OK, so what wasn't planned to happen, happened; I wrote another Suzannah-story. I kept getting PMs and reviews telling me to do so, and eventuallly I got tempted to. According to the timeframe, Suzannah should be about 2 years old (this is S7) but she's obviously older than that (about 5 or 6, maybe.). Oh well, not even the GG-creators are good with timeframes.

This story is spoilerish, so don't read it if you want to stay spoilerfree.

Dedicated to Inca, my wonderful beta (VoyICJ) :)

Enjoy!

Gilmore's Anatomy

"He's not going to die, is he? Please, Lorelai, please say he's not going to die!"

Lorelai looked down on her sister who was sitting on her lap and was looking up to her with big, brown, doe-like eyes. Lorelai wished it was her, who could turn to someone for comfort, she wished she could be the one everyone wanted to spare from the terrible realities life has to offer. Lorelai hated having to be the strong one, although she fulfilled her role dutifully.

"No, Suzy, he's not going to die. The doctors are going to make him better, it's just going to take some time," she heard the words coming out of her mouth, and she desperately wanted to believe them.

Of course she had been scared when they told her and Rory about the disease, something called a primary pulmonary hypertension. She remembered the day they told her as one of the worst Friday night dinners in history, which had to mean that it had been a big deal. Her mother's serious face, Rory's desperate begging for details, her father's refusing to talk about it at all... But although she had been scared, she would never have imagened sitting here in a hospital corridor, only about a month later. Although it had crossed her mind that this disease could eventually kill her father, she would never have imagined sitting here, worrying for his life, so soon.

Her sister's voice forced her to come out of her thoughts.

"If the doctors are going to make him better, why is Mum crying?" she asked. "Mum is tired, you know..." Lorelai began. "That's why she is crying so much. Once Dad is better she'll stop."

Lorelai couldn't remember ever having seen her mother falling apart like this before. Richard had told her once that her mother had had a break-down after Lorelai had run away from home, but she had never been able to grasp that, she hadn't really been able to picture it. But ever since the night before, when her parents' maid called her to tell her about the sudden deterioration in her father's state, ever since she came to the hospital and found her mother and her sister in the corridor she was sitting in now, she had seen it with her own eyes. Her mother was not herself, she had turned into a desperate and dire woman that Lorelai couldn't remember ever having seen before, not to that degree. She was yelling at the nurses, convinced that they were all holding back information from her. In-between her worst outbreaks she'd cry bitterly, making Lorelai feel horrible for having told her to pull herself together earlier. Then after a while she'd get angry again. As she only got worse as the hours of the night passed by, the staff had decided to offer her some sedatives and a room where she could rest. At first she refused to do so, fearing that she would miss getting information about Richard's state, but eventually Lorelai managed to convince her to take a few pills, conditioned that she would wake her up if anything happened.

Lorelai herself had spent the last half of the night sitting on the same chair, with Suzannah on her lap and Rory in the seat next to them.

Lorelai looked up and saw Rory walking down the corridor with two cups of coffee. She handed one to Lorelai and sat down next to her again. Suzannah in the meantime seemed to be satisfied with the answers she had been given. She rested her head against Lorelai's neck and dozed off. The little girl was in her long, white nightgown, a mantle and boots. Emily hadn't had the time to dress her before they had left.

"So, have they said anything yet?" Rory asked. "About Grandpa, I mean?"

Lorelai shook her head while taking a sip of coffee. "Nah. I stopped a nurse about ten minutes ago, she said the same thing they've been saying all night; they're still running tests."

Rory lay back in her chair and sighed. "You'd think they would have had the time to test him for just about anything by now. We've been here like...forever." Lorelai grumbled something to assent. "Oh by the way," Rory continued. "Dad texted me just now. He called our house and Babette was there to feed Paul Anka so she told him where we were." Rory had to yawn before she continued. "He said that if we need him here, he doesn't have to go with his mother and GG to that great-aunt of his." She studied her mother's face, looking for clues as to how Lorelai felt about this. "Do you want him to stay, Mum?I mean, you two are, like, an item now..."

"It's up to you, babe." Lorelai brushed some hair away from her sister's forhead. "I think...Chris and I are past the stage where he can be...you know...just my friend, but we're not quite at the point where he can be there for me as a boyfriend," she sighed. "But he's "dad" to you all the time. That's never going to change," she smiled tiredly at her daughter. Rory didn't smile back. "I'm OK with him going," was her quick and short reply. "Fine. I'm sure we'll be out of here soon anyway," Lorelai said in a sleepy voice. Then they sat there without speaking for a little while.

"Well, I guess I should go and see how grandma's doing..." Rory decided and got ready to get up, when a doctor in a long, white coat came out of a door and headed right towards them.

"You're Richard Gilmore's daughter, right?" she asked Lorelai. "That depends on what he's been up to this time," Lorelai said dryly. One look at Rory was enough for her to realize that the joke wasn't well-recieved, so she pulled herself together and took on the part of a responsible adult.

"Rory, why don't you take Suzy with you and get her something to drink." She said as she handed the girl over to her daugther. Rory nodded, took drowsy Suzannah by the hand, and brushed her available hand over Lorelai's back before she turned away and left.

"So..." Lorelai got up to face the doctor..."On, you know, on " Grey's Anatomy" or "House" and stuff like that, this is the part where they play that really scary music and then they sort of fade out and I'll either start crying or throw myself around your neck..." she said in a very hasty and insecure voice. The doctor gave her a quick smile before she became serious again.

"Ms. Gilmore, I'm sorry to tell you that your father has a bronchogenic carcinoma." Lorelai looked confused. "And now I guess my line as the naive relative is "Can you repeat that in English, please?" The doctor nodded before she answered. "A tumor has appeared in one of his lungs...To put it esaily, it means that he has lung cancer."

Lorelai sank back into the chair. "Lung cancer?" she asked in a whispery voice. Then she looked back up to the doctor's face. "Lung cancer?!?" she repeated, louder. "But I thought you said he had the primary...something-something? The thing he could live with if he took tablets?" "Primary pulmonary hypertension," the doctor nodded, "Yes, that was what we diagnosed at first. The symptoms are very much the same..." "Well if they're the same, then why do you assume that he has the first thing, huh?" Lorelai cut her off. "Wouldn't it have been better to check if it was cancer first?!" Her voice was shrill at this point, and she had to take a deep breath.The doctor squatted in front of her. "I'm sorry to be the one to give you this bad news, Ms. Gilmore," she said in a gentle voice, and Lorelai understood that she was shooting the messenger. She thought to herself that snapping at the doctor would be the sort of thing her mother would have been likely to do, and she decided to rise above that, even though she felt angry enough to bite the doctor' head of. She forced on a sad little smile. "I'm sorry, here I am yelling at you, and you're only doing your job..." she said and wiped her hands across her face. "So, what happens now, how are you going to treat him? I mean, there's stuff you can do, right?"

"Unfortunately, the tumor has spread already. We have to do a pneumonectomy." "I've already used my "In English, please"-line," Lorelai reminded her. "I'm sorry. It means that we have to remove one of his lungs. Completely." The doctor explained. "You mean, like, give him a new one?" Lorelai hoped she wouldn't have to get into a dilemma about donating one of her organs. "No, he can manage with one lung. If he survives the operation, he has a 70 percent chance of surviving the next five years."

"If he survives?" Lorelai sent the doctor an interrogative look. She could see that this question was hard to answer. "Yes. At your father's age, the chance of surviving a surgery like this one is about 50/50...and that's optimistic." The doctor got back up before she continued. "We've scheduled a surgery on Monday at 1.00 PM."

Lorelai knew that it would have been acceptable, if not mandatory, for a daughter to react when she was presented to this kind of news, but she didn't start crying right away. Sure, she was completely worn-out by what she had just heard and just wanted to cry like a baby, but she felt that if she allowed the staff to comfort her and take care of her, it would be a little hypocritical given how her relationship to her father probably wasn't as good as they would think. So instead of bursting into tears, she quietly thanked the doctor for the information, and took on the responsibility of filling the rest of the family in.

When the doctor left her to herself a few minutes later, Lorelai covered her face with her hands and tried to gather her thoughts. Okay...so there was a 50 percent chance that her father would die in three days. 50 percent... In three days. 50/50, that meant that there was just as big a chance of him dying as of him surviving. Dying. Death. In three days.

"Are you kidding me?!?!" she exclaimed out loud. She wasn't sure who she was speaking to. It just felt good to get it out.

Only a few minutes later Rory came back with a fast asleep Suzannah hanging over her shoulder. After having put the child down in one of the chairs, she sat down next to her mother to get to know what the doctor had said. Lorelai explained, as gently as she could, but without hiding anything, what she had been told.

Rory didn't have any second thoughts about crying. When her mother mentioned the word "cancer", the first tear slided down her cheek, and when she heard about the risky operation, she buried her face in Lorelai's lap and wept with frustration. Lorelai also allowed herself to cry now, now that only Rory could hear her.

Reviews are apprechiated, unless they are TOO harsh. But constructive critisism I'll try to handle. (And if you're an Emily-fan like me and want to see more of her, look forward to the next chapter:) .)