Home Invasion 4/9
Title: Home Invasion (4/9)
Author: tay_21
Fandom: Primeval
Pairings: Connor/Abby
Rating: Pg-13
Genre: Angst, violence, romance... eventually
Warning/Advertisements: violence
Word Count: 16,256 (total)
Disclaimer: Primeval and its characters belong to Impossible Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: Initially written for deinonychus_1's birthday, I hit a wall and couldn't finish until recently. FINALLY, I finished and I'm only about two to three years late at this time. Thanks to evenstar_estel, fredbassett, prehistoriccat, and sunspecops all of which helped to beta this monstrosity in part or in whole over the course of it's inception. I hope you enjoy it.
Summary: Webster's Online Dictionary: Home Invasion - Noun 1. home invasion - burglary of a dwelling while the residents are at home...There's been a series of armed robberies in and around the estate where Connor and Abby now live with their two children. Everyone in the area is on edge, Connor and Abby included. Many of the robberies have ended badly for the families involved.
(I know it's late, but...) HAPPY BIRTHDAY deinonychus_1!!!!!!!
Home Invasion (1/9)
Home Invasion (2/9)
Home Invasion (3/9)
PART IV
The next morning, when Abby awoke, the doctor came in and gave her the news. She was indeed pregnant. She was dumbfounded, happy and terrified all at the same time. What if Connor didn’t pull through? How would she manage three kids on her own?
“Where are my kids, how are they?”
“Your kids are fine, and your friend should be back soon and he can take you to see them.”
As if on cue, Becker came through the door with two steaming cups of coffee in his hand. He held one out to Abby.
“I hope that’s decaf,” she said smiling weakly at him.
He looked slightly taken aback for a moment, then the penny dropped. “Uh, no. So this means you’re…” Abby nodded. Becker set the cups down. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Connor will be so happy.” Becker leaned forward and kissed the top of her head.
“Does that mean he’s awake?”
Becker glanced sideways at the doctor.
“No, Mrs. Temple, he’s not awake. I’m sorry. We’ve had to induce a coma. His brain was swelling and he took a minor turn for the worse last night. Like I told you before, time will tell. His surgery went well, but he’ll probably need a few more operations to repair all the damage that was done to him. Don’t lose heart though. Your friend says Connor’s a fighter.”
“He is.” Abby took a deep breath. “Can I make the rounds to go see my family now?”
“Absolutely, we’ll get you a cup of decaf coffee, or maybe some herbal tea on the way to the children’s ward.”
“No, I want to see Connor first. I need to see him. I want to do that before I see the kids. That way I can have something to tell them about their father.”
“All right, let's get you into a wheelchair.” Becker helped Abby get settled. They bid the doctor good-bye for now and he wheeled her out of the room.
It wasn’t a long trek up to Connor’s room, Abby was glad of that. Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the sight that met her eye when she entered his room. His eyes were closed, and he was on a respirator. There were tubes and wires attached all over his body. Abby didn’t know where it would be safe to touch him. He had a cast on his arm and another on his leg. There were bandages everywhere. Even his head was wrapped in bandages.
“Oh, Connor.” Abby laid her head on the cast on Connor’s arm. She didn’t sob, she just let the tears slide down her cheeks. She moved her head to lay it gently on his chest. She needed to hear his heartbeat, not a machine beeping in time with his heartbeat, but his real, living heartbeat. After she was reassured that he was alive, however frail and fragile that hold on life might be, she lifted her head and gently kissed the tip of his nose. It looked like the only part of him that might not hurt, but she couldn’t be sure. She distinctly remembered them kicking him in the face. Her heart broke as she tried to push those horrible memories aside and focus on Connor now.
“Hey, Conn. I’ve missed you these last few hours. So much has happened that I have to tell you.”
She watched his face eagerly for any kind of reaction, but so far there was nothing. She bit back a quiet sob and took a deep breath. She had to tell him.
“Connor, we’re going to have another baby. Can you believe it? I only found out this morning. Connor, the kids are going to be OK. I’m going to be OK. We’re going to have another baby, and they’re going to be OK. All we’re missing is you. You have to get better so we can be a whole family. We’re not whole without you. Please, Connor. Please be OK. All right. Please, just get better and come back to me OK. You can’t leave me. Not now. Not like this. Please, Conn. I love you, and I desperately need you. I’m sorry if I don’t tell you often enough. I love you. I love you. “
The doctor came in to see if Abby needed anything.
“How long is he going to be…?”
“It’ll depend a lot on him. He’s in a coma now so that his body can heal without any added stress. He’s got a machine breathing for him so his lungs can heal. I know it looks bad, but if he makes it through the next week, I have high hopes for him. But, it’s going to be a long week, maybe two. There’s just going to be a lot of watching and waiting. I’m sorry that I don’t have a better answer for you. Hopefully the coma, will a severe step will do what it’s supposed to do and give him the time that his body needs.”
Abby nodded her acknowledgement. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
Becker peeked around the doorway where he had been politely waiting outside the room.
“Do you want to stay, or do you want to go to see the kids now? We can come back later, right, doctor?”
“Yes, of course, I think having you here will motivate him to get better. At least that’s my hope.”
Abby turned away from looking at his too-pale, bruised face. “Yeah, OK, let’s go see the kids and then I’ll come back.”
“I can stay with the kids later if you want to spend some more time with him after your visit, and I think Lester was going to stop by. You know what a big softy he is under all that sarcasm.”
Abby laughed a little at that. Lester had indeed proved to be a big softy. She had caught him on more than one occasion playing with her kids and their toys, making baby voices and all when the kids were younger. He never missed one of her kids’ birthdays, and in the last few years that had even extended to her and Connor.
Abby settled herself back into her wheelchair and Becker headed for the elevator that would take them down to the children’s ward. Abby rested her head on her hands and began to sob.
Abby’s children were resting comfortably. They were going to need a lot of therapy, and Nick would need regular nebulizer breathing treatments for the next week. The bullet had passed through Sarah's liver and shattered one of her ribs, but her surgery had been a success. They had reconstructed the rib and repaired the damage to her liver. If all went according to plan, then she would heal up perfectly fine. The bullet, after passing through Sarah, had lodged just passed the muscle wall of Nick’s abdomen in his lower intestine. The doctors had had no difficulty removing the damaged bullet from him and repairing the wound to his intestine. It had been dicey for a moment there, because intestinal wounds could be tricky, but, it seemed as though Nicky had almost quite literally dodged a bullet. Both of them, Nick because of his abdomen and Sarah because of her more major bullet wound, would require about a week’s stay in the hospital.
The doctors now wanted Abby to stay for two more days to keep an eye on her leg and make sure the baby had not been adversely affected by the stress of the last 36 hours.
Becker pulled up a chair next to her after wheeling her into the narrow space between the beds of her two children.
“They always look so peaceful when they’re sleeping, don’t they?” he asked.
Abby nodded. “I almost lost them. Why would those people do this to us?”
“We questioned them yesterday before turning them over to the police. It seems they were thrill seekers whose preferred form of adrenaline and gratification came from terrorizing people in their own homes. The three of them seemed to be real nasty pieces of work. I would have preferred to handle them in house, but Lester was adamant that all their victims see justice. Two of the other families that they terrorized have already come down to the station and identified them as their attackers, and there are still at least four other families that the police want to come and have a look at them. They’ve killed four people in their exploits, a little boy, both his parents, and a father of four who lived less than a mile from you and Connor. They should be going away for a long time.”
“I can’t imagine what they were thinking. I mean what kind of person has no problem executing a child and his parents, or getting off on brutalizing a family? Becker, if you hadn’t knocked on that door when you did, things would have been a whole lot worse. They tried to…” Abby couldn’t finish her sentence. Her cheeks reddened and she felt the hot tears stinging her eyes again. “They were going to…” She just couldn’t. She saw Becker grip the arms of his chair very hard. His knuckles were white against the dark wood.
“Abby, I’m so sorry I didn’t get there sooner. We thought Connor was just messing about with some piece of tech. I didn’t hurry. I’m truly sorry about that. I know I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I’m going to try and make it up to you, to both of you, to your whole family. I mean, God, if any of you had been killed…” Becker trailed off and took a deep breath to regain his composure. “Connor’s one of my best friends, you’re like a little sister to me. I love your kids like they were my own. I’m getting to be an old bachelor soldier. Your family is the closest thing I have to an actual family. Things might be looking up with Jess, but ever since Sarah, I just can’t put myself out there. When I saw that look in your eyes, it reminded me of Sarah right before she…” He stood up and walked over to Sarah’s bed. He gently pushed the little girl’s hair back off her forehead. He bent down and kissed her forehead so much more gently than Abby would have believed possible from the soldier.
“I miss her. I miss her so much. I love that you honored her by naming your daughter after her. She’s very like Sarah, because she’s very like you. She’s little, but she’s strong. She’s feisty and yet once you win her trust you have it completely.”
"Don't miss her so much that you miss what's in front of you right now. You and Jess are good together. How long are you going to hold her at arms length while trying to keep her close? Don't you find it exhausting. Sarah would have wanted you to be happy. Don't wait too long. Life is too short, Becker."
Becker nodded and then he turned around and stepped to the side of Nick’s bed. “He’s so like his father, this one. He invokes every protective instinct in everyone he comes into contact with, and yet he’s very brave and stronger than others give him credit for. He’s got your tenacity for protecting others though, even when it’s not in his best interest. I’ve seen him do it.”
Abby joined him at her son’s bedside, leaning up and standing on one leg, carefully keeping her weight off the injured one. “He is a pretty amazing kid, isn’t he?”
“They both are.”
“Yes. Connor says they both remind him so much of me, but all I see is him when I look at them.”
Nick’s eyes fluttered just like Connor’s when he was trying to wake up and his chocolate brown eyes, so like Connor’s as well, slowly, sleepily, opened.
“Mummy, what’s going on? Where’s Daddy, why’s Uncle Becker here? Why does my throat hurt? Where am I?”
Abby smiled, he was going to be OK, a little rough around the edges, and raspy sounding, but he was already talking a mile a minute, just like Connor.
“We’re in hospital, do you remember anything from yesterday, baby?”
Nick’s eyes got very wide as sudden remembrance crashed over him.
“Daddy! Where’s Daddy?” He tried to sit up and cried out in pain as he jostled the stitches on his abdomen. Abby pushed him back down.
“Daddy’s resting just like Sarah, see?” She indicated Sarah in the next bed over with a nod of her head.
“I want to see him. Please? Why isn’t he here too?”
Abby thought her heart would break all over again. These two were so alike.
“You can’t see him right now, baby. He’s going to be OK. He’s just going to be sleeping and resting a lot right now, maybe for a while. He’s been hurt pretty badly, and he needs time. OK? He’s going to be all right.” She could see his breathing begin to grow more difficult as worry and fear set in. “Nick, please, I need you to be strong for me. Can you do that? Can you be strong for mummy and daddy? For Sarah? I’m going to have to spend a lot of time with Daddy while he gets better and that means that I won’t be able to be here with the two of you as much as I would like. I need you to stay calm and work on breathing deeply. I need you to keep an eye on Sarah and watch over her. Can you do that?”
Nick took as deep and stable a breath as his weakened lungs would allow and nodded his head. “Is Sarah going to be OK?”
“Yes, sweetheart, Sarah’s going to be just fine. She’s just resting too. She’ll probably be awake in a little while. Do you want anything?”
“Ice cream would be nice.”
“Ice cream, you are your father’s child. You know he asks for the same thing every time he’s sick?”
Nick smiled up at her. He seemed to be calming and his breathing wasn’t so labored now.
“There’s someone else here who wants to say hi.”
Abby motioned Becker over from where he had retreated.
“Uncle Becs!”
“Shhh,” Becker chided lightly. “You don’t want to wake your sister, now do you?”
Nick shook his head. “How long are you staying?”
“As long as you need me, buddy. Today, I am at your service.” He did a quick flourish of a bow to theatrically show his sincerity. Nick was instantly grinning from ear to ear and almost bouncing with delight.
Abby leaned over and kissed the top of her son’s head. “Keep Uncle Becker out of trouble, yeah?” He laughed and nodded his agreement. She looked over to Becker and mouthed her thanks to him and sat back down gingerly in the wheel chair. She wheeled herself out to the hall and then got a hospital worker to assist her back down to Connor’s room.
Connor was much the same as he had been earlier. The machine was still breathing for him and he was still completely unresponsive. She leaned forward and rested her head on the pillow next to his. Abby reached up and gently ran her fingers through the little bit of Connor’s hair that she could actually touch. She let the tears silently fall down her cheeks. She kept her hand on his head; she just needed the connection. She needed to know he was there, alive and warm, even if his body was so horribly broken.