His mother died three days before Christmas.

She was on a date when he called. She was in red, her legs shaved, the candlelight dancing in her eyes, but she was reaching for the phone before the second ring sounded, even as her date leaned back in his chair, a disappointed sour smile on his face.

"Eames," she answered, knowing she was snapping, but she couldn't care. He had been suspended without pay the week before, and she had barely heard from him since.

"She'sãdead," he said, and he made that little soft gasp at the end of it.

Before she knew what she was doing she was shoving back from the table, the heel of her hand against the edge, her chair scraping on the hardwood. "Bobby."

"I don't know... why I called you."

By then she was on the pavement, scanning for a cab. Her arm was halfway up before she realized she had left her purse at the table. "Where are you?"

"Where else."

"I can be there in an hour."

"No... no, don't."

He had been sleepwalking for weeks, but this... she couldn't even imagine how much sedative they had to have given him. "I will be there in an hour."

She didn't bother stopping to change, and with her heels sounding on the scuffed linoleum she could feel the smell of this place creeping into her skin, her hair, the smell of death and despair. She hated it. Wreathes, fake plastic vines and bulbous red ornaments over the nurse's desk, and she still hated it.

He was bent nearly double, elbows on his knees, his fists clenched hard with his thumbs just brushing his cheeks. He looked like he hadn't shaved for weeks, or at least not since the last time she'd seen him. Since the day he'd been suspended.