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Trigger warning: trauma and fertility
…
Once Kaycee began his trek to the hospital and the adrenaline from the chase wore off, he realized how much his shoulder hurt. He had seen the blood but didn't realize how badly he had been hit. He went through the ER entrance, with one of the doctors taking care of his shoulder quickly.
He was lucky he wouldn't need surgery, they were saying, but all he could think was to get to the waiting room where Monica and Tate were to get an update on his dad.
He hadn't been told yet about anything else.
Tate ran to his dad, holding onto him for dear life. Monica came over, giving a worried look to his shoulder.
"I'm all right," he assured her before she could say anything. He was surprised by the number of people from the ranch at the hospital. Mia, Lloyd, Colby, Teeter….were they all here for his dad? And where were Rip, Ryan, Lexi and Beth?
"Where's my dad?" Kaycee asked. Monica looked over to Lloyd, who took Tate to the cafeteria to eat. Kaycee was afraid of that.
"He's out of surgery," Monica told him. "They're weaning him off the anesthesia, but with the shock, they're not sure how long it will take for him to wake up." She waited as Kaycee seemed to process this.
"For Jimmy Hurdstrom?" One of the nurses asked and Mia leapt to her feet to talk to her.
"What happened to Jimmy?" Kaycee asked.
"There was an attack at the ranch," Monica explained.
"Are you ok?!" Kaycee asked, realizing now it wasn't just him and John. Monica nodded, though she blinked back tears. "Is Rip with my father?"
"He's upstairs…with Beth," Monica admitted. "Someone….someone mailed a bomb to her office Kaycee."
"Oh my God," Kaycee quietly gasped. "Where are Jamie and Lexi?"
"Jamie's ok," Monica told him first. "At his office, he's safe." She wasn't going to get into what Ryan told them, how Jamie hung up on him. "Lexi, um," she started but had to stop as the tears welled up.
"Tell me she's alive," Kaycee begged.
"She's in surgery," Monica told him. "She was in an accident, someone T boned her and ran her off the road. She, um…." She wasn't sure how to tell him this. "She's bleeding really badly, Kaycee," she told him, a few tears slipping out of her eyes. "They're not sure if um…" She swallowed hard, unable to finish.
"…what about the baby?" Kaycee asked, dreading what would come next as it seemed inevitable.
"We didn't know what to do," Monica was saying now. "This is normally the thing we would ask her about…Ryan left it up to her boss because we had no idea…"
She shook her head as she gathered her thoughts.
"He thought it would be best to deliver him, to do a c section," she finally explained. "Her bleeding was too much and his heart rate was dropping. And even if…" She forced herself to push through. "Even if your sister makes it, her body would likely be too weak to handle the pregnancy, and we'd risk losing them both."
"Thought?" Kaycee asked, picking up Monica's past tense.
…
Kaycee went to the appropriate floor, turning down the hall for the NICU. When he got there, sitting outside the room on the floor sobbing was Ryan. He had his head in his hands as he sobbed uncontrollably, Laramie sitting next to him on the floor with her arms around him. She caught Kaycee's eye and hers welled up with tears.
Kaycee came over and sat on the floor on the other side of Ryan, resting a hand on his brother in law's shoulder. Ryan barely registered the touch.
"Kaycee's here," Laramie said softly as she pulled away a little.
"Yeah man, I'm here," Kaycee said as Ryan still had his head in his hands. "And I promise, we're going to kill every last person involved in this."
…
They were at the hospital late into the night. While neither Monica or Tate wanted to leave Kaycee, both Monica and Kaycee knew this was no place for Tate. With visiting hours on Beth's floor over, Rip took them home while Kaycee waited with Ryan and Laramie for news on Lexi. She had been in surgery for hours.
Laramie noticed her boss coming around the corner to the waiting room first, nudging Ryan who seemed to be staring into space. When he saw Keith though, he snapped to attention.
"She's ok," Keith told them right away. Kaycee stood with Ryan while Laramie stayed in her seat. "I won't say she's out of the woods yet, we'll want to keep her for a few days for observation but, I'm cautiously optimistic," he finished.
"She awake?" Ryan asked and Keith shook his head.
"It'll probably be awhile," he started to explain. "It's hard to say how long, she's younger than John, but the trauma-"
"I'm not going home until she wakes up," Ryan said, though everyone else had been more or less kicked out of the hospital at that point.
"I thought you might say that," Keith nodded. "We take care of our people here, she's in room 407, no one's going to bother you," he assured him.
"Th…thank you," Ryan said now.
"There is um…" Keith wasn't sure how to say this next part. "Tomorrow the, ah, the funeral director-"
"We can take care of that," Laramie said quickly, looking to Kaycee.
"Absolutely," Kaycee said now as he turned to go with the doctor, hearing Laramie promise her brother she would check in with him tomorrow.
…
Two days passed and neither John nor Lexi were awake yet.
Kaycee and Rip were taking shifts at the hospital. Monica and Tate obviously felt safest with Kaycee, but knew he wanted to be there for his sisters, especially his twin. Kaycee knew that Rip wouldn't let anything happen to their family and assured Monica and Tate this.
The grace they gave Ryan to be there outside of visiting hours started to apply to all of them.
Rip had just left the hospital, going back to the ranch to start on some more clean up. His cabin had been burned down, causing him to stay in the foreman's cabin for now. With Beth asleep, Kaycee went to check on his father's status. After the update from the nurse, he went down the hall where Lexi was still sleeping. Ryan was sitting next to her bed, holding her hand, watching her sleep.
Kaycee wondered how much sleep Ryan was actually getting, just from the chair he had alone. He remembered those crappy hospital recliners; he slept in one after Tate was born. Remembering that made his heart hurt for RJ all over again.
"I can sit here with her," Kaycee was telling Ryan now; he shook his head. "You need to get some sleep."
"I can't sleep," Ryan murmured. Kaycee didn't fight him, knowing he wouldn't sleep either in this situation.
After a moment, Lexi began to stir.
"Mmm, Ryan?" She asked hazily.
"I'll go get your doctor," Kaycee said, knowing they wanted to see her when she woke up. He also knew Ryan and Lexi were going to need a moment alone.
"What happened?" She asked Ryan.
"What do you remember?" He asked. They were worried if she had hit her head too hard, but she seemed to be herself.
"….I was in an accident," she said as it came back to her. She could still picture the truck in her periphery before her sedan went tumbling down the side of the hill. "I," she started as she went to adjust herself in the bed but then felt a shooting pain in her abdomen. No, lower. In her hips.
A c section, she realized.
"Where's RJ?" She asked in a panicked voice. As her senses came back to her and she came out of her haze she was now hyper aware she was not pregnant.
"Baby," Ryan said as he moved to sit on the edge of her bed.
"What happened, where-"
"They delivered him," Ryan explained. "You…you were bleeding so much," he said, blinking back tears at the memory of her being rushed to surgery. He wanted to hold it together right now for her.
"I was only 25 weeks!" She exclaimed, voice shaking with tears. The odds were against them, but she couldn't face that. "Is he in the NICU, is…." She trailed off, trying to read Ryan's face.
"Lexi, I am so sorry," he said.
He never heard a scream come from her like that before and he never cared to again. She fell against him, screaming, wailing. He tried to hold her, but she started fighting against him, in denial.
"I wanna see him," she was saying as if he couldn't be gone, that he was in the NICU, that Ryan just was confused. "I wanna-"
"Lexi, baby," Ryan was saying, trying to get her to stop. She was trying to pull at her IV as Kaycee and Keith came rushing in at the scream. Keith left and returned quickly with a shot to settle her.
"I don't want her to rip her stitches," Keith was saying as she was laying back down, awake but no longer in a panic. "If she starts bleeding again…."
"Why is this happening?" Lexi asked, breathing labored as though she was having a panic attack still, though her body was forced to be calm by the medication.
Neither Ryan nor Kaycee knew how to tell her about what happened to the family.
…
Knowing they couldn't keep it from her, they eventually told Lexi everything. In shock she seemed to go numb, laying in the hospital bed and not speaking. She just alternated between sleep and staring. Ryan stayed with her, trying to get her to eat, but she just picked at her food. They brought Beth down from her floor to see her, but she wouldn't even talk to her sister.
A week after the accident, she was being sent home. She was grabbing the bag Kaycee and brought her and Ryan and was shoving things inside when her boss appeared with Ryan. They had a wheelchair.
"You're kidding me, right?" She asked them.
"Hospital policy Dutton," Keith told her, nodding at the chair. She rolled her eyes as she sat down, setting the bag on her lap.
She at least seemed a little more like herself today, though it was mostly because she wanted to get out of here.
"When can I come back to work?" She was asking Keith as he walked with them to the doors, Ryan wheeling her along. They exchanged a glance as they knew she would be asking.
"You're taking your full leave," Keith informed her as they got to the door and she stood up.
"It's maternity leave," she emphasized, blinking back tears. "And I'm not-"
"Your body has been through a lot," Keith reminded her, never mind what her mind was going through. "You need to let it heal."
She shook her head but then shrugged as she gave in.
"I don't want to see you up here unless it's to see your sister or father," he told her as she and Ryan prepared to go.
She waved him off as Ryan led the way to the truck.
They rode the way back to the ranch in silence. Lexi averted her eyes when they got to the point of the drive where her accident was, the guardrail still crumpled from where her car went over. Ryan took a deep breath as they went by.
As they walked through the door into the kitchen, they were met with a counter full of flowers.
"They keep coming," Gator was saying as he just got done cleaning up from breakfast.
Among all the various colors of flowers, Lexi noticed a vase of white roses. Knowing white was a common color for sympathy, she tried to brush it off. Anytime Matt hit her though, she could always count on a dozen white roses showing up either at their home or at her work the following day.
"I got you these," Tate was saying as he and Kaycee were coming in now; he had just got done picking her wildflowers. "But…they're not as pretty," he lamented.
"You know what?" She asked as she knelt down to him. "These are my favorite ones," she said as she took them and he grinned, kissing her cheek.
"Do you want me to make you something?" Gator was asking her now.
"No, I'm ok," she said, wincing a little at her stitches as she stood back up.
"You should eat something Lex," Kaycee told her, knowing Ryan wanted to but he didn't want her to snap at Ryan. She could snap at him all she wanted.
"I'm really fine," she brushed Kaycee off, looking over the flowers as a distraction. Kaycee sent Tate upstairs with his mom, happy he was even able to get him out of the house for a little while to get the flowers.
There was a huge arrangement of lilies; that came from Jamie, who never even came by the hospital or called.
"From Mr. Randall," she said dryly as she dropped the card to the side. She had started referring to Jamie as that seeing as he never called or seemed to care.
The next one she reached for was the smallest, a tiny vase with multicolored daisies.
"These are from your dad," she told Ryan as she turned the card around to show him.
"Mmm," he nodded, not really sure what to say to that. Sure it was nice. It didn't fix anything though.
"Can I have a second, Ryan?" Kaycee asked, nodding at the door to go outside. He could see Ryan was getting overwhelmed and knew he was trying to brave everything out for Lexi.
Lexi continued to go through the cards. There were flowers from Laramie, the bunkhouse, her work friends. There were some from her boss out in California, Chris, and his husband Owen. Unable to avoid it any longer, she reached for the card with the white roses.
…
Outside, Kaycee got Ryan to sit with him as Lexi was inside going through the cards.
"Do you have any idea who-"
"No," Kaycee stopped him. "Not yet." He sighed. "Just…let me deal with that, ok?"
"I know it's your family too," Ryan was saying now. "But, Monica and Tate are ok. And Lexi-"
"Isn't the only one who lost a kid," Kaycee stopped him again. He was going to tell Ryan it was ok to talk to him or Laramie or anyone, just as long as he talked to someone.
From the kitchen though, they heard a blood curdling scream. Both went racing inside and Lexi was in hysterics as she was holding the card in her hand.
"….when he hit me…" she was rambling incoherently as she tried to explain her scream.
"Baby, what is it?" Ryan was asking worriedly and her hands shook as she handed him the card.
Our deepest sympathies, the Morris Family, it read.
"He always sent me white roses after he hit me," she managed to get out before her eyes started streaming out tears.
Ryan grabbed the vase with the white roses and whipped them at the wall, the glass shattering and falling everywhere. Lexi began crying harder, sinking to the floor, head in her hands.
"Ryan, Ryan hey!" Kaycee called as he went after him. Someone needed to be with Lexi, but he knew Ryan was about to do something stupid as he stormed into the living room. Sure enough, he grabbed a gun from the cabinet.
"Ryan, stop!" Kaycee yelled as he got directly in his path.
"He did this! You know he-"
"Probably," Kaycee agreed as he took the gun from Ryan. "But killing his brother and ending up in jail isn't going to do anything."
It seemed to hit Ryan as Kaycee was saying that.
"I told you we would kill everyone involved and I meant it," Kaycee assured him. Rip had come up to the house and heard the two of them yelling, going to investigate.
"The hell is going on?" Rip asked, hearing Lexi crying in the kitchen.
"Lexi's ex might have had a hand in all this," Kaycee told him now. Rip nodded as he took his in, thinking of how to deal with this.
"Go to your wife," Rip told Ryan seriously. "I'll take care of it."
"Make sure it hurts," Ryan told him as they could hear Lexi sobbing, going to her finally. Gator, unsure of what to do as he heard everything, had started cleaning up.
"I did that, I can clean it," Ryan told him.
"It's ok Ryan, really," Gator assured him as he left with a dustpan full of broken glass and white rose petals.
"Here, come here," Ryan said gently as he helped Lexi to her feet. "Let's go upstairs, ok?"
"Ryan, I'm so sorry," she was crying still.
"For what?" He asked in confusion.
"This is all my fault," she sobbed. "All of this, everything with them, it's my…" She broke off into choking sobs.
"Look at me," he told her, taking her face in his hands.
"If I never left, if I just stayed there-"
"Do not do that," he stopped her, his own voice shaking now with tears. "None of what he's done to you is your fault, do you understand me?"
"Ryan…Ryan, our baby…our…"
"I know," he assured her, pulling her in now and she continued to cry into his chest. "I know, but you don't need to be sorry," he said, holding her tight.
"It's not fair!"
"I know," he agreed, barely realizing he was crying now. "I know. But it's no one's fault but theirs."
And he was going to go after every last member of that damn family.
…
Beth was home a few days later, recovering well from her burns. Once she was home, it seemed to be time to face the inevitable; it was time for RJ's funeral.
In the dress she wore to Lee's funeral, Lexi stood next to Ryan at his grave, which was right next to her mother. It felt like she had spent the past few days either crying or making an attempt at sleep, so right now she felt pretty numb. Ryan stood next to her, holding her hand, a few stray tears but he still kept a lot in.
Behind them was Kaycee, his family and Beth. Rip was off somewhere and, again, no one had heard from Jamie. Everyone from the bunkhouse was there as well, except for Jimmy of course who was still in the hospital.
"Where were you?" She heard Beth hissing through her teeth as the funeral was still in progress. Rip was there now and she was pretty unhappy he had been late.
"Some business at Cross Creek," he murmured softly; Ryan felt him squeeze his shoulder, assuring him of what was done.
Soon after, the funeral was over. And while Lexi initially thought she wouldn't be able to pull herself away, she actually couldn't take standing there another moment. Laramie asked if she wanted to come sit with her in the bunkhouse. Lexi agreed, wanting Beth to go rest and for Kaycee to be there for his family. They asked Ryan to come but he waited back; he was the one having a hard time pulling himself away.
…
The scene at the bunkhouse reminded Lexi a lot of the night of Lee's funeral. Most were still in their black clothes, all quietly sitting around. The big difference, she knew, was tonight wasn't going to end in card games and drinking. No, tonight they just sat in miserable silence while Jake randomly clicked through the tv channels.
Lexi sat on the couch with Laramie but eventually sank to where she rested her head in Laramie's lap, her sister in law playing with her hair. It reminded her of her mom when she was little. Ryan eventually came in, going to sit at the table with Colby and Lloyd, having stopped to reach over the back of the couch to squeeze Lexi's arm before sitting down and having a drink.
As Jake was clicking through, trying to find something to watch, they briefly saw a picture of Roarke on the news.
"Turn that off," Laramie was saying, though Lexi sat up.
"Wait, turn it back," she said. She didn't just see his picture; she spotted the word 'tragedy.'
"The scene out of Cross Creek Ranch tonight is particularly gruesome," the woman on the news went on. "Mr. Morris's cleaning woman came by and was unable to find him. Eventually, he was found down by the river where it is believed he fell while fishing. Police believe he fell into some kind of snake den as he was bitten on the face by a rattlesnake. Unable to get to help, Mr. Morris died at the scene. He…."
"Karma's a BITCH," Teeter announced while flipping off the tv. They had all heard by now about the flowers and how the Morris family likely had something to do with what happened. Lexi turned to the table to look at Ryan.
"Pretty sure karma is living in the foreman cabin," he murmured, taking a drink. Lexi realized that was where Rip had been that day. She felt the urge to do something now, grabbing her phone before she lost her nerve. Everyone looked on curiously, wondering who she was calling.
She was taking her power back.
"Hey, Chris?" She asked as her old boss answered. "Can you do me a huge favor?"
"I told you, anything you need from us," he assured her.
"I need you to send a dozen white roses to Matt's office," she told him.
"You want me to add a card?" He asked lightly, knowing about the flowers from when she lived there.
"He'll know who they're from," she said as she hung up, knowing anonymity was going to be better anyway in case they ever tried to prove anything.
"That's my girl!" Laramie cheered as she hugged her.
"Probably not the best idea?" Colby questioned under his breath to Ryan as they watched from the table.
"Like kicking a hornet's nest," Lloyd agreed.
"Pretty sure they did the kicking," Ryan said, finishing off his drink.
…
It was late when he and Lexi went back up to the house. He had been drinking some, but she hadn't at all. That's why it came to him as a bit of a surprise when, after she had changed out of her clothes into her pajamas, she started kissing him.
"Baby," he protested, pulling away from her. She figured it had to do with her stitches, or maybe it was like the night of Lee's funeral where he worried about taking advantage of her.
"I feel good right now Ryan," she said, referencing her call before, kissing him once. "Just let me hang onto this high…" She trailed off as she kissed him again.
"Lexi, you've barely been home a week," he said, gently taking her hands and giving them back to her. "I don't want to hurt you, or-"
"Then we'll just make out," she grinned, putting her arms around him and kissing him again. "It'll be like when we were first dating," she said as she started kissing his neck.
"Lexi, I can't," he finally said, pulling away from her abruptly. As surprised as he was that she was in the mood, she was just as surprised that he was pushing her away.
"….um, ok," she agreed awkwardly.
"I'm sorry," he told her, knowing it threw her off. "I'm just not…"
"No, it's fine," she stopped him. After all, there had been plenty of times she told him no. He had every right to say no too. What seemed to be getting at her was their different ways of grieving.
They weren't coming together, they were pulling apart.
"I'll just, um, give you some space," she decided, leaving the room.