CHAPTER 62
A/N: Thanks for the reviews guys! I've almost broken 300, wow!
We have a short number of chapters left before we switch back to the present, where this story first began. I'm not telling you how many more, but we do have a few left. You might want to have some tissues on hand, because I can promise you that most likely, they will be tearjerkers, at least to myself anyway.
With that said, enjoy!
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MARCH 14th, 2000
"Roger? I brought you some coffee."
Roger broke himself out of the trance he had gotten into and looked up at Maureen's silhouette in the dim waiting room. She had sat down carefully next to him in the plastic chair, extending her arm to give him the cup of coffee.
"Oh. Thanks, Mo."
"Yeah." Maureen took a sip of hers and checked her watch. "Well it's a little after two AM…if you wanted to, you could go back to the loft and get some sleep," she suggested. "I could sit with Mimi for a few hours. I don't really mind."
Roger shook his head. "You can't. They won't let you in there. I mean, I had to convince five doctors to even allow me to come and go without breaking any visiting hour rules. Especially since it's so late and you're not technically immediate family…they won't let you in there. I'm sorry."
Maureen cleared her throat and shook her head. "No, it's fine. I just, you know—if you were tired—"
"I'm okay. Jaylynn's okay?"
"Yeah. She's fine. Your mom called Mark tonight. She asked about Mimi. I told him that you'd talk to her today sometime."
Roger stretched his arms out and nodded. "Yeah. I'll have to do that too."
"Well um, I just wanted to bring you the coffee. I better get back then, Harvey's probably wondering where I am by now," she smiled softly. She stood up and slid her jacket on, pulling her curly blonde hair out from underneath the collar part.
"Hey Mo?"
"Yeah?" Maureen turned back around and stared at him.
"I just, I never got to congratulate you. About you being pregnant now and all. So congratulations."
"Thanks Roger." She walked over to him and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Call if you need anything, okay?"
"I will. Thanks."
Roger stood up and watched Maureen walk down the ICU hallway through the glass paned waiting room window. Sighing, he set the coffee on a small table and shoved his hands in his pockets, starting to walk up and down the length of the room. There was no point for him to sit with Mimi right now. In fact, he had been there with her almost constantly since she had been brought in by ambulance three days ago.
After finding Mimi unconscious in the kitchen, Mark had called 911 and they had dispatched an ambulance within minutes. Roger clearly remembered the ride to the hospital. It had been one of the most unnerving and terrifying experiences of his life. Not knowing whether Mimi was okay had killed him for the ten minutes he had spent with her in the ambulance. When they had reached the hospital, she was immediately taken into the trauma room, where she was worked on for over an hour. Tests had been sent off constantly, the results never good enough for the doctors.
Mimi had advanced into full-blown AIDS and was battling a potentially dangerous strain of pneumonia. The doctors however had told Roger that she had been battling AIDS for months now, and the pneumonia had relapsed even worse than before. The fluid in her lungs had accumulated so much that it had started to collapse one of her lungs, causing her to pass out in the kitchen. Mimi had been immediately sent upstairs to the ICU and hooked up to a ventilator, heavily sedated. She hadn't woken up much at all since.
Roger pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed them over his chest, glancing out into the hallway. He could see a few nurses gathered at the ICU station right near the waiting room. He had been wishing for the past few days that there would be some change—anything, just to have Mimi wake up and talk to him again. She wasn't supposed to leave him like this. Right now, he wanted more than anything for one of the doctors or nurses to run over to him and say that Mimi was fine and that this all had been some sort of mix up. He'd give anything to see Mimi sitting up in that bed smiling at him right now.
He couldn't take the waiting anymore. Roger figured that the least he could do was try to get one of the charge nurses to let him in to see Mimi one more time before he tried to go home and get some sleep. If anything, he probably was in desperate need for a good shower.
The brunette nurse saw Roger approaching the desk and looked up from the form she had been filling out. "Hi Mr. Davis. Still here? Is there anything I can get you?" she smiled warmly.
"Would it be okay if maybe—I could sit in with Mimi for a few? Before I leave?"
She nodded. "Of course." Together they walked down the hall and the nurse punched in the access code for the main ICU room. "There you go."
"Thanks Leyna."
"Anything else you need, let me know."
"Sure."
Roger passed his way into the small area sectioned off as Mimi's and felt his heart jump once again into his throat. She looked so fragile and so small lying motionless in that hospital bed. Her curly hair had been pulled back loosely into a ponytail, obviously the doing of Maureen or Jackie earlier in the day. She looked almost peaceful, but then Roger noticed the breathing tube that was hooked up to the ventilator and the oxygen tube underneath her nose. Sighing, he sat down on the edge of the bed and took her small hand in his, rubbing his calloused fingers over her smooth ones. The diamond in her wedding band caught the light and he brought her hand up to his mouth to kiss it gently.
The doctors had told Roger earlier in the day that even though Mimi was asleep and under the medication, she could still hear him and he should try to talk to her as much as possible. Even though it sounded like bullshit to him, Roger had decided to try it and see if he would get anywhere.
So he began, as he had done the previous two nights before. "Hey Mimi. You know, I think you really need to wake up soon because Jaylynn has been begging my mom to have you tell her a bedtime story and put her to bed. You've gotta open your eyes before they're going to let you out of here, baby. I know how stubborn you are, and sometimes you don't listen to anyone but yourself, but this time, please Mimi, wake up for me and Jaylynn. The doctors won't let me bring her here to see you, not at least until they move you to a regular room downstairs, so—so Jaylynn really wants to see you—and…we want to see you better. Just hang on a little bit longer for the both of us, okay? Promise?" Roger paused and ran his hand over her forehead before planting a kiss on it. "I'll see you in the morning baby. I love you."
Roger smoothed the blankets down on her bed and carefully placed her hand back on top of her stomach before leaving the ICU. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would wake up. She had to.
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Harvey tossed his keys onto the counter of his and Maureen's apartment and set down the bag of groceries he was carrying. He dropped his dance bag onto the floor and grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.
"Hello? Maureen? You home?" He walked down the dim hallway and into their master bedroom, where he found Maureen curled up against the comforter and pillows. "Mo? You awake babe?"
"Yeah." She sat up some on the bed. "I had a bad headache so I fell asleep for a few."
Harvey sat down next to her and Maureen rested her head on his shoulder. "You feel any better?"
"Kind of. Sucks because I can't take anything for it now so I have to tough it out," she told him. "How was your day?"
He wrapped his arm around her back and pulled her close. "Okay. Rehearsal was long, and class was even longer. Something was up with Jackie today."
"What do you mean?"
"I think she got into a fight with Mark and she brought it with her to rehearsal so she was in a bad mood all day."
"What were they fighting over?"
Harvey shrugged and stretched out on the bed and Maureen followed suit, pulling the light blanket over them both. "I think ever since Jackie had Hannah, Mark has been working a hell of a lot. So pretty much, she's had to take care of Hannah, who's not even a month old yet, and Luke, who's going through the terrible twos. And I feel really bad. She looked really tired when she came in today. Plus she said she thinks she's coming down with something too."
Maureen nodded sympathetically. "They've always fought though."
"Yeah I know. I wasn't really supposed to spill this, but Jackie wants to move back to Sydney really bad. I think last year when she danced for a season with the ballet there she realized how much she missed home. Plus, she never gets to see her parents, friends, or sister half as much as she wishes she could because it's halfway across the world and airfare is expensive. Don't get me wrong, because she loves the city here, but she loves Sydney more I think. But Mark won't leave here, and that's what they keep fighting about. Either way, they're fucked, because Mark's parents and friends are here, and Jackie's are in Sydney. It's not really fair to either of them. They're supposed to be moving into a townhouse uptown somewhere for more room, but I don't even know when that's happening. All I know is that their relationship has been pretty rocky these past two months, and I don't know what's gonna happen."
"You don't think they'll get divorced will you?" When Harvey didn't answer right away, Maureen rolled over and rested her chin on his chest. "Harvey."
"I'm not sure. She's not happy. Happy with Mark, but not happy here. I know it's probably not fair to Mark, but if he wants to be with her they're going to have to come up with something to make the both of them happy. Plus Mark's job isn't as flexible as they'd both like it to be now."
"But they just had a baby…"
"Yeah, but it happens all the time. People get divorced all the time, newborn or not. We're gonna just have to wait it out and see, but I don't know. Jackie's been here for seven years now, since she was eighteen years old. I think she wants to go back home." He yawned and kissed her temple. "So what about you? What have you been thinking about?"
"Just stuff."
"You want to talk about it?"
"You didn't just marry me to fill some void after Natalie died, did you?"
Harvey lifted his head off the pillows and looked down at her. "What? Where did that come from?"
Maureen shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not sure. I just…yeah, that was stupid of me. I just think sometimes that if Mark didn't get his job, he wouldn't have met Jackie, and then I wouldn't have met you. We wouldn't have gotten married and I wouldn't be having your baby. You know? I just think a lot of things would be different around here if a lot of things didn't happen. If everyone didn't get sick, if Mimi didn't get pregnant."
"I know what you mean. Sometimes I think that if Natalie and I would have went out even five minutes earlier we wouldn't have been hit by that truck and Natalie would still be here. She and I probably would be married and she'd be having my baby." He started stroking Maureen's hair and sighed. "But then I wouldn't have met and fallen in love with you, either, and I would have been missing out. You know how they say that everything happens for a reason? Well I think that in a way that's true. And right now, everything, good or bad, is working out for everyone just the way it's supposed to be. Even with Mimi not doing so well and Mark and Jackie fighting. That's just how it's supposed to be, Mo."
She nodded and wrapped her arm around his stomach. "I love you. Sometimes I don't stop to think about how grateful I am to have such good friends in my life. Plus a wonderful husband. I think the whole situation with Mimi and how sick she is really made me think about everyone. Like yesterday, I called Roger to tell him that I loved him. I never did that before. I used to hate Roger. We used to fight all the time, and now I consider him one of my good friends," she laughed.
"I know. I love you too."
"I'm really gonna miss her when she's gone," Maureen said sadly, a single tear falling onto her face. "I'm trying not to think about it, but I am."
"And it's okay to miss someone. Don't ever let anyone tell you that it's not. Just because Natalie's gone, I don't forget about her. The same with April. She's there in the back of my mind, but I've let her go and tried to move on the best I could. You'll have to learn to do the same with Mimi."
"Yeah." Harvey started rubbing slow circles into her back and she cuddled against him. "Can we go out to dinner tonight? I'm starving," Maureen smiled.
"Sure. Let me just get a shower and we'll go. I probably smell," Harvey joked.
"Maybe just a little bit." Maureen stood up and stretched. "Can I join you?"
"Hmm…" Harvey pretended to think about this for a brief second and laughed. He then scooped her up in his arms and carried her towards the bathroom. "God Mo, you're breaking my back!"
"Shut up," she pretended to whine. "Fine, then you can take a shower by yourself."
He kissed her and shook his head. "Nope. Now you're stuck taking a shower with me."
* * * *
MARCH 16th
"Mr. Davis."
Roger lifted his head up off of his arms and blinked groggily. The same brunette nurse from the past few days, Leyna, was shaking his shoulder lightly in an attempt to wake him up. He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. Shit. He had fallen asleep right in the plastic hospital chair, still clutching the coffee cup from hours before tightly in his hand.
"Yeah?"
"It's Mimi. She just woke up," Leyna smiled brightly. "Come on, the doctors are taking her off the ventilator now."
Roger was on his feet immediately and followed Leyna out of the waiting room. "You're sure? Really?"
"Yes really. She just woke up about ten minutes ago and the doctors immediately went in to see how she was feeling and how alert she was."
It had been five, long days spent waiting in the hospital for Mimi to make any sign that she was getting better, and now she had just woken up. Five days that had separated Roger from Jaylynn. He hadn't gone to work for any of those days. He hadn't seen much of anyone but the same nurses and doctors coming and going. And now that Mimi was awake, she had to have a slight chance of recovery, right?
Leyna led Roger to the same curtained area. Instead of seeing Mimi motionless on the bed, she was now sitting up and sipping a cup of water slowly. Her eyes immediately lit up when she saw Roger and she tried to give him a smile the best she could. The two doctors took note of Roger and nodded.
"Mr. Davis."
"Hi," Roger greeted them.
Leyna cleared her throat. "Well doctors, if you don't mind, I think we need to give Mr. and Mrs. Davis a few minutes alone, seeing as Roger hasn't been able to talk to his wife for a few days. I'm sure monitoring Mimi right now can hold off for a few, can't it?"
The doctors seemed to incoherently mumble in agreement and left the room. Leyna smiled and did the same right after them.
Roger sat down on the bed and took Mimi's hand in his. "Hey stranger."
"Hi," she whispered. Her voice was barely audible, and Roger had to practically lean in to hear what she had said. "What happened?"
"You collapsed in the loft and I found you when I came home from work. You've been in the hospital for almost six days." Roger briefly explained to her what had happened and what she had missed out on. He was just so happy and excited to be able to speak to her again.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Roger told her, running his fingers through her hair. "I should have noticed. We should have gone to the doctor that day. I knew you weren't feeling too good and I went to work anyway. I shouldn't have."
"Don't blame yourself," Mimi replied. She started coughing roughly again and motioned for the cup of water. "Doesn't seem like I'm doing much better now."
"Don't say that. We don't know anything yet. I haven't even talked to the doctors. I just rushed in here when Leyna woke me up and told me you were awake."
Mimi nodded. "Woke you up?" she whispered. "What?"
"I've been staying here on and off for most of this week."
"Oh. Okay." She started coughing again just as a tall, middle-aged female doctor walked in.
"Hi, Mimi. Welcome back."
Mimi nodded. "How am I doing?"
"Well, we'll run some tests shortly and check your vitals again, but as of right now, I'd like to speak with your husband separately, if that's all right."
"Sure."
Roger bent down and kissed Mimi lightly on the lips. "I'll be right back."
"Yeah."
He followed the doctor into the hall outside the ICU. She stuck out her hand briefly and Roger shook it. "I'm Dr. Michelle Gallagher and I've been monitoring Mimi's condition over the past few days."
"Well how is she doing?"
"Here. Please sit down." She motioned with her hands to a row of chairs. "Mr. Davis, you wife has been battle a severe case of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia for the past week. In a nutshell, your wife's lungs are slowly suffocating her to death. We're trying as best we can to give her antibiotics to prevent this, but unfortunately this are having little effect on her. The only thing that she is benefiting from is the oxygen she has been breathing off of for the past few days."
"So…she's dying, then?" Roger said slowly.
Dr. Gallagher hesitated, but then nodded. "Yes. I'm so sorry. She has advanced AIDS now and her T cell count is under one fifty. I'm very sorry, Mr. Davis. I wish I could have brought you better news."
Roger swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat and nodded. "How long?"
"Three weeks to a month. Her lungs won't be able to function much longer than that. I'd say two months maximum. I'm so sorry."
"Can I take her home?"
"We'd like to move her out of the ICU and into a regular, private room sometime today and hold her overnight for observation, but yes, we can discharge her the following day, although I'd just like to inform you that if she stayed in the hospital—"
"No." Roger shook his head. "I'm taking her home. We have a two-year-old daughter. No. I want her to be comfortable."
"Okay. I'll leave you now to visit with your wife, and if you need anything, just page me. I'm sorry."
"Thanks."
Dr. Gallagher nodded and left Roger alone in the pristine hospital hallway with his thoughts. Sighing, he glanced through the glass window and into the ICU, where he saw Mimi having blood drawn.
Three weeks to a month. Roger knew now, there was no more time to waste. They'd have to savor every second of their relationship until the end. No day but today.
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