Half an hour later Beca and Chloe were still holding each other, and Stacie was actually starting to enjoy the trashy daytime TV, when a nurse in light green scrubs called out Chloe's name.
All three women jerked their heads up and around to look at the nurse.
"Right here." Beca called back as she and Chloe both got up. Stacie was up a moment later and they all walked over to the nurse.
"Right this way." She said as she gestured back through the open double doors she had just come through, giving the trio a sideways glance as she turned to lead them back into the patient area.
The nurse showed them to the room, took a quick look at Chloe's intake paperwork, gave them one last strange glance and said
"The doctor will be with you shortly."
They all thanked her and settled into the room, Chloe on the bed, Beca standing next to her, holding her hand, and Stacie in a chair near the foot of the bed.
"Do you guys mind if I do the talking?" Stacie asked after a moment.
Both Beca and Chloe shook their heads and Stacie nodded. She knew that, even though she loved Chloe and Beca dearly, she was still the least emotionally invested person in the situation, and things were going to be dicey enough, trying to get a doctor to believe them. They did not need a lot of tears to go along with their story.
They were all fairly surprised when just a few short minutes later a man with sandy brown hair and a five o'clock shadow, who looked to be in his late twenties, walked in the door. They had expected to wait at least an hour.
"Ms. Beale?" He asked, looking down at the paper work in his hands.
Stacie snapped her head up when she heard the voice.
"Frankie?" She asked in disbelief.
"Oh my God! Stacie?" The doctor immediately replied.
The two hugged, while Beca and Chloe both looked on, confused.
Stacie took a step back and looked at her friends.
"Guys, this is Franklin Linds. He was in med school at Barden. Frankie, this is Beca and Chloe, they were the captains of The Bella's."
Frankie stepped forward and shook both of their hands, saying. "It's so great to finally meet you two. Stacie told me so much about you guys back in the day."
Beca and Chloe both smiled awkwardly and said hello.
Sensing the tension from the two women, Frankie's smile shifted slightly from warm and personal, to compassionate and professional.
Stacie noticed the change and smiled. She had always liked Frankie, and Lady Fate could not have dealt them a better hand than him being the doctor on call.
"Ok, Chl… Ms. Bea…" Frankie seemed to be a bit confused at what to call Chloe and after a moment of deliberation, asked "Is it alright if we just use first names?"
Everybody nodded and he continued.
"Ok Chloe. Your intake paperwork says that you wanted to wait to explain your condition to the doctor because it is, and I quote, complicated. I want you to know that you can feel comfortable telling me anything at all. I've heard just about everything and there will be no judgement here."
"Um… Frankie?" Stacie said When her old friend looked at her she continued. "Beca and Chloe have asked me to explain everything. Is that ok?"
"Yeah definitely. Whatever makes everybody the most comfortable."
"Ok, now this is going to sound really freaking weird, but I swear to you that everything I am about to tell you is the God's honest truth."
Frankie nodded and Stacie went on.
"Eight months ago a woman was brought here, she had been in a car crash and died on the scene. Me and her mother came in to identify the body. They had the identity correct and she was cremated a few days later."
"Ok?" Frankie said obviously not making the connection to the current situation.
"Before I go on. Can you tell me if that is something that can be verified?"
"Yeah, sure it can be. By law we have to keep all of those records for ten years, and even after that, they can usually be retrieved from storage if needed. Eight months ago shouldn't be a problem at all."
"Do you keep pictures of the deceased or any type of identifying documents?" Stacie asked.
"Yeah we take a picture of the body when it comes in to the morgue and if the person had any type of ID or anything on them we get a copy of that too, but Stace I really don't see what this has to do with anything."
Stacie took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth.
"The woman who was brought in eight months ago was Chloe. Her and Beca's house got destroyed in the quake a few days ago and today we went in to see what we could salvage and found Chloe lying in the wreckage."
Frankie's face contorted in confusion for just a moment, and then he burst out laughing.
"Oh wow, you actually had me going for a second there. Good one! So who told you I was working tonight? Was it Jackson?"
Not hearing any answering laughter, Frankie looked around at the somber faces of the three women in the room with him.
"You're not kidding." He finally said flatly.
"Look Frankie, I know how this sounds, ok? It's sounds totally insane, but please just go look up the record for Chloe Beale from last September. You'll see I'm telling the truth."
Frankie looked at them all, with a mixture of shock, disbelief, and pity on his face before he finally said.
"Ok give me just a few and I'll be back."
As Stacie watched him walk out of the room, she hoped that he was actually going to look into it and not just humor them by leaving the room.
"Well that could have gone better." Chloe said after a moment of tense silence.
Beca huffed in agreement, and Stacie chuckled, before quickly adding.
"Actually considering the circumstances, I'm really not sure it could have."
It was only a matter of moments before Frankie came back in the room with wide eyes, looking a little greyer than he had when he walked out.
"Believe me now?" Stacie asked quietly.
Four hours and many visits from multiple doctors later. Stacie was physically restraining Beca in a small waiting room off of the ICU.
"What the fuck do they mean quarantining her? Are they gonna put her in some fucking cage like a fucking animal?" Beca screamed while trying to pull out of the grip that Stacie had on her wrists.
"Beca calm down. This is not doing anyone any good."
"I will not fucking calm down! This is bullshit and I will not let them do it!" Beca had lost Chloe once and she would not sit by and let it happen again.
"Beca, Chloe came back from the dead!" Stacie finally screamed directly in the shorter girl's face.
Beca stopped fighting and looked at Stacie, she knew it was true, but hearing the words spoken so bluntly gave her a moment of pause.
"If I let your wrists go, will you please stay here and just listen?"
Beca nodded and Stacie released her, but kept her position in front of the door.
"Look I don't know how this all happened. Biologically it makes no sense, and those doctors out there are thinking the same thing right now. They want to make sure that Chloe is well, that her body is functioning and also that she's safe to be around."
"Of course she's sa…"
Stacie held up her hand and made a shushing sound, cutting Beca off. "You know that and I know that, but they don't. They've never seen this before and they have to explore all options. Now I talked to Frankie. Chloe is going to be kept in an observation and isolation room off of the ICU, it has glass walls, and as a special favor to us, Frankie said that you could sit outside the room in the hall for as long as you want, but you have to behave. No screaming, no trying to break in to the room, and no trying to get Chloe out. I know you love her, and want to be by her side, but for right now this is the best we can do. OK?"
Beca sat down, hard, in one of the waiting room chairs.
"This is so much bullshit." She said.
"Bullshit or not, it's what has to happen right now. Ok?"
Beca nodded reluctantly and Stacie smiled at her.
They were just getting ready to walk back out into the ICU, when Beca's phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and smiled as she saw Aubrey's name on the screen.
"Oh my God, Stace. We haven't told Aubrey yet."
Stacie had just started saying not to answer the call, when Beca slid her finger across the screen, put the phone to her ear and started talking excitedly.
"Bree, I'm so glad you called. You're never going to freaking believe what happened."
"Well you sound good." Aubrey said with an obvious smile in her voice "What's got you so excited?"
"Chloe's back!" Beca almost yelled in her joy.
There was a moment of silence, and when Aubrey spoke again her voice was a mixture of sadness and disappointment.
"Beca, no sweetie, she's not."
"No really Bree, she is. I promise I'm not crazy. She's really back."
"Beca honey, tell me where you are, please."
Beca was getting ready to tell Aubrey the whole story when the phone was jerked out of her hand. She turned to look at Stacie, and was just about to make a comment, but quickly bit it back when she saw the glare her taller friend was shooting her way.
"Bree it's Stacie. I'm with Beca and she's telling the truth."
Aubrey was quiet for a moment and then said.
"Ok, so you obviously can't talk freely, just answer yes or no for me, ok? Is Beca in danger? Are you worried she's going to hurt herself? Can you keep her safe until I get there or should I call the police?"
"No Bree. It's not like that. I'm not humoring Beca. She hasn't relapsed. She's in no danger because she is perfectly sane. The quake destroyed Beca's house. I met her there today to help her get things out and we found Chloe on the floor in her old room, covered in some kind of writing, but alive. We're at the hospital now. They're going to keep her in isolation and under observation for a while so they can try to figure out what happened."
"Stacie, that's not possible. Chloe is dead. For God's sake, you went with her mother to identify her body." Aubrey said, suddenly worried about both of her friends' sanity.
"I know Bree. Believe me I know. This shouldn't be possible, but here we are."
Aubrey was suddenly faced with three possibilities. The first was that Stacie had somehow been pulled into Beca's delusion so deeply that she actually believed what she was saying. The second was that this was the most deranged, cruel prank that anyone had ever tried to pull on her. The third, was that both of her old friends were still sane and Chloe had really, somehow, managed to come back from the dead.
Aubrey knew that both of the first two options were all but impossible. Stacie was way too intelligent and too together to get pulled into someone else's madness, to the point she believed something so crazy. The second option was even less possible than the first. Neither Stacie nor, especially Beca, would be so callous as to joke about Chloe's death, not to mention there was no doubt in Aubrey's mind that neither of the women had the capacity for that kind of cruelty. That left just the last possibility, that Chloe really was back. The only problem with that was, it was the least possible of all the options.
"Bree?" Stacie said into the phone after Aubrey had been silent for a few long minutes.
"Yeah, I'm here Stace." Aubrey finally said.
"I'm not asking you to take this on faith. I know you were just here, but do you think you could come down for a few days? I have a feeling it's going to be all hands on deck for a while."
Aubrey sighed again. "Sure. I'll catch the soonest flight I can, and I'll text you the details."
"Ok that sounds good. Thank you."
"No problem, call if you need me before then."
"Will do. Bye Bree."
"Bye Stace."
Stacie hung up the phone, crossed her arms over her chest, and looked down at Beca, who had sat back down during her conversation with Aubrey.
"I guess I should have thought that conversation out a little better, huh?" Beca said sheepishly.
Stacie rolled her eyes and then sat down in the chair next to Beca.
"Yeah Becs, you should have. You can't just tell someone that their best friend came back from the dead so casually. Not only does it sound totally insane, that's not something that people can really comprehend without seeing it firsthand."
"Oh my God, how am I gonna tell Mama Beale?" Beca asked suddenly and mostly to herself.
Stacie rubbed her forehead in frustration.
"Beca listen to me." Stacie waited until Beca turned to look at her and then continued "We can't tell anybody else about Chloe right now. Ok?"
"Why?" Beca asked, a confused look taking over her face.
Stacie sighed, she hadn't wanted to go into this, but it looked like she wasn't going to have a choice.
"Ok, look, I want you to know upfront that I'm not saying this to scare you or anything. Ok?"
Beca nodded, her immediate unease at Stacie's comment showing on her face.
"We can't tell anybody yet, because we don't even know what's going on. We have no idea why or how this happened and neither do any of those doctors out there. People have come back from the dead before in the sense that their heart stopped and they were revived, or they got frozen for the perfect amount of time and they were able to come back from it, but not after being dead for days and then cremated. This is all new and nobody has any idea what to expect."
"What do you mean?" Beca asked hesitantly.
"It means what it means Beca. We have no idea what is going to happen with Chloe. This is new territory for medicine and science. Her heart could stop, she could go into organ failure, hell she could pop right out of existence, for all we know. Like I said I'm not trying to scare you, and I'm not saying those things will happen, just that they could. So considering that Chloe's family has already lost her once, I really think that we should wait to tell them anything until we know for sure, or at least as sure as we can be, that she is going to be ok and stay on the same plane of existence as the rest of us."
When Stacie was done talking, Beca looked down at her hands and stayed silent for a few minutes. When she was done thinking or praying or whatever she had been doing, she looked back up at Stacie, with a somber expression on her face.
"You're right. I don't know what I'll do if I lose her again, and I don't want to put anyone else in that position."
Stacie smiled sadly, put her arm around Beca's shoulders and pulled the smaller woman in for a quick one arm hug.
"How about we go see to our redhead?" Stacie asked with a smile.
Beca returned the smile and they both walked out of the waiting room into the ICU.