Chapter Two: Coping
"Su, are you all right?"
Susan didn't even bother to look away from the window when she answered Karen's hesitant question.
"I've just lost my entire family," she said, hollowly. "How do you think I feel?"
Karen was silent for a long moment, while she considered how to best reply.
"If you want to talk," she finally offered, "I'm always here."
"I don't want to talk," Susan said. "I just want to see them."
Karen nodded, wordlessly, and the car fell into silence as they continued the drive to the hospital where the accident victims had been taken. But, when they pulled into a parking space, Susan simply sat there, staring out of the window in a dazed manner.
"Su?" Karen asked. "Su, we're here."
"I-I can't go in there," Susan whispered, brokenly, as a tear crept slowly down her cheek.
"You just said-" Karen began.
"If I go in there," Susan continued, without any indication that she'd heard Karen, "it'll mean that they're really dead. If I stay out here-"
"-They'll still be gone," Karen told her, gently. "Come on, Su. I'll be with you the whole time."
Susan nodded, accepting Karen's help out of the car. Then, she walked slowly up to this entrance, feeling terribly old and fragile.
Entering the hospital, they found the waiting room full of people. Some were weeping openly, others were simply staring around them in shock. But all were grieving, there was no doubt about that. Susan drew in a ragged breath, afraid that she would lose her composure in the face of devastation as great as hers.
"Excuse me," Karen said, speaking to a receptionist, "we're here to see Susan Pevensie's family."
"You'll have to wait over there with all the rest," the obviously harried woman snapped. "They're only taking a few back to the morgue at a time."
"Don't know how they expect me to handle this up here all by myself," she muttered, obviously not expecting them to hear her.
"Is a little compassion too much to ask for?" Karen snapped, holding tight to Susan's arm to keep her there, when she would have drifted back into a chair, to avoid a confrontation.
"Probably everyone in this room has lost someone they love in that train crash," Karen continued, furiously. "Some have lost their whole family. The least you could do for them is act like a caring human being!"
The soft sound of clapping drew their attention, and Susan looked up in surprise to see an older woman standing nearby, applauding. All around them, mourners were glaring fiercely at the receptionist. The clapping woman took Susan's other arm, and led the girls over to a couple of chairs.
"I've wanted to do that since I got here," she told them. "That woman shouldn't be allowed to be near people."
"Why didn't you?" Karen asked, even as Susan wondered, "How can you be so calm, with everything that's going on?"
"I find anger keeps me grounded," the woman replied. "And I've been plenty angry since I arrived here," she added, glaring at the now-abashed receptionist.
"I'm Molly McCaan," she introduced herself, a moment later. "I've been waiting two hours to say good-bye to my husband."
"Susan Pevensie," Susan said. "And this is Karen Flanders. We're here to see my family."
"Your whole family," Molly repeated. "Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry."
The words were genuine, and filled with distress and grief, and Susan looked at her in shock, amazed that this woman could comfort another, even in the face of her own awful grief.
"Thank you," she said at last. "I'm sorry about your husband."
"Thank you, dear," Molly said, wiping away the tears that trickled down her cheeks. "He was a marvelous man. I'll miss him terribly."
"Would-" Susan began, unsure of how to continue the sentence.
"Would you tell us about him?" Karen finished for her, understanding her hesitation.
Molly gave them a look of shock, and then, smiling tremulously, began to tell them of the man she'd married. Susan, in turn, told Molly about her family, about her parents and her siblings. They wept together. And Susan found herself giving comfort to a total stranger, even when she felt like she was going to break into a million pieces.
Suddenly, they were interrupted by a nurse calling out Molly's name.
"My turn," Molly said, softly.
"You don't have to be alone for this," Susan said, suddenly, seized by an impulse she couldn't quite name.
"Thank you, dear, but this is something I must do alone," Molly told her.
"Well," Susan continued, digging a piece of paper out of her purse and scribbling her phone number on it, "if you ever want to talk, you can call me at any time."
"Thank you," Molly repeated, as the nurse led her off.
"Do you think she'll call?" Karen asked, as Susan watched Molly disappear down the hallway.
"I hope so," Susan replied.
A short time later, her own name was called, and she stood up, gathering her purse, and her courage, in close.
"You don't have to do this alone," Karen told her. "I could come with you."
Susan nodded, and Karen linked arms with her, as they followed the nurse down the hallway. They wound their way through what seemed like the whole hospital, always going down, until they reached a steel gray door, plain except for the small window in the middle. The nurse unlocked the door, and stood aside so that they could enter.
Susan did so, apprehensively, and found a short, balding man in a lab coat waiting for them.
"Susan Pevensie?" he asked, in a surprisingly musical voice, as he looked at his clipboard.
"That's me," Susan said.
"This way, please," the man said, as he strode off. "Dr. Winters is waiting for you."
He led them over to a tall, dark-haired man standing by a row of steel tables. He smiled kindly as they approached.
"Susan Pevensie?" he asked. At Susan's nod, he continued, "I'm so sorry for your loss."
"I'd like to see my family, now," Susan replied.
"You need to prepare yourself," Dr. Winters warned, cautiously, as he stood by the first table. "This was a gruesome accident, and your family may not look like you expect them to."
"I can handle it," Susan assured him, firmly.
Dr. Winters nodded in understanding and, pulling back the sheet covering the table, revealed Colin Pevensie's solemn visage.
"He looks just like he's sleeping," Susan whispered, gazing at her father, and Karen squeezed her hand, supportively.
"He, your mother, and your sister were inside the train at the time of the crash," Dr. Winters told her. "They were spared most of the injuries that the people on the platform sustained."
"They're still dead, though," Susan said, sadly, as she went to the table holding her mother. "I'll never get to tell them how much I love them."
She went to Lucy and Peter, next, and it was harder to look at them than it had been with her parents. Peter was almost unrecognizable, with the bruises and cuts covering his face and body. The only way Susan could even recognize him was by the distinctive, star-shaped scar on his shoulder.
She remembered how he'd gotten the scar in a sword fight, but shook it off as an overactive imagination. After all, how could Peter have been sword fighting when he'd hardly left London?
Lucy, however, was worse to look at. Not because of her injuries, for she was just as undamaged as their parents, but because of the strange look of eager anticipation on her face.
'What about a train crash could possibly be so exciting?' she thought, but had no time to dwell on it as something hit her.
"Edmund," she said, aloud, turning to face Dr. Winters. "My brother Edmund's not here."
"Edmund Pevensie is in a room up in the Intensive Care Unit," Dr. Winters told her. "I can't explain how it happened, since he was standing on the platform, and was hit directly by the train, but your brother survived."
"I want to see him," Susan said.
The doctor led the way to a small room, and pulled the door open. The curtains separating the room had been drawn, but he pulled them back, and Susan gasped in shock at what she saw. For a second, her vision wavered, and she was no longer in a hospital room in London, but in the middle of a war zone.
/Edmund lay so still, and for a second, she feared he was already dead. His face was so pale, a stark contrast to the blood that soaked the front of his tabard in alarming quantities. His hands were covered with the same blood, as though he'd tried to hold it in his body. He was so small; how could he stand to lose so much blood/
Furious at herself for drifting, Susan shook herself into the present. She couldn't let her overactive imagination run away with her, especially now. Ordering herself to focus, she turned back to reality, to her baby brother.
He lay in the bed, deathly still. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and he looked terribly fragile. There were countless bruises and abrasions scoring his face. He was hooked up to half a dozen machines, all of them beeping insistently, measuring one thing or another. But none of that mattered to Susan.
Only one thing mattered.
He's alive!