Ruth was ashamed to say she'd been putting this off.
Putting off visiting them.
She just couldn't face them, and now as she stood in front of the hospital, she still didn't want to, but now it was because she knew that she had left things too long. She'd put it off, finding excuse after excuse not to do it, and now she had none left.
There was nothing she could say that would placate them.
How many times could she fail them, her little boys, in one lifetime without learning her lesson?
Too many, she suspected the answer would be.
She hadn't been there when they were growing up. She'd buried her head when Jeff, well, he'd conscripted them, there was no other word for it. And now she'd run away when they were at what she suspected would be their lowest.
Virgil would forgive her even if he never forgot; Scott, though, would never forgive her, not entirely, and both would add this to the ever-growing list of her failings. A list she knew all too well.
She couldn't put this off any longer, though.
Taking a deep breath, followed by another, and with legs that felt like they were made of lead, she walked the path to their rooms, a path she felt would forever be burnt into her memory.
Part of her apprehension she felt would be the fact that she would almost certainly be facing them together. She was a coward, she wasn't ashamed to admit it. She wanted to ease into her damnation, but no. She had no say in this.
They would be, as they always were, together, a co-dependency borne of her failings.
She needed to change, she needed to prove herself to them, she knew she would.
The question, though, was how?
She sighed, pausing at the door to their wing they had called home for months now.
'Ma'am?' She jumped, turning to face the unknown voice. 'Sorry.' It was a nurse; she was tall and rather pretty with startlingly red hair tied into a rather messy bun and bound tightly. 'Are you okay?' She was the kind of woman Scott would go for, sharp and attractive with long legs, the kind of woman he'd chase until he got bored, because when it came down to it, everything was a game to him.
There was a sharp pain in her heart as she realised that he would never know what she looked like.
'No,' she admitted, 'I'm not.'
The nurse frowned and stepped forward, introducing herself as Kathryn, Katie for short. She led her to a nearby seat, and they talked.
Katie, it turned out, knew the boys rather well—she'd been there when they'd been bought in and had watched and helped as they improved. She would fill Ruth in on all the details before she went to face them.
There was only so much talking they could do, though—she had to face them, and there was nothing Katie to do about that.
She was nice, though, and Ruth decided she quite liked the young woman.