Happy New Years! I'm gonna make this short. One, I hope you had a good New Years Eve or whatever and are enjoying the new year. Two, I'm sorry I haven't uploaded, I was put on a medicine that was suppose to help and it had the side effect of making you wide awake and go insane but I was weird. Anyway, I've been sleeping non-stop and having odd hours that past few days. I finally edited this and I think it's good. Hope you enjoy!
I'll try and update soon.
"Good morning, lieutenant." Taylor greeted Wash when she joined him that morning at dawn right on time, just like every morning, except this was far from on a normal morning. Even when she got only a couple of hours of sleep, she always pulled through and had a friendly conversation with him.
"Sir." Wash nodded at him, falling into step with him and together they set out for heir patrol.
"How'd you sleep?" Taylor asked.
"Fine, sir."
"Good, good. Ready for the day?" He was really trying hard to make conversation and keep her mind off the one person she was worried about. It didn't work, of course.
"Yes, sir." Wash said.
He knew she wasn't handling this the best way, she was just handling it her way. Wash would pretend everything was fine, put on a show for her boys and keep with her routine. She would visit Natalie, Taylor knew that for sure – he witnessed how she was when he had her exit.
At the time, it had already been closed to visitors, but Taylor talked to Dr. Shannon and insisted she made an exception, if only for five minutes. Elisabeth agreed once he explained to her their relationship. Once their five minutes passed they had to leave, Taylor took her home where he had to order her to bed. Wash reluctantly complied and she had left Natalie's old room that still stood across from her own bedroom.
They only got five almost six hours of sleep, not too bad considering. Their sleep was far from peaceful, though – memories of Lucas had flooded back to their mind and everything surrounding him and the Sixers.
As they walked the perimeter, they spoke to some of the soldiers on duty and pointed out possible security breeches. It was silent most of the time, there were a few times a conversation was commenced between the two but they ended shortly after they began and Alicia ended up getting lost in thoughts of her daughter.
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Wash was headed in the direction of the Training Centre – she was in-charge of training the soldiers and making sure they were combat ready. Her walk was intercepted though by Jim Shannon, great.
"Shannon." She nodded at him.
"Hey, Wash, you busy?" He questioned the woman who continued to walk forward, not stopping to talk. Jim jogged ahead to catch up with her.
"I take it you are. Anyway, I got question." Shannon told her.
Wash sighed, knowing he wouldn't leave, she turned to face him, "What?"
"Someone's in a mood." He muttered earning him a glare telling him he didn't say it low enough. "As I was saying, I got a question." Jim waited for a response, but all he received was a blank look.
"Aren't you going to ask what it is?" He sounded like a child asking his parents if they want to know what he got them for Christmas.
"I don't have time for games. I have training." Wash told him, annoyed with his childish antics.
He huffed, "Fine. As I said before you ruined it, I was talking to my wife."
"Is that suppose to be surprising?"
Jim rolled his eyes, "No. Let me talk; she told me the patient you found wasn't some random OTG girl, it was your daughter!" He exclaimed, amazed at the discovery and he was expecting a reaction but she remained expressionless.
"Okay..."
"How come you never mentioned having a daughter? And what was she doing OTG? How'd she get hurt?" His questions spilled out go his mouth a mile a minute.
"She's in a coma, Shannon, she can't exactly speak at the moment." Alicia said, dryly.
"As for why she was out there...when the Sixers split from the colony, she got lost. We couldn't find her, we assumed she'd been killed." Or at least that was what the cover story was, well, one of them.
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Later that day, Wash went to the infirmary to visit her daughter.
She headed to the back, weaving her way through the stream of patients, nurses and doctors and entered the room containing her daughter. She looked about the same, her skin was a little bit less pasty, but there was also some discoloration on her body that wasn't there before.
Wash pulled up a chair and took a seat beside her daughter, gently grabbing ahold of her unbroken hand after a few seconds. Her long held back emotions flooded her: the pain of losing her daughter, the sadness that she may lose her any day, the regret for her actions that drove Natalie away. The good along with the bad memories were brought to the surface; the hateful words Natalie spoke, the day she arrived in Terra Nova, the day she got deathly sick, the day Natalie first called her "mom". Every goodbye Alicia remembered – when she left for Terra Nova, her first deployment after having her and now this could be her last goodbye.
No tears came as Wash sat there silently, unsure what to say. It went on for several minutes, before she finally opened her mouth,only to close it a moment later.
"Natalie, I'm-" Wash sighed, stopping herself; she still didn't know what to say.
"Please wake up."
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Natalie's light brown slowly opened. She never got to fully open her eyes due to the blinding light below and her eyes felt tired. Also, not a few seconds later, she noticed the ventaltors and now that she could beretta he on her own, she she struggled with getting air into her lungs with the device. She started panicking and tried to move. Lucky for her, her vitals spiked and having them been monitored outside the room, a nurse came running in.
Nurse Ogawa saw the patient struggling and the spiked vitals made sense.
"Relax." She told Natalie.
Natalie listened somewhat. She was struggling with concentrating, the oxygen to her head was getting cut off, allowing her to only focus on one thing. She obviously chose to live.
Once the ventilator was removed, Ogawa watched her carefully, concerned that her lungs couldn't function and that air was crucial. But Natalie's did, she took shallow breathes and her body (and lungs) began to relax on the bed.
"How are you feeling? How's your breathing?" Ogawa questioned her.
"Okay?" It came out as a question. "I can breathe fine, I think."
"I'm sure the doctor will want to verify that. She'll run some tests to make sure you are alright."
"Doctor?" Natalie was completely confused. "Where am I?" She scanned the room to the best of her ability. It was rather bland, white walls with just a bed, there was some medical supplies in one of the corners behind her, but she couldn't see it from her position.
"You're in the infirmary."
It only took her moment for those few words to settle in and it's true meaning to take effect, "I'm in Terra Nova?" She already knew the answer, but she needed verification.
"Yes." She'd been briefed that the girl had been OTG, so she wasn't entirely shocked as to why she was confused about where she was; especially since she was non-responsive when she was brought in.
The simple, short answer had Natalie sitting up and trying to leave the room. The problem was, while she could move herself about twenty-degrees up, her hands couldn't pull herself the rest of the way up. Her hands wouldn't do anything, it was like her brain refused to take orders from it anymore – same with her spine.
Looking for an explanation for this madness, she turned to the nurse who had her mouth opened; the nurse had been about to tell Natalie to lay back down, "Why can't I move? What happened to me?!" She freaked out, getting on the verge of a panic attack.
"Miss. Washington, please calm down." Ogawa had dealt with patients like her before and she knew what she was supposed to say. But it always aggravated them worse. She still went wing their method since, when someone was like this, only they can chose to calm themselves down. That or on occasion a therapist which they didn't have.
While still slightly panicked, Natalie didn't hesitate to correct her, "Natalie."
"Natalie." The nurse was about to speak again when Natalie's voice cut through, speaking first.
"What's wrong with me?" Natalie's voice was soft and delicate, much like a whisper.