This is a sequel, in some way, to the first story I wrote here, Seventeen Days. Sat on this one for a while until I knew what I wanted to do with it. It was such fun writing the first one, but so much has changed in the 2 seasons that have passed that there are new stories to be told, and they need a new home...
It's a familiar corridor; she's been here before. The cold floor she lays on is the same one she'd walked unsteadily across when they'd let her out of bed after seventeen days she'll never remember.
The tiles beneath her cheek are cold. She can taste the bleach the hospital staff have used to scrub them clean of any bacteria, and it sticks in the back of her throat and makes her wretch again.
She drags herself to sit up, repulsed. The bleach is strong, but not strong enough to mask the stench of the vomit she emptied into an unfortunate plant pot right before she slid to the ground.
Blindly she gets to her feet and stumbles down the corridor, headed in the direction of the roof terrace she'd spent hours on when she was recovering from the accident that nearly killed her two years ago.
'Can I help you there ma'am? You look a little pale,' a porter says, and she looks at him without seeing his face, and thinks she succeeds in shaking her head. He hovers anyway, but she walks away from him and pushes open the door that leads outside.
Eleven hours they've been in this hospital. Three hours longer than the surgery was supposed to take, two hours since Dr. Rand had come and told her he had bad news.
'There were some complications,' he'd said, and everything after those words has been fucking torture.
She wishes it would all go numb, that some kind of autopilot would race in and override the pain she's feeling, but it hasn't happened yet. Instead every minute is agony, and they refuse to pass any faster, no matter how hard she begs - God, the doctors, whoever the hell will listen.
It isn't lost on her that it could be she's wishing away the last hours of Deacon's life.
It's the dead of night, and the sky is thick with cloud and pissing rain. Rayna stands with her arms leaden by her sides and her face towards the drops, grateful that they cool her skin and calm her just a little. Just a little is can hope for.
Her hair soaks quickly, and she pushes it out of her eyes, gasping air. She cannot make this better, for anyone - not for Deacon, not for her babies who are three floors below and terrified. She cannot fix this.
The rain comes down anyway. The world doesn't stop just because hers does.
She realises she is shaking violently - shivering, maybe? - only when someone comes up behind her and wraps a blanket around her shoulders.
'Tandy?' she rasps, confused to see her sister's face. She wonders for a moment if she's fallen asleep in the waiting room, if it's all a cruel dream and they hadn't really told her they'd lost him on the table, that technically Deacon, her Deacon, had been dead for a full minute and a half.
She feels the roof shake under her feet when the thunder rumbles though and she knows she isn't asleep.
'I know you said I wouldn't be able to do anything so I should stay put,' Tandy says, putting an arm around Rayna and steering her indoors, 'but I couldn't get through to your phone so I got straight on the next flight. I found Scarlett downstairs with the girls, she told me what's happened.'
Rayna withers into her sister's arms, overwhelmingly grateful that she's here and freezing except for the hot tears that fall afresh down her puffy cheeks.
'Come on,' Tandy soothes, pulling her towards a couch, where she rocks her until eventually her sobs slow, exhaustion rendering her quiet.
'Are the girls still asleep?' she manages to ask.
'They woke up for a little while when I first got here, but they're out for the count again. It's been a long day for all of you.'
'And Beverly...'
'Still out too. There's been no new update, on either of them.'
Tandy smoothes her damp hair back, and suddenly Rayna feels like the kid who clung to her sister's hand in this same hospital after their mother's death, while they'd waited for what had seemed like far too long for their father to arrive, only a nurse to keep them company while they'd fallen horribly apart.
'I need to get back to the girls,' she says, sitting up quickly.
#
The first time Rayna met Beverly - officially - they'd been in a grimy bar in East Nashville that had smelled like someone had rubbed beer into the upholstery.
Deacon had invited Rayna along to a gig they were playing, and she'd jumped at the chance to see him again. They'd met twice before, the first time after a short set she'd done at the Bluebird, when he'd sat at a table near the back and watched her unabashedly. He'd come up to introduce himself to her after she'd finished, and they'd talked until her sister had come to collect her, at 11pm on the nose, as per their agreement. Tandy had gingerly stepped over the threshold of the Bluebird, not at all her territory, taken one look at the rugged, gorgeous Deacon Claybourne, and ushered Rayna right out the door.
For two weeks she'd tossed and turned at night, full of regret for letting herself be dragged away without a way to contact him. She'd pictured his crestfallen face, the way he'd started after her but had quickly realised her sister likely had a shotgun in her purse and certainly knew how to use it.
She'd walked into the Bluebird two Thursday nights later and there he'd been, halfway through a curious, haunting song with a woman next to him on the small stage, and Rayna had promptly forgotten the basic art of breathing. He'd barely taken his eyes off her, much to the woman's quite obvious displeasure.
She was his sister, Rayna had learned. When he'd beelined straight for her as he'd come off stage, his brooding stare melting into a grin that gave away just how happy he was to see her again, Beverly Claybourne had headed in the opposite direction and glowered at Rayna from the bar. Deacon hadn't seemed too surprised by her peculiar behaviour, and Rayna had been so caught up in him she'd forgotten Beverly was even there.
He'd made sure to ask for her number before she'd left that time, and had told her he was playing across town the following Saturday, asking her shyly if she might want to stop by, as though he'd been afraid there was any possibility she'd say no.
It wasn't a date, as such, Rayna had told herself all the way there while she'd fiddled with her hair and tried not to turn back to change her outfit a fourth time. She'd had to bargain hard with Tandy to cover for her again, and had almost lost the battle when the short skirt she'd settled for had given away that she'd been intending to see the hot guitar player guy again.
He'd looked nervous when she'd spotted him, sitting on a stool by the bar bouncing his knee up and down. Beverly had been next to him, talking intensely about something while Deacon nodded, his eyes scanning the room over her shoulder. Rayna would come to know, oh so well, the way his face brightened when he saw her, how everything around them melted away.
She would also come to know the disdain Beverly wore around her more often than not.
Rayna had watched that night, not without jealousy, as a gaggle of girls had swooned over Deacon while he'd sung, his moody lost-boy musician thing a potent cocktail for their pheromones. They'd thrown themselves at him as he'd left the stage, something Beverly had smugly enjoyed, her stare burning into Rayna where she'd sat waiting for him. It had been misguided, though. They'd been leggy, blonde, skinny, big-breasted, hoping he'd take them home, wishing he'd take them to bed. He hadn't seen a single one of them.
Deacon, moody, lost and full of hope, easing his way politely through the sea of attention, had seen only Rayna.
#
The room is hushed. Maddie and Daphne are huddled together on the couch, Scarlett in the corner with her chin in her hands, eyes unfocused. She looks up when Rayna and Tandy walk in, but it takes her a moment to register them.
'Hey,' she says, sounding just as weary as Rayna feels. 'What happened?'
Rayna realises, following Scarlett's glance, that her clothes are completely sodden. They start to feel heavy suddenly, and goosebumps littered over her skin make themselves known; she sighs and sits down, her eyes on her exhausted, sleeping girls. Their sweet faces are marred with frowns, and she wonders if they will ever be quite the same again, whatever happens in the next few hours.
'Here sweetie,' Tandy says quietly, holding out a pile of clothes. 'I picked these up from your house on the way over here, thought you might want to change now that you're going to be here overnight.'
Didn't know you'd be playing out in a thunderstorm, but lucky guess, she doesn't say.
Rayna takes the clothes and lifts them to her face. They're dry, soft, and they smell like detergent, and again, she's hit with gratitude. There are some on a chair for the girls too. She gives Tandy something that feels like a wobbly smile. 'Thank you.'
She changes in the little en suite bathroom, taking her time. There's a towel on a shelf that she uses to wring out her hair, and she runs her hands under the hot tap, warming her fingers until they turn pink.
The mirror steams up, and among the drops that roll down its surface she catches sight of her tear-stained, pale face; she looks like a stranger, like someone else this is happening to.
'He took a turn as we were finishing up,' Dr. Rand had said. 'We found a clot that had developed, and we've had to open him back up to maintain blood flow to the new liver - mechanically, for the time being.'
She remembers when she was in the coma after the accident, how she'd heard their voices - her daughters, Tandy, Bucky. Deacon, often, before he'd been discharged and arrested, though they've never spoken of it. She'd heard them beckon her back to them; it had felt like swimming through thick, murky water, trying to find something she couldn't see, but the more they'd spoken to her, the clearer the direction had been.
She wants them to finish whatever they're doing to him, for him to be at the very least in a bed where she can hold his hand and call him back to her. What she really wants is him awake, conscious and speaking, squeezing her fingers. Small steps, though, are the only way to get through the night. She'll take alive for now - as long as he is alive, they have something to work with.
She hears voices, and all but bolts out of the bathroom. Dr. Rand is standing there, speaking in a low voice so as not to wake the girls, but they rouse anyway, and he looks up when she appears. She's frozen to the spot, not able to move any closer towards him, scared beyond all measure that he might tell her Deacon is gone, but as she tries to breathe through the dizziness that pricks at her vision, she takes in the look on his face, and knows that isn't the purpose of his visit.
'He's still under,' he says, coming towards her. She is gripping the door handle so hard her knuckles are white. 'We're transferring him to the ICU.'
'The surgery's done?' she asks, her brain not nearly as sharp as it usually is. Dr. Rand nods, helping her out.
'We've managed to stabilise the liver long enough to remove the clot, and he's showing no signs of rejection. We'll be monitoring him through the night, and I need you to know he's not out of the woods Rayna, these next few hours are crucial, but yes, the surgery is done.'
She isn't sure how to react, but she sends up a silent prayer of thanks that there are no longer strangers in white coats with their hands inside his prone body, and sinks into a chair like all of her bones have been liquified. Scarlett crouches down next to her and rubs her knee, and it's strange, Rayna thinks, somewhere in the mire inside her head, how it is to be the one other people are being strong for. Strange, but not unwelcome. She covers Scarlett's hand with hers.
Dr. Rand isn't finished. He looks from Rayna to Scarlett. 'Beverly's awake. She's groggy, but she's asking for you.'
#
The plastic chair is bolted to the floor in Teddy's cell. Cell. Like he's a criminal. But he is, he supposes - he's done a thousand things wrong, too many of them not at all legal. He's disappointed in himself, but that isn't nearly the worst of it. How will his daughters ever be able to look him in the eye again?
He looks around the square, minimal room he is being held in overnight. He shouldn't want them anywhere near this hellhole. Prison is no place for his beautiful girls, they are too precious, too unspoilt, to set foot in its doors. He knows, with a pain in his heart worse than any he has ever felt, that it will be a long time before he sees them again.
He never thought the day would come when he asked for any good fortune to be sent Deacon Claybourne's way, but he finds himself praying, for the first time in as long as he can remember.
Let the bastard live, he pleads. My girls need a father.
#
Daphne is scared. She's never seen her mom such a mess - not when she split up from her dad, not when her pawpaw died. Not when it had been all over the newspapers about Deacon being Maddie's real dad and everyone in the playground had been talking about it.
Deacon seems to be the person her mom gets most worked up about, apart from her and Maddie. That time in school when Maddie slipped on a spilt drink in the lunch room and cut her chin open got her all kinds of upset, and Daphne knows she cries sometimes when she has to leave them to go on tour.
Since Deacon's been sick though, it's been really obvious she's sad. She always tries so hard to be Superwoman, but sometimes Daphne thinks that she really needs to take off her cape and let everyone else take care of her for a change.
Daphne knows Deacon is Maddie's dad but she loves him a lot too, and she doesn't want anything bad to happen to him. He always looks really big and strong and he hadn't looked that way at all in the ugly hospital gown that had been really itchy when she'd hugged him before he'd gone into surgery. She hadn't liked seeing him like that. It's been really cool having him live with them and she feels like they're becoming a new family, a really good one. She hopes they can go home all together and be that way again.
Deacon's doctor is really nice, even if he does look too young to be a real doctor. The doctors Daphne's seen on TV have usually had at least a moustache or some wrinkles, but Dr. Rand - she thinks that's his name - doesn't even have a bit of beard. Aunt Tandy says what he does have is a face like a baby's butt, but Daphne doesn't really want to think about that.
The baby's-butt-doctor had come in to tell them they'd finished the operation on Deacon, and she'd thought that had sounded like it might be a good thing but they wouldn't let anyone go and see him and it doesn't seem to have helped her mom to feel better.
Daphne wants to cry but she doesn't. Maddie is already crying and their mom is really white and looks like she might throw up any minute. They're sat on the couch really close together and Daphne sits down next to them.
She doesn't cry. Instead she holds both of their hands, and squeezes tightly. Even if she is only ten and up way past her bedtime, she thinks it's her turn to be Superwoman for a while.
#
Rayna waits outside the door when Scarlett goes into Beverly's room. She wants to go in, to thank her for what she's done, but there is a part of her that she is shocked at that hisses in her ear that if Beverly - nasty, bitter, egotistical Beverly O'Connor - survives and Deacon dies, she will never fucking forgive her.
It's completely irrational, of course. There is nothing to forgive her for. Beverly walked into this hospital fit and healthy - she isn't the one who's been sick for the past six months. Why it should be a trade off between her life and Deacon's is based on nothing but Rayna's absolute terror that he might not wake up, that Beverly may be the only one walking back out of here again.
How unfair, she thinks, with such intensity that her hands shake - how unfair that sweet, selfless Deacon, with his boundless capacity to love, who had been brought up amongst exactly the same hardships Beverly had, should be the one to lose his fight, when he has fought so hard and Beverly hasn't fought at all. She has allowed herself to be consumed by her pain, to take it out on all those around her and to try her hardest to pull them down with her. Deacon would do anything to protect those he loves, to see them happy even at his own expense. Finally he is building the life he has always wanted with Rayna and the girls, the life that he has deserved all along, and Beverly is the one whose voice she can hear through the crack in the door.
But that's just it, Rayna realises - he would do anything for the people he loves. If the very worst happens, if he isn't able to thank his sister for at least trying to help save him, then he would want her to do it for him.
She walks into the room.
'Hey, Beverly.'
#
She'd known it could be the last show they would ever do at the Bluebird.
That he'd only been able to find the strength to do it because she'd been there by his side had spoken to everything they have always been to each other.
They'd walked up to the stage hand in hand, and the rest of the night Rayna had stayed close to him, her arm tucked in his, his fingers around hers.
'Hey there,' the blonde woman had said after their performance. sidling up to them in a way that Rayna at another time might not like very much. The woman had been a little apprehensive though, and it had offset any bristling there may have been had the current magnitude of things not shrunk everything else.
'Pam,' Deacon had replied, confirming what Rayna had been wondering. Pam, Luke's back-up singer, the one she'd seen Deacon with his arm slung around a couple of times backstage on the Wheels Up tour. How foreign it had felt to think back to that time; how quickly it had become so. Back then Rayna had been jealous seeing Deacon with this woman - irrationally, given that she'd had her own arms around Luke.
'Long time no see,' Pam had said, smiling at him in the way women often smile at Deacon, like he's melted their kneecaps at some point in reality or their dreams and the mere memory is enough to make them drool.
Pam though, had been different. There was a hint of regret about her, sure, that he got away no doubt, but she'd clapped Deacon on the shoulder when she hugged him; one of the guys, despite what the floaty dress might have wanted people to think.
'We haven't officially met,' she'd said, extracting herself from Deacon and holding out a bony hand. The look on her face had said she perhaps knew more than Rayna may have wanted her to - about Rayna herself, about her relationship with Deacon. Something about Pam had made her think that she'd figured most of it out for herself though.
She'd decided instantly that she liked her.
'Good to see you back up there together,' Pam had said, genuinely, and Rayna had looked at Deacon. He'd been gazing down at her, his arm hooked around her waist, a hint of a goofy smile on his face.
'It's good to be back up there together,' he'd said. 'Ain't a thing in the world feels like that.'
They'd exchanged a look then, Pam and Deacon, something secret that had passed between them, and Rayna had looked from one to the other, curious. There had been no doubt, no insecurity. For Deacon, Rayna is it, and everyone else knows it just as well as she does.
'You always were gonna end up right where you belong, Claybourne,' Pam had said, and to Rayna it had seemed like a goodbye, a full stop at the end of the part she'd played in Deacon's life.
She'd left shortly afterwards, but the sentiment of what she'd said had stayed with Rayna.
The Bluebird had been the first place she and Deacon had ever sung together. They've done so hundreds of times since, have played more sets on that small, understated stage than they could ever have imagined. They've played plenty on huge, glitzy stages too, in front of sold out arenas full of screaming fans, and yet they always return, no matter their circumstance or success, to the place they think of as home.
The Bluebird is where Deacon first kissed her, where he slipped a lollipop ring on her finger and told her, with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips, that he would dedicate his whole life to getting her to marry him. Out the back by the empty barrels and the employee trucks is where they'd first confessed that they loved each other; on the hardwood chairs around a formica table is where he and Maddie had their first real conversation as father and daughter.
And Rayna knows, without question, that if the worst happens, she won't sing another note at the Bluebird ever again.
#
The nurse who peers around the door is instantly familiar, but Rayna can't quite place her. She is somehow gentle as she walks in, careful not to upset the balance they are trying to hold onto. If anyone cracks, they all will, and even Daphne is aware of their unspoken agreement.
The nurse smiles. 'Thought you might need this, sugar,' she says in a thick, syrupy-smooth Southern accent that comforts Rayna instantly, as though the sound of it is stored somewhere in her memory and has brought her strength before.
Because it has. 'Bertha,' she breathes as the nurse holds out bitter-smelling coffee in a polystyrene cup.
'Just how you like it,' Bertha says, giving her a gentle wink, and Rayna looks down at the cup as she realises. This woman, with her wiry hair and her round frame, remembers, after two years and countless patients, how Rayna takes her coffee. She'd been the one to sneak a cup to her in the weeks after the accident when Rayna had been under the watchful eye of a doctor who just hadn't understood her need for caffeine.
Bertha pats her elbow and Rayna starts to cry.
'There now,' she soothes, plucking a tissue from the pocket of her patterned scrubs. She waits patiently for the tears to subside, and Maddie and Daphne come to sit at Rayna's feet, leaning their heads on each of her knees and keeping their end of the silent bargain while they let her - while she lets herself - crumble. She strokes their soft hair, feeling surrounded by love.
'No offence to you honey,' Bertha says when she has calmed some, 'but I'd hoped y'all would stay far away from this place.'
'Me too,' Rayna says in a small voice.
'He's strong as an ox you know. Stubborn as one too. Caused me no end of trouble when he was in this hospital, sneaking into your room to sit with you. Wouldn't listen to a damn soul tell him not to.'
Rayna's tears fall anew but she smiles, laughs a little even. A few days of Deacon Claybourne and this woman had had him pegged.
'Paid off though,' Bertha says quietly, and her face is soft for only a moment. She straightens her back and shuffles her hips like a bird gathering its feathers. 'Now it's your turn to be stubborn. Don't you let him go anywhere but home with you and these precious girls.'
#
Her phone flashes at 4am, and she picks it up from the table where it sits among the long-abandoned card game and untouched cartons of Chinese food.
'Can't sleep,' Juliette's text says. 'Any news?'
The last time Rayna had seen Juliette she'd been a stone cold bitch who hadn't appeared to give a damn about Deacon's wellbeing, but Juliette is Juliette, irrational and, more often than not, backwards at coming forwards. Right now, her mood swings are the least of Rayna's concerns, though she has her own suspicions about her current state of mind.
Somehow it's a comfort to hear from her, even if Rayna would quite like to toss the phone at her head. There's always a fine line with Juliette between wanting to hug her and wanting to throttle her.
'Nothing,' Rayna texts back. She knows Maddie texted her earlier to tell her there had been complications, and she's happy for anything that provides some comfort to her daughters right now.
'I'm sorry,' Juliette replies, and Rayna has no idea if she's talking about Deacon or her little display earlier, but she accepts the apology anyway. Life and death, and there Juliette is, bound to her, for better or for worse.
#
There are some flowers on a side table. They would be beautiful, in another place, on another night. Here they feel forced, token cheerfulness that doesn't belong amidst fear and grief.
Rayna stares at them, tracing the smooth folds and edges of their petals with her eyes. They're tulips, luscious and brightly coloured, and she hates them.
She would never be the same without him. It chokes her to think it, how incomprehensible a notion that she will ever be able to wake again if he doesn't.
She's heard stories, of course she has, she's in the business of whiskey lullabies and lovelorn cries issued as song. They tell of broken hearts that never heal, of lovers doomed to mourn their perfect other every moment of the days they remain.
She feels like the flowers are mocking her, so she tosses them in the trash can.
#
The room is still when Bertha opens the door and ushers Watty in, shushing him as she does. He thanks her with a nod and she disappears, leaving him to sit down. Maddie and Daphne are covered with pale hospital blankets, Tandy next to them with Daphne's head on her knee, and Deacon's niece, who he knows he met once at the Opry, is resting her head on a bundled up coat that covers the arm of her chair. None of them stir, and he looks from one to the other, wishing he could take all of their pain away.
His eyes settle on Rayna, asleep in an armchair. She looks anything but comfortable. She is hunched up in foetal position, her head resting on her knees, and a jacket is draped loosely over her legs.
He'd woken up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water from the kitchen, as he often did, and had seen her text.
There's a problem Watty, it had said.
He doesn't stay. He covers Rayna with a spare blanket and leaves the silver ring on the coffee table next to her, retrieved from her music box and delivered safely just as she'd asked.
As he moves to leave she shifts in her chair, but doesn't wake. She looks, even in slumber, lost, horribly alone. Watty cannot imagine Rayna Jaymes without Deacon Claybourne. He hopes he never has to.
#
Rayna watches the sunrise through the open window. She once heard someone say that no matter you win or lose, the sun will always come up in the morning. She figures they were right, because it does, just like always. The sun is indifferent to anyone's plight or joy.
It should be a comfort, the consistency of it all, but Rayna finds herself fearing the daylight, uncertain what it will bring.
Maddie stirs, and is by Rayna's side in a few quiet steps, no words needed. She is Deacon's daughter, through and through, and her presence , more than ever, calms Rayna. She feels him with her, and as Maddie slips her hand into hers, she feels the reassuring squeeze as though he is telling her all will be ok, my love, no need for such worry.
So she waits, no longer so alone. Maddie rests her head on her shoulder, and together they watch the sun crack like a yolk and bleed all over the sky.
#
As the clock ticks towards the seventeenth hour, the door opens and Dr. Rand walks in, his hands in the pockets of his impossibly white coat.
#