To 707: I'm glad you were able to get help. I can certainly relate. I spent a great deal of time while writing and posting THLS recovering from an auto accident. I'd suffered through several previous injuries, but those sustained in the accident caused me the greatest pain of my life. It hurt to breathe, speak, and wear clothes, and doing something as simple as trying to put on my shoes was so painfully difficult that there were many mornings I wanted to give up and call in for the day. I swore I'd always remember exactly how that pain felt, because how could one forget something so horrible? I do remember what I went through, what a challenge my daily routine was, and how I didn't dare roll over in bed because it felt like my torso was burning in acid, but, barring another accident, I won't feel that particular pain again. I'm just grateful I made it through. Thank you!

Chapter 33

A Mother's Reaction

Fern had fallen asleep a few times as she sat propped up in the basement doorway, drifting in and out as she struggled to stay on with dispatch while waiting for the paramedics to arrive. It was as if her body, now depleted of energy, knew the hardest part was over. There was no need to exert anymore. The paramedics and hospital staff would be responsible for her mobility, take her to every place she needed to be, and she could relinquish autonomy for the time being and let them. Despite fighting to stay awake, her brain insisted on powering down, and she kept sinking below her cold and excruciating reality into a momentary ocean of oblivion.

"I'm still here," she croaked when the woman on the other end spoke up, pulling her back to the surface. "I'm sorry…. What did you say?"

"There's a locked gate on the property, sweetie, and the paramedics are trying to break through. Your dad is with them. They should be there shortly, okay?"

"Oh," was all Fern could think to say. "That's nice…."

Her various injuries burned and pulsed with her heartbeat, but she was getting out of here. Fern gave only a moment's thought to how the paramedics were managing to break the lock. Probably a bump key or bolt cutters—quick work with little challenge…. She went under again, waking sometime later to the sound of voices coming from near the entrance to the farmhouse antechamber. One of the voices, high and filled with panic, pleaded with the paramedics, "Please, let me go through!" Unmistakably, that had been her father, his words carrying through the open doorway, over what sounded like the remaining wood planks being pulled away from the boarded door frame. As they worked, bright beams from their flashlights shone down the short, black hallway, bouncing off the walls and dancing across the dusty floor. In her fourteen years of existence, Fern had never heard her mild-mannered father sound scared. Unless she missed her guess, he was absolutely terrified right now. Her eyes welled at the emotion in his voice despite being certain she had already cried herself into a dehydrated husk before reaching the stairs' landing.

"Dad!" she called out to him, hoarse, tearful. Her ribs flared. Perhaps the hardest part was over, but there was indeed more pain in her future.

"Fernie! I'm here, honey! We're coming to get you!"

"Sir," said a calm and authoritative male voice, "I know you want to be there for your little girl, but this could be very dangerous. We need to secure and remove her as safely as we can without putting you at risk too. Please wait here and let us help her…."

It should have been mortifying, the idea of two grown men cutting her damp, sweat-soaked clothes off her shivering body, but coming close to death had rendered the notion trivial. Staring up at the ceiling as the paramedics wheeled her cot through Elwood City Hospital's emergency ward, Fern, now covered with two thin blankets, gave more thoughtful consideration to the fluorescents as she passed underneath them, one by one. The light they provided was warm, and they were covered with hexagonal-patterned grates, unlike the square-grated, blue-toned fluorescents along the hallway that led to the morgue below. I almost wound up in the morgue, she thought as words like "hypothermia", "dehydration", and "possible fractures" were thrown about as they traveled. She had almost become another body stored away in one of Troy's coolers. There was talk of what could happen to her, more words like "X-rays", "CT scan", and "suture". While all these words made her nervous, she managed to take comfort in knowing she was getting help. The words that truly scared her were the ones her father spoke as he called down the hall after her: "I'll be with you as soon as I can, okay, Fernie? Hang tight—I'm going to get ahold of Mom!"

Fern was still in triage when her father returned, phone in hand and looking shaken by the conversation. "Mom…." she said to him as the nurse, a short, young aardvark man, removed the sphygmomanometer cuff from her arm. He left her side briefly to enter her stats into a computer on a rolling cart.

"She's on the way," her father assured her. "Jill is driving her here from the expo, thank goodness, but it might take a little while. She's in no shape to drive herself. I didn't want to go into specifics, to help her stay calm, but she insisted."

He looked as if he had not intended to divulge that to Fern, but he needed to tell it to someone. What had been her mother's reaction? Had she feared for her daughter's well-being, or had she merely exploded in anger at her defiance? If she had not gotten angry right away, she was bound to at some point, and Fern knew she would pay for what she had done today. It was her mother's way.

"I'm…in so much trouble, Dad," she said with a sniffle.

Her father's denial was low and soothing as he took a chair beside her gurney. "No. No, honey. You made a mistake. It's all going to work out, I promise. Don't think about it. Just try to rest—"

"No…. Mom is going to kill me when she gets here."

"You're just distraught—"

"Please…protect me from her. The ball was my punishment, and I…I don't know what she'll do to me now that she knows I…sneaked out."

Her father's concerned look quickly changed to one of confusion. "Punishment for what? What's going on, Fernie?"

Surely her father had been aware of everything that had happened since the Baxter cottage. Fern had believed so. His general confusion over the matter, however, told a different story.

"You mean you don't know about Ivy Drive?" she said.

The nurse asked for Fern's hand so he could clamp a pulse oximeter onto her finger. He looked uncomfortable to be in the room amid strangers' family drama, but he remained both personable and professional.

"I don't," her father confirmed slowly. "Why don't you explain it to me? Sit back, calm down, and tell me everything in your own time."

Fern sank below again once she had been returned to her room after her tests. Her leg had been immobilized with a splint, the gash in her thigh had been stitched up, and IV fluids now coursed through her veins, along with prescription-strength naproxen sodium and muscle relaxers. Following her father's request, she had told him about how she had picked the lock, how her mother had discovered her in the Baxter cottage, only she had not called it "the Baxter cottage". She had confessed her desire to perform practical research for her novel but had resisted the urge to throw Buster under the bus for breaking into the house with her. Fern explained how livid her mother had been, how she promised to punish her, and how she had finally followed through a little over a week ago. Lastly, she told him how she had devised and executed a plan to visit Van Houten Farms instead of complying with her mother. Her father had not gotten angry with her. Instead, he paused for a moment to take everything in then took her hand. "The important thing," he told her sweetly, "is that you're safe now. And you're going to stay that way. I swear it."

She stirred awake at the sound of her mother's voice, though she did not dare open her eyes. As expected, her mother was upset with her.

"What on earth were you thinking, Fern?"

Doria Walters did not care one bit that her daughter was in the hospital. No, she only cared that Fern had disobeyed her.

"Nothing to say for yourself? Look at me when I'm talking to you!"

She was furious, and things were probably only going to get worse. But had her father not vowed she would stay safe? Where was he in her time of need? With great hesitation, Fern allowed her eyes to flutter open, and she was taken aback by what she saw.

Fern sat in the passenger seat of her mother's car while her mother drove, hands clenched around the wheel so tightly that her knuckles were bulging through her skin. She was driving Fern home, pushing the speed limit so she could make it back to the expo.

"I wasn't going to bother anything," Fern said weakly. "You have to believe me."

"I don't care that you weren't up to anything malicious. What would possess you to break into Van Houten Farms?"

"I—"

"I should've stayed home and chaperoned that dance. You're very, very lucky you didn't land on your head. I don't think you realize that. You could have easily died up there, and then what?"

Fern opened her mouth to speak, but her mother cut her off again.

"You could have driven us insane with grief! Did you even consider that?"

Of course, Fern had considered that, along with several other things. But falling through a hole in the floor after being frightened by a raccoon was a scenario that had never entered her mind. "I thought I had a plan," was all Fern could say in response before becoming distracted by her attire. She was not in her hospital gown; she was not even in her escape outfit. She was wearing her plum jacket and ivory lace dress, the ensemble she had worn to Muffy's brunch before breaking into the Baxter cottage, though her body still hurt all over. She thought the situation had seemed familiar.

Am I dreaming? she thought.

"And I just bet this brilliant plan of yours has to do with your silly stories…. What did I tell you? Real-world actions have real-world consequences. If you mess around with something you have no business messing with, it can turn around and bite you."

There was a trilling, animalistic chatter coming from behind, and Fern turned in her seat to see a raccoon wearing a shiny gold crown lounging in the back seat. The raccoon noticed Fern and doffed its crown at her like a gentleman before baring its teeth.

"Definitely dreaming…." she muttered. This was too bizarre, even for Fern. "Come on, wake up. Come on, Fernie! Fernie!"

"Fernie! Oh my god, Bill, look at her! My baby girl! I'm here, Fernie! Fernie, wake up!"

Fern was definitely awake now, and her mother was definitely in the room, but she was not angry. She was sobbing. Fern still was not ready for this, and she kept her eyes shut, putting her acting chops to the test once more.

"What's wrong? Why won't she wake when I call her?"

"The doc said it's fine to let her sleep," her father said. "With everything she's been through, the cold, the exhaustion and dehydration, rest is one of the best things for her right now."

There was more muffled sobbing as, apparently, Fern's father held her mother, trying to comfort her. Fern listened with amazement, until she eventually drifted off again, only to wake in the middle of a hushed, tense conversation between her parents.

"What on earth were you thinking, Dori?"

"I— She committed a crime." her mother whispered defensively. "And now she's done it again."

"I think you're reading too much into her actions."

"She broke into a house."

"And I stole a campaign sign once when I was her age because the father of a girl I liked ran for city council. I was hardly a hardened criminal. We did a lot of dumb stuff when we were kids because it seemed smart in the moment, but we grew out of it. Or were you always perfect?"

There was a long silence. Fern's father had always been so easy going, and she had taken him for a pushover where her mother was concerned. But here he was, actually throwing verbal jabs at her. It was shocking to hear him say such things.

"It was still wrong," her mother finally said, "and I needed to teach her a lesson."

"I don't disagree, but this? A school dance? Forced charity work? What lessons are you teaching her?"

"What are you implying?"

"Nothing much, only that I don't think it's a good idea for our daughter to view helping her fellow man as a punishment."

"Then what would you have done, Bill? What kind of punishment do you think would have been suitable?"

"Housework? Yard work? Pretty much everyone agrees those things are awful. Maybe it's not a perfect plan, but it's a damn lot better than what you cooked up. The only thing you're teaching her with all this is to hate you...if she doesn't already."

Another pause.

"I take that back," her father said quickly, sounding genuinely remorseful. "I'm sorry, Dori. I'm just so...I'm taking a walk."

"At this hour?" she said. "In the snow? Where?"

"I don't know, but I need a breather. Call me if there's a problem."

Fern wanted to believe this was another dream, but as the door closed firmly behind her father, she knew this was very real. Her parents had just had their first fight, and they were fighting over her. She had somehow managed to cause even more destruction today, and the fact made her aware of a twinge in her chest that was just as painful as the other injuries she had sustained. And then a new worry began to take root in her mind: What if this was only the beginning of a rift between her parents? Where would it end?

To be continued...