CHAPTER 22

March 2018

As planned Joy waited patiently with Caleigh by Emily's car, the 7 year old finally willing to replace Clive. The little scotty dog had been such an integral part of their lives that Emily understood why replacing him was so hard. Clive had been a faithful companion and helper for Caleigh for over half her life.

Emily had loved the little dog simply because he loved Caleigh.

It had taken a lot of time and research but she'd found a service dog trainer in Gainsville and had contacted her months before with what she was looking for. She'd been… sort of... honest about Clive being killed going for the panic alarm during a home invasion.

She hadn't been pushing Caleigh, instead waiting for her to be ready and the week before she'd crawled into Emily's lap late one night and said.

"I miss Clive… it's lonely without him and he wouldn't want me to be lonely."

"No he wouldn't, are you ready for a new friend?" Emily had signed back.

Caleigh had only shrugged in response.

"Do you want to go and meet some dogs and see if you want them to be a friend?"

Her nod was hesitant but Emily took that as a good sign and had contacted the trainer and organised for them to go out there tonight.

So here they were pulling into the acre lot just as the sun was setting. They were met outside by a woman a few years younger than Emily who had a pile of puppies trailing after her.

"Emily?"

"Yes, and this is Caleigh."

"Come on out the back. As I said on the phone I have a couple of dogs who are noise alert trained and they know a few basic signs, but you've already done this before so you know the drill. We'll follow Caleigh's lead here."

As they rounded the corner Caleigh's eyes went wide and she hid herself behind Emily's legs at the sight of all the dogs.

Off to the side in a small fenced off area lay a beagle type dog, 2 labradors and a miniature pinscher.

At the light tug on her pants Emily crouched down to eye level with her daughter.

"The one with white and black and brown looks nice"

"He does, doesn't he. Do you want to go say hello?"

"Yes please."

"What's the beagle's name?" Emily asked the trainer.

"That's Phoebe, she's 18 months and a beagle miniature pinscher mix. She was the only survivor of a litter someone tried to drown." Emily quickly translated the name but not the story as the trainer got her attention with a clicking sound and called Phoebe over with a hand signal.

Emily stepped back and let the trainer make the introductions and was relieved when Caleigh didn't immediately cry.

"In some ways Phoebe's still a baby, it will be a while before she's fully trained." the other woman admitted.

"That's fine" Emily smiled "it's taken 8 months to get her here so if Phoebe is the one then we can be patient."

It was at that moment Caleigh burst into tears and bolted back towards Emily shoving her face into Emily's legs her body shaking with sobs.

"Ooohkay… maybe Phoebe isn't the one." Emily shrugged and let Caleigh cry for a few minutes before crouching down to be eye level with her daughter. Pulling a tissue out of her pocket she wiped Caleigh's eyes and nose.

"What happened?" she asked.

"She's not like Clive… I asked her where Mommy is and she didn't know… Clive always knew…"

This Emily saw coming.

"You don't remember but the day we met Clive he didn't know us either. We had to teach him who Mommy and Caleigh were. We had to teach him who Joy was and he didn't know what our lights meant or the sign for dinner… and Phoebe is only a baby, Clive was older than you." tucking the dark locks behind Caleigh's ears Emily gave her another moment before speaking again. "Let's try something huh…?" taking a deep wet breath Caleigh nodded.

"Does Phoebe have a name in ASL yet?" she asked the trainer who nodded and taught them the sign.

Not caring about the wet grass Emily sat down facing the dog and pulled Caleigh into her lap. Snapping her fingers as instructed to get the dogs attention she signed for her to come. Ears perking up the pup immediately trotted over to them and sat waiting for her next instruction.

"See…" Emily told Caleigh "she knows her name and to come to us when she's told. We just need to teach her a few new things."

Reaching out a trembling hand Caleigh gently ran her fingers along Phoebe's ear and let out a small smile when the dogs head tilted into the touch. Then she turned her cold wet nose into Caleigh's wrist to nuzzle at it.

After watching Caleigh gently stroking the dogs head for a few minutes Emily brought her hands round for Caleigh to see them and asked.

"Do you want to come back next week and visit Phoebe?"

Caleigh leaned back into Emily's chest as Phoebe creeped closer to them, enjoying the affectionate patting. Several long moments passed before she nodded.

Emily was the last to arrive the next day. Caleigh's nightmares from being taken by Scratch came and went randomly and when they hit they were fierce, Emily spent most of the night sitting up in bed, lamp on, cradling Caleigh against her chest.

Every time she lay Caleigh down the terror started again, waking them both.

So she sat there holding the 7 year old and not sleeping.

As a result Caleigh was barely functioning from the lack of sleep. Having already made the decision to give the team a few days to settle back in properly before they took an out of state case Emily called Caleigh in sick to school and took her into the office and settled her on the couch with an iPad full of books.

By the time Dave braved her office, Caleigh was fast asleep, he cocked an inquiring eyebrow at the plus 1.

"Bad night…" Emily admitted "nightmares about Scratch, she's in no fit state to go to school so here we are."

"You know…" Dave lowered himself into a chair "I knew you gave in too easily and I honestly thought it was to do with Scratch grabbing Caleigh. Five years in London and not a single incident… you're back in DC for what… 8 months and she gets grabbed by a serial killer as a bargaining chip." he studied her for a moment "You wanted us to think that didn't you?"

"It wasn't in the original plan but it was convenient… I needed you guys looking at that. Looking at the past not at what I was doing. Agent's like Linda Barnes are the most dangerous kind, they breed mistrust not just from within but from without. They want the power for themselves… I knew it and I pushed her buttons to get her to suspend me. All those times she claimed to have spoken to the Director… lies… she didn't once speak to him in regards to what she was doing at the BAU. I know, I left O'Keefe's and met him the night she ripped the team apart."

"I don't like it" Dave admitted "I feel as though we could have helped, brought this to a close without all the theatrics and secrets but I also understand that you were under orders."

Emily knew she'd be repeating her next sentence a lot over the next few weeks "Plausible deniability Dave. Hotch and I went over and over this so many times… he came to London and we spent hours talking and at the end of the day we knew the team needed to be protected from any fall out."

They both jumped when Emily's office door banged open to reveal a slightly manic Penelope Garcia and a worse for wear looking Spencer Reid peering over her shoulder.

"So Spence and I went back to my place last night and we both drank waaaaay too much so we're both a little hungover but here's what it comes down to… you did what you did and despite my inability to keep a secret or tell a lie I probably would have agreed to it as well because catching bad guys is what we do and she was definitely one of those." she paused and took a deep gasping breath "Why is Caleigh here?"

Emily smiled.

JJ sent her an email a few hours later.

I would have thrown an epic and memorable tantrum in public for you, all you had to do was ask.

Choking back a laugh Emily hit reply.

Taking lessons from Henry?

As requested she gave Tara space and Luke grabbed her while getting coffee.

"You and I need to swap UC stories one day." Was the only thing the younger man said.

It took 3 months of hard work with the trainer and Phoebe before she was ready to go home with them. Unlike Clive who was sedate and regal through all things Phoebe was a bit more excitable. Emily insisted on Caleigh and Phoebe going back to the trainers twice a week for the foreseeable future. They were both a little too young and a little too wild to stop the regular training just yet.

Like Clive, Phoebe wouldn't be going to school with Caleigh until Emily was confident in her daughter's ability to control the sweet dog but as a registered service dog she went everywhere else with them.

One of the things Emily loved about Caleigh's school was the monthly open house they ran for the families of children with hearing impairments.

The night she'd attended when Caleigh was 6 weeks old had opened up a world of support and friendship for both of them in those first few months and many of those friendships were still going strong despite the 7 months in witness protection and over 4 years in London.

Emily brought Caleigh to as many of these nights as she could, it gave her a chance to catch up with the other parents and she wanted to give back, give the families who had just received a diagnosis a friend… her experiences and her understanding of just what a mind-fuck they were going through.

Each month a different parent was asked to speak, Emily had never offered in the past because her schedule was so unpredictable but when they arrived to help set up she'd been approached by the principal. The father who was supposed to be speaking had pulled out at the last minute and would she mind getting up and telling her story?

So she sent Caleigh and Phoebe off with the principal to help set up while she got her thoughts together.

Halfway through the formal part of the evening Emily was introduced and made her way down to the podium.

Taking a deep breath she looked around the crowd, smiled, raised her hands and started to tell her story.

"Good evening, my name is Emily Prentiss. I'll start by telling you a few things about myself. I work for the FBI as the Unit Chief for the Behavioural Analysis Unit. I'm what's known as a hyper-polyglot which means I am fluent in 6 or more languages, by the time I was 16 I had lived in 8 different countries and most importantly my daughter Caleigh is in the 3rd grade here at Kendall. Caleigh has complete binaural sensorineural deafness due to vestibulocochlear aplasia. For those of you new to all of this that means the auditory nerves didn't grow and connect properly." Emily took a moment and continued.

"My life had already altered drastically, I was an FBI agent who travelled for 3 to 7 days at a time, I was in my late 30's and was in hospital after being involved in a car accident and during a routine blood test it was discovered I was pregnant. 3 days after I found out I was pregnant I was single. Then at 22 hours old Caleigh failed the ABR infant hearing screening, I'm sure many of you in this room received the same news and got the same reaction. 'Don't worry 90% of babies who fail at birth, pass at two weeks'. At 15 days old she passed the OAE and failed the ABR again. This time I'd done my research and knew what that most likely meant. The pediatrician sent us to the audiologist who sent us to the ENT specialist… Caleigh was 4 weeks old when they did a MRI and she was officially diagnosed. So I'm not just a single mom in the most exclusive and demanding unit of the FBI, I'm a single mom raising a child with a hearing impairment and my first thought is not fit for mixed company." she smiles as a light chuckle goes through the room.

"At the time I didn't realise just how lucky I was to get her diagnosis so young. So what did I do? I adapted… what choice did I have. I love my daughter and I will do anything for her so I learned sign, my mother, my friends and the babysitter learned sign, two days after I started telling people two of my friends turned up at my front door and installed vis-alerts to everything, I found this school and brought Caleigh along to an open night where I found friends, support and knowledge. I was happy when she smiled early, rolled over on time and scared stupid when she sat up, crawled and walked late. When Caleigh was old enough I started looking into service dogs, just after her 3rd birthday Clive came home with us, because at 3 years old children are starting to learn independence, their world is opening up and I wanted that for Caleigh. I could let her play with her back to me and not worry because if I called for her Clive would tap her hand and face whatever she needed to pay attention to and she learned to follow suit. I didn't need to worry about her not hearing an alarm because she had Clive with her, I knew that Clive would follow her anywhere. Unfortunately we lost Clive last year and it took time but now we have Phoebe who is a loyal friend and helper to Caleigh." she paused to take a drink of water.

"8 weeks ago her ENT specialist offered Caleigh the ABI, for those of you who don't know what it is, it's an implant placed in the brainstem that bypasses the auditory nerve. It will give her a version of hearing… after speaking with Caleigh I turned it down. If Caleigh changes her mind when she's older, when her understanding of the world matures with age and experience then I will support her 100% but I won't make the choice for her. My daughter is a person with hearing impairment, she can still think and feel, she is still capable of making her own informed age appropriate choices. As she is growing I am doing what her doctor told me to, 'worrying about her future, worrying about giving her the tools she needs to grow into a successful well adjusted human being'. Has it been easy? No, but then she's my kid… it's not supposed to be easy."

"One of my fondest childhood memories is my mother reading to me, so from the moment she was born I read to Caleigh… when I accepted that she couldn't hear me I spent hours at the computer translating children's books into sign. I bought a book stand and page turner so she could sit in my lap and see my hands and I could see the book. At five years old I knew English, French and we'd just moved to Cairo so I had a smattering of Arabic. When Caleigh was 5 years old I picked up a number of children's books in Spanish and started to teach her, I would point to a word and use the ASL sign for it. She can now read and write in English and Spanish and 2 months ago I started teaching her Greek. Eventually I plan to add Arabic and French and my mother wants to teach her Russian." Emily smirks and looks around the room.

"How many adults with full hearing only speak one language? My deaf 7 year old is trilingual…" Emily paused as she realised something "Technically she might qualify as quadrilingual as we lived in England for 4 years, ASL and BSL are two different languages. For those of you here for the first time… you and your family are very welcome here. We've all been there… the tests, the seemingly endless doctors visits, the late nights researching and working yourself into a right state with the what if's. The anger, at yourself, at the universe… the car accident I mentioned earlier… I was 5 weeks pregnant, right when the very first parts of the auditory system start to develop… is that why my baby can't hear? Did the injuries I sustained in that accident cause Caleigh's hearing impairment? To quote her doctor again 'it's irrelevant' because Caleigh's reality is that she's deaf. Knowing either way won't change reality… it took time but I let it go. Our children's reality is they have a hearing impairment. Our reality is we love them and we'll do everything to give them the tools they need to become well adjusted, successful members of society. That's me, that's Caleigh and that's our story… so far"

END

That's it everyone, the end of the story. Thanks to all my readers and reviewers, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

This is officially my longest and most reviewed story!

I'm working on my next project but there is currently no time frame on when it will be ready for posting.