Author's Note: Sorry for the delay in posting. I hope you all enjoy this chapter. I tried to make it as realistic as possible because I can't stand it when its not. Especially when it comes to medical or law procedures. I ALSO hope that it isn't too hard to understand, but please let me know if it is. As always I welcome thoughts and relish in reviews.

Kirsten Cohen's head hurt.

She couldn't count the number of times she'd looked at the tiny bottle of Aspirin she carried in her purse. All she had to do was pop two or three in her mouth, swallow, and her pain would eventually dissipate. Voila! Presto! Just like magic. But, she just couldn't do it.

Every time she raised the pills to her lips her stomach exploded with guilt. It was an irrational feeling, she knew, but there all the same. How could she even entertain the idea of ending the inconsequential throbbing in her skull when she didn't know if Ryan was dead or alive? How was it that the little capsules in her fist could end her pain, but not his?

She felt more inadequate than she ever had before. All she could do was sit with her husband and her son, waiting for the grim faced doctor that would eventually arrive to inform them of the fate of the newest member of their family. No mother likes to wait when the safety of her child is on the line. But wait she must. Wait and try to hide her growing headache that she knew was caused more by the copious amounts of alcohol she'd used to deaden the pain of the nightmare that had become her Thanksgiving than her anxiety over Ryan. The hissing, writhing snake of guilt in her belly exploded into a giant nest of biting serpents and Kirsten wanted nothing more than to rush to the bathroom and regurgitate all her culpability into the waiting mouth of the porcelain express.

She bit down hard on her tongue and remained seated. There may not have been much she could do for Ryan, but she had another son and a husband who were devastated. It was her job to be their pillar of strength. It was her duty to be the one to ask the questions that none of them really wanted an answer to. Besides, she doubted she had enough energy to handle anything else. She'd picked a hell of a time to get drunk. Not that she was drunk now, of course. She had been on the edge of a total drunken blackout when Sandy had answered his phone, but one look at the expression on his face had sobered her up faster than a cold shower, cup of coffee, or the equally effective hair of the dog treatment ever could. It was funny how surges of adrenaline could do that to a person. What wasn't funny was what she was left with when the adrenaline wore off, but she had nobody to blame but herself.

All she'd wanted was to make Ryan's first Thanksgiving in their household something special. It was supposed to be easy. It was supposed to be fun. More than that, it was supposed to be Kirsten's chance to shed her icy exterior and show the kid that she wanted him. That she loved him. That he was family and would remain so for as long as she drew breath. But, when were things ever that easy when it came to Ryan?

From the moment Kirsten had met the troubled boy from Chino she knew that life had taken an uncanny and unfair interest in the young man for no other reason than that he existed. It was in the way his smile rarely met his eyes. It was in the way he sometimes flinched when Sandy moved too quickly or the way he watched them when he thought they weren't looking. As if he found the very idea of a family laughing together and loving one another strange and alien. Sometimes, when they all spent time together, she would glance over and see the most peculiar expression on his face. It was one part wonder, one part joy, and one part sheer terror. Kirsten often wondered what was going through his mind when he looked like that, but she was too afraid to ask him. Too afraid that his answer would only break her heart.

She knew she shouldn't have been surprised when the Thanksgiving she'd been hoping for began to crumble. It seemed strange to her that so much heartache and grief had begun with a simple phone call. Kirsten wished more than anything that she'd denied the charges when she was asked. No, it was more than that. She wished she'd taken the call from Trey, wished she had told him to leave his brother alone or else he would have one pissed off mother bear to deal with. But, she hadn't told him that. Hadn't protected Ryan even though every mothering bone she had in her body was screaming at her to do so. Why? Because Ryan wasn't really hers. Not entirely. She had no right to keep him from the people that had been his family for the first sixteen years of his life. She had no right to make those decisions for him even though she could have done so under California law. If it had been Seth, there would have been no chance he would have been allowed to go, but Ryan wasn't Seth. He wasn't her biological son.

She hated the distinction, hated the metaphysical fault line that would always separate them, but there was nothing she could do to change it. She loved him no less than Seth, but as much as she wanted to act like he'd always been there she had to remind herself that Ryan had a past she knew next to nothing about. A living, breathing family that had shattered everything Ryan was, everything he dreamed he could be. A family that was out of sight, but certainly not out of mind. And no matter how much Kirsten wished she could erase every sour memory from Ryan's mind, every scar from his body, every painful lesson he'd been forced to learn at too young an age, she never could. And that terrified her.

Kirsten had long ago come to terms with the fact that motherhood and terror often came hand in hand. Still, the terror she'd come to feel with Ryan was something entirely new to her. Her fears for Seth were of the common variety. The fear that he would hate her, the fear that something terrible would happen to him, the fear that he was lonely or miserable and couldn't bear to tell her, the fear that all the values she'd taught him were wrong. Her fears for Ryan were anything but common. The fear that she would fail him, that she would hurt him somehow, the fear that she would shatter his already brittle trust, the fear that she would say or do the wrong thing and drive him away. Seth had been her son for sixteen years. She had birthed him, nursed him, bathed him. She was confident that no matter where Seth was in his life or what might go on between them he would always come back to her. But Ryan? With Ryan there were no guarantees. If she said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, it would be easy for him to run away and never come back. She couldn't bear the thought of that and it quickly became clear to her that she was stuck in a vicious cycle. If she didn't show the kid how much he had come to mean to her then she was driving him away, but if she overstepped her boundaries or made a mistake then she could drive him away. Thanksgiving was supposed to be a way out of the cycle, a way for her to show him she cared without overstepping.

But it had all fallen apart when Trey called. Ryan never talked about his brother, but sometimes Seth mentioned him. Or Sandy. He was always brought up casually, but it quickly became clear that Ryan was fiercely loyal to the older Atwood. The kid would instantly become still, like a statue, and his jaw would tighten as if he was trying to control some inner urge to protect the reputation of his brother. He never said a word, but Ryan had an uncanny ability to make his thoughts known with a simple look. It had frustrated Seth on more than occasion that he didn't share Ryan's talent, but both Sandy and Kirsten found it to be a lifeline. His expressions were sometimes the only insight they got to his inner thoughts. He wasn't a talker, which worked out perfectly for Seth who could talk for hours, but his silence was frustrating at the best of times. Sandy seemed to be better at getting Ryan to open up, but he'd always had a natural talent at dealing with even the most hardened people. Sandy was easy that way. Besides, Kirsten often suspected that Ryan saw a bit of himself in the older man. After all, that had been part of Sandy's argument to her in the beginning. It wasn't until they'd opened his medical file that Sandy realized just how different their lives had really been. Sandy may have been from a bad part of town, may have been robbed of someone to look up to, may have made mistakes, but he'd never been beaten down as often as Ryan had. And he'd never been in any physical danger.

The thought of anyone harming Ryan made her blood boil. The kid was so damned sweet and gentle, so caring and kind. Life had given him a thousand and one reasons to be a violent, angry, and vicious young man but he'd never succumbed to such primal urges. In the beginning she had mistook Ryan's aptitude for fighting as a sign of a darker presence lurking just beneath the surface. A presence Sandy either could not see or refused to. It wasn't until she'd found out the reason why he'd punched Luke on the beach and in the diner on the pier that she began to re-evaluate her misgivings. Ryan had been trying to protect Seth and the kid had never said a word in his own defense. He could have explained what had happened on the beach, what had happened at the model home or in the diner, but he'd allowed people to think whatever they wanted to think. Kirsten wondered if Ryan was truly that self-sacrificing or if he believed he wasn't worth the effort or the time it would take to explain his actions. Was he so used to being judged unfairly that he'd grown tired of trying to change people's opinions?

The thought saddened Kirsten and from the moment she'd discovered the truth she had wanted to protect him. The same way he'd protected Seth. The same way he'd protected her that day in juvenile detention when that inmate had made a pass at her.

Except she hadn't protected him. If she had done what she had promised to do Ryan wouldn't be in the situation he was in. He wouldn't be dead or dying. Her husband wouldn't have Ryan's blood on his hands and clothing and her son wouldn't be staring at the floor with the dead-eyed, hollow expression of a man facing pain and death for the first time. If she had done her job Ryan would be eating his second helping of mashed potatoes and playing Playstation with Seth. Perhaps if she had done her duty the vodka and tequila wouldn't have looked so damn good and she wouldn't be nursing the hangover that was currently whittling away at her skull. He would have looked at her with his soulful blue eyes and he would have asked her if she was okay. His voice would have been so quiet, so gentle and sincere. It would have given her the extra layer of armor she needed to face her father and Julie Cooper. It would have—

"Kirsten," Sandy said softly, reaching out a blood stained hand and squeezing her knee gently. "Earth to Kirsten."

"Sorry," Kirsten murmured. "I was lost in my thoughts."

"Yeah," Sandy whispered. "I think there is a lot of that going around. You holding up okay?"

"What do you think, Sandy?" Kirsten said with a sad smile.

Sandy nodded once and removed his hand from her knee. She wished he would leave it there. It felt good and warm against her skin and the weight of his fingers gave her strength. She glanced over to where her son had been sitting, to pull him close to her, but Seth was no longer there.

"Where's Seth?" she asked.

"He needed some fresh air," Sandy told her, rubbing at his eyes. "I think he's going to call Summer and Anna to give them an update on Ryan."

"What update?" Kirsten asked darkly. "We've been here five hours, Sandy, and nobody has told us a damn thing. If we don't get some answers soon I am going to go up the counter and—"

She heard the whoosh of the emergency room doors opening behind her and she turned to watch an older, burly looking gentleman stride purposefully through the doors. There was something about him that gave her pause and she followed his progress through the waiting room. He stopped at the front desk and whispered something to Rachel, the nurse on duty. Rachel glanced at Kirsten before turning back to the burly man. She lifted a thin, manicured finger and pointed to where Kirsten and Sandy sat waiting and the burly man glanced at them, before nodding and making his way in their direction.

"Sandy," Kirsten said. "There is a man coming this way. Maybe he's with the police."

Sandy glanced behind him and stood up to greet the strange man. If circumstances had been different it might have been comical to see the man towering over her husband, but Kirsten was beyond finding anything funny.

"Mr. Cohen? Mrs. Cohen?" the man inquired, trading grips with Sandy. "I'm John Marcovitz. I—well, I was there when they found your son."

"You were?" Sandy said, busy eyebrows rising in surprise. "Nobody said anything about there being someone else with him."

"The girl didn't tell you?" John asked, looking between Sandy and Kirsten.

"You must mean Marissa," Kirsten whispered, standing up to greet the newcomer. "We haven't heard from her since she called to say she was at the gas station."

"I see," John said slowly.

"Mr. Marcovitz," Kirsten said. "I don't mean to be rude, but what are you doing here? How did you even know Ryan was being brought here?"

"I came to see how the kid was doing," John said sheepishly. "I overheard the paramedics talking at the gas station and I just thought…well, its hard too explain, but I feel sort of responsible for him."

"You're not his mother," Kirsten said waspishly. "I'm responsible for him, Mr. Marcovitz. Not you."

"Kirsten," Sandy hissed. "What has gotten into you?"

"It's fine," John said slowly. "I get it, Mr. Cohen. A mother has every right to be cautious when it comes to strange folk taking an interest in their children. I just wanted to let you know that I'm here if you need anything and I wanted to see if the kid made it okay. I tried to keep him conscious, but…" He shrugged listlessly and shook his head.

"Take a seat," Sandy told him. "We don't know much about Ryan's condition at the moment. It was pretty hairy when we first got here, but they got him breathing again. All we know now is that he's in surgery."

John glanced over at Kirsten, obviously waiting for her approval before he sat down. She nodded once, in way of apology, and the giant man sat down with a small sigh. His broad shoulders and wide torso seemed to dwarf the chair and the man had to lean forward on his knees to sit comfortably.

"He seems like one hell of a kid," John told them. "I thought you should know that."

"We do know that," Sandy said softly. "More than he does, I think."

"You said he was conscious when you found him," Kirsten said slowly. "Did he say anything to you? Say anything about what happened?"

"We spoke," John said slowly. "He was pretty lucid considering how much blood he'd lost but—" He glanced up at Kirsten's face and grimaced. "I'm sorry. I forget that being blunt isn't always the most sensitive of approaches. There isn't much room for bullshit in the marines, you see, and I—well, I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Kirsten told him. "I appreciate honesty even if it is hard to hear. What did he say?"

"It was mostly filler stuff on my part," John told them. "I was trying to keep him conscious until the paramedics arrived." He smiled slightly. "He called me a butcher which probably doesn't make much sense to you, but in context it was a fairly amusing joke. Certainly better than anything I could come up with in his situation. We talked about miracles and my wife and you two."

"Us?" Sandy asked.

"Yeah," John said gruffly. "You two mean a lot to him. He wasn't exactly in the mindset to explain his situation, but from what little I pieced together it seems to me like the two of you are doing a good thing here and he recognizes it. Hell, he's terrified of disappointing you."

"What makes you say that?" Kirsten asked, already beginning to feel her heart split down the middle.

"He got pretty upset when his girlfriend mentioned you were worried about him," John explained uncomfortably. "He didn't seem to understand why you were taking a chance on him."

Kirsten opened her mouth to ask more about what Ryan had told him, but she never got the chance. She felt Sandy grip her hand hard and she followed her husband's gaze to the doors leading to the medical bays of the emergency room. A man who seemed entirely too young to be in a medical profession of any kind shut the door and turned to face the room, his face haggard with exhaustion.

"Is Ryan Atwood's family here?" he called. "Ryan Atwoo-"

"Here," Kirsten cried, jumping to her feet. "We're right here, doctor."

The doctor jerked his head in acknowledgment and made his way over to them, sliding between rows of other waiting guests. Sandy leaned in close to her still keeping a watchful eye on the doctor.

"We should get Seth," he told her. "He would want to hear this."

"No," Kirsten whispered, trying to keep her emotions in check. "If it's bad news I would rather him hear it from us. I think he will take it better that way."

The doctor made his way down their aisle and sat down across from them, running a hand through messy brown hair before flicking his steely grey eyes to meet theirs.

"I'm Doctor Woodruff," the young man told them. "Are you Ryan's parents?"

"We're his legal guardians," Sandy corrected him. "We have full custody. It's all in the paperwork if you need to—"

"I've got a copy here," Woodruff interrupted, holding up a blue folder wearily. He opened it up and glanced down at a couple of documents, his eyes moving restlessly until he'd found what he was looking for. "Well, everything seems to be in order."

"How is he?" Kirsten asked quietly.

It was like a switch had been flipped. Woodruff's expression went from bone deep exhaustion to calm and efficient the second the words were out of her mouth. Kirsten felt sure that he was no less weary than before, but that the change was instinctual to him. Calm was what worried parent's expected of the person in charge of keeping their children safe. Efficient is the only thing he could afford to be when lives were on the line.

"He's stable," Woodruff told them, pulling a medical diagram of the human body out from Ryan's folder. "The bullet entered here, low down on his left side." He pointed to where he'd circled the area with his pen. "It pierced the liver, but luckily the damage inflicted there wasn't horribly serious and was fairly simple to fix surgically. We classify liver damage on a Roman numeral scale of one to six, one being the least damage and six being the most. Ryan was a three."

"So," Sandy said, a slow smile spreading across his face. "He's alright? He's going to be fine?"

Kirsten's heart sped up hopefully, but she could tell by the expression on Woodruff's face that Ryan's ordeal was nowhere near over with. She took Sandy's hand and squeezed it tightly.

"Mr. Cohen," Woodruff said gently. "I would like nothing more than to tell you Ryan's life is no longer in jeopardy, but I can't. Even though the trauma done by the bullet to the liver was relatively inconsequential there were complications."

"Complications," Sandy repeated lifelessly. "What kind of complications are we talking about here?"

"The bullet was a hollow point," Woodruff explained. "When a hollow point hits the body it doesn't shatter like most people believe. It expands or mushrooms out." He pulled a small baggy from his back pocket and showed them the tiny piece of metal they had removed from Ryan's body. "In Ryan's case, when the bullet expanded it pierced the Hepatic Portal vein."

"It's a vein for Christ's sake," Sandy said. "We pierce veins all the time, Doc."

"Portal veins aren't normal veins," John said from where he sat quietly in his seat.

"He's right," Woodruff said, glancing over at the large man. "Portal veins supply 75% of the total blood volume needed for proper liver function while the other 25% is supplied by the hepatic artery. Sustaining trauma to the portal vein in the liver is serious and the blood loss associated with such an injury is substantial. He was bleeding both internally and externally, Mr. and Mrs. Cohen. If we had been able to get to him earlier, if we could have gotten control of the hemorrhage from the beginning, the meeting taking place between us would be going very differently."

"What are you saying?" Kirsten asked, tears beginning to streak down her cheeks.

"By the time we even began to treat Ryan he'd lost almost two thirds of his total blood volume," Woodruff told them quietly. "That's about 50%-60%. What happens in cases of severe blood loss is something we call hypovolemic shock. In the simplest terms, Ryan's body began to systematically shut down due to oxygen deprivation. Now, as I said before we were able to stabilize him using a mixture of blood transfusions and Dopamine treatments."

"Dopamine," Sandy said. "What is that?"

"Dopamine is commonly used in inotropic therapy, Mr. Cohen. The goal of inotropic therapy is to get a specific muscle to contract more forcefully and more often. In Ryan's case, the Dopamine should force his heart to pump more often which will increase the blood flow to the rest of his body. Our hope is that we can minimize any tissue damage without causing any further agitation by oxidizing his tissues too quickly. It's a hard line to walk, but so far Ryan seems to be responding well to treatments."

"If he's responding so well why are you acting like he's already dead?" Seth asked loudly from behind them.

"Seth," Kirsten cried, whirling to face her child. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough," Seth said quietly, his eyes never leaving Doctor Woodruff.

"You should come sit down," Sandy told him quietly, trying to take his son by the arm.

"I don't want to sit down," Seth snapped. "What I want is for Doctor Frankenstein here to stop babbling about things that don't matter and tell me how my best and possibly only friend is. What I want is to see Ryan."

"Seth," Kirsten said. "Apologize."

There was no conviction to her words. She was too exhausted, too heart broken for that. Besides, she couldn't blame the kid. She'd wanted to say the exact same thing to the doctor from the moment he'd opened his mouth.

"I'm sorry," Woodruff said suddenly, surprising all four of them. "I'm not—I've never been very good at this. Supposedly it gets easier as you do it more often, but I still struggle."

"Exactly how long have you been doing this?" Sandy asked him.

"This is my second year," Woodruff replied. "When I started out I thought I could save everyone…that I would never have to deliver bad news, but—"

"Is that what you're doing?" Seth asked very quietly. "Delivering bad news?"

Woodruff looked up at the dark haired young man and seemed to appraise him from behind his tortoise shell glasses. Kirsten could see genuine concern in his eyes and her heart softened. Jesus, he was just a kid. He wasn't much older than Seth or Ryan.

"Give it to them straight," John rumbled. "Trying to make a bad situation seem less serious by using big words don't make it any easier to process. Pain is pain, mister. Regardless of how it's delivered."

"I know," Woodruff whispered. The young man sighed then squared his shoulders and met their eyes again, the calm doctor once more. "Like I said before, Ryan's vitals are stable, but it isn't his vitals I'm worried about. When tissue and organs don't get enough oxygen they get damaged. There is a point where you can damage the tissue beyond repair and that is what concerns me with Ryan's situation. His heart stopped three different times that I'm aware of, once at the gas station, once upon his arrival here, and once while he was on my operating table."

"He isn't going to wake up, is he?" Seth asked, stumbling into a chair like a zombie from the movies. "That's what you're trying to tell us. He isn't going to wake up."

"I'm not saying that," Woodruff said quickly. "But…I'm not denying the possibility."

"What?" Sandy rasped, gripping Kirsten's hand so tight it hurt. "What did you say?"

"The brain, like any other organ, needs oxygen to survive," Woodruff said gently. "With the amount of blood Ryan lost there was no way his heart could pump the amount of oxygen needed to keep the brain functioning properly."

"But," Kirsten said, tears staining her cheeks. "You said he was responding well to treatments."

"He is," Woodruff told her. "But the brain is a complicated organ, Mrs. Cohen. There is no real way to measure the kind of damage that has been done until Ryan wakes up…if he wakes up."

"What kind of damage could we be dealing with here?" Kirsten asked, refusing to entertain the possibility of never seeing Ryan's baby blues again.

"It could be anything," Woodruff said. "It could be something as simple as slight memory loss. It could also go in the opposite direction and leave him unable to speak or walk properly. Or there is the possibility that his brain works just as well as it did before. But, like I said, there is no real way of knowing until he wakes up."

"And if he doesn't?" Sandy said hoarsely.

"I think," Woodruff said slowly. "I think that is a question best asked when there are no other roads to travel down, Mr. Cohen. Ryan is fighting with everything he has, but he'll need all of you to make it through this."

Somewhere an intercom buzzed overhead and Woodruff's name was called over the loudspeaker. He grimaced at them apologetically and stood up, placing Ryan's folder beneath his arm.

"I hate to do this to you," he said. "But, duty calls. If you have any questions or concerns ask for Angela. She is the head ICU nurse tonight and she'll help answer them as best as she can."

"I've got one," Seth said from his seat. "Can we see him?"

"You can," Woodruff told him. "But, he is still in the ICU and will remain there for some time. There are strict visitation rules and I'm afraid you'll have to abide by them for Ryan's safety. There is still an hour left in visiting hours so you'll be able to spend a little time with him. He's a minor so he's allowed to have one parent stay the night with him. Talk to Angela and she'll get everything arranged."

The doctor turned to leave, but John stood up quickly and put a large hand on Woodruff's bony shoulder.

"Did the medics tell you about the towel?" he asked.

"What?" Woodruff replied, confused. "What towel?"

"The bathroom towel the kid used to try and stop the bleeding," John replied. "I was a medic in the marines and I know a bad omen when I see one. I wanted to make sure the paramedics told you about it."

"They didn't," Woodruff said, frowning. "Are you sure it was from the bathroom and not one he had on him earlier?"

"It was one of those cloth bathroom towels," John said adamantly. "I know it was, doc. The thing was filthy and covered with who knows what. I know I'm not a doctor, but—"

"I believe you," Woodruff said, obviously troubled. "And I wouldn't sell yourself short. From what the paramedics told me if you hadn't been there Ryan wouldn't have made it to the hospital. I'll look into the towel. The only thing we can really do is start him on a preemptive antibiotic and keep an eye out for any signs of infection."

Kirsten paled and her hands shook. It was too much. All of it was too much. The light was too bright in her eyes, the pain in her skull was reaching a blinding crescendo, her stomach threatened to revolt against her, and all she could do was think about Ryan.

Ryan never opening his eyes again, lost to a dark world full of monsters and demons Kirsten couldn't protect him from. Ryan trying to speak, but unable to do so, silenced forever by fate. Ryan in a wheelchair. Ryan's pale face as he she leaned over him in his coffin, pressing her lips against his cool skin as she said her final goodbye. Ryan leaving her forever.

Kirsten Cohen, ice queen of Newport Beach, bolted to the emergency room garbage can and emptied the contents of her stomach into the black lined receptacle. She could feel her husband's soothing hands on her back, rubbing in gentle circles, but for the first time in her life she didn't want him to be gentle. She didn't want him to love her so damned much it hurt. She wanted him to hate her like she hated herself. She wanted him to yell and scream at her for failing to protect Ryan. She wanted him to curse and rage at her for drinking her night away.

But, Sandy didn't yell or scream or curse or rage. He simply held her like he always had. Kirsten's icy armor cracked and the tears began to fall. Slow at first, but soon her shoulders were hitching with the force of her sobs and her head pounded worse than ever before.

"I'm sorry," she heard herself saying. Over and over again like the crazy woman that she'd seen living on a street corner when she was little. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Kirsten," Sandy soothed. "There was nothing you could have done. None of this is your fault."

"You don't know that," she cried. "You don't know that for sure, Sandy. I should have stopped him from going. I should have insisted on going with him. I should have—"

"Mom," Seth said, suddenly beside her. "Mom, stop."

Her tears immediately ceased as she glanced up at her son. He was so frail looking in his T-shirt and jeans, so pale and vulnerable. Seth hugged her tight and she drew strength from his embrace.

"It was Ryan's choice," Seth told her softly. "Going was his choice and nothing you could have done would have stopped him from doing it. It would be like trying to convince Gollum not to go after the ring, mom."

"What?"

"Mom," Seth said with a sad smile. "You've officially hit 'lives under a rock' status."

"What are you trying to say?" Kirsten huffed, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I'm not hip? Not groovy enough to keep up with the kids these days?"

"Mom," Seth sighed. "Just…just stop. You're embarrassing yourself."

"Yeah, I'm used to that."

Seth smiled slightly, but didn't say anything more. Then again, he didn't have to. His job was done. His mother was back in control. The ice queen once more.

Only…she wasn't really. Not anymore. Ryan had seen to that. Ryan had changed her for the better.

He'd changed all of them for the better.

Kirsten made a silent promise to herself to make sure that Ryan knew how much she cared about him the moment he woke up. And he would wake up. He had to wake up. Kirsten didn't know what she would do if he didn't.

Because a life without Ryan wasn't really a life at all.