It had been hours. Robin had been sitting, waiting for word on her mother, for any update for hours. She felt like she was going to lose her mind. She wasn't used to this kind of fear. Sure she'd waited on news on both of her parents plenty of times, and listened to the devastating untruth twenty years ago, but now she knew too much. As a child, her parents had always take the approach of age appropriate honesty. Never, "Mommy's in critical condition. Mommy may not make it through the night. Mommy's in a coma." Always, "Mommy's in the hospital. Mommy's sick. Mommy's sleeping so she can feel better." The truth but definitely in child friendly lingo. The problem was she was no longer a child. There was no longer any hiding the gory realities of the truth from her. On top of which she was a doctor now, she fully grasped the severity of what was happening. If they couldn't stop the convulsions, they were looking at permanent brain damage and death. The human body was simply not built to withstand prolonged trauma of that degree. Oh how she wished she didn't "get" it, that she could go back to the days when everything was still a game. She couldn't take it anymore. She needed to see her mother.
"Robin."
"How is she?" Patrick, as always, coming through just in the nick of time, and with that thought she realized just how right her mother had been at in the Maarkham Islands. She had fallen in love with her father.
"It's bad, Robin. The seizure was caused by severe cerebral swelling. I've never seen swelling to this degree. I'm trying to understand why your aunt didn't deal with this when she found your mother. How can a physician not know that a cranial injury of that magnitude needs to be dealt with immediately? I'm going to go my best, but it's twenty years of damage."
"Surgery?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Within the week. It's urgent we reduce the swelling, but she's much too weak right now. I have her on phenobarbitol right now and she's resting comfortably. My hope is that if we can avoid another seizure, she'll have time to regain her strength and increase her odds of coming out of surgery."
"Can I see her?"
"Of course." Robin followed him to her mother's room in a state of disconnect. He was her husband, and she knew he was ready to fight like a lion for her mother's life not only for her and Emma, but also because she knew he sincerely loved her mother, but she couldn't feel him. The only thing she could feel was the intense and burning need to reconnect with her mother. She opened the door and was once again frozen. She heard Patrick mention he was headed to radiology to take another look at her mother's MRI results, but she heard him as though underwater. The only clear sound was the steady beeping of the heart monitor. The only clear sight was her mother sleeping in a sea of tubes. She couldn't help but blame herself. Alexandra Devane was a world class physician. Robin had no doubt that she knew how severe her sister's head injury was when she was under her care. She could say with absolute certainty that her aunt had spent the last ten years arguing with her mother about her treatment plan. She was also certain that more than anything she herself had kept her mother from seeking treatment. Robin was her mother's everything. Robin and her guilt for everything she hadn't been able to do for her over the years. There was absolutely no way that her mother was going to "burden" her with her illness or let it take her out of commission. She would be damned if she wasn't there to ride in to her little girl's rescue at a moment's notice.
"Mom, why are you so stubborn? Why can't you accept that I'm a big girl now? I can deal with my own problems now. The only thing I can't deal with is losing you. I've done it once, and I can't do it again. I just can't Mommy. I can't" She sat there holding her mother's hand and fervently praying for her mother to come out of this one just like she had come out of so many tough spots before.
Robert Scorpio was a haunted man. A man haunted by failures. He never had quite gotten things right. It would have been different if the failure had been just been to himself, but somehow someone else had always borne the brunt of his screw ups. Robin and Anna were most often the collateral damage, but more so Anna. She took her role of mother seriously and had created a shield around Robin. As far as Anna was concerned, Robert was Robin's father and therefore should remain her hero. He was always the good guy to her bad guy; the moral, upstanding, man of integrity that hadn't been able to deal with her grey areas, with her belief that sometimes, just sometimes the ends did indeed justify the means. She never spoke of the fact that she'd been a mere child when their love affair had started. She never spoke about how nine times out of ten her ends had been him and their daughter and her need to keep them safe and happy. Sure they bickered, sure she bitched and moaned, but when it came to the nitty, gritty she took it like a man and made sure Robert's image in his daughter's eyes was untouched, but their daughter was most definitely her mother's daughter. Nothing got past that one. He still remembered the tongue lashing he'd received from his daughter for stealing out of General Hospital like a bandit without Anna hurting her once again. He knew that Anna had defended him and told Robin that he needed to do this on his own, but he also knew that Anna had known better that more than sparing her it had been sparing his pride the defeat of having the love of his life see him in his weakest moments, and he was certain Robin knew the same. Anna always took care of them, and this was the one way they'd taken care of her over the years. No matter what they'd allowed her to continue believing that Robin had no idea just how big of a louse her father could be at times. They allowed her to believe that her ruse including her distracting jabs at him had done their job. If only he'd done his share, may be things would be different now. He wondered if in all the times he hadn't come through there was a single time that would have changed what was now going on. He was no fool whatever it was, it was bad. Robin was an adult. Her parents were no longer her Mommy and Daddy even if he did occasionally get a Daddy out of her. The moment she'd said, "It's Mommy," he'd known and his battle with the "what if's" of life had begun. May be if he'd come to her in Canada; he'd have realized the severity of her injuries and made sure she received proper medical care immediately even if it meant taking on the WSB. May be if he'd revealed himself in Pine Valley as he watched her and Robin reunite; he'd have convinced her to let her sister care for her without fighting it. May be if he'd come to her when she lost Leora; she'd have confided in him that she was still having headaches. May be if he hadn't stolen away in the night almost four years ago; he'd have picked up on the fact that her episodes were once again occurring with frightening frequency and severity. May be if he'd realized that Wonder Woman was human; she wouldn't be fighting for her life right now. He just hoped that she and Robin both knew he was an idiot. If he'd ever truly seen things for what they were, he would have been there for her, for them both. If he'd known, he would have been there. If he weren't such an arrogant fool, he'd have saved her. If this damned chopper ever decided to move faster, he'd show them how much he loved them and stop wasting precious time.
Robert still had the stealth of a spy, but Robin knew the moment he'd come into the room by the steady increase in her mother's heart rate. There was only one person who could make her mother respond immediately no matter what the circumstances. It was like they were two halves of a whole. Patrick called it their Jedi mind trick. Patrick. Her man. She loved Patrick with all her heart, but she still wondered if they'd ever truly be soul mates, if she'd ever be able to understand and sense him like her parents did one another. She wondered if they'd ever truly belong to one another the way that her parents did, because there was no doubting that her father was her mother's Robert and her mother was her father's Anna. It had been twenty years since they'd last lived in Port Charles full time and still to this day you never heard talk of Robert Scorpio or Anna Devane. It was always Robert AND Anna, and of course just as her mother had done for him, he'd come running in her hour of need. It brought her comfort to realize that it was true that they loved each other beyond reason. She should probably warn him about a few things before his inner rescuing hero/caveman emerged and he brought down wrath and hellfire on the hospital staff for not taking care of his Anna. She turned to lead him out of the room before her mother could fully awaken. Against his will she lead him into the conference room.
"Robin, what are you doing?" Robert was feeling his frustration peak, " I need to get back to your mother for once I need to be there for her. I have to be there when she wakes up. I've failed her too many times."
"I know Dad, but I just need to talk to you first. She's very weak and we need to avoid stressing her in any way. Stress could bring on another seizure and increase the risk to her. We need to do our best to keep her seizure free long enough for her to regain her strength so that Patrick can go in surgically to reduce the swelling in her brain. Right now, Patrick is controlling the seizures with a high dose of phenobarbitol, but that may not be enough."
"Are you saying I'm a stressor?"
Attempting to make Robert Scorpio act in a rational manner, had always been her mother's job. To this day when he got out of hand, she managed him with a warning of "I'm going to call Mom," but now her mom was the crisis so it was time for Robin to put on her big girl panties and deal with him herself. She prayed it worked, and that instead of taking it as a recrimination, he truly heard and understood what she was saying, "No. Dad what I'm saying is that you're right. You have failed her, but you need to move past it if you want to be there for her now. You once told me that you loved her beyond reason. You need to know that the feeling is mutual. Please Dad, don't let your guilt over the past interfere in the present. Before you go in there, I need you to bury the past for the moment and live in the here and now. I need you to be here for her now. It's going to be a long, tough battle and there won't be any energy left over for trying to right the wrongs of the past."
"You think I don't know that Robin! Do you think I haven't been torturing myself with regret from the moment I got your call?" Robert had never actually found himself so angry with his daughter as he was in this precise moment. Anna was lying deathly still in a hospital bed in serious condition, and Robin was choosing this moment to call him out.
Robin wanted to rant him. This was always the problem in their communication. They were too similar. She'd lost track of how many times people had told her that as much as she looked like her mother she was a Scorpio through and through. He was being an ass, but then she remembered what her mother had told her during their last "I just can't deal with Dad" talk. When she'd asked her mother for her secret in dealing with her father and not losing her mind was, her mother had replied that the trick to dealing with Robert was to remain rational yourself. She pointed out to Robin that as heated as things got between her and her father, she avoided truly losing it. She pointed out that their fights were more of a tango than a cage fight. More of a chess game than a death match. She strengthened her resolve and lowered her voice, hoping her calm had enough firmness behind it to convey just how serious she was about her message, "Dad, you need to calm down. What I'm saying is that may be if Mom had given up her guilt and dealt with the past instead of letting it torment her, she'd have let Alex take care of this problem ten years ago instead of running herself into the ground trying to make things up to me. I'm saying that I will not under any circumstances let the past continue to kill my mother. I am promising you that we will deal with it, but not here and not now. I am telling you that you have two choices: You can deal with the here and now, and be at Mom's bedside or you can act like a raving lunatic in a futile attempt to assuage your own guilt, and be banned from the room. I called you because I know she needs you to get better, but she needs you to be here not stuck in 1991. The ball is in your court."
Robert took his daughter's words to heart and calmed, "I know sweetheart. I love her and I'm going to be here. Come hell or high water, I will do right by Anna this time."
With those words, Robin watched father walk out of the conference room and straight into her mother's room. She followed him and watched with the comfort of a child who knows not only that she is loved, but that her parents love each other deeply, as her mother made the effort to open her heavy eyes and welcome her father with a caress of his cheek.