Forever Yours
49
Counsel for the Defense
IT WAS NEARLY two weeks before the trio could get in for counseling together. In that time, the company was working intently, but functioning smoothly. Henry met daily with his chief managers, Nathan, Conrad, and Darrel. As the IT manager, Darrel was responsible for seeing that all networks in the company were secure with the latest version of the Delphos Network Armor. That included all the servers at Page Services. With Nathan’s addition to the staff, Darrel was no longer trying to specify a system, but was working on requirements. Conrad reported a solid plan for moving forward with the power conservation app. Nathan was coordinating the perimeter defense specification.
The biggest thing on Henry’s mind was the counseling session with his wives. He worried about how much he would need to reveal about the actions he’d taken against the preacher and his unauthorized use of oxycontin. While he was certain Lisa and Chastity would understand and agree with them, he couldn’t really expose his action to the counselor.
“It must be hard on all of you to deal with the aftermath of the accident,” Elaine, the counselor, said. “Henry, how is your recovery coming?”
“First of all, it wasn’t an accident,” Henry said, setting the tone for the session. “It was attempted murder. I will never forgive that bastard for hurting Lisa and Chastity. My bones will heal eventually. I don’t think my anger ever will.”
“Just so I know the extent of remedy that is being considered, is your insurance handling the money aspect?” Elaine asked.
“It is being handled as an accident,” Henry said. “Auto insurance doesn’t cover attempted murder nor does health insurance, but the police reported the incident as caused by a driver under the influence. The lawyers have convinced the insurance company to cover the medical expenses and have launched a lawsuit against the estate of Flagston, the driver. It turns out that he was uninsured and there is little or nothing in his estate. They can’t go after Daniel Reeves for encouraging the incident as that would shift it from accident to attempted murder for hire and they don’t cover that. I don’t know the current status of that. Every time I think about it, I become a little irrational. And everything starts hurting again.”
“There are other complications regarding the lawsuit,” Lisa said. “It exposed a massive fraud and embezzlement scheme by the preacher and that brought federal investigators in, since all his money comes in the form of donations to his church. There are a ton of other allegations as well, including ours. They include domestic terrorism.”
“And none of that is giving you any relief,” Elaine sighed. “Henry, the trauma has left you with some non-obvious side-effects. In our previous session, Lisa described nightmares, outbursts, and concern for your use of painkillers. What would help you?”
“Knowing he was dead, his entire church was dismantled, and his members were all in the hell they seem to believe in would help,” Henry said. “When I get out of this wheelchair, I’ll go to Texas and see to it myself.”
“You know that won’t change how you feel, don’t you?”
“Really? That bastard encouraged a drug addict to try to kill us! He paid for Russian hackers to attack our company. He preaches against our products and services and has referred to me as the antichrist. I think getting rid of him would go a long way toward helping me feel better.”
“Let’s see if we can change the focus a little to what we can do in this room. Henry, your wives—I’m not going to play around trying to define different roles for Lisa and Chastity; legal relationships have nothing to do with your bond—your wives are also suffering and need you. Revenge against the perpetrator is unlikely to help them. Why don’t we try to find some immediate short-term remedies that will help your family through this rough spot?”
They made as much progress as possible in an hour-long introductory session. Elaine encouraged Henry to talk to his doctor about his use of painkillers and he promised he would. In the meantime, they would try to talk more openly among themselves about how they were feeling and would focus on finding good things in their relationship that were above and beyond the attack on their family.
And, of course, they’d meet again every week for more group counseling, plus individual meetings as needed.
The next Monday was Labor Day and everyone was invited to Luke’s parents’ home for a cookout again. ‘Everyone’ included Isobel’s parents and brother, and Henry’s parents. They’d also been surprised by a visit from Lisa’s parents for the long weekend and they were included at the Monday event. Fortunately, once Henry had been lifted up the steps to the Riordans’ front door, the rest of the party was all on one level and he could make his way around in the power wheelchair. As a special accommodation, Germaine was also invited to the party and drove the van for Henry and his family.
“Germaine, is this really part of your job?” Henry asked as she deployed a portable ramp to get up the stairs to the Riordan front door.
“Oh, no,” she replied. “I volunteered. I just couldn’t stand the idea of Chastity and Miss Lisa having to wrestle you in and out of the van. I’m used to it and didn’t have anything else to do today.”
“You didn’t want to spend the holiday with your parents?”
“They don’t live in town,” she answered succinctly. Henry guessed they must be somewhere far away. Germaine had requested a Forever Yours package for her maternal grandparents once a Ukrainian translation package was available.
“Well, I’m glad you can celebrate with us, then,” Henry said. “You are part of our family.”
“Thank you, Mr. Henry.”
The party was pretty relaxed. Felipe attempted to renew his interest in Chastity, but she kindly told him that she was Lisa’s wife and didn’t run around on her.
Henry noticed that even though Felipe managed to snag a beer from the cooler with the adults all turning a blind eye toward the sixteen-year-old, Isobel was sober and not sharing in the alcohol like she usually would. Nor did she smile, even when Germaine addressed her as Mrs. Riordan.
They’d seen this kind of behavior on occasion in the past. Henry assumed she was having difficulty with her medications, or perhaps had just quit using them as he’d seen in the past. That was his opinion until Lisa and Chastity were corralled into a game of cornhole with Lisa’s parents and most of the other guests watching. Henry stayed parked under an umbrella at one of the patio tables. Isobel sat down as near to him as his chair would allow.
“How are things going?” Henry asked. “Have you started feeling better?”
“This is all your fault,” she growled.
“What is my fault?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“I don’t think you can blame me for that,” Henry said quickly. “Um… congratulations?”
“It was supposed to be yours, but you sent me back to Luke’s room and I stupidly let him come in me. We always used condoms before. I let him come in me once for every time I’d imagined you fucking me. But you turned me away. I hate you so much!”
“Isobel, having Luke’s baby is the way it’s supposed to be. You aren’t supposed to have mine. You’re married, and I am, too.”
“I don’t want it!”
“Well, it can’t be far along. What? Nine weeks? You could abort it,” Henry said, sounding rather callous.
“Abortion? Are you crazy? I’m not a murderer, Henry! And Luke would be heartbroken,” Isobel said. “I don’t believe in abortion. How many times have I told girls they shouldn’t fuck around if they don’t want to bear children. I’ve stood on the fucking steps of the clinic and shouted at girls going in, even if they only wanted birth control. I didn’t even consider it the morning after. I was a little hungover.”
“Does Luke know?”
“Of course. He went to the doctor with me. We haven’t told anyone else. We’ll wait till three months. I just want you to know that you’ll be godparents and I’ll drop the brat off with you every chance I have,” Isobel growled. “If it gets too bad, I might get Luke to let you adopt it for its own safety. I would have done that if it was yours anyway.”
Henry paused to think about what she was saying for a minute and try to process how this would ever work. He didn’t morally or ethically object to adopting Izzy and Luke’s baby. If Izzy went off the rails, Luke might consider it a safer alternative. They’d been best friends since kindergarten and Henry would never withhold his child from him, no matter what the legal arrangement. How would Lisa react? They’d decided to wait a year before they started a baby of their own.
“Luke might have something to say about whether you give the baby up for adoption,” Henry chuckled.
“He wants a child. I don’t. He knows I’m not suited to be a mother. Look how stupid I’ve been the past few weeks just responding to the pregnancy. Luke watches like a hawk to be sure I’m not drinking or taking drugs. No child would ever be safe around me.”
“You know that might change when you actually hold a little one in your arms. A little one you gave birth to,” he said gently.
“Yeah. There’s always the chance I’ll be miraculously turned into a saintly mother. I’ll no longer be bipolar or schizophrenic. I’ve been on pretty good drugs, you know. I’ve been stable for a couple of years. I’m worried about being on them now. My doctor is worried. He cut my dosage this week. It could affect the baby. When I’m off it, I’m constantly going from manic to depressed, so I’m on an antidepressant, too. You know when I’m manic. You’ve seen me before. The drugs inhibit my feelings.”
“What can I do?” Henry asked.
“I don’t know. Kill me? I need help. Even if we don’t give it to you for adoption, I’ll need a full-time nanny. I don’t plan to stop working unless I’m moving to a remote desert island. I just feel so helpless!”
Isobel buried her face in her hands while she cried. Henry felt helpless. Whatever happened and however Isobel decided to handle it, Henry knew he had to talk to Lisa and Chastity about it. He’d never let Isobel spring something like this on them. They’d probably want to talk to the counselor about the whole thing.
“I’m glad Germaine agreed to help today,” Henry said when they’d reached home. “She’s a real godsend.”
“They,” Chastity said.
“They who?” Henry asked.
“They Germaine. During a conversation with Lisa’s parents, they revealed they preferred the pronouns they/them. We’re going to work that into our vocabulary and encourage others to use the same terms,” Chastity explained.
“I have nothing against that,” Henry said. “It just came as a surprise. She… They didn’t say anything when they first started work.”
“No. They’ve had some pretty bad experiences in the past. Especially in the Marines.”
“So, they’re trans?” Henry asked, trying to grasp the situation and determined to be proper. It was good practice as he planned to offer a job to Simon as soon as he was available in the spring. Simon was openly gay, but only wanted to be referred to as she if he was cross-dressing, which he/she did periodically, but mostly when going out.
“‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” Lisa quoted from Hamlet. “They are asexual. They don’t identify with either male or female. Nor do they have a sexual or emotional attraction to either male or female. They’ll use the women’s room because it is equipped for their biology, but it wouldn’t make a difference if they went into a men’s room. Not to them, at least. They just aren’t interested.”
“Okay. That’s good. I’ll mark it in my feeble brain to use the right terms. Please correct me if I slip up.”
“You’ve always been accepting of different people, Henry. We’ll all slip up occasionally, but we’ve asked Germaine to please correct us when we do,” Lisa said.
Lisa and Chastity helped Henry undress and get in bed. Then they got in on either side of him in the narrow bed.
“It will be so nice to start removing more of the plaster,” Chastity said. She had settled on his left where his upper arm and leg were still in casts. Of course, using the term ‘plaster’ was a leftover from the last century. Nearly all casts were currently made of fiberglass.
“The doctor said this could probably come off Friday,” Henry said. “My physical therapist has had me working on using crutches without putting direct stress on the fracture. It will be nice to go upstairs to my own bed.”
“So true,” Lisa said. “Our bed.”
After a little kissing and cuddling, Henry brought up the subject he half dreaded.
“Isobel is pregnant,” he said.
“That explains a lot,” Chastity said. “I was suspicious.”
“Wow! I never expected her to want children,” Lisa said.
“She doesn’t,” Henry said. “That’s what makes this difficult. She’s never been particularly stable with her bipolar disorder and possible schizophrenia. She’s backed off her prescriptions during the pregnancy and Luke is watching like a hawk to be sure she doesn’t drink.”
“I’ll bet she hates that,” Lisa said. She’d seen Isobel when she was drunk and managed to steer clear of her then. Chastity nodded.
“Of course, she categorically rejects any immediate remedy, even though she’s still in the first trimester. I guess I don’t blame her for that. I’d be reluctant to participate in that if it was us,” Henry said.
“But I do want children,” Lisa said. “How far along is she?”
“Nine weeks,” Henry said.
“That would be… We were in Louisiana!” Lisa said.
“The night before our wedding. I didn’t mention this because I handled the situation and it didn’t affect us. The night before our wedding, Isobel managed to get into my room in the middle of the night.”
“Shit!” Chastity said.
“She was pretty plastered and wanted me to fuck her.”
“Please say you didn’t do that,” Lisa pled.
“I didn’t do that. I got her turned around and out of my room. Then I put the chain across so she couldn’t get in again if she tried. She didn’t. Remember your spa day?” Henry asked.
“Isobel didn’t show up.”
“Luke missed our tee time, too,” Henry said. “From what Luke told me when he got to lunch that day, they didn’t stop fucking each other until it was time to get ready for the wedding. And Isobel was careless, allowing Luke to go bareback for the first time.”
“I suppose she blames you,” Chastity sighed, understanding immediately what the issue was.
“Why?” Lisa asked.
“Because Isobel never takes direct responsibility for her mistakes. That’s why I removed Nancy from helping her and hired a financial assistant who has more experience than Isobel does,” Chastity said.
“Okay, so I don’t think this will ever happen,” Henry said, “but Isobel suggested the remote possibility that she and Luke would want us not only as godparents, but to adopt the baby if it proves too much for them to handle.”
“Adopt Luke and Isobel’s baby?” Lisa said. She stopped to consider that for a minute as they all lay in bed, any thought of amorous activity abandoned. “Maybe we should step up our timeline a little and work on our own little one,” she finally said.
“What?” That was not a suggestion Henry was expecting. He saw Chastity smile and nod.
“Well, if we might have to adopt Luke and Isobel’s baby, it would be good if ours wasn’t that much younger. He or she should have the opportunity to get established first.”
“But we were going to wait… like… until…”
“Why?” she asked. “Henry, my love, do you want to make a baby with me?”
“Of course!” he practically shouted.
“Then what possible difference does it make if we start in a month or a year? I’ve always been prepared to accept the possibility of getting pregnant accidentally. We could do it accidentally on purpose. It might even help Isobel in knowing she’s not the only one.”
Amorous thoughts surged back into their minds.
“Congratulations,” Henry’s doctor said as the cast fell from his upper arm. “Don’t stress it, but start working to gradually regain your strength. This means you can start switching to crutches, but like your PT has had you practicing. Keep the weight supported under your shoulder, not in your hand. It won’t be long before you’ll have the strength to start lifting with that arm.”
“This is great, Doc,” Henry said, flexing his arm. “It… still kind of hurts.”
“Henry, who gave you a prescription for oxycontin? You’re abusing the drug and I only gave you one refill. I want you to get rid of all the painkillers you currently have and I’m telling your wives to be sure you have. This is an intervention. I’m switching you to 800mg of ibuprofen twice daily. In any normal person, that is more than enough to handle the kind of pain you are experiencing.”
“I only took them for pain,” Henry said, his breathing accelerating.
“The response you are experiencing right now says you are mentally dependent on the drugs as much as physically. This will be tough, Henry. Don’t succumb to a real addiction. Fight through it.”
“Fight. Yeah. I’ll fight it.”
Henry stood in the conference room on Monday the seventeenth to welcome Dale Jacoby and four new developers to the company. This was the start of the new robotics project and they were all excited to have the joint project underway. Two executives and the lead developer from ARDC and one of the principal investors from Argos Capital were also in the room. Argos was funding the joint venture and had supported hiring Jacoby in the role of director. While his direct responsibility would be over the software, he was considered the project manager for both software and hardware.
Argos had hired a financial manager for the joint venture as well. He was at the meeting as were Chastity, Luke, and Isobel. Isobel breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn’t have responsibility for the joint venture. She didn’t feel up to expanding her financial management to what was essentially an independent venture housed under their roof. She’d shoveled more of her responsibilities as CFO of Open Cloak to her assistant. The bills for the joint venture would be paid from a separate account by an employee of the joint venture, not integrated into either ARDC or Open Cloak.
“This is a big step for both of our companies,” Henry said. “Yes, we are going to develop a single project designed to pave highways. That is going to keep us busy for the next year or two. But hopefully, over that time, we’ll also discover new ways our companies can work together on joint development projects. This is an instance in which brawn marries brain, I guess, more literally than any human aspect. We’ll truly have a new breakthrough in autonomous machinery.”
There was applause and the investor from Argos had a turn to speak to the team.
“There is an old adage that says a joint venture is where a guy with experience joins a guy with money and at the end of the project the roles are reversed.” There was some laughter. “That’s not going to happen here. We at Argos have invested in two remarkable companies who have different but compatible expertise. We are not simply funding a project, but investing in a future that we see as vital to people’s quality of life. You might ask how that is when we are just creating a road paving machine. But roads are fundamental to the lives of everyone in our community, our state, and our country. Until we develop transporter beams, roads will continue to be vital to our existence and quality of life. And, as Henry said, we expect you to discover other areas in which your companies can work together to solve many problems we face today.”
The team moved to their office space on the second floor, next to Nathan’s perimeter defense team.
Chastity followed Henry to his office and locked the door behind them. She’d seen the sweat on his forehead during the meeting and he was beginning to pant. She sat on the corner of his desk and he immediately grasped her leg and leaned against her thigh. She petted his hair.
“It will pass, love,” she cooed. “It’s getting better.”
“Better,” Henry whispered as he closed his eyes and squeezed the tears from them. “Better.”
He could tell the difference. Yes, his head hurt, but he was suffering most from the withdrawal. Intellectually, he knew it was the result of withdrawal and PTSD. Emotionally, he knew it was continued anger and frustration.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
