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Jack let out a heavy sigh, bringing his attention back to him. "My daughter is pretty, just like her mom, with red hair and hazel eyes. I actually saw her outside her dorm at NYU one night. I'd been drinking at a nearby bar, and I thought, hell, I'll just go see her. But when I got there, I couldn't do it. I knew I'd had too many drinks. And I couldn't meet her like that. I didn't want her to look at me and think, like her mom did all those years ago, that I'm not worth much and couldn’t possibly be a good father."

He could see the pain in Jack's eyes. He'd definitely taken the mother's refusal to tell him he had a daughter as a rejection. He couldn't really blame him for that. He didn't know how he would react in that situation. But he did now understand why Jack was so desperate to get better. He had someone he wanted to be better for. "All right," he said, knowing they couldn't dwell on this problem. They had others to worry about. "We'll deal with your daughter later. We need to get you through this detox period and put the people who did this to you behind bars. I'd like to reach out to Dr. Prescott, but I want to do it away from the clinic."

"She lives in Chelsea. I don't know her address."

"I can get her address." He checked his watch. It was almost eight. "She's probably already headed to work now. I'll have to get to her later."

"She gets lunch at a café near Waverly. It's called Daisy's. She met me there once. She said she's a creature of habit, same big salad every day."

"Any particular time she goes?"

"I know her calendar is blocked for patients between one and two."

"Patients," Rachel suddenly echoed.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"I have patients this morning. I have to go to work."

"Can you take the day off?" Tyler asked.

"Not with this late notice. I can probably push this afternoon, but I have patients to see this morning. I can't cancel now." She got to her feet. "My car is still in your garage. I need to get it so I can go home, take a shower, then get to work."

He could see her mind racing ahead to everything that needed to happen, but he couldn't leave Jack until Evan arrived, and that was probably thirty minutes away. "What time is your first patient?"

"Ten."

"Okay, good. We have some time. Why don’t you take a shower here? Then I'll have someone drive you to work. I don't have any other clothes for you, but you can rinse off if you want."

She glanced at her watch. "Okay, but I need to leave by eight thirty. That's thirty minutes from now."

"We'll make that happen."

"I think I'll take a shower then."

As she moved toward the hallway, Jack called her name. "Dr. Thorne?"

She turned back to look at him with a wary expression on her face.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," Jack said.

"Thank you. I'll be okay. The bruises will fade."

In typical Rachel fashion, she was downplaying her feelings. The physical bruises would disappear, but he knew that the horrific memory would stay with her for a very long time.

"I could have killed her," Jack said as Rachel closed one of the bedroom doors.

"I don't want to think about that," he replied.

"I might have killed you, too."

"That wasn't going to happen."

Jack gave him a faint smile. "Always thought you could beat me. I bet you're wondering why the hell I came looking for you after everything that went down between us. I know you blamed me for TJ walking into that ambush. And maybe you were right to do that. I've had a lot of time to think about that day. I made a bad call, and TJ lost a leg because of it."

He was surprised to hear that admission coming out of Jack's mouth. "Battle decisions are made in a split second. It didn't matter to me that you might have been wrong. What mattered is that you refused to consider the possibility that you'd made a mistake. That's why I couldn't trust you anymore. You might be rethinking things now, but you weren't then. And a good leader always examines what went wrong as well as what went right."

"You're right, Iowa. You always were smarter than me, but I never wanted to admit it."