Jill and Meredith burst into the house and found Dru asleep on the couch.

“Oh, Dru, there you are, I didn’t see you there for a second,” Merry said.

The two girls noticed at the same time how different Dru looked. She was still sleeping, but it was the expression on her face that scared them. It was so peaceful; it was too peaceful.

“Dru?!  Dru,” Merry screamed.  Jill didn’t say anything, for the first time since Dru had known her;  Jill was speechless.  Merry began shaking Dru gentley.

Dru’s eyes remained closed.

Jill, regaining her senses, said,  “Check her pulse.”

Merry did so and found a pulse. “It’s there, but it’s really slow.”

The doorbell rang but neither of the girls heard it. Ivey and Cade opened the door. Jill looked up, saw the two of them, and said, “We need help. Call 911 or something!”

“What’s wrong with her?” Ivey asked calmly.

“She won’t wake up and Merry says her pulse is really slow.”

“What happened to you, Dru?” Cade asked in a constrained voice.

Dru was silent;  Cade doubted if she even heard him talking to her. Cade did not know what to do.  It was causing him so much pain to see Dru like this, knowing that this was partially his fault.

“Cade,” Ivey said, again, calmly, “She cannot hear you.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jill saw Dru shudder. “She moved!”

They all held their breath as Dru’s eyes fluttered. Her eyes opened partly, enough to see the outside world, but they did not focus on anything. They did not move the right way.

“Oh, God,” Merry cried. “Something’s wrong. Please, God, help her.”

No one else said anything. Other than Merry, none were religious, but they all respected her choices in life.

Cade edged over to Ivey and whispered softly in her ear, “Call home and see if Drake’s there.” Ivey went in the other room to do so; they other girls wrote it off as Ivey becoming too emotional to watch her friend like this.

Dru’s clear green eyes focused on Cade.  He was sure she had come out of whatever trance she had been in.  He leaned closer to her and noticed something very peculiar.  All of his suspicions were confirmed at this moment;  she smelled like Drake. She smelled like Drake and something else, but he could not identify the other scent.

“Dru?” he prompted.

“Jill, Cade,” she said softly, so quietly they almost missed it. “Merry.”

“Dru, what’s wrong? You had us scared for a minute, there,” Merry soothed.

Dru’s face went blank. “I--I...”

“You have to try to talk louder, we can’t hear you.”

Dru struggled to get her mind under control. Everything was so blurry and hazy right now. She looked around and saw she was in the den at her house. Why am I here? What’s wrong with me?

“What time is it? Why am I here?”

“School just ended,” Merry told her.

“School. I missed school.”

“Yes, you hit your head last night at Ivey’s house, remember?”

They all saw the realization creep into her face at the same time. She tried to move, to sit up, to stand. The effort exhausted her.

“I’m so tired,” Dru mumbled.

“Don’t go back to sleep, Dru,” Cade said, taking charge of the situation. “We need to make sure you’re okay.”

Dru nodded numbly. Her head did not hurt. Shouldn’t it be hurting? This morning-- Dru’s line of thought stopped.

“This morning...” she started.

“Yes?”

“I can’t remember. Find my mother...”

“I’ll go call her,” Merry said.

Cade said, “What happened after I came this morning, Dru?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember you coming.”

“What do you remember?”

“Last night...You and Ivey brought me home and I couldn’t walk straight. I don’t remember waking up this morning. But I know I did.”

“Yes, you were awake when I came. You don’t remember us talking?”

Dru uttered a sound meant to be no.

Jill left the room, presumably to help Merry. As she left, Ivey walked back in with a grim expression on her face.

“He’s not home, or not answering the telephone.”

“Who?” Dru asked.

“Drake.”

An expression of disgust crossed her face and she said, “I think he was here.”

“You said you couldn’t remember.”

“I don’t. I can’t. I just...know.”

“About last night, Dru,” Ivey began.

“I don’t want to talk about last night,” Dru interrupted. “I just want to forget about last night.”

Cade was seeing Dru differently now, for she was talking in a very repressed, abraded voice, and was very calm on the whole.

“Not yet,” Ivey told her. “You won’t be allowed to forget yet. First there will be doctors. ‘How did this happen?’ and such. Then, there will be your mother. She’ll be worse than any doctor could ever be.”

Cade gave Ivey a warning look. She was going too far.

“My mother?” Dru said in a kind of awe. “My mother! What am I going to tell Mother?”

“The truth. As bad as it may seem now, this will blow over, if you let it.”

Dru refused to believe her and turned away. Ivey and Merry came in, then, and told the threesome Mrs. Bassey was already on her way home. “Also, she said she had something to tell you, Dru, when she got home, and that you guys have to go on an emergency trip. You need to start packing.”

Dru stared at her, uncomprehending for a moment.

“Would you like us to start packing for you?” Ivey asked after a moment.

“Yes, please.”

The three girls scooted away, leaving Dru and Cade alone.

“I need a story,” Dru said timidly, “for what happened last night.”

“Don’t look at me, I won’t help you.  I think you should tell the truth.”

Dru looked at him in distaste and scooted away from him.  “What a good friend you are!  I’ll ask Ivey for help, I can trust-”

“What, Dru?  You can trust her?  You can’t trust me?”  Cade’s face was twisted in disgust, not unjustly.

“No, that’s not it,”  Dru said, finally understanding what she had known for the last five months.  There was something about Ivey that wasn’t quite right, something peculiar.  It was almost as if Ivey had been holding a secret from Dru ever since they met.  Dru sensed it within Cade, also;  she had never completely trusted him, either.  There was even some of it surrounding Drake.  Dru had never thought she was clairvoyant, but she knew there was something different about these three people who had so drastically changed her life;  maybe this was why she had felt so drawn to Ivey in the beginning, why she liked her so much.

“Then what is it?”

Dru looked at Cade, an awesome fear creeping through her body.  “I can’t even trust Ivey.”

“Then let me ask you this, Dru:  who do you trust?”

Dru, ashamed of her answer, whispered,  “Nobody.”

Cade was wrong;  he had thought she would get over this quickly.  How glad he was that it was Drake, not him, to be receiving this girl’s animosity!

Dru’s mother flew in the door at that time and stared at her daughter. She looked so tired and defenseless now. How more so would it be once she told her. A love swelled up in her chest; it was scary how much she loved her Dru. She would, and had, do anything for her daughter.

“Dru, honey, we need to get going. Will you get up?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Your father’s been in an accident in Europe. Their was a crash or something...”

They never got to the airport, but instead took a detour to the hospital. Dru’s condition worsened and it became clear very quickly that she wouldn’t have survived the flight.
 

They were at the hospital when the phone call came.  The dreaded phone call.  Later, when Dru was thinking back, she blamed it all on that one phone call.  It was silly, she knew they would have found out some way or another.

But the phone call came, and Marilyn Bassey was called to the front desk.  All Dru could remember of that evening was her mother coming to her with tears streaming down her face.  “Dru, honey,” she had sobbed.  “That call came from a hospital in Rome.  Your father was attacked.”

“Is he all right?” Dru asked.

Marilyn did not know how to answer her daughter.  After what had happened to her that afternoon, she didn’t know if Dru could take another shock.  So this is what it has come down to, Marilyn thought.  My baby, my strong-willed little baby, how I hurt for you!  “He’s dead, Dru.”

“He’s coming home to see me,” Dru exclaimed.

“He was on the way to the hospital when someone stabbed him.  They said he died in the hospital thirty minutes ago.  He wasn’t in pain, Dru, and he died calling for you.”

Dru went into shock.  That word: dead, she had never really associated it with her life.  The only funeral she had ever been to was her mother’s Aunt Hilda,  and she had never known her.  Dru’s mind continually chanted it in her head, taunting her.  Dead, dead, dead, dead . . .

Dru was later told that she was not unconscious, but she was not responding to anything anyone was doing to her.  Dru came out of shock after eleven hours, they told her.  The doctors would have let her go after one night of observance, but they noticed the bandage on her head and wanted to take a look.  They told her she had a severe concussion and because it had not been properly treated right away the side effects were lasting longer than normal.

Over the next five days Dru failed to get any better.  She was still not able to walk without the assistance of something, whether it be a wall or a person.  They suspected it was because of a nasty bruise on her hip, but when that was nearly gone and she still couldn’t walk they knew otherwise.  She frequently lapsed into unconsciousness, at very opportune moments.  Whenever someone asked her a question she did not want to answer she simply willed herself to faint, and there she would go.

After five days of being in the hospital and not making any progress some doctors came in with Dru’s mother.  They told Dru they had been talking with her mother and had decided that a psychiatrist should evaluate her.

The next day someone named Dr. McLaoy came in and asked Dru a whole bunch of strange questions.  Dru tried to be as rude as possible and answered only in monosyllables.  The doctor gave up and left.  Dru had been scared the doctor would stumble upon some interesting information. Because of her father’s death no one had really questioned her about what happened;  when they had, she had fainted, not only of will, but fear.

Later that afternoon Dru’s mother came in by herself.  “Dru, the doctors have told me that you can leave within two days if you want to.  Dr. McLaoy said you’re going through a common case of denial, and that you are using your illness as an excuse not to deal with what has happened to you.”  She paused.  “I’ll be allowed to take you home anytime after tomorrow morning.  Think about it.”  Then she left Dru.

Dru did think about it.  She did not know if she wanted to go home to all of the painful reminders of what had happened to her. Everytime she sat on the couch, she would remember the misery of finding out about her father. She would remember all the pain in her head. Worst of all, every time she would pass the guest room she would remember the horror of finding out her father was dead.  She did not know if she could go home to all those reminders.
 

While Dru was eating dinner that night she had some visitors.  It was the first time they let anyone see her besides her mother and hospital personnel.

Meredith, Jill, and Ivey came to see Dru.

“Hi,” they all said.  Ivey set a vase of daisies on a table, and Jill set an assortment of flowers next to the daisies.

“Hi,”  Dru returned.

They all looked a little bit uncomfortable.  “I am so sorry about what happened,” Ivey said.  Dru knew she was not talking about her father, but Drake’s unexpected show of violence.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dru reminded her.

“I know, but still . . .”

Dru changed the subject.  “They said I can come home tomorrow if I want to,” she told them.

“That’s great!” Merry exclaimed.

The foursome chatted for awhile and then Jill, Ivey, and Merry left.  Dru looked back down at her unfinished dinner.

It would almost be worth it to leave the hospital just to have real food, Dru thought.

Then Dru had another visitor.  It was Drake.

“Get out of here,” she said threateningly.

“I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

Dru threw the remainder of her applesauce at him.  “Get out of here!” she shouted at him.

He ducked just in time to see the applesauce splatter on the door.  “Please, Dru, be rational about this!”

“I’m not going to be rational if you aren’t.  Now get out!”

Dru threw her whole dinner tray at him; it missed.  “Go away!” she screamed loudly.  Drake hightailed it from the room.

A nurse ran into the room.

“Oh my,” the nurse commented as she surveyed the floor.

“He wouldn’t leave,” Dru explained simply, calmly.  She offered no other explanation.

Mere minutes before the visiting period was over, Cade strolled in.  He set a vase of lilies near the growing bushel of flowers.  They were Dru’s favorites, lilies were;  not Easter lilies, but lily of the valley.

“How did you know?”  Dru asked Cade.

“Know what?”

Dru nodded toward the lilies.  “The lilies, they’re my favorite.”

“Your mother told me.”

“You’ve been talking to her?” Dru said.

Cade sat down in a chair near the bed and changed the subject.  “How have you been?”

“Bored.  They don’t do anything to entertain us here.  All they do is bring the food in, take the food out, bring the medication in-”

“What medication are you on?”

“I don’t know, I have not bothered asking.  But there are two of them.  I take one pill at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and a different kind before I fall asleep.”

“Did you have trouble sleeping the first night you were here?”

“Yes, I did.  But what does that have to do with anything?”

“The pill you take before you go to sleep is a sedative;  judging by the scars on your arms from the IV, the other pill probably increases your appetite.”

“How do you know all this, Cade?”

“Experience.”  Before Dru could think about his response he asked her another question.

“When do you get out of here?”

“Whenever I want to.”

“Then why don’t you go home right now?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid to go back home.”

“Drake, right?”

“Partly.”

“Why can’t you go home and hope for the best?”

“Hope!  Hope, Cade?  Really, I thought you would be smarter than that!”

“What are you talking about?”

“What is left for me to hope for?  All I wanted is gone.  Gone, in one day.”  Dru felt the pain of what she had been denying for the past week oppress her.  “My father is dead.  Dead!  Do you even know what that means?”

Cade knew some piece about hope, hope dying.  Normally he didn’t say them aloud, because people did not understand what they meant to him.  But Dru need this, most likely more than he did.

“Dru, there are some very smart men that lived long ago.  Luckily, they wrote down their thoughts so we could gain insight on some of the most important issues of life.  Oscar Wilde is one of these men.  I’m remembering part of his The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and am aware of how important it is for you to hear it.”

“I don’t understand what-”

Cade cut her off and started speaking,

 “We did not dare to breath a prayer
      Or give our anguish scope!
 Something was dead in each of us,
      And what was dead was Hope.”
 

Dru told her mother she wanted to go home the next day.

The next day her mother brought Dru a wheelchair because she still could not walk without assistance, and Dru left the hospital.  The psychiatrist told her mom,  “I bet she’ll be better in no time at all.  It’ll do her good to get back into familiar habits."

So on Sunday, Dru was back at home.  She would not go into her room, so that night she slept in the guest room.  She thought it would fill her with bittersweet memories,  being in the room she had decorated for her father, but somehow it made her feel closer to him.

Marilyn Bassey arranged for Ivey to take Dru out shopping.  She needed some knew clothes that didn’t cling to her hip, because of the bandage she had there.  The bruise had disappeard, but she still complained of pain.  This was the perfect opportunity for Marilyn to accomplish what she wanted.
 

“I’m sure you already know why I asked you here,” Marilyn began, glaring at the young man in front of her.

He nodded.

“Why is your brother not here?” she asked him.

“Drake is in Tennessee at the moment,” Cade answered.

“Alright, I’m going to start out with the truth here, and I’ll expect you to answer in truth, also.  I have had you investigated, your whole family.  I know you are the son of Mark Burke, and I know Mark Burke killed Dru’s father.  I also know of every FAX you have received from him since September.  You name it, and I know it.”

Cade gazed at her in a mixture of fear and awe.  “Then why have you not turned us in?”

“For some erratic reason, I didn’t believe you would do anything.  I didn’t, that is, until last week.  I was a fool to trust anyone with Druscilla’s well-being, and  she has suffered because of it.  I feel horrible, know I’m a horrible mother, and this is as much my fault as your family’s.

“I’m giving you a warning, one which I will expect you to pass on to the other’s involved.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You so much as lay a finger on Dru and I will have every federal agent within a three-state-radius on your tail within two hours.  And I can do this, I have the power.  I’m sure you don’t know this, because Dru does not even know, but I am one of the wealthiest women in the country, and wealth gives one an enormous amount of power.  If you or your family do anything to Dru ever again, I’ll let you see how far my power extends.  Have I made myself clear?”

“Crystal clear.”

“And don’t think you can get away with anything, either.  I already have ten PI’s hired to watch Dru during school, out shopping, driving around town, at parties, and beyond.”

“Nothing more will happen, I assure you.”

“Wonderful.  Now, my last thing. What is it that happened to Dru, exactly?”

“You don’t?know?”

“No, I do not.”

“My brother.  Drake threw her across the room when she wasn’t--er--cooperating.”

“Thank you; you are dismissed.”

Marilyn watched the man exit.  Yes, she thought, this revenge shall be sweet.
 

Dru now knew she would never see her father again, had finally accepted the fact.  She had missed his funeral a few days ago, because the doctors did not think it would be good for her;  that was okay with her.  She knew that a few days ago she would not have gone to the funeral even if she had been well.

The next day Dru’s mother drove her to school.  From the second Marilyn helped Dru out of the car people were staring at them.

Almost everyone knew that Dru had had a horrible accident, in which she had received a severe concussion.  They also knew her father had died.

There were two groups of people that day.  There were the people who walked up to Dru and said they were sorry, and the group that looked at their feet as they walked by.  Dru could not stand either.  Ivey pushed Dru around all morning, since all of their morning classes were together.  Everywhere they went they saw sympathetic faces.

At lunch Dru found a problem.  The new cafeteria the school had built was nice for most people, but not her.  They were supposed to walk up about ten steps to get into it and there was not a wheelchair ramp.  Ivey helped Dru out of the wheelchair and carried it up to the top.  As she walked back down to help Dru a familiar voice behind them said,  “Need help?”

Dru nodded.  Brian picked her up and carried her up the steps.  He set her down in her chair and walked away.

This is the first time in over a year that he hasn’t asked me out on a date the minute he saw me, Dru thought.  She felt a mixture of excitement, and, yes, even disappointment.

Jill came bounding up the steps and looked after Brian.  “Well, I guess even jerks can be nice sometimes,” she said.  A typical Jill-comment.

Though the cafeteria was hard to get into, it was easy to eat at.  They had put huge built-in tables all over the place.  At the far end were tons of folding chairs.  The students were supposed to bring a folding chair over to the table and sit.  It was even easier for Dru, she had only to ask someone to push her over to the table and started eating.

The usual people sat at the table: Neil, Merry, Jill, Ivey, Jon and Terry (two of Neil and Cade’s football friends), Cade, and Dru.

They talked about the normal things, but Dru felt out of it.  She felt as if she had changed, and realized she had.  She knew much more of the world, the real world, not the sheltered life she had lived.  Drake had made her see that she could not always be an innocent, naive, little girl. Dru was quickly becoming a bitter, cynical person.  She did not know whether she liked it or not.

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