Anna found herself truly frightened for the first time in all of this mess. She had long since accepted that her time was coming. She was actually anxiously awaiting it. The last four years of her illness had been absolute hell and she relished the idea of being released from her torment, but now everything was different. Now Robin and Robert knew what was going on, they were along for the ride and that was horrifying. They were both trying so very hard to take care of her, but she could sense their fear and worry almost as if it were a fourth person in the room. Robin was passed out in bed with her curled up into her like a child gripping on to her with a strength that bordered on painfully tight. It didn't take her mother's intuition to understand that she was desperate for her to not leave them, and Robert was not doing much better. He was asleep in the chair next to the bed leaning over it with his head on her stomach and one arm draped over both her and Robin. The scene gave Anna insight into what they could have had if things had only gone differently for them. She could picture a stormy Saturday morning with a three year old Robin cuddled up between her Mommy and Daddy watching cartoons in bed, and once again regretted that she hadn't gone to Robert when she figured out that the nausea had nothing to do with her injuries from the explosion. She pictured a family movie night with a thirteen year old Robin momentarily forgetting that she was too cool to hang out and cuddle with her parents. She pictured all the moments that could have happened if she and Robert hadn't been so damn stubborn. If only she'd ever had the courage to tell Robert that he was her once in a lifetime twenty years sooner than she did, then Robin and Robert would have a lifetime of happy memories of the three of them together to get them through the coming storm, and she didn't doubt for a moment that they would have been happy memories. Even with the silent but ever present tension between the two of them over the years, she and Robert had managed to be fabulous co-parents and create a world where Robin felt cherished. She could still remember an eight year old Robin asking her, "Will you and Daddy get back together…you know it isn't anything against Uncle Duke?" She could remember clearly the look in her daughter's eyes when she'd assured her that no, that would not be happening. She knew her daughter still longed for them to be together, and it hadn't taken that sweet little, "Why?" almost twenty years after the first question. They'd succeeded in making their daughter feel the strength of their love for each other, and she knew it was one of Robin's greatest comforts, that somehow the knowledge that regardless of their rocky history they still loved each other above all others, cemented her security in the fact that they loved her with a force greater than life. They'd achieved this while constantly self-destructing, so she could not help but dwell on the fact that things would have been truly magical if she and Robert could have but aside their need to prove that they could make it without each other. May be they would have avoided all the pain of the last twenty years, and may be the strain between Robin and Robert would not exist. She would have been there to be there buffer before things had a chance to get ugly. She'd have helped Robin understand that Robert's gruff exterior came from the fear of being hurt, and she'd have helped Robert understand that his little girl was a lot stronger than she looked and all his overprotective, standoffish Papa Bear tactics only served to alienate her. Then she'd have the peace of knowing that they had one another if anything were to happen to her. As it stood, she could sense them both in their respective corners preparing for the fight, both steadfast in the belief that they were right. She worried that if she did not beat this, they would tear each other apart instead of being each other's strength. The more she mulled over it, the worse she felt and the stronger the throbbing in her head grew.
Robin was woken from a deep sleep by the heat radiating off her mother. She lifted her head and thought she saw the answer to the problem, both she and her father were smothering her mother, but then she noticed that her mother was shivering and pale and her concern grew drastically, "Mom, are you okay?"
"I'm fine darling, just a bit of a headache."
Bit of a headache, yeah right. That was mom for there's a sledgehammer going off inside my head. Robin quickly got off of the bed and went to get a pen light to examine her mother's pupils and take her temperature, "Mom, I need you to be honest with me right now. On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst, how bad is the pain?"
"May be a 3," Anna hoped that Robin bought it, but of course between the Devane and the Scorpio blood coursing through the child's veins there was little hope.
"Mom…"
"Alright, alright, it's more like an 8 or 9. But please don't be alarmed, Robin. It'll pass. There's no need to make a big fuss and wake your father," Anna was interrupted by the beep of the thermometer. She could tell by the look on her daughter's face that she was not happy with the reading, "What's the verdict?"
"103.9, you're burning up Mom. We need to get your temperature down," Robin did not like where this was going. Although she realized from the get go that things were serious, she had the sudden realization of just how serious things truly were regarding her mother's health. They were in a situation of damned if you do, damned if you don't. She needed surgery desperately, but things had been festering for far too long, and taking her mother in for major surgery in this condition could easily be a death sentence in and of itself. They could not avoid any setbacks, but at this point Robin dreaded that they had reached the point where it would be nothing but one setback after another, "I'm going to give you some acetaminophen to try to bring down the temperature as well as increase your saline drip to help keep you hydrated, then I'm going to go find Patrick so we can set a definite timeline for surgery. We're also going to need to wake up Dad. We need to have a long talk about our options and come to a decision together."