Chapter 6 - Grief and Guilt
Due to her head injury, Penny was put into an ambulance and taken right to the hospital, for an examination and treatment, a police officer riding with her asking questions when the paramedics said it was okay. While in the emergency room, on a very uncomfortable exam table, Penny was bombarded with additional questions, including next-of-kind, to which she immediately told them Leonard and gave his phone number. The next 20 minutes involved blood being drawn and exams being done by a couple of doctors, one supposedly a neurosurgeon, before she was told by one of the doctors that she was very lucky and seemed to only have an bad impact bruise from being hit, no concussion. They were however going to completely check her out, so before she could leave she was scheduled for Electroencephalogram and a CAT scan.
Penny was resting for a few minutes from the prodding of the doctors when the woman came in with the clipboard, again. "Miss, we tried the number for the Leonard Hofstadter, you gave us, several times, and got no answer. Do you have another contact?"
The thought of 'Where can Leonard be?' crossed here mind, but then the recall of Bernadette's number, made Penny forget about Leonard and tell the nurse the information she needed. Bernadette and Amy showed up about 30 minutes after she gave the hospital staff Bernadette's number as a local next-of-kin, Leonard's phone was sitting on the work bench in university basement room, its ringing never heard, because Howard and Leonard were distracted trying to hurriedly safe and secure the suit. It was another ten minutes before Leonard picked up his phone and saw the missed calls, immediately dialing the last, Bernadette, the only one that was not from an unknown caller.
Leonard was a little frantic, the events of the last couple hours and his concern for Penny driving him crazy. "Bernadette, have you heard from Penny, do you know if she is okay, do you know where she is, have you heard what happened, please tell me you know something." he only stopped for a second to catch his breath.
Bernadette knew who it was by the voice and could hear the desperation in his voice, so she immediately jumped in before he started again. "Leonard, she is okay, calm down. I have seen her already and the doctors said she is fine."
"Where is she?" Bernadette told him and then got a curt 'thanks', then the phone went dead. Leonard immediately went to the door, a confused Howard watching his friend quickly leave. Howard barely got the lights off and the door locked, before seeing Leonard make a turn at the end of the corridor, to what Howard knew was the parking lot, Howard had to run to catch up.
Howard finally caught up with Leonard as he went out the door to the parking lot. "Leonard, I'm driving, you are not in any shape to drive."
Leonard looked at him to protest but then thought better. "Fine, County Hospital." Howard and Leonard didn't say another word to each other all the way there.
The girls were waiting outside the emergency room when a very upset Leonard and a concerned Howard arrived. Bernadette stood up and grabbed Leonard's hand to try and calm him down. "She is okay Leonard. I saw her a couple of times already, she is fine, they are just checking her to make sure she didn't have a concussion. It is just a precaution, they don't think she does, but they have to check. She had a Electroencephalogram, which they said was normal and now just went for a CAT scan."
Bernadette felt Leonard physically relax, which was good, so she let him go and went over to be hugged by her husband. She had been upset, like Leonard, at first, so she needed Howard to hold her to relieve some of her tension. Everybody just stood there for about a minute doing nothing, until Leonard finally was able to talk again.
"The head injury, is that all that happened to her?"
Bernadette stood back from Howard's arms, "Yes that is all the physical damage she has, but who knows what mental damage she will go through. I didn't talk to her much but she was shaken up a little by it, so knowing how tough Penny is, it has to have been pretty traumatic on her."
Leonard nodded, and thought to himself, 'At least he had done the right thing, by making the situation safe, so they could treat Penny. At least he did one thing right'. He kept going over everything in his mind, his basic conclusion being he had no idea what he was doing and he was lucky he didn't get her killed.
The friends had to wait another three hours before Penny was released, two of those hours were to allow for the police questioning her on what happened, as soon as the doctor ok'd it. It was past midnight when she was finally released from the hospital and police, her friends now allowed to take her home. Penny was being wheeled to her friends when Leonard saw her and got up immediately, going to her, to hug her. "Penny are you okay, I know you are hurt, how bad is it?"
"I got hit in the head Leonard, I'll be fine the doctor said, I was lucky, I just got a headache and a bad bruise, no concussion, I'm not really that hurt."
Leonard nodded, relief washing over him, "That God."
Penny nodded, then looked at her friends, "Thanks for being here guys."
Bernadette smiled at her friend, "No problem, ready to go home, I think you had enough adventure for one day." she said trying to lighten the mood.
Penny gave her a weak smile and nodded, going home sounded really good. "Yeah, home sounds great, let's go before the police want to question me again."
The trip home was uneventful, Amy drove and Bernadette rode shotgun, while Leonard sat in back with Penny, Raj rode in the other car with Howard. Penny still had a little headache so she leaned against the door and looked out of the window so she wouldn't get carsick. Leonard sat on the other side just watching her, the feeling he felt was indescribable, he was so relieved she was okay. Every movement she made warmed his heart, she was alive, he had thought she was going to die earlier that day and now seeing her with just a bandaged head bruise and a slight headache was like his greatest wish had been granted.
As Penny was staring out the window, she thought about the last couple of hours, especially the questions the police asked her. It really bothered her that they asked more questions about the thing that saved her than the animal that tried to kill her, they were obviously more interested in it. Penny had become more and more disturbed as she had to answer questions about it, she felt she was being traitor to the hero that saved her. Penny then did something she never had done before, she lied to the police, as the questioning progressed she told them more and more she couldn't remember stuff, which she knew upset them. A doctor standing by, finally cut the interview off, saying memory loss was common with head injuries and she needed to rest, so the interview was over.
Penny was relieved when they pulled into the apartment parking lot and felt even better when she settled into her couch, as soon as she got in her apartment. The comfort of familiar surroundings made her relax, the first time since everything had happened. The only problem was now everyone was in her small apartment and she felt it was stifling, Sheldon had even been brought over by Amy after they got back. Penny knew they all loved her but she didn't need all this loving right now, she preferred not to have so much company at the moment. There was this underlining anger right now in her too, she knew they wanted to know what happened to her and she really didn't care, they would not understand how she felt, no matter how she told them. But they were her friends so she would humor them for a little while, then she figured she could tell them she was tired to get them to leave.
"Penny do you need anything?" Leonard asked her to help her and give himself something to do, so he didn't think too much.
"Some water would be nice, and I think I can take another headache pill again." She watched him go to her refrigerator, shake his head and then head out the door to his.
"Penny, thank God you were not hurt badly and no one was killed." Amy was trying to be sympathetic, but Penny didn't see it.
"No, thank whoever was in that machine that saved us all." Penny said curtly. "And someone was killed, one of the monsters that held us." Bernadette, Amy, Raj and Sheldon looked at her in shock. Howard looked at Leonard, who was now standing in the doorway, with several water bottles in his hands, frozen in spot, a combination of shock and grief over his face.
"What machine?" Bernadette and Amy looked at her puzzled.
Penny couldn't help but feeling that talking about it was personal, but she knew they would bug her till she told them something, "It is hard to describe, the thing looked like a robot, but you could sense there was a man in it. It came through the front door like a avenging angel and rescued us all. It killed one of the crooks that shot at it and then had the other two begging for mercy as it picked them up and dropped them in front of the police…But before it left, it looked at me."
Howard was still watching Leonard, finally getting up and taking the water bottles from him, putting one in front of Penny and the rest in the refrigerator. Leonard seemed frozen in the doorway, a far off look in his eyes, Howard thought he knew what was happening, he was remembering everything that happened as Penny described it.
"What do you mean, 'It looked at me'." Amy was looking at Penny is disbelief.
"The one crook had a gun to my head." Both girls gasped, "And it killed him with, I think using a laser, then after it picked up the other two crooks, it suddenly stopped to look right at me, me, it just stood there looking at me! I swear it was like whatever it was wanted to say something to me." Penny was just staring off, her mind trying to picture it as it looked at her.
"Was it something the police used to save you?" Bernadette wanted to know more.
Penny gave her head a little shake, someone had said something to her, but she didn't know what. She looked at the girls, "I'm sorry, what?"
Amy repeated Bernadette's question. "Could it be something the police used to save you?"
"No, the police pulled their guns on it and then this thing jumped over them into the darkness and was gone."
Amy honestly thought Penny had not seen things as they really were, due to stress and being hit in the head, "Penny people under extreme stress see things when they are scared, do you think maybe you mistakenly saw police in protective suits and made them seem like this thing you thought you saw."
Penny was now a little aggravated at her friend, she wasn't there, she couldn't understand, that was why she didn't want to discuss this with them in the first place, "Believe me Amy, this was no dream or hallucination, this thing burst through the door and saved us and the police didn't have any idea what it was either."
Penny didn't want to discuss this with them anymore, she was actually slowly starting to feel tired and so she asked if everyone would let her get some rest, she never noticed that Leonard had left a couple minutes before she finished, and went to his room to lie down. Penny's story had brought everything back to Leonard in vivid detail and made him physically sick, he just had to escape. It turned out to not be such a good idea, because as soon as he closed his eyes, the wide dead eyes, of the man he killed, entered his mind and the picture of his dead body falling to the floor occupied his thoughts.
The girls had decided they were going to stay with Penny and she got to bed a little before 2 AM, she had been running on adrenaline since the ordeal started and it finally ran out, taking all her energy with it. The girls didn't get up till noon, however now Penny didn't want to talk anymore, the adrenaline had worn off and the mental pain of the event had now set in. The girls tried to talk to her again about her ordeal, but it just made her mad inside and them watching the news shows, to get more information, just made her relive it in her mind. There was even some footage, from one of the channels of the machine coming out of the Cheesecake Factory with the criminals, then jumping away, and Bernadette and Amy gasped when they saw the thing and looked at Penny in awe. Penny couldn't help the feeling she was actually getting sick of their company, they still lived in their perfect little world, they had never experience the horror she did, they could never understand. Penny wanted to yell at them, but she decided it wouldn't be right, they were her friends and only wanted to help, so she went over and got the wine bottle, she just wanted to be numb, after all it would probably help the pain of the bump on her head and she had some great headache medicine for tomorrow's hangover.
Leonard had tossed and turned all Friday night, only sleeping for short periods of about an hour before he would wake up again. Leonard had no one to talk to, Howard was the only one who knew what they did, and he went home that night. Everything was bottled up in him and it was eating at him, he had killed a man, and the remorse of it was killing him. Saturday, Leonard laid in bed till almost 2 PM and would have stayed there longer, until Sheldon started to whine to him, about wanting to go to the comic book store. Leonard told him his car was still at Cal Tech, so he couldn't drive and was rewarded by a 15 minute tirade on how he wasn't living up to the roommate agreement. Raj came an hour later, to take Sheldon, so Leonard left afterwards to walk in the nearby park, just to be alone.
The wine was having its effect, Penny would drift off thinking about events of the last 24 hours, and Amy and Bernadette would try to get her attention back to something else, they wanted to keep her from getting sad. Amy especially knew of post stress problems from such ordeals and wanted to be close in case her bestie needed her. There was also a call from the Cheesecake Factory Home Office, to her next-of-kin on the hospital paperwork, Bernadette, to notify Penny of consoling. The girls setting up an appointment for Penny, with the counselor on Monday, to make sure their friend would be taken care of. Amy was so persistence, Penny, who really didn't want to see a counselor, finally relented and let them make the appointment, to get Amy off her back. By evening there were a couple of open wine bottles and the girls were busy the rest of the evening trying to keep Penny from getting completely full blown drunk, till she finally fell asleep half drunk that night.
Sunday Penny was partially hung over, she had felt much worse before, when she got drunk, but she was still miserable and just wanted the girls to go away. Penny's goal for the day was to be alone, get over being hung over, the headache pills helping a lot. She finally convinced the girls to leave, a little after lunch time, she couldn't stand having them around anymore, she wanted to scream and tell them to leave, but she somehow controlled herself and they finally left. Now she tried to get her stomach back to the point, where she could eat again, she hoped she would feel hungry then. Penny didn't have the energy to do anything, she just sat in her quiet apartment thinking about her ordeal over and over until her apartment started to get dark from the evening light going away. She still was sitting on her couch when the soft knocks on her door broke her out of her trance.
Leonard had no one, he spent most of his weekend in his room, except for a short walks to the park on Saturday and Sunday to try and think things out. He hardly slept much the two nights before, nightmares of his killing of the man, who had Penny, running over and over in his head, even as he dreamed. However, the most horrible nightmare, he had, was of him not using the laser and the same man pulling the trigger, killing Penny, he woke up in a cold sweat after that one, screaming her name. It took him a half hour to convince Sheldon he was okay, so Sheldon would go back to sleep.
He was laying on his bed, when he heard Amy come into the apartment, to tell Sheldon she was going home and that Penny wanted to spend the night by herself. After Amy left, Leonard just laid there thinking about Penny and her ordeal, he had seen the terror on her face when that man held the gun to her head. Leonard was an emotional wreck, but he still was worried about Penny, she always came first to him, he was hardwired that way ever since the day he realized he loved her. It had started to get dark when he finally got the well being to see her, so he waited till he heard Sheldon go in his room and close the door, before he slipped out of the apartment to check on her.
Penny looked at the door, not registering that someone wanted to see her, till she heard the second set of knocks. The door was locked, she had locked it after the girls left, she didn't know if she would ever leave it unlocked again, the thought of a stranger walking in terrified her. The third set of knocks finally made her get up and look out the peephole, it was Leonard, she knew she needed to let him in, he was her boyfriend, so she should let him in and only that made her unlock the door to open it. Penny opened the door and then turned to walk back to the couch, sitting in the same spot she had been in moments before, only this time she was watching Leonard, who hadn't moved from the doorway.
"Penny, I just wanted to see if everything is okay and…..Are you okay?"
Penny stared at him, 'No Leonard it is not okay and I am not okay.' she wanted to say but her mind knew he just didn't understand, none of them did, so instead she lied. "I'm getting over it, it will just take a little time. I'm sort of tired now Leonard and I want to get some sleep. I'll talk to you later okay." She kept thinking, 'Please leave Leonard, I don't want to talk about it, Please leave.' her mind tried to will him to leave.
Leonard knew Penny quite well and he knew she didn't want to talk, her face and physical posturing made that very evident to him. She was always so strong emotionally, much more than him, he didn't really know how he could help her anyway, he would probably just screw things up, so he decided he better leave. "Okay, if you say so, just remember I'm across the hall if you need anything."
"Okay, thanks, goodnight Leonard."
"Goodnight."
Leonard turned and walked back to his apartment as Penny got up to lock the door again, Leonard had never actually entered her apartment, he had stayed at her threshold the whole time talking with her. She actually watched him go to his apartment, through the peephole, with a little bit of sadness, she felt bad for rejecting him and even worse because she knew he knew. She finally resigned herself that there was nothing she could do, and she now did feel tired, the emotional energy lost by interacting with Leonard finally doing her in, so she headed to her bedroom.
Leonard never went into the apartment, just opened the door and got his keys from the key bowl near the door. He needed fresh air, so he grabbed his car keys and walked down the stairs then out into the night. He knew it would take a couple of hours for him to walk to Cal Tech to get his car, but he didn't care, he just wanted use up all the energy in his body and think, hoping maybe he would be able to sleep tonight if he did that.
Penny laid in her bed, she had been in bed over a hour and she couldn't sleep, she felt so alone with no one now in her apartment with her, her bed seemed so cold and alien to her. Laying there, she didn't know if she would ever be able to get warm and couldn't help the feelings that were welling up in her, she thought of Leonard standing in her doorway again and how good it felt when Leonard held her. She then looked at her nightstand near her bed, she usually had her phone there, but it was still in her Cheesecake Factory locker. She knew Leonard would come right over, if she called him, she did want to sleep wrapped in his arms, but she thought it was probably better she didn't have her phone, now. There was no way she could guarantee that Leonard would come, not say a word or ask a question, and just crawl in bed to be with her, that was not how Leonard worked. He would try to talk to her and comfort her and she knew she would get mad, scream at him, then throw him out. She didn't want to do that, she didn't want yell at him, so she pulled the covers closer and tried to will herself asleep.
Another hour later she was still awake and miserable, she couldn't keep her mind from bouncing back to Leonard and how when she was with him in his bed, she was never cold or alone. She wanted to be with him even more now, so she rationalized if she went over and got in bed with him, maybe he wouldn't wake up or if he did he wouldn't ask her anything, just let her sleep with him. She convinced herself that would happen, so she got up, put her robe on and grabbed the guy's key as she left her apartment. She kept thinking about him warm in bed and how she just wanted to cuddle up to him, to feel his warmth and feel safe again, those thoughts driving her on while she tip-toed to his room. Therefore it was a great shock to her when she entered his room to find a messy bed and no Leonard, the energy seemed to drain out of her. She felt completely hopeless, sulking back to her apartment and crawling into her unwelcoming bed, trying the best she could to get warm again.
Leonard sat in his car at an all night takeout place, drinking coffee, trying not to think. He was tired from his walk, but didn't want to go home, he really didn't know what he wanted to do. Knowing Penny was okay in her apartment, just let Leonard's mind focus on other things, those things being that he killed a man. He knew he would do it again to save Penny, but that didn't make it any better, he still had killed a man and dealing with it was one of the hardest things he ever did in his life.
Penny's mind finally drifted from how uncomfortable she was, without Leonard, to what had happened to her, just 48 hours before. She felt guilty, that the redhead girl was raped, that second time, it was suppose to be her and she couldn't help but feel responsible. She felt helpless that she could do nothing to prevent that animal from doing what he wanted to her and the other girls. And she felt scared to her very core, that her very life was so fragile and could be taken from her at any moment, when he put the gun to her head. She also didn't know if she would ever be able to get the feel of the steel barrel, of his gun against the side of her head, out of her mind. She couldn't help think, that she was suppose to die that day, it was her time and only the miracle of that thing, saved her. She laid in bed, her mind going over it again and again until she had no energy to do anything anymore, her mind slowly shutting down, finally letting her sleep.
Penny's nightmare came Monday morning about 5 AM, she had finally fell into a deep sleep, when it came to her in a dream. It was really a simple nightmare, she dreamed that when than man came up to her, instead of grabbing the redhead, he grabbed her, then raped her, the feeling on his hands on her so real, it made her wake up in a cold sweat, having trouble breathing. However, what scared Penny worse, was because of instinct or her deep sense of security with him, she immediately reached out for Leonard and he wasn't there. At first she panicked not knowing why he wasn't there, until her mind finally fully became functional again and she realized that they were not sleeping together, so he shouldn't be there. Penny didn't go back to sleep that night, she got up and watched TV all morning, until she had to go see the counselor, relieved the girls made her make an early appointment.