just_1_word || 8.5. Afterthought
8.5. Afterthought
Co-written with agentsullivan
[Follows THIS and THIS]
Andrew paused at the doors of the Maternity ward and let out a slow breath. What the fuck was he doing here? Wasn’t this sort of thing stalker material and she was a goddamn FBI special agent! He indulged in a moment of feeling like an utter idiot and planned to turn back around and bolt for the elevator, when someone he knew just had to walk by. “Andrew. What are you doing here? We don’t usually see you lot up in our neck of the woods.” Katie; a Maternity nurse who occasionally relieved in the ER of Mount Sinai and happened to be the sister of Andrew’s partner. Andrew’s arms were luckily occupied with a bunch of pink tulips and a pink stuffed bear so he couldn’t give himself the slap in the head he really wanted to. There was going to be no explaining his way easily out of this one. Katie laughed. “Switched careers to florist?”
“No,” Andrew returned with a smile. “I’ve come to visit someone, actually.”
“Oh? Which of our lovely new mums is the lucky lady?” Katie teased and gave him a nudge in the arm. “Slim pickings. We only have three in with girls and two of them are married.”
Andrew felt a flush crawl into his cheeks. “No, it’s nothing like that. She was a patient we brought in yesterday. She was having a tough time of it and I heard she ended up having a girl, so I though I might just drop by and congratulate her.”
Katie looked in the direction of a room just up the hall. “Ah, so my suspicions are correct. You’ve come to play Fairy Godmother to Special Agent Sullivan. I’ll tell you, honey. She could use a bit of cheering up. Looks like you might be her Guardian Angel or something.”
Andrew frowned and shifted the flowers into the crook of his arm. “Is the baby sick?”
“No, no. Perfectly healthy six pound one baby girl. Just a bit of post-natal hormones running wild, is all.” Katie picked up a box of Kleenex from the Nurses’ Station and placed them in Andrew’s other hand. “You’ll need those. Good luck.” She patted his arm and disappeared into a room behind her.
Now he really did want to run. Why was he even here anyway? Oh yeah, he wanted to make sure she was okay after how distraught she was in the ambulance. He just hadn’t been able to shake thoughts about her and needed to know she and the baby were okay. Now he knew, which meant he could just dump the flowers with a nurse and piss off again, right? Only, she apparently wasn’t so okay and his need to help people was kicking in. Even if he just said hello and gave her the flowers? Time for some ball-grabbing. She had already cried extensively in the ambulance, so that wasn’t going to bother him and if she told him to fuck off, he would do that too.
He walked over to the room Katie had gestured to. The door was open and the curtains weren’t drawn, so he didn’t think he was interrupting anything. He knocked and cleared his throat, smiling just a little. “Hey,” he said hesitantly. “I… um… thought I would just stop by to check how you were.”
Without the ambulance uniform, Ali didn’t realise who the guy was for a moment. She looked up from the magazine she had in her lap, though she had hardly been reading it. More like staring numbly at the same page for the last hour and a half. It took a few moments for her to realise he was the hand in the ambulance and she managed a faint smile. “Oh, hi. Sorry, my brain is completely fucked.” Her eyes dropped to the flowers and bear, both pink. “Hospital network seems to work as quickly as the FBI.”
Her voice was too tired and drained for him to be able to tell if she was pissed off or not. “I’m sorry,” he said, deciding to apologise anyway. “You were just so upset on the trip over. I just wanted to check how you were doing now all is said and done.” He stayed safely by the door in case she wanted to boot him out.
“No need to apologise,” Ali assured him. “You’re real sweet, thank you. Come in. You’re making my door look messy. Not that I can talk. I know I look like a wreck.” She folded the magazine over and shoved it back on her nightstand.
“But that’s understandable,” Andrew assured her with a smile. He went over to her side to hand her the gifts and then leaned over the newborn hospital crib by the bed with a bundle of pink blankets. “She’s beautiful, Ms Sullivan. Congratulations.”
Ali rubbed softly at the back of her neck, watching him peer at her daughter. Her daughter. It felt so fucking foreign. She couldn’t connect to the concept at all and was struggling to connect to the infant because of it. She had already been placed in a high risk category for post-natal depression with a shrink apparently planning to stop by on her the next day. She was confused, not insane. She thought she had four weeks up her sleeve to prepare for this and all of a sudden the rugrat is there in her arms. She really thought the kid would be better off in the nursery with the professionals but the nurses - and doctor - continued to encourage her to keep the baby in the room with her. “Thanks,” she murmured. She knew the baby was beautiful, but that was where her knowledge stopped. She tried to fight yet another wave of tears but it was impossible. “Fuck. I’m sorry. They tell me this is normal.”
Andrew proffered the box of tissues to her. “It’s okay. You’ve been through a lot, and earlier than you expected. It will take a little while for the hormones to stop pumping through your system. How are you feeling otherwise? Did she give you a hard time?” He paused and held up his hand. “You don’t have to tell me anything. In fact, you can ask me to leave any time you like. I promise I don’t usually do this. But then, birthing mothers don’t normally verbally threaten me on a run, either. They usually save that for the fathers,” he added, laughing softly.
Ali still managed to smirk through her tears. “I’m often accused of having a filthy mouth. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t mean to aim it at you. And to be honest, I really appreciate the gesture… and the company. Take a seat for a few minutes. Unless you have somewhere else to be…”
“No, it’s my day off. I think I could find a few minutes in my not so busy schedule,” Andrew decided and sat down in one of the visitor’s seats.
“A paramedic is spending his day off in a hospital? Are you sure you don’t have something better you want to be doing?” Ali asked, raising her eyebrow. She wiped at her eyes with a handful off tissues. “You won’t even find me in a ten block radius of work on my days off.”
Andrew laughed and shook his head. “I don’t have a hugely active social life. You didn’t answer my question and I can’t decide whether you’re deflecting me or deflecting yourself,” he told her.
With a small sigh, Ali rested her head back against the hospital pillow. “Myself,” she confirmed. “I don’t know how I feel so I don’t know how to answer your question. Physically, I’m exhausted. Completely knackered, like I have never been in my whole. I was in labour for twenty eight hours and even though they tell me she isn’t a big baby by any means, she still had to come out of me and that fucking hurt like goddamn hell for hours and hours on end. Everything else I… can’t think about because I lose it. And please, while I think about it, call me Ali.”
Andrew nodded. He noted that her room was already nearly filled to the brim with flowers and cards, among other pink ‘It’s a Girl!’ paraphernalia. Calculations told him she would’ve only given birth around this time the day before, so she clearly had a lot of people who cared about the arrival of the baby. “When we picked you up, your boss mentioned that you had a really rough time of late. I admittedly wondered if you had lost your partner or something along those lines. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know something huge was affecting you. I guess that’s part of the reason I’m here now. I just needed to know you made it out in once piece,” he admitted. He smiled and rubbed the bottom of the pink baby bundle. “That you both did.”
“Depends what your definition of ‘one piece’ is because I swear my vagina is never going to be it’s old self again. Neither will my tits,” Ali said wryly, reluctant to even touch them because they were hurting so badly. She had tried to breast feed and failed. The nurse would be back again soon to try again. She was just more convinced than ever that she wasn’t made to be a mother.
Andrew blushed a little and chuckled. “Well, I hear that does get better. Not that I have had first hand experience.”
“No wife and kid at home while you’re slugging your guts out on the road as a paramedic?” Ali asked and found herself looking over at her daughter to make sure she was okay. Where the fuck had that come from? Was that the maternal instinct kicking in? Even a soft wave of relief to see the infant was still sleeping peacefully.
Andrew snorted. “No, it’s just me. I’m just back from six months in London, actually. I’ve only been home about three weeks,” he explained. “And straight back into my old job.”
“You’re keen,” Ali noted. “Can I ask why you were in London so long?”
“Of course you can. My father died around twelve months ago. It was sudden. He and I were close, so I took it badly. London was my change of scenery to help me clear my head. I know it was running away, but I never intended it to be a permanent escape,” Andrew said and offered her a flickering of a sad smile. “It still hurts, but I’m beyond the point where I want to burst into tears every time I think about my Dad.”
Ali had an urge to take his hand just like he had done for her in the ambulance, but she didn’t want to be too forward. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “And I… I understand,” she added hoarsely. “On some level at least. It wasn’t really my partner that I lost. It was my two best friends. My partner… I lost a long time ago. The kid here was an accident. Shamefully the result of a one night stand we had. It’s a fucking complicated story that you really don’t want to be drowned with. But the loss I understand. My best friend, James, was murdered about three weeks ago. My other best friend, Izzy, couldn’t cope and ran away after the news broke. They were in love, see. Had been for a long time but only recently started to date. His death has…” She choked up again, cover her face with some tissues to catch a sob. “It’s affected a lot of people in a lot of ways. They were supposed to help me through this. They promised they would be there. But now they’re gone and I’m alone. My… she…” She looked at the sleeping baby beside her. “James was her uncle. Her father was his brother, but after the whole tragedy, he and his family moved back to Australia because they couldn’t handle staying here after it all happened. So, I’ve lost Mark, James, and Izzy all in a matter of weeks, and gained this thing that I have no idea how to deal with. I don’t know how to be a mother. If you knew me before, you would know I’m the least mummy material to ever walk the earth. Told you it was complicated,” she finally ended, the ramble coming out in a quick, tearful wave.
At the mention of murder, Andrew’s mouth had dropped open, let alone taking in the rest of her tail. No wonder she couldn’t go a few sentences into a conversation without crying. No wonder she had been so fucking scared in the ambulance. He assumed the two best friends had been pegged for her birthing partners and she was prematurely thrown into the deep end during the most hormone-fuelled time of her life to not only deal with it without her support network, but to be barely into the grieving process and facing the prospect of being a single mother. But before he even had a chance to comment or react, the baby started to cry.
“Shit,” Ali mumbled, swiping her fingers across her eyes to try and stop the tears. It hurt to move, but she managed to get to the edge of the bed without doubling over in pain. The crying just made her anxious and she apologised silently to her daughter that she had to get her as a mother when there were any number of Brady Bunch mums down the hall seeming to walk around with the kid permanently attached to their nipple. Instead this poor kid got her, who didn’t know how to aim a nipple if she tried and couldn’t even get the diaper right without it falling off three times.
Andrew could see the pain in her features and he stood to offer his hand to help her. He bit the corner of his lip hesitantly. “Why don’t you just stay sitting on the bed and I’ll hand her to you?” he suggested. “I’ve had some experience with infants. I promise I won’t hurt her.”
Ali drew her lip between her teeth. How had he known what her first thought had been? It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him with her baby; it was anyone. Something she knew she would have to get over because there would be a lot of people wanting to nurse the new arrival. The crying continued, drilling somewhere deep in Ali’s heart. She nodded, though slightly reluctantly and sat down on the bed again. “Okay,” she agreed. “Cheers.”
Andrew carefully scooped the tiny newborn up into his arms and cradled her against his chest. He smiled down at the little teary face. “You really are a beauty, aren’t you? It must be the genes,” he added, smiling at Ali as he placed the baby into her arms.
“Why are you doing this?” Ali asked quietly, not missing how he handled the baby with ease. “Why are you even here?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew had to admit. “But I’d like to keep you both company for a little bit longer, if you’ll have me.” He could hear that the baby’s cries had fallen into some soft whimpers now. “Seems she just wanted a cuddle from her mummy.”
Ali felt a faint smile on her lips as she watched her little girl squirm in the bundle of blankets. She didn’t comment on his afterthought. She just glanced up and met his eyes. “I think I can put up with you for a bit longer,” she joked, though there was gratitude in her dark eyes. If only he knew just how much she had already helped her, by reaching out to her when she needed a hand to hold, and now with a fleeting thought to remind her that maybe there was a faint hope that she might not be such a shite mother after all.
isabelowens and agentfraser referenced with permission
Word Count | 2,669
Co-written with agentsullivan
[Follows THIS and THIS]
Andrew paused at the doors of the Maternity ward and let out a slow breath. What the fuck was he doing here? Wasn’t this sort of thing stalker material and she was a goddamn FBI special agent! He indulged in a moment of feeling like an utter idiot and planned to turn back around and bolt for the elevator, when someone he knew just had to walk by. “Andrew. What are you doing here? We don’t usually see you lot up in our neck of the woods.” Katie; a Maternity nurse who occasionally relieved in the ER of Mount Sinai and happened to be the sister of Andrew’s partner. Andrew’s arms were luckily occupied with a bunch of pink tulips and a pink stuffed bear so he couldn’t give himself the slap in the head he really wanted to. There was going to be no explaining his way easily out of this one. Katie laughed. “Switched careers to florist?”
“No,” Andrew returned with a smile. “I’ve come to visit someone, actually.”
“Oh? Which of our lovely new mums is the lucky lady?” Katie teased and gave him a nudge in the arm. “Slim pickings. We only have three in with girls and two of them are married.”
Andrew felt a flush crawl into his cheeks. “No, it’s nothing like that. She was a patient we brought in yesterday. She was having a tough time of it and I heard she ended up having a girl, so I though I might just drop by and congratulate her.”
Katie looked in the direction of a room just up the hall. “Ah, so my suspicions are correct. You’ve come to play Fairy Godmother to Special Agent Sullivan. I’ll tell you, honey. She could use a bit of cheering up. Looks like you might be her Guardian Angel or something.”
Andrew frowned and shifted the flowers into the crook of his arm. “Is the baby sick?”
“No, no. Perfectly healthy six pound one baby girl. Just a bit of post-natal hormones running wild, is all.” Katie picked up a box of Kleenex from the Nurses’ Station and placed them in Andrew’s other hand. “You’ll need those. Good luck.” She patted his arm and disappeared into a room behind her.
Now he really did want to run. Why was he even here anyway? Oh yeah, he wanted to make sure she was okay after how distraught she was in the ambulance. He just hadn’t been able to shake thoughts about her and needed to know she and the baby were okay. Now he knew, which meant he could just dump the flowers with a nurse and piss off again, right? Only, she apparently wasn’t so okay and his need to help people was kicking in. Even if he just said hello and gave her the flowers? Time for some ball-grabbing. She had already cried extensively in the ambulance, so that wasn’t going to bother him and if she told him to fuck off, he would do that too.
He walked over to the room Katie had gestured to. The door was open and the curtains weren’t drawn, so he didn’t think he was interrupting anything. He knocked and cleared his throat, smiling just a little. “Hey,” he said hesitantly. “I… um… thought I would just stop by to check how you were.”
Without the ambulance uniform, Ali didn’t realise who the guy was for a moment. She looked up from the magazine she had in her lap, though she had hardly been reading it. More like staring numbly at the same page for the last hour and a half. It took a few moments for her to realise he was the hand in the ambulance and she managed a faint smile. “Oh, hi. Sorry, my brain is completely fucked.” Her eyes dropped to the flowers and bear, both pink. “Hospital network seems to work as quickly as the FBI.”
Her voice was too tired and drained for him to be able to tell if she was pissed off or not. “I’m sorry,” he said, deciding to apologise anyway. “You were just so upset on the trip over. I just wanted to check how you were doing now all is said and done.” He stayed safely by the door in case she wanted to boot him out.
“No need to apologise,” Ali assured him. “You’re real sweet, thank you. Come in. You’re making my door look messy. Not that I can talk. I know I look like a wreck.” She folded the magazine over and shoved it back on her nightstand.
“But that’s understandable,” Andrew assured her with a smile. He went over to her side to hand her the gifts and then leaned over the newborn hospital crib by the bed with a bundle of pink blankets. “She’s beautiful, Ms Sullivan. Congratulations.”
Ali rubbed softly at the back of her neck, watching him peer at her daughter. Her daughter. It felt so fucking foreign. She couldn’t connect to the concept at all and was struggling to connect to the infant because of it. She had already been placed in a high risk category for post-natal depression with a shrink apparently planning to stop by on her the next day. She was confused, not insane. She thought she had four weeks up her sleeve to prepare for this and all of a sudden the rugrat is there in her arms. She really thought the kid would be better off in the nursery with the professionals but the nurses - and doctor - continued to encourage her to keep the baby in the room with her. “Thanks,” she murmured. She knew the baby was beautiful, but that was where her knowledge stopped. She tried to fight yet another wave of tears but it was impossible. “Fuck. I’m sorry. They tell me this is normal.”
Andrew proffered the box of tissues to her. “It’s okay. You’ve been through a lot, and earlier than you expected. It will take a little while for the hormones to stop pumping through your system. How are you feeling otherwise? Did she give you a hard time?” He paused and held up his hand. “You don’t have to tell me anything. In fact, you can ask me to leave any time you like. I promise I don’t usually do this. But then, birthing mothers don’t normally verbally threaten me on a run, either. They usually save that for the fathers,” he added, laughing softly.
Ali still managed to smirk through her tears. “I’m often accused of having a filthy mouth. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t mean to aim it at you. And to be honest, I really appreciate the gesture… and the company. Take a seat for a few minutes. Unless you have somewhere else to be…”
“No, it’s my day off. I think I could find a few minutes in my not so busy schedule,” Andrew decided and sat down in one of the visitor’s seats.
“A paramedic is spending his day off in a hospital? Are you sure you don’t have something better you want to be doing?” Ali asked, raising her eyebrow. She wiped at her eyes with a handful off tissues. “You won’t even find me in a ten block radius of work on my days off.”
Andrew laughed and shook his head. “I don’t have a hugely active social life. You didn’t answer my question and I can’t decide whether you’re deflecting me or deflecting yourself,” he told her.
With a small sigh, Ali rested her head back against the hospital pillow. “Myself,” she confirmed. “I don’t know how I feel so I don’t know how to answer your question. Physically, I’m exhausted. Completely knackered, like I have never been in my whole. I was in labour for twenty eight hours and even though they tell me she isn’t a big baby by any means, she still had to come out of me and that fucking hurt like goddamn hell for hours and hours on end. Everything else I… can’t think about because I lose it. And please, while I think about it, call me Ali.”
Andrew nodded. He noted that her room was already nearly filled to the brim with flowers and cards, among other pink ‘It’s a Girl!’ paraphernalia. Calculations told him she would’ve only given birth around this time the day before, so she clearly had a lot of people who cared about the arrival of the baby. “When we picked you up, your boss mentioned that you had a really rough time of late. I admittedly wondered if you had lost your partner or something along those lines. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know something huge was affecting you. I guess that’s part of the reason I’m here now. I just needed to know you made it out in once piece,” he admitted. He smiled and rubbed the bottom of the pink baby bundle. “That you both did.”
“Depends what your definition of ‘one piece’ is because I swear my vagina is never going to be it’s old self again. Neither will my tits,” Ali said wryly, reluctant to even touch them because they were hurting so badly. She had tried to breast feed and failed. The nurse would be back again soon to try again. She was just more convinced than ever that she wasn’t made to be a mother.
Andrew blushed a little and chuckled. “Well, I hear that does get better. Not that I have had first hand experience.”
“No wife and kid at home while you’re slugging your guts out on the road as a paramedic?” Ali asked and found herself looking over at her daughter to make sure she was okay. Where the fuck had that come from? Was that the maternal instinct kicking in? Even a soft wave of relief to see the infant was still sleeping peacefully.
Andrew snorted. “No, it’s just me. I’m just back from six months in London, actually. I’ve only been home about three weeks,” he explained. “And straight back into my old job.”
“You’re keen,” Ali noted. “Can I ask why you were in London so long?”
“Of course you can. My father died around twelve months ago. It was sudden. He and I were close, so I took it badly. London was my change of scenery to help me clear my head. I know it was running away, but I never intended it to be a permanent escape,” Andrew said and offered her a flickering of a sad smile. “It still hurts, but I’m beyond the point where I want to burst into tears every time I think about my Dad.”
Ali had an urge to take his hand just like he had done for her in the ambulance, but she didn’t want to be too forward. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “And I… I understand,” she added hoarsely. “On some level at least. It wasn’t really my partner that I lost. It was my two best friends. My partner… I lost a long time ago. The kid here was an accident. Shamefully the result of a one night stand we had. It’s a fucking complicated story that you really don’t want to be drowned with. But the loss I understand. My best friend, James, was murdered about three weeks ago. My other best friend, Izzy, couldn’t cope and ran away after the news broke. They were in love, see. Had been for a long time but only recently started to date. His death has…” She choked up again, cover her face with some tissues to catch a sob. “It’s affected a lot of people in a lot of ways. They were supposed to help me through this. They promised they would be there. But now they’re gone and I’m alone. My… she…” She looked at the sleeping baby beside her. “James was her uncle. Her father was his brother, but after the whole tragedy, he and his family moved back to Australia because they couldn’t handle staying here after it all happened. So, I’ve lost Mark, James, and Izzy all in a matter of weeks, and gained this thing that I have no idea how to deal with. I don’t know how to be a mother. If you knew me before, you would know I’m the least mummy material to ever walk the earth. Told you it was complicated,” she finally ended, the ramble coming out in a quick, tearful wave.
At the mention of murder, Andrew’s mouth had dropped open, let alone taking in the rest of her tail. No wonder she couldn’t go a few sentences into a conversation without crying. No wonder she had been so fucking scared in the ambulance. He assumed the two best friends had been pegged for her birthing partners and she was prematurely thrown into the deep end during the most hormone-fuelled time of her life to not only deal with it without her support network, but to be barely into the grieving process and facing the prospect of being a single mother. But before he even had a chance to comment or react, the baby started to cry.
“Shit,” Ali mumbled, swiping her fingers across her eyes to try and stop the tears. It hurt to move, but she managed to get to the edge of the bed without doubling over in pain. The crying just made her anxious and she apologised silently to her daughter that she had to get her as a mother when there were any number of Brady Bunch mums down the hall seeming to walk around with the kid permanently attached to their nipple. Instead this poor kid got her, who didn’t know how to aim a nipple if she tried and couldn’t even get the diaper right without it falling off three times.
Andrew could see the pain in her features and he stood to offer his hand to help her. He bit the corner of his lip hesitantly. “Why don’t you just stay sitting on the bed and I’ll hand her to you?” he suggested. “I’ve had some experience with infants. I promise I won’t hurt her.”
Ali drew her lip between her teeth. How had he known what her first thought had been? It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him with her baby; it was anyone. Something she knew she would have to get over because there would be a lot of people wanting to nurse the new arrival. The crying continued, drilling somewhere deep in Ali’s heart. She nodded, though slightly reluctantly and sat down on the bed again. “Okay,” she agreed. “Cheers.”
Andrew carefully scooped the tiny newborn up into his arms and cradled her against his chest. He smiled down at the little teary face. “You really are a beauty, aren’t you? It must be the genes,” he added, smiling at Ali as he placed the baby into her arms.
“Why are you doing this?” Ali asked quietly, not missing how he handled the baby with ease. “Why are you even here?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew had to admit. “But I’d like to keep you both company for a little bit longer, if you’ll have me.” He could hear that the baby’s cries had fallen into some soft whimpers now. “Seems she just wanted a cuddle from her mummy.”
Ali felt a faint smile on her lips as she watched her little girl squirm in the bundle of blankets. She didn’t comment on his afterthought. She just glanced up and met his eyes. “I think I can put up with you for a bit longer,” she joked, though there was gratitude in her dark eyes. If only he knew just how much she had already helped her, by reaching out to her when she needed a hand to hold, and now with a fleeting thought to remind her that maybe there was a faint hope that she might not be such a shite mother after all.
isabelowens and agentfraser referenced with permission
Word Count | 2,669