Chapter 15
Closing Luke's was the least Rory felt she could do, after having kept up with her mother's texts throughout the night on how things were progressing over in Boston. Things were serious. So serious that Jess had spent the night driving to Boston all the way from Philly. This was not about a few broken bones like the last accident Liz and TJ had been in.
Rory got there herself by the next morning, bringing essentials and proper food. TJ and Liz weren't her blood relation, nor people she particularly connected with, but through Luke they still felt like family. More like the really odd distant family that one felt slightly embarrassed about most of the time, but still. And in Stars Hollow weirdness was embraced by default.
"There you are!" Rory exclaimed with relief, catching a sight of Jess, sitting in a smaller waiting room, bouncing his knee up and down nervously. She'd been wandering around the hospital with a bag of essentials, but since her mother's phone had died and Luke had his on silent, she'd struggled to locate them.
"Hey," Jess said, his voice sounding a little hoarse, and stood up on instinct.
"How is everyone!?" Rory asked, urgently, continuing to observe her friend. He looked tired, which was understandable ofcourse. But it was not often she'd seen Jess look this scattered and disdraught.
"Mom's in surgery. Still. It's been like...forever. Doula's asleep, she's fine - a bit shaken up, and has a fractured arm," Jess explained, and rubbed his reddened eyes.
"And TJ?" Rory inquired.
At that question Jess's impression turned even more serious. "He didn't make it," he said.
"Oh my god!?" Rory reflected, having not expected to hear such grim news.
"Yeah, he didn't even make it to the hospital. There was just too much damage. The truck rammed right into his side of the car," Jess explained, shaking his head, being still in disbelief himself.
"I don't even….," Rory began, not knowing what to say.
"Yeah, I know. I didn't love the guy, but still. He's Doula's dad. We're yet to tell her, or Mom," Jess said, swallowing hard.
Rory sat down beside him, deciding to just sit with him. There was little she could do at this point, and her mother was sure to find them soon enough where she was now.
About twenty minutes in, Rory's phone pinged, and Rory's instinct was to silence that ping, thinking the message notification seeming somehow improper for this setting. She did catch a glimpse of the message. It was Tucker, thanking her from a nice evening and suggesting already something new for them to do. She didn't go into reading or responding to it right then and there, not wanting to feel giddy right now. She didn't want to burden the man with her family worries either, not this early on. It was an odd thought - thinking of this possibly being the start of 'something'. It felt light, yet complicated. But it was certainly a change in the way she'd been thinking, for so long her pattern of thinking had been impossibly tying her path with a man that couldn't be hers. Even in such a short time Tucker had already given her something very important - hope that she might someday have somebody as significant in her life as her mom had Luke, or as Liz had had TJ.
Thinking the latter, brought her back around to the present moment alright, sending a jolt of compassion through her whole body. God, what would losing someone like that even feel like? Could she ever even handle something like that? She'd pondered the same when her grandmother had lost Richard. The thought of decades with the same person seemed unfathomable to Rory.
"There you are!" Lorelai exclaimed, coming from around the corner, tossing out an empty takeaway cup into a nearby bin as she did.
"Hey," Rory replied, and hugged her mother and then Luke in greeting. At that moment she felt a little odd for not having hugged Jess earlier - but unlike with her mom and Luke, with her and Jess there was this barrier between them - physical touch coming either impulsively when one was excited and didn't have time to think or with a little too much thinking, as if fearing one might cross some unspoken line.
"Have you heard anything?" Luke asked Jess.
"Not yet," Jess replied, shaking his head. His knee continued to bounce. This was a changed Jess alright, not like the one he'd been in college and would've never in a million years confessed to caring about his mother like this.
"I'm sure, it'll be okay," Lorelai rubbed Jess' upper arm, supportively. It was an odd interaction to witness, coming from how little they'd once liked each-other, but in that moment, it felt completely natural.
"I should probably go check on Doula, she might be up soon," Jess said, excusing himself. It was weird - he sounded almost fatherly like that.
"I don't envy him," Luke commented quietly, after Jess had left.
"Yeah," Lorelai exhaled, both knowing that it was on Jess's shoulders to tell Doula about what had happened, sooner or later. Luke and Lorelai might've lived in Stars Hollow with them, but Jess had grown a lot closer to his 10-year-old half-sister than he had ever been to his mother or TJ.
"What surgery are they doing on Liz? Do you know how bad it is?" Rory inquired, wondering whether the lenght of the surgery had to do with the extent of her injuries or rather the type of surgery to be done. For example, plastics also was known to take a while.
"There was pretty bad internal bleeding, I'm not sure exactly," Luke replied, clearing his throat. He looked tired too.
Lorelai continued to give Rory a quick overview of what had been going on through the night. It was clear none of the three, besides Rory, had gotten any proper sleep during that night, sitting there worrying about Luke's sister.
It was another few hours before they heard anything. And when they did, the news hit everyone way harder than anyone had imagined.
"...Despite out efforts, she suffered a brain bleed. And combined with all her other injuries, there was nothing more that we could do at that point," the doctor finished their overview.
Lorelai held Luke, who looked like he'd been completely blindsided by the news. No dramatic emotions showed, but it was clear he was in shock.
"Excuse me," Jess said, and excused himself, swallowing an evident lump in his throat, and slipped away down the hallway.
"I should…," Rory said, after a second of hesitation - not that Lorelai or Luke were really paying a lot of attention, her mother being busy comforting Luke. She knew Jess well enough to know that he wasn't fine. He was just now great at expressing his emotions. And while there was some part of her that knew Jess just needed to come to terms with his feelings on his own, she just couldn't bear to let him be. She wanted to help - not that there was any way to really help.
Rory's feet followed him on instinct, making her pretty soon realize she hadn't really had to run with her baby bump pushing onto her ribcage before. Physical activity hadn't been her favorite spare time activity ever, but this was next level, leaving her out of breath almost immediately.
Several hallways and turns behind her, Rory finnally paused and held onto a wall, trying to catch her breath. It was just as she had a chance to look around, it was when she saw him, leaning his head against the wall in a dark passageway.
"Is there anything I can do?" Rory asked, sounding unintentionally out of breath.
Rory could tell Jess' mind was fighting between making a joke out of all of this, saying something snarky or even maybe turning this interaction over to something to do with her instead. But some other part of him won this time. Wordlessly Jess just melted his body against her, searching for support. Rory held him there, not saying a word, feeling this moment to be both the saddest, but also the most beautiful she'd ever witnessed with him. He was letting his guard down like he'd never done before.
"My mom's dead," Jess reflected in a whisper, several seconds later. He wasn't crying, but he wasn't far from it either. It was like this strong, stubborn, guy was being held together by mere masking tape.
"I'm so sorry, Jess," Rory said, and squeezed his body gently, hoping it'd come off supportive above anything. It was odd hugging him like this though, a small bump between them seeming so foreign.
A few moments later Jess inhaled sharply, trying to pull himself together.
"I'm going to have to tell D she's lost both her parents," Jess said, straightening his back, as if stepping onto some other duty.
Rory wanted to say something supportive, maybe even suggest that he didn't need to take all of this onto his shoulders alone. There was Luke too, after all. TJ had family, too, if that counted. But still, this cast a very different kind of light onto Jess in Rory's eyes - he was not just some trendy artsy guy from Philly, who had all the time in the world to date around, drink IPA-s and sleep late, this was a man who was approaching middle age, just like herself, and who had taken a major step up in regards to taking responsibility for his family, rain or shine.
