Oh goodness. I don't feel well. I think I'm sick. Although, it wouldn't surprise me, the weather keeps fluctuating. Some days it's warm, and then the next it's cold. It can't make up it's mind. Anyway, make me feel better and review! Aww, and a few thanks to those who specifically mentioned caring about my feelings!

AABattery: I totally care about you back. Really I do. You are not insignificant. Not to me at least.

TeacherTam: mmm, hot fudge sundaes. If I wasn't afraid I'd throw it back up, I'd go make one right now. My roommate bought sprinkles ! (It's the little things in life)

Silver Dog Demon: Ah, you like the suffering Ryan huh? I think it's a downfall for all of us.

HateToSayIToldYouSo: You are awesome too. I don't think that's mentioned enough.

Disclaimer: The characters are sort of not mine. Okay. Not sort of. Really not mine.

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When Ryan got up the next morning, he had the imprint of the tile on the floor on his cheek. He rubbed his hand over it to make it go away, and walked towards the house. Seth was talking animatedly into the phone, and he turned and waved to Ryan when he came in.

"All right, we'll be down in a little while to see her," Seth said before hanging up. "That was my dad." Ryan just nodded and reached for the box of cereal, hoping that he could keep something down. "He said that if we wanted we could go down and visit my mom for a little while."

"Okay," Ryan replied after a minute. Seeing Kirsten would just make him more confused. The night before he decided that he was upset that his father was dead. But Ryan knew that seeing Kirsten would just make him rethink his whole stance on the subject. But he wanted to see her, he wanted to talk to her about all of it. He wasn't much a talker, and it was ironic that the one person who had always respected that about him was the one person that he desperately wanted to talk to. She would understand. Maybe she could help him decide what he was feeling. It was a lot of pressure to place on Kirsten, this he knew, but he couldn't help but think that Kirsten would be the one to help him sort it all out.

What would he have done without her? What would any of them done? Ryan shook the thoughts out of his head. She was fine. She was alive. But his father was not.

"So Summer is going to come over and take us to the hospital, since Dad has the car," Seth said. Ryan was about to open his mouth and ask where the other car was, but then he remembered. It was still in Chino. Sitting in front of Ryan's old house, where Kirsten had parked it and left it.

"Okay," Ryan was sticking to the one-word answers. They were working well for him.

"Dad said that we would take you down to Chino later to pick up your stuff," Seth said cautiously.

"Okay."

"Dude, I know that you have a very limited repertoire, but could you come up with something other than okay?" Seth teased.

"No."

"That's something different!" Seth exclaimed. "See? It is possible!" At this Ryan couldn't help but crack a smile. He was exhausted still, despite the fact that he had slept for almost eight hours. He chalked it up to sleeping on the bathroom floor, but he knew that it was because his mind hadn't been able to get any rest. The sleep had come because his body was completely worn out.

"Possible and likely Seth are two very different things," Ryan reminded him. The doorbell rang and Seth rolled his eyes at Ryan and went off to answer it. Ryan heard Summer's voice a minute later.

"How's he doing?" Summer never was any good at keeping quiet. It just wasn't her thing. It wasn't Seth's thing either. Maybe that's why they worked so well. Neither one could keep their mouth shut for more than two seconds. Ryan didn't hear what Seth said in response, but he could guess what the gist of it was.

Ryan's not doing too well. Ryan's drawing back into himself. Ryan's not talking.

He would talk. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk, it was just that he wanted to talk about it to Kirsten. And she wasn't there. Summer and Seth appeared in the doorway a second later and Summer offered a sympathetic smile.

"Ready to go?" She asked sweetly. Ryan dumped out the rest of his cereal and climbed to his feet and headed towards the front door. Seth and Summer hurried after him and the three drove in relative silence for half the way until Seth began to whine about the radio station they were listening to.

"Summer. This is pop. I can't listen to pop music. It hurts my ears. They bleed. Do you want to see me bleed Summer?"

"I'm not changing it Cohen. We're in my car. And in my car we listen to what I want to." Seth actually looked pained.

"But it's Britney Spears," he said in an overdramatic voice. Seth made it sound like the plague. For once Ryan was thankful for their bickering. It made him forget. At least for a little while.

"Cohen. Shove it. I like her."

"But Summer...." Seth started. "She's a slut!"

"She was a Mouseketeer!" Summer argued. "She can't be a slut. Mouseketeers are not sluts."

"That's just not true," Seth replied. "Christina Aguilera was a Mouseketeer, and she's most definitely a slut." Summer looked indigent.

"She is trying to clean up her act," she huffed. Seth just rolled his eyes and looked back at Ryan.

"Dude, back me up here."

"I'm staying out of it," Ryan said. Seth sighed loudly and placed his fingers in his ears to drown out the sound of Britney Spears. Ryan saw the hospital in the distance and remembered everything once more. His father was dead. That kept repeating in his head. It made him shake and want to cry and throw up some more.

His father was dead.

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Sandy woke up from his little amount of sleep with his arm around Kirsten was sleeping soundly next to him. She had scooted over the night before to let him onto the bed and he had held her tightly. It was what he had needed. To hold her. Everything just seemed better with her in his arms. He didn't need to think about what had happened.

But he did think about what happened. Because when she turned, he could see the bruises all over her arms. A hand print around her upper arm where he knew Dave had held on tightly to her. Bruises on her face, and he didn't look but he knew the there was a plethora of bruises on her stomach.

Her father killed someone. Not directly, of course, but he had ordered it. The idea of Caleb being the equivalent of a mobster was absurd, and yet...he had paid off police officers to kill Dave Atwood and stage it as an accident.

Kirsten moaned slightly and Sandy jumped off the bed ready to page the nurse to come give her something for the pain.

"Are you okay? What do you want? What do you need?" He asked.

"Sandy," she said softly with a small smile playing on her lips. "Calm down okay?"

"Are you feeling better?"

"A little bit."

"Good." Sandy nodded and then took her hand and brought it up to his mouth to kiss. "Good morning."

"Don't you mean good afternoon?" She asked looking at the clock. "God can you believe all of this happened in less than 24 hours?" You don't know the half of it, Sandy thought to himself.

"What are you talking about? You were asleep for most of it," Sandy teased.

"Right, pick on the ill, real nice Sandy," Kirsten replied back grinning slightly. She took a deep breath and shuddered.

"Seriously, are you okay?"

"Yeah, it just hurts a little to breathe," Kirsten told him shutting her eyes tightly as she willed the pain to go away. He hated this. He hated to see her like this. "So go talk to the doctor, see when I can get out of here." Sandy smiled at her and leaned down and kissed her forehead.

"I'll go when the boys get here," he told her.

"You know you can leave me alone for more than four and a half seconds," Kirsten said. He knew. But the truth was that he didn't want to leave her side for more than four and a half seconds. He didn't want to leave her side at all, for any length of time. He had envisioned a world without her when he got the phone call from her, and it had scared him shitless. There was no world without her. Oh God, now he had to go and sound like a Hallmark card. But it was true.

She was his world.

"When the boys get here I'll go find the doctor," he repeated. Sandy leaned down and kissed her lips, and let them linger there for a little while. "I love you. Did you know that?"

"I had a vague idea." There was a knock on the door and Seth poked his head in.

"Jeez Dad, can't keep your hands off her even when she's in the hospital huh? It's despicable really," Seth said. It was nice actually. To be able to tease about his parents' sex life. To pretend for a minute that things were normal in the Cohen household. Sandy laughed, and then his laugh halted. He saw Ryan lingering in the hallway just behind Seth, and Ryan looked like he had had an even worse night than Sandy had.

"Hey Seth, why don't we let your mother and Ryan spend some time and you and I can go talk to the doctor about springing her free from this joint," Sandy suggested hoping that Seth wouldn't argue back.

"Sure, but then I get some Mommy/Seth uninterrupted time," Seth said as Sandy joined him out in the hall and Ryan stepped in and closed the door gently behind him.

"How are you feeling?" Ryan asked first. He studied Kirsten's face. He nearly cringed when he saw the bruises, but managed to refrain.

"I'm okay, how are you holding up? How's the wrist?" Ryan forgot about his wrist. He had other things on his mind. He was still standing back by the door and Kirsten gave him a smile. "Hey, you can come closer. I don't bite." Ryan moved up to her bed and sat down in the chair next to her. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to begin.

"I'm sorry about your father," Kirsten said softly. With that, Ryan felt the tears fill his eyes and Kirsten reached out and grabbed his hand. Ryan's whole body began to shake and Kirsten reached out her arms and Ryan carefully went into them.

"I don't know what to think," he said as he tried to catch his breath. "Because...he's dead. But I still hate him for what he did."

"It's okay," Kirsten murmured into his hair. "You're allowed to be angry at him." Ryan clutched at her hospital gown as he let out all his emotions. Kirsten was both amazed and pleased that he had come to her and opened up about what he was feeling. It was a step forward. He wasn't keeping everything bottled up. Maybe some good would come from all of this after all. "It's going to be okay, though, honey. We're here for you. We'll all get through this." Ryan nodded and wiped the remaining tears from his eyes. "Maybe we should all start going to therapy?"

"No, that's okay...I don't..." Ryan's voice trailed off. Therapy? No. Atwoods didn't do therapy.

"We can all go together," Kirsten said gently. "As a family." A family. Ryan went to shake his head again and then figured that they would argue about it when Kirsten was out of the hospital. They were silent for a moment before Kirsten spoke up. "How did you sleep last night?"

"Oh, I slept fin....not that great," he admitted.

"We can ask the doctor to prescribe some sleeping pills for you," Kirsten suggested. Ryan felt a small smile tug at his lips. Kirsten was controlling even when in the hospital out of commission. Kirsten caught the smile. "What?"

"You. You just...you're in the hospital and you're still taking charge," Ryan began to laugh. It felt good to laugh.

"Well, you know, all I did was lost a spleen. I can still think and talk and do anything else that I would want to do!"

"Except cook," Ryan inserted. Kirsten feigned an insulted expression which just set Ryan off. The door opened and Sandy and Seth walked in.

"Did we miss something?" Seth asked looking from his mother who had an indignant look on her face, to Ryan who was laughing. Ryan laughing. Seth was beginning to doubt he would ever witness that again.

"No, just the usual," Kirsten said. "Ryan's insulting my cooking and I have to defend myself once more to the people who claim to love me." The usual, Ryan repeated in his head. This was normal. Teasing Kirsten was the norm. And it felt good.

My father is dead. It invaded his cheerful thoughts and made him want to weep once more. He is dead and I am laughing. Why am I laughing? And immediately Ryan stopped.

"What's the matter?" Kirsten asked softly.

"He's dead. I can't laugh."

"Yes you can," Sandy broke in. "You have to. It's the only way you can get through it. You need to laugh, and you need to tell the people you love that you love them. It's okay to laugh. He would want you to laugh." He wasn't a monster, Ryan thought, he would want me to laugh. He just couldn't control himself when he drank, and he couldn't control his drinking either. All in all not a great combination.

"Well, you all need to get out," Seth said after they were all silent for a few minutes. "I want to spend some time alone with Mom."

"Fine, come on kid," Sandy said to Ryan. "We'll go get something to eat."

"Oh," Kirsten spoke up. "When do I get to go home?" Sandy grinned.

"Tomorrow." Kirsten's face lit up as well. Just as they were all thinking things could get better, things could go back to normal, Kirsten's door flew open and an irate and clearly intoxicated Dawn came in.

"You killed him!" She screamed in a hysterical voice pointing to Kirsten and Ryan. "You killed my husband."

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Oh that Dawn and her crazy accusations. So I've been thinking about it. How many want Kirsten to find out about her father's misdeeds? Let me know. Review please! I'm going to lie down. My head is throbbing : (