Title: The Truth
Category: TV Shows » Revenge
Author: And The Moment's Gone
Language: English, Rating: Rated: t
Genre: Angst/General
Published: 03-16-12,
Chapter: Prologue, Words: 1,766
Warnings/Spoilers: If you haven't seen through 113 (Commitment) then stop reading now if you don't want to be spoiled. I have played a little fast and loose with the events of certain things in 114 (Perception) and there is no reference to any thing past that. If there's anything you don't understand, please don't hesitate to ask.
Summary: While the floors underneath our feet are crumblin', the walls we built together tumblin', I still stand here holding up the roof. 'Cause it's easier than telling the truth…
Official Disclaimer: All Revenge characters and plots belong to Mike Kelley and ABC. I do not hold stock either the man or the company. Emily Thorne, Nolan Ross, and any other character featured are NOT mine. The title and summary comes from the Kris Allen song The Truth and I don't own that either.
10:22 am
Friday, August 26th, 2011
Southampton, New York
"Family of Emily Thorne?"
The man looked competent, and Nolan slid his laptop from his knees in order to stand, his back protesting the change in position. He's not alone when he reaches the surgeon, but he and Daniel had been ignoring each other since Emily's advanced directive had been announced, so he really didn't see the need to rectify it now. "How is she?" Daniel asked before Nolan could open his mouth.
"Emily is an exceptionally lucky woman." The man began.
Nolan only takes a second to note that the surgeon's name is Dr. Sinclair, and Ashley is standing directly behind him. "Start with the bad news."
"The impact of the crash fractured two of her ribs, one of which punctured her lung." Sinclair noted that only Nolan nodded while the rest tried their hardest not to look stricken. "We did a thoracotomy to stitch the puncture and assess the area for possible tears. She's been intubated and we inflated the lung."
Ashley reached for Daniel quickly, but Nolan blocked them out. "How long will you keep her on the ventilator?"
Sinclair wasn't surprised to see that Nolan was well informed. "We've started her on antibiotics, but we can't remove the patient circuit until we are sure that she isn't susceptible to hypoxia or further respiratory failure."
"Best case scenario?"
"If we're sure the lung won't collapse again and she doesn't develop an infection?" Nolan nodded, "We can remove the chest tube and take her off of oxygen as soon as the day after tomorrow."
When Ashley thanked God, Nolan ran a hand down her arm on reflex. They would all be amazed to know that he wasn't actually paying her the least bit of attention. He was mentally flagging the information that his correspondences had given him, matching information and making sure he remembered everything correctly. "How long until she's awake?"
"We can start to reduce the drugs in as little as four days." He didn't need to add the phrase if everything goes well. While Nolan was taking everything in stride, the other two that were listening intently didn't seem to be. Dr. Sinclair was thankful that Nolan had been the one with the advanced directive. Sticking with Nolan's best-case scenario directive he counted days in his head. "She could be conscious this time next week."
Nolan gave Ashley's back another pat before withdrawing his hand. "And her other injuries?"
With a shake of his head and a smile, he told Nolan all he needed to know. "A broken wrist, sprained knee and ankle and a dislocated shoulder." They had been left for post op treatment, but Sinclair was confident that they were things that, once healed, wouldn't bother the woman. "They're uncomfortable and take time to heal, but nothing life threatening." He watched the two that Nolan was ignoring start to smile and he reached up to touch Nolan's arm, pulling him slightly away from the other two. "The thing that worries me Mr. Ross is her head injury."
Another curse, this one a common four-letter word, and Nolan turned to shut out the two that had already started celebrating that Emily would be all right. Daniel had moved to tell Charlotte what the doctor had said, and both Declan and Ashley were on the phone. "Head injury?" While he was aware that the car had flipped, and that she had been found upside down, it hadn't even occurred to him that she could have hit her head.
He noted the surprise in Nolan's voice and removed his hand. "From what I know about the points of impact and what I could see of the bruising on her head and neck, we're looking at possible frontal and temporal lobe trauma."
At MIT he'd been forced to take a biology course, and everything he remembered of that semester of his life screamed that the frontal lobe was responsible for reasoning and temporal for long-term memories. Nolan took a deep breath and blew it out of his mouth, willing his brain to regroup quickly because Emily couldn't afford for him not to. "How bad?" He said when he realized that the doctor was looking for a reaction.
"Honestly?" Nolan could feel the sarcasm bubbling in his brain. "We can spend all day theorizing, but until she wakes up, we can't know for certain." It was the typical answer, and Nolan didn't really expect anything else. Still, something was better than nothing. "Her EEG's showed no signs of irregularities, and the MRI's don't have any signs of swelling or hematoma." Another mental list started, and Nolan thanked his ADD as a child for allowing him to be better at multitasking as a man. "Traumatic brain injuries are tricky, Mr. Ross. She could wake up and be perfectly fine."
Nolan looked over to where Ashley and Daniel were taking the small victory and then shook his head. "Or not." He finished for Sinclair. "Thanks Doc."
"We're moving her into the ICU now, I'll have someone let you know when you'll be allowed in to see her."
Nolan nodded, unclipped his cell phone and cursed again.
Ed appeared at his side without being summoned, and Nolan thanked every available higher power that he had managed to find the bodyguard. "You need something boss?" He asked quickly, looking around the room to make sure no one else was paying attention to them.
"There's a box." Nolan started, turning to scan the room as well. "I think it's in the floorboards under the rug in the living room." Ed nodded and Nolan couldn't help but wonder if there was a limit to secretive, nonsensical things that he could ask his bodyguard to do for him. "Someone needs to get it and take it back to the house." Ed reached for the phone and Nolan's whole body shook. "No. You do it, I don't trust anyone else." There was another nod and Nolan tried to breathe through the tremor. "And I want a team put on the house. Whatever you need to do. If someone so much as thinks about going near it, I want to know about it."
"You got it." He was given one final glance to make sure that he wouldn't need anything until Ed returned, and the bodyguard was gone.
Nolan considered his laptop. He wasn't sure how long it would take for them to get her moved and situated, but he wasn't thrilled about spending that time pouring over stocks and the latest market research. He probably wouldn't retain any of the information anyway.
"Jack'll be on his way up soon." Declan seemed to appear out of nowhere, shoving his phone in his pocket and glancing around. "He has to open the bar and wait for Bull."
Nolan had almost forgotten about Jack. He had hoped that Declan had been able to relay all of the pertinent information so he wouldn't have to start from scratch. "You heading out?"
He nodded. "The Grayson's took the car, so Charlotte and I were just gonna catch a cab."
Without thinking, Nolan pulled his wallet out of his pocket and handed Declan a card. "Call my service, it'll be faster." Shoving his wallet back into his pocket made him think about texting Ed and asking him to bring a change of clothes when he came back up to the hospital. "Tell them to charge it to me."
The younger man's eyes opened slightly, before he remembered whom he was talking to. "Thanks." Declan clapped him on the shoulder and then pulled his phone out again.
"I'm going to head back to the Grayson's as well." Ashley walked up behind them, smiling as Declan nodded and added one more to the list of people being picked up. Nolan had to resist the urge to announce that of course she was. After all, it wasn't like her best friend was just in an unexplainable car accident. When he noticed that apparently Daniel had joined them as well, he rolled his eyes. "Let me know if you need anything."
He wasn't sure whom the comment was directed toward, but Nolan didn't hesitate to roll his eyes. "Naturally." When Ashley turned back for her purse, Nolan finally allowed himself to look at the Grayson heir.
Daniel was tired, something that Nolan understood well, and he'd shed his coat and tie sometime between Nolan's arrival and the doctor's appearance. His hair was the only disheveled part of him though, which wasn't surprising. Leave it to a Grayson to be the only beautiful part of a tragedy. Nolan ran a hand through his hair and actually had to suppress a laugh at the fact that Daniel's shoes were still shined.
"You don't want to go back to the house?" Nolan watched as Daniel jumped, obviously unprepared for any form of conversation.
"Emily almost died."
It was the most obvious thing that he could have said right then, but Nolan wasn't expecting too much from the other man. "She's going to be asleep for a while." He shrugged, and understood that the look Daniel gave him was warranted.
The clock on the wall ticked on, and both men stood side-by-side and just listened. Neither Daniel nor Nolan understood what it was they were supposed to do while they waited.
Another minute, and Daniel finally coughed.
"Why would Emily have an advanced directive listing you as the next of kin?"
Looking off in the direction of his laptop, Nolan shrugged. "Why does Emily do anything?" He asked softly, choosing to tug at the hair at the nape of his neck. For half a second he considered actually admitted that he and Emily were closer than they appeared. Then Daniel actually looked up at him, and he realized that when Emily made it out of this, he was likely to die. "She probably thought she wouldn't have to use it." He tried to sound realistic, hoping that Daniel wasn't thinking too clearly. "And with how much she and your mother love each other, she didn't want to think about you having to make those kind of decisions."
The door clicked shut behind them, and Nolan turned just in time to see a nurse slide her pen back into her clipboard. "Mr. Ross?"
Moving to where Ed had packed up his laptop, Nolan swung the bag over his shoulder. "If you're not going home, at least do me a favor and have someone bring you clothes?" Daniel seemed to think about it as he ran a hand over his dress shirt. "You look like an Alexander Amosu ad."
There was a second before Daniel looked back up at him. He wasn't sure if the he was joking or not, Nolan wasn't known for telegraphing his humor. He wasn't looking at him anyway, following the nurse to the door back to the room they had put Emily in. Daniel pulled his phone out, contemplating a call to the house to follow Nolan's advice, before changing his mind. Once he saw Emily he would worry about his clothes.
"The attending will let you know when they're done." The nurse was telling Nolan, while people moved about in the glassed room in front of them. Daniel wasn't sure when or how it was decided that Emily was in her own alcove, away from the others that were recovering, but he was grateful that someone had thought of it. Nolan readjusted his bag and nodded to the woman.
Emily was already in the room, moved to a new bed, dressed in a hospital gown – that was on backwards – and her hair pulled into a surgical cap on top of her head. Nolan tried not to let it bother him that he had more or less been ordered to the outskirts while the nurses and ICU team un-hooked and re-hooked her to the various machines on the far wall. They readjusted the position of the monitors and the lines, and he was going to have to ask what kind of damage that they could expect the many electrodes that were stuck to her skin to do to her. The IV at the top of her uninjured hand had three leads running to it, going to three separate bags, and there was a port in the crook of her opposite elbow, marked with some kind of tape that had her blood type written on it. He wondered briefly if that had been started for a transfusion, and then thought against actually asking out loud. As everyone else started to file out, one nurse double checked the leads and reset the blood pressure cuff before turning around.
Nolan was the first in the room, grabbing the solitary chair and pulling it closer to the bed, pulling his bag into his lap in a move he learned in college. He didn't touch her, it hadn't even occurred to him, and when Daniel wandered up to Emily's other side, he tried not to laugh.
"This wasn't what I was expecting." The eldest Grayson didn't mention the fact that he didn't have a place to sit. He touched the air cast on Emily's hand with reverence and then ran that same hand through his hair.
Dropping his laptop bag to the side of the chair, Nolan smirked. "You've never watched ER?" He glanced around the room quickly, noting that chances were high that until they moved her, flowers and stuffed animals with awkward sayings would have to be transported elsewhere. There was a beat before he reminded himself to ask the doctor whether she would be in ICU until she woke up or not. Idly he wondered what was keeping Jack. "She'll get less pale soon, or so I was told."
There was bruising around her temple, and Daniel wanted to ask about it. No matter what he had heard the doctor say, he wasn't expecting this. Almost anything, but this. "I'm gonna…" He fished his phone out of his suit pocket and held it up. "I think I'm going to call for those clothes now."
No matter how hard he tried to hold it in, Nolan failed miserably. "You do that." He said softly, his eyes never leaving Emily.
12:03 pm
Friday, August 26th, 2011
Southampton, New York
When Jack finally arrived, it was with much less fanfare than Nolan had thought it would be. The duty nurse was told to point him in the right direction, Emily was only one of three people in the ICU anyway, and he slid into the room so quietly, that neither Nolan nor Daniel noticed that he was there.
It wasn't until he heard the quiet gasp that Nolan looked up from his iPad. "Hey Skipper." He said carefully, dropping the tablet into his bag as he stood, conscious of the fact that Daniel was almost asleep on the floor on the other side of the bed. Ashley had sent him up a pair of jeans and a pullover, and Daniel had dozed on and off since he had changed. He placed his hand on Jack's shoulder as he pushed the man to the door. "What did Declan tell you?"
"I want to hear it from you." Jack hoped that whatever Nolan had to say was more coherent, and less technical, then what his brother had said. "How is she?"
"The crash broke a few ribs and punctured a lung." The younger man's hand came up to his face, and Nolan ran a hand over his friends' back. "They patched her up and reinflated, and now they're waiting for her body to start healing itself." It was the Cliffnotes version, missing information such as the fact that it was up to Nolan to make the important decisions and the fact that they may have to give her another transfusion, but it was information that Jack didn't need in the long run anyway. "Prognosis is good. It's just a waiting game."
Looking through the glass, Jack tried to remember to breathe. "Is there enough room in there for one more?"
There was a laugh, the first one Nolan had allowed himself since this whole debacle started, and his arm resumed its position around Jack's shoulders. "As long as you don't mind the floor." He pointed to the spot on the floor right next to his chair and then laughed again when Jack didn't argue.