Gently checking his pulse and feeling the thready motion of it, Lauren starting praying silently to the God she'd not spoken to for so long. "What do you mean, until me?"
"I dreamt of you."
She felt flushed, "You dreamt of me? I mean, when?" Lauren very carefully dabbed at his mouth, not letting her husband see the red on the cloth. But he was still staring at her.
"The first night... when we met. Your job interview." One eyebrow quirked humorously as he watched her eyes widen. "Nothing specific... just how-" Thomas coughed and she nearly screamed in terror when he wet the cloth she hastily put to his mouth with another red stain. "-how beautiful you were. You were sitting in our garden - my garden then - in the sunshine. Looking up at me and smiling. I'd never had anyone at home to greet me. It..." another cough, no blood this time, "...never occurred to me that such a thing would be desirable. Until you."
Lauren used every ounce of self-control she possessed to speak calmly. "My beloved, I have to get Chuck to link us to the doctor again - just, you know, checking in - so just relax, okay? I would like to hear more about the dreams."
He seemed to be in a light doze, so she cried silently as she dialed her bodyguard, who already had the poor physician on the line.
Eight hours gone by. Four more hours. She just had to keep her husband, who was in terrible pain and bleeding sluggishly, alive for four more hours. Then the medics would take over.
"They're already here, Miss Lauren." Chuck was trying to soothe her as he watched the tears pour down her reddened cheeks. "Just ready for the door to open and take care of your husband."
"He's..." she was trying to choke down a particularly loud sob. "Everything's been taken away from me-" she laughed mirthlessly, "-mostly because of him. But I can't lose Thomas. I can't. I... I know this is all nuts. But he's mine. He made me more. Better. He's better too, now..." She regretted the words almost instantly because, for a moment, her stoic father figure almost looked gut-shot himself.
"I... Miss Lauren," he finally answered, "you will not lose Mr. Williams. You are doing a fine job."
"So did that fucking bullet tearing through his chest," she sobbed in a whisper. "Could you just, you know, call me Lauren? Would that be okay? Like... family?"
For the first time, it seemed that Charles Straker had thrown caution utterly to the winds, behaving in a ridiculous, almost madcap sentimental fashion that was so utterly alien to him. "We are family, Lauren," he finally answered, "and I see you as my daughter. And as my daughter, I could not be prouder of who you've become."
Wiping her cheeks with the back of her hands, she smiled at the video screen in a watery fashion. "Thank you, Chuck. I wish you had been my dad. I bet I wouldn't have been such a wimp growing up."
"Ah, Lauren," he said gently, "but then perhaps you would never have met Mr. Williams. Never married him. Never fallen in love. Even knowing what you know now, would you have rather had that other life?"
Angling the video screen so she could watch his face when she laid back down with Thomas, Lauren shook her head. "No. No, I wouldn't. I just wish... it wasn't so brutal. People keep getting hurt. I wish it wasn't like this."
He looked rather sad, but Chuck nodded. "All those in this position wish the same. But that is not for us to decide. What we can do, is decide what to do with the time gifted to us."
There was a comfortable silence between them as Lauren stroked Thomas's forehead. "Chuck?"
"Yes?"
"You totally stole that whole line from Gandalf inLord of the Rings,didn't you?"
It was the first time she'd ever seen the man laugh.
"Thirty minutes, Thomas," Lauren whispered, both hands cupping the gaunt cheeks of her husband. "Thirty tiny minutes and we're out of here and you get better. I love you so much. Just thirty more minutes, okay?"
For the first time, he didn't answer her back, and Lauren began to sob in earnest. "You don't get to go away! T-Thomas I will say 'fuck' three hundred times a day! I'll wear jeans! I'll- I'll not only say 'fuck' at your funeral, I'll totally lie and tell everyone you liked polka music and only drank boxed wine at home! I mean it!"
There was the faintest smile on his face as Thomas rasped out, "I intend to live primarily for the satisfaction of spanking you for that outrageous threat."
Curling around him like a desperate strain of ivy, she whispered, "Yeah, okay."
The electronic buzz and the crisp "click!" or the door opening was drowned out instantly by the stampede of feet. The doctor Lauren recognized as the man who'd been coaching her for the last twelve hours. Paramedics. And Chuck, who immediately wrapped his arms around her. Lauren's knees finally gave out under her when the physician looked up.
"He's alive, Mrs. Williams. You did a good job. Let's get him to the hospital."
Chapter 44 - If you try to pull out that IV, I will sit on you.
In which Lauren makes it clear she is Not Fucking Around.
When Thomas woke next, it was in a hospital bed.
This was the worst possible position for a man in his, well, position to be in. But as his bloodshot eyes scanned his room, he spotted Chuck and another trusted man by the door. Lauren's bodyguard was just inside it on a chair, and the other man sitting in the hallway, glaring at everyone passing by. And then, with half her little body slumped on his covered legs was his wife. Smiling tenderly, Thomas attempted to reach out and stroke her hair, but the IV in his hand stopped short. Lips curled back in a sneer, Number One of Jaguar Holdings was about to rip it out of the vein it was puncturing when the flash of light from Lauren's wedding band stopped him. Her left hand was covering his, and his sweet bride was wearing a thunderous scowl.
