Classification: TRHA

Rating: PG

Summary: Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, lovers and friends...ah, what a mess.

Spoilers: We didn't bring any with us here.

Disclaimer: Property of 1013 Productions and Fox Television, at least until negotiations are complete.
 

"Times are far between and few I bet
When we can look upon our lives without regret
Of all the things I have done
Do you think I'm proud of every one without exception?"

"Few and Far Between" by Natalie Merchant. Copyright 1992 Christian Burial Music. Used without permission.
 

Lines Torsis
 

February 5, 2000

It had been a horrible week.

Ironically, it started off with some good news. Dana had tested 21 subjects that were in Byers's classes, and found no evidence of the virus in any of them-definitely a positive, but she was utterly mystified when she tried to access FDA and CDC information on similar cases. It seemed that they were inaccessible to all but a very few individuals, and this bothered her tremendously. Langly, Frohike and Michael all attempted to hack the databases, but were not successful, which in turn frustrated them no end. They talked of going to Atlanta to attempt an inside hack, but it wasn't going to happen right now; not only were circumstances at home urgent, but a trip inside the CDC was going to take a huge amount of planning and time.
Dana had a couple contacts there, but not anyone with enough rank to pull it off. Mulder was working his congressional contacts; no avail. Whenever I had a bit of time-and that was a big if-I was still combing Langly's e-mail accounts, a task I'd begun on Christmas day and still was in the process of. Of his 17 accounts, I'd managed to work through 3.

Maybe I could be done by the end of this millenium if I had the time and put my mind to it.

One of the worst incidents of the week was when I took Shelby to see her mother at the Virginia Psychiatric Correctional Facility, where her mother was on suicide watch. Shelby was doing well with Dr. Shawe, but the trip to her mother seemed to have set her back horribly. She became withdrawn, refusing to study, generally shutting down. She was already seeing Dr.
Shawe three times a week, and there was no way she could see her more than that; there was the time factor, and also the money factor. Mary had made arrangements through her father's estate that Shelby would have Blue Cross coverage continue, but psychiatric was only covered if she went to certain practitioners, and Dr. Shawe was not on the list. We were paying out of our pockets $360 a week for psychiatric care. We would eventually be reimbursed via her father's estate, but it was still being probated and debated. The $1500 a month was killing us; we were rapidly devouring the 10K my mother had given us for Hanukkah-money we wanted to use to put a bathroom in the offices.

Byers was still unconscious, except for a few waking moments, but at least he was out of quarantine and had been moved to intensive care. Unfortunately, he had developed pneumonia and was not breathing on his own; we cringed at every phone call. The pneumonia did respond to antibiotic therapy, but he continued to be very feverish and was suffering from irregular heart rhythm as well. The first time I saw him I gasped, and Langly looked as if he'd been winded. We didn't talk the whole way home after that trip.

"Christ, wasn't for the bracelet, I wouldn't know it was him," was his only comment. I'd caught him sitting up one night, in the living room, watching terrible television, and crying silently. I walked over to him, kissed him on top of the forehead, and when he didn't respond, I let him be. I don't even think he knew I was there.

Juliet was in much better shape; Dr. Ying had been able to reduce her fever to the 101 range, and she was conscious and fairly alert. Her parents had been summoned, and in contrast to Mr. Byers senior, her parents were kindly souls. Even her brother, whom I could smell "professional student" on from a mile away, came to see his sister. She had lots of loving family support, and the Parkers actually seemed grateful that we were there.

 The worst came on Thursday evening. Mr. Byers was not pleased with the services his son was receiving, although he would have been hard pressed to find better elsewhere, and he was attempting to make arrangements to have his son moved to a private facility. There was one small problem, however: the person with power of attorney in the event Byers was incapacitated-I think this counted as one of those times-was not Mr. Byers senior, but Frohike.   This resulted in a very nasty argument between Frohike and Mr. Byers senior, both of whom were attempting to assert their authority in the situation. Although Mr. Byers senior was well aware that the documents his son had signed were legally binding, he had attempted to press Kat, a lawyer who was currently not practicing, into doing some legal finagling. She wasn't having it. Mr. Byers made some comment to the effect that he knew when he wasn't needed, took off, and in the process, disinherited his daughter as well. Now Kat was dealing with a critically ill brother and had lost whatever tentative relationship she'd had with her father, and she was spending a lot of her time crying.

I was not present for the actual fallout, for which I was grateful; Langly had been there and assured me it was ugly. I decided to make certain I spent some time with Kat the following day.

Thursdays were my lightest day of the week that semester; I could bail at noon, and I drove over to Northeast Georgetown. I tiptoed into Byers's room. Kat was sitting in the uncomfortable-looking chair, looking numb. Her pretty blue eyes, the ones she and her brother shared, were flaming red, both from crying and exhaustion. I doubted she'd slept since the night she
spent at her brother's apartment.

"I don't understand," she whispered into the distance. "Actually, I do, and that's the problem."

"What's that?" I wanted her to unburden herself as much as possible.

"Ally, all I told him was that I could not do what he asked me to do. Not legally, not ethically. In fact, not at all; my bar dues aren't current. I haven't practiced since my older daughter was born." She sniffed. "He just thinks he only has to snap his fingers and we'll all do his bidding. And sometimes we just can't." Tears filled her eyes again. "And the stupid thing is, I feel terrible. I feel like I let him down. And now we're not speaking. I don't care about the money. Craig and I are doing fine. I
don't need his money. And while he's not a very...likeable man, he is still my father." She began a fresh stream of sobs. I hugged her tightly.

"Kat...how long has it been since he and your brother spoke?"

She choked back a few sobs, calmed, and began to speak slowly, strainedly. "You know that my mother passed on, don't you?"

"You mentioned that."

"She had pancreatic cancer. She went very rapidly. In fact, John was living in Washington at the time, and she never even told him. So he had no way of knowing.

"When she died, we tried to reach John. We couldn't. He missed the funeral. We found out afterwards that he'd been in Colorado, doing some guest lectures. Things were very strained even then between John and my father. I can't remember a time when they weren't. And not being available to attend my mother's funeral-when John found out, he was of course
devastated. But my father would not forgive him."

"What did they fight about?"

"Well, my father, as you know, is a very...how do I say this?"

"Say the word, Kat. My parents are wealthy, too." That actually made her laugh.

"It's funny how we treat it like a dirty word, isn't it?"

"I suppose it's how that wealth was obtained that determines whether or not it's an obscenity." I cringed inwardly; how much was there that I didn't know about my own family? I pushed that thought back.

"Do you know why I don't practice law anymore? It wouldn't be that big a deal to keep my CLE credits up or pay my bar dues."

"Well, you've got two kids."

"No. That's not why. I was always such a good child, Ally. I did everything that was expected of me. I worshipped my dad when I was young. And John did, too."

"What does that have to do with it, Kat?" The connection was unclear, and she was rambling. I wanted her to focus.

"Okay. I did everything I was supposed to. I had the debutante ball, went to the right college, married a doctor. And I never questioned these things to the point where it occurred to me not to do them.

"John didn't either, until after I joined the law firm of my father's best friend-of course they had a job for me. Connections count for everything in the legal world. I began handling some things for my father's business concerns.

"I was given a case I wasn't supposed to get. My father was in the process of selling the railroad. I wasn't handling that end of it. What I did do was prepare the Chapter 11 papers."

"He went bankrupt."

"No. He didn't. He forced the company to go bankrupt. Do you know why?"

"No."

"The company had been hit with a number of wrongful death lawsuits by families of workers who had died. Apparently health and safety concerns take a definite backseat to my father's concerns about profits. And I didn't want to believe it.

"I began to dig into these lawsuits-on my own. And I was horrified at some of the things I found out. I couldn't tell anyone else, so I told John.

"John didn't believe it at first. But he agreed to help me with my search. And what we learned was startling. My father has substandard conditions in most of his concerns, at least as far as workers go. And most of the people he employs in these concerns are dreadfully poor, uneducated. And they know they have to eat. So they put up with it. Many of the workers on the
railroad were Native Americans and people living in Appalachia.

"John was horrified. And we discovered that he was using slave labor in China for many of his manufacturing concerns as well. I didn't call my dad on it, but John did. They had many, many arguments over this. John tried to persuade him to implement new policies in his practices. My father feels that any kind of outside interference, whether it's by state or federal
agencies or whatever-is just that. Interference. Interference with his right to make a godalmighty profit for the shareholders.

"Finally, John went to the Wall Street Journal and told them what he and I had found, along with documentation. Now Wall Street loves my dad, and they wanted nothing to do with it. So we went to the New York Times. And they ran it. They ran a four-part series on illegal and unethical practices by corporate CEO's-and my father was featured prominently.

"The stock prices began to tumble on bad publicity. My father was forced to close the lumber concern. The regulators began to move in on him."

"Your father doesn't look like he's hurting that bad."

"He's not. He had electronics concerns overseas. That's where the money comes from these days-in fact, it was always the most profitable of the concerns. Mostly because he uses destitute locals in third world nations and pays them next to nothing. And these people are starving. He also uses prison labor, Ally, in these countries. These people are basically worked to death and then disposed of. No, my father has plenty of money, but much of it is because of what he inherited. He stopped earning nearly what he was before. And he never forgave John for what he did."

"I think I understand."

"John never brought me up the entire time. He protected me. And I wanted out. So when I found out I was pregnant, I simply said that I wanted to raise my children myself, and I quit. I took the chickenshit route."

"So they stopped speaking over this?"

"Yes. And then my father found out-through me, opening my big mouth-that John had married Susanne. My father was furious. I don't know if you know Susanne's background."

"I don't."

"Susanne was a poor kid from a Polish neighborhood in Chicago. She had to win scholarships to study. And she was building a good career for herself as an organic chemist when she began to learn things about the very people she was working for. And John met her. And it all gelled for him."

"In what way?"

"My father is not in pharmaceuticals-he'd do nothing with R&D costs that run that high-but he is a major stockholder in several pharmaceutical concerns, mostly inherited from my grandparents. And he got wind of this woman. And while I don't believe he had her killed, I think he favored the move." She laughed harshly. "He couldn't believe John was such a 'traitor,' as he referred to him. I think my dad hoped John would go into business with him, and he was always disappointed that he didn't. He always complained that John wouldn't play on the team. Of course, playing on my father's team means you do it his way, period. And John wasn't going to do that. He blames John for almost ruining his concerns as well."

"Hasn't seemed to hurt him any."

"Well, it did, actually. My father took it as a strong betrayal."

"Why do you think he came here?"

"I don't know, Ally. Maybe to reconcile? I haven't got a clue." She sniffed, then laughed bitterly. "If I know my father, though, he's probably angry at John for not waking up when he walked in."
 

It had been an educational afternoon, if not a particularly inspirational one. I looked forward to coming home and enjoying some peace of mind. I knew upon arrival, however, that this was going to be an unlikely occurrence.

I was greeted by the sounds of a heated, noisy argument emanating from the dungeon. The voices belonged to Miranda, Langly and Michael. Apparently something of Miranda's had been broken when Michael had walked through the girls' room to reach the bathroom-something that probably shouldn't have been there in the first place-and stepped on it. I'm not sure where Langly came in, but the noise level may have had something to do with drawing him into the skirmish.

Shelby was in the living room, staring blankly at the TV.

"Shel, what the hell is the problem down there?"

"Oh, Michael came in to use the bathroom, and everyone's gotta walk through Miranda's room to use it, and she and Michael got loud, and Langly told her she ought to try picking up her room, and now she wants Michael to get the fuck out, and Langly's mad at both of 'em-it's stupid." She never raised her eyes. I was growing more and more concerned about her. She had been so lifeless lately. "Al'son?"

"Yeah?"

"Uh...M'randa and me...having to be in the same room...all the time...it's not working."

"I know that. We're working on it."

Now we had to, anyway.
 

Langly and I sat at the kitchen table, having a beer. The heat of the moment had subsided downstairs, but the fallout was likely to remain for a while.

"That kid's gotta go," Langly mumbled.

"I assume you're referring to Michael."

"She shoots, she scores."

"I can't deal with this, Ally. He and 'Randa fight all the time."

"They do not."

"They fight enough. I mean, they're cool sometimes, too, but they really get into it, and I've been hearing Shelby and 'Randa getting into it, too. Think 'Randa's real stressed. I mean, everybody else has got a problem, but 'Randa, we all expect her to be so cool about everything. And yeah, her room's a pit, and I risk my life every time I walk across the floor, but she's got a point. She's got Shelby in there. Michael's down there. She's right. She's got no fucking life."

"So what should we do?"

"I think we should tell Michael to hit the highway."

"No. I disagree. But I think we should let Frohike in on this. He is his kid. And Michael's not in any position to be self-supporting yet. I think Frohike should take responsibility for him."

"Frohike's got enough friggin' responsibility."

"I agree. But we've been responsible for Michael for a long while now. And we can't keep doing it. Not with our situation with Shelby. And not with the lack of room."

He contemplated this. "I s'pose we could add on."

"With what, babe? Our good looks? For me, that and 2.55 will get me a latte at Starbucks."

He stared down at the floor. "I called Eleanor."

"You WHAT?" I could feel my face turn as red as my hair. "Are you crazy? Langly, we make over 100K a year together!"

"And our monthly outgo currently exceeds income by about $1,000. We're dipping big time into the money she gave us for the holidays, and we've been raiding the savings and charging up the Visa way too hard."

"Let me guess. Eleanor told you to go fuck a duck."

"Not exactly. She only demanded that I fax her a full accounting of expenses & income."

"Oh, great. She knows everything about us now."

"No, Ally, she only knows we're going broke trying to keep this going. Hey, she knows you were out of work for a while, and so was I."

"She'll probably make us sell the house."

"No, she didn't even suggest that."

"So what did she suggest?"

"She said she'd cover Shelby's bills and make us a loan for some business expenses, which I also had to detail to her. We need some new stuff, and we haven't got the capital."

"And she probably charged you an arm and a leg."

"Not really. Prime plus one. We couldn't do better commercially." My jaw hit the ground. I was amazed. And pissed. Pissed because we'd agreed not to ask her for money. At least I thought I'd been there for that conversation.

"Langly, we weren't going to do this."

"Do you have a better alternative? It's that or head down a real slippery slope, which we are already perched over the edge of, girl, whether you know it or not." He finished off the beer he had and removed another from the fridge. "And that's another reason why Michael's gotta go. He's costing a lot, Ally. Did you see the Bell Atlantic bill this past month?"

"Thought you paid it."

"I did. $215.26 in charges to the 900 lines. We got BA to forgive us on the first time, but they don't do it twice."

"Make him work it off."

"We are. Plus a couple times he borrowed my car to go clubbing and stuff? He's got four unpaid parking tickets, and the way I found out was one of 'em went to warrant! Fuck!"

"Does Frohike know?"

"He knows about the 900 lines. Not the parking violations. But he's gonna find out."

"Have you confronted Michael on them?"

"Oh, yeah. And he says he wasn't illegally parked."

"Were any of 'em in DC?"

"All of 'em."

"He was illegally parked." There are very few legal parking places in DC, and Michael didn't seem lucky enough to land on any of them.

"Shit, Ally. I hate to do this to Frohike. Seems wrong."

"We can't keep this up, babe. We can't live like this. Something's gotta happen."

"I know."

"So when should we tell him?"

"Sooner the better. Or I'm gonna get really pissed off and do something I'm gonna regret." Langly bent his vanilla-white head over the table. When he looked up again, it looked as if he had aged ten years in a moment's time. Every one of his 36 years looked logarithmically increased. There were new lines in his face that hadn't been there when I first met him, and some
freshly minted grey strands interrupted the formerly pure blonde hair. His eyes, normally pale blue and clear as a shallow pool, were dark with exhaustion and had red streaks racing through them. Purple shadows under the eyes completed the picture of one very overtaxed human being. I hugged him hard, smoothing his hair gently. He leaned into me and just sighed.

"I really don't wanna do this to Frohike. I don't think he feels ready to take this on."

"Then we need to come up with another plan."

"I don't know what other plan there is."

"Have him stay at Byers's until Byers is well."

Now that seemed to amuse him, and he burst into a fit of laughing. "Oh, God, Ally, can you see it? The only guy in the world who gets the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, and we stick one of the world's biggest slobs in there and let him take over?"

"It's a scary thought," I concurred. "But it would get him the hell out of our basement."

"Which we gotta do."

"Yeah. I think we do."

"Is he at the hospital?"

"Nah, he's working out back. He and Michael are going over to see Byers in a while."

"Maybe we ought to go and talk to them right now."

"Maybe." I could see this wasn't a task he was relishing.

"Look, if you don't want to do it, I'm going to. Because I can't live like this."

"Nah. We'll do it together. 'Less you want me to do it."

"No, you've already made enough unilateral decisions," I said sharply, referring to his consultation with my mother.

"Hey, if you've got a better idea, I wanna hear it!" He shot back. I sank back into one of the kitchen chairs. I shook my head. "I mean, I'm not gonna hear about this the rest of my friggin' life, am I? That I tried to do the right thing and you got pissed off 'cause you didn't make the call? Get over it, Ally. 'Sides, she was nice about it, believe it or not. You don't give your mom enough credit."

"You've said yourself she's a major bitch. You've been treated to several of her outbursts."

"Yeah, and she always gets over it. Give her a break, Ally. She didn't have to do shit for us, but she did agree to some very specific things that, believe it or not, will help us quite a lot!"

I was silent and quite embarrassed, not to mention irritated. Langly knows I am thin-skinned and easily humiliated, and he's not afraid to work it when it goes to his advantage.

"You're about to find out that nothing ever comes for free from my mother."

"Well, Ally, you're the one who set the price." I remained silent, but I was livid. Mostly because he was right.

We could hear the hum of Frohike's Thunderbird as it pulled away from the offices. We'd missed them. Langly peered out the kitchen window.

"Guess we're gonna have to go talk to them at the hospital."

END OF PART 62