“Oh God Al. I’m so sorry.” Dana whispered as she lovingly took Alice’s hand in hers, tears flowed freely down her face.  “Please just wake up baby, come back to me I don’t care about anything else as long as you wake up and remember me.” Dana’s tears increased, she dropped her head to rest on the bed as her exhausted body sobbed into the bedcovers.

Shane entered the room just behind Dana, shocked at the sight in front of her.  Bette awoke as the entered the room and Shane gave her a hug, tears in both of their eyes as they held onto each other and watched as Dana took visual note of Alice’s entire body before whispering an apology and collapsing into the bed and sobbing with heart wrenching force.

Bette immediately took control as usual and placed her hands on Dana’s shoulders.

“Come on Baby, it’s ok she’s gonna be ok.”

Dana looked up at Bette and saw the hurt they were sharing behind her dark eyes.

“She has to be Bette, I can’t live without her.”

The three friends embraced and cried together for some time.  Feeling better once their tears were shed, they closed the floodgates and settled into a three way bedside vigil until the sun began to rise.

They had lost all track of time and it wasn’t until Bette saw the first rays of sun outside she realised that she had meant to phone Tina and fill her in properly.  She turned to the other two, “Hey guys, I think I might head home for an hour, I should really fill the others in on what’s happened.”

Shane realised she hadn’t phoned Jenny, who was in New York with her editor for the week or Carmen was visiting family relatives who were on holiday in Mexico with her mother for a few days.

“Fuck I haven’t told anyone either.”

“It’s ok I’ll phone Jenny if you like?”

“Yeh thanks I’ll phone Carmen soon too.”

Bette smiled then hesitated, unsure how to ask the following question

“Dana?”

Dana tore her eyes away from Alice’s peaceful sleeping motion to look at Bette.

“Do you want me to contact Lenore and Alice’s brother and sister?”