Summary: Tragedy brings twelve-year-old Rachel back home to her father, and Mark hopes that things will go back to the way they were in the old days. But it’s not as easy as it seems. Part 3 in series.
Author’s Notes: Spoilers from Piece of Mind onward.
Disclaimer: The characters you’ve seen before are not mine, and I don’t make any money from writing about them.
Feedback: I’m new at this, so I’d really love to hear what you think about this series and my other stories. Please, pretty please, with a cherry on top?! Just send all comments and criticism to greeneblob707@yahoo.com with the title of the fanfic as the subject. It would make me ecstatic!
The news Mark had just received was not good. It wasn’t the kind of news he himself wanted to hear, it wasn’t the kind of news he wanted to share with others, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of news that he wanted to break to his daughter.
He paced outside Rachel’s recovery room with Elizabeth watching on worriedly. “You know, Mark, you don’t have to tell her yourself if it’s too much.”
When he didn’t respond she prompted him, “Mark?”
“No,” he suddenly said. “I couldn’t do that. I don’t want her hearing it from some strange doctor.”
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, knowing it was not the time or place for jokes, but not able to help herself nonetheless. “Then maybe I should do it?”
“Haha, very funny,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do.” She continued watching him move back and forth across the hall.
“Mark?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re making me nervous.”
He sighed and took a seat next to her. “What am I supposed to say? I’m sorry but your mother’s gorked out? Your mother’s alive, but we’re going to have to kill her because that’s the way that modern medicine works?”
Elizabeth looked on sympathetically. “Talk to her like you would talk to any other twelve year old in this situation. You’ve done it before.”
“I know, but…” he drifted off. “You should have seen her face when I told her I didn’t know if Jen was okay. I don’t know if I can stand to face that again.”
“You’re going to have to, Mark. You’re right, she needs to hear it from you,” she told him. “Look, it’s going to hurt her no matter who tells her. Maybe it will be harder for you if you do it, but believe me, it will be much easier on her.”
He sighed. Looking her in the eyes, he said, “It’s not going to be easy.” She locked her gaze on his. “No, it’s not. But you have to do it,” she stated firmly.
He nodded and made his way into Rachel’s room before he could change his mind. She was sleeping peacefully on the hospital bed, and Mark was afraid to wake her. They were the last few happy moments she would have for a while, why spoil them? It didn’t take long for Rachel to wake up. It was as if she felt her father’s presence and knew that he had news for her. She looked up to him with wide eyes but didn’t speak.
“Hey, Rache,” he greeted her, less enthusiastically than before.
“Hi,” she replied weakly, as if everything had been sucked out of her since the last time they had talked.
“Feeling any better?” he asked hopefully.
“No,” she answered grumpily. “My leg hurts even more. And I’m tired of sitting down. Can’t I walk around or something?”
“They’ll get you crutches soon and let you test them out.” Neither one said anything for a while. Mark was, in his head, going through all the possible ways to tell her about Jen. He had been stalling by checking up on her and making normal conversation, but he knew he needed to tell her. And soon, before he lost his courage.
“Rache, there’s something I have to tell you,” Mark said slowly.
“Is it about Mom?” she asked.
He was slightly surprised that she had anticipated it so well, but he simply said, “Yeah.”
“Is she out of surgery?”
“Yeah, she’s out,” he told her.
“Well, that’s good. As soon as I get my crutches I’m gonna go see her,” she informed him enthusiastically.
“Well, that might not be a good idea for awhile.”
“Why?”
“Your mom is in a very serious condition. The accident caused some bleeding in her brain that they didn’t find until they began the surgery,” Mark began to explain. He looked at Rachel, who didn’t seem to register the information right away. “During the surgery, there was a lot of stress on the heart and the brain. So all the pressure in the brain destroyed a lot of her brain cells. And she’s in a coma now.” He checked her face again, which now had a more confused look.
“So I can’t see her? Because she’s in a coma? But can’t I just talk to her and she can hear me? I see it on tv all the time.”
“Rache, the thing is, this isn’t the kind of coma that she can come out of. So much of her brain was destroyed that they can’t rebuild it.” He paused, wishing he knew an even nicer way to say these words. “She won’t be able to sit up, to walk or talk. She won’t even be able to eat or understand anything,” Mark stopped and took a deep breath. Rachel took the opportunity to interrupt.
“Why can’t you fix it? They operated on your brain,” she pointed out. Mark sighed, knowing that was coming. “Well, this is a little different. The brain has a lot of different parts, and the part that got damaged in your mom’s was the part that controls the most basic things. And they can’t repair it. There’s just no way,” Mark explained gently. “I’m sorry.”
“Why can’t I see her?” she asked.
“You can see her,” he said. “But you have to realize that there will be a lot tubes hooked up to her to help her. They feed her and do a bunch of other things that she can’t do for herself now.”
“I can handle that. I’m not a baby,” she retorted.
“I know, darlin’. I know. But it can be hard, even for the strongest people.” He looked on, wondering how to approach the next topic.
“Rachel, there’s one other thing that I have to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“Like I said, your mom isn’t going to be able to do a lot of normal things anymore. And I want you to ask yourself if your mom would really like to be living like this.”
Rachel looked confused again. “Nobody would like to be living like that,” she answered.
Mark looked a little relieved. It might be easier than he thought. “A lot of times what they do in hospitals in times like this is take her off all the machines and let her die peacefully. That, way, she isn’t hurt in any way, and all her other organs that are still good can be used for other people who need them.”
Rachel looked shocked. “They can’t just kill her, though!”
“No, they need permission to take her off the machines. They need to ask Craig. And you.”
“No, I mean, they can’t kill her!” she cried. “What if she wakes up? She could just wake up and if we kill her she never will wake up. You can’t let them kill her!”
Mark tried tried to calm her down, saying, “I know, Rache, I know this is hard. But I have never in my life seen anyone wake up from something this bad. Neither have any of the other doctors. It’s impossible. It’s better to let her die-“
Rachel refused to listen. “You just want to kill her,” she accused. “You don’t care if she dies. You hate her anyway.”
“Rachel,” he said, this time in a scolding tone. “I did not hate your mother. Now I know that this is not going to be easy. But you need to calm down, okay? I don’t want her to die any more than you do. But I think that we need to just think about this for awhile, okay? You can see your mom, and we don’t have to talk about this right now. But we need to make a decision very soon. And I wanted you to start thinking about it.”
Rachel was on the verge of tears. “No,” she said. “I’m telling Craig no. He’ll listen to me. He won’t kill Mom.”
Mark stared at her for a while. He leaned over to stroke her hair, but she pushed him away. “I want to talk to Craig,” she replied stubbornly. Mark sat back and sighed, giving up. He was hurt, and she knew it, but she didn’t care at the moment. If he wanted to kill her mother, he didn’t deserve to talk to her right now.
Mark studied Rachel’s face, filled with the same fear he had seen before. This time it was more frantic and more hurt. Sensibly, Mark knew that this was her way of grieving. Denial was the first stage of grief, something everybody went through. Trying to explain it to her would be useless. But he couldn’t help but be hurt by the fact that in one of the worst times in her life, she wasn’t going to comforted by her father. She wasn’t going to seek support from the man who had created her, who had watched her come into this world, and who had thought of her every day since then. She was going to be comforted by Craig, her stepfather, who had won his way into her life and become a part of it through Jen, through cheating, through… Mark couldn’t think anymore. He retreated from the room after saying a few more words to Rachel and left her to think by herself for a while. He hoped that Craig was more sensible about the situation, or they had a problem on their hands.
* * *
Outside the recovery room, Elizabeth was sitting, as she had been for the past few hours, on the hard wooden bench. Ryan had woken up, eaten, and was now using Elizabeth’s lap as a horsey, giggling happily. She had tried to take her mind off Mark and Rachel for a while and tried to concentrate on Ryan, who was delighted to have her undivided attention.
Craig had gotten the news a while ago. He was visiting Jen in the I.C.U. Neither Mark nor Elizabeth were sure as to what he was going to decide about Jen. Both were hoping for the same decision, but there was no way for them to know until he was done with his visit. The possibilities had undoubtedly been explained thoroughly by Jen’s doctors, and they had most likely enouraged Craig in the same way Mark had encouraged Rachel. From their experience just in the E.R., however, they both knew how difficult it was to persuade people to let go, especially in these cases, when everything had happened so quickly. Forcing someone to make a decision like this when their lives had been just fine twenty four hours ago was not easy, understandably, Elizabeth thought. The image of Craig overcome with the pain of the news was still in Elizabeth’s mind as Mark walked out of Rachel’s recovery room.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Not so great,” he answered.
“How bad was it?” she wondered softly.
“Well, she accused me of wanting to kill Jen. And then she asked for Craig,” he told her.
“You’re kidding,“ Elizabeth said. She noticed the hurt still in his eyes as Mark took his seat. “Look,” she continued, “I’m sure this is just her way of coping. She’ll understand a few years down the road.”
“I know,” Mark sighed. “I guess it’s just hard to accept that Craig is the one she asks for in a time like this.”
Elizabeth thought about this and replied, “I’m sure if Craig had told her the news she’d be crying for you right now.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I am,” she replied. “So I guess it was worse than you imagined?”
“Worse? I don’t know. I’ve seen her make a bigger scene in the grocery store over the wrong flavor of ice cream. So, no, I think it could have been a lot worse.”
Handing Ryan over to Mark, she said, “Well, that’s what we have to look forward to, I guess.”
Mark took Ryan and held him high over his head. “Not this one,” he said, looking in Ryan’s huge eyes. “Not you. You’ll grow up and eat whatever flavor ice cream we buy you, right?” Ryan’s gaze was focused down the hall at a bright light that fascinated him. “Right?” Mark asked again, bouncing him a little in his hands to get his attention. He smiled at Mark, who returned the smile brightly. Then Ryan, taking advantage of his most opportune position, stuck his tongue out, bringing with it a large amount of spit and drool. Mark closed his eyes for a moment as Ryan giggled excitedly.
“It’s not your day, is it?” Elizabeth asked Mark. “Come here, you,” she ordered, pulling a rag from the diaper bag.
Mark handed Ryan over to Elizabeth, and she smirked slightly. She sat Ryan on her lap, but told Mark, “I meant you.” Carefully, as to not smother Ryan, she leaned over and wiped his face. When she was finished, she said, “You know, I remember quite a while ago, someone once told me about some nice bad-day therapy.”
“Oh, really?” Mark replied, playing along. “Did it work?”
“Well, I suppose so,” she answered. “But I think I have something that works better.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Hmm, what’s that?”
“This,” she whispered as she leaned in for a kiss.
When it was over, Mark smiled. “Oh, you’re definitely right about that.”
Elizabeth chuckled, pleased with herself.
Playfully, Mark looked at Elizabeth with a pleading look. “If I’m good, can I still have a milkshake?”
Elizabeth looked at him and shook her head. Then, taking the rag, she tossed it in his face. He threw it back, but it hit Ryan in the face instead. “Good aim,” she said. Ryan giggled, as usual, and they both watched him as he chewed on the rag happily. Mark, although distracted for a while, remembered why they were there and returned to his previous expression. “Mark, it will be fine,” Elizabeth remarked firmly.
Mark looked up and smiled at her weakly. “Yeah,” he said, shaking his thoughts from his head. “Come here,” he said more cheerfully to Ryan, whom he removed from Elizabeth’s lap and began to tickle. Looking at Ryan’s happy face, he forgot about all his troubles for a while and immersed himself in playing with his little boy.