Disclaimer: Again. Not. Mine. Ever.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lorelai glowered at Luke. "I wanted to tell you about the baby," she snapped icily, and shook her head in disbelief. "Rory did that, not me. I was going to tell you when I felt well enough, physically, but Rory decided to tell you before I was even out of the freaking hospital, don't you dare try to make that my fault!"

"Hey!" yelled a red-faced Luke. "Don't yell at me like I'm your mother!"

"Don't treat me like I'm yours, Freud Boy!"

Luke made a gesture toward the ground. "Can't you respect anything? You don't even respect the dead!"

"Oh, how about promises?" sneered Lorelai, then sang snidely, "Luke says he's all in, Luke says he's all out, his word is hocus bogus…" She flapped her arms and spun in a circle. "That's what he's all about!"

"That's the chicken dance and don't dance on my family's graves!"

Lorelai went cold. It hurt. It being all of her body, soul, heart, mind, it-ness. The It of Lorelai was in pain. She shuddered once, and said flatly, "Actually, that was the grave of…" She peeked. "Silas Entwhistle. Okay, I apologize, Mr. Entwhistle. And you, Mr. Danes?" She shook her head at Luke like she would at a poorly dusted shelf (shades of her mother, God help her!) or an unbalanced accounting sheet (she was her father, too?!). "You can sit here and cry all you want, but the grown-ups in this conversation are going to work now. We didn't all inherit a building from our parents."

She stalked off, seething. She had awakened an hour early, fretted over her appearance, opted for business casual just in case, and now wished she was wearing something that flounced solely for the effect.

Also, she really wished she'd thought to make that crack about inheriting buildings five years earlier. She hated when Luke threw her upbringing at her as a weapon. He lived in a building, fully paid for, that his dad left him. But no, she growled to herself as she braked at the stop sign, lest she join the quiet dead on the low hill. No, Luke was forever stuck on the fact she was raised by rich people. That she'd been more impoverished since age eighteen than he ever had been? Irrelevant. Fact, she snarled, was not anyone's best friend, but Luke could have let it in the house once in a while. A house, she noted bitterly, he inherited free and clear. She had a mortgage on hers.

When she entered the lobby, Michel's languid complaint stopped before it made it past his lips. He snapped to attention, alert, oriented, with a crisp, "Bon jour, Lorelai."

"Oh, there's no bon in this jour, Michel," she warned him, and shut her office door. She dropped her purse in a drawer. She hung her coat on its hook. She sat down. She saw her index card. Who I am…

Is a big stupid loser!

She came very near tearing the card into pieces, then put it back in place by her photo of Rory at Chilton graduation, and her photo of Rory on her first day of school, and all the other photos that kept her sane in the long hours of lunacy that came with running an inn.

Someone tapped on the door. "It is I," announced Michel, "and I brought Sookie."

"Oh let me in, Michel!"

A split second later, Lorelai was smothered in a hug, a cup of spicy-scented tea, and a plate of soft sugar cookies.

She burst into tears.

"Shh," said Sookie gently and held her, rocking her. "I know, honey. I know. We'll make up good hexes on him. Okay? Let's wish a bad thing on him, like warts. Or someone missing the turn and driving right through the plate glass window at the diner. Or the paint on his truck turning pink overnight. We can go throw eggs at him. Tell me what you need to do, honey, I don't know how to help!"

"My parents are getting a divorce and I can't even talk to Luke without fighting and if you and Jackson ever break up, I'll… I'll…" sobbed Lorelai. "And I'm getting your chef whites all icky!"

"Honey, this is me, I go through three sets a day, you know that."

Lorelai wailed. For this, an adult best friend was the only possible cure. Someone who could be kid-silly but was adult-scarred.

"And Jackson and I can't split up, he grows food and I cook food and then we both eat food, it'd be like a violation of the circle of life."

Lorelai succumbed to a blubber.

"Eat a cookie," commanded Sookie. "I know you worry about your health since… Well, since then. But a single cookie won't kill you, and if it does, you won't die hungry, okay?"

Cry-laughing held no dignity, but did bring solace. Shoulders hitching, Lorelai blew her nose in the kitchen towel, then wiped her face on a clean gauze pad Sookie had in her pocket because Sookie usually needed one. Shivering from the inside out, she ate a cookie and drank tea. "Good. Tea. Mulling spices?"

"Yeah, with a little bit of apple juice. You like?"

Lorelai nodded, slouching. How she wound up on the couch, she did not know, nor care. "Thanks, Sook. Yeah. Good tea. Good cookie. But y'know my dad has a heart thing so it's not just…"

"I know, but you got kinda scary Posh Spice skinny for a while."

"Rory's still skinnier."

"Rory's shorter, too."

"Point," acknowledged Lorelai, and took the cookie she was given. "I'll have to see my mom soon. Rory's negotiating this family dinner like it's the Treaty of Versailles, the one that ended World War One."

"Thank you for clarifying which Treaty of Versailles," said Sookie gravely. "And why is Rory doing this?"

"She's Rory. She goes around sprinkling magic happy dust wherever she walks," sighed Lorelai, and rinsed down the last of the cookie with the last of the tea. "Too much clove at the end on the tea, Sook."

"Got it. So she wants everyone to be adult and rational when it's going to be ten kinds of Jerry Springer."

"I like finally knowing my dad better. I do. I feel kinda weird. Like April," she laughed sourly, and pointed to the box of tissues. Sookie obligingly passed it to her. Lorelai blew her nose some more. "But my mom… We were getting better and then… I'm tired, Sook. The whole formula of life thing. Have career, find good man, have house, have kids, poof, instant happy!"

"Well, who said the whole package had to come in that order?" challenged Sookie, and rose. "You got it, you just didn't get everything at once. Or in that order. Look at me. Career, house, husband, kids, no dog, and sometimes I sit in the bathroom and cry for ten minutes because I just want a day when I only have to deal with one thing at a time, not five at once, y'know? When Davey and Jackson both have a bad day the same day, and the house is a mess, and I've been on my feet in the kitchen all day, and I come home to everyone wanting me to fix all that? At our age?" concluded Sookie. "Your mom, my mom, they did all that in their twenties, and having a job was like having a hobby."

Lorelai stood, gave Sookie a quick hug. "Thanks. You're right. I know that. In my head. But I spent a long time thinking it had to go according to some plan, it's hard to unthink that."

Sookie pulled open the office door, turned back quickly. "How bad, with Luke?"

A gruff male voice said, "Bad."

Sookie screamed and slammed the door on Luke.

"OhmyGod," she whispered. "Whatwhatwhat?"

Lorelai sagged, shook out her hair, and wiped until the tissues showed no traces of cosmetics. "First, you breathe. Second, you go to the kitchen. Third, ask if anyone in the kitchen worked as a bouncer."

"Seriously?"

"Not on the bouncers, but it's tempting."

"On it!" said Sookie, opened the door, and jabbed a finger under Luke's chin, into the tender place between bone and windpipe. "Make her cry again, that's gonna be a knife, buster."

Lorelai looked at the man who was Her One, and also, at the moment, her nemesis. "Leave the door open, please."

Sookie left, glaring. Luke kept the door open. He sat on the couch. Lorelai removed herself to her chair at her desk. When he did and said nothing after an exact three minutes by her watch, she faced facts. Letters galore, but when the day came, it reduced to yelling, tears, and silence.

She focused on her ring-free fingers, pushing hard into her desk, and prepared to speak.

When she looked up, Luke was gone. She wished that surprised her.

GG GG GG

"Well, Richard, you did very well on your stress test."

"But?" prodded Richard, tapping a finger on his leg. "I know there is always some qualifier."

"But…" said his cardiologist. "I do have concerns."

Richard growled to himself. "The bloodwork?" he asked in a nasty-civil tone that worked wonders in the business world, and had no effect at all on the cardiologist.

"No, your cholesterol and triglycerides are where we want them."

They weren't, in Richard's opinion. He wanted them higher. He missed the simple joy of a bacon cheeseburger. Still, Lorelai's changed eating habits had made an impression on him. He couldn't be outdone by his own daughter.

"Blood pressure is high, but given the situation, that's not unexpected."

"Then why are we having this discussion?" inquired Richard sweetly.

The cardiologist met Richard's gaze squarely. "Your original diagnosis was variant angina. Your mother died of heart failure."

Richard nodded, his bow tie suddenly far too tight. He could remember clearly when Trix decided Lorelai's immaturity came from Emily, how indignant he felt at that moment, though he shared her opinion that the two women had to stop their squabbling over petty words and past mistakes. As Trix had reminded him, he'd been no model of perfection, and it always stung that she might have been right to blame Lorelai's failures on him. After all, he'd left Lorelai to Emily. Was Trix going to haunt him further, in his very heart?

"You've done well in terms of diet, exercise, and reducing your intake of alcohol."

"And?"

"I think it's time to change your medications to include a beta blocker. It can help reduce the effects of adrenaline, from stress, upon your heart." The doctor passed him a pamphlet. "It helps lower your blood pressure, as well. Given the changes in your life, what we're seeing on echocardiogram…"

"You said my EKG was fine."

"That's your electro-cardiogram. Echo is the ultrasound of your heart," explained the doctor, as if aware that Richard interrupted solely to find some sense of control over the situation. "The cardiac catheter we did last week indicated that your coronary arteries aren't in optimal condition, no worse than five years ago, but certainly no better, and I don't like the fact you're still not exercising as much as recommended."

"In my own language, please."

"Ideally, we wanted by now to see more mitigation of coronary artery disease, and if we don't see more progress, I worry that a stressful event could put you in the hospital, Richard."

He paled. "I don't…"

"Or that we might need to resort to invasive measures. I'd prefer to avoid stents at this point…"

So would Richard, to whom the word stent was terrifying.

"But if we don't see improvements, we could be looking at an open-heart procedure. I'd like you to consider stents. Your right coronary artery at this point is borderline qualifying you for a stent."

"Stent," repeated Richard faintly. He looked at the pamphlet. A stent stuck in his artery and held it open, like his artery was a collapsing tube or clogged pipe. Possibly both. He understood actuarial tables, but the pamphlet left him swimming in confusion. He wished he'd brought Lorelai. Or Rory. Or, really, anyone.

No, not anyone. Emily would panic and fret and become shrill and he did not want that.

"Stress management is required, as well as more physical activity. If a situation begins to upset you, or you can see it's going to become significant…" The cardiologist harrumphed. "Such as a court hearing or similar meeting with your estranged wife."

Richard nodded, shivering a little inside himself.

"Walk away. Leave. Do not be drawn into it. The beta blocker I'm prescribing can help, but nothing can stop the human body from a catastrophic failure if we ignore its warnings."

Richard frowned. "Wait a moment. What about my examination led you to…"

The doctor said quickly, "I mentioned your wife, and your blood pressure spiked alarmingly. It lowered, but I notice that if I mention your wife… There, again."

Richard frowned. "There, again?"

"Face flushing, then paling, pupil dilation."

Caught out, and oddly humiliated, Richard grumbled, "This is entirely too personal."

"It's my job to keep you alive. That is personal."

Richard blinked hard. He confided, in a burst, "I lived by very strict rules. I did not consider that the price of peace thirty years ago would end in such conflict, and now I am rather at a loss." He smiled thinly. "I don't suppose you have a pill that allows my daughter and wife to behave like adults around each other."

"Psychiatry is in the next building."

Richard nodded, folding up the pamphlet and shoving it into a pocket. He placed the prescription slip into his wallet. "A year?"

"Three months, since you're taking a new medication."

"Of course," came Richard's meaningless reply. He stood, shook the cardiologist's hand. "My daughter. She's not yet forty. How much should she worry?"

"Her habits…?"

"Radically changed in the last several months. Much more in line with the sort of diet you recommend, no coffee, and I think she may have given up burger and fries forever."

"Does she exercise?"

Richard grinned a little. "Not enough for you, I don't doubt."

"Well, given your history and your mother's, I think it's best she focuses on prevention. May I ask what changed her habits?"

Drawing upon his dignity, Richard answered sharply, "You may, but I will not answer."

"Understood. I'll see you in ninety days, Richard, and if you have any problems, call immediately."

Richard went out to the nurse's desk. Or receptionist. He no longer knew which it was. He paid. He paused, then took one of the informational sheets on free stress management seminars. He'd rather have brandy, but who wouldn't?

AN: Cardiology information is accurate per my personal experiences with such. I wanted Richard to be in better shape than the show let him be. I've been through this with my mother, and if you haven't guessed, I'm skipping many plot points from S7, because, well, y'know. I can. It's AU.

Entwhistle is a real surname. Yes, about six months post-Partings, they're still a mess. There are nine treaties referred to as the Treaty of Versailles, but if you don't use the date, it's assumed to be the one that ended World War 1 between France and Germany. The other eight years are 1756, 1757, 1758 (hey, France was busy), 1768, 1774, 1783, 1787, and 1871 (ending the Franco-Prussian war, which was basically, yes, France and Germany).