by Feral and Rob blanc

Disclaimers: See Part 1.

Caution: Caution: ch 17 in particular may be difficult for many to read. It was certainly harrowing to write. I also have to thank my beta, Beurre blanc for her tireless help in making this series worth reading. She not only beta’d as usual, but in ch 17 she co wrote where I faltered. She is truly the finest friend I could ever have. Thank you, rob.

Dedication: For Slim.

Feedback is always welcome: This is an original piece based on things I’ve done and experienced. I own these characters and these words. The world I live in isn’t shiny, but it is interesting. I don’t flinch from gross. Don’t steal. Do comment. Please...feral@e-scribblers.com.

Copyright © 2008 by C. R. Johnson and R. M. Kirwan. All Rights Reserved.

---

“What I’m trying to tell you is it’s too soon to be sure of anything – and too soon to worry. The fact there are no new lesions on the MRI, and nothing on the EEG to indicate a seizure disorder is heartening, and I’m fairly confident this was a singular event. If, as we observe Rae over the next few weeks, we find reason for action, there are excellent results to be had from medications and rehabilitative therapies. I’m confident this won’t impact the healing process.” Smelly guy sounded pleased.

Rae wanted to strangle him. “What triggered me?” Her increasing facility with words was doubly heartening now that she could use it on this GOOBER.

“Exhaustion, stress, and a slight electrolyte imbalance, along with all of the drugs in your system – all that on top of the aggravated state of your brain following so much trauma will have played a part in it. We’ll never really know how much of each.”

“So it could happen again?” Elsa asked.

“It could, but for now, the more she stays calm, the better.”

“And that’s answer? My fucking life?” Come here ya little runt, let me rip you a new asshole!

“Rae?” Elsa warned softly.

“No!” Rae barked at her. “Don’t want calm. Don’t want reasonable! Want normal and pissy and know can touch wife again no shit scared of both when orgasm into fucking grand mal!” She didn’t care she was using old terms. She was old, for fucks sake! And it was the longest semi-sentence she’d managed in weeks. She didn’t care if it was confused and jumbled.

“That’s understandable Rae…” he began, but she cut him off.

“Babe, shades in purse?”

“Uh, yeah…” Elsa wasn’t sure how her sunglasses fit in with this, until Rae started tearing off the dressings that covered her eyes. “Rae!”

One of the tugs pulled at more stitches than the others, and Rae hissed as it tore at her skin, but a few seconds later her eyes were uncovered and fixed on the neurologist’s face… or, well, damned close to his face, more like his shoulder. “If more, then I start now, am standing independence! No more downing talking. No more covered eyes!” she challenged.

The doctor, having never been forced to endure one of Rae’s glaring looks, very nearly flinched. Instead, he nodded to Elsa to help Rae put on the glasses. Rimless Lennon-style copper, they looked odd on Rae, but as soon as they fell into place, Rae relaxed. Light still bothered her, obviously.

“Well, since I’m here, let’s take a look at those eyes of yours, and we can discuss how to care for them.”

Rae ground her teeth. She’d won, but it wasn’t getting her anywhere very fast.

---

She wound up and let fly with another cast, grinning at the sound of scrambling paws and the thud of a small body as it traveled the floor of the entryway in pursuit. She giggled. She didn’t have to see more than the scrambling blur of brown and black fur to know how this worked. Cast the mouse over the rail, hear the thud, reel and redo.

Elsa was gonna have a fit: apparently fishing for fur balls lacked dignity. The thought made Rae grin even wider. Later, she’d break out the ear swabs and play fetch…

…Dumb cat…

---

It was a conspiracy. They taunt you with promises of solid food just so they can gag the shit out of you when they pull the OG tube, and then they bring you tea and Jello!

Jello!

Rae shuddered. God, she truly abhorred Jello, and believed unequivocally that any form of flotation device snuck into the quivering goop was karmic vengeance. Somewhere, some-when, in her colorful past, Rae must’ve done something really awful to have brought down on her head this plague of chunky goo.

Holding the plastic cup beneath her nose, she took a sniff. “What color is it?”

El didn’t answer right away, which meant it was either awful orange or…

“Green, isn’t it?” Rae’s voice fell flat on the hard surfaces of the room. If she ate this and kept it down without problem, they were going to move her out of the ICU and into a regular room sometime in the next week. But God, did it have to be Jello?

“Uh, yeah, it is,” El admitted. “With what looks like diced pear, I think.” Exactly what Walter had said earlier.

It was more habit than anything that turned Rae’s face to look imploringly at her partner. With her eyes no longer dressed, and her face scraped up, she must’ve looked more like a pizza than a human being, but the look was one they’d shared over many a holiday meal and cookout. Rae was pretty sure El could read it through the interference of sunglasses.

“Suck it up, you big pussy, and eat it. I’ll make sure they mark you down for no Jello when you get a room without needles every fifteen minutes,” El urged.

With a sigh that must’ve weighed a ton, Rae felt for her little plastic spoon and began her excavation of the cup. “They worry I’m swallow real spoon?”

“More likely they think you’ll sharpen it and dig your way out,” El offered, watching as a hunk of green and whitish-yellow disappeared between Rae’s lips. There was little hesitation, though Rae was going on touch, and she was holding the cup in her good left hand while wielding the spoon with her wounded right.

Rae didn’t like the weakness of her right grip any more than she cared for the menu, but she knew the shoulder was healing well and the weakness would end. Jello, on the other hand, Jello was fucking forever! She shuddered as she let the goo slide off her tongue and swallowed.

“You called me pussy!” she pointed out. “Lesbian approval board have card revoked.”

“Big threat there girl.”

“Would quit watching me! Know how my mouth, even in the dark!” Rae groused as she gagged down the second spoonful. “Find all good things sorts in dark.” She knew she’d hit the mark correctly when she heard El shift. If this kept up, she was gonna get damned annoyed and then work her way all the way up to peeved. She hated being watched! She wasn’t a two year old, even if she did sound like one!

“Mmm, just think of all the interesting things you can search for once I get your butt home,” El reminded her.

For just a second, Rae forgot what she was doing and stabbed her thumb with her little plastic spoon. “Shit!”

Letting out a small laugh, El stood and bent to kiss a bared spot on Rae’s nape.

At the feel of wet soft lips so unexpected on such sensitive skin, Rae shuddered in a completely different way.

“You’re half way done with that,” El whispered.

“Huh?”

Chuckling softly, El ran her hands through Rae’s dark hair. “Just eat.”

“Feels funny.”

“You always say that about Jello.”

“Cause weird and horse hooves and cattle horns.” She set the nearly empty cup and spoon on the table and leaned her head back. “Head hurts.” Oh God, she was whining. She hated when she whined!

A second kiss landed on Rae’s lips, and she kissed back, gently.

“Now, while you digest, tell me how the hell Chris got her lips on you.”

“Yuck!”

Elsa smiled at the face Rae pulled. Apparently Chris was worse than Jello.

“Good answer. She was crying when I got back to the family sitting room. Mom was on her usual rant, and Chris wouldn’t look at either of us.”

“Girl is gay.”

Despite hearing Rae say it before, the term startled Elsa. “Chris? ‘I-hate-you,-you-fucking-perverted-lesbian-slut’ Chris?”

Rae nodded scooting over as Elsa settled next to her on the bed.

“Well, that explains the vehement disgust.”

Another spoonful of slime entered Rae’s mouth and she made a face. “Has lover college. Wants what us is.”

“She has a girlfriend?” Elsa squeaked. On Rae’s nod she groaned, then her brain caught up with what Rae had said. “What do you mean, wants what us… we are?”

“Love.”

---

Three days since she’d talked to Tim, and she was taking the long walk from car to barn like a dawdling toddler to avoid what she was sure was coming next. She should have just kept her mouth shut and said nothing. Who’d know she was passing? She could’ve just kept up the ruse and left it at that…

But no, she had to go and tell Tim, the guy with the mouth hinged in the middle! The guy who told every secret he’d ever known. Every Christmas present, every surprise party, every quiet milestone: Tim’s yammering had been all over it.

“Hey Irons!” She looked up to find Jonas on his way toward her, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Terry’s lookin’ for your ass.”

She sighed and flipped him off by way of greeting, and he laughed in return. Stepping up her pace, she’d barely closed the door to the bay when she could hear Tim’s laughter in the duty room and Terry bellowing at him to ‘shut the fuck up’. She followed her nose towards the smell of coffee and toasted bread, and received a quick but guilty grin from Tim as she entered.

“What have you done now?” she asked, feeling a bit sick to her stomach.

Toast sticking out of his mouth, his eyes widened in understanding and he began to shake his head vigorously.

“He volunteered you both for the rodeo coverage this weekend, is what he did. So find your spurs and take a spare shirt. You know what always happens at the rodeos…” Terry breezed through the room to fill his coffee cup and tossed her a measuring look. “How do you feel about dirt bike races?”

Mouth half dropped open, Rae turned her gaze from her boss to her cousin and growled, “I’m gonna fucking kill you!”

“Not till after the rodeo and the races you’re not…” Terry mumbled as he headed back to his cubby hole office.

Tim tried the puppy dog eyes routine, but it wasn’t working.

---

“Maybe you should tell me what happened here today.”

Rae listened, Elsa’s side of the conversation more than enough. Chris had spoken her piece earlier and Rae didn’t want to be in the middle. Even though I pretty much am.

“No, I’m not going to kill you just yet. Rae told me what you said, about being gay. I’m just checking that Mom didn’t kill you when you told her.”

So when did they start letting people use their cell phones in the ICU? And what was that phone doing to Elsa’s brain while she talked? She’d always kind of worried about that. She didn’t want El coming down with brain tumors. One of them as a nutcase was enough…

“She’s going to have to know eventually.”

Uh oh, Rae knew that tone…

“I tried the closet all the way through college; it’s no way to live Chris.” Elsa sighed. “Just how did you explain away your kissing my wife?”

Rae wiggled her toes at that. It was damned rare for Elsa to call her her wife, and she really rather liked it. Some of the nurses, like Walter, had started calling El her wife as well: Mrs. Irons. Apparently, Elsa had said something in the early days of comatose hell. Rae didn’t know exactly what.

“Yes, she is, and I’m hers, and you’d better get off the golden child routine, because you’re about to crash and burn if you’re not careful.”

Rae stretched out her arm, and felt El’s fingers lace with her own.

“I can’t tell you that Chris. All I can say is it’s not wrong. It’s just different.” Elsa dropped into the chair beside Rae’s bed, and from the sigh that escaped her, Rae could imagine the look of weariness on her face, and the bowing of her head.

“Rae is my life. I have nothing without her. Absolutely nothing.”

Chapter 17

“She’s pretty shook up.” Heather, tonight’s night nurse, was checking her vitals, and had stopped a moment to talk.

Rae, awake the last hour, her arm around Elsa as the blonde snuggled soundly into her side, was glad for the distraction.

“Me too.”

Heather was moving around the room, going about her duties, but she stopped at the wistful tone in Rae’s voice. “They did tell you it was likely a one-time deal, right? You need rest, not worry.”

“Yeah, they said.” Ah, this new facility with words was tenuous, and she knew better than to trust it to remain. Even so, the ability to color it with emotion made her feel less alone in the world and a tiny flare of hope remained that she could remain valid in a life she once claimed as her own.

“But you’re not buying? Is that it?”

“No. Not.” Rae didn’t try for words. She wondered instead about expressions, and how she’d always counted on reading El’s body language and eyes. There were clues in the smallest of quirks in El’s expression, little things no one noticed but Rae. How was she supposed to read El now? How would she know when Elsa was thinking couch-bound and she needed to step lightly; when El was scared or grumpy or needing a hug and a cuddle? She wasn’t sure she could be what El needed any more - what she needed to be as herself – without the simple crutch of eyesight.

And this was going to be even harder if she flopped around and frothed at the mouth without warning!

She’d scared the hell out of both of them, and she didn’t know if she could fix that…

“You’re luckier than most, you know that, don’t you?” Heather asked. The small click as a ring tapped the clipboard made Rae wonder if she was married. “She adores you. It’s a privilege to watch the two of you together. Some couples are like that. We get to see inside their lives, and know there’s so much more to being alive than just breathing and surviving.”

Rae blinked, turning her head toward the nurse, not concentrating so much on the “to watch” as on the sentiment.

“Thank you.” Funny how life just offers up that slice of reassurance sometimes when you need it most. She didn’t have to wonder what Heather was seeing. She knew. She’d seen it hundreds of times, in couples who’d been through life together, held on, and didn’t let go no matter what. The seeing could be humbling, heartening, wondrous, and here she found the same knowledge reflected in the voice of someone who watched over she and El.

Wow.

Without warning, Rae’s face blossomed into a grin, and she let herself feel the warm weight of El’s arm across her belly.

“Thank you,” she repeated. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome Rae,” Heather said gently. “Now try to sleep. Tomorrow’s waiting.”

---

“Oh.”

“Hmmm?” Rae roused just enough to listen, her eyes still closed. El, in her second trimester, was killing her. If she didn’t get to sleep soon, she was going to go to work as a zombie… again!

Elsa took Rae’s hand and laid it low on her belly, pressing firmly.

“Wait.”

And something moved. Like a tiny shiver beneath the muscles, a flutter of wings…

“Is that?” Rae propped herself up on an elbow and blinked, a shy but persistent smile on her lips. “That’s…”

“Yes, it is.” Leaning back into Rae, Elsa sighed. “It’s our little flutterbuddy.”

“Oh we are so naming this kid something else.”

“I don’t know… it fits, right now.”

“If it’s a boy, you’ll give him a complex… and I am not calling our baby flutterbuddy!”

“Fine. What do you suggest?”

The movement under El’s belly strengthened, then settled to rest under the warmth of their combined hands.

“Stretch?” Rae suggested.

Elsa considered that.

“It can’t be more than the size of a hamster right now, can it?”

“Gives the kid something to shoot for.”

Elsa turned in Rae’s arms and looked her over carefully; noting the exhaustion and the smile and feeling wonderful affection for the way Rae tried so hard to blink the cobwebs from her brain for a stolen moment.

“I love you.”

In answer Rae bowed her head and kissed El’s neck. When she straightened she cast a critical eye over El’s frame and face.

“Sleep, baby,” whispered El, “While you can, you need to sleep.” She guided Rae back onto her side and gathered her into her arms.

“I’ll be here to keep you safe.”

“I know,” Elsa whispered. “Always.”

---

Reading aloud was one of those things Rae had enjoyed once. Those days were long gone - yet she would never have imagined that a favorite childhood pastime could suddenly become an instrument of torture. Why her speech therapist insisted on nonsense sayings was beyond her. At least she wouldn’t have to be seen with a book in her hand…

“When people have junk…” El prompted.

Rae concentrated on the words, tried to picture them in her mind as she’d been told, and heard her voice saying them before she opened her mouth to try.

“Junk when… when… persons have junk… people persons…” she growled.

“When people have junk…” El repeated patiently.

Nostrils flaring, Rae pictured the words again, as a sentence. At this rate this book was going to take a month!

“Rate persons…”

No, that wasn’t right. She heard the words again in El’s voice, then in her own.

“When, when persons have junk…”

“Here’s the place that they’ll throw it” El went on without correcting, allowing Rae a modicum of accomplishment. This last, however, was a mouthful - Rae’s eyes popped open, though she hadn’t known she had squeezed them shut, and she felt her face drop into something resembling a fish out of water.

“Fuck that!” She’d be damned if she was going to be caught dead reciting Dr-fucking-Seuss at her age any more.

“El…” she whined.

A sigh.

Damn, now she’d let her down. She hated when El sighed like that. She couldn’t even read her face to see if she was really annoyed… nor could she read anything else, come to think of it. Nope, that wasn’t going to be happening - ever again, though Braille was likely next on the hit parade of things to learn.

The golden lining in all of this, however, was that El still had the sexiest voice she’d ever heard.

Especially when El departed the text…

“My wife is horny.” Elsa delivered the line with the same casual disinterest as the ones about fish and whales and nursery rhymes.

Rae didn’t doubt that a bit.

“My wife… is…horny.”

Thinking each word out was difficult, but it helped, and so did the fact she’d used these words a lot more than “run sally run…”

“Correct. Now tell me what you’re going to do about it,” Elsa whispered.

Suddenly they were a very long way from Fun with Dick and Jane. Or perhaps a great deal closer…

“Uh…” Rae’s hands twitched reflexively, and her nerve endings grew suddenly fevered.

“I want now.”

The words tumbled off her lips like a jumble of Lego blocks from a bucket.

“I want you.” This time there was no hesitation: the words were as true and familiar as air.

Elsa was on the move and Rae felt the momentary thrill of prey before a silent, unseen predator.

“Go on – tell me what you are planning to do about it...”

---

“Are you afraid, love?”

A light touch along her hip, the taste of Elsa’s sex on her lips. Rae wanted to beg, was willing to beg…

---

“Come on Rae, fifteen more.”

Sweat poured down her temples and she dug deeper for the will to push herself, to push the hand grips round on the weighted spindle of the upright bike. Her lip curled and she was spitting mad. As her right arm rode happily along, the left did all the work and her shoulder burned.

When the hell did she become such a damned wimp?

---

“Just kids…” her voice echoed off the hard walls of the waiting area, thundered through her skull and skittered along her brain. She had been looking at her own injured hands with clinical detachment when Tim moved to touch her shoulder, and she rocketed out of the chair.

She couldn’t stand to be near him: had to move just to keep from hurting him. His world didn’t hinge on El’s survival, and he wasn’t the one who had failed her. Hell, he wasn’t here for Elsa! The thought curdled in her heart, cold seeping in around the edges. Rae’s entire world had narrowed to that ER bed. Nothing else mattered but Elsa and their child, nothing.

Rae knew only one way to pray: through her pores, and she had no deity she cared to call on to answer. She cast her need onto the world and pressed her hands into the cinderblock walls, no longer trusting her knees to hold her up.

“Rae…”

Her back stiffened, and she felt her hands clench against the cinderblock.

“If you touch me I’ll kill you,” she growled. “I swear to God, Tim. I will kill you!”

She’d have to stop trembling first.

“Rae, pull it together,” he cautioned, his voice pitched low.

“Pull it together?” She rounded on him. “Pull it together?! She’s. My. Life!”

Tim continued to look uncomfortable, if not downright alarmed. “Then she’s gonna need you to be more than what I’m seeing right now, Rae. We’ve got incoming, and it’s about to get ugly.” He flicked his eyes down the hallway, the look on his face breaking into her rage far better than his words had.

She froze.

Elsa’s parents were coming down the hallway toward them, and the fury Tim now saw in Rae’s eyes made him want to hit something nearly as much as she did. He couldn’t help it. He knew how deeply they hated, had seen the scars they’d already left on Rae’s self esteem, and wondered how deeply into her psyche they’d had to travel to compound with others she’d borne for decades. Family was a touchy thing for Rae, and in Elsa’s she’d managed to find herself just as intractable and cruel a bunch as the one they’d been born into.

Tim took her wrists, and held on until she forcibly broke his hold. The abruptness of her action didn’t bother him - in fact, he’d expected worse - but she was already retreating behind her defensive walls, measuring her options, and he knew better than to keep pushing now. Whatever was going to happen would happen, and Tim planned on staying damned close in case he was needed.

Rae was looking past him now, following his eyes as her heart clenched in her chest.

“Fuck me…” she breathed.

She darted past, suddenly determined to meet up with Elsa’s parents before they reached the waiting area.

“What’s happened? Why won’t they tell us anything?” Maureen wasn’t in the mood for small talk, nor did she seem to have the energy to argue. Her features, so like El’s, were tight with fear, and Rae consciously reminded herself that Elsa’s mom loved her daughter too.

El’s Dad, John, was talking over his wife, demanding to know the same thing. Flitting in the periphery was Christine, their youngest: fourteen, and infinitely superior in attitude, her eyes wide with alarm.

Rae took a deep breath and leveled her jaw.

“We were attacked…”

“What do you mean you were attacked? Where the hell…” John began.

“What kind of horrible place did you take her?”

“…did you go? What degenerate…”

“We need to call the police!” Maureen looked as though if she sniffed any harder, she’d disappear.

“… hole in the wall…”

Rae wanted to roll her eyes, but didn’t dare take them off of the volatile monsters in front of her. Experience told her they bore watching. Dread, however, made her reckless. It was people like these whose attitudes fuelled the thugs who had attacked them, and as much as she distrusted John and Maureen, it was Chris who kept catching Rae’s eye. The two girls had been about her age, according to the police. The boys were older by a year or two. Country club kids, out on a lark…

“I took her to dinner,” Rae said into the maelstrom of blame. “The kids that attacked us were just your type: Spoiled, rich, hateful little beasts.”

“How dare you?” Maureen demanded, only to be interrupted again by her husband.

“How bad is it?” John asked quietly. He looked harried and stretched, like a man who didn’t know which way to turn or look. “What have they told you?”

“I don’t know,” Rae admitted.

“But you’re supposed to know! You’re supposed to be protecting them…” Maureen had pulled her arms around her stomach much the same way Elsa did, and Rae felt something inside herself give way.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry?! You’re-,”

John interrupted, glancing over at Tim, before focusing in on Rae again. “What have they said about the child?”

Rae didn’t know how to answer. Instead she waited, feeling lost. No one had told her anything – they had refused. Documentation out the ass and it all meant nothing at home in the bureau drawer. She was supposed to be listed as next-of-kin: she was Elsa’s, Elsa hers. Why couldn’t they see that? Where were the goddamned records, anyway? And why the fuck wouldn’t they let her in? Her life was being torn to shreds, her whole fucking life! ‘This is my heart I might be losing, and no one will let me breathe…’ Hell, they’d paid more attention to Tim!

And none of it mattered, not really, so long as when those doors opened the doctors were smiling and telling Rae that both Elsa and their baby were safe and well.

But that wasn’t going to happen, and Rae felt dread claw relentlessly at her belly. She couldn’t and wouldn’t hide it, and Elsa’s Dad could see whatever the hell he wanted to read there.

It was Tim who managed the words for her when she failed.

“They haven’t said anything. It doesn’t look good though...” he said simply.

Rae closed her eyes, her head dropping forward as she started to tremble again.

“My baby, my poor baby…” Maureen began to cry. As the color drained from John’s face, it rose in Maureen’s. And then she rounded on Rae with sudden ferocity.

“You did this!”

For a moment it looked as though she’d strike out, physically, the snap of twitching muscle in her chest and shoulder clear to see. But the blow, when it came, was verbal, and ugly, and barely recognizable as human speech.

“You cunt! You horrid little cunt! You horrible godless cunt! You did this!” Now Maureen was screaming. “First you ruin her, and now you destroy the only thing she’s ever wanted! You promise her a child in some sick little fantasy where you get to be the hero, and you can’t even protect them! You’re less than pathetic, less than any man…”

Rae’s head snapped up, but her brain remained far behind.

“I didn’t… I didn’t LET anyone… Aw, fuck you, you bitch! FUCK YOU!” Tears slid down Rae’s cheeks and there was a catch in her breath; nonetheless the words roared out of her like a lion’s challenge.

Rae took one step toward Maureen, no more. It was enough.

“That’s my lover - and our baby - in there, and I’ve had all I’m gonna take from you! She’s your daughter, but she’s my life, you ignorant bitch. I’m not taking any more of your shit today! I’m here, with Elsa, and I’m never going away, so you better learn to deal with that! Do I make myself clear? Do you get it, or do I need to pull your head out of your ass so you can hear me?!” Screaming and furious, Rae spun away, only to have her eyes catch Christine’s. She hesitated, eyes narrowing, and it took most of Rae’s remaining strength to remind herself that Christine, perfect little country Club poster girl Christine, wasn’t one of the kids who’d done this to them…

“I won’t have you looking at my other daughter like that, you dyke!” John bellowed. “You’ve done enough ruining Elsa!”

Rae raised her face to look at John, disbelieving, stunned. At the very edge of her awareness she registered the touch to her shoulder that told her Tim had her back.

“What did you say?” In-fucking-credible…

“You heard me, you bitch. You’ve the gall to look at her while Elsa is…!”

Rae stepped into John’s space, her hands working. “You think I’m… that I’d… “ Her mind grappled to reconcile it all. “What fucking little rock in fantasy land do you live under? Elsa is the love of my life – she’s my… everything, and she’s only in that Emergency Room because of hysterical fucking hatred like yours, and you think I’m… Jesus fucking Christ!”

“How dare you take the Lord’s name in vain,” screamed Maureen, grasping the one thing, the only thing which didn’t challenge her own free-floating bigotry. “You put her in there! You made her a toy in your sick little game, you vile pervert! Wanting to raise a child…”

Rae nearly exploded.

“Elsa is no one’s toy!”

Something snapped in Rae. She abandoned any last vestige of respect for these people, any hope that she could – or indeed had any obligation to – try again to explain. Now she just wanted to hurt them back…

“That’s it, isn’t it? You still think this is a game, don’t you?” She let her voice rise, no longer caring who could overhear. “Well let me tell you, you ignorant bitch, Elsa isn’t a toy, and this isn’t a game… Elsa is with me, she loves me, and she doesn’t need or want a man. That just eats you up, doesn’t it? Elsa is perfectly, deliriously happy with me, and she doesn’t need a cock to make her that way. Your daughter is a lesbian, Maureen. Elsa’s a dyke. And she chose me!”

When both Maureen and John blanched, she felt the soar of scoring a direct hit.

“I bet it kills you, imagining what we do in bed… and out of it! I bet it makes you want to be sick… or does it?” she tilted her head.

“Rae…” Tim tried again to interrupt. He’d come up alongside her now, and had caught the small telltale tic that meant John was about to swing. When the big man lifted his arm, Tim shook his head in warning, and moved subtly closer to Rae, ready to step between her and John.

The exchange wasn’t lost on Rae.

“Let him try!” she taunted.

“Rae, back off hon…”

For a second she looked at Tim and for that second it mattered what he thought of her. Then that second passed and a small, ugly curl graced Rae’s lips.

“I don’t think so. I’m not taking this shit anymore.”

“You whoring bitch!” John bellowed.

Rae let out a humorless laugh. “Oh c’mon, John, be accurate here. Maureen had it right at ‘cunt’!”

“Don’t test me, girl!”

“Oh you’re nothing, big boy,” Rae sneered. “Your daughter, on the other hand, she’s the formidable one. She bends and breaks me every time! And that’s the thing that gets right under your skin, John, seeing what a good little lesbian you raised. And she’s good enough to own me. I do what she says John, not what you want!”

His face congested with fury. “How dare you?!”

“How’s it feel to know your daughter is ten times the man you are? How does that taste to those God-fearing sensibilities of yours?”

“You don’t care about my daughter!” he blustered. “You’ve dragged her into this pathetic fantasy land, just so you could get at her money.”

Rae looked fit to explode. “You fucking bastard!”

Before anyone else could speak, the big double doors opened and a doctor in scrubs emerged, striding purposefully towards them.

“Family of Elsa Robinson?”

“Yes.”

Everyone answered, even Tim.

The doctor turned to Tim and sized him up.

“Are you Ray?” he asked.

Stepping forward, Rae felt her heart sinking. “I’m Rae.”

Grey eyes looked her over, startled, then the mask was back in place as he nodded.

But John was pushing forward. “I’m John Robinson, Elsa’s my little girl…”

The doc glanced at him and offered up a half smile, but spoke directly to Rae.

“I’m Dr. Deacons, the ER physician. Ms Robinson is on her way to surgery. Her condition is stable but her injuries need better assessment, and surgery is the place for that. The surgeon is with her now, as well as our on call OB/GYN.” He glanced at the rest of the group, taking in the all-too-palpable tension between them, then turned resolutely back to Rae.

“You need to come with me - we can talk on the way.”

Rae’s hesitation was born of fear – pure white fear – and he saw it immediately.

“She’s awake, Rae, and she’s asking for you. We need to get you scrubbed up and in there as soon as we can.” He waited for her to nod, then smiled reassuringly at the others. “Please, have a seat. As soon as we know more, we’ll be out to talk with you again.”

When John and Maureen tried to intervene, he cut them off with a curt nod, then turned and started off quickly down the hall, Rae in tow, his clogs making barely a sound.

“Please, tell me what’s happening,” Rae asked, as they turned the corner heading toward the elevators.

He looked her over more carefully in the lift, noting the grazes and scrapes, and the swollen nose and eyes. “Did anyone look at those wounds of yours?”

She waved him off, dismissing his question, frightened by his oblique dodge of her own.

“Our records say you’re her next of kin… I’m assuming you’re her partner?” When Rae nodded mutely he went on, “I’m sorry Rae, there’s no easy way to tell you. Your baby’s been injured – badly. We’re preparing to deliver her now – by C-section.” He waited a moment, for Rae to take this in, before reaching for her hand. “I’m sorry, Rae, but we believe she won’t survive – the damage is too severe… and we need to deliver her so we can treat Elsa properly. Otherwise…” He left the statement open, but Rae felt the weight of possibilities narrow down to just one – El’s life, El’s survival, depended on this act.

Her voice was nothing more than a whisper. “Does she know?”

His answer was a simple, “Yes.”

He noted the shudder that ran through Rae’s body, and the stillness that followed: unnaturally deep.

“Are you going to be able to do this?”

Rae shook off the sudden paralysis as the doors to the lift opened and they started toward the med / surg wing. “I’m fine.”

“Rae, I’m sorry. We’re doing everything possible for both Elsa and the baby.”

Rae nodded.

“I know.” She held his gaze and asked, “Elsa?”

“There’s internal bleeding we need to control. Soft tissue injuries are difficult. We’ll know more once the surgeon has a chance to see what’s happening.”

He was quiet after that, leading her to a locker room where scrubs lined the shelves and she could strip out of her torn and filthy clothes.

A nurse joined her in the locker room, guiding Rae through the routine of dressing, shoe covers, cap, before walking with her along the corridor, quietly explaining the do’s and don’ts of surgical theatre as she went. They were almost at the theatre doors when the nurse stopped suddenly, eyes narrowed on Rae, lips pursed.

“I know you, don’t I?” she said, her tone more certain than the inflection.

When Rae looked at her finally, she recognized one of the OB nurses she’d handed many a babe and mother off to on transfers. Sally. Her name is Sally.

Brown eyes now looked her over with greater kindness, which Rae would have thought impossible, had she not seen it.

“Oh hon, I’m so sorry.” Sally straightened herself and nodded as though Rae had spoken. “Right, let’s get you in to your partner. She’s been asking for you.”

In the OR, Elsa was being prepped, a drape already placed between her and her belly, hair in a net like Rae’s, and a glassy, frightened look to her eyes that made Rae feel ill.

As soon as Rae entered, Elsa reached for her, wildly, clutching, entirely unaware of the disapproving glances of the nursing staff as she dragged at her own iv lines in her haste.

Rae clasped her hand, and bent in to kiss El’s forehead. “Hi, babe,” she murmured. “Love you.”

“Hi.” There was an absence to El’s voice, a slurring flatness, and Rae wondered just how much pain killer she’d been given. “I’m sorry I got in the way…”

Oh, Jesus… “You didn’t get in the way, love. They hit you with the car.”

“Your car… I didn’t want them to take it…”

“Oh God El, it’s just a car…”

“But you love it.”

“Honey, shhh. I love you way more than a stupid car, don’t you know that?”

“I can’t feel the baby any more, Rae.”

Rae squeezed El’s fingers more tightly, grimacing and blinking, desperately willing herself to hold it together… for El.

“It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“No, El, it’s not. But it is this time.” Again she bent to El and kissed her, this time on the lips, whispering, “just this time.”

“Okay.” Elsa accepted the statement quietly, like a child acceding to Rae’s knowledge and strength. She turned her head in to Rae’s hand. “What took you so long? I’ve been waiting…”

“I’m here now…”

“God it’s cold In here.” El shivered.

Rae responded by gathering closely around El’s head and shoulders to lend her warmth. Beyond the drape, the surgeon was talking, telling them what he was about to do, then opening El’s abdomen, low along the rim of her pelvis.

Tears were flowing steadily from El’s eyes now, and her grip on Rae tightened as they heard the sound of suction, and she felt her swollen belly deflate.

“We need a name,” Elsa whispered, afraid. “She deserves a name, even if only for a few minutes…”

Rae said the first name that came to mind, one which, paradoxically, they’d long ago decided against.

“Aiden?” she whispered.

“Aiden.” Elsa echoed. “Aiden Irons-Robinson.”

“Elsa, Rae, you have a girl.” The voice pulled Rae from her musings, and she looked up to find a swaddled body being handed to her.

She was tiny, this baby placed in her arms. With a sweet face and startled cyanotic expression Rae knew instinctively cried of pain. The wraps around her hid the damage Rae feared to see; instead she stared at a little face grimacing, trying to respond to the first, primal instinct to breathe, and failing…

It seemed wrong to handle her, somehow, yet Rae knew that was foolish, that this meeting would be measured in minutes, more than tomorrows. This little girl had traveled protected under Elsa’s heart, had been nourished by her blood, had ridden through their love-making and hopes without surcease. Somewhere in this tightly wrapped bundle, were the feet and hands that had followed her across the universe of El’s belly and stolen her reason to grant one anew.

As little Aiden struggled to take a breath, Rae laid the bundle in Elsa’s arms and touched her partner’s face. The part of Rae that always fought for life railed against what she was seeing, and she glanced over the drape to where the obstetrician was watching.

“Her chest was crushed, and her spine is separated from the skull Rae. The cord injury is high, and complete. She won’t live… she can’t.”

Finally, after all that had gone before, Rae let her own tears fall.

“Hello Aiden,” she choked, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to protect you…”

Rae glanced at El, then at the tiny bundle growing still in the cradle of their arms.

“Rae…” El called, sounding lost.

“I’m here, baby, I’m here. She’s beautiful, El. Just like her mama.”

“Rae, she can’t breathe… do something… please…”

“Babe, she’s got a journey to make where we can’t follow. All we can do is send her on her way with love.” Rae wrapped her arms more tightly around mother and child in a futile attempt to keep them safe.

“Please!” The desperation in El’s expression tore at Rae; the way it changed from disbelief, to accusation, and then to acceptance, was almost too much to watch. But it was Rae’s duty here to bear witness, to see and to absorb. El was barely coherent, and Aiden was leaving them behind…

“No love. We have to let her go.”

Elsa held her baby even more tightly, burying her face in the swaddled body, shuddering with need. ”Oh please… no…”

The obstetrician and the anesthesiologist stood beside them now, their manner respectful and kind. One of them - Rae didn’t know which - said gently, “It’s time Elsa. Give little Aiden to Rae.”

“Don’t leave her alone, Rae. Please, don’t leave her…” Elsa begged.

“She’s leaving us, love.”

“Watch over her!” It was a command, and so Rae nodded her promise as she took Aiden from El’s arms.

“I love you, Elsa,” she whispered. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

And then she was being led from the OR and into the lesser lights of the wider world, and in her arms, little Aiden was still, her soul already fled.

For a long time, with a doctor and nurse nearby, unwilling to interrupt, Rae looked at her daughter’s face and wished…

But wishing was futile, and there was no changing this.

“Goodbye Aiden,” Rae said at last, the words choked from a throat too tight. “We’ve been waiting for so long for you to get here, and we had plans, but those will have to wait. Go with love, baby, and don’t look back…” She felt herself crumple as one final word fell from her, and the world around her dissolved into tear stains. “Goodbye…”

Continued in Part 8

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