51.
~ Alex had stopped breathing when Norman, in all his repressed furry, pointed his own gun at him. Strangely enough, Alex felt calm at the prospect of dying. He regretted very little in life. He didn't regret killing bad men who hurt people in this town. He didn't regret for a second marrying Norma and especially having Lucy. They had been the happiest years of his life and he felt his sprits pick up just thinking of them. No matter what Norman did to him now, he couldn't ever take away the past eight years Alex had stolen from fate.
He looked at Lucy's limp little body and felt himself pray for her. He was a parent to a helpless child. He understood, from the moment he held his newborn daughter, why Norma had always been so protective of her son.
"Lucy." he said calmly to the perfectly still form laying on the floor. His daughter hadn't moved since Norman roughly pushed her off his lap.
Norman was coming. Advancing on him with a loaded gun and he was going to kill him this time. Alex would die instantly and he couldn't protect his daughter anymore. He felt real pain worse than any gun shot or stab wound at that realization.
"Lucy, it's going to be okay." Alex said. "I promise."
Alex held his breath again when Norman aimed the gun at his head. Three shots ringing out in the dark basement. Alex flinching at the noise that echoed all around him.
He saw a puff of red, almost like smoke, bloom from Norman's blue robe. The white face becoming paler as he looked down in shock at his chest.
Three gunshot wounds to the chest and Norman Bates was still standing. Still looking dumbstruck at the blood seeping onto his mother's robe.
Alex looked behind him and saw Dylan, his face still covered in blood holding the spare side arm he'd given him. Norma's oldest son looking angrily at the monster his brother had become.
"Dylan?" Norman said in a weak little girl's voice. "Oh, Dylan. Honey, how could you?"
Alex felt himself panic at the sight of Norman still standing up. The blood flowing freely out of his chest as the strange and fearsome creature started to cackle.
"Dylan, I wouldn't have hurt a fly!" Norman laughed. His voice still high pitched and Alex cringed at the sight of that ghastly smile.
Norman held the gun up to his brother now.
"Dylan, shoot!" Alex shouted when he realized Norman still had enough strength to murder them all.
Dylan, ever reliable, didn't need to be told twice. Norman's head exploded when Dylan shot him at close range. The loud bang caused Alex's ears to start ringing.
He watched in muted horror as Norman's body collapsed onto the pink rug next to him. Half his face blown away and looking like ground meat. The smell of hot blood and gun powder filling the air and Alex started coughing at the stink of it.
"Get Lucy!"he shouted once the ringing had stopped. "Don't let her see."
Dylan took a second to take in what he'd done to his brother. A brother he so obviously wanted to love.
"Dylan!" Alex shouted. His step-son turning to him as if in a trance before snapping back to reality.
"Are you okay? He stabbed you!" Dylan said. His eyes were wide with concern for the Sheriff.
"Get Lucy!" Alex waved to his daughter's still body beside the rocker. "Don't let her see, Dylan. Don't let her see any of it."
Dylan didn't want to leave him but he nodded and stepped over Norman's body to kneel beside Lucy.
Alex breathed a sigh of relief when he heard his child moan and cry out when Dylan helped her sit up. He watched his step-son peel off his coat and wrap it over Lucy's head before gently picking her up.
"It's just a game we're playing, Lu-Lu." Dylan said in a happy voice. "Your mom and dad are gonna be so happy to see you."
Alex felt his muscles relax a little when Lucy started crying and saying she wanted to go home. He could hear Dylan placing the little girl on the basement steps and telling her not to move. Hear his savior come rushing back to the pink room to help him up.
"Romero." Dylan panted. "I called 911, told them to send cops and ambulances. I saw the blood on the carpet upstairs. The bullet holes on the wall."
"Good." Alex groaned and let Dylan help him to sit up. "I want you to stay with Lucy. She's hurt and I don't want her to be alone."
"I will. I had to make sure you were going to make it." Dylan said and looked sadly at his brother's body.
Alex saw and understood what Dylan had done.
"I had to." the younger man said miserably. "He was going to kill you. I don't know… why was he dressed like that?"
"I don't know." Alex breathed. He reached out and gripped tightly to Dylan's shoulder. "Thank you, son."
Dylan nodded and helped the Sheriff stand. Alex felt dizzy and tried not to lean on his step-son too much. Dylan was strong and capable enough to help him limp out of Lucy's pink room.
"Mom might forgive me for killing him." Dylan reasoned. "She wouldn't be able to forgive you."
"Your mom being mad is the least of our worries." Alex said once they reached the bottom of the basement stairs. Lucy was sitting there with Dylan's coat wrapped around her shoulders. Her expression unreadable and her blue eyes vacant from shock.
"Lucy?" Alex called to his daughter. Dylan helping him sit down on the step next to her.
"I'll go and flag down the ambulance. They'll be here any second." Dylan said and raced up the stairs.
"Lucy?" Alex asked the little girl. "You're safe now. Your mom and I are going to take you home really soon."
Lucy didn't blink and she started out at nothing.
"Lucy?" Alex asked. He was feeling light headed from the blood loss. "Lucy, I need you to say something."
Outside, he could hear sirens from police cars and ambulances.
"Don't let… Mother catch you here." Lucy said slowly. Her voice sounding tinny and far away.
"What?" Alex asked.
"Mother wouldn't like you being here." Lucy said to the shadows.
~ Norma ran through the emergency room, the same place she gave birth to her daughter, hardly believing that her baby was alive.
Emma had gotten a call from Dylan as the paramedics were loading Lucy and Alex into waiting ambulances.
"Just meet us at the hospital." He told her before the paramedics insisted on looking at his head wound.
Norman Bates, still wearing his mother's blue robe harsh makeup and a wig, was loaded into the coroner's van with no one to grieve over him now.
"Lucy and Alex Romero?" Norma asked pulling a nurse aside.
"You'll have to talk to a doctor." the nurse said quickly.
Norma hated being in the hospital around people who couldn't give her a strait answer.
"My daughter and husband were brought in." she asked a man in a white coat.
"Romero's in surgery." a familiar voice said from behind them.
Norma turned and saw her son Dylan with a white bandage on his head. His shirt covered in blood and a general look of annoyance on his face.
"Dylan!" Emma gasped. "What happened? You found Lucy?"
"She's gonna be okay." Dylan nodded and looked guiltily at Norma.
"Where is she?" Norma breathed "Alex is in surgery? What the hell happened?"
She was more annoyed than anything. She felt left out her daughter's recovery and it hardly seemed fair she was among the last to know.
"Mom." Dylan said slowly and pulled her to a more secluded part of the intake room. Nurses and other staff members were watching them closely. In a few hours, the news would be all over town.
"What?" Norma cried.
"Mom, it was Norman." Dylan said. "He did this. He took Lucy."
She shook her head.
"No, Norman hasn't been back here in years. He's never even seen Lucy. I tried to give him pictures and he didn't care about her." she said.
"Mom, he took her. He gave her those presents and he took her to the old house. He took her, mom." Dylan said.
Emma had started crying and Norma shook her head. Still disbelieving.
"Norman is doing fine. He's living on his own. He's past all that." she told him.
"Mom, Norman took Lucy." Dylan said harshly. "He took her to the old house and when Romero and I went to look there, he hit me over the head with your old frying pan and stabbed your husband twice."
Norma recoiled from the horrible accusations.
"Norman doesn't even know Lucy!" she hissed back at him. "He would come to me first and I haven't seen him in three years. He kept refusing to even talk to me. He wouldn't do this."
"He did this." Dylan nodded. "Mom, he tried to kill you. He took Lucy and tried to kill me and Romero."
"I want to talk to a doctor." Norma stepped away from her son. "Can someone tell me what's going on with my husband and daughter?"
Her voice was loud and demanding in the emergency room. The nurses all looked scared of Mrs. Norma Romero.
The mother of that horrible psycho Norman Bates.
~ "Your husband is already out of surgery." Doctor Swift was saying calmly. "He was lucky. The stab wounds were deep, but they didn't puncture any organs."
"He was stabbed?" Norma questioned. Her mind still rejecting such violence had happened to her husband and child.
"I'm afraid he had a concussion to. His attacker hit him pretty hard. We've given him some medication to ease the swelling." Swift went on.
"Lucy?" Norma asked. "I need to see her."
"Your daughter is being examined still." Swift told her. His tone never working the worried wife and mother up with all the excitement. "The good news is her only injury seems to be a dislocated shoulder. We've already popped it back into place and given her some pain medications."
"Okay." Norma breathed. "Can I see her?"
"Mrs. Romero, we had to do an exam for sexual assault." Swift told her. Norma felt her chest tighten and her vision fade slightly.
"She was…"
"At first glance there appears to be no trauma to suggest that she'd been molested." Swift said quickly. "We still have to do the exam though to be sure."
Norma was blinking back tears and spotted Dylan and Emma holding back a few feet.
"I… I was told my other son… Norman Bates…" she whispered. She knew it was true. Knew Dylan wasn't lying about Norman doing this. She just didn't want to believe it. Not yet anyway.
"Detective Chambers will discuss that with you." Swift said. "I'm afraid my job is to treat the living, Mrs. Romero."
Norma winced and felt her body grow cold. She knew what Swift meant by that. Knew in her bones that Norman, her son, was dead.
"I'll have a nurse come get you once Lucy's exam is completed. Should be anytime now. Your husband is still under from the surgery but he managed to stay conscious until they started to prep him. That's always a good sign." Swift told her.
Norma hardly heard what Swift was saying.
Emma and Dylan were guiding her to a row of chairs so she wouldn't faint.
"It's going to be okay." Emma was saying.
"Lucy is going to be fine." Dylan added. "Romero, he's an old man, but he's strong. You'll all be fine."
Norma heard nothing. There was a roaring in her ears that sounded like she had started screaming.
~ Lucy sat on the edge of her hospital bed and wasn't sure if any of this was real or not. She hated hospitals more than her mother did. Just last year, she'd been on her roller-skates and took a bad fall. She'd hit the sidewalk so hard she heard a snap. Her arm hurting worse than any pain she had ever felt. She screamed and Mr. Dumas, who'd been out with his cats came rushing over to her.
He called her Gracie and told her that her arm was broken. Lucy was still afraid of him back then, but she sensed that he wanted to help her. His mind lived in another time and she could tell that he was worried for her. Mrs. Brennan had heard Lucy scream and came rushing out of her house. Tommy's mother scooping her up like she weighed nothing and putting her in the back seat of her car.
She'd taken her to the hospital just like Lucy had been her own child. Her parents coming just as a nurse was asking her what color cast she wanted.
"Lucy, you have to be more careful." her mother sighed. Her father looked a little impressed with her broken arm.
"Look at my brave girl. Breaking bones and everything." he smiled.
"Alex, don't encourage her." her mother had snapped.
Lucy had picked out a pink wrapping to go on her cast and the nurse even applied some carefully selected decals to put over the cast for added decoration.
"All your friends will want to sign your cast now." her father told her when the time came for them to leave. She felt very foolish for breaking her arm in the first place, but the benefits were worth it.
Her father had carried her out of the emergency room in one arm. Her mother made her her favorite dinner when they got home. Uncle Dylan and Aunt Emma had sent her a get well teddy bear that arrived it it's own box and had her name on the mailing label. Her father had brought her a big bouquet of pink roses to her get well to. He had been right about her friends wanting to sign her cast. All the other kids thought her broken arm was amazing. Many of them spending the next few weeks trying to break their bones to.
Lucy eventually got tired of her cast. It was itchy and smelled bad. Her arm would ache and mommy had to give her pain medication. She had a hard time putting her own clothes on and mommy had to go back to helping her get dressed and bathe every night. Lucy had been glad to get that stupid cast off.
Her parents taking her out for ice cream once she was free of the itchy, smelly thing. Her mother saying the ice cream would help heal her bones, but not to go breaking anything else.
"It's okay, monkey." her father had teased with a smile. "I've got good insurance. You go break as many bones as you want."
"Alex!" her mother scolded.
Lucy shook her head. She didn't want to break her bones ever again.
Now she was back in the hospital and her arm hurt, but it wasn't broken.
Doctor Swift, mommy said he was the same doctor who delivered her, had taken her limp and useless arm and looked it over carefully. His hands had been very strong like her father's. He gave her a little smile and told her hold tight to the nurse with her good arm. He said take a deep breath and she felt him push and pop her shoulder back into place.
It had happened so fast Lucy hadn't had a chance to cry out at the potential for pain. She was amazed to find her arm working again. Like she had been a broken toy and now she was whole once more.
"I've never seen such a brave patient." Swift told her. "You should see some of the kids I get in here, Lucy. The boys always cry and scream. I'm going to tell them how you didn't cry at all. My brave girl. Very proud of you."
She'd been glad that she hadn't cried. She didn't know why she didn't. Maybe because she wasn't sure if this place was real or not. A nurse put a needle in her arm because the doctor was worried she was dehydrated. Everyone telling her how wonderful and brave she was. A lady doctor had come in and helped Lucy remove the pink dress 'Mother' had put on her. Doctor Swift having already cut part of it off to fix her shoulder.
The lady doctor was very nice and she asked questions Lucy had never been asked before.
"When you were with that man, did he touch you where you go to the bathroom?" the lady doctor asked. She helped Lucy change into a hospital gown and even took her underwear away.
"No." Lucy said numbly. "I… I had an accident."
Her lower lip trembled at the sight of her underpants. Mommy and daddy would be disappointed she had a wet herself.
"I had an accident like a baby." she whimpered in shame.
"That's okay." the lady doctor said with a kind smile. "It happens to people older than you."
The lady doctor wasn't done with Lucy. She asked all sorts of strange questions. If Norman had made her take her clothes off. Did he watch her change? Did he put his hands down her underpants? Did he make Lucy touch him? Did he make Lucy see any parts of his body?
She didn't understand what was being asked and only told the lady doctor about the dresses Norman made her put on. One as Norman and one as 'Mother'.
"He had on a dress and wore a lot of make up." Lucy said when the doctor made her lay down.
"You're going to feel my hands on you, but it won't hurt, I promise." the lady doctor said.
Lucy felt funny about having this stranger look at her privates when she didn't have unaware on.
"Everything looks good." the lady doctor smiled. "I'm going to see if your mommy can come in."
"Okay." Lucy said and sat up on the edge of the hospital bed. She wasn't sure what all of that was about, but maybe it had something to do with not wearing her zebra or rainbow legs. Mommy telling her she always had to wear them so people wouldn't see up her skirt.
She waited for her parents to come, but Aunt Emma and Uncle Dylan came into her room instead.
"Lucy?" Aunt Emma smiled. "Oh! I'm so happy to see you!"
Aunt Emma gave her a big hug and smoothed back her hair. Uncle Dylan had a bandage over his head.
"What happened?" Lucy asked him.
"I was ridding bikes with Elliot and I fell." Uncle Dylan said dramatically. "I landed on my head so nothing serious was hurt."
"So remember to wear a helmet, Lu-Lu." Aunt Emma smiled.
"Where's mommy and daddy?" Lucy asked.
"They will be here very soon." Aunt Emma told her.
Lucy sensed that something was off. That her Aunt an Uncle were hiding something. She could see bad things. Blood and stitches and mommy crying.
"Are they okay?" she asked.
"Your mom is just fine." Uncle Dylan said.
"Daddy?"
"He's going to be fine." Uncle Dylan said. "He just had a little fall like I did. It means he gets to stay home with you for a while."
"That's right!" Aunt Emma smiled. "You and your daddy can watch TV together all day."
"Where's Norman?" Lucy asked.
She watched her Aunt and Uncle looked panicked. Their faces telling her all she needed to know.
"He's gone?" Lucy asked.
"Yeah, Lu-Lu. He's gone." her uncle sighed.
Lucy nodded. She knew her uncle was a lot like her father. That they didn't feel the need to lie to her about complicated grown up things. She knew her uncle told her the truth about her father being alright and Norman being gone. That Norman was gone forever and she never had to see him again.
"I'm glad." Lucy admitted. "He… he was bad."
It was a long chapter and I know some parts were disturbing. Especially Lucy being examined. I felt it was important to the story.
