And the hits just keep on coming...
The next morning, faith would have it that all four Gilmore girls arrived at the hospital at the exact same time, and headed towards Richard's room. Halfway down the corridor, a nurse came running towards them. "Mrs. Gilmore?" she called out, looking at Emily who immidiately stopped.
"Yes?" she confirmed in a nervous voice as the nurse came up to her.
"Mrs. Gilmore, I'm sorry to tell you that your husband's situation was aggravated this morning. The doctors decided to accelerate the surgery. Mr.Gilmore is being taken to the O.R as we speak, I was just about to go and call you..."
Emily paled in an instant. Lorelai and Rory looked at each other, both hoping that the other one would come up with a calming, dauntless smile. Instead, they were just staring into the other's apprehensive eyes. Suzannah tugged at her mother's coat, asking again and again "What does that mean, Mum? Mummy, what does that mean?" When her mother didn't answer her, she turned to Rory instead and repeated the same question. Rory was too shocked to answer her as well, but she lifted Suzannah up to make her stop.
Finally Emily managed to gather her thoughts enough and was able to speak. "So is he worse, is it that what you're saying?" she asked.
"Well..." the nurse began, but Emily cut her off right away
"How could he be worse all of a sudden? What is wrong with him?" she asked upset.
"It seems like we overlooked something," the nurse admitted. "That's the only explanation the doctors have at the moment. Hopefully removing the infected lung will let him breathe esaier. Then we can determine if there is any other damage." She looked at them all in a sympathetic way. "I'm sorry that I can't give you any more information at the moment," she said. "He will probably stay in surgery throughout most of the day, so if you want to, you can go home and wait for our call."
Of course, no one wanted to leave. Although they were all sick and tired of the hospital corridors, there was something satisfying about sitting in awful plastic chairs, staring at the white walls and drinking the vending machine coffee... It felt as if they were contributing to Richard's healing just by suffering through being there and waiting for him to come out of surgery.
It was while sitting like this that Lorelai told Rory about her and Christopher's break-up. She calmly and undramaticly explained that the two of them had discovered that they were too different to be together, but said that there were few, if any, hard feelings. "I hate to spring this on you right now, babe. I just thought you needed to know right away." Her daugther's reply shocked her quite a bit though.
"To be honest, Mum, I knew it had to happen. I'm just glad you got out of it in one piece, and that I can still be speaking to both of you," Rory declared, without explaining further, before she got up and went to get more coffee.
Two floors above them, in the hospital cafeteria, Emily tried to get her youngest daughter to eat some soup. Suzannah didn't have much appetite these days.
"Come on, take another spoon!" her mother demanded. "I've told you we're not leaving this table until you've finished that bowl." Suzannah unwillingly took a mouthful while studying her mother's face.
"Mum, you don't look good," she declared.
"That's not a very polite thing to say," Emily told her, while leaning over the table to wipe her daughter's chin with a napkin.
"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that you don't look happy," the girl explained. "It's because you're worried about Dad, isn't it?"
Emily sighed deeply. "Yes, Suzannah. I worry about your father all the time," she admitted. "I really do," she added and got an absent look.
"Mum?" her daughter put her spoon down next to her plate. "The disease...Is it bad? Can Dad die from it?" Emily had to cover her eyes with one hand for a few seconds before she could answer.
"You know that the doctors are doing their best to make your dad better, I've told you..." she tried to calm her daughter.
"But he could still die?" her daughter's voice was trembling as she repeated her question. Emily took a deep breath before she answered.
"I wish I could say "no", angel but I can't." She felt tears coming to her eyes and hid her face in her hands once more. Suzannah got up, walked around the table and climbed onto her mother's lap.
"I'm sure the doctors are going to help him," she said in a comforting manner before she leaned towards her mother's chest and cried silently.
Not until nine in the evening, when Suzannah had fallen asleep on Emily's lap a long time ago and Rory was just about to doze off with her head on Lorelai's shoulder, did the doctors have any new information for them. Just as Emily checked her watch at 09.02, one of the surgeons, the one who had talked to Lorelai the first day at the hospital, came down the hallway towards them. She pulled out a chair from the row by the wall and sat down facing them.
"I have both good and bad news for you," she began. Rory sat back up in her chair, expecting the worst already. On look at the other two was enough to tell her they felt the same way."The good news is that we had no trouble getting the infected lung out. The bad news is that the other lung isn't functioning as good now as it did when we ran the tests..." A silence occured until Emily's trembling voice broke it.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that Richard needs a respirator to breathe. But it can only maintain his lungfunctons for a certain amount of time," the doctor explained and sought eye-contact with each of them before she continued. "He is going to need a lung-transplant."
"I'll give him a lung!" Rory quickly offered. Lorelai looked at her daugther with both shock and admiration, and wished that she could have been able to offer a sacrifice like that without thinking about it first. The doctor smiled at Rory.
"That is a nice thing of you to offer, but firstly, your lungs would be far too small to fit your grandfather, and secondly, we are going to need both lungs from a deceased donor."
"Isn't that like...hard to get?" Lorelai felt like she should be asking medical questions in this situatuation, but couldn't think of a better one. The doctor nodded
"We've put his name on the list, but at his age...The lung would have to be a perfect match in order for him to be prioritized."
Lorelai, Rory and Emily looked at each other. They had been getting so much bad news lately that they weren't sure how to react anymore, when something new came along. Rory hid her face in her hands while Lorelai, who was sitting inbetween the other two, put her arm around her and pulled her close to herself. She hesitated for a second, not longer, before she put her other hand on her mother's shoulder. Emily shifted the weight of the sleeping child from her right arm to the left, and cleared her throat.
"I don't suppose a generous donation to the hospital would put his name higher up on the list?" she asked. The doctor shook her head.
"No. I'm sorry, Mrs. Gilmore, but that's all based on our medical estimations..."
"It thought so," Emily admitted. "But I had to ask..."
"So, what do we do now? Is there anything we can do at all?" Lorelai asked.
"Now , we hope for the best. There's not much else to do, I'm afraid," the doctor answered with a sympathetic, sad smile.