Part 4:
Violet could hear people talking near her. White hot pain blossomed in her head and she could feel something warm dripping along her neck into the collar of her shirt. Oh god, did she fall again?
"Charlotte," she called out.
"I'm right here," the blonde said above her.
Her eyelids felt heavy, but she managed to crack them open.
"Hi," she said to the blonde. There were some other people around her, but they were too far out of her range of vision.
"Don't try to move. Do you remember what happened, Dr. Turner?"
A bright light was shined in her eyes and she tried to swat it away.
"My head hurts," she said instead of answering the question. The blonde came closer and she was able to get a good view. Charlotte looked different. Her hair was shorter and with bangs and most noticeably her stomach was flat.
"Where's the baby," she managed to get out.
"What baby, Violet?" Charlotte asked while listening to her heart with the stethoscope.
"Your baby."
The blonde stopped what she was doing and put her stethoscope back around her neck. Charlotte looked worried now.
"Can you tell me your full name?"
"Violet Marie Turner."
"Good. Now can you tell me what month and year we're in?"
"March 2012."
"Are you sure," the blonde asked.
"Yeah, I feel sleepy. I think I'm going to nap."
"Violet, try to stay awake."
She couldn't.
When she woke up again, she was in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV. There was someone sitting at her bedside, holding her hand. She blinked in the bright light of day and then focused on the woman sitting beside her. All she could remember was slipping on paper and falling and then some weird dream that she couldn't really remember. She had the weirdest feeling that the dream was about the blonde.
She coughed to clear her throat and to alert Charlotte that she was awake. The blonde handed her a cup of water and helped her drink some of it. Charlotte put the cup back down and looked at her expectantly.
"What?" She asked. She noticed Charlotte was still holding her hand. It felt kind of nice. The blonde had surprisingly soft hands.
"Don't tell Cooper I beat you up. I wasn't gonna hit you."
She rolled her eyes. "I know that and besides I could have definitely taken you. You're tiny, you know."
The blonde snorted. "Uh, huh. Sure." Charlotte stood and flipped through her chart. She listened as the blonde told her she had a grade 3 concussion and five stitches. She would be out of the hospital in a couple of days if she behaved. She rolled her eyes at that.
"I will personally take care of you," Charlotte told her as she wrote something down on her chart. "If you need anything at all, the nurses will page me."
She chuckled. "What? Are you worried I might sue the hospital?"
The blonde froze for a second and then resumed writing. Her body, which had previously been relaxed, was stiff and rigid. Her hand was gripping the pen she was holding too tightly. Violet noticed all of these things
"Charlotte," she said softly. "I would never do that. I know that were not friends or anything, but I wouldn't do anything that horrible to you."
She didn't know why she was being so gentle with the blonde. It's not as if Cruella had feelings or anything. Still, she didn't want Charlotte thinking of her like that.
"Regardless, I will personally oversee your recovery. Now, can you tell me what year it is?"
"2009."
"Hmm."
"What?" She asked curiously.
"Earlier, when we were still in my office, you said it was 2012 and then you said something about me having a baby. You were all out of sorts. Don't worry about it."
"Oh, I think I had a dream about you when I passed out. All I remember is that you were pregnant and that there were blueberry pancakes."
"Interesting dream, Turner. Cooper's going to be here in a few minutes. He was here earlier, but he had to leave because of an emergency. The rest of the Oceanside pansies have been in and out all day. You probably don't remember it. You were pretty out of it."
The blonde put up a finger and moved it back and forth. "Can you follow my finger?"
She did as she was told and the blonde nodded. She lay back in the hospital bed feeling dizzy and tired again "Hey, I'm sorry I got blood all over your office and everything."
"Don't worry about it. I'm just glad you're okay." She felt the blonde give her hand a squeeze. "Just rest now."
She woke up later and the room was cast in shadows. She sat up, no longer feeling tired. She had slept the whole day away with a lot of interruption, like every hour. She apparently slept away Cooper's second visit too because she couldn't recall seeing him. She heard the click clack of heels headed in her direction and looked over to see Charlotte walking her way. It was pretty late and she wondered if the blonde ever stopped working.
"Well, look who's up."
"I've been sleeping all day. I can't sleep anymore."
The blonde handed her a little plastic cup with pills in it. "Take your medicine."
She scrunched up her nose in distaste. "I don't like those. They make my head feel fuzzy."
"Which is better than a pounding headache. Now go on, take it. Don't be difficult."
She did as she was told. She swallowed the pills and downed a glass of water. The blonde did a couple of tests and asked a couple of questions before taking a seat in the chair next to her bed. Apparently she was here to stay. She rolled over carefully so that she could watch the blonde.
"Hi," she said with a lazy smile.
She knew she must have looked goofy because the blonde was smiling at her and that would never happen under normal circumstances.
"Hi, Turner."
Violet grinned and reached out to the blonde. These were some good drugs. The blonde obliged and took her hand. They stayed like that for a few moments, silent and watching each other.
"Why did you start Pacific Wellcare?" She said out of the blue.
"I liked the challenge of being a director and at the practice I actually get to see patients instead of the endless paperwork I get here."
"Mmm, that's a good answer."
"I wasn't aware that I was being judged," the blonde said with humor.
"You weren't. It's just that you're…" She paused as confusion crossed her face.
"I'm what?" Charlotte leaned forward, genuinely curious.
"I never know what to expect from you."
The blonde merely raised an eyebrow and encouraged her to elaborate.
"It's not a bad thing. You're just a very complicated person. I can't figure you out. You're mean to everyone, but then you go and do something nice like the Safe Surrender Program or this, taking care of me. You're …" She searched for the right word. "Intriguing."
The blonde smirked. "Oh, is that right, Dr. Turner?"
"Yeah, I would like to figure you out one day," she mused aloud.
Charlotte chuckled and pat her hand. "I think I like you better when you're all drugged up."
She spent three days in the hospital in total. She was pretty sure the blonde wanted her to keep her there longer, but she was going stir crazy and she was really wanted to sleep in her own bed and wear her own clothes. Those hospital gowns were pretty annoying. Like she needed people to see her underwear every time she had to get up and pee.
She stayed home for a little over a week before she went back to work. She rested and recovered until her head didn't hurt so much. She couldn't wait to see her patients. She had been nervous about leaving them with a substitute therapist. Some of her more sensitive patients could be easily upset by this sudden change. But when she got back to Oceanside, she jumped right back into things and everything seemed to be going well. Her co-workers were happy that she was back and so were her patients. She was happy to be back too, but she couldn't help but feel a little off.
It could have been a number of things that were making her feel this way. It might have been the head injury itself, or the way Charlotte personally took care of her and kept her company during her stay at St. Ambrose or it could have been the feeling that she was forgetting something important. She felt like that dream she had when she passed out meant something, but she could still only remember snippets of it.
She was in the break room the second day back at work when she spotted Addison talking to Charlotte. In her drug induced haze, she remembered telling the blonde that she wanted to figure her out. She wasn't really sure why she said that or in what context, but she did kind of want to get to know the blonde better. Try to understand her and figure out why she did the things she did. This would be like a study. She would study the blonde.
She found Charlotte to be more interesting and less infuriating these days. Her recent behavior proved that she wasn't exactly Cruella. She didn't think Cruella would hold her hand while she was high on drugs and feeling lonely in the hospital. She had a feeling that there was more to Charlotte than the blonde let on and that definitely peaked her interest. So she would study the blonde and put the pieces together. For science.
She pretended to read a file, while surreptitiously observing the blonde. Charlotte wasn't doing anything particularly interesting, just talking Addison. She tried reading their lips, but couldn't make out anything. The blonde spotted her and raised an eyebrow at her. She raised the file up higher to cover her face. A few moments later the blonde was standing in front of her.
"Are you spying on me?" The blonde asked incredulously.
"No," she said dragging out the word. "I have better things to do with my time."
"I'm sure," the blonde said dryly. "Anyway, here."
Charlotte handed her an appointment card with a date and time scheduled for tomorrow.
"What's this?"
"An appointment card." The duh was implied. "Yours. I'm still your physician and we need to do a follow up appointment or did you forget?"
"No." Yeah, she forgot. She wasn't really listening to Charlotte's instructions when she was being discharged. She just wanted to get the heck out of St. Ambrose. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Alright then." And with that the blonde was gone.
She went to the follow up appointment the next day. It was upstairs at Pacific Wellcare. She decided not to tell anyone. She was pretty sure they would be pissed that she was now a Pacific Wellcare patient. Plus, she probably could have asked someone at Oceanside to look her over.
She went upstairs and checked in with the receptionist. She felt incredibly uncomfortable sitting in the lobby like a patient. And she knew that exactly what she was, but she usually never made official appointments for things like this. Finally, after an eternity of waiting a nurse called her name and led her to an exam room. She sat in a chair. She refused to sit on the exam table. She should have just asked for Charlotte to come to her office and do it there instead.
The blonde walked in, looked at her sullen expression and smiled in amusement. Charlotte let her stay in the chair as they went through a list of questions regarding her concussion.
"And how's the pain? You might still be getting headaches."
"They're not bad," she said while playing with a loose thread on her sleeve.
"Would you tell me if they were?" Charlotte gave her a pointed look.
She squirmed a little in her chair and focused her eyes on anything that wasn't Charlotte's intense gaze.
"Maybe," she finally got out. "Probably. Most likely."
The blonde shook her head. "You're a terrible patient."
"But, I mean it. I hardly get headaches now and when I do they're not painful."
"Good, that's good. I see that you've already had your stitches removed." The blonde didn't sound particularly happy about it.
She shrugged. "Cooper did it."
"And you didn't call and tell me this because?"
Yeah, she probably should have done that. Charlotte was the one who had given them to her in the first place. "Because, I knew that you were already so busy and didn't want to waste any of your time?" She said while giving the blonde the smile she used when she knew she was in trouble.
"Uh, huh," the blonde said, clearly not buying it. "Any nausea? dizziness? Sensitivity to light?"
And the list went on and on. Finally, she just couldn't take it anymore. She had work to do too.
"Are we done yet?" She asked.
The blonde sighed and closed the file. "For today, but you call me if anything changes. I mean it, Violet."
She got up to leave, but turned back at the last second. "So we're not going to do the whole mortal enemies thing anymore?"
"I don't think that would be appropriate anymore considering you're now my patient."
When was it ever appropriate?
"Alright. See you around Charlotte."