Upping the Ante – Chapter Eight – emersli1

Reading Time:
13 Minutes

Buck was completely unprepared for Maddie’s reaction.

“No, no, no!  You can’t say his name, Evan!  You mustn’t ever, ever say his name.”  Maddie had both hands crossed over his mouth as she practically climbed into his lap, whispering frantically while looking around in a panic.

Eddie had no idea who Daniel was, but he knew a flashback when he saw one.

Maddie’s face was a study in contrasts, one side dark and swollen, the other dead white with a huge, staring eye.

Abuela spoke quietly into the room.  “Why mustn’t you say his name, querida?  What might happen?”

“No, no.  Can’t ever say his name.  I could be an only child… their princess… everything I ever want … it wouldn’t be so bad.  Obey, Maddie.  You have to obey.  If you’re not a good girl you don’t deserve to have a brother.   Maybe that’s why he died.  This one could die too.  Babies die in their cribs all the time.  Never say his name.  Obey, Maddie.  You have to obey.”

It was a little girl’s voice.

“I have to obey.  If I want my baby to live, I have to obey.  I don’t deserve to have a brother.  I have to be a good girl.  Or they’ll erase Evan.  Just like they erased Him.”

Eddie felt his blood run cold.  Maddie was hyperventilating now, a constant flow of panicked promises to be good and obey falling out between breaths… all mingling in a horrible kind of terror.

Then as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.  Maddie seemed to just run out … of fear, of air, of energy?  Who knew?  But she suddenly turned to look at him.  “Eddie, I’m very tired.  Can I rest now?”

It didn’t sound any better on his aunt’s sofa than it had yesterday in his yard.

Fortunately, Abuela stepped in while Eddie was still trying to gather his wits.  “Come child.  You can come lie down.  I will keep watch over you.  And Eddie will keep watch over Evan.  All will be well, and look better when you wake.  Come take your pills and lie down now Maddie.  All will be well.”

Maddie looked from Abuela to Buck.  “All my pills?  Yes.  Yes, I don’t think I’m in the right place to be a mother.  Not right now.  My head feels so fuzzy sometimes.”

She turned to the older woman and dropped her voice a little.  “I promised myself, no more lying.  But I don’t know how to tell him.”

“Maddie.”  Buck got his sister’s attention.  “You don’t have to tell me.  And you could never be like them.  You can rest now.  I’ll be here when you wake up, and we can talk then if you want.”

Maddie reached up to his face and cupped his cheek.  “All I’ve wanted is for you to be happy.  We’ll talk, when I wake up.  I’m so tired right now.”

She turned and went with Abuela back towards the bedroom she’d been using.  The older woman shot a significant look at her daughter, who scurried quickly into the kitchen for the required medications, and then followed them down the hall.

Eddie turned to his fiancé, deeply confused and extremely concerned by the vicious intensity of the flashback.  “What the Hell?  Who is Daniel?  And …  just…what the Hell?”  He honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say, looking towards Buck for some kind of explanation.

Buck ran his hands over his face.  “I don’t know Eddie.  I mean, I know who Daniel was … but that whole … flashback.”  He shook his head.  “I don’t know.”

Paco was grim.  “Have you ever seen someone in a flashback who has been tortured?  Some of the older vets I work with … well, the Viet Cong specialized in psychological torture.  What those tactics would do to a child …” He looked back down the hallway after his wife.

“Well, I guess we just got a glimpse of that.  And I wouldn’t want to cross any lines, but in my opinion, that poor woman needs a longer inpatient stay.  All the stressors in her life have apparently fractured her childhood conditioning.  This could be a dangerous time for her.”  Paco wasn’t a psychiatrist, but his volunteer work at the VA had given him a lot of experience helping people struggling with the same issues.

Buck felt cold and numb.  “Daniel was our brother.  He was two years younger than Maddie.  He died when I was a baby, so I don’t remember him.  I wouldn’t know about him at all, but the Navy does background checks.  I was totally surprised when my recruiter called and asked me why I hadn’t listed my brother.  I’ve never seen a picture.  Never heard his name spoken, all the time I was growing up in that house.”

Suddenly another emotion came rushing in.  Complete, unmitigated fury.  Someone, no not someone.  Their parents had tortured his sister, a grieving eight-year-old at the time, to completely erase a little boy whose only crime had been dying.  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a card.  Dialed the number.

“Tony, it’s Evan.  I’m sorry to bother you, but I had a question.  Is there a statute of limitations on torture in the state of Pennsylvania?”

Pepa opened the door before Tony could ring the bell and showed the man into the living room.

After a round of introductions, Tony got straight to the point.

“I pulled your background check from your enlistment.  You did have an older brother named Daniel.  He died of leukemia when you were thirteen months old.  Your sister would have been almost nine.  Are you saying you suspect your parents of torturing your brother to death?”

Buck shook his head.  “No.  You need to understand, until that background check, I didn’t know I had a brother.  No pictures.  No stories.  Nothing.  No one had ever mentioned him.  I thought it was just a grief thing.  Like maybe it just hurt too much to talk about, or something.  But my sister…”

He sighed.  “Maddie had asked for Plan B, and was trying to decide whether or not to take it.  When Pepa mentioned that a child deserved better than to be resented by their parents, Maddie said she wouldn’t leave a child in that environment again.  When I asked if that was about Daniel… well as soon as I said his name…”

Buck seemed to be at a loss for words, so Paco spoke up.  “Hearing her dead brother’s name from Evan’s mouth seemed to throw Maddie into an intense flashback.  From what I could gather, she was … convinced … to never speak of her lost brother again, under a variety of threats from her parents, up to and including Evan’s murder.  I’ve heard older vets at the Center, surviving POWs, talk like that during flashbacks.”

Tony’s face darkened, and he opened his mouth only to be interrupted by Buck.  “She was babbling about being a good girl, and obeying if she wanted her baby to live.  I assume I was the baby, since Maddie more or less raised me anyway.  She went into inpatient therapy recently, and I think it unearthed some things…”  He trailed off there.

Tony thought quietly for a few moments.  Then he pulled out his tablet and rechecked something.  He sighed, and looked directly at Buck.  “By any chance do you have a small, faded mark on either hipbone?  Or possibly your lower back?”

Buck was surprised by the seemingly random question.  “Uh … I have a birthmark on my right hipbone.  Like up on the point of the pelvis.  I don’t know about my lower back.  Nobody’s ever mentioned it, but I guess I could ask somebody to look.”

“OK, I’m drawing some conclusions here, so I could be wrong but…your brother died following a failed bone marrow donation.  Failure to graft,  Not anyone’s fault, just something that happens sometimes.  More often thirty years ago.  The donation was anonymous, and provided to the hospital.”  Tony watched Buck closely, and saw the moment it landed.

“They used me?”  The small, shocked exclamation fell into the room.

“They made you.”  The quiet reply came from the hallway.  Maddie stood there looking tired but determined.  “They made you.  Called you their blessed hope.  Defied the doctors, who wouldn’t take the donation from a child too young to understand the procedure and risks.  Got around that by taking you to Mexico to get the marrow drawn and then had it couriered directly to the hospital.  Where it failed, just the way his doctor had told them it would.  By the time you were born, he was too sick for anything to work.”

Buck looked absolutely devastated.  “So even from the beginning … all I ever was to them was … a collection of spare parts?”

Maddie looked at him steadily.  “Yes.  But you were never spare parts to me.  Even before I understood, before I made the connections, you were always my baby.  My beautiful, brilliant baby brother, whose giggle could light the darkest days.”

“Made the connections?  You mean about Mexico and the donation?”

“That.”  Maddie agreed.  “But Evan … Mom had her ovaries removed after He was born.  Ovarian cysts ran in the family and back then they thought it was a precursor to ovarian cancer, so she had them removed as soon as possible and went on HRT to stave off early menopause.”

“Then how did I even?  I mean, they would have had to use…”  Buck felt a slow horror creeping up his spine.

“They would have needed donated ova.  From the nearest possible genetic relation.”  Tony was grimly furious.

“And there I was. And Mom already had the drugs.  She told the insurance and the pharmacy the refrigerator had malfunctioned, so they replaced three months worth of her HRT.   She gave me the shots for three months, telling me they were vitamins.  To make sure I stayed strong and healthy.  Then I developed ‘appendicitis’ on a family vacation to Jamaica.  Four weeks later Mom was pregnant with you.”

One part of Buck was trying to throw up.  But another part of him, the science nerd part, was talking.  “The odds of that … you weren’t even nine yet.  Three months of HRT wouldn’t have … I mean, the odds of getting one viable ovum…”

“One was all they needed, as long as it was the right one.  And the geneticist said it was.”  Maddie shook her head.  “Obviously I found this all out later.  Mom got drunk and yelled it at me when I talked about starting a family with Doug.  I didn’t deserve to have a child since I’d killed hers.  She’s insane Evan.  And Dad’s no better.”

“They’re both sociopaths, in their own ways.  I don’t know how you became such a joyful, loving person.”  Maddie smiled tremulously at him.

Buck took a deep breath, and smiled back.  “That’s easy.  When they made me, they started with you.”

A harsh, abrupt sob burst from Maddie’s mouth.  Quickly regaining control, she moved towards Buck, reaching her hand up to gently cup his cheek.  “You’re my baby brother.  I didn’t learn that you were anything more until I was a grown woman.  I thought about suing for custody, but I didn’t have any proof, and Doug had already started … well, I couldn’t bring you into that kind of situation.”

She continued, with the air of a woman determined to see her mission through.  “When my brother died, we moved.  New town, new neighbors.  We cut ties with family and friends.  And they made it very clear that I was never to mention him again.  And they were done with you.  They tried to bribe me first.  I could have anything I wanted forever if you went away.  But I told them all I wanted was you.  So they told me to take care of you and be good.  If I didn’t obey, well babies died all the time.  Small children were so terribly accident-prone.  I had just lost one brother.  I wasn’t about to lose the second.”

Maddie looked around the living room.  “Now you know everything, Evan.  All my secrets.  It’s all so ugly, but you have to know.  You, Evan Buckley, are beautiful inside and out.”

She smiled.  “And you were right.  About the important things.  And I’ll repeat them, so you always remember no matter what.  I’m sorry.  I’m so proud of you.  And I love you so, so much.”

Maddie seemed to fold in on herself, as though with her mission complete nothing else was holding her up.  Abuela guided her back down the hall with gentle hands.  And if she shot her daughter a furious, commanding glare over Maddie’s shoulder, well she was la jefa de familia, and Maddie was theirs now.

As soon as Maddie was safely out of sight, Buck turned and raced for the kitchen sink.  He hated to do this to Pepa’s sink, but he didn’t think he could reach the trash can on the other side of the kitchen.  As he retched violently, he felt hands on his back and heard someone opening a cabinet door.

When the spasms passed, Paco was waiting with a glass of water from the refrigerator door.  Buck rinsed his mouth out and then swallowed, the coolness of the water easing his throat.  Eddie cuddled him close, continuing to rub his back.

Paco moved a little closer, and murmured quietly, “Evan, we are with you.”  He displayed the K-bar in his hand.  “My Pepa and your friend are on a conference call with her boss, trying to find the best, legal way forward for you and your sister.  But if you decide to go to Pennsylvania, you will not go alone.  Your family will stand with you.”

Buck looked up at the older man and saw absolute conviction in his face.  “Let’s see what Pepa and Tony come up with.  But thank you.  It means everything that you would have my back.”

Moving back into the living room, Buck heard Pepa, Tony and the woman on the speaker phone spitting furious Spanish back and forth so fast he couldn’t keep up.  Pepa looked ready to scorch the earth, and Tony looked like he wanted to salt it behind her.

One more burst of Spanish from the phone, and Pepa hung up, turning to look at Buck.  “Come Sobrino, come and let us tell you what we have put in motion, if you approve.”

Buck sat down on the sofa and gripped Eddie’s hand tightly.  “OK, tell me what you’ve got figured out.”

Tony looked at the notes he’d made on his tablet.  “OK, we’ve settled on what we think is the best option, but there are others if you don’t like it.  The main goal is to keep these people permanently out of your lives.  You and Maddie are going to file for permanent restraining orders against them.  Yours are going to go through JAG, and will be privacy protected.  We’re going to bury Maddie’s deep in witness protection using the Domestic Violence Survivors Act.  We’re getting an exhumation order for your brother, and he’ll be moved out here.  You and your sister can choose a lovely place for him, far away from the monsters.”

Pepa interjected, “Luisa is already on her way with the documents.  If you agree, you can sign them.  She is also bringing Power of Attorney documents for both of you, and Medical Power of Attorney documents as well.  You can make your choices on those people, and we can file all of them together.”

“While there is technically no statute of limitations on child abuse or medical negligence in Pennsylvania, filing those charges would necessitate a long process and require you to testify.  And any evidence would be difficult to find at this point.  I think the more important goal is keeping them away from you, but if you disagree, I’m willing to press for it.”  Tony looked inquiringly at Buck.

What Buck really wanted was to destroy both of them.  But thinking of his recent experience with identifying his true goals and finding other ways to reach them … yeah.  This would work.  Number one goal was to protect his family.  A long trial process and having to face them in court wouldn’t accomplish that without a huge cost.  Permanent restraining orders and effectively disappearing?  That would protect Maddie far better.

“All right.  We’ll do it that way.  As long as they don’t fight it.  If they fight the restraining orders …”  Buck looked determined.  

“If they fight the restraining orders, we’ll file very public charges.  It will almost certainly make the local news.  Might even go national if it’s a slow news day.”  Tony’s grin wouldn’t have been out of place on a shark.  “And we’ll petition for psychiatric evaluations we know they won’t pass.”

A car door slammed outside, causing Paco to go look out the front window.

He quickly moved to open the door, and admit a tiny woman carrying enough unmitigated fury to fill an arena.

Pepa moved to greet her boss and introduce her around.  “Luisa, welcome.  Thank you for coming out here.  These are my nephews Eddie Diaz and Evan Buckley, and Assistant Director Tony DiNozzo of NCIS.  You already know Paco.  Mama is with Evan’s sister Maddie.  Everyone, this is Luisa Medina.”

“All right people, let’s get this done.  I want to get these motions for Ms. Buckley before a judge this afternoon.”  With that the little dynamo took over the proceedings, ably helped along by her paralegal.

Buck leaned his head against Eddie’s and just breathed.

It was going to be alright.