It’s Sterling. It could be any or even all of the above.
When we get to the hospital, Vic parks and pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping my cheeks and throat. I try to help, but he bats my hands away, and yeah, they’re covered in blood. For some reason I keep sticking on that.
Eddison, we learn, is in surgery, and they’re not sure yet if they need to put hardware in and around his femur. It’s broken, definitely, but given that he’s an active agent, the surgeon is going to do her best to avoid anything that could keep him out of the field. That’s how I remember Bethesda is a military hospital.
Sterling hauls me into a bathroom to wash my hands and face. When we rejoin Vic in the waiting room, he’s on the phone with Priya, letting her know about Eddison. I wasn’t sure he’d call her so late, but then, this is Priya. Not only is Eddison her brother, but she goes semi-nocturnal during summers anyway. Vic’s voice is calm and soothing, the kind of voice we all automatically respond to after so many years. Even Sterling’s shoulders loosen a few inches.
At some point, Vic goes off to find coffee and breakfast, leaving Sterling slumped half-asleep against me. I pull my credentials out of my pocket and fold them back to rest badge up on my knee. My badge is ten years old, and it shows in a million ways. The gold is worn and dull at the highest points of the letters, where the metal rubs against the black leather divider of the credentials case. One edge has a chip from getting slammed onto a curb in a takedown, there’s a line of dried blood down the inside of the U in US that no amount of cleaning can seem to get rid of, and the eagle at the top is mostly decapitated because baby agent Cass, with her fear of guns, used to forget that guns have this thing called a safety. The day Cass murdered the eagle on my badge, which had been sitting on the lane’s ammo shelf where it should have been safe, was the same day she got the range master as her personal tutor. The range master said it was in the interest of everyone’s well-being. Still, blind and burdened Justice stays in stark relief near the center of the badge.
Ideally, our task is to be Justice. Without prejudice or preconceived notions, weigh the information and bring down the sword.
I run a finger along the eagle’s wings, tracing the letters that have shaped almost a third of my life.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
When I first got the badge, I used to run my finger along the words in almost the same way, tracing them over and over like it was the only way to convince myself it was real. It was new and inspiring and terrifying, and so much changes in a decade.
Some things don’t. It’s still terrifying.
I knew better than most going into this that the FBI isn’t, can’t be, anything simple, and yet I still expected it to be easy. No, easy isn’t the right word. I expected it to be straightforward. Challenging, yes, and sometimes painful, but unwavering. It never occurred to me that I might come to question the good I do.
It’s never been a mystery that the system is flawed. My third set of fosters included a skeevy man and his near-adult son who liked to watch the girls when they showered. I learned to skip lunch and shower at school, and the older girls followed suit. The younger ones didn’t have showers or gyms, but we could move them through the bathroom at the house pretty quickly with one or two of us standing guard while the men were gone.
But I was also lucky. Most of the homes were safe, and if not all of them were warm, they provided necessities without stripping too much dignity from us in return. My last fosters, the mothers, they were different. Rare, and I think I knew that even then.
How many kids do we rescue who aren’t that lucky? How many, who don’t have a safe family to go back to, end up even worse than where they started?
How many Caras are out there, one trigger away from snapping and killing others in the course of their spiral of self-destruction?
How many have I helped create?
“You’re hurting my brain,” mumbles Sterling. “Stop it.”
“Trying.”
“No, you’re not.” She reaches up, arm heavy with fatigue, and clumsily pats at my face. “’S’okay. Bad day.”
“What do you do to get through an impossible day?”
“Let you and Eddison spend most of it pouring me full of booze.”
Okay, there’s that.
“Vic is here,” she continues after a minute, “because he has the same fears as most of those parents. Eddison is here because he doesn’t want any other family to have the weight and pain of always wondering. I’m here because I know how hard these crimes are on family and friends, and want to ease that burden where I can. Of course we’re here for the kids. Of course we are. But we also have all those other reasons. You are the only one of us who is here totally and completely for the kids. You’re here for them. To rescue them. To help them. You’ll help everyone else as much as you can because you’re a good person, but the kids are your priority. So of course it’s going to be hardest on you.”
She shifts in her seat, digging her chin into my collarbone for leverage, and resettles with her forehead burrowed into the side of my neck. “I think it makes you a better agent to question the impacts of your actions on others, because it keeps you conscientious. But you belong here, Mercedes. Never doubt that.”
“Okay, hermana.”
A few hours later, long after Vic returned with a vending machine breakfast for the three of us, the surgeon comes into the waiting room and gives us a broad smile. A knot loosens in my chest. “Agent Eddison is going to be just fine,” she tells us, sinking into a chair facing us. “He’s in the recovery room, still coming off the anesthesia. Once he’s a bit more aware we’ll give him all the instructions he’s likely to ignore.”
“Huh. You really do know his type.”
“I operate on Marines; they’re all his type. He’ll be here for a few days at least, and that number may go up depending on these first days of healing. Mostly it’ll be based on how much he behaves himself. Here’s where I’ll need all of you riding him: We didn’t have to put any hardware in, but that doesn’t mean someone won’t have to back in and do it if he screws this up. That means abiding by limits, managing his pain, not pushing himself harder than his physical therapist tells him to. He’s going to need you to kick his ass.”
“Oh, we’re good at that,” chuckles Vic.
“Normally I’d say you can go one at a time back to the recovery room.”
“But?” Sterling asks, pushing herself upright.
“But the first words out of his mouth after surgery were your names, so I think he’d rest better if you were in there with him. Just remember that he needs to rest.”
Vic gravely makes promises on behalf of us all, and Eliza and I are too tired to look mischievous, for once. The surgeon herself takes us back to the room, where Eddison is pale and groggy in the wide hospital bed, wires and tubes leading from his chest and hand. He lifts a hand in greeting, and then gets distracted by the sight of the IV.
“He’s on the good stuff,” Vic says, sotto voce.
“Vete a la mierda, Vic,” he mumbles.
“I speak Spanish, you’ll recall when you’re sober. I know what that means. It’s only code for Sterling.”
“I can’t say that to Sterling!” Holy God, he sounds absolutely scandalized. He looks about for Sterling and beckons her closer, groping out with his hand until she steps forward. He tugs her closer, almost face-to-face despite the awkward position of the bed. “I can’t say that to you,” he earnestly tells her nose.
“I appreciate that,” she says in almost the same tone, and drops a soft kiss on the end of his nose.
Vic actually seems startled, and he gives me a curious look. “Did we know about this?”
“You’re kidding, right? They didn’t know about this.”
“But you did.”
“I may or may not have a pool going with the girls. Priya and I were betting on when; Inara and Victoria-Bliss were betting on no.”