Henry Brown

Author: Erica

Rating: PG

Henry Brown

Author: Erica

Email: ericaphile@hotmail.com

Rating: PG

Summary: A two-day nightmare as Nick's job at F&F hangs by a thread.

Author's Note: The half-life is not factual and is for dramatic
purposes only. The story happens between Intersection and My Aim is
True. A Discovery Channel episode inspired this. This is my second
NickFic. I hope you like it.


--+--


Nick Fallin was going over his rough draft of the contract on the
legal pad. Unlike most people, he preferred working with a paper and
pencil, and relying on the secretaries and assistants to type things
up for him on a computer. The tactile process of flipping a page
and holding a pen helped him concentrate especially when he worked
with words. The blank screen of a computer monitor just couldn't
compare to the clean, straight lines of a legal pad. He'd been at
this for two hours straight already and he'd filled up more than
thirty pages. In a half-hour, he'd be finished, which meant he could
run over to LSP in the afternoon without the guilt of leaving things
up in the air at F&A.

He hissed in annoyance when the telephone rang. It was too much to
ask for another hour of peace and quiet.

"Nick?" Sheila's familiar voice was at the other end of the
line. "Your father wants to see you now in his office."

"Can't it wait?" Nick pleaded to his father's secretary. "I'm
in the middle of something—"

"He said, now, Nick," Sheila insisted then hung up.

Why did she have to call me? Nick wondered. Couldn't she just have
told one of the people passing by the front offices to relay the
message to me?

With a snort of annoyance, Nick left his legal pads and pencil, its
point blunted after all the work he'd done this past couple of
hours. He hoped his dad would get over whatever he wanted with him
quickly or else he'd lose his train of thought. Nick strode through
the halls of F&A and reached Sheila's office.

"Go right in, Nick."

Nick didn't bother to knock. He barged into the room but was halted
in midstride when he saw his father's grim face. Burton was going
over a sheaf of papers and he seemed impossibly calm. Only Nick's
familiarity with his father warned him that something was not going
well with Burton.

What had he done now? Nick's mind rifled through his activities for
the past few days, mentally reviewing his actions and trying to
recall why his father was so angry with him. Did he offend a client
or did he miss something in any of the meetings, or forget any
instructions from said meetings? Nick sat down on the hot seat, on
the chair opposite his father's desk. Nick's hackles rose further
when his father didn't speak to him, letting him stew while he went
over more of the report he had in his hand.

Burton's silent treatment was reserved for the gravest offences and
Nick had grim flashbacks of severe reprimands when he didn't own up
to breaking Mrs. Schultz's picture window with a wildly thrown
baseball, which Hugh didn't catch. Or what about the time he got a B-
in trigonometry because who took triangles seriously anyway? All
these, of course, couldn't hold a candle to the time when he had a
drug possession charge hanging over his head; Nick had been rewarded
with two weeks' worth of Burton's absolute silence even here at F&A.
With his insides churning, in times like these, Nick once
again wished his dad and boss weren't one and the same person.

Burton removed his reading glasses then his deceptively mild voice
finally broke the silence. "When was the last time you met with your
probation officer?"

"Uh…a week ago," Nick answered, completely caught off guard by
Burton's line of questioning. What was this about?

"No calls from him recently?"

"No."

"When did he last check you for illegal substances?"

"Like I said, a week ago, I gave the sample…"

"Random blood samples? Does he do that, too?" Burton had that icy
gaze that Nick found hard to return.

"Every two months," Nick answered with a dawning comprehension. F&F
instituted a brand new policy of mandatory drug testing of all
personnel. He'd submitted his own urine sample two days ago to the
screening agency the firm had hired. In fact, he hadn't given it
much thought, since submitting samples were so routine already,
unlike other employees of the firm, who'd made a big fuss about
it "Wait? Did I test p-positive for anything?"

"Nick, you're positive for codeine and morphine," Burton's voice rose
angrily, finally making it clear what this was all about. He stood
up from his chair and instead of looking out the window like he would
have normally done, Burton leaned on the desk to further glower at
Nick. "It says right on this report from Pharmalabs. Only two
people in the firm tested positive and one of them was you."

"What? There must be some mistake—" Nick's voice cracked.

"Mistake?" Burton said indignantly. " How can there be a mistake,
Nicholas?! Two people in the men's bathroom were present when each
employee submitted the sample and three separate testings of each
specimen were made. The only other positive test was for marijuana
and the particular employee has already admitted to using it."

"I didn't use anything—"

"Nicholas, the tests were designed to prevent errors! How can you
keep denying what is so clearly a positive proof of drug usage?'
Burton bellowed. "What if this drug test was made by your probation
officer, huh? What then? Does that mean you'd risk everything and
go to jail?"

Nick was speechless at his father's blazing anger and
disappointment.

"Hasn't it sunk into your brain how much I was willing to risk for
you to stay out of jail? Haven't you learned your lesson yet? God,
Nicholas, you were in jail for the death of Mandy! Do you want
to—"

"Dad, I didn't use drugs!" Nicholas finally got a word in. All his
hard work, attending NA meetings thrice weekly, staying away from his
old friends, avoiding alcohol, and most of all, working his ass off
at this firm and at LSP; all his hard work to keep away from cocaine
was clearly up in smoke in his dad's eyes because of a single drug
test.

He'd rather believe the test result than me, Nick realized. Didn't I
tell him I wasn't even planning on taking the pain pills when I
injured my hand in Lulu's car accident?

Nick didn't listen to what his father was ranting on about; Nick
turned on his heel and walked out of the office. In all the years of
working here, this was the only time Nick ever felt like crying right
there in Dad's office.

He blindly made his way to his own office and locked the door. How
could his father say those things to him? At this point in his life,
foremost in Nick's mind every time he entered F&F each morning, was
the Senator Caldwell and Mitch Lichtman mess happened because of his
stupidity and his father's botched attempt to put his mistakes to
rights. Each morning, Nick resolved to do better, especially after
he got off for Mandy Gressler's death and more so now that he was a
partner. But most of all, each morning, Nick had this drive to do
better, because Dad sank so low that Mary Gressler lived in his house
in a convoluted, distorted version of gratitude stemming from Nick's
major screw up of the year.

After all that, did Dad truly think he'd be foolish enough to submit
a urine specimen if he'd been using drugs? He submitted the specimen
because he was clean!

Positive for opiates. That meant heroin and mainlining; only
dumbasses tooted. Nick paced in his office, running his hand over
the back of his neck. He'd completely forgotten the legal pad on his
desk, full of two hours' work, the one where he wasn't supposed to
lose his train of thought on.

Nick went over step by step how he submitted the urine specimen three
days ago. Could it be someone from the firm was trying to frame
him? Did someone add a few drops of the illegal drugs into the cup
he submitted? Or did someone switch specimens outright?

But Nick clearly recalled how everything had been random. Never once
was an F&F employee in the chain of custody of another's specimen.
No one knew when it was their turn to piss in full view of the
Pharmalabs personnel. The random drug testing process of the firm
took a whole two months to finish because of the surprise element,
with Nick at the tail end of the people tested. Two whole months of
enduring jibes from the associates and other partners each time their
numbers came up that maybe Nick should be the one submitting their
specimens since he didn't have trouble with his own probation
officer as of late. The moment he'd filled the cup with an adequate
amount, the Pharmalabs employee had taken it and put it in the box
after proper labeling.

He had to be a better person; he had to be a man about this. He
grimly exited his office and went to the restroom where he washed his
face and let cold water run over both his wrists to cool down his
roiling emotions. He combed his hair then straightened his tie.

Then walked down the corridor back to Burton Fallin's office.

Sheila stared back at him in surprise standing there. Of course, she
didn't miss this latest walk out, especially after all the muffled
yelling she heard five minutes ago.

Nick stared belligerently back at her, and was satisfied when she
hastily looked away. This time he knocked and waited to be let in.
Burton was still extremely angry, the crease in the middle of his
forehead much deeper, peering at his son over his reading glasses,
but Nick could take it now. He had to.

"I don't know why the tests were positive, sir," Nick formally
began. "All I know is, I followed the procedures for the specimen
collection and I cooperated with the lab when my name was randomly
called. But as the law always says, the intent, m-my lack of
malicious intent is of no consequence if the evidence points to the
contrary. We agreed, however, from the last partners' meeting that
if anyone was positive from the drug testing, blood specimens could
be submitted for confirmation to an independent laboratory.

"I'll go to the laboratory of your choice, submit the blood specimen,
with witnesses if you want and wait for the results. If I'm
positive, I'll leave the firm, just like we agreed at the partners'
meeting. B-but D-dad, like I told you earlier, I haven't u-used
drugs in a long time." He hated how he stammered like a schoolboy.

"Eight months isn't a long time," Burton stated impersonally,
referring to Nick's brief transfer to Kirk and McGee, further
twisting the knife into Nick's heart. "I'll be your witness. No one
at the firm should know about these results yet; someone might want
to report you to your probation officer if the results leak out.
After my meeting with Clayton Steel, you'll get that blood test.
Don't go running to LSP today, and I mean it."

Nick grimly nodded and left.


--+--


Sheila again summoned Nick at half-past two. He grabbed his coat and
waited for his father near the main doors of F&F. Burton emerged
from his office with his hat and coat. No words passed between them
as they waited for the elevator. Once they got to the parking
garage, Nick automatically went in the direction of his parking
space, assuming he would be driving.

"I'm driving," Burton announced. Nick meekly followed Burton to the
Cadillac.

Still in silence, they drove to the outskirts of the city. Nick
swallowed his rage when they ended up in Greenwich Rehabilitation
Center.

"This is the most accurate drug lab without ties to law enforcement,"
Burton coldly said, as he pulled the parking brake. "Let's get this
over with."

The rehab center personnel didn't ask questions, merely directing
Nick and Burton to a room where a lab technician appeared after a few
minutes. The windowless room was the worst place to be for Nick, who
was feeling claustrophobic especially with his dad so mad at him in
the same room. Finally, the technician appeared. Nick took off his
topcoat and suit coat then rolled up his sleeve.

The tech's comment of Nick having good, clear veins was gratifying to
hear, but Nick doubted if Dad understood what the technician meant:
that his veins haven't been used for heroin. The blood extraction
only took a few seconds; the tourniquet, tapping the inside of his
elbow for the vein to plump up, antiseptic soaked cotton ball, then
the prick and finally his blood filled up the two vacutainers. The
tourniquet was released then a cotton ball was taped to the blood
extraction site as Nick flexed his arm for the vein to clot up.

"Your name…?" the technician was poised over the laboratory
request and the stickers to label the vacutainers. Nick was busy
buttoning his sleeve, made more difficult because he had to deal with
the cuff link of his shirt's French cuff.

Before Nick could say his name, Burton blurted out, "Henry Brown.
His name is Henry Brown. When will the results be released?"

"Two days, Mr. Brown." The technician correctly assumed this was a
father and son tandem, not unusual in a rehab center like this. He
then wrote down Nick's "name" then Burton made arrangements for the
results to be faxed to his house. Once they got out of the
claustrophobic room, Nick felt dizzy and nauseous from the tension
and actual hunger. He missed breakfast that morning and he didn't
have an appetite for lunch after Dad's announcement of the random
drug test.

Nick had to take a seat and put his head in his hands as Burton
settled Nick's bill by paying in cash. Henry Brown doesn't leave a
paper trail.

Henry Brown? From where did Dad pluck that name?

As if to reinforce matters, Nick heard, "Henry, come on." Burton
finished with all the necessary transactions. Mercifully, Burton
didn't thrust any of the rehab center's brochures onto him,
considering how many were scattered all over the place. "Henry"
stood up and followed his father out of the rehab center.


--+--


Nick returned home at ten that night. After the blood test, he
requested to be dropped off at LSP, which his father did grudgingly.
Nick needed some time away from F&F, Burton more specifically, and
LSP was his nearest escape hatch. Then afterwards, he had to attend
his NA meeting.

He really needed to get wasted, the way he was feeling right now,
even if he was fresh from an NA meeting. However, not even a can of
beer was in his whole house.

He'd wanted to ask Alvin and others at the NA meeting how his drug
test could have been positive; another source of reliable information
was his probation officer, but then asking him would have been like
nailing his own coffin. He needed to talk to Lulu, but he didn't
want to pile on his problems on her when she was still recovering
from her injuries while on Caroline's watch.

Nick shed his clothes, disgustedly removing the cotton ball still
taped to his arm where blood was drawn that afternoon. He donned his
pajama pants, then went downstairs to confront his refrigerator. As
always, the thing was nearly empty.

Nick briefly looked up from the refrigerator, his eye falling on the
picture of his mother he'd tacked on the kitchen wall. Once more,
for the nth time, he wondered if she were still alive, how much
different his life would have been. Such speculations were
especially acute whenever things weren't going well with his dad and
him.

This time he ate a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich, again in
front of the television as he watched the evening news.


--+--


The next two days was a game of cat and mouse for Nick, who avoided
F&F as much as possible. The client meetings he could handle without
any problems, but the partners' meetings were something else. There
had been questions from some of them regarding the results of the
random drug tests, but Burton had brushed them off and concentrated
on more important financial matters of the firm. Nick sat at the
seat farthest from his dad and generally avoided catching Burton's
eye.

He'd had time to think more of his situation and the resentment
against his father was too much to handle. He wasn't trusted,
even if he said he'd been clean. But any way he looked at it, Nick
wouldn't have trusted himself after all the lying he'd done in the
past. How many times had he himself doubted the words of druggie LSP
clients when they claimed they hadn't used drugs? When he botched up
of the Sloane deal, he had the gall to be indignant when Burton had
rightly accused him of using.

The meeting was breaking up and everyone was in the process of
leaving the conference room. Nick attempted a clear getaway, but
Burton called out for him. He reluctantly backpedaled and stood in
front of his father who was shuffling his papers back into his folder.

"Nicholas, the results have been faxed to me an hour ago," Burton
said in a low voice so that others wouldn't overhear. "I want you
home this evening."

Nick nodded bleakly to signify he understood.

--+--

Shit. Nick reared back when the door opened to reveal Dad's thunder
black expression. The implicating fax was in Burton's grasp.

"What are the results?" Nick mumbled as he stepped inside Dad's
kitchen. It was a rhetorical question because Burton's overall
demeanor was a dead giveaway.

"Positive for codeine and morphine." Burton furiously threw the fax
on the counter.

Nick's inside twisted. He felt absolutely defeated. All these
months, when he'd made a conscious effort to be good, to stay good;
hell, he'd even begun listening seriously to the NA meetings. In
fact, he'd even haltingly "shared" once.

Nick was baffled but the fax he held clearly showed levels of the
illegal substances. His vision blurred. This time, there was no
escape. No reason to suspect that someone spiked or switched his
specimen. The blood test result showed "Henry Brown", a 33-year old
male, with positive results for the two agents.

Just then, the front doorbell rang. Burton took the fax and left the
kitchen, which gave Nick enough privacy to brush away the tears that
threatened to spill. He heard his father talking to someone as their
footsteps headed for the kitchen.

Nick sniffed and looked up to see who the visitor was. He was doubly
stunned to find Brad Young, his lawyer when he was busted for
possession.

"Hey, Nick," Brad shook Nick's hand.

Does this mean he was being fired and Brad was here as his counsel?

Burton and Brad sat down by the leather sofas in the family room that
was open to the kitchen.

"So the tests were positive?" Brad began.

"Nick, get over here," Burton ordered his son who was still rooted by
the kitchen counter.

Brad's unexpected visit was like the twilight zone for Nick. All the
negative emotions he experienced upon his arrest for possession was
resurfacing with a vengeance. He was reliving the nightmare of two
years ago. After getting bailed out of jail, Burton and Brad had a
meeting the next day for their strategy in Nick's defense. Nick had
been too dazed to remember much, except that it was in the exact same
spot where the two were now sitting.

"Nicholas…" Burton's warning tone shook Nick out of his reverie.
He took his place beside Brad, who had the two test results in front
of him on the coffee table. It took Brad a minute to peruse the lab
tests.

"Basically, you have a qualitative and a quantitative test here,"
Brad explained. "The Pharmalabs result is qualitative. The
substances that show up in your urine mean you took those two
kinds…"

"That's just it," Nick's voice rose finally in his defense. "I
didn't take anything. I never did heroin. Heroin's foul. Why
would I do something that idiotic…"

"NICHOLAS!" Burton roared. "Let Brad have his say. I called him
because he's the most experienced lawyer in town for these kinds of
things."

"Again," Brad sighed as Nick slumped back on the sofa. The drug
lawyer wasn't fazed by the dramatic hijinks of father and son, which
were mild compared to what he'd seen in his line of
work. "Qualitative tests are just a positive or negative kind of
result, as you already know. These screening tests are preliminary
tests. So these two substances mean they were present in your body,
Nick."

Nick opened his mouth once more to protest, but Burton angrily
wagged a finger at him to shut him up.

"The Greenwich test is a quantitative confirmatory test, with an
actual blood level of the drug. Your blood tests show trace amounts
but at very minute level, Nick," Brad continued as he fumbled for two
more sheets of paper folded from his pocket. He smoothed these out
on the coffee table, too. "These were your last test results from
your probation officer, dated exactly a week before the firm's random
test. You knew they were negative.

"So a negative qualitative test from the county, followed by a
positive qualitative test a week later…okay, you could have snuck
something in between…but the clincher is the quantitative test
from the rehab center, taken two days later. The half-life of the
drug is at least five days. In your case, the levels were too tiny.
Why would you take heroin in such small quantities if it won't get
you high at those levels in the first place?"

"Because I didn't" Nick burst out angrily.

"Precisely," Brad concluded with a smile. "You didn't."

"Why do those substances still appear on the last blood test?"
Burton asked as he stroked his moustache.

"Poppy seeds, Burton," Brad announced with a flourish. "Have you
been chugging the stuff, Nick? Lemon poppy seed muffins, cakes…"

"Bagels," Nick moaned with his bent head in his hands. "I've been
eating them for the past five days."

"Eating just two poppy seed bagels have been proven to show up on
qualitative tests, Burton," Brad explained, pleased as punch that
Nick confirmed his suspicions for poppy seed ingestion. "So five
days…that makes at least five bagels in your system."

"Make that twelve." Nick mentally counted how many poppy seed bagels
were left in the economy-sized package of bagels in the house.

"Twelve bagels?" Burton wondered. "You bingeing on bagels these
days? Don't you have anything else to eat at your house?"

"It's a long story," Nick sighed. "And, yes, I don't have anything
else to eat at my house." Never buy economy-sized when you live
alone. Another lesson learned. Specifically, stay away from poppy
seed bagels. Forever.

He'd been consuming the bagels for breakfast and dinner for almost a
week. He had stopped by a 24-hour supermarket, instead of the
gourmet grocery store he usually frequented, and in his hurry, he'd
bought the 20-count package of bagels for convenience, purchasing it
without a second thought. It had been 1 a.m. when one day was at the
cusp of the next and he hadn't been thinking of a more sensible
shopping list. In fact, on that particular night, aside from the
bagels, he'd bought a variety of candy bars, two cans of anchovies
and even the National Enquirer but completely forgot eggs and milk.

"A Florida woman sued after being fired from work because her
qualitative test was positive," Brad said. "So you better not fire
your boy here, Burton. He has a pretty strong case against that
random qualitative test result. And Nick, do you have receipts of
your bagel purchase?"

"Yeah."

"Good. You better keep it as evidence in case someone questions the
test results once it's released. Burton, I suggest you get an
affidavit from the technician who did the blood extraction, that Nick
was the one he drew blood from, even if the name Henry Brown is on
the test result."

Brad rose and Burton suddenly remembered his role as host. "Would
you like anything to drink, Brad, coffee…?"

"No, thanks, Burton," Brad declined. "I have two more clients
waiting for me at the County Jail. I think it's better if you feed
Nick here his dinner, anything but bagels."

The two men laughed, but Nick didn't join in because it was difficult
seeing the humor in any of this. He followed them to the front door
where he gratefully shook Brad's hand before the defense lawyer left.

"Well…" Burton smiled back at him, his first smile directed at
his son in the past couple of days. "We have to plan a confidential
partners' meeting to explain your test results. Brad should be
there, I think, in case more questions are raised."

Nick nodded. Without a doubt, that partners' meeting would end up
with everyone thinking that Daddy once more bailed out little Nicky
from a sticky F&F policy. He went back to the kitchen where his
father followed. He took his coat from the kitchen stool and put it
on.

"Hey, aren't you staying at least for dinner?" Burton frowned.

"No," Nick said curtly. "I still have an NA meeting. I'm late
already."

He rushed out to his car, without even a thank you to his father for
calling in Brad Young tonight.

He drove for two blocks pondering whether he was willing to put up
with more blurred lines between firm and family. He pulled the BMW
to the curb and wept.


THE END