Part Five
Of the Heart
"Lorelai?" her mother's voice echoes in the corridor as the clicking sound of high heels on the hospital floor gets closer.
Lorelai opens her eyes slowly when the footsteps stop. Emily is standing next to her, her forehead creased in what almost looks to Lorelai like concern.
"What's wrong?" Emily asks brusquely. "Are you ill?"
Lorelai closes her eyes again, letting the sturdy wall support her aching shoulders. God, she's tired. "No," she says quietly. "Luke is."
Her eyes still closed, Lorelai is surprised to feel a hand on her forearm, the touch hesitant, but gentle.
"Yes," Emily says, after a moment. "I know."
"I thought you went home, Mom." She sighs heavily. She doesn't even care anymore. She's too drained to care. Her mother could be doing cartwheels down the hallway in a pink leotard and she'd be too distracted to notice.
"No, as I told you, I went to the cafeteria."
"Oh." Though she'd never admit it, she's almost glad to have someone else there. Someone familiar. Someone who is willing to be the strong one and take control. Lorelai feels like she's lost control of everything– the situation, the future, her emotions. As a dull headache begins to throb at her temples, she thinks that maybe it's about time to give someone else a shot at picking up the pieces.
"You look terrible," Emily states simply.
Lorelai touches her chin to her chest. She laughs softly, humorlessly. "Thanks."
"I'm serious, Lorelai. You're as white as a sheet. When was the last time you slept?"
"I'm fine, Mom," Lorelai says, finally lifting her head to look at her mother face-to-face. "I just... need some coffee. Yeah. I need coffee."
"Well, come on then. I'm sure Rory will go and find you some." Lorelai feels her mother's hand on her elbow, and lets her lead her back to the waiting room.
After depositing Lorelai on the sofa next to Rory, Emily takes the chair on the other side of the coffee table, picks up a copy of Vogue and begins to flip through it with a tiny frown. Rory wordlessly threads her fingers through Lorelai's and mother and daughter stare at the clock on the facing wall. All three women are uncharacteristically silent. Lorelai gets more nervous with every second that passes. This is big, is all she can think. This is so, so big.
The clock begins to sound very loud to Lorelai. Combined with the deafening sound of her heart pounding in her ears, she thinks her eardrums are about to explode. Tick, thump. Tick, thump. Tick, thump. It's a sickening rhythm. She tries to ignore it.
After what seems like hours, but is actually closer to twenty minutes, a nurse wearing lilac scrubs and a thin surgical mask slung around her neck steps into the waiting room. All three of them jump up.
"Family of Luke Danes?" the nurse asks tersely. Lorelai nods. Tick, thump. Tick, thump.
"I just wanted to let you know that the OR team is just up," the nurse says. "Mr. Danes should be out of surgery within a few minutes. Dr. Stevens will come out and speak with you as soon as they're finished."
"But... " Lorelai sputters. Rory takes her hand, gripping it tightly. "But how is he? Was it bad? Is he okay?"
The nurse shakes her head. "I'm sorry, you'll have to wait for Dr. Stevens. It should only be a few minutes." She offers an apologetic smile and leaves.
"The nerve of that woman!" Emily exclaims. "Can you believe it? Coming in here like she knows something, and then telling us nothing!"
"Mom..." Lorelai says as she lowers herself back down onto the sofa, her voice a hoarse whisper.
"This is ridiculous. I should call David McDougall, he's an old friend of your father's, and a wonderful surgeon–"
"Grandma..." Rory tries, sitting down beside Lorelai.
"Dr. McDougall certainly wouldn't stand for this sort of reprehensible treatment. Really, I'll call him; he might be able to help–"
"Mom!" Lorelai shouts, her head in her hands. Emily stops, and stares at her daughter. "Mom," Lorelai says again, softer. "It's fine, alright? She said it was only going to be a few minutes. Can we just sit? Please?"
Emily is quiet for a moment. And then she nods, and sighs softly, and sits down.
A few minutes turns into five. And then ten. Fifteen. After twenty minutes, Rory jumps up and offers to get coffee, obviously feeling the nervous tension thickening in the tiny room.
Lorelai feels like she's going crazy with fear. She gets up and begins to walk in circles around the room, wringing her hands, chewing on her bottom lip. She can feel perspiration collecting at the small of her back and dampening the underwire of her bra.
"Sit down, Lorelai," Emily bids.
She shakes her head, still pacing. "I can't do this. I can't just wait here for him to come in and tell me that Luke is going to die. I just... can't. I can't."
"You have no choice."
Lorelai pauses for moment, the sour taste in her mouth making her stomach flip unpleasantly. "I think I'm going to be sick."
"No, you're not," Emily counters sternly.
"Yes, I am. I'm going to be sick."
"No, Lorelai, you're not. You're going to sit here calmly until that doctor comes in."
"Calmly!" She hears in her own voice a shrill sort of edge that only serves to heighten the manic, anxious feeling building up inside her.
Emily shakes her head in disapproval. "Lorelai," she admonishes, "you're stronger than this."
Lorelai looks over at her mother sharply. A bubble of anger rises up in her chest at the harsh statement, but it bursts quickly.
Emily's right. She is stronger than this.
Lorelai takes a deep breath and sits down on the sofa, leaning over so that her forehead touches her knees. Tick, thump. Tick, thump. Tick thump, tick thump, tickthumptickthumptickthump...
The surgeon arrives then.
He's a tall man in his fifties, with a pleasant face and greying hair. "Are you the family of Luke Danes?" he asks Emily and Lorelai. They stand to greet the doctor.
"Yes," Emily says, happily taking control. The surgeon introduces himself as Dr. Stevens.
This is it, Lorelai realizes. This is what they've been waiting for all day. This moment. She shakes her head, suddenly unable to catch her breath. She's not ready to hear this yet.
"No," she says softly. "Rory's not back yet. We should wait for Rory." She clasps her hands together, trying to ease their violent trembling.
"We can tell her when she returns," Emily reasons. "Go ahead, doctor."
Lorelai swallows hard. She's barely breathing.
"Mrs. Danes?" Dr. Stevens addresses her.
"Gilmore," she corrects absently. "How's Luke?"
He smiles. "You can relax now. The surgery went well. The tumor was actually smaller than we anticipated. We were able to remove it without any complications."
Lorelai blinks, trying to make her mind focus on what the doctor is saying. She finds herself only able to catch a few words, like her brain is working in slow-motion. "And the... the lymph nodes?" She manages to ask.
"They appear to be clean. The spots his oncologists viewed on the-ray were probably just a result of the developing process. It happens sometimes. We removed the nodes surrounding the right kidney, but there was no evidence that the cancer has spread beyond the organ. Unfortunately, we did have to remove the kidney, but that was to be expected, and he can lead a normal life with only one."
She stares at him for a moment, open-mouthed and speechless. A normal life. A normal life. "So... he's going to be okay?" She squeaks in a voice she doesn't recognize.
"He has an excellent chance. We'll know for certain when his tests come back from the pathology lab in a day or two, and he'll have to have a few months of chemotherapy to make sure the cancer doesn't return, but at this point, there's no reason to believe he won't be fine."
Lorelai is so relieved she doesn't know what to do. She sits down into the chair behind her, her knees suddenly weak. "Thank God," she whispers, almost inaudibly. Then she quickly stands up again and steps toward the surgeon. "No, no, thank you! You wonderful, brilliant man. Can I hug you? Oh wait, you're probably specially sterilized or something." She shakes his hand instead, words pouring out of her mouth, relief having triggered her babble-reflex. "Thank you, so much. You're a hero. No, wait, better than that, you're a superhero! You're like, all of the Powerpuff girls combined into one, with Mojo Jojo's big giant brain... but, you know, without the evil."
"I... well... thanks, I think." The doctor chuckles, confused.
"When can I see him?" Lorelai asks.
"He'll probably be in recovery for another hour or so," Dr. Stevens explains. "After that we'll move him to a more permanent room where you can sit with him."
Lorelai and Emily both thank the surgeon again. Then he leaves, and Lorelai sits down and sobs relief into her hands.
She is crying so hard her shoulders are shaking. She covers her mouth with her hand, trying to keep the painful noise inside.
"Lorelai, didn't you hear him?" Emily asks, flabbergasted. She sits down beside her on the sofa. "He said that Luke is going to be fine."
Lorelai turns to Emily. She realizes that she's hasn't let her mother see her cry like this since she was a child, but she can't seem to stop, and she can't keep the words from tumbling out of her mouth. "I was so scared..."
She feels like she's been unplugged, and all the emotions she's been bottling up all day have nowhere to go but out. Her quiet sobs fill the small room. Emily is silent, clearly uncomfortable. Lorelai can hear her steady breathing beside her.
"You know," Emily suddenly begins, "I was terrified when your father was in the hospital at Christmas a few years ago. I was afraid he was going to die."
Lorelai looks at her mother sideways, sniffling softly.
"I kept picturing myself having to go through all of his things and deciding which to keep, which to give away..." Emily's face softens, and Lorelai can't help but think how pretty she suddenly looks.
"I imagined having to sleep all alone in our bed from then on, eating dinner alone, traveling alone..." she continues.
"You... did?" Lorelai asks. She's finding it easier to breathe now, her crying lessening to a more manageable series of hiccups and sniffles and shuddery breaths.
Emily nods. "My hands wouldn't stop trembling for a week afterwards."
Lorelai holds up her own shaking hands, palms down. Both women smile a little.
Emily straightens in her seat, pushing her shoulders back, her head high. Her brow furrows slightly, and she nods slowly. It's an expression Lorelai remembers seeing on her mother's face when she was considering a new piece of furniture or picking out an expensive painting at a gallery. Serious, and almost... wise.
"I think he's going to be fine," Emily says, measured and certain.
Lorelai nods, and her chin lifts slightly, though her voice is tight with tears. "I think so too."
Rory walks in then, and freezes when she sees Lorelai's puffy eyes and tear-streaked face. Stricken, she drops the tray she'd been carrying, and three large cups of coffee splash onto the floor. "Mom, is he...?" she manages to squeak.
Lorelai jumps up. "No, no, honey," she soothes, ignoring the mess on the floor, pulling her daughter against her side and kissing the top of her head. "Luke is fine. Everything went well. He's gonna be okay."
"Really?" The color begins to return to Rory's face.
"Yes, really. I promise," Lorelai assures her. "The doctor just came in to talk to us. He said: 'all is well in Luke-ville.' Well, not exactly like that, but that was the basic gist."
"Oh my God," Rory breathes, her eyes closing briefly in relief. "I was so worried, Mom."
"I know, Rory. But it's okay. He's okay."
Rory looks down at the spilled coffee and frowns. "I made a big mess with the coffee."
Lorelai smiles and clicks her tongue in mock annoyance. "Yeah. Wasted coffee. Such a tragic sight."
"Don't worry, dear," Emily chimes in. "The cleaning staff will clean that up."
Rory nods. "When can we see Luke?"
"The doctor said he's going to be out for a few hours," Lorelai explains. "Why don't you go home for awhile? Have some real dinner?"
"No, Mom, I want to stay."
"Nonsense," Emily says, shaking her head. "You'll come back to the house and have dinner with your grandfather and I. That way you won't have to go all the way to New Haven, and you can come back here tonight during visiting hours."
"See?" Lorelai smiles. "You can go and rest for a few hours, and come back later."
"But what about you? You should come too. Or at least let us bring you back something to eat."
"Nah, I'm just gonna hang out in the cafeteria for a while. I hear their chili is hot enough to make actual steam fly out of your ears, and you know I never pass up a chance to play with my food."
Rory reluctantly agrees to leave with her grandmother, and Lorelai helps her pack up the board games and snacks so that the waiting room isn't left looking as if Hurricane Gilmore passed through it.
When they leave, Lorelai flops back onto the grey sofa where she's spent most of the morning. It's only mid-afternoon, but she's exhausted, not having slept at all last night. She lays her head against the back of the sofa and closes her eyes, her hands folded across her abdomen. She feels light, like after a drastic new haircut, like she's suddenly shed the heavy armor she's been wearing all day. She thinks that if she had the energy, she'd be pulling an Eric LaSalle and pumping the air with her fist in the hospital hallway. He's fine. He's alive. He's going to be okay. A few stray tears slip past her eyelashes, but she's smiling widely.
Before she can let herself fall asleep, she gets up and goes to the hospital lobby and calls Buddy and Maizie, and Liz and T.J. to let them know how the surgery went. Maizie sounds choked up on the phone when she tells Lorelai: "I knew he'd make it. That boy's so strong. Always has been. Besides, he's got so much to live for now."
"I wasn't really worried," Liz says spiritedly over the line. "I had a vision that he was going to be fine. I have a sixth sense about these kinds of things, you know."
On her way back upstairs, Lorelai catches her reflection in the shiny steel elevator doors, and gasps at the way she looks. She can just make out the mess that is left of her makeup, and her frizzy, uncontrolled hair. She decides a trip to the bathroom and the utilization of the small array of lip glosses and blush compacts at the bottom of her purse are in desperate order.
What she sees when she turns into the hallway where the bathroom is makes her stop cold. Caroline Greenleigh is standing in the corridor, clutching the same stuffed elephant toy Lorelai had seen her with earlier. She's crying soundlessly, shaking her head from side to side. She's flanked by a man Lorelai doesn't recognize - her husband or a brother perhaps, and a nurse, both of whom are holding one of her arms, supporting her, holding her up. Instinctively, like she did when she first met the woman in the surgery check-in area, Lorelai knows. The hair on the back of her neck stands up, and she remembers the baby's name was Abby, she remember the feel of her tiny fist wrapped up in her hair, she remembers Rory at that age, all in the span of a second.
Lorelai knows she should do something, say something, at least offer the woman her condolences. Instead, she looks away and turns around and heads back up the hall the way she came. She'll find another bathroom.
She feels ashamed, of course, as she walks in the other direction. But mostly, she feels lucky.
The image of the woman's face, broken with grief, will haunt her for a very long time.
An hour later, when Luke is taken out of recovery and situated in his own private room, Lorelai is allowed to see him. She stops in the doorway of his room, suddenly nervous, even though he's still under the anesthetic. She edges up to him slowly. He looks... weird, she thinks. His face is really pale, and he has monitors attached to his chest, and an IV line in his hand. He looks sick. Even though they've known about the cancer for more than a week, this is the first time he's actually looked unhealthy. It scares her more than she thought it would.
She puts her purse down and sits in the chair beside his bed. The doctor had said it could be an hour or more before he wakes up, and that even then, he'll be extremely groggy for awhile.
Nurses file in and out as Lorelai waits, flipping through one of the fashion magazines Rory had brought. They inject things into his IV, take his blood pressure, and scribble things on his chart. "How's he doing?" Lorelai asks every time, and they all answer the same way: with a small smile and a perfunctory "his vitals are fine."
The first time he wakes up, it's only for a minute or two. She looks up from an article on Sarah Jessica Parker, and notices his eyes fluttering open. She immediately drops the magazine and leans over him so that he can see her clearly.
"Hi," he rasps, his voice rough.
"Hi," she says back, smiling widely, her cheeks aching pleasantly with the force of it. She's relieved, and happy, but nervous. She's not used to seeing him like this.
"Is it gone?" he asks, and she knows what he's talking about.
She nods. "It's history. It's outta there. It's Clinton after the impeachment trial. Doctor Powerpuff totally kicked its nasty tumor butt."
Luke blinks, his eyes glazed and heavy-lidded. "Doctor... who?"
Lorelai just grins. "Go back to sleep, hon. I'll be right here." She strokes his forehead, and his eyes close.
The second time he wakes up, it's long enough for her to tell him that everything went perfectly.
"You did so well, Luke," she tells him. "Dr. Stevens said the cancer didn't spread. You're fine. You'll have to go through a few rounds of chemo, but Vin Diesel has really popularized the I'm-so-sexy-and-macho-with-my-shiny-bald-head look, so it's all good."
He nods and sighs softly. "I'm gonna look like Captain Picard," he says, but he's smiling, if a little lopsidedly. He's more alert now, but his words are mumbly, and his eyes glassy.
"How do you feel?" Lorelai asks, fingering the edge of his thin hospital gown.
"Heavy." He raises his hand off the bed a little, then lets it fall back down with a soft thump. "My head and my arms feel like lead."
"Well, don't worry," she says, taking one of his hands in hers and lifting it up, holding it to her chest. "I'm pretty strong. I'll hold you up."
Luke grins drowsily again, and shifts slightly in the bed, wincing a little as he does so.
Lorelai frowns, afraid that he's in pain. "Does it hurt a lot?"
He shakes his head slightly. "No, I'm just a little dizzy. Actually, it doesn't really hurt at all."
She smiles. "Good drugs, huh?"
"Yeah," he says slowly. "Good drugs."
She can tell he's beginning to fall asleep again, his eyelids slipping closed. "You're tired, babe." She strokes the delicate skin on the back of his hand with her thumb, then gently lays his arm back at his side. "Why don't you sleep a little more?"
"Maybe just for a few minutes," he concedes, and then he's out again, breathing deeply.
The next time his eyes open, they are clear and bright, and focus on her face immediately. She breathes a small sigh of relief. He's himself again.
"You look like hell," is the first thing he says.
"Thanks, Romeo," she teases.
"You're tired."
Lorelai nods. Leave it to Luke to be worried about her five hours after having major surgery. "It's been a long day."
He looks around the room, really noticing his surroundings for the first time. He lifts his hand and looks at the IV line taped to his skin. "Don't remember much of it myself."
"I know, Mr. Morphine," she grins.
Luke reaches out and touches her knee. He squeezes gently. "You should go home."
Lorelai shakes her head. "I'm not leaving." She places her hand over his. "I've been here all afternoon while you've been unconscious. I think I deserve some face time here, mister."
"Bu–" he protests, but she interrupts him.
"I'm staying," Lorelai asserts stubbornly. "No amount of arguing and promises of unlimited amounts of coffee will convince me otherwise. So you might as well get used to me sitting here."
Luke sighs, defeated. His fingers twine with hers on her knee, and she finds herself gripping his hand tightly. She's acutely aware of how close she came to losing this. Losing him.
Luke gestures to the head of his bed. "How do I make this thing rise up?"
"Dirty," she cracks. He rolls his eyes, but gives her a small smile.
"I want to sit up."
"Okay. Here, I think this is the button." She crouches down and presses one of the levers on the side of the bed, and sure enough, it raises him into a sitting position.
When she stands back up, he's staring at her sleepily. "Do I really look that bad?" she asks, suddenly self-conscious. She never did make it to the bathroom to fix her makeup. She can just imagine what she looks like: puffy eyes rimmed in smudgy mascara, no lipstick, no blush, and that lovely sallow color her skin turns whenever she's lacking sleep.
"No," he shakes his head. "You look fine."
Although she appreciates the lie, she doesn't believe him. She takes one of her compacts out of her purse to check her reflection and get rid of all the tear-stains and smudgy makeup. But her hands are still shaky from the lack of sleep and the hyper-emotional events of the day, and the compact slips through her fingers and crashes to the floor. The mirror breaks into hundreds of tiny pieces, the shards scattering across the floor.
For a moment, Lorelai can only stare at all the glittering pieces, open-mouthed.
"Shit," she exclaims when she recovers from the small shock. "Seven years of bad–"she begins, but she stops and looks at Luke, who's awake, and alert, and alive. "Nevermind," she finishes softly.
Not wanting to leave pieces of broken glass on the floor, Lorelai bends down to try to clean up the broken mirror. But she picks up one particularly sharp piece a little too quickly, and it slices a small cut in her thumb. She yelps, and a bead of very red blood appears on the surface of her skin.
"You're bleeding," Luke says, concern evident in his voice.
"It's okay," she reassures him, standing up and pinching the tip of her thumb.
"Are you sure?" he asks, trying to lift his head to get a better look at her hand, and grimacing when he realizes that he doesn't have the strength yet.
"Yeah," she says, taking a tissue out of her purse to blot her thumb with. "It's not deep."
Lorelai rummages around in the bottom of her bag until she finds a band-aid. Ripping the plastic off without using her injured thumb, she manages to open the band-aid and presses it over the small cut. "Ta-da," she says with a flourish, holding up her bandaged thumb. "See? It's okay."
"Okay," he repeats, nodding. "It's okay."
Dr. Stevens comes in later to give Luke the full rundown of the surgery and the upcoming treatments. When he leaves, Lorelai walks around and begins to point out to Luke all of the gifts, flowers and banners that have arrived from the Stars Hollow townspeople and are now filling his room. There are daisies from Babette and Morey, a bonsai tree shaped like a fish from Kirk, a bottle of massage oil from Miss Patty, who said there was no better incentive for him to get better quickly, and even fresh fruit from Taylor.
When she's finished giving him an inventory of how many people love him and want him to come home soon, she sits back down in her chair and pulls her knees up to her chest.
"Luke?"
He turns her head towards her. "Yeah."
"That baby died."
He looks confused, and she feels bad for confusing him when he's not feeling well, but she needs to tell someone, and he saw her too– that beautiful, sick baby. He saw her too. "What?" he asks. "What baby?"
"The baby from the waiting room this morning, Abby, with the puffy face and the little... the little soft hands..." Lorelai takes a deep breath. "She died."
"Oh. Jeez." Luke's says softly. "How?"
"I dunno. In surgery, maybe." Lorelai bites her lip and stretches out her legs. She reaches out to grip the side of his bed, needing something solid to hold onto. She's been trying not to think about it. She didn't want anything to spoil her own relief, to taint the fact that her news had been good. But she can't ignore what she saw. And she can't forget the look on Caroline Greenleigh's face. She can't shake the feeling that it could have just as easily been her in the hallway this afternoon.
"Hey," Luke says gently, obviously reading the pained expression on her face and following her train of thought. "I'm not goin' anywhere."
Lorelai nods. She's sitting in a hospital room beside Luke who is lying in a bed and is sick and has cancer, and she's never felt so lucky in her whole life.
She feels like a wave of something big is pressing against the walls of her body, something real, something warm and dark and sweet all at the same time, and it's taking every ounce of her strength not to drown in the feeling. She meets his eyes and holds his gaze. His eyes are deep blue and glassy, and, she thinks, so lovely. Lorelai realizes that she's having some sort of epiphany, a revelation. She's never felt like this before. The way she loves him is entirely different than anything she's ever felt for a man. It's almost how she feels for Rory. Like she would do anything to keep him safe. She'd give up shopping. She'd give up coffee. She'd live in a tower like Rapunzel for the rest of her life if it meant he'd be okay. And it isn't just because she doesn't want to live without him. It's because she wants him to live.
Her fingertips brush against his, just the tippy-tips of their fingers touching, and she wonders if he can feel the electric surge of emotion coursing through her body. She wonders if some of this hot energy might be transferred to him through her skin. She thinks that maybe it could revive him, heal him, find the sickness inside him and shrivel it up like a raisin.
As she looks at him, she can feel her eyes begin to well up and her throat tighten. Buck up, Gilmore, she tells herself. Take a deep breath. He's gonna be okay. Be okay. Be okay. Please be okay.
Her fingertips feel hypersensitive– it's all she can focus on, that tiny square of skin that is touching his, and she remembers the way she felt on their first date, when he pressed his lips to her neck, in the hollow behind her ear, and it felt like this, like the nerve endings in her skin had suddenly been flicked on for the first time.
"Hey, move over," she suddenly says, grinning slyly.
"Why?" he asks, raising an eyebrow, suspicious.
"I'm coming in with you." She carefully climbs up onto the bed beside him, easing onto her back, making sure not to jostle him. She balances on the very edge of the mattress, her shoulder just barely touching his.
"Jeez, Lorelai. This is a hospital, the beds are this small for a reason, you're not supposed to..."
"Narc," she accuses playfully.
"Nutcase," is his dry response.
She shrugs, grinning. Then she sighs, turning her face into his shoulder, her nose against the thin fabric of his hospital gown.
"Hey, where's your TV?" she asks, realizing that there isn't one situated in the corner of the room where she'd expected it to be.
"I guess there isn't one."
Her mouth drops open, and she gasps. "I can't believe you don't have a TV. What kind of a hospital is this?"
"One that focuses on the medical care of their patients and not on mindless entertainment?"
Lorelai grins. "Well then, I guess it's up to me to entertain you."
Luke rolls his eyes. "Oh boy."
"I know, I'll sing you a song! Are you ready? Okay. Here we go." She clears her throat dramatically, then takes a deep breath. "Hello Muddah, hello Faddah, here I am at Camp Grenada..."
"Lorelai..." he protests half-heartedly.
"Shhh, I'm singing. Camp is very entertaining..."
"You're going to wake up the entire hospital."
"And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining!"
"They're going to call the police. You're disturbing the peace."
"I went hiking with Joe Spivey..."
"Okay, you're disturbing my peace."
She glances sideways at him. He's grinning dozily despite his protests. "He developed poison ivy-"
"Mom?" Rory appears in the doorway, interrupting the serenade. She's carrying a vase of yellow sunflowers and a cardboard tray of coffee.
"Hey, sweets. Come on in."
"What's with the Alan Sherman?" She asks, smirking.
Lorelai shrugs. "No TV."
"Ah," Rory nods, as if this makes perfect sense, and Lorelai gets up off the bed and sits back down in her chair. Rory steps into the room and hands the coffee to Lorelai, then places the sunflowers on Luke's night table.
"Hi, Luke," she says, a hint of shyness creeping into her voice as she leans over to kiss his cheek.
"Hey, Rory" he says, and Lorelai can see a flush of redness spread across his cheeks at the gesture. She's glad. She hates to see him so pale.
Rory settles into one of the guest chairs on the other side of Luke's bed, and asks him how he's feeling. She explains that she brought sunflowers because they were the only kind of flower that didn't seem too girly. Luke smiles, and asks her about school and what books she's reading.
While Rory and Luke chat idly, a slight movement catches Lorelai's eye, and she looks up to see Emily standing in the doorway, watching Lorelai and Rory with Luke. Their eyes lock and Lorelai sees something unfamiliar in her mother's gaze. Something that, if she didn't believe Emily Gilmore to be incapable of the sentiment, closely resembles understanding. Lorelai finds herself smiling softly. Emily nods, a very slight smile playing over her lips.
Lorelai turns to Luke and Rory for a moment, watching the two people who mean the most to her in the whole world, and wondering if Emily might finally see a bit of what she sees. When she looks back up, Emily is gone.
When visiting hours end, Rory leaves, and Luke soon falls asleep. Lorelai is content to simply sit and sip her coffee in the quiet. She feels heavy with tiredness and relief. The sun is beginning to set, warming the tiny room with thick, amber light. She thinks about what's to come, but the thoughts are not dark, like they were last night.
Lorelai presses the back of her hand to his cheek. He's so wonderfully warm. The world suddenly seems very open to her, brimming with bright possibilities. They can have anything they want, do anything they want.
She thinks that she might like to go to his father's cabin with him in the summer, when he's finished chemo treatments and feeling well. Lorelai smiles into her cooling coffee, staring up over the Styrofoam brim at the man sleeping beside her.
She remembers something Rory said today, about marrying Luke if it turned out he didn't have long to live. Two weeks ago, she wouldn't have been immediately sure of the answer. But after today, she's never been more certain about anything.
She wants to be Mrs. Backwards-baseball-cap.
Lorelai drains the last cold, bitter drops of coffee and puts the empty cup on the floor. She finally gives into the overwhelming urge to curl up in the thinly padded chair, and lays her head on the edge of Luke's bed, pillowed on her arm. Just for a moment, she thinks. She'll just rest her eyes for a moment.
They are dancing, the way they did at his sister's wedding last year. His arms are solid and strong around her. She feels like she did that first time: safe and free and giddy. He looks happy. His body is wonderfully warm, and she presses closer to him as they dance. His arm tightens around her ribcage as they sway to the music.
"You said before you don't dance," she tells him, grinning, like it's some treasured joke between the two of them.
"Well, I'm a compulsive liar," he replies, like she knew he would. His eyes twinkle when he smiles like that.
She feels the odd, warm wetness against her belly before she sees the red. She pulls away from Luke, and gasps. A patch of blood is spreading slowly over the front of his dress shirt. It blossoms like a flower, the color vivid as it creeps across the white of his shirt. It's on her hands, on her dress, warm and sticky. "Luke," she says, panic rising in her voice. "You're bleeding."
He shrugs nonchalantly. "It's okay. It's from the shunt."
Lorelai shakes her head. "No, Luke... there's something wrong. That's not supposed to happen..." Her fingers tremble violently as she begins to unbutton his shirt. 'This cannot be happening', the panic-voice intones.
Luke takes her shaking hands, trapping them between his own. "It's okay," he says, his voice low and calm. She shakes her head, confused.
"Luke, we have to... we have to call an ambulance..."
He lets go of her hands and moves to cup her face, his thumbs gently brushing the tops of her ears. "Lorelai," he says, and it's the way he says her name– so measured, so certain, so loving– that makes her hands stop shaking. She meets his eyes. He's smiling softly. A feeling of warmth settles over her. It's a nice sensation– peaceful. "It's okay," Luke says again, and he's so earnest, she can't help but believe him.
"Yes," she finds herself nodding slowly. "It's okay."
As Lorelai sleeps, the twilight reaches through the room's sole window and finds a few small shards of glass lying on the floor in the corner – forgotten pieces of the broken pocket-mirror. When the setting sun is at just the right angle, the shiny fragments catch the light and throw it back tenfold, sparkling like little flecks of diamonds and reflecting light into the darkening corner.
Lorelai wakes slowly, groaning as she sits up, the muscles in her neck protesting the awkward position she'd fallen asleep in. She rubs her eyes, trying to clear her head. The images from her dream begin to float back to her like the dandelion fluffs that blow around in the spring, drifting in from her sleep to collect in her conscious mind. It felt real. She can still feel the warm stickiness of blood on her hands. She holds them in front of her. They're clean, bare, except for the small band-aid on her thumb. But they're shaking a little, so she folds them together and squeezes tightly.
Luke is still quiet in front of her, sleeping peacefully, his chest rising and falling steadily. Leaning over, she gently pulls back the sheet covering his waist. His gown is perfectly clean: not a drop of blood mars the pale blue cotton. Lorelai tugs the sheet back up over his chest, lightly tucking it in around his shoulders.
She turns in her chair, looking towards the window. It's getting dark; the sun is nearly set. She leans over to softly press her lips against Luke's forehead, then gets up and goes to the pane. She reaches up, pressing her palm against the cool glass.
Lorelai feels shaken by the odd dream, her whole body suddenly thrumming with an emotion she can't quite define. It's a little like hope, and a little like fear, and nothing like anything she's ever felt before. She knows the next few months are going to be hard. Chemotherapy will make him very sick, and Luke hates being sick. She's going to have to find a way to be there for him without smothering him.
She finds herself wishing she could wipe away the fogginess of the future the way she wipes condensation off the bathroom mirror after a shower. That way, at least, she could see what's going to happen and feel a little more prepared.
Sighing softly, she takes her hand off the window. Looking out onto the street below, Lorelai watches a man and woman leave the hospital. The man is limping slightly, leaning heavily on the woman's arm. She helps him into a yellow cab, then climbs in beside him, and they drive off into the darkness. A few minutes later, Lorelai watches as another woman steps through the hospital doors and onto the street. She is alone, except for the newborn baby in her arms, bundled in blankets. She pauses for a moment outside the hospital doors to adjust the blue baseball cap she is wearing over her dark curls. It's a little too big for her head, and she has to push it up on her forehead to see properly. Then she too climbs into a waiting car and disappears.
Lorelai's hands clench into fists at her sides, and she takes a few deep breaths, trying to clear her mind of the prickling doubt that is starting to creep in. She shifts slightly, stepping closer to the window to feel the last moments of warm daylight on the skin of her face, inadvertently stepping on the shards of broken mirror lying on the floor.
The delicate pieces crunch beneath her feet.
Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
--W.B. Yeats, "The Circus Animal's Desertion"