"You always have faith in me, don't you?" Gregory wondered more to himself than to her. He was surprised when she answered. Her voice was so soft that he had to stop walking to hear her.
Olivia sighed as he begged her to repeat herself. "I said you're easy to have faith in. You're Gregory."
"What does that mean?" He begged her, torn between being confused and flattered. "Is it even a good thing? 'He's Gregory' could mean anything. You could be comparing me to Satan for all I know."
She laughed for half a second before the pain stopped her. "That could be good-" Her fingers tightened for a second before her arm fell from his shoulder.
"Pick your arm up." He ordered firmly as he prodded her shoulder.
She struggled with it for a moment before obeying. Gregory stopped walking long enough to make sure it was secure in her lap. "That's my girl. Even if you are being cryptic."
Olivia lifted her head enough to touch his chin with the crown of her head. She could smell his cologne. Her feet were going numb and her fingers moved slowly when she could move them at all, as if they belonged to someone else. But none of it mattered. The arms around her were Gregory's. "Cryptic seems like an odd choice." It was easier to talk now. The pain in her stomach was starting to fade into the grey haze she'd lost her legs too.
He pretended to wince. "I'm sorry sweetheart. I didn't mean it that way." A crypt was the last place she was going. "You're going to be fine. I've got you."
"And you're Gregory Richards." She repeated as she let her head fall back to his shoulder. When had it gotten so heavy? "If you say something is so. It usually is."
"Even if that makes me satanic." Gregory shifted his arms and felt the line of sweat run down his spine. It didn't matter how much his arms ached to be free of their burden. His heart wouldn't let him put her down.
She sighed before she was able to speak. It was getting so hard to keep listening to him. He was the one person she used to be able to listen to all night long, when they were first married and they'd lie in bed next to each other talking about nothing until the sun came up. But she was tired. Every part of her was tired. "I didn't say that. You said satanic, not me."
Gregory watched the corner of Seventh Street come into view and pass behind him. "I did. I guess I'm just surprised."
Olivia's mouth tasted like blood. She moved her tongue carefully around looking for the cut. Nothing was wrong with her mouth, but the taste was still there. "Surprised?" She swallowed again, but metallic feeling in the back of her throat didn't go away.
"Frankly I'm surprised that you still trust me." He admitted with the ease that only came in the quietest of moments. When the end was near, everything had the clarity of hindsight.
She wanted to grab his arm, but it was all she could do to grab the edge of his shirt. He was sweating. She couldn't be easy to carry. How far were they going? Olivia didn't remember how to ask. When she blinked she could barely tell the difference between having her eyelids open or closed. Was it dark out?
"Why are the street lamps out?"
"The earthquake sweetheart." Gregory stopped just past Eight Street. "I need you to stand up for me."
Olivia felt him wrap her arms around his neck. "Stand up?"
"I have to switch arms." He lowered her feet tentatively to the pavement. "I'll hold you up." As soon as any of the weight was on her legs, they buckled. Gregory pushed her back against the door of one of the gift shops that lined Front Street. "Just a second."
She wanted to pull her hands down, wrap them around the pain in her stomach as if somehow that would make it disappear. Gregory only need to hear her gasp once before he lifted her back up. This time her head was on his left shoulder.
It took longer than he had hoped for her breath to slow to a normal rate. "Not much longer." This time he had to kiss her forehead to bring her back around. "You have to stay with me."
"I'm sorry-" Olivia's voice trailed off.
"Don't be sorry, be awake." That made her smile. He could see her cheeks move just slightly.
"Okay." Her hands were still around his neck. Somehow her fingers were still holding on. "But I'm tired."
The childish lilt in her voice reminded him of the young Olivia. The shy young woman who used to giggle when he reached down to warm up her cold feet when he crawled into bed next to her. "Sometimes good things happen when you're tired." As he expected, she picked up the reference.
"You told me that on New Year's Eve." Olivia's memory of twenty years ago was frighteningly clear. "When you were trying to keep me awake until midnight."
"And you kept trying to tell me there'd be a hundred more New Year's Eve's and I should just let you sleep through this one." The hub of lights ahead had to be the clinic. It had to be. "You were so jet-lagged you couldn't even tell me what time you thought it was. I tried to fly you to Paris, so our first New Year would be in the city of light." He stopped in the story, chuckling a bit as he lost himself in the past.
"But it was foggy in Amsterdam."
Olivia caught his embellishment and kept him from getting away with changing the story. "It was snowing in Frankfurt."
"And because of the snow we had a ten hour layover. We didn't even get into Paris until nine. You were so tired you didn't even want to go out to eat so we got room service."
"The kitchen was closed." She corrected with that same little smirk.
"I bought you bread and coffee from a street vendor." That was something she remembered. Closing her eyes against the sudden influx of light, Olivia snuggled in closer to his chest.
"I promised you if you made it to midnight I'd buy you a diamond-" He had to nudge her to get her to respond this time. "A diamond Liv-"
"It was-" The lights were suddenly so bright they threatened to burn through her eyelids. "Don't-" He was setting her down. Olivia couldn't fight him, but she didn't want him to go. He needed to stay with her. The smell of him returned as he kissed her cheek. She blinked at him, unable to see him through the lights over his head.
"It was you." She whispered into his ear as the medics started to lift up her shirt. "You didn't have to buy me anything. All I wanted was you."
Olivia looked worse in the bright lights of the hospital. Even as Tyus hurried over to them, Gregory didn't have a lot of hope. Her lips weren't even pink anymore. Dried blood was crusted up inside of the, stark and red against her skin. She shied away from the light Tyus shone in her eyes as he checked her pupils.
"Gregory?" She hit Tyus' hand weakly away from her face. "Gregory." Olivia repeated with the last of her strength.
"It's okay." Tyus told the nurse as Gregory took her hand and held it tightly to his chest. "He's her husband."
Gregory didn't correct him. As Olivia's husband he could stay with her. He could make the right choices for her. He could be there. He needed to be there. "I'm here."
Fresh tears appeared on her lashes as Tyus' hands fluttered across the bruised skin. He looked to his assistant. The young man didn't look any older than Sean. "Put her on the ultrasound schedule. Move her above the broken leg." Tyus paused for a second and then added. "And the other internal case. Put a rush on her blood typing."
Gregory shook himself out of fear. "She's O positive. We both are."
"You're absolutely sure?" Tyus took a chart and dropped it on the bed next to Olivia's feet. "I don't have to tell you how important it is-"
"O positive." He would never forget that day in the emergency room or the six pints of blood it had taken to replace what she'd lost with the baby.
"Our supplies are stretched to the limit. You might need to donate for her." Tyus handed the chart to the intern. "Get at least three pints of O positive. I'm going to need clotting agents, two pints of saline, and a transfusion kit." The young doctor touched Gregory's shoulder.
"Stay with her. if she changes, yell for someone. Eric's going to get some blood, and I'll put Olivia's name on the helicopter list. We'll get her out of here and to somewhere they can treat her injuries. South Bay's taking our surgical cases."
Gregory suspected the earthquake had ravaged the coast but he had no idea how far down the damage had gone. "She can wait that long?" He rested his hand on her shoulder. The other held her right hand to his heart.
Tyus looked across the crowded tent to a new arrival and immediately started to walk away. "She's not in any immediate danger. She has a few hours."
Hours. He'd thrown away years with her. Good years that could have been happy. Now it was down to hours. A handful of hours to make up for all the wrongs of their life together.
Her lips moved before she found her voice. He had to lean all the way down to her to hear what she was saying.
"What did the doctor say?"
"You need blood." Gregory offered the simplest explanation he had as a woman in a Red Cross sweatshirt brought him a folding chair. "Your stomach hurts because you're bleeding internally. They're going to give you some blood and fly you down to South Bay. Then you'll be fine."
Olivia's fingers went limp in his hand. "I haven't been in a helicopter for years."
"We'll fly over the beach. Watch the waves in the moonlight." The tears were back to sting his eyes. He buried his face in her hair. "It'll be all right." She murmured something intelligible. Now that she was safe her strength was gone. Olivia had made it this far. in her mind, that was enough. It was up to him now. He had to-
The intern's voice startled him. "Mr. Richards?" He had a pile of sterile rubber, capped needles and a length of tubing. "Dr. Robinson said you were the right blood type? The blood bank's tapped."
Gregory sat up and started to roll up his sleeve. "Take it. Take whatever she needs."
The young man nodded and started to check Gregory's arms for a suitable vein. "We're going to take two pints from you. You might be a little groggy." The same quiet woman in the sweatshirt brought him three bottles of water.
"But my wife-"
Eric's bedside manner was as fresh as his face, but he was trying. "Should be all right. She's stable for now. Her blood pressure's low, but it's not dropping any further." He cracked open the bottle of iodine and spread it out in slow circles on the crook of Gregory's arm. "Dr. Robinson asked me to tell you your grandson is all right. He's down in the nursery at South Bay. He'll be waiting for you."
"Trey's all right." The needle lanced into his arm as he watched one of his tears clear a track down the dust on her face. "Did you hear that Liv? Trey's just fine."
"Move your fingers." Eric suggested politely as he handed Gregory another water bottle. 'Drink this. Dr. Robinson-"
Gregory finished his thought. "Will be right back." He slid his folding chair a little closer across the concrete floor. "She'll be here." Eric covered the needle in his arm with a washcloth so he didn't have to watch it. The long snaking tube wrapped up an IV post and down into Olivia's arm. Their life force was one. The very blood of their veins was connected, intermingled as it ran through to her heart. "We'll both be here."
He didn't hear the intern leave. He could barely hear anything over the chaos of the triage center. "I wish you were right." Gregory whispered to the lids that had finally closed down over her exhausted eyes. "I wish I could keep you here just through force of will alone because I'm Gregory Richards. And I-" He paused for a second, still bitterly amused by the irony of it. "I get what I want."
"I didn't tell you that you missed something important when you came up with that theory." Gregory dropped his head to the bed just next to her shoulder, careful not to bend his elbow and dislodge the needle tapping his vein. "I'm not myself- I'm not 'Gregory Richards' without you."