Trust Me (Phil Coulson Love Story)

The Worst Is Yet To Come

        The weeks after Sophie’s release from the hospital were hard on everyone.  Sophie became timid and withdrawn from her friends. They stopped calling and inviting her to do things. She was so skittish around boys that she nearly ran every time they even so much as looked her way. She had a hard time communicating and often went for days without saying a word to anybody at all.
       Phil and Charlotte had to learn to adjust to sharing their once empty house, with an emotionally distraught teenage girl. Both of them were called into work at the worst times and they hardly saw each other. They stopped talking to each other about everything. They hardly spoke at all about anything and when they did speak, they argued about little things that shouldn’t have mattered anyways.
       Charlotte knew they were growing farther and farther apart and she was desperate to do something. The desperation was crawling under her skin for so long that soon it just left. When it was gone, all that was left was a numb feeling. She didn’t want to lose his love, but he was closing himself off to her. She didn’t know what to do and she had no one to turn to, no one to ask for advice. She was completely on her own.
Charlotte was working a night shift one night, someone had called in sick and Charlotte didn’t want to go home. Phil was not home. He was gone on a business trip again and didn’t say when he would be back. She still didn’t know what to do anymore. She had tried everything she could think of to save them, but nothing seemed to work.         When she said Phil surprised her, she now knew that there were so many more things about him that could surprise her. She had so much experience in the world and not all of it was good. Some of the things she knew were things that no one should know at all, let alone at such a young age. She had not always been a nurse. She had become a nurse as a fresh start, a fresh start after a nightmarish life that was best forgotten.
       Not wanting to dredge up bad memoires, Charlotte focused on what she was doing. It had been an unusually busy night and all the doctors and nurses had been on their toes all night long.
       Around midnight there was a code blue that came with many hurt people.
Charlotte went into a room, where a patient was waiting to be helped. She went straight to the clipboard and began asking the person in the bed some simple questions. She did not notice at first when she began to get some strange answers, her mind was swirling with this emergency and her crumbling love life, but when she asked them if they could describe what had happened she knew something wasn’t right.
        “It’s ok if you don’t want to talk about it, but it could help me determine what all to look for. Even if something doesn’t hurt, something could still be wrong. So I need to know everything that happened.” Charlotte assured them in a soothing tone of voice, so as not to upset them further.
        “Nothing is right.” The man’s voice whispered in a mournful tone that, for some reason or another, sent chills up Charlotte’s spine. “It’s not over.” The man continued, “The worst is yet to come.”
        The silence in the room that followed forced Charlotte to look up at him. He was lying in the hospital bed, still wearing his street clothes. He looked like he might have been a solider at one time or another; his eyes were blue and filled with secrets of life that Charlotte had yet to discover. He met her eyes and she immediately saw regret. He pulled his hands out of his raged coat and with them came a gun. Charlotte froze as she stared in horror at the sight, her eyes never leaving the gun.
        “It can’t be as bad as all that.” She said, trying desperately to keep her voice calm and soothing. She knew she was failing miserably. She used to be so good and looking down the barrel of a gun, but it had been years since she had done so and she wondered how she had ever done so.
        “Oh but it is.” He replied sadly, his eyes filled with tears and Charlotte took the moment to press the emergency call button for security then, taking a deep breath, because what she was about to do was the stupidest thing she had done since getting married, she began to inch forward.
        “Tell me about it. I’m not going anywhere. I happen to be a good problem solver. I’m sure we could come up with something that would work everything else besides this.” She met his eyes and suddenly she wasn’t afraid anymore, she just felt sad for this man, who looked like he had been through hell. She was still a good four feet away from the gun when the door to the room swung open and security came rushing through the door.
        The man’s eyes went wide for a split second and then they turned back to her, hard and cold as ice in deep winter. The gun raised and she rushed him, realizing this was her last chance to keep anyone from getting shot. She had nothing to lose anymore if she got shot. Phil probably didn’t love her anymore and without that Charlotte didn’t feel as though she had anything going for her anymore.
        Charlotte grabbed the gun and a shot rang out as she shoved it towards the ceiling. Security was right behind her and soon they had the old man into custody.
        Nurses and doctors streamed into the room to find out what was going on. There was a lot of back patting and hugs as they all told her how brave she was. After a moment the room began to spin. Charlotte felt something wet running down her side and put her hand to it. It stung and she cried out, catching everyone’s attention.
        Holding her hand up to her face, Charlotte looked in bewilderment at the crimson liquid staining her hand. The room began to spin faster, and then tilt as everyone rushed to her at the same time. Soon, everything went black all together.