Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls if I did I'd be rich and not writing fanfiction. Luke's thought are in italics. Thanks to all the reviewers.
The entire town was a buzz. Nothing like this had ever happened before. People couldn't stop talking about it and yet they didn't want to talk about what could have been. They all knew what would have happened had Dean not been there at that point in time.
What if's, kept rattling around Luke's brain at top speed.
What if Dean decided not to visit his folks this weekend?
What if they hadn't needed milk for the store?
What if he'd never moved to Stars Hollow in the first place.
What if I hadn't run out of cheese, and didn't need to go to the market and distracted Lorelai from watching where she was going. She'd have seen the car and not walked blindly into the street.
These and a million other things are going through Luke's mind ashe sits in the waiting room at Hartford Memorial.
Waiting, with my head in my hands staring at my shoes. Lorelai is right, I do need new shoes. These are old and ratty and fairly grease stained.
What am I thinking about? Shoes of all things. I guess she has finally rubbed off on me. Oooooh Dirty. Oh God. I'm babbling like her in my head.
Luke laughs to himself and looks up right into the face of Dean Forrester. He wants to look anywhere else other than Dean, but he knows he's going to have this conversation eventually. He looks Dean up and down and notices how disheveled and dirty he looks. He didn't pull any punches in knocking Lorelai out of the way. From the way he looks you can tell he didn't even think twice. His right hand and arm are scraped up, swollen and bruised from where he landed on the street and he has a cut above his right eye where the back of Lorelai's head made contact with his face. He took much of the brunt of the fall by going down on his right side and upper back with Lorelai landing half on him, half on the ground. The side of her head still made contact with the sidewalk. It definitely would have been worse had the car hit her. As Dean sat there with his eyes closed he had no idea Luke was studying him so intently. He felt someone watching him and his eyes popped open, to come face to face with Luke Danes.
Dean cradled his right arm protectively as he opened his mouth to speak, but Luke had other plans.
'Dean, I – I want to, ah, thank you for what you did. That was, ah-.' He looked down trying to find the right words when Dean spoke. 'No thanks needed I did what anyone else would've done.'. Luke took a deep breath and pursed his lips.
'Well, ah-,' he stood up and stuck his hand out. Dean stared at his hand for a second and was about to grasp it when, Rory came bursting through the waiting room doors with Logan right on her heels.
'Luke, oh my god.', as she ran into his open arms. 'Rory, how did you. Who called you?'. She sniffeled and said, 'Lane called. She said something happened to mom, and to get to the hospital. What happened? Where's my mom? Is she all right?' she fired off question after question till she was out of breath. She hadn't noticed Dean sitting there off to the side, but Logan did. Dean noticed Logan too, and smirked at him. Logan put his hand on Rory's shoulder. All the while Rory was oblivious to the malepissing contest going on behind her.
'Rory, calm down.' Luke said as he reached back for her and pulled her into his arms again.
'Luke, my mom.' She said with tears in her eyes. Just then a doctor came out through the double doors and said, 'Who's here for Lorelai Gilmore.' And four sets of eyes turned towards him.
TBC
