Cath Trilogy: Hey Jane

Jane drank enough coffee to keep her up through the night, the nightmares were becoming something that she would rather be without. It was rather difficult given how many antidepressants she had taken, but it didn't matter for Jane believed that this case would only take a small amount of time before the case would be solved and things would go back to normal. Everything would be the way that it was before she was assigned this case, and Rhys would never have to know. No one would ever have to know.

"Ready?" Rhys asked when she got out of the bathroom after taking a quick, cold shower and changing into a grey suit. It would have matched the fog perfectly if it wasn't pretending to be the white of an angel's wings. Even the weather lied to itself in the bay area.

Now, they were going to go to the place where lies manifested in themselves and somehow created people who were supposed to be accepted by society. They were supposed to be better and more suited to the environment that would be provided by the real world and everyone who supposedly lived in it. Jane knew exactly where she had truly lost the sanity that people were supposed to have but no one really did. No one interesting. Jane knew where she had found out that unless she looked in the mirror and lied to herself, she wouldn't be a norm of society. These were lies she didn't want to tell herself, I am fine. I'm not feeling pain. My past is not what defines me. There are people in my life who really care. I don't need to act out to get attention.

Jane was going back, and she was more than grateful that she wasn't a patient again. Though, she had the moments where she would feel like she was back to being one. There were the times that she wouldn't want to lie, she wouldn't want to express her emotions to her friends... friend... one friend, her therapist, or her parents. She had a nice little bubble that she could live in, and there was no one who could hurt her in the bubble, she was safe in it. The cost of this bubble was a room with white and doctors shoving pills at you to cure the diseases you have. A vaccine for schizophrenia. A pill for paranoia. I am fine. I don't need to go back.

"I'm ready," Jane answered Rhys, and they went to his car. The air seemed to be getting tight around Jane as Rhys turned the key. The engine flickered to life. People could use that engine to slowly suffocate themselves. If they got out, they would most likely go to a place like where they were about to travel to through the fog of lies. The cold, constricting air.

"You sure you're ready?" Rhys asked.

"I'm sure your grammar needs some work," Jane breathed out and smiled at him.

"Shut up," Rhys smiled back playfully and began to drive off to the nice hospital with the nice doctors in the white clothes. The nice doctors that Dr. Wayne had told Jane about. The nice doctors who would take her mind.

"You can't end your sentences with prepositions," Jane corrected him yet again.

"Shut up, bitch," Rhys uttered the profanity obviously lost in his own thought. Jane was more interested in him than herself so she asked him the question he was supposed to ask her.

"What's on your mind?" She put her head against the cold window.

"Just..." Rhys searched for words then blew out a long stream of air. He then continued, "I was there when they admitted Catherine. I saw her on this stretcher," tears clouded Rhys' eyes and he quickly wiped them away. Jane was unsure of what to do, so she just sat there as she watched her friend break down a little. "She had tried to kill her self. She was a little girl, and she had taken 30 pills, just jammed them down her throat.

"I told you about the swing set story," Jane just stared at him as a few tears left streaks down his cheek. She never would have imagined that he would have embedded so many emotions into the girl's life. He continued maybe finding a bit of reassurance in the fact that he could voice the things that he had been feeling. "She was a tough cookie. She ran to me after her parents... after they..." Rhys still couldn't bring himself to say the words even after all these years. "She was so bloody. At first, I thought she was just pulling a prank on me. Her father was like that. He would have pulled a prank on my family on Christmas just to laugh at us.

"But, I knew it wasn't a joke. She didn't cry, not one single tear from when my mom called the police to when we heard the shot for her mother..." Rhys paused and focused on driving for a moment. They had a good 20 minutes to the drive, and Rhys wanted to get out the story. "But, the police came and the man had escaped. He had jumped over that fence that you were standing next to."

Jane knew this piece despite the fact that it wasn't in the case file. "He had gotten away a trailed Cath's mother's blood after him. I had never seen so much blood. The trail and Cath, and her ankle swollen and inflamed. She only cried when they brought out her father's body. I guess she just didn't want to believe more than I didn't. Despite all of that, she was still... I thought she was okay. I thought she would pull through. You know, that is how I met Aubrey. While I was busy being sick from all the blood, she was trying to convince Cath that it was going to be okay.

"Aubrey really thought that Cath was going to be alright. The girl was still young enough to be adopted and even so there was always foster care. Instead, I got to see her laid out on a stretcher with her stomach pumped and as pale as anything that I had ever seen. She just looked so weak. The moment that I saw her being pushed into the facility, I swore that I was going to help her and everyone like her. I knew that I wanted to be a police officer."

Jane noticed that she had begun to tear up at this story. She never would have guessed that something like this ever would have happened to Rhys. None the less would she have thought that it would build up inside of him and cause him to cry in front of her. She had never seen him cry, and she didn't find it to be the most pleasant thing to be watching, but she couldn't look away.

"Thanks for listening. It means a lot," Rhys wiped snot onto his sleeve and pulled himself together. It had been a long time since he had thought of or been forced to think of Catherine. Suddenly, he burst out laughing. It was the kind of laugh which Jane truly enjoyed listening to, "You know what? She was able to chose a name for herself for witness protection... she chose Jane. Like the Marvel character. Ha! Her father was such a nerd and watched all of the Marvel movies with her. I guess she just really liked Jane Foster or Natalie Portman. I don't think she was allowed to keep that name but what a small world."

"Yeah," his partner laughed and went back to staring at the thick, white as ever fog.