Connections
Lorelai edged into the Intensive Care Unit with the strangest sensation that her head was floating some three feet above her body on a balloon string, like a cartoon in a Sudafed commercial. It wasn't just that her mind and the rest of her seemed to have parted ways, or that her brain was curiously but completely blank while her feet and legs operated on autopilot. It was as if she was outside herself, looking down dispassionately from a helium bubble, watching herself find her way through the seventh-floor labyrinth, following the blue painted line. The yellow brick road. Off to see the Wizard. God, I need it all right now, she thought desperately. A mind, a heart, a home, and a nice healthy helping of courage. She was letting it get to her- the hospital, the smells, the dreadful, pervading sense of impending doom, the deathly serious, somber look of all the staff. He's not dead, she reminded herself, taking short, shallow breaths. He's not. He's not dead, he's not dying, it's all…
She brought herself to a stop outside the ICU wing. Suddenly she was hit by an almost irresistible impulse to turn and run, run far away from the hurt and the worry and the fear, escape to somewhere where she didn't have to feel anything, where her heart wouldn't hammer in her chest, where it wasn't just all too much. She was afraid, afraid of seeing Luke so crumpled and still, so unlike himself, so far from alive and well and normal. If she didn't go in, she could pretend that it never happened, that he hadn't gone to Hartford, that he hadn't smashed his truck, that he was waiting for her at home worrying and wondering where on earth she could be at two o'clock in the morning. She knew very well that the illusion would only last for as long as it took her to pull up to an empty driveway and a dark house, with no welcoming scent of coffee in the air. Luke wasn't there, he was here. Or part of him was. And she loved him. She loved him, she couldn't leave him. Even as part of her strained to fly down seven flights of stairs, not stopping until she'd crossed the parking lot, miraculously honing in on the car that she had no recollection of Rory parking, another part of her- a bigger part- propelled her through the doors. Luke was here. Or part of him was. And she was here, and she was going to sit and wait until the rest of him showed up. She wasn't leaving. And she wasn't going to let him leave, either.
Chin up, shoulders back, she placed her hands palm down on the front desk and asked in a firm voice for Lucas Danes's room, please.
"Are you a family member?" the male nurse asked in a quiet, sympathetic voice.
"Yes," she answered confidently, because it was easier than anything else. And she was his family, just not in the traditional, legal sense that seemed to be so important to anyone let loose in this hospital with a medical degree.
"Just in there," the nurse indicated, pointing behind her to a long row of rooms. "514."
"Thank you. If I bribe you will you leave a mint on his pillow and guarantee that he will be one-hundred percent well in less than a week?"
The nurse looked nonplussed. "Er…no."
Lorelai shrugged. "Didn't think so- just thought I'd ask."
She surveyed the room from the doorway, taking stock before taking the plunge. She couldn't look at Luke right away. It was dark, save for the muted light that glowed through the gigantic picture window on the interior wall. Lorelai could see the nurses' desk through it, where one of the half-dozen nurses would glance up every few seconds or so to make a cursory check of all the patients through their windows. Efficient, she thought. Or a gross invasion of privacy.
Luke's room was, she suspected, like all the others. A normal sized window opposite the transparent wall, a long, durable counter running at waist height beneath it. Two chairs for visitors, one on either side of the bed.
And a menagerie of oddly-shaped and weirdly-glowing machines, which hummed and whirred and clicked and beeped as if they had a life of their own, instead of quantifying and monitoring the life of the man lying so still and lifeless at the end of their wires. Finally she forced her eyes onto him, onto Luke- except he didn't look like Luke. He was so small, and frail, like an old, old man. His form was sharply outlined under the sheets, odd lumps and bumps from casts and splints and braces sticking up and out on the left side. He was attached to so many wires it looked like he was being sucked dry by a writhing, slithering, many-tentacled monster. His skin was so pale under the bandages, and his face matched the dull white of the pillowcase. His eyes were closed, but he didn't look like he was sleeping- his face was too drawn, too pained, even in unconsciousness.
Lorelai swallowed hard and took a deep, deep breath. Somewhere in there, somewhere under the wires and bandages and monitors and hospital smells, was Luke. She bit her lip so hard tears came to her eyes, and then she bit her lip even harder to hold the tears back. "Oh, Luke," she whispered in a choked voice, teetering on the edge of losing control. She couldn't reconcile the memories and images she had of him in her mind with the broken, battered man before her. And it hurt, it hurt to see him like this, to reach out and feel the same frightening sensation of immobility and all-encompassing wracking pain, and then to draw back in terrible pity because he couldn't feel anything at all.
She moved around to the left side of the bed, skirting the chair and squeezing in next to an EKG machine. Slowly, tentatively, she reached out an unsteady hand and touched his face. He had a five o'clock shadow already, and the familiar feeling of rough bristles on her fingertips brought everything home to Lorelai. She almost smiled, and felt a fiercely loving, protective instinct rise up in her. Gently she smoothed his hair back, then bent and kissed his forehead. "I'm here, Luke," she said softly.
She sighed and reined her emotions in more tightly, straightening up long enough to scoot her chair closer to the bed. She sat down, taking his uninjured right hand in hers.
"I hope you're not thinking of dying, Luke Danes," she began, almost conversationally. "Because that would be such a major inconvenience for me. I mean- to say nothing of having to find something to put in your empty drawer- where would my caffeination come from? Without Luke's, I'd have to find a whole new routine in the mornings. And I'd starve to death, minor point… Plus my house would fall down, so I'd be homeless. Dead, and homeless. I guess I wouldn't need a house if I were dead…but Rory still would, so you're putting her out, too. Really, it's very selfish of you to be lying here, oblivious to my wants and needs. I expected more from you." She took a breath. "And why would you want to die, anyway? It'd be boring. No one to get you all riled up at a town meeting, no one to increase your insurance premiums by sneaking behind the diner counter, no one to ignore your health lectures, no one to drag you out of bed in the middle of the night to stand in the snow. No one to stick up for you, no one to listen to you, no one to hold you, no one to care about you-" she broke off suddenly.
"Dammit, Luke," she muttered ungraciously, rubbing her eyes tiredly, "would you wake up so I can tell you I love you?"
She waited a second, peering intently at his face, hoping for an eye-twitch at least. Nothing.
She sighed loudly. "That is so like you, you stubborn, obstinate, perverse, irritating person. Fine. I'll wait. It's not like you're going anywhere."