Forget You – Chapter Seventeen – Or Is It?
Disclaimer: If I owned Fuller House, I would, well I don't know what I'd do.
MAKE SURE YOU READ THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER BEFORE CONTINUING!
"Is that what you really want?"
She didn't know how to reply to that. She really didn't.
Stephanie stood staring at where the image had just been, her Mom standing behind her watching, concerned.
What her mother had just showed her, shocked her. The whole ordeal had. When she had woken up in the hospital room, she had told the nurse her name was Stephanie Tanner. She had seemed to go ghost white and Stephanie knew why instantly. To everyone else, she was dead.
Very quickly, police had been contacted to come in and blood had been taken for a DNA test with her father, just as proof for people.
For a few hours after she had woken up, she hadn't been able to see any of her actual family because of questioning and testing, the same family she hadn't seen in nineteen years.
Finally, the nurse had noticed that she couldn't handle any more of the questioning, that she needed her sleep and had removed everyone from the room. When she had asked about her family, she was told that she would get to see them tomorrow – tomorrow being the time they expected the results to come back.
But when she had gone to sleep that night, she had felt weird. She was drowsy and her eye sight was fuzzy, not being able to focus on anything that was said to her – not that much was anyway.
And then all Stephanie could hear around her was the beeping of machines and frantic voices before it all went dark again.
Her eyes opened to the same black room as hours before where her mother was. Pam was looking almost distraught to see her middle daughter back when she had sent her away to her other family a few hours ago.
"Why am I back here?" Stephanie had asked, obviously scared by the fact that she was back in the dark room once more and Pam could have sworn she could see the little four-year-old girl she once knew who had crawled into her bed, terrified of the dark.
"I don't know," Pam admitted, "Something must be happening to your body in the real world and they've sent you back to me. Do you feel any pain?"
Stephanie stood still for a moment before nodding, "Now that you mention it, my head does kind of ache."
"Hold on, let me see if I can find something," Her mother told her and stared off into space for a moment. Stephanie watched her weirdly for a moment before the scene around them changed.
"Okay, the first thing I need to tell you is that we got the DNA results back of your father and Miss Wright," A man was telling D.J.. "They came back positive; Emma is in fact Stephanie."
D.J.'s face seemed to light up for a moment before the doctor continued, causing her happiness to fade, "For the bad news, this morning, around four a.m., Miss Tanner's heart rate was dropping to the point where it almost stopped. Luckily, we managed to keep it going after several minutes of work. We put her in for more testing and it came back that her brain was swelling, causing her to slowly shut down."
"What?" She looked at him, disbelieving. "What's happening for her now?"
"Well, we've put Miss Tanner into a medically induced coma to try and get the swelling to go down. It's all down to that. But another factor is whether she is going to fight for it or not."
"Stephanie will fight for it, she always would," D.J. insisted and tried to shut the voice inside her head up.
The doctor nodded, "It's all a matter of time now."
"I'm in a coma?" Was the first thing Stephanie asked.
Pam nodded, "Yes, you are in reality," She explained, "But where we are now, this is your choosing area. There's a fifty/fifty chance you get to come here and decide whether you go on or not. You're lucky, Steph, you really are."
Noticing her mother's downcast look, she asked hesitantly, "Did you get the choice?"
"No," Pam whispered. "But I know I know why, I had to watch over you three and your father."
Neither girl spoke, Pam lost in memories and Stephanie trying to decide what to do. Pam noticed her daughter beginning to stress over her decision and quickly stepped in, "There's something I need to show you before you decide."
"What is it?" Stephanie asked when the scene changed to a different part of the hospital.
"This is what life will be like if you choose to stay here."
The tension was thick throughout the house later on that week.
Ever since the truth about Stephanie had come out, that she was actually who the girls had suspected her to be, nobody had acted quite the same. Phone calls had been made, spreading the news about the return of her but also the fact that she was now balancing on the edge.
Jesse and Becky had said that they would be down as soon as they possibly could, needing to book time off work. Finally, they had been able to get away on family emergencies, Becky managing to get them to show re-runs of Wake Up, USA since both co-stars were away.
Everyone had taken turns to visit Stephanie, who was now in the ICU so they could keep a close watch on her.
As every day passed by, Stephanie's condition wasn't changing and nobody could work out if that was a good thing or not. But looking on the positive side, she wasn't getting any worse.
But the doctors were warning them to prepare for the worst. They had no control over the swelling, they couldn't do anything for it apart from let it go down by itself. They had also warned that if she were to wake up, the chance of there being some long-term effects was a high. Yet those were unpredictable, too.
It was Michelle's turn to sit with Stephanie, D.J. off signing papers to allow Jackson to leave and go home and the others in various other places.
If the wires and everything else to be removed from Stephanie, she would have just assumed that her elder sister was sleeping. But those wires were a constant reminder that Stephanie's life was in the balance.
With a shaking hand, Michelle gently grasped onto the other's hand. For a minute, she sat in silence, "Hey Steph. It's so weird calling you that, you know. I've been calling you Emma for months now and you're really not Emma."
"We miss you," She told the unconscious body of her sister after a few minutes. "We miss you so darn much that it hurts. I miss you. I have missed you for the last nineteen years. If – when you wake up, will you remember us? Will you remember the last nineteen years?"
"You have to come back to us, Steph. There's so many people to meet. There's Teri, she's our step-mom. And Jackson, Max and Tommy Jr., D.J.'s three kids. Sure, you've already met them, but not as you. I wish you could have met Tommy, D.J.'s husband. He died, kinda like Mom. But it brought us all closer together. Even Kimmy has a kid now; can you believe she found someone who would put up with here?" She paused as if Stephanie was going to reply, "I know right, me neither."
"I need you," Michelle finally admitted. "I need you so much, so please, come back to us. Come back to me," And with that, she leant forward and began crying softly, her hair shadowing her face.
The silence took over once more as the two women listened to Michelle's sobs.
Dragging her eyes from where they were downcast towards the floor, Stephanie looked straight at her mother, "I know what I have to do. I love you, Mom."
I LIED! Surprise chapter! Yeah, I just decided a mid-week chapter was what I was going to do. Uh, yeah, my non-existent medical knowledge is back again. Stephanie has to make probably the most important decision of her life right now. I don't know how many of you saw the previous chapter, I uploaded it under twenty-four hours after the previous one so it didn't register but the email notifications went out, so if you haven't already, please go back and review that chapter :) We're close to 100 reviews on this story, that's like the first time I've ever hit 100 reviews, like what?! Thank you so much! Also, lastly, do you think the quality of my writing has decreased over the last couple of chapters? Please let me know, I feel like it has but that's not really relevant. I shall see you Friday!