x
Dysrhythmia
I hate you, I love you;
I hate that I want you.
You want her, you need her,
And I'll never be her.
- Gnash ft. Olivia O'Brien
BECA
Pt. II
Sleep doesn't come easy. Aubrey can't seem to get comfortable for more than a few seconds at a time and her cast keeps digging into Beca's stomach. But it's the first night Beca can recall that Aubrey hasn't cried herself to sleep, so she deals with her internal organs being crushed and takes comfort in Aubrey actually wanting to be this close to her. Even when she settles, draped across Beca like a heated blanket that won't shut off, Beca is too lost in thought to drift off.
xxxxx
"I'm not staying on the phone with you. Did you not hear me that they're bleeding?" Beca stood amidst broken glass scattered across floor of the Maritime Museum, bouncing anxiously on her toes.
"Ms. Mitchell, I'm going to need you to remain on the phone until helicopter arrives."
Beca dropped the phone on top the desk. She couldn't stay there while Chloe and Aubrey were both injured and alone – possibly bleeding out. The dispatcher was calling her name as she darted out the door and took off running back toward the neighborhood. It all looked the same – the houses, the streets. Even with the address running through her mind, her vision was blurry and her thoughts were racing, and she still missed the road and had to double back.
Finding the house itself was simpler than finding the street. Jesse was lying motionless in the driveway with blood pooling around the upper half of his body. Beca immediately felt like she was going to puke. She covered her mouth with the palm of her hand and stopped at the bottom of the stairs to look back. The gun was still next to him. It was impossible to tell if he was breathing from where she stood, but she couldn't risk it. She sprinted his direction and yanked the rifle toward her by the strap, tripping over her own feet as she stumbled back. Ignoring the pain, she scrambled up to her hands and knees to half run, half crawl her way to the front door.
Aubrey's gun was on the porch and she grabbed it on the way in, then tossed both weapons to the side next to an empty coat rack. "Aubrey?!" There was no answer. "Aubrey!" Beca followed the droplets of blood on the floor to the couch. She was curled up behind Chloe, wrapped around her like the two of them had just decided to fall asleep like that. There was blood everywhere, soaking their clothes, seeping into the couch cushions. "Aubrey...?" She inched her way forward, gripped by the fear of finding them both dead – and herself alone.
xxxxx
"Beca?" Aubrey whispers, her breath hot against Beca's neck.
"I thought you were sleeping," Beca murmurs and shifts a little bit to relieve the cramp in her back.
"I'm dying."
Beca frowns. "You're not dying. You're just burning the fuck up." She sits up, pushing Aubrey upright with her. "I'm gonna go get your mom."
Aubrey reaches out and grabs her hand. "Don't leave." Her hair is all in her face, and Beca brushes it out of the way with her other hand. The dark circles under her closed eyes make it look like she hasn't slept in days and, aside from her flushed cheeks, are the only real color her face seems to have.
"Mrs. B?" Beca calls toward the hall.
Julia is there in a second, pushing the door open and furrowing her brows at what she sees. "I'll be right back." She turns to leave again. "Stay there."
Beca lets her hand rest on Aubrey's cheek and watches the doorway.
"I wanna be with Chloe," Aubrey demands when Julia comes back.
"Let's talk about it in a minute. How about you open your eyes for me?" Julia places a few pills and a cup of water on the nightstand then sits down on the bed next to Aubrey and presses a thermometer into her ear.
It feels like they're sitting at the poolside all over again – Aubrey with her eyes closed, refusing to move that stupid sweatshirt away from her face. That was the moment Beca knew she was sick; but she understands Chloe's perspective now too. Aubrey needs to think she's okay, because panicking is going to make this so much worse. Her proneness to vomiting must really fucking suck.
Whatever the thermometer reads, it can't be good, judging by Julia's expression. She set it down on the table in exchange for the pills and water. "Here, Baby, take these and drink some water."
Aubrey releases Beca's hand and holds her hand out flat for the pills. She gets them into her mouth then takes the cup. The water sloshes up the sides and Julia helps her keep it steady and tilt it up against her chapped lips.
"She said she's dying," Beca says.
"Nobody is dying, okay?" Julia lowers the cup back down. "Everyone is fine. Is that better?"
Aubrey shakes her head. "Take me to Chloe."
"It's really late. Visiting hours are over. We'll go first thing in the morning – after eight."
Beca climbs out of bed and lowers herself on the floor next to Aubrey's things. She unzips her back and moves some things around, trying to keep everything neat so she doesn't have to face her wrath once she's feeling better, searching until she finds a sweater that she recognizes as Chloe's. "Hey, here." She drops it in her lap.
"Thank you," Julia mouths.
Aubrey finally opens her eyes and twists the widely spaced stitches around her fingers. "Why don't you believe me?"
"Believe what?" Beca asks, "That you're dying?"
Aubrey nods.
"Dude, because you're not." Beca sits back down next to her. "You're just…" She doesn't know what she wants to say, but what she does know is that Aubrey needs to lay back down and get some more rest. "Let's go back to sleep how we were." She isn't sure why she doesn't believe her, especially when not believing her got them into this mess. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to believe her. Aubrey is fine now. She was cleared to go home. There is no possible way she can be dying. She looks at Julia, who seems to also be questioning herself.
"Where are you going?" Julia asks as Aubrey places the sweater behind her and tries to maneuver herself up onto her knees, using Beca's shoulder as support.
"The bathroom."
"Are you feeling sick?"
Aubrey doesn't answer.
"Can I give you some help?" Julia tries again.
That gets a nod out of her.
Instead of helping to her feet, Julia gets up and retrieves the discarded bowl that Aubrey had thrown at Beca on her way out the door. "Sit back against the headboard."
Beca expects a fight, but Aubrey obeys and slides back down against the headboard. She looks bad, and Beca is starting to think maybe they should go back to the hospital. "What was her temperature?"
"102.8. If it doesn't go down in thirty minutes, we're going to consider it an emergency."
Aubrey's hand finds Beca's again and she squeezes it tightly and closes her eyes, determinedly focused on her own breathing. "It hurts."
"I know it does, Bunny, I know."
Her nails dig into Beca's skin as she leans forward over the bowl, drying heaving so hard she ends up belching and struggling to get her breath afterwards. Since Julia has the bowl and her hair, Beca tries rubbing her back with her free hand, but it doesn't seem to have much of an effect in getting her to breathe calmly again. There's nothing she can do to help her, and it's an absolutely fucking terrible feeling that Beca never wanted to feel again after finding her bleeding on the couch.
xxxxx
They both still had pulses, and Beca's hand was covered in blood after checking for them. She ran to the kitchen, ripping every dish towel she could out of a drawer in one movement. Pressure was supposed to stop the bleeding, but what the fuck was she supposed to do when Aubrey was bleeding on both sides of her shoulder? She didn't know if it was a good thing that the bullet went all the way through or if it would have been better for it to get stuck in there. Tears blinded her vision as she climbed onto the couch and straddled both Aubrey's and Chloe's midsections to apply pressure to both sides of the wound. Help wasn't arriving fast enough, if it even managed to get there at all before it was too late. "Guys, do not leave me here!"
Huge, heaving sobs rattled her entire body. "Aubrey, wake up." She bounced her body on top of them once in a desperate attempt to shake at least one of them awake. It made Aubrey's hand slide from Chloe's shoulder into her hair, but otherwise accomplished nothing. "Please!" She would beg; she didn't care. "Don't leave me here. Don't leave me here. Don't leave me here. Don't leave me. Don't leave me." She was so lost in her mantra, she didn't even hear the roaring helicopters until the paramedics were rushing through the open door. Startled, she let out a shriek and spun around, sitting directly on top of Aubrey as she pressed herself back against the couch cushions.
People were all talking at once – to each other, on walkie-talkies. "Are you hurt?" the first guy to reach her asked, then physically moved her off to the side when she shook her head. No one spoke to her after that. It became clear she was in the way, so she climbed over the arm of the couch and moved off to the side as Chloe and then Aubrey were eased onto stretchers.
"Wait here." One paramedic held his hand out to stop her from following them being carried out the door.
"No, I'm going with them." Beca fought to get around him then jogged after Chloe. The people loading her into the helicopter didn't argue. They helped her inside where she found a place to sit and made herself as small as she could so she wouldn't get in the way there too. "Is she going to be okay?"
They were too busy to provide an answer. Chloe began to convulse, and they rolled her onto her side facing Beca. Her entire body thrashed, her arms flailing, legs kicking.
Beca ducked her face down against her knees and covered her head with her arms. She should have gone with Aubrey.
xxxxx
Aubrey heaves again, bringing up what Beca knows immediately is blood. Bright red clings to her trembling bottom lip.
"Noah!" Julia calls then turns her attention back to Aubrey. "You're going to be okay."
Beca has to look away as she throws up more blood and foam, choking and coughing over it. She stares at the wall, her chest feeling tighter by the second.
"Call an ambulance," Julia says when he steps into the room.
xxxxx
"Are you hurt?"
Every time someone asked her that, Beca remembered all over again that she was covered in blood that wasn't her own – which should have made being covered in blood better somehow, but it didn't. The shirt she was wearing was stained with dark crimson splotches across the front of it and the right side of her face was painted bright red from a momentary lapse in realization her hands were bloody as she tried to wipe her eyes. She shook her head for the thousand time, refusing to look anywhere but at the wall.
"Your friend, Aubrey, should be out of surgery soon."
"What about Chloe?"
"It might be awhile. Are you sure you can't tell me anything else about them?"
Beca shook her head. Chloe Beale. Born June 7, 1990. She didn't know if Chloe had any medical issues or allergies. She didn't even know Aubrey's birthday. She only knew that Aubrey was older than Chloe because she had bragged once about being older than both of them. How the fuck was she supposed to know Aubrey's medical history? She was still second guessing herself over Aubrey's last name being Posen even though Aubrey answered the phone 'Aubrey Posen speaking' literally no matter who was calling.
"Alright." The nurse didn't seem satisfied. "Well, I brought you some clothes and we have a shower you can use just down the hall."
"Shouldn't the police be here?" Beca asked, "Don't they want pictures? Or evidence?" She didn't know how the fuck this shit worked, but she was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to be showering without speaking to someone first. She followed after her to a large room that doubled as a bathroom and a shower. She did want the blood off of her and seeing as how her questions weren't being answered, she didn't know when she would get another chance to shower. "Thanks," she mumbled as the nurse set down scrubs that looked like they were made of paper, a plastic bag, a white towel, and a shower caddy full of essentials.
Beca watched her leave then just stood there – alone and confused. It felt like there should be a list of instructions and people surrounding her to help her out, but there was nothing. She never wanted someone to tell her what to do so badly. If Aubrey was awake, she would know what to do. She always knew what to do and she always made sure to tell Beca to do it. And if Chloe was awake, at least Beca would have someone to figure things out with. Either option was better than this.
She peeled her clothes off slowly then folded them neatly into the bag. Her tailbone hurt from falling, but when she craned her neck around to look, there was no visible bruising. Rubbing the sore area with the heel of her hand, she used her free hand to turn on the water. It felt wrong just standing there, waiting for the water to warm up, but after all that time trapped in the rain, she couldn't stand another second being pelted with cold water.
The spray coming off the water thinned the blood clinging to her skin, and it began to roll down her body in thin, pinkish streams. Her stomach rejected the sight of it, and she closed her eyes as she stepped under the water completely and scraped at her skin with her nails and the pads of her fingers in an attempt to rinse it off faster. This just made it impossible to see if she was clean or still a bloody mess, and when the warm water reminded her she hadn't pissed in God knew how long, she chose to shamefully relieve herself where she was standing rather than risk opening her eyes. A fresh wave of hot tears burned her already raw cheeks.
Behind her was a handicap bench and, once she was sure she had to be clean, she backed herself up until her legs hit the front of it, then she all but collapsed downward. If she was going to cry, now was the time to do it when no one could see or hear her. Her breaths turned into short gasps that she sobbed out for a far longer period of time than she inhaled. In the empty space beside her, she imagined Chloe holding her hand, trying to wrap her in the tightest hug she'd ever received in her entire life. She attempted to block it out at first, then she clung to it, almost able to actually feel her there. The image of Aubrey paced back and forth in front of them, deep in thought. For a second, she wasn't alone.
They disappeared when she finally brought herself to open her eyes – replaced by cold, empty spaces. Her sobs tapered off into silence and the most intense fear, the worst loneliness she'd ever experienced faded into complete, utter nothing. Just like that, she was numb; she was fine.
xxxxx
Her name is Aubrey Posen. Her middle initial is L. Her birthday is April 10, 1989. She has no medical history aside from recent events and no known allergies. Beca listens as Julia rattles off answers to the EMT's questions in the ambulance. She really is just as much Aubrey's mother as she is Chloe's, and Beca feels a twinge of jealousy. After Beca's mother died, Sheila had tried to step up in her place – which was even worse than no one making an effort. But this lady would have made a pretty good fill-in.
Aubrey arches her back against the stretcher, breaking her from her thoughts. She's been writhing in pain since moving from the bed, but they don't want to do anything for her until they know what's wrong – which is bullshit, in Beca's opinion. There has to be something they can do. But they only instruct her to lay back.
Julia leans over and wipes away the beads of sweat forming on Aubrey's forehead. "Try to be still, Baby, okay?"
"I can't," Aubrey mouths.
"Yes, you can."
Aubrey slowly lowers herself back into the stretcher and bites down on her lower lip.
"Uh, hey, Aubs." Beca tries to swallow her own fear in order to distract her. "Remember that time at Barden someone took apart all your ink pens and switched the colors in them then put them back together again? That was me. I was pissed at you."
It doesn't work. Tears continue dripping from her chin, soaking through the front of her shirt, and she retightens her grip on Beca's hand. "I don't want to die."
Beca feels like she's shrinking into the bench, becoming somehow smaller than she already is. Aubrey really believes she's dying. "You're not dying."
"Beca's right," Julia says, "You're not going to die."
Aubrey presses her lips together and shakes her head.
"You didn't get out of there alive just to die at home," Beca states, "Fucking fight, Aubrey."
"I am," Aubrey forces out through clenched teeth.
"Dude, no, you're not; you just keep claiming you're dying."
"Because I am!" Aubrey chokes and leans forward, blood dripping from her mouth into a pink basin.
Beca tears her hand away. "No, you're not." She scrubs at her eyes with heels of her hands. "You can't. You're all I have left; everyone else is gone!" She slides her fingers up into her hair, digging her nails into her scalp.
"Hey, hey…" Julia takes Aubrey's hand and uses her other arm to pull Beca into a hug that she leans into this time, "Nobody is dying and nobody is getting left alone. Just breathe, Girls." She demonstrates with a deep breath as the ambulance pulls up to the hospital. "Come on, Beca." She helps her up and out toward the emergency entrance behind Aubrey.
"I'm sorry," one of the EMTs says, "You'll have to go around front to the main entrance and wait in the waiting room."
"No, no, no," Aubrey sits up straight, letting the basin clatter to the floor and splatter blood. She throws back a blanket they had her covered up with and swings her legs over the edge.
"Whoa, Aubrey." Julia releases Beca and grabs her before she can stand up.
"I'm going to Chloe." Aubrey tries to pull herself free.
"Stop," Julia commands her firmly, "Stop."
Aubrey stops and meets her gaze.
"We need to take her," the EMT intervenes.
"Talk to me." Julia ignores him. "What are you thinking right now? Why do you need to get to Chloe so badly?"
Aubrey just stares at her, not breathing a word.
"You're not dying alone, Aubrey. You're not dying at all." Julia cups her chin. "Now cooperate. Okay? Lay back. Good girl." She rests her hand on Aubrey's shoulder and turns to the EMTs. "I'm going with her. Please have someone escort Beca to the waiting room to be with our family."
"Ma'am, that's not-"
"She's not going to be cooperative," Julia mouths silently, "She has a very strong mind of her own, and it's being powered solely by fear right now."
Aubrey is staring hyper-focused in the direction of the elevator, and Beca knows she's thinking of every way to get herself to Chloe. But even if she does get up, Beca isn't sure she's going to make it more than a few steps without collapsing.
"I am helping you guys." Julia glides her hand down the bridge of Aubrey's nose, forcing her eyes to flutter closed, successfully disorienting her and distracting her away from her goal for a moment.
"It's protocol. We can sedate her."
Julia closes her eyes and visibly cringes.
"What? No." Aubrey scrambles back upright again. "I'm not giving you permission to do that."
Beca can't watch this again, not even with Julia here as a buffer this time around. She turns to face the wall, wrapping her arms around herself. This is Aubrey waking up in Seattle before Chloe's parents arrived all over.
"Hey!" Nora comes walking in through the emergency entrance in her pajamas, in the process of pulling her hair up into a bun. "I know Aubrey fired me, but your friend, Conrad, texted me you had called an ambulance. Our team should be down here in a second."
Julia stares at Aubrey like she wants to bop her over the head with something. "Aubrey," she chastises her before looking at Nora, "Aubrey is going to fix that as soon as she can. Thank you for showing up."
"No problem." Preston and a few people Beca doesn't know turn the corner and Nora dismisses the EMTs. "Can I do anything to help right now?"
"Beca needs someone to walk with her to the waiting room to find our family," Julia answers.
"Of course. Come on, Beca."
Beca glances back at Aubrey with a sinking feeling that this could be the last time she sees her and hot rage pools in her stomach. She's about to tell her to stop acting like she's dying when Aubrey cries out and arches against the stretcher again. The anger warps into terror. "You're fine." It's more of a demand than a statement of disbelief.
"Beca, go," Julia orders her, "I'll come update you, okay?"
Her feet feel frozen to the floor and it isn't until they're pushing Aubrey out of sight that she can convince herself to move. She rubs the goosebumps forming on her arms and silently follows Nora toward the waiting room, getting there just as Brian is walking in the main entrance to join Noah and Conrad. She finds herself a chair between Conrad and a table and falls down onto it, staring sickly at the magazines meant to keep people occupied as they waited.
"What's going on?" Brian asks, stripping off his jacket. He takes one look at Beca then tosses it in her direction.
Beca draws her feet up onto the chair and covers the entire front of her body with it.
"Aubrey is vomiting blood," Noah answers when no one else does.
"It looks bad," Conrad whispers, his voice cracking.
"How bad?" Brian asks.
Beca sniffles and resists every urge to pull the jacket over her head.
"Really bad."
He's exaggerating it – just like Aubrey is. But Beca can't find enough illogic in her to contradict him.
"What does that mean? Really bad?" Brian replies.
"I think-"
"She's not fucking dying!" Beca bursts before even waiting to hear if that's what he was going to say, "She's not fucking dying…" She lifts her hand up over her face.
Conrad slowly rests his hand on her back and they all go silent. Brian falls back into an empty chair across from them and starts tapping his foot.
Feeling nothing felt better than this and Beca looks for that feeling again but to no avail. If Aubrey does die, it won't be sudden – they'll at least call her to say goodbye, right? The tears come harder and she lowers her head against her knees and the jacket. Conrad's hand rubbing her back does nothing but make her feel like crying more, so she tries to shrug him off, but he refuses to move. Instead, he pulls her closer and drowns out the reminder of how she sat completely alone in Seattle and how fucking awful that was.
xxxxx
"Beca? Do you remember me? I'm Chloe's mom. We met very briefly at her graduation."
Beca stared straight ahead, watching the slow rise and fall of Aubrey's chest. "Yeah," she answered flatly, "I know who you are."
"Can I sit with you?"
"Why?" Where had she been twenty-four hours ago when Beca needed that? She didn't need shit now.
"Because you look like you could use some company."
Beca puffed out her cheeks as she exhaled then shook her head. "No, I'm good." She pulled her legs up onto the cot with her and turned to lay down facing the wall.
"Beca…"
"I'm fine. If you're here to sit with Aubrey, I'm going to sleep."
xxxxx
"Beca…"
Beca wakes up to a hand brushing her hair away from her face. She shifts uncomfortably in the hard hospital chair and slowly lifts her head from where she must have collapsed over onto Conrad's shoulder then opens her eyes. The white walls are the first thing she sees followed by the front desk. She scrambles upright and looks at Julia.
"It's okay," Julia quells her fear immediately, "Aubrey is alive."
But. There's a but. Beca can see it in her expression.
Julia backs up and sits down in the chair next to Brian. She wipes her face with the palm of her hand then leans forward with her arms against her knees. "Okay…Aubrey is alive," she repeats, "They missed some internal bleeding on their scans, however."
"From what?" Beca asks, "From not eating?"
"No. They're sure she was poisoned with Ricin now. It's definitely all been out of her system for awhile, so that's a good thing. But she's bleeding into her stomach, and they're not sure how bad. They're taking her in for surgery right now, and they'll update us when they know something."
That explains her aversion to eating and drinking if there was blood in her stomach. "But she's going to be fine?" Beca asks.
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"It's serious," Julia says, "I'm not going to lie to you."
"But you spent all that time lying to her about how she was fine?" Beca shot.
"We both know that was in her best interest," Julia replies, "But I don't think lying to you is in yours." She sits up and sinks back into the chair. "That's all I know. It's another waiting game now."
Someone needs to tell Chloe. Beca twists a few strands of hair around her finger. Unconscious or not, Chloe should know.
"We should have stopped her," Brian tells Conrad, "You saw what happened when we brought it up going to see Hamilton. Clearly, she didn't want to that wedding."
"But how?" Conrad asks, "We know she would have still gone."
"We still could have made a fucking effort." Brian stands up. "Fuck!" He flips his chair then kicks it.
"Maybe you should go get some air," Conrad whispers.
"I'm going to go for a walk," Beca announces and stands up.
"Take someone with you," Julia says.
Beca recognizes her words as an order she needs to follow unless she wants to argue over going alone. It's not worth the fight right now.
"I'll go," Conrad volunteers.
"I'll text you if we get an update," Julia tells him.
"Okay." Conrad looks behind him as he follows Beca to the elevator. "Where are we going?" he asks after they're inside.
Beca doesn't answer. She presses the button hard with her thumb then folds her arms around herself and stares at the ground.
"Are you going to be okay?"
"I keep yelling at her to fight when I know that she is," Beca replies, "I should have told her I loved or some shit."
"Do you love her?" Conrad asks.
"I don't know." Definitely not the way Chloe has always wanted her to. But she doesn't hate her and she isn't just a blip on Beca's radar either. She definitely feels something strong.
"You don't have to be in love with her to love her," Conrad says, "I love Aubrey. And now I love you too. But I'm not in love with either of you. Why do you think you should have told her that?"
Beca steps off the elevator once the doors reopen. "For Chloe." She looks down the hall toward her room.
"I think if you're going to say something like that it should be for you."
"Well it's too late now."
"She's still alive, Beca. She's a fighter."
Beca sniffles and wipes her nose with her arm as she slowly approaches the door. "I need to do this alone." She looks to make sure he's staying put and stands with her toes crossing the border into the room - frozen.
"You can do this. I believe in you, Beca." Conrad takes a step back toward a nearby chair. "In there or out here – 'reality doesn't change according to your ability to face it'. I read that on my motivational calendar. To be honest, it didn't feel very motivational."
"You need a new calendar," Beca agrees, "Shred the other one."
She steps into the room and slowly closes the door behind her. Breathing heavily, she convinces herself to look up and takes in the sight in front of her before tears prevent her from seeing. Her hands shake as she wipes her face and she looks down at her quivering fingers in revulsion. Even as a baby, she probably never cried this much.
"Chloe…" There are so many things she wants to say, but not to Chloe when she's unconscious. "Aubrey's hurt," she croaks, "She's really hurt. And she's scared." That should be enough to wake her, but it isn't. "I can't be you for her, so you have to wake up. If you wake up, then maybe she'll – we'll -" She turns around to face the wall, laughing in her distress. "I love you, Chloe, but I hate you. I hate you so much." She spins back around. "You have to fix this – with both of us. You owe Aubrey! You owe me. And you're just bailing out! We need you."
Chloe slumbers on, peacefully oblivious. Those stories of people waking up from comas like some miracle are all bullshit. Beca slowly approaches the bed and takes her hand. "I'm sorry – for this, for you, for Aubrey, for everyone… I am so sorry." So much for not spilling her heart to someone who can't even hear her. "I'm going to make it up to you and Aubrey – and you should too by coming back. We love you. I love you. I'm in love with you." She releases her hand and takes a step back, gripping the front of her shirt and pulling it up over her face to bawl into it.
"Beca?" Conrad knocks on the door. "I'm coming in," he says when she doesn't answer. He leaves the door open a crack behind him then walks across the room and engulfs in a hug her without question or regard for personal boundaries – a lot like Chloe probably would. "No one knows what's going to happen. Brains heal. There's a chance she might wake up and be perfectly fine."
Beca knocks the wind out of herself with her decision. "But I'm still letting her go."