Topic: Does She Live in the Lab?

Bridget Dillon · Date: 2011-07-01 19:02 EST

The clock on the lab wall ticked off seconds that felt like hours. Bridget Dillon stared at the stack of paperwork in front of her. It was one of those times when she wished had some sort of magical gift she could call upon to sort, fill out, and file the reports. There were rumors that the incoming director, Mami Tharadon, planned to run a full audit on every department. While Bridie could see the need for such, it was still taxing on one's nerves. She had every penny accounted for in the Forensics Lab, but not her new responsibility, the Pathology Lab. When she had come to Riverview two years before, she had been a part time employee. Her agreement with Dr. Valkonan had been a job with modest salary in exchange for using the lab facilities for private cases. The redhead muttered under her breath as she went through records that had been delinquent since Dr. Fisher's departure from the staff. The fingertips of her right hand rested against her left temple while her thumb rubbed the right.

The cellphone on counter made the familiar buzzing noise, it had been set to vibrate. Blindly, she reached for it and kept muttering, "Shush, shush, I'm getting to it. Be patient." When she finally found the phone and clicked on, she greeted the party on the other end with, "Dillon here." Bridget was silent as she listened to a woman's voice on the other end. In the background, she heard another female voice grumbling. "Siobhan," she addressed her sister-in-law in a tone that almost demanded cooperation, "slow down and say that again. Is she all right?" Her knuckles went white as her fingers curled around the phone.

"I'm telling you, Bridie," Siobhan said in frustrated tone, "I just don't know what to do! She was at a school function, nice as you please, and next thing I knew we got a call to come and get her. Bridget, " it was the tone that mother's get when they were about to chide one of their children by the full name method, "she left marks on him. Deep gouges. The school is letting it go because witnesses said he provoked her." There was a silence on the end of the line before the conversation continued, "I think she needs to talk to you now. She's quite upset."

Tick tick tick tick. Again sound of the clock on the wall marked the seconds, but in Bridget's head, the second hand clicking away sounded like a ticking time bomb. It was appropriate, given the circumstances. Elizabeth Rose Marks was just that. "Put her on, please." Bridget closed her eyes as she waited for the younger voice to get on the line. "Rose, it's Mum."

"I should hope so, or Aunt Siobhan is fussing at the wrong woman!" Rose was being her usual wise cracking self. She shooed her aunt away, so she could have a bit more privacy to talk to her mother. "She's fussing over nothing, Mum, I'm fine. Some people just need to keep their hands to themselves."

How does did she always know just what button to ....

"They called out the Garda. I told them he got fresh. Sgt. Ceallaigh told Finn he ought to know better than to be trying to play slap the baps and be hoping for a game of play the flute with Mick Dillon's granddaughter. Then, he told me I was right to teach him a lesson, " there was a self satisfied sound in the thirteen year old's voice. "And, Mum, Finn looked about as flummoxed as a wee babe when Old Man Ceallaigh said he was lucky I didn't use a cricket bat on his sorry ...." She was interrupted by her aunt with a comment about her language. "What, it's true! It's just what he said!"

Slap the baps ....Haven't heard that one in ages. I'd have belted him, too! The redhead couldn't help but grin. Her father had known Sean Ceallaigh when he was a kid and trained him when he was a rookie. "Let me guess, you're not the one in tailspin, Aunt Siobhan is?"

"Isn't that always how it is?" Rose shrugged and the lack of concern drifted into her voice.

"You could always come home to stay, Rose."

"And leave the boys to the mercy of their mother?" there was a playful taunting in the question. Rose grinned and waved at her aunt, who was the target of her teasing and hadn't quite left her alone in the room. "Besides, I told you I want to finish school."

"Yes, I know, but ...."

"Mum, I know what you're thinking."

Do you really, Ealasaid" "You think so' Well share then."

"You're thinking I've forgotten who I am and who I come from," she sounded ever so serious. "I know who he was," and what he was, was left unsaid, "Mum. I still have memories of our home in the woods."

Bridget noted her daughter's careful choice of words. Home not house. There was a house, yes, but it wasn't what Rose was talking about. She meant the woodlands that surrounded the cottage that had served as an office for Wolf Investigations. The lack of information had been for Siobhan's ears. Bridie often wondered what would be thought if the family had any idea what was truly in their midst. The change happened to save her life, but would that really matter" Then again, her family was Irish and believed in the existence of things that many thought of as legend.

Deftly, Rose changed the subject, "So, how is work?"

Tricky little ... "Great, I'm in charge of two departments now. The last head of pathology left. Next thing I know, they'll be calling me upstairs to deliver a baby or something." Bridie chuckled as she knocked on the wooden counter she'd been working on. Rhydin had a way of giving people just what they wished for.

Rose knew very well that her mother thrived on the activity. She'd been shuttled been back and forth to Rhydin ever since she was preschool age. If Belfast was a dangerous place to grow up, Rhydin was a universal war zone.

The conversation devolved into comfortable chatter about school vacation, shopping and a few of the trendy feminine trappings that Rose and her friends liked that week. Bridget tended to avoid purchasing or wearing girly girl things like they were infected with plague. It wasn't that she didn't clean up well or do a bang up job of being female when the occasion called for it. The redhead had been working with men so long, that she just found it easier to dress for comfort instead of accentuating her assets. Too much cleavage and high heels on the job were a good way to get attention you didn't want and sore feet. She'd had that kind of attention once, it was a part of her life she preferred to keep in her past. She didn't blame herself for being raped, but killing someone, that stayed with you no matter the reasons.

((Author's note - Baps are a slang term for breasts.))

Bridget Dillon · Date: 2011-07-04 04:25 EST

It was late when she got off duty that night. There was a crispness in the air; that sense of things and the smell of dirt that comes just before it rains. And rain it did. Bridget had learned long ago to revel in the so called inclement weather instead of complaining about it. There would be sunshine again soon enough. The water was cleansing, like a warm shower. While it washed away some things, it awakened her senses to others. As she walked across the parking lot, she tilted her head up to let the rain touch her face. Heaven's Tears, that was what her mother had called it when she was a child. A honking sound behind her pulled her from her reverie. She waved to the driver and moved onward. Her ears pricked and she heard what she thought was muttering about crazy people blocking the road.

Fifteen minutes later, she was on the covered back porch of her small house with a cup of cinnamon tea. The rain went on all night; it was soothing. She had no doubt that crickets would be out en masse once the rain shower was done. The woodlands blended into a small mountain range. Farther back in those woods dwelled larger creatures of the four legged variety. If they weren't hunting, they were likely tucked into the caverns that had long ago been formed by water flowing into the mountain and eroding the soil.

Bridget Dillon drifted into the arms of Morpheus and an old memory crept into her dreams to haunt her. One of her long legs still had the nearly faded scar to remind her of that night. It was a four inch long scar inside her thigh that once was a gaping knife wound that served to remind Bridie Dillon that all women, even tough ones, could fall prey to violence. Even though there was satisfaction in crushing his face with her forehead, it didn't erase the memory of the moment when someone tried to break her.

The attack was during an already low point in her life. Her father was in the hospital dying. Bridie had been on her way into the hospital from a dark parking lot when she was grabbed from behind. After breaking his nose and dragging her unconscious assailant into the emergency room, she collapsed. The family upstairs was notified. Her oldest and youngest brothers, Sean and Patrick, stayed with their father. The other two came in answer to the call. Michael didn't even stop, he went directly into the room the rapist had placed in, and proceeded to beat him into a bloody pulp. James helped his sister cope with her worries. She didn't want their father to see her to such a state.

Two hours later, she was at her father's bedside. The painkiller in her leg making her fade in and out. Mick Dillion knew his daughter all too well. When she moved to sit, he saw the stitches to the inside of her knee. She had come off work and he assumed it had been a line of duty injury. Bridget was there to hold her father's hand when he crossed out of this life, just as he had been for her through her lifetime.

It wasn't a stranger that had done the deed. She relived the catalyst of the assault in her nightmares as if it had been happening at that very moment. It was her nineteenth birthday, and the week before that she had graduated from the academy. Her brothers had baked a cake and slathered on frosting an inch thick. Adult or not, she was their baby sister, and would have cake to mark the day. Bridie sat in the kitchen with Michael, who had been her defender since she started primary school, chatting away about how their mother had named her after St. Bridget because she thought it would be good luck.

There was a knock at the front door and they could hear voices in the front room. It was Ian Malloy; she had dated him about two months and broke it off. He had come to ask her father's permission to marry her. "Bridget Rose come in here." Bridie knew the tone, and she winced. When Michael Dillon called his youngest with part of her mother's name tacked on, it was serious. When she entered the room, she was stunned at the question her father relayed from Ian. Her jaw dropped for a moment. She hardly knew this man and here he was asking to marry her.

She and her father had a lengthy talk on the matter. When her refusal was delivered it took two of her brothers to hold Malloy back and send him on his way. He was screaming that he'd have her or no one else would. They thought it an idle threat until almost three years later, when she saw that face behind her, reflected in the glass of her car window. Her father, thankfully, would never know.

A trial was held, to determine Michael Og Dillon's innocence or guilt. When forensics proved it wasn't the beating that caused the fatal injury, but broken fragments of his skull near his nose that splintered into his brain. It was by Bridie's hand he met his end. She and her brother were let go. They refused to even file charges against a rape victim that had defended herself. It was decided that Bridie would take a few months leave from the force it was indirectly how she ended up in Rhydin.

She awoke in a cold sweat and feeling eyes on her. A glimmer of light reflected off of golden eyes. For some, being watched by an old wolf, even from a distance might have been unsettling. For Bridget, however, it was comforting.