Part 3
It took a lot of convincing, but the boys finally agreed to have full examinations. While Vin and Ezra were taken to x-ray, Buck went out to fill Josiah and Nathan in on what they had found so far, while Chris sat with JD.
As the boys got more comfortable with the doctor and nurses,
Vin started answering a few questions for them, revealing his age at twelve and
Ezra to be eight. According to Vin, he
and Ezra had been living together on the streets for over eighteen
Finally finished with the examinations, Dr. Roberts asked the nurse to bring some more juice and some sandwiches for the boys. When the food arrived, Chris, Buck, and the doctor watched with a sad heart as Ezra tried to give JD his sandwich. Chris was the first to react.
“Ezra,” Chris said in a low rumbling voice, when Ezra jerked away from him, he wanted to kick himself for frightening the child. Smoothing out his tone, he tried again, “Ezra, eat your sandwich, if JD wants another, we will get it for him, all right?” Chris worked to keep the expression of his face from showing the emotions roiling through his heart.
“Yes sir, Mr. Larabee,” Ezra said quietly, before picking up his sandwich and taking a small bite.
“Mr. Wilmington, would you be so kind as to retrieve your colleagues from the waiting room, I would like to speak to all of you?” Mr. Roberts asked. Buck simply nodded before heading out to the waiting room to retrieve Josiah and Nathan. When he saw the three men walking down the hall back toward the examining room, he turned to the boys sitting on the gurneys and said, “Ezra, Vin, JD?” When they all had looked up and given them his attention, he continued, “I need to talk to Mr. Wilmington and Mr. Larabee. We’ll be right across the hall if you need anything yell. Nurse Walters, here,” he nodded to the nurse that had brought up the juice and sandwiches after assisting him with the examinations, “will stay in here with you the whole time, alright?”
The boys moved closer together, but nodded and continued to eat. Dr. Roberts stepped close to the nurse and whispered in her ear, before Leading Larabee to a room directly across for the examination room’s open door, waving for the other three ATF agents to follow them in.
“This is the Doctor’s lounge. We can talk privately in here. First, I’ll summarize what we have so far, then I’ll answer any questions you have,” Dr. Roberts informed the men as he locked the door and motioned for them to take seats on the couch.
After all of them were seated, Roberts opened the files he had been holding and started. “JD Dunne, age five years. Height 3’4”; Weight 38 lbs. Parents unknown. Injures: minor bruising, skinned left knee. There was evidence of old bruising on his back and legs, but nothing that couldn’t reasonably come from children’s play. He seems to be developing a slight cold. He’s slightly underweight and dehydrated. All in all, he’s healthy, just need some good nutrition. I’d like to keep him over night for observation.” Shuffling that folder to the bottom he opened the next folder.
“Vin Tanner, age twelve years. Height 4’10”; Weight 98 lbs. Parents unknown. Injuries:
sprained left wrist, considerable bruising of the left ribcage and left
abdomen, but no evidence of internal problems.
Moderate bruising on the rest of his chest and abdomen, back, and
legs.
Heaving a sigh he started reciting the information in the
folder, trying to distance himself from it. “Ezra Standish, age eight
years. Height 4’0”; Weight 42 lbs. Parents unknown. Injuries:
moderate bruising of the chest, abdomen, back, and legs. Minor bruising of the arms and face. Not as severe as Tanner’s, but still
significant. Minor cuts and scrapes. Extensive evidence of abuse. Scars from beatings and what appear to be
cigarette burns on his back. From what
young Tanner told me, I would say that Standish has been abused since sometime
before his fourth birthday. I ordered a
full skeletal series and counted at least seven areas of calcification
indicating previous
When the four men simply looked at him with confused expressions, he explained, “It’s a slang term for a shoulder that dislocates easily after having been dislocated several times. For him to have developed on this young…” the doctor trailed off as he saw understand come to the eyes of the ATF agents with anger following close on its heels. “It may right itself as he gets older, as long as he doesn’t continue to injure it, but there are no guarantees on that. Standish should weight a good eight to ten pounds more. He’s severely dehydrated and malnourished. He has a good case of bronchitis going, but the x-rays have ruled out pneumonia. He will need to be here for several days, to ensure that the bronchitis doesn’t develop into pneumonia and start dealing with the malnutrition and dehydration.”
“Why is Standish so run down? It sounded like the others are doing pretty good,” Josiah asked.
“This is just a guess, but from what Mr. Larabee, Mr. Wilmington, and I observed before we left the room, I’d say Standish has been starving himself for the benefit of the others. I had sandwiches brought in for them, and he tried to give his to little JD Dunne.”
“Jesus Christ,” Nathan muttered as he absorbed the last. Clearing his throat, he voiced the question had preyed on his mind since the doctor started listing the abuse the chestnut-hair boy had suffered. “Uh, Doctor, was there any evidence of sexual abuse on any of the boys?”
“No, thank god,” he said fervently.
“Amen to that,” Josiah agreed while the others nodded.
“Well, gentlemen, that’s what I know, now the question seems to be what’s going to happen to them after they get out of here? Should I assume that Family Services is going to take over?”
“No, DFS will not be taking over their cases, at least not yet,” Chris stated emphatically. “We almost had a war on our hands when we mentioned Family Services earlier. Those boys were absolutely terrified of them. I’m not sure which Ezra was more afraid of, being hurt or being separated from Vin and JD.”
“So, what are you going to do?” Dr. Roberts asked.
“After we get them settled in here for the night, I’m going to head back to the office and see if I can find out who they are. After that, I’m going to arrange with DFS for them to stay with me, for a while at least. I’m still on the fostering books.”
“Chris, are you sure?” Buck asked gently. He knew some of what had to be going through Larabee’s mind every time he looked at those boys.
“I’m sure, Buck,” Chris said.
“You and your wife will have your hands full…” Roberts started.
Chris broke in before he could go any farther. “I’m not married,” he managed through gritted teeth, fighting the memories that were stirred, both by the situation, and the doctor’s words. “My wife was killed a little over five years ago.”
“My apologies, Mr. Larabee, I did not mean to bring up a painful subject, but you are going to need help if you plan on going through with this. Those boys are going to need someone with them constantly, and until you can get them into schools, with you working, that would be nigh on to impossible.”
“I've been living out at the ranch for the last couple of months since my apartment burned down. I hadn’t gotten ‘round to looking for a new place. Between Me, Miss Nettie, and Chris, we can keep an eye on those boys,” Buck informed the doctor.
“Who is Miss Nettie?” Roberts asked.
“Mrs. Nettie Wells is a retired school teacher that lives next door to me. She inherited the land from her late husband and lives there with her granddaughter Casey. Casey turned five in November, so she’ll make JD good company. Miss Nettie takes care of the animals when I get tied up in town and can’t get back in time for chores. She loves children, and probably wouldn’t mind taking care of the boys once in a while. I believe she even did some fostering in her younger days,” Chris told him.
Looking at Josiah questioningly, Nathan received an affirmative nod, before turning to Chris and saying, “Chris, we’d be willing to help out to, if you need it.”
“Thanks, guys,” Chris said smiling faintly at the other members of his team. He knew he would be able to count on these men. In the six months since he had put the team together, Chris had come to find that he didn’t get hit by everything so hard.
“That should work, Mr. Larabee. The boys seem to you and your team, but there might be trouble finding a permanent placement that will keep all three of them together. If that fight we had with Dunne when Tanner and Standish went to x-ray is any indication, it won’t be easy to split them up.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Doctor," Chris said as he stood up to shake hands with him. “Let’s go get the boys settled in for the night and head back in to the office. While Buck and I get the boys settled, Josiah, I want you to call Travis and tell him what’s going on. He doesn’t like surprises much. Nathan, call DFS back and tell them that I’ll be calling them later to set things up; hopefully we’ll have some more information for them later.” The five men filed out of the room, three headed for the examination room across the hall, and two for the waiting room where they could use their cell phones.
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Chris, Buck, and the doctor entered the treatment to find the boys still sitting quietly on the gurneys. Vin and JD had finished their sandwiches and were drinking from their small plastic cups of juice, but Ezra still had half of his sandwich to go.
“Ezra, aren’t you going to eat any more?” Chris asked as he more to the boy’s side.
“I am not longer hungry, Mr. Larabee. I shall endeavor to consume more of it at a later time.” Ezra coughed some more, but it didn’t quite as bad as before to Larabee.
Chris was about to protest, but the doctor caught his eye and shook his head no. Frowning, Chris remained quiet as the doctor got the boys’ attention.
“Boys, we’re going to taking you up stairs soon, and get you into bed, okay?” Roberts avoided mention anything other than immediate plans on purpose. The less the boys had to worry about the better.
“’Kay, but we stay together, right?” Vin asserted.
“That’s right,” Roberts agreed. “Mr. Larabee and Mr. Wilmington, why don’t you sit with the boys while I go get every thing set up for them upstairs.” When they agreed he walked toward the door, but stopped to whisper in Chris’s ear. “When a person is as badly underfed as Standish, their stomachs aren’t able to hold what they normally would. If he forces himself to eat, he could make himself sick, that’s why I didn’t push it. He’ll likely be hungry again in an hour, but it’s better that him being sick.”
Chris’s eyes widened as he nodded that he that understood and wouldn’t press Ezra to finish the sandwich. The doctor smiled and lightly clasped Larabee’s shoulder. If this worked out, those boys would have a good home. Larabee had all the makes of being a fine parent, and Roberts had seen the depth of his emotions for the boys on his face. Larabee wanted to keep those boys, whether he had admitted it to himself yet or not.
>>>~~~><~~~<<<>>>~~~><~~~<<<
Two hours later, Chris, Buck, Josiah, and Nathan had cleared up their paperwork from the earlier bust, and were hard at work tracking down anything they could on their three charges.
Vin Tanner’s files were fairly easy to find. Vincent James Tanner of
Approximately nineteen months ago, Vin Tanner vanished on his way home from school. He had simply gotten off the bus at a different bus stop, telling the driver that he was going to go to a friend’s house. The driver had taken a shine to the shy, quiet boy, and been happy that he had been able to make friends. She had been distraught when she was told that the boy had disappeared.
JD Dunne was a little harder, but they finally tracked down
his birth certificate and an enrollment at a day care. Jonathan David Dunne was the son of an
unmarried young woman, that had worked as a maid at one of the larger houses in
Ezra Standish remained an enigma however. They couldn’t find anything on the boy at all, no birth certificate, no records of any type. They could even prove that that was really his name. Buck had salvaged some of the cups the boys had used to get their fingerprints, but that had come up empty too.
Not withstanding their lack of information found for Standish, Chris continued to set things up so that the boys would be in his care when they were released form the hospital. When Nettie Wells heard about what he had planned, she volunteered before he got the chance to ask about help. She was already making plans about how to care for the boys before she hung up the phone. Chris smiled as he looked at the phone in his hands, he knew he could count on her.
Breaking the connection, Chris redialed and started working his way through the bureaucracy at the DFS to get the boys released into his custody. It took quite a bit of arguing and talking, Chris came within a hairs breadth of blowing his temper twice, but he finally managed to get everything set up. All he had to do was swing by their office with the boys the next day to sign the papers. They insisted that he bring Vin Tanner and JD Dunne with him when he came in, but would allow him to gain custody of Ezra with out him present since he would be in the hospital for a few days yet.
Sighing, Chris finally hung up the phone. Looking down at the pages of notes he had taken
during all of the discussions, it finally hit him that he was going to be
caring for three boys that he knew practically nothing about. Dear
god, what am I thinking? Chris thought.
These boys need a family that can
take care of them, not a grumpy SOB with a black hole for a soul!
Chris looked up when the door to his office was opened and Buck entered. “Hey, Chris, ya’ get it set up?”
“Yeah,” he replied gruffly fiddling with the pen in his hands.
Buck smiled compassionately. “It’s startin’ to hit ya’, ain’t it? You’ve taken on quite a job, Pard, but remember ya’ ain’t alone in this. Me’n Josiah’n Nathan’n Miss Nettie are all going ta be right along side you and those boys.”
“Yeah, but will it be enough, Buck? Those boys have suffered too much as it is. They need a family to care for them, not…” Chris started, but Buck cut him off before he could get a good head of steam.
“They will have a family, Chris. You, Me, Nathan, Josiah, and Miss Nettie will make ‘em a good family,” Buck asserted.
Chris looked over at his old friend with a speculative gleam in his eye. “You’re talkin’ like you expect me to keep them.”
Buck grinned. “Chris, whether you’re admittin’ it to yourself or not, you want those boys. You're puttin’ a lot into this.”
Chris sighed again, feeling everyone of his thirty-eight years and a few extra. “I’m letting the boys stay with me until DFS can find a family to take them all. It’ll only be for a few weeks at the most.” Standing he grabbed his coat and prepared to leave the office.
Buck just continued to grin. “Keep tellin’ yourself that, Big Dog. When you start believing it, maybe then you can convince me.”
When Chris threw a smoldering glare at him, Buck laughed out
loud. Chris sometimes forgot that Buck had
been watching him for the last five years.
Since the fire, Chris had just drifted through the days, sometimes
getting drunk and angry at the whole world, sometimes not caring what went on
around him at all. He did his job, but
But today, Chris had jumped in with both feet, getting in the middle of the situation, and working with his old determination to right what had gone wrong. Buck knew that Chris had to have been reminded of Adam today, but instead of running the other way and refusing to get involved, as he would have six months ago, Chris had taken control and started looking for answers.
Buck smiled as he followed his old friend out of the office. His Chris was on the way back; he only hoped nothing happened to mess this up, because he didn’t think he would be able to hold Chris together a second time.
