1.
As the bruised and battered form of their unknown patient was wheeled down the corridors of Pine Valley Hospital the paramedics relayed the important information to the receiving medical team.
"Jane Doe, early to mid 30's found unconscious on the steps of the church, respirations 8 and shallow, she's barely shifting any air on the left side and the right is completely silent, possible punctured lung, possible pneumonia, HR 150, temp 94, blood pressure is barely registering, she appears to be in septic shock, there's an open wound to her stomach; looks like a surgical scar. We're pushing fluids as quickly as we can but her BP is still not registering," the paramedic concluded as doctors and nurses surrounded the gurney.
"Trauma room 2," Jake directed as he followed behind the gurney.
Entering the room he watched as the nurses set about connecting her to the monitors whilst a junior doctor attempted to get more IV access.
"She's shut down, I can't get anything," a female doctor said as Angie entered the room.
"What have we got?" Angie asked him, as she started setting up for central line access.
Jake started giving her the history as he moved towards the head of the bed to assess the patients respiratory status. "Jane Doe, found -"
Looking up from the task at hand Angie watched as Jake's face paled, his stethoscope dropping to the bed. "Jake? Dr Martin."
"She's not a Jane Doe. She's not a Jane Doe. It's Greenlee, Oh God it's Greenlee Smythe," he stammered as he reached up and placed his hand on her head.
Looking up at the stricken woman's face Angie immediately saw it too, that under the pale, grey complexion lay the porcelain features of Greenlee Smythe, a woman whose life she had saved once before.
"Call Ryan Lavery and Jackson Montgomery, don't tell them anything just get them here," Angie ordered one of the orderlies.
"Just hold on Greenlee, we're going to get you through this. You're home now, you made it home and that's all that matters," Jake vowed as he placed a gentle kiss on her head before setting about repairing the catastrophic damage that had been inflicted upon his fallen friend.
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Rolling over in bed Ryan turned to face Erica, as a familiar feeling of guilt washed over him just like it did every time he woke up next to Erica Kane, the only woman that had been able to make him feel anything after Greenlee's death. A loss that had brought him to his knees, and still haunted his every waking moment and many of his dreams and nightmares too.
He knew that him being with Erica was in some ways like he was cheating on her, and he knew that by being with Greenlee's biggest nemesis he was somehow defiling the memories of what they shared together but he couldn't help it. Every time it happened he promised himself it would never happen again, but time and time again he broke that promise to himself as he found himself waking up next to her once again.
He told himself that it didn't matter, that as long as there was no love or passion involved it was alright, that what they were doing wasn't wrong but the truth was he needed the one thing that only Erica Kane could give him. He needed to feel alive.
Leaving her sleeping he silently pulled his clothes back on as he headed out of the hotel room and into the chilly night air. Deciding that fresh air was what he needed right now he left his car parked where it was and started on the long walk home. A walk that he hoped would clear his head and cast some clarity on his current situation.
As he reached the end of the driveway he finally realised that the soft ringing sound was coming from his coat pocket, reaching in he pulled out his cell phone frowning as he saw Jesse's name flash up on his screen.
"Ryan?"
Immediately Ryan picked up the panic in the detective's voice. "What is it? What's happened? Is it Emma? Oh God please tell me-"
"It's not Emma," Jesse reassured him, cutting off the young man's panicked rambling. "But I do need you to come to Pine Valley Hospital."
"What's going on?" Ryan demanded to know.
Jesse took a deep breath before speaking. "Please just trust me and get here as soon as you can. Everything will be explained when you get here. I promise."
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Running down the corridors of Pine Valley Hospital Ryan immediately noticed that all of the buzz and activity seemed to be centred around one of the trauma rooms.
"Jesse?" he shouted as he watched the detective approach him.
Jesse put his hand on Ryan's shoulder. "Ryan, please, take a seat."
"I don't want to take a seat," Ryan insisted, shaking his head.
Jesse nodded, knowing that Ryan's head must be all over the place at the moment, deciding it was best to give the other man some time before things really got complicated he walked over towards the coffee cart.
"Coffee," he offered handing Ryan the semi hot beverage.
Ryan took the offered cup as he started to pace back and forth in front of the trauma room where something important was obviously unfolding.
"Jesse what the hell is going on in there?" Ryan asked, his patience finally wearing out.
"Perhaps I can shed some light on that," Angie began as she exited the room, exhausted after a long fight for a young life.
Ryan stepped towards her. "Who is in there Angie?"
"Perhaps we should sit down, what I'm about to tell you is not going to be easy to hear but I need you to promise me now that you will not interrupt until I finish, and in return I promise that when I have finished I will answer all of the questions you will surely have to the best of my ability," Angie vowed, as she sat down opposite him.
Wringing his hands together in a nervous gesture Ryan nodded. "Ok."
"Ok," Angie echoed. "In the early hours of this morning an anonymous call was made to 911 about a collapsed woman on the steps of the church, when the paramedics arrived there they found an unconscious woman, they quickly stabilised her and brought her here."
Pausing Angie took a mouthful from her bottle of water before continuing. "On arrival here she was barely alive, it's taken us until now to stabilise her but even then her condition remains critical. She is underweight and severely dehydrated, she has on overwhelming pneumonia that has put a lot of stress on her heart, we've intubated her to give her lungs a chance to rest and have her on high dose antibiotics, we're giving her IV fluids and electrolytes to try and stop any further damage to her kidneys."
"She was also in a state of septic shock when she arrived, it appears that infection has entered her blood stream from a wound on her stomach, the infection made her blood pressure crash, we've given her multiple blood transfusions and we have her on medication to try and maintain a normal blood pressure, there also appears to be some swelling to the brain which we are closely monitoring, now whether this is from trauma or infection it's impossible to tell at this stage," Angie said, concluding the medical part of her explanation.
"Ryan," Angie breathed, reaching out and taking his hand in hers. "The Jane Doe it's … It's Greenlee, she's alive Ryan, barely, but she's hanging on, we just have to have faith, I mean she's made it this far, she's made it back to us."
Standing up Ryan shook his head. "No it's not Greenlee. My Greenlee is dead, she went off the cliff and they found her body … I saw it … I …"
"Ryan I wouldn't be putting you through this if I wasn't a hundred percent certain, the woman in that room is Greenlee," Angie whispered, her voice barely audible.
"I need to see her," Ryan breathed. "I need to see for myself that it's really her. Please?" Ryan pleaded.
Angie nodded. "But first I need to prepare you for what you're going to find behind those doors. We have Greenlee intubated and sedated, she's receiving blood transfusions as well as fluids and high dose antibiotics, she has a central IV line as well as one in each arm, she's severely underweight and when she was brought in the infection was stopping her blood from clotting properly so she's badly bruised and there is still oozing from the wound to her stomach, it's under control but we do have drains in just to stop the blood collecting."
Angie looked over to where Jake now stood leaning against the door. "Let me know when you're ready."
"I'm ready," Ryan insisted as he followed Angie into the room.
Stopping at the door Angie let Ryan go in without her as she felt Jake pulling her back out of the room. "Why didn't you tell him?"
"He doesn't need to know, at least not until we're certain," Angie hedged.
"You know as well as I do exactly what that incision is and what it means, and we both know that there is one reason and one reason only why we had to surgically remove some imbedded placenta from her uterus, we need to make this news public, the sooner everyone knows the sooner the search can begin," Jake reminded her.
Leaning heavily against the wall Angie ran her hand tiredly through her hair. "As soon as we get the lab results back we will make the information public."
"All the lab results are going to tell us is whether or not it was a girl or boy," Jake countered.
"Is, is a girl or boy," Angie corrected "There's nothing to prove either way if that baby was born dead or alive."
Pushing himself off the wall Jake placed a comforting arm on his friend and colleagues shoulder. "I'm going to go and see if I can't hurry the lab results along."
Taking a few moments to compose herself Angie tried not to let her mind wander to the unimaginable torment that the young woman had no doubt been through in the months since she had last been seen or heard from.
Closing her eyes Angie prayed. "Please God, please give us all the strength to help Greenlee survive this and to help her and Ryan heal and be a family again. And please help guide us to that poor lost child and look after him or her until we can reunite them and if it's too late, if he or she is already gone from this world then please help the child's parents find peace in the knowledge that he or she didn't suffer. Thank-you."
"She," Jake said, his voice heavy with tears as he guided Angie over to the hard, plastic seats. "It was a girl. Greenlee had a little girl."
"Could they tell us any more than that?" Angie questioned.
Jake nodded. "They tested the placenta and from what they can tell it was a healthy placenta, no signs of cyanosis or anything like that, it also appears to have been a term pregnancy."
"So she could be alive?" Angie asked, her voice full of hope.
"We have no reason to believe otherwise," Jake sighed.
Shaking her head Angie wiped her hands against her trousers. "The incision looks to be what 7 days old?"
"Yes, 10 at the most," Jake agreed.
"Which means that somewhere out there could be a newborn baby in desperate need of her mother and father's love," Angie cried, finally allowing her emotions to get the better of her. "How could somebody do this? How could they take a baby from it's mother like this and then leave the mother for dead?"
Jake shook his head. "I don't know. But we need to tell Jesse, we need to get the police out there and looking for the baby as soon as we possible can. There's already been enough time lost."
Standing up Angie walked over to Greenlee's room where Ryan sat holding the hand of the women he loved, the woman whose death he had spent the last 9 months mourning.
"How on earth do we tell him? How do you tell a man that no only did someone keep his fiancé from him for 9 months, lead everyone to believe she was dead, then rip her child from her before leaving her to die on the steps of a church," Jake asked, knowing that there was no simple answer to that.
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Quietly Angie entered the intensive care room that was to become Greenlee's home over the coming weeks, possible even months.
"Ryan," Angie whispered as she pulled up a chair and sat down opposite him.
"I keep thinking I'm going to wake up and find out that the last 9 months have been a horrible nightmare, that Greenlee and I are married and in the middle of our European honeymoon and all of this is just a horrible, horrible nightmare," Ryan vented, his frustration boiling over.
Angie took Greenlee's hand in hers. "I'm sorry this happened to you. To both of you."
"I know that I should be relieved, that I should be happy that she's here and that's she's alive but right it just feels like I'm stuck in somebody else's nightmare. And I know this sounds selfish, because I should be the one telling her that everything is alright but right now I just need her to wake up, put her arms around me and let me know that we're going to survive this," Ryan whispered.
"I understand, when Jesse came back to me I couldn't make out any one emotion in the thunderstorm that was inside my head, nothing made any sense, nothing at all," Angie said, hoping that by sharing her past with him it would help him make sense of what was happening.
Ryan ran his hand gently through Greenlee's hair. "She's the love of my life, these last 9 months have been like a never ending black hole and now that she's back it should be the end of that and the start of our life together, but there's this voice inside me telling me that it's not going to be that easy, that the real struggle has only just begun."
"And I wish I could tell you that wasn't true but the truth is there's something else I need to tell you," Angie whispered.
"How can there be more?" Ryan asked his voice verging on hysterical.
Angie turned her attention to the unconscious woman on the bed. "Do you remember how I told you that Greenlee was suffering from a severe infection from a wound on her stomach."
"Yes," Ryan nodded, keeping a firm hold of Greenlee's hand, after everything that had happened he was never going to let her go again.
"We had to surgically explore the wound and when we did we found some tissue inside of it, further results showed that it was part of a placenta which confirmed our suspicions that the incision was left following a caesarean," Angie explained, watching Ryan's face for a reaction.
Ryan shook his head. "Greenlee can't have children, and even if she could she would never be able to carry the child to term. I -"
"It's amazing what they can tell from tissue samples these days and the lab has confirmed that the placenta was full term, that there was no signs of oxygen deprivation or anything else that you would connect with a still birth, they were also able to determine that it was a girl," Angie said, watching as realisation dawned on the young man's face.
"I have a daughter? Greenlee and I we have a daughter?" Ryan cried.
Angie nodded. "Jesse is already aware and the police are doing everything they can to find who had Greenlee and what happened to the baby, however there is only so much we can do until Greenlee wakes up."
"Anything they need; money, planes … anything at all, just make sure they find our baby, I need to do this, I need to bring her home," Ryan vowed, finally having something else to focus on other than the all-consuming guilt that was eating away at him for not pulling back the sheet and looking at the body properly.
Because then maybe if he had he wouldn't have given up on Greenlee as soon as he did and then he wouldn't have found himself in bed with Kendall and Erica. And if he hadn't of given up when he did then perhaps he would have found her sooner and their baby wouldn't be out there somewhere all alone.
"I will make sure that you are kept up to date on every development, but right now, in this very moment you are exactly where you need to be; with Greenlee," Angie reassured him.
Looking up Ryan nodded. "Jackson, oh God I didn't even stop to think about him, has anyone told him? He's her father, he needs to know."
"He's on a plane back from France as we speak," Angie replied.
"And Kendall, she and Zach are on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean somewhere, they shouldn't hear it second hand, I should call them, can I … can I used my cellphone in here?" Ryan asked.
"Yes," Angie told him, as she stood up, giving Greenlee's hand a reassuring squeeze she left the couple alone, as she set off to chase up the latest blood results in the hope that everything would finally be starting to improve.
Once they were alone in the room Ryan held Greenlee's hand up to his mouth and gently kissed it. "We're going to get through this Greenlee. You, me, Emma, Spike and our Baby Girl we're going to be a family. Now that you've made it back to us nothing is going to keep us apart, not any more, I'm going to find our Baby Girl and I'm going to bring her home. I promise you Greenlee, no one is going to keep her from us. No one."