CHAPTER FIVE

"You don't remember this place? We lived here for four years while we studied at Smith."

"Of course I remember," Emily snapped. "But… they tore this building down a few years after we left. And you're …"

"Dead," Sweetie confirmed with a sigh. "Yeah, I am."

"So … does that mean I am, too?" Emily was afraid of the answer.

"No," Sweetie reassured her. "No, you're not dead."

"Then what is this? Why am I here, Melinda?" Emily didn't usually call her Melinda unless she was in a very serious mood.

"Well, like I said before, you're not actually here." Emily looked confused. "This isn't real. It's just your imagination." Sweetie sat down next to Emily. "You had an accident and now you're sort of … in limbo, I guess. This is all just in your head. I know it sounds crazy."

"Crazy doesn't begin to cover it. This seems so … ridiculous."

Sweetie nodded her head in agreement. "You've always been dramatic, Emily." She didn't dare look at her best friend, knowing that Emily would not be too pleased with that comment. "I know that it makes no sense to you because you like things to be logical, but it's not for me to figure out. I'm just here because you want me to be."

Emily was silent, looking around. How could this not be real? Every detail was perfect. The furniture, the books on the shelves, the pictures on the wall … it all looked just as it had when she lived here so many years ago. "I just don't understand."

"You'll figure it out." Emily looked at her best friend incredulously. She was about to demand more details when Sweetie cut her off. "Come on, we have somewhere to be at two o'clock."

"Where?" she asked.

Sweetie rolled her eyes. "You'll see soon enough." She picked up something from the table. It sounded like keys clinking together. "I'll drive."

"Drive…? Where are we going, Melinda?" Sweetie walked past her, out the door. You could do nothing with Emily without first being asked a series of questions. It felt just like old times.

Emily sighed. She supposed that she had no choice but to follow. None of this made sense. If she was in control, then why did she have no clue what was going on?

"Any change in Mom's condition?" Lorelai asked, dropping her coat and purse into the chair in the corner.

"No," Richard confirmed. "Joshua examined her this morning. He's ordered some tests. He wants to call in a neurologist."

Lorelai looked up at her father. "Do they think something is wrong with her brain?"

Richard sighed. "I don't know, Lorelai. Joshua said its standard procedure when a patient has head trauma and shows no signs of response to outside stimuli. He also said that we shouldn't worry because it has only been twenty-four hours. So, I don't know what to believe at this point."

Lorelai looked over at her mother. It was still hard to think of Emily Gilmore as helpless. She kept expecting her mother to sit up at any minute and demand to know why she was in such a dark and dull room. Yet her mother didn't wake up and she was still lying there unconscious. And only God knows when or if she'll wake up.

"Do you remember when you took me to the hospital to see Mom?" Lorelai asked. Richard looked up at her. "I don't think I was that old, maybe three or four at the time."

Richard nodded. "It was a few months before your fourth birthday," he confirmed.

"Why was she there?"

Richard repositioned himself in the chair, trying to find a comfortable way to sit there. "What do you remember?" he asked.

"Not much," Lorelai said, taking her purse out of the other chair to sit down. "I remember wanting to see her and I wouldn't stop crying until you promised to take me to her." Richard smiled slightly as the memory of the nanny's exasperated face flashed in his mind. She had looked so relieved and thankful. "Why did I want to see her so badly?"

"You were a little girl. She was your mother and she was suddenly gone. You didn't understand." He sighed heavily. "We didn't tell you anything... So, of course, you didn't understand."

"I thought that mom and I weren't that close when I was a little girl."

Richard looked at her strangely. "Why would you think that?" he asked.

Lorelai looked across the room at her father. "I … I don't know," she stuttered. "I had a nanny and you guys always talk about me and her, not me and Mom."

"That doesn't mean you weren't close to your mother," Richard reminded her. "Cecelia helped your mother. You weren't the easiest child to look after." He suddenly started laughing. "We didn't have a nanny until you were two. That was the first time that your mother left you alone with me. You had just learned how to run. I spent three hours chasing you around the house as you broke various items in each room." He smiled at the memory. "That's when your mother decided that we needed a nanny."

"I don't remember very much from back then."

"It was a long time ago and, besides, you were just a little girl."

"Yeah, but little girls remember being attached to their mother. I don't."

Richard sighed. "I can't help you with that, Lorelai. I spent most of my time at work. I was young and I was trying to make a name for myself. We had an agreement. I worked and your mother took care of you and ran the family."

"Why was she in the hospital?" Lorelai asked again. Richard was silent. He didn't like to think about that time. Emily never spoke about it.

"Your mother was pregnant." Lorelai watched her father, a look of shock on her face. She hadn't expected him to say that. "We lost the child a few months before her due date." He pushed himself up, out of the chair.

"Did I know that she was pregnant?" Lorelai asked as he walked past her.

Richard sighed. "We had talked to you about it, but you didn't really understand any of it."

"Why don't I remember that?" Lorelai asked. She wasn't really asking her father, but herself.

"It was a long time ago. We don't talk about it," he said, standing in the doorway. "Your mother didn't want to talk about it." Lorelai watched as he left the room. She sat there, staring at the doorway as he disappeared down the hall.

"Will you slow down?!" Emily clutched the side of her seat. "If I'm not dead yet, I don't want to be killed in this car!"

"Calm down, Emmy. You can't die. None of this is real." She was getting tired of having to saying that to Emily. "Besides, asking all those questions made us late. And you know how you hate tardiness."

"Where are we going?" Emily asked again.

"To meet Richard." She said it as if Emily already knew that.

"Richard? He's here?"

"Of course he is. This is all in your head Emily. This is all being controlled by you."

"Will you stop saying that!" she snapped. "I have no clue where we are going! How can I be in control?"

Sweetie glanced over at Emily. The woman was still as dramatic as ever. When she didn't get her way she would always get huffy and pout. That was probably what she missed the most about her best friend. Melinda was the only person who was not fazed by Emily's demanding personality and sometimes-harsh manner. "We're going to meet Richard. We'll be there in a minute. Now, be quiet!"

Emily turned her head to yell at Sweetie and suddenly they were no longer in the car. They were sitting at a table in coffee shop. "What in the world…"

"Don't you recognize the place?" Sweetie asked.

"How could I forget?" Emily looked around. It was the same place. Just like the apartment, every detail was perfect. The wooden tables. The shaky chairs. The sound of the coffee pots and machines. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee. She had spent so many days in this café. She'd spent a lot of evenings here, too. She worked best when there was a lot going on around here and this was the perfect place.

"Look," Sweetie instructed her, waving her hand in front of Emily's face.

Emily looked up at the table next to them. There sat a young, red-haired woman. She had a pile of books on the table in front of her. She was bent over writing in a notebook. Every once in a while the young woman would look away from the notebook and flip through the pages of one of the books in front of her. Then she would return to her writing, feverishly trying to capture every thought. After that, she would drop her pen in frustration before picking it up again and crossing out what she had just written.

"That can't be …"

"It is," Sweetie confirmed. "It's you."

"But how? I'm sitting right here. I can't be sitting over there, too."

Sweetie rolled her eyes. "How many times do I have to tell you, Emily? It's all in your –"

"My imagination, yes, yes, yes, I get it." She kept watching the young woman, the young version of herself. She had forgotten how red her hair was back then. Over the years, she had lightened the color as she aged. She was so thin, too. It made her smile to see herself so young and beautiful again.

The young Emily was wearing black Capri pants, a fitted black shirt, and flat black shoes. The only color was a scarf wrapped around her neck that perfectly complimented her hair color. It hit her that she really had been a strikingly beautiful young woman. No wonder Richard had fallen in love with her.

She reached for her coffee cup but something hit her from behind and she jerked forward. The contents of the cup spilled out and onto her books. She cursed lightly, trying to quickly dry as much as she could with the few napkins that she had when a man suddenly appeared in front of her. He kept apologizing, trying to help her dry the table.

"It's fine, it's fine," she repeated, pushing his hand away. He apologized again and she finally looked up at him. There was something in his eyes that caught her attention. She couldn't take her gaze away from him. It felt like hours yet it was only mere seconds before he turned his head away from hers.

"Richard, we're going to be late!" Emily looked over to where the voice had come from. There was a tall, slender woman standing next to him. She had her coat folded over her arms and looked to be very impatient. He, Richard apparently, apologized to her once again before he was led away by the blonde. Emily watched as he crossed the room. He looked back at her one more time as he held the door open for his companion. And then he was gone. She looked down at her wet notebook and let out a heavy sigh.

Breaking her gaze away from the younger version of herself, Emily looked over at Sweetie. "I didn't think I'd ever see him again ... let alone marry him one day," she reminisced. Watching herself and Richard felt so real. She could still feel all the emotions that she had felt that day. The unfamiliar feeling that washed over her as she looked into his eyes, the ability to completely lose herself in his presence. No man ever before or since had caused her to experience that sort of feeling.

"You miss him," Sweetie commented. "The man that you fell in love with all those years ago..."

Emily nodded in agreement. She looked back at the table and the young version of herself was gone. In fact, the entire place was empty except for the two of them. Sweetie put her coffee cup down on the table. "Let's go. You should rest. We have a big day tomorrow."

Emily sighed, standing up to follow her friend. "What are we doing tomorrow?"

"You'll see."

"Can't you just tell me?"

"Nope." She glanced back at Emily. "Besides, you already know where we're going." Emily groaned, causing Sweetie to smile to herself. She loved to rattle Emily just for the fun of it. She'd been doing it since they were eight years old.