asskickingblahniks: (062)
Geneviève Emmanuelle "Gen" Hart-Campbell ([personal profile] asskickingblahniks) wrote in [community profile] dreamlikenewyork2015-04-25 11:30 pm

"Come on, baby, let me in, and show me what this really is about..."

Who? Gen Hart and Mark Campbell
What? Soaked in booze and tears
Where? The Campbell-Hart abode
When? Saturday, late morning, after this

Gen wanted to believe that she could hold it all together for her husband and son -- that when Justin was hurting, and Mark was hurting for him, she would somehow be able to be the strong one. But the truth was, her heart broke for her husband and son, too. She had come home from work and crashed out early, exhausted from a long day, and Mark had texted from work telling her that he was at work, but he was going to get Justin and he'd be home later. By the time she'd woken up, it was to a text from Ali telling her that Mark was passed out drunk on her couch. Thank fuck Justin was with Sam. Which probably said all anyone ever needed to know about the father Mark was. Even in the midst of heartbrokenly writing himself off, he was still first concerned about being sure Justin was safe. But what this meant to Gen right now was that, as Ali had told her, she had to get Mark home and really talk to him about what was going on, because if he was writing himself off? He wasn't coping with things, and that was when they needed most of all to be a team. Which was why she'd spent well over an hour after Ali's texts sobbing into her pillow in her room -- sobbing for her amazing husband whom she so loved whose heart was shattered for his precious son, and sobbing for that son himself... the wonderful boy that love had given her as a son, just as truly as if he'd been conceived and carried in her body... the boy whose innocence had been taken from him when he was still too young to even understand why this was happening.

Ali let her know when she was on the way with Mark, and Gen made her way to the bathroom, washing her face and trying to at least calm some of the puffiness down. By the time Ali got Mark home, Gen had brewed a pot of coffee, stout and strong, and was waiting for Mark on the sofa, both of their cups of coffee made just as they liked them. She'd invited Ali to stay and have a cup with them, but knowing that they needed to chat, Ali declined and left Mark on the couch with Gen, who was slowly sipping her coffee and trying to decide what to say.

It was an awkwardly long few moments that Gen and Mark sat there in silence, Gen prolonging a sip of her coffee to get her thoughts together despite the fact that hours of prep time hadn't allowed her to do that yet. And when she finally spoke, it was shaky and she felt like she might start crying all over again. "Mark," she said softly, setting her coffee down on the coffee table in front of them so that she could turn and look at her husband. "Sweetheart, I don't know where we should start talking, but we need to talk about this. Not just about you drinking, but about everything that's happened with Justin."
aussielawyer: (076)

[personal profile] aussielawyer 2015-04-26 05:21 am (UTC)(link)
At times like this, 'hangover' wasn't a good enough description. Mark was a mess. He knew it, because he felt it. He was unshaven, expensive clothes creased up, tie handing undone around his neck, shirt untucked, making him look like he wasn't shrouded in designer labels and instead should be sleeping on a park bench. You would think this would be a deterrence, and many thought it should be for alcoholics. It just didn't work like that. If only. That was like saying the cure to an obese person's weight loss would be to choose a diet soda with their supersized Big Mac meals. He had an horrifically pounding head and ended up puking into a plastic bag in the car on the drive over here. Luckily Ali was a mother and knew how to be prepared. He was dehydrated, and as much as the coffee probably would have helped, he couldn't stomach the thought of putting it near his mouth.

He would eventually shower, probably sitting on the floor of the cubicle for the duration when his legs wouldn't hold him, and cut himself trying to shave a few times. Then crash in bed for an indeterminable amount of hours. Upon which, if he didn't work to break the cycle, he would hit the bottle again the following night. At the mention of what happened with Justin, he just closed his eyes, feeling them sting. "I don't want you knowing everything that happened to him. I don't want you having all the details stuck inside your head that you can't stop thinking about it."
aussielawyer: (041)

[personal profile] aussielawyer 2015-04-26 12:27 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm not talking about it," Mark replied flatly but there was resolve in his words. It was bad enough sitting in the court room and hearing it relayed when Justin's statement was read out. He couldn't sit here and just regurgitate the information like he was telling a tale about a trip to the beach. He had suspected it for awhile. There had been ways Justin reacted to things, said things that didn't seem to be interrelated to other things he had faced. What he had been able to deduce was that there had to have been at least one other suicide attempt before leaving Chicago, and at least long-standing suicidal ideation. He hadn't needed Justin to confirm that, it was the pattern his bipolar had taken. It had been confirmed that just because Justin hadn't been diagnosed, didn't mean the first episode was when he got to New York and Mark realised something was wrong.

That was the first thing that came up in the statement. Justin had punched a window and tried to cut his wrists with a shard of glass. When his 'friends', kids from the bad crowd, realised how badly he was bleeding, they took him to the ER and the story was that he tried to punch someone and missed. Then there had been an incident with a car. He was walking home high one night and just walked out in front of a car. The car swerved, and Justin got scared and ran away. That had been expected. And even though he had suspected Justin had possibly been abused when he was younger, Mark could never have prepared himself for what he actually hear was logged in that statement. "You can read it, but I'm talking about it."
aussielawyer: (057)

[personal profile] aussielawyer 2015-04-26 04:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Mark didn't say anything. He was listening, of course he was, but sometimes you got to the point where there felt like there were no words left. That was where he had been the last few days. When he had been hugging his kid goodnight, his heart had been lodged up in his throat knowing what he had been through. When he had tried to sink himself into work, the details kept filtering back to him. It wasn't even just that he was feeling like a failure, and knowing he could have stopped this happening to Justin if he knew he existed. It was just the incredibly weight he, as a father, was trying to hold up here knowing how much pain his son had been through. He wasn't trying to reduce what Gen was feeling or purposefully pushing her away, he just got so very tired of talking. He was weakened from trying to process everything and trying to accept it, that he just couldn't. He had gone from needing someone to talk to, to this, feeling like no amount of talking could stop the pain.

So all he did was get up and go to his briefcase to get the copies of the court papers out that were in a blue envelope marked strictly private and confidential. They had been sealed documents before the case. No one but the independent attorney acting for Justin had known what was in those statements, and the court witness to them. Now the case was said and done, Mark had requested copies for his own records that could be used for Justin's assault case. At this point, he was poised to have those charges dropped but it would take time. He handed her the envelope. "Please, just respect the fact I'm not in this place as any sort of punishment to you, or diminishing your position as my wife or Justin's mum. Because none of this is about that, and I honestly don't have the fucking energy to fight you on this. I need you to just understand."
aussielawyer: (023)

[personal profile] aussielawyer 2015-04-27 03:52 am (UTC)(link)
Mark had just glanced at her with that comment. Did she think he wanted to end up back where he used to be? Did she think he did this deliberately and recklessly? Whatever it was, he just did not have the strength to have this all switch up and turn on his faults when it should be Justin they were focusing on. Mark knew he was going to need to end up back at the doctor to have his anti-depressants up, he knew he would going to need to go back to a therapist, he knew he was going to need to plant his arse again at the AA meetings. What he also knew was that he was hurting so much inside right now that the booze had numbed that for a little while. It was like a wildfire burning inside him that he had no other way to douse. He couldn't switch it off. He had barely slept since the court case, and drinking intercepted all of that for just a little while. He knew he shouldn't have done it, but at the same time, the temptation to turn it all off for awhile was too strong.

What had happened was Justin ended up staying at Sam's place. Lisa had been there, and when Sam got called into work on an emergency, Lisa had been perfectly fine to stay with Justin. That day, Justin was going to spend some time with Sam playing basketball and getting a burger. Which was a relief for Mark to have heard via text message a little while ago, with Sam adding a pointed 'We'll talk later' at the end of it. He put his hand on Gen's back, rubbing it softly. Inside, he was trying to urge the nausea to die down because he felt so sick. Justin's recount had a lot of terminology and simplistic ways of explaining what had happened, because he had only been a kid. He had a better understanding of how wrong it was now, but back then, he thought the only way his mother wouldn't give him up for adoption to a family who would hate him would be to submit to the cunt boyfriend's actions. "I wanted to climb over that bench and strangle her." At the time, Ash had to physically hold Mark back from doing just that once the statement had been read out.
aussielawyer: (057)

[personal profile] aussielawyer 2015-04-28 12:32 pm (UTC)(link)
The court case had been horrific for Mark. He should be used to courtrooms, and to conflict, but when it was a case surrounding your own child and the fact he had been a victim of child abuse and neglect from his own mother, who deliberately kept Mark from him as punishment for him ruining her life, there was no way to cope with it well. He needed to be present for the whole thing, and force himself to sit there and listen to everything, but it had really impacted on him and not in a good way. "She went in there off on a tangent about how we were paying Justin off to keep him shut up about really wanting to be with her. Her amateur backdoor attorney tried to pin the bipolar on my genetics and said the only reason I married you was to put up a phony marriage front that I'm the better parent for the kid to be with because I'm a crook and just want to use Justin's status on Broadway for my own personal gain."

He shook his head in a vain yet fruitless attempt to stop himself from crying. But he just couldn't. He was wrecked and this was something he was seriously struggling to process. "I could handle all that. I expected it. It's why I made sure Dani and Curtis went in armed with everything to counter it all. But this?" he said, gesturing to the folder. "Anyone can tell me until they're blue in the face that it's not my fault, but the bottom line is, she kept him from me to punish me for fucking her and never speaking to her again. It's my fault my child was sexually abused, neglected, let to suffer the torture of a mental illness alone, scared, without help. It's my fault. It's not his, like she made him believe since he was old enough to understand what was being said to him."
aussielawyer: (024)

[personal profile] aussielawyer 2015-05-10 08:42 am (UTC)(link)
Mark had been to hell and back with Justin multiple times since the kid turned up on his doorstep. Hell, his very welcome of them was to spew all other Mark's feet. At that point, Gen had understandably freaked out and questioned everything. Mark never judged her for that, but it was those initial moments where he hadn't remotely had a choice to back away and analyse the situation. The kid was his son. Well, either his son or Sam's, because he looked so much like him. Sam had never been promiscuous or slept around, so it wasn't even a possibility. Mark had taken Justin in and been determined to care for him no matter what. The kid was his son, and he was sick and in a really bad mess. It hadn't taken long for him to realise that there was something much deeper at play than just a delinquent kid who abused booze and drugs. He was absolutely screaming out for help, and with the right medical attention, the mental illness diagnosis had come. Even then, it was only gradual and piecemeal that Justin began to revealed traumas of his past. Mark remembered questioning Nathan about the possibility that Justin was being so secretive. It was Nathan who said that it was unlikely Justin was being secretive, and much more likely he was blocking things out in his past. It was something young people often did, especially mentally ill kids. He told Mark that over time, more things might come to light and warned him to be prepared for it. Nothing could have prepared any of them for this. "We can't keep holding on to the anger because it's going to spill over onto him. Like Ali said, the only way he's going to know it's okay to not be okay is if he sees that we're not either. But on the same token, he can't see that we're continuously angry either because he'll react to that too. You have to let it go."

The anger for him was dissipating for that very reason, but he couldn't shed the grief or the nauseating sickness inside from what had been in that statement Justin had made. There had been an attempt from the cunt's legal defence to try to say Justin was lying and making up stories, like he always did for attention. That he had a lengthy history of attention-seeking. That had been the nail in the coffin for the presiding judge. She chose to throw the book at them and now Justin's mother had a very lengthy jail sentence to serve and she couldn't get to him at all. "I know that. I do. But I have a hell of a lot to work through and I'm not dealing with any of it. At all. But I've made an urgent appointment with my therapist, and I've set up a session for all three of us to see Justin's therapist together so he can have a chance to open up about what he said in the statement if he wants to. I fucked up. I know I did. But I needed to shut down. I couldn't handle the pain. It's the worse pain I've ever felt in my life. Even above and beyond when I was told Jim was dead."