The Greatest Showman: March One-Shots

26. 27B

pt. 3 of the "easter" one-shot🌻

this one takes a tuuurrrnnn.... prepare yourselves 😜🙈

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It's almost an hour later when the waiting room doors slide open, and suddenly Lettie walks in. She nearly jumps out of her skin when she sees Charity and Phillip sitting there. It's obvious that she hadn't expected them to still be out here either.

"What... what's going on?" she asks, quickly going over to sit down beside Charity. "Is he in surgery, or something? Why are you still out here?"

All Charity can do is shake her head as her blank eyes well up with tears. Phillip doesn't say anything either. Throughout the last fifty-eight minutes they've aged a century, anxiety so high they're bound to crack and crumble any minute now.

Lettie's face is filled with concern. She tries to read their emotions, tries to piece together the puzzle, but it's nearly impossible. She just resorts to staying quiet, hoping that, maybe, one of them will say something in the next minute or so.

A doctor then appears behind the glass that divides the waiting room from the nurse's station. Charity's on her feet in an instant, rushing over to the desk, and Lettie is able to guess who that doctor might be. She gives Phillip a questioning side glance, but his eyes are glued straight ahead of him.

The doctor holds out a rather impatient hand to Charity as he beckons the nurse over. Charity almost screams in annoyance as the two personnel begin to talk in hushed tones.

"This has been the last three-ish hours," Phillip says in a voice so soft Lettie almost doesn't hear him. "We don't even know what happened in the first place, other than that there was an 'accident.' But... involving the train, involving a carriage, a... a protester, even?" He shakes his head in disbelief, his cheeks flushed. "It's ridiculous."

Lettie can't believe it. She begins to feel something stir inside her. Rage. Anne and the rest of the oddities had the house under control, so she snuck out to go check on P.T. and Charity and Phillip. She had assumed that, by now at least, they would know something.

"And you haven't done anything about it?" Lettie asks quietly, watching as Charity's eyes bore nails into the doctor and nurse, her body as rigid as a board.

"We've tried," Phillip tells her, exasperated. "They won't listen, they won't tell us anything."

"Not even Charity?"

He shakes his head. "Not even Charity."

Lettie's on her feet and marching over to that glass divider before she even has time to think about what she's doing. "Excuse me!" she calls, banging her palm on the glass. The personnel give her a look that reads Lady, can't you see we're in the middle of a conversation? "I said excuse me," Lettie repeats, her patience running low.

With a sigh, the doctor walks over to the desk. "May I help you, ma'am?"

"Yes, actually, you can," she says, without hesitation. "I'd like to know why you and your little friends find the need to hide vital information about a family member's condition."

The doctor blinks. "Well, ma'am, technically Mrs. Barnum isn't family—"

"Oh, shut up," Lettie snaps. "You know what I mean. But we don't even know what happened to Phineas in the first place, and we'd like to know why it's so damn difficult to find out. Why we're not allowed to see him, or talk about him, and why it seems like we're just some pebbles stuck in the soles of your rich-ass shoes." She pauses for effect, eyeing the doctor's slightly offended expression.

"I'm sure you get paid well," she continues. "Don't you?"

He swallows. "Yes'm."

"I thought so," Lettie says, leaning in closer as she drops her voice to a few decibels above a whisper. "So, what exactly are we paying you for?"

"Lettie," Charity suddenly interrupts, going over to pull her away from the glass. "It's all right. Really," she says, even though her voice is tight and her eyes are filled with tears. She wears the most forced smile that anyone has ever seen, and the Bearded Lady's heart nearly breaks right then and there. She's about to call her bluff, and likely sass the doctor again, when he clears his throat.

"Mrs. Barnum, would you like to come back to see your husband now?" he asks her in a voice so small you'd think he was a teenager who was just reprimanded for tapping the bumper of the SUV in front of him at a stoplight.

Charity hides her reaction well, but the way she yanks on the newly unlocked door and all but races down the hall is another story. Lettie and Phillip remain in the waiting room, while that godawful nurse returns to her hard plastic chair to scribble down senseless things on sterile pieces of paper and flip through endless files and records.

Charity and the doctor stop in front of a sliding door, a sign reading 27B on the wall beside it. The doctor uncomfortably fiddles with his clipboard.

"I want to apologize, Mrs. Barnum, for keeping you in the dark these last few hours. It was my choice, and now I'm realizing that it wasn't the best choice whatsoever. You most certainly deserved the right to know what was going on," he tells her, and then presses a button to slide the doors back.

Phin is there in the bed, alright, but... it's not him. It can't be him. The angry stitches, the dried blood, the sterile white casts and bandages, the wires. No, this isn't Charity's Phin. There must be a mistake.

"I—" she starts to say, but her voice catches in her throat.

The doctor begins to speak anyways. "The police told us that a horse had been spooked, and was running wild along the streets right outside of the circus, the carriage still intact," he explains. "The driver had been thrown off, but there were people still inside. Mr. Barnum heard the commotion and went outside to see what it was all about. He tried to help: to disconnect the carriage, and then hopefully be able to stop the horse." The doctor pauses. "Unfortunately, things didn't play out as he had hoped."

Charity almost laughs. She would have, in all honesty, if it weren't for the sight before her. If it weren't for the fact that that couldn't be more like her Phineas. The Phineas Taylor Barnum who gets severely injured trying to help others. The irony.

So, instead, Charity just cries, as she slowly goes over to the side of the bed. The doctor continues talking, but she stops listening. With a trembling, uncertain hand, she reaches down to lace her fingers through Phin's, and then she kneels down on the floor beside the bed, pressing her husband's broken hand to her chin.

She squeezes her eyes closed as some tears seep out, trying to erase the image that she just saw right in front of her very own eyelids. She can only imagine what had happened to put her husband in such terrible shape—the horse probably knocked him to the ground and trampled him, and then the carriage, sliding and rocking all over the place, came next.

There's a sewn-up gash in Phin's chest, and Charity doesn't want to think about where that may have come from. The bruises littering his forehead and obvious broken body parts are enough to make a large fist squeeze her heart to its limit. Not to mention all of the other hidden marks and scars, gashes and bruises.

Why did this have to happen?, Charity asks herself, burying her face into the bedsheets, her shoulders shaking with sobs. She's pretty sure the doctor has realized that she's stopped listening by now, and she hopes he's stopped talking.

She hopes he's stopped trying to tell her the inevitable: that he didn't want to disclose any information regarding Phin's condition because he's already too far gone for his wife to make any decisions or sign any papers. There aren't any options left.

Charity can almost already hear that deafening flatline.