The elevator ride to the intensive care unit on the sixth floor lasted two minutes at most but Lulu was sure that those two minutes felt like an eternity to her mother. Lulu knew how she would be feeling if Dante was hurt this way. Not that her mother and Kevin were in any way comparable to her marriage to Dante, but Lulu knew that it was time to admit to herself that her mom cared about Kevin a lot. She supposed it was similar to how she had cared about Dillon way back when they'd dated when they were stupid teenagers trying to grow up much too fast, or Logan or even Johnny. She supposed she'd be a wreck if any of them had been hurt. But that was different. Her affair with Dillon (while he'd been married to Maxie's sister, go figure how life worked out sometimes) and even her - thing with Johnny didn't compare to her mom's romantic life. Such as it was. Her mom had only been dating Kevin for three months, if her mom's words were to be believed, which Lulu thought was debatable. They couldn't possibly be serious so soon. There wasn't any way could her mom could be in love with Kevin even half as much as she loved Dante. Because if there was then that meant Lulu had missed out on the start of her mom falling in love again for the first time in years and the thought that she had missed that for no reason but her pride made her unbelievably ashamed and sad.
Her mom's hand squeezing hers and her audible sniffles when they got off the elevator and after speaking to one of the front desk nurses Elizabeth pressed a four-digit code to be allowed access to the intensive care unit got Lulu's immediate attention. So she did love Kevin. Question answered.
Lulu slipped an arm around her mother's waist and half-listened to Elizabeth as the nurse explained to the two of them why exactly intensive care was the best place for Kevin to be at this time and how long his doctors expected him to be there. She was on purpose paying more attention to how her mother reacted. Her mom didn't show outward signs of how frightened she was but if the way her mom clutched tighter at her hand at every word Elizabeth said was any indication (to the point it crossed Lulu's mind to be gentle with Dante and not grip his hand so tight when she was in labor), Lulu knew her mom was behaving how Spencer women did, pretending to be strong when they weren't. Elizabeth punched a different four-digit code that took them through another set of double-doors that took them closer to Kevin and now she was talking about Kevin being on a intravenous drug drip to ward off infection and him having to be in a cast for four to six weeks because of a severe broken bone in his lower right leg. Lulu shook her head and vowed to pay better attention. She didn't know if her mom was listening to any of this.
Elizabeth kept talking and Lulu wasn't sure of the rest but even still she was sure it couldn't have been any better than what she had heard because her mom looked like she was mere seconds away from running to the nearest open waste receptacle and throwing up. The three of them walked down the hallway and took a right, doing that same thing again at the end of a second hallway to end up walking past three doors. Elizabeth stopped at the door to do an identification check and nodded in self-satisfaction, a look that did absolutely nothing to appease Lulu's mind about what she was sending her mother into even though she would be right there with her, and gave her a little push forward. Lulu put her hands on her mother's shoulders to stall for a moment so they could both get their bearings.
"Mom?" she murmured quietly and Laura glanced up as if she hadn't heard her and had actually forgotten she was there. "Mom, do you want me to stay with you in here? Elizabeth said it might be awhile until Kevin wakes up. Until I'll leave when he does wake up and let the two of you have some time alone, and then I'll take you back to my house so you can get some sleep. I'll bring you back in the morning whatever time you want. Is that allowed?" She directed the last question to Elizabeth but didn't give her a chance to respond. "I don't care if it is or it isn't allowed, I'm staying with my mom. Tracy Quartermaine is on the board of this hospital. You are more than welcome to take it up with her if there's any issue."
Laura's voice interrupted Lulu invoking Tracy Quartermaine's name to get her way and the way she answered her daughter sounded detached and mechanical. Like she was struggling with everything she had inside of her to hold it all together in front of the hospital staff and her daughter, even if that hospital staff was her former daughter-in-law, and that scared Lulu even more than anything Elizabeth might have tried to prepare them for earlier about Kevin would look. "I'm...not going back to your house with you tonight, Lulu, how could you even think that?" This was why Nikolas had been so desperate that one of them stay with her at all times, Lulu thought to herself with a sudden clarity that sickened her. So she didn't run herself down to the ground and make herself sick - or worse. Lulu didn't know if she could handle the thought of having to call Lucky and tell him that mom was sick, again, and that he needed to come back home. "I'm going to stay with Kevin as long as he needs me. Elizabeth said she can make that happen and Kevin would do the same for me if I was the one - hurt."
Her mom blinked rapidly a few times and Lulu pressed a gentle and reassuring kiss to her shoulder, taking her mom's hand in hers and squeezing tight. "I should have known better, I'm sorry. Elizabeth said you could go in, there's a chair right up there by him, see, you can hold his hand. I'll sit on that remarkably comfortable-looking plastic chair over in the corner."
Laura didn't react to the so-horrible-it-should-have-made-her-smile joke. "I know being in the same room with Kevin is the last place you'd ever want to be. You should go home and be with your son and your husband. That's your place, Lulu. My place is here with Kevin."
Lulu blinked but she didn't cry. That wasn't her place, either. "And right now my place is with you," she said in a tone that held no room for discussions or argument. "Rocco is with Elizabeth's boys, he's fine. Dante is at the station and he will be for awhile. They taped off the garage as a crime scene and bagged all of Kevin's property as evidence and the last I talked to him one of the deputies had found Kevin's car and they were dusting everything for prints." Lulu immediately wanted to kick herself for describing exactly to her mother how the police department from minute one of arriving on the scene treated Kevin's attack as a purposeful and criminal act. No doubt her mother already knew that, considering Kevin had been brutally stabbed nine times and kicked as well as hit in the head, but she didn't need to know police procedure specifics. Not right now. "Never mind, mom. Forget I said anything. Just go sit with Kevin."
Lulu watched her mother carefully as they walked into the room for any sign of her not being able to hold it together when she saw Kevin for the first time. Elizabeth had known what she was talking about. From the knee down Kevin's right leg was completely enclosed in a cast, and there were bruises starting at the side of his eye and spreading down his cheek to the side of his face so spectacular that it made Lulu wince. She didn't even want to imagine how badly that had hurt. Nor did she want to imagine how much pain he must have been in when he was conscious and being stabbed relentlessly.
And even while being stabbed and hurt so badly his first thought was for her mother. Lulu didn't know what to think or how to feel about that.
Lulu sat in the corner chair at the farthest side of the room exactly like she promised she would do and for the next forty-five minutes she flipped through a magazine she had borrowed from Elizabeth from the nurses' lounge (Borrowed sounded so much better than stolen, but in all honesty her former stepmother was a board member of this hospital and even if she did plan on taking the magazine with her it was six months past being a current issue, it wasn't a great loss) and kept up a conversation with Dante via text wondering if the PCPD had discovered anything yet and what that meant for Kevin's case.
Her mom had moved the chair as close to the hospital bed and to Kevin as she could get it so she could hold his hand as soon as they had entered the room, and hadn't moved since. Lulu instinctively knew better than to interrupt.
"...I love you. I really love you." The magazine she wasn't even reading slipped out of Lulu's hands and fell to the floor and her phone fell to her lap when she heard for the first time in awhile her mom's quiet, achingly sad, despondent voice. It was so quiet and so tender and so emotional Lulu felt as though she was intruding on something intrinsically private, something meant only for her mom and Kevin. But Lulu couldn't turn away. Her mom whispered to Kevin over and over again how much she loved him and how grateful she was that he was alive, how he had made it through the hard part now and she'd be right there with him for the rest of his recovery, and if pressed to give an answer Lulu would have to say that her mom no longer remembered or even cared that she was in the room. Lulu's hand instinctively reached to get her mother a tissue but held back when she saw her mother carefully stroking Kevin's uninjured hand. Her mother didn't need a tissue. What she needed was Kevin to wake up and tell her for himself that he was going to be okay.
"I love you, Kevin Collins." Lulu hadn't heard that soft tone in her mom's voice in many, many years, not in regards to a man. Never had she heard her mother claim to love a man other than her dad. Had she really spent all of her time and energy refusing to acknowledge the importance of Kevin's presence in her mom's life that she missed all of this completely? Lulu promised herself and her mother silently that she wouldn't miss anything else, not one more day. Not if this man in this hospital bed made her mother so happy. "I love you, I love you, I love you," she heard her mom whisper. "I'm sorry I convinced you to take that meeting, I was more than happy to stay home with you but I know how long you had waited to meet with human resources that I didn't want you to pass it up because of me. I love you, Kevin. I love you and all I want right now is for you to wake up and look at me so I can say it to you in person. In public or at least outside of your apartment. Please." She watched silently, sadly, as her mom stood up from her chair and kissed her own fingers before lightly pressing two of them to Kevin's cheek, one of the few parts of him she could find uninjured or free from medical tubes and wires.
Lulu had to get out of there before her guilt started to bubble over, she knew she did. None of this was fair. "Mom," she whispered, and her mom's startled expression combined with the way she half-froze in place and shielded Kevin's body from any other perceived harm proved that she indeed had forgotten Lulu was there, but it didn't upset Lulu like her subconscious had first claimed it would. All it did was make Lulu sad all over again that she for the last three months had every day put her feelings of hurt and abandonment above her mother's happiness, to the extent that Kevin had been a part of her mother's life in a romantic way for a quarter of a year and she hadn't taken even one evening out of her life to have dinner with them or even talk to Kevin for five minutes. The little she knew about her mother and Kevin's relationship she knew from Nikolas and Dante and both of them were reluctant to tell her anything given her well-publicized feelings about her mom dating.
She had a sudden and overwhelming need to hug her mother and apologize for everything, honestly and profusely, but the words caught in her throat for a fantastic reason: she saw Kevin's finger move. "Mom!" she murmured urgently, loud enough to get her attention, nodding towards the bed. "I'm going to go find one of the nurses, okay? Stay with him."
There was something inside Lulu that made her want to stop and look back even though she was already halfway out the door and when she did, she saw Kevin's hand that wasn't taped with an IV needle reaching for the soft fabric of her mom's blouse, and heard his rough voice, slurred with a mix of anesthesia and drugs. "'hey, pretty girl." Lulu hurried the rest of the way out and went in search of a nurse. Her mom was reaching for water for Kevin as soon as he first opened his mouth and didn't acknowledge her leaving.
The best thing about the intensive care unit was that the nurses were always at attention whenever they were called for. She wouldn't think about it until much later how she had only said his name and not what was wrong before the nurses started running towards her and how that must mean Kevin was the most critical patient on the floor, but within minutes she was pushing open the door to Kevin's room again and stopped dead in her tracks at what she saw. Her mom, half-kneeling on Kevin's hospital bed, supporting most of his upper body weight as best she could, pressing his hair away from his face and a bedpan underneath his mouth and his chin as he threw up. Only to repeat the same process seconds later when he threw up again. Kevin started to make horrible retching noises for the third time - third time only since she'd been there, who knew how many times it had been overall - and Lulu blinked back tears of sorrow and shame as she watched as she watched how unbelievably gentle her mom was being with him. The nurse immediately went to Kevin's side and Lulu saw her mom shift into protective mode.
"Give him a minute until he's done!" she heard her mom say sharply and as Lulu came into the room and went around the other side of the bed to switch bedpans or even get a trashcan if they needed it she heard her mom's gentle voice whispering into Kevin's ear, something soft about how she'd raised two children and had five grandchildren and wasn't he lucky that sudden throw-up didn't scare her, and all the while she was running her fingers through his hair.
"It could be his response to the anesthesia that's still working it's way out of his system or an adverse reaction to one or more of the medications we have him on," the nurse was saying. Lulu hadn't heard her mom ask the question but the nurse was speaking directly to her. "But in the meantime we'll try to get him on some anti-nausea medication as soon as possible."
"See that you do. Immediately," Lulu heard herself saying and the surprised but grateful look in her mother's eyes made her supremely glad that she had. "Immediately means now," she snapped when the nurse hadn't yet left the room. "I'm sure leaving your patient in unnecessary distress is not on your list of critical care duties." Lulu rolled her eyes as soon as the nurse hurriedly left the room - she might end up reporting her to Elizabeth if that kind of behavior happened again - and looked sympathetically at Kevin and gained a newfound respect for him when he stayed remarkably compliant while her mom helped him sit up to drink a couple small sips of water and watched him to make sure he drank it successfully without spilling or choking, wiped his mouth with a hand towel from the bathroom, and carefully and slowly helped him to lie back down, slowly to avoid aggravating his stitches. Dante wouldn't have been this complacent if she was treating him like this, Lulu knew. "I'm glad you're alright," she murmured. "For my mom's sake and because you can't be such a bad guy if my mom cares about you so much."
Her mom looked at her with so much surprise that it made Lulu want to apologize for every bad thing she'd ever done to her mother, but the potential for a bonding moment between them was over when Kevin looked at her with eyes full of pain and reached towards her to swat at her hand. Her mom held Kevin's hand tightly in hers and murmured something quietly to him Lulu couldn't hear to keep him from moving or pulling at his stitches and hurting himself. "Ankle, Lesley Lu, your hand is on his cast and you're hurting him!"
Like it was a burning stove, Lulu right away removed her hand from Kevin's casted leg and stammered an apology and that she didn't mean to hurt him, not at all. Kevin barely turned his head to look at her mom and Lulu watched her mom smile, say something else quietly that made him laugh until the laughing made him cough, and pressed a gentle kiss to his knuckles before she curled her fingers around his. "Be more careful, Lulu," her mom spoke harshly but not-unkindly. "Please."
Lulu managed to stammer out a second apology and took quick steps backwards to sit in her chair again. Twenty minutes later her phone rang and she answered it instantly without caring who it was or that it was two in the morning. It could have been Nikolas or Dante or Elizabeth's grandmother but she was immensely grateful for the interruption no matter who was on the phone. Kevin had thrown up twice more in that short time and it was nothing less than supremely mentally draining to watch up close and personally how careful and gentle her mom was with him every single time. It made her feel so guilty for how she'd treated her mom and Kevin that she could hardly stand to be in the same room as them, but every time Lulu felt the self-pity she had to remind herself that this was all a predicament of her own doing and that she needed to put her mother first if she had any hope of being included in this new phase of her mother's life: this was about how her mom felt, not about how she felt.
Her mom's frantic voice interrupted her before she escaped into the hall. "Get that nurse back in here and tell her to administer an anti-nausea medication that works!"
Lulu flagged down the nearest nurse but made herself scarce and stayed in the hall for the next ten minutes to talk to Dante on the phone and see what she could pry out of him about what the PCPD had learned about Kevin's attack, every so often peering curiously at what little she could see through the gaps in the window blinds. Two nurses were in the room and it hadn't escaped her notice that as soon as the nurses had arrived Kevin reached for her mother's hand and had asked her to stay. She would have been in the way. Lulu frowned and stepped closer to the window, crossing her fingers behind her back that nothing major was wrong, when ten minutes dragged to fifteen and all the way to twenty and the nurses were still in the room. Lulu hung up on Dante in a hurry and lifted her hand to knock on the window when the door to Kevin's room finally opened and the nurses trailed out, but her mom remained inside. The shorter of the nurses held Kevin's chart up high in a poor attempt to hide that she was laughing and Lulu's confusion and worry heightened. "What is going on with my - "
The second nurse pulled her away from the doorway. "The anti-nausea medication should be kicking in soon and we don't anticipate any other problems, but his other medications are kicking in and medication effects everyone differently. He's a little - out of it right now, but don't you worry, your dad's going to be fine."
Lulu's frown deepened. "Out of it? Is he safe?"
"He's very talkative now," the nurse that was laughing only moments before told her, with somewhat of a straight face. "We had a very interesting conversation about how sorry he was that the night before last got fucked up - his exact words - and that it was all his fault because he didn't have condoms. Apparently your mom was - quite eager and he felt bad for having to tell her no. But he assured us, and by us I mean all of us in the room, that as soon as he was out of the hospital he'd go back to the store and get a super-sized box of protection and then go home and he and your mom would get right down to business." The nurse mistook the look on Lulu's face for annoyance at how much he had said. "It happens to a lot of patients, dear, and it might be embarrassing but it's ultimately harmless. Don't be too concerned. He's going to be just fine once it all travels through his system and you and your mom will have a great time reminding your dad of everything he said once he's recovered."
Lulu's face registered shock and disgust long after the two nurses walked away and left her alone in the hall, and after a few moments to let it all sink in she still wasn't sure what part of the conversation had shocked her the most - that a high-on-pain-medication Kevin meant he started talking about anything and everything, or that Kevin had apparently used the words fucked up in a sentence. Or that two nurses seemed to think that Kevin was married to her mom and was also her father. "Oh, he's not my -"
Her fingers flew across her phone as she typed out two messages back-to-back before tucking her phone in her back pocket.
Be very glad you aren't here to Nikolas, and to Maxie, Ew. Ew. Ew. Kevin Collins is high on pain medication and the side effect for him is that it made him talk to a bunch of nurses in detail about wanting to have lots of sex with Mom. Ew. Ew. Ew.
Lulu took a few minutes to herself to steel herself to go back inside that hospital room and not give any outward indication that the nurses had told her anything or that she knew anything that had come out of Kevin's mouth. That was the very least of what she owed her mom and she supposed that Kevin's behavior could always be worse if he was high on pain medication, he could have used his sudden-and-out-of-character talkative nature to curse the hospital staff or even her mother. Neither of which sounded at all like Kevin no matter what medicines he was on. (Lulu ignored that little voice in her head that warned her she didn't have a right to say what sounded like Kevin and what didn't because she didn't know him at all. Stubborn conscience.) She walked inside the room and did her best to brace herself for a first-hand and possibly only experience with Talkative Kevin.
Lulu walked into the room, looked at the scene before her, tried not to look too closely at just how much of her mother's body was in Kevin's personal space bubble, and in spite of herself she wondered what Kevin had said this time. Even with her mom's face half-buried in Kevin's shoulder, Lulu could see her lips moving to whisper something softly to him and could see the faint blush on her cheeks.
"Kevin, honey, you've got to stop saying that," she heard her mom admonish him ever so gently, in a voice that barely rated above a quiet whisper. "I want to go home, too, but you can't say those kinds of things in front of people. You can't tell people why you want to take me home." As usual for this night It didn't escape Lulu's attention that her mom wouldn't stop touching him.
The impulsive Spencer gene took over, Dante told her that impulsiveness would get her into trouble one of these days, and the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. If her mother was going to be embarrassed and Kevin wasn't going to remember any of it anyway, Lulu figured she might as well get some entertainment out of it. So she played along. "Do I want to know what he said?"
Kevin raised his hand as though he was a little boy waiting to be called on in school and looked positively giddy at the idea that he had a high probability of both embarrassing his girlfriend and breaking every single social decorum rule he had ever learned. It actually made Lulu smile at him. "I told her that I wanted to take her home and put that dress back on that she had last night. So I could take it off her and it would be on my bedroom floor and she'd be naked in my bed."
The corners of Lulu's mouth twitched despite her feelings about the subject Kevin had started with and she had to look up to the ceiling for a second or two so she wouldn't burst into laughter. Oh, this was going to be such great blackmail material for the both of them when Kevin was back to himself. "I'm sure you would."
His response was immediate and matter-of-fact businesslike. "She would more than me. Last night your mom and I were in my apartment and she was kissing me while I was carrying her to the couch, but she was mean and kept distracting me 'cause she did this this really, really good thing with her tongue and it felt really, really, really good, and - "
"Kevin Collins!" Her mom's voice came out in a hurried whisper-yell. Lulu's first thought was that whatever her mom had done to Kevin the night before with her tongue she wouldn't be doing that again anytime soon, and she promptly swallowed back bile that tickled her throat because her mind had actually gone there. She did not want to think about that. "That is not appropriate conversation in front of my child!"
Lulu knew she couldn't trust Maxie to keep this within the family so she wasn't going to tell her any of this. Her mom would literally murder Maxie and Lulu if any of this conversation became public knowledge. She already looked like she didn't know what she wanted to do more, run out of the room or cover Kevin's mouth with her hand. Lulu took pity on her and stammered out some vague shushing noises. "Oh, I don't need the visuals, please!" Lulu said quickly, her words stumbling over each other in a rush to get out. "What you and mom do in your own time is your own business and that is a picture I really don't want, thank you!"
"You're welcome," Kevin said matter-of-factly. So matter of factly and without any sense of irony that Lulu had to look up at the ceiling again so she wouldn't laugh. This version of Kevin was funny. Lulu watched as Kevin turned his head slowly between Laura and Lulu and she saw the exact moment that he remembered that Laura had just yelled at him. His face scrunched in befuddlement. Lulu watched in utter amusement as he patted her mother's hand to get her to stop being mad at him, and then he turned his attention, such as it was, back to her. "Aw, don't look sad like that, you're my baby, you're not supposed to be sad. You're our happy girl 'cause you make us happy. You know your mother and I have sex, Lulu, how do you think you got here?" Kevin beckoned Lulu closer like he wanted to tell her a secret. "I'll give you a hint: there wasn't any stork. Your mom was pregnant."
Lulu blinked and exchanged a worried look with her mother. Elizabeth had told them earlier that Kevin had been hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat and also kicked in the side of the head more than once, had that done some damage that couldn't be undone? Something the doctors hadn't seen during surgery? Was it purely the medications making him out of it like this and his unfiltered persona would wear off in a few hours, or did Kevin really not know that he wasn't her father? That scared her. Lulu purposefully kept her tone soft and her words careful. "Kevin, you're not my father and I'm not your girl," she said quietly. "Mom was pregnant with me, yes, but my brother and I are Luke Spencer's children. We have a half-brother named Nikolas. You have a daughter named Christina with your ex-wife Lucy."
Lulu's worry heightened when Kevin's face was blank for a few seconds and then scrunched into an expression of confusion for the second time since he'd woken up from surgery. He looked at her mom with a mix of childlike wonder and wounded betrayal, but for the most part looked unbelievably sad. Lulu didn't know how to feel about that. "B - but you said. You yelled at me for inappropriate conversation in front of our child. You said it. That's not fair, you can't take it back." He appealed to Lulu's common sense and perfectly-functioning ears. "Tell her, sweetheart. Tell her she can't take it back after she said it. That's a rule, you know."
Lulu relaxed at once because if he could use the word inappropriate correctly in a sentence his brain function had to be just fine, and he was simply, hilariously under the influence. But she would have to think about it later about how Kevin's unfiltered nature brought to the forefront that he thought he was her dad. Her mom sat back down in the chair besides Kevin and brought his uninjured hand to her mouth, pressing a soft kiss to his skin. "I'm sure Lulu appreciates that you want to get to know her but she's not your child. And before you open your mouth that doesn't mean I ever cheated on you." Lulu recognized immediately the patiently indulgent tone that her mom used with her boyfriend was the same tone of voice she used with Rocco when she wanted him to behave. "She's my child," her mom murmured quietly, patiently, carefully running a hand through Kevin's hair. "My daughter, Kevin. Mine, not ours." Lulu privately found it hilarious how Kevin still looked like he didn't understand but still managed to look sad all the same. "We've only been dating for three months, you goof."
Kevin wouldn't be deterred from his ultimate goal. "We've got time, then. When I get better we can go home I'll take you to bed and we can make a baby. It'll be fun, I promise."
Lulu finally could no longer help it and started to laugh because a drugged-up-on-pain-meds and uninhibited Kevin was hilarious. Her mother immediately narrowed her eyes and glared at her and she mouthed an apology. Kevin looked at her mom like his whole world depended on what she said next and it impressed the hell out of Lulu, she had to admit, as she watched her brush the hair out of his eyes and press a tender kiss to his forehead, that aside from her first embarrassed outcry her mother was talking every one of Kevin's questions and comments seriously and hadn't so much as laughed at him a little bit. "I have no doubt that it would be. We talked about this last night, it's okay if you don't remember that right now, but I told you that my baby-making days are over and have been for quite some time. I'm so sorry to spoil whatever ideas you had for us. But we can babysit Spencer and Rocco some weekend if you want. Not on the same weekend, of course, but we can work something out with Nikolas and Lulu. Would that satisfy you?"
Kevin dropped her mother's hand and seemed to find the stark white color and the crispness of his hospital sheets suddenly worthy of the utmost fascination. Lulu didn't want to be admonished by her mother again and had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at his petulant whining. "You took away Lulu and now you won't have a baby with me. I really, really, a lot want a baby with you." He looked up at her mom curiously. "Are you sure you're done?"
"Kevin…" her mom laughed, but Lulu detected a hint of warning in her tone. That was interesting. Lulu added that to her list of things to file away for later observation. "Let's not do this here…"
"Lucy was pregnant twice," Kevin said matter-of-factly. "Twice. They were mine both times, but we lost both of them. So my swimmers work. We could have a baby if you wanted to, Laura."
"Kevin, I'm sorry but I am very sure that I am done having babies," she told him. Lulu saw how her mom got even closer to him when she whispered to him that they could talk about that later, privately, and they could talk about what he had said about his past with Lucy. "We had that conversation last night, honey, but we can talk about it again when you're a little more yourself, trust me. It wouldn't be fair to the children we have if we had another one, even if it was possible. You were the one that said that last night. I wouldn't do anything to put any of us in danger and neither would you."
Ten minutes went by where Kevin talked a lot more about many things all three of them would later wish he hadn't - it wasn't anything as horrible as getting explicit play-by-play detail of what he wanted to do to her mom once he was out of the hospital, thankfully, she had been afraid that had been where the conversation was heading at one point - but still Lulu was inordinately pleased at how Kevin's eyes always tracked to keep her mom in his immediate line of vision.
Until he tore away from looking at her mother to look straight at her. And he wasn't happy. "I know you," he sighed. "You're Lulu Spencer. You're the great Luke Spencer's daughter. That's why you don't like me."
"You don't like me," he said matter-of-factly, in a tone that he would have used with his accountant. No emotion to it and Lulu glanced worriedly at her mother. An unfiltered Kevin talking about why he didn't like her could be bad for all of them but especially for his relationship with her mom. Lulu did want her mom to be happy, even if it was with Kevin. "Lulu doesn't like me dating her mom because she doesn't want her mom to be with anyone but her dad." Lulu didn't even have time to wonder why he was bringing this up now and here of all places or why he was talking about her in the third person when he knew exactly who she was and he was looking right at her because he opened his mouth again. "It makes your mom sad that you don't trust her to make her own choices for her life, and that doesn't work for me because I don't like seeing her sad. I especially don't like seeing her sad because of you. I hate it, if you want to know the truth. If you'll let me be honest with you. I hate that she cries because of you. She cries because one of her children, one of the three people in the entire whole world that are supposed to support her and encourage her happiness because that's what she's always done for all of you, isn't letting her be happy. Do you even know, Lulu, that she came over to my apartment a month ago and she cried in my arms for twenty minutes because you had started using Olivia as the primary babysitter for Rocco and not her? Or do you not care how much you're hurting her?"
"Kevin, shh," her mom murmured. "Let's not get into this now. Please, we can talk about this at home."
But Kevin did want to get into this conversation now. "I'm not trying to infiltrate your life and replace anyone, Lulu." Lulu rolled her eyes despite her mother's frosty glare in her direction because of course Kevin would be still be able to correctly use words like inappropriate and infiltrate in sentences under these circumstances. "You have a dad and you've made it clear to both of us that you have an issue with me dating your mom. You allowed your father to move on but not her. I gave you a free pass the last three months because of your mother but not anymore. I...care about your mother very much. I love spending time with her. I'm sure your mother would like the three of us to be able to spend time together sometimes but if you're never going to be okay with that you're going to need to put on your big girl panties and let me know. I'll stop trying to be your friend. But I won't stop dating your mother, Lulu. She's an incredible woman and the best thing is that she's a really good kisser. She makes me happy, she makes my life good again, and I want to think that I make her happy too." Kevin's eyes glazed with the glassy sheen of the overly-medicated but even so he looked sure of himself and what he was saying and his anger at Lulu penetrated through everything. "She makes me happy. I want her. I want her with me. As long as she says she'll have me I intend to be in her life. As her boyfriend or as her husband it doesn't matter but no matter what our life together is I'm not giving up your mom, Lesley Lu Spencer. Do I make myself clear?"
Lulu barely heard her mom interrupt through the overwhelming urge to scream or cry at everything Kevin was saying, mostly because it was all true. Her mom's voice interrupted again, firm and strong. "I think that's enough," her mom said sharply. "Kevin Collins, do you hear me? I need you to stop talking now. That's enough."
Kevin stared at her mother unrepentant and unapologetic but somehow cute enough still Lulu suspected her mom would go easy on him and find him adorable. He was medicated and had just gotten out of major surgery, after all. "I'm not sorry."
Or maybe not. "I don't care if you're not sorry, you still won't speak to my daughter that way."
Lulu watched Kevin's face crumble like it did the last time when her mom had been angry at him and she had to begrudgingly admit to herself - but only to herself - that if this was Dante and he had just looked at her like she had run over his favorite puppy while kicking a kitten, exactly how Kevin was looking at her mom, she would think he was super-cute. "Kevin, come on, don't give me that face. You were rude and unfair to Lulu."
"No, please, mama, by all means let him finish." Lulu crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her mother's boyfriend. He might have said things that weren't untrue but she couldn't take anyone that wasn't her family telling her exactly how much of a brat she had been to her mother. This was something he'd been wanting to say to her for three months and his lack of a filter because of the medications had finally made him say it. "You said you gave me a free pass, and thank you so much for allowing me to interact with my own mother on my own terms even though it didn't meet your approval, so now I'm returning the favor. You have a free pass, Kevin. Finish telling me how I've been unfair to you and my mother and a horrible daughter when my mother neglected to even tell me she was dating you and I had to find out by watching you and her make out in the hallway of this very hospital."
And so he did, for the next ten minutes, cheerfully ignoring every one of Laura's attempts for him to be quiet. He purposefully used a slow cadence and words with no more than three syllables so Lulu wouldn't have reason to claim she didn't understand. Until he stopped mid-sentence with a deep frown and a furrowed brow because he no longer had an audience of two but now just an audience of one.
Kevin frowned even more when he tried to move his right leg and something heavy stopped him. Laura and Lulu or the nurse would have told him if he had broken his leg but maybe they forgot. He really needed to go to the bathroom. "Where'd she go?"
He reached out for her wrist and stared in enchantment at her bracelet, pulling back the string with his fingers and snapping it back against Laura's wrist until she told him sharply to stop that now. He responded by touching each of the bracelet stones one by one and avoiding looking at her. Laura indulgently and lovingly rolled her eyes. If someone had asked her to describe how her grandson behaved when she caught him doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing it would be exactly like this, and Rocco was well-immersed in his terrible twos. "She's in the bathroom, honey, and seeing as how you kept on talking until you made her cry, I'm thinking it's a safe bet that she won't be coming back here. I should be getting a text from her any minute telling me she's going home. Or maybe I won't with the way you spoke to her." Laura crossed her arms over her chest and on purpose she crossed her right arm over her left so he wouldn't be able to distract himself with her bracelet. "Are you proud of yourself, Kevin?"
"Yep!" he said proudly. "She deserved it since she made you sad all the time." Kevin was sad that Laura didn't share his enthusiasm and she didn't smile at him either. He really, really needed to go to the bathroom. His girlfriend was mad at him, she might not take him. She didn't look happy and he needed her to be happy. Not sad or mad like Lulu. Maybe if he tried to be nicer and made her happy she wouldn't be sad and she would help him. He lifted his uninjured hand to Laura's face no matter how much it hurt him and carefully traced her cheek with two of his fingers. She had such a pretty face. "You're my girl, Laura Spencer. I don't want to see you sad."
Laura's resolve to stay angry for the things he had said crumbled when she looked at him and saw nothing but love in his rich brown eyes, with added worry and gentle concern. It wasn't entirely his fault, not really. She hadn't expected to hear some of his true feelings about Luke, in all honesty, but she had provided him with more than enough ammunition and probable cause the last three months - nine months, if she included their friendship - to make the majority of his comments true, and he was on at least four different medications according to Elizabeth and the nurses up here. Some of the things Kevin had said were more true than others and some of his candid commentary hadn't needed to be said at all (there were a few things he'd said they'd need to have a very long talk about and she knew that she wouldn't be in close physical proximity to him when they did) but he hadn't said anything that he couldn't come back from, Lulu's running away in tears notwithstanding, without heavy-duty groveling. To her and to Lulu, and even to Lucky over the phone. Which she was more than prepared to make him do, tomorrow. Lulu was her daughter at the end of the day and no matter what she came first.
"Oh, Kevin," she sighed in resignation. She leaned over the rail of his hospital bed to touch her forehead to his and pressed a barely-there kiss to his forehead, his nose, his cheek, his mouth, every safe part of him she could reach, and continued to hold tight to his hand like she didn't want to let go. Because she didn't. She didn't care if he was medicated or out of it or if he even knew for real what had happened to him. She didn't care how talkative or opinionated he was as long as he was alive and here for her to hold him. "You and I are going to have a very long talk tomorrow about everything that you said but it wouldn't do either of us any good right now because I know you won't remember. You'll feel better when you get some sleep." She pressed a soft kiss to his knuckles and took her seat again right beside his bed, reaching for the extra blankets Elizabeth had instructed the ICU nurses to give to her in case she fell asleep, too. "And I'll be right here. When you wake up again I'll be right here."
And she was. She was asleep beside him three hours later when he woke up grunting in pain because everything hurt, everything hurt so bad that it felt like he couldn't even breathe without white-hot pain that seared through his chest and his ribs. He yanked her hand away from the on-call button and told her he could deal with it, he was fine, it wasn't bad enough to call a nurse. He only wanted to be with her and hold her hand. She must be exhausted. She was there blinking back surprised tears when he snapped at her to get him a strawberry milkshake from Kelly's now and he didn't care that it was five o'clock in the morning and Kelly's wasn't open. He wanted a milkshake, dammit. And above all, she was there to see the dawning look of realization in his eyes when he struggled to come up with the word strawberry never mind getting the connection between his brain and his mouth, and when he finally managed to come up with simple words they came out of his mouth slurred and unclear.
She was right there to push the on-call button no matter what he said when his entire body jerked and he started to shake uncontrollably. She rushed to his side to hold his hand until the doctors and the nurses and even Elizabeth came running, smoothing back his hair and telling him quietly that he was going to be all right, the seizure would be over soon and the doctors would get this under control. Laura was there to see the fear in Kevin's eyes as he wanted to say her name but the words wouldn't come and he tried to reach for the air where her hand had been. She squeezed his free hand and told him with a calmness she didn't feel that he was going to be fine. Everything would be all right.
Elizabeth took her into the hall while inside his room the nurses pumped Kevin full of medications at doctor's orders that were supposed to get his seizure managed and prevent any others, and told her that unfortunately seizures such as this were to be expected with the injuries Kevin had sustained and the amount of trauma had brain had been through during the attack.
And then the intercom blared with another code for more doctors to come to Kevin's room number and Elizabeth rushed back inside and Laura didn't know how long it was that she was alone until her former daughter-in-law-returned. Laura remembered everything about the moment Elizabeth returned. When Elizabeth told her with sadness in her eyes that Kevin hadn't responded the way they had hoped to the seizure medications and that in fact he wasn't able to follow the light they had shined in his eyes, answer simple questions, talk, or respond to them at all.
Laura's hand went to her mouth to stifle a sob at Elizabeth's next words before she even said them. Kevin was alive, but for his health and for the best chance of a full recovery he was now in a medically-induced coma.
And her world came to a screeching halt.