"Lauren?"
She heard the voice as if she were at the bottom of a well. Her head felt like it was filled with cotton, but at least the rest of her didn't scream in pain. She squeezed her eyes tighter, because she just wanted to stay down here, at the bottom.
"Lauren? Babe? Can you hear me? It's Joe. Please, babe, tell me you're okay."
The voice sounded closer now. She recognized the voice as her husband's, but she was annoyed by his words, because they were pulling her up out of the well when sleep was so much better.
"Five more minutes," she mumbled.
"Oh, thank God," Joe cried, and to her dismay, even deep down the well, she heard him sobbing, and it was a terrible noise.
"Don't cry, Dad," she heard Naomi say, but she was crying too. "Look, her eyes are opening!"
Her eyes cracked open, and the blare of light was so intense that she closed them again.
"Come on, babe," Joe said. "Tosh is doing okay, he has a broken arm to match mine and some stitches on his head, but he's okay. They're just keeping him overnight for monitoring to make sure he doesn't have a concussion. Now we need you to be okay, so our family can be whole again."
"Fuck off," she mumbled, resentful at his implication that she had a duty to be there for her family, true as it might have been. "It's too bright in here."
"Maybe we can turn down the light?" Naomi said.
The light wasn't as intense the next time she cracked her eyes open. She blinked a few times to clear her vision, and Joe and Naomi swam into focus. Joe looked terrible, his eyes red rimmed and bloodshot. Naomi looked beautiful after a good cry.
"Where's Tosh?" she asked.
"Next bed over." Joe pulled back the curtain separating one emergency room bed from another, and there was her sweet boy, arm in a cast, lying slightly inclined. Turning her head to see him proved difficult, as her neck felt like it was in a brace.
Tosh turned his head and saw her, and smiled. "Hey, Mom."
"Hey, baby," she said, feeling tears run down her cheeks.
"You're okay?"
"I think so. What did they say?"
"You don't remember the last few hours?" Joe asked.
"It's a bit hazy. I think I got a lot of drugs. My neck..."
"You had some pretty bad whiplash. Also a dislocated shoulder and fractured tibia; apparently it smacked the frame hard during the rollover. While you were out they popped your shoulder back in and set your leg in a cast. It could have been worse. Your small size might have actually saved you from worse damage, just like Tosh."
His mention of size reminded her of the taller passenger in the car with them. "What about Al? Where is he?"
Joe looked at Naomi, who looked back at him with tears in her eyes and a trembling lip.
"Where is he?" Lauren demanded.
Joe closed his eyes and sighed. "He's in the ICU. Apparently the rollover caused the top of his head to smack into the ceiling of the Highlander pretty hard. He has a lot of swelling in the brain, and... uh... they had to induce a coma to relieve it."
"Oh, thank God," she cried. "He's still alive?"
"As far as I know. But he's in bad shape, babe. He's on a ventilator to help him breathe. Rachel and the kids are with him now."
"Oh, God." It was painful to cry. Her body convulsed in ways that challenged the constraints of the neck brace. "Poor Al! Poor Rachel! Poor kids! Do they hate me?"
Joe frowned and said, "No, of course not, why would they hate you? It was an accident."
"They didn't tell you what happened?"
"What?"
"We were being chased by someone in what looked like an unmarked police cruiser. It tried to run us off the road. I was trying to cut into the turnoff, but with the wet weather we skidded and flipped."
Joe gasped. "Do the police know about this?"
"I don't know. Al was on the phone with nine-one-one, describing our pursuer. There was a guy who looked in on us to make sure we were okay, he said he saw everything, maybe he talked to the cops."
Joanie chose that moment to slip in. Her face sagged in relief when she saw Lauren. "Oh, thank God," she said. "I saw the Highlander after it flipped. It's pretty much a write-off. You're lucky to be alive."
"Al's not so lucky," Lauren pointed out, and started sobbing again.
Joanie nodded and gave Joe a pained look.
"I need to see him," Lauren said. "I need to see him and tell him how sorry I am."
"Babe, you're not going anywhere," Joe said stiffly, perhaps sensing the ghost of Lauren's feelings for him, feelings that were supposed to belong completely to Joe now. "At least not right now. You have your own healing to do."
"He's right," Joanie said. "You have a neck brace, an arm in a sling because of the dislocated shoulder, and a cast on your leg. Movement is going to be a challenge for you right now."
"There are wheelchairs, aren't there?" she growled. "This is a fucking hospital, isn't it? You can wheel me there to see him."
"Lauren, he wouldn't even be able to hear you, so your apology would be useless," Joe snapped.
His callousness made her gasp.
"Anyway, there's more," Joe said. He cast a sidelong glance at Naomi and Tosh. "But I'll tell you later."
"What?" she demanded.
"Later. In private."
His look was so cold and his voice so hard that she decided not to press him.
The curtain parted, and a blonde woman her age, in scrubs and a white coat, stepped inside. "Oh, she's awake!" she said. "Hi, Lauren, I'm Doctor Markovich. You had quite a night, tonight."
"My friend," she said. "Al Mackenzie. He's in a coma. I want to see him."
Doctor Markovich looked to Joe with raised eyebrows. Joe sighed in exasperation and shook his head. "Well, I don't know anything about that," she said. "I'm your doctor, and your son's. My responsibility is to attend to both of you. If your friend is in the ICU, he has a team looking out for him, don't you worry."
Lauren ground her eyes shut in frustration. When she opened them again, another tear rolled down her cheek.
"Let's check you over," Doctor Markovich said. "Can I have a little privacy, please?"
Joe, Joanie and Naomi nodded and went back out into the corridor, and Doctor Markovich closed the curtain on Tosh. She went through the routine of listening to her heart with the stethoscope, checking her blood pressure and temperature, the reflexes on her uncast leg and her unbound arm. She looked in her eyes with the ophthalmoscope, and palpated her stomach.
"Ow!" Lauren yelped.
"Oh, sorry," she said. "Are you experiencing cramping?"
"Cramping?" she whimpered, the implications of such a development settling heavily on her heart.
Doctor Markovich leaned in and said low in her ear, "While the paramedics were loading you into the ambulance, they noticed you'd leaked menstrually through your jeans."
"Oh..." she breathed. "Oh, no..."
"It was rather heavy," she said, her voice soft and very gentle, "and when we worked on you we wanted to be sure there hadn't been a rupture in your uterus from the accident or other internal damage. You were given a pelvic exam and an ultrasound. Fortunately, your internal organs are okay, but we tested your discharge and discovered there was more than what we'd normally expect, if you get my meaning." She cleared her throat as she waited for Lauren to deny that she got her meaning, and when Lauren didn't, she said, "We had to do a D and C to prevent infection and even heavier bleeding later."
Lauren closed her eyes as tears rolled down her cheeks, but didn't let herself cry. What was the point? Why mourn something that was barely more than a suggestion? Why be surprised at this loss, after a devastating accident, when she'd lost two others at the peak of health? Why pretend to mourn when the feeling that overwhelmed her at that moment was relief?
"I'm so sorry," Doctor Markovich said. "Was it something you..."
"Does Joe know about this?" she whispered, still with her eyes closed because she didn't want to see the woman's face.
"I'm afraid so. He's your husband and emergency contact. Was this something unexpected?"
Lauren barked a laugh. "That's a safe assumption."
"Is there anything you need me to do?" she asked. "Do you need me to report him to the police?"
"What?!" Lauren squawked, opening her eyes wide.
"Are you afraid of your husband? He's a rather large man, and if this is--"
"No! No. Sorry, Doctor, it's not like that. It was just something I wasn't ready to tell him, yet, that's all. But I guess now there's nothing to tell."
"No, I'm afraid not. It's gone."
She sighed and wiped her cheeks with the unbound hand. "How long will I be here?"
"You'll stay here for monitoring today and overnight, just in case there's internal bleeding we don't know about. Otherwise, your injuries are superficial."
Lauren took the doctor's hand and looked her in the eye. "I'm not going anywhere until I see him."
"Him?"
"Al."
"Oh, your friend in the coma?"
"Yes. Is there a way you can wheel me over to see him?"
Doctor Markovich looked at her for a long time. Then she leaned in and whispered in her ear, "Was it his?"
Lauren closed her eyes and nodded as she began sobbing. If Al never woke up, he'd never know his baby was gone. It might be a mercy, but not to Rachel, or to Logan and Emma. They needed him to wake up, and she thought if she could go to the ICU and see him, talk to him, she might be able to wake him up. It was irrational, egotistic, and she knew it, but knowing it didn't dampen her desire to see him, to tell him how sorry she was for screwing up, for not factoring in the rain more, for not slowing down a little before she'd pulled that stunt. Her mistake might have killed them all, and might still kill him, and she'd never forgive herself if it did.
Dr. Markovich placed a gentle hand on her arm and said, "Rest, now. I'll see what we can do when the time comes."
"Thank you," Lauren whispered.
Dr. Markovich left, and Joe, Joanie and Naomi reentered the room. When Joe locked eyes with her, his face tightened, and immediately she knew that he knew she knew he knew, and how he reacted to this news would determine whether their marriage survived, or whether it died in this room.
Thanks for reading this far! Lauren's scheme, whether you thought it was diabolical or the only thing she could have done to preserve her marriage, has failed before she could complete it, and Al is in even worse shape than she is. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about the medical procedure, leave a comment and let me know; I strive for authenticity.
To see how Sunny reacts when he sees his friends laid up at the hospital, click on "Continue reading."