"As much as I can."

"Don't let them overwork you."

"I don't have much say in the matter, Scott."

"Yeah, well, it makes me mad."

Reaching up with a smile, Jean cupped his cheek, then dropped her hand.  "You're sweet."  He blushed.  Yet what they said mattered not a whit.  What mattered was her fingers intertwined with his as they stood at the airport boarding gate, putting off the moment when she had to walk down the tunnel onto the plane, and it had never before been this hard to leave him.  Pride kept Jean from making a fool of herself, and she wasn't prepared to admit anything in words, but they held hands and leaned shoulders against a wall with barely six inches separating their faces.  There was a softness to his expression, a besotted fixation, and in that moment, she truly regretted his hidden eyes.  Palpable electricity arced between them both and she swayed closer, her gaze fixing on his mouth.  Elated and terrified, his fingers tightened around hers, but the voice of a flight attendant broke in with a final boarding call, and she wasn't ready to rush this.  When she kissed him finally, she wanted him to know that he'd been kissed.  A thorough job.  

So she released his hand and stepped back, glancing around.  She worried, too, about the casual interest of strangers; there were too many people watching.  Such things mattered to her more than to him.  She imagined that she read disapproval on faces, so she settled for a last hug, her cheek pressed to his, then grabbed her bags and hurried up the tunnel before the attendants could shut the gates.  

The last person on the plane, she had to eel her way almost sideways through the cabin back to row eighteen.  It was just her luck that there was no space in the overhead bin so she had to store her carry-on three bins up, and the couple occupying seats B and C were big enough that they really needed the whole row.  They had to get out to let Jean in and she apologized profusely, then sat down and pulled out a book to read, embarrassed by the complications of her tardiness.  At least she didn't have to wait long for the plane to leave the gate.  She read right up until take-off, then closed the pages on her finger to stare out the window as the California landscape fell away below.  Banking, the plane turned into the morning sun to head east, and Jean, bored of her book already, fished out a picture from those she'd had developed at a one-hour shop only the day before.  It showed Scott at the beach, standing in a silly pose, his face plastered with a big grin.  So often he was serious, but when he smiled, it was delightful, wide and easy and impudent.  She pressed the picture up against the little, double-paned oval window so that the back lighting made stained glass of him, illumined for her heart.  

"Is that your boyfriend, sweetie?"

Startled, Jean nearly dropped the photo and turned to look at the woman in the seat beside hers.  The other had startlingly green eyes in a face beginning to show the lines of middle age, and her permed and dyed hair also had an hint of green to it, as if she'd gone swimming once too often in chlorine water.  Most notably, though, she was huge (in both girth and height), and the doctor in Jean wanted to make a mental assessment of heart stress, but despite the weight she carried, she seemed healthy.  Her breathing was quiet, and the flesh of her arms looked solid, not fatty.  Jean suspected that if they were standing, she'd be facing a woman who towered over even her.  

In any case, her seatmate had asked a question, and she wondered how she ought to answer?  "Sort of," she said.  "I mean, yes, he is, I think.  Or I mean, I suppose he is."  Then she sighed in frustration.  That had sounded foolish even to her own ears.  

The woman, though, was smiling.  "Are you headed to Chicago to see him?"

"No."  Jean couldn't keep the sadness out of her voice.  "He lives out here, in Berkeley.  He's a grad student in anthropology -- studies Mayan warfare and technology."  Then she blushed.  That was far more than the other had asked, or likely wanted to know, but Jean found herself wanting to talk about him, as if she could cling to him just a little longer through the verbal.  

The stranger didn't seem to mind.  "Where is home for you, sweetie?"

"New York."  

"That's a lot of miles in between."  

"Yeah."  

"Can I see your picture?"

Jean handed it over and the woman raised the reading glasses that hung about her ample neck, perching them on her nose to study the photo.  "Nice looking fella."  She turned to peer over the top of the glasses at Jean, and the smile returned.  "I take it you haven't been dating long?"

"I --    No.  No, we haven't."  Unhappily, Jean hugged herself, and the stranger noticed even if Jean didn't.  

"It's hard to be apart when it's all new.  So, how did a New Yorker meet a California boy?"

"Oh, I've known him a while.  We're old friends."  Jean grinned a little mischievously.  "He ran into my car."  

That got a laugh from the other woman -- "Sounds like a story I have to hear" -- and so they settled in to chat for the three and a half hours to Chicago.  Jean Grey heard all about Jennifer Walters' three daughters and five grandchildren, and her law practice in Los Angeles.  And Jennifer heard all about Jean's residency and her relationship with Scott.  

"Do you believe in fate?" Jean asked at one point.  

"Fate?"

"Yeah.  I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes I feel as if . . . this was all fated somehow -- Scott and I.  How else can I explain it?  But I have this friend who's always telling me there's no such thing as fate and the future isn't set in stone."  

Jennifer studied Jean thoughtfully a minute before replying.  Finally, she said.  "I don't believe in fate, no.  But I do believe in luck.  Fate always sounds so negative.  We're fated to do this or that, as if it were the pronouncement of some cosmic judge.  Luck is more optimistic, don't you think?"

And Jean tilted her head, turning that over in her mind, turning it over like a leaf.  Luck, not fate.  Scott wasn't her albatross; he was her dolphin.  Or her silly sea otter.  
 
 
 
 

Jean had been told that someone would be there to pick her up at JFK when she returned, and someone was.  

Warren.  

Seeing him standing there, dressed in a casual sports jacket and pressed slacks, she felt ambushed.  Her stride faltered as he called, "Jeannie!" and came over to embrace her.  

"Hi, War."  She pinned on an expression of false cheer and let him take her arm to escort her out to collect her bags.  Then he called for his car -- chauffeured, of course -- and this was so different from Scott picking her up in Oakland only a week before.  When they stopped at a nice French restaurant on the way back to the mansion, Jean was surprised.  "Why are we here?"

"Because I know you and you probably didn't eat anything on the plane.  My treat.  Consider it a 'welcome back and good luck in ER' dinner."  

She didn't feel able to protest, though she wasn't comfortable.  She knew Warren was interested in her, but she wasn't sure how interested.  Warren Worthington III was a consummate playboy, and if she didn't fear that he'd take advantage of her only to cast her off like an old toy, there was a frivolity to his flirting that disinclined her to take him too seriously.  So she donned her polite face, smiling and making small talk, and cast wary glances at her watch.  Finally, she said, "I do need to get back, War.  I need a good night's sleep before tomorrow."  

So he took her back to the mansion and kissed her hand as he left her on the front step; it made her blush.  Ducking inside, she leaned up against the solid wood door and wondered what she was going to do about Warren?  Confounded, she went quietly up to her room, opened her laptop, and checked her email.  A letter was waiting for her.

Subject: Home? 
From: scottsummers@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Date: 2/18/2001 2:21pm
To: jegrey@xavier.org

Bling me when you get in, so I know you got there safe.  --S2

. . . .  

jeangrey:  Hi. 
bonedigger:  Hi!  I was starting to worry.  I thought your plane was due in hours ago.  Did you get delayed in Chicago? 
jeangrey:  No, Warren picked me up and took me to dinner on the way back.  I hate plane food, you know.
bonedigger:  Warren took you to dinner? 
jeangrey:  It was just a bite.  Nothing big.
bonedigger:  Oh.  Was the flight okay? 
jeangrey:  Fine.  Long.  I have a long day tomorrow, too.  :-(
bonedigger:  I guess I should let you go to bed then. 
jeangrey:  You don't want to talk? 
bonedigger:  You should get some sleep. 
jeangrey:  You sure?  
bonedigger:  I'm sure.  Don't let them work you too hard in ER.
 jeangrey:  Okay, I won't.  Night, then. 
bonedigger:  Night.

Almost three thousand miles away, Scott Summers signed off his computer just as confused as Jean.  Though to be fair, 'confused' had defined his emotional state for most of the week prior.  Confused, ecstatic, terrified, cynical . . . turn and turn and turn again, so that by the time her visit had ended, he hadn't known if he were coming or going.  She'd almost kissed him in the Oakland airport -- he could have sworn she'd been about to kiss him -- yet as soon as she'd gotten back to New York, she'd let Warren take her to dinner?  Perhaps he had misread things, exaggerating simple gestures of friendship into fantasies of suppressed longing.  Certainly she'd never shown any romantic interest in him before.  

When it came to Jean, all his usual self-assurance evaporated.  Like many attractive men, Scott was a bit vain -- a fault that his friends chose to overlook because his vanity was unconscious and honest.  How did one handle a face like his?  Too much modesty was false, but he didn't dwell on it either, having found better ways to measure his self-worth.  Nonetheless, it granted him an inadvertent arrogance that, combined with his natural charm, tended either to annoy women or to attract them.  With Jean, however, that didn't apply.  Her beauty, her intelligence, and her greater age leveled the playing field; she alone could make him feel common (and at some subconscious level, he liked that challenge).  

Yet now, wretched, angry and ego-shaken, he slammed his laptop shut, then flung himself down on his bed.  It still smelled of her -- her shampoo, or perfume, or just the scent of her body -- and he rolled himself up in the top sheet, drunk on her scent as she'd been drunk on his earlier that same week.  But Scott's intoxication expressed itself in the painfully physical, and the intense pressure of arousal finally led him to reach down, undo his fly, pull out his cock and masturbate, keeping the sheet between his hand and penis just for variation, or maybe so he could better pretend it was her hand.  Already tense, the slide of cool cotton over warm flesh drove him to a peak quickly and he was both too intent and too lazy to stop before making a sticky mess of things.  Then he just lay there and breathed before rising to root through his laundry for a dirty sock to clean it up.  

Much later, EJ returned to find Scott lying on his back on the living room floor in the dark.  Flipping on an end-table lamp, he asked, "What's up with you, man?"

"My life is shit," Scott said, and turned his head away.  

Sighing, EJ walked over and plopped down on the rug by his friend, offering Scott a hand.  Scott clasped it and let EJ pull him to a sitting position.  EJ had been expecting this conversation for months and knew, at the root of it, that it had little to do with Jean Grey.  They just looked at one another for a while.  After three and a half years, EJ had learned to find Scott's eyes behind the quartz, and appreciated how much it meant to his friend.  He'd long ago stopped wondering what Scott's eyes actually looked like, and couldn't explain his lack of curiosity, as he knew that most of their friends speculated (usually behind Scott's back).  He didn't.  The glasses or goggles or visor were simply a part of Scott, and EJ had learned to read his mood in the tick of a cheek or a firming of the jaw, a twitch of mouth or hands, the eyebrows that rose or fell, even the tilt of his head.  These were the windows to Scott's soul and EJ had no need to see his eyes.  Right now, Scott sat slumped and loose with depression.  "Spill," EJ ordered.  

"I'm not sure I belong here anymore," Scott began.  "This past week, it's been . . . I've remembered how to have fun.  Having Jean around was like waking up.  Since November, when the rumors started about Fred, it's been this . . . knot . . . in my stomach."  He made a vague gesture towards his center; EJ listened but didn't interrupt.  "And this semester, I've tried hard to figure out what to do, but I've been so angry about everything -- kind of deep down.  I didn't let myself think about it since I'm working with King -- but Eeej, I know he did this.  I know it.  It's his fault, what happened to Fred.  I can't make myself like him, and he doesn't like me, either.  I could deal with him for a few classes, maybe even on my committee.  But directing it?  I try not to think about that, either.  But I've got to.  Hiding my head in the sand isn't going to make this go away."  

Scott leaned over until his forehead touched his knees, longish brown hair falling forward.  "I don't think I can stay here."  

EJ had known the day would come when they'd each go their own way but he'd hoped it might be for happier reasons -- graduation, marriage.  Yet it was upon them now.  "Yeah," was all he said.  

Scott raised his head and looked up.  "You agree?  You're not mad?"

"Why would I be mad, man?  It's your life, and this is a crappy situation.  Maybe you need to take three steps back out of the flying shit.  It's only paranoia if they're not out to get you, y'know.  Sticking it out here just because you're fucking stubborn doesn't prove anything except that you're fucking stubborn, y'know?"

Scott grinned at that.  "So what do I do now?"

"Look into other universities, dimwit.  Call professors in your field and talk to 'em, see about transferring after this semester.  How about this Mark Waters guy who's doing digs at Tikal?  Weren't you considering going down there this summer, if he'd have you on his project?"

"Yeah, he's got NSF funding to excavate the city walls.  John Farmer is out east, too.  I love his work, but he's doing digs a little too far north of my interests.  Still, he could direct my thesis."  And they moved on to a discussion of potential alternative schools.  Neither said anything about the fact that most were either in New York State or a day's drive away.  
 
 
 

"You did not have the authority to override my orders and release my patient!"

Jean jumped and spun around.  She'd been making notes on a chart when Jack Lippman stormed up to confront her.  Lippman was a senior resident on the floor but acted as if he were the chief, and after a week in emergency medicine, she'd come to the conclusion that ER doctors were second only to surgeons in their arrogance.  Now, tired from her first overnight with three trauma calls after eleven, she just stared at him.  His face was shiny and red and he had protruding eyes under curly blond hair.  "What are you talking about?" she asked.  

"My patient.  The indigent in Room C.  Russell Curtis."  

"That man was your patient?"  A surge of rage washed away all Jean's exhaustion and she slammed down the chart on the counter.  "What the hell did you think you were doing, calling in a psych consult to declare him incompetent?  He was perfectly competent!  Just because he's indigent and refuses treatment doesn't make him incompetent!"

"Well, your competent patient was refusing an absolutely necessary triple bypass because his horoscope told him it wasn't a good day for it!"  Lippman poked his finger at her, almost hitting her in the chest.  "Let me inform you of a thing or two, Dr. Grey, since you're new here.  Curtis comes in and out on a regular basis.  He's been having chest pains for the past six months and suffered his second cardiac arrest this morning.  Both have been mild, but the next one won't be.  He's been putting off this procedure since we first told him he needed it, and if he'd had the operation three months ago, he wouldn't have made the last five trips to ER.  And who pays for these visits?  Our taxes.  You just turned him out again, a man with no common sense or willingness to face reality.  He's an alcoholic, he smokes, and his diet stinks.  He needs that damn bypass or he'll be back in here -- again -- and we'll face exactly the same issue -- again.  So next time you blithely decide that a patient with a potentially fatal cardiac condition can check himself out against doctor's orders, why don't you try asking the attending for his history?  Or at least try reading his goddamn chart."  He leaned in to add, "Be sure I'll tell Bram" -- the chief resident -- and then he stalked off.  

Face flaming from fury as much as humiliation, Jean leaned against the nurses' station.  "Bastard."  The nurses behind her went on about their business with a click of pens and distracted voices, trying to pretend they hadn't overheard, but she was sure her dressing down would be all over the department within the hour.  Turning back to the chart, she struggled to re-gather her thoughts and continue writing, then went to assess her next patient.  An hour later, chief resident Walter Bram asked her to step into the staff niche.  

His manner was less angry than Lippman's, but still brusque.  "Do you want to explain yourself?"

"You can't have a patient declared incompetent just because he doesn't want to undergo a procedure.  That's not right.  It's a person's freedom we're talking about, to decide what's best for him."  Her voice had risen a little, almost against her will.  

Bram didn't appear to notice, merely shook his head.  "Why don't you leave the diagnosis of competency to the psych department?"  He eyed her.  "You're a geneticist doing a general med rotation, Grey, not a psychiatrist."  

"Neither is Lippman!  He made a snap judgment!  That's bad science -- bad medicine!"

"That's ER medicine.  Get used to it.  And it wasn't a snap judgment.  Lippman has been dealing with this guy for months.  You haven't.  Don't jump over the head of a senior resident again unless you have a better reason than that you think he acted rashly.  We have a process in this hospital.  Nobody is getting admitted to Creedmore who doesn't need to be there.  Let me tell you something.  Lippman calls a psych consult at least once a month.  They're used to him.  They'll send someone over here, she'll smile, talk to his patient, then come out and tell him he's full of shit.  I know you're new, and you don't know the routine, but that means you can't go making snap judgments yourself.  Got it?"

She stared at her feet and nodded, but felt compelled to add, "It's a decision about a man's sanity and his freedom of choice."  

"We're doctors, not philosophers.  It's our job to make people well."  

"Even if they don't want to be?  It's his right to choose."  

Bram shook his head.  "God, I'm glad you're just rotating through here," and he left her standing by the coffee machine.  

Leaning up against the rear wall, arms folded, she glared out at people passing in the hall.  None of them understood what it was like to be locked up with the key thrown away.  Jack Lippman should spend a week on a psych ward before he decided patients needed to go there just because they were stubborn and foolish.  "Insolent prick," she muttered, then returned to her duties.  

Later that day after her shift was over, Jean described the incident to Warren, who said, "Wow.  It sounds pretty bad."  He'd come to pick her up at five o'clock -- as he'd taken to doing lately when she wasn't on call.  It both flattered and frustrated her.  If she and Scott had been communicating less since her trip to California, Warren had begun pursuing her in greater earnest.  Now, he was taking her out for ice cream in his silver Rolls and she felt ridiculously ostentatious stopping at a Dairy Queen in a car that cost more than the combined yearly incomes of all the shop's employees.  Still, she had a thing for vanilla custard soft-serve, and Warren knew it.  

That was the problem.  Warren knew what she liked, and offered it without strings or claims that his indulgences were more than friendship, while Scott . . . fear and uncertainty made her suddenly skeptical of his intent.  Handsome, popular, and confident Scott Summers with his personal harem of Valkyries -- what did he want with an overworked, inexperienced, nose-in-her-microscope, science geek?  In retrospect, it seemed silly.  When he'd been impressionable and young, she could understand his crush.  But he knew her better now; he'd begun to see the real Jean, and it didn't surprise her if he were back peddling.  

Warren was different.  He might be as handsome as Scott, and far more famous, but fame was a thorned rose, and his urbane attitude hid insecurities as deep and wide as her own.  Jean understood Warren.  He was like her, both in social class and in the disenchantments bred there.  But unfortunately, he didn't make her belly shake, and it wasn't Warren she dreamed of at night.  So she mediated her time with him, doing her best not to give him a wrong impression.  Maybe with time she could learn to love him, or maybe not.  But with Scott, the fire had always been there, banked beneath propriety.  Scott excited her.  Warren didn't.  It boiled down to something as simple as chemistry.  

"The problem," she said now as she nibbled at her soft-serve, "is that I don't know if my call was right or wrong.  The man is going to have a massive coronary at some point.  I should probably have called social services or the chaplain's office since it's their job to assist patients in adjusting to illness, but I just saw that call for a psych competency consult and freaked.  The guy was not incompetent.  Superstitious and resisting how serious his condition is -- yeah.  But that's not crazy, War.  You can't label someone crazy for being afraid."  

"I don't think that's what -- "

"It is," she snapped.  "If they declare him incompetent, that's what they're saying."  

She could tell from Warren's expression that he didn't quite agree, but he didn't protest further.  

Despite her exhaustion, Jean didn't fall asleep immediately that night.  In fact, she was still tossing restlessly at one in the morning and finally got up, throwing on a robe to pad down to the kitchen for tea.  No one was around.  Sitting at the table, she waited for the teapot to whistle and rubbed at her aching temples.  When the pot went off, she rose to pour boiling water into a mug, swirling the tea bag about and letting her eyes go out of focus as she watched.  Finally, too wound up to stand it anymore, she walked over to the wall phone and picked up the receiver, tapping in a number she knew by heart.  She hadn't talked to him, voice-to-voice, since she'd left Berkeley, and maybe that was the problem.  Scott revealed as much by his tone as by his words, and she needed to hear him, not just read his remarks on a screen.

The phone rang four times and she wondered if anyone were there.  It wasn't that late in California.  Finally, EJ answered.  "Is Scott around?" she asked.  "It's Jean."

"Oh, yeah, hang on."  Then a bellow away from the mouthpiece:  "YO SLIM!  PHONE!"  Jean had to smile.  She found EJ's nickname for Scott rather funny.  Only a man with EJ's physique would call one with Scott's 'slim.'

Who is it?, Jean heard Scott say in the background.  Jean, EJ replied.  Jean?  Yup.  Then, into the phone, Scott's voice:  "Jean?"

"Hi.  You have a minute?"

"You bet.  Whatcha need?"  And the utter sincerity of his tone undid her.  It sounded like her Scott, and all the fears and suspicions of the past week evaporated.  She leaned into the counter and sobbed a little.  "Jean?" he asked.  "What's happened?  You okay?"

"Oh, yes."  Smiling and still crying at once, she twisted a strand of short hair around her index finger, then told him everything that had happened that day, up to and including the ice cream with Warren.

"So you're dating Warren now?" he asked.  

She sighed out in frustration.  "No.  I'm not.  Would you let up with that?"

A pause.  "Okay."  Then, "You're really not?"

"I'm really not!  God!"

He laughed.  "Okay, okay.  So tell me exactly what happened in ER again?"

And suddenly, everything was better, like the click and shift of a railroad router onto a new track.  She told him about the incident a second time and when she was done, he asked, "How much of this has to do with that guy, and how much with you?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

Snorting softly, Jean stared at her cooling tea.  "You think I made a mistake."

There was a long pause.  "Yes and no.  The guy wasn't incompetent, but -- you want the truth?"

She pondered that, yet wasn't it why she'd called him?  He'd give her the truth.  "Yes."  

"I think you jumped the gun.  You can't make people not be stupid -- I mean, it was the guy's choice -- but you saw 'psych consult' and went ballistic.  That's about you, not about him."

"If he dies before he has the bypass, it's my fault, isn't it?"

"No, it's his fault.  He walked out the door.  Still, you can't let what happened to you when you were a kid rule you, okay?  Just because they misdiagnosed you doesn't mean they'll misdiagnose everyone.  You were kinda a special case.  It sounds like this guy might need serious help, even if he's not necessarily incompetent."  Then Scott listened to her breathe, trying to control his own anxiety.  He hadn't wanted to make her angry, but thought she needed to release the past.

Finally, she said, "Okay.  You have a point.  So what do I do now?"

"Nothing.  It was his choice.  But next time, think first, okay?"

She laughed a little at that, and it cut the tension in his gut.  "It's bad when you have to tell a researcher to think first," she said.

"Hey, we all have our buttons."

"I guess."

"We do, Jean.  Now -- tell me more about ER.  I wanna hear everything."  So they talked for almost an hour and when she hung up, she was smiling despite the hour, and returned to bed with cold tea but a lighter heart.
 
 

"So what do you think?"

Barb took the proffered pair of pictures to study them, and Jean tried not to fidget too much.  After a moment, Barb shot her a little grin.  "This isn't the blond I saw you with."

"Ah . . . no."  

The other woman's smile widened and she held up one of the pair:  Scott in his new hat, sitting in a tree, looking entirely too full of himself.  "Okay, spill.  Who is he, how did you meet him, and are there any more like this where he came from that I can introduce to my little sister?"

Jean burst out laughing, relieved and flattered at once.  Somehow, Barb always knew the right thing to say.  Jean took back the pictures and gazed at them a moment before slipping them into one of her folders.  "His name's Scott, we met when he ran into my car, and yes, he has a little brother, but I don't think they get along any too well."

"So what does he do?"

"He's a grad student working on Mayan technology and warfare."

"So why haven't I seen him around here?"

"Because he's in Berkeley, California."

Barb made a silent, Ah, and Jean was sure she'd put two and two together about Jean's recent vacation to the west coast.  "He's cute.  But you knew that."  Eyes crinkling at the corners, she regarded Jean a moment while sipping a 7-Up.  "So how old is he?"

"That'd be twenty-two."  Then Jean almost winced as both Barb's eyebrows shot up, and she hunched her shoulders, leaning over the table.  "You think he's too young, don't you?"

"Hey -- women who live in glass houses can't throw stones, darlin'.  It doesn't matter what I think.  What do you think?"

And Jean shoved a french fry in her mouth.  "Some days I think no, some days I think yes."

"What do you think when you're not worried about what other people think?"

Shrewd, shrewd, Jean thought.  "Mostly it doesn't cross my mind."

"Ah.  And there's your answer, darlin'."

Jean nodded.
 
 

March 1, 2001, 3:22pm PDT

bonedigger: <<sung>> 'I'm makin' a list, and checking it twice ...'
jeangrey: ???  Have you had too much beer?
bonedigger: not at 3:30 in the afternoon.  Just feeling silly.
bonedigger: been looking into schools out east
jeangrey: And? 
bonedigger: couple of possibilities
jeangrey: And? 
bonedigger: well, believe it or not, NYU and Albany -- also Penn State, Ohio State, Boston U, Yale and Harvard.
bonedigger: I doubt I could get into Harvard or Yale -- Berkeley or no Berkeley -- nor would I want to. 
bonedigger: But NYU?  Along with Penn State, it'd be among my first choices.
bonedigger: In some ways, PSU would be best, faculty-wise, but NYU is right there and they have a great grad program.
jeangrey: Scott, you don't *have* to come back to New York.
bonedigger: well, no -- but maybe I want to come back.
bonedigger: I kinda miss it. 
jeangrey: Really?  What do you miss? 
bonedigger: oh, red hair. 
....
jeangrey: You're a flirt. 
bonedigger: Sometimes.  Sometimes I'm serious, though.
....
jeangrey: I'm not sure how to answer that, Scott.
bonedigger: You don't have to answer it.  Just think about it.
jeangrey: Shit.  I have to go.  Beeper's going off.
bonedigger: Is it really, or are you running away? 
jeangrey: I'm not running away.  It's going off.  Later, Don Juan.  We'll talk.
** user jeangrey has disconnected **

Jean came barreling into Trauma A just in time to hear "Roll call!"  She had made it down in three minutes on the nose.  "Here!" she answered to her name as she gloved and gowned, then she asked, "What've we got?"

"Motor vehicle accident," the head nurse replied, voice brisk, reading from her clipboard.  "Car rear-ended a semi, went right under it.  They had to use the Jaws to get out the driver.  ETA is about four minutes.  Definite head and chest injuries -- he hit the steering wheel -- along with a probable concussion, abdominal injuries and multiple leg fractures.  The EMTs tubed him on site but his blood pressure is bottoming."  And the nurse rattled off his vitals.

"Shit," Jean muttered under her breath.  If that patient survived to reach the ER they'd be doing well.

Four minutes could pass incredibly slowly, when one was waiting.  Around her, the trauma team finished preps.  It was Jean's luck to be teamed with Jack Lippman.  He barely glanced at her as he listened to the EMTs on the radio, and she tried to regularize her breathing.  She'd been here two weeks but this would be the worst she'd seen so far.  She watched the others -- they were primed, pumped, ready.  She was just scared shitless.  She wasn't cut out for ER.

But the ambulance had arrived; she could hear the slam of the outer ER doors, the calls of EMTs and nurses, and the drumming of feet on linoleum.  Seconds later, the trauma doors burst open and there he was -- a bloody, torn figure amid stained sheets.  Middle-aged, unconscious, but still alive.  "Primary assessment, people," Lippman called.  "Get him bagged and vented!  EKG and pulse-ox stat!  Type him, too; we're going to need some blood here!"  And whatever Jean might have thought of Lippman personally, she had to admit he didn't flinch.  Jean went about her duties mechanically, weaving in and out of the trauma-room dance, and tried not to look at the man's shattered body as his clothing was cut away.

He wasn't going to make it.

How she knew that, she couldn't have said, but she knew.  Oh, they'd fight; they'd battle till there wasn't any hope, because they were doctors, but he wasn't going to make it.  Some things a body just couldn't recover from.

Flashes struck her like strobes, the white and black illumination of a life.  

Two kids in the den, a vivid impression of a stone fireplace and a cherry armoire entertainment center.  Arguments over the controllers of a Play-Station.  Two kids.  Two girls.  One had red hair.  "Make her stop, Daddy!"

The heat of summer and the choking dust kicked up by a mower.  Yellow iris along a fence and a yellow dog digging in the tomatoes.  

A blonde woman reading a magazine and the same yellow dog sitting beside her on the couch.  

The blonde woman with her head thrown back, caught in the moment of sexual ecstasy.  

Girls asleep, red hair and fair on pillows, the hum of a fish tank in the background.  

"Jean!  What the fuck are you doing?  I said put in a central line, dammit!"

Startled, she jumped to obey.  

The rise of mountains, blue with fog, and the twisting roads of the Appalachian Trail.  A hand on his knee, sliding up the inside of his thigh while he checked signs for the right exit, looking past white wedding flowers wrapped around the antenna.

Blinking lights on a Christmas tree.

Blinking fireflies in a June twilight.  

Blinking lights on a highway . . . .  Sliding lights . . . .  too fast . . . .  gripping the wheel.  Impact.  Pain.

SLAP!  "Wake up!  Or get the hell out of my trauma room!"

"Okay, okay," Jean muttered, blinking, struggling to focus on her hands.  She had an impression of nurses nearby in blue and green, like fog and mountains.

What's her problem?  She looks drunk.  

She's freaking out, freezing up.  

Move, you stupid cow.  

It's dark here.  It's quiet.  I think I'll stay.  

"He's crashing!"

Get her out of my ER.  

Get her out of our ER.  

"Where's that blood, Hogan?"

So quiet here.  It doesn't hurt.  Bye, bye, baby.  Bye, bye, my babies.

"I've got no blood pressure!"

Get her out . . . 

Get me out . . . 

Out . . . .  

Someone screamed.
 
 

 

Some part of her is hungry, a sharp pain below the diaphragm.  She should find food.  Lights whiz by.  Horns.  Voices.  Sound lengthens, then it speeds up, accelerating to a whine like bees.  She can see only one object at a time.  A yellow fire hydrant.  A concrete bench.  An abandoned white cardboard cup.  A young girl in a striped stocking cap.  A blue U.S. mailbox on a street corner.

Is she drunk?

Get out of the way, white bitch.

"Hey, you wan' sometin', Mamma?"

Rough hands shove at her.  She stumbles, then she dances.  Twirl and spin.  Like headlights.  Like a car out of control.  Like death.  

She laughs at them when they shy away.  She's dead but they keep speaking to her. 
 

Where is her purse?  She left it on the subway, she's sure.  And a bag of groceries.  Her pictures were in that purse, her last pictures.  She follows the lights to some station.  She's not sure which.  I have to find my purse, she says.

Tough luck, lady.  

But it's got pictures of my boy.  My last pictures of my boy.  He died a month ago in Vietnam.  

Vietnam ended twenty-five years ago, you freak. 
 
 

 

There's a little dog and a pack of Camels and a brown leather jacket that she wears because it belonged to her brother.  It still has the smell of the docks about it.  My name's Jill, what's yours?

Julio.  

You like dogs, Julio?  You like my little bitch?  She wiggles her ass and laughs.  

I like you, baby. 
 

The whine of an old air-conditioner kicking in before noon tells her the day will be hot.  Kids scream obscenities at each other in the next room but she's too tired to care and the checkbook is reading negative numbers again.  "Shut the hell up!" she screams finally, and her voice edges sharp with the lilt of Brooklyn.  The kids shut up.  For two minutes.
 

Daisies spread under her fingers, and fern and lilies.  She binds their stems with sticky green tape and the bright smell of cut flowers is strong.  The shop bell rings.  "I'll be right with you!"
 
 

 

Honeysuckle blooms in April.  She remembers the fat waxy scent, and the ugly shotgun houses lined up beyond the River.  She remembers Bourbon Street and the sour smell of old men who hadn't bathed, the fetid stink of bad teeth when they kissed her, and the impatience of calloused fingers pinching her nipples.  Now her breasts sag and she's old herself.  Her pantyhose are wrinkled like the legs of elephants as she lumbers down sidewalks.

She shifts the weight in her arms and pulls up her shirt, undoes her bra.  A hot mouth latches on and sucks hard.  Pull, pull, until the let down of milk.  It gushes.  And she, sleepy with the sensation, relaxes back into her chair like the moment after climax.  Her fingers stroke the fine hair at the base of her baby's scalp.
 
 
 

"Candi tastes sweet, Candi tastes sweet, such a treat, all the boys love to eat."  But that's not the way it usually goes.  On her knees, she's doing the eating, and it's salty-bitter.  A radio in the background plays Red Hot Chili Peppers.  She needs to tuck in her blouse in back, and her neck hurts.
 
 
 
 

It was a comment on the limits of Francesco's power that he wasn't the first to know of Jean's awakening.  Charles Xavier was.  He'd been the one to erect the walls in Jean's mind, and he knew it the moment they crumbled, battered apart by the ram of a luckless man's dying impressions.  Death had woken her power the first time, and death had called it forth once more, rising like a phoenix.  There would be no shutting it down again.  The egg had hatched, Charles thought.  Now, the race was on to find her.

Yet he informed none of the other students at the mansion -- eleven of them now, not counting Ororo and Frank.  This, he had to do alone insofar as he could; Jean's pride would bear no pity.

But first he made an overseas phone call to Scotland.  The physician couldn't heal herself, and there was no way to guess in what state he'd find her.  Besides, he might need Henry's assistance in the weeks to come.  Then he headed down to Cerebro.  It was eight-fifteen in the evening when he entered, but it took him half an hour to pinpoint her location.  Her fragmented mind led him on a merry chase, darting in and out of the bushes of others' psychic impressions, and he had to be so gentle, so gentle.  A contest of wills with his phoenix would only result in mutual bruising.  This hunt required stealth and skill.  Finally he caught her in his net, holding her mind like a man might hold a baby rabbit, fearful she'd leap and slip her skin.

Quiet, little one.  Sleep.  

And in Washington Heights on the steps of the Hammer Building only a few blocks from New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Jean Grey sat down and stared blankly at the street.  Initially, she'd meandered out of the immediate area of the medical center, but now had wandered back, led to this one building by cosmic irony or years of habit.  People stepped around her; a few had seen her there before, including the security guard, and so left her undisturbed.  A dazed resident in scrubs after a bad day wasn't so uncommon a sight, but there was something a bit mad in the face of this one, and her hands were still unwashed, stained red past the wrists.  Pedestrians kept their distance and their eyes rolled white like spooked horses -- even those who might otherwise have tried to get away with something.  The insane were never predictable.

It took Xavier an hour and ten minutes to reach the area, then he left his driver and car in the hospital parking lot to continue on by himself.  Here among the tall medical buildings, people were jumbled into a macédoine salad of skin, dress, and social class, and no one glanced twice at the man in a wheelchair as he moved purposely up the block towards the bright spot of fire in his mind.  At last, he spotted her.  Curled up in nearly a fetal position on the landing, she seemed far too small for the psychic glow she cast.  Stopping at the base of the stairs, he sent, It's time to go, my dear.
 
 

She'd seen Jesus and he was bald.  Giggling, she called out, "Where's your cross?" then unfolded herself to spread her arms wide like a crucifix.  The knuckles of one hand hit a corner of brick and it hurt.  Yanking it back, she sucked at it, got a mouthful of salty iron.  This is my blood that was shed for you.

It's time to go, he told her, and beckoned, and the taste of his mind was strong -- intoxicating like aged, oak-cask cabernet, full of smoke and plum and pepper.  Was he Jesus or Dionysos, god of her madness?  Headlights slid by behind him.  They beckoned, too, like the white lights of death.  But she'd seen death and it was dark.  Goodbye, my babies.  Goodbye, my Annie.  Goodbye, goodbye.

"Are we going to heaven?"

"We're going home, Jean."  

But Jean wasn't her name.  He couldn't be there, calling her home by a name that wasn't hers, she thought.  Yet what was her name?  Jill?  Juanita?  Candi?  Maria?  Jean?  Autumn?  Semele?

Semele.  She was Semele with a veil as broad as the heavens because her womb had held a god.  "I'm Semele," she told him, then waited for the strike of the thunderbolt that would immolate her.

But he said only, "Let's go home, Semele."

Rising, unsteady on her feet, she tripped down five concrete steps to take the hand he stretched out to her, and in so doing, a little of her confusion sloughed off like old skin.  "Let's go home," he said again.

She nodded. 
 
 
 

Over the next several days, Charles made arrangements.  It was what he excelled at -- making arrangements, covering tracks, explaining the peculiar.  A few phone calls, a little finessing, a gentle reminder of the Family Medical Leave Act, and Jean wasn't immediately booted from her residency program.  Ororo was sent to the hospital to collect Jean's overnight bag and personal effects, while back at the mansion, temporary quarters were set up for her in the danger room.  Xavier might have preferred to put her in the better-shielded Cerebro, but he was concerned for her sanity and didn't trust her alone in a big room with a narrow tongue of flooring stretching out into a large space of nothing.  So she was housed in the danger room, which at least had moderate telepathic shields.

Hank had arrived from Scotland, still blue, still angry, still depressed, but coming to terms with the permanence of his condition.  He ran extensive tests on Jean and tried not to weep for the cracked state of her mind.

"There have been definite alterations to her DNA," he reported later to the professor.  "Just as there have been to mine, and just like -- I'm sure if we had a sample -- to Bruce Banner's."

"So you're saying that Dr. Banner's machine mutated all three of you."  

"Correct."  

Xavier pondered that.  "You've argued that Bruce was a latent mutant, and that your mutation never completed itself at puberty, but how do you explain Jean, Henry?"

Sighing, Hank removed his glasses and plopped down in the reinforced chair at his old desk in the sub-basement labs.  He weighed close to three hundred pounds now, a bit more than most office furniture was designed to support.  "I don't know," he answered.  "I can't explain it.  The machine wasn't supposed to affect either normal humans or fully manifested mutants, but I'm not sure Bruce got as far as testing it on full-mutant DNA.  All the test results that I saw had been from experiments run on non-X controls and unexpressed X-gene samples.  The best I can tell you is that it didn't affect the DNA of anyone without an X-gene."

"Why weren't DNA tests run on Jean last summer?" Xavier snapped, growing angry.

"I thought they were!  At the time, I was a little distracted, Charles."

And Xavier backed down, nodding.

"I assumed," Hand said, "that Jean would automatically run them on herself, but if she did, there's no record of it.  Maybe she thought that with no obvious changes, it hadn't affected her."

"Or maybe she didn't want to know if it had."

"That, too."  Leaning forward, Hank picked up a stack of printouts from his overburdened desk and passed them to the professor.  "Right now, that's all I've got."  He paused, then asked, "Have you told Scott yet?"

"No."  

"When are you going to tell him?"

"I'm unsure.  There is nothing he can do -- "

"He has a right to know.  It's been four days.  You know he'll be furious if you wait much longer."  

Charles did know that.  In fact, Scott would be furious that Xavier had waited as long as he had, but some premonition warned him that informing the boy would lead to a chain reaction Xavier might be loathe to face.  Working with Jean -- reassembling Jean from the fragmented personalities in her head -- was taking all his focus.  He had no wish to compound the situation by adding an anxious twenty-two-year-old to the mix.

"Perhaps you should call him, Henry."

But Hank McCoy just tilted his head down and raised both brows.  "It needs to come from you.  I'm surprised he hasn't called out here already."

 
 
 

In fact, there was a simple reason why Scott Summers hadn't called yet.  Doubt.

He'd tipped his hand in his final chat with Jean, and she'd fled.  He still wasn't convinced that her emergency had been real instead of a manufactured convenience, and the more time that passed with no word from New York, the more anxious he grew, certain he'd made a fatal error.  His concentration failed in the midst of midterms and his mood skidded from distracted right into depressed.

"Man, just call," EJ advised, tossing Scott's cell phone into Scott's lap where he sat on the couch.  Scott stared at the phone, then picked it up and dialed, but all he received was a message that Jean's cell was off.

Early the next morning their apartment phone rang.  EJ had already gone to class and Scott dragged himself out of bed to answer.  "'Lo?"

"Scott?  This is Professor Xavier."

And that woke him up.  Why would the professor be calling him at this hour of the morning?  Swinging his legs over the side of his bed and feeling for his glasses instead of his goggles, he replied, "Yes, sir?"

It came out slightly slurred, and Xavier asked, "Did I catch you at a bad time?"

"What?  No, no.  I just got up, that's all.  Sorry.  What's happened?"  The anxiety was back in his belly and he ran a nervous hand through his greasy hair.

"There's been a certain development.  But let me preface this by saying that, at the moment, there is nothing you can do about it.  I'm simply informing you so that you're aware of the situation."

The hair on Scott's arms and the back of his neck rose straight up.  "What's happened?" he asked again.

"Jean's telepathy has remanifested."  

And that wasn't at all what Scott had feared or steeled himself for.  "What does that mean?"

"The blocks I had placed in her mind some years ago have broken at last, and her telepathy is back.  She's here at the mansion -- perfectly fine physically, but a bit disoriented, as you can imagine.  Henry is here, too, and we're both working with her."

"Can I talk to her?"

"She's not in a condition to talk on the phone, Scott."  

And the pinpricks of fear returned.  "Maybe I should come out there?"

"I see no reason for it.  Don't you have a week's worth of class left before spring break, and other plans made for your vacation?"

"Yeah, sure, but I could change them, it wouldn't --"

"Scott.  There is nothing that you can do here, even if you came."

"I could keep her company, talk to her --"

"No, you could not.  Jean has been isolated in the danger room.  It's necessary until she can learn proper shielding.  At this point, she is unable to filter out the thoughts of any unshielded mind."

"I should be there!" Scott protested, "at least for when she gets out of isolation."

"Be here for how many months, son?  No one can guess how long it will take her to build up her own mental shields.  And repeating myself once again, there is nothing that you -- a non-telepath -- can contribute."

In short, he'd just be in the way.  "Then why call me?"  But it was more distraught than scolding.  

"I thought that you would want to know.  Jean will be all right, but it will take time.  You simply must be patient."

Rage and fear replaced initial shock, and in a pique, he slammed the phone down, cutting off the professor.  Then he bolted out of bed, showered and dressed . . . and stopped dead.  What did he think he was doing?  Reason had returned, and he knew that the professor was right, as far as it went.  There was nothing for him to do, and it galled him.  He needed more information.

Grabbing his cell phone, he called New York again, but not the professor.  Unfortunately, the person he sought didn't answer.  He got Ororo instead.  "Where's Frank?" Scott demanded.

There was a little catch in her breath, then she replied, "He is at the library."  

"Fuck.  Ro, what the hell is going on out there?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play fucking coy with me!  What's happened to Jean?"

There was a moment of silence before her tight reply.  "I am not playing 'coy.'  You asked a rather unspecific question.  As for what has happened to Jean, I am neither a doctor nor a geneticist, but my understanding from what Henry has told us is that Bruce's machine altered her DNA as well as theirs; it simply took longer to manifest.  And since her mutation is psionic, not physical, it was not readily apparent.  Her telepathic capacity has burst its previous bounds."

Scott sucked in breath.  That alone was more information than Xavier had told him, and damn the professor for couching everything in platitudes.  "You mean what happened to Hank and Bruce Banner happened to her?"  His voice had squeaked up like a teenager's.

"Scott, do not panic.  This is serious, yes, but if anyone is equipped to help Jean, it is the professor."

"He doesn't want me to come out there."  

"Well, there really is no reason for you to.  She is isolated in the danger room and none of us has seen her since she arrived."  

"Not at all?"

"No."  

"How did this happen anyway?"

And so Ororo told him what she knew of events at the hospital.  The more he heard, the more alarmed he grew.  "She's lost it, hasn't she?" he finally interrupted to ask.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean . . . Christ, I don't know what I mean.  But last time this happened to her, when she was a kid, she told me she was catatonic . . . Fuck, fuck, fuck.  She was catatonic, Ro, for almost two fucking years.  She was catatonic.  So they put her in a mental ward, and even after she woke up, she was out of her mind for two years more."  He sank down on his knees and tried to keep from shaking.  "Please tell me she's not crazy."

And on the other end of the phone line, Ororo had to wipe her eyes.  "Oh, Scott.  I am so sorry.  I refuse to lie to you.  She is not catatonic, no, but I do not think she is sane, either."

Scott bent his head and sobbed.  

"Shhh," Ororo said in his ear.  "Scott, remember -- she is not a child any longer.  And she has the professor.  I do not think it will take her so long this time."

"Thanks," he whispered and shut off the phone, then knelt there, bent over, arms wrapped around himself.  And out in New York, Ororo sat on the bed she shared with Francesco, staring at the phone.  If it were Frank, how would she feel?

When Frank returned to the mansion a few hours later, she hugged his neck tightly.  "What's wrong?" he asked her in French.  They were alone in the den.

"I've talked to Scott."

"Ah," he hugged her back.  "He's on his way home, then?"

Ororo pulled away to look at him.  "He said nothing of the kind, actually.  He asked the professor if he could, and was told not to."  Her head tilted.  "But he will come, won't he?  He'll come back here."  Frank gave a little shrug of one shoulder.  "Francesco!"  Ororo's eyes narrowed as her mind clicked through the bits and pieces of remembered conversations.  "How long have you known this would happen to Jean?  That's why you let the lab accident occur last summer, isn't it?  Because you knew this would happen -- and Scott would come back for her."

"He has to come back," was all Frank answered.  "He has to come back and stay."  

Ororo thought of the broken woman in the basement and the man crying for her a continent away.  "Sometimes," she said coldly, "I hate you."

"It's mind-boggling, to realize how tall they are, and how old."  

"Yeah."  

Jean and Scott had been lying on the forest floor in Redwood National Park on the Friday of her vacation.  It had felt a bit odd, to take her to a place he'd once come with Clarice, but it had also felt right.  He'd known she would appreciate the trees, and she had, so he'd shown her his trick of lying on his back, face to the sky so that the trees soared up and up all around, the living buttresses to great green cathedrals.  If there was a god, this was his sanctuary.

"I think I know why you like them," she'd said.  

"Why's that?"

"Because you're a Redwood yourself."  

"Huh?"  And he'd laughed.  "I'm a tree?"

"You're proud, straight, solid, patient, always there.  I turn to you when I need to know the world isn't falling apart.  I can lean on you.  I don't know what it is, but you make me feel safe."

He'd laughed.  "Stop!  You're going to give me a swelled head."

And she'd rolled up on an elbow to grin at him.  "Your head's already swelled, Summers," and she'd swatted him with his hat.  Later, she'd taken pictures of him there in the forest of sequoias.
 
 

 

Scott got up off his knees and wiped his eyes beneath his glasses, and all the frustration of the past five months broke like a swell on the beach of decision.  Even if he couldn't do anything specific for Jean, 'doing' was overrated.  He needed to be there, like the trees.  He'd planned to leave Berkeley at the end of this semester anyway.  What difference did a few months make?

Thus decided, he pushed himself to his feet and stumbled back into his bedroom to take stock.  He'd need moving boxes -- rather more than he might have guessed; he'd acquired quite a lot of paraphernalia in his three and a half years here -- and he could rent a small U-Haul as he didn't have a car.  Checking his watch, he saw that it was early yet, barely ten o'clock.  If he hurried, he could pick up boxes, reserve a truck, and be back to pack in order to leave tomorrow.  He'd stay up past midnight if he had to.

Much later that afternoon, EJ returned to find Scott buried in his bedroom with his personals in sorted piles, a dozen already-full boxes stacked in a corner of the living room.  "What the fuck are you doing?" EJ asked.

"I have to go back to New York.  Jean needs me.  I'm leaving tomorrow."

Mouth agape, EJ dropped down on the stripped bed.  "You mean leaving as in moving?  Have you lost your mind, Slim?  It's the middle of the fucking semester!"

Scott looked around without straightening up.  "I know."  Then he went back to taping a box shut.  "She's sick, Eeej.  The telepathy came back and Jean's really sick.  She needs me."  And he related the rest of the story to his friend while he worked.  EJ sat, trying to take in this sudden upheaval, and bit his tongue because he'd known Scott long enough to know when there was no reasoning with him.  Summers was going to do this, regardless of what anyone else said.  Scott ended with, "Don't worry about my part of the rent for the last months of the lease.  I already settled that with Mrs. Gale, and I've left you some cash for utilities and stuff."

"Man, I ain't worried about that.  But I think you're jumping out a window before anyone's yelled fire."

Frowning, Scott twisted around sharply.  "She needs me."

No, EJ thought to himself, you need her, and that was rather a different thing, but the end result was the same.  EJ decided to try one last sally.  "You talked to your profs yet?  They letting you take incompletes for this semester?"

"Incompletes?"  Scott laughed.  "Fuck incompletes.  I withdrew, Eeej.  I withdrew from the university.  I'm going home."

Go on the Chapter 16, "And All the King's Men"