Disclaimer: I don't own Psych, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter or The Walking Dead. (Never even seen the last one, nor will I ever watch it. I hate zombies. Blech! :)
A/N: Please read and review! :)
The Finch and the Mockingbird
Chapter Thirteen: On the Hike-Way to Help
It took them close to an hour to get Shawn to the ambulance.
How Stevens had managed to navigate his van through this mess and pull it up to the storage building was beyond everyone. Perhaps it was because he'd memorized the trail and had driven it many times. Whatever the reason, the ambulance was much bigger, bulkier, and harder to navigate, and the detectives and SWAT had had to go on foot to follow the trail, and there hadn't been enough time to wait for any other police vehicles to slowly drive through the brush, so they'd had to walk. It made Henry a nervous wreck. They'd said carrying Shawn on foot through the trees was his best bet, but every agonizing moment of waiting just squeezed Henry's already drained heart a little tighter.
Although the EMTs had tried to insist that Henry should wait at the cabin with the detectives until some more medics made their way through the woods with a gurney to pick him up, or at least until one of their police vehicles had navigated to the building, he'd steadfastly refused and was walking, occasionally stumbling, alongside them. In fact, it had been all that they could do to convince him that it was not in his – and more importantly to Henry, his son's – best interest for him to help them carry the gurney, because he was dead on his feet and injured, and if he fell or became too dizzy or weak to help carry Shawn, it could injure him even more.
Finally Henry had agreed, but he'd walked/staggered as close as he could to the bloody, beaten, and hastily patched up son, managing to maintain physical contact the entire time. It was a miracle that he was able to keep up with the paramedics, even at their careful, halted pace. His body was a cacophony of scrapes, cuts and bruises, and it was tough just to stay on his feet. But he didn't care.
He couldn't believe everything that had happened to his son in the past twenty-four hours.
Upon their quick, initial examination, the medics had declared that Shawn was suffering from shock, infection, severe blood loss and dehydration, dislocated shoulder, broken arm, and a badly injured knee – although they weren't able to get a good look at it before they strapped Shawn in and got him ready to go. They'd manage to bandage up the gaping wound on his arm the best that they could given their limited supplies and urgency to get him to a hospital.
He'd remained unconscious the entire time, whimpering in pain whenever his arm or leg was shifted in the slightest.
Henry had asked what his chances were if they got him to the hospital within the next hour.
They'd told him they couldn't be sure, because they didn't know how advanced the infection was. The blood loss and dehydration combined were serious problems, but if they could get them under control and get him on some antibiotics within the hour, he'd probably make it through the night.
They'd have to see from there.
Henry was shell-shocked, to say the least.
How could it have come to this? he wondered as the grim parade of EMTs, detectives, and flabbergasted father picked their way through the dense overgrowth of weeds and brush down the barely visible path from the building.
He was still trying to process the reality that the twenty-something kid he'd believe to be innocent all those years ago had done this. Aaron Stevens had been a quiet guy, to be sure, put in a terrible position by the law that normally saw things through the right way. Never in a million years had Henry expected something like this to come back and bite him in the backside in such a horrifying, violent way.
He struggled with his morals and principles as he followed the procession. He'd done what the law had required of him. Nothing more, nothing less. But if what Stevens had said about his old friend on the force, Jim Morton, was true, the detective had gone above and beyond his call of duty to try to set the terrible wrong right.
He would've gotten into trouble for digging around in a solved case if the chief had found out about it, and technically, he hadn't been working inside the law, but he'd pressed on anyway, determined to set the kid free who had been falsely accused. He'd followed up with Stevens, tried to help him out, and Henry had sulked about the poor kid's fate for a few days before pushing the unfortunate circumstances out of his mind.
There was nothing he could do about it, he'd thought.
But what if he'd tried? What if he'd visited Aaron in prison just once? What if he'd reassured the falsely accused young teacher that he didn't think he'd done it? What if he'd gone out on his own and done a bit of investigating like Jim Morton?
He might have been killed by O'Dell like Stevens seemed to think Jim had been, but at least Shawn would have been safe.
Left without a father, yes, but he wouldn't have become the target of this madman's plot.
Henry didn't try to stop the waves of guilt and anger that assaulted his pounding head. He kept his eyes on Shawn, his eyes always focusing on his chest, the uneven rising and falling as his severely injured son struggled with a task as simple as breathing.
Finally, they made it to Aaron Stevens' childhood home, and he could tell by the looks on the paramedics' faces and their increased urgency that Shawn's condition was getting worse.
Several ambulances were waiting for them in the dilapidated driveway. The waiting EMTs quickly ushered Henry away from Shawn, actually having to resort to physically dragging him away from his son and toward another waiting ambulance. Henry fought weakly, his many injuries from his fight with Stevens and the long, arduous trek to the house really taking their toll. "Let me ride with him," he practically begged one EMT. The tag on his white uniform said "Randy Davis." "Please."
Randy Davis shook his head firmly, directing him toward the back of his ambulance. By the time Henry had managed to shake off the gentle but unyielding hands on him, the vehicle holding his son had already squealed away in to the hospital in urgent pursuit of medical care.
With nothing left there to fight for, now only wanting to get to the hospital as soon as possible so he could see his son – he could care less about his own injuries, concussion and broken thumb or not – Henry shook off the hands that had once more gripped his shoulders to guide him to the ambulance and climbed into the back on his own, opting to sit instead of lie on the gurney out of sheer stubbornness, never mind that his head was pounding, his gut was twisting violently, and his vision was fuzzy.
He wasn't going to rest until he knew Shawn was going to be okay.
Juliet and Lassiter stood side by side in the brambles of what had once been an immaculately cared for yard but was now a verifiable jungle. There was yet another ambulance waiting, the driver propped up against the side as he waited for the remaining medics to make the trip back to the isolated storage unit and retrieve Herman O'Dell's body.
Funny, in all the drama of catching Stevens and trying to make sure that he didn't murder Henry and Shawn, the fact that he'd already murdered O'Dell had seemed to slip to the back of everyone's minds. Ironically, Lassiter thought, with O'Dell's death, Santa Barbara was probably a safer place than it had been before. The guy was a veritable scumbag, had probably been behind more deaths and disappearances than they were currently aware of, and had always wriggled his way out of any convictions scott-free. He'd finally messed with the wrong wackadoodle, Lassiter reflected grimly.
"You okay?" he asked O'Hara, whom he knew was still reeling from what had just happened. Lassiter himself was still staggering from the events, try as he might to convince everyone, including himself, that he was unshakable.
She nodded, and as he watched her, concerned, her nod seamlessly turned into a shake, her eyes welling with unshed tears. "No," she answered honestly. Her lower lip trembled, but she held herself together remarkably well. "We need to get to the hospital," she said, her voice strained. "We need..." She paused. "Oh my gosh! We need to call Gus!"
Gus was not happy. He was worried, and he was very unimpressed with the fact that Chief Vick and Detectives Lassiter and Juliet had felt compelled to lock him in a conference room with Buzz McNab guarding the door just in case he suddenly gained the ability to melt through the wooden door and escape to follow the detectives.
Please. This wasn't Platform 9 ¾.
If Shawn had been here, he would have undoubtedly given Gus grief about his steadfast belief that when he went to London someday, and he went to King's Cross Station and ran headlong into the brick wall between Platforms 9 and 10, that he would go through the wall and be able to board the Hogwarts Express. He knew this because Shawn loved raining on Gus's semi-frequent "Harry Potter Is Real" parades. Usually, it ticked Gus off, causing him to click his tongue at Shawn and snap, "I'm not doing this with you right now, Shawn," or a combination of the two.
Now, he wanted Shawn to tease him about his dorkiness more than ever.
He remembered the mockingbird he'd found in front of the Psych office yesterday morning. Holy crap... Had that only been yesterday? Gus was squeamish anyway when it came to dead things, but the mockingbird had unsettled him more than most. Anyone who would kill something as harmless as a mockingbird, snuffing out a life that offered no offense, only made beautiful music, was exceedingly cruel. Which, Gus realized, was the whole point of Harper Lee's novel, and he supposed the twisted point Aaron Stevens had tried to make out of his stupid game. It was unfair, disturbing, wrong, and if someone was willing to ruthlessly strangle a mockingbird with no reservations, what did that say they were capable of on a larger scale? Most serial killers started out torturing animals, Gus thought darkly. Even Tom Riddle, back at the orphanage.
Shawn would be goading him again, making fun of him for being a Potterhead.
Once again, Gus wished more than anything that his best friend was right back in the room, calling him a geek or a nerd or a gerd, which had been Shawn's recent combination of the two, which Gus had proclaimed made no sense, after which Shawn had claimed that Gus's left shoe didn't make sense, after which Lassiter had stomped into the lobby of the station and demanded they leave, so help him, or he would have them arrested on charges of disorderly conduct, loitering at a law enforcement office, and generally just being pains in his ass, and then Shawn had said something about how Lassie should really get that looked at; that hemorrhoids killed people...
Gosh, Gus really missed Shawn, as annoying as he was and as idiotic as he acted sometimes. He and Shawn had been inseparable almost since birth, best friends. And sure, Shawn had been in some pretty harrowing situations before (and often dragged Gus in right behind him), but something about this seemed different. Gus had a really bad feeling about this one, even worse than the one he'd had after getting that voicemail from Shawn all those months ago and then arriving to an empty car yard to find that Shawn had been kidnapped and shot. And that was saying something.
He looked at his watch. It was 9:13 a.m. He hadn't heard from Juliet and Lassiter yet, and they'd (well, Juliet'd) promised they'd (she'd) let him know as soon as they (she) found something. Lassiter had just stood there looking sour. Some things never seemed to change.
Gus paced to the conference room door, knocked quietly, and said, "Buzz?"
Buzz answered almost immediately. "Oh, hey, Gus! How's it going?"
Gus fought the urge to snap at McNab's all-too-friendly tone (that was just how Buzz was, after all), and said in a semi-calm voice, "Has the chief heard anything yet?"
There were a couple moments of silence, and Gus's heart leapt into his throat, terrified that Buzz was about to impart bad news, but then he heard muffled voices outside of the locked door and realized that Buzz was asking someone. A few seconds later, his voice came back, sounding slightly less cheery than before. "Not yet. But I'm sure they'll find Shawn soon." He sounded worried.
Gus could sympathize.
"Oh, wait," said Buzz, his voice suddenly attentive. I think the chief just got a call—"
That's when Gus's cell phone rang. He glanced down at the Caller ID: Juliet O'Hara.
Hands trembling, he answered the call.
"Juliet? Did you find them?"
Juliet's voice was small and crackling from a mediocre cell connection. "Yeah," she said. She sounded drained, exhausted. "They're alive."
"Thank God," Gus breathed. Maybe he'd been overreacting about the whole thing after all; maybe...
"Shawn's in pretty bad shape," she said in a subdued tone. "He's being taken to Santa Barbara Hospital as we speak via ambulance. Henry too, though he's not as bad."
Gus's voice was shaking as all kinds of horrible scenarios pelted his mind's eye. "What's wrong with him?"
"Not really sure all that's wrong," Juliet said shortly, "but it doesn't look great. You can meet us at the hospital. We're on our way there now."
Irritation flared. "If I can get someone to let me out of here!" he said. "I don't think it's legal to lock a civilian in a conference room if he's not convicted of anything!"
"It isn't, and we didn't," she said dryly. "Try the doorknob."
He twisted the knob. It turned. "What?"
Juliet almost sounded amused. "I can't believe you didn't even try the doorknob, Gus," she said. "And no, we couldn't keep you here without probable cause, but McNab was instructed to trail you and keep you from trying to follow us and get yourself into more trouble."
Ah, so that's why McNab had been enlisted to babysit him, Gus thought. "I had a lot of other things on my mind," he said gruffly. "And you tricked me."
"It was Lassiter's idea," Juliet offered.
"That doesn't make it any better."
Juliet gave a noncommittal cough, but didn't respond otherwise.
"Can you tell Buzz to let me out of here without a tail?" he asked.
"Carlton's talking to the chief right now. She'll take care of it."
"Thanks, Juliet." He paused. "Is Shawn gonna be okay?"
Juliet's voice was low, grave. "I hope so, Gus."
His voice cracked. "Me too."
Less than five minutes later, he was in the Blueberry, squealing out of the police parking lot and heading for the hospital, praying the entire drive that whatever had been done to Shawn, that he would be okay.
Henry had been patched up with heavy bandaging on the back of his head, some painkillers, a knee brace, a few stitches, a mummified thumb and a slather of antiseptic and had been released to the waiting room to suffer an even worse torment than his surface wounds, sprained knee, broken thumb and concussion: Waiting for word on his son, who had been rushed into the emergency room and whisked away nearly twenty minutes before the ambulance Henry was riding in arrived. The detectives weren't far behind in Lassiter's Crown Vic. Gus had been there just moments after.
Now they were all waiting.
It had been five hours. Five long, unbearable hours that they all sat in the waiting room, interrupted only by the regular, quarter-hourly calls from the chief and other well-wishers, wanting to know if they'd heard anything, if there'd been any change, if Henry was feeling any better, et cetera, et cetera.
He'd called Maddie, finally. She was on a plane from Miami, but she wouldn't be in Santa Barbara until the next day, at the earliest. He'd tried to contact Abigail, but it was hard to reach her in Uganda. He hadn't left a message with the operator; he didn't want to scare her. He'd wait and try her again later, hopefully when they had more news.
And they waited some more, with stale coffee, hard-cushioned chairs and an annoying, too-chipper voice periodically making announcements on the intercom. Oh, and the lone TV bolted to the wall at an odd angle was playing HGTV nonstop.
This reminded Henry of the wait after Shawn had been shot and was being treated, but at least that time he'd talked to his son, seen that he was awake and semi-coherent before being rushed to the hospital... This time, he wasn't even sure if he was going to make it.
No. He had to. Shawn was too stubborn, too full of life to give up now.
Henry hadn't shed a tear, but he felt like he'd been wrung dry anyway. Tears were an insufficient means of expressing his agony. His fear and remorse were far deeper. He sat there, dazed, like a zombie, sometimes pacing, also in a zombie-esque fashion, and by the way that the poor secretary up front reacted to him every time he rushed up and demanded to know something, anything about his son, he might as well have been rambling for her desk moaning, "BRAAAINZZZ."
When Shawn woke up, Henry was going to make him wish he'd never made him watch that stupid Walking Dead show.
No, when Shawn woke up, Henry was going to hug his son, and he was going to thank the higher powers that Shawn had survived, and, dammit, he was going to tell the kid how much he meant to him.
Henry was terrified he'd never get to tell him again.
Henry had been imagining the doctor coming to greet them so many times that when the scrub-wearing, intelligent looking woman with a clipboard and a slight frown between her eyebrows made her way purposefully to where their anxious and brooding group was waiting, he almost thought he was imagining things again, and when she spoke, she actually took him by surprise. "Family of Shawn Spencer?" she said.
Everyone but Lassiter stood up, and then when Juliet glared at him, he stood up begrudgingly. His gaze was troubled, even if he tried to look detached.
The doctor's dark brown eyes gazed seriously around at the diverse group, obviously no relation between any of them, and then she smiled slightly. She had a nice smile and crow's feet around her almond-shaped eyes, and the ID card hanging from her zebra striped lanyard said Dr. Angel Garfield. She looked to be in her mid to late thirties. "Father of Shawn Spencer?" she asked, her eyes hovering on Henry.
"That's me," he said, his voice strained.
"I thought so. My secretary seems to be a bit wary of you."
"I just wanted news on my son."
"I know. Why don't you all follow me to my office, so we can talk?" She led them out of the surprisingly empty waiting room, down the hall, and into a relatively spacious office on the right. There were a couple of chairs facing her desk, and then a small couch on one wall. She was quiet for a couple of seconds, then gestured at the empty seats. "Why don't you all sit down?"
Henry's heart dropped to his feet. "Is he—?"
"No, no," she said quickly. "But his injuries are severe, and there's a lot to take in. Why don't you sit?"
"I'll stand."
She regarded him with knowing eyes the color of dark chocolate and then smiled slightly. "Well, I'm still going to sit down, if you don't mind. I've been standing for hours." She sat.
Even though he recognized her ploy, Henry played along and sat down, the others following his lead.
"How's my son?"
She cleared her throat, her voice grave. She had a bit of a Southern accent, just a twang, and her soft tones were oddly soothing as she started her monstrous list of things terribly wrong with his son. "First off, I want to tell you that my prognosis is hopeful. He's in a bad place, certainly, and he's going to have a lot of recovering to do, but I believe that he will make a recovery, barring no further complications." It didn't slip Henry's attention that she didn't say full recovery. He narrowed his eyes but let her continue without interruption for now.
"I'll start with the more minor issues," she said. "Shawn has quite the goose-egg on the back of his head, and a mild concussion. He's pretty banged up; he has a couple of bruised ribs, a bruised jaw and some cuts and scrapes that needed minimal treatment." She paused to let this soak in, and then continued, her voice soft. "He had a severely dislocated shoulder on his right side; we reset it and have it bandaged. It will require therapy, and will be swollen and painful for a while."
Henry had figured as much. "One of the EMTs said something about possible infection."
"I'll get to that in just a moment," she said kindly. "I want to talk to you about his knee first." She took a deep breath. "Due to blunt-force trauma directly to the knee, Shawn's patella – his kneecap – has suffered a severe comminuted fracture. This essentially means, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, that his kneecap has been shattered."
Henry felt the blood drain out of his face. He didn't look around at the others in the waiting room, but he could almost physically feel their dumbfounded reaction. "He will require surgery to correct this, probably within the next few days, depending on how his other injuries are healing up."
"You mean you haven't fixed it yet?" Henry snapped. "What the hell have you been doing back there for the past six hours, exactly?"
She didn't seemed fazed. "We've been taking care of his other injuries, at least one of which was much more extensive than his kneecap. And either way, it's not uncommon for surgery on broken kneecaps to be postponed until the swelling has gone down and the outward abrasions are somewhat healed."
He nodded curtly, and she continued. "As I was saying, depending on how he's doing within the next few days, we'll put him into surgery. Since it is a comminuted fracture, and a severe one at that, the top of the patella has been broken into several pieces, as has the center, the bones fragments are much too small to be fixed back together. Several of the smaller fragments will be removed from the top. The orthopedic surgeon will take the loose tendon and attach it to the remaining patellar bone, and chances are, several wires and screws will be put in a place and small portions of the kneecap will likely be removed. Even so, his knee should make a full recovery, although there is the possibility of his suffering from arthritis in the knee earlier in life, for some muscle weakness – though he should be able to build it back up in time – and some chronic pain. But we'll cross those bridges when we come to them."
She fell silent, letting the stunned group process this.
Finally Gus found his voice. "He's going to walk again, right?"
Dr. Garfield looked at him kindly. "I can't give you an absolute answer, just because in cases like these, there's always the slight chance that complications could arise, but I can say with 98 percent certainty that he'll be walking normally again, likely without even a limp, by this time next year, maybe a bit sooner."
The group seemed to let out a collective breath. Lassiter fidgeted in his chair, Gus fiddled anxiously with his thumbs, and Juliet absently twisted a loose strand of blonde hair.
"As you can probably guess, the most troubling injury is his broken arm."
Gus made a soft whine at the back of his throat. "Just like Jem," he muttered darkly.
Dr. Garfield shot him a strange look, but continued. "It's broken in two places. His upper arm's break is fairly standard. However, his forearm suffered from a compound fracture, which means the bone pierced the skin. Due to his arm being pulled violently after the break, the bone was pulled back under the skin, causing even greater damage to the skin, muscles and tissue. He lost a lot of blood from this wound, and because it was out in the open and went untreated for hours on end, he developed not only a slight infection of the skin around the wound itself, but a quick-onset case of Acute Osteomyelitis, which is a fancy way of saying fast-acting bone infection. Normally, Osteomyelitis develops over a period of time, but with violent injuries where the bone pierces the skin and the marrow is exposed to the elements for a period of time, a bone infection can set in very quickly.
"Like most infections, a bone infection causes fever, pain, and stiffness. Despite the short amount of time in which it developed, his fever was quite severe at topped 105 degrees shortly after his arrival. We managed to bring it down slightly through intravenous antibiotics and cold compresses, but right now it's holding at just under 103.7, which is still a dangerously high temperature, especially for someone in his condition.
"We surgically took care of the broken bone and cleaned and stitched the open wound, and immediately put him on blood transfusions since he'd lost so much. Our greatest concern now is getting his fever down and controlling the infection that's raging in his arm. It's affected not only the bone, but has spread to the tissue around it, some of which had to be removed. But in advanced cases such as these, there's always the possibility that extreme measures might have to be taken in order to stop the infection from spreading throughout the body, causing permanent damage and, in extreme cases, death, if the infection becomes too out of control and reaches the heart." She spoke gently, but her tone did nothing to belittle the horror of her words.
"I'm not saying it's going to happen," she said, "but depending on how well the infection responds to the antibiotics, and if it starts rapidly spreading to other parts of the body, you may have to make a very difficult decision." She looked into Henry's eyes with deep brown ones, concern wafting from her words and face. "It's not a decision that's easy to make, and it will be up to you if the situation calls for it, because Shawn is under heavy sedation and will be in no condition to make this sort of choice." She hadn't said it, but Henry knew exactly what she was talking about.
"I'm not gonna let you amputate my kid's arm," he said hoarsely. It was like all the air had been sucked out of their small corner of the mid-sized office.
Juliet squeaked slightly in alarm, and even Lassiter looked disturbed, though he had to have seen it coming, too. Gus just looked ill.
Dr. Garfield held both hands up placatingly. "I'm not saying that's even going to become a reality," she said. "But I wanted you to be prepared for what you're going to have to face if it does. If Shawn reaches this point, it may be that amputating the arm might save his life. I want to prepare you for that eventuality, should it come."
Henry managed to calm down enough to give a gruff, "Thank you" to the doctor, but his mind was raging at the suggestion that he might have to make a decision to either let them cut Shawn's arm off, or risk his life further. He couldn't imagine how much the loss of an arm would devastate his always active, on-the-move son. His heart felt like it was going to burst.
"Anything else?" he said, knowing that there had to be but praying that there wasn't.
"Blood loss and lack of water for over 24 hours combined to cause severe dehydration. We've got him on an IV, pumping fluids. But he's already looking a little better on that end. Like I said, it's the bone infection that is the most troubling at this point."
There was silence. Then Henry said, "Can we see him?"
She regarded the mismatched group for a moment, but her eyes landed back on Henry. "I'm afraid I can only let family in at this point, and only for a limited amount of time. He's being moved into the ICU from recovery right now. But yes, you can see him in just a few minutes, Mr. Spencer. A nurse is going to come get you and direct you to the ICU waiting room once he's settled." She looked at the others. "You're welcome to stay in the ICU waiting room, but I'm afraid we can't let anyone but family into the room to see Shawn right now." She sounded a bit apologetic, which made Henry think he might be able to needle her into letting Gus in later on, knowing that Gus would be out of his mind with panic until he saw Shawn.
Henry knew the feeling.
"I'll go," Gus said instantly.
Juliet looked like she was trying to decide if she should go to the ICU and wait or leave the hospital for want of anything to do, but Lassiter quickly helped her make up her mind by saying tersely, "There's nothing we can do, O'Hara, not here. We need to go back to the station, inform the chief of what's going on, and then get back to the crime scene to conduct the rest of our investigation."
She nodded. "You're right." Looking relieved and rather awkward, Detective Lassiter stood and moved for the door after thanking the doctor briefly for her time. He paused, hand on the door handle, as Juliet hesitated.
"I'll be right behind you," she said, and he nodded curtly and left the room.
She turned to Gus, who looked like he was about to fall apart. She took his hand, squeezed it tightly, and then hugged him. Henry watched the exchange numbly. Juliet turned to him. "Shawn's going to be all right, Mr. Spencer," she said, and she said it with such conviction that he almost believed her. "Let me know when I can see him, and I'll be right here. Sorry about Carlton... he's not exactly in his comfort zone right now."
Henry snorted.
"Tell Shawn I said to feel better," she said. She closed her mouth, turned, and the pivoted back, a strange, almost desperate look in her eyes, and opened her mouth again, like words were at the tip of her tongue, then she shook her head sadly, turned, and left without looking back.
Right after she disappeared out the door, a nurse knocked and entered, announcing that Shawn was settled in the ICU and that Henry could see him now, for a little while.
Father and best friend walked side by side, shaken to the core by the horrific turn of events, and as they followed the mousey little nurse with the upturned nose and too-big Eeyore-patterned scrubs to the Intensive Care Unit, each man was occupied by his own dark thoughts and wonderings, hoping beyond hope that Shawn was going to treat this battle like he did everything else in his life – with defiance, courage, and stubbornness so strong and independent it was idiotic.
If anyone could defy the odds and make a full recovery, with all limbs intact, they told themselves, it was Shawn.
Replies to Anonymous Reviewers:
To Guest: Thanks! :)
To Checkerz: Thank you so much, I'm glad you are enjoying the whump so much (trust me, I greatly enjoy whump too, so you're not alone, and if it means you're a psych-o, then so am I! XD And yeah, Lassie's so silly! He and Shawn are SO friends, but he's just too stubborn to admit it! *sigh* Thanks again! :)
A/N: In case you couldn't tell, SOOOO much research went into this chapter. And still, I'm not a doctor, so even though I did real research, there's still the possibility that I messed something up, so if that's the case, sorry! I did my best!
Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed chapter 12: Said The Liar 13, Guest, Checkerz, thewarpedmind1, ShamrockNinny, Liberty Hoffman, Olivia94, Feather 32, Polaris'05, Clara Brighet, EvilCelery, GlOmP3R and Juromuro! Also thanks to Polaris'05 for reviewing chapter 11 as well, and to everyone who has read, favorited and followed this story!
As you can see, I now have a cover for this story, but the whole thing wouldn't fit, so you can follow the link on my profile to see the full cover. :)
Also, I moved some stuff around in order to make this chapter longer, so it may end up being 16 chapters and an epilogue, even though it's the same length, but the last few chapters may be divided up slightly differently than I originally had them.
Please, please let me know what you thought, and I'll update on Tuesday! So much more hurt!Shawn, angsty!Shawn, angsty!worried!family and friends to come. Oh, and Dr. Angel Garfield: I created her in honor of my sister, whose name is Angel, and who is in love with Andrew Garfield (AKA the Amazing Spiderman). This one's for you, sissy. :)
Please review! Love you guys!
~Emachinescat ^..^