Free Jury of Peers by Troy L Brodsky

partier. 
                  They’d spent the remainder of the week together in Durban, and found that there was something more to life than pushing the outside of the academic envelope.  It was a grand time to be alive, and minus the jet and yacht, they could easily have passed for another young couple a couple of decades prior.  They married during their Junior year just after midterms.
    Whit congratulated them with a smile and a shake of his head.
    There wasn’t much money as they pushed through school and even less after Jenny was born, but they had the prospect of being MIT graduates, and because the business world runs on the fuel of potential, they both were able to hang on to jobs that likewise, had promise.
                  Ten years later, they were making about three quarters of a million a year as a family and working insane hours while trying to raise a good kid.  Emily was the number three seed in her firm, and serving up some aces from month to month that kept her in the spotlight.  Lawyers loved good PR (or any PR depending on who you talked to), and she was getting it.  Likewise, Seth had been at the right place at the right time in the IT world and had just walked into Esoteric Internet Security one afternoon looking for a job when it was still little more than a computer store in a strip mall.  His career had been born with the Internet, and moved along just as quickly as it evolved.  Within five years he was doing heavy duty security work for some Washington firms, in just under ten he was contracting through EIS to the National Security Agency, something that was just too coincidental to be connected with Whit in any way.  The money was good and they agreed that they would keep it up only as long as it took to retire comfortably and relax with their brood.  They tended to live life together very much as they had begun it, giggling and lubing.  It was really more than love, Seth thought.  It was friendship.  It was hope.

Chapter Eight
    Inchoate
     
     
    Seth sat still.
                  Emily lay there before him, pale and unconscious.  Someone had combed out her long hair and then braided it so that it ran down her side.  The hiss of oxygen was a drone among the beeping equipment, all of which Seth avoided.  His eyes stayed focused on the backs of her lids.
                  Occasionally she appeared to be dreaming, her eyes rolling back and forth in that scary looking REM sort of way, and he knew how terrible it was to not be able to wake from the nightmare.  He wanted to shake her, to clutch her to him and tell her that it was alright, but he couldn’t… and it wasn’t.
                  Worst of all, she wasn’t lying on her side.  For the last month, the only way she could comfortably lie down was to pitch herself over on her elbow and tuck pillows everywhere to hold herself in position.  She didn’t complain, just gave him that look.  I think you should have to do this part.  He would have, and she knew it.  But now it didn’t matter.  The belly she’d slathered lotion on for the last months to avoid stretch marks was as flat as it had been at five months, even with the bandages and shunts and tubes.  Their babies were gone. 
                  He desperately wanted her to wake, and prayed that she’d sleep.  He just didn’t know how to tell her, how to watch the recognition set in, how to see her hurt any more than she already did.
                  He sat for thirteen hours.
                  “Hello Mr. Meek,” came a voice from the door.  He turned to find the doctor once again, tired Dr. Sam.  It was just past nine in the evening according to the clock.
                  He said nothing, but questions assaulted his mind.
                  “You’re welcome to stay.  We have a pullout right there,” she indicated the adjacent wall.  "And I can get some