Page 109 of Sticks and Stones
“I’m accustomed to pain, Sam. I’m okay. I confronted him, and we talked—as much as you can with Charlie. He’s a stubborn jackass at times, but the devil you know.”
Oh, Sam was well aware.
“Just tell me about how he was feeling before this morning’s episode.”
Sam could do that.
After all, they owed her as much.
“I thought something was off last night,” he said, continuing since she knew about them. “Your father is a‘sex before bed’kind of a guy. It mellows him out, and he falls asleep after. When I got into bed, he was out cold, and he hadn’t been his feisty self all day.”
She thought back to the case and how he’d behaved on it. Charlie seemed his normal self, but now that Sam mentioned it, yesterday he was…tame.
That wasn’t like him.
Damn.
She’d missed it.
Before she could say anything, she heard her name being called.
When she turned, they saw Tony running into the ER, and he was wearing his lab coat, and his micro goggles were still on his head.
Someone had been working on bones and raced out of there.
When he got to them, he looked scared.
“How’s Dad?” he asked, hugging Elizabeth and Sam. “Tell me he’s going to be okay!”
They wished they could.
“We don’t know,” she admitted.
That made Tony even more nervous. The whole way there, he was worried sick over the man. He’d just gotten him as his stand-in father, and he didn’t want to give that up. Tony finally had a family of his own.
To lose it would suck.
“Is it bad?” he asked, hesitantly.
Elizabeth shrugged.
“We don’t know. They let Chris back, so we’ll find out. Other than that, it’s anyone’s guess. That he’s not trying to escape the doctors makes me nervous. By now, he’d pull a Houdini and get out of there.”
Tony was shaking.
“I’m scared,” he admitted.
Sam heard the fear, and patted his cheek.
“He’ll be okay. Charlie is tough,” he stated, leading them over to some chairs. When he sat them down, they were all twitchy.
“If he dies, I’m going to be sick,” Tony said. “I can’t lose him yet. I just got a Dad, a Mom, and a sister. It’s not fair to not keep them.”
They all knew Tony had abandonment issues, so for his sake, they hoped Charlie was good.
The man was holding Elizabeth’s hand in a death squeeze, and she understood.
She knew how he felt.
