Primary Focus Read online

  Blair’s candles.

  Ellison had put the candles back on top of the fridge, spacing each one exactly how Sandburg had placed them when the microwave died and the empty spot had looked strange and his roommate had stood on a chair and arranged and rearranged the candles until somehow the right balance had been achieved and he had sighed happily and grinned across at Jim, ignoring the eyes rolling at his concentration on such a simple thing.

  Why wouldn’t it make any sense? He needed his partner to explain it all to him.

  He was so tired.

  Jim rolled over in his bed, pulling the quilt close over his shoulders, trying not to listen to the hum of the fridge or the tremble of the windows against the evening breeze, or the absence of Blair’s heartbeat.

  *

  Saturday, May 23rd, 8:15 a.m.

  Jim walked into the room, sat beside the bed and Blair opened his eyes.

  For a moment, Ellison was too startled to say anything. “Did you just wake up?”

  Blair nodded, glancing around. “Why … we here?” he asked, his voice still rough.

  “They won’t let you leave yet. They don’t think you’re well enough.”

  “Can’t you … just take me …?” A hand emerged from beneath the blanket and grabbed hold of his.

  “No. They want you to stay. For a while yet.”

  “Can’t you … fight them?”

  “I need for you to be well, Chief. Much as I would love to take you home, we have to wait a while longer.”

  Blair nodded wearily, his eyes closing, already asleep.

  Jim stretched, surprised at the difference the enforced rest had made to his own state of mind. He felt calmer, but maybe that was just the presence of his Guide. The ache in his chest was still there, but it wasn’t half what it had been.

  Blair slept for another half hour and then the doctor came in and he woke up when they prodded him. He allowed the doctor to check him over, but he kept one hand on Jim’s wrist the entire time. He seemed to have some difficulty in following what the doctor was saying, but was tuned in to Jim’s voice enough so that when Ellison repeated the doctor’s questions, he could answer them.

  There were horrible purple-yellow bruises over his sternum from where they had done the CPR. When Blair was asleep again, Jim gently eased back the hospital gown and stared at the marks, running touch-sensitive fingers over the worst of them, satisfied himself that no ribs were broken or cracked. He remembered Simon’s hands pressing down, elbows locked as he did the chest compressions alternating with Jim’s mouth-to-mouth. The mumbled phrases from mandatory first aid courses. Follow the bottom rib up to the notch, then higher to the sternum, allow a finger’s width for safety, mark, and begin. One and two and three and four and five and one and two and three and four and ten and one and two and three and four and fifteen.

  The feeling of panic returned for a moment, catching him by surprise and Ellison had to gasp to get any air. He had taken an emergency first aid course with Simon several years before, but this hadn’t been the latex doll they had practiced on. It was their friend. Sure, he had done CPR on others before, sometimes alone, sometimes with another person, but he had never known the casualties personally. They had just been situations he had come upon as a police officer. But the bruises on Blair’s chest were mute testimony to the battle to keep him alive. A battle they had given up on until Jim had heard a feeble, single heartbeat.

  During the day, for the most part, Blair slept, his body unable to do anything else. Three times he woke up, a scream lodged in his throat, coughing and hacking, his hands on his neck as though he were drowning, remembered water filling his nose and mouth, choking him. Jim had held him, rocking him slowly, one hand rubbing circles on the young man’s back, trying to calm the ragged breathing and ease fragile lungs from the rough coughs. Each time he was able to lull his partner back to sleep, settling him back on the bed, then resuming his wait. The anxiety and tension had left the detective’s body, leaving in its place a heavy sadness that was equally debilitating.

  As the hours passed, Jim sat beside him, waiting silently while he slept, watching over him. At one in the afternoon, a nurse came in and told him to get some lunch in the cafeteria. He started to refuse, then remembered his promise and held back the words, reluctantly moving down the hall, his hearing fixed on his partner’s breathing, anchoring him.

  *

  Saturday, May 23rd, 6:30 p.m.

  Blair woke slowly, shifted on the hard surface he was lying on. It was late in the day, the sunlight still making itself known through the trees. He looked around as his eyes focused, but Jim was nowhere in sight.

  Jim had been there, though, hadn’t he?

  He closed his eyes, trying to remember what had happened when he had woken previously. Yes, he was certain Jim had been there, had held him in strong, secure arms and banished the shakes and coughs that had unnerved him. A few times, actually. There had been more than one period of consciousness. But why was he alone now? Had Jim left him — abandoned him?

  “Jim?” he called, surprised that he had no power in his voice. The weak scratchy sound was scarcely discernable as a voice at all. “Jim?” he called again, disturbed by the fear that rolled over him.

  “I’m here.” Ellison’s voice came from a distance, then he stepped closer and Blair could see him.

  “Good. I was —”

  “Worried — I know. I heard your heartbeat go up. I was downstairs getting something to eat.”

  “Downstairs?”

  “In the cafeteria.”

  The words scared him. Downstairs.

  Ellison sat beside him, one hand moving to brush the strands of hair from his face, then he stopped, lifting his hand away as though he hadn’t the right to touch him.

  Sandburg looked at him carefully, cursing his blurry vision. “Jim?” His voice cracked all over the place, and even he could hear the tears that threatened to unleash. Then he was tilted upright, resting tight against Jim’s chest, as instinct replaced Ellison’s hesitancy.

  Except something was wrong. His hands slid down his partner’s arm, feeling the soft flannel shirt … but seeing a bare arm with tribal markings. “Jim?”

  “I’m here.”

  Blair shifted away from him, pushing back to look at him. To see the bandana over Jim’s head. Blair’s hand reached out and traced the short haircut. No bandana, although he could see the pattern in the blue cloth.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He heard Jim’s whisper to him, but shook his head, unable to respond. He let Jim pull him closer, and turned his head to look around the clearing. Jim wasn’t wearing what he looked like he was wearing. Was this jungle truly a hospital? A private room? A bed?

  A native approached, the one he recognized as Albinoni. Was this, then, the doctor? He thought Jim had been joking, or that the man was a healer or shaman, but instead …

  Jim was speaking with the man, then shifted him back to the bed so the doctor could check him out. Blair shut his eyes and allowed the examination. If he kept his eyes closed and concentrated , he could feel the metal of the stethoscope, the brush of the doctor’s lab coat sleeve. There were blankets and sheets beneath him, IV in his arm. He could tell when a nurse came in, the whiff of perfume, the click of the little gizmo that took his temperature by touching his ear.

  He opened his eyes again and saw the natives and the jungle. Part of him was terrified and part of him was thinking: Cool. How did this happen?

  He kept his eyes closed for a while after that, orienting himself to his surroundings. Sight was screwed up, but touch wasn’t. Hearing was fifty-fifty. He could hear all the little sounds, chairs scraping, the bed frame creaking as he moved, the ice water poured into a glass for him. But the words they spoke didn’t make any sense. Expect for Jim.

  And speaking of Jim … “Hey.”

  “Yes. Do your eyes hurt? Do you want me to turn the lights down a bit?”

  He cracked one eye open to look at his
jungle-warrior-garbed partner. “It’s not the lights I’m worried about.”

  They were in a clearing and he was lying on a flat, blanket-covered rock. The sun was coming through the trees, casting strange shadows around them.

  “Did I hurt my head?” he asked, softly, surprised how calm he felt.

  “You had a concussion. A blunt trauma to the back of your head knocked you out while someone pushed you into the fountain.”

  “You pulled me out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He waited for another few minutes to go by, centered by the touch of Jim’s hand on his arm. He had lots of questions — mainly in the category of what the hell is happening here? — but even more important, there was something that needed to be said immediately and even his altered sight wasn’t going to stop him. First things first, he had decided. “We have to talk.” His voice was a little stronger. It seemed easier to string words together, but then he had a firm idea of what he wanted to say.

  “I know we have to talk. Chief, I’m so sorry for everything that happened.” Ellison let go of his arm and leaned forward, covering his face with his hands. “I can’t begin to explain it. I wasn’t thinking right — I haven’t been for the last few months. Forget that something was happening with Alex and my senses … I had no right to read your dissertation or treat you the way I did. Fuck, I threw you out of the loft. I’m sorry. I have no other words for you than my deepest apology. You’re supposed to be my friend and I treated you like dirt.”

  Blair’s chest tightened until he could hardly breathe. His heart accelerated, thumping against sore ribs, and his lungs tried vainly to pull in some oxygen. Dimly, he was aware of Jim pulling him upward, massaging his back and coaxing him to breathe, to take a breath and let it out. “No,” he whispered, when he had enough air to do so. “Damn it, no.”

  “I’m sorry, Chief.” Ellison rocked him gently, trying to soothe his anxiety attack.

  “Talk. Need to talk,” Sandburg managed to get out.

  “In a minute. We will. Just relax first.”

  How? How could he relax when everything was all fucked up? Forget his screwed up sight — his universe had been flipping around for the past several weeks, the proverbial rug jerked away from under him so many times he had terminal rug burn. The words — everything he wanted to say, needed to say — drifted away from his conscious mind as he collapsed against Ellison, his body drained beyond belief by the overwhelming fear that they would never get this settled, that they would be doomed to flounder through life not getting the point of it all. Substituting convenience and comfort for the real thing.

  “Jim?” he whispered, when he thought he had enough control over his breathing. He opened his eyes, trying to see clearer.

  “Yeah.” Ellison was staring off into the distance. “Wait a minute, Chief.”

  There was a commotion a little ways away, then a man approached them. Sandburg closed his eyes, letting Jim talk to the guy to see what he wanted. Now who was it?

  “Chief? Don’t go to sleep on me now. This is a doctor. He needs to check you over.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry, but he does. It won’t be long.”

  “No,” Blair repeated. “Not now. I don’t want to be rude to him, but tell him to come back later. I’ve got to talk to you first.”

  “We have time later—”

  “No. I don’t want him to touch me. Later, if you want.”

  The two men talked, then the intruder went away. “He’s not very happy about this.”

  “So sue me.” Sandburg tried to sit up, to move away from Ellison. “I need to see you when I talk to you.” At least see your face.

  Ellison did something behind him that he couldn’t make out, then he moved the bedding so there was some support for his back, settling him gently against it. “How’s that?”

  “Fine.” Sandburg accepted the glass of juice handed to him, sipping at the cool drink, letting it soothe his raw throat. He almost laughed at the conflict of sight and touch, the feel of the glass in his hands, but the tin cup of his vision.

  Jim misunderstood his little gasp. “Chief, I —”

  “No, this is my turn.” He handed the glass back and closed his eyes, feeling the burn of tears beginning to blind him as he searched again for the words he had prepared. “I need to say something.”

  “Okay.” Ellison’s voice was soft. The man was really trying to listen, but it was still guilt that motivated his actions. Some deserved, some self-imposed, some unwarranted.

  But this wasn’t the Sentinel’s turn to talk.

  Sandburg exhaled slowly, letting his head fall back as he tried to ground himself. “Jim, remember when we were last in Peru, when Simon and Daryl disappeared? I had a decision to make then.”

  “About Borneo.”

  “Yeah. About whether to take the assignment in Borneo or stay with you. Do you remember what I told you when we got back? About why I wasn’t taking the assignment?” He glanced up at Ellison, not surprised to see the open pain on the man’s face.

  Ellison nodded. “You said you never understood it before. That you were staying. It was about friendship.” Ellison wiped his eyes on his arm — his sleeve? — too tired or emotionally worn out to care what he looked like.

  Sandburg sighed. It was only going to get worse. “Jim, I don’t know how to say this — but I was wrong.”

  The blue eyes stared back at him, devastated. “What?”

  “I was wrong. I made a mistake.”

  Ellison pulled away from him, sitting further back. “I don’t understand. Are you saying you should have gone to Borneo?”

  “No, not that.” Sandburg waved away the thought with an irritated gesture, then tried to get his breathing under control again as he sensed Ellison’s confusion and the tension suddenly in the air between them.

  “Then what?”

  Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in.

  “Jim … When I first met you, I was one very excited anthropologist, delighted to have found a subject — the proof that my theories and Burton’s were correct. You were the subject of my thesis. Clinical. I’m good at that. We’ve done lots of tests on your senses, tried to see your limits, what you can do and can’t do. I have a room full of documented information on you. My office is filled with reference books and tapes and everything I could get my hands on.”

  Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in.

  Sandburg could feel his heartbeat echoing through his body. “Then, I discovered I was your friend … and that was so unbelievably cool, man. That we were friends. That you cared what happened to me. We could talk about stuff and go camping together. You were like this major person in my life — friend, big brother, confidant, pseudo-father.” He looked up briefly to see Ellison’s eyes still filled with tears, a small smile on his face at the declaration.

  Say it. “But I was wrong, Jim.”

  The smile vanished, replaced with a grimace of pain, as though he had thrust a knife into the Sentinel’s stomach.

  “I was so wrong, man. Neither option was the right one. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with me being your friend, or me being an anthropologist, but that’s where I messed it all up. I didn’t get my Primary Focus.” He said the words so Ellison would know they were capitalized in his mind. “It’s not about Friendship. That’s where I got it wrong. It was just so much fun and it felt so right that I didn’t question it or my actions.”

  “Keep talking.” Ellison’s voice was cooler, as though he were trying to distance himself already. Bracing himself for the next blow.

  Just hear me out. A few minutes.

  “Jim, I didn’t get that you needed to be my Primary Focus. Remember when I said that the dissertation was ‘all about you’? I was closer to the truth than I knew, but still I was making choices based on the wrong things — No, let me finish, then you can get me the hell out of here — My prim
ary role isn’t as an anthropologist or as your friend. My Primary Focus is as your guide, your partner. And it hasn’t been. I’m not even sure why that is. Maybe it’s because there are no role models for me in this, that I figured I had to keep on with my life and do the research and do the regular living thing.”

  “Blair, you’ve done great as my partner. It’s me who hasn’t—”

  “Stop! Let me finish.” Breathe in. Breathe out. “Damn it, Jim. Listen to me. Look what’s happened over the last few months. You’ve been acting tense, feeling edgy. I’ve noticed it, but it didn’t affect me much, so I figured it was just the workload or something. Then you had to ‘get away from it all’, and when we saw you up near the lake, you were as calm as could be, dealing with everything. So, I figured that nothing was wrong with you and I ended up getting my feelings hurt because you had left without me. When Megan showed up, that put a new slant on everything for a while, and I was feeling better because we had a common problem: how to handle her and the whole situation. But then it started up again with the dissertation. And I felt I had to choose between being an anthropologist, getting my degree and everything, or being your friend. Again, I chose to be your friend, willing to throw away my dissertation to keep that friendship. I still made the wrong choice.”

  Ellison was shaking his head. “You’re losing me here, Chief.”

  “Okay, then, imagine this scenario — it shouldn’t be hard. Alex comes to town, but we don’t know it. Suddenly, I start noticing you being tense, edgier. Your behavior is changing slightly, but I don’t know why. What do you think I should do? I don’t know about her, so I don’t know why you are acting this way.— Well, as your friend, I might try to talk to you, but you don’t want to talk, so instead, I’m careful around you. I don’t want to get into a fight. I don’t want my feelings hurt. I ended up adding to the problem, not solving it.

  “As an anthropologist studying you, I notice things, changes in your behavior, and I write down your reactions and speculate, then put the journals away. I think of more tests and controlled meetings. I get clinical, as non-emotional a response as the friendship angle was an emotional one. And I ended up adding more to the problem, not solving it.