She waited.

Patiently, at first. Or as patiently as was possible, given she was not a patient person to begin with and given she had the words, "complicated rib fracture with internal injuries" ringing through her head.

Surgery. Possible internal injuries. But he'd been conscious, at least before they put him under for the exploratory.

Conscious. Responsive. She clung to those words as if they were the only thing keeping him alive.

Time crept by so slowly, prolonging the agony. When her cell rang, she plucked it from Trucker's hand just to have something to do.

"Jude, Joyce just called me," Tish accused. "What the hell is going on?"

Jude took a deep breath so as not to come out swinging at Tish's irritated, impatient tone. "Didn't she tell you?"

"She left me a voicemail telling me to call you," Tish replied shortly.

Jude couldn't really blame Tish for her attitude. She and Tish didn't always see eye to eye on Mikey, and Tish resented having to put up with her opinions, given that she was his mother and Jude wasn't. Joint custody wasn't all it was cracked up to be, but Priestly and Tish agreed it was the only way to go. And so far, no matter what was going on in the realm of the grownups, neither of them ever made any threats about suing for sole custody. Jude and Priestly didn't always agree with Tish about Mikey, but they all agreed on one thing: Mikey deserved harmony and a united front. Sometimes getting to that united front was like getting the House and Senate to pass the same legislation, but somehow they managed.

Even so, Jude couldn't manage Tish's exasperation. She wordlessly handed the phone to Trucker, who glanced at the display before wiping one hand over his face and up into his hair.

"Hi, Angel," he said calmly as ever, though Jude saw his eye twitch again. She almost laughed realizing that even Trucker felt some dread over talking to Tish. But instead, she was just grateful as she actually heard Tish's voice blast through the phone.

"Trucker," she said loudly, "what's going on?!"

Jude wished she could tune out. She thought about getting up, pacing the room again. But that would just make their small crowd even jumpier. Jen and Jeff were the first to arrive, their faces grim and unsmiling. They were just in time to meet the Leons as they left for their hourly ten minute vigil at Missy's bedside, which was all the stern faced pediatric nurse would allow. They all agreed it was ludicrous, but it was a rule designed specifically for the ward. As it turned out, there was a whole secret department in the hospital just for celebrities and other high profile patients. Not just limited to a private waiting room, they had a wing of ten private rooms designated for all levels of care. They had their own OR, their own diagnostics center, and their own staffing. It was like a hospital within a hospital. And, the head nurse explained to them, for it to work, they had to stick to a specific protocol. Jude thought the protocol was bullshit and said so. The nurse just gave her a death stare and replied in clipped tones,

"The First Lady herself would be subjected to the same rules."

Somehow, Jude doubted that. But she bet the line worked on most of the people the nurse tried it out on.

At any rate, Jude had to suffer through the entire conversation with Tish as if she'd never left the line. Trucker gave her the shortest version he could. To her credit, Tish was properly chastised by the news. She barked at Rick to pack up, they had to go back to Santa Cruz right now. There was a brief silence and then Tish's impatient voice again. No, not tomorrow morning. Now.

In another few minutes Trucker had given Tish Jude's mother's number so that Tish could drop Mikey there instead of bringing him into the waiting room of the hospital, where he would likely be bored half out of his mind. The phone was silent in Trucker's hand again.

The clock ticked steadily forward.

*%*

When eight p.m. hit, still with no word from the surgeon on call, Jude was forced to dwell on minutiae to keep from losing it in front of everyone. Her memory had always been sort of photographic about certain things, but generally it was only so when her emotions ran wild. And so Jude ran down her interminable wait again and again, on an endless loop, twirling the end of her hair between her right thumb and forefinger.

3:33 p.m. Trader Joe's clerk hands her the receipt. The only reason she knows this is because of Priestly's thing with 11:11. Now, thanks to him, she's always noticing 3's, such as 3:33 p.m. So that's how she knows it was around 3:30 when they wandered out to the car in the perfect spring afternoon.

3:42 p.m. She called 9-1-1, staring in horror at the display on the phone while chanting AR9, AR9 to herself lest she forget the partial plate number.

3:43 p.m., 3:44 p.m., 3:45 p.m…. She felt the passing of each minute until the police arrived in the parking lot like the dragging of nails down a chalkboard. When they finally arrived at 3:49 p.m. she was about to hyperventilate.

Time passed in a blur after that, at least until she'd called Trucker at 4:46 p.m., according to the display on the nurse's desk phone. And then it crawled again as she stared out into the ER lot, willing the Causemobile to roll past. And when it finally had, she missed it because she was back at the intake clerk's desk pleading with her and then demanding information.

5:25 p.m. was what the time read on the Breaking News ticker on the bottom of the ER television screens.

5:28 p.m. Leo called, and Trucker broke the bad news.

6:18 p.m. was when the Leons burst into the ER in search of Missy.

6:34 p.m. Leo called back to give Trucker their return flight information and Trucker told them the only thing they'd heard was that Priestly was conscious and responsive, but it was a stale update.

7:12 p.m. was when they finally got word from the charge nurse that Priestly was in exploratory surgery, though by then he'd been there a while already. Trucker immediately called Leo to report the latest, though that eyelid of his twitched. Jude knew he hated giving such news over the phone, hated scaring them half out of their wits when they were so far away. Leo confided Joyce was frantic over the fact that they wouldn't land back in San Jose until 5:45 a.m. It was still two hours until their return flight, so Trucker promised he'd call if they heard anything more before then.

7:14 p.m., Jen and Jeff arrived, looking solemn and strained. In turn they each hugged Jude and offered what little comfort they could in the form of Starbucks and company. Ironically, though it should have made her crazier each time, in the retelling of the tale, she found some acceptance.

At 7:28 p.m., Tish called with her bitchy, 'why are you bothering me?' tone.

At 7:31 p.m., while Trucker was talking to Tish, the Leons returned from their hourly visit and got better acquainted with everyone, all of them chattering about nothing in hushed tones, anything to distract Priestly's camp. As it turned out, David Leon, Missy's husband, worked in another division of the same company Jeff worked for. They shook their heads and marveled about the "small world" and agreed they wished they'd met under different circumstances.

By 8:15 p.m., Jude was nearly climbing the walls. Trucker eased the Starbucks cup out of her hand, shooting Jen a look that made Jen wince apologetically and suggested they take a walk. "They'll come get us if anything happens," Trucker said, gesturing to the tense room around them. Jen, Jeff, Lisa and David all nodded their agreement.

She walked in a circle with him, silently, still twisting at her hair, which she hadn't done since she was about ten. Next, she'd be sucking on it, a habit which her mother had stubbornly and determinedly managed to break over three long years of Jude's childhood. And, really, it was less her mother's doing and more the self-consciousness that came along with the sudden appearance of boobs that made her stop. As she plodded alongside Trucker, one persistent ugly thought kept pounding at the back of her mind. What am I going to tell the kids if their daddy dies?

The thought made her shiver each time it slinked in past her defenses, which it had done many times in the many hours that stretched endlessly in either direction. The hours that led up to now, and the imagined hours that lay in wait.

Mikey might not be Priestly's biologically, but he was Priestly's son nonetheless. He was a crazy little monkey, always climbing and jumping fearlessly. And like any kid, he soaked up everything around him like a sponge. And the result of that soaking was he clearly wanted to be just like his daddy. He always wanted to help, even if it put him underfoot and in harm's way. When they'd expanded the garage apartment, they'd had to pack him off with Tish for several days to keep him from trying to help. If he happened upon a coin, he'd put it in the hand of the nearest person that seemed needy. He was still too young to really understand panhandling and homelessness, so he'd given coins to the nice old lady in front of them at the supermarket when she'd seemed to be fumbling for change. In reality, she was just having trouble with the zippered pouch of her wallet, but she'd smiled down at him like he had offered her a million dollars and crooned,

"Well, aren't you just the sweetest thing?"

Jude fought a proud smile over that occasion, but she'd sometimes fought off embarrassment, as well. Not everyone took kindly to the handouts Mikey tried to offer. But Priestly would just chuckle when she'd shake her head over such moments. "Would you rather he get in trouble for giving people money or stealing it from them?" Of course, that was a no brainer, and it made her grin abashedly in response each time.

God, how Priestly loved his Mikey Bear and his Lily Bee, as he'd nicknamed them. When she fretted about their struggles with money, wondering if they'd ever be able to take a family vacation, he just set up a tent in Leo's back yard and took the family "camping". Right down to a campfire (in one of those big, bowl-type fire pits), hot dogs, and s'mores. And it was perfect. Despite their obligations at the grill, he always found a way to make it to the important events like parent/teacher night and most of Mikey's pee wee soccer games. Before Mikey had started kindergarten last fall, he and Tish had argued for months about where he should go to school…closer to Tish and Rick's place, or closer to the grill. Priestly won the argument after explaining to Tish that someone had to be available to pick him up after school. If that person was going to be him, he had to be able to zip out of the grill and back again. Of course, there was no elementary school that could be considered truly convenient, but Tish finally agreed to let Mikey attend Gault because it was the closest one to the BCG.

Priestly always had her and the kids in mind, and they were the foundation for his decisions, his plans, his dreams. Now, wandering down the harsh and unforgiving fluorescence of the hallways, Jude acutely felt she was getting a preview of the gaping hole that would be her life without him. Even if his absence was only temporary, she realized she'd fallen into the trap of taking everything for granted. Their day to day life had had her on autopilot. Not entirely unpleasant, mind you, but just sort of putting out fires with a few laughs and quick touches in between.

But now she felt…really felt…his impact on her life. The way he got up with the kids so she could catch a wave or two in the mornings before running whatever surfing lessons she could squeeze in before helping out at the grill. How he kept the Beetle running for her, and how each afternoon he'd give her a serious, full on kiss rather than just an absent peck on his way out of the grill to get Mikey from school, usually with an apologetic wince over the size of the waiting crowd. How he would hurry back to the grill, Mikey in tow, always worrying about her and the crew in the afternoon rush. And somehow he'd manage to keep Mikey entertained until either Joyce or Tish picked him up, all while bussing tables or prepping food or running the register or any one of a million things that cried out for his attention. And all the while still being Priestly…cracking jokes with the regulars, ranting about some hotbed issue or another, or posing questions that got everyone riled up and thinking and talking about things most people preferred to avoid. Gay marriage. Gun control. Church versus state. Prayer in schools. He was still the only person she knew who could push a customer to storm out of the grill in a huff but still come back for more the next day.

Finally, Trucker gently steered her back toward the waiting room, not realizing that her silence didn't mean she was feeling any better. Jen caught her eye and shook her head. No news. The Leons were gone again, but it wasn't because an hour had passed while she wandered the closed ward in circles with Trucker. Jen said they went to the cafeteria for something to eat.

She was just rubbing her fingers against her scalp, her head pointed toward the floor, when she heard the door creak open.

"Jude Priestly?"

Her head snapped up at once. A surgeon stood in the doorway. She couldn't help thinking he carried a look of weary defeat.

Her breath stopped.