A Hale Love Story

Wolfsbane

Kenzie's POV

I yawned loudly and unattractively as I went around on my rounds at the hospital, I'd been here since 6:30 this morning and was already beyond exhausted since I haven't been sleeping well lately with all the stress of the past week not to mention I was single parenting a five year old while trying to keep a full time job, I haven't seen Derek since the night we fought and only got a few short texts letting me know he was okay.

I had dropped Lia off at friend Ryan's place this morning so his mom could drop her off at school since as of late she'd been spending quite a bit of time with them after I'd finally met the boy's mother, her name was Sarah and she was the grade 3 teacher and while I didn't usually trust new people especially with my daughter I didn't really have that much of a choice lately as I had to keep appearances at work and with Derek gone I didn't have any other options so she spent the days I was working at Ryan's and I picked her up after work.

I walked back towards the nurses station just in time to see Jackson stand up from one of the nurse computers and take off with a smirk on his face and frowned wondering what the hell that was about so I continued over seeing Melissa sit back down at that computer and looked over to where Jackson had disappeared before back at the computer before shaking her head.

"What was that about?" I asked her.

"He wanted to look something up, he said he was one of Scott's friends" she shrugged and my frown deepened since that wasn't true which told me that kid was up to something but I didn't have the time or the energy to find out what it was. "You okay, you look exhausted?" Melissa suddenly asked me making me turn back to face her.

"I haven't been sleeping all that great, Lia's been...acting out you could say with this situation with my husband" I replied and she nodded knowing all about the Derek thing and frankly I was surprised she even still talked to me since a lot of the other nurses only approached me or talked to me when it was work related other than that they avoided me like the plague as if I was in on the whole murders and would murder them at any second even though Melissa had more right to be concerned given 'Derek' supposedly had her son trapped at the school but she never acted with ill intentions towards me or Lia as of yet which I was kind of glad of since Lia loved coming to work with me sometimes just to see Melissa.

"That can't be easy" she shook her head and I took a seat next to her on one of the computers to file an update on the patients file I just finished with. "If you don't mind me asking, how are you with everything going on?" she asked and I turned.

"I'm okay but it's been hard looking after Lia on my own, from the day she was born I've always had Derek and his sister there to help especially given I wasn't that confident about being a mother at first but all that's changed now" I replied shocked by my own honesty.

"Well if you ever need any help, I'm here" she replied and I shot her a thankful smile.

"Thanks Melissa, I really appreciate that you don't treat me or Lia differently"

"None of what your going through is yours or your little girls fault and although I can't completely relate I know what its like to have your kids father disappear from the picture" she replied squeezing my shoulder and I nodded since although I'd never asked about Scott's dad it was clear he wasn't around. "Well I'm off to do a few sponge baths" she added and I laughed which actually felt good to do.

It was reasonably slow in the hospital at the moment so I found myself walking into the long term care area and headed towards Peter's room walking in seeing him sitting in his wheelchair which was angled to be looking out the window, I sighed walking over and took a seat on the chair nearby.