The Question of a Lifetime {EDITING}

2||Admitting

The response to Richard's emergency call was twenty-two minutes. The party died down and guest slowly evaporated from the room of decadence. The gaggle of gossips, escorted by their patriarchs, said their farewells. Few would call the next day for an update, not that they really care.

Half an hour after the fact, a third of the campus was woken up with the buzzing report. Any news always traveled around Yale campus like a punch of a peacock mantis shrimp, it seemed. Finn and Colin fielded calls, messages, and questions from the brigade members with skills of a corporate PR team.

Color slowly flushed back into her cheeks as Logan rotated a clean rag—which Honor had ordered Josh to gather up with ice wrapped in it—on her forehead, cheeks, and neck. Lorelai had removed her camisole to help her body breathe a bit better with less restriction and layers. Logan mentally thanked her for doing something that would have rattled the rumor wheel if he had done just that.

Sirens suddenly blared through everyone's eardrums, paramedics were swiftly guided—Josh and Honor had waited outside for the ambulance—to the patient. They did a routine check, rattling off numbers and words that didn't comprehend in Logan's ears. Seconds later they carefully removed Rory's limp body from Lorelai and Logan, setting her on a stretcher to wheel her out. Although Rory didn't go without protest from Lorelai.

"If there is anyone who wants to ride with us to the hospital, you have to make a decision fast," said a paramedic, eyes darting between people before setting on Logan's frozen body on his knees, clutching the rag of ice. Lorelai had jumped to her feet, determined to be with her daughter.

"Logan, you go. We'll meet you there." Emily rushed, holding onto Lorelai's arm to keep her from barking a refute. He didn't respond much to Emily's words until he was pulled to his feet by his best friends and pushed towards where he was needed.

Logan nodded to the quiet paramedic and followed, leaving all friends and family behind him. He hopped in, staring at her pale form. His worried gaze fell to the hand laying at her side closest to him. He took it between his hands, pressing her knuckles into his lips and then to his forehead as if in prayer. A secondary paramedic watched him as the primary paramedic got work on a saline IV, she didn't want to interrupt but she needed to get the woman's medical history.

"What's her medical history, allergies, and current medications?"

Staring into the abys of his despair, Logan refused to believe he was sitting here and feeling what she must have felt after his Costa Rica accident. This pit in the center of his soul was gaping and rearing up his fear and guilt and he didn't know how to dispel it. The heaviness brought on tears that he has held back for so many years for so many overwhelming emotions. But he could do this, this one thing to help her when she has helped him numerous times for numerous things. There was a reason why she was his emergency contact. Bringing his lips to her fingertips once more, Logan started rattling off answers about allergies and medications and other needed information.

Lorelai tore away from her mother, took Chris, and rushed to her Jeep—nearly tripping in her three-inch heels. Emily made no refute to her daughter's abrupt leave, turning back to the lingering crowd, after taking a glance at her husband who was on the phone. The flushed cheeks, shaking shoulders, and deep frown told her that he was handling the nincompoops at Hartford General and whatever else that was making him high-strung. She'll inquire about it later.

Honor and Josh had followed Rory's parents to their own car, joining the growing caravan of loved ones.

In the ambulance, Logan stared at the paramedic running current vitals and things. He didn't want to know what it all meant, it was the fearing reality of it being bad that kept him quiet after answering their questions. That moment, it took his mind back to every time that his love for her had grown an inch, a step, a yard, a leap, a mile, or a jump more than seven-stories down the rabbit hole. His memories were a cascade in reveling hope that everything would be okay. It also helped that the driving paramedic tore through traffic like a NASCAR driver.