A/N:
Thanks to Carol, not just for BRing this, but also for explaining in the fdk thread why I took so long to post this. Yes, I had quite a busy week last week, coupled with a cough that caused me to lose my voice in one of the worst possible situations! Anyway, I’m *so* sorry that I couldn’t get this up on Sunday, and I know you’re not at all interested in my problems, you all want to know what happened to Lois, so, here you go.
*.*.*.
from Part Eight
I was crying by this point. I wasn’t sure when I had started but there was no way I could stop it. I couldn’t see a thing through my thickly flowing tears.
I ran across a road in a desperate attempt to put as much distance behind me and Clark as I possibly could. I heard the squeal of a braking car and was bathed in the cold glow of a car’s headlight as I felt a sudden pain in my leg. I fell onto the hard road and heard something crack as my whole world went black.
*.*.*.
Part Nine
*.*.*.
When I came around I found myself lying on a hospital bed with my leg encased in plaster and some medical equipment stuck to my arm.
Soon afterwards I began to start feeling the pain in my body from the impact with the car.
When the nurse finally appeared she told me what had happened to me and that someone from orthopaedics would come to explain the damage and work done to my leg in greater detail later. I glanced at my notes and saw a small ‘S’ on the written in the corner. I asked her what it meant as it didn’t seem to have anything to do with me or my condition.
“Oh, that? It means you were rescued by Superman. Every week we send him an update on his rescue-ees.” Her face lit up as talked about her hero. “It’s great if you work with one of the kids he brings in, he often comes back to visit them.”
“Fat chance of him visiting me,” I mumbled and I couldn’t help but wonder what had been going through Clark’s head as he flew out to rescue me only seconds after our fight. Was he worried about me, annoyed with me for rushing into trouble? Wishing I’d been killed so he wouldn’t have to bother with me anymore?
The nurse gave me a funny look. “Sure, you’re way too old and let me tell you, *every* woman who he rescues thinks he’s going to arrive and offer to marry them after falling wildly in love with them following their rescue. It’ll never happen.”
I tried to move but gave up after finding it too painful. I settled for a sarcastic retort instead. “While you, of course, maintain that he’s going to fall for a nurse.”
She glared at me, as if my sarcasm was unwarranted and I’d just destroyed her dream. “It’s more likely. Men like nurse’s uniforms much more than the ‘I’ve just been hit by a car’ look that you were sporting when he saw you.”
A part of me was sorely tempted to tell her exactly what, or more to the point who, I’d been doing before I’d been hit by a car but I bit my lip and said nothing. I had no idea how long I was going to be stuck in here and I didn’t want to annoy all my jailers too much.
“Oh, and by the way, there’s an Inspector Henderson outside wanting to speak to you about the accident.”
I groaned. “Of course there is. They never send anyone else, do they?”
“Are you up to speaking to him?”
“Sure.”
She finished my check up and left the room. Seconds later Henderson was sitting on the chair beside my bed. He read through some notes, presumably on the accident, before looking at me. “How are you feeling, Lane?”
“Never better. I’m gonna get up and dance a jig in a minute, fancy joining me?”
Henderson’s face remained blank but his tone softened slightly. “That was a stupid question. What do you remember about the accident?”
“Not much really.”
“Whose fault was it? Yours or the driver’s?”
I lowered my eyes. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“So, you ran out in front of the car. Why?”
I was surprised. “Why? Look, unless you have evidence to the contrary, it was all my fault, so why are you looking into this?”
Henderson sighed. “Well, it says here that you were running, the driver assumed from something, in very little clothing and so there’s a theory that you may have been assaulted.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Henderson, I--”
“I’ll be honest with you, Lane. I know where you were hit and I’ve got a good idea where you were running from, which is why I took this case.”
“To protect him.” I said bitterly. I knew where Henderson’s loyalty lay and I knew that it wasn’t with me.
“To protect both of you,” he corrected me. “If what I think is going on between you is going on, it’s not something either one of you is going to want to be common knowledge. And before you speak, I really *don’t* want to know. However, if you were assaulted, even if it was by *him*, I need you to be honest with me now.”
“Why? You can’t lock him up.”
“Lane!” was his less than patient response. “Just tell me.”
I took in a deep breath. “I wasn’t. Did you really think I was?” I asked him quietly.
“No, but I needed to ask.”
“So what now?”
“Nothing, I would imagine, unless you and the driver decide to take action against each other. Just get better and stop getting run over by cars.”
“Ruin all my fun, why don’t you?” I mumbled sarcastically as he left the room.
I felt so tired still, even though I must have been out of it for hours after the accident, and my whole body ached, not to mention the pain in my leg. I closed my eyes for a few seconds and quickly drifted off to sleep.
*.*.*.
Later on that night I dreamt that I woke up. I was unfortunately still in the hospital but I wasn’t alone. Clark was floating beside me, well partially floating, he was half on and half off the bed, his arms encircling me as I slept. It felt nice, to be with him like that, like he was completely in love with me and there was none of the hatred he told me he felt for me. Just the love. Like we were a normal couple, with one alien and one invalid in a hospital bed.
OK, so there was no way we could be a *normal* couple, even if I was completely healed, but still, it was a nice feeling.
I felt his hand stroke my sleep-ruffled hair and he murmured into it, “Go back to sleep, Lois.”
I didn’t want to go back to sleep, I wanted to stay in that moment, with that feeling of contentment that his soothing presence installed in me. I opened my mouth to tell him so but all that came out was an enormous yawn. “Sorry.”
He giggled, or made a sound as close to giggle as a man of his stature would be allowed to make.  “See. You need to get some rest, Lois. You need to heal.”
Reluctantly deciding that he was right, I snuggled down into his loving and comforting embrace.
“Love you,” I told him sleepily, before returning to a deeper, dreamless sleep.
*.*.*.
“Ooh, ah, damn it!”
The curses accompanied the sound of someone bashing into objects and they brought me back into painful consciousness. I focused in on the blurry shape of my visitor and was mildly surprised when it turned into the form of my wayward younger sister.
“Sorry,” she grimaced when she noticed my eyes were open and watching her. “Did I wake you?”
“What do you think?” I snapped. I wasn’t a morning person at the best of times, and these certainly were not the best of times.
“I didn’t mean to. Sorry, Lois. Go back to sleep, I’ll just sit down and not move.” She managed to manoeuvre herself onto the seat where she took off a shoe and started rubbing a toe that she must have stubbed on something as she woke me up.
I couldn’t have gone back to sleep even if I wanted to, not with the bright light of day blaring happily onto my hospital bed. I groaned. “Don’t matter now. What do you want?”
She looked surprised. “To see you. I know we’re not the closest of families but I figured that it was the least I could do. And you’d come and visit me if I was in hospital, don’t tell me you wouldn’t.”
“Are you listed as my next of kin?” I asked her, my brain still fuzzed from sleep, not doubting her words but wondering how she knew I was in hospital. They probably would have tried to contact someone to tell them about my accident but I had no idea who. If I’d have been asked, I would have given them Perry’s number but he might not have been the hospital’s first choice of contact.
Lucy pulled a face as she answered. “No... Mom is. And she couldn’t make it, so she called me and told me to come and see you. I’m supposed to call back with an update this evening. I did try and call Dad to let him know but, well, you can guess how successful I was at that.”
“Humph,” I rolled my eyes. “I guess sending you to check up on me is sort of caring.”
She looked apologetically at me and I shot her a sad smile. The truth was that Lucy probably should have been my next of kin; it would be no surprise for me to discover that I was hers, after all I had practically raised her myself. She stood up and found a vase for the bunch of flowers she’d bought me. She found a sink and filled it with water, before placing it on the windowsill beside another bunch of flowers that I didn’t remember arriving.
“Who are these from?” Lucy asked me, as she simultaneously reached for the note that had been left with them, as if she didn’t trust me to tell her the truth.
“I don’t know. They must have come while I was sleeping. What does it say?”
“‘From a friend, X.’ Recognise the handwriting? I’d say they came from a *man* myself,” she asked as she shoved the card in my face. The mysteriousness of the note had certainly aroused her interest.
I managed to take the note from her and read it myself. While the leg was the most serious of my injuries, I had extensive bruising that made other movements difficult and painful and I was also being treated for concussion.
My gut instinct was telling me that the note was in Clark’s handwriting, but it had been so long since I had last seen what his writing looked like that I couldn’t be sure. My intuition wasn’t normally wrong, but surely it was just longing on my part. There was no way that Clark would send me flowers and sign the note with a kiss! Of course, maybe the ‘X’ was in place of his name but then why say ‘a friend’?
I sighed, and gave Lucy the note back for her to scrutinise. “Dunno. It could be the florist's handwriting, anyway.”
Lucy looked admiringly at the bunch while she replaced the note. “It doesn’t look like they came from a florist's. They look like they came from a garden or a hedgerow or something.” Something else caught her eye and she tutted. “Since when did they leave the windows open overnight in hospitals? That’s just careless.”
I stared as Lucy shut the window. It was all a dream, right? Clark hadn’t been to visit me last night and left me a bunch of flowers. Oh God, it had to be dream! I told him I loved him! Please, let it all be coincidence and an overactive imagination on my part. That must be it. No other explanation came close to being logical.
“So, who’s your secret admirer?” Lucy asked after she shut the window and had turned to face me with a knowing smile. I couldn’t stop the annoyed groan slip my lip as I closed my eyes and begged sleep to return and save me from my little sister and my one track mind.
*.*.*.
Lucy grinned from ear to ear as she showed me her winning hand. I glared at her. “You know you’re only winning because I’m in recovery after being hit by a car, right?”
She laughed at my statement, as if it was a desperate attempt on my part to explain that I should have won, when it was purely the simple truth of the matter. “You wish, Lois. I used to date a professional card player; he taught me all the tricks of the trade. Gone are the days where you beat me at Rummy.”
I stopped her as she went to pick up all the cards. “In that case, I’ll shuffle them this time.”
“Not again! Lois, you tried that half an hour ago and we’re still missing the Queen of Spades. You’d better find it; I don’t want to have to explain to my room-mate that she doesn’t have a full deck of cards anymore.”
I shook my head at her logic. “Then you shouldn’t have taken her cards without asking. Honestly, Lucy, do you take responsibility for any of your actions?”
A knock on the door interrupted our impending argument and I was surprised to see Martha Kent poke her head into the room. “Can I come in?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said, wondering why she was here. Then a second thought hit me. She seemed to know everything else about my relationship with Clark; did she know what had happened between her returning home and my accident? Did she know the real reason why I was lying in the hospital? I watched her as she entered the room and asked how I was. If she did know, she showed no sign of it. She just acted like she was a friend concerned for my welfare.
Lucy watched the stranger for a moment, then cleared up the cards as she reached a decision. “I’ll take this opportunity to go and grab some lunch from somewhere that isn’t a hospital. Do you want me to pick you up something?”
“Yes,” I begged. “Anything that isn’t hospital food.”
“Oh, don’t complain too much. It’s still better than anything you cook!”
Martha laughed at her statement as Lucy left I called after her, “That’s not the point!”
I took a breath as the door slammed and then gave Martha an apologetic smile. “That was my sister.”
“Ah,” was all she said, and then, “if you want, I can bring you some food in. I don’t have much else to do and I do feel responsible for you being in here.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I told her. I could have blamed her, I knew that, but I didn’t.
She looked troubled at my declaration. “Maybe not directly, but you wouldn’t have gone to Cl-- my son’s in the first place if I hadn’t insisted on you coming with me.”
“True, but that doesn’t make it your fault. I blame myself mostly, not you.”
Martha smiled at me, although I didn’t feel that she’d quite absolved herself of blame yet, although she seemed relieved that I didn’t hold her responsible. Her eyes wandered to the flowers adorning the windowsill and her smile became real.
“Where did those flowers come from?” she asked me, he eyes resting on the mysterious bunch.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, wishing they weren’t causing so much interest in my visitors.
She investigated the bunch, looking at every single flower, obviously recognising each one. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she knew their full Latin name as well.
“I could swear,” she told me in an almost musing voice, “that I grew each and every one of these flowers in my cottage garden back in Kansas.”
“Well, if I find out who gave them to me, I’ll let you know who it was, as you obviously share the same taste.”
“Oh, yes,” there was the twinkle back in her eye as she turned to face me. “I’m sure we’d get along very well. Do you like them?”
I wasn’t quite sure what the right response was. It could be the work of my imagination once more, but I could swear that she had been hinting that they had *come* from her Kansas garden and there was only one person I could think of who could have picked them and got them here without anyone noticing. It was just me jumping to conclusions, wasn’t it? I couldn’t be right, not this time.
“Yes, they’re very pretty but I don’t know much about plants and flowers.”
There was silence for a second before Martha spoke again. “He was beside himself when he came to us that night after taking you to the hospital.” Her voice had changed; it had become sorrowful and sincere and had lost the teasing slant that I had grown used to hearing from her.
“Martha--” I began but she wouldn’t let me speak.
“He’d come to visit himself but that wouldn’t be a good idea. He’s not sure that you’d want him to, anyway. I didn’t just come to ease his mind, though. I would have come anyway, I think it’s important that you know that. Jonathan wishes you well, too. I know he didn’t come over that friendly the other night but he was just looking out for his son. I’m sure you can understand.”
I smiled at her, surprised that she had come partly on Clark’s behalf and pleased to know that she liked me enough to come anyway. “Of course. If I were any one of the three of you, I wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire. It’s *your* attitude I have a harder time understanding, not Jonathan’s or your son’s.”
Martha sat down on the vacated chair, picking up a bit of card that had been on the seat before she sat on it.
“Oh, I think this might be one of your sister’s cards,” she said absently, placing it on a table. “To be honest, Lois, I’m not sure what my plan was when I came round to your apartment. I hadn’t planned to spend the day with you and invite you over to dinner; I just wanted to meet you. As I said, you’ve had a big impact on my son’s life. It was pure curiosity, I’m afraid. When I did, I saw how miserable you were, and decided that you looked like you’d been paid back for the pain you’d caused us. So I forgave you. And you looked so desolate that I was unable to leave you like that, my conscience just wouldn’t allow it. So I took the opportunity to mother you a bit and I got to like you. I’d like us to be friends, regardless of what my family thinks. If you do,” she added as an afterthought, as if she truly thought there was a person alive that wouldn’t want to be Martha Kent’s friend. At that moment, I don’t think I’d ever wanted anyone’s friendship more.
I gave her an honest smile. “I’d like that. I like you too, there’s no way I would have put myself in that position if I didn’t like you. It’s not like I was expecting a warm welcome from anyone else.”
“Well, I’ll admit that was partially curiosity as well.”
“Clark thought you’d set the whole thing up.”
She laughed again. “Not entirely but I did wonder how he acted around you. And now I know. I just wish it hadn’t ended with you in hospital.”
I glanced down at my plastered leg. “It’s certainly not an easygoing relationship I have with your son,” I replied with humour. It was a situation where I could either laugh or cry and although I felt that Martha was a person I could break down in front of, I decided that humour was the way to go.
“Oh, let’s not talk about that any more, or I’ll just feel guilty again. Tell me who else has been to see you?”
I looked over at the window. Had Clark been to see me? There was no way for me to be sure, besides Martha probably had a better idea of that than I did and she wasn’t saying anything.
“Just you and Lucy,” I told her. “My boss called the hospital and said that he’d come and see me as soon as he found the time so he’ll probably turn up sometime today, possibly with Jimmy but there’s no-one else.”
“Not even your parents?” she asked, amazed.
“Not everyone’s lucky enough to have parents like you and Jonathan,” I said, then proceeded to tell her about my brilliant family life and why there was slim chance that either parent would care enough to come and visit me.
To Be Continued...
