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"I am not emotionally ready for ninety percent of what happens to me."

~Maxine Gray "Judging Amy"

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"What do you mean you don't know where she is?" Maxine cornered the nurse in celadon green scrubs against the wall of the nurse's station with her stare. "Is it this hospital's policy to misplace its pregnant patients?"

"I told you, she said she was going to walk around and that's the last I saw of her." The nurse closed the top flap of the metal chart in her hand to cover up the identifying patient information on it before setting it back into the metal rack of that held five other charts, having to move past a desk cluttered with half empty Starbucks cups and an opened bag of chocolate truffles.

"If you would have bothered to look up from your bon-bons and your mocha whips you would have noticed she wasn't even on the floor!"

"We only low jack the babies Mrs. Gray, your daughter is a grown woman she can go where she wants-" The nurse skirted around the counter of the nurse's station where Maxine was standing to grab another chart off the rack and write something in it.

Maxine rounded gaze on her with a look that could melt fire. "My daughter is moments away from giving birth. Now that fact may not interest you since you get paid regardless of where that happens, but I'd personally rather her not do this in the gift shop or the atrium!-"

"Then maybe you should call her-" The nurse picked up a chart. "I hear cell phones are a thing nowadays."

The nurse looked all of 21-years-old, and at some angles, 17 with her long brown hair tied up in a ponytail with white ribbon that had little pink and blue pacifiers on it.

Maxine closed her mouth in a dangerous line, rage amassing to hellfire flame strength burning its way up her throat. "I also hear that it's a thing nowadays to have fully stocked malpractice insurance for ignorant, scrunchie wearing, pill pushing 10-month course, technical school graduates-"

"Excuse me," the voice cut in followed by a very loud, over emphasized throat clearing. Sean Potter came up right in-between Maxine and the nurse, standing next to him was Rebecca, Bruce's 14-year-old daughter.

Both Maxine and the nurse she was ripping into turned their attention to Sean.

"Rebecca wanted to know where she could find some real Coke, apparently they're out of everything except cheap knock offs in the vending machines up here."

"Oh sweetie," The nurse's face suddenly lowered into an overly sugary laden gaze of sympathy. She clicked her retractable pen closed, and pocketed it in the front pocket of her scrub top, making a big deal about bending down to Rebecca's height, which wasn't that much shorter than her own. "I know it's scary having new little brother or sister coming into the world. It can make you feel like you aren't getting mommy and daddy's attention. So I tell you what, how about I show you to our vending machine in the 'nurses lounge.'" She said 'nurses lounge' like she was saying: Windsor Palace. " Would you like that?-"

"I'd like for you to stop talking to me like I'm one the babies you deliver," Rebecca volleyed back in perfect sarcasm.

The nurse's smile pulled down on her face just as Maxine fought to bite one off of hers.

"Becca-sweetheart. Why-" Maxine cleared her throat and rubbed a thumb across her forehead to keep from simply laughing in the nurse's face. "Why don't you and Lauren go scout out this vending machine, with, uh-" She bent forward and read the name off the Nurse's ID. "Katie here-"

"It's Katherine," the nurse corrected, her expression no longer happy or sympathetic.

Maxine pulled out three singles and handed them to her stepgrandaughter. "I'm sure Katie, will be more than happy to show you both where it is, and I'll let you know when your parents show up."

Rebecca took the money from Maxine with a less than self-contained grin that she shared with her grandmother. She left to go find Lauren who was standing at the end of the hall, leaving the nurse to shoot Maxine the briefest of withering looks before following after the two teenage girls who walked just fast enough ahead of her that she had to jog to keep up.

Maxine watched them both leave with a look of pride in her eyes. "Rebecca's been a wonderful addition to the family."

"She certainly has your over the top cynicism down." Sean said.

"Sean, you came to stand in for Ignacio since he couldn't get back in time from that Horticultural Nightmare Bulb Show in Cleveland, not to correct my putting an overzealous little imp back in junior high where she belongs-" she took a breath because she realized she was ranting at the wrong person. "I'm sorry, I-" she looked around the labor and delivery floor. "I never thought I'd be here with Amy again, certainly not after-" she paused, the silence speaking of the baby Amy had miscarried days before her 40th birthday. "I just want everyone to be delivered safely." When Amy and Bruce had told everyone that she was pregnant again, Maxine had been happy if not more than a little scared. Amy was over 40 and had already suffered one miscarriage months prior; Maxine basically held her breath for 7 months, and was holding it even harder now when they were so close to the finish line.

"Amy will be fine."

"She's 41 Sean," Maxine said back. "Having a baby at this age poses, significant risk."

She's your daughter Maxine, she's strong, she can handle it." Sean set a hand on Maxine's shoulder, offering her a reassuring smile. "So don't worry, grandma." His smile grew megawatt bright.

"Sean, I love you dearly," Maxine removed Sean's hand from off her shoulder, and cupped his face in her hands with a smile. "But if you call me grandma with that tone of inflection again, I will do to you what I wanted to do to Nurse Brittany Spears."

"Understood," Sean returned.

"Grandma!"

Maxine turned at the sound of by Lauren's voice and turned to see her granddaughter running back down the hall with Rebecca, neither of them had sodas in her hand. "What's wrong?"

"Mom and Bruce are back!" Lauren answered in a hurried manner.

Her granddaughter's words shot Maxine forward like a torpedo, her shoes thudding in her fast stride over the tile. She turned a corner and caught sight of Bruce pushing Amy in a wheelchair in a stride just under a run. She hurried over to them and rounded on her daughter. "Where for heaven's sake did you go?"

"Out for a latte," Amy said over a thick pained voice as another contraction hit her full on.

Maxine ignored Amy's sarcasm and appraised her daughter with a critical maternal, eye. "How far apart are they now?"

"The elevator trip from hell took about four minutes," Bruce pushed the chair quickly down the hallway with a whirring of wheels. "She's had two contractions while we were on it."

Maxine turned back to the Nurse Katie. "Get doctor winters down here now-"

Katie looked at her affronted. "She's in the middle of a C-section."

"She's had multiple contractions in less than four minutes- get. her. down. here!" Maxine shouted loud enough to wipe the affronted look off of Katie's face and had her reaching for the phone as she took command of the wheelchair until it was pushed into Amy's assigned birthing room while Bruce kept pace right alongside of her.

"Mom," Lauren ran in a jog to keep up pace with the wheelchair, her voice laced with fear. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Amy pulled out of her curled position and grasped her daughter's hand. "I'm okay, I'm okay-just go wait with Uncle Vincent"

"But I want to be with you-" Lauren argued. "You said I could be here."

"I know what I said, but the nurse is going to do stuff that I don't think you'd want to see, I need you to come back in a little bit, okay-" Amy leaned over as another contraction hit her. She had been laboring for four hours, but her contractions had stalled out, until twenty minutes ago, feeling more, 'vicious' was the only way to describe it. "Can't I just have her here?" She didn't even want to think about standing up again to get to her bed, it felt like someone was trying to push a bag of porcupines out of her vagina.

"No grandchild of mine is going to be born in a hallway!" Maxine insisted, turning to Lauren. "Lauren, please listen to your mother, you and Rebecca go with Sean and find Uncle Vincent and Uncle Peter, and give us about 15 minutes before coming back. I promise nothing good will happen without you."

Lauren still looked affronted at being treated like she was still seven-years-old, but finally said. "Okay," before Amy kissed her daughter's hand several times before releasing it wheeling Amy through the doorway of her birthing room as Sean ushered both Lauren and Rebecca around where the hallway turned to the left towards the waiting room where the overflow of Gray family members were waiting.

Maxine continued to push the wheelchair. "In my day, children weren't allowed in the delivery room, something about seeing your mother screaming and half-dressed in stirrups causing trauma."

"She's 14 mom, I think she can handle it." Amy argued, "I was at the hospital when you had Vincent."

"You sat on your father's lap in the lobby and ate ice cream Amy, it's not the same thing." Maxine stopped the chair with a squeak of wheels.

"Yeah well she said she wants to be here, so I want her here," Amy returned.

"We'll debate it once you're back in in bed," Maxine insisted. She set the breaks and she and Bruce each took a side and helped Amy stand to her feet.

Katie hurried inside the room, stethoscope bobbing around her neck from the movements that she stilled with her hand on the bell and the ear pieces. "Dr. Winters will be here as soon as she finishes up with her C-section," she said this to Amy just as Amy doubled over in another contraction, throwing herself against the bedframe before she just dropped in a ball on the floor.

Amy groaned again, louder. "God, I don't remember it being this painful with Lauren."

"Every labor is different, Mrs. Van Exel," Katie walked over to her in an almost non-hurried manner, helping Maxine and Bruce get her back in a lying position on the bed, "And contractions can be much more intense for women at such an advanced maternal age like yourself." She said it like she was reading the preflight safety precautions on an airplane. She pulled the straps of a fetal monitor posting the first one over the peak of Amy's extended uterus. "It's all perfectly normal," She squirted gel on the second probe and moved it slid it with cold thickness across Amy's stomach until the fetal monitor beside the bed filled the room with the swishing thunk of the baby's heartbeat. "See?" she turned with a wide 'take it easy' smile at Amy. She held the monitor in place and pulled the straps through it to hold it in place.

Amy turned to stare at the monitor numbers, listening to the loud beating of the baby's heartrate that filled up the entire room

"She looks wonderful," Katie set a hand on Amy's stomach and rubbed it. She got her face right down next to Amy's stomach "Don't you, whittle baby? Yes you do, yes you do!" She made a variation of a motorboat motion as she coed against Amy's belly.

Amy gave Katie a 'what the hell?' look, clenching her right hand into a fist until Bruce grasped it and pulled it to him before she could lower it into a chokehold on Katie's neck.

Katie pulled away oblivious to all of this and beamed at her. "Pain better?"

"A little bit, yeah" Amy said this in a bit of a guarded fashion like Katie might offer her a coloring book next.

"Well they don't call it unlabor," Katie laughed with a high spirited laugh, looking around the room for everyone to 'get' her joke.

Maxine laughed with such force that anyone who wasn't Katie would have noted the fakeness it, but Katie just kept on laughing and Amy laughed with her, forcefully squeezing Bruce's hand to almost bone breaking strength to keep from putting her hands on Nurse Katie.

"I'll be right back to check you again, okay mommy?" Katie hung her half full bag of saline back on the IV pole by the bed. "It shouldn't be long now!"

Amy smiled so forcefully she it felt like she was breaking her teeth. "Great" she gave an over the top thumbs up to match Katie's but with a sarcastic smile that Katie missed because Katie petted the top of her head like she was a child and walked out of the room with a bob of her ponytail.

"Who told Nurse Katie 'unlabor' was a word?" Amy shot out as soon as Katie bobbed away with her chart.

"The same idiot that let her into nursing school in the first place." Maxine answered.

"That idiot needs to be shot," Amy returned.

"Yes they do," Maxine returned back. She set a hand on Amy's head, wiping it gently with her hand. "How's the pain?" her voice expected a real answer.

"It's defiantly there," Amy answered back, letting out a breath. "You know how it is ma."

"Yes I do, and I really wish you would have opted for the epidural. You don't lose any sense of womanhood merit by not bearing horrible pain without any drugs."

"No more lectures mom alright?" Amy returned. "I didn't have the chance to think about pain management; I was too busy finding my husband who ditched me-"

"I was saying a prayer, not going AWOL" Bruce defended. "After Rebecca was born I went to mass and lit a prayer candle to St. Philomena, the patron saint of infants. I did it again today, that and one to St. Majilla, the saint of childbirth."

"There's a patron saint for childbirth?" Amy questioned. She fully supported Bruce's religion, she herself had just never converted after they were married.

"There's one for everything," Bruce insisted. "I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a little extra protection thrown you and the baby's way."

Amy's annoyance fell apart like a frayed piece of cloth at the declaration. "That's sweet- that's really sweet" she reached out with a bit of an exhausted sigh, and grabbed his hand again, closing her fingers into his one at a time. "I'm sorry baby – God," she dipped her head back on the pillow and dropped her hand over her eyes, the IV catheter in her hand digging in against her skin. "I haven't had a baby in 14 years-"

"You either?" Bruce returned.

Amy glanced up at him and laughed in an exhausted kind of fashion, "What the hell were we thinking?"

"Mostly likely it was about sex." Maxine returned. "It's certainly what your father and I were thinking off when we made you and your brothers."

"Ma," Amy returned in mortification, swiping at her eyes like she wanted to pull them out of her socket. "Don't make me picture you and daddy having sex."

"If people didn't have sex, Amy, then civilization as we know it would grind to a screeching to a halt," Maxine returned. "Bruce is the theological one, ask him."

"It was a part of the Commandments before they got dropped down to ten," Bruce deadpanned to his wife. "Haven't you ever seen "History of the World?"

"Stop encouraging her!" Amy shot back. Bruce only laughed and leaned over the bedside rails. "No. You don't get off the hook like that," Amy said as he was nearing towards. "You're supposed to be on my team, remember?" Bruce kept ignoring her and at the end of their little dance she gave in and let him kiss her. "I hate you."

"I know you do," Bruce returned softly, his face was still inches from hers.

"And you did this to me, just so you remember." Amy returned.

"I remember." He pulled back and a bit of a smile graced Amy's face with a bit of a head shrug.

The next two events that happened in Amy's birthing room happened almost at the same moment. The first one was that Amy's eyes widened with a 'you've got to be kidding' mumbled under her breath as she caught sight of Stu Collins in his perfectly ironed charcoal gray suit turning at a nurses pointing into her room. And the second: the contractions that seemed to have quieted down since she had been back in her room came back, hard.

Amy leaned over with a gasp just as Stu made it into her room, the contraction taking her breath before she could ask him what he hell he was doing.

Maxine turned the doorway at the sound of someone entering the room, her eyes widening in surprise at what she saw. "Stewart-?"

Bruce turned at Maxine's words to Stu who stood just inside the doorway by the countertop set up with the soap and liquid hand sanitizer.

"What exactly are you doing here?" This time Bruce's question was asked at Stu, and much more harshly.

Stu looked past Bruce and to Maxine. "You're looking well Maxine."

"Thank you. You as well," Maxine responded with the politeness she had been taught as a child, but then her eyes narrowed in confusion because Stu and Amy didn't exactly keep in touch all these years. "But what are you doing here?"

"I ran into Amy and Bruce downstairs in the Chapel," Stu returned to Maxine, like it was a two plus two kind of answer, gesturing behind him to the Chapel that was hidden by a hallway and six lower floors. "And hospital visiting hours are still on, so I just thought, what the hell? Why not stop and check on everyone?"

"What about your client?" Bruce asked in a very low voice, starting to remember exactly why he never liked Stu Collins. "Shouldn't you actually be going upstairs and speaking to him?"

"The judge never showed," Stu returned, "His CSO fed me a line about him getting into some sort of maritime accident, well you know how it is with covering for a judge, Bruce. So that means I get to go home without accomplishing anything and do this whole damn thing again tomorrow."

Even in the midst of her contraction, Amy still managed to stare at Stu. "How'd you even know where I was?"

"There's only one maternity ward in this place- I just asked for your name at the nurse's station," Stu answered like it was obvious. "Amy Van Exel?" his tone shifted to annoyed audacity. "When I asked you to change your last name you wouldn't even consider it-you said it was against your principals-"

Amy grunted out a breath as she tried to breathe through the contraction, the urge to push was right there, the damn doctor had better hurry up or she wasn't giving her a choice. "You tracked down my maternity room to throw something back in my face that I said five years ago?"

"I came up here to apologize for what I said downstairs, Amy." Stu returned. "I overstepped, it's just been a very long day-"

"Yeah tell me about it," Amy shot back, blowing out a very long breath.

"I'm sorry," Stu finally said. "It's just, seeing you again," he laughed like it was an old joke that they both should have gotten. "I don't know what it is, but you always did do something to make me crazy."

"Can we do the whole apology thing later?" Amy returned, white knuckling the bed rail and Bruce's hand at the same time. "Maybe when I'm not in labor and when you actually mean it?"

Stu looked at her like she slapped him. "Excuse me? When I actually mean it?"

"I dumped you on our wedding day Stu," Amy returned while trying to blow out several breaths all at once. "You have every right to be burned by it and run off into sunset with the Polynesian interior decorator you met on our honeymoon that never happened, but don't try to fake sincerity around me!"

"God," Stu blew out a raspberry of a laugh. "You haven't changed at all-it's all still about the insatiable Judge Amy Gray-"

"I'm in labor!" Amy shouted at him. "And I never wanted you up here in the first place!"

"Which is history repeating itself," Stu returned.

Amy closed her mouth in a deadly straight line. "Get out-"

Stu stared at her like she slapped him. "Amy c'mon-"

Bruce turned around to face Stu when he didn't move.

"She said get out Stu," Bruce repeated Amy's words, his glower matching his wife's. "You're an adult, how about you finally do something in that age category and drop the teenage, jock, asshole mentality?-"

"I'm not the only adult in this room, Bruce," Stu threw back. "And I'm not the only one who's being an asshol-"

It happened in a blink, Bruce let go of Amy's hand and slammed a fist right at Stu's face before fully had time to think.

"Oh Bruce!" Maxine exclaimed audibly as the force of Bruce's punch threw Stu backwards on the floor with a heavy groan and a bloody nose.

Bruce looked at Stu lying on the ground, releasing his hand from the fist it was in with a pop of his knuckles, the reality of what he just did fully sinking it, but not above the part that fully thought Stu damn well deserved it.

Maxine walked in white canvas sneakers over to the bedside tray that sat next to the bed, dunking a white hand towel in the plastic pitcher of ice water on top of it. She wrung it out and walked over to where Stu was still sprawled on his back on the hospital floor. Without formal invitation, she bent down and grabbed Stu up by his underarms and yanked him to his feet. "Here, wipe your nose, there are nurses outside that can give you further medical attention if you think it's broken, or police officers you want to file a report." she pushed the cold wet rag against his face in a sloppy movement; Stu stumbled to catch it with one of his hands. "But I suggest the next time my daughter tells you to get out, you listen." Her glower was strong, she turned her and laid a hand on Bruce's arm and there was a silent exchange between them that ended in Bruce nodding his head at her, and unclenching his throbbing knuckles.

"Bruce-"

Amy's voice behind him made Bruce turn slowly. Hitting someone wasn't like it was in a Clint Eastwood Movie. The last time he had lost control like this, he had been arrested, and convicted as a felon, and it had made Amy almost fearful of him and the violence he was capable of, even if it was in defense of someone he loved.

A brunette nurse poked her head in the room, stethoscope swaying around her neck. "I heard a crash-" the nurse surveyed everyone the room like they were in a police lineup "is everything okay?" Stu was standing just to the right of the nurse, but before she was able to see the bloody expression on his face a beeping alarm rang from the fetal monitor Amy was attached too.

Whatever was about to come from Bruce's 'confrontation' with Stu Collins was drowned out in the sound of the alarm.

"Are you alright baby?" Bruce hurried back over to Amy, grabbing at her hand, and she received his touch with a wide eyed shocked look.

"I don't know-"Amy turned to the noise, blaring inches from her bed. The little heart symbol next to the numbers that registered the baby's heartbeat flashing in and out erratically as the heartrate began to lower. She watched as the brunette nurse lifted the paper readout of the motor, reading it. "What's going on?"

The second nurse's face lowering at what she saw, she raised her head and shouted: "I need some help in here!"

"Help" came in the form of Nurse Katie who ran into the room with a squeak of her sneakers on the tile. "What's wrong?"

The second nurse held up the fetal monitor strip "Baby's heartrate deceled down to 110-"

"What's wrong?"

"What's the matter?" Amy's words tripped over her mother's as Katie grabbed a pair of blue plastic gloves and moved down towards the end of the bed.

"I need to check you again Amy," Katie's voice had lost its high pitched light heartedness as she maneuvered Amy's legs into a bent knee position.

Amy felt the 'paint scraping' sensation again, harsher, a sensation that had her gasping and practically clawing up Bruce's arm. Katie swore.

"Damnit!"

Which made Amy raise herself up on her elbows in alarm. "What?-"

"Cord's prolapsed, almost an inch is visible-" Katie whipped her head up to the other nurse, "Put her in reverse Trendelenburg's position, get Dr. Winters-"

"She had to do an emergency hysterectomy," the second nurse answered.

"This is an emergency also!" Katie yelled it. "Get mom on two liters of O2 by mask and page the OB on call now!"

The second nurse placed a plastic oxygen mask over Amy's face but she jerked it off. "No, no! Not until someone tells me what's going on!"

Katie looked up at her. "The baby's umbilical cord slipped out before its head-"

"What does that mean?" Bruce turned to Katie.

"When that happens the head can squeeze against the birth canal and cut off oxygen to the baby," Katie's voice was much more clinical, much more assertive when she answered Bruce this time. "We're lowering the head of the bed to try and relieve some of the pressure and giving your wife oxygen to supplement the baby to prevent loss of oxygen to its body-"

"Oh god," Amy's expression shifted into fear and she finally stopped fighting the O2 mask as it was placed on her face, feeling a rush of air move up her nose, smelling her own hot breath as it moved up and down in a fog in the mask. Her head dropped down with a series of clicks drawing her lower like she was falling into a hole, her heartrate pounding in her chest, causing the heart rate monitor which monitored her own heartrate to skyrocket.

"What do we have?" An unfamiliar voice entered the room that Amy only saw in a blur of long black braided hair and celadon green scrubs.

"One inch visible cord prolapse, fully dilated, baby's heartrate's in the low 100's, moms on two liters by mask-"

"Up the oxygen to three liters and keep your hand on it." The woman slid a metal stool over to the bottom of the bed. "Amy, I'm Dr. Sanders, Dr. Winters is handling an emergency surgery so she asked me to look in on you okay? Your baby's cord is out before its head, which is causing her heartrate to lower, we have you on oxygen to try keep her stable, the nurse is manually keeping the cord away from the birth canal to try and relieve some of the pressure. I need to do a manual exam okay?"

Amy didn't have time to interject before she felt a ton of cold pressure that made her jerk up with an audible sound.

Bruce's lowered himself into a crouch to be even with her line of sight.

"Plus two station-" the pressure was finally gone as the doctor removed her gloved hand. Dr. Sanders threw the bloodied glove in the trash. "Call OR 4 tell them to prep-"

"They're done baby, okay?" He pushed his forehead into hers. "Breathe, just breathe-"

Amy closed her hand so tightly into his, calling out to the doctor. "Is she okay?"

There was a rolling movement of wheels by Amy's left side and the face of Dr. Sanders fully came into view, the top of her head covered by a blue surgical cap and her face half covered by a blue mask. "You're completely dilated, and your baby is almost fully descended into the birth canal, at this point, a C-section is almost more risky than trying to let you deliver naturally."

"So what are you going to do?" Bruce asked the woman who was only inches from him, as he held his wife's hand, feeling the pulse point in her wrist throbbing against his hand.

"We're going to move her to the OR-" Dr. Sanders returned. "In case the baby's heartrate drops any lower, we'll be prepped for an emergency C-section."

"I thought you said it was more risky than a natural birth," Bruce's voice was only one decibel louder than his heartbeat that was erratically beating inside of him.

"We might not have another option," Dr. Sanders told him, her expression serious, and so honest it felt like knives being scrapped across layers of old paint. "If the baby's heartrate lowers anymore, we might have to attempt the risk-"

"You will not attempt anything!" Maxine yelled at Dr. Sanders. "You will get in there, and you will deliver my grandchild and my daughter safely, do you hear me!"

The brunette nurse hung up the phone she had been talking into on the wall "OR's ready."

Amy's breath was threatening to choke her as it fogged into the mask, her mind flashing back to a time a year and a half ago when she was in a place like this, except she came back from it alone.

"Our surgical theatres' are small," Dr. Sanders said this in a kind of guilty sadness as she looked around the room at Maxine, then Bruce "there's only room for one more person."

Maxine ran one hand through her short, gray hair, before looking over to Bruce, her eyes betraying all the fears that she was desperately afraid would come true. "You need to go, - you need to go," she leant down by Amy's head. "I'll tell Lauren and Rebecca," she took Amy's hand and kissed it repeatedly. "You're strong baby, you will be able to do this-" she kissed Amy's mess of curls.

The brakes on the hospital bed rails released with a thick sound of Katie and the other nurses' foot, the latter turned to Bruce. "The OR is sterile, you'll have to change before I can take you back."

"I'll be right back-" Bruce watched Amy's breath fog up the oxygen mask, felt her hand tight and warm in his. "Try not to start without me alright?" From under the mask he saw her cry, and he lifted it up off her face just enough for him to kiss her.

"Just come back-" Amy watched him, trying to take her fingers off of his, but they didn't want to release.

"Sir, we need to go," Katie's voice cut into the reality of the moment. It wasn't like television shows, where people paused to allow enough time for everything to be said because it was the real nature of an emergency, messy and fast, and unable to wait for anything but its eventual outcome.

Bruce shared a last look with Amy that ended on a nod that was split between them. He released her hand and went to follow the nurse out of the hallway, only a moments glance backwards made him realize that Stu was still standing there in the room like something misplaced in the wrong section of a store, his face bloody, Bruce left hearing Lauren's cries of: "mom!" as he hurried to keep up with the nurse.