Ch. 7 - Midnight Gossip Sessions
A/N: I just checked my bank balance. I'm obviously not JK Rowling. - DG
Hermione woke with a start. She looked around the room and it looked like nothing had changed. The lights were dim in the room, giving off just enough so the nurses who came in could see their clipboards and medications. A soft whirring was in the background, making a white noise through the pump of the ventilator. Hermione found that her digital pad had turned off after she dozed off. She replaced it in her satchel on the floor so she wouldn't be clumsy and damage it.
Hermione sat on the couch for a moment, running her hands through her hair, rubbing her eyes in the barely illuminated room. She felt like she had cotton in her mouth and sand in her eyes. Those same eyes strained to see her mum, lying still in the bed. She checked the watch on her wrist. It was half ten. I must have dozed off reading earlier. She stood up and stretched her back out from sitting on the couch the wrong way. No wonder why Dad slept poorly on it last night. He's right – the couch is just this side of rubbish. It needs another cushion on the back of it, not just on the bottom of it.
Hermione slipped out of the room and walked down the hallway to the ward waiting room. She needed to stretch her legs and grab a cup of tea.
36 hours and no change yet. I need to be patient – everything went barmy only yesterday. She's only been on the vent a little over a day. Her last morphine dose was 4pm so it could be tomorrow afternoon at the latest. It could be tomorrow morning at the earliest. I just need to stay awake tonight in case she wakes and needs me. What can I do to stay awake and keep busy?
Hermione poured hot water from the spigot on the coffee dispenser, steeping a packet of Lady Grey. It would suffice for industrial tea rather than the loose leaf she used at home. She could have had worse. It could be the burnt sludge in the coffee pot. The smell still wafted through the room even if the pot seemed hours cold.
Hermione waved to the nurses at their station before she walked quietly back to room twelve. She slipped in the room with the intention of reading more of her case files. She passed by the mirror above the vanity and saw her face reflected back. There were dark circles under her eyes and ink smudges across her face. Ron would love to see me like this. Probably take the mickey for it too. She looked through the mirror to her mum in the bed and saw some color on her cheeks.
Hermione turned and took her vigil on the opposite side, right at the hip, just out of range of the wards she put up. Her cup of tea was left on the vanity, immediately forgotten. "Did someone put some makeup on you while I dozed off? Did a nurse make you up to look like Sleeping Beauty?" Hermione itched to remove the wrong shade of red from her mum's cheeks. "You'd fuss at me if you saw what they put on your face. You'd wonder who thought that shade was proper on your complexion. But since I can't get any closer to you to take it off you're stuck with it tonight. Maybe Dad can wash your face in the morning if you're awake. If you wake."
Hermione shoved her emotions back into her emotional closet, fighting the growing anxiety once again. Stop that! You can't think that way. All you're doing is making yourself sick so quit it right now. Focus on the positive, not the things you can't fix. When she wakes, then you can deal with the problems.
She looked at the bed again and saw that they had changed the blankets on the bed. The red blanket was gone, replaced with a white one over her arms. "At least the red one is gone. You always preferred white for bedclothes and linens. You said it was easier to keep clean – or know when to throw away. The one time I asked for bright blue bedclothes you told me for half an hour how you couldn't make sure they were even clean after being washed since they weren't white."
Hermione chuckled to herself. "You'd have had a fit seeing the linens in the tower. I think all my years I didn't have the first white article of bedclothes. Even my clothes were dark, except for my knickers and my uniform shirt. After a while I guess I got used to it." Hermione laughed again. "I just realized that I've never had white as bedclothes. Ever since I moved out we've had gold, and red, various shades of orange – but never white."
Hermione stepped back to the vanity and picked up the tube of lotion from the parcel there and brought it to the bed. She laid it gently on the white blanket while she took her mum's hand in her own. "Then again you had a snit when I asked to go shopping and I picked out garments that weren't sensible. I can still remember your face when I picked up that shocking red bra set. I was being silly. I knew you'd react and you did. I was all of fourteen at the time but the look you gave me was enough for me to put it back on the table straightaway. Imagine if I had been thinking of Ron that way at that point in my life."
Hermione untucked the blanket and sheet at the end of the bed. She pulled out one of her mum's feet and moved it a little. She knew from her research that the danger of a blood clot was minimal because of her medications but she still didn't want to take a chance.
"You'd have laughed the first time I took Ron shopping for pants. Up until then his mum bought them. He nearly had a meltdown when he saw the variety he could pick from. She bought what they could afford but I wasn't going to see him wearing threadbare pants any longer. Once we returned to England, which was before you repatriated, I took him shopping then went back later to purchase pants for him. I came home and tossed all the old, the threadbare, and the worn pants in his bureau dresser. He walked in and saw me sitting on the floor sorting his pants and got so mad at me. He yelled at me for throwing away perfectly good pants into the rubbish pile."
She picked up the foot and moved it around a little in an attempt to keep the ankle flexible. The nurses this morning did the same for her but twice a day made more sense.
"We've been together 15 years and I can count on one hand the number of times I've purchased white knickers and pants for either one of us. Most of that were maternity and nursing bras for when I was pregnant with Rose and then Hugo. I was upset since I felt like a cow. Ron said I finally looked healthy. Whom am I to argue with the love of my life?"
She massaged the lean muscle in the legs while moving the knee.
"But I also know it sent you around the twist knowing that we were shagging before we came to Australia. I still remember the harsh things you said that day before you stormed out of the house. I had betrayed your trust by using magic on you and you lashed out. You told the truth but you were so horrible in how you said it." Hermione sniffed, stifling the emotions yet again. "What you said hurt terribly and it took a while for me to get over it." Hermione continued to massage the muscles in the calf, working her fingers into the muscle to loosen it up. "I realize now that you didn't care how harsh it came across, how brutal it sounded to my wounded ears. You told the truth as you saw it and you weren't going to hold back how you felt. I betrayed your trust and that was your way of wounding me back."
Hermione took a deep breath. "It took years for me to accept that you were as blunt as Ron. If I wanted solace I needed Dad, not you. It's still the same even now. If I want answers, I ask Ron. If I want solace, I call Ginny or talk with Audrey, Angelina or Fleur. Even Luna is more help."
Hermione finished with the first foot and leg and started on the second one. "I swore I heard your teeth grinding from the other end of the house when we retired for the night. Once our door was closed I heard you yelling at Dad. I knew you were irate for what we were doing, shagging like rabbits. You told me straightaway that you thought I had lost my mind. I still remember that row completely. I only fought back because you lit into Ron. Rowing with me was fine but lighting into him was uncalled for."
Hermione picked up the foot and worked the toes into some semblance of flexibility. "How could you know that I would collapse three days later and have a magical crisis? You certainly didn't understand why I had such trauma and needed a mind healer for the next year while at school. You thought it was an excuse to get out of my responsibilities, thought I was hiding from the consequences of what happened. Then again it's not like I trusted you, hurting like I did, to confide in you what happened. I didn't know until much later that I was using sex as a coping mechanism."
Hermione picked up the tube of lotion from the bedclothes and applied some to her hands. "I'm shocked that you didn't throw us both out of the house after Ron yelled at you in the hospital. I bet that was Dad intervening in the situation. He's the peacemaker, just like Harry is."
Hermione started rubbing lotion into her mum's leg and worked her way down to the toes. "You didn't understand until later how much we changed since I sent you away. You didn't know that he was my soul mate and that it wasn't a question of if we were getting married but when. You only knew him as the horrible boy from school who often made me cry. You didn't know he was the reason I was still breathing, still coherent. You didn't know him as the love of my life, the one who actually could make me feel alive. We've been married 13 years, together for 15 and yet he can just look at me a certain way and it twists my knickers."
Hermione picked up the tube and squeezed more out onto her hands. She picked up the first foot and started working the lotion into the skin. "How can you know these things when we've barely talked in those intervening years? Sure, it's about Rose and Hugo, small talk and idle chat but it's not the conversations we had when Ron broke my heart the second time. We've certainly not talked of ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings."
Eventually she finished with one foot and did the second one. "It would have been nice to have had someone doting on me like this when I was petrified my second year. I was stiff for a week once I was administered the mandrake draught. I don't think Ron or Harry knew or realized it once I was awake. Merlin, there were days when Ron would drive me around the twist. Harry was just as bad but in a different way. He would get moody and quiet while Ron would fight back. Then again, they did laugh at me when I accidently polyjuiced into a cat. I was upset but looking back it's rather funny now.
"I wish you had known them like I did then. After Ron knocked out the mountain troll they were my friends. They were so silly and oblivious and ignorant. Ron was a prat from as soon as I met him, but I didn't do any favors either. They didn't mind I was a swot – not when I was helping them with their lessons and revisions. They were also the only ones who didn't bother me that they weren't as smart or picked on me for how much I bossed them around."
Hermione stopped prattling. She stood silent for seconds, realizing the opportunity she had before her. Only the repetition of the vent broke the silence. "Know what? Since you're a captive audience right now, I think it is time I tell you everything. It's not like you're too busy to listen or act like you're asleep in the middle of it all so I'll quit talking. That tactic quit working after my fifth year."
Hermione pulled over the cheap chair she borrowed from another room and pulled it up to the end of the bed. The chair was far from comfortable and it strained her back some but it would suffice for the night.
"I guess I should start at the beginning. That would be when I met Neville and helping him look for his missing toad. The train had just pulled away from the station and you told me to ignore the other kid's laughter because I was already in my robes. Not a minute later a student came up to me and asked if I had seen his toad on the train. Well,…"
Hermione started telling her Mum about Hogwarts. She was going to tell her Mum everything, good and bad, as long as she was asleep.
Francine stood outside of room 12 of the Critical care ward. She had a clipboard in front of her with orders for Mrs. Granger inside. She saw that her last dose of morphine was 4pm and was expecting at some point in the night for her to wake up. She still had to administer the other medications and check her vitals but she could do that in seconds.
She stepped into the room and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Immediately she saw Mrs. Granger's daughter sitting in the chair talking quietly. The two ladies looked different yet similar. They appeared to have the same stature, the same hair color and the same pallor. The little light in the room illuminated the few gray hairs on both their heads. Yet there were also differences. The daughter looked an old soul in a youthful body. Her eyes were expressive through the fatigue yet her back was straight, as if held up by force of will. Her hands were strong yet wizened but she also saw scars just barely visible under the cuffs of her vest.
"Mrs. Weasley, do you need anything?"
The daughter looked up from her mum's face. "I couldn't sleep so I thought I'd talk to her. She's probably been bored to tears by now listening to me jabber on about my days at boarding school in Scotland."
"I'll beg to differ. Talking to a patient while they are like this gives them a desire to come out of the fog, gives them a reason to wake up. You keep talking and I'll not bother you."
Hermione smiled. "Thank you," she replied quietly before turning back to her mum. "So we found out about Anacondas and Goliath Birdeaters. Those are spiders that live in South America…."
Francine tuned out the conversation of Zoology and finished her notes for Mrs. Granger. She worked quickly, replacing the dextrose bag after cleaning her IV ports and finishing with the necessary pain relievers and blood thinners.
"But I missed those lessons since I was so sick in the hospital wing. It would have been fascinating to see them in person," Hermione said to her mum. "Then again, after listening to Harry and Ron talk about the spiders – and how scared Ron was of them – might have frightened me too. If I saw a spider the size of a wheel well cover, I'd have been scared too."
Francine turned to walk out and caught a snippet of the rest, "And he's still afraid of spiders." She closed the door behind her and onto the next patient in her care.
Francine stood outside of room 12 yet again. It was a little after 4 in the morning and Mrs. Granger was due for a check. She had her clipboard and her hands were now sterile. She had the syringes in her smock and was ready to finish with her so she could get her dinner in the nurse's lounge.
She stepped into the room and it hadn't changed since midnight. Mrs. Weasley was still sitting in the chair quietly talking but Mrs. Granger seemed to be awake according to the monitors yet had her eyes closed. She didn't know if Mrs. Weasley realized that her mum had come out of the sedation.
Snippets of conversation caught her ears. She heard about running the halls of the Ministry on a trip and standing in the Hall of Archives in London. She listened discretely when she heard Mrs. Weasley mentioned getting hurt terribly while they were there and waking up days later in the hospital.
That might explain the scars.
Francine finished quickly and stepped back out of the room so she could make her notes and eat dinner.
Francine stepped back into the Granger room at six am. Dawn was breaking on the horizon, sunlight slowly trickling through the east facing windows. She looked at Mrs. Granger and saw that she was awake. Mrs. Weasley obviously hadn't noticed since she had her head on her hands and was far off in memory by the distant look on her face. Francine made a note of it, ignoring the chatter from Hermione about a row with her husband and him going home angry from their camping trip.
I'd be mad too if he got up and left me there. Sheesh, what a prat!
Francine finished changing out the saline bag and quietly slipped from the room. She had charts to finish and her notes to add to the charts before the next shift came on duty. She was ready for a pint and a kip even if most of the world was just waking up to the day.
She didn't interrupt Mrs. Weasley talking about how upset she was that Ron left her at their camp.
Sunshine barged in through the blinds on the window. It illuminated the two ladies in the room. One sat in almost the same position as earlier while the other lay in her bed. The one in the bed had her eyes open, listening intently to the adventures, escapades, and torments her daughter endured.
"The only way we could escape was on the back of the opaleye they had deep in the high security vaults. I hated that they had him chained down there but there was no other way for us to get out of there. So, we jumped on his back, broke his chains and held on for dear life while he clawed his way up to the surface. Once he was outside he took off and we rode it for hours. It's similar to the paradox of riding a tiger – it's a great ride but getting off of it without getting eaten or burned to a crisp is the challenge. It's a wonder we didn't run into a snatcher's gang on the ride up – or Aurors patrolling the skies. But then we saw an opportunity – jumping into a loch in Scotland and Harry said – "
Hermione felt her mum's hand move. Hermione squeezed them between her hands. Her mum squeezed it back. She looked up from the blankets that served as her pillow throughout the night and saw her mum's green eyes looking back at her.
"Mum?"
Jean smiled through the tubes helping her breathe. It was weak by comparison but felt like the best hug she ever received. She squeezed Hermione hands intentionally with as much force as she could muster.
"You're awake!" she said thickly. Hermione felt the boulder in her throat, choking on her reply. "Merlin, you're awake!"
Jean reached her hand up and ran her fingers across her daughter's cheek, pulling the first tears off. Hermione leaned into her mum's hand, feeling the warmth across her fingertips.
Hermione pulled her mum's hands back into her own. "Are you hurting?"
Jean shook her head.
"Do you know who I am?"
Jean nodded emphatically.
"Do you know your name?"
Jean pulled Hermione's hand open and wrote out her name.
"That's absolutely right. Do you know where you are?"
Jean looked around the sun illuminated room and looked confused. She turned her head back to her daughter and shook her head in response.
"You had a heart attack. You're in the hospital."
Algae green eyes imitated a house elf. Jean curled her hand and pointed at herself.
"Yes, you had a heart attack. It's a miracle you're alive. Dad caught you and did CPR on you."
Jean's hand went back up to her daughter's face while the other one sought out her hands. A gentle squeeze was all that was said.
"Oh Mum!" Hermione put her head on the blanket and wept in earnest, the emotional restraint melting away under her mum's delicate fingers. Hermione relishing the solace of her mum's fingers running through her hair.
