A/N: As much as this story isn't liked as much much as my others, I'm addicted to it. I'm sorry for the lack of Literati interaction, but I have to set up the story first. Think of this as The Diner Boys, Season One. Rory should be coming in somewhere around chapter ten, I think, give or take a couple of chapters.

My Latest Mistake

Chapter Five

Changing

Rated T

Something was different. He didn't need the bleeping of machines, or the hard hospital bed beneath him to tell him that. The sheer fact that he was having difficulty moving spoke volumes for his health. Frowning, he flopped a little bit, feeling his arm move beside him. That was good, one limb down. Flopping a little more, he got his second arm moving and then he moved onto the hard part. But try as he may… his legs didn't seem to want to move. Brushing it off as an aftereffect of the drugs, he shrugged it off and went onto the hardest movement of all, his eyes.

"Humprhg," he grumbled as they opened to bright hospital lights. An arm flew up to shield his eyes.

"Jess?" Luke requested eagerly. Jess looked to the side, beyond his arm, and attempted to smirk at his uncle. It didn't quite work.

"What's going on?" he asked groggily and attempted to sit up. A jarring pain in his back told him that it wasn't a good idea.

"We're in a hospital," Luke pointed out needlessly, looking almost as disturbed as Jess was with this news.

"No, really?" Jess scoffed and frowned when he realized that he couldn't feel anything beneath his waist. "What's going on?" His voice was a little bit more strained now, reaching and demanding.

"It's your legs, Jess…" Luke stopped and trailed off, unable to finish.

"What about them?" Jess demanded, trying to sit up to stare down at them, but was knocked back again by a bout of pain.

"The doctor says you're paralyzed…" Luke rasped out, looking anywhere but his nephew as Jess's eyes bored into his back.

"Paralyzed?" Jess repeated, and whipped the blankets off his legs. He stared down at them, as much as he could over his body, and tried to make his toes move, tried to do something. Grabbing a piece of his leg's skin in his hand, he pinched as hard as he could, but he didn't feel it.

"Stop it!" Luke shouted, grabbing Jess and stopping him from doing anymore bizarre tests.

"How? How the hell did this happen?" Jess roared, shoving Luke off with the last panic-driven energy he had in his system.

"The doctor can tell you, I'll get the doctor," Luke attempted, but Jess snarled at him, wordless and pain-filled.

"No!" he shouted again, and tried to slide himself off the bed.

"Nurse!" Luke yelled, searching for someone to help them. "Nurse!"

A couple of nurses came running at his call, syringes in hand. They rushed towards Jess, who stared at them in horror. "No! Get away from me!" he screamed, but they didn't listen. They pinned him to the bed and one of them delivered the needle with pinpoint accuracy.

"Paralyzed?" Jess gasped up at Luke, still trying to get it through his head. There were tears in his eyes and the terror of his future hadn't quite left them either. As he went under his mind circled around the ten million things he wouldn't be able to do anymore. Blackness encompassed him, and in that blessed darkness, all he could think about was that his life was ruined… what little of it that he hadn't already destroyed.

-gGg-

Luke sat outside Jess's room, as he had been for the past two days. He was shaking, just slightly, from exhaustion and maybe a little bit from fear. Jess's outburst had taken him by surprise and he hadn't liked it much. Trying to tame his hands, he clenched them around the, God-help-him, coffee cup in his hands. The nurses kept supplying him with them. There was a bed sitting beside his chair, but there was no way he could sleep in a hospital, especially with Jess suffering in the next room.

He had contacted Lorelai about half an hour ago, retelling the tale of Jess's outburst. She had tried to support him the best she could over the phone, but finally conceded that she'd be there in forty minutes. Luke was grateful, but he still felt empty. That last look that Jess had given him, while the drugs were taking effect, was enough to destroy him.

"Mr. Danes?" one of the nurses asked.

"Hmm?" Luke barely got out. He felt like he was ready to collapse.

"Your nephew, Jess Mariano, will be able to be released by the end of today. We need someone to sign the forms… will you be taking care of him?" she asked pleasantly, trying to keep the situation as bright as possible.

As she said it, Lorelai walked in. She rushed over to him and hugged him tightly. He reveled in the hug and hugged her back, hiding in her. The nurse coughed a little bit, drawing the attention back to herself.

"I'm sorry sir, but the forms?" she pressed.

"Forms?" Lorelai butted into the conversation, as she often did. "Signing your life away?"

"So to speak," Luke couched and took the forms with a nod. "Yeah, I'll be the one taking care of him."

"You're not going to send him to a hospital?" Lorelai asked tightly, noticing the name at the top of the page and reading over his shoulder.

"No, I'm not. He wouldn't want to go, I don't want him to be more upset than he already is," Luke shrugged, eyeing her and trying to get across that he really didn't want to fight about this.

"But Luke… you have stairs. I have stairs… Stars Hollow has stairs! How are you going to live?" Lorelai pointed out, and Luke's hand froze over the page. She had a very valid point. Sighing, he tapped the pen twice across the page and looked up at the nurse.

"Do you know of any places I could get some sort of… wheelchair lift… or, I don't know, something?" Luke asked.

"I can have a list of phone numbers for you in ten minutes," she recited and he nodded gratefully.

"Thanks," he muttered and went back to the pages, avoiding looking at Lorelai.

"So you're just going to install an elevator and that's it?" she snapped.

"What else would you suggest, leaving him here?" Luke demanded, waving his pen around.

"No… but send him somewhere that they can take care of him, somewhere that he doesn't need a ramp just to get to his own room," Lorelai pleaded.

"Drop it," Luke barked gruffly, stopping his writing for a moment in warning.

"Why don't you ask him?" she suggested, pointing at the room. The nurse chose that moment to inch her way over with the numbers.

"How long before he wakes up?" Luke requested, pointing at the door with his shaking hand. The writing on the pages was barely legible, but apparently it was still legal.

"He probably won't be awake today, sir," she told him, looking at the door cautiously, like it would bite her.

"Great, here are your forms," Luke told her, handing the clipboard to her and giving her a tight smile.

"So that's it," Lorelai demanded, pointing at the forms that were walking away with the nurse.

"No, that's not it. Now I have to call these guys and have them install a ramp leading to the diner… and one of those… things… up the stairs, and for the bathroom, and he'll probably need something by his bed," Luke listed off distractedly, thinking of how much work had to be done in such a short amount of time.

"Luke…" Lorelai growled, shaking him back into the present.

"What?" he snapped, turning to look at her, disbelieving of her determination on this matter. "Do you really expect me to turn him out on the streets when he needs me? When he's told me that he needs me, and that he wants my help?"

"No, I thought that you'd at least think about what you're doing! You've never dealt with a drug addicted teenager before, and you've sure as hell never deal with a drug-addicted teenager who also happens to be paralyzed!" she screamed.

"This is my problem! It's not yours. You have your choice. If you want me, he comes with!" Luke shouted, shoving his finger in the direction of the door.

"I don't want him, I want you!" she stabbed her finger into his chest, knocking him back a little bit. Luke was about to shout something back, but his mind clouded over and he stumbled back a little bit more, trying to catch onto something, but finding himself falling to the ground instead.

-gGg-

When Luke woke up, he frowned and looked around a little bit. It couldn't have been too long, Lorelai was still there and the sun still appeared to be in the general same area in the sky. Sighing, he took in his surroundings. He was in a hospital bed, Jess was right beside him.

"Why am I here?" he mumbled.

"You passed out from exhaustion. How long has it been since you've slept?" she reprimanded him tiredly.

"Three days?" He mumbled and tried to sit up.

"They restrained you," she muttered, rolling her eyes. He felt his arms and found that they were, indeed, restrained.

"Why?" he asked in a panicked voice, but his body was too tired to panic.

"If Jess was any indication of your family, they didn't want you getting loose… the blond nurse also thought that it was the only way that they could get you to sleep," Lorelai mumbled. "Besides, I think she likes to see you struggle. All these nurses are sadists."

"Hey," Luke objected, glaring at her, but the playful flirting that would normally encompass that comment was non-existent in her body language.

"So you're really going to do this all over again?" Lorelai sighed out, looking at Jess's bed with disdain on her face.

"I'm really going to help him this time," Luke assured her, turning his head to look at Jess as well. "Can you help me out of this?"

"I'll call a nurse," Lorelai told him and stood up. She looked down at him, obviously upset, and kissed his forehead. "Goodbye, Luke."

"Lorelai?" he asked, frowning as she walked away. "Lorelai!"

He continued shouting for a minute, before he realized that she wasn't coming back. Something deep inside him stung and he nodded as if accepting it and turned to look at his nephew again, who he had now sacrificed everything for. He didn't want to be the bad guy, but something in him wondered if it was really worth it.

-gGg-

Jess woke up in a dark room. He didn't know how long he'd been out, only that it had been drug induced and that his body was now aching for his old ways again, and if he had the chance, or the ability, he probably would have gone back. But he was in a wheelchair now. There was no way to make money as a runner in a wheelchair. It just didn't happen.

He looked around a little bit and saw Luke in the bed next to him. Frowning, he absently wondered why the hell his uncle had been restrained, but he brushed off the thought and went back to brooding in his own misery. Sure, misery loved company, but the company had to at least be conscious.

"Mr. Mariano?" a nurse inquired as she stepped into the room, letting a bit of the harsh hospital light spill into the room. The brief flash of light hurt his eyes and he cringed.

"Yeah?" he rasped, his voice sounding low and gravelly from sleep.

"When your uncle wakes up, you will be taken back to Stars Hollow to live with him. We wanted to make sure that this was what you wanted before we sign the final release form. Did you have any other family that you would rather live with?" she asked formally.

His mind scrolled through other names, other faces. There was his mother, his father, but neither of them were ready, or willingly, to take on a wheelchair-bound son. No matter how many different faces his mind provided him with, he kept returning again and again to Luke. Sighing, he shook his head and turned away.

"So we'll have the final forms signed by the hospital, but we'll need your signature here as well. This states that you will be under your uncle's care until you have had proper training and are able to care for yourself. We suggest that you spend at least a year with someone before moving out on your own," she said quietly, carefully, knowing about his outburst from the other nurses.

"Give me the form and get out," he snapped, holding his hand for the clipboard.

"Of course," she stammered and handed him the papers. He grabbed them roughly out of her hands and scratched his name on the 'x-ed' line before shoving them back towards her.

With a sickly-sweet, but dangerous, smile, he nodded at her and said: "Thank you." She nodded at him nervously and rushed from the room.

He felt a little bit bad for scaring her, but most of his feeling was devoted towards bitterness. Parts of him were finding others to blame. Everyone from his mother to Luke to Rory… but mostly, and he knew this, it was just himself he had to blame. He adjusted the pillows behind him so he could sit up easier and just stared at the wall in front of him, beckoning it to give him some answers. Such as: 'What the hell am I going to do now?'

He scoffed at his own pathetic questions and looked down at the ground. It was giving him any answers either, so he looked towards the door. There was a button beside the bed and he hesitated, but pressed it softly.

The nurse entered back into the room, looking at him in fear. He attempted a smile to lighten the situation, but she just cowered more. He cursed himself for scaring her and shook his head at himself.

"Bring me a chair," he requested.

"A chair?" she repeated, eyes wide.

"Bring me a fucking wheelchair," he snarled, and she nodded with an 'eep' and ran from the room. Absently, he wondered how new she was.

When it was rolled into the room, the only thing he could think of was how this thing was his enemy until he was fixed. The nurses helped him slide into the chair. It felt weird, cold, beneath him. Sighing, he bit back his tears as they adjusted his legs into the chair and fitted him in.

"Thanks," He mumbled bitterly and stared to try to roll himself around. They stood back and watched as he slammed into a few different things before finally getting the hang of it and rolling out of the door and around the hallway. A few minutes later, a scruffy looking Luke emerged from the room and gazed at him.

"Hey," Jess greeted with a bobbing of his head.

"Hey," Luke said back, and they stood there and stared at each other. Jess broke contact first, turning away. "Home?"

"Home," Jess nodded and Luke moved awkwardly behind the wheelchair to push him towards the room again to grab their things. The trip involved quite a bit of slamming into things that probably would have hurt his legs, could he have felt anything. There was no talking on the way out of the hospital or to the diner… or at all. There was an unspoken agreement not to talk about this. That way neither of them would have to attempt to console the other, because both of them knew that they were stuck together, whether they liked it or not, and complaining wasn't going to do a damn thing.