Blown Apart

25

Beca POV

I went outside to get some coffee as it is cheaper outside than inside and we could use all the money saving tips we can. We hadn't even discussed how we were going to afford all the bills. The thought of it makes me sick. I put the orders in for coffee and moved to the end. Shivering, thinking I should have brought a coat out with me, I see a taxi pull up at the front of the hospital. A woman gets outside in shorts and a coat, I think to myself what an idiot. Whose wears shorts in this weather it's freezing. Then at closer inspection I see it's Chloe's idiot.

I laugh as I walk over after grabbing the coffee. Katy struggles to pull her bags out of the back of it. She has two large suitcases and her backpack. You would think for someone who travels she would be able to get her cases from the back of a taxi. I help her and pull them out.

"Oh my god Beca! How are you? How's Bronte? Is she okay? I came as fast as I could." Katy panicked and I took over and moved her stuff aside. She paid the driver and we pulled the bags along with us to the coffee counter where she added her order.

"I'm okay. Sleepy but we all are. Worried. They took her straight into surgery after running tests and that's the last we heard. We are just waiting around in Cece's room. She is doing okay. Back on her phone like normal."Beca said with a slight laugh trying to make the situation lighter.

"Do they know what happened, why it happened?" Katie asked, still concerned about Bronte. It was no secret that Bronte was her favourite. Everyone kind of knew it and if they didn't they could guess by looking at the amount of time she spends with each child. There was a bond there that needed no words.

"They haven't worked it out yet. She was in a horrible shape when they found her. It may be something off of that that they couldn't find it the first time." I finished, Katy paid for all three drinks, even though I put up a fight but was secretly thankful. As we made our way inside. Katy asked about the other kids and how they were again. I basically repeated what Chloe had said on the phone adding the fact that Cody and Brynlee were at home with Katy's parents.

We made our way around the maze of the hospital to find Cece's room. When we walked in Chloe immediately ran to Katy to hug her younger sister. They stayed like that for a while as I struggled and pushed the bags in so they weren't a trip hazard in the way of the door. Katy eventually let go and made her way over to Cece.

"How are you doing kiddo?" Katy asked.

"Okay, just want to go home now." Cece replied. She also knew that Katy was here for Bronte. It was on her face. Yet Cece didn't mide except the fact that it was clear Katy was the cool aunt. And everyone wants to be best friends with the cool aunt.

"That's good. We will do the presents once everyone is here together. No peeking." Katy said, turning away from Cece. She opened her suitcase to pull out one of the only two pairs of warm clothes she had with her. She walked to the bathroom to get dressed in the bathroom quickly.

"What are you doing about your blog now you're not finishing your holiday?" Cece said once Katy walked out the bathroom. Making a good question.

"Well, I have some bits to do a couple of them but I will have to say due to personal circumstances I had to end it early. I couldn't stay away from you lot?" Katy says. Cece smiled back. I could tell she was tired and wanted to go home. She was probably still in pain.

I signalled to Chloe to join me outside and leave Katy and Cece alone for a minute while we had a chat. She smiled and nodded giving a look to Katy to keep Cece entertained.

"Hey what's up babe?" Chloe asked me when we got outside. There were seats just down the corridor which we decided to sit on. I reached out my hand which Chloe took. We both haven't been ourselves. Mainly due stress and worry and we both need to do better and we know it. But we needed to have more of a serious talk.

"When we went to get coffee I went outside?"

"Okayyy. Why is that important?"

"It's cheaper. And I hadn't really thought about it. Katy paid for it which was nice and probably needed."

"I love you but i'm not sure where you are going."

"The hospital bills are going to be huge. We have three out of four of our kids. Broken arm in multiple places $2000 at least if it's not covered by health insurance. Plus Heart surgery from Cece, which cost god knows how much. Then all the surgery Bronte has gone through. Is going through. May still has to go through. And then her leg and getting a prosthetic leg and then if she needs multiple, what about a running one. So she can hopefully run again. All the stuff she may need to survive. They don't even know the extent of the injuries. I just don't understand how we are going to afford this. We haven't been at work for a while. And we don't know how long we will be out of work for. Maybe when we are home how likely is it Bronte can be on her own? I'm just kinda freaking out." Beca said running her fingers through her hair. Chloe reached over and grabbed her hands.

"I have thought about it too. It's not going to be easy. But we can't tell them to stop working on her. We will work it out. Taking out a loan, another mortgage. It's not like we made a lot anyway but we made it work. With her staying alone we have plenty of family that could watch her. I don't imagine Katy is leaving her side for a while. I promise we will work this out like we do everything. Together." Chloe had so much confidence that everything was going to be okay. Also that we could afford this. Which I 100% knew we couldn't. I let her embrace and fill me with a false sense of security.

"I hope this is as easy as you make it."

We sat there for a while talking about random stuff and forgetting the fact we were sat in a hospital. It felt almost normal. Laughing about random stuff. Then that all stopped just like the day where this all started. Chloe started standing up and her face turned serious. I turn around and see the same thing she was looking at. The doctors were walking down the hall. You could tell they had come straight out of surgery. Their face didn't give anything away. My heart was pounding in my mouth. I found Chloe's hand as she found mine. I took a deep breath as they approached us.

"She has just come out of surgery. It went well. In the respect we found out why she was coughing up blood. We found bleeding in the stomach, also the first part of the small intestine. This caused her to be coughing up blood. Which also explains some of the pain." Dr Bailey and Dr Robbins finished.

"Bronte was complaining about severe headaches before she went into surgery. We found a blood clot-"

"Wait she had a stroke." Chloe interrupted, clearing knowing more what they were saying than I did.

"Yes in other terms, we did a producer called a thrombectomy. We removed blood clots which restores blood flow to the brain." Dr Meridith Grey said with Dr Shepard nodding along who was the main doctor operating on her brain.

"You mentioned that the blood in her stomach was some of the pain. What do you reckon caused the rest of it?" I ask, wondering how long they would have to keep cutting up my daughter. Dr Robbins looked to Dr Lexie Grey to present the next part. I was slightly concerned being told the information by an intern but she had done so much for Bronte I did trust her.

"When i was with her she hardly touched her food she avoided eating it. Saying she was full, but obviously i questioned it as she hadn't eaten. She complained of head pain, which we now know was the blood clot. But she also complained of heavy chest pain even though she tried to act like she didn't feel it. When we did the scan we noticed that her spleen was hugely enlarged. Which would explain the not eating. When we were looking at it in surgery we also saw that it had been punctured. And we will need to remove her spleen." Dr grey finished. We stood there in silence. Until Chloe finally spoke.

"Why didn't you remove it when you were in there?"

"Well there are multiple steps we have to do before we can remove it. But also we want to make sure we do what's best by Bronte. So we need time to think about what to do. We will have further discussions with you once seeing Bronte. We can't bring her back into surgery too soon. We don't want to cause too much strain on her body." Dr Robbins finished. They said their last bits and then left. Chloe and I hugged already not sure what we were going to do. We had a lot of googling to do before we had the meeting.