Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews and the birthday wishes :-D I did have a really nice birthday ;-) Here's a short chapter because I'm still kinda tired from being out late last night... but I wanted to update for ya anyway, so that's why it's short! Hope you like the twist (which some of you guessed already!) and hehe I won't kill Derek... well, maybe... ;-)
The Venturi-MacDonald family continued staying at the hotel near the hospital as George went house shopping. The kids went to school. But Casey withdrew more and more from the family and the world around her.
She only went to school once in awhile, usually finding herself walking to school and changing directions and heading to the hospital instead. She would sit by Derek's side and talk to him. Sometimes she'd read to him or relive arguments they had had in the past, a small smile on her face. Other times she'd sit there and cry, begging her stepbrother to come back to the land of the living.
Nora was worried about her daughter. She seemed to have gone into a deep state of depression, becoming very quiet and a bit of a loner. She never smiled. She barely ate, and Nora had caught her throwing up several times in the past week since the fire.
"Casey, honey, are you still seeing Peter?" Nora asked at dinner that night, watching Casey push around her take-out food with a plastic fork.
"Paul?" Casey corrected her mother, her blue eyes empty and no longer full of that Casey Spark.
"Yes… the guidance counsellor?" Nora nodded, almost cheering as she watched her eldest daughter take a small bite of her chicken.
Casey couldn't bear to tell her mother that she could barely finish a whole day of classes, never mind actually managing to go to a meeting with Paul. But she gave a small nod to satisfy her mother, and placed her fork down on her plate.
"I'm finished," she announced quietly, and Nora was about to protest this when George came bursting into the small hotel room.
"Nora, I found the perfect house," George looked excited for the first time in a week.
Casey excused herself and turned on the shower to drown out the sound of her vomiting.
For the next week, the family was busy fixing up their new place, which was only a few blocks away from their old house. Nobody said anything when Casey fixed up a bedroom for Derek.
Bringing up the missing member of the extended family had seemed to become a taboo subject in the new Venturi-MacDonald home. Sort of the white elephant in the living room, so to speak. The family visited him less and less, too. The doctors became less and less optimistic of the prospect of Derek coming out of his coma.
It was only Casey who visited him on a daily basis and believed that he still had a chance.
But, almost a whole month after the fire, Casey visited Derek with swollen eyes and a trembling lower lip. She took his hand in hers and gazed at his peaceful face. He looked so calm and relaxed. She hoped that he was able to hear her.
"Derek…" her voice came out shaky as she began. "Derek…" she tried again, but still she sounded broken. "I… I really need you to come out of this. I mean, n-not just me…You see…" she choked back a sob, "Derek, I-I think I'm pregnant…"
