"You ready?" Henry asked, coming through the open door, making Elizabeth startle.
"I've been ready for a week!" she exclaimed, making him smile. She sighed. Leaving the hospital was something she had been looking forward to from the moment she had woken up. She hated it there. But going home also meant facing all of the things that were going to be different now.
The realizations had started pretty quickly. She had known that she wouldn't be able to walk, but that wasn't the end of it. She could hardly sit up on her own, which made her feel completely and utterly helpless most of the time. It had become rather difficult to reach things that were more than a couple feet away, which contributed to the feelings of uselessness. Eventually, the doctor had said she would be able to propel her own wheelchair, but at the moment, Henry was pushing her the majority of the time. She hated feeling so… so vulnerable.
"Hey," Henry broke through her thoughts. "Stop thinking about it."
She wondered at how he knew her so well, but she couldn't seem to stop going over and over everything that was wrong. Henry had helped her get dressed for the first time earlier. She was grateful for his help, but it was another reminder that everything had changed. That she had basically no independence. Now, as he lifted her from the hospital bed and into a wheelchair, she struggled to keep the tears in her eyes from falling. God, what was wrong with her? She was always able to keep her emotions at bay… until now, apparently.
"Babe," Henry said, setting her down in the chair. "Babe, look at me." He placed a kiss on her forehead, which finally made her look up.
"Henry, I can't do this," she quietly sobbed out.
Henry knelt down beside her, and she felt him wipe away her tears. "It'll be okay," he reassured her.
"No, no it won't!" she cried out. "Nothing will be okay! Nothing will be alright! Everything is different! Everything has changed…" she dissolved into wracking sobs. She felt Henry's hand on her back, trying to calm her down, but she wasn't sure she wanted to calm down. She leaned her head on her husband, letting his strength seep into her. Right then and there, she needed it.
"Hey, hey, it's fine to cry," he whispered into her.
"No it's not! It's so stupid, Henry! The vice-president died last week! People are killed every day! I see tragedy every day at work. And I'm still alive! I… I have no reason to be crying like this!" She was gasping between sobs and sentences, gripping Henry for dear life. "I should be grieving the death of Delgado, the hundreds of deaths I hear about every day! And yet this," she exclaimed, gesturing vaguely towards her legs, "this, is what I'm upset about!" Out of steam, she collapsed back into her husband's arms.
"It makes perfect sense, Babe," he responded. She pushed her body away from him, flabbergasted.
"No it doesn't!" she countered.
"You're grieving the loss of a lifestyle. Everyone does it when things change drastically."
"Okay," she said, finally catching her breath, "Now you just sound like a religion professor!"
Henry laughed. "Maybe 'cause I am?"
She laughed, and he smiled back at her. Looking up at him, she asked, "Can we go home now?"
"I thought you'd never ask!" he joked, unlatching the brakes of her wheelchair and pushing it out the door.
The ride home had been relatively uneventful, minus the new sedan and the extra security. Henry was grateful for the normality; hopefully it would keep his wife from having another breakdown. He was justifiably worried about her. She didn't cry over just anything. For her to be crying, she must be in a lot of pain.
Not that she shouldn't be! She had every right to be kicking and screaming right now! Well, maybe kicking was out of the question… but she had every right to be screaming at the world right now. Honestly, it wasn't what Elizabeth did that scared him. It was what she didn't do. He knew she was keeping parts of this to herself. He had seen her do it time and time again when faced with hardship and tragedy. And every time, it ate away at her, until she finally broke.
"Henry?" Her voice broke his train of thought, and he turned to look at his wife. Even with the dark circles under her eyes, her eyes red from tears, she was beautiful.
"Yeah, babe?"
"How are we going to make this work?" Her eyes held so much discouragement, so much terror. He could tell that she was genuinely terrified of this new reality, and he couldn't blame her.
"One day at a time," he answered carefully.
"That's not an answer!" she exclaimed, a smile playing at her lips.
"Well, what do you want me to say?" he playfully asked.
"I… I don't know…" she sighed, and Henry found her hand, wrapping his own around her fingers.
"Elizabeth, you are the strongest person I know. You'll figure it out. And besides, you don't have to do it alone." He paused, noticing the question in her eyes. "You have me, for starters. And you have the kids. You have the greatest staff in the history of staff. And, for god's sake, you have the president of the United States on your side. You are most certainly not alone."
"Yeah, well, after a while, I may wish I was!"
"I doubt it," he gently countered.
"Yeah... me too."
Stevie stood in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes taking in the room. Quite a bit had changed in the last few days; the whole house had been renovated to be more accessible to her mom. Yes, there were some benefits to being friends with the President. Namely, having a group of contractors and construction workers able to transform the house in a matter of days.
"Stevie?" Ally's voice made Stevie jump. She hadn't noticed her sister walk in.
"Yeah?"
"What time are mom and dad getting home?"
"Uh… dad texted that they were leaving like ten minutes ago, so they should be here any minute. Where's Jase?" Stevie inquired.
"I think he's still upstairs… should I get him?" Ally asked.
"Let him be. It'll probably be too crowded anyway with all of us down here…" Stevie trailed off, not wanting to think about all the change that was hitting her family like a boulder.
"So…" Ally broke the silence that followed Stevie's comment. "You wanna make popcorn? I'm sure Mom would like that!"
"I mean… why not? Sure beats standing here waiting," Stevie agreed, heading to the pantry to pull out the giant bag of popcorn kernels.
The sound of the front door opening barely registered in Stevie's brain as she popped the popcorn, but the sound of the door shutting most certainly did. Tapping Ally's shoulder to get her attention, they both ran out of the kitchen and into the front entryway.
The sight of her dad balancing five bags, trying to send a text, and pushing their mom all at once was rather comical. "Babe, I can carry something!" Mom was telling him, but he shook his head.
"Nope, I've got it!" he replied, before spotting the girls waiting inside.
"Uhh, Dad, you look like you could use a hand!" Stevie exclaimed, racing to grab three of the bags, while Ally grabbed the other two.
"I've been trying to tell him that!" her mom complained with mock seriousness, before bursting into giggles. "He's determined to be some kind of macho man."
"The correct term is 'knight in shining armor', babe," he replied, leading to a sigh from Mom and giggles from her and Stevie.
Setting down the bags on the stairs, Stevie turned back to where her mom was nervously eying the house. Stevie couldn't blame her for that; the ground floor, especially, looked very different from the last time her mom had been there. She looked at her dad, their eyes meeting. "Hey Dad, you want to go put everything away while Ally and I show Mom around our new 'abode'?"
"Sounds good to me. You okay with that, Babe?" he asked her mom.
"Sure! I need to see what this place looks like now!" Her mom's smile and enthusiasm helped to settle Stevie's nervous stomach. Exchanging places with her dad, she grabbed the handles of her mom's wheelchair, and they were off.
Ally led the way, and the trio made their way all over the house, stopping in the living room, the kitchen, and the family room. In the kitchen, Stevie pointed out the section of counter that had been lowered. "So you can still use the kitchen," she explained.
"But we still don't want you to cook, Mom," Ally snidely remarked, and their peals of laughter rang through the house.
Their final stop was the front office. Well, what used to be the front office. Stevie was a little nervous about what her mom would think about the room. The contractors had told them that it would be at least six months before any sort of elevator could be installed in the house, so there was no way that her mom could sleep upstairs. Instead, the contractors had made some minor renovations to the office, and it could now serve as a bedroom.
"Are you mad?" Ally finally asked after they had entered the room.
"Why would I be mad?" their mom asked.
"Well… because it's not how it used to be…" Stevie stammered.
"Honey, a lot of things are not the way they used to be. We're going to have to be okay with that." Her mom sounded confident, but Stevie suspected that she was trying to convince herself along with her daughters.