Everyday Peril
Chapter 10: The Beautiful and Damned

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I swear that it will get better in the end. We just have to get there first… Thanks for the reviews, everyone. Please keep them up. They're great to come home to after babysitting all day, especially when one of the kids thinks that because you don't live in the house, or on the street, or own the bike or the TV or the PlayStation, that he doesn't have to listen to a word you say, but anyway… Enjoy!

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For the first time since she had met him, since she had grown to trust and love him, she lied. It wasn't so much a lie as a deception, a hiding of the truth. But it felt like a lie to her. They had been completely open about absolutely everything since they had become intimate so long ago, and knew everything about each other. Sydney could probably say that she had the only husband who not only knew what tampons were, but exactly what kind to get if she ever needed him to get them for her.

She didn't tell him how much pain she was in, wouldn't show it. There are some things a person never forgets, and how to not betray what she really felt was something that would stick with Sydney forever. Michael had tried so hard to rid her of that, and given a few more years of complete bliss, probably would have succeeded. But this accident had sent her crashing back to that time before. The time of darkness, where there was nothing to live for, no purpose to life. When it was so bad that she needed someone, something to cling to, to keep her from spiraling downward.

To Michael, it looked like she was in a lot better shape than she felt. For once, it was the emotional ache that fell through her strong façade first, not the physical pain. Countless times before, she had let him nurse her through morning sickness, headaches, even simple colds. This time, she didn't want him to know that she hurt. Didn't want him to know that she had been taken to this room not ten minutes before, and the doctor would have killed her if she had known that her patient had been sitting up, let alone out of bed. Didn't want him to know that she had to fight back the tears to move and take the few steps to the window. Didn't want him to know that it hurt to breathe, would have felt better if the slow, shallow breaths she was allowing herself now would cease altogether.

She didn't want to stay here any longer, could feel the ghosts of her past swirling around her, wailing and howling. Before this, the twins' birth had probably been the only time she had ever been in a hospital without an alias, a convenient lie, and some sort of wound or malady inflicted by the enemy, someone she could go after later, someone she could kill. And that had been a time of happiness; this was altogether different.

"You have to stay here for a little while," Michael murmured, finally responding to her earlier statement. He sighed, taking a deep breath before saying her name. "Syd?"

She knew what he wanted, and she didn't want to talk. "I'm tired," she whispered, closing her eyes. She didn't see him nod, swallowing with difficulty, trying to hold back the tears. He took her hand and kissed it. She didn't move.

Michael watched his wife sleep, or at least he thought he did. Sleep did not find her, although she had closed her eyes. The sandman who had so viciously beaten her with boulders a while ago was nowhere to be found with his soft, glimmering sand. But she hadn't really wanted to sleep, only using it as an excuse to shut herself off from the world. It seemed a perfect solution; if she appeared asleep, no one would bother her, but if she wasn't really, she couldn't be haunted by dreams.

She hadn't accounted for daydreams, however. And it wasn't long before her mind spun out of control, replaying the assault on her senses that had occurred earlier, her daughter's screams echoing in her ears. Although a small corner in the back of her mind, the one space left that still had some light to it, that hadn't been completely clouded by tragedy, knew that Michael was standing right there, holding her hand, she refused to tighten her grip. She didn't want to feel anything, even his arms around her.

As it had been before, time became something that didn't matter; a piece of taffy that was stretched and pulled, then folded back together again, always the same amount of sticky sweetness but seeming at once to be so much and so little. He forgot completely that he had told his daughter he would be back to get her, couldn't think of anything but the woman before him, what she had been and was now, searching her for any glimmer of hope and life.

The soft knock at the door almost instantaneously followed by his daughter's arm around his leg startled him. Instinct kicked in and he scooped her up, pasting a smile on his face and walking out the door to where Carol was waiting.

"Hey, sweetie," Michael whispered on his way out. "Are you okay?"

"Look, Daddy," Hailey said solemnly, pointing to both the cast and sling that held her arm tightly. The brightness of the cast nearly blinded him, and he wondered for a moment how she was going to get to sleep at night. "And I didn't cry one bit," she added, glancing at Carol for confirmation.

"She's a very brave girl," Carol said, nodding. "I'm sorry," she continued in a whisper. "But she was desperate to get to you."

"No. Thank you," Michael responded, not wanting to have to say in front of his daughter that he had forgotten her, and glad that the paramedic seemed to understand this and offer him the perfect excuse. Hailey didn't seem to worry about it either, laying her head on his shoulder and tiredly fingering the buttons on his shirt, just as her mother would do after a long, hard day. "I don't know how I'll every repay you."

"Don't worry about it," Carol shrugged, brushing Hailey's hair back behind her ear. "This one's a perfect little angel." She reached into her pocket and handed him a card. "Here's my number. If you need anything, don't hesitate to call."

Michael didn't get a chance to answer before Hailey looked up at him, bringing a hand to his face and commanding his attention. "Daddy, is Mommy all better?"

He thought for a moment before answering. "Not yet," he murmured, kissing the top of her head and glancing at Carol. "Thank you."

"Is the new baby okay?" Hailey continued, feeling that she had been left in the dark for far too long, and now wanting to know everything.

Michael flinched. Carol ruffled Hailey's hair and patted Michael's shoulder. She murmured a goodbye to Hailey before giving Michael her now familiar parting words, spoken this time so that he barely heard her. "Good luck."

She left and Hailey patted her father's cheek. "Daddy?"

"Hailey, there's something we need to talk about," he began, leading her to a bench far enough down the hall so that Sydney couldn't hear them if she woke up. The movement also bought him time. He had no idea how to broach this subject. As difficult as it had been to convince Hailey to want and love this baby, telling her that it was gone was going to be ten times worse. How do you explain the death of something that was so loved but had never yet been seen?"

Hailey waited patiently enough for a few moments, admiring her new cast as she sat beside him. "Look, I'm all protected," she said, smiling up at him and tapping a finger along her cast. "You can touch it and I don't even feel it on my skin. Is this like what the knights weared in The Sword in the Stone?"

But Michael hadn't heard her question. A pity, since it might have made him smile, and he could have used that desperately. "Hailey…"

"Maybe do you think if Mommy and me weared this in the car we wouldn't have been hurted when it crashed?" Her deep green eyes were solemn; her question not as silly as it may have seemed. Michael wanted to hug her so tightly, never having to let her go again. He wanted to do the same to her mother and her brothers, never letting his family leave his grasp.

"Hailey," he started again, lifting her onto his lap so that she faced him, needing her to be close to him when her mother could not. "We need to talk about something important."

"Is it about the crash?" Hailey asked. She was an intelligent child and if it hadn't been her lack of understanding of French, it would be hard to pass anything by her. "When I asked if the new baby was okay, you didn't say anything."

"That's what we're going to talk about now." Now if he only knew where to begin. He wished there was some kind of prepared speech for this, but only for a moment before he realized that his daughter's curious nature would have riddled it with holes and uncertainties; there was no way anything could prepare him for all her questions.

"Did the new baby need a cast too?"

It would have been nice if it were that simple. Yes, Hailey. The new baby needed a cast, but it will be all better to play with you after it's born. Quick, simple, and painless, with barely a hint of suffering.

"Do you remember that little bird we found in our yard awhile ago?" Michael asked quietly, not knowing where else to begin.

He and Sydney had tried to keep their children sheltered from the pain of the outside world. They had decided that the two of them had had enough of it to last a lifetime and they were going to protect their children from it at all costs. The little girl and her two brothers were in bed by 8 o'clock every night, only played in the backyard if someone was out there with them, and never watched a movie that was rated higher than G if their parents hadn't watched it first. They knew almost nothing of suffering and death outside of the quick, honey-coated misery in Disney cartoons.

"The one that flied into the window?"

Hailey had found it early one Saturday morning, telling her mother and father that it was sleeping on the grass and maybe they should find its nest so it wouldn't be scared when it work up. She didn't know that its sleep was deeper than she could have ever imagined, that there was a kind of sleep that you never woke up from.

"Yeah. Do you remember?"

Hailey nodded. "He didn't move at all, even when we picked him up. The new baby can't fly, right?" She cocked her head to the side, clearly confused. He knew that he was doing this by a very roundabout way, but couldn't think of any better way to do it, knew that he needed to deliver the news slowly for his own sake as much as that of the little girl's.

"No, Hailey. But do you remember what happened next with the little bird?"

"We put him in a box," she said thoughtfully, suddenly brightening. "Can I see it?"

"What?"

"The box that the new baby's growing in," Hailey stated matter-of-factly. "Can I look inside real fast? I promise I won't wake it up."

"No, sweetie." He would probably never perfect this parenting thing. Sydney would have been so much better at this, he was sure of it. Sometimes, he even wondered why that woman had let him father her children. "The baby's not living in a box. It's…"

"You're not gonna bury it in the backyard, right?" Hailey interrupted, eyes wide, all the joy that the thought of seeing the baby had brought her quickly extinguished with this new notion.

Michael had thought that the bird would be a good entry to what he had to say, but perhaps he had been wrong. If he was getting anywhere at all with this, it was definitely in a worse position than where he had started. Too bad there was never practice for things like this. You got one shot and that's it. Michael would learn from this, but it was not something he hoped to benefit from; he never wanted to have to explain this again.

"The little bird went up to heaven, right?" he asked, trying to steer this conversation in the right direction.

"Yep," Hailey nodded. "Mommy said it growed angel wings even though it already had birdie wings." She remembered wanting to see them, asking if the angel wings were bigger or would help the birdie fly faster. She thought that all the other birdies would be jealous because the bird's new angel wings were more beautiful than their own birdie wings.

Well, it was as good a lead in as he could hope for, and he had to tell her the truth. "Hailey, the new baby went up to heaven too."

The little girl frowned. As smart as she was, what they had been discussing had not prepared her for this. She thought that maybe the new baby would have pretty wings too, that it would learn to fly and maybe teach her when it got bigger. "Why?"

"It got hurt in the car accident."

So if it got hurt, it needed a Band-Aid, right? She hurt her elbow learning how to ride her bike, and she never grew angel wings. Her cousin had pushed her down at the playground, but she never went up to heaven. She got a Band-Aid, a kiss, and was as good as new before she even had a chance to cry. "But me and mommy got hurt, and we're not going to heaven."

"You and Mommy are a lot stronger. The baby was so little and it got hurt very badly." It was difficult to explain this. He had to be careful not to make it any worse, not to scare his daughter into thinking that every time someone got hurt, they went up to heaven. He was treading on delicate ground and one step in the wrong direction was all it would take to shatter the little girl's confidence.

"Did it grow angel wings and fly out of Mommy's tummy?" Did it hurt to grow the wings? Did Mommy feel it fly out? Why didn't we see it? She had a thousand questions bombarding her, and was more confused now that she had more answers than she had been before. Life was so difficult to understand sometimes.

"Yeah," Michael answered, smoothing her hair.

A moment later, Hailey's lip began to tremble and tears sparkled in her eyes. "How come the new baby didn't want me to be its big sister? I telled it I was sorry I said I didn't want it…" She looked down and her tears dropped onto her father's lap.

"Oh, sweetie…" Michael gathered the little girl into his arms, and it took all his strength not to cry with her. He rocked her gently back and forth and she wrapped her arms tightly around him. "It's not your fault, angel. It's nobody's fault."

"Then why'd the new baby have to get hurt and go to heaven?" She asked, sniffling.

"I don't know," Michael murmured, brushing his thumbs over her eyes to dry them.

"Who's gonna take care of it when it cries?" Her daddy was drying her tears now, but he wouldn't be there to dry the new baby's tears or hug it or kiss it or tell it what a pretty little baby it is. It would never get to play with her or William or Jonny.

"There'll be lots of angels up there to love it, Hailey. Grandpa Vaughn… and Grandma Bristow." They had never told their children the truth about their grandmother, and never planned on doing it. Some things were better left untouched, too difficult to explain. "And the little bird will be up there to sing it to sleep."

"I think it'll like that," Hailey said, nodding and wiping her arm across her face.

"Me too," Michael agreed. His little girl snuggled against him again and they sat in silence. He took a shaky breath, feeling his daughter's little heart beating against his chest and listening to the hum of activity around them.

"Daddy?" Hailey asked after a moment. She scooted back to look up at him, tears no longer falling. "Can you not call me angel anymore and we can call the new baby that instead?"

"I think that's a good idea," Michael answered. Never in all his wildest dreams had he allowed himself to think that a child he helped to create could be so sweet and perfect.

"Goodbye, angel," Hailey called, glancing up a the ceiling and waving. And just like that, she made her peace with it. "Can we go see Mommy now?"

"Yes. But first, you have to show me your smile. Mommy needs to see happy faces right now." He couldn't afford to add more sadness to that room. There was already enough in there to drown anyone who entered; maybe others couldn't feel it, but it had weighed heavily upon him the moment he had entered the room.

"How's this?" Hailey asked, beaming up at him, a miniature version of Sydney's smile plastered across her face.

"Beautiful," Michael responded. "Just like your…" He stopped himself, unable to finish his sentence, and quickly changing the subject. "Now, we'll go see Mommy, but only for a few minutes because she's very tired. Then I'm going to take you to Grandma's house, and…"

"How am I gonna get to Grandma's house?" Hailey interrupted him, her voice quivering, her forehead wrinkled with concern.

"I'm going to drive you and then come back here." It hit him as he said it. Had he been in her shoes, he wouldn't want to get back in a car so soon either.

"What if we crash again?" Her voice was so tiny, and he realized then how small and helpless she actually was. She was only a little girl.

"Don't worry, sweetie. Your mother and I will always try our best to protect you." She didn't need to know that car accidents were something that there was no protection from. If she was satisfied with his answer, that was all she needed.

"Promise?" Hailey asked, still uneasy.

"I promise." But the shadow of fear still lingered on his daughter's face. She hadn't bought his answer completely, but she was still young enough to be distracted into happiness. "Is the tickle monster going to have to come and find your smile?" Michael asked with mock seriousness.

"Maybe," Hailey answered, without a hint of teasing or happiness.

Michael willed himself to smile for Hailey's sake. She had been through a lot today, and it was the least he could do for her. He tickled her ribs until she squirmed with laughter.

"Okay!" Hailey managed in between giggles. "The tickle monster can go away now!"

Michael obliged, taking his hands off her. She leaned forward, tottering without the ability to use both arms to balance, and he helped her move toward him. She planted a kiss on the tip of his nose. "I love you, Daddy." To think how close he had come to losing all this…

"I love you, too," he answered automatically, the words finding their way over the lump in his throat without a problem. "Now, let's go see Mommy." He lifted her down and took her hand. "Don't be scared when we go in the room. Mommy was very hurt."

"I'm brave," Hailey stated. "Carol said so."

"I know you are," Michael replied. "Mommy might be asleep, so we have to be quiet." He led her into the room and Hailey paused in the doorway, staring at her mother. "Come on, sweetheart."

Sydney was so still that at first he thought she was still fast asleep. But lifeless as they appeared, her eyes were open, so he took their daughter over to her bedside.

Hailey took her eyes off her mother for a moment to glance uneasily at her father. Her fingers tightened around his. He probably should have prepared her better for what she was now seeing, maybe shouldn't have taken her in at all. But he knew that the child had to see for her own eyes that her mother was still living and breathing, that eventually she would be okay.

"Syd, I've brought you a visitor," Michael murmured, picking Hailey up so that Sydney wouldn't have to turn to see her.

Sydney's eyes met her daughter's and he could see the emotions that flashed through them, so quickly that one was barely discernable from the other. But there they were. The relief at seeing her daughter all right, the sadness and anger when she saw the bruises and cast, the guilt at causing her pain.

Hailey wrapped her arm tightly around her father's neck, leaning her head against his chest but still keeping eye contact with her mother. "H-hi, Mommy." Somehow she managed a flash of a smile, gone almost before it was even there.

"Hailey…" Sydney murmured, her voice low.

Simply hearing her mother's voice was enough for Hailey. As unlike her mother's normal cheerful tone as it was, it still managed to brighten the little girl. She realized that it was indeed her mother underneath all the bruises, and her shyness and fear melted away. "You have something in your arm," she stated, pointing to the IV. "Does it hurt?"

"Not anymore," Sydney whispered, answering truthfully. It had stung when they first put it in, but compared to the pain elsewhere, it was nothing; it had been numbed away.

"Look, Mommy," Hailey said, glancing at her cast and sling. Her voice had been sad earlier when she had said the same words to her father, but now it was cheerful. "The doctor said it will be all better in no time."

Sydney didn't seem to hear her merry tone, however. Her eyes locked on the cast, and she saw it as a symbol of pain, her ears filled with the little girl's screams as they rose above all the other noise and commotion from earlier. "I'm sorry, Hailey."

"Don't say you're sorry, Mommy," Hailey responded, shaking her head. "Never ever. It's not your fault."

Michael froze. Don't say you're sorry, Syd. Don't ever say you're sorry… How many times had he said those words to his wife? His daughter had never heard him say it, but somehow she had known.

Hailey didn't notice her father's strange glance, and Sydney either didn't recognize the familiar words or didn't care, her face still the same void it had been when he had first walked in the room, distant and emotionless.

Suddenly, he realized that somewhere deep down he had been hoping that their daughter would have been able to bring the light back to her mother's eyes. But Sydney had retreated too far in her shell for that. He had always been able to reach her and pull her out before, usually without the help of their daughter. But Sydney had lost herself in territory unfamiliar to him, too deep into the maze for him to penetrate easily.

It pained him more than words could say, and he wanted to get Hailey out of there before she noticed the change in her mother's behavior. The little girl didn't need anymore sadness today, and out of all that had happened, he thought that losing Sydney like this, still having her, but not in the same way, was probably the worst of all. He would work harder than anything to bring her back, but it would take time.

"Say goodbye to your mother, Hailey," he murmured, his voice hoarse. "She needs her rest. You can come visit tomorrow."

"Bye, Mommy," Hailey chirped obediently. "Don't worry. You'll be all better soon." She brought a tiny hand up to her lips and blew Sydney a kiss. "I love you."

"Goodbye, Hailey," Sydney whispered. And if the little girl noticed that for the first time, her mother didn't say she loved her back, she didn't say anything.

Michael carried her out of the room and down the hall. Hailey didn't say a word until they were in the elevator, taking her father's chin in her hand and tilting his face towards her. "Daddy?"

His eyes answered for him, told her that he was listening and she didn't call his name again. He needed a break from speaking, knew that if he opened his mouth, he wouldn't be able to hold back the sobs that were beating against his chest.

"When you come back," the little girl continued, "make sure you give Mommy lots of kisses so she's not so sad."

The elevator beeped as the doors opened, and the movement of walking out saved him from having to respond. Ordinarily, the little girl's tactic would have worked; his kisses would have restored a smile to Sydney's face in no time. But he knew that he wouldn't be so lucky this time. They had suffered through so much before, so many strange and exotic dangers. But it was an ordinary one that had broken them. He shifted Hailey so that he could hold her with one arm, using his free hand to wipe away his tears before they had a chance to fall.