WHEW. Finally got this finished! I had - not writers block, because I've known how this story is going to go from beginning to the very end since the very first word was typed - but a certain amount of trouble getting things exactly how I wanted them to go.
THANK YOU to all of you who have left reviews and messaged me and asked if I either survived the tornadoes I mentioned last update or was still writing. I'm sorry if I haven't gotten back to you yet - real life jobs are quite busy right now. :)
This update is inspired by Canaan Smith's "We Got Us." This song just got released nationally and I encourage you to go listen. I've been jamming out to it for a few weeks now.
THINGS I OWN: Some really great concert tickets for a show in May that I'm counting down for. THINGS I DON'T OWN: Hart of Dixie.
Zoe stood in the window of Lavon's living room, looking out over the plantation's lawn. It was covered in white, soft snow still falling. The oak trees lining the drive looked like something out a fairy tale. It was, literally, sparkling. She'd seen a lot of snow over the course of her life, but she'd never seen anything like this. She heard Wade and Lavon come in through the back mud room, stomping their boots and laughing about something.
"You still looking out that window?" Lavon asked as they trooped into the kitchen, both dressed for the cold weather, their heavy boots and coats shed in the mud room. "Thought you grew up in the snow yet there you are looking at it like you ain't never seen it before."
"Not like there's anything else to do," Zoe said, turning away from the window. "I boiled some water for hot chocolate. It should still be hot if you two want some."
"Look at you, boilin' water," Wade said. "Learnin' to drive, survivin' your first trip to the grocery store before a snow storm… You better be careful, girl. People might start mistakin' you for a Bluebellian."
"Ha ha," Zoe said. She leaned on the counter watching as the two fixed themselves mugs of hot chocolate in a weird sort of assembly line only years of friendship could come up with. "Where did you two go anyway? And why'd you come back? I was kind of enjoying the peace and quiet without that stupid video game blasting in the background. "
"Watch how you talk about Modern Warfare," Lavon warned.
"We went for a drive around town, checked things out. Looks like everyone minded the officials and kept themselves inside. Didn't seen nothin' but a few kids playin' in that little park out on the other edge of town," Wade answered.
"We might have joined them in throwing a few snowballs," Lavon added.
"Throwin' 'em at them more like," Wade said. "Won't a very mayoral thing to do if you ask me. Just like hidin' and blamin' me won't. Ain't re-election comin' up at the end of the year?"
"Shut up," Lavon said. Everyone in the room knew Lavon's job as Mayor was his as long as he wanted it. "I reckon I done had enough of you for a while. I'm going to retire to my study and – read a book or something." He turned to leave, trying for an air of dignity.
"He ain't gonna go read a book. He's just gonna call Didi," Wade told Zoe.
"And you're just going to sit down here and kiss her," Lavon said, jerking his thumb in Zoe's directions as he walked away. Wade just shrugged. That was pretty much his plan so there was no use in denying it. Lavon's laugh disappeared with the click of his study door.
"You two act like teenagers most of the time, you realize that, right?" Zoe asked.
"It's a tough job, bein' an adult all the time," Wade answered. Zoe couldn't argue with that. She gravitated back towards the window as Wade rummaged in the fridge for something to hold him over until it was an acceptable time for dinner. The snow was starting to taper off, but the temperatures were supposed to hover at or below freezing for the next couple of days, keeping the white stuff around. She was thankful Brick was the one on call so she could stay inside where it was warm. She figured it was only fair, seeing as she'd somehow ended up on call over Thanksgiving, the night of the BCS Championship, and, if she'd read the calendar correctly, Super Bowl Sunday, conveniently any day there was a big football game.
"You really can't stay away from that window, can you?" Wade asked, coming up behind her. He slipped an arm around her from behind and pulled her against him.
"It's so beautiful out," she told him. "I've never seen snow like this before."
"You mean it's not cold and white in New York?"
"Cold, yeah, white, not so much," she told him. "It's all gray and slushy. The city makes it that way, all the smog and car fumes. It's always been more of a nuisance than anything, unless you catch it when it's freshly fallen. I've never had a snow day, a day to just stay in and enjoy it. It's like I can't turn away."
"Now you know how I feel every time I look at you," Wade muttered in her ear. Zoe felt her heart flutter. She hoped she never got used to that, Wade surprising her with sweet words one wouldn't think he was capable of at first glance. She also hoped he never stopped surprising her. She turned to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Wordlessly, she pulled him in for a deep kiss. She moved to let him go but he moved with her. Before she knew it, she was pressed up against the window, forgetting that Lavon could walk in on them at any moment.
"Whoa," she said when they finally broke apart.
"Yeah," Wade echoed. He couldn't quite hide his smirk. Zoe ran her hand down his chest. She could just feel his tight muscles through the two shirts he was wearing.
"Let's go to my place," she said.
"Why Dr. Hart, what might you be suggestin'?" Wade asked. His hands crept lower on her hips.
"We could just… Watch a movie or something."
"On what? Your laptop?" While he had a big screen TV and satellite, Zoe didn't have so much as a black and white emergency TV.
"We could go to your place then," Zoe replied. Her hand again trailed down his chest again. Wade caught it and brought it to his lips.
"Bundle up," he told her. "We're goin' outside." Zoe thought to question him but then decided it wasn't worth it. He'd either persuade her to go along with whatever he was up to in the end or he'd just bundle her up himself, toss her over his shoulder, and she'd find herself involved in yet another obscure Bluebell tradition. Several minutes later, they were both in heavy coats, boots and gloves. Zoe had pulled a hat on too.
"Now what?" she asked as she followed him out the door. He shrugged.
"I don't know," he admitted. "Just figured it didn't make much sense for you to sit and stare out the window at the snow when we could go out in it."
"So you got me to bundle up for no real reason?" Zoe asked. Wade shrugged.
"I reckon so," he admitted. Zoe put her hand in his.
"Let's take a walk," she said. "You lead the way."
"Follow me then," he told her. He led her towards the plantation's main drive, no real destination in mind. The snow had all but stopped, a few stray flakes falling from the still thick clouds. It was cold, but they were bundled up enough where it wasn't unbearable. "What'd you do in New York when it snowed?"
"Go to work or school," Zoe answered. "I never really had a snow day, remember?"
"You mean you never had a day where it snowed so much they cancelled school when you were growin up?"
"Well a few times," Zoe amended. "Usually when there was a big blizzard or something like that. But I grew up in Manhattan. I didn't go sledding or build snowmen. The thing with snow in New York is that falls, looks pretty for just a few minutes, and then it starts melting, between the city warmth and the sheer number of people walking around. It gets all gray and disgusting. Whenever I had a snow day growing up, I used it as my excuse to either stay home and read medical journals or, on a good day, I got to go with my – fake dad – to the hospital and hang out."
"You know, you can call him your father," Wade said. "You spent nearly thirty years of your life thinkin' the guy was your dad."
"I know," Zoe admitted. "I just feel – guilty, I guess, calling him 'dad' when I know Harley was actually my father. And then I feel bad because I don't know Harley. I know he was my dad, I know he was a doctor, and thanks to you, I know how he took his coffee. But I don't know him. If I would have just taken the job when he offered it to me the first time, I might have had a chance to know him."
"I think you ended up here right when you were supposed to," Wade said. Zoe smiled up at him.
"You might be right," she agreed. She had been thinking on this topic a lot lately. Had she taken Harley up on his offer and moved to Bluebell right after her med school graduation, she would have never been able to deal with the adjustment. She'd matured over her years as a surgical resident and needed to be brought down a few pegs by losing the fellowship before she could truly appreciate what Bluebell was offering her – both professionally and personally.
"Might be right… That's somethin' I probably won't hear from you very often." Zoe laughed, realizing she was walking so close to him their arms were brushing, even as she held his hand. She didn't move away.
"I still think I'd like to get to know Harley's side of my family," she told Wade. "At least know who they are. Maybe I have an aunt or an uncle or cousins. I know you said he had a sister that died, but maybe she had kids? Or maybe he has a brother or another sister? I just don't know where to start."
"I reckon goin' through Harley's stuff might be as good of place as any," Wade said. "I think he was a bit of a history buff. Hard to tell what might be sittin' up there above the practice collectin' dust." Zoe considered what he was saying.
"I guess it couldn't hurt to look. It seems kind of disrespectful though, just throwing open a door and going through his things."
"But makin' yourself at home in his office before you even had a place to sleep when you first got here was okay?" Wade asked.
"Point taken," Zoe conceded. "I guess I'll start figuring out who I am and I'll by going through Harley's stuff." She looked at Wade. "Do you know your roots? Where you came from, who you are, all that stuff?"
"My family's lived in Bluebell forever," he told her. "Mama's side, anyway. Dad's people moved down from somewhere up around Little Rock 'bout three generations ago. Mama's family were some of the first settlers right after the country declared Independence and then they moved west when too many people settled 'round 'em. Made their livin' fishin' and farmin' like a lot of the folks 'round here."
"Huh," Zoe said, thinking. It amazed her, how just about any Southerner she met could trace their family history back to almost the very beginning. She herself could barely remember the name of her great-great grandfather on her mother's side and she still wasn't sure she was right. "Maybe I'm some great-great-great-granddaughter of a Civil War hero or something."
"Maybe you're a legacy to the Belles," Wade said with a smirk, envisioning Lemon's reaction. "You could ride on their float in the Founder's Day parade, attend their tea parties…" Zoe smacked him playfully across the chest.
"Don't joke about that," she said. "Being a legacy to anything Lemon is involved with is too much of a nightmare to even consider." Wade laughed. Zoe glanced over her shoulder.
"Hey, look," she said, dropping Wade's hand. She took several steps towards the side of the road and then stooped down.
"What?" Wade asked, following her.
"This!" Zoe turned and fired a snowball at him, hitting him squarely in the chest.
"Oh, it is so on," he told her, already moving to form his own snowball. Laughing, Zoe took off at a run, more sure footed than Wade in the snow although his aim was still good even while she was in motion. She made it back to his house and managed to slip inside and slam and lock the door behind her before he was on the porch.
"You're gonna try and keep me out of my house?" he asked, amused.
"It was closer than mine and you were catching up," Zoe told him, trying to catch her breath. Wade shrugged.
"Okay, then," he said. "You go right on ahead and make yourself comfortable." And then he disappeared down the porch stairs and out of site. Zoe frowned.
"Hey!" she called, trying to spot him out the windows. "Wade?" She made her way into his small kitchenette and tried to see out of the window above the sink. She knew he was up to something. "Fine then," she announced to no one. She went and sat down on his couch, determined not to help him out by going outside in search of him, sure that was what he wanted her to do. She was working on pulling off her coat when something cold hit her square between the shoulders. She shrieked and whirled around. Wade was standing between her and the kitchen, grinning wide.
"You forgot about the back door," he told her. "All I had to do was wait for you to leave the kitchen."
"Dammit!" Zoe mumbled, shrugging off her coat after checking that Wade was now unarmed. "Well played, Kinsella." Laughing, Wade walked up to her and helped her out of her coat. He had her in his arms before the thick fabric hit the floor.
"Truce?" he asked.
"Maybe," Zoe ventured. She unzipped Wade's heavy coat.
"Maybe?" he repeated. "What's a guy gotta do to earn his way back into your good graces?"
"Surprise me," Zoe told him. She slid his coat off his shoulders and as it joined hers, his lips were on hers. "Truce," she breathed when he finally pulled away.
"That's my girl," he said, almost huskily. "What do you say we hang out here, watch some TV, work on keepin' the cold out?" Zoe agreed and removed her boots while Wade got a fire going in his small fireplace. He moved his space heater from his bedroom to the living room and turned it up before joining Zoe on the couch.
"You can't flip a car that many times and walk away unscathed," Zoe said.
"He's not unscathed. Are you missin' the blood pourin' down his face?" Wade replied, barely taking his eyes off the TV.
"He just walked away from a fiery car crash under his own power. A crash like that, he should at least be hanging on to life by the thinnest of threads, not walking into another gun battle or whatever."
"You're runin' this for me," Wade told her.
"Because the whole premises of racing street cars through a desert in Mexico or wherever they are so they can stop a heroin dealer is so realistic in the first place."
"It was until you started tellin' me all the reasons it won't."
"After four straight movies of the same guy evading the law by helping the law, you start to not buy it," Zoe said.
"Got like two more to watch after this," Wade replied. Zoe rolled her eyes. She had let Wade pick the first movie and that had somehow turned into the entire Fast and the Furious series. She'd make him regret that choice the next time they had a movie night.
"Pass me the peanut butter," she said. Wade leaned forward and passed her the open jar of peanut butter sitting on the coffee table along with a jar of pickles, a mostly empty bag of chips and a sleeve of Oreos. He used a fork to fish another pickle out for himself. It was a makeshift dinner at best, but neither of them kept many groceries on hand and had decided it wasn't worth bundling back up and trudging through the snow to Lavon's now that it had gotten dark and the temperatures had dropped even lower.
"Pickles and peanut butter, the dinner of champions," he commented.
"Beats going out in the cold," Zoe said.
"Although warming each other up has its perks," Wade replied. He finished his pickle and moved so he could stretch out across the sofa, his head in Zoe's lap. Zoe tried to pay attention to Wade's movie, her fingers unconsciously working over his scalp in a sort of massage. She just couldn't get into fast car, guns, drugs and fire the way a guy could.
"That feels amazin,'" he said several minutes later. Zoe looked down to see his eyes were closed, contentment on his face. Zoe leaned down to kiss him. She had never been the overly affectionate type, but with Wade, she found a lot of her inhibitions in previous relationships were a thing of the past. Part of it was that she'd matured as she'd gotten older. But another part of it was that she was just comfortable with Wade, things felt right. "That feels amazin' too," he muttered. He reached up and tangled a hand in her hair, pulling her down so he could kiss her again.
Zoe gently moved Wade's head out of her lap and laid down beside him. He was quick to pull her close, his lips finding hers again. He let his hand creep just under the hem of her shirt, feeling her warm skin on his fingertips. When she didn't protest, he let his hand roam higher. His lips left hers and trailed along her jawbone then down her neck. He heard her sigh in contentment, felt her hands on his chest as she pulled herself still closer. Soon they were a tangled mess of limbs.
Wade heard his name fall from softly from Zoe's lip. He pulled his lips from her collarbone and looked at her, searching for any sign that he'd pushed things too far. She looked timid but still wore the faintest of smiles.
"If I went too far…," he started.
"No," Zoe cut him off. "I… We don't have to… stop."
Even with the movie still playing in the background, silence filled the room as they looked at one another. They both knew they'd reached a turning point in their relationship. They had taken a step closer to this moment each day they were together, their kisses getting more urgent, their hands getting braver. Wade had been doing everything in his power not to mess things up while Zoe had been learning to let him in. The moment had come where those two paths crossed.
"Are you sure?" he asked. He ran his thumb along her jawbone and waited for her answer. She nodded.
"I trust you," she said. He nodded, her words exactly what he needed to hear before he went any further. He kissed her once and then stood. "Where are you…?" He easily scooped her up and carried her into his bedroom, wishing desperately he'd thought to make the bed that morning.
"We're gonna do this right," he told her. Her lips found his as he laid her down on the bed.
The snow was gone as fast as it came with one turn of the temperature hand, sending the freezing temperatures into the mid-50s. Zoe had managed one more snow day, but bright and early Friday morning, she was sitting in her office, the minute hand barely past 7:00. She frowned as she stared at the words and figures in front of her, willing them to magically rearrange themselves into better news. But there they were, in black and white, her worst suspicions about Earl Kinsella confirmed. She sighed deeply and rested her head in her hands.
She'd delivered plenty of bad news over the course of her career. She'd signed up for that aspect of the job the moment she'd been accepted to med school. She'd lost patients on the operating room table as a surgical resident. She'd also saved patients, been able to tell families that their loved ones would be just fine. The healing and saving were the peaks of the job. The losing and bad news were the valleys. She didn't think the valley had ever been this low, however.
It was ironic, in a sick sort of way, that Harley had likely sat behind the very desk she was seated at now, mulling over Mary Ellen Kinsella's file and wondering how he was going to give her such a grim prognosis when she had so much living left to do. She knew her opinion on how much of a life Earl had before him would be very different than his own. She saw a man with a son and a daughter and two grandchildren. Earl, however, would see his chance to reunite with the love of his life, everyone else be damned.
Her thoughts drifted to Wade as she waited to see if Earl would turn up for his test results like he'd promised. She couldn't stop the faint smile that crossed her lips as she thought back over the last two days with him. Other than the occasional visit to Lavon's for food, they had spent most of the 48 hours together, at first just being and then getting to know one another on a more intimate level. She could easily put the two days high on her list of best days ever, a list that, she realized, was quickly being flooded with Bluebell moments, with and without Wade in them.
She hated that this was going to hurt him. Earl had been adamant that he didn't want anyone to know about his health issues. As his doctor, she couldn't expose him. Despite their rocky relationship, Wade would never want Earl to suffer alone and he certainly wouldn't want to be kept in the dark about his father's illness. Though she didn't know Meredith well, she didn't think she'd be okay with the situation either.
"Hello?" came Earl's voice. Zoe closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and went out to greet Earl.
"You came," she said. She thought his skin looked more jaundiced than it had just a few days earlier. She could smell the faintest stench of whiskey on him although he seemed sober.
"You told me to," he said. "You got my tests back?"
"I do," Zoe confirmed. "Come on back."
"You and my boy get through the storm okay?" Earl asked as he followed her into the exam room.
"We did. It was nice to see some snow."
"I reckon you done seen a lot of it up North." Earl heaved himself onto the exam table.
"A fair amount. Can't say I've ever seen a mob scene at the grocery story, however." Earl chuckled.
"That's just Southerners," he said. Zoe fiddled with his chart, flipping through papers she wasn't reading to buy herself some time to delivering the bad news. "So you'll be stayin' around these parts, I reckon." Zoe looked up from the chart. "I know you only 'sposed to be here a year but you gonna stick around."
"I haven't thought much about it," Zoe told him, avoiding looking at him. "I have months before I have to make that decision." About five, give or take a few weeks. She had thought about it more lately than she would admit, even to herself, and each time, she had shoved it out of her mind, promising to come back to it later – when she absolutely had to.
"I'm sayin' you gonna stay," Earl clarified as he removed his jacket. "Whether you know it yet or not." Zoe didn't respond as she focused on turning off the voice reminding her she would have a big decision to make sooner rather than later. "So, what's wrong with me, Doc? That cirrhosis thing you mentioned?" Zoe flipped back to the papers with Earl's test results.
"Well, in a word, yes," she said, easing into the worst of the news. "Earl, how long were you experiencing symptoms before you came to see me?" Earl shrugged.
"Right good while," he said. "Figured I was just real hungover 'till I figured out I won't." Zoe sighed. One of the most frustrating things to her as a doctor was seeing patients whose lifestyles were the root cause of their medical problems. Whether it was a diet of Big Macs and super-sized fries or an addiction to alcohol, they could have prevented or at least slowed down their deteriorating health by eating a few more vegetables or putting down the bottle.
"Before I delve into this, please keep in mind that I want – and still encourage – you to have more tests to confirm my diagnosis. Blood tests and what I saw on the ultrasound last week are good, but I'd like you to go to Mobile, have a CT, maybe an MRI, a few other tests to confirm…"
"I done told you, Doc, I ain't goin' to Mobile to see no doctor," Earl said, going on the defensive. Zoe sighed, knowing there was no use in arguing with him.
"Fine," she relented. "As long as you understand that the tests I'm able to do here only scrapes the surface of what could be done to help you."
"Yeah, I know," Earl said. "Quit stallin' and tell me what's wrong with me."
""Well, you do have cirrhosis of the liver," she confirmed. Earl nodded, obviously expecting the news. "But Earl, having been left untreated for so long, you've developed some rather severe complications. Your tests results show that you have Type 2 diabetes. That's not terribly uncommon in people with cirrhosis. The cirrhosis causes insulin resistance which, in most basic terms, interferes with the body's ability to break down and process sugar." Earl nodded again.
"My daddy had that," he told her.
"We can control it with daily insulin injections and a proper diet," she continued. "Depending on how things go, we may even be able to treat it without insulin injections."
"We'll talk 'bout them shots," Earl said, making it clear he was going to resist insulin injections. Zoe had no doubts as to where Wade got his stubbornness from. "What else is wrong with me?" Zoe fought the urge to look down at the chart in her hands as she delivered the worst of the news. She was supposed to be learning bedside manner and detaching herself in this moment wasn't what the people of Bluebell expected. And it certainly wasn't the way to deal with her boyfriend's father.
"There's no easy way to say this…," she started.
"Just spit it out, Doc. I can promise you this ain't gonna be the worst news I ever heard." They both knew the worst news Earl had ever received was that his wife, the love of his life, was going to die.
"Earl, you have Hepatocellular Carcinoma. It's a form of liver cancer caused by the cirrhosis. Without running further tests, I can only guess, but your levels indicate that you're pretty advanced. It's important that we start treatment right away." Earl shook his head no violently.
"I done seen what them cancer treatments do. I ain't gonna have them."
"You'll die without them," Zoe told him bluntly.
"I'll die anyway," he countered. "Ain't no use in getting' treatments that ain't gonna do nothin' but suck the life at me. I reckon I'm supposed to quit drinkin' too?"
"Immediately," Zoe confirmed. "And don't think I didn't see you head off to the liquor store when you left here the other day – right after I told you to quit drinking."
"It was closed anyway," he countered. "And I'm sorry, but I just ain't gonna quit drinkin.'"
"Why?" Zoe demanded, abandoning any hope of being a rational, practical doctor. "Why won't you put the bottle down and start taking care of yourself?"
"I done tried. Your daddy got me to try time and time again. I ain't strong enough."
"You are. Deep down, you are. It's not easy to quit something you're addicted to, but you can if you just make the decision that you're going to give it up."
"My strength left me when my wife died, Dr. Hart. Ain't had nothin' to live for since."
"What about your son?" Zoe asked. "Or your daughter? Or your beautiful grandchildren? Are they not worth living for? Because Earl, I have to tell you, your son is pretty damn incredible. I've only met your daughter a couple of times and briefly at that, but she's not someone to be ashamed of either. Your grandkids are beautiful and so full of life. So how can you sit there and tell me you have nothing to live for?"
Silence fell over the room, both of them shocked by her outburst. Maybe it was her own family history, her problems with her mother, her residual feelings of abandonment by the man she'd grown up believing to be her father, her lack of knowledge about her dead real father. Or maybe it was her relationship with Wade, knowing how much of his life, of his story, his father had affected whether Earl knew it or not. Whatever it was, Zoe didn't regret a word she'd just said and she certainly had no intentions of apologizing.
"I know they call me 'Crazy Earl,'" Earl started, breaking the silence. "I reckon I am, crazy I mean. That's what love does to you, make you crazy. Strong people – like yourself – can handle it. They might get their heart broke, shattered, even, but after you wallow around in self-pity for a while, you pull yourself up by your boot straps and get on with it. Your bootstraps might be old and worn out, but you still do it 'cause you're strong and you can.
"But then there's people like me, who somehow got lucky enough to have the prettiest girl in school fall for 'em. I don't know why Mary Ellen picked me but she did. I never got the chance to ask her. We got married and got to havin' babies and runnin' the farm and the restaurant and just got busy. Then she got sick and next thing I know, she died. Died and left me with two teenagers and a broken heart.
"I know I won't the best daddy. I didn't know how to deal with my own grief, certainly couldn't help my kids with theirs. Meredith, so much like her momma. And Wade, he's like me, stubborn and proud. But he's got his momma's eyes and if he lets you get close enough to him, he's got her heart too. I ain't sure how they turned out so good, but I'm damn proud of 'em both, even if I ain't done much to show it.
"Mary Ellen won't just the love of my life. She was my life. She was the one who kept our family together. I was just the fool lucky enough to have her. She broke my heart when she died and I ain't never been able to put it back together. Do you know how hard it is, to have a broken heart for so many long, lonely years?
"I'm tired, Doc. My kids, they'll be fine without me. Meredith has her own life and Wade, he's workin' on his - he's got you. Me? I ain't had much of a life since Mary Ellen died. And I know it's selfish of me, bein' so wrapped up in myself. But I guess that's just gonna have to make me a selfish man."
Zoe just stared at Earl, taking in his words and slowly starting to understand the complexity of what was going on in his mind, why his diagnosis was almost welcomed. She couldn't respond, even if he'd asked her to. She just knew, instinctively, perhaps, that he didn't expect her to. So instead, she nodded once and flipped the page in his chart.
"If you're – declining treatment …"
"I am," Earl interrupted.
"Ultimately, that's your decision. I can give you all the options and recommendations in the world but if you choose not to do anything, then there's nothing I can do to change your mind. I can, at least, make you comfortable." She watched Earl glance at the old watch on his wrist and knew he was getting anxious as the minute hand crept closer to the top of the hour when Brick would waltz in.
"You gonna tell me to not drink, but we've already established how I feel 'bout that. What else you got for me?"
Zoe spent the next 15 minutes quickly going over his options, still offering chemo, radiation and surgery even though she knew he would refuse it. They – Earl – settled on a few prescriptions to ease his symptoms, content to let his diagnosis kill him slowly.
"You know it's only going to get worse, right? There's going to be pain, days when you can't so much as get out of bed. And that'll be just the tip of the ice burg. You're going to get weak, fade away slowly. You can take all of these meds exactly to the letter, but sooner rather than later, it's not going to matter much."
"I know," Earl said simply. Zoe shook her head, almost in wonder. She'd never seen someone accept their fate so easily, welcome it, even.
"And Earl, please, tell Wade and Meredith. They deserve to know you're sick. They deserve to get the chance to be there – and to ultimately say goodbye."
"I'll think about it," Earl said. He shrugged his jacket back on. "We done?" Zoe nodded.
"We're done," she confirmed. "Come back and see me next week though, just to follow up." She remained in the exam room under the pretense of cleaning up. She listened to Earl's footsteps falling across the old hardwood floor and then heard the front door open only to close moments later. When she was certain she was alone in the practice, she took a seat in the chair in the corner of the exam room where she let just a few tears roll down her cheeks. Who the tears were for – Earl, Wade, Meredith, herself – she didn't know.
Wade whistled as he took the steps to Zoe's carriage house two at a time, nearly losing his footing when he hit a patch of melted snow frozen over once more as the night's temperatures dropped below freezing again. He was in a good mood even though he'd been at the Rammer Jammer for fourteen hours, catching up from the two days he'd let himself stay home with Zoe. He grinned, thinking those two days were definitely worth it.
"Zoe!" he called as he let himself in.
"In here!" Zoe replied even though it wasn't necessary. She was easy to find, seated in the middle of her sofa in the small house. She had her laptop out, a pen and paper by her side. The space heater was pointed directly at her, blowing on high now that the day's warmer temperatures had been replaced by the night's lows. A half a glass of wine sat on her coffee table.
"Hey," he said, leaning down to kiss her.
"Hey," she replied, kissing him back. "Guess what I'm doing?"
"Tryin' to figure out how to take over the world from Bluebell?" Wade asked. "Or at the very least, how to save it from invader zombies?" Zoe rolled her eyes, wondering not for the first time where Wade's preoccupation with zombies came from.
"I'm researching my family tree. The Bluebell side of it, to be exact."
"Yeah?" Wade sat down beside her. "What'd you find out.
"That Harley Wilkes lived in Bluebell," she answered wryly. "I haven't gotten very far." Wade laughed and stood up. He started working on getting a fire started.
"I still say you should check out the upstairs of the practice," he said. "Harley's stuff ain't doin' nothing but collectin' dust."
"I know," Zoe admitted. "I went up there today, actually. But I didn't have my key with me. I think I'll go in tomorrow and start going through it while Brick's not there."
"I can help if you want." Zoe shook her head.
"Not tomorrow," she said. "I kind of want the first time I go up there to be just me."
"Makes sense," Wade said. "You just tell me if you want my help." The fire caught and he returned to Zoe's side, his intentions less than pure. "I done missed you today," he said as he put an arm around her and pulled her close to him. Zoe closed her laptop and put it aside. "Havin' spent the last two days in your company, usually sans clothes." Zoe rested on his chest and sighed. He could hear something off in the breath that escaped her. "You okay?"
"Long day at the office," she said. "Really, really long day." Wade could tell she was in no mood for what he had in mind so he abandoned the thoughts he had and got comfortable on the couch. They spent most of the evening in silence, him holding Zoe and letting her work through whatever happened at the office, Zoe wishing they could just stay right there for the rest of their lives and not have to face anything the word just outside her front door had waiting for them.
I love Earl's character. I was pleasantly surprised with how they're portraying him on the show. I know how I want him to be in this story, but I was thrilled with how he is on the show as well. Now if only they'd get rid of Judson already...
Thanks for reading and reviewing!