Chapter Text
Lizzie looks small, curled up in the hospital room’s visitor’s chair, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, given to her by a sympathetic nurse.
Casey enters the room and the first thing she sees is her little sister, eyes bleary but open. The first thing she hears, even before Lizzie’s voice, is the beeping of the machine that’s breathing for her mother.
The fist around her heart unclenches ever so slightly, because part of her had been terrified that she’d come back and find her mother had died while she stepped away.
But she hasn’t, and Lizzie’s there. She collapses into the other visitor’s chair, staring at her mother’s limp body, trying to glean some sort of insight from the hospital monitors as if staring at the numbers might turn her into a doctor herself.
But the truth of it is that her body is wrung out. Simon is quiet in the car seat, and Lizzie is silent, and eventually, even in the uncomfortable hospital chair, Casey falls asleep.
—
It’s the summer before uni. They’re on vacation, at the lodge. It’s so bright and sunny, and their family is playing hide-and-seek.
Derek and Casey are seeking, together. The sun glints off the water as they wander around, looking intently for the rest of their family.
Marti’s in a tree near their cabin. When Derek spots her, she giggles and jumps, knowing her big brother will catch her.
Lizzie’s hiding in the boat house, under one of the paddleboats.
Ed’s under the pier, coming out fully soaked and regretting his choice of spot.
They join in, all of them, and suddenly all five of the McDonald-Venturi children are looking around, trying to find her mother and George.
It’s not until they give up and go back to their family’s cabin that they find Nora, still asleep in bed.
Lizzie tries to rouse her, but she doesn’t wake.
George isn’t there with her.
She sends Derek to keep looking, but they never find him.
Casey puts a hand on her mother’s cheek, about to shake her awake, and her skin is cold.
From behind her, someone screams, and it sounds like her own voice, coming from somewhere else.
She jerks awake, heart racing in her chest.
She looks around, and it isn’t until she feels disappointment bloom in her chest that she realizes she’s looking for Derek. She can barely make it from one moment to the next with his solid warmth beside her. Without him, she finds herself drowning in the weight of all of it. Her hand itches for her phone, but she ignores it. He’s going through enough.
A quiet voice in her mind wonders if he’s waking up from a nightmare too–only his came true, because his father is gone. Is he looking around the living room in the darkness, wishing she was there, the way she wishes he was here?
The shift change is what wakes her up the next time. Eight am. She looks at her baby brother, held in Lizzie’s arms and sucking hungrily at a bottle.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, clearing her throat, “I can take him–”
Her neck aches from sleeping in a hospital chair, and she stretches it out to either side, wincing at the loud crack .
Lizzie just shakes her head and shrugs. “I’m used to it. I did the nighttime feedings sometimes, if I was up doing homework or something.”
“I… didn’t know that.”
Lizzie shrugs the shoulder that isn’t supporting Simon’s head as he suckles.
“I guess it never came up. You guys were busy.”
They had been busy, that much was true. But had they really been so busy that now they no longer recognized the contours of their family’s lives? Everything feels like it’s been slightly adjusted.
Derek’s chair was gone from the living room, replaced with another one. Their bedrooms had been changed over to reflect the fact that they no longer lived there. There was a machine on the kitchen counter that sanitized baby bottles.
Her stepfather was dead.
Her mother was–
Casey rises to her feet. “I’m just gonna–” she points at the bathroom. Her voice sounds like it belongs to someone else, and her vision is starting to darken at the edges.
She navigates her way to the bathroom, putting a hand on the foot of the bed, and another on the doorframe, closing the door behind her before she fumbles for the light switch.
She turns on the faucet as far as it can go, and flushes the toilet, and sits on the filthy floor of the hospital room shower.
Her breath comes faster and faster, until she thinks she might pass out. She closes her eyes, and waits for it to pass. Her heart is beating like a drum. She tries to take deep breaths, but they catch after only half a second and then the air is forced out of her again. She can’t hear properly–she can barely make out the sound of the faucet beyond the blood rushing in her ears.
Why can’t she just pause everything? Why can’t she get a timeout to process this? Where’s the referee, to put her in the sin bin so she can think straight?
Where’s Emily, to make her laugh? Where’s–oh, god , where’s Derek, to hold her hand? To make her laugh through the tears? To hold her against his body, to protect her from everything this world can throw at her?
She crawls to the toilet and hunches over it as she dry-heaves.
Had she eaten a sandwich when she made them for Derek, Ed, and Marti? She can’t remember. The last thing she recalls going into her stomach was the coffee the nurse made for her.
She retches again, and this time, yellow-brown liquid comes up. Her head aches with every beat of her heart, a vicious throbbing.
Behind her eyes, at her temples, behind her forehead, it all just aches, utterly relentless.
She flushes, and rises on shaky legs. She hears the sound of knocking, as if from far away, through the pounding of her heart in her ears.
She leans on the counter, and puts her mouth over the sink, cupping a palm under the water to rinse the taste of bile and old coffee out of her mouth.
In the mirror, she looks a decade older, with deep bags under her eyes, drowning in an oversized sweatshirt that she might have stolen from Derek. She looks like she should be a patient, not just a visitor.
The knocking continues.
“Coming,” she calls, “just a minute.”
She splashes her face with cold water, once and then again, and again, and again, until she beats her body into submission, her breathing slowing down and her vision clearing.
Slowly, she opens the door, finding Lizzie at the door, a nurse holding Simon.
“Are you okay?” Lizzie asks her.
Casey’s always honest with her sister. But she doesn’t even think before lying to her now.
“Yeah, Liz, I’m fine,” she says with a smile that she hopes doesn’t quiver. She puts her arms around her little sister and hugs her tight.
Had she hugged her after they’d gotten in last night? She can’t remember. So she squeezes her tight, half apology, half comfort.
“How are you holding up, Liz?” she asks softly.
Lizzie’s lower lip trembles. “It doesn’t feel real,” she whispers. “George dropped us off at school this morning. How can he be–And Mom–”
“I know,” Casey murmurs, kissing her hair. “I feel that way too. Like it’s just a bad dream.”
But she’s never had a dream this bad.
“It’s late,” she tries to keep her voice gentle. “I can take the night shift. Do you want me to drop you off at home, and Derek can bring you back in the morning?”
She glances at the nurse. “She’s stable right now, right? We don’t think there will be any change between now and the morning?”
The nurse checks the monitors, takes a quick look at their mother, and pulls up the notes on the computer.
“She’s been hanging steady for a few hours now,” she says cautiously, “I would expect her to be stable until morning, yes.”
Casey nods. “How about I take you home, Liz? You should get some rest.”
Her little sister isn’t clinging anymore, but she’s still leaning against her, as if she’s too exhausted to support her own weight.
“Okay.”
That worries Casey more than the red eyes, more than the listlessness, more than the bags under her eyes.
Lizzie would never agree to this so easily, not unless she was desperate to be told what to do, desperate to abdicate the responsibility for whatever happened to someone else.
Her little sister just wanted everything to be all right again, and if that meant following Casey without question, she’d do it.
Casey strokes an arm up and down her back, trying to rub some life into her.
“Okay,” she agrees, “I’ll take you home.”
She takes Simon, who is now awake and not particularly happy about the world he finds himself in, from the nurse, and settles him back into his car seat. This prompts unhappy wailing, and Casey has no fucking idea what she’s supposed to do to calm him down. She offers him a pacifier, which he promptly spits out, so it lands on the hospital floor.
There are a few seconds there where she seriously considers picking it up and putting it back into his mouth, before she comes to her senses.
—
She opens the door quietly, but still, Derek startles awake from where he’d been dozing on the couch.
“Whasappnin’?” he mumbles, groggy.
“Go on up to bed, Liz. Do you want me to make you a sandwich?”
“No, thanks, the nurse brought me one,” Liz says. She hugs Casey, and then walks over to Derek, who still looks a little perplexed when she leans down and hugs him, too, holding him tight.
“Try to get some rest,” Casey says, hoping the unspoken I love you comes through.
Lizzie nods and trudges up the stairs to her room.
Derek is sitting up at this point, rubbing his eyes. “What’s going on?” His voice is still raspy, but at least he’s saying all the letters.
“Nothing.” Casey pauses and perches at the edge of the sofa, next to Derek’s knees. She sighs. “Nothing new. I just brought LIzzie back home so she could sleep. The nurses said Mom’s probably going to be stable until morning.”
He finds her hand and holds it in his.
“How ya doin’, Case?”
She lets out a sound that aspires to be called laughter.
“I had a panic attack in the bathroom of Mom’s room,” she confesses. “And then–and then I just shut it off when I opened the door, because Lizzie needed me to be strong.”
She glances up at Derek. It's a mistake. The second she meets his eyes, she feels her own fill with tears.
“I’m not, though. I'm not strong,” she whispers. “Not strong enough for this.”
Derek shifts back, pressing himself against the back of the couch. Without a word, he wraps an arm around her shoulder and pulls her towards him, so her side is resting on his chest, and he just holds her.
“You’re the strongest fucking person I know. We would’ve been lost without you here.”
I would’ve been completely lost without you here , Casey thinks.
“Same,” is all she says, “with you. This would’ve been too much for any one person.”
And that’s when she remembers. She jumps out of Derek’s hug.
“Fuck,” she mutters, “I thought I’d only be in here for a minute or two–I left Simon in the car!”
Derek’s up with her in a heartbeat. “It’s not that cold,” he says instantly.
“I left the car running. I think.” Casey’s pulling the door open, grateful their garage is too full of stuff to park in, and Derek’s shoving his bare feet into Edwin’s sneakers, squashing down the heels.
Casey opens the car door, and there’s her baby brother, somehow asleep again.
“Thank god he’s sleeping,” she murmurs, “he had a full-on meltdown in the hospital.”
“Car rides,” Derek says knowingly. “Marti was the same.”
Casey hadn’t known that–that car rides put Simon to sleep.
“Well, good news for him, we’re going on another one,” she mutters.
“You’re going back?”
“I can’t leave her there alone, Derek. I just can’t.”
He looks at her, and then back at the baby.
“I’ll take him. You’ve had him all day.”
“Are you sure? You’d have all of them.”
“I wasn’t sleeping that well even before you got back.” He unbuckles the carseat and pulls it from the car, careful not to jar Simon awake.
She grimaces at the reminder. Has it really just been one day since she’d gotten that call?
“Well, try to get some rest, at least. At least one of us should be able to put a sentence together. Can you bring Lizzie back in the morning?”
Derek nods.
He looks as old and utterly worn out as she feels—as if they’ve both gone old and gray over the course of hours instead of decades.
“Drive safe,” he says quietly, “and call if you need anything, okay? I’ve got my phone, I’ve got the car, I can come pick you up if you can’t drive back.”
“Okay.”