Becoming Anne Again

Chapter Fifty-Six

A/N Trigger warning for mention of sexual abuse. 

Terrible revelations awaited Cape Cod, a town about to shaken to its core. Mr. Phillips, a formerly respected public employee, an assistant principal at the town's middle school, had systematically been grooming and molesting a thirteen year old girl. The mother, Allison Andrews, a receptionist for the local pediatrics clinic, had been complicit throughout the entire affair, knowing that her daughter, Prissy Andrews, had been systematically exposed to pornography, before being instructed to participate in more explicit acts. Later, she would defend Mr. Phillips, and then she would be too busy defending herself in court.

All these things were horrible, but to three people waiting outside the ICU, they were irrelevant.

Diana found she couldn't stop crying. She wanted to stop, wanted to be able to breathe, but even when she had gone silent, her shoulders were trembling. Then she was pacing, and then she was buried in her mother's shoulders again. Matthew and Samantha Cuthbert were both on the verge of a breakdown, but they kept it together. Anne wasn't gone. Anne was beyond those doors. Anne was going to make it. Anne had to make it. They were working on stabilizing her, working on stopping the blood, and then she was going into surgery to repair arterial bleeding.

After three minutes of the brain being deprived of oxygen, the patient is in risk of permanent brain damage. After six minutes, the patient will most likely enter cardiac arrest. In general, the patient will not survive long after that.

Anne had a pulse. Technically, Anne had survived. The problem was, no one knew exactly how long Anne had been unconscious for, or how long Anne had been deprived of oxygen, let alone considering her significant amounts of blood loss. Prissy, who was being treated and administered a rape kit, could barely even say what day it was, and Mr. Phillips was too overwhelmed by the holding cell of Cape Cod's police department to know anything at all.

Anne's "effects" were in a plastic bag between Samantha and Diana. Diana hated that word. "Effect." It was a word that she had heard to describe what was left on some corpse, a bag that detectives on "Law and Order" held while gathered in the city morgue. Not the belongings of a very much alive Anne. Her cell phone—which Diana knew she would need back, for when the two would sleep on the beach in the summer, since the parents wouldn't let them do something like that alone without a phone—some bobby pins, which Anne was going to need to finish her run as Belle—and some loose change. They weren't effects.

But just as Diana was about to hide her face in her mother's chest again, the phone lit up. No one seemed to notice—it was on silent, presumably had been since Anne had entered the school. Probably before that, probably had been put on silence for the night's performance.

Had they really been performing Beauty and the Beast just a few hours prior? Now Anne was hooked up to an oxygen tank—right, the phone.

"I think someone's calling Anne," Diana said, suddenly straightening up, and grabbed for the plastic bag.

Gilbert.

Her hands shook, and before Samantha could ask who it was, Diana was already ripping the phone out of the bag. "Gilbert," she choked out, and she hit Accept. "Hello?"

"Anne? What's—"

"No, I'm not..." Diana's lips trembled, and then the tears were flowing again. "No, I'm sorry, it's Diana."

Gilbert could barely make out the words between Diana's cries, but that made it that much more chilling.

He had known something was wrong when they took off, but he didn't know what it was he could do. Anne wasn't saying and Diana was back in Anne's life and, no, he wasn't going to get jealous—but then the hours ticked by and Anne hadn't returned and something was wrong. So he called. Three times, and yet no one picked up. Until the fourth, and he was met with Diana's blubbering voice. "What's wrong? Where's Anne?" He asked, his voice high pitched with panic.