Alias- Jack & Laura

11) Suspicion

Jack finished feeding his wife the fruit and put the spoon down. They sat in silence for a few minutes, studiously not looking at each other, until the aid came back in. "All finished?" the young woman said happily. Laura nodded, and the tray was taken away.

Another long moment of silence was broken when Jack's stomach growled. Laura turned her head toward him. "You should go eat something."

"A doctor's supposed to come and talk to us this morning."

"I'll stall him until you get back."

Jack hesitated. What would she say to the doctor? He looked at her. "All right," he said. "This is your first test, so you'd better behave yourself."

She knew she had no right, but Irina felt herself getting rather annoyed. "Jack, I can't move anything except my head and right arm. What exactly do you think I'm going to do?"

"You've already done enough damage just with your mouth." Anger welled up in him yet again, and he fought it down. He couldn't start yelling at her here, where sound might carry into the hall or someone might come in at any moment. He turned away from her and looked out the window until he calmed down. "I'll be back soon," he said, and left.

Once the door was closed, Irina finally allowed a few tears to trickle down her cheeks.

As luck would have it, the doctor chose that moment to enter the room. "Mrs. Bristow?" he said. "I'm Dr. Nielson." She tried to wipe away the tears with her hand, but of course he noticed. He moved to the bedside and handed her a tissue. "Are you all right?"

She did a slightly better job of getting rid of the tears with the tissue. "I'm sorry. I'm just a little know, not being able to move at all."

The doctor nodded, but she could see that he didn't believe her. And why had he come in right then? Her keen sense of paranoia, finely honed after ten years of living a double life, made her wonder if he had been waiting for Jack to leave.

"Mrs. Bristow, I just need to ask you a few questions about your past medical history. I see from your X-rays that you've had quite a few previous broken bones. Can you tell me about how that happened?"

Irina was surprised. Laura's back story was solidly ingrained in her memory, but didn't include the many broken bones that Irina had had as a child. She thought quickly. "I was a very active child," she said with what she hoped was a disarming smile, "and a rather clumsy one, I'm afraid. I was rather bad about falling out of trees or off of fences."

"I see. Specifically, do you remember how you broke your right femur?"

How to explain that one? Irina knew that the femur was rather difficult to break. "I fell down the stairs," she said. When the doctor's expression didn't change, she added, "I was carrying a jar and dropped it, then tripped over it. Like I said, I was pretty clumsy."

"I see. How long ago did this happen?"

Suddenly she realized the purpose of the doctor's questions, and why he had waited until Jack left. He thought that Jack might be abusing her! She almost laughed at that. "I was fifteen," she said. That, at least, was the truth.

The doctor looked at her for a moment. Then he said, "Mrs. Bristow, do you feel safe at home?"

Other than the odd worries about KGB assassins breaking down the door. "Of course," she said. "I can see what you're trying to say, but my husband would never hurt me."

"Is there anyone else that you're afraid of?"

If you only knew, she thought. "No," she answered simply. "Now, going on to what's important at the moment, how long am I going to be stuck here?"

She could tell the doctor was still suspicious, but at least he knew when to quit. He turned to her chart. "We'll take you in for some X-rays on Sunday morning. If your ribs are starting to heal, you can try out some crutches, and if that goes okay, we'll let you go late Sunday or early Monday. Until then, though, I want you to stay as still as possible." She nodded. "Do you work outside the home, Mrs. Bristow?"

"I'm a teacher at UCLA."

He frowned. "I'm sure you want to get back to your classroom, then," he said, "but that's going to have to wait a bit. I want you to take all of next week off; if you're off of pain medication and feeling all right, you can go back to work the following Monday."

She sighed. "And how long am I going to be in this cast?"

Jack came back into the room then, having just eaten a quick breakfast in the hospital cafeteria. "Hello, Dr."

"Dr. Nielson," the doctor said, standing to shake his hand. "You must be Mr. Bristow." Jack nodded. "I was just telling your wife that she'll need to stay here until Sunday evening at the earliest. And she should stay home from work for a week after that." He turned back to Laura. "As for the cast, that depends on how fast a healer you are. We'll see how you're doing in four weeks; if you're healing nicely, we'll put you in a below-the- knee cast that will let you walk without crutches. You'll also be able to drive once you get the long cast off. Any questions?" They both shook their heads, and the doctor left, leaving husband and wife once more with a gulf of silence between them.