April 25th 2023

Chapter 115
We Become Visitors

He didn't sleep well. Some of the blame there naturally went to the fact that he was recovering from what had happened to him, and the surgery he'd needed as a result. That was the easiest conclusion for people to reach, closely followed by how he was in a hospital bed instead of his own, back home with Maya at his side, with his daughters in this room and that one. But there was a third, and that one he struggled to speak about. He hadn't talked about it, to anyone save his wife, his father, and Sylvie. She was his constant visitor whenever she could drop in and maybe most well equipped in understanding the third thing that disturbed his sleep. He'd started having nightmares.

It wasn't the easiest thing to admit, especially as it demanded for him to make himself vulnerable, admitting that what had happened at the ranch had shaken him to this point. A lot of it went to how he had little to no recollection of just how he'd gained most of his injuries. He'd defended himself. He was sure that he had, and yet here he was, left helpless.

And as though it wasn't bad enough, he was also highly aware of how his family was left to cope in his absence. He hated that he couldn't be there to see to the girls with Maya. He didn't actually have much of anything to be worried about so far as her rising to the challenge, he knew, especially as she had all this help at her disposal. She had her brother and sisters in the house, her first line of assistance, and then right across and up the road, there were the Hart-Lanes, then the Sandersons, and down the road she had the McCulloughs and the Dixons. The lane took care of its people. But they had always been a team in parenting, and she slept no better alone than he did… and the girls… This was a lot, for all of them and then each on her own, too.

They had a routine. In the morning, they would call him over breakfast, so they might talk a bit and 'share' the meal. Then it would be off to school for all but Aubrey, who'd spend her days with her grandparents or great-grandparents. At the end of the day, she would be brought out to the hospital, even as her mother went and collected her sisters and brought them out to join them. They would spend as much time together there as they could before the visitors eventually had to go on their way. It was not their favorite time of the day by a long shot. The consolation prize here was that, after they went home and did everything that they had to do there, they would get one last call, at bedtime, where Lucas would tell his daughters a bedtime story.

That had been the way, for the four days since the incident, and having that routine had been as beneficial to Lucas as it had been to the girls. It helped him cope with the days, the nights… So much of him needed to get out of this bed and this hospital, to get back to his life, but at the same time, while he couldn't wait to get back home, he was finding that any thought of going back to the ranch – for the moment – was giving him significant pause. And he needed to deal with that.

That night, in many ways, he was being given a treat. It was parent night at the high school, and so Maya would be out there. The girls could have been left in their aunts and uncle's care, the routine uninterrupted, but they'd managed to make it so that they could stay with him – along with Nellie and Gracie – for the length of Maya's meetings with the parents. She would swing back over to see him and get everyone when she was done, and in the meantime, it would be a very good evening in room 1203.

Maya had already gone and done the rounds on the parent side herself earlier that day, over her afternoon break, as the elementary school was also holding their parent night that day. Normally, Lucas would have been the one to go, but he couldn't, and the triplets' teacher had been as understanding and accommodating as Marianne's. If anything, it had allowed Ingrid McAllister to talk to one of her own daughter's teachers ahead of time. Everything was going great with the third grader and with the three kindergarteners, putting aside the last few days' turn of events. Lucas was as happy to hear this as Maya was.

There had been plenty of disturbances as it was, in just those few days, so they could only imagine what it would be like while Lucas remained in the hospital. For one, everyone's activities, the skating, the swimming, the karate, soccer, all of that had been put on hold in favor of facilitating visiting hours between the girls and their father. For another, the afterschool program had been temporarily shut down. After what had happened to Lucas and Sylvie, they'd had a deluge of calls from parents wanting to know if their children would be safe. It was a reasonable concern, and while they were all promised that yes, they would be, it had been decided that they would stop holding group days for a few weeks, possibly until after the holidays, giving time for the dust to settle. A decision would be made whenever Lucas was released from the hospital.

"What's going on out there?" Lucas asked Marianne as she came up to his bed. Across the room, he could see Nellie and Gracie in a sort of huddle with Lucy, Kacey, Remy, Mackenzie, and Aubrey, all of them bent over something that he couldn't see.

"Can't tell you," Marianne shook her head, with the great solemnity of the eldest sister in the room.

"Right, got it," Lucas told her, and he was glad to see her smile.

According to Maya, maybe the only reason why Marianne hadn't spent each night since finding out what had happened to him up in their bed with her was so that she would be in her own room for Mackenzie and Aubrey if they needed the comforting presence of their big sister. But she'd definitely been struggling, maybe not nearly as much as she'd done back in February after her grandmother's passing, but near enough that Maya was fully expecting to get a call from the school any day now, asking for her to come and pick her up. So, if Lucas had any power in him to lift their girl's spirits…

"Does your back hurt a lot?" Marianne asked, drawing him from his thoughts.

"Comes and goes," Lucas told her. He could try and skirt around the issue completely, but it wouldn't have felt right, especially with her. He didn't go and tell her every single detail, but he was frank enough that she would know he was being honest with her. "They're taking really good care of me though. Going to make me as good as new as I can get," he reached out his hand. She took it in hers and she smiled again with a nod. "Do you have to go over there, or…" he motioned covertly over to the huddle. Marianne looked over and chuckled before moving to join her sisters and their aunts.

By the time Maya would arrive to visit her husband and retrieve their daughters and her sisters, she would get to see the big scheme realized. In an execution worthy of her art class, they had all worked together to add some much needed life to Lucas' space, guaranteeing he'd have plenty to look to while he was there, even when they weren't. And it would make him smile. If that didn't help him heal, what would?

"How was it tonight?" he asked Maya when she came up and kissed him hello.

"How do you think it was?" she sighed, and he let out a breath along with her. She'd predicted how the incident at the ranch, not unlike the musical last spring, would go and dominate and derail the conversations she'd have that night. It was understandable, kind even, that they should be so concerned and want to express their well wishes toward her, and him, and their family at large, but then they were all on short time, time that was meant to be about their children and their presence and their work in her class.

"At least you got through it, huh?" he guessed.

"As much as I could. Had to pull on the teacher voice with some of them so they'd get back on track," she revealed, and it made him laugh.

"Now that I wish I could have seen." She rewarded this request with as good of a re-enactment as she could perform. It was very effective. "All that aside?"

"All that aside, it was parent night. I had some trouble focusing, but I did what I could," she admitted. She usually enjoyed those nights, as tedious as they could be. He knew how she loved getting to talk with the parents about their children, especially when they would get engaged with the class. Those who took it as a freebie, even if she treated them the same as the others, once they got to parent night, well… there was only so much she could do.

"Three highlights, hit me," Lucas challenged, and it made her smirk.

"Fine," she raised her brow at him before pausing to think. "Might be cheating, but I was glad to have Haruna Farrell come along for Max. She didn't spend the whole time asking about you and the ranch, but with what she went through a few years back, I guess it's no wonder. It's not the same, but she gets it."

"She does," Lucas agreed, pointing out the flowers in the corner of his room, sent from the Farrells.

"Gabe Dixon," Maya called for her second choice, and Lucas wondered how it had gone with her and their neighbor of many years. "Turns out Amy's not nearly as sneaky as she thinks she is with her whole wardrobe swap."

"Could have told you that," Lucas hummed. "So, they're fine with it?"

"Gabe went on about how he and Marsha were, back when they were her age, and how they know she's doing great in her classes, and they trust her… so they don't mind playing like she's pulling a fast one on them."

"Then I won't tell her if you don't," Lucas agreed. "And number three?"

"Sydney, twice over," Maya replied. He'd almost forgotten how she now had both Maia and Jake out there now, one a senior, the other a freshman. "She kept going on about how she couldn't believe how close she was to getting one of her kids off to college. She talked about you, too, but that one I allowed," Maya told him, and he nodded. His basketball teammate had lost her husband about six years back, before she'd joined the team, and she sympathized deeply for what the Friars were going through. "She mentioned how you discussed letting your spot on the team go?" Maya slowly asked, and Lucas nodded with a sigh. "You never said anything."

"I haven't made up my mind yet, but I figure with how long it'll be before I'm out of here, and recovered… We don't know what that's going to look like, but the way I see it right now, it's looking a lot like my playing days are over." Maya wasn't going to argue with that, although as they both found themselves looking over to their daughters, about half of them asleep on the small couch in the corner, they had the same notion in mind.

He may have been done with his team of medical professionals, but as far as playing with their girls outside the house… He would do everything he could to get back there with them.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners