Bridges 12

Chapter 12

All of a sudden my world came crashing down back into reality. I was on top of Brandon.
Brandon who was lying there.
Bleeding…there was a slow pool of blood forming under him and the gun…there’s a gun in my hand. Mom’s service revolver.
I can remember the dream.
That memory.
The violation.
I was just a little kid, my family knew then.
I knew then.
That I’m transgendered.
The rape, the molestation.
I was remembering all of it when Brandon touched me and I slid from one PTSD moment into another.
It went from day to night and everything changed on me. It became this world of dark shadows that threatened my life.
My house had become this bombed out two and a half story ruin in Afghanistan.
Nothing made any sense and everything was tinted with vertigo and it shook.
I shot the man I love.
I lost it and shot him.
There was so much blood.
Just like there.
There where days I just couldn’t wash it off of me.
The staccato death chant of insurgent AK’s.
Me shooting Brandon.
The death scream of a mini-gun from my side and seeing teenagers get reduced to this kind of state like when the snow plow goes by and pluses mostly water and slush really fast.
Me shooting Brandon.
The boom then dull roar of the roadside bomb going off.
Me shooting him in the chest…
I hear myself let out this thin, wailing cry, like this keening sound…the sound of a broken heart…I sound like the women I’d see who lost someone they loved in those villages.
I bring the gun up to my temple.
I close my eyes.
I squeeze the trigger.
Nothing happens….
I open my eyes and Brandon’s got his hand shoved into the space where the hammer strikes.
His green…forest hazel eyes stare into mine and there’s a trickle of blood starting to run out of his mouth.
I…
Those eyes tighten up and he breaks my finger ripping the gun out of my hand and hurls it out my window.
“Bbbb…Brandon…?”
“Okay…Sam; you’re a nurse, now what?” He coughs up some blood.
Oh my fuck, I shot him…
I shot him…
“SAM!” He yells at me shocking me back to reality?
If everything I know isn’t what I know then is it reality? My head is pounding.
“Sam…”
“Sam…”
He kisses me…!
I taste his blood.
I turn and throw up.
Several times.
He falls backwards and passes out, his head bounces off my hardwood floors.
OH my god!
Adrenaline and training and habits start to take over as I grab my bag from the closet at a run and a sheet off the bed and my cell phone and dial 911. I put it on speaker as its dialing.

“911, hello? How can we help you?”
“Bbbrandon’s been shot! I shot Brandon! Help I Need an Ambulance Stat!”

It becomes a blur after that and I’m trying my damndest to keep him from dying, from bleeding out. I’m ripping sheets and stuffing and binding wounds and trying to keep him from dying on me.

I’m hardly aware of things until the EMT’s came and we got him down to the ambulance and in it. I was about to go too when Cass took me aside. “Miss Chase, we need to ask you a few questions.” I looked at her then at the three other Mounties there. My Mom’s service piece is in an epigenous bag. I see Eli and Chuck and the boys there having come over at some point in time and I….

“I shot him Cass, I freaked out and I shot him Cass!”
Cass turns to the other cops. “I’ve got to recuse myself from this investigation; I’m too close to it.”
Then another RCMP Officer comes up. “Miss Chase if you’d come with us, we have to get you checked out and there are questions that we’d like you to answer.”
Cass takes my hand and passes her badge and her gun belt to another one of the officers. “I’m going with you and I’ll be acting as Ms. Chase’s council until she can obtain one of her own.”
The Mountie who talked to me looks hard at her. “Cass, this isn’t smart, the CP won’t like you doing this.”
“Andy, Sam’s a friend, I’m still a lawyer. I was one before I joined the force. I’ll Deal with the CP.”
“As long as you’re sure.”
She gives me this look, there’s this warmth there and real affection in it. It makes her look stunning in a way I’ve never really settle in my head before. I’m not cuffed but they do place me into the back of the police cruiser. Cass gets in with me. “It’ll be okay Sam. It’ll be okay just tell me what happened.”
“I shot him.”
“I know but why? Why did you shoot Brandon? Did he attack you?”
“No…No…but I thought he was…but it wasn’t him, I thought he was an insurgent.”
“You were having a flashback?”
I nod.
“It’s okay, It’s okay…He’ll be alright, they’ll take good care of him.”
“There was…Pastor Lucas, and I was…I was me, but I was little, but I was me and he…”
It’s too much.
I lose it and just dissolve into tears and the shakes and everything else…that happens when you have a nervous breakdown.
I remember telling Cass my RCAF doctors name was Major Gina Sullivan.
I think I can remember getting checked out.
I remember getting a shot.

***
Cass’s part:

I had gotten the 911 call along with the other officers and we went out with the ambulance to the call at Sam’s place. I had thought that someone else had attacked her and that she was in danger.

Then we had got there and Andy had found the .38 out in the yard and the EMT’s had said that a Brandon Page had been shot.

Then Sam had started to break down and started admitting to shooting Brandon. I was too close to this and I recused myself from duty to be Sam’s legal council. Before I’d decided that I just couldn’t take seeing real pieces of crap getting off with so much stuff and joined the RCMP I used to be a defense attorney. I lasted at that job for all of six months before I just couldn’t take not being able to sleep at night or look myself in the mirror.

Two of the other officers met us at the hospital. That got me going in my official capacity as her legal council. Two of the older nurses had threatened to walk out of the ER if they had to treat “it”. How fucking dare they, didn’t they take nursing oaths. Well turns out they did. I quietly went to their supervisor. “Get those two off the ER floor right now.”
“Why is there a Problem?” she said it kind of cattily like she agreed with them.
“My Client and your patient is a combat veteran and a transgendered woman and two of your nurses are violating her rights.”
“His rights.”
My voice goes to my low range dealing with scumbags level. “Her rights and I’m lodging complaints. Now you get me the hospital admin here right now or there will be some real fucking trouble.”
“I’ll call security.”
“Good you do that, they’re here to protect the patients just as much as the staff.”
She called security.

I know the security guys, we work with them some nights and they’d just as soon not have this hassle so he calls the head admin to the hospital.

It’s over the phone. “This is David Evans, I’ve been told that there is a problem?” He actually sounds interested and not like he’s trying to placate me and I calmly explain. “I have a client who is in RCMP custody and they are being refused treatment by two of your RN’s and that behavior is being upheld for whatever reason by their nursing supervisor. Look that not only are they holding up her treatment but an investigation that she’s involved with as well, but they are violating her civil rights and severely mistreating a decorated military veteran and a nurse as well. All because she is a transgendered woman.” I go on further that. “If the situation isn’t remedied that I’ll be going after the hospital and the nursing staff for breach of oath which is a social contract.”
“Please Ms.?”
“Cavanaugh, Cass Cavanaugh.”
“Please Ms. Cavanaugh, I understand your concerns and refusing to tend to a patient on the grounds of a prejudice no matter what kind is not the way that I run my hospital. Please just let me get things sorted out.”
“Fine but I’m barely keeping my restraint Mr. Evans.”

I was not amused.

Long story short, I got them sent home for the day with a promise of a strict review of their actions, and more than likely a transfer.

It also stirred up some feeling there with the staff. There were more than enough of the nurses pissed about how Sam was being treated. Yeah, Sam might have been Trans but that was like not even the issue. Sam’s a nurse. And they treated one of their own like shit. Medical staff sticks together in a lot of ways like good cops do.

In the end of it Sam is alright at least physically for the most part, she’s in shock and had been given a mild sedative and put onto an IV drip. Andy is there to interview her as to the particulars of what had happened. I was there too as well as the staff psychologist on call for the hospital while we were getting in touch with her long term psychiatric specialist assigned to her GID and PTSD issues from the armed forces.

It took us a few hours before her doctor got there. And the situation after talking to Sam and then Brandon’s friends and thankfully after Brandon made it through surgery and was recovered enough to talk went something like this.

Sam had a buried childhood memory surface that showed her as being Trans at a very early age and instead of putting their kid through hell her folks at the time had gone with it. Apparently her father had a transgendered brother to sister who had committed suicide over it and he wasn’t going to let that happen to Sam. This we got through a little research after Sam had told us she remembered being little and hearing her dad talking about an Aunt she didn’t have.

Sam had been sexually abused by according to her by this Pastor of her church while living in Regina as a child. Sam believes that this is the same man that is the Pastor of the church that the Blacklocks attend here in town and whose goons jumped her in the mall parking lot. We’ve made request to get information about this Pastor Lucas from the church but we and the RCMP as far as I know have been getting stonewalled. I’m going to try and find out from other parishnerers if there was a sexual abuse scandal at that church.

Sam’s Doctors says that Sam had gone back to being a boy to mask the pain from the sexual abuse and it wasn’t until Sam was older that they experienced their GID as a result of being in Afghanistan and meeting her friend while on leave in Thailand who had sparked that buried part of herself.

Brandon had confirmed that Sam had been in deep into a PTSD episode when he had tried to shake her clear of it. She had gone from crying out about this Pastor Lucas to fighting him like she was fighting off an attacker and had been shouting for her Lt. While she had been fighting him and then she had gotten a hold of her mother’s old service revolver and had shot him.

Brandon wasn’t pressing any charges on her. Emphatically not.

The CP (Crown Prosecutor) had been there and he wasn’t too thrilled with me being there to represent Sam’s interests as her lawyer. He had looked at me frowningly. “You shouldn’t be here Sergeant.”
“Sam’s my friend and she wasn’t in any shape to not have legal council.”
“You’re an Officer of the RCMP and your duty lies with the force.”
“I’m going to have to disagree with you sir. My duty is to my friend.”
“I can see that but you doing this might just give the defense in the Wade case to cite you for conflict of interest and say that you used your status as an RCMP officer to help your friend.”
“I recused myself from duty for this sir, I have vacation time.”
“You’re not going to need that I’m suspending you.”
“You’ll have to go through my union rep first.”
“I could put IA on you and see what shakes loose.”
“Go ahead sir; I’m sure that’ll really go over well with the other officers.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, do you know how many of our people served in the armed forces sir before coming to the RCMP? Sir, just let this go. I’m just sticking up for my friend and a veteran and there her other issues that will just get you into more trouble over this.”
“Like what?”
“Sam’s transgendered, plus there’s no secret of the fact that I’m a lesbian sir. I’m not going to say anything but someone else might and you’ll be seen and the CP’s office will be seen as disrespecting of military veterans and PTSD incidents plus prejudiced against people of different sexual orientation.”
“I see a threat then?”
“No sir, I like you and respect you and enjoy working with you I’m just trying to let you see the shitstorm that the press will whip up.”
“Okay, but I can’t go to a judge and let her get off Scott free. And you need to get punished as well to throw the Wade defense off of using this as an issue to get him and his brother off.”
“I’ll take a suspension but with pay until Sam’s better. Her Doctor wants her in a mental healthcare facility for her own good right now plus there’s the standard thirty days for her psyche evaluation. How does that sound we get her Doctor up there and talking to the judge.”
“And if she is in there for a long time?”
“Six months, I’ll come back to work after six months if she’s not out by then.”
“Okay Cavanaugh, I’ll play it your way but this really might still bite us in the ass. So I’m charging you with a contempt of court charge for not coming to me with you needing to defend your friend and using proper channels. You can fight the charge if you want.”
“I will.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”

That was two weeks ago and I’m on my way to Cloverdale therapy center just out of Vancouver to go and see Sam for the first time since they had taken her down for her evaluation. It’s the first time that they’ve let her be cleared for visitors.

***

Brandon’s Part.

I remembered getting shot…

Oh fuck, not again…My third time, I hate getting shot…I came to and I seen Sam putting the gun to her temple.

I was trying to say so much. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to scream at her; NO!, No!, I fucking love you!, you don’t get to do that!, you don’t get to check out on me!

But no, no I couldn’t say that, couldn’t tell her that.
I had to say something stupid and snarky…and really, really inappropriate.
I remembered getting the gun away from her.
I remember trying to get her to snap out of it.
I remembered kissing her…I remember the darkness.

Yeah, remember. Getting shot in the chest and through a lung really kind of sticks with you.

I’ve been home about three days. I was in the ICU for like three days before spending another twelve of them of them in a hospital bed. I hated every second of it and hated being idle. The guys came to visit everyday, or rather every evening. Eli kept me going with how things were going at the house. Cass…Cass Cavanaugh had stopped in. She’s Sam’s RCMP sergeant friend. She’s visited a few times and stood up for Sam with her boss and got stomped for it. She brought it all together for me though, everything that had happened…and I don’t mean with getting shot or just with Sam getting sent by the judge for extended treatment for her Transgenderism and her PTSD mostly plus facing, remembering and trying to get past getting molested. Cass told me about Pastor Lucas…She told me the church has hushed things up. While I was there and getting better enough to come home she had gone to Regina to see if she could find any other abused survivors.

She found only three that were still alive, there might have been another two or three but one is in Japan and kept hanging up on us. There’s another one last seen in Montreal but was a doper and hooker or so rumor went and one killed himself in high school.
Cass cried to me over the phone with that one. “That could’ve been Sam… Brandon, that could’ve been Sam….” I think there’s some feeling really going on there between the two of them.

It hurts, but I’m glad too but….With Sam being sexually abused…and dealing with all of that. I’m scared. I really afraid that we might not ever to be together ever again. I’m realizing how much I actually love her. Of the fact that I think that I’m falling in love with her despite how shortly we’ve known each other.

Eli and his wife had brought the boys up for the last two weekends to help me out with things here. Most of the work is done. The last has been the garage going up and the barn getting finished up. I’m not worth much right now with the damaged lung and still recovering. I’m getting the barn ready for the animals.

The greenhouse and the stables are going to go up next. Yeah, stables. I’m going to have my organic farm but I’m also going to put in a place for horse rescue. I’ve seen a ranch that did that and I love horses…if they’re in that state where they’re no longer perfect they’re still beautiful animals that deserve a better way to spend their final days.

I talked to the guys on the phone. I assured them I was alright. I told them what I could about how Sam was doing. I called another number three days ago…

***

Ryan’s Part. 3rd person.

He’d been working just leisurely at Stella’s place When he got the call from Brandon his blood brother. He set the axe down and he flicked on his Sat-Phone. “Yeah…”
“Hey Ry, it’s Brandon.”
“Yeah, duh you don’t sound like Shannon Tweed.”
“….(there was a chuckle the coughing and a groan of real pain.) Shit Ry don’t make me laugh…I just got shot in the lung…”
“Shot again? Who’d you mix it up with this time?”
“My girlfriend…No, don’t go there she had a PTSD freak out.”
“Shit…You okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll live. I’m fucked up for awhile but I’m okay. Sam’s another story.”
“Not Okay I take it.”
“That’s an understatement. Sam’s a T-girl Ry.”
“And? Dude you know me. I could care less about the small stuff.”
“Yeah you and Tracy.”
“Yeah, Tracy was awesome while we were together.”
“Yeah well Sam’s had the small town bullshit going on with her and PTSD from her time in Afghanistan. Plus the night this happen she’d flashbacked to her childhood where they’d been molested as a kid.”

The phone creaked in Ryan’s clenched hand.
“So what’d the cops do.”
“One’s a cop and stood up for her as her legal council and she’s in a therapy center down by Vancouver. They investigated the bastard she’s sure is the guy who did it but it’s been a no go so far.”
“Wait…the fucker’s around there?”
“Yeah, he’s been giving her shit for being trans but Cass, the mountie friend of hers is pretty sure he knows that she’s one of his victims. Some aren’t able to be found or don’t want to talk to us and three of them are paid off by out of court settlements from the church.”
“So he’s running a hate campaign to try and drive her over the edge.”
“Yeah, think so. He’s been bitching to the towns hate rag about her being perverted and dangerous and unstable.”
“I’ll be up in a few days.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah I just got a few things to finish up here before heading out.”
“ ‘Kay later bro.”
“Yeah later bro.”

Ryan put his Sat-Phone away and then reached down and took a long slow pour down his throat of his beer. Then picked the axe back up and went back to chopping the rest of the wood he had cut down last week.

It was easy work but in this economy Stella had hit on some hard times. She had lost her job but she had her savings, she owned her home out in the boonies just west of Portland just out of town and it needed some work.

It was just after that and at sixty one years old she found herself with her back to a wall. Things were getting expensive and out of reach. Her house had really needed some work and she couldn’t really afford a full winters worth of oil in the tanks. If she had to rely on her electric the winter would have put her in seriously deep debt.

Not counting if she got hurt or she got sick or just behind enough that she might lose her home to back taxes.

He had heard her lamenting or rather commiserating with one of her friends at the old diner he had stopped at about three weeks ago.

He had gotten up and had followed her and walked up to her as she was getting into her truck. “Excuse me Ma’am, I couldn’t help but here that you’ve got a spell of trouble and I’m between jobs at the moment if you think you need a man about to do a few things I’d be grateful for a place to lay my head a spell.”

Stella had looked him over, some might have said he was a stranger and she was crazy but she’d been taking chances all her life plus he seem honest enough. Six feet tall, mid thirties may be forty so he wasn’t so rude rash kid. Tanned and weathered like he worked out doors all his life. Scruffy beard, white tank top under what had become the popular grunge rocker red plaid flannel shirt and a denim jacket and levis. What really got her was the straw cowboy hat, you didn’t see those worn a whole lot. He had it in his hand. Like a man who took off his hat in front of a lady. Not many of them either.

Now she watched Ryan as he put the axe to the firewood over and over. He was a fine looking man. Fit and handsome with blonde hair and blue eyes. His muscles worked as he split the last of the firewood he had cut off of her property. She loved the way he looked, the sheen of his muscles under the sweat he’d work up. She never though that she’d know a man who made her as aroused as she had been in her youth.

He was a biker and showed up at her house with an old 70’s Harley with a whole bunch of bags tied to it in places. Since he’d been there he’d weather stripped her house and banked the sides with plastic sheeting and spruce boughs. He’d fixed both her front and back steps and fixed some of her other odds and ends. She’d never really had anyone around the house until Ryan had come and stayed with her. It had taken only three days of him being there and sleeping in the old spare room before she had been walked in on naked in the shower…there was only one bathroom in her bungalow. He hadn’t looked away when she cover herself, he hadn’t looked disgusted, or put off by her age. He’d been her lover ever since that night, young endowed, and as young as he was compared to her he had learned how to use what god have gave him.

…….It had been white wine and pasta that night and had made love. It had been very passionate and sweet, and…And Stella knew it was goodbye, She didn’t ask him why, she didn’t ask him to stay she just gave him everything she had that night as they made love, everything she’d ever held back.

…….She had kissed him goodbye in the morning at her door and Ryan had cooked her steak and eggs, the first time he had ever cooked when he was with her. It had been a long kiss, a deep sweet kiss and he had left. She smiled and sipped her coffee and adjusted the straw cowboy hat on her head.

Three hours later a truck labeled Mac Pherson fuels pulled and the man driving had knocked on the door. She answered it. “Yes?”
“Stella Grant.”
“Yes? Can I help you young man.”
“I’m here to deliver your oil.”
“My oil?”
“Yes, a Ryan Swift had set up an account for this address.”
“For how much?”
“Dunno ma’am, It’s on a credit card. But he said you ain‘t gonna have to worry ‘bout paying fer heat ever again.”
“Oh.”

***
Pastor Lucas’s part. 3rd person

It was quiet and the middle of the night so when Pastor Gregory Lucas heard the sounds downstairs he moved to his wall and took the fire place poker from it’s rack. It was likely the little town bastards. They all thought they could break into the communion wine or steal from His church.

He hated the little fuckers, any child over the age of twelve was somehow transformed from these beautiful…so beautiful Angels and turned to these disgusting little bastards and later even filthier sinful adults.

He crept through the house attached to His Church he saw lit candles inside His church from the kitchen window. He wrapped his robe around himself and gathered his dignity and his clerical attitude around him, so that they’d cower the way they’re supposed to and see him as the chosen of god that he was.

The person was a bum… He knelt before the altar, black garbage bags taped around his feet, woolen gloves, and old thread bare winter jacket. He wrinkled his lips and his nose in disdain. “You come in here at this hour and dare to stain my altar, in the house of the lord. Be away from here you drug and wine ridden filth before I call the police!”

He never saw the first swing of the lead pipe that shattered his kneecap. He screamed.
“You dare take gods love and hide your self behind it you pedo trash.” The figure rose and had a ski mask on under the hood of the jacket. His voice was very low, a growl almost.
“I’ve done nothing wrong!, God gave me those charges to show unto love!”
He tried to crawl away from him….this terrible man…this demon.
The pipe lashed down again on his right hand right over the knuckles.
He yanked his hand back to his chest with a yowl.
That left that elbow exposed.
It got shattered next.
Then the other knee as he tried to curl up.
His screams turned into sobs.
His other elbow was next.
Then his ankles.
The man started to tell him names, names he had known.
The names of his little angels.
He prayed.
He prayed to die.
He prayed to go to hell.

***

Fifty nine year old rumored Pedophile Pastor Gregory Lucas screamed and passed out as him attacker, the children’s avenger put the blunt end of the pipe over each testicle and leaned on each one until he felt it pop like a grape… each one ….

Andrew looked as the EMT’s had quickly put the bastard into the stretcher and rushed him to the hospital ER. He was going to hate investigating this piece of shits attackers.

Whoever had done this had dialed 911 and wanted him to live. The other officers and even the EMT’s looked ill, at the damage, the carnage and the fact the man…balls where turned into grease spots. But the beating was mafia styled, he knew exactly just what to break and how like a professional.

***
It was 4 AM in the morning in an old garage in the where gloved hands poured the acid out of several batteries onto a pile of clothes and plastic garbage bags, electrical tape….The lead pipe went through a saw and was cut into small chunks. Even if there was a guess at who supposedly did the old bastard his proper turn they’d have to legally get passed serving a warrant on reservation land.

***
It was 8:25 When I heard the growl of a Harley and the familiar sound of Eli’s truck. I stepped gingerly out onto my front steps with my tea as Ryan pulled in on his Harley along with Eli and the family.

It only takes moments before I’m clasping arms with both of the two guys who are like brothers to me.
“You’re here, for how long?”
“No immediate plans, so as long as I’m feeling it.”
“Long drive?”
“A bit but I got to make a pretty good stop.”
“Found a woman to rest your head on as usual?”
“Naw, just had a stop that was good for my soul.”
Eli nodded. “It was a beautiful thing.”
I look at them.
I heard the local news on the radio.
I’m not going to ask.
But….
I smile.
“C’mon guys, I’ll throw on a good fry up.”