Archive of Our Own ^beta

As always, Martha and Kitty betaed. As always, they were both patient and kind. Thank you. Thank you also to everyone who sent information on homebuilding. As you will see, I haven't had a chance to use it all yet, but I will, and I am very grateful for your kind advice.

If you disliked the others in this series, you're really going to hate this one.

This story is a sequel to: The Greater Public Good

Have you ever been missing? Have you ever been gone?

One more unknowing volunteer, disappearing one morning

When you thought you were on the way home.

Missing--Tom McCormack

April 17, 2008

Jim's new county car is a SUV with four-wheel drive and the new M-23 suspension. The last county car? In January, he did about a thousand dollars of damage to the undercarriage of the sedan while driving up a ravine in search of three murder suspects. He'd wanted a better car for a while, but didn't feel it was fair to commandeer one of the newer ones for himself when the last sheriff got along fine in a boxy Chrysler. The fact is, though, that even fifty miles from nowhere, Jim needs a pretty durable vehicle.

The SUV is parked on the side of the little dirt road. Jim drives it off duty; it maintains his presence in the community. After all, he never really is off duty. I pull over behind him. I'm driving my little red truck, even though I am still in uniform. I just got off shift and didn't want to waste time going home to change. It's bulldozer day.

A few yards up the hill, on the other side of the road, Jim and another man are standing with their backs to me. Below them I can hear the grind of big engines. Perhaps I haven't missed everything. I throw Jim a smile as I come up beside him and peer eagerly over the side of the hill. The slope down to the wide bench that will hold our house has been smoothed and stabilized into a passable driveway. The bulldozer is almost finished; it is nipping a tiny protrusion out of the hillside, so there will be more room to work. It makes a dark scar in the earth, but I contain my dislike; my sensitivities don't make it less necessary. "Wow," I whisper. It's cold, and I zip up my jacket.

"Finally," Jim says. We'd hoped to be doing this earlier in the month, but it's been a wet year, and until this week the ground was too soft.

"Hi, Blair."

I tear my eyes away from the house site and finally register the man standing beside Jim. "Whoa. Stephen. Hey. What are you doing here?"

"Well, to make a short story long, we moved into a new building on Monday. Brand new. Half the elevators aren't finished yet. Yesterday, we shorted out the entire electrical system. I can't even turn on the lights, let alone my computer, so I thought I'd take the day off and come see what you guys were up to."

I glance at Jim. He shrugs slightly; if something is up, he doesn't know what it is. So I smile and hold out my hand. "Well, you're always welcome, you know that. How's the family?"

He brings me up to date on Lauren and Amanda while we watch the bulldozer slowly inch back up the hill. Lauren got promoted. Amanda graduates high school in June. We're invited to the ceremony if we aren't too overwhelmed by the house. Bill is buying her a car as her graduation present, a prospect that has Stephen nearly biting his fingernails. I make the appropriate, sympathetic noises and remind him that Amanda is a bright kid.

The bulldozer makes it to the top of the hill, and Jim goes over to hand the driver his check. They talk amiably about dirt. While Jim's busy, Stephen says softly, "He looks good."

I wonder if he thinks he's being subtle. Because Jim can hear us just fine. We might as well have had this conversation while he was still here to contribute. I'm not sure whether I should laugh or snarl. Well, no, I shouldn't do either one. Sighing, I pat his arm. "He's ok. This house business practically has him walking on air. Did he show you the plans?"

He laughs. "For almost an hour. But it's going to be a wonderful house. I can see I'm going to have to visit a lot."

"And there'll even be plumbing that works for you."

"Oh. Speaking of which, how much is it going to be to get you on water and power?"

"You don't want to know what running the electric is going to cost," Jim says, coming back. "For water, we're putting in a well. Sometime next month, depending on the scheduling."

"Isn't that kind of risky? You hear all the time about people who dig and dig and wind up with nothing."

"It's covered."

"But you can't be sure--"

Jim catches my eye, smiling slightly, waiting for the answer to percolate through Stephen's brain.

"Oh. Right. How do you know?"

"I can hear it. Underground." That is the heavily edited version. The long version, detailed in my notes, talks about Jim lying for half an hour on the damp fir needles, using his body as a sounding board for the vibrations of the ground beneath him. I watched from a rock more than thirty feet away, trying not to move too much.

"Oh. Sure."

There is a short, awkward silence--which is strange, because normally Stephen is cool about the whole sentinel thing--and then Jim suggests we head home. Jim and his brother take the macho SUV that says "Dorset County Sheriff's Department" on it and I follow in my truck. Irked, I admit, because I have been missing Jim, we didn't get a proper reunion, aren't even currently in the same car, and will have company this evening. Rats.

We have started working off schedules. For the next several months, we'll only have one day off together each week, and that will almost never be on the weekend. This maximizes the amount of time one of us can be at the house site accepting deliveries, helping with assembly, and supervising the people hooking up our utilities. Not that we're paranoid or over-protective or anything. But this is our home we're talking about.

But--oh, God! I miss him already. There will be almost no time together alone, and even a lot less time together period. It's like there is this hole next to me, an empty spot that ought to be occupied by warmth and strength and joy and instead has nothing in it. For the foreseeable future, I'm going to have that hole often. Or it's going to be filled by Eddy, or Loraine, or Elliot and the canine unit....

On top of that, I'm scared. Jim, at the house site one or two days a week, without me. The deck is going to be made out of pressure treated lumber. There will be sawdust--which even when pure is dangerous stuff. The insulation for the roof is a man-made chemical mess, and while it should be inert once it's in place, first they have to install it. Caulking, putty, grout for the tile in the bathroom, solder, concrete--not a lot, but some, and that stuff is corrosive, interior wax finish, exterior stain finish....

My hands are sweating. I wipe them on my jeans. He will be fine. He has promised to walk away if it looks like there will be a problem. He is happy with his job, excited about his house, totally in love with his partner. His emotional state has more bearing on his physical health than almost anything else. If his head is in the right place, he can handle almost anything. He will be able to handle this.

I manage to be a smiling, charming host when I climb out of the truck and follow Jim and Stephen into the house. Jim has thawed buffalo steaks for dinner; it hasn't quite clicked that I will let him eat as much of that as he wants, so he takes every 'occasion' that comes up as an excuse for red meat. I change and come out in jeans to set the table and get everyone drinks, telling Jim how things went at work. The entire 4th grade of Ithaca Elementary came in on a field trip. They saw the holding cell, the police cars, and the bullhorn. Loraine gave them a talk on the dangers of drugs, and then they got their picture taken with Doris before trooping across the street to see the courthouse and get punch and cookies from the county commissioners.

Jim laughs. "You know all they'll remember is the dog."

"Speaking of which, the NWGA is holding national police dog trials in August in Spokane this year. Elliot is already talking about it."

"Well, I can't consider it till he puts together a budget."

It is still really too cold out to grill, which doesn't stop Jim, but does force him to use the gas grill, which heats up faster. Stephen makes a salad and I turn left-over noodles into an impromptu pasta salad. When Jim brings the steaks in, Stephen repeats the invitation to come up for Amanda's graduation. We haven't been to Cascade since before Christmas, and as much as I love Ithaca, as much of a relief as it's been having Jim here, safe and well and rested....I do miss the food. I can only fake it so far on my own. My Italian food is great. So is my Mexican. I can make a very good curry and a passable chicken tika, but naan is impossible, and Ethiopian and Vietnamese food is totally out of my league. As for sushi....Raw fish just shouldn't happen this far inland. Not in the hands of amateurs. Sorry, but no. As hard as I try, I can't quite forget the restaurants in Cascade, and spending a few days in the city sounds very tempting.

I am sharply brought back to the present conversation by Jim saying firmly, "Stephen, unless you're planning to spend the night, you're going to have to actually talk about whatever it is that's bothering you. Even if you want to spend the night--and you're welcome to, you know that--why don't you just get it out in the open instead of repeating things you've now said to both of us?"

Stephen puts down his fork, looks at me, at Jim, at me again, and says, "Right. Ok. Right. Here's the thing. Next month, Holy Trinity High School is sponsoring a retreat for the senior girls at St. Agnes's Convent. It's three days. She wants to go...all her friends are going. But I'm not sure it's a good idea."

I wait for the rest of it, but this, apparently, is the entire issue that caused Stephen to drive out here on a weekday. After a moment, Jim says carefully, "So you're...having second thoughts about a religious education? I mean, it's worked out ok for the last twelve years, right? What's the problem?"

I smile, teasing. "Even if she were a rowdy teenager, what kind of trouble can she get into in a convent?"

Stephen looks at us as though he is amazed at our stupidity. "She'll be meditating. And praying. Quietly. For three days."

He looks tense. Very, very tense. I am resisting the urge to say, "Oooh. Yeah. Other parents just have to worry about illegal drugs and sex!" (almost unsuccessfully) when I grasp the problem. Oh. "You're wondering if it counts as traumatic isolation, and if it does, would three days be enough to bring her on line?"

I glance at Jim. He is nodding, but his face has shut down. Ok, I guess it's up to me.

"First of all, she's not going to be alone, right? They'll be eating together, maybe be attending a class or workshop or something? And her friends will be there. And it is only three days."

Stephen takes a deep breath. "So you think it's not a problem?"

"Well, Stephen, if all it takes is a high school religious retreat...she can't spend her life avoiding quiet contemplation. That just won't work."

"This isn't a minor issue, Blair."

"I know that. Believe me." I glance at Jim. "But it's not the end of the world, either. If Amanda's a latent sentinel...it can be...coped with."

Jim says, very softly, "It isn't a defect."

Stephen's hands are shaking. "How many times have you been hospitalized? How many dangerous things have you done because you had information other people didn't have? How much time have you spent..." He stops and closes his eyes. "She's just a little girl. Can you understand that?"

"This really isn't something you can have one hundred percent control over," I say gently. "Stephen, it...Look. I admit there are things I would do differently with Jim, if I had it to do over. We know a lot now that we didn't thirteen years ago. Amanda is in a much better position than Jim was. She's been taking yoga and Tai Chi since she was nine. She has people looking out for her. She's going to be fine."

"What does she say about it?" Jim asks.

"We haven't discussed it with her."

Jim gets very still. Despite the fact that my partner is radiating hostility and disappointment, I am trying to keep this discussion from escalating. "Why not?"

"She's too young to understand how important this secret is, how dangerous it would be for Jim if it became common knowledge...She's just a kid."

Jim is still silent.

"She's a bright kid, Stephen. She isn't careless with other people. She needs to know, if only for her own protection--"

"Protection?" Jim hisses.

I put a hand on his arm. I feel like I'm touching a porcupine, he's that prickly. "Protection," I repeat, looking into his eyes. "You remember what it was like, coming on-line with no warning and no idea what was happening to you. If she's carrying the genes, there is always the possibility that she could become active. She would need training, people who would understand." I keep my voice low and reasonable, carefully not using the words "help" or "scared" or "crazy." "If she didn't know what was going on, she wouldn't know what to do."

Under my hand, Jim's arm relaxes slightly. I turn to Stephen and continue in the same tone. "This isn't a dirty little secret, and treating it like one isn't going to help anyone. She may already have figured out that something is up. She was old enough when I... nearly ruined everything that she may remember quite a bit." Jim turns his arm over and takes my hand. With his family visiting, this is, for Jim, a huge PDA. I squeeze his hand back and don't comment.

"The bottom line is you can't keep it from happening," Stephen says.

"No, we can't. Even if that was what she wanted, I don't know how."

We don't talk much after that. Stephen finishes his dinner, but slowly, as though he were just being polite. Jim manages to eat about half of his, and I suspect that is to keep me off his case. I eat everything and take seconds on the pasta salad; I'm trying to say nonverbally that despite the Ellison tendency to freak out over the "S" word, nothing tragic has happened here tonight.

When dinner is over, Stephen gets his coat. The building may be sorted out by tomorrow and he has to be ready to go back to work. But he invites us up for the graduation again and gives Jim a hug. Jim hugs him back, much to my relief. The silence when his car has pulled away is only glum and not oppressive.

Jim starts clearing the table. I leave him alone in the kitchen and sit on the couch in the living room to watch the news. I have mellowed enough not to fuss and pounce every time something goes wrong. Let him calm down.

The news is depressing. Gang activity in Cascade is up. The president wants to cut EPA funding. People are demonstrating in China again. I feel guiltily safe here in central Washington. I wish I could turn off the TV and make it all go away....Lord, I must be getting old.

Jim comes out with two cups of tea, handing me one as he sits down. "You ok?" I ask.

"Yeah, fine."

"Jim, you know, Stephen--"

"Blair, I really don't need you taking his side right now."

"I'm not taking his side. There is no side. Stephen is not fighting with you."

That earns me an impatient look.

"Stephen has really vivid memories of your senses being hellish when you were kids. You know what he's told me."

"And I've told you he remembers it wrong."

"Yes, and for what it's worth, I agree; Stephen was very young and he didn't have the whole picture. However, the truth is totally irrelevant here. What he remembers is pain management problems. He loves you, he's worried about you and your job for years, and he's scared for his kid. Nowhere in all of that is any part of you devalued or rejected."

Jim won't look at me.

"How many times have I heard you say you were glad you didn't have kids because, and I'm quoting here, 'I wouldn't wish these senses on a dog.' Stephen isn't --''

"Not for years."

"Granted." Not for years, and usually only during a blinding headache even then. "But Stephen doesn't have the benefit of the perspective you have on them now, does he? You and your brother have a lot in common, it's not surprising that you would share similar...concerns about this issue." I pause again, but Jim makes no move to respond so I continue, keeping my voice heavy and slow: "As much as I strongly disagree with that attitude, it's not exactly fair for you to come down on Stephen for concerns you've had yourself."

Jim is looking at me like I might have pulled a fast one. I wait. Jim thinks.

"I'll call him tomorrow."

I set down my tea cup and lay my head in his lap. Jim has a nice lap, although if he would let his thighs get a bit out of shape, it would be softer. I chuckle and pretend to fluff him like a pillow.

Laughing, Jim holds the tea at arm's length. "Sandburg, if I spill this you're going to be really sorry."

I tickle him. Gently, one finger up the side of his neck. The tea makes it to the coffee table before Jim rolls me off, pins me to the floor, and starts to tickle me in revenge. I am pinned between the couch and a table leg, and there is no place to escape to, even though I am less bulky than Jim and a bit more agile. He is heavy and strong, and one of my hands is trapped. His free hand is already under my shirt, looking for the sensitive skin of my stomach. I squirm, laughing, unable to hold still. His head turns slightly and I lean sideways to plunge my tongue into his ear. Since I have been laughing with my mouth open, my tongue is cool and slimy. Jim shivers and chokes, his concentration disrupted. Pushing off the front of the couch, I slide under the coffee table and scramble away.

I snatch a look back, wondering if this is going to degenerate into a game of hide and seek or a wrestling match (both of which place me at a profound disadvantage) but Jim hasn't moved. He is watching me, unblinking, scouring me with hungry eyes.

He used to look at women like this. I spent years with my deepest, saddest, most secret longing being that he would look at me like that. I still can't believe, sometimes, that this look could possibly be for me. This marvelous, strong, exciting man loves me. He's happy to be with me. He wants--

While I am thinking, Jim is getting up, still looking at me but with more tenderness now. I swallow. I reach up, and he catches me, pulling me up beside him with strong arms. Those arms slide around me as he closes slowly for a kiss, pausing to nuzzle my hair, my cheek. When his mouth finally descends on mine, it's hard to stop smiling enough to kiss him back.

**

Friday I am off duty and Jim is working. I'm fine with that. Really. It isn't like we're never separated. Sure, we're almost always on the same shift and usually in the same car, but not always. Jim has meetings I don't have to attend. He has more paperwork, I serve more evictions. We aren't conjoined twins.

We have breakfast together, and then Jim, in his uniform, heads for Ithaca and I, in old jeans and three layers of torn flannel, head out to the house site. It's the first time anyone has used the new driveway, and I creep the truck down it, trying to convince myself that it isn't unusually narrow. Because it's not. It is a wide cut in grayish clay, still imprinted with the track-marks of the bulldozer. The drop-off in the downhill side isn't even very steep.

The bench at the bottom has been partially bulldozed, but there is quite a lot of old brush and some trees that need to come out. The man from the power company is coming out today to take measurements and make an estimate. Or whatever. Another guy's coming to see about sites for the septic tank. It's like Grand Central Station here in the middle of nowhere, and the building permit hasn't even been approved yet.

While I wait for them, I start clearing out the low brush and fallen logs. I have a chain saw, an axe, two sets of cutters, and a wheelbarrow. By noon, I am exhausted and filthy and only about a forth done--and no one has shown up. When Jim arrives with lunch he finds me cursing and kicking disgustedly at a fallen tree that has sunk into the ground and will not move despite the fact that I have managed to assemble a very clever make-shift lever.

Bless his heart, he doesn't laugh. He gives me a baby-wipe to clean my hands, then passes over a cardboard container from Ralph's, a seed-n-feed in Bickford that has recently branched out into hot, home-made food. Turkey corn chowder, chicken fried steak, corn bread, and extra mustard greens.

"Sorry about the meat," Jim says. "It's what they had today."

"S'ok," I answer. Ralph's has a very limited menu, but it's homemade, not swimming in grease, and, in its way, kind of exotic. I grew up on tofu dogs, bean sprouts, and whole-grain bread, that sort of thing. I wouldn't make a steady diet of 'down home cookin' but it isn't bad if you're adventurous and hungry.

I start shoveling in the food at once, but Jim sets his container aside and produces the accordion folder in which he keeps The House--or at least all the paperwork, lists, phone numbers, budget information, and schedule for the house. He holds the folder up like a ten pound salmon he has just caught. "Guess what's in here."

"Paper," I say around a mouth full of corn bread.

"We got the last permits!"

"Really? So we're good to go?"

"Yup. This is it."

Wow. I had thought it would be next week at the earliest. It's kind of scary to be starting at last, but it's also exciting and kind of a relief, too. Although Jim sets the folder aside, picks up his lunch, and starts telling me how things are down at HQ, I keep thinking about the house, going over the steps in my mind. I'm anxious to be finished and worried about starting.

I am still only half-present when Jim starts collecting our trash and getting ready to go. "Hey! How did I miss those yesterday?"

I look around, wondering what I missed, wishing I had been paying more attention. "Miss what?"

"Those," Jim says, pointing unhelpfully. He heads off down the hill, taking the bag the food came in and digging the pocket knife I gave him for his birthday last year out of his pocket. I trail after him, as always envying Jim his perfect footing.

Jim stops just below and to the east of the house bench, squatting beside a tiny rivulet still running from the heavy spring rains. With his knife, Jim cuts something mud-colored out of the ground next to the water and pops it into the bag.

"Uh. Jim. Are you ready to solo?"

"You were the one who said I would be a natural. You were the one who talked Miss Lillian into spending our last two days off together leading us through the woods. It's a little late to get squeamish."

"I'm not squeamish." But what Jim is harvesting doesn't look like mushrooms. It looks like vertical, grey dog poop.

Still harvesting, Jim sniffs and laughs. He can probably smell my suspicion and revulsion because he says, "Didn't you pay attention? These are delicacies. If you could buy them in a store, they would go for about seventy bucks a pound." He leaves three or four of the mushrooms in place and stands up, wiping off his knife blade on a clean tissue from his pocket. The plastic bag full of anomalous 'delicacies' dangles from one pinky. "Dinner is going to be fantastic."

**

I spend the rest of the afternoon the way I spent the morning: fighting with sharp, grey branches and cutting up small fallen trees. Naturally, both utility guys show up at the same time and they both want to stop and chat. The electric guy will get back to us with an estimate. The septic tank guy is good to go and will be here with his truck, his tank, and his digging equipment on Thursday.

By six-thirty the sun has dipped down behind the big mountains to the west and I am exhausted, although the job only seems to be about half done. I load my tools into the back of the truck and head home, wondering what Jim has in mind for the wild mushrooms.

I go around to the kitchen door; Jim will have a fit if I bring my filthy self through the living room. The kitchen is light, and warm, and Jim is next to the stove checking a roast chicken he has just pulled out of the oven. He smiles over his shoulder as I stand in the doorway pulling off my boots.

"It smells wonderful," I say, stepping forward in my stocking feet.

"Almost done." Jim pushes the roast back in and closes the oven. He has to lean down to kiss me--further than usual, since he has shoes on and I don't. I'm filthy, so I don't lean into him, but one of his hands slides up under my hair and the other--

Gasping, Jim stumbles back away from me, making abortive motions to wipe his hand on his pants. "What is it? What is that?"

"What? Where?"

He reaches for me, flinches back again. "Jesus, Chief, it's all over you!"

"What is?"

"Get out. Go out side and strip. Don't touch anything."

I stumble backwards, too surprised and confused to do anything but obey. I stand on the weathered wooden steps, unbuttoning my clothes without looking. Jim is by the sink, almost out of my field of vision, scrubbing at his hands with the kitchen soap.

"Jim? Can you tell me what it is? Is it some kind of chemical?"

At the sink, Jim pauses for a moment, tipping back his head to think. "A plant, I think," he says, and goes back to washing.

Some kind of allergic reaction, then? I strip to my underwear and dump my clothes at the foot of the steps. Jim is still scrubbing. "Jim?" I am cold. Very cold, standing just outside the door in my underwear. There is a slight breeze that makes me shiver hard. "Jim, how's it going in there?"

"I can't get it off!" Panicky sentinel. He needs my help, but I don't dare go near him.

"Is it sticky?" I was smeared in at least two kinds of evergreen resin. That stuff is pretty strong.

"No, it's...oily."

"There's alcohol swabs in the first aid kit under the sink. Why don't you try that?"

I watch him retrieve the first aid kit, the water in the sink still running, the soap dumped haphazardly in the sink. I feel horribly helpless and far away. Jim rips open a packet and begins to wipe his hands on the alcohol towelette. "Jim? Is that getting it? Can you--"

"Oh, God!" Jim staggers backward into the counter, coughing and gagging.

"Jim? Jim! Put your hands back under the water. Jim!" I reach for the screen door and then remember that I dare not go near him. "Jim..."

He is leaning against the sink, hunched over. I can't see his face. "Jim?"

At his faint, "Yeah?" I nearly cry out in relief.

"You ok?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm ok." He turns around slowly, still hunched, one hand still cradled close to his body. "Let's get you inside. No, wait." He disappears briefly, and when he returns he opens the door, standing well out of my way. "The shower is on. Go straight there. Don't touch anything."

I don't argue. I scamper through the house, drop my underwear into the bathroom trash can (just in case) and jump into the warm shower. My skin is so cold that for a moment the water is almost burning, but then I adjust and it is a torrent of heaven.

"Here," Jim says from just outside the curtain. He is holding out a bottle of the biodegradable detergent we use for laundry and dishes. He turns on the vent and closes the door as he leaves.

I scrub, quickly and thoroughly, first with the detergent, and then with regular soap. Then, because I'm nervous, with the detergent again. I use the detergent to wash out the tub and then rinse everything, including me, again. By that point the water is nearly tepid and I am freezing. Although I have hurried as much as I dared, it has all taken too long. I throw on some sweats and head back to the kitchen with my hair still dripping.

Jim is sitting at the table, his hands curled protectively around each other. I swallow the lump in my throat and go squat down next to him. "Jim? How you doing?"

He nods slowly. "Ok. You clean?"

"Operating rooms should be this clean."

He doesn't manage to smile. "I put your clothes in the trash."

"You shouldn't have--"

"I didn't touch anything."

"Ok. Ok." I put a hand on his shoulder. He's not shaking. He's breathing ok. He's answering questions. This is good. We're ok. Thank you, God. "Here, let me see your hands."

Obligingly, he turns them both over. One of them is a little red, but no reaction welts, no swelling. I pat his arm and go get the low-dose hydrocortisone cream from the still-open first aid kit. Gently, I spread it on both his hands, plant a kiss on his head, and go see about dinner.

There is salad in the fridge, au gratin potatoes in the oven with the chicken, bread warming at the back of the stove. I fix our plates, get out the silverware, pour water. Jim says, "Thank you," when I put his food in front of him, but nothing else.

He eats, though. Slowly, at first, but he does clean his plate. The food is spectacular. The mushrooms are in the wild rice stuffing and in the potatoes. The chicken is, maybe, a little over-done, but excellent, all things considered. "You're a genius," I say, hoping to rouse Jim with flattery.

"So you're satisfied I'm not poisoning us?"

"Well, let's say, if you are, it was worth it." I smile at him and he smiles wanly back. "Jim, do you have any idea what that was?"

"No. Maybe. It was just so strong. There was so much of it, I couldn't think, and then suddenly it was in the air..."

I reach across the table and lay my hand on his arm. "It's ok."

"No. It's not. Chief, if I'm allergic to something at the house site...." He looks me in the eye, at last. He is angry and scared and very dispirited.

"Jim, listen. We'll figure out what it was and I'll get rid of it. It'll be ok."

He nods reluctantly. "Are you ok?"

"Fine," I say. I stand up to clear the table, leaning over to plant a kiss on his temple. I am fine, mostly. A little pumped up on adrenaline, maybe. We have some kind of sentinel-related disaster every six months or so (half as often as we had them in Cascade) and every time it scares the shit out of me. Still. Even after all these years. But I'll be fine once I calm down.

I put away the food, but leave the dishes soaking in the sink. Collecting Jim, I go into the living room. Jim shakes his head, no, he's fine, really. He doesn't need to rest. I ignore that and pull him down beside me, guiding his head into my lap, covering him with a blanket. "Blair, I'm ok."

"I'm tired," I say. "I just want to sit for a minute. Maybe watch a movie." He gives in, of course. For me. I tell myself I'm not manipulating him for his own good, but rather giving him an excuse he will let himself accept.

As it turns out the excuse is also accurate. I fall asleep in the first twenty minutes. Too soon into the movie to tell if it's going to be a mystery or a love story. When it's over, Jim wakes me up and puts us to bed.

I wake to a bright room. Morning. We've slept in. Or I have. Jim is curled around me but awake. I stretch and sigh, pulling him closer. The chances to sleep in together will be rare for a while. This is our last Saturday off together until the house is finished.

"I told you to do exactly the wrong thing last night," I say. "It should have been detergent, not alcohol."

Jim lifts his head slightly and looks at me. "You know, I can't remember the last time you made the wrong call."

"Ha," I say sourly, a picture flashing through my mind.

"What?"

"Like those signs in front of factories: 'X number of days since our last industrial accident.' Well, 'X number of days since Blair screwed up his sentinel.'"

"It wasn't serious. Just a little...intense there for a while. Everything's fine."

"Uh, huh."

"Don't beat yourself up about it. Anyway, the alcohol got it off my hand."

"I'm really sorry."

Jim turns over and sits up. "I know that. Ok? Do you think I think you'd hurt me on purpose?"

"Of course not--" But Jim is already out of bed and reaching for his robe.

"Do you think I somehow failed to notice how terrified--" He stops, closes his eyes, reins in his feelings. After a moment, he sits back down on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees and sighing.

I move closer, but don't touch him. As much as he has mellowed, in the last couple years especially, he still doesn't always deal well with being vulnerable or with being so dependent on me. Even though he's self-aware enough to know exactly what's going on, still, sometimes, his feelings get away from him.

"Blair?"

I do touch him then, coming up on my knees behind him, sliding an arm around his stomach. I want to apologize again--as though if I say 'I'm sorry' enough it will undo everything bad. But that would be for me, not for him, so I don't say anything. I just hold him, telling him silently that I understand, that I'm not angry, that I wouldn't --not for anything in the world--hurt him.

"So," Jim says at last, "how do you want to do today?"

Today we are having a party, a big potluck event with the whole department invited. We would both prefer to do our socializing by getting together a few friends and playing poker. But Jim is the boss now, and there are about 20 deputies under him, in addition to support staff. Rapport and even-handedness are important. So. Everybody gets invited into our home. It kind of reminds me of the annual party the anthro division chair would throw for the faculty and graduate students.

"Clean first, then cooking."

"I suppose you already have the duty roster drawn up?"

"Right." I pat his head. "I clean the kitchen and bathroom, you vacuum and dust everything else and then rake the front yard."

"Rake the front yard? Since when do you think the front yard needs raking?"

Since it keeps my sentinel away from the cleaners I use in the kitchen. "And sweep the front porch." That ought to keep him out of my hair.

He slips out of my arms and goes to the dresser for work clothes. "Jim? You know...we're in the woods all the time. Whatever it was yesterday, it can't be all that common, or all that potent if you're not directly exposed to it. This isn't going to be a huge problem. You'll see."

He gives me a small smile over his shoulder. "Thanks."

**

I am just finishing the kitchen floor when Jim comes in still flushed from raking in the cold. "What are those spots on the floor?"

"Very funny," I say. I have mopped myself into a corner--or at least up against the back door. When finished, I will just go out the back and around, preserving my spotless finish.

"No, seriously. It looks like...drops of hot water melted the floor wax or something."

"Jim. Beloved. This is the floor cleaner you picked out. It "removes old residue." It "cleans and polishes." The floor is fine. Any damage done by old spills is long gone."

"No, seriously. There are spots here and here--"

"No--" the sentence I have just started will end "normal person will notice the damn spots on the floor" which can be taken the wrong way and would be a shitty thing to hear even though it won't scar him for life. So I take a deep breath and say, "No problem. I'll start over."

I pick up the bucket and walk (across my clean, still-damp floor) to the sink and dump it out.

"That's the kitchen sink. You dumped the floor water into the kitchen sink!"

"Jim. I'll clean the sink out later." I rummage under the sink for the floor cleaner I put away not more than twenty minutes ago.

"The kitchen sink. Is this how you always wash the floor?"

"Jim. Why don't you go....clean out the closets or something."

"That's disgusting."

"James. I'm really not kidding. Go away. Now."

He goes. I rewash the floor, reminding myself with each stroke that his tidiness isn't his fault. He spent years in the army. Years. Besides, just because I can't see the dirt doesn't mean it isn't there.

**

We are responsible for drinks and the entree, everyone else is bringing sides and desserts. I put beer and soda in the fridge, and start a batch of iced tea. For the main dish I made lasagna and eggplant parm. I cannot break the habit of a veg option. Actually, we do have one vegetarian; one of the secretaries lived for several years in California. When she came home to look after her parents as they got older, she kept her city habits. Not that Dorset County doesn't have its share of veg-heads and tree huggers. It has plenty. You just don't find them in law enforcement.

Everything is clean and ready when people start arriving at 5:00. Jim went out for ice: we have plenty. Eddy got the paper plates (at our request; we are all getting tired of his chili and this seemed the best way to avoid it without coming out and saying so). As people arrive, food accumulates on the kitchen table: cheese balls, devilled eggs, chips and dip, potato salad, cheese cake, brownies, pie....Loraine, bless her heart, has brought a fruit plate.

The major topic of conversation, of course, is the Wade land scandal. Everyone knew that when old man Hoskins died he was going to leave the land he'd accumulated to a conservation organization, but the most recent will his lawyer produced left the land, some thousand acres, to Hoskins' nephew, Harry Wade. Naturally, the law was on Wade's side, and Wade wanted to sell his land to a logging company. The conservationists had tried to appeal, but of course they had no real case. There is a citizens group trying to get the money together to buy the land from Wade, but it is doubtful they can come up with the money before it's too late.

In the meantime, the whole issue is polarizing the community. The long-time residents, the orchard owners and lumbermen, don't see what the fuss is about and don't approve of public protests and tree hugging. The winegrowers and b&b owners, who have mostly come out in the last 15 years or so fleeing the city, see the issue as a symbol of anti-corruption, enlightenment, and environmentalism. In the last week, the Sheriff's Department has been called in on two bar fights that started out with "Liberal pantywaist!" and "Ignorant hillbilly!" It is getting as bad as a salmon rights argument.

"It's a matter of economics," Eddy is saying. "People want to make the logging go away, but how do you employ all those people?"

"It's shortsighted," Loraine tells him, sounding like she is practicing a campaign speech. "We won't have the logging forever in any case, and if we don't have the trees, we won't have tourism either. Now or later, this isn't sustainable."

I am not tempted to join this conversation. I've had it too many times. It leads nowhere. Instead I head to the living room. Jim is showing off the house plans again. I hope he isn't torturing anyone who has seen them three or four times already.

Although--the house is wonderful. It takes advantage of the hillside, so that the garage is in the "basement," while the front door will actually be up some steps. There are two stories above the basement, with a large, open living area, a huge deck, and three bedrooms. It will be wonderful.

"Blair, what's wrong with your hand?"

I tear my eyes away from the floor plan and blink foolishly at Millie for a moment before looking down at my hand. I am absently scratching my wrist, which, now that I think of it, itches quite a bit. Millie, who is the most motherly person I know for a sixteen year veteran cop, lifts both my hands into the light and turns them over thoughtfully. Just above each wrist is a scattered band of tiny, fragile blisters.

"Hmmm," Millie says. "Poison oak."

"What? But I wore gloves!"

"I'd say your gloves stopped right about here and your sleeve started here." She is smiling sympathetically.

Poison oak. Like a careless child. No. No way. "But. It can't be. Nothing has leaves yet."

"Oh, that doesn't matter. That stuff can stay active for years. The oil can get on clothes, tools, old wood...It just lasts forever."

My gloves are in my truck. Damn. And my tools. I'll have to decontaminate them somehow before Jim goes near them.

Millie is talking again, "Wait here. I have something in the first aid kit in my truck."

While she's gone, I stare in consternation at my rash. Poison oak? But when was the last time I spent any time in the woods without Jim? Poison oak was just another hazard he automatically takes notice of, sometimes gently touching my arm and pointing, but always leading us safely around. I have been spoiled, relying on his gifts.

Millie returns with a small brown bottle and leads me into the bathroom where she applies the thin, sharp smelling liquid with a cotton ball. I feel almost amused. Then it starts to sting.

"Hurts, huh?" she says, still holding my hands. It occurs to me that I don't know Millie very well. She is much closer to Jim than to me. She is a little older than he is, and his second in command. Every couple of weeks he drives out to her place to have a beer and talk about...things. The troops, local politics, work probably, and maybe other stuff too. Something. I don't ask about it; it's good that Jim has friends besides me, a social life beyond this little house.

Turning my hands over again, she sighs and lets go. "You're lucky it isn't everywhere. You seem very allergic."

"No, I think...there was just a lot of it." Luck, I realize, had nothing to do with it; the reason I am not covered with tiny, itchy blisters is that Jim made me strip and scrub as soon as I got home.

"Don't scratch; it'll get infected." She hands me the bottle. "Three times a day."

"Thanks. Thanks a lot!"

She smiles suddenly. "Oh, my help isn't free. I have my price."

"Oh?"

"I want your recipe for eggplant parmesan. I tried to make that once, it was bitter. The kids won't even look at eggplant now."

"Oh. Well. The trick is to salt the eggplant first." We head back to the party, talking about food.

The party stays low-key and pleasant, and by 11:15 the last one is heading out the door. For the most part, people took their left-overs and serving dishes with them, so there isn't so much to clean up. Jim clears away scattered remains that linger in the living room, I wash dishes. By the time I'm done, Jim has vacuumed and taken out the trash. Coming back through the kitchen to set out a clean garbage bag, he pauses and sniffs me. "Chief, you smell like a moldy salad."

"Oh. I think that would be the un-ivy Millie gave me for the poison oak."

"What?" He puts down the garbage bag and comes over to me. "Where?"

I show him my arms. "Jeeze, Blair! How did this happen?"

"I think that was what was all over me yesterday."

"Poison oak? Why would you play around with that?" He is confused and impatient, as though I were a misbehaving child with whom he is disappointed. His response isn't making my rash any less embarrassing.

"Well, it's not like I did it on purpose! I didn't know."

"How could you not--" but he stops, going from impatient to pitying in a dizzy about-face. "You couldn't tell."

"No, I couldn't tell."

He sighs, holding on to my hands. "I'm sorry. I'll go with you next time."

I smile and shake my head. "Like hell you will. I'll be fine if I cover up and ditch the clothes as soon as I'm done. But there is no way you are getting near this stuff. No way."

He frowns, then kisses my forehead. "We'll talk about it later."

"Fine." We can talk about it, but my answer is not going to change.

**

The next day is Sunday, and we are both on duty. Day shift on Sunday is usually pretty quiet. The bars are closed. Everybody is either sleeping or in church until 11:00, and after that, not much is open so most people stay home. Usually, the only action is from bored teen-agers speeding or an occasional lost hiker.

We spend the morning driving around randomly. Or at least it looks random to me. Jim might have a subtle pattern thing going on in the back of his mind. Just as we are heading back into town for lunch, Chief Anders, who runs the little police department over in Bickford, calls. Jim is headed toward Bickford at 80 miles an hour with the lights on even before he hangs up the phone.

"What?" I ask.

"You've heard of John Bird?"

"Sure." Bird was a notorious local troublemaker who was known for repeatedly beating up his wife and terrorizing his neighbors, until, about three years ago, he killed his own brother in a bar fight and disappeared.

"He was just seen in the hospital in town. Visiting his mother, who just broke her hip."

"You're kidding, right?"

"Nope. Apparently he's a devoted son. A real peach. Naturally, nobody in Bickford is on duty, and Anders asked for some backup."

We go through town with no siren and no lights, and park in the lot next to the funeral parlor about a block from the hospital. We meet Anders beside the dumpsters near the side employees' entrances. He greets us with an excited nod. "He's still in there, but we don't have much time. He's on the second floor, room 218, right now, but he may move soon. He doesn't have a visible weapon. I told hospital security to stay out of his way. Ellison, you go in through the front, Sandburg, take this side entrance here. I'll go through the emergency room."

"Are we sure we want to take him in the hospital?" Jim says, very politely. I can see he is picturing the disaster that will ensue if Bird is, in fact, carrying a weapon.

"No, I don't want to, but there's just too many ways to run out here, and too many exits he might use. If we can all close in on him at once, we'll have him." And Anders is off.

I glance at Jim. We've taken people in hospitals before, but always with more backup than this. Jim nods, though. Not thrilled, but also not anxious to try to bring in Bird in this parking lot either.

I head toward the employee entrance, Jim follows the sidewalk around to the front.

A security man lets me in the side door and I slip into a narrow staircase. The hospital is small, only forty beds or so. Emergency, clinic, OR, and labs on the first floor, patient care on the second floor, and administration on the third floor. He won't have much room to run, or much of a maze to lose us in, if we fail to take him cleanly in his mother's room.

I climb the stairs at a run, unzipping my jacket in the warmth. I unsnap my gun, but don't draw it yet.

"Aw, damn it!" Jim's voice from my radio makes me jump. "He just came off the elevator and made me coming across the lobby. He's on the main stairs heading for the basement. I'm right behind him."

I am already running back down the stairs. The basement? Well, there's the convenient maze. Tiny single-drawer morgue is down there, I know, and the cafeteria. But I've only been there once. Damn. Damn. If we didn't have Jim we might be in real trouble now.

The heavy fire door at the foot of the stairs opens into a narrow, white hallway. I am wondering which direction to head in when a flat, blatting alarm echoes from the right even as Jim shouts from my radio, "Ow. God! He just went out the cafeteria fire escape!"

"Don't lose him," Anders shouts. I don't bother to answer. Jim knows where I am. I follow the direction of the alarm at a run. It turns out the cafeteria is very close, just a turn of the corridor. Hospital staff and visitors startle as I burst into the room, and then point wordlessly at the still-open, still wailing door. I try to wave at them reassuringly before I charge into the cool, spring day.

The rear of the hospital is lower down than the front, so the fire door opens out onto a narrow grassy lawn overlooking an overgrown ravine. The lawn is still brown from winter, but it's still neat enough not to have taken foot prints. I look right and left, then down. I can't see either Jim or Bird. Some of the skeletal bushes down the steep slope are still moving though, so that has to be where they have gone.

It is a very steep slope. I have to grab at branches and roots to keep from sliding. Shortly, though, the scrub gives way to more widely spaced trees, and there is not even that much to hold to. Stumbling, panting, I try to look for Jim, but there's nothing to see and I can only continue down.

It can't be very long--the ravine just isn't that deep--but it feels like hours and not minutes before I catch a glimpse of the creek at the bottom and a bit of Jim's uniform beside it. With a destination in sight, I hurry even faster, forgetting to pay attention to my feet. I fall, but catch myself before I slide far, and manage to stumble to a halt beside Jim.

He is standing beside the creek, bent forward and gasping. "Jim?" I say softly, trying to bring him back just a little bit.

"Can't...hear him," Jim pants. "Can't find him." Eyes shifting up and down stream, he reaches for my shoulder. I step closer. "Gone. He's gone."

"Give it a second," I whisper. "He can't be too far ahead of you."

There is a crash of branches behind us, and Chief Anders stumbles down on to the narrow creek bank. "Where is he? Which way did he go?"

Jim shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't find his trail."

Anders stares at Jim in surprise. The sheriff has a reputation for tracking, and he just wasn't that far behind Bird. But, examining the bank, Anders has to admit that there aren't any tracks to find. Snarling into his radio, Anders heads back up the slope.

Seven hours later it is clear that we have lost him. It has been clear for a long time. The rest of the Bickford police force has been called in, as well as all the on-duty deputies, half the off-duty deputies, and the state police, but Bird appears to have worked his way back around to the road and stolen a car from the driveway of a house at the outskirts of town. There is an APB out, of course, but Bird had at least two hours' head start, and chances don't look good.

Anders talks to Bird's surviving brother, and Jim tries to get the hospital to let him talk to his mother. No luck, but never mind. What kind of interrogation can Jim run on an eighty year old woman in the hospital anyway? I call Bird's wife and warn her that he's in town. She promises to go stay with friends.

At six, as Jim and I are about to give up and head home, Joey Fanzelli gets a call that his four year old tripped on the dark stairs to the basement and broke her arm. Before Jim can volunteer, I offer to take the rest of Joey's shift for him. As Joey races for his car, Jim frowns at me. I wave him off; he looks exhausted, and if someone is staying, it won't be him. "Go home. Get some rest. Just save me some left-over lasagna." Sighing, he goes.

It is a quiet shift, even though dispatch fields anxious calls all night about Bird. People are seeing him pop out of the woodwork. Not that I blame people for being tense. Looking at the man's police record, I see that he was repeatedly arrested for drunk and disorderly, assault, and creating a public nuisance. The only people in town not convinced he was a serious psycho, apparently, were the judges who kept putting him back on the street with only a small fine.

The state police leave a couple extra cars in town, just in case, but everybody agrees that we missed our chance. Bird is long gone, and we may not see him for another three years.

I get in shortly after midnight, hungry and tired. It's been a while since I had to work a double shift. I must be getting old, because I just don't remember it being this bad.

I get some water and an apple in the kitchen. I should eat more, I know, but I'm tired and I have to stay awake at least long enough to shower. You don't get in bed with a sentinel while you're unwashed. It just doesn't work.

I hurry the shower, and slip into bed with my hair a little damp and toss my towel into a heap on the bedroom floor. Jim stirs and turns over as I slide next to him. "You ok?" I don't think he's come all the way awake to ask me, although I have no doubt that if I were in trouble, he would already know.

"Fine. Quiet night."

He grunts and slides an arm around my waist, and I smile to myself as I wait to join him in sleep.

I wake to darkness, unsure how long I've slept. Jim is restless beside me, turning and turning again. Awake, I decide, not just sleeping badly. Even as I open my mouth to ask him what's wrong he sits up and throws his legs over the side of the bed.

I reach out and touch the warm skin of his back. "Jim? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Go back to sleep." His whisper sounds tight and wrong, and I frown.

"Jim?" I press softly. When he doesn't answer, I sit up slowly and squint at the alarm clock. 3:15. "Hey?"

"I just...don't feel right. I can't sleep."

"Can you be more specific?" I keep my voice low and gentle, although I am wide awake.

"No."

"Ok." I scoot toward the middle of the bed and gather both our pillows behind me. "Come here."

"No. Blair, I know you're trying to help here, but I can't...I'm just not...I think I should get up."

I open my arms. "Jim. Come here." I don't need to raise my voice or threaten or do anything at all but invite him firmly.

He hesitates a moment longer, then turns back into the bed, sliding over to lean against my chest, his cheek resting on my shoulder. "I can't get comfortable," he mutters, almost petulantly. He has only complied because he loves me, not because he thinks it will help.

"Slow your breathing down. Stretch out a little, here." Speaking softly, I settle him more firmly and ease my arms around him. Not tightly, he isn't my prisoner. "Whatever it is, it will be better if you relax. That's right. Just breathe with me." I lift one hand up to stroke his hair. He's let it grow out a little for winter; there is almost an inch to slide through my fingers. It is soft and silky, and Jim's muscles begin to soften as I play with it. "Yeah. That's it. You're ok."

In answer, an arm slips around my waist.

After a few minutes I ask softly, "Jim? Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"I just don't...feel right."

"In your body?"

"Yeah."

I close my eyes. Is he sick? I try to remember Lynn's schedule; I keep a copy in Jim's car and one in my computer. She sends me one every month. She's not working nights this week, I'm pretty sure. Clinic. Days. Which means if I take him to the hospital now I will have to try to explain his sensitivities to a stranger who doesn't know his history and may not listen to me. What is the bigger risk? Damn. Of course, I could call Lynn at home, but I hate to endanger her good will if this is nothing.

Even as I'm weighing the options, Jim's breathing changes and I realize he's fallen asleep. Tomorrow, then. If he feels bad in the morning, I'll call Lynn and beg her to squeeze him into her schedule.

The alarm clock is the kind that starts out softly and slowly beeps louder. Usually, Jim turns it off before it wakes me. This morning, however, he barely stirs, a heavy, too-warm weight in my arms that grunts softly when I kiss him. Gently I shift out from under him and roll to the edge where I can reach the off button. When I turn back, Jim is watching me through slitted eyes. "Magic," he whispers hoarsely.

"What is?" I lay my hand on his forehead. Hot.

"I could barely....and you just turned everything off. How did you do that?"

"You did most of it, I think. The trick is always to relax, you know that."

Jim's sigh turns into a wet cough, and I frown. "Can you tell me anything? When did this start?"

"I don't know. Things were...off all day yesterday, but nothing I could put my finger on." Another thick cough, and my stomach knots. "I know you're afraid I've been exposed to something, but I think I'm just sick, a germ of some kind."

Just sick. Why am I not relieved? But I create a smile for him and say, "Well, you can't go sub-letting your body to germs. I have dibs on it. You'll just have to evict them."

He smiles a little. "You got it. Right away."

I get him some orange juice and hit the shower. He won't be going to work, but I think, if I remember the schedule today, we have plenty of coverage.

As I am rinsing my hair, I hear the door open, but before I can say anything, Jim is squatting beside the toilet, retching. By the time I get out of the shower, he has apologized and gone again. I wrap a towel around myself and go get the phone. I have all of Lynn's telephone numbers memorized.

She can access her patient schedule from her home computer. There is a cancellation at two-thirty, so she won't even have to 'squeeze' him in. Jim doesn't fight me about staying home in the morning, but he adds that if Lynn clears him after she sees him, he'll be in at the end of shift to check on things. Yeah, right. I'm not worried about Lynn telling him he can work; he looks like hell.

I finish dressing, stopping to apply the un-ivy when I notice I'm digging at my wrists. The treatment burns, but the rash doesn't seem as wet or as itchy as I dimly remember poison oak being.

For myself I grab a bagel with vegetable spread and tea. Jim doesn't want anything. I remind him there is ginger ale, if he wants it later. Or tea. And there is bread he picked up on the way home on Friday if he wants toast.

Jim sits up and pats the bed beside him. I sit down, even though I would feel better if I were getting him something. Jim takes my hand in both of his and leans forward so that our foreheads are resting together. "It's fine. Don't worry."

But all I can think is how much I envy his senses. When I'm sick, he knows before I do, by smell. He monitors my medication by smell, too. The chemicals leak out my pores. If our positions were reversed, there would be no guesswork, no confusion, no horrible helpless feeling. I say, "If you think you can hold something down, I'll give you some Tylenol for the fever."

He shakes his head. "I'll just go back to sleep. Don't worry."

"I'll be here at 1:45 to take you in for your appointment."

"'Kay."

I kiss him and fluff the pillows. Then leave, looking back over my shoulder.

The morning is quiet. Sherry, the office manager, brought in homemade cookies. Loraine Alwell is in plain clothes, staking out the hospital, just in case. I send Dave and Eddy out on another lawn statuary theft--our third this month. With the office nearly to myself, I try to get something done on the plan for the disaster drill we have coming up, but two of the county commissioners drop by, wanting updates on the Bird case. Dave and Eddy come back and write up their crime scene report and interview for the lawn ornament crime wave. They pause frequently in their typing to munch cookies and do what I think are South Park imitations for each other. Eddy is twenty-one, and still painfully eager and nervous and innocent. Dave is older and intelligent, but beautiful and charming. They both seem frighteningly young, sitting there singing about underwear.

I am at a desk across the room taking a statement from an elderly man who has come in to complain about his neighbor's loud, all-night parties and barking dog. I am trying to ignore Dave and Eddy, but their laughter keeps drawing my attention. Today they seem very alien. I can't figure them out at all. Perhaps if I had ever taken the time to watch South Park and analyze it as subversive discourse I would understand them better.

At ten-fifteen dispatch announces that Bird's ex-wife has just subdued him in her home (no, apparently she is not staying with friends. Don't you love civilians?), and she would like the police to please come take him away.

I apologize to the elderly gentleman, and promise to call him personally later. He says he understands. I bring Dave and Eddy, but I don't pull Loraine off the stake-out; it might be a hoax, after all. A ploy on Bird's part to get to his mother again. I do ask that any State Police still in the area be diverted to the scene, in case he is there and not as 'subdued' as we think.

It is not a hoax. He is subdued. Thelma Bird is a tiny woman with limp hair and baggy clothes. She has clubbed her ex-husband over the head with a light, non-stick frying pan, which means, if he has a concussion, that she has hit him really hard, because those pans don't make a very good club. He may have a concussion, because although his pupils are reactive he is still unconscious when we arrive nearly fifteen minutes after the incident. Against the possibility that he might have come to, however, Mrs. Bird has thoroughly mummified his wrists and ankles in duct tape.

Eddy and I cut him loose and put him in the recovery position to await an ambulance. I turn Thelma Bird over to Dave, whom women find very soothing and kind.

Two units from the state police come, and then the ambulance. There is examination of the scene and questioning of the witness and note-taking. Relatives and extended family start showing up to comfort Thelma and just generally complicate the situation further. It is nearly one before the ambulance carrying Bird (guarded by Dave and escorted by Eddy) is gone and the State Police and I are wrapping up. My cell phone rings, and I excuse myself to answer it. The number is not one I recognize.

"Deputy Sandburg."

"Chief...it's me." His voice is quiet, and I shove the phone into my ear so I can hear better.

"Jim? What's up?"

"I just...didn't want you to call the house and worry when I didn't answer."

"Where are you?"

"Don't get upset. Everything's under control."

Oh, shit. I am already upset. I wave absently at the State Police guys and start back toward the county car I'm driving. "What's wrong?"

"I'm at the hospital. I thought...I needed to come in early. But it's all right. Lynn took care of it."

I grind my teeth together, trying to master my panic. He can hear that, I know. He can hear my heart, too. At least he can't smell me. "What? Jim, are you ok?"

"Yeah. I just...I was having a little trouble breathing. It's all right, but...Lynn wants to admit me. Just in case."

"Yeah, ok," I say, numbly getting into the car. "Ok. Did she say what she thought was the problem?"

"Pneumonia. Maybe. Blair, don't freak out on me."

No. That isn't possible. He had the pneumonia shot two years ago when things were so bad. He's been vaccinated.

"Blair?"

"I'm here. Just. Just. I'm coming, ok? I'll be there in a few minutes."

"Ok."

I don't remember the trip into Bickford. I think I ran the siren. The nurse at the emergency room desk greets me by name. In a town this size, all the emergency people know each other. "Bird is in bed four. Your people are with him."

"Where's the Sheriff?" It comes out as a snap. I don't have it in me to apologize.

"They just moved him upstairs. Room 235."

I race past her and around the corner to the lobby and the main stairs. As I charge through the corridor, the staff looks at me askance, no doubt remembering yesterday's armed pursuit. I should feel bad about racing around a hospital this way, but I can't quite force myself to care. I storm 235 without pausing or knocking.

Jim is ok.

He is in the second bed of a double room, but the nearer bed is empty, and he is alone. He is pale. And on oxygen. But awake and calm. Sitting up in bed and buried in blankets. I stand in the doorway for a moment, trying to compose myself. Carefully, I close the wide door and walk over to sit on the bed next to him.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

"It's not your fault. Don't worry about it." I take his hand. It's too warm, although he is hunched as though he is chilled. "I would have come to get you."

"I called the office. Sherry said you were on a call."

I nod slowly, hating myself for leaving him this morning. "Tell me what happened."

"I...had to call Lynn around ten-thirty. She said to come on in. But when I came in through the lobby," he tries to smile carelessly, "well, I must have looked like hell, because they kept trying to direct me to the emergency room and not the clinic."

And he drove himself in. Shit. Shit.

"Things got a little...Blair, whatever they tell you, I was not disoriented and combative. I wasn't. I was just afraid to let anyone but Lynn touch me, and I couldn't--I didn't know how to explain."

I nod again, clinging to his hand.

Jim puts his head back against the pillows and closes his eyes. I can't tell if he is editing or resting. "Lynn came in and took care of it, but she wants to keep me overnight."

I wonder about the parts he has just skipped over, but I am not going to make him give me details. "For pneumonia."

"Yeah. IV antibiotics."

"Well, she threatens every time you get a cold." I smile thinly. There had been so few colds lately I was starting to forget this particular terror.

"Lynn's coming."

I kiss his temple. "I'm gonna go talk to her, ok?"

Jim nods, and I squeeze his hand one more time before forcing myself to let go and meet Jim's nurse practitioner in the hall. She sighs when she sees me. I smile politely and lead her up the hall, past the visitors' lounge where the tv is playing cartoons. It's not that I think Jim doesn't have a perfect right to hear what she has to say, but I really don't want him hearing the tone of my voice for the next few minutes. Right now, he needs to think I'm calm, a rock, absolutely unworried.

Lynn is taller than I am, and thinner. Her face is very narrow and her hair is very dark. She is businesslike and calm, and I feel better just standing here with her. "Pneumonia?" I ask.

"Looking at the second set of x-rays, we're pretty sure it's not."

"What then?"

She opens her mouth and shuts it with a snap. For the first time since I met her she looks uncertain. "Blair, if he were anyone else, I would say it's an exacerbation of chronic bronchitis, a little infection, that these things are expected, and we're on top of it. I'd send him home with some antibiotics and ipratropium or an oral steroid and not worry about it." She waits until I nod. "He's atypical in almost every way; he's too young, his general health is too good, he's never smoked, his entire medical history...Blair, he was blue when he came in here, but he responded almost too quickly to the albuterol. There's evidence of infection, but that isn't looking typical either. I've shown everything to Dr. Fredricks and he doesn't know what to make of it."

"So you want to keep him overnight."

She pauses, sighs again. "His fever's up again. We got it down with acetaminophen, but..."

"I usually have to alternate Tylenol and aspirin every two hours." Her frown deepens and her eyebrows go up. "It was all I could think of," I protest, "I think it's related to his problem with painkillers."

"Blair, I'd really like to contact the VA. They might know something about--"

"No."

"Jim may not be the only veteran out there with these medical anomalies. They might know something." Reasonable. Patient. Kind. She has only Jim's best interest at heart.

"No. They can't help him. I promise you, they don't know anything." Oddly, this does not panic me the way it would have about nine years ago. It's a little late to try to turn Jim into a secret weapon. We have had long talks, especially in the last few months, about how we would fight any attempt to interfere with our lives, and I think we have worked out ways to make the legal hassle and bad publicity that would result from molesting us more trouble than we are worth. Nevertheless, I want nothing to do with the government or the military. Jim spent over a decade as an expendable resource. I don't want them near him.

"Blair, why are you so sure? How do you know?"

Well. I knew Lynn was smart. Sooner or later she was bound to notice we were keeping something from her. "Lynn--"

"If you know something that affects his treatment, keeping it a secret isn't doing him any favors." She watches me carefully, waiting. I just stay still. I have a lot of practice in giving nothing away on this topic. "Blair, I have patients waiting for me downstairs. I'll be back at the end of shift. I hope by then you'll have your mind made up."

I watch her leave until she turns the corner, and then I slowly head back to Jim's room. He opens his eyes as I come in. "Well?"

I sit down and sigh. "It's not pneumonia, and it's probably not all that bad...."

"And?" His voice is low and tired and I remind myself--again--that he is going to be fine.

"She doesn't understand that you're not mysteriously and persistently sick; you're just a healthy sentinel who sometimes gets overwhelmed."

"Ah. Are you going to tell her?"

"That's up to you, man. You know that."

"I'm tired of pretending....I know it isn't safe to just come out...but Lynn has been so good to us."

"Is that yes?"

He nods.

"Ok. Do you want to do it?"

He winces and shakes his head. "Ok. I'll talk to her this afternoon." I take a deep breath. "So. You'll need your own toothbrush, and your bathrobe. Do you want your book?" He shakes his head. "Ok. I'll be back soon."

"Go down to HQ," he murmurs. "They brought in Bird. Make sure all the paperwork is correct. We don't want him walking out."

I don't jump up and yell, 'screw Bird. I don't care what happens to him!' but it takes some effort. At moments like these, being a cop--a career I love, to which I am committed, damn it--seems suddenly like a hobby; a dangerous, time consuming hobby I get paid for. My job--my real job, what I do in this world that matters--is looking after Jim, and I have been remiss to forget that. This isn't just about being in love with him. This is about a commitment I made thirteen years ago, when he asked me to teach him control and I agreed to back him up.

But although I couldn't give a darn about the law enforcement shtick right now, Jim does. That is his career, what he does in the world that matters. I nod and calmly promise to go check on Bird. I feel guilty about not being a better guide, not being a better cop, not being able to fix anything.

Bird is not concussed and is ready to move to the jail. I head over to Ithaca and make sure everything is copasetic at the Sheriff's Department. I give Loraine the notes on the old man and his noisy neighbors. I try not to hurry. In the car on the way home I call Millie and let her know that she is in charge. She accepts the news of her temporary promotion with a graceless snort.

At the house I assemble the things Jim will need for a day or two at the hospital. His toothbrush, and his own shampoo and toothpaste and soap. His bathrobe and a change of clothes. The battery-operated white noise generator.

In the lockable firebox where I keep my passport and insurance forms, I have a cutting of the page 2 newspaper article detailing my admission of academic fraud from nine years ago. I take that too. In my computer is a short-version sentinel handbook that Lynn should probably see. It's encrypted and I won't print it or copy it. If Lynn wants to read it, she'll have to come here and read it off the screen, because I am not letting it out of my sight.

Still, though. Maybe she'll be able to help. How many times have I wished I had medical training?

Oh God, it always comes back to the sentinel thing, doesn't it? Jim wouldn't be sick--again, damn it, it wasn't fair--if it weren't for those senses. He gave up Cascade, he is so careful about what he eats, what he touches, he monitors his body all the time, it seems. He's done everything humanly possible, and it's not enough, he's still in the hospital. I wish he weren't a sentinel. I wish--

I realize what I've thought, and I hate myself for it. I have just failed Jim, completely betrayed him. I was the person who told him that the senses were part of him, that to deny them was to deny himself, that to be a sentinel was natural and special and normal and right. And here I am, wishing he were different, rejecting the senses that he can't get rid of, has no option but to accept.

I set down the gym bag containing Jim's stuff and lay the news clipping on the table. I can't go to Jim like this, so I might as well get it all out here. I sink to the floor and cry for my partner, my love who may well be dying from his gifts. I cry for myself, cowardly and selfish, pathetic weakling who would still, even knowing it's wrong, trade anything for Jim to be healthy and safe again. Even if it meant betraying him.

In about ten minutes I get up from the floor. My eyes are burning and I have work to do. I take out my contacts and wash my face, forcing myself to think while I do it. Jim is sick, but this isn't like the little colds he picks up at work about twice a year. Something irritated him enough to give the germs a way in. Something threw his system off. Something. Jim is just not this fragile. He's really not.

He's not.

Stress? He lost a suspect yesterday, but I think that was an effect of whatever was wrong, not a cause. The argument with Stephen? Maybe, maybe. The house? No, he's so happy about the house.

So what's new? From long practice I can run through the candidates fairly quickly. The mushrooms? No, Jim had them last week, and anyway, he picked and prepared this batch himself. He wouldn't have eaten them if they weren't right. We cleaned the house on Saturday...but it's been over a year since that actually caused a problem. I try to keep him away from the cleaning products, just as a general practice. But I wouldn't have anything in the house that would irritate his lungs so badly it would lead to this. Something he ate at the party? My poison oak?

Seven minutes on my computer tells me more about urushiol than I ever wanted to know. At first it looks like an unlikely candidate; Jim's exposure was on the palm of his hand, where the skin is very thick and reactions to poison oak are rare. Besides which, it apparently takes about twenty minutes for the chemical in the oil to bond with proteins in the skin and trigger an allergic reaction. No matter how long it had seemed at the time, Jim's total exposure was less than two minutes, and while that was enough time for Jim's body to recognize a threat (which the average person, obviously, can't) no itchy blisters ever formed. That is probably not what I am looking for. In the warnings section, though, another possibility presents itself; you don't burn poison oak or any of its relatives because, while urushiol won't evaporate on its own, it can be boiled off into the air by fire (which does not break it down). Can it be evaporated out by alcohol? On the surface, surely not, because alcohol looks like it is a main ingredient in several of the poison ivy cleaning agents advertised. But Jim is a sentinel. "And then suddenly it was in the air," he said.

Maybe. But this doesn't look right either. Reactions to urushiol in the air seem to happen pretty quickly, and apparently they are too severe to just ignore for a few days. Damn. I just don't know.

Then there is, of course, the salad smelling stuff I've been putting on my wrists three times a day to dry out the blisters. Jim isn't fond of the way it smells, but he never said he found it irritating.

Just in case, I throw the bottle out, shower, and put on a clean uniform before gathering up the mess I left in the kitchen and heading back to the hospital.

Lynn is with him when I arrive. Jim is sitting stiffly in bed, his hospital gown pulled down, patiently submitting to her stethoscope. I wonder if her tool lets her hear Jim's body half as well as he does.

They are nearly done. Lynn reties Jim's gown and settles him back against the pillow, speaking to him softly. Looking past her, Jim meets my eyes and smiles reassuringly. I take a deep breath and go over to them, holding out the bag of Jim's things. I try to smile casually. "Before you ask, when I checked in at HQ everything was fine."

Jim smiles charmingly at Lynn. "Ah. I've suspected for a long time that I'm completely superfluous. My people are competent, and after all, they have Doris." Charming, very charming. But his timing's off; Lynn doesn't get the dog joke yet.

I prod his leg, and return in the same tone, "Doris can't type. And she still hasn't learned how to use the cuffs. I think you have a job for a while yet, boss."

Jim's laugh turns into a wet, half-choking cough. Lynn examines his phlegm with a neutral, calm face and hands him a drink of water. When she finishes with him, she turns to me. "Jim mentioned that we needed to have a conversation."

I look past her to my partner. "You want us to do this here?"

I know the answer before he shakes his head. He wouldn't want to face this even if he weren't exhausted and miserable. The choice, however, is his, and this was his last chance to change his mind.

Off the med-surg waiting room is a wide balcony. In warmer weather, patients and their families sit outside and admire the mountains in the distance. Today Lynn and I have it to ourselves, even though it isn't particularly cold.

"All right," Lynn says. Her arms are folded, even though I don't think she is trying to look combative.

"Lynn, you have to promise this doesn't go past you."

"I'm reasonably familiar with patient confidentiality."

"I mean not even people you're consulting with. No doctors. Nobody. Just you."

"Is this...classified?"

"I wouldn't give a damn about classified. This is about Jim. Will you promise?"

"Blair, I might need--"

"Only you, or nobody at all," I press.

After a moment she nods. "Only me."

I hand her the news clipping.

After about ninety seconds she looks up at me frowning. "It wasn't the dissertation that was the lie. It was the press conference," I say.

She waits, still frowning.

"It wasn't finished. I hadn't changed the name of my primary informant, or put in any camouflage to hide him. It got....out of my hands and it was...." Jesus! This was almost ten years ago. Where is all this shame coming from? But my gut's in a knot and all I can see are those reporters closing in on Jim, armed with the worshipful, idealistic discourse of that naked first draft and wanting a piece of the miracle that was the only identified sentinel in the world.

"What's described here just isn't possible," Lynn says, dragging me back to what I am supposed to be doing.

"Oh. Um. It is, actually. Before Jim, I had case studies from 119 people with one or more senses more than 50% more acute than the American national average, and baselines on about 90 more. I've got...graphs and things I can give you. But I only had two subjects with all five senses enhanced." I am rubbing my hands together. I stop.

"This is why his list of drug reactions is over a page and a half long?"

I nod. "And how he does biofeedback so well."

"Blair, this is so far out there--"

"It's true." I give her a very abridged version of Jim's life story. I lay out what I know about sentinel biology, and the pernicious stress caused by noise pollution and the caustic effects of air pollution, and how even the rain in Cascade was so full of crap it made his eyes burn if he got any in them.

"So you left..." she whispered when I finished. "It wasn't because--" she stops, frowning. "But this is all incredible."

"It's true."

She closes her eyes briefly. "I'm going to have to think about this, look into some things...."

When I get back to Jim, he is asleep. He has turned on the white noise generator, maybe to block out Lynn's voice if she had decided he was some kind of superhuman freak. Or maybe just to block out some of the everyday pain and terror that always permeates hospitals.

I sigh and sit down in one of the cold, institutional chairs.

He sleeps until they bring him dinner and then obediently chokes down the cool meatloaf and runny Jell-O. He tries to get me to go eat--a sandwich from the cafeteria, something. Even though I've missed lunch, I'm not hungry. I do get a cup of coffee from the machine in the visitor's lounge (I am pretty sure that while I am gone, he dumps the gluey mashed potatoes in the biohazard trash. I don't blame him.) and tell him about the arrest this morning. "It isn't like a high profile arrest in Cascade. The media is on the sidelines here and everybody...everybody actually knows him, or knows somebody who knows him. Heck, one of the EMT's at the scene went to high school with him. It's...really different. Personal. When people talk about him...It doesn't feel like idle gossip, you know?"

Jim sighs, and I know he feels bad for not being there himself. "Any idea where he's been for almost three years?"

"His wife said..." I frown. It seems like years ago, not just lunchtime today. "He was really afraid of serious prison time. He knew he'd stepped over the line finally, that it was all over. Put the fear of the American penal system into him. He just...ran and kept his head down."

"How'd he know his mother was sick?"

"That we don't know. The wife denies any contact. Personally, I believe her." It is soothing, sort of, the patterns of work. Our job, concrete and meaningful. "There is the other brother--the one he didn't kill." I snort. "What do you think? Have Millie bring him in in the middle of the night for questioning? She's not a bad interrogator."

Jim shakes his head. "The mother's a better suspect. She's still here...could hear her crying when she found out he'd been caught. No way we could talk Oksana into prosecuting, though, even if we had a case....Can you imagine what she'd say if we suggested it?" His sentences have been broken by longer and longer pauses. This one goes on so long I think Jim may be asleep, but he says at last, "Remember how I used to jump all over Simon? When he stopped me from pursuing something there was no way we could prosecute?... Don't tell him I've turned into him, ok?"

Visiting hours end at 8:00. I circumvent them by the simple virtue of not leaving. The aide looks at me funny, but doesn't say anything. The night nurse who comes in a few minutes later gives the same look and the same silence. Well. There is a reason I am still in my uniform. I tell myself that my status is a reassurance that I won't cause trouble or interrupt their routines. The truth may be that the staff remember it's likely they or someone close to them will need the sheriff's department someday, and nobody wants the responsibility of enforcing the rules and throwing me out. I would feel guilty about this, but the deal works both ways: I won't cause them any trouble. I know good and well that somebody close to me needs them.

I sit with my chair in a corner, trying to sleep with my head resting against the wall. I don't get a lot of sleep, and not just because I am about to fall over and my wrists itch like fire. Jim is having a rough night. The nurse comes in every couple of hours; I could sleep through it, but he can't and even asleep I listen for him. Even between the visits, though, he's restless, turning frequently, coiling and uncoiling, coughing.

I am hovering just under the surface of wakefulness, caught in a half-dream of women in sensible shoes walking up and down hallways, when he calls for me. "Blair?"

I am awake at once, standing at his side. "Right here." My watch says 2:17.

"I can't find the bed controls."

My hand traces the wire. "Got it. Want to sit up a little?"

"Yeah...yeah, I think...." The room is not completely dark. Hospital rooms never seem to be. I can see his eyes are open, but I can't tell if he's tracking me. I raise the head of the bed, then sit down beside him, taking his hand in mine. He is absently rubbing his arms, as though they are tender and itchy. I wonder what the hospital washes its sheets in and why I didn't think to bring some from home. He's a little too warm, a little sweaty. His pulse under my fingers is a little too fast for the middle of the night. I wish, for the millionth time, that I had his senses, that it was obvious when he was in serious trouble.

I lay the back of my hand along his cheek. "Jim? You want me to call the nurse?"

"No! Please," he whispers. I shouldn't have bothered to ask. The short handbook file has a section (at Jim's insistence) on how difficult it is for a sentinel who is feeling vulnerable or in pain to submit to the touch and smell of strangers. The longer notes expand on this at length. Unable to ignore or filter sensory input, the tiny sounds of an unfamiliar body seem like an overwhelming invasion of personal space, the touch of someone unknown, untrusted is a physical violation, experienced almost as violence. It is terrifying. This seems to have gotten worse as Jim has gotten older. Or maybe he is just getting less able to hide or ignore his distress, I don't know.

I lean over him. "Ok. Ok. We'll leave it for a little while, ok? Let's just calm down. Can you slow your breathing a little?"

"...been trying."

"Start by breathing properly." I run my hand along his stomach, just under his diaphragm. "Where's your center, Jim?"

He laughs at me, or tries to. His weak chuckle turns into a thick cough. I rub his back, whispering encouragement. I wish I could get in bed with him, relax his body by overwhelming him with mine and settling us both, but that's just not feasible here.

"....love you," he gasps at last. "You know that, don't you?"

"You'd have to, to put up with me. And buttering me up will not distract me. Where's your center?"

I wait till he nods faintly before going on.

"Ok. Put your attention there for right now. Let the rest of it go."

Quietly, I talk him through fighting the infection and not himself. He does his best to cooperate, I do my best to reassure him. We play with the dials, we play relaxation games. I draw his attention from the return of his fever, his shifting, minor sensory spikes and the fact that his chest is full of gluey mucous. We change what we can, and I comfort him while we wait out the rest. When the nurse comes in at 4:00 he is still awake and uncomfortable, but he is calm and breathing easily. She gives him Tylenol for the fever. Jim doesn't flinch when she takes his pulse. A little after that we both fall asleep, our hands still knotted together, my forehead on his arm.

We wake again after six. Jim pats my hands and squirms onto his side to fall back asleep. Though I am still pretty tired, I cannot bear the thought of sliding back into anxious unconsciousness. I kiss his temple and slip out, going home for a shower and a quick bite to eat before work.

I spend the morning sleepy and depressed. Back in Cascade we had periods similar to last night, but--not here, not until this week, and never so bad. I'm hoping...I'm hoping things aren't as bad as I think, I guess. Or that Lynn will come up with some miracle. My mind goes round and round. I am supposed to be working on disaster training, but I keep forgetting what page I'm on. Elliot asks me for advice about his budget for the police dog trials. I have no idea what I tell him. Mr. Randall from the local newspaper comes in with questions about Bird's arrest and the most recent lawn ornament caper. I hand him off to Loraine.

I take an early lunch break and head back to the hospital. Jim is lying down, his head turned away from the door, when I arrive. He turns at once, smiling a little and lifting his hand. "Hey."

"Hi." I pull the curtain closed so we can't be seen from the corridor and sit down on the edge of his bed. He looks tired; like he's been chasing a fugitive through the woods, uphill, for two days with no food. But the nasal canella are gone and his cheek, when I kiss it, is dry and cool. "How's it going?"

A small shrug. "The guys sent flowers. Huge arrangement. Really nice."

"Where is it now?" I don't ask why it's gone. A huge flower arrangement in an enclosed space like this would just set him sneezing or worse.

"Pediatrics."

"That's nice."

"How're things downtown?"

"Quiet. Mostly. At shift change, Millie said she could come in days if you thought she should; the kids are in school anyway. The newspaper guy is in hog heaven. I think Elliot mentioned he has a date tonight. Bird goes before the judge sometime this afternoon...." I try to think of more innocuous news.

"Tell Millie, no. I won't be out that long. Hey, Anders stopped by for a visit."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Then, thoughtfully, "Man's an ass."

"I've noticed."

A short pause, then, "Lynn was here this morning."

"Oh?"

"Did stupid pet tricks for her; told her her heart rate, what she had for breakfast...went out into the hall and read the fine print on her eye chart."

"Ah," I say neutrally.

"Then she examined me again. Listened to everything. Reflexes. Spent a long time on my eyes and my ears...then she did unusual things. Touched me places, kept asking if it hurt."

"Did it?"

"Here." He shows me the outside of his forearm. "Hit it on a tree on Sunday. It's a little sore."

Touching him and asking if it hurt. "Glands?" I hazard.

"No." He shows me. The back of his neck. His thighs. His arms. Nowhere near the glands.

"It sounds familiar, but I can't place it."

"She asked me questions. What kinds of things do I hear? Do voices ever speak directly to me? How am I sleeping? Do I have difficulty concentrating? She asked about my emotional state. Blair....I was prepared for questions. I've done the academic thing....but she didn't sound like you did. You know, at first."

"No, she sounds like a health care professional. You went to doctors before you came to me. Were they very different?"

A short pause, then, "No."

"But it makes you uncomfortable."

A nod.

"Jim, she's going to see this primarily as a medical phenomenon. She has to. For people interested in the human body, this is very interesting. But the novelty will wear off, and she'll be a lot more helpful when she's not confused by little puzzles she can't explain."

"She wants to talk to you. She's in on the patient hotline today until noon."

Lynn, it turns out, is in a little room between the front desk and the clinic. She has a headset and a computer and a stack of nursing journals in an empty chair beside her. She transfers the journals to the floor and motions me to sit down.

"How does he sleep?" she asks without preamble.

"Fine. Usually. At least since we moved here."

"We aren't set up to monitor sleep here, we're just too small. But I might be able to put something together so I can get an idea if he's reaching stage four."

"Sleep? Monitor his sleep?" I feel as though I've boarded the wrong train. "Wait--here? You aren't going to get a decent reading here; there's way too much unfamiliar noise, even with a white noise generator on."

She frowns, thinking.

I am thinking too. "You're looking for....what? schizophrenia? depression?" Jim's description of her exam clicks something in my mind. "Fibromialga?"

"Blair, something is going on here--"

"And I've told you what it is!" Interestingly, my voice hasn't risen. I have argued with Jim long enough to be very good at quarreling while speaking softly. "Lynn, I know your training is to see any deviation from the average as some kind of pathology, but that is not what is going on here. Jim is not defective, he's just a sentinel." I try to contain the wave of my emotional response. I know it's just my own guilt; yesterday wasn't it me that was wishing Jim were 'normal?' Me, who had promised him for years that 'normal' was just a myth perpetrated to keep the dissatisfied in line? It isn't Lynn's fault she sees disease around every corner.

"What are you saying, Blair, that Jim isn't human?"

I freeze, blinking. I have missed the train again. I might not even be in the right station. "What?"

"You have a, a, a, word that says he's different. How different is he? What is normal for him?"

I can only blink at her. An unscheduled train has somehow run me over. "What? What else would he be?"

"But you keep saying...'sentinel.' This word. What does it mean?" she whispers, leaning close to me.

I rock backwards. I had thought we had been communicating fairly well. The feelings of surprise and confusion as I discover that we are not are accompanied by deja vu. How many times had I had this exact derailment while teaching intro? Usually during the section on kinship. Americans think there is only one self-evident, inevitable way to understand family relationships, and alternative ways of organizing them would usually sail past at least a third of a class for at least the first three times it was explained. Even though I was making perfect sense and they were asking questions using the right words, the discontinuity in our communication usually surfaced just before class ended. Even though I knew it was coming, it always stunned me like this.

"What does it mean?" I repeat.

"What am I dealing with? And why is it making him sick?"

Both of which I had explained yesterday. Perfectly clearly. And honestly. With details.

"A sentinel...." I stop. It used to be my job to explain things that were outside people's experience to them. I back up. "All cultures have words for...." I am groping as I go, speaking slowly, "classifications of people that they believe are...spiritually or biologically--fundamentally spiritually or biologically--different from people...who are not in those categories."

"Like what?"

"I'm coming to that. Like 'mother.' Like 'King.' 'Priest.' 'Witch.' 'Slave.' 'Berdache.' 'Hijra.' Categories like this are very powerful, and people in them are often considered different from other people...or affected by conditions that don't apply to other people. But everyone in all of these categories is human. I know of five societies who seem to have a special word for people like Jim, and nine more that seem to have a concept of the...phenomena? position? But no word for it."

I look into her eyes. She doesn't look lost or angry, but she doesn't look convinced either.

"Jim's exceptionally excellent hearing isn't unique. It's not a sign of a disease, it isn't caused by a defect, it is not a hallucination...and neither are--admittedly uncommon--differences in his other senses."

"Yet you admit it causes problems for him."

"Well, yes." I try not to sound impatient. "Imagine it's night, and you can't sleep because the faucet in the bathroom is dripping and you can't ignore it and it's keeping you up." I wait for her nod. "Now imagine you can hear all the faucets dripping in all the apartments in your building--and also all the televisions and crying babies and arguments."

"So you're blaming everything on sleep deprivation and stress? That doesn't explain his multiple drug sensitivities."

It's like talking to a wall. I said this yesterday. Twice. "No. That is his body--which can detect and react to vanishingly small chemical changes--overreacting to or mis-identifying powerful chemicals which usually are mildly toxic or have multiple potential side-effects anyway."

Lynn sighs. "The human mind couldn't cope with that much continual over-stimulation."

"The human mind didn't evolve in cities, Lynn. Societies that have the category 'sentinel' have structures set up to help them. And, excuse me, but the human mind can be trained to cope with a hell of a lot."

"If it's 'normal' why is Jim sick?"

"He got almost no training or support growing up. He had a high stress job in a very toxic environment....and people do get sick. It's a very 'normal' human thing to happen." Shame, again. Because if I had foreseen this danger five years ago and gotten him out of the city then, Jim wouldn't be sick now.

She is silent.

"Lynn, the senses we can handle. But not...Lynn, you didn't see him before we moved here." I stop, looking away.

"He seems to be responding to the antibiotics. This morning his temperature was down and he was moving air a little better. I think you can take him home tomorrow. He'll have to stay on medication again for a while."

She sounds like someone who is 'relenting' rather than 'agreeing', but I will take it. "I have some documentation you can read. If you want."

"Thank you. That would be helpful."

Then her relief comes in. Just as the phone rings. There is no more time, nothing more I can do right now. I hope to God going to her was the right thing to do, but I have that old Tom McCormack song running around in my head--"Don't tell," from a CD I haven't listened to since my first year as a cop, the one I used play as a form of secret penance.

I go up to see Jim again before I go, but he is sleeping soundly. Well, he needs it. I head back to Ithaca, running up the street to grab a take-out sandwich at Mom's diner. I have more than used up my lunch hour, but I haven't eaten much since early yesterday. If things are quiet at HQ, I'll go patrol somewhere. I'm too wound up to patiently wait for speeders across from the high school until after school lets out.

As I come to the door of the Sheriff's Department, though, I am brought around by a scream behind me. A woman -- Carol, one of the secretaries we share with the District Court -- is flying out the Courthouse doors, yelling. Even as I watch, her headlong rush down the stairs turns to a headlong fall.

The bag containing my lunch slips out of my hand and I run across the street. As I reach Carol, though, she is already trying to get up, and her screaming is suddenly meaningful. "He's got a gun! Oh my God! Help! Somebody do something!"

Half-way to reaching for her, I drop my hand and continue on past to scramble up the steps toward the main doors.

Nobody else is managing to make it out, although a dozen people are clumped together next to the hallway that led to the county clerk's office. They're pressed against the wall in silent panic.

What is panicking them is the man standing in the center of the lobby waving a gun and using one of our deputies as a shield. The man is Bird, naturally. At his feet is a crumpled and bloody body in a bailiff's uniform. She is not moving.

Besides myself there are two people in the room not incapacitated, cowering in the corner, or posing an immediate threat. One is Loraine Alwell, who has found some cover in the doorway of the DMV. This is reassuring, in that Loraine is at least as good a shot as I am. It is also depressing, because I am pretty sure she doesn't have a clear field of fire.

The other person is Marty. He doesn't appear to be armed, but he does appear to be completely unflappable. I don't even think he's sweating. He is standing between me and Bird, talking calmly with his hands open, taking slow steps forward.

Bird shrieks a stream of profanity and fires at Marty. People scream. Marty flinches, but not because he's hit. Bird fires at the ceiling and the screaming stops. Marty steps backwards and to the side, not too quickly, wisely silent. I can see who Bird has a hold of now; it's Eddy. Bird has him by the neck, and the gun is pointed at his head again.

My gun is out and pointed at the little of Bird I can see over Eddy. I am all that is between Bird and the door. He has noticed this too. He yells at me to get out of the way, he says he's fine with killing with everyone here, and getting killed himself is better than going to prison.

He means it. He really does have no options. Eddy's eyes have rolled back in panic and he is a horrible color. I don't blame him for being petrified; I've been in his place too many times before myself.

I glance at Loraine. She still doesn't have the shot; Eddy is between her and Bird. The bailiff on the floor still isn't moving, but she may be alive. I can't remember her name. Her blood is all over the ugly green tiles installed during an ill-advised renovation sometime in the late seventies.

If this goes on much longer, she will die, if she hasn't already. If Bird walks out of here with Eddy, he will kill him too. And whoever owns the car Bird will hijack when he gets to the street will probably die.

I have a shot. It is way too close to Eddy, though. If I take it, and Bird's gun goes off, Eddy is dead anyway.

"No," I say, "You're crazy if you think you're going to walk out of here."

He turns the gun on me, away from Eddy, and I fire. After nearly ten years, the action is natural, ingrained. The shot is good. Bird goes down still holding Eddy, but he is dead before they hit the floor.

Loraine springs forward, professionally kicking Bird's gun away, handing Eddy off to someone else. She is panting a little, but smooth in her movements. She checks to see if Bird is alive. He isn't.

Outside, I hear sirens.

This isn't the first time I have been sick and shaking with the aftereffects of adrenalin. And this isn't the first time my heart has wailed at the unfairness of there not being another way. But, oh, god, this is the first time I have been alone. No Jim. No Simon. No sanity standing next to me, silently reminding me who I am. Just me, the senior fucking officer at the scene.

I put my gun up. "Somebody tell me what happened here."

The story is not complicated. Bird slammed the bailiff escorting him headfirst into the wall and grabbed her keys. Eddy and Loraine had been bringing over a DWI at about that time, and Eddy tried to subdue Bird by hand. Bird had gotten his gun and started yelling threats just before I arrived.

Marty is bent over the bailiff, his knees wet with her blood. The EMT's still aren't here. Eddy is white and silent, standing in a corner like a pillar of salt. Every other deputy on duty is lined up in front of me, waiting for instructions.

Who is here? I pay attention to faces. Joey Fanzelli is senior to everybody but me. I take off my gun and my badge and hand them to him. "Procedure," I say. "You are in charge. I am on suspension, pending."

Joey's eyes go wide. "What do I do?"

I close my eyes. "Call Millie. Have everybody get statements. Get pictures." I look around, find the security camera. "Get the video. Don't let any of our people talk to the press until Millie gets here and makes some decisions." I step back, but don't leave. It was unconscionable, dumping everything on Joey like that, but I promise you, he is thinking a lot more clearly than I am right now.

Our people really are doing a nice job. Elliot and Dave are being Good Guys, talking softly and not too quickly, looking people in the eye, checking to make sure names are spelled correctly, that sort of thing. Low key. Dave has even produced a little packet of tissues, which he is sharing as necessary.

The coroner is here; he was just down the street. Not that there could be a question that John Bird is dead, but rules are rules. It is a relief when they finally cover him. The EMT's take the bailiff and Eddy away. I wish they had room to take the body too.

I make myself look out the window.

Millie comes, at last. She takes over for Joey, who looks ready to piss himself with relief. She sends me across the street to type up my report.

It is after five before I make it back to the hospital. Jim isn't alone. Eddy is sitting beside the bed and they have their heads together, speaking softly. I freeze in the doorway, surprised, furious that I have to share, not wanting to interrupt.

Jim, of course, knows I'm there. He lays a hand on Eddy's shoulder to still him and looks up. Eddy turns, then rises, tentatively. His mouth opens, though he doesn't speak, and Jim fills the growing silence. "Eddy came up to tell me what happened."

"Oh," I say.

Before I can say more, Eddy nearly falls over himself, whispering, "Blair--Blair, I--just wanted to say--Thank you. I'm such a--Thanks. You saved my life." He fumbles for my hand, shakes it, pulls himself together. "Look, I, thanks, Sheriff, I really, well, I should go. My sister is coming to pick me up. She'll be downstairs soon."

When Eddy is gone, I go over to the bed, pulling the curtain closed behind me. Jim leans back against the pillows, his eyes drifting closed. I take the chair Eddy left. It is still warm from his body.

Jim finds my hand. "I don't know if I can do this, Sandburg. This whole mentor, father figure thing. God, what a mess."

"Oh, come on," I say gently. "You've been in leadership positions before."

He sighs. "I wonder if it was like this for Simon."

I squeeze his hand. "You were a great mentor for me."

His eyes pop open. "You're kidding." His eyes close again, and he smiles slightly. "I think we might have a problem here, Chief, if you've been following me. Because I've been taking my cues from you since the mid-nineties."

I laugh. Or, at least, I mean to laugh. It comes out a slightly hysterical giggle. "The blind leading the blind!"

Jim doesn't laugh. He pulls me into his arms and buries his face in my shoulder. "Tell me that bastard didn't hurt you."

"No, no, I'm ok. I promise."

"Jeeze, Sandburg!" He is clinging to me, not as strongly as he'd like, but as strongly as he can.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Where the hell have you been? I didn't KNOW until a little while ago. I would've come--"

"Like hell. I hope not. You're in the hospital."

"You needed somebody!"

"We handled it. It's ok. Millie came." The giggle slips out as I remember. "She smelled like she'd been making cookies."

"God. Blair."

I kiss him. To silence us both, to keep this from escalating. We know each other too well, we are both torn up, and we are breaking for each other. But that's not right. It's not. We are both alive and winning our battles. Even in those moments when we are fighting uphill, we are not fighting alone. I am here. He is here. Jim pulls back to breathe and I whisper, "I love you."

"Blair, I'm sorry."

"Jim, it wasn't, it wasn't...Eddy's such a kid, and I've been where he was! And that woman! Jim, do you know?"

He understands what I'm asking. "They airlifted her out forty-five minutes ago. I didn't hear any more than that. I didn't know you were involved...I should have known."

I sit back down in the chair, still holding Jim's hands in mine. "I feel bad," I say softly, "That I don't feel more pity for Bird. He was crazy, he must have been. He needed help."

"Why? Because he was violent?" Jim pulls me closer. "He kept his head down for almost three years. He was a wanted man, and he was so well behaved he didn't even get picked up for speeding. It wasn't that he wasn't capable of being human. He killed his own brother. He may have killed that woman. From what Eddy said...." He swallows, and I wonder what Eddy told him. "Oh, Blair..."

"Shhh. It's ok. We're ok. We're right here. It's over." Of course everything is not ok. But we are together, I am touching him, and I am so thankful for that. Jim's eyes drift closed, but he still holds on to me. He won't let go. I know that.

The soft drag of sensible shoes just beyond the curtain and I look up. "Hey, Lynn." I try to look glad to see her. She looks tired; her shift must have ended almost two hours ago.

"Blair. Jim, how are you feeling?"

Jim sighs. "A little better than yesterday."

"You and I need to talk," Lynn says to him. I can tell she means without me. I frown.

"Blair, you're hungry. Why don't you go eat," Jim says softly.

I laugh. "No way am I hungry."

"I was going to suggest it anyway. You smell like someone who's been fasting. Go get some food. You'll feel better."

So I go, although letting go of him and stepping away feels like Velcro being pulled apart. The cafeteria serves hot breakfast and lunch, but dinner is only cooked for the patients. The lone cashier presides over a glass refrigerator of cellophane-wrapped sandwiches and canned drinks and a table with slices of left-over cake. I take a chicken sandwich, a root beer, and a rather sad looking orange from the bowl beside the cash register.

I take my booty back to Jim's room, going slowly up the back stairs, taking my time; they'll bring his dinner soon, and we can eat together. When I arrive, Lynn is gone. Jim's eyes are closed, but he isn't asleep. "What did Lynn want?" I ask as I sit down.

"She wanted to talk about my drug sensitivities. I think she's worried about poisoning me."

"Good. She's paying attention." I unwrap the sandwich and take a savage bite, suddenly starving, unwilling to wait.

"What happened between you and Lynn this morning?"

"She was being a little thick about things. She didn't ask you about sleep monitoring, did she?"

"No, why?"

"Nothing. Don't worry about it."

He doesn't have the energy to argue with me. He sleeps for about half an hour, until dinner arrives. While he eats, I run down for something I left in the car, and when I get back I chase him and his tray and IV pole out of bed to the chair in the corner so I can change the sheets. "Aw, you didn't," he whispers, touched. I smile; I brought his pillow, too.

He needs a shower, and we manage that with a little help from an orderly. Shaving is too much, but that's fine. When we put him back to bed he is clean and fed, wrapped in sheets that are soft and smell of home. This is a good start, but I am not finished. I will not put either of us through another night like last night.

When the orderly is gone, I turn out the lights. The room is still pretty bright; at 7:30 the sun hasn't set yet. It's early, but he is tired enough to go to sleep anyway. So am I, for that matter. I settle on the bed beside him and slip my hand into his. "How you doin'?"

"Good. Well, better," is the soft answer.

"What's getting to you first? At night?"

"Here? The kids over in peds, having nightmares. And the smells."

"Yeah. There's a lot going on here. I bet if I knew all of it, it would keep me up too. People are upset. People need stuff. Lots of baseline activity.... Thing is, it's all under control. What can be done is being done. You know? I know this is a really busy place, but it's not, well, dangerous. Nothing is going to come up for you to fix. Nothing is going to come through that door to hurt us. And if it did, I would be here. I will be right here." I have pulled his hand into my lap and am gently massaging his fingers.

He takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He knows what I'm doing. If he falls asleep relaxed maybe tonight won't be so bad. True, when things are bad, nights are always worse than days, but maybe we can make it less ghastly.

"Jim, if something happened here that you needed to know about--you would know about it! You don't need to listen for it. If there's trouble, I'll be right here. So just let go. Let it all go and rest."

I seem to hypnotize myself as well. I manage to move into a chair before I fall asleep, but that's it.

It is still a long night; the nurse is in and out, the noise is still there, there is no way I can truly convince either Jim's subconscious or mine that we are sleeping in our nice, safe home. We do get some rest, but still, when morning comes it's a relief.

Lynn's arrival as Jim is finishing breakfast is not a relief. She has a doctor with her and they both examine Jim. Thoroughly. I stand in the corner and sweat all the way through. Lynn and the doctor exchange a few words, and then the doctor leaves. Lynn examines Jim again, asking questions about his senses as she goes. She goes down each one, asking what kind of trouble each causes, how often it interferes with his life.

Actually, I'm kind of envious; she gets more concrete information out of Jim in 20 minutes than I did in the first week. I console myself that he has had years to learn how to describe the elusive.

At last she sighs and steps back. "I am scared to death to let you go, but I can't justify keeping you another day."

"What are you worried about?" I ask sharply, stepping forward.

"If he has a reaction to the medication at home...you all live a long way out of town."

"Not that far--" I start.

Jim interrupts firmly. "Blair knows what to do. He's been dealing with this for a very long time."

She glares at the floor for a moment, her lips pressed together. "There's a new drug, it looks very effective for inflammation. Dr. Fredricks thinks you would do well on it...I'm going to talk him out of it. If I understand Blair correctly, there is much lower risk of catastrophic side effects with medications you've taken before."

Jim nods, and Lynn turns to me. "You'll call me. Every day. Report any change in his physical condition. And if I find out you--either one of you--are holding anything back from me--again--I'll drop Jim as my patient." Jim and I are silent for a minute after she leaves.

Of course we cannot simply leave. There are forms. Prescriptions (pharmacy on the first floor between the lobby and emergency). Detailed instructions. It is ten-thirty before I get Jim home, and we are both already exhausted. I have a gym bag crammed with Jim's stuff, the little sack with his meds, our jackets. I dump everything on the couch and steer Jim into the bedroom. When I have him undressed and in bed, I can take care of everything else.

"What do you want for lunch?" I ask, pulling back the sheets.

"Don't make lunch." He is looking at me longingly as he lies down. "We'll eat later. Get in with me."

How can I refuse him? "As soon as I shower," I promise.

"Now."

So I strip and follow him, taking time only to dump our clothes in the hamper in the bathroom.

When I wake Jim is lying across my chest. He's been drooling on my shoulder, but he's awake now and looking at me. My arms are already around him, a comfortable and warm weight that proves to me this is not some happy dream. How could I ever, ever have wished he were any different, this marvelous miracle that holds my heart in his hands? "Time?" I whisper.

Jim frowns and sniffs me. "A little after two."

"Hungry?"

He thinks for a moment and concedes, "Yeah."

If it weren't for some of the party left-overs, all we'd have in the house would be canned soup. The deviled eggs have had it, and I never liked the looks of that cheese ball, but there is eggplant parm. I divide what's left and heat it up, making a shopping list in my head as I go.

"You want to talk about Bird?" Jim says gently after we have sat down. The pills that are taken With Meals are laid out next to his plate.

"Talk?" I say around a mouthful of hot sauce and cheese. "Rant maybe. I'm...still angry, I think."

I expect him to nod wisely, tell me that some anger is normal, offer to listen if I want to rant. Instead he frowns. "Not feeling guilty?"

"Do you think I should? Jim, if things had gone just a little differently yesterday, I would have to tell you that one of your deputies had been killed. Or more than one. I might have been doing reports on the civilians that bastard killed--" I stop. I am ranting.

I expect Jim to encourage me to go on, but he is still frowning at me. "No, that's not it."

"Not what?"

"Not why you smell off. Guilty."

Guilty? Of course! Look, Blair's screwed up again! Like it wasn't enough I betrayed Jim, I had to go and broadcast it so it was his problem, too.

"Yes, that. Whatever it is, that's it."

"I don't want to talk about it." I say this as mildly as I can.

Jim is still frowning at me. "When did this start? It's worrying you." And then, "Blair?"

"Jim, it's nothing--" A lie. That is not going to work. "Ok, it's not nothing. It's something. I screwed up. But I won't let it happen again and I'm really sorry. Can't we let it go with that?"

"Is this smell going to go away?"

"Well. You know. Eventually."

I can tell by his eyes that this is not good enough. My scent must really be setting off alarm bells in his head, now that he is well enough to notice things like that again. But, God, I can't tell him.

Jim's face closes down and he studies his food.

I have to tell him. But how can I? "Jim, first, it was just stress. I didn't mean it, and it won't happen again."

"You have the right not to tell me."

I close my eyes, thinking about what will happen if I don't tell him, and what will happen if I do. "We've gone this far. I can't leave you wondering. And, really...It shouldn't matter. It doesn't mean anything, or change anything. I didn't mean it, even at the time. I just feel bad about it...I know how annoyed you get when Stephen feels that way. You'd be right to be mad at me; it was a screw-up. But I didn't mean it."

Jim studies me for a second. "You were wishing I didn't have the senses." He sees from my face that he guessed correctly and nods. "Because you're getting tired of coping with them?"

He sounds almost matter of fact about it and for a second I can only gape in surprise. "No! No. Because I...I'm afraid I won't be...able...." My throat squeezes shut and I close my eyes. It was a mistake to go there. I shouldn't have said this. Jim's state of mind is what most determines how his body handles challenges. If he takes his cues from me, and my cues say it's hopeless--

Jim is beside me at once, his hard arms wrapping tight around me. "Shit. Sandburg, only you." He is breathing slowly, trying to center himself, not quite making it. "You got scared and couldn't think straight. You think that never happened to me? You think I don't know how you feel?" He pauses, sighing into my hair. "Do you really think I'm going to be mad? Just because you're so in love with me all your values and your common sense went out the window for a few minutes? Blair, this isn't even news. I have figured out by now that me, the person I am, is more important to you than me the sentinel."

"Jim, you can't be split apart. I don't get to choose. You're you. A package deal."

He frowns. His face is close to mine. His eyes are more alert than I have seen in several days. "So you failed all of me because you rejected part of me?" I don't need to answer. Whatever the truth is, he sees it already. "Try it like this. I know what you do for me. This is not to devalue that. Heck, I would have been locked up that first year if it weren't for you, and you've saved my life every year since then. But, Blair." He pauses to take a deep breath. "What you do for me is not nearly as important as who you are to me."

I drop my head onto his shoulder and close my eyes. "Aw. Jim--"

"Ok, you weren't being yourself, and you did something, thought something, you wouldn't normally. But it wasn't a crime." He holds my head in his hands, trying to steady me, to find his own way in this. "God, Chief, look at you. You're still so torn up, so scared. This has to stop.

"Blair, you used to tell me not to respond to the present as though it were the past. Remember? Just because parts look the same doesn't mean it is the same. You've been ripping yourself apart every time I sneeze for two years. You're in such a state now... Look. I got sick. Ok. We knew this would happen. Not might happen. Would happen. It doesn't mean we're going to have another nightmare year. It doesn't mean I'm going to get all quiet and you're going to have to start treating me like some kind of high-maintenance house plant again." My laugh is a shocked gasp, and Jim pats me on the back. "It doesn't mean I'm dying. Blair! Are you listening to me? I can beat this. But, you've got to start living in the present. You have to see where I am now or you are just going to fall apart."

He is looking at me hopefully, and I would love, love to tell him, yes, I hear you. I can do this. All I can manage right now, though, is to put my arms around him and cling like a baby monkey, letting him comfort me while my terror slides over me in waves.

Eventually, we finish lunch, holding hands and watching each other across the table. Afterwards Jim takes a nap, I take a shower. I go shopping; we are out of almost everything. For dinner I make hamsteak, fried potatoes, and broccoli with cheese. I tell myself it's because Jim deserves a treat. Secretly, though, I think he's looking thin.

After dinner I rub Jim down with grape seed oil (he says he likes the way it smells). The air handling at the hospital keeps the air clean and very dry. I should have been doing this all along--would have, if hospitals allowed any privacy. My hands slide slowly over his broad shoulders and down his arms. I feel the shape of long, smooth muscles under his velvety skin. Solid, he is solid and so, so soft. I keep my palms flat, the pressure even. I have kneaded and dug knots out of him many times, but tonight there is only gentleness, showing him that he is safe, that I am here. I stroke his belly and he smiles, and something in me relaxes....

I rub his front off with a soft towel, wiping away the excess oil, and nudge him to turn over. His shoulders are knotted from stress, his back hard and tight. He is sore from worrying, from sleeping badly, from coughing. I slide my hands in circles, paying attention to what I can feel beneath my hands.

He is asleep before I reach for the towel. I turn out the light and finish in darkness.

I wake up too early the next morning, and after some quick, sleepy math come to the conclusion that it is Thursday.

Technically my day off, even if I weren't on procedural suspension--Jim's day off too, if he weren't sick. And--rats--septic tank day. The original plan, of course, had us both there for the Big Digging. Worse, in our local division of labor Jim was the expert on septic systems, drainage, and human waste. He has talked extensively with the--what do you call people who do this? Are they technicians? Some kind of construction worker? Machine operators? Jim has made all the arrangements by phone, marked off the area in question with pink plastic ribbon, picked out the tank. But would I even know if they installed it wrong?

It is too late to cancel now. I should have thought of this sooner. Since I haven't, all I can do is get up and get going. I make breakfast for us both, remind Jim that I have the cell phone, and, after one last hug, hurry out the door.

I am on time. The men from The Whole Poop, Inc., naturally, are not. To keep warm, I pace around the clearing. The woods, which usually do not seem quiet to me at all, are sadly still and hushed. Even my feet make very little noise as they tread the soft carpet of yellowed pine needles.

Jim is right. Of course. I have been obsessive--very nearly insane--for months now. Years. I hover. I fret. I boss him around sometimes like he was a child or someone with impaired judgment. Which is almost amusing, considering that he has been dealing with his senses as long as I have! Considering that he has a much more intimate perspective on the consequences of overtaxing his body or overloading his inputs.

Last fall we actually got into a fight over a sno-cone! As though Jim were somehow incapable of understanding the minor reaction that followed or judging whether the sno-cone was worth it. Maybe the taste was worth it to him. How could I know? Or maybe the attraction was just to spend five minutes not being so careful. Maybe the gain in overall morale was worth a little photosensitivity....

(But the little things add up! It was the little things that wore him down in Cascade.)

No. Jim knows his limits. And he knows he can't be protected from every single little thing, that it would be hopeless and exhausting to even try.

(He doesn't know his limits. He can't do it alone. That's what brought him to me in the first place.)

A very long time ago! He's a bright guy and he's been paying attention. Sure, he still needs some help, but his boundaries are his to set, not mine. He may give his body to me on a regular basis, but he's the one who has to live in it.

(If we don't do everything right....) That is the thought that scares me most. If we don't do everything right Jim will suffer terribly. Or worse--I won't have him any more. I couldn't take it if--

But--Damn it! That does not give me the right to determine what is right for him and force him to comply. That's just...wrong. If Jim, knowing the risks, wants an occasional blue sno-cone, he has the right to choose to do that. Even if he wants to do big, dangerous things like, like, like scrub the kitchen down with undiluted bleach or put pesticide on the lawn, it is his body and his life and his choice. Isn't it?

Oh, God. Is this how Naomi felt watching me become a cop? Never mind taking on a life so alien to her world view, but doing something so dangerous besides? Oh, Mom. You tried so hard to let me make my own decisions, to support me. How do I do this? How do I stop panicking all the time? How do I let go? Just enough so that he can breathe and I am not insane? How do I do it?

I am no closer to an epiphany when the truck comes forty-five minutes later.

As far as I can tell, it goes off without a hitch. They find the area, clearly marked. They manage to get the digging equipment in place. The good ol' boy in charge is an unpleasant but careful young man who worries about putting in the septic tank before the well is dug: what if well-site we have picked doesn't work out? But we can't get the drill for another three weeks, and anyway, it doesn't matter. Jim picked both sites. Everything will be fine.

Halfway through the process, it starts to drizzle. Not much, and they don't want to stop (although the foreman frets), but it is annoying. This is the second wet spring in a row. All the tourist propaganda promises "300 sunny days a year!" but naturally as soon as I move into town they start setting records the other way. Just noticing.

Inspecting the hole before they install the tank, I slip in the new mud and nearly fall in. Lovely.

At home I go in the back door--filthy again, but at least I didn't touch any plants this time, so I shouldn't be toxic. Jim greets me in the kitchen with a cup of hot tea. He says he heard me grumbling all the way from the main road--which is a lie. I wasn't grumbling out loud.

It's not late and I have a lot to do--laundry, vacuuming, change the sheets. I haven't worked out in over a week. Or really caught up on my email.

I don't do any of it, throwing on a pair of sweats and settling down with Jim on the couch instead. I give Jim the remote and he turns on the Pet Psychic, in what I can only assume is a misguided attempt at generosity. As well as he knows me, there must be times when I seem like a very alien and incomprehensible animal. When his head drops back with a snore, I snag the remote and switch to the food channel.

It both pleases and worries me that Jim is sleeping so much. I have the urge to reach out and touch him. It is, I acknowledge, the same urge that prompted the massage last night: insecurity, possessiveness. Control. If I am ruthless with myself, even appropriating. Jim is right, my terror is making me crazy. Jim has less privacy, less space, less autonomy then he did when he was my research subject. Yes, it's nice that he likes to be touched, is willing to let me pretty far into his life, wants my help. But he is not my property, and it is a really shitty thing that my terror runs our life.

I get up and do the laundry.

After dinner, Millie shows up with a report for Jim and paperwork that she can't sign herself. And a huge pot of chicken soup. She clucks over my wrists which are not so much weepy from poison oak now as scabby from my scratching. Millie is uber-mom, in a way Naomi never was, and it is easy to forget that she is armed even off duty or that last year during first-aid recertification she hoisted Jim over her shoulder and carried him a good eight feet.

Jim asks about the shooting. Millie says all the statements match (as much as eye-witness accounts ever do) and the Commissioners want to know if I can get a medal. The bad news is that Bird's mother wants to sue the county for wrongful death. "But it'll never make it to court. He attacked two people to get that weapon and threatened over a dozen civilians with it, including the head of the school board." I wince. School board members get elected because they know everybody. "What are people going to say about this? It's hard not to be sympathetic to poor Mrs. Bird, but everybody knows her grief is making her just a little crazy."

The next day I am back at work. Millie says they could manage if I needed another day, but I am coordinating the disaster drill, and Chief Anders, the high school principal, the head of the health department, two nurses from the hospital, and the volunteer fire Chief are expecting to meet with me.

When I walk into HQ Friday morning, everybody stops working and glances up at me covertly. Of the four people in the outer office, none of them has ever had to kill any one, and only Dave has even had to fire his weapon in the line of duty. I can hear them all wondering.

I manage to keep my head together for the meeting, even though I am days behind in my own contribution to our synthetic disaster. At lunch I go home to check on Jim. I find him asleep on the couch with the TV going. It's good that he's getting some rest. Worrisome, though, that he doesn't hear me come in. Sighing, I cover him with a blanket and make lunch.

So Friday goes. And Saturday. And Sunday. Jim sleeps and eats. I go to work and ride with Loraine or Elliot and Doris. Each evening we report to Lynn. Jim is getting better. When he's awake he has energy; he stays present in conversations, renews his obsession with the house.

Hardwood floor in the kitchen or tile? Ceramic tile or stone tile? Glaze? Should we try shopping in Wenatchee? Or go all the way into the city? The accordion folder comes out again.

On Monday, Jim comes back to work with me. I think it's too soon, but I don't say so. If he really wants to sit at his desk instead of at home, ok.

We are late. He wanted to see his new septic field. He admires it for about ten minutes, walking slowly over the turned ground. There is nothing to see but dirt and machine tracks. Maybe he is using the sonar of his own footsteps to scope out the shape and position of the tank and pipes underground. I don't really care how he's doing it; he is calm and satisfied.

We have just turned back toward Jim's SUV when our radios sound off. "Civil disturbance" off County Four north of Apple Jack. No, Bobbie can't be any more specific, she is getting conflicting reports. But we do realize that is where the Hoskins land is, right?

We run. It's not that far to the bench where the car is parked, but it's uphill, and by the time we get there, Jim sounds like he's trying to cough up his toes. I nudge Jim to the passenger's side and drive myself.

Apple Jack is a post office and gas station half-way across the county. That part of County Road Four is a joke (and only funny if you think pot-holes are high comedy). It takes half an hour to get there.

The civil disturbance isn't hard to find. It is centered on one of the hundreds of nameless dirt tracks leading off what is passing for a main road--a crowd of about two hundred sitting (some of them on folding chairs) in the dirt road, mostly holding signs, and barring the path of--naturally--four or five logging trucks and about a hundred workers who have spilled back out onto the main road and are milling around, yelling.

Between the two groups is a news crew from Chelan and three unhappy-looking deputies. We shoulder our way through to the center. Joey, in charge until now, gratefully steps aside for Jim. Dave Couch catches my eye with a half-smile and shakes his head. I pretend not to see--

And find myself meeting the eyes of the woman in the foremost folding chair. Miss Lillian. Which would not have been a surprise, if I had given this any thought at all. She smiles a formal smile that comes straight out of the late 1950's and says, "Morning, boys."

Jim nods, tips his hat, says, "Just what seems to be the problem, here, ma'am?"

It is the other side that answers him, a tall, thin man in denim, brandishing a sheaf of forms and permits, snarling about trespassing, about how the company president himself is on the way, about how 'this bitch' has already put them behind schedule, is costing his men money, trying to cost them their jobs...

"Oh, is that today?" Jim takes the man's papers and turns slightly away, studying each form carefully while ignoring the rant that continues in his direction. After what seems a very long time, Jim hands the papers back and says, "Well, this all seems to be in order. Thank you." He speaks very softly and the man has to shut up to hear him. Then Jim turns to Miss Lillian. "Mrs. Billings--"

"Sheriff, have you met Ted Carter? He owns a winery a few miles east of here. And I believe you know Robyn Hurley."

Jim shakes hands politely with the people standing behind Miss Lillian's chair. Apparently, he's in no hurry. "Mrs. Billings, do you have a permit for this little assembly?"

She actually looks embarrassed.

"And--" Jim looks around, "Half these people are high school kids! Shouldn't they be in class?"

"It's an applied lesson in civics," she says primly.

"What am I supposed to do, here? Come on. You can't sit here forever."

"I don't need to. Only about a week or so. The Citizen's Committee is raising the money to buy back the land. Jim--Sheriff--you know Mr. Hoskins meant this land to be a nature preserve."

This inspires yelling from the foreman, which is drowned out by the yelling of the loggers, which is drowned out by the protesters. The protesters are yelling something in unison, that rhymes. They are on beat, and I think they might have been organized by a cheerleader. I clamp my teeth on a hysterical laugh; is this the same job I had last week? Am I even living on the same planet?

It takes a while to get everybody quieted down again, and then Jim turns to me. "Can we arrest for truancy?" His voice is loud enough to carry.

I pretend not to know, and look at Joey.

Joey says, "Not without a complaint from the school and documentation of multiple offenses. And then we'd have to go arrest the parents."

A few of the teenagers look nervous, but nobody moves.

"I can arrest you all for unlawful assembly, disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, obstructing a public roadway--"

"The part we're obstructing is a private roadway. The logging trucks are obstructing the county roadway," Ted Carter says helpfully.

I sneak a glance at Jim. I know where his sympathies usually lie--never mind that some of the protesters are his friends; the loggers are about to damage his territory and he's not thrilled. But he will enforce the laws. So will I, in fact, even though it was my mother that taught Miss Lillian how to stage a protest.

The news crew is now filming, although Dave has moved them back several paces and is keeping them out of the way.

The edgy silence is broken as three men in suits shove their way to the front, waving more paper. The one in front closes on Jim, shouting into his face, "I demand you get these tree-hugging morons out of here now!"

Jim peers at him for a moment. "And you are?"

"Sam Larken. I own Pioneer M, L & P. Those are my men, this is my land, and that rabble is trespassing. I demand you arrest them immediately!"

Very few people yell at Jim with impunity. Even I am not usually one of them. But Jim just turns to Miss Lillian and says, "Mrs. Billings, I am going to ask you and your people one more time to vacate these premises."

She swallows nervously. Not, I think, because she is looking up at a muscular cop thirty years her junior and more than twice her weight, but because she was always a nice, law-abiding citizen who is not used to disobeying the law, even civilly. "No."

Even though he is not moving so very quickly, even though it isn't completely unexpected, even though Miss Lillian makes no move to resist--it is shocking just the same when Jim seizes her by the arm and hauls her out of the chair and up against one of the big trees at the side of the road. Jim holds her arms behind her back with one hand while he digs out his cuffs and recites her rights in a stentorian snarl that would give Jimmy Hoffa chills.

Carter starts forward, looking shocked and yelling, "Hey!" I stop him with my leg and a hand squarely in his chest. "Don't. I mean it." I push him sideways so he can see Dave and Joey with their hands on their guns. They are both a little freaked. "Don't escalate this."

Robyn Hurley turns to the still-seated protesters and starts them singing.

We don't have enough cuffs for 200 people. Or transportation. Or a place to put them. By the time we have the whole kit and caboodle downtown and unloading off borrowed (rented) school busses, we have made the noon news out of Olympia, Seattle, Cascade and Spokane. We are met by a horde of angry parents, the white-faced county prosecutor, two of the three county commissioners, and another news crew.

Commissioner Whitfield closes on Jim bellowing, "What in the hell did you think you were doing?"

Jim ignores that and says politely, "With your permission, sir, I'll release the kids to their parents or guardians as soon as we get them identified." Not that he needs permission, but it shuts Whitfield up and gives us another hour of relative peace as we get the kids sorted out.

By that time, Oksana is ready to let everybody go with a warning but the ringleaders. She presents it to Jim meekly, expecting an argument (for a lawyer, she is amazingly conflict-avoidant) but he just shrugs and agrees. We wind up with six people in Marty's jail, not the original 191. They refuse to give their names, hoping to have to be detained for a few days, but naturally everybody knows who they are. Bail will be set by the end of the day.

We are almost done, except for the politics. Commissioner Whitfield is first: "I'm not saying you did the wrong thing, son. We brought you in to enforce the law, keep the peace. And God knows, this mess is not good for the county--not the corruption charges and not this weird explosion of tree-hugging, liberal yuppie-dom. But treating an old lady like that with the cameras right there, no matter what the old bat was doing...son, you've just got to learn some judgment."

Commissioner Chang is not so stupid. "Play any more games in my county and I'll have you fired. Don't think I can't. I'll overlook a lot, because you're good. But no games."

It is not even, by this point, four o'clock, although it feels to me like midnight. Jim goes into his office and closes the door. I open up the files on the disaster drill and try to read through the plan as it currently stands. We only have three more meetings to get our shit together.

At 5:15 I notice that we haven't left yet. I close out my files (never mind that I share the computer; if you don't close the files properly, they don't get backed up in the wee hours of the morning. I can be tidy if it's necessary.) and go knock on Jim's door. He doesn't answer, so I knock louder and head in anyway. He flinches as the door opens, but remains hunched over his desk, his forehead in his hands. Before him are two running white noise generators and the scattered remains of something brown and anonymous. I shut the door softly, approach slowly. His jaw twitches with each footstep, and I take a deep breath.

I stop--oh, too far away! But I don't know what is setting him off. "Jim?"

"Just a headache." I can barely hear him.

Slowly, I come closer. The brown bits in front of him are the mutilated remains of a moose-shaped hand-squeezie. It was whole last time I saw it. "Hearing bad?"

"And smell. And light." His hands work restlessly, but the stress-toy is already shredded.

"Take anything?"

"Everything. More than I should have."

"Ok. Ok." Jim keeps a coffee pot in his office. Partly to offer guests, partly to use as emergency aromatherapy: good coffee will cover a lot of less pleasant smells. The pot is running now. I turn it off, pick up the jug of spring water on the floor. There is enough left to dampen a wad of crappy paper towels from the little supply cabinet. I put my shadow between Jim and the light leaking around the closed blinds and wipe his face with the damp towels. "Why didn't you call me?"

"Sorry." Sadly, he meets my eyes, and I see that he isn't sorry he didn't come to me. He's sorry he just couldn't deal with my terror again. He's sorry I was too much for him, that he couldn't face the pain and my worry, too.

I blink hard. "S'ok. I understand. It's ok. Just close your eyes and breathe for me, ok?"

"Thought I could handle it...."

"Sometimes you can. Just a little headache, right? But you're just getting over being sick and today was a hell of a day, all that shouting, all that anger, hearing it and smelling it." He shudders, and I squat beside him, pulling him against me. "That was a hell of a thing Miss Lillian asked you to do, wasn't it? Gee, do you think she spent the 60's glued to the news wishing she was at a sit-in? I always suspected she was a closet hippie. It's always the respectable people you have to watch."

Jim smiles faintly against my chest. "Think she'll bring charges for excessive force?"

"Don't give her any ideas." I have my arms around him, trying to protect him from light and sound. Futile, I know. "How are the dials?"

"Thought I should start with the magic numbers....I can't find them...I keep listening for my blood pressure...."

"Shhh. Ok. You're just tired." I know I am saying this to calm me, not him. "Let's just go home, how does that sound?"

He nods a little. "Please."

I get him home without incident until we walk in the front door, and he almost loses it from the smell of the garbage in the kitchen. We get his clothes off and I leave him in the darkened bathroom to shower while I take out the trash and put on a pot of coffee, since that seems to be what's working today.

I settle Jim in bed. I would dearly love to stay with him, but God alone knows what smells I am carrying on my person after today. By the time I am done, Jim has fled his pain into sleep. I watch him from the doorway, a dimly outlined lump breathing slowly.

What am I going to do?

What am I going to do about me?

He didn't come to me for help because he couldn't cope with my reaction. Dear God....

I call Lynn for the evening report. I confess the headache. She says if it isn't gone by tomorrow, she wants to see him. I explain that if smell and hearing are still acting up, I can't bring him to the hospital. The conversation lasts longer than I want.

Not hungry, no one to talk to. I turn on the local news and manage to catch the end of the story on the protest. Gad. Given that footage, I can see why the county government freaked out. From this angle, all you can see of Jim is his square jaw (looming over Miss Lillian's head like he's Tiny Ron or something), his dark glasses, and his hat as the big, macho cop hauls the little old lady around like some kind of thug or hopped up gang member. You can't see that, with one hand supporting her so that she doesn't fall while moving so quickly, Jim has left himself wide open, and that if Miss Lillian had had even basic combat training she could have easily taken his gun twice. You can't tell, from that camera angle, that Jim holds her arms loose and low, or that the handcuffs aren't nearly tight enough for her tiny wrists.

After an hour or so, Jim creeps out and settles on the couch beside me. "Any better?"

A relieved, tired smile and a small nod. He's still moving carefully, though, as though he expects it to hurt.

"Hungry?"

A bigger smile. Still not talking.

I drop a kiss on his forehead and go scare up dinner: frozen ravioli, the expensive sauce, and his evening pills. We eat in front of the tv with the sound turned down. Jim leaves the trays on the coffee table and stretches out, his head in my lap. Still that ghost of a smile--it must feel so good not to hurt. We sit in the quiet, letting the last of the tension go. His hair slides like silk through my fingers as I stroke his head. He is large and solid and beautiful, this man. He is the center of my world, more than I ever hoped for. What will I do if I screw up and lose him? What would be left for me then?

After a while I rouse myself to check out holsters and new frisking gloves in the latest FARM catalog. I have the light on its lowest setting, though, and if I read too long I will wind up with a headache. But maybe it doesn't matter. I am not really looking at the page anyway.

Just when I am about to give it up and take us both to bed, Jim stirs. He pushes against me, trying to sit up, swallowing a cough.

"Jim, what's wrong?"

He clumsily shushes me and rolls onto his feet. I stand up behind him, reaching, unsure. Is he in trouble? No doubt I could smell his physical state, if I were him. But no, he's listening to something.

He untangles himself from the blanket, runs for the door. I am right behind him. He is silent, urgent. Should we be armed? Not pausing at the door, he charges across the tiny porch, down the slightly uneven wooden steps. I can see, now, headlights coming up the drive and hear the crunch and crack of tires on gravel.

Jim stops on the grass and I nearly trip into him. "Who is it?" He silences me with his hand again. He doesn't look happy, but he isn't on the defensive either.

The car has stopped by now, and of course my normal eyes can't make out who is getting out. But I know Stacey's voice, calling to us, turning to crying as Jim runs to meet her. "Sweetheart, what's wrong? What's wrong?"

Between us, we take her into the house and produce food: leftover pasta, ice cream, and fruit. She bounces between embarrassment and heartbreak, and Jim keeps looking at me expectantly, as though he wants me to fix it.

Stacey has had a fight with Martin. Their first, apparently. Can I even remember my first fight with Jim? Not counting the one where he threatened to toss my office and run me in for practicing medicine without a license...Lord, but those days were just one long, uphill battle with Jim alternately refusing to cooperate and demanding I solve everything immediately.

But, no, this argument sounds very serious. They want to buy a house, and Martin's parents have offered to let the kids live with them for a year while they raise the money. "I can't live with that woman for a year. I just can't, nothing I do is good enough, she judges everything...."

Jim pats her while she sniffles and shovels in ice cream. "Didn't you explain?"

"Of course, I explained! He says she's not that bad, it's only for a year, it was a generous offer...but I'd rather live in a box than live in her house, by her rules, with her watching everything...."

Jim looks at me imploringly. I wonder what the hell he wants me to do. I pat her other shoulder and say, "All right, let it out. Let it out and let it go. Martin doesn't want to hurt you, we know that. He doesn't understand where you're coming from." I realize what I sound like and give up, going to get more ice cream. Maybe Martin is a stupid shit, what do I know? It sounds like just a little miscommunication to me, but I wasn't there.

When the ice cream is gone, she is much calmer. A quick trip to the bathroom to wash her face and breathe for a moment, and she is back, saying a proper hello, telling us she missed us, thanking us for being here, she just didn't know where else to come....

Jim goes off to make up the guest room, pinning me with a hard look that says he is giving me a clear field to fix everything. Thanks, man.

"How are things otherwise?" I ask. I have no intention of trying to solve all of Stacey's marital problems tonight.

"Fine. Great. Except I might be fired for ditching work tomorrow."

I wince.

"What about you?"

I sigh. "The usual; busy. Oh, and excited about the house. We have a septic tank now."

"Cool. And Jim."

"It's his septic tank, too."

"No, I mean, how is he?"

I knew what she meant. Because she was having a rotten day, I managed to rein in my irritation and say gently, "It's bad enough when Jim's family plays that game, but you know better, and, I think, have a little more emotional maturity."

She blinks. "What game?"

Without losing my temper, I say, "The game where you ask me how Jim is while he's out of the room but within range of his hearing so that he knows you care without ever having to take the emotional risk of saying so to his face or risking having to cope with any embarrassing distress if things aren't going well." I sigh inwardly, because I had meant to be kinder than that. But really. This is Stacey, and she should know better.

"Oh. Actually, I wasn't playing that game," she says meekly.

My eyebrows go up. "What game were you playing?" Because I don't believe her.

"The one where I ask you how Jim is and then try to figure out by how hard you work to avoid answering the question just how bad things are. Kind of like getting an advance warning. Before I talk to him. So I'm prepared."

Well. There's not a whole lot to say at this point, is there? My face goes red. I groan and bury it in my hands. I need to apologize, I think. Jim is already coming back in, though. He goes up behind Stacey and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Sweetheart, I really am ok."

She turns under his hand, looks up at him fearlessly. "You look like hell. You're tired and out of breath from making a bed."

It is my impulse to get her out of here, to stop this before it goes any further, before Jim has to say something Stacey really does not want to know. But he pulls up a chair and takes her hand, smiling faintly. "No, that's from running up the hall. Sweetheart, I picked up an infection and spent a couple days in the hospital."

"Bad?" she asks.

A shrug. "Worst so far." A pause. "But it's moving on pretty quickly. I'm already back at work. I'm all right. I promise, sweetheart. It's been a long day and I'm tired, but basically, I'm ok."

"Yeah?"

"Uh huh." He hugs her and pats her head. "But really, you shouldn't give Blair a hard time. You know this makes him crazy."

"Yeah, I know." They glance at me sadly.

"It's late. We're all a little wound up. How 'bout we talk tomorrow?"

"Ok."

"Think you can sleep?"

She nods, plants a kiss on Jim's cheek, then on mine, and heads off down the hall for the bedroom that is officially mine.

When she's gone, Jim looks at me for a moment, and sighs. "Us, too. Come on, Chief."

Stacey is up before us the next morning and makes French toast for breakfast. She seems cheerful and smiling, but something about her eyes makes me suspect she hasn't slept too well.

As I am reaching for the syrup, Stacey catches sight of my arms, which have stopped weeping and itching and have scabbed over nicely. "My God, Blair, what happened? Were you--? Did someone--?" I can see she is thinking I was kidnapped or something. Although we haven't been overly frank about the kinds of risks our job entails or about the fact that I have been unlucky enough to be abducted more than once, she is not an idiot and she knows how to read a newspaper. She knows that even out here the job is dangerous.

Oh, lord, I hope she doesn't know about Bird. I can't go there with her. Right now, I am just managing not to think about it myself. And I hope she didn't see the news, so we don't have to explain why Jim arrested an old lady yesterday.

While I am still floundering, Jim says, "Poison oak." He says it with the same sourness he would use to describe something much worse, and I look at him sharply. "He couldn't see it." His voice sounds brittle and he has stopped eating. He will not look at either of us.

"Jim, I'm sorry." I don't know what else to say, and maybe this will help.

Then he does look at me, and he isn't angry; he is pitying and a little guilty. "It wasn't your fault. You couldn't see it." He turns back to his food with a determination that says to me he has lost his appetite and is only eating to avoid insulting Stacey or alarming me.

And--wow! Doesn't he have a right to be upset, being reminded like this that he is surrounded by people who are practically blind and deaf and who can't smell worth a darn besides? That everyone he loves is basically a sitting duck for any calamity that comes along? Yeah, the sentinel thing makes him vulnerable to a lot--but not to toxic plants sitting in plain sight, and not to things like people sneaking up on him or taking a bad fall in the dark or getting poisoned by eating drugged pizza.

Really, I rarely see his protective impulses leak like this. He's much better at controlling his anxiety than I am.

Damn.

I wonder--after all these years, does he even remember what it's like to perceive so little? He has benchmarks to keep track of things he could not possibly know so that they don't wind up in reports, but does he really think about them any more?

Before this can go anywhere, the night operator at dispatch calls to say that the protesters are in place again. Lovely. On the way out the door, we hug Stacey and promise to try to come home early.

As we get out of the car, Millie, who has half an hour before going off shift, stalks through the milling loggers and hisses at Jim, "Please tell me we are not arresting them again. My daughter wouldn't even talk to me last night."

Jim just shrugs and wades into the crowd. There is a narrow no-mans-land between the protesters and the loggers. Two of our deputies are there, along with Commissioner Whitfield and a camera crew which gears up as we approach. "No civics lesson today?" Jim asks Miss Lillian, who is back in her chair.

She motions to the crowd behind her, which is about double the size of yesterday's but contains nobody underage. "I came to an agreement with the principal. No more applied social studies if the biology classes have to read 'Silent Spring.'"

Jim grunts and nods before turning to a suit stationed at the logger edge of the no-mans-land. "So--do you want everybody arrested again?"

This earns him a black look from the corporate lawyer and a titter from Robyn Hurley, who is again behind Miss Lillian. The loggers start to boo loudly, at the cops or at the protesters, I can't tell. The protesters are singing and can't hear them anyway.

After about an hour it becomes clear that we have a stalemate. The logging company is unwilling to act and the protesters are just going to sit there and sing. (They sing all of 'We are a Gentle Angry People' which makes Commissioner Whitfield turn bright red and storm off. Even I am a little surprised, although I am sure they just did it for shock value.) This could go on for days. Jim leaves Joey and Loraine in charge of the scene and we head back into town.

It is a long day, and except for Jim's brief appointment with Lynn, we spend most of it hiding in the Sheriff's Office. It's amazing, really, how many people in this town went through Miss Lillian's third grade, and a number of them give me dirty looks as I duck out to the diner to pick up something for lunch. There is plenty to do at the office; tomorrow is the end of April, and Jim has three monthly reports that really should be filed before we get too far into May. I have that damned disaster drill to work on, the final paperwork on Bird's shooting, and the network is acting up again.

Naturally, on the way out the door at 4:55, an accident call comes in. So much for getting home early.

When we finally do get home, it is close to seven, and there is an extra car parked at the edge of the gravel. I count again. My truck, Stacey's little Honda, and a big sedan....Great. Miss Lillian is here.

Sighing, Jim leads me in the back door to the kitchen, where Miss Lillian is having coffee with Stacey. "I was hoping to catch you at home. I had no idea you had company. Stacey has been very kind."

Stacey jumps up at once to get two more cups. Grinning, she waves toward a brown paper bag on the counter. "She brought mushrooms! It's amazing. You won't believe it. You can't get mushrooms like this."

Jim sort of smiles. "Mushrooms. You know, nobody ever tried to give me a payoff for arresting them before."

"Oh, it's not for arresting me. It's for forgiving me."

The conversation has confused Stacey, who has stepped back and shut her mouth hard. I go to stand beside her as Jim takes the seat she vacated across from Miss Lillian. "I'm not...angry with you. I'm just...what if I'd been someone else?"

"I was very lucky. It was you, and you would never let things get out of hand. But if it had been someone else, I would have done the same thing."

"I know that. One way or another it would not have worked out so well. It might not have worked out so well this time--do you realize one of your people started to obstruct your arrest? People could have been hurt."

"That was my mistake. I thought everyone understood this only works well if you don't resist the police. I should have been more blunt with them. I'm sorry."

"You're not getting me here. This sort of thing is never one hundred percent safe. I don't want you hurt in this--this craziness."

"Jim. What else was there to do? Or do you really think Mr. Hoskins forgot to make out a will? I may be old, but I'm not dead, and I'm not going to sit around and rock while doing a little thing like getting arrested can change the world. You think so too, or you wouldn't have made sure I made the news."

"I was wrong. And if I'd made a mistake, I could have hurt you."

"We were both right. We won."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not just an environmental issue, it's a huge scandal. Corruption and fraud, and the implication that somebody bought off a judge to get things settled quickly. There isn't a logging company in the state that would get involved with the kind of bad press that would overflow from that. They're giving up. They're selling it to us--we already have the money for a down payment and we've been contacted by two major organizations which are willing to help...."

"I'm happy for you. Really."

"But you're not happy with me?"

"I'm not angry....You're just...You're as bad as he is." Jim sighs in my direction. "Be careful, won't you?"

Miss Lillian says all the polite things before saying good-bye and heading home. Into the awkward silence she leaves behind, Stacey mutters, "I thought she was kidding. You really did arrest her yesterday?"

I giggle. "She's a pillar of the community. Regular local institution. Except for the protesting. Actually, that part's our fault--"

"Has anyone got any preferences for dinner?" Jim asks.

Stacey looks pointedly at the bag. "Mushroom soup. Also, steak with mushroom sauce."

Jim softens slightly. "That sounds nice."

Jim goes first to shower and change, then me. I leave them talking in the living room, but when I come out Jim is sitting on the couch with his head thrown back, sound asleep. Silently, Stacey slips out of her chair and follows me into the kitchen. "We were talking," she whispers, "and then he just fell asleep."

"Yeah," I say. "He'll do that for a few more days."

She lays out some newspapers on the table and gently empties the bag of mushrooms on to them. "You should have called me. When he got sick."

"I'm sorry," I say hollowly. "I'm sorry about last night, too."

She gives me a hard look, and I think Oh, God, she's going to push--But she just sits down at the table and begins to pick through the mushrooms for bugs and small twigs. "Do you know, when I was--younger--I used to wish more than anything that someday I would have with somebody what you and Jim have?"

I try to smile. "A license to carry?"

She laughs, but isn't distracted. "You know. To love somebody like that. To trust somebody like that."

I sit down across from her. "What about your parents?"

She shrugs. "I never really knew them as people. They seem sort of like a dream sometimes. I can remember they didn't fight a lot. They talked a lot about things I didn't understand. But how their marriage worked? I never noticed." She deftly cuts a large slug-like thing out of a mushroom and lays it aside. "Even watching you and Jim, I can see what but I have no idea how."

"How what?"

"How you don't have terrible fights and say things you don't mean and get all scared and hurt and..." A big tear slides down her face and lands on the handle of the knife.

"We've...done that, actually. All of it."

She is shaking her head. "What would you fight over?"

I snort. "Name it. Cases. My untidiness. His tidiness. Food. Money, although that one's rare. Building the house. At the beginning there was the dissertation...." We always kept our friction from her, even if we were in the middle of a fight when she arrived. She needed stability, we thought, people to feel safe about. Bad enough she knew people shot at us, she didn't need her anxiety about the world added to by thinking we weren't solid with each other. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake. In the real world nothing is perfect and solid all the time.

"Well. But. Disagreements, sure. But you wouldn't say anything to really hurt him."

I lean forward. "No. I've done things that really hurt him. Things I didn't think out or that he saw differently than I assumed he would."

She looks astounded. "Jim--?" She is shaking her head. She has never seen the worst parts of him. He can't have been mean to me.

I take a deep breath. "He says things. Hurtful things." The most hurtful things he can think of. "When he's angry. Or." When he's angry or hurt or afraid. "When he's uncertain, he pushes people away." I edit heavily; I will not betray him, even for the sake of Stacey's education.

"But you love each other!"

"That doesn't make us not human. It doesn't make us mind readers or always brave or never selfish."

"Then how? How do you do it? He adores you and you would do anything for him and it works. How do you do it?"

"Well. Practice makes it better. Lots of apologizing. Lots of forgiving. Lots of buried pride."

Her eyes flick away from me, toward the living room where Jim is still sleeping. "Yeah..."

"It's been a lot of work, and we had, well, a few advantages."

"Like what?"

"In the beginning, there was low emotional investment--it wasn't so easy to hurt each other. It wasn't all personal and intimate. I'm guessing, Martin means a lot to you, and it's easy for him to hurt you, yes? Even by accident?"

"Yeah."

"And in the beginning, when we were working all the basic stuff out, well, we were irreplaceable to each other. We needed each other for our work. That's a great incentive to either work it out or suck it up, so we coped. Even when we irritated the hell out of each other."

"Wow."

"But you and Martin have advantages Jim and I didn't. You're starting out in love. You know you're in for the long haul, so you can talk things out instead of just ignoring them until they explode. Also, you're not both guys, so you can actually admit weaknesses to each other rather than having to be in control all the time."

She just nods, thinking, as her swift fingers chop the mushrooms.

Dinner is late--close to nine--but it is excellent. Jim has seconds of everything, even the vegetable (frozen beans and mushrooms). I clean up after dinner, sending Jim and Stacey off to look at the house plans. Of course we have sent her stuff by email, but this is the real thing, and Jim can go on forever about the house. When I join them, Jim is waxing poetic about the merits of different kinds of exterior stain.

Later, when Jim and I are in bed, clinging to each other in the darkness, I whisper, "We have to send her back."

"Why?" and then, "She's no trouble."

"That's not the point. She doesn't need to be here. She doesn't even want to be here."

"How do you know?" He is hoping. I am guessing.

"She didn't bring her cat."

"But..."

I sigh and pat his head. "She's here because her baggage says to run away from things that are hard to deal with. It's what her parents did every time things got bad. It's the first thing she did when she started to come back to herself at the hospital. It's what she did when things got awkward with you in Cascade."

"She's not a kid now, Blair. Over the years, she's had more therapy than you. If this is her pattern, she knows it. It's still her decision."

"I'm sure she does know. If she's stopped to think. But Jim, the thing is, what she needs to be doing is talking to Martin and listening to him. Not hiding here with us where things are easy. "

"She needs to feel welcome here, Blair. She needs to know she can always come here."

"She can. But she needs...." I stop, unwilling to turn this into an argument. "Never mind. I'm sure it will all work out."

"It's good to see her."

"Yeah, it is." I sigh. "Maybe she and Martin could come up later this summer and see the new house. Or go camping or something."

"That would be nice...." Jim turns and snuggles closer, laying his head on my shoulder. "How are you doing, Chief?"

"Me? Fine." I turn my head so my cheek brushes his hair.

"Blair...Please." I can barely hear him. "Just talk to me."

"What do you want me to say, here, Jim? I'm doing the best I can. I'm just scared."

"What are you so scared of?"

"You know. Failing you. Losing you. Don't make me do this."

His face tilts up to mine. He is studying me carefully. "I just don't know what else to do. I just...don't. You're knotted up inside and scared all the time now. And I--Ok, I don't know how to fix it. I don't. But even if I can't fix it, you don't...Chief, you don't have to face it alone."

"Jim, I can't risk sabotaging you worse than I already am. Do you understand? I've got to get on top of this without dragging you down with me. I just need--"

He eases over and props himself on his elbow to look down at me. "That is such crap," he whispers fiercely. "Do you really think you're hiding your feelings from me? You aren't protecting me, you're pushing me away."

I know he's right. I am already making mistakes. "I'm just so afraid," I make myself say the words, although I still don't want to. I really am failing Jim, but at least I can give him the truth he's asking for. "You're going to die and it will be my fault."

With his free hand he cradles my face. "Is that what you really think, Chief?"

"Think?" I press my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming and waking Stacey. "I'm too scared to think! I'm too scared to breathe! If I let it out, even a little, oh God, Jim!" It has already gotten away from me, this hysteria I realize I have been fighting for days now. For as long as I can remember. The tears slide out of my eyes and in cool tracks into my hair. I cannot stop them, I cannot speak.

He wraps his arms around me and turns me so my face is crushed against his shoulder. He is whispering random things that don't make any sense. Poor Jim. He thought he was ready for this. He thought he could handle me.

He gets quiet before I do, just holding me against him. I try to get a hold of myself. "I think we just found part of the problem." Jim says, while I am snuffling. He is trying to sound optimistic.

"Oh?" I do not soundly convincingly in control of myself.

"You said it would be your fault if I died."

A funny gasp slips out. I swallow and flop my hand out seeking a tissue. "And what? You forgive me in advance? Gee, that's such a huge help."

"Blair, I've got a revelation for you. Are you listening?" He shakes me gently. "Blair?"

I finally find a tissue. "Yeah. I'm listening."

"Sooner or later I am going to die. I'm almost positive it won't be your fault."

"Jim--what?"

"There's all kinds of things that could happen to me that wouldn't be your fault. I could hit a slick spot in the road tomorrow. Anything. There's just too much in the world that isn't in your control. It wouldn't be your fault.

"It isn't going to be your fault."

"It is." My eyes fill up again. "My job--these senses--"

"Your job is to teach me about the senses and help me cope. That's all."

I can only stare at his shape in the darkness, unable to speak.

"I suppose...I contributed to this. I've asked so much from you. You do so much more than I had any right to expect...you were so good at it. So good. I just kept asking. And you kept doing miracles. But you can't do everything. Of course you can't. You don't control everything."

I take a couple of deep breaths. "Not everything. Just your senses. It's your senses that make you vulnerable to certain irritations."

He thinks about that. "Is my body in there anywhere?"

"Huh?"

"There's more to it than the senses. You didn't make it. And you can't stop it from getting older."

"Jim, I see what you're trying to do--"

"Do you?"

"But you can't expect me to be ok with the idea of something bad happening to you."

"I'm not asking you to be ok with it. Just notice that it hasn't happened yet. And that everything that happens to me is not one hundred percent your responsibility."

I don't answer him.

"Will you just think about it? Please?"

I do not want to think about it. I have not wanted to think about this, ever. But I nod. "Ok."

We lie awake for a long time. Or I lie awake, and Jim tries to stay with me. He's tired, though, and at last he drifts off, still holding me against him. I have not missed how hard he is trying, facing every private terror of his own, hoping to reach me and get me through mine. He's running out on limbs to try to coax me out of the tree I have been in since he called to say he was in the hospital. I hold him in the darkness, heavy and real and sleeping deeply. Whatever my fears, they haven't happened yet.

The next day is Wednesday. I have it off. The idea of sending Jim in to work without me makes me positively nauseous. But there is no question of going in with him, even if it wouldn't just earn me another lecture about being over-protective. We are expecting two truckloads of gravel for the driveway today. Somebody has to meet them.

At first I console myself that I will at least have Stacey. She can come out with me to wait for the gravel, and afterwards, we can meet Jim at the diner in town for lunch. But when we sit down to her beautiful banana pancakes, she announces that she's going home to Portland to start talking with Martin. If she leaves right after breakfast, she can make it back in time to be waiting for him when he gets home from school.

The gravel trucks are on time; I barely beat them. To make up for their punctuality, they dump their loads unevenly, and I have to spend several hours with a rake smoothing out the rocks on the driveway. I pull the truck up and leave the radio on, so that I can monitor things in town. It's a quiet morning. The only call that comes in is another strike by the lawn ornament bandit. The morning warms up quickly, and by the time I finish at noon I have peeled two layers of flannel and am still sweating. It really is spring, finally.

When I get home, putting the rake away reminds me of the garden tools still waiting under the narrow back porch to be cleaned. So I run back into town for that poison ivy cleaner which started its existence as a chemical warfare counteragent before finding a commercial application as a trendy hiking accessory. I soak an old rag in the stuff and scrub everything and then hose it off. Then I get a new rag and do it again. When I'm done, I am damp from a small leak in the hose, but still warm. I lay the tools on the grass to dry in the sun and head inside, intending to shower.

I change my mind. It's been over a week since we cleaned the house, and if I don't do it, Jim will. Yes, it's coddling and overprotecting him to hurry and do it before he gets home, but I am off the hook here. For at least a couple more weeks, he is going to need that. It is the right thing to do.

It is the right thing to do, but somehow that doesn't make me feel better. Sooner or later, my excuses will run out and then I will have to give him some....freedom. Trust him to know his own body. To not be an idiot. To do his best to stay with me.

I vacuum and dust, and then clean the kitchen floor and bathroom to his standards.

The shower afterwards in the clean bathroom is almost worth the work in itself. I turn up the hot water. I scrub with the loofa. Free of sweat and filth, I sing. I am happily rinsing my hair, when Jim's bellow sounds from just the other side of the shower curtain. "Sandburg! How many times are we going to have this talk?"

The part of me that is not slipping on the soapy tub pauses to admire the kind of precision control it takes for a sentinel to yell like that in a confined space. Jim's arm shoots through the gap between the curtain and the wall and seizes my upper arm. He is scaring the bejeezus out of me to make a point, not trying to kill me, after all. My feet slide, but do not shoot out and dump me on my ass. "You didn't hear me. I could have been anybody. Is it so hard to remember to lock the back door?" He is not really angry, just frustrated and a little worried.

"Oh, come on. In the last ten years, you couldn't count the number of times I've left the door unlocked on one hand."

"Two hands. It's six."

"Come on. Who's gonna walk in on a cop?"

"It only takes once. Will you stop looking at me like that. How can I yell at you when you're smiling?"

"I'm not smiling. I'm taking you very seriously. And I'll do better. I promise."

"Damn it, Blair, this is not a game." His eyes are hard, suddenly, and kind of frightened underneath. He starts to let me go, looking away just a little. I catch his hand.

I know--God! I know that feeling! It's clear, now, how he's been so preternaturally patient with my fussing and coddling. "I'm sorry," I say.

"Just be careful."

"Ok."

He nods slowly, his eyes softening again into that sweet affection that even after two years I can't take for granted.

Without letting go of his hand, I take half a step backwards into the water and reach behind me to turn it off. As the faucet sputters and drips, Jim watches me through the gap in the curtain. "What?" he asks.

"You're so beautiful." He has left the door open, and with the water off, the shower is suddenly cold. I shiver and step closer.

He laughs.

"Not macho enough?" I ask. "Too sentimental?"

"Not accurate." He is smiling, radiating affectionate tolerance. It makes him look more beautiful still. "I'd accept 'sexy.' Or 'godlike'." The tease falls flat, and he frowns. "Are you feeling ok?"

"I love you, you know. You are everything I ever wanted, even when I didn't know all of what I wanted....and your loving me, that's...I never even dared to want that."

"And you're scared. I know. But you can't lose that, Blair," he whispers. "Nothing can take that away from you now. Not ever." He studies me, searching. "I love you. That's real. That's yours. Forever." I hear what he's trying to say, and I know what it's costing him to say it. Again and again he steps out on this limb for me, honest and vulnerable, not protecting himself. A frightening limb for him; feelings are frightening, dangerous things.

For me, he does the really scary things. For me.

I lean forward, still only touching his hand--I am sopping and dripping and he is still in his uniform. I strain upward and he meets me. His mouth is soft and warm and steady. He tastes like the Promised Land, like first prize, like the apples of Iduna. I push into him, reaching with my arms, drag him close to me. His uniform is dry and stiff and lumpy, but I can feel him, hot and solid underneath. I'm dripping on his radio, but I don't care. All I can think is that I want him.

He steps carefully backward, guiding me out of the tub with a hand tangled in the wet curls at the back of my head. I follow, still pushing against him with my body, soaking his shirt, searching for him with my hands. He has two belts on and far too much clothing. When I knock his hat off, he detaches himself enough to undress. Not fast enough, but instead of complaining, I close my eyes and lose myself in the taste of him, the warmth of his body near mine.

He is willing to take a moment to pick up the discarded clothing. I am not. I step over his holster and shoes and draw him after me into the bedroom. "Easy, Chief. I'm right here."

My answer is a soft, longing noise. It seems to communicate my feelings very well, so I make it again and pull him down onto the bed on top of me. He tangles one hand in my hair and plants gentle kisses on my face. "Missed you today," he whispers, smiling. "God, I'm so spoiled, Chief." His tongue flicks out in tiny strokes that he must taste as bright explosions. His hands on my body are light and slow and reverent.

It is not enough. He is not near enough. Whimpering, I squirm under him, take his hand and put it firmly where I want it.

The hand doesn't stay, and, in fact, Jim nearly rolls off me reaching for something. I grunt in frustration, and by way of compensation, his teeth fasten gently on my ear. "I'm right here," he whispers, nuzzling me, "Here. It's ok."

I run my hands over him--smooth. And soft. And hard. Everywhere, he is beautiful. All I can think of is the sweet slide of his skin and that I need more, more of him. Searching, desperate, I pull him closer and kiss him again. It's like the first kiss--ever: all hot and glittering and dizzy and blind.

And, at last--oh, at last--his hand is back. His fingers are slippery and warm and inside me. He is gentle and caressing, even now, in small, circular movements that seem to saturate my entire body. His eyes, still open, are becoming slightly unfocused.

I love you. Nothing can take that away from you. That's yours forever.

I gasp, feeling as though I were flying or falling or floating. I slide my teeth along the soft skin of his shoulder, cling to him as he twists and gasps. One of his hands is in my damp hair, holding me as tightly as I am holding him. Stunned, unable to think beyond need and beauty and sweetness, I push him over and pin him beneath me. His free hand flutters, trying to soothe and comfort, trying to pull me closer. Firmly, I untangle us, and then, still only half-prepared, I sink down over him, taking most of him into me.

Beneath me, Jim gasps and then fumbles to catch my hips and steady me. My balance is bad. His hands are all that keep me from falling.

Then, for a moment, this is enough. Jim is in me and under me, the only solid and real thing in the world, blotting out both the future and the past, making me forget what it is to be without him, what it is to be afraid.

Then I see him, lying beneath me, glistening with drops of sweat and water from my shower, trying to breathe and stay present and keep me from falling. Warm and strong and so beautiful.

Before Jim, I had nothing to fear, because I had nothing to lose. I didn't know that then. I didn't know. I didn't know.

I know now! I will do anything--anything--not to lose him.

I love you. Nothing can take that away from you.

Wailing softly, I impale myself on him again and again. I am a wave crashing against the shore and pouring out onto the sand. My body trembles and falters, incoherent with the sweetness of Jim's body and the desperate echoes of my fear.

Jim slides one hand over and lightly takes my straining shaft in his palm. He slides his thumb slowly around the head and I whimper without meaning to. He whispers back, "Love you..."

He does. Nothing that ever happens will take that away from me.

The yelling might be me. I might be falling or flying or floating. There is hot pleasure and cold fire, a torrent that starts in my extremities and rips inward, washing away everything in its path and silencing even the parts of me that would notice when the screaming stops. But even in that inner silence, I can still see him, sweet and glorious, shining beneath me. Loving me. His mouth shaping my name as he comes inside me, pushing me further when I had thought that there was no further to go....

When I fall, I can't stop myself. Jim catches me and eases me down beside him. I curl close to him, cold now, damp with sweat and bath water and tears. Jim kisses me and pets my face gently. I recognize the move as one I've done for him, after a hard climax, when he's having a rough time coming back. I surprise myself by smiling at that.

It is only then, when Jim sighs with relief and lays his forehead on my shoulder that I realize how badly I may have scared him. I reach for him with clumsy hands and open my eyes. "Jim? You ok?" My voice doesn't sound like mine.

Another sigh. "Yeah. Yeah, as long as you're not hurt."

I laugh at that. I don't know why.

"Blair?"

"Oh. Yeah. I'm fine." Then I giggle some more. Because he is close and warm and mine, and I get to keep him.

End On the Way Home by Dasha: [email protected]

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