Chapter 1
Disclaimer: I do not own any house MD characters or storylines. I own the actors- they're in my basement. I make them act out shows for me.
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"Darcy." I moaned into my duvet and wormed my way further down into the bed. I didn't care that the morning light had already begun to cut through the thin curtains of my bedroom- there was no way I could get back to sleep now, no matter how tired I was. I didn't care, either, that I could smell a cup of instant coffee with my name on it brewing (dissolving) down the hall; the fact that Monday morning had rolled around once again was enough to make anyone attempt to wriggle down into the forth dimension.
Noah repeated my name once more and I sighed and pulled the duvet off my face. The light was blinding.
"Can't you see I'm busy trying to ignore my priorities?" I protested, squinting and thoroughly annoyed by my brother's consideration for my educational wellbeing. I hated school, especially because I was in my last year of it.
Don't get me wrong or anything. Windsor-Plainsboro high is a great school. Above average grades to match above average teachers means high publicity, high publicity means more income, and more income leads to, inevitably, a better school.
The house we used to live in in Oklahoma with our parents was in a rough neighbourhood, and had overlooked a construction site- now, I was sipping my morning coffee by the window of our apartment, staring out across the Grovers Mill Pond. It was more of a lake if you asked me, but who was I to judge?
"You're not eating?" I blindly observed, not taking my eyes off a small gray squirrel I had noticed darting back and forth across the lawn across the road from the apartment block.
"I feel a little sick." He admitted, following my gaze. "Besides, I've got a few snack bars in my work bag. I'll just eat one of those if I get hungry... Or something." I took another slurp of my coffee and set it down on the coaster, deciding the squirrel had gotten boring.
"Ready to go?" Noah nodded and stood up from the barstool he had been reading a newspaper on. I had already become indulged in picking at my chipped nail but in my peripheral vision I saw that, instead of reaching for the car keys, Noah's hand slammed against his head and he groaned, balancing himself against the wall with his opposite Palm. I jumped towards him, grabbing him by the elbows to steady him and guide him back to his seat.
"Woah... Are you hung over or something?" He stopped moving for a second, his body tensing up.
"No... I don't drink, Darcy, not after..." Noah paused, blinking roughly and rubbing his eyes. He didn't need to finish the sentence, because we were both thinking about his dad. "Wow, that was weird." He digressed back to the original point of conversation and I frowned and stared hard at him. He's still not sleeping? It'd been over a week since Noah had gotten a good night's sleep, I knew that much from the dark circles under his eyes and the books piling up on his window sill -nobody can get through the Shining in an hour's worth of light bedtime reading.
"Maybe you should skip work today." It was more of a request than a suggestion, but even before it left my mouth Noah was shaking his head.
"We need the money." I swallowed hard, knowing he was right.
"Fine. But when I get home I'm cooking you a nice lasagne." Noah smiled and ushered me out of the door, his dizzy spell now apparently over.
"Don't you... Forget about me! Don't don't don't don't!" It was a 10 minute car journey for Noah to drop me at school before continuing on to the factory where he worked. It was grey and slightly drizzly out, but hot air still filled Noah's rusty ford.
"You're a crappy singer." Noah stated.
"You're a crappy driver, can you please-" Noah pushing me back into my seat obscured my attempts to grab the wheel- "stay on one side of the road!" I laughed i could hear him chuckling to himself as I struggled against his powerful grip. "Okay you win. You can let go now." I said, staring out of the passenger window at the grey sky whizzing past. "Noah." I repeated when he didn't lower his arm. His muscles clenched and a pothole jogged his arm higher, towards my throat. I swallowed and gasped slightly, his strength had started to become overpowering and I turned my head to look at him- but my line of vision never quite reached him before everything went black.
When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that someone was screaming. I wanted them to stop. The second thing I realised was that I was the one screaming; and then everything suddenly came to me in a heap. I could instantly feel the blood trickling down into my eye and both of my legs were trapped underneath the dashboard. The car was creaking slightly. My breath was forming icy clouds in front of me, and I could taste copper. I closed my mouth and tried not to writhe in the blinding pain. The front of the car was completely crumpled inwards and branches were thrust violently through the windshield. Glass littered my lap and the dashboard and I began to feel a sharp pain throbbing in my shoulder, which made my hand fly to it and feel around the large shard of windshield sticking out from it. A bird cawed in a tree somewhere. I had never passed out before, but already I could feel myself slipping back into the black. I tried to focus on my own breathing, I knew it was important to stay awake. Stay awake. Blinking, I forced my eyes to remain open; and that's when I felt the movement to the left of me. My heart rate sped up when I realised I forgot about Noah. The bird cawed again and a sudden bang from the engine startled me. I turned my head and expected to see Noah either struggling his way out of his seatbelt or blacked out. I was expecting the blood. I was expecting the damage- but what I saw was even more horrifying than I could imagine. His eyeballs were rolled back into his head and his skull was pressed firmly against his headrest, his jaw jutted out in a contorted manner. He was fitting uncontrollably. I yelled out at him and made an attempt to pin him down against his seat before crying out in pain, remembering the glass in my arm, and my vision doubled. I rummaged around on the seat with my good arm, trying not to vomit- and by some miracle of God, there it was. My phone was tucked away under my leg. A faint sense of irony washed over me at the fact that I had cracked the screen of this little bitch just a few months before by putting it down on the coffee table too hard. And yet it survives a car crash? I shake myself out of my thoughts: realising that, if I didn't act fast, the phone would be the only survivor.
"9-1-1, what's your emergency?"
"My, my brother, he was driving and, shit, there's blood, he's having a seizure?-- oh god, there's so much blood," I could feel myself slipping away as I repeated the last sentence, my brain jumping backwards like a broken record, and closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them again I was lying flat with two men bending over me. The white sky was above me and the pain was still there. The feeling of movement told me I was in an ambulance. It wasn't the sky, it was a ceiling. My other senses slowly came back to me, I could hear the low hum of machinery and talking. I tried to talk but I found myself restricted, my breath hot and forming in a pool around my mouth- I had an oxygen mask on. Eventually my syllabic mumbles caught one of the men's attention and he removed the mask.
"Hi, my name's doctor Chase. You've been in a car accident, can you tell us your name?" He peered at me with furrowed eyebrows and i could feel his fingers under my jaw. Concerned.
"Darcy Rachel Lennon." I replied hoarsely, battling to catch my breath. I wasn't going to cry.
"Darcy, you've been in an accident." I nodded- tried to, my head was stuck in something. "Dont try to move." He warned. "We're taking you to Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital. We'll be there shortly." Before I could even begin to ask where Noah was, the oxygen mask was back on and I had succumbed to the pain once more.
I could hear faint beeping and distant chatter. The smell of disinfectant. The copper taste was gone. Before I opened my eyes I knew I was in the hospital. I turned my head (it was free now) and noticed a tall man in a white coat was looking at the monitor next to me, a needle in one hand and his other resting on the top of the screen. I shifted in my bed to get his attention, too awkward to begin a conversation. Not that I could. He turned and smiled at me.
"Hi, Darcy. My name is Doctor Foreman."
"Where..." I began to ask about Noah, but the doctor interrupted me.
"You're in the recovery ward of Princeton-Plainsboro hospital. You've just come out of surgery."
"What?" I asked, trying to sit up and instantly regretting it. The doctor made a soft "woah" noise and dropped the needle onto the silver tray on the table beside my bed and lightly placed his hands on my shoulders, guiding me back down.
"Careful, you've got stitches, kid. You had a pretty extensive bleed in your lower abdomen, a broken femur and a fractured pelvis. You also had several shards of glass embedded in you: one of which punctured your lung." He paused and turned back to my monitor. "We didn't have to do anything extensive. You coded a few times, but you shouldn't have any long lasting damage." I laid there stunned for a few moments, wrapping my head around the fact that I was so badly hurt. I blinked and shook my head, cursing myself for being so selfish.
"My brother. Noah. Is he okay?" I demanded, before realising how grumpy I must have sounded and shooting him an apologetic look.
"He's alive. I'm going to be honest with you, we still haven't managed to talk to him, we only know who he is because he had his driving license in his back pocket. He's currently upstairs with my diagnostics team."
"Diagnostics? I thought-"
"The tree your car hit only damaged the right side of the car, meaning unfortunately you got the raw end of the deal." He swallowed and scratched his goatee, obviously sensing my confusion. "Your brother's had two seizures. We believe the first one is what caused the crash." A seizure? That meant he was sick before the crash. And I didn't even notice. I was going to vomit.
"What's wrong with him?" I asked, sitting up further and swallowing the bitterness that had crept up my throat. Doctor Foreman sighed.
"That's just it. We don't know yet."