Lucy was walking from her car up to the house after a particularly long shift at the hospital when she heard someone call out her name. She groaned when she saw Lawrence coming up the sidewalk.
"What do you want, Lawrence?" she asked as she continued walking. "If you've come to berate me about my son again, I don't have the time."
"No, there is something I need to tell you in person." He paused a moment to collect his thoughts, but since he could tell that Lucy was impatient and there was no easy way to say what he needed to say, he came out with it directly. "At the meeting tonight there is going to be a vote about whether or not Vince will be allowed to stay in the neighborhood."
Lucy sighed and rolled her eyes. "You have got to be kidding me."
"I hate that it has come to this, but we all know the bylaws. The newspaper stories and the reporters' vans inundating the neighborhood were too far."
"I didn't want any of that," Lucy insisted.
"I know. . ."
"Okay, if you know that and you hate that this is happening, why are you letting it?"
"We all agreed to the rules that we live by," he replied weakly.
Lucy found his insistence on following the bylaws unconvincing and she was quickly able to read between the lines.
"Oh, I see. Then it's Shayna? That figures," she scoffed. Lawrence started to protest, but she cut him off. "Why are you letting her push you on this? You can stop this."
"I tried to warn you-"
"No! You could put a stop to this if you chose to, rules be damned, but you aren't. After we've known each other this long, you're just going to treat me and my kids as random strangers? How can you be so heartless?"
"I'm treating you the same way I would treat anyone else in this same position," he said firmly.
"Eileen would have never let you go through with this." As soon as she mentioned Eileen's name, she could tell that she hit a nerve as Lawrence's face turned ashen. She leaned in further, refusing to hold back.
"You wouldn't be threatening me and my son or anyone else with these ridiculous bylaws if Eileen were still alive. She wouldn't stand for such cruelty. She was loving and compassionate and understanding and everything you're not. For the first time I'm actually glad that she's dead so she doesn't have to see you acting like this."
Lucy's words hit Lawrence like a slap to the face. He balled his fists as he struggled to contain the rage that threatened to overwhelm him. They stared at each other for a long second, neither daring to speak or back down. Once he had composed himself enough, he managed to say in a low even voice, "I just thought you should know."
As Lawrence turned and started to walk away, Lucy stormed into the house and slammed the door behind her as she fumed on the other side.
* * * * *
Cassie groped around blindly as she struggled to navigate her way through winding corridors filled with smoke and fire. She knew Blaine was there somewhere, but as hard as she tried she couldn't find him.
She passed a hallway where Vince and three young men stood backlit by flames.
"Have you seen Blaine? Have you seen my husband?" she cried out.
When they turned to look at her, their expressions were blank, and their lips were silent. Finding no help from them, Cassie pressed onward.
As she turned another corner, she found Natalie standing in front of her, looking around frantically.
"Please, hurry! You have to help him." she pleaded as she grasped Cassie's arm and pointed down another hallway.
Following Natalie's direction, Cassie ran through the dim hallways until she reached a room filled with smoke and flames. As the haze cleared in front of her she saw Blaine sitting at a desk, typing furiously at a computer. Reese stood at his side urging him on.
"Don't stop! You're almost there! Keep working!"
Cassie tried to run forward. She had to get Blaine and pull him away from here before it was too late, but she was suddenly unable to move closer. She tried to call out to him, but as she screamed his name, no sound came out.
For a moment Blaine looked up. He stared directly at her, but did not acknowledge her. Instead he turned back to the computer and returned to his work, tapping away more quickly than ever.
The smoke grew thicker around them until Reese, Blaine, and the entire office were completely out of sight. Cassie kept trying to scream, kept trying to get to him, but she was helpless.
When the smoke finally cleared around her, Blaine and the desk were gone. Instead she was surrounded by mirrors. In one she saw Reese, in another was Vince and his friends, in another was Reese's boss at the law firm, and in yet another was her mother. When she turned to the last mirror she was confronted with her own reflection.
As she stared at the doppelganger of herself, the mirror cracked. Then all the mirrors around her shattered into shards that rained down onto the floor.
Left in the darkness she heard her mother's voice calling out to her through space. "Cassandra, you know . . ."
Cassandra awoke from her nightmare with a gasp. In a moment she had oriented herself, finding herself curled up in a chair in the hospital at Blaine's bedside. He was still unconscious, but she sensed someone else was there. She turned to see Natalie standing timidly in the doorway.
Natalie took a step back. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you."
"It's okay," Cassie said, stretching the crick out of her neck as she shifted in her chair, trying to find a more comfortable position.
"I wanted to see how he is, but if it's not a good time, I can go."
Cassie shook her head and beaconed Natalie forward. "It's fine. Come in."
Natalie hesitantly walked into the room. She had wanted to see her father, but now that she was here in the hospital, she found the sterile walls and the beeping machines intimidating. Her father was lying in bed motionless, looking so fragile and weak and next to him Cassie looked so weary and equally helpless. She wished she had asked her mom to come back with her after all.
"Is there any news?"
Cassie rubbed at her eyes as she tried to clear her head. "They said the surgery went well and everything looks good so far. We're just waiting for him to wake up."
Natalie nodded solemnly. "That's good, right?"
"I'll feel better when he wakes up and I can see it for myself."
For a moment neither of them spoke as the sounds of the hospital filled the silence. Natalie was feeling awkward and unsure of what to say and Cassie was too exhausted to make an effort at conversation at all.
Finally, in a small voice Natalie said, "I wish I hadn't gone to the office that night. If he hadn't been worried about getting me out too, maybe he would have gotten out of the building before the explosion and he wouldn't have gotten so hurt."
Cassie bit her lip as she tried to hold back her emotions. If only that had been true. She pulled herself to her feet and touched Natalie on the arm gently. "There are a lot of people I can blame for how things happened, but you are not one of them."
Natalie just nodded; her eyes averted to the ground.
Cassie motioned toward her chair. "Why don't you sit and talk to him for a few minutes while I get some air."
* * * * *
Cassie staggered into the hallway, blinking into the bright fluorescent lights and headed for the nearest restroom.
As she washed her hands at the sink and splashed some cool water on her face, she looked up at her reflection in the mirror. She looked like Hell and felt like it too. For a moment, she was drawn back into the world of her dreams, confronted with her own self and the choices that she had made. Her mother's voice echoed in her head and for a split second she thought she saw her mother behind her in the mirror, but when she turned no one was there. She needed to get some real rest. Exhaustion was making her delirious.
On her way out of the restroom, a discarded newspaper on the sink caught her eye. The leading article was about the accident. She picked it up and started reading. When she saw Vince's, name she took pause. She had only been vaguely aware that he had been there with the others when she had come into the hospital. Now the images from her dream were flooding her mind and she was starting to wonder if there was more to them than there seemed.
* * * * *
Natalie sat at Blaine's bedside feeling a little awkward. Coming to see him seemed like the right thing, but now she wasn't sure what to do. Cassie had said to talk to him, so that's what she tried to do.
"Hi. I don't know if you can hear me or if you even know that I'm here, but I wanted to see how you are," she started slowly. "I hope you're okay. I really want you to be okay. My whole life I never knew you and I never thought I needed you, but now that I have met you, I am really glad that it happened. I'm glad that I got a chance to start to get to know you and I was hoping we would keep getting to know each other. . ." she trailed off. Her train of thought was taking her to a dark place, and she was starting to feel emotional. "Please, don't leave us now."
When Natalie looked up, she thought she saw Blaine's eyelids flutter. She jumped back startled, not sure if that was normal or if that meant he was starting to wake up.
She quickly rose from her chair and nervously backed toward the door, watching him for any other change. When she reached the doorway, she looked out into the hallway for a doctor or a nurse to confirm what she was seeing. She locked eyes with Cassie who was just leaving the restroom. When she motioned to her, Cassie rushed over.
"What happened? Is something wrong?" She asked in a panic.
As they entered the room, Blaine's eyelids continued to flutter, then opened. He blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted, and he started to take in his surroundings.
"Where am I?" he croaked weakly.
Cassie rushed to his side and excitedly took his hand in her own. She started to cry tears of joy and relief. "You're in the hospital. You were in an accident." She frantically pressed the call button before embracing him. "I was so afraid you weren't going to pull through. I'm so glad you came back to us."
Blaine furrowed his brows in confusion as he looked between Cassie and Natalie and the surrounding hospital room. "What accident? Who are you?"
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