The Palpable Prosecutor

by Lubrican

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Chapter Three

Bob got to the hospital at three.  He had to wait, first because there were questions about HIPAA again.  Then he was informed she hadn't been moved from ICU to her room.  The uniformed policemen had been replaced by two US Marshals, who wanted to throw their weight around, telling him he wasn't authorized access to the protectee.  He'd brought his contract with him and showed them the paragraph that stated, quite clearly that should the US Marshal's Service assign her protection, he would "play a pivotal role in the protection plan or their services would be declined."  While they were faxing that to their headquarters and generally dithering, Lacey was moved into her room.

Eventually the two USMS guards were told to give him accompanied access until the situation could be further clarified with the protectee. 

When he finally got to see her, she was awake, but still disoriented.  Her skin looked like ash and she was too weak to do more than lift a hand in recognition of him.

"Hey," he said, softly.  "How you doing?"

"Turrble," she said, moving her lips fractionally. "Wha happen?"

"You were poisoned," he said.  "It was in the water in the pitcher on your table."

She blinked.

"You tole me nah drin," she sighed.

"I know.  I guess you forgot."

"Shit."

It was the first word she'd said clearly.  It was also the first off color word he'd ever heard her utter.

"Don't worry about it.  We got you to the hospital and they're fixing you up."

Her eyes ranged around the room and fell on the US Marshal who was "accompanying" Bob.

"Who?"

"He's a Marshal," said Bob.  "I guess your request for protection finally got approved."

"Fuckers," she muttered.  Bob blinked.  Two curse words in less than a minute. 

"They don't think I should be here," said Bob.

She rolled her head toward the Marshal. It was obvious it took all her strength to do so.

The man stepped closer and said, "I'm Deputy Jenkins, Ma'am.  We're going to take good care of you."

She moved her lips, but what she said couldn't be heard.

Jenkins leaned closer, putting his ear next to her mouth.

"Bob is in charge," she whispered.

He leaned back, startled. 

"I'll inform my superiors," he said.

"Good."  All it was, was her mouthing the word. She was obviously exhausted.

"We'll let you rest," said Bob.  "Don't worry.  Either they or I will be here all the time.  He's right.  We're going to take good care of you."

She mouthed, "Good," one more time and closed her eyes.

Deputy and hired gun left together.

"I told her you guys wouldn't want to work with me," said Bob, standing in the hallway.

"It's not that we don't want to.  There just isn't any precedent," said the other man, who had introduced himself as Deputy Thomas.

"She asked you guys for protection and didn't get it.  Since then there have been two attempts on her life."

"We didn't know about the first one," said Deputy Jenkins, his voice accusatory.

"Would you have jumped right on it if she said some guy with a knife came at her, but was chased away?"

"Probably not," admitted Jenkins.  "But we're here now, and we're trained to do this.  Are you?"

"I'm trained to identify threats and eliminate them," said Bob.  "I was very good at it until I got shot up in a firefight."

"Military?"

"Special forces and Delta Force," said Bob.  He wasn't used to telling people about his military past.  When he'd been in those positions, he never told anybody about it.  Even now he knew he wasn't supposed to tell anybody what he'd done, or where he'd done it.

"We don't normally go in with guns blazing," said Thomas.

"I don't either, unless I have to," said Bob, patiently.  "The point is that they've tried twice, and I'm pretty sure they're going to keep trying.  I am not inclined to cut them any slack in the matter.  You guys can arrest them if you want to, but if I see anybody trying to kill her, I'm going to eliminate the threat."

"And what happens if you eliminate the wrong threat?" asked Jenkins.

"There's no such thing as a 'wrong threat'," said Bob, "but I get what you're saying.  I plan to be on the interior.  That means anybody who gets to where I am will  have gotten through you guys first.  If they did that, then they're not good guys, and I will consider them a clear and present danger to the health and safety of my client.  Fair enough?"

"I think that's workable," said Jenkins.  "We'll handle exterior security, and have a man inside with you.  That way any of us who want to come inside will be known to him, and there will be two of you to handle anything that gets past us.  Not that I expect that to happen, of course.  But I think my superiors will buy off on that."

"You have your superiors come talk to Lacey," said Bob.  "She's the one calling the shots, here."

"I don't think it will come to that," said Jenkins.

"I hope not," said Bob. "We have enough problems already."

It took Lacey three weeks to recover enough that they were willing to release her to continue her rehabilitation at home.  During that time the trial was in recess.  Bob had no contact with the officers of the court, though Detective Cooper did.  It was because of what Cooper told Judge Gardner that he decided not to ask for a new prosecutor.  First of all, having a new AUSA assigned would delay the case longer than the month Lacey was expected to be in recovery.  Second, he felt a little guilty at having shut down her security man when he tried to alert the court to his suspicions about the water.  He was irate that the sanctity of his courtroom had been violated in such a manner.  Dozens of people had seen the mystery woman who had waltzed into the courtroom as if she was supposed to be there.  But nobody knew who she was, where she came from, or where she went.  As happens frequently in bureaucratic situations, if someone acts like they are supposed to be there, others accept them at face value.

So he simply recessed the trial.  He had to charge the delay to someone and, while it might be overturned on appeal, he decided that the facts and circumstances justified blaming the delay on the defense.  When Ronald Summers objected strenuously, the judge pointed out that his water had not been contaminated and that both the pitchers and glasses had been brought in from outside. 

"Whether it was intentional on the part of the defense or not, the only party who benefitted from this was the defense.  So I am charging the delay to the defense."

Summers' complaint abated.  It didn't really cost him anything.

In fact, it earned him more in fees.

And, of course, while his client denied it, Summers, like everybody else in the system, knew on whose behalf this vile act had been perpetrated.

At the hospital, Lacey wasn't able to feed herself for the first week.  She was on an IV drip, which helped replace fluids she'd lost during her initial treatment.  She didn't know it, but that initial treatment had involved almost continuous enemas in an attempt to cleanse her digestive tract of the bacteria she'd ingested. 

She lost twelve pounds that first week.  When they began to offer her food, and she was too weak to feed herself, Bob spoon-fed her at her bedside.  He spent as much time with her as he could without falling asleep and their relationship became much less formal as a result.  Her appearance, that first week, was reflected not in Bob's eyes, but in those of the agents who guarded her.  They did not engage in such mundane pursuits as feeding her, but they did check in on her and chat with her from time to time.  It was what she saw on their faces that told her how bad she looked. 

That Bob never reflected that meant more to her than he could know.  And then there was the fact that he had saved her life ... again.

It was her reaction to him on that plane that caused her one day, when his hand happened to be resting on the covers near her hip, to lift her hand and place it on top of his.  It was merely her acknowledgement of the fact that he obviously cared about her, but it was something more too, something she'd never experienced with a man before.

It was, in fact, the most intimate thing she'd ever done to or with a man she was not related to in some way.

The second week she was able to sit up and feed herself.  She sat with her legs hanging over the edge of the bed and was able to stand long enough to sit in a wheel chair while her sheets were changed.  She asked if there was a way to wash her hair, but the nurses demurred.  She did get a sponge bath every other day.

The third week she took a few halting steps, first supported by nurses, but then later, by Bob as she walked around the room.  Her strength improved rapidly, though she had no endurance, and had to rest often.  She chafed at the restrictions she was under, but finally got to wash her hair.  Bob brought her one of her robes, too, and her own slippers, which made her feel better.

She'd been in the hospital for twenty-four days when she was able to take a shower unassisted and walk all the way around the circular third floor hallways.  It was then that Dr. Masterson said she could go home.

He told her not to go to work for another two or three weeks.

The USMS detail that had been assigned to Lacey while she was in the hospital went home with her.  Their superiors deemed that four were enough to provide her with adequate security, both at home and when she returned to work.  One deputy was inside the house with her at all times.  Another took care of external security.  The shifts were twelve hours on, and twelve hours off for two weeks.  Then those four had a week off while four more gave them some relief.  Bob, of course, lived there, and was "on duty" twenty-four hours a day.

Since Lacey's windows were barred, and considered unlikely entry points for an invader, the inside deputy was posted in the short hallway between her front door and the living room.  The outside deputy stayed in the main building entry, just past the stairwell that led to the second floor.  There were four apartments in the building, two upstairs, and two down, with a small basement that contained a washer, dryer, and caged storage for the tenants' boxes, bicycles, and so on.  The agents were in radio contact with each other.

When she finally got back into her own home, the atmosphere was much different than it had been before she was poisoned.  Perhaps because her hair had been down in the hospital, she left it down when she got home.  More importantly, Bob checked on her a lot, including when she was in her bedroom.  Neither of them thought that was really a departure from the norm.  He'd spent three weeks with her in what amounted to her bedroom at the hospital.  Nor did she feel shy about him seeing her in the nightgown she wore constantly for the first day or two she was back home.  Bob, after all, had seen her daily in her hospital gown, which was much more revealing than her cotton nightgown.  Bob sat in a chair outside her bathroom the first couple of times she took a shower, but when she had no trouble with that, he busied himself elsewhere in the apartment while she was attending to her personal hygiene.

Another thing that might have impacted their relationship was that the inside USMS guard normally had very little to do with Lacey, directly.  Bob made sure that man had something to eat and drink.  The two agents swapped places every two hours, both to break the monotony and so each had access to a bathroom regularly.  The men used the half bath between Lacey's room and Bob's room.  Lacey had her own bathroom, which was accessed directly from her bedroom.  But the result was that, with nothing to do in terms of work, Lacey spent almost all her time with Bob.  They chatted about everything under the sun.  She told him about her childhood, and what little information she had about how she'd come to be adopted and what she'd found out about her biological father having been sent to prison for killing her biological mother.  She'd never seen the man since he was released from prison, and had no idea where he was, or even if he was alive or dead. 

Bob responded to her supply of intimate details with some from his own life.  He didn't go into the operations he'd been on in more than very general terms.  He stayed with the missions in which they had taken supplies, equipment, and arms somewhere, to support various groups, and the rescue missions he'd been on.  He didn't tell her about the times he'd killed insurgents, terrorists, or just plain criminals in the line of duty.

Several times they talked, her in bed and him sitting beside her, until she fell asleep.

Now that there were more people around to protect Lacey, Bob was able to go shopping on his own.  Prior to this, he and his boss had always gone places together.  Like many bodyguards, he knew a lot more about her tastes than the casual observer might have realized.

"I'm going grocery shopping," he announced one day.  "Anybody want anything?" 

He was speaking to Lionel Young, one of the agents on duty at the time.  He saw Young lift his radio handset to his lips and speak softly.

"Dick is making you a list," he said to Bob after listening for a few seconds.  He was referring to his partner, Deputy Richard Hooker, who was in the main hallway of the brownstone.  Hooker, who always said, "I prefer Richard," when being introduced, was invariably called Dick by his compatriots.  Some juvenile, male drive made them insist on associating "Dick" with his last name. 

Bob picked up the list on his way out.  Dick was seated in a chair that gave him an unobstructed view of the entryway and both downstairs apartment doors.  The short staircase leading to the basement laundry room was behind him.  The other tenants had adapted to having armed lawmen in the building with astonishing ease.  One of the upstairs apartments was occupied by a young man and his wife, both of whom worked on Wall Street.  The other upstairs tenant was a woman in her fifties, named Elaine.  She was a receptionist at a doctor's office.  Downstairs, across the hall from Lacey, lived an older man named Maurice Towner, who was a bell boy at a hotel in Manhattan.  He wasn't on a first name basis with the men he saw each time he came and went, but he nodded amiably.  All the tenants knew who Lacey was. They read the papers.  They were all New Yorkers, and having the US Marshals Service in the building was something they just took in stride.

Bob chose a big box department store to do his shopping at because he had a couple of things in mind other than groceries, and he didn't want to have to hunt for them on the streets of New York City.  It meant a longer drive, but he didn't care.  He'd been cooped up in either the hospital room or the apartment for weeks, and getting out on the road felt good.

He did his "extra" shopping first.  That list started with two new robes and one nightgown for Lacey.  Then he spent a few minutes standing in front of a bewildering display of nail polish.  The names of the colors delighted him, though they meant nothing whatsoever in terms of actual color.  He chose "Feminine Flower" because of the name alone.  The fact that it was a subdued lavender shade also seemed appropriate.  Finally, he selected a number of different kinds of things that were designed to control and help style a woman's hair.  The only makeup he had any knowledge of was the camouflage variety, and the commercial pastes that many operators used as a base under the green, brown, and black streaks, so that it would come off when you wanted it to.  He decided not to try getting her any makeup.  If he could get her to use the nail polish, that would be a resounding success, in his mind.

When he got back home he dropped off a pint of chocolate milk to Lionel, who was on outside duty at the time, and went in to give Dick his order and put away the rest of the groceries.  Lacey appeared from her bedroom and helped him.

"What's all this?" she asked, when she opened the bag with the clothing items in it.

"You only have one nightgown," said Bob.  "I thought you might like to be able to change things up now and then.  So I got you a new nightgown and two new robes."

She pulled the garments out of the bag and held them up to look at.  The robes came out first.  One was midnight blue, with gold trimmings.  The other was forest green with cuffs, collar, and belt that were light brown.  Both only came to just below her knees when she held them up against her body.  She thought of them as decadent, but at the same time beautiful.  She wondered what her mother would have said if she'd seen them.  She blinked and swallowed.  She didn't have to wonder.  Her mother would have said they were a sinful, extravagant waste of money.  The nightgown was long and white, like her cotton one, but it was much lighter.  In places the fabric was smooth, shiny, and unbroken.  The bodice had a pattern worked into the material that made it look lacy, but it wasn't see-through, like lace.  It went from neck to ankles, like her old one.  That too was classified as decadent, but beautiful.

She decided that, since she hadn't bought them, and that they were a gift, she would accept them.  And she would wear them!

"I was thinking about getting dressed," she said.  "But I'm going to go put one of these on instead!"  Her voice sounded like she had decided to climb a smallish mountain rather than go for a short walk.

While she was gone Bob put the rest of the groceries away and pocketed the nail polish.

She returned wearing the blue robe.

"It's so soft," she said, sliding her hand across one sleeve.  "Thank you!"

"It goes with your hair," said Bob.  "Speaking of which, I also got you some barrettes or whatever they're called.  Your hair looks really good down out of that bun, but I noticed you have to keep brushing it out of your face.  I thought something like this might help."  He dumped the little pile of hair clips out of the bag, onto the counter.

Lacey had plenty of pins to keep her tight bun in place all day.  But she didn't have anything in the shape of a butterfly.  Then her eyes were drawn to one that was a flower perched on a banana clip.  It was blue, the same color as her new robe, and made up of a number of little blossoms. In the middle of each was a dark blue artificial pearl.  It was beautiful, and she ignored all the others as she admired it.

"This one!" she said, like a little girl.  "I want to wear this one!"

In some ways Lacey Cragg was a little girl, despite the fact that she'd walked the Earth for almost twenty-nine years.  The first four of those twenty-nine years had been with her biological parents, but she hadn't had much chance to be a normal little girl.  Her father was abusive, and there was a lot of yelling in the house.  She did a lot of hiding.  Then one day people came and took her to a new house, along with a pitiful collection of her clothes.  Her questions as to where Mommy and Daddy were went unanswered as first one foster family and then another tended to her physical needs, while leaving her psyche to fend for itself.

Fred and Eileen Cragg adopted the little six-year-old girl based on Christian duty, rather than a desire to love and cherish a lost soul.  They attended what some would have called an ultra-conservative fundamentalist church which, among other things, believed the geological age of the Earth was in the neighborhood of 6,000 years, rather than the more widely accepted four and a half billion years.  Give or take half a billion.  Among those other beliefs were the concept that sex was necessary for procreation, but to be eschewed otherwise.  Sex for pleasure led one down the primrose path to destruction, and into the waiting arms of the grinning devil.  It was perhaps because of the conservatism of this church that Eileen changed the girl's name from Angela to Lacey.  Angela seemed blasphemous, and Eileen's great-grandmother was named Lacey. They never told Lacey she'd had any other name.

It was possible that the reason Eileen's womb never quickened and she was therefore motivated to adopt was because they were so careful not to engage in "frivolous" intercourse.  Once, during the peak of her fertile time should be enough, if the Lord was willing to give them a child.  They decided the Lord wasn't willing, and wanted them to adopt some unfortunate urchin out of Christian charity.

So Lacey was raised to believe that flaunting one's gender was base, and sinful.  She was always dressed plainly, and her feminine attributes muted in all ways possible.  As a girl her hair was cut short enough that some people thought she was a long-haired boy. 

When her menses arrived, Eileen instructed her what to do using pads.  She was never to use a tampon, as those were ungodly, somehow.  Eileen instructed, but did not assist.  Lacey was left to figure out how to wear the thick pads herself. 

That was when the "informative" sessions began in which Eileen taught Lacey about men, and lust, and the eternal hell fire that was associated with both of those things.  At one point Eileen helpfully said, "We home school you because the children in public schools talk about sex, and some of them even engage in horrible, sinful practices.  All of them are going to Hell, where they will be in agony forever.  We want to protect you from their evil influences and you must always be vigilant to avoid letting such people corrupt you, Lacey.  You must be strong and put your faith in the Lord."

Another time, for no reason obvious to Lacey, she got a lecture on the evils of touching herself in unholy ways.  This was, coincidentally, immediately after Eileen took a bath, and it was Lacey's turn to use the bathtub.  Lacey was confused by the whole diatribe.  She had washed her body hundreds of times and couldn't understand her mother's tortured code words.  "Lacey, you may feel the urge to wash too long, or touch yourself there, but you must fight that urge.  To stroke the wrong place will surely bring insanity.  You don't want to be locked up do you, Dear?  You must pray for strength to help you ignore those feelings."

What feelings?  What places?!  Where was ... "there"? She'd washed herself everywhere, and had never felt anything other than the wash cloth scraping across her skin.  It made no sense to her, but she knew asking for more information would get her nothing.  Whenever she asked for details about any proscribed behavior, what she got was something like, "Don't question me, child.  The Lord will provide what you need to know in his own good time."

Ironically, it was that very lecture that night that caused Lacey to explore her body in much more detail than she had in the past.  She was familiar with her genitals, in a clinical sort of way.  She wiped when she eliminated, and she knew now where to position her menstrual pads to best effect.  There was hair down there, but she'd never thought much about it.

Eileen would have wailed and gnashed her teeth if she'd known that her warnings had prompted Lacey to explore far enough that she discovered the bump she didn't even know had a name of its own.  But when she touched it with a slippery finger, she instinctively knew this was what her mother was talking about.  The little zings of happiness when her finger slid across it startled her.

Then, immediately, she felt shame and guilt.

She was careful, after that, not to wash any longer than absolutely necessary.  And that extended to the rest of her body as well.

Being home schooled, Lacey didn't get asked on dates.  There were no dances, no prom, no social events of any kind.  At least not school-based.  Lacey's social life was wrapped up in the people at church.  There, during pot luck dinners, prayer meetings, and mission outreach projects, she was exposed to other people.  Most of them were not as conservative as her parents, to be honest.  But those people kept their personal beliefs to themselves, because the minister and the Elders were as conservative as Fred and Eileen. 

When young ones interacted in these settings they were watched by many eyes, and any member of the flock was expected to exert control if it was observed such control was needed.  Even something as minor as too many smiles exchanged between a boy and girl was cause to monitor them more closely.  Satan walked among them, even in the sanctuary of the church building.  The tempter wanted to corrupt their children, as he constantly tried to corrupt them.  This was obvious to the men, because their eyes sometimes lingered on women other than their wives.  Or worse, one of the teenage girls.  And the women knew the Prince of Lies hovered in their presence because they sometimes felt the dangerous longings in their loins as they gazed at their husbands.  Or perhaps some other man.

And so it was that, when she went off to college, Lacey Cragg was ill prepared to engage with others her age in uncontrolled settings.  Her plain lifestyle and appearance helped deflect the attention of most college men, and her complete unwillingness to engage in anything other than polite, spare conversation with the others protected her from their lustful ambitions.

That they had such lustful ambitions was painfully obvious.  She saw evidence of that everywhere she looked.  The men panted after the painted women, who actually advertised their sexuality, wearing tight or revealing clothing.  Unmarried men and women kissed and groped each other.  And if that wasn't bad enough, they did so in public, completely unashamed in their depravity.

She did not get a reputation as an ice queen as an undergraduate.  That was most likely because very few men paid any attention to her at all.  That changed in law school, though, where the population was both smaller and, by necessity, more involved with each other. Study groups were mandatory to make it through, and in such small groups, it is impossible not to get to know the other members.  It was there that the males classified her as most likely lesbian, and the women put her in the category of "not in competition" for the males.  A few of the guys tried to get her to go out on dates, but were rebuffed. 

In the same vein, she never participated in discussions about politics or religion.  She had learned early that her beliefs, and those of her parents, were not widely embraced and that when she espoused such beliefs, people seemed to feel it was their mission in life to debunk them.  Initially, she believed that Satan was sending these people to test her, but later she realized they just hadn't been exposed to the truth.

Still, one cannot live in the wider American culture and not witness the fact that sinners are not struck down by bolts of lightning.  People she wanted to like were not afflicted with pestilence or boils when they stood in a hallway licking each other's tongues in premarital sexual behavior.  Many of those people seemed genuinely happy.  And many of the women she initially classified as trollops and harlots were nice to her.  Not once did any of them whisper in her ear that their way of life would be much more fun than her spare, Spartan existence.  They didn't try to tempt her to stray from the straight and narrow.  They didn't try to seduce her into slipping through the gates of Hell.

She wasn't stupid.  At some point the definition of "brainwashed" and her upbringing came into jarring contact.  The guilt associated with deviating from the religious path her parents had put her on was too strong for her to break away from ... but she began to have some doubts. 

The rigors of law school helped.  After that, the generally isolated environs she inhabited while clerking for a group of judges also helped her avoid the influences of other people.  And the dry, black and white nature of the legal world she inhabited helped reinforce the dry, black and white upbringing she had endured.

Then, when she got the chance to become a prosecutor, her life changed in dramatic ways.

Eileen had told her what little she knew about Lacey's biological parents.  She did this not to inform the girl of her heritage, but as an object lesson in the wages of sin.  All Lacey knew was that her biological father had, in an uncontrolled rage, killed his wife, Lacey's mother.  Eileen speculated on the reasons for the heinous crime and blamed it on the sinful behavior of both victim and perpetrator.  Wasn't it obvious?  If they'd been Christians, and had lived pure lives, then they would both still be living normal lives.  But their sin had caused God to punish them, and Lacey to become a waif. 

During law school, however, as the concept of "motive" was discussed, religion did not enter into the fray.  No one suggested that crimes were "sins" or that they were committed as a result of straying from one's religious duties.  Lacey learned about domestic abuse, and alcoholism, and stress. She learned about poverty and joblessness.  She learned that frustration and anger sometimes led to violence.  The only thing, in fact, that Lacey heard that sounded familiar was that some men believed their wives should bow to them as masters in the home and marriage.  Lacey was familiar with that concept, because she'd been raised in such a home.

The difference was that the instructors said that was outdated nonsense, and not a legal defense in cases of domestic abuse.

Her experience as a public defender (required for a short while during her early work experience) and then as a prosecutor gnawed away at her social underpinnings further.  She was exposed to the worst of the worst, and when one deals with that part of society on a constant basis, it is easy to begin to assume that everyone is similarly flawed.  It was impossible to determine who was telling the truth.  Attorneys tried every trick in the book to manipulate judges or jurors.  Witnesses who appeared to be innocent bystanders were proved to be conniving liars.  People were killed out of quick anger or prolonged hate that was fed by daily exposure to a person who the killer could have just walked away from. Judges seemed to make arbitrary decisions, and jurors succumbed to courtroom theatrics rather than making their decision based only on the facts of the case.

Where was God in all this?  Why didn't brimstone rain down on the modern day Sodoms?

In the end, she decided that she was a finger on the hand of God, that she was his presence in the world, smiting the wicked and punishing them for their sins.

It made her a formidable prosecutor, a woman to be feared, a force to be reckoned with.

And, in this case, a person the Russian mob wanted to kill.

It was this complicated woman who Bob had encountered and saved twice.  It was the complexity of her nature that caused her to react to him as one of the few men she actually respected.  That she had other feelings and emotions related to this man was something she might not have been aware of or hadn't tried to deal with.  And then he brought her colorful robes and geegaws for her hair, and the little girl she'd missed being when she was younger was delighted.

That delight moved her farther along a path she would not have chosen, a path her mother would have been horrified about.

For the first time in her life Lacey liked a man ... and wanted to hug him based on plain affection.

She wasn't aware that, by handing him the flower banana clip and turning her back to him, she was engaging in a very minor flirting behavior.  She didn't think of asking him to help her use that clip as an invitation for intimacy.  That she felt delight when his hands gathered her hair and clipped the flower in place didn't seem odd to her.  She wouldn't have said wearing something like the robe and hair clip made her feel "pretty".  But that's what happened.

And she wanted to feel pretty, whether she knew it or not.  Even more ... she wanted to be pretty for Bob, her white knight.

Not that she would have characterized him that way in any conversation she might have had.

"You look good," said Bob, approvingly.

"Thank you," she said, softly.  The thrill that coursed through her body was unfamiliar.  But feeling good after so many days of feeling awful was welcome, no matter the source.  "I wish I could see it."

"Do you have a hand mirror?" he asked.

"In the bedroom," she said.

"Well?  Let's go get it, silly," he said.

He followed her into the bedroom.  That was completely unremarkable at this point.  He always knocked, but also seemed to know if it was "safe" to enter, and often did so without her vocal permission.  Now he helped her sit in front of the vanity mirror that was part of her furnished apartment. The top of the vanity was bare, except for a comb and her brush.  She opened a drawer and extracted a round hand mirror about eight inches wide.  She held it behind her, but it seemed awkward and he reached to take it from her.

"You just sit and look," he said.  "Tell me whether to move right or left, and up or down.

He put his face behind the mirror and looked over it like he was aiming a gun.  That got him close and her vocal instructions helped him get it where she could clearly see the back of her head.

"It's beautiful," she sighed.

"It looks good," he said.  "I'm glad you like it."

"I love it," she said.

"Well, then, happy birthday," he said.

"It's not my birthday," she said.

"I know, but you had one.  I just wasn't around when that one happened."

She turned to look at him.  There was something like curiosity on her face.

"You're not like other men I've met."

"Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?" he asked, grinning.

"It's a good thing," she said.

She felt tingles beginning in her belly.  She recognized those tingles. Always before she had done something to distract herself from them.  But they felt good, somehow, and this time she just let them flutter.  Again, she had been on death's doorstep, and that first week after waking up in the hospital there had been times when she had wished to just be able to step over the threshold into God's light and get some kind of peace. 

But Bob had been there, always there, talking to her, feeding her, taking care of her as if he was the Samaritan who found her bruised and bleeding body beside the road.  Bob had made her step away from the door to oblivion.  He had pulled her gently back to health.

The fact that she was naked beneath her new robe suddenly burst into her mind.  She looked down to see that one of her nipples had malformed the smooth surface of her new robe.  She looked at Bob, expecting to see lust in his eyes, but then relaxed.  He was still just ... Bob.

The tingles moved from her belly to the nipples that were making her look like some hussy.

But there was no judgment in Bob's eyes.

And he didn't treat her like a hussy.

"Thank you," she said, feeling her face get hot.

"You're welcome. You deserve some happiness after what you've been through."

"I do!" she said, feeling the conviction of her words.

And as she said that, the guilt that had been forming about all those delicious feelings she was experiencing vanished, like smoke on the wind.

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