Chapter 16:

And We All Find Our Way Back Home

"Come Josephine, my flying machine going up she goes, up she goes…" Taylor's soft voice provided a rather eerie soundtrack for the otherwise silent and solemn setting. It was ten o'clock at night and seven figures, hunched with their disbelief and shock, loomed within the halls of Rosewood Community Hospital, the rest of it deserted. Every so often, an uncanny groan from a patient down the hall or the click of a doorway opening and closing would disturb the lulling silence, but otherwise, the atmosphere was shockingly frigid. It seemed odd, under the circumstances that they had all been in this very position multiple times – a few of them just a couple weeks ago – but Spencer knew why it was so different than the other occasions.

This wasn't an accident. This was on purpose.

"Taylor." Melissa softly hushed her daughter. Spencer peered up at her sister, who sat opposite to her, against the wall with Taylor tucked under her arm. Jason's footsteps echoed across the walls as he paced back and forth. Bree and Emily were leaning against the same wall Spencer was, the one that separated them from Jenna's hospital room.

Spencer's legs groaned out from under her as she stood up and crossed the room, her fingers slipping out of Toby's grasp. He peered up at her as she stepped over in front of Taylor, crouching before her niece, "What are you singing there, Taylor?"

"I don't know what it's called," The four-year-old shook her head, busily combing her fingers through her Barbie doll's bleach-blonde hair, "But they sang it on the boat movie when things got weally qwuiet."

Spencer met Melissa's gaze and they both chuckled. "You mean Titanic?"

Taylor nodded. "Yeah." She looked up at Spencer, "Aunt Thenther?"

"Yes, Jelly Bean?"

"What happened to Miss Jenna?"

Spencer sighed and peered over her shoulder at Toby, who still sat against the opposite wall of the hallway, his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He met her gaze indifferently, taking a deep breath and shaking his head, somewhat exasperated. When she turned back to Taylor, she put her hands on her niece's knees. "Do you remember that woman, Gracie Lovat? The one who died last year?"

Taylor nodded.

"Do you remember how she died?"

Taylor nodded her head vigorously. "Mmm-hmm. Mommy said that Grathie was in a bad place. And she felt like she had no way out. She said she had….what was it, Mommy?"

"Demons, Taylor." Melissa replied softly, pursing her lips.

"Yeah. Grathie had demons." Taylor continued, "So she killed herthelf."

Spencer nodded softly, "Yeah. Well, Miss Jenna had demons, too."

She gasped, "Is Mith Jenna…?" Taylor's brown eyes grew wide and her eyebrows furrowed.

"No, no, honey. Miss Jenna isn't dead." Spencer reassured her. "Miss Jenna tried to hurt herself, though. She had a lot of problems going on in her life and they just…became too much for her."

Taylor's lower lip wobbled. "That's tho thad." She said, in an innocent, honest way that only a four-year-old could pull off.

"Yeah." Spencer said, the side of her mouth pulling up in a bittersweet expression. She reached out and softly stroked Taylor's hair. "I know."

A moment of silence settled over the room once more. The shrill ring of Emily's cell phone was the first to break the quiet. She fished it out of her pocket and answered it, "Hello? Mom? Yeah, yeah. We're at Rosewood Community. I know, I know. Alright, yeah. I'll be there." When she hung up, the rest of the group was peering up at her expectantly.

"My…my mom wants me to come home since I have an early flight tomorrow. She says I have to finish packing." Emily sighed.

Spencer nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, you should get some sleep." She turned back to Melissa, "Would you mind giving Em a ride home? And Bree a ride back to campus?" She asked. In any other situation, Melissa would have refused to drive all the way back to Hollis so late, but under the circumstances, she nodded. "Yeah, yeah sure. I should take Taylor home, too. Wren's working late here tonight. If you see him, tell him to head home as soon as he can." She said, "Come on, Taylor." Melissa got to her feet, pulling Taylor up into her arms so that she rested on her hip. "Call you tomorrow, Spence."

Spencer nodded. "Yeah." She replied monotone.

Toby got to his feet behind her, nodding towards Emily, "I'll pick you up tomorrow morning for the airport."

Emily scratched the back of her head, beneath her ponytail and nodded. "Yeah, thanks. See you then." And then she, Bree, Melissa, and Taylor walked stiffly down the hall towards the lobby, their footsteps echoing off the walls of the hall.

Spencer stepped back to the wall, next to Toby and let her head fall back against the hard glass of the window. The blinds were drawn, not allowing anyone even the slightest glance inside. But Spencer could practically feel Jenna's presence, in a haunting, lingering way that stuck to her skin like dust and invaded her thoughts. She knew that she was somewhere behind that door, confined to a bed, having been brought hurdling back to earth not an hour before.

Finally, Spencer gathered the nerve to confront the enormous elephant in the room, the one that was practically crushing them under its weight.

"What. Happened?" She asked coarsely, her voice barely above a raspy whisper. Although her near-panic attack visa vie the ambulance at her brother's house was over two hours in the past, she still felt the icy chill of its harshness coursing through her veins, spiking her blood, making her body run hot and cold at the same time.

Jason shook his head and let out a heavy sigh. "When Toby showed up…Jenna had already retreated up to her room. She said she had 'something to get done.' I assumed she meant getting some phone calls, or maybe some cleaning finished. Then Toby got there and we started out moving the couch out of the way to make room for Jenna's keyboard, and put together the grandfather clock she bought me for letting her stay. We realized that we were out of bolts to attach it to the wall. So Toby…ran out the hardware store, and I decided to make some soup for myself. When I yelled upstairs to ask if Jenna wanted any…no one answered. So I went up to her room and knocked on the door, but it opened and she wasn't there. So then I figured that she was in the bathroom. She must have…forgotten to lock the door, because when I knocked on that one…it opened, too." Jason closed his eyes tight before opening them once more, "I'd never…seen anything like it. At least not in person. She had…an orange empty bottle of pills, and a finished bottle of whiskey was in her hand. And uhm, the inside of her wrist had been cut several times. I saw that she had a boxing knife beside her, and there was a lot of blood on the tile. I figured that she started chasing the pills with alcohol, and when that didn't work fast enough, she just started…going at her wrist. I checked her pulse on her other hand and couldn't quite hear it, and she wasn't breathing." He shuddered, as if someone had poured ice down the back of his shirt, "I figured that Toby was still at the hardware store, so I called 911 and then the ambulance came to get her. The police showed up first, after I told him that I feared she might be dead. They asked about it being a murder, but I said it looked exactly like a suicide attempt."

"And they brought her here." Spencer nodded. She sighed. She opened her mouth to say more, but a doctor with blonde hair opened the door to Jenna's room and stepped out.

She smiled when she saw the three gathered there, "Hi. You must be the friends and family of Miss Marshall." Spencer resisted the urge to snort in disbelief. "Family" was hardly the word to describe Toby and Jenna's relation, and "friends" was pushing the envelope even more so.

"Uh, yeah." Jason replied, stepping closer to the doctor, "We are."

"I'm Tiffany Hale. I'm her doctor." She held out a hand to shake Jason's, then Toby's, and last, Spencer's.

Spencer gave the woman a quick once over: she was blonde and slender, with large blue eyes that addressed her with a sense of calmness. She looked like she was in her mid-to-late twenties, and she actually pulled off the green-scrubs-under-doctor-coat look pretty well. Bree would have connected her to one of the prettier actresses on Grey's Anatomy, had she been there a minute longer.

"So…how is she?" Jason asked hesitantly.

"Well, she's very, very lucky. In all honesty, it was nothing short of a miracle. When we got her in the ambulance, we tried CPR but it didn't have any effect. While some of our paramedics stopped the bleeding in her wrist, others worked the defibrillator. At one point, her heartrate was completely flatlined. Luckily, on our third try, we were able to get her heart going once more."

"So…she technically died, in the ambulance?" Toby asked, his voice quiet.

"For only a moment." Tiffany assured them, "But yes. She did."

"I'd say she was very lucky." An accented voice that Spencer fully recognized said, and Wren opened the door to Jenna's room and stepped out, behind Tiffany.

Spencer tried not to roll her eyes and wondered once more if there were any other doctors in Rosewood…

"Nice work tonight, Dr. Hale." Wren grinned, gazing down at Tiffany.

Spencer had expected to see the usual reaction Wren got from nurses and female doctors: a flirty, desperate smile, a soft giggle, maybe even a corny twirling of a lock of hair, but Tiffany surprised her when she pinched up her nose slightly and even rolled her eyes a bit, looking stubbornly in the opposite direction.

Wren, not taking the hint as usual, merrily turned to the rest of them, "Hello, Spencer. Toby." Wren nodded to both of them, his signature grin on his lips. "How are you?"

"Don't you think that's kind of a silly question?" Jason asked.

Wren peered up at him, and a look of recognition flickered in his eyes. "Ah, yes, Jason. Nice to see you again." He stretched out his hand to shake and Jason obediently shook it.

Jason nodded and gave a small half-smile. "So, is she awake?"

Tiffany shook her head, "She's not comatose, but she's recovering. Give her a few hours to wake up. And she might be disoriented. Give her some time. If she really felt like death was the only way out, she was in a bad place. Do either of you know of maybe what could have caused this?"

Spencer and Jason looked at each other for a long moment before Spencer cleared her throat. "Well…her boyfriend recently left her, and she had no where else to go. I don't know the whole story, but that's why she moved in with Jason." She nodded over to her brother.

Jason sighed and shook his head. "I never…pegged her for someone who would do something like this."

Tiffany gave a wry, bittersweet smile. "Yeah. It's always unexpected." She sighed.

"I suggest that you three head home – it's getting late and you all probably need to sleep on things. We can talk about Jenna's arrangements in the morning." Wren said.

Spencer nodded. "Yeah, we'll be out of here soon." She reached down to pick up her jacket, which lied in a heap at her feet. The memory was still scorching through her brain, filling her thoughts. Piling into Jason's car. Skidding down the street behind the ambulance. Hastily dialing Toby's number. Gasping out what had happened. All seven of them shoving past the double doors of the hospital. Waiting anxiously in the lobby while Jenna was in the ER.

Spencer didn't know how long they were there for; but it felt like years. No one spoke. No one cried. Everyone was stoic, and no one knew exactly how to feel. As for Spencer, she counted each tick of the clock, as the seconds passed by, remembering every time Jenna had put her through hell. Made her feel eternally guilty for blinding her. Tearing at her already-broken heart by making her believe that she had won Toby over, in the months they spent apart. Getting Spencer and her friends to lie for her when they found out she could actually see. Every single time Jenna had proved herself to be nothing but a nightmare stared at her in the face, but somehow, Spencer didn't feel the hot, itchy blaze of anger she usually got. Spencer guessed that all it took was the thought of losing Jenna to make her see her in a totally different light.

"Oh, and Wren." Spencer said distantly, sliding her arms into her jacket. "Melissa says to head home as soon as you can." She peered up into Wren's eyes, addressing him seriously, "I think she and Taylor really need you tonight." She raised her eyebrows, waiting for his response.

Wren looked somewhat surprised and cleared his throat, his gaze dropping to his shoes, then back up to her face, "Uh, yes. Yes, of course." He cleared his throat once more. "Well, then. Goodnight, Spencer. Doctor Hale." He nodded toward Tiffany, who offered up no response. "Nice seeing you again, Jason. You, too, Toby." Then, he turned on his heel and stalked down the hall, turning a corner and disappearing amongst the subtle beeping of the heart monitors.

Spencer knit her eyebrows and peered over at Tiffany. "So, I'm guessing you aren't a fan of Dr. Wren?"

Tiffany snorted and rolled her eyes. "It's a long, long story." She shrugged. "You probably don't want to hear it."

The side of Spencer's mouth quirked up: a bittersweet smile. "I do. But maybe another time."

Toby squeezed her shoulders softly. "Come on, Spence. Let's go home."

She nodded and reached for Jason's hand, the three of them turning to walk slowly down the hall, taking their time, still trying to make sense of things. The smoke had cleared, and in the end, the only things left were them three, an ex-blind girl on a suicide mission, and the confusing way they were all connected to each other.

"Toby?" Spencer whispered softly in the dark. "Are you asleep?"

She could feel Toby sigh heavily beneath her, "Nope."

She was curled up against his side, her head resting on his chest, trying to fight away the lingering thoughts of the evening. "Did Jason tell you that I thought it was you in that ambulance?" She asked, her voice unsteady. She took a shaking breath to steady herself.

Toby's fingertips began to stroke her hair softly. "No." He said finally.

"Well, I did. And…I think it's been years since I was that scared." Spencer replied. "I didn't…know how to function. Have you ever had that moment? When everything in the world just fades away and in that one tiny second, your whole life comes crumbling down?"

Toby shook his head. "I honestly can't say I have; but I can imagine it." He shifted beneath her, shuffling the sheets as he sat up a bit against the pillows. She peered up at him, watching his expression. His eyes got a faraway look in them, and he stared at the ceiling. "I've considered it, once. A few years back…when Em lost Maya…she called me from Haiti; she said she needed someone to talk to, just for a little bit. I tried to sympathize with her, tried to understand what she was going through. But I realized that there was no possible way that I could understand that. I lost my mom when I was younger, but…that was different. With my mom…I'd known her as long as I could remember. I thought about what it would feel like to lose someone I love more than anything; someone who came into my life when I needed them most. Someone that you choose to love. Someone like you." Toby shook his head. "And I couldn't think of anything worse." He let out a deep sigh and peered down at her. "I'm sorry that you had to feel like that."

"Well, I guess it doesn't matter now." Spencer shrugged, trying to pass it off like it was nothing, hoping that its lingering feeling inside her would fade. She laid her head back down on his chest. "I mean, you're safe, and that's what matters."

"It's crazy, isn't it?" Toby snorted. "I never thought that the possibility of losing Jenna would conjure up such an uproar. I mean, Jason was the closest one of us to liking her, and the rest of us just treated her like…"

"Like that old, crazy aunt that everyone is nice to at family reunions, but talk smack about any other time?" Spencer giggled.

Toby chuckled. "Yeah."

Spencer shook her head in awe. "What do you think ever…possessed Jenna to do something like that?" She shuddered, the mental image of Jason finding her invading her brain.

"I don't know." Toby replied honestly. "I mean, I guess we didn't know how involved she was with that Mitch guy – or how broken she was when he left her."

"Maybe she'll talk to us about it. You know, when she comes…back to humanity again."

"Oh yeah, those heart-to-heart talks with Jenna…God, I live for those…" Toby rolled his eyes, and Spencer laughed at his sarcasm.

"Let's not think about it. Let's…talk about happier times." Spencer smiled, reached out to grasp his hand, running her fingertips over his palm.

"Alright. Maybe we should start with you're obsession with wearing anything that belongs to me."

"Oh, hardly!" Spencer protested, knitting her eyebrows and looking up at him.

"Oh come on, Spence. This morning you had breakfast in my sweats and t-shirt, decided that my cologne smells better than your perfume – which, by the way, isn't true – and wore my tie with your shirt to your class today."

Spencer scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't pretend that you don't like it."

"I'm not saying that." Toby replied. "I'm just merely making an observation."

"Like you don't have quirks…"

"Well, I for one, am okay with not being the best at everything I do."

"Oh, no you're not! You care about being the best at everything, too. Even changing a light bulb."

"Still on that, huh?"

"I'm just saying: if you could have pointed the flashlight, I would have been able to do it just fine. Case closed."

"Alright, alright, you win." Toby chuckled, pulling her upward until he could laugh into her hair. "You light-bulb-changing-champ, you."

"Do you remember when Taylor was born?" Spencer inquired, her voice light and curious.

"Well, that's random."

"Do you?"

"Of course I do. It was the same day you had your appendix out. We were with your parents on our way home from your lake house your senior year for the weekend and we had to rush you to the hospital because of the pain in your side. Then your sister called your mom from your house and started going into labor." Spencer could feel Toby shake his head, "Man, if I thought I'd seen your dad nervous before…"

A small smile graced Spencer's face and she began to draw patterns on his t-shirt with her fingertips. "Yeah well – "

"Oh you didn't let me get to the best part yet!" Toby insisted, "And then when your surgery was over, you were so high off the anesthesia that when Hanna and I came into your hospital room, you proposed to me, and then two seconds later, you turned to Hanna and proposed to her!"

Spencer blushed at the memory, scowling, "Well, it was the Valium talking!"

"Well, I assumed so, seeing as you told Hanna that she was the light of your life and that you loved her so much that you couldn't stand the thought of not being with her every day for the rest of forever. Pretty sure you quoted Twilight somewhere in there."

"Well, for all I know, you and Hanna could have gotten together four years ago and conjured this story up just to make me look stupid! I still don't believe I proposed to Hanna Marin. Even if it was under the influence of wacky gas."

"Well, it actually came out like "Manna Harin," but I think we all understood what you meant. And by the time your parents came in to see you after Melissa had Taylor, you were already arranging Emily and Aria to be your bridesmaids at both ours and your and Hanna's wedding."

At that, Spencer laughed, covering her face with her hand. "Yeah, I don't remember anything from that day. Maybe it is better that I don't – if that's the kind stuff that was coming out of my mouth." She shook her head. "But I still wish I could have been there with Melissa – you know, fully there, not drunk off Valium and proposing to my friends."

"Hey, she knows that you would have been. And that you were there in spirit."

Spencer shook her head. "It's not just that, though. I wish I could have been there to see her face when the doctor laid Taylor in her arms. More than that…I wish I could have seen Wren's face."

"Uh…why?" Toby asked.

"Because if he looked at Taylor – and Melissa – the same way most devoted fathers do, then I'd know that there was something in there marriage worth preserving. That it could be enough to help them pull through." She shrugged. "I mean, with everything going on between Franco, Melissa, Wren, the baby, and poor little Taylor, it doesn't feel like there's any easy answer. But I mean…Wren and Melissa were two pieces of a puzzle that were bent out of shape and were never meant to be put back together again. Taylor is the only thing that's held them together all these years. And even now…it doesn't even feel like enough."

"Taylor will help them through. Just like it helps you get through the rough spots by thinking of…what was her name again?"

"You know what her name is." Spencer whispered, a small smile spreading across her face.

"Say it anyway."

Spencer sighed and shook her head, rolling her eyes. "Audrey Jane…" She smiled, rolling out the syllables.

"Yeah. That's it." Toby chuckled in her ear and stroked her hair softly. "I think they both love Taylor enough to try to make things work."

Spencer snorted. "I'm not so sure anymore."

"Spencer…" She felt Toby shake his head, "I want you to do something for me: stop worrying about everyone else. If it's not Melissa and Wren, it's Jason, or Aria, or Emily, and now Jenna. You aren't even thinking about yourself anymore."

"Yeah, well," She shrugged, "once you reach a certain age, you just…give all that up to help the people who need you."

"And I'm sure that God and everyone else appreciate that. But you just keep trying to make everyone else happy. I just want you to be happy."

"Don't be silly." Spencer replied. "I have you; and as long as I can be sure of that, I'll always be happy."

Toby laughed, "Now you sound like me, Juliet."

Spencer's eyelids fluttered shut, her sleepiness catching up to her as she mustered up a soft giggle. "Well, you can't always be the romantic."

"Well, I still have the journal you wrote for me a few years back in my drawer. I think that that proves you're a pretty good romantic."

"Oh, God, don't even bring that up. Too embarrassing to think about. I sounded like a lovesick Nicholas Sparks."

Spencer could practically hear Toby roll his eyes, and as he opened his mouth to argue, she reached up and put a finger to his lips, her eyelids falling completely shut. "Shhh…quiet down, Romeo. I'm doing what you said – thinking about myself. And I have class tomorrow. So shut up and let me fall asleep so I can dream about Audrey Jane and our Victorian house."