There's a woman in the waiting room.
She's older than she looks, Ellie thinks. It's the eyes. She has tired eyes, eyes that keep flickering between the screen of her cell phone and the white plastic sign that says Cardiology. Every once in a while she sends a text, but it's always with an eye half-trained on that empty hallway.
Ellie supposes she looks tired, too - there are a lot of things to be afraid of, today, and so she alternates between trying not to think about her best - only - friend, and reminding herself that if ever anyone were capable of keeping a heart beating out of sheer stubborn will, it would be Alec Hardy.
So it's out of something like kinship that she brings two cups of terrible coffee back from the cafeteria instead of one - and that's like her old self, isn't it, doing something nice for a stranger? It feels good, though in the wake of the last six months spent with Hardy as her only adult companionship, she isn't half surprised when the proffered cup is not only accepted, but accepted with a warm, if not slightly distracted, thank-you.
"I'm Ellie," she says, sitting one seat closer than she had before. Old reflexes, she supposed.
"Tess," the other woman says, a not-quite smile finding her lips. "Waiting for someone?"
"Just a friend," Ellie waves a hand. "But he'll be all right. What about you?"
"Yeah," the other woman says, taking a long breath. She tucks her long brown hair behind her ear, and one finger absently worries the edge of the styrofoam cup she's holding. "I'm waiting for someone."
They lapse back into awkward silence after that, and it's not long before Ellie's holding her breath every time someone in scrubs comes through that hallway. Should it be taking this long? Is he all right? Is he…?
Oh, he really shouldn't be alone in there.
His ex-wife, she notices, is suspiciously missing. Ellie's torn on that - ever since the article, ever since she worked out what happened and weaseled the rest out of him, she's been itching for a chance to give that woman a piece of her mind, and she doubts she'd be able to keep herself from doing so today. But the absence of his wife also means that his daughter is not here, and he really shouldn't…not without seeing his daughter one last…oh, stop.
He's going to be fine.
"That's a lovely bracelet," she says, by way of distracting herself. It isn't, really, it's a cheap little thing, with the silver plating wearing away in places, revealing copper underneath. But the woman - Tess - smiles when she says it.
"Gift from a little one," she says, scrunching her nose up fondly. "She saved up all her candy money for it when she was just a wee thing. "
"Your daughter?"
"Aye," says the woman with a mirthless laugh. "Fifteen, now, and barely speaks to me at all."
"Oh that's just kids," Ellie says, waving a hand. "My son Tom - the moods he gets in!"
It goes on like that for nearly an hour, idle conversation about children and life and motherhood, words that are really just life rafts, keeping their heads above water until news - good or bad - arrives. Ellie never quite catches why she's here, just barely-there snatches of emotion flitting across Tess' face every time her eyes flicker towards the surgical suite.
It doesn't dawn on her, at the time, to think anything of the Scottish accent, or the wedding ring she isn't wearing, or the petulant fifteen-year-old daughter. It doesn't dawn on her that they're watching the same doorway, or that their eyes follow the same doctors, flitting in and out of the rooms beyond.
The important thing, the thing she doesn't realize, only comes to her when the doctor comes striding down the hallway with a clipboard in hand, approximately fifteen minutes after she's decided she really very thoroughly likes this woman.
"Mrs. Hardy?"
Her first astonished instinct is to correct him. This is not, unfortunately, the first time someone has assumed that Ellie herself was Mrs. Hardy, for all the time they spend together. It isn't until she sees the grief-stricken fear on Tess's face that she realizes.
Oh god.
"He's going to be fine," the doctor says, giving her a reassuring look.
He continues to talk, but Ellie doesn't hear because she's still reeling, and Tess doesn't hear because she's slumped against the wall in relief. After a single text message sent with a trembling hand, the other woman's face grows red and her mouth twists in a sob, and she turns away from Ellie, shaking.
She isn't sure, but Ellie thinks she hears words, thinks she hears oh god thank you, in the midst of those gut-wrenching tears.
"Don't tell him I was here," she says quietly, voice thick after minutes have passed, swiping ineffectually at her face, still sticky with running mascara. "Just don't tell him I was here, and make sure he doesn't…he always…he'll try to get up before he's meant to, you've got to stop him, okay?"