The Lexie Project

Season 19, Episode 19 (The One With The Thumb Drive)

There's a soft knock on the door, then Chloe pokes her head in. "I heard someone say coffee."

"Dude, you're like the coffee fairy," I say.

This is the part where Benny should open one eye and say something funny about being gay, like, There's only one fairy here, sister, and it's me.

But he doesn't. Obviously.

Chloe comes in bearing a tray from Starbucks. There's a skinny latte for me, a mocha for her, and a pumpkin latte for Dee. We Baker-Sheldon girls believe in spoiling the nurses that are keeping our brother alive.

"Aren't you the sweetest thing," Dee says, finishing up taking Benny's vitals before she reaches for the latte.

We drink in silence for a moment, all looking at Bens. His face is less puffy and bruised than when he first came in, but he still looks shattered. The gauze is off the huge laceration across his cheek-my beautiful brother will have a scar there forever. He gets baths and stuff, but his hair is still kinda greasy. He's very particular about his hair, so sometimes I put dry shampoo in it because I know he'd be so embarrassed if he found out he appeared unwashed. Especially since Dee has helped us sneak Matt in here a few nights a week. I don't know what Matt says to him when they're together. I hope he's promising that they're not really broken up and that they will get married and live happily ever after like Chloe and Patrick.

There are tubes going up his nose and he's hooked up to an IV, which always makes me shiver. I hate needles. A monitor by the side of his bed draws a jagged electric-red graph of his heartbeats. Up, down, up, down. I know he flat-lined once during the operation and sometimes I just stare down that machine and let it know I'll kick its ass if it ever tries to pull anything like that on my watch.

"Any changes?" Chloe asks.

Dee shakes her head. "Vitals are good, though. You girls just keep doing what you're doing and he'll come around."

She heads out to finish her rounds, but not before she gives us each an encouraging squeeze on the arm and kisses Benny's forehead (which, she says, is totally against protocol, but he's her "angel"-dude can charm people even when he's in a freaking coma).

He'll come around, she says. I'm not so sure. What if he's like this forever?

"Fucking vultures are still outside the hospital," Chloe says as she dumps her backpack on the little sofa near the window and plops down. "Only two, but still...I'm, like, get a freaking life I hate you."

"You'd think the paparazzi would get tired of waiting after three weeks," I say.

"Nah. They're there to gets pictures of us coming and going," she says. "I'm almost glad Patrick's at school now-he'd be so freaking pissed if he saw them out there. He'd talk shit and it would just egg them on."

Patrick had to get to New York because his classes were starting at Columbia, so Chloe is living with Noe and I for the time being. He almost didn't go-Benny's not just his brother-in-law, he's pretty much Patrick's best friend-but Chloe made him go.

I give her a sad smile. "So you're back in the fray now."

She nods. "Looks like it."

Chloe had fought so hard to get out of the public eye and it sucks that after a year of going to the ends of the earth to shake the vultures off, she's right back where she started. Jax has been pressuring me to get Chloe on the show and though I know it would be good for ratings-killer, actually-I won't ask her. I wouldn't even let her if she offered.

"Um, FYI, Liam's outside again," Chloe says.

I concentrate on taking a nice, long sip of my latte. "And?"