Chapter Text
As Dan uses the last of her strength to heave Francesca’s limp body from the earth, she wonders, really truly, what is wrong with her. What possible turn of events could have led her, scholarship crowned golden child Danielle Cain, down such a gore soaked path as the one she found herself stumbling along with Francesca in her arms.
“C’mon Francesca, we’re almost there,” she pants. Her breath fogs in the cool November air. “Almost there, almost there.”
A swarm of squad cars and ambulances have already descended upon the house, bathing the headstones of the neighboring cemetery in strobing reds and blues. A paramedic notices Dan limping from the cemetery, and rushes forward to support Francesca’s dead weight.
“Oh my god, it’s Doctor Cain! Are you alright?” Dan ignores her in favor of calling to a bundle of EMTs standing nearby. “She needs to get to the hospital now, I need a gurney over here!” The crowd parts as Francesca is strapped onto the gurney and hauled up into the ambulance. Dan gets a better look at her, caked in dirt and blood illuminated by the interior light. She thinks of Gloria, their girl, their Not-Meg, her wild shining eyes. Dan’s stomach turns, and she falls to her hands and knees, retching hard.
“Doctor Cain please, you’re bleeding-,” the same EMT touches her shoulder, “We need to check your wounds, would you like to ride with her?” Dan ignores her again.
“There’s still someone stuck down there, have they gotten her out?”
“Down where?”
“The crypt, the basement-,” Dan coughs again, gags on nothing but a tightness building within her. “There’s someone down there, she-,”
Dan can’t get the words out. Completely wrung out and heaving stomach bile into the grass, she collapses.
–
“And you must be Dani, is that right?”
Dan grips the blanket around her shoulders a little tighter, and glances up from her chair. A tall woman with dark hair and her arms crossed tightly over a trendy windbreaker stands before her in the bustling hospital hallway, staring her down.
“Ah, yeah. You are-?”
“Francesca’s roommate. Sarah.”
Dan flinches. “Sarah, I’m so sorry-,”
Sarah scoffs. “Save it.” She strides over to the door that Dan has pulled up a chair next to. “You stay away from her. I heard what happened to your last little girlfriend. If you try to talk to her ever again, I’ll call the fucking cops.”
Sarah doesn’t slam the door behind her when she enters Francesca’s room, but she’s made her message clear. Dan peeks through the blinds, watches Sarah cross the room and drop to her knees by Francesca’s bed and grip her bandaged hand. Francesca smiles at her weakly before catching Dan’s eye through the window. Sarah turns and glares, stalks her way to the window, and violently draws the blinds.
That’s fair, Dan supposes. Francesca is good and smart and sweet, and nights like these shouldn’t happen to good, smart, sweet people. Her own head throbs. She had regained consciousness in the ambulance, with a ring of med students and EMTs hovering above her like a halo of scrub clad angels, ready to enact judgement. She looks up and stares into the fluorescents until her vision spots.
Judgement. Dan walked out of the crypt with a few scratches and a headache, changed from her dirtblood soaked shirt into a pair of clean spare scrubs she kept in the office. Good, smart, sweet Francesca would need surgery to repair her crushed larynx, in addition to a few dozen gnarly black stitches from where Gloria had sunk her teeth in and 500 ml of blood. Fairness was maybe besides the point.
She hauls herself to her feet to stagger down the hallway to the breakroom. Her vision swirls, tips dangerously with fatigue and the after remnants of shock. She swears there’s a Coke in the staff fridge with her name on it. She nearly rounds the corner, but stops at the sound of a conversation that carries over the bustle of the ER.
“I’m sorry officer, but until she regains consciousness on her own, I simply cannot allow you in for questioning. It’s against hospital policy.”
Dan peeks around the corner. It’s one of the lead nurses, Sheridan Bird. She’s sizing up against a pair of cops, who tut and shift impatiently. “You know what they found in her basement, Nurse Bird? Bodies. Lots of them. Hacked up and then sewn back together.”
“I never knew West was a seamstress.”
Dan’s breath catches in her throat. Herbert is here. Alive.
The shorter cop gasps. “This ain’t a joke-,”
“I’m not laughing. This isn’t a joke, it’s the emergency room. And right now, butcher or not, Doctor West is our patient and you are interfering with our care. You will wait until she has woken up to ask your questions, or you will be asked to leave. Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?”
Dan whistles quietly under her breath. Kudos to Nurse Bird. The officers mutter petulantly, but turn to leave. Dan watches the pairs of handcuffs hanging off their belts catch the light as they retreat. She’s got to move quickly.
“Nurse Bird!” She jogs forward as quickly as her aching legs will allow. “Nurse Bird, you said Doctor West is here?”
Bird wheels around, puts a hand to her chest. “Dani, you scared me half to death! I’m glad to find you though, when I heard you were a part of that whole mess at the cemetery, I was so worried!” She pats Dan on the cheek gently. Dan preens under the matronly affection, but deflects. “I’m fine, I’m fine, thank you. Can you tell me where Herbert is?”
“Of course, of course. I was just about to call for you, you’re listed as her emergency contact, and um. The police are here. For her.” Bird whispers this last portion, shielding her mouth away from the nurses buzzing around them. “I talked them down, but you should probably go out there, see what you can do. I mean, Dr West is a strange one, don’t get me wrong. But murder? Hacked up bodies? I just don’t believe it. Follow me.”
Dan flushes. There’s a lot Nurse Bird wouldn’t believe about what they get up to. She follows her down the bustling hallways, half dazed. Bird stops in front of one of the private rooms, unclips the Do-Not-Disturb sign from the handle, and hands it to Dan.
“Now she’s resting. I realize you’ve both been through quite the ordeal, so no acting out. I’ll be back to check on her in fifteen.” With that, Bird turns on her heel and heads back down the hallway, pulling her face mask on before turning into one of the surgery suites. Dan glances up and down the hallway, then dips in the room, closing and locking the door behind her.
Herbert looks smaller than normal in the hospital bed. She’s petite as it is, but pale and completely still, Dan realizes that her personality gives her at least a few inches. Dan grabs the clipboard hanging over the edge of the bed. Fractured radius on her right arm. Bruised right lung. Concussion. Several lacerations, 22 stitches required in total. Dan blinks back a stinging in her eyes, attempts to rub the headache out of her temples. It’s a rare sight to see Herbert at rest, but they haven’t got much time.
She crouches down by the bed, lays a hand on her shoulder. “Herbert?” She jostles her gently. “Herbert!” She doesn’t rouse. Dan glances at the clock. “Shit,” she mutters. She busies herself with removing the IV in Herbert’s arm, and bandaging the bead of blood that springs up. Herbert’s right arm is in a sling and soft cast. Dan is sure that she’ll be needing a hard cast for a fracture like that, but they just haven’t got the time. She grips Herbert’s shoulder again, harder this time. “For the love of- wake up. Do you want to be arrested?”
Herbert stirs. She groans quietly, painfully, her face screwing up as she comes to. She opens her eyes blearily. “Dan?”
“Oh thank God. Can you sit up?”
Herbert still hasn’t caught up. She tries to shift, but winces in pain. “Dani, where-?”
While Herbert reels, Dan realizes she hasn’t got her coat on her. No keys. And after her ambulance ride, no getaway car either. She crouches closer to Herbert, and hooks an arm under her left side. “We’re at the hospital,” she tucks an arm along her back as gently as possible and hauls her forward, “The cops are here, Herbert.”
Herbert hisses at the change in position and curses. “Damn. The lab-,”
“Completely destroyed. Swing your legs this way.”
Herbert complies. “My notes?”
Dan knows exactly where they are. Herbert’s notes are buried beneath several feet of earth and rubble, just like their girl and the rest of the evidence against them. Dan hopes it all goes missing, for both their sakes. She lies for Herbert’s. “I don’t know. Probably still at the house. But right now, Herbert we need to go. Now, one, two, up!”
Herbert pitches forward off the bed into Dan’s arms. Her legs wobble beneath them, but they stagger the few steps required to the wheelchair pushed against the bed. Dan deposits her heavily, grabs her glasses from off the side table, and pushes forward out the door.
“We need to go back for them.”
“We need to get the hell out of dodge.” Dan rounds the corner, keeping close to the edge of the hallway with her head down. “Then, maybe we can go back.”
“There will be no going back!” Herbert protests, indignant. She cranes back in the chair to glare up at Dan. “Those notes have everything, if they were to fall into the wrong hands-,”
Dan cuts her off. “Then we will both get arrested, is that what you want?”
Herbert huffs. “They can’t prove anything. We were attacked by that raving Lieutenant and interrupted by that simpleton girlfriend of yours, both along with breaking and entering and damaging private property. We’ll see how the courts like that, if she’s really stupid enough to try and accuse us. Dan, where the hell are you taking us? The closest exit was back there!”
“I forgot something.” Dan turns them once more, choosing to ignore the crueler points of Herbert’s argument. Herbert squawks in protest when Dan uses her legs to push open the door to the breakroom. She parks Herbert facing away before rustling through the staff lockers. The third one swings open, unlocked. A key with a fob and a small Harvard keychain dangles from the hook alongside a men's hoodie. Dan silently begs forgiveness from the naive trainee who probably forgot to lock his locker on this day of all days, and pockets the keys. She turns to open the fridge, and sighs in relief.
“Hold this.” Dan says as she hands the Coke to Herbert. She pushes backwards out the door, then wheels the pair around back down the hallway. “Really, Dan.” Herbert scoffs at the can, but she slumps to the side, clearly exhausted. She grips the can in her lap as Dan pushes them out of the hospital staff exit, and to the parking lot. She clicks the key fob button, scanning the parking lot even as her view wobbles. Something beeps from the east end of the parking lot. Herbert perks up at the sight of police lights at the main entrance of the hospital.
“Is she dead?”
“Who, Francesca? No, you’ll be saddened to hear that she’ll make a full recovery.” Dan replies bitterly.
“No, no, not her-,” Herbert waves her hand dismissively, “Her. My, I mean, Our… Creation. Her.”
Dan balks. “You don’t remember? My God, Herbert you were there. She’s gone.”
Herbert doesn’t reply. She doesn’t look at Dan. They don’t say any more to one another as Dan helps her get into the passenger side of a dirty green Honda Accord. She leaves the wheelchair in the parking lot before getting into the driver's side herself. Dan says a quick internal prayer. She doesn’t know if God would really listen to her at this point, but it’s worth a try. She breathes, grips the steering wheel. Herbert wheezes quietly beside her, eyes still cast straight forward.
A fresh surge of adrenaline sates her as Dan puts the car in reverse, then forward out of the parking lot and into the surrounding night. The flaring red and blue in the rearview shrinks until there’s nothing behind them but road.
—
Three hours later, somewhere near Syracuse, and just about five seconds away from crashing their new car from sheer exhaustion, Dan finds them a motel.
Herbert gets out of the car willfully unassisted, despite Dan trying to help open the door. She plucks the room key from Dan’s pocket and lets herself in before Dan even locks the car. She stands in the doorway, hesitating. Dan winces. Turns out there’s not too many vacancies at 3 in the morning on a Saturday.
Dan follows behind Herbert, and follows her gaze into the room. It’s small, pretty cheap, but charming in its way. Average in just about every way for a motel room. There’s only one bed. Dan wonders if Herbert’s current vow of silence will win against the very singular elephant in the room. Dan didn’t think it was a problem. Dan felt very calm and normal about it, in fact. Of course it was normal. They were friends.
Still, Herbert doesn’t move. Dan takes pity on her. “I can take the floor. I’m so tired I could seriously sleep anywhere at this point, ok? Let’s get some rest.” She puts a hand on Herbert’s shoulder and leads her into the room.
Herbert goes easily, sinks slowly onto the bed with another pained hiss. She puts her glasses on the side table inelegantly and covers her face with her hand. Dan steals the pillows from the other side of the bed as well as the throw blanket. She flips the lights off and lays down on her makeshift floor bed.
For a moment in the dark, she just breathes. Feels the ache in her legs and the sting of the cut her arm. Feels the relief of being alive, yet again, despite it all. It almost makes her sick, how relieved she is to be alive. She’s alive. Francesca is alive. Herbert is alive. Sleeping next to her, struggling to take a deep breath in through her aching bruised lung but stubborn as ever. Very very much alive.
Dan knows the survivor's guilt will come later. For now, she allows herself to just bask in relief.