March 11th 2020

Chapter 71
Their Day of Caring

The weeks that followed quickly revealed themselves to be something like… one stress replaced with another. It didn't feel right to put it that way, but it was the truth, wasn't it? They had replaced the pressure of deciding very suddenly to get married in a matter of seven months with helping a friend recover from what might have been life ending injuries. No matter what, in both cases, the stress had just been… acceptable… It would all be worth it in the end. They would have the wedding they had been dreaming of, since they'd been… probably kind of young to even be thinking about any of that. And Sophie… They were as determined as she was to ensure that she would be a cop again.

"Oh, I can't wait to meet him," Sophie laughed, looking at the video on Maya's phone, showing Archer the pup. The little Australian shepherd, with the piercing eyes that got him his name, just trailed after Sam, staring up at him all the while, like he might have had a treat hidden on him somewhere. This would lead him to trip over himself and stumble, only to rise again, yapping up at him like he was his favorite human and that counted for something, that something being food… or scratches. Scratches were good, too. "He reminds me of Eloise's dog, Chico when he was a puppy. He's gonna be huge isn't he?"

"Well I don't know about huge, but next to Trix and Lou, yeah, definitely," Maya smirked, sitting at the foot of the bed.

It was just the two of them that morning. Much as she would have preferred to stay there with her wife every day, eventually Chiara had needed to go back to work. Where they were concerned, it didn't matter that Sophie's mother had a fortune… and her fortune had a fortune… They had always worked to live off their own means as much as possible. The fact that Diana Zvolensky was footing the bill for her daughter's care and recuperation was simply out of their hands. They couldn't have kept her from doing it if they tried, but that was all. The other bills still needed paying, and besides Chiara loved her job and it would be good for her to get back to it.

"So… Any word yet?" Maya asked as she was handed back her phone. Sophie sighed, leaning back against her pillows.

"No, and I swear it's because they're waiting for my mother to be here to say it. Twenty-four years old, married, living out of her house for nearly five years now, a cop… and I still can't get out of here until they tell my mom it's okay," she declared with clear and earned frustration. "They know she's not going to be there with me all day, right? I told her, she needs to go back to what she was doing before this all started. The best way I'm going to get better is if I can do it my way. I want to be home, with my wife, and our roommates. I'll be good, I'll do my exercises, I'll go to my check-ups… I just can't stand it here anymore."

"Oh, I get that. Couldn't imagine being in here for weeks like you have," Maya looked around the room. As comfortable as they'd made her, it was still a hospital.

She looked a lot better than she'd done that first morning Maya and Lucas had seen her, when she'd finally woken up and asked to see her friends. Her eye had healed up, save for the scar curving around her right eyebrow and dipping toward the bridge of her nose, though it was a neat enough line that it didn't disfigure her in any way. And her vision was as correct as it had been before, which was one less thing to worry about for the young officer. Between her eye, and all those small glass cuts having disappeared, and the fact that she wore actual clothes instead of a hospital gown, her red hair pulled into a lengthening ponytail, she could almost appear completely healed.

Except, of course, those clothes hid what was still happening underneath. It had all been under covers the first day, but over time, and as she'd found herself helping her friend move around, or get changed, Maya had seen it all. As awful as it was to see any of it be on her friend, the way she looked at the whole thing, she didn't mind seeing the bruises as they healed, the cuts as they scarred, the dressings and the cleaning… Every time she saw them, there was less, and that meant Sophie was getting better.

By now, a lot of what remained was everything knitting itself back together, inside and out, and it was also about pain and discomfort, and about Sophie doing all she could to keep moving in what ways her body allowed. She still couldn't bear weight on one of her legs, and the state of her arm was just one of the things preventing her from getting around in spite of that.

If you asked her, of course, this would not prevent her from being left alone at home all day whenever Chiara, Asher, and Ray were all out. There had been some talk of having Mrs. Carlton stay with them for a while, but Sophie wouldn't have it. The woman was getting too old to carry her around and they both knew it. Unfortunately, much as they wanted to put their trust in Sophie's confidence, they only had to look at her as she'd attempt to get out of bed on her own and it would become clear that she really couldn't be left to her own devices, not yet.

"What are you going to do if they do say you can go home?" Maya asked, looking back at her stir crazy friend. Sophie continued to look at her like she was very simply the person she could speak most openly to, cutting no corners the way she might around her mother or her wife, out of a need not to make them uncomfortable or overly concerned. Maya grasped her sense of humor, and she'd be straight with her, too, where others just might not know how to say what needed saying.

"I almost made it to the bathroom on my own earlier," she pointed to the small room inside her room.

"Yeah, almost, and if I'd come five seconds later you would have fallen on your face. And speaking of your face, it really didn't believe you when you said you were fine." Sophie stared back at her like she wanted to argue against this, but there just was no way, was there? She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment.

"You and I, we're so good with finding solutions, making things happen… There has to be a way, and we have to find it. Please?"

"Okay," Maya crawled up until she could sit side by side with her. "Move over, scoot."

"I can't scoot," Sophie pointed out, much as she tried and had to be helped.

"Good, so we've established that already," Maya told her.

"Rude."

"Impatient patient." Settled next to her now, Maya looked to Sophie with a smile. "Truth time?"

"Yeah, fine," Sophie sighed.

"You can't be on your own."

"Yet," she insisted on the specification.

"Yet," Maya agreed. "But only for mobility's sake."

"And so I don't break something out of stubbornness…"

"Oh, are you stubborn? Chiara will be so sad she missed the great confession…" Maya pressed a hand to her heart. "Wait, I can record it, say it again."

"You seem to be under the impression I won't shove you off this bed," Sophie countered with a grin. Maya laughed.

"Oh, Willlow…" she thought all of a sudden.

"She's like eight months pregnant, she can't lift me!" Sophie protested.

"Was not suggesting that, please," Maya raised her finger at her. "But she's a nurse, and she's local…" Sophie mimed a huge belly. "And," Maya insisted, "She has to know people, she could find you someone to help you out…"

"Yeah, my mother already offered that, I told her I didn't want it. Already had enough of strangers handling me over here…"

"Right, I get that," Maya nodded. She'd definitely seen it in action. Much as she would work with whoever was helping her at the time, Maya could see that Sophie was just more at ease when it was her or one of the others helping her instead, and that was not a reproach on the care she received, it was just a matter of personal comforts. "Okay, then we'll just take shifts," she suggested. Sophie looked at her.

"Shifts?"

"There's enough of us who'd be willing, it'd be easy for all of us to pick a day, or even half a day, and be at the house with you. It'll be much better than you having to be on your own all the time. You look so relieved whenever any one of us shows up."

"See, I told you we could figure this out," Sophie smiled, a glimmer of hope rising up at the prospect of her finally getting out of this place.

They spent much of the next little while with a grid being drawn up on a sheet of paper. Maya would fill it in as they both figured out who might be able to come when. It really wasn't all that hard. In the end, it was like Maya had said. There were a lot of people around Sophie, people who might just be able to make this happen for her. As proof, once the grid was filled out, Maya had taken a picture of it and sent it to all those whose names had been entered, asking if they would be able to be there at the house, with Sophie, in the weeks following her release from the hospital. In a matter of minutes, they had confirmations across the board, along with some alternates in case of scheduling conflicts.

By some miracle, as though the universe had just been waiting for Sophie to have a solution that did not involve her attempting to manage on her own when she could not, her doctor had come to look in on her not long after. She'd examined Sophie, looked over her most recent results, and she had said the words the young officer had been waiting to hear for a long time. She could go home. Everything would soon be in order, so all she had to do was pack up her things and get dressed, and she would be out of here. Sophie took one look at Maya, eyes round with a plea.

"We're going to need to get a sweater on you. I think the weather qualifies as 'nippy' today," Maya smiled at her.

"See, now you're just doing it on purpose," Sophie laughed.

Acting as she believed her friend would want her to, Maya had seen to the packing in what could only be called the 'I'll sort this out when I get home' method of shoving everything as quickly and securely as possible into the suitcase and bags she had on hand, only leaving out what Sophie would need to get changed. This happened with all the care and caution both of them could give, until finally Sophie Zvolensky sat in a wheelchair, her latest flowers held protectively in her lap, ready to go.

She said her goodbyes to the nurses who were currently on the clock, thanking them for all they'd done. Now that she was actually going, she almost looked like she didn't want to go, like it was all happening too fast and she wanted to get to talk to everyone. But now she was being wheeled off down the hall, and into the elevator, and finally… finally, they were outside. It wasn't like she hadn't breathed fresh air in all of the last several weeks, but this time it felt different. This time she was going home.

"Ready?" Maya asked her.

"I'd think I was dreaming, except my body is still a mess and this is definitely real." The smile on her face was so pure, and for having come so close to never seeing it again, Maya never felt more sure that she and Lucas had made the right call about the wedding.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners