Stats
by Jayed


Disclaimer: Just borrowed, briefly.
Warning: Simon-centric (sort of), deathfic (minor character)

EMAIL: Jayed


    In one day, seventeen year old Daryl Banks fell into two devastating statistical categories. He became an unwed father to a little girl, and he was killed while driving drunk .  His blood alcohol level was just at the legal limit, but he clearly wasn’t thinking “clearly” in light of the birth of his daughter.  His mother knew about Dahlia, but he hadn’t told his father. The beers he’d drunk were his attempt to shore up his courage before he made the trip to his father’s house to let him know he was a grandfather. Sort of.

    Neither Daryl nor Dahlia had made any real plans for after the baby was born. Daryl had been in on and off again denial, and Dahlia, slightly older at nineteen, had not really been willing to plan either. She had been keeping up with pre-natal appointments through the clinic at Rainier, but she hadn’t really thought about what she would do when presented with a real live baby.

    Tall and handsome, Daryl Banks had seemed older to the college sophomore when she met him at an off-campus party. It wasn’t until they were on their third or fourth date that she found out he was a high school student who had been at the party because he was a friend of the host’s younger brother. He had just turned seventeen. He was fun, and he had a car, and he did look old enough. So, Dahlia took him to her college friend’s parties, and they passed him off as a student “at another school,” which most Rainier students took to mean he was attending the local community college.

    Neither of them was particularly virginal, and they knew enough in the Age of AIDS to use condoms, but once one broke. The possibility of a pregnancy hadn’t crossed either of their minds, and they had just been sure to be more careful in the future. On her first trip home that semester, her mother teased her about putting on the “freshman fifteen” as a sophomore. But she had always been a bit irregular, and it didn’t occur to her until she was about four months along that she had been that much more irregular than ever.  Thus, the most obvious solution was beyond them at that point.

    And then the real problems began to surface. She had never introduced Daryl to her folks because her father was not the kind of man to tolerate this daughter dating someone who couldn’t bring potential benefits to the whole of the family. The very young son of a black Police Chief would not have qualified. So, she hadn’t told them. She stayed at school for the next few breaks, telling her folks that she was getting ahead on her studies. As her parents used these excuses to take trips to Paris and then Maui, she didn’t feel badly about the lies.

    Now, however, she was presented with a major dilemma. She didn’t really want to give up her baby, but she knew her parents would never accept her. She didn’t really want to put her into an impersonal adoption process where she would be whisked away forever. But she couldn’t support her on her own, and, although Daryl’s mom had been supportive, Joan had not offered a refuge, had in fact told them point-blank that she didn’t want a baby in her house. Dahlia knew that what Joan really wanted was for Dahlia to give the baby up and then disappear to some school far across the country. She had been encouraging Daryl to go to Duke in any case.

    And then Daryl didn’t come back to the hospital after his visit to his father, the visit where he was supposed to let his second parent in on the secret. She thought maybe he just needed some time, so she didn’t worry until the next morning, when decisions really needed to be made. And bills needed to be sorted. And, the baby, who in her heart was already Alice Dee, although the bassinette merely said “Baby Girl Ashton,” needed to be…kept.

    While Dahlia was considering the options and possibilities and problems that morning in her hospital room, calling for the nurses to bring Alice Dee to her room, Simon Banks was opening his door to a couple of distraught patrol officers.  He didn’t even need to open the door the whole way before he knew.  Taking a deep breath against the coming shock, he merely said, “How?”

    And while Dahlia was slowly coming to terms with the term ‘mommy’, Simon and Joan were coming to terms with the fact that she would never be called that again, and he would never be “dad.” And then Joan dropped the bombshell. Grandparents.

    It was almost too much, at that moment, but Simon’s protective nature sprang to the fore. He couldn't let anyone else let the young woman, the young mother, know what had happened to Daryl, his son, her … lover? The baby!, the baby’s father.

    The funeral was the nightmare he knew it would be. The conversations with Dahlia’s parents were almost worse. But there was Alice Dee, the living reminder and remainder of all that had been his son. The Ashtons refused  to have anything to do with her, and were, for the time being at least, estranged from their only child as well. Having lost his only child, Simon couldn’t begin to comprehend it.

    So, Simon Banks, former tough guy, Major Crimes Police Captain, bereaved father, found himself in a very strange position the next time he hosted the departmental poker game. “Guys,” he cautioned, opening the door, “Dahlia has her night class tonight, so we’re babysitting.  Alice Dee just went to sleep, so, the game’s on, but keep the noise down, okay?”  But before the first hand was dealt, he took a quick trip down the hall to the room that had been full of a teenage boy’s paraphernalia and was now almost too full of pink and lace to leave room for the crib belonging to the small café au lait baby and the twin bed belonging to her slight, blonde mother.