by Rebeckah
DISCLAIMER
We all know that the Pretender isn't mine and that I
don't get any kind of profit from writing with the cast of our favorite
show. So NBC and whoever else gets to
make moola from the idea, give me a break, I'm not worth the time to sue
anyway!
Jarod ran, holding his left arm
awkwardly against his body and clutching his metal case in his right hand,
cursing inwardly with every step. The
Pretend had gone so well at first! He’d
had no problem learning how to scuba dive, even with the extra precautions
necessary to diving in the frigid waters off of the San Juan Islands in the
Puget Sound. He’d inserted himself into
the Marine Biology team studying the large octopus breed found only in the
waters around Washington State and British Columbia Canada. In no time at all he’d determined that the
man who’d funded the project, Mr. Martin Baker, was also responsible for the
near fatal accident that had befallen his ex-wife, Amanda Phillips.
Amanda was one of the junior
biologists on the team and had been unaware of her wealthy ex-husband’s part in
the project. She’d nearly died when her
scuba gear developed a series of faults that plunged her to a potentially
lethal 300 feet underwater, and then cut off her oxygen supply with a minute
explosion in her breathing gear. Her
quick thinking, ditching the weights, and doing a rapid "free
ascent", exhaling the entire way up, had saved her life, but left her with
a good case of the bends, or decompression sickness as it is now called. Pneumonia had developed as a complication,
trapping her in a hospital bed where her husband tried once again to rid
himself of the wife who’d divorced him and gained custody of their two girls.
Jarod had orchestrated an
elaborate "sting", trapping Mr. Baker in the hospital’s decompression
chamber and tearing out a confession of his schemes with the threat of his own
imminent demise to lethal atmospheric density.
Jarod had arranged for the chamber technician to deliver Baker to the
police, along with the video tape of his confession, and had the recovering
Amanda set up in a small house in Olympia with her daughters, two nurses and a
nanny. Of course, Jarod had paid all
the expenses and left the small family enough to provide for them until Amanda
was fully recovered, then he had retired to his rustic cabin to retrieve his
few precious possessions and head out to the site of his next Pretend.
It was a complete shock to find
the Parkers, Miss and Lyle, waiting for him.
In a dramatic change of tactics they’d tracked down his hideout, instead
of trying to intercept him in mid-plan, and waited for his return. He’d barely escaped out the back door with
his priceless DSA’s and metal case.
Even so a lucky, or maybe it was unlucky, wildly fired shot had managed
to strike the exact spot necessary to cause an explosion in the gas tank of
Lyle and Parker’s Towncar.
Jarod was closest to the car and
literally lifted off of his feet and thrown into the woods surrounding his cabin. He didn’t dare check on Miss Parker, not
with Lyle so close, so he’d merely picked himself up from the bushes that had
broken his fall, barely noticing his dislocated shoulder in his haste to
relocate the metallic briefcase, and ran into the lush rain forest of the
Pacific Northwest. He felt the seeping
warmth of blood saturating his right arm, and knew a projectile of some sort
had cut him, though he felt no pain yet.
He felt the blood stream down his right arm and onto the case, and knew
that he was leaving an easily followed trail behind him.
Even as the realization of his
injuries penetrated his anxious mind, he burst out of the trees and onto a
narrow, two lane paved road that was wet from the drizzle that had been falling
since the sun had gone down. Beginning
to weave from exhaustion and blood loss, Jarod fell along the side of, pulled
himself up again, and began stumbling down the center of the road, thinking
only of escape and oblivious to the danger of cars.
The loud blare of a horn and unmistakable
hiss of tires sliding on slick blacktop startled him, impelling him to leap to
the soggy bank rising on the side of the road.
"You idiot!" The angry female tones of the shaken driver
drew his attention to the powder blue Sprint that had managed to stop several
yards ahead of him on the road.
"What the *hell* do you think you’re doing."
"I’m sorry." Jarod managed shakily, pulling away from the
bank and starting down the road again, towards the woman emerging from her
car. "I’ve got to get away,
they’ll be here in a minute."
"They who?" The woman asked, moving closer
cautiously. "Oh my God!" She
exclaimed an instant later when her flashlight beam illuminated his face,
scratched and bruised from his precipitous journey into the woods surrounding
his cabin hideaway.
"What happened to you?"
"Got to get away." Jarod repeated anxiously, his brown eyes
blank with shock. "Please,
help?" He stumbled again and fell
to his knees, losing his grip on the case.
"C’mon." The woman approached him quickly, grabbing
him supportively around the waist as he struggled back to his feet, and
grabbing the case even as he reached out for it. "I can at least get you to a hospital."
She shoved him into the passenger
seat, putting the case on the floor under his feet and buckling his seatbelt
before slamming the door shut and hurrying to slide behind the wheel of the
car. In moments she had the car in gear
and headed back down the road cut into the foothills of the Cascades. Lyle, scratched, dirty and perspiring
emerged from the trees just in time to see the taillights of the woman’s car
disappearing around a bend in the road.
"Damn!" He cursed, his brown eyes seeming black as
he glared impotently down the road.
"Too late again?" Miss Parker taunted, emerging from the trees
only slightly less mussed. "Well,
we might as well start walking then, thanks to you the Towncar is toast."
She looked down at her attractive,
but inappropriate high heeled sandals and sighed in resignation. "Well, they were ruined in that little
nature walk anyway." She muttered
to herself as she stalked furiously down the road.
"When I get my hands on
Jarod..!" Lyle muttered ominously,
prompting a derisive laugh from his sister.
"IF, you get your hands on
Jarod!" She corrected him
acidly. "So far he’s managed to
outthink you every time. We’re still
three steps behind him."
"No, we almost had him this
time." Lyle contradicted her, his
rage rising as he registered the damage done to his expensive silk suit. "I *will* get him, dear sister, I
swear."
"Right." She laughed dismissively. "In the meantime why don’t you use your
dizzying intellect to find us a ride?"
As the unhappy siblings sniped at
each other and hiked for the nearest phone, Jarod roused himself enough to reassure
himself of the presence of his all important briefcase, and contradict his
rescuer’s plans to drop him off at the nearest emergency room.
"No." He told her with remarkable firmness
considering the fact that his face was pale and his lips nearly bloodless. "I can’t go to an emergency
room---they’ll be checking the hospitals.
Just take me to a motel. A
small, out of the way, motel."
The woman pulled her eyes off the
road long enough to give him an assessing look, her royal blue eyes seeming to
penetrate through his attempt to seem perfectly okay.
"Not a chance,
buddy." She responded with more
believable firmness, glancing at the blood that had saturated the side of her
T-shirt as she helped him to the car. "You
need medical attention."
"Look, I’m a
doctor." He told her, muttering,
"sometimes", under his breath.
"I can doctor myself."
"You’re about to pass
out." The woman pointed out
sensibly.
"If you take me to an
emergency room I’ll just turn around and walk back out." He threatened desperately.
"All right!" She snapped irritably. "I’ll take you to my place. You’d
better not be running from the law, though.
I’ll turn you in myself!"
"No, they aren’t the
law. Just really, really
ruthless." Jarod mumbled, his head
sagging back wearily as he gave in to his injuries.
"Up, up!" The woman’s voice, low for a female, roused
him from the numb half-sleep he’d slipped into. "Lean on me."
She ordered, grabbing him once again firmly around the waist and
supporting his sagging weight on one sturdy hip.
"C’mon, buddy, give me a
little help here!" She panted,
struggling with the man who topped her own 5’6" by at least six
inches. Jarod struggled against the blinding
pain of his dislocated shoulder, and mustered the energy to stumble into the tidy
little A-frame cabin. The woman bullied
him into the front room and to an overstuffed sofa in front of a cheerful fire
and let him sag down, muttering dire imprecations as his blood stained the
pretty floral upholstery.
"You’re bleeding like a stuck
pig!" She informed him,
unnecessarily, as she disappeared into a room off of the front room. She reappeared moments later with towels and
washcloths, a big bowl of water and a large pair of scissors.
"Wake up, Dr.
Welby." She ordered him, rousing
him from a gray fog of pain and exhaustion.
"I can’t do this without help, so you need to tell me what to
do."
She began cutting his shirt off as
she spoke.
"Hey! What’re you doing?" Jarod demanded, jolted into full awareness.
"Making sure your shirt isn’t
hiding some other injury. I’ll get your
pants after we deal with the bleeding."
She responded crisply.
"Unless, of course, you *want* me to try and pull your T-shirt off
over a dislocated shoulder?"
"How do you know it’s
dislocated?"
"The way you’re holding that
arm. If it was broken you’d be cradling
it, not trapping it against your body like that. Besides, there’s no bruising that I can see and no indentation to
indicate a break."
"You seem to know what you're
doing, so what do you need me for?"
Jarod asked, his white lips pulled in a small smile.
"My first aid extends to
immobilize and use pressure to stop the bleeding. If you won’t go to a doctor you’re going to need me to do a lot
more than that." She firmly
pressed a washcloth against the gash on his right biceps and used another
washrag, dampened from the water in the bowl, to wash away the worst of the
blood on his arm and side.
"Okay." She announced moments later, looking
directly at Jarod for the first time since she’d picked him up on the
road. "As far as I can tell this
laceration on your right arm and the dislocated left shoulder are the biggest
problems. What do you think, Doc?"
"I think you’re
right." Jarod agreed, smiling at
her patent skepticism in his doctoring credentials. "If you’ll use something to hold the washcloth on my arm
I’ll talk you through relocating my shoulder.
Then we can figure out how to stitch the cut."
"Yes, I suppose I *do* have
to relocate the shoulder, don't I?"
She asked rhetorically, her face paling at the thought.
"Better you than me. I’m not sure I can remain conscious long
enough to do it myself. I’ve lost more
blood than is good for me. Besides,
relocating my shoulder by myself once was enough." Jarod affirmed steadily.
"Oh God! What have I gotten myself into this
time?" The woman asked herself
shakily. She pressed a trembling hand
firmly over her eyes before drawing in a deep breath and lowering the hand.
"Okay." She said more firmly. "What do I do?" Her blue eyes were almost a dark gray with
distress.
"Take my right wrist, get a
good grip, and pull my arm steadily away from my body until you feel the joint
pop back into place." Jarod told
her, bracing himself for the pain.
"It’s going to hurt me like blazes, so ignore it if I yell or pass
out, just keep pulling out until it’s back into place. Otherwise you’re just going to hurt me for
nothing, got it?"
"You’d better be worth this,
buddy." The threatened half
seriously, wiping her perspiring hands down her jeans before grabbing the
indicated wrist.
"Brace your foot against my
ribs." He advised before she
started to pull. "You’ll need the
leverage. Ahhhhhh!" He ended with a shout of pain as she placed
her left foot against his side and pulled in one smooth motion. If he hadn’t hurt so bad at the time he
might have appreciated the fact that she didn’t yank, but pulled out in a
fluid, firm way until the joint popped and she dropped the arm quickly.
"Are you okay? Did I do it right?" She demanded anxiously, looking a little
nauseated.
"Yeah, yeah you got
it." Jarod gasped, surfacing from
a sea of pain and fighting down his own nausea. "Now we’ve got to get this arm stitched."
"No way." She announced firmly, shaking her head and
making pushing motions with her hands for emphasis as she backed away from
Jarod. "No way am I going to
stitch your arm."
"You have to." He countered reasonably. "Look, I’ve already bled through this
washcloth, if you don’t---"
"Uh uh!" She shook her head again. "You need stitches, you go to a
doctor!"
"I can’t. They’ll be looking for me at the local
hospitals. They’ll know from the blood
trail I left that I’m hurt bad enough to need medical care."
"Look, I’m just a normal
person!" The woman protested
desperately. "I don’t know how to do
stitches and I don’t keep the supplies on hand either. There’s no needle, no thread, and no
Lydocaine to numb your arm. I am *not*
doing it."
"What about a fishing hook
and some fine nylon fishing line?"
"A fishing hook?!" Her voice rose dramatically, ending with a
squeak of dismay. "You want me to
push a *fishing hook* through your arm?"
"You need a curved needle to get the line deep enough into
the flesh to hold the edges of the cut together. It has to be done."
He added, putting as much persuasion and pleading into his voice as he
could.
"Damnation." She muttered, pinching the bridge of her
nose until her finger and thumb were white with pressure. "Damn, damn, damn, damn." She
added for good measure. Jarod waited
patiently, knowing when not to push.
"Okay." She sighed again, lowering her hand. "No fishing hooks---you can’t tell me
they won’t do more damage than good.
Give me a few minutes to see what I can do."
Jarod waited, holding a fresh rag
against the still bleeding cut as firmly as his tender shoulder allowed. The woman reappeared with an armful of
supplies. She had a sewing box, a
marble rolling pin, a small hammer, and a spool of clear nylon thread for
sewing sleeping bags and coats with.
Jarod watched in fascination as she used needle-nosed pliers to hold a straight sewing needle against
marble handle of the rolling pin and the hammer to bend the needle into a half
circle that was nearly identical to a hospital suturing needle.
"Will this work?"
"Yes." Jarod agreed, his eyes shining with
admiration. "That’s very
ingenious."
"I watched a lot of MacGyver
growing up." She responded
dismissively. "Now, how do I start?"
She listened carefully as he
explained where to place the stitches and how far apart they should be. She practiced tying a few knots and
sterilized the needle and thread with rubbing alcohol. Finally, she cut several lengths of the
nylon thread, giving herself a few extra lengths, just in case.
"Okay." She said at last, almost managing to
suppress the tremor in her voice completely.
"I guess I’m ready."
"Go ahead." Jarod encouraged her, his warm brown eyes
steady and encouraging. "Trust me,
I’ll survive."
"If I wanted to be a
doctor," she muttered fiercely,
selecting the spot for the first stitch and placing the needle gently against
it. "I’d have gone to medical
school!" With a firm push and a
flick of her wrist she drove the needle through his arm and up through the
other side of the gash that she held closed with her left hand. Using Jarod’s method she tied the knot one
handed and moved onto the next spot.
She focused intently on her task,
filtering out Jarod small hisses of pain and the involuntary flinching her
ministrations caused. Fifteen minutes
later she smeared an antibiotic ointment on his arm, covered it with a
rectangular gauze pad and wrapped the stretchy white gauze bandaging around the
arm a few times before fastening it down with medical tape.
"Okay?" She asked him, surfacing from her self
induced trance.
"Yeah." Jarod told her, still caught up in
pain. "It’s perfect."
"Good." She told him, looking blankly over his
shoulder. She got up, ignoring the mess
of supplies around her, and vanished into a door just a few steps off of the front
door. Moments later Jarod heard the
unmistakable sounds of a person violently expelling the contents of their
stomach.
He thought about getting up and
trying to help her, but lacked the energy and just leaned his head against the
back of the sofa instead. Several
minutes later a toilet flushed and she re-entered the front room, pale and
trembling, but in control of herself.
"I’m sorry." He said contritely, knowing that her illness
was a result of the stress of relocating his arm and stitching the laceration.
"Forget it." She ordered him with a steely gaze backing
up her words. "I certainly intend to." She added fervently. She
gathered up the mess left by her first aid attempt and left the room without
meeting his gaze again. When she
returned she had a cheerful green and red checked flannel shirt draped over her
arm and several squares of white cotton fabric.
"Let me help you into this
shirt, then I’m going to bind your arm so you don’t move that shoulder until it
has more of a chance to heal." She
told him, steadfastly ignoring the minute tremors still shuddering through her.
"Shouldn’t you take a break
first?" Jarod asked, concerned by
her continuing shakiness.
"No. When I relax I’m going to cry---for a very
long time. I can’t afford to give into
that yet. You still need to get
something hot and liquid into you and then I need to put you to bed. Then I can break down." She answered mechanically, holding out the
flannel shirt in silent command.
"Okay." He surrendered, but continued to watch her
with concern. Something about her
pulled at his memory. He almost felt
like he’d met her, or at least seen her, before, but he couldn’t figure out
where.
She focused as intently on
immobilizing his right arm and preparing him a simple meal of soup and toasted
cheese sandwiches as she had on stitching his arm and actually seemed to relax
slightly by the time she’d seated him at the kitchen table to eat. She’d declined his request to join him in
the meal, placing a protective hand over her uneasy stomach as she did. Instead, she attacked the bloodstains on the
sofa with a vigor, managing to remove most of the unsightly marks before he
finished his meal and made his way from the kitchen back to the front room.
She was sitting on the hearth,
looking blankly at the inky darkness visible through the floor to ceiling
windows in the front of the house, with tears glittering in her eyes.
"Hey." Jarod said quietly, sitting down beside
her. "Are you okay?"
"No." She whispered softly, a tear spilling over
to wend its way down her cheek. "I
can’t handle stuff like that."
He knew, instinctively, she meant
the first aid she’d performed.
"You did great." He assured her, dismay rising in him as more
tears followed the first.
"I keep feeling the needle
going through your arm." She
shuddered violently, her eyes closing in a futile attempt to block out that
vivid memory.
"Please, don’t!" Jarod begged, wrapping his less damaged
right arm around her comfortingly.
"I wanted you to----I *needed* you to do that for me. Don’t feel bad because of it."
"I can’t help it!" She sobbed, giving in to the gentle pressure
of his arm to rest her head on his shoulder.
"I can feel it all, and I know how it felt for you! It’s horrible!"
"Shh, shh." Jarod soothed her, his hand rubbing her back
gently and his chin resting lightly on her head. "It’s okay, it’s all over now. I’m sorry I asked you.
I’ll never do it again. It’s
okay now."
He continued to hold her,
murmuring reassuring phrases and noises, not even paying attention to what he
was saying, just trying to soothe her distress.
Finally she pulled back, sniffing
as she pulled a tissue from the box on the mantle.
"I’m sorry." She muttered with her eyes downcast. "I should be showing you the bedroom,
not crying all over you."
"Hey," Jarod stood easily, his amazing stamina
already at work overcoming the trauma’s of the day. He lifted her chin, blue eyes met brown, and he gave his most
winning smile. "You’ve gone above
and beyond for me. I’m Jarod, by the
way. Jarod----Brown." He added after a moment of lightning fast
thought.
"Brown, eh?" An upraised eyebrow in the finest
"Spock" style made her disbelief obvious. "Well I’m Theresa, Theresa----Smith." She added mockingly.
Jarod colored slightly. "Look, I’m not trying to deceive you,
it’s just that----" his voice trailed off uncertainly.
"Who are you running
from?" She demanded, even though
she’d long ago decided it couldn’t be the law.
His face was simply too open and gentle for him to be a criminal.
"It’s a long story and,
honestly, you’d be better off not knowing."
"I think after all I’ve done
for you tonight you owe me an explanation."
Jarod hesitated then sat back down
on the hearth, his brown eyes dark and troubled as he weighed his words
carefully. Theresa watched him narrowly
for a moment longer, and then sat back down beside him, both of them avoiding
the still bloodstained sofa.
"When I was very young I was
stolen from my family by a corporation that---" his well-rehearsed
narrative was cut off by Theresa’s gasp of amazement.
"The Centre?" She demanded, her blue eyes sparkling with
barely restrained excitement. "Was
it the Centre?" She demanded
again, leaning forward expectantly.
"How do you know about the
Centre?" Jarod demanded, feeling
surprised and confused, two emotions he was generally unfamiliar with.
"My brother----my twin was
stolen from our family when he was just four.
My mom----she never got over his disappearance. Dad went half crazy looking for him. A few months afterwards he took me and mom
and we started to move around. I didn’t
understand why until a man in a black suit tried to grab me when I came out of
the restroom at a city pool. Dad, he
shot the man----I think he killed him."
Theresa’s eyes were unfocused as she relived past events.
"He took me and Mom to Canada
and basically parked us on a reservation with some friends of his. Then he left to look for my brother. I haven’t seen my father since I was nine and
my brother since I was four. Mom died
five years ago and my brother is all the family I know I have left. Please, do you know about the Centre? Where it is? Where my brother might be?"
"You don’t want to go to the
Centre, believe me." Jarod
answered soberly. "Your brother
may very well be dead anyway."
"No." Theresa said positively. "He’s not, I still feel him
sometimes. Not as much as when we were
little, but enough to know he’s still alive.
Please, tell me about this place."
"The Centre is hell on earth,
if ever there was such a place. They
conduct experiments that take inhumanity to a new level. If your brother was taken there he’s dead or
altered beyond all recognition."
"Yes, Timmy was changed, I
felt it. The scary man, he used to be
the boogeyman of my nightmares----his eyes still haunt me, icy blue and inhumanly
emotionless; he changed my brother."
Theresa whispered her eyes filling with new tears. "I still have the most horrible
nightmares."
"Timmy? Timmy was your brother?" Jarod demanded, his brown eyes wide with
shock yet again.
"You know him!" Theresa cried, hope blazing from her
face. "Where is he? Tell me Jarod! I’ve been looking for my brother for ten years and I *will* know
where he is!"
"Theresa, Timmy doesn’t exist
anymore." Jarod answered sadly.
"Raines---he’s the "scary man", he did terrible things
to your brother. Now he’s called "Angelo" and he’s
not..." Jarod paused, trying
to come up with a gentle way to tell Theresa that her brother was basically
brain damaged.
"I know." Theresa offered softly, looking blindly at
the floor. "He can barely
verbalize, he lives in tiny, cramped tunnels, and he thinks more with instinct
than rational thought."
"How do you know all of
this?"
"He’s my twin, I’ve always
known what he was feeling. When he was
taken I cried for weeks, I felt his pain as well as my own. The scary man----Raines, invaded my dreams
for years, until the day my brother changed.
Then the nightmares stopped, but it was too late. My father was gone by then and Mom just
didn’t seem to care about anything anymore.
The Centre isn’t going to keep me away from my family any longer."
Jarod looked at her face
carefully, his earlier half formed impression of familiarity solidified now
that he knew what he was looking for.
Her dark blond hair, snub nose and high cheekbones were identical to her
brother’s. Her deep blue eyes were a
shade darker than Angelo’s, but set at the same, slightly up-tilted angle, and
her mouth was just as wide and generous, albeit more feminine.
"I can’t tell you,
Theresa." He sighed finally. "Angelo wouldn’t want me to
either."
"I don’t care what you think
Timmy wants." Theresa told him
furiously. "If you don’t tell me
I’ll find out some other way. I’ll find
those people you’re running from and follow *them* to the Centre. Damn it, Jarod! This is my brother we’re talking about! What would you do if you had the chance to see your brother after
fifteen years apart from him?"
Jarod looked down guiltily. She was right, he’d do anything and risk
anything to see his own, long lost family, but he still wasn’t willing to tell
her the location of the Centre. He knew
that if he was in her shoes he’d rush right in, waltzing in through the front
door, in his eagerness to see his family.
If she did that she’d be doomed,
the Centre would have her then and there would be no way out.
"You said someone tried to
abduct you after Timmy, do you know why?"
He finally changed the subject.
Theresa stared at him, bitter disappointment written on her face.
"I think they always wanted
the two of us." She finally admitted
in a somber whisper. "When they
got Timmy I was home with the chickenpox
He’d already had them a month earlier and he was grocery shopping with
Mom. The got Timmy in the parking lot
when Mom went to put the cart back."
"So you’re a Pretender
too?"
"What’s a
Pretender?" Theresa
questioned. "What, do you act out
parts or something? Why would they want
children for that?"
"Did your parents go to a
fertility clinic to have children?"
Jarod asked, confusing Theresa who wondered why he was changing the
subject.
"Yes. Mom had already had two tubal pregnancies,
so there wasn’t any way she could have children without help."
"Well, while they were
helping your folks, they tampered with your genes." Jarod informed her bitterly. "Some of us ended up with a special
kind of intelligence, one that lets us be anyone at any time, if we study and
focus hard enough."
"I learn quickly, if that’s
what you’re saying. They wanted me to
be a doctor when I was younger, but I couldn’t handle it. Even knowing that the patient was
unconscious I still felt the pain of the procedures as if they were happening
to me."
"I think I’d like to try an
experiment with you in the morning, if you’ll let me." Jarod told her, his expression
thoughtful. "It sounds to me as if
you at least have Pretender potential.
No," he cut off her immediate question with an upraised hand.
"It’s late and we’re both too
tired to go into it more fully tonight."
He clarified at her annoyed frown.
"I’ll explain it better in the morning, okay?"
Theresa didn’t lose her frown, but
she did nod a grudging assent.
"Now, didn’t you say
something about a bed earlier?"
Jarod asked, his engaging, little-boy grin appealing to her feminine
nature to forgive and nurture. Theresa
refused to be so easily won over and she led Jarod upstairs while maintaining a
disapproving silence.
Jarod let out a weary sigh as Theresa
closed the door to the spare bedroom behind her. The simple, pine framed double bed called to
his tired body, but he had one last thing to do before he went to sleep. Quietly, knowing Theresa would undoubtedly
be irritated if she saw him heading downstairs again, he crept through the
silent and dark house to the front door.
His metal case was still in Theresa’s little car and he wasn’t about
to go to sleep without knowing it was safely in the room with him.