Surgeon – Chapter Twenty-One

NOT EDITED

Chapter Twenty-One

Sunday: January 12, 2020

2:00 AM; CLINSTONE, IVORY HILL, PARKING LOT

“Thanks for calling me about him instead of just sending him home in an Uber or something,” Jacob said, pointing his thumb back at his car.

William nodded. Arms crossed over his chest, he leaned to the side for a peek at Bo. He sat in the passenger seat of Jacob’s car, head tilted all the way back against the headrest. William cleared his throat, eyes coming back to Jacob’s face. “Umm, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I worry about what will happen if I don’t. If I understood him correctly, umm, he came here tonight with the intention of killing himself once he had enough alcohol in his system. I… I couldn’t send him home by himself knowing that. I couldn’t. I was going to take him back home with me and let him have the guest room, but I was worried he’d think I took advantage of him or something. And with him already in a dark state of mind, I didn’t want to risk that. So…” William shifted his weight between his feet, cleared his throat again. “Keep an eye on him tonight, yeah? Just to be safe.”

“Jesus,” Jacob whispered. “Yeah, I will. Thank you for telling me, Will. Seriously.” He pulled William into a quick hug, giving his back a few comfort taps on the back. “Thank you for saving him, even if you didn’t know that’s what you were doing at the time.”

“Yeah. I’m glad I could.” William patted Jacob’s back before stepping away. “If you need anything while he’s at the house, or if something happens and he needs somewhere else to go, let me know.”

“I will. Thanks, Will. Night, man.”

William nodded. “Night, Jake.”

Jacob passed a hand through his hair before letting out a breath. He’d known Clinstone had been rough on Bo, but he hadn’t expected to be picking him up from the bar that morning. Or to be told he wanted to die. He turned around and headed to the car. Inside, he cleared his throat as he clicked his seat belt into place. “So I was thinking you could sleep in my guest room tonight.”

“I couldn’t ask that of you,” Bo said.

“You’re not. I’m offering.”

“I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You won’t be. You aren’t.”

“Mm.” Head still leaned back, Bo turned toward Jacob. “William told you, I presume? It just sort of slipped out. I didn’t intend for him to know. I didn’t want to put that on his shoulders.”

“I’m worried about you, Bo.”

“Don’t be. I likely would’ve talked myself out of it. I don’t plan to leave this case open. I don’t want to leave behind any unfinished business.”

“You’re talking like you’re planning on ending your life the second this case is over.” Bo didn’t respond. “Are you?”

“You shouldn’t be worrying about it, Detective. You have bigger fish to fry. You have a fiancee and children to worry about. You don’t know me well enough to need to be worried about me and what I do or plan to do.”

“There isn’t a specific amount of things you have to know about a person before you can give a shit if they kill themselves or not. I’ve talked strangers off of roof tops and balconies. I’ve talked them into dropping the gun or the knife. As much as I’d like to get to know you, to be friends with you, I don’t need to in order to care if you’re in a dark place or not.”

Bo either needed a moment to sit with that or was planning to simply ignore Jacob until he moved past the subject. With Bo, it was hard to tell which. The young man’s face never offered up much emotion. The most obvious expression of his mood and his pain Jacob had been able to detect thus far was the snapping of the rubber band on his wrist at the police station, when Gwen and Carter had deep-dived into his notebooks.

It wasn’t until Jacob pulled out of the parking lot that Bo mustered up a quiet, “You do not want to befriend me, Detective.”

“What makes you think that? I mean, genuinely. Why?”

“I have friends in Los Angeles. Not many. But a few. I stopped talking to one almost entirely after Dallas was arrested. The other, I… only really spoke to because we still worked together and had to see each other every day. I pull into myself, Detective. I don’t… express. I don’t discuss. I don’t talk it out. I simply pull my limbs and head into my shell and refuse to come out, despite the phone calls and the texts and the phone calls and the emails and the random drop-bys at my house or my job. I pull into myself and away from everyone. Nobody… deserves that treatment from a ‘friend’. I am not a good friend. Or a good son. Or a good buddy. I am… I am not someone you want in your life, Detective. I am not.”

Jacob flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, clearing his throat. “After my mom died, I, uh, went through that phase too. I didn’t think anyone deserved to have to be friends with someone who was… broken. Therapy eventually taught me that I wasn’t broken. I was depressed. All of the good thoughts in my head were overshadowed by darkness and guilt and anger and grief, and they fundamentally changed who I was as a person. But I wasn’t broken. And I didn’t deserve to be treated like I was. I didn’t deserve to treat myself like I was broken or less-deserving than other people just because I was depressed.” He glanced over at Bo who, surprisingly, was looking right at him. “Everybody falls apart sometimes. And a lot of times, we need help putting the pieces back together. Sometimes the puzzle is really hard to put together because it didn’t come with a complete image on the box and the pieces are shaped weird and it doesn’t have a clear border and the manufacturer didn’t send all the pieces the first time. But eventually, you get the right pieces sent to you, and they send you an image of the completed puzzle, and you’re able to fit the damn thing back together. There’s no shame in having lost a few pieces or them being shaped different than standard puzzle pieces. It’ll go back together eventually, even if it needs a little glue and a few puzzle-building friends.”

Bo held onto the silence so long that Jacob had to check that he was awake and breathing more than once. “So you’re saying that you… want to be one of these puzzle-building friends?”

“If you’re ready to start picking up the pieces and figuring out where they go? Yes. And if you aren’t, I don’t have to be a friend. I can just help you find the lost pieces, figure out which ones need to be re-ordered.”

“Well,” Bo said after a moment, “I can certainly see why you and Mister Foreman are friends.”

“He’s a good guy. A really good guy. He didn’t want to tell me, didn’t want to spill your secret without permission. But he was scared something would happen to you if he didn’t.”

Bo nodded. “I understand the fear. I mean, I mostly understand it. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that there are two of you here in Clinstone who want to… talk to me. Befriend me. That usually doesn’t happen to me within the first, you know, twelve days of a new location.”

“I know you’ve met a lot of pieces of shit, and I totally believe that you’re well within your rights to feel jaded and untrusting of new people and their motives. But despite all that, we aren’t all assholes. Some of us just, you know, like having friends and meeting new people. And making new people feel like they belong, that they deserve to belong. Some of us… are just as weird as you.”

Bo snorted. “I’m not sure I believe that last part.”

“If you’re some sort of freak, those of us who want to be friends with you gotta be weird too. You can’t have it both ways, kid.”

“Kid,” Bo echoed. “You’re aware I’m not that much younger than you are, yes?”

“You’re giving me a lot of credit there. You look like a college student. I’m callin’ you kid.”

“You’re four years older than I am.”

“You… age well. Damn. Congrats, dude.”

Bo snorted again. Twice in one conversation. Jacob figured that was an accomplishment. “We’re in our thirties. Not our eighties.”

“We’re in our thirties working overnights and triple shifts and waking up at three AM to respond to homicides in the woods or the river. Most of us don’t age well, even in our thirties.”

“You’re aging just fine, Detective.”

“Aww, thanks.” Jacob glanced over at Bo as he rolled to a stop at a red light. “You’re staying at my house for the night. You aren’t asking it of me. You aren’t burdening me with it. I’m telling you it’s what’s happening. Okay?”

Bo nodded. “Okay.”

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