Work Text:
When they arrive at the hospital she’s still intubated, and if not for the bandages and wires and tubes and scrapes and cuts across her body, she would look just like their daughter. As it is, Bill’s eyes fill with tears and he stands still in the doorway of the hospital room, trying to remember how to breathe.
His wife, Nancy - the Patterson who gave birth to a Patterson - is far more purposeful in her movements. She hurries across the room, practically flinging herself into the chair at the bedside, and takes their daughter’s hand in her own. “Oh, sweetheart,” he hears her whisper.
He watches as Wi - no, she’s Patterson, he reminds himself, she’s Patterson at work - opens her eyes a little and blinks drowsily. Her mouth moves. Nancy reaches out and touches her cheek. “You’re intubated,” she says gently. “Don’t try to talk.”
Bill sees the confusion on Patterson’s face, and her eyes roam the room. They light on him, still standing in the doorway, and as though he’s being moved forward by some divine spark, he crosses the room and takes her other hand in his. “Hi, gorgeous.”
She rolls her eyes, then flicks her gaze to the nearby table. On it - a yellow legal pad and a pen.
“You want that?” Bill asks.
She nods.
Bill grabs it, seeing several other notes on it - When can they take this tube out? and I need some more painkillers prominent, and hands it to her.
She scrawls something laboriously, her forehead furrowed in concentration, and holds it up towards them.
I’m so sorry.
“No, don’t be sorry,” Bill tells her softly. “You don’t have to apologize.”
Mom, I know you had a talk tonight.
Bill looks at Nancy. Nancy shakes her head. “No, sweetheart. This is so much more important.”
Patterson looks down at the paper. I was so stupid.
“It was an accident,” Nancy says.
Bill sees tears in his daughter’s eyes and his heart breaks a bit further. She looks like a wreck, like the child he remembers nursing through colds and flus and a nasty bout of appendicitis and a broken arm from climbing trees in the neighborhood with her brother. He wants nothing more than to pick her up and hold her and tell her nothing bad’s going to happen to her again, but he knows she’s long past the stage where his words can save her from the big bad evils of the world. He’s seen that a lot in the last few years, starting with David’s death and winding through the truly terrifying torture she experienced at the hand of a crazed criminal.
He wishes they spent more happy times together. Maybe it's time to make that more than just a wish.
“It’s going to be okay,” Bill says, and he tries to use the all-knowing but gentle inflection that gives his teachings on science a bit more authority and a great deal more kindness.
Patterson’s eyes flick towards Nancy, who nods in agreement with Bill’s statement. “We’ll talk to the doctor, see when you can get that tube out.”
Patterson shakes her head slightly. Asked earlier. Said sats aren’t great.
“Well, okay. Then there’s a goal,” Bill says.
“Can we bring you anything?” Nancy asks.
No. Just stay. She blinks, hard, and then her eyes close. She jerks herself back awake a second later, and writes, Sorry. So tired.
“You just woke up from a coma,” Bill says. “Some things are to be expected.”
“We’ll be here when you wake up,” Nancy tells her, and they squeeze her hands and kiss her cheeks and Patterson drifts back into darkness.
True to their word, when Patterson opens her eyes again, her parents are still in the hospital room. Nancy is asleep on the couch in the corner, but Bill sits at her bedside, looking down at a magazine.
“Dad,” Patterson rasps, and she realizes that at some point while she was still drugged and unconscious, they took out the breathing tube. She reaches up and finds a nasal cannula threaded around her ears, oxygen pleasantly hissing into her airway.
Bill’s head jerks up. “Oh, hi,” he says. “How do you feel?”
“Thirsty.”
“As it turns out, I can do something about that.” He stands up and goes over to a table in the corner; he picks up a yellow plastic pitcher and pours water into a similarly-colored plastic tumbler. He pokes a straw into it and brings it back to her.
Patterson drinks greedily until Bill pulls back. “Easy,” he says. “They don’t want you to vomit.”
She sighs and leans back against the head of the bed. “You stayed,” she says.
“Your mom and I don’t lie very often.”
“No, you don’t,” Patterson allows softly. “I just thought… I thought you had to get back to work.”
Bill sets the cup back on the table. “Nothing is more important than being here with you.”
He strokes her forehead, being careful not to touch any of the small cuts or abrasions on her face. “I’m so glad you’re awake.”
“What day is it?” Patterson asks.
“Wednesday.”
She’s been out for more than twenty-four hours, and yet she feels like she hasn’t slept at all. Apparently being blown up and ending up in a coma does that to a person. “Dad,” she says, “tell me a story.”
Bill smiles and sits back down, taking her hand in his. “Once upon a time, when the earth was new…”
“Dad,” Patterson groans. It’s how he’s started all of his stories since she can remember.
“Oh, fine, opposite, opposite.” Bill gets comfortable. “Once upon a time, a time not so very long ago, there was a princess.”
He sees Patterson start to speak and cuts her off. “And yes, she realized that the monarchy was an outdated system of governing and she did her very best to shake off the bonds restraining her position in society -”
She grins, relaxing, and he continues: “ - and she was beloved by all who knew her. The princess was absolutely fearless, much to the chagrin of the king and queen, who had never met anyone quite like their princess.
“They tried to tame her brilliant mind with activities within the palace, but all too soon it became clear that the princess was smarter than everyone in their little kingdom. The king and queen knew they would have to let their princess go out into the world if she was to live up to her full potential. It broke their hearts to let her go, because the world was so wide and so full of danger…”
Patterson closes her eyes.
“... but they loved her so much that they wanted her to see everything she wanted to see, and to know everything she wanted to know, and to touch everything the world could put at her fingertips. Even if it meant that sometimes she might get hurt.
“Of course, it never made it any easier to get letters from the princess’s advisers telling the king and queen that their beloved daughter was facing troubles.” Bill looks up at the heart rate monitor, seeing Patterson’s heart rate slow as her body relaxes. “They wanted to save her from everything, bring her back home to their kingdom, find her a safe job as a professor or an archivist or a pharmaceutical researcher…”
Patterson smiles drowsily.
“... but they never did. They learned to live with their fears, and maybe that was the most important thing she taught them how to do.”
“Hmm,” Patterson breathes.
“And sometimes when the king sits at the bedside of his brilliant princess he wonders if maybe he missed his chance to see the big wide world the way she does,” Bill says softly. “If maybe taking risks and learning from the aftermath is what makes his princess so gentle, so loving, so fierce and bright and tenacious that she outshines the sun.”
He squeezes her hand gently. “But whatever he thinks about risk-taking, the king loves the princess with his entire heart. It’s impossible not to love the sun when it shines.”
Bill knows that if she was awake, and not in a drug-addled mind-set, she’d just roll her eyes. But she’s sleeping now, breathing easy, and it’s just him and the story in the room.
Sometimes those are the best kinds of stories.
Keeping his fingers laced with hers, he leans back in his chair and watches his daughter’s heart monitor pulse ephemeral lines across a screen - there one moment, gone, then repeating back over themselves, tracing something new.