Glimpses

Chapter 50

January 1st, 2022

It was around 6 AM, when the phone that laid on the armrest of Rory's couch, began to buzz. The phone was Rory's, both her and her mother having dozed off on the couch, the TV still playing. She was no longer wearing her coctail dress, thankfully, just a simple pair of leggings and a sweatshirt, having hastily changed last night.

All of her muscles felt stiff from the awkward sleeping position on the couch, next to her mother, still dressed in the clothes she'd come in last night, who was likely due experiencing a similar type of pain very soon. Rory's condition was a little worse though, as her brain throbbed as well, the body's ability to handle a hangover not being quite what it used to be in her twenties.

"Yeah?" Rory answered, without looking who was calling. In that moment she'd nearly forgotten what was going on. She recognized the voice in an instant thought.

"I'm at the psych ward at Hartford Hospital," Jess said, and continued to explain how after trying to talk Luke down to come and get in the car with him without success for an hour, he'd ended up having to call an ambulance in the early hours of the morning. Because Luke had been considered a danger to himself and others at that point, the first stop had been the Psych ER, where he'd soon been given some sedatives. But either way, he was expecting the doctor to come and talk to him within the next hour or so, hopefully to give him some actual insight as to what was going on with him.

Luke had been in pretty bad shape, several self-inflicted wounds on his hands on top of everything.

Rory knew without Jess asking her, that Lorelai would want to be there, and even though her mother was never a huge fan of 6 o'clock in the AM, she knew it was time to wake her.

She drove her mother's car to the hospital, where she was relieved to find Jess without wandering around the hospital too much. Logan had texted her already during the night that she was staying with Em, while Jess went to handle things with Luke, but while she was a little concerned how Em would take the surprise of waking up without his dad being present, she felt confident Logan would just have Em call her if there was anything she worried about.

"How is he?" Lorelai asked Jess before Rory had a chance to, and hugged him as they reached him. Jess wasn't too keen on hugs from family members excluding Em and in the past also Rory, but under the circumstances he didn't fight it.

Rory could tell by the way his skin tone was a little dull, hair messy and eyes reddish that Jess had truly had a rough morning, or rather - the whole night.

"He's sleeping now, the meds they put him on made him pretty drowsy, but they did some preliminary assessment and the doctor should be out soon to give us an overview," Jess explained.

"It's good it's something medical, I guess," Rory added with a sigh, trying to see the silver lining. She could only imagine what state Luke was in - hardly something he would've been proud of himself.

"Yeah...," Lorelai exhaled, the hope that this wasn't really him, his underlying personality, that this was just something that was wrong with her husband giving her some assurance. Though as they'd already talked in the car with Rory, the fact that it was the psych ward made this certainly something less consoling. Rather it was upsetting and confusing. And Lorelai really didn't understand how she hadn't noticed something being really wrong with him until last night. These little changes had almost snuck up on them.

There were various levels of security at most psych wards - but the waiting room of the one they were sitting in was certainly not one with a low level of security. And as much any of them knew about psych wards - people didn't come out of them that easily, nor quickly usually. This was only added concern to Lorelai, who'd already been fretting about what would happen to the diner.