist.  I open my eyes and it’s not the Alpha’s face hovering over me. 

It’s Peter’s.

I begin to weep.  Once the floodgates are open, there is no holding back.  I blubber like a child.  I can’t see through the tears.

Look at me.

Not just Peter’s face, his voice now, too.  My ears never trick me. 

I fall quiet.  Only for a moment, only to let the betrayal sink in and rip out the last seedling of hope I had tended inside. 

I take a deep breath. 

And then I fight.

This is my last stand.  I will hurt them.  I will make them angry.  Unleash a rage they can’t control.  I’ll let that rage fuel their lust and their blows, let it take away any inhibition, any fleeting reflection on the sanctity of human life.  I’m going to make them take it one step too far.  And they—The Alpha, his Lackey and Peter—won’t know when they’ve taken that step.   I’m a con man, and I’ll take my last breath as a con man.  Making them think that this boy can’t be broken.

Look at me, Neal.

This boy is a fool.  Thinking that, spread naked on the floor, he can outwit the great Peter Burke.  There’s no anger in Peter’s voice. 

Wake up, buddy.

Yeah, wake up, buddy, and smell the shit pile under the rosebushes that is your life.  This here agent won’t be manipulated cleaning up this mess.  He won’t be doing your dirty work.  You’ve conned him one too many times.  He won’t let you use him again.  He won’t deal you that convenient blow that will make it all better by ending it all. 

Peter takes my wrists, effortlessly pulls them from the Lackey’s tight grip, lowers them to my sides, holds them there.  I feel his weight on me, feel the fabric of his suit brush over my bare skin.  I shiver.  His mouth is close to my face, I turn away from him and screw my eyes shut.  His tenderness is a farce.

Shhhh.

Fresh, warm tears are running over the bridge of my nose.  Silently.  Defeated.  Hopeless. I don’t stop them.  Maybe I can let my life drain out of me, drop by salty drop.  How long would that take?  How much life can one tear carry?  How long until a man dies of loneliness and shame?

Open your eyes. 

I shake my head with what little will I have left.  I hear him sigh in frustration.

Yes, you can, Caffrey.

I crack my eyes.  The walls of the small, doorless room retreat and open to a brighter and airier place.  A window is the first thing I can make out.  I haven’t seen one in ages. I think it’s raining outside.

Hey.

I turn my head to the left by a few degrees.  Peter is stooped over the bed I rest in, his hands on my arms, holding down my left wrist and the heavy cast that encloses my right.  He looks disheveled.  Sweat is beading on his forehead.  He has shed his jacket and tie.  I remember a yellow mustard stain.  It has been replaced by a coffee stain on the front of his shirt.  His cuffs are unbuttoned, one of the sleeves rolled up to his elbow.  He is breathing heavily.

So am I.  I’m panting.  I’m trembling visibly.  The front of my hospital gown sticks to my chest.

You awake?  Peter asks.

I nod, although I’m not fully convinced.

One by one, Peter peels his fingers away from my arms, watching me closely as if he doesn’t trust the peace. 

Good, he puffs out a long breath and wipes his palms on his thighs.  He straightens the blanket that covers me, tugs it a little higher up my shivering body.  I flinch when his fingers graze my chest.  The last hands to touch me there were Alpha’s.  Mere minutes ago.

Nightmare? He asks.

I nod again, not trusting the peace any more than Peter. I dare not to blink, for fear of being thrown back in that room.  I glance down my body.  My right arm is in a cast from the elbow down.  The IV from my left arm is gone, a thin strip of gauze wrapped around the crook of my arm, purple bruising spreading from underneath the bandage.  There are no handcuffs, no restraints of any kind.  Only Peter, watching me like a hawk.

Do you remember what happened?

Some. My dry, aching throat produces a mere whisper. 

Wait.  Peter finds the remote control, pushes a button that raises the head end of the bed by a few inches.  Then he takes a cup of water from my bedside table, offers me the straw.  As I drink I watch Peter’s other hand suspended in midair, like he doesn’t know what to do with it, like he doesn’t want to touch me.

They said your throat might be sore from the endoscopy.  He puts the cup of water back and produces a second one.  I got you some ice chips, I thought that might help.  He holds a plastic spoonful out for me.

I let the cold liquid slowly trickle over the tender tissue and sigh with pleasure at this small amount of bliss.  Peter smiles down at me and couldn’t look happier with himself had he invented frozen water.  He offers me more, but I shake my head no.  I sink back against the pillow, close my eyes.  My breathing has calmed, my body is not shaking much anymore.  I feel pain now.  My stomach is sore, but the blinding flares of agony have stopped.  My wrist hurts under the cast, but it’s bearable.  My head is throbbing.  I touch my fingers to my forehead, feel the bandage at my hairline.  It’s an excuse to wipe away the tears.  Peter has the courtesy to look away.

What happened?  I sound only marginally more like myself.

Peter inhales deeply, pulls up the chair.  There’s the familiar scrape of its legs on the floor.  He sits down, takes a drink from the coffee cup on my nightstand. 

You collapsed when you came to our meeting.  That was yesterday morning.  Just about a full day ago.  He talks slowly.  Perhaps choosing the right words and tone is difficult for him, perhaps I look like someone who needs to be spoken to slowly.  He looks at his coffee cup, only glancing up occasionally while relaying the events of the past day.  He tells me that I hit my head on a bench when I passed out, says he is sorry for not catching me.  The guard thought I was faking it, he explains, wouldn’t let Peter near me.  There’s a twinkle of glee in Peter’s eyes when he details how he cut the guard down to size, Burke finger-jab and all, how he made it perfectly clear that neither he nor I were going to move an inch until medical personnel checked me out.

Peter turns quieter.  The nurse practitioner came as soon as she was alerted.  Peter liked her.  She asked the right questions of him and the guard while she checked me over.  I was in bad shape, Peter says, too sick to be treated at the prison.  They wouldn’t let him ride in the ambulance, kept him out of the hospital ER.  Against protocol, Leslie came and found him in the waiting room.  She told him about the bleeding stomach ulcer they had diagnosed, said I must have been losing blood for a some time, must have been in severe pain for a lot longer.  The ulcer had been cauterized but it would take time for me to recover from the anemia and substantial weight loss.  They would keep me in the hospital for a night or two to monitor the possible concussion I had sustained in the fall. Then they’d transfer me back inside.  She would look after me, she had promised him

The next thing I hear is you’re back in surgery to repair a dislocated wrist, Peter continues.  He is becoming agitated and trying to conceal it.  But I see that telltale play of tension around his mouth, see him pummel the paper cup between restless fingers, subtle signs of the impotent rage that bubbles up in Peter Burke when a situation has—when I have—slipped his control.  The guards haven’t heard the last of him, he says.  The stupidity to leave me cuffed to the bed and go to lunch!  Like I am some bicycle that can be locked to a streetlamp for convenience!

I chuckle hoarsely and Peter glances at me in surprise.

What?

That’s kind of the whole point of prison, Peter, to lock criminals away for convenience.

He doesn’t look amused.  He looks startled.  He studies me closely, maybe trying to detect if my comment was intended to be a much more personal affront than my light tone suggested.  I don’t think his ruling is conclusive.  He deflates with a deep breath, rolls some of the tension out of his shoulders with all of the élan of someone who hasn’t slept in a proper bed in days.

What happened in there, Neal?  He sighs.  I watch him pinch the bridge of his nose, rub his forehead with his eyes screwed shut.  Then his head jolts up.  In the recovery room, he clarifies in a rush.

And then I am certain. 

I’m certain that he knows.  I know he’s read my file, turned page after page of the horrific scrapbook Leslie and the doctor have assembled.  He’s talked to the warden, interviewed the guards.  Peter would be thorough like that.  He’s had a day.  A day is all Peter Burke needs to get to the bottom of things, to get his facts straight on how a perfectly healthy man could get into a car in New York and end up crumpling at his feet a thousand miles and six months later, reduced to a grotesque shadow of his former self.

I also know Peter isn’t ready to talk about this.

Neither am I. 

Not now. 

Try never.

I fell out of bed, I lie.  I don’t remember how.

Peter doesn’t buy it for a second, but something in his careworn expression tells me he’s glad for my evasiveness, relieved he doesn’t have only himself to blame for ignoring the big, hairy, scraggly elephant in the room a little longer.

The room.  I finally tear my eyes from Peter and survey my surroundings.  My bed is the only one in the large space.  There is a TV mounted on the opposite wall that Peter has muted and turned to a hockey game.  The walls are painted a warm buff and there are fabric window treatments instead of sterile aluminum blinds.  To my left, behind Peter, a small seating area is set up with a three-seater sofa and a small coffee table.  The wrinkled pillow and blanket tossed onto the sofa seat leave little doubt where Peter spent the night.  Above the couch, a large reproduction painting depicts a pastoral scene taken straight from a Hallmark greeting card that falls somewhere between the Sympathy and Get Well Soon categories.  To my right, within a few steps of the bed, a half open door leads to a small private bathroom.  This isn’t bad.  I’ve stayed in hotel rooms that were a lot less ritzy than this.  If it wasn’t for the call button by my bed and the pervasive smell of antiseptics, I could be easily convinced that Peter has abducted me to some motel room off of I-40.

This is one of those rooms where they take people for bad news, huh?  I rasp.  Don’t tell me something happened to the dog!  I smirk as best as I can.  Peter pushes himself up from his chair and offers me more water from the straw, before shoveling two heaping spoonfuls of ice chips into my mouth.  It’s his way of telling me I’m not funny and should probably shut up.

I wanted to get you away from that circus for a while, he explains and plops back into his seat.  It wasn’t a hard argument to make, given that the supervision of two guards and at least a half dozen nurses left in you worse shape than you were in when they wheeled you in here.  And I can’t say I prescribe to their solution to keep pumping enough sedatives and painkillers into you to fell a wild boar.  Or a big, hairy, scraggly elephant.

I glance down at the crook of my left arm where the IV used to be. 

I asked them to take you off.  Peter explains and looks a little rueful.  If the pain is too much, I can call someone.

I tell him no, even though the throbbing in my head has escalated to a hefty pounding.

I’m a little groggy, I admit.

That’s okay, Peter nods eagerly.  You can go back to sleep.  I’ll keep watching the game.

Yeah?  Who’s playing?  I challenge.

Peter glances at the TV set where the broadcast has gone to commercials and shakes his head in his trademark, feigned exasperation.  I’ve missed seeing it.  Even more, I’ve missed putting it there.  Peter turns to me and just for a second I am sure he sees who I used to be, his friend and partner, the guy who knew exactly how to push his buttons.  But then his eyes veer off again and all he can look at is the scruffy beard that hides my face and the sweat-soaked front of my hospital gown that hides nothing.

Get some more sleep, Neal, he sighs.

I don’t think he understands. How could he?  How could he comprehend what it’s like to be afraid of what may be waiting for me when I close my eyes?

I’ll be right here, he says softly. The chair legs scrape again when Peter inches closer to the bed.  He takes my left hand, watching my every reaction closely as he rests his fingertips on the back of my hand at first then encloses my fingers with his. 

I’m right here, he repeats and gives my hand a light squeeze. I’ll wake you.  I’ll bring you back when it gets bad.  Okay?

I stare at him and at his resolute, caring eyes.  He doesn’t avert them when I shed the first tears that aren’t born out of despair.

I need to stop doing that.  Crying.

I wake curled onto my side, my hand still in Peter’s grasp, my head close to the edge of the bed, closer to him.

Hey, Peter says.

Hmm, I reply and could swear that that sounded a like a clever, full sentence in my fuzzy brain.  I drink from the straw that Peter slips between my lips.  The water is tepid now.  How long? I croak.

Couple of hours.

Did I?   I look down the bed, searching for any signs of another fit of terrors I don’t remember.  The sheets are neatly draped over me, my skin dry, my breathing calm.

Slept like a log, Peter smiles and finally lets go of my hand as he straightens on his chair and works the kinks out of his neck.  I roll onto my back, fumble for the controls of the bed until the head end pushes me into a semi-upright position.

You were here the entire time?

I said I’d be, didn’t I?  

Hmm.  I mumble and mean Thank You. 

I watch Peter get to his feet, rock onto his toes to stretch his tall frame.  He shakes out the legs of his slacks, smoothes the front of his rumpled shirt, rolls up his left sleeve to match his right.  He looks like he has been released from a long, tedious briefing, weary but anxious to spring back into action.

I’m sorry.  My good hand scratches an itchy patch of beard on my chin.  You must have been bored.

Nah.  Peter shakes his head with about two degrees too much enthusiasm to convince me.  He produces his Blackberry from his pocket and unnecessarily glances at the empty screen.  I’ve been honing my texting skills.

Everything all right at—?

Home, I want to add, but then I leave the question dangling like that.  Home.  It took me too long to train myself not to think about Peter, Elizabeth and that whole damn city in that term.  I can’t let a thoughtless slip of nostalgia rekindle sentiments I’ve fought countless dark nights to repress. 

Yeah, everything’s well.  Peter looks at me a little bemused.  Everything’s great.  I faxed Jones your report.  It was … excellent, Neal. 

I let the compliment wash over me and try not to grin like a fool. 

We suspected who the mole was, Peter continues and his face lights up with the pride and excitement that only a solved case can incite.  But the inconsistencies in the paper trail she left were too random and sporadic, we couldn’t have connected the dots without your help.

So the unit is safe?  Diana?  Jones?  You are?  I barely stop myself from saying We.

It might take a while for things to be completely sorted out, but yes, Hughes seems to think so.

That’s good.  I sink back into my pillow, close my eyes to take stock of how I feel about this victory I’ve earned as a mercenary in someone else’s battle. An unpaid mercenary.  No, not unpaid.  Rewarded with a few days of feeling significant, with a few hours of bedside company for old times’ sake.  Trifling, in the grand scheme of things.  I’m not resentful.  Perhaps I will be later, when the loneliness of my cell overwhelms me again and when the selfish core of me insists that I deserve better, as it often does.  But that part of me is silent now and I know I’m not lying or even stretching the truth when I quietly tell Peter I’m glad.

Peter doesn’t offer a reply.  I look up to find him slowly pacing the room, on hand on his hip, the other raking his short-cropped hair repeatedly.  His gaze brushes over the walls and furnishings, the painting and the window, over anything but me.  I feel a knot tighten in my stomach again and it has nothing to do with my ulcer.  I recognize a man who wants to make his exit and doesn’t know how.

I know you have to leave, Peter, I say.  It’s okay.  I have to swallow so hard on the okay, I’m not fooling anyone.  Peter stops in his tracks, and if I have ever seen a flight-or-fight debate play out in someone’s face, it is in Peter’s in this very moment. 

He doesn’t flee.  There is hesitation in his steps when he approaches me.  I don’t like this.  I don’t like seeing Peter insecure.  It unnerves me.  He bypasses the chair and sits down on my bed.  I flinch.  I don’t intend to, but his weight on my covers makes me feel pinned and I can’t have that right now.

Peter doesn’t notice, too preoccupied with getting his thoughts in order and his tongue untied for whatever speech he is still frantically drafting in his head.  His eyes dart over my face, over the gauze taped to my forehead and over my unkempt beard.  Then he finally locks eyes with me.

I’ve made a mistake, he says.

My thoughts are reeling.  I open my mouth to say something without really knowing what.  Peter raises a hand.

Let met talk, Neal, he pleads.  He waits for my small nod.

I made a mistake, he starts over and stops again to consider his own words.  He frowns and minutely shakes his head.  No.  Not a mistake.  That sounds trivial, like an oversight.

He rambles.  I’m worried, because Peter Burke never rambles.

I was mad at you, Neal.  Really.  Fucking.  Mad.  And disappointed.  And so unbelievably tired of you and your lies.  I wanted you gone from my life.  For—what did you call it?  For convenience, yes.  I knew there was a real possibility that you’d be …

He falters.  Don’t you dare say it, Peter.

That something bad could happen.  I knew that no distance from me or from the FBI would be material in lessening any threat to you.   I knew that.  I chose not to think about it.  For convenience. 

He looks at me with a tortured self-reproach and I don’t know if his silence is meant to cue a response. 

I’ve often asked myself, Neal, how you—of all people—could be a criminal.  How you could hurt people with your deception, how you could ruin their lives by stealing and lying.  It didn’t make any sense.  Not for you.  You like people.  You thrive in their company, in their affection and admiration.  But I think I get it now, Neal.  You’ve learned to turn it off.  You choose not to care because sometimes that is more convenient.  I get it, Neal.

That doesn’t mean I understand it.  I don’t understand how I could sit across from you two weeks ago and see that you were hurting and emaciated and … haunted.  I saw all that and chose not to care.  I should have cared.  I should have asked you the right questions.

It wouldn’t have mattered, Peter, I quietly offer.  I would have lied to you.

Then I shouldn’t have let you get away with it!  Not this time!  Peter is nearly shouting.  What kind of person does that make me, Neal?  What kind of person turns a blind eye to his friend’s suffering?

You’re here now.  I don’t know what else to say to make Peter stop whatever it is he is doing to himself and me.

Yes, after you were too sick to even stand.  He sounds tired, looks more so.  I spoke to the nurse, Neal.  The one who cared for you in prison.  I asked her what happened, how someone like you could waste away like that.  You know what she told me, Neal?

I don’t want to talk about it, Peter, I tell him.  My eyes flit over to the call button dangling from the nightstand by its chord.  Peter moves it out of reach without even looking at it.

She told me that months of isolation and fear can do that to any man.

She had no right.  My throat is so tight, I can hardly speak.

She wouldn’t tell me anything specific, he continues.  Did you think that would stop me?

You had no right, Peter.  I choke.

I’ve never been more desperate to get away from a conversation.  I look at the door, consider my chances to make it there without falling flat on my face.  Those chances aren’t good, but I feel my entire body tense, every muscle overstrung, ready to jump at the first opportunity.  Peter briefly glances down, finally noticing that his weight is trapping me under the covers.  He doesn’t move.

You’re right, I didn’t. Peter speaks softly.  But I had to.  I had to know what I put you through.  The last 24 hours were quite possibly the worst of my life, Neal, but I know nothing of what I saw in those files and what I made people tell me comes close to the reality of what you had to suffer.  And I wish I could make it all undone.  I wish I could go back to that garage six months ago and stop myself from making that mistake.  I want to go back and stop that marshal’s car and drag you out of it and yell at you like you’ve never been yelled at and vent all those frustrations I had with you and do anything but send you away.

Peter’s lips are quivering.  He takes a deep breath, straightens his shoulders.

And that’s why I’m here now, Neal.  I can’t send you back there. No matter what.  I want to give you a choice and you can take as long as you need to make it.  Hours, days … whatever.  It’s all good. 

What choice?  I’m pretty sure I say that out loud.

There’s a guard outside that door.  I can make him go away, whenever, for however long you’re going to need.  My car is in the hospital garage.  I can leave the keys on your nightstand and go get some coffee.  I have two hundred dollars in my wallet.  I can get more.  I can get what you need for those first few days before Mozzie catches up with you and the two of you disappear.  For good.

You’ll lose your job, I say and Peter smiles almost wistfully.

Not your problem, Caffrey.

What’s option two?

You come home. 

That’s all he says.  No conditions, no long list of contingencies.  No indication of what that vision of home looks like in Peter’s mind, whether it comes with an anklet, with a job at the FBI offices, with his friendship. 

Think about it, Peter says and gets to his feet.  He self-consciously wipes his palms on his shirtfront, points a thumb at the door and looks like a person who is in dire need of some air.   Or a drink.   I’m going to step outside for a few minutes.  Grab some coffee, see what they want you to eat for lunch.

My eyes track his steps to the door.  I watch him open it, his hand hesitating on the doorknob. 

I want to come home, I hear myself say before he is fully out the door. 

Peter freezes and looks at me, glad and relieved, I think.

I want to go now, I add.  I know I’m pushing it.

Peter stalls for a moment, chews on his lower lip.  He glances at the window, perhaps to guess how much daylight remains.  Then he looks at me, gauging my ability to travel 10 feet across this room, let alone to travel 1000 miles across the country.  I assume the mumbling that follows sends a Hail Mary to any higher power Peter Burke is still capable of believing in.

We’re leaving in an hour.  With a determined nod and, his phone already in hand, he is out the door.

I can’t move for ten minutes.  I can barely breathe.  I’m waiting for something, for the walls to close in, for me to wake up and find myself on the cot of my small cell or bleeding on the floor of the visitation room with a guard standing over me and with Peter gone.  I rap my knuckles on the cast around my wrist then touch my fingers to the bandage on my forehead.  I suck in a sharp breath.  It hurts.  This is good.  It hurts and I’m still here in this bed and Peter will be back soon to take me home. 

I could swear the distance to the bathroom looked a lot shorter when viewed from the bed than from the dizzying height atop a pair of shaky legs.  I’ve never been happier to find a washroom tricked out with safety rails in every conceivable location.  To pee standing up with one usable hand and piss-poor balance is out of the question.  My masculine pride will have to wait to be fully restored another day, but shedding the flimsy hospital gown is a giant leap in the right direction. 

I turn on the shower and step under the warm spray. For a long time I simply stand with my eyes closed and my good hand wrapped tightly around the support bar.  I feel the stream of water pelt my skin, drop by drop massaging life back into atrophied muscle.  My hand lets go of the support long enough to rub shampoo onto my head.  I rinse the greasy, sweaty buildup out of my hair then wash my face and body as best as I can without bending over and risk losing my balance. 

When I’ve turned off the water and covered myself with a towel wrapped around my waist, I feel good enough to face the mirror.  I wipe the condensation off the glass with my hand.  The dripping man staring back at me from above the sink is hollow-eyed and gaunt and has a soggy patch of gauze taped to his forehead.  I carefully peel back the tape and flick the bandage into the trashcan.  I lean closer to the mirror and press a fingertip to the tidy surgical knots that secure the stitches.  There’re six of them.  I’m going to have to wear bangs for a few weeks.  I touch my cheekbones and the lines in the grayish skin around my eyes.  Bangs and sunglasses, for sure.  Or a large paper bag with holes cut in it.  I take a deep breath.  I may hardly recognize the stranger in the mirror, but it is probably a good idea to shave him anyway. 

I locate the shaving kit laid out among the toiletries on the small wall-mounted shelf.  My good hand struggles with the plastic wrapper around the disposable razor.  I tear it open with my teeth.  The jerky movement makes my head swim for a second.  I lean my hips against the sink, rest my cast on the edge of it to steady myself as best as I can.  I use my left hand to splash water onto my face and slather shaving cream onto my beard.  The white, frothy mess instantly improves my looks.  The razor doesn’t feel natural in my left hand.  I’m going to have to work on that if I ever want to go undercover as a lefty.

Peter’s reflection appears in the mirror when I’m halfway finished with my left cheek.  I see him standing in the room, a few steps away from the bathroom, with an armful of clothes, looking at me through the open door.  Looking at my bare back and shoulders, to be more accurate.  I let him stare, let him get the repulsion, the pity—whatever it is he is feeling in this very moment—out of his system.  He has a right to see what he’s taking home.  He has a right to change his mind if this is too much to handle. 

He snaps out of it when I nick my skin.  He tosses the clothes on the bed and is at my back in a flash.

You should have waited, he grumbles and rolls up the sleeves of the fresh shirt he has changed into.  He grabs a washcloth, takes me by the shoulders and turns me around to face him.  The way his body crowds me against the sink makes me uncomfortable, but I swallow the reflexive impulse to push him away.  Peter tips my chin up, dabs at the pink foam around the small cut on my jaw.  Then he tears a small piece of tissue from the toilet paper dispenser and sticks it to the nick.  He twists the razor out of my hand, reaches around me to rinse it and the way his shirtsleeves skim over my bare skin makes me dizzy with an unchecked bout of panic.

Hold still, Peter asks and grips my chin again to hold it in place while he continues to shave my face with short, careful strokes of the blade.  He reaches around me and rinses ever so often and after some time the physical intimacy doesn’t frighten me much anymore.  I relax back against the sink and watch Peter’s concentrated face, as he silently and meticulously goes about his task, tilting and turning my head as he needs it.  He never makes eye contact, never lets me get a glimpse of what might be going on inside his head.  But once in a while his focus strays and his eyes flit down to my carved out collarbones or to the mark on my chest that the Lackey’s greedy fingers have left and that is still healing after more than a month.  His eyes never linger and Peter continues his work stoically until his treacherous gaze escapes his control again.  Finally, he takes a half-step back, turns my face sideways by a few degrees then in the opposite direction and applies the blade one last time to clear a patch of stubble from my chin.  He takes a towel to wipe the traces of shaving cream from my face. 

And then I see it.  The single tear that suddenly rolls down Peter’s cheek. 

I’ve never seen Peter cry.  I’ve never even pictured what that would look like.  It was something outside the realm of possibility.  Now I am standing here, paralyzed, gaping at him in wonderment and horror like I’m witnessing a unicorn being clubbed to death.  Peter clears his throat, swiftly passes the back of his hand over his cheek.  Without looking at me he tosses the towel aside, turns to walk away.

Peter?!  That’s as far as I’ve gotten in coming up with something valuable to say.

He stops, turned half away from me.

Did you ever blame me?  He asks quietly, his voice raw and near the point of breaking.  When it happened?  Did you blame me?

I shrug or shake my head.  I don’t quite know.  Either way, Peter can’t see from his position.

I didn’t think about anything, really.  When it happened.  I gave the same answer to the rookie shrink a few weeks ago to a question I can’t recall anymore.  Much like the psychiatrist, Peter looks greatly unsatisfied by it.  I step around him, make Peter face me head-on.  I’ve always been more convincing when people have to look at me.  I’m not sure that my current condition and the soaked towel around my waist work in my favor.

Um, I say.  It’s a terrible start, but it gets Peter’s attention.  He raises his gaze to look at me.  There is more moisture brimming in the corners of his eyes and that just about kills me.  Peter, I’ve thought a lot about you in the last few months and sometimes in anger and a lot of times in despair.  I don’t want to … I can’t really talk about much of it yet, but I can tell you that blame never entered the equation.

My throat hurts from speaking and I’m beginning to feel light-headed from spending too much time on my feet or from the overwhelming desire to disappear into thin air, but Peter blinks at me expectantly.

I don’t know what else I can say, Peter, my thin voice continues, about three steps ahead of my whirling mind.  I’m trying to move forward.  As far as I’m concerned you’re not the guy who sent me away.  You’re the guy who slept on a shitty couch last night and who wasn’t completely weirded out that a grown man can be too fucked up to sleep without someone holding his hand.  Peter, I’ve been afraid almost every day for the past six months.  Scared to the point of losing my mind.  And I… I still am.  But when you showed up an asked me to come home, I suddenly felt I knew who I am again, and where I want to be.  Without a doubt.  I don’t know what’s waiting for me back in New York, but I know that it will be okay.  We will fall into place.  We always do.  Somehow. 

Peter releases a long breath, lets his chin drop to his chest.  Taking a small stop forward that very instant feels like the right thing to do.  A jolt runs through him when his head comes to rest on my shoulder.  I cup my good hand around the back of his neck, pull him in as close as I can stand it without having my hammering heart break through my chest.  Peter buries his face in the crook of my neck and I can’t tell if he is sobbing quietly or breathing heavily.  I dare not to move, even though the added weight is making my legs wobble precariously. 

At last, when I am near the point of having to let go in order to stay on my feet, I feel Peter shift against me.  His arms wrap around my back and he pulls me in with enough force to rob me of my breath.  In a good way. 

Somehow, huh?  He hooks his chin over my shoulder.

Hmm.  I need to come up for air soon.

Peter loosens his vice-like embrace, passes a hand up and down my back as I suck in a lungful of air.

Damn it, Caffrey, you’re a rail!  He steps back gives my bony shoulders a last squeeze and my body a sweeping glance up and down. 

Yeah, I’m going to have to have my suits altered. I shrug and rub a patch of skin on my stomach that still feels warm from his contact.  I’m guessing the Bureau doesn’t keep a good tailor on retainer.

Peter’s patented crooked smile looks odd when combined with a pair of red and tear-stained eyes.  It is still the best thing I’ve seen all day.

I don’t think that’s going to be the solution to your problem, not if Elizabeth has anything to say about it.  He tosses me the clothes he has brought.  I’ll have your stuff shipped from the prison.  For now that’s all I could find in the gift shop.  Hope you’re a fan of the … he thinks for a moment and shakes his head in confusion.  The local sports team.

I’ll be able to see her? Elizabeth?  I ask hesitantly.  Peter busies himself with his briefcase as I tear the underwear package open with my teeth and yank the briefs up my legs as swiftly as I can. 

Yeah, sure.  He nods.  As soon as I think she’s ready for this.  He glances up from his case as I step into the plaid flannel pajama bottoms.  I spoke to your doctor and I think we should check you into a hospital when we get to the city.  Just for a few days.

Okay.  I’m quick to agree.  I have fifteen hours in the car with Peter.  I’ve changed his mind in a lot less time.  From across the room Peter eyes me with overt suspicion when my head pops out of the neck hole of the cotton sweatshirt. 

Sit down, Neal.  He points at the bed.

I drop onto the mattress with an affected sigh, steeling myself for a lecture.  But Peter only picks up the shoebox he has brought, gets down to his knees in front of me and silently wiggles a pair of socks then the brand-new sneakers over my feet.  He takes his time lacing them, tightening them just right, the way he tightens handcuffs and tracking anklets.

What are my chances of taking you out of here in a wheelchair?  He looks up at me from his kneeling position. 

I don’t have to say it.  He climbs to his feet, pulling my arm over his shoulder in the process.  Curious eyes follow us through the hallways and into the elevator.  Peter looks straight ahead, not paying them any attention.  He doesn’t look at me either, but I can tell he is tuned into me by the way he slows down whenever I need it, tightens his grip whenever I slip.  We cross the nearly empty parking garage that looks so much like the one we found ourselves in six months ago, yet feels so different.  The familiar two-note chirp of Peter’s car unlocking sounds up ahead.  He walks me around to the passenger side, helps me into the seat, buckles me in.  His unnecessary and excessive attentiveness is slightly discomfiting, strangely pleasant and greatly amusing.  He digs around on the back seat, reappears by my side with a blanket and a pillow he has undoubtedly stolen from the hospital.  I make a mental note to hold it against him in the future.  I noisily clear my throat to put an end to his nervous fussing when he starts tucking the blanket around me.

You’re good?  Peter glances up.

I’m good.

Peter climbs behind the wheel, starts the engine, tunes the car radio to a sports station.  Then he shifts into gear and slowly rolls the first few yards of our fifteen-hour journey home.

I’m soundly asleep for every minute of it.

The End.