Phoebe heard moments later as the emergency room team opened the back door and prepared to get Nancy out of the car. Phoebe quickly released her grip on Nancy and tried to get out, but Nancy who seemed to come to her sensed a little more as a doctor tried to take her away from Phoebe, tightened her grip on Phoebe not letting her out.
"Phoebe, don't leave me with them. Don't let them take me away please."
"Don't worry Nancy, I'll stay with you?"
Phoebe looked to the doctor to confirm that this was aloud, and then after receiving a nod from the doctor continued.
"I promise Nancy. You need to relax, let the doctors help you. I won't let them hurt you."
Nancy loosened her grip and allowed the doctors and nurses to ease her out of the car and onto the gurney. As they tried to strap her down, Nancy once again began to fight back.
"Forget it, let's go!"
One of the doctors yelled, and without hesitation they rushed her through the emergency room doors. Nancy was very scared, but Phoebe kept her promise. She held Nancy's hand and talked to her softly and calmly every step of the way. Being asked to move so the nurse could start a I.V., Phoebe moved to the end of the bed, placed a hand on Nancy's leg to let her know she was still there. Nancy stayed as calm as possible the whole time, but kept her guard up, just in case.
Meanwhile Prue and Piper paced the waiting room waiting to hear any news about their cousin's condition. Only moments after they arrived the police arrived, with a social worker close behind. Prue and Piper now had their work cut out for them, they hadn't really figured out how they were going to explain how they knew Nancy was their cousin, and how they found her. Prue had a partial plan, but didn't know if it was believable enough.
"I'm told you are the ones who brought in Nancy Halliwell."
"That's right. My name is Prue, and this is my sister Piper, Halliwell."
"Halliwell? Any relation?"
"Yes. We recently found out that she is our cousin."
The social worker sat down and took out a note pad and began to take notes.
"Well my name is Julie Simons, I've been Nancy's social worker for several years now. We found Robert Davis tied down to a chair at his house. The person who called in the report claimed that he was abusing Nancy. Is this correct?"
"Yes. We walked in and found him beating her with his belt. She had a large cut on her arm, and head. We fought him, took his belt away, and brought Nancy here."
"This is all very confusing to me Miss Halliwell. I still don't understand how you know that Nancy is your cousin."
"To be honest we weren't sure ourselves. You see a few weeks ago, I was in L.A. on business. I spotted Nancy in a park and thought she looked like a young girl in this picture."
Prue reached into her purse and pulled out the picture that Paul had sent to Grams. Handing it to Julie she continued.
"You see, our Uncle and Aunt used to write to our Grams all the time. He sent this picture, along with a copy of Nancy's birth certificate to her for safe keeping. Here are a few of the letters that he sent to our Grams."
Julietook the letters and papers from Prue and studied them carefully before making anymore comments. Piper just sat back and listened to what her older sister was saying. She knew she had some questions to ask Prue when this was all over.
"Well of course you realize that I will have to double check all this information, as well as speak with Nancy personally. Everything you have said seems in order and legitimate, but you understand."
"Of course we do. Our other sister Phoebe is in with Nancy right now. Nancy was refusing to allow the doctors to help her until Phoebe agreed to go in with her."
"Understandable. I would like to ask what your intentions are toward Nancy if all this does prove to be true."
Just as Prue was about to answer Phoebe exited the exam room and sat down next to her sisters. Seeing Phoebe sit down, Prue and Piper turned their attention away fromJulie for a moment.
"How is she?"
"The doctors say that she will be alright. She is running a fever, and is badly dehydrated. He says from the looks of it she hasn't had much to eat in the last few weeks. Beyond that she has a few broken ribs and a concussion. They gave her something to sleep. She'll be out for a while."
Prue put her arm around Phoebe who was visibly upset by the whole ordeal, and turned her attention back to Julie.
"You want to know our intentions. I would think that would be pretty obvious. We would like to have Nancy come and live with us."
"What makes you think that you are qualified to take care of a 13 year old girl?"
"I don't think you'll find any other people who are more qualified. Our mother died passed away when Phoebe was only 3 years old. Our father was never a part of our lives. Our Grams raised us, but being older, and having no money left to take care of us, she had to work a lot. We learned to take care of each other."
"Prue practically raised us. She was there for every sporting event, every teachers meeting, and every doctor's appointment. For all intense purposes, Prue was our mother."
"Prue helped put me through college. She helped me through my regular college work, and then helped me find out what I really wanted to do with my life, which at the time was be a chef. Now of course I run my own club, which my sisters are silent partners. They helped me get the money together to open the club."
"The point that I think we are trying to make is that if we had not been there for each other, we would never know what love was, we would never know what commitment was, and we would never know what it was like to depend on someone else. Sure it has not always been easy, and we have had our share of bumps along the way, but no matter what we always know when push comes to shove one of us, if not all of us, will be there to back each other up. We want to provide these things for Nancy. She has been through so much in her young life already. We feel that it's about time she had something that was constant."
"According to my records, when Nancy's parents passed away two years ago, she reported not having any other family."
"We can't really answer why that is. It's possible she didn't know about us. Our Grams did pass away a little over two years ago. It's possible she had forgotten in her time of stress. We never actually did have the opportunity to meet each other. We only found out about her when we starting going through our Grams things and found our Uncles letters."
Juliewatched as Prue put a protective arm around both her sisters. She finished taking notes then looked into each of the sister's eyes. She had seen a lot of people try to bluff their way through interviews, but she could tell that these ladies were being sincere.
"I don't for see any real problems with Nancy going with you, as long as everything you have told me does pan out. As I said before, we will have to check everything out. We will need to have a new social worker assigned to you in San Francisco, and have her check out your home environment, and financial standing, but most of that is routine. Do you have any references we can call to check things out?"
"Here is my entire phone list. You can call a Lieutenant Darryl Morris; he's with the San Francisco Police Department. Here is my boss at Bucklands Auction House. Here are the phone numbers for all three of our boyfriends, and neighbors who have known us since we were kids. Do you need anything else?"
"Not at this time. Tomorrow I will come back and talk with Nancy. Depending on what she has said, I will base my decision. We might need her to come back to testify against her foster father."
"I don't think that will me necessary. He pled guilty to everything when we arrived at the house."
Julie wrote down want the officer told her.
"Well that's good news for Nancy. I tell you what I believe that Nancy will be very lucky to have a family like yours to take care of her."
Julie and the cop stood shook the girl's hands and left. Once she was sure they were gone, Piper turned to Prue to ask the questions that she almost froze the room to ask.
"Where did you get the Birth Certificate?"
"Before you and Phoebe came down yesterday, I opened a few envelopes, and there is was. When I was packing this morning, I grabbed it and a few letters as well."
"But Prue, all that talk about powers, and magic."
"Piper do you think I'm stupid. I found all the letters that didn't have to do with magic. A few others I magically changed."
"Changed?"
"Yes changed. Like the letter about Nancy being so smart. I magically took out the parts about her powers."
"Personal gain?"
"No way. I needed to do this to help protect Nancy. I'm sure the Powers That Be will understand."
"They better. If that backfires it could not only expose us, but also cost us Nancy."
Piper wasn't telling Prue anything she didn't already know, but over the course of the next hour they simply sat in silence. Phoebe was nodding off to sleep every now and then, and Piper and Prue just sipped their coffee. Finally after what seemed life forever a nurse came out and showed them to Nancy's room.