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"So you're going to be okay?" Monica asked worriedly. She had just taken the drive home from the hospital with Rachel and Amy and was now having to leave her alone, since Amy had gone back to work. Rachel nodded and smiled feebly, sitting down on the edge of her bed.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Don't be silly," she answered, slapping her hand in the air towards Monica in a casual brush-off gesture. She nodded and looked around the room that seemed so foreign and cold to her now. She had barely had adequate time to adjust to it before all of this had happened, and upon returning to it, she couldn't help but feel that even the hospital had been more comforting.
"There's, uh...something else, Rach," Monica revealed, biting her lip and hoping for the best. Rachel looked confused and a bit frightened.
"What is it?" she enquired, her eyes searching for an answer. Nothing could possibly surprise or scare me after what I've been through, Rachel thought to herself.
"There's someone who wants to talk to you," Monica whispered, looking back at the door. As if on cue, the white bedroom door opened slowly and Ross stepped inside. Monica looked back at her friend, feeling the tension mounting in the room. She wanted to get out of there quickly- if not just to allot them some free time, then to remove herself from the increasingly tense situation.
The two had not seen each other in almost 2 and a half months. Even when he had come to visit her in the hospital, she had been asleep. Their eyes had not made contact...their skin had not grazed the other's for over 2 months.
"I'm going to go," Monica announced quietly. "I'll call you later, Rach." With that, she turned and exited the room. When she pass by Ross on the way, she gave his hand a covert squeeze of comfort and whispered an encouraging "good luck" before she slipped out.
The door dragged shut and they were left alone together.
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"Can you believe all of this?" Monica asked, leaning her head against the back of the porch swing. Chandler had come over after she'd arrived home from Rachel's that afternoon. They were sitting together on the whitewashed wooden swing on her front porch. The afternoon had given way to evening, the sun beginning to fall down behind the treetops. The wind was blowing just enough to cause chills to run occasionally up their skin.
"No, I really can't," Chandler replied. He had never known anything like this to happen before- at least not to anyone he knew. He thought he had it bad- with his alcoholic, sexually aggressive mother and his pool-boy-screwing, cross-dressing father. Even those hang-ups seemed equivalent to a paper cut in comparison.
"How's Ross been?" Monica questioned. Her brother had been sleeping at Chandler's for the past few weeks. She had talked to him periodically, but he had always seemed so wound up and enveloped in his own little far-off world.
"He's dealing with it," he answered, perhaps spinning it a bit optimistically. He shook her head and pursed his lips. "I've got to say, though...I don't know that he's ever going to be able to see past this."
"Ross is more of a man than that," Monica insisted, shaking her head. "He would NEVER blame her for this."
"No," Chandler agreed. "You're right, he wouldn't. He DOESN'T. It's just that..." He paused, searching for the right words. Ross had only spoken to him briefly about his feelings, and he was afraid he's misconstrue what his friend had really meant. "I think he feels like something was stolen from him, not just from her."
"Maybe that's understandable," Monica admitted. She leaned her head into Chandler's shoulder and he wrapped an arm around her. It was getting cooler, even through the earlier heat of the summer night. Chandler nodded, feeling his cheek brush against hers.
