fic: Moving On (20/20)
Title: Moving On
Rating: PG
Pairing: Finn/Sam
Words: ~5,500
Notes: Final installment barring the epilogue in the Sinn mpreg verse. Fics in order you should read them before this one: Confusion, Help Me, Getting By.
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Words can't even describe the emotions I'm feeling right now. Accomplishment, pride, and sadness all at once. I was in tears writing this last installment, I think because this verse has lasted so long and had such loyal fans, and now here it is, winding down to a close. There is still an epilogue coming your way, but that will be the last piece in this verse. I hope you all enjoy this chapter, and I hope to see you around for the epilogue.
Thank you to everyone that has read and followed this series the whole way through. I couldn't have done this without your encouragement <3
Time seemed to fly by; the holidays came and went and Sam and Finn were both amazed that Sam was just a week away from his due date. They were terrified to hear if Evan needed the surgery, but they were more at ease knowing that Sam’s vigorous medication and vitamin regimen and strict bed-rest after the move had paid off. They had an appointment scheduled on Sam’s due date in case he didn’t go into labor before then, and they had a plan for what they’d do with the girls if Sam went into labor while they were all home.
Burt and Carole volunteered to take the girls for New Years; they wanted to have a little party with them and let them stay up late, and they wanted to give Sam and Finn some moments alone to celebrate as well. Sam’s due date was five days away, and they were getting close to being new parents all over again. Sam was starting to grow weary of being pregnant; he’d never been this big before and his whole body ached all the time. It scared him that he hadn’t gone into labor yet since he hadn’t really been this full term. Even Caroline came almost two weeks early.
Nevertheless, Sam let himself relax, and he and Finn sipped sparkling cider as they watched the New Year’s programs. It was only ten o’clock, but already the festivities were well underway. Finn got up and went into the kitchen to get some snacks when Sam let out a yelp. It was as if he was being stabbed. The pain came out of nowhere and he doubled over as much as he could from where he was laying on the couch. “What happened? Are you okay?” Finn asked, sprinting into the room, a bag of Cheetos in hand.
The pain hit Sam again and he shook his head. “God no,” he groaned.
Sam didn’t remember ever being in this much pain with Annika or Caroline. Sure, labor hurt, but not like this - not with pains so sharp Sam was fighting back tears. Finn switched off the television and grabbed Sam’s coat before he rushed over to help him into it. Finn shrugged on his own and they grabbed the suitcase that was already ready and waiting by the door before slowly making their way out to the car. Finn drove as fast as he could across town to the hospital, and he sped more than he should have.
Sam managed to groan out a phone call to Dr. Lopez, and they were all going to meet at the hospital. Sam clutched Finn’s hand with a vice grip the whole drive and when they got to the hospital, someone was there right away with a wheelchair for Sam. They got him set up in a room and put him on several pain medications as they waited for Dr. Lopez. When he arrived, he did a quick check-up on Sam and his eyes went wide. “What’s going on?” Finn asked quickly.
“Prep the operating room,” Dr. Lopez said to the nurses.
He turned to Finn and Sam and said, “Don’t panic. The baby’s heart rate is a little erratic, and from the descriptions Sam has given us of the pain, we think that his body is beginning to reject the baby and uterus.”
“What? Is…is Evan going to be okay?” Sam asked weakly.
“He’s going to be fine. We’re going to get him out and we’ll take care of you,” Dr. Lopez reassured him. “Some nurses are going to get you ready and bring you down to the OR. I’ll see you there.”
With that, he left the room. Sam squeezed Finn’s hand tight as another contraction hit, and he couldn’t remember ever being this scared. He was twenty-four years old, had done this three times, and yet it seemed far scarier than it ever had at age seventeen. “You’re going to be fine,” Finn reassured him as some nurses came in to help Sam onto a stretcher.
Sam’s hand never let go of Finn’s as they wheeled him down to the operating room, and once there, it was old hat getting into the routine. It would be his third C-section. With a laugh, Finn said, “Don’t pass out on me, okay?”
Sam smiled faintly at Finn through all the pain, and he nodded, “Promise.”
Time seemed to move at a glacial pace as Dr. Lopez began the C-section. Sam just held Finn’s hand tightly as he waited for the cries and screaming to signify that their son was there. Until then, everything was in limbo. It was all a mystery. It felt like it took forever before small cries were heard throughout the operating room. A few minutes later, the volume practically doubled, and Sam panicked a little. “Is he okay?” he asked.
“He’s just fine,” a nurse reassured him. “We circumcised him. He’s on his way.”
She smiled at him and stepped out of the way so one of the other nurses could lay him on Sam’s chest. He stared down in awe at their little boy. “He’s here,” Sam said as he watched his son’s tears subside in awe.
Sam reached out for Evan’s hand and felt his tiny fingers curl around it, and he grinned. Finn looked down in wonder before he leaned in to kiss Sam’s forehead. “He’s perfect,” he smiled.
Usually the surgery was ending by now, and Sam didn’t see Dr. Lopez anywhere. “Is everything okay? What’s happening?” he asked as he looked around at the still hurrying doctors and nurses.
One of the nurses came into Sam’s view and said, “We’re going to need you to make a decision right now, Sam. Your body is at risk of rejecting the female reproductive organs in your body. We can try to keep them, or we can perform a hysterectomy.”
Sam looked confused and asked, “A what?”
“We’d remove the uterus so you wouldn’t be able to have any more children,” she clarified for him.
Finn and Sam’s eyes met instantly and Sam wasn’t sure what to say. Was their family done growing? It all rested on him right then, but he wanted to know what Finn thought of it all. “I don’t want you hurt,” Finn said softly. “Whatever is going to keep you healthy. I’m fine with whatever you choose.”
Sam looked up at the nurse and asked, “What’s the risk if I keep the parts?”
“We could try to give you medication, but chances are your body would continue to reject the parts until we had no choice but to remove them,” she said sadly. “From this point on, the chances of a successful pregnancy are slim to none.”
Sam bit his lip and looked down at Evan. Slowly his eyes met the nurse’s and he said, “Do it then…the hysterectomy. It’s fine.”
Sam swallowed hard and Finn leaned down to kiss Sam softly. “We have our family. Everything is perfect, Sam,” Finn reassured him. “It’s what you had to do.”
Words failed Sam, and he just nodded and looked down at Evan again. He found himself preoccupied with looking at Evan’s head to see what the fuss had been about, and it was obvious almost instantly. It was misshapen and looked like the shape of an egg from the top of his head, Sam noted as Finn held Evan while Dr. Lopez performed the hysterectomy. The thought of putting Evan through surgery at such a young age was a terrifying thought, but it would help him in the long run and that’s what Sam had to remember.
“Congratulations,” a nurse said as she came by to grab Evan to clean him and put him in a proper onesie and blanket. “He was seven pounds, two ounces and 22 inches long.”
“God he’s tall like Finn,” Sam teased.
Both boys smiled and tried to relax, but the weight of everything this time around was a lot. When the nurse brought Evan back to Finn as Sam was getting cleaned up and ready to be brought to a proper room, she smiled and said, “I’ve also been told that your baby was the first to be born in the new year in this hospital. He was born at exactly midnight on January 1st.”
Finn smiled down at Evan, who was cooing in his arms, and he said, “You’re a special guy already, aren’t you?”
Sam watched with a smile on his face as he was wheeled to his new room. Finn had to set Evan down in his little cart and they all went down to Sam’s room. On the way, he pulled out his phone and sent a quick text message to his mom so he wouldn’t wake her or the girls. They could come visit in the morning, but for now this was Sam and Finn’s time with Evan. Even though it was after hours, the nurses let them keep Evan in the room, and Sam held Evan until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Just before Sam fell asleep, Dr. Lopez walked in. “Before you guys leave in a few days, I’d like you to make an appointment to have a 3-D CT scan done for Evan. Preferably around his one-month check-up. I think we’ll need to perform the surgery, but we want to get full proof first,” he said.
Sam frowned a little and nodded. “You did amazing, Sam, and your family is beautiful. I’m happy I got to help you guys along the way,” Dr. Lopez said proudly.
It felt weird, hearing that from him. It was like they were saying goodbye. In a way, they were. Sam didn’t have the parts anymore, so he wouldn’t be having kids anymore. There was no reason for them to need to visit Dr. Lopez, and the thought was a strange one. “Thanks,” Sam replied. “For everything. The free visits when I was pregnant with Annika…being there along the way…everything.”
Dr. Lopez patted Sam on the shoulder and bid them a goodnight. He walked out of the room and Sam let out a big yawn. “I’ll take him,” Finn said softly, reaching out for Evan. “You get some sleep.”
“You should too,” Sam muttered.
Finn laughed a little and said, “You’ve been through a lot more than I have.”
Sam looked over at Finn sadly. “Y’know…I hated this whole being able to have kids thing back when it first happened, but…” he took a deep breath and admitted, “Now that I can’t, it feels weird. I don’t like it. I got so used to the idea of it all and now it’s just…gone.”
Finn frowned and nodded. “Now you’re just like the rest of us guys,” he teased.
“I know,” Sam replied, his frown growing.
“Hey,” Finn said softly. He sat down on the edge of Sam’s bed, Evan sleeping peacefully in his arms, and he reached out with his free hand to hold Sam’s. “You’re still special, Sam. You gave us three kids. Not many guys can say that.”
Sam looked into Finn’s eyes and knew that he’d been given a lot more than anyone else. His thoughts strayed back to when Kurt had admitted at his wedding that he was jealous of Sam. How many other guys like Kurt were there in the world, who wanted this but didn’t have it? Sam may not have had the ability for long but he’d gotten more than most, and that was something he couldn’t help but be happy about. He nodded lightly and Finn leaned in to kiss him. “Get some sleep,” he whispered. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”
Sam rested back on his pillows and fell asleep almost instantly. Finn couldn’t take his eyes off of Evan, even as the little guy slept peacefully in his arms. It still amazed him that Sam had given him any kids, never mind three. They were all perfect and Finn felt fortunate to be the father to all three of them with Sam. Finn slowly found himself drifting off to sleep as well, and he didn’t wake until several hours later when Evan started to cry. This roused Sam as well, and Sam was eager to feed her a bottle. It was such a stark change to their first baby, whom Sam didn’t feed until she was almost a week old.
That afternoon the girls came by, and Carly took to Evan a lot better than Annika did, though neither threw a fit like they did before. Carly just stared down at him in awe, like he wasn’t really real, and she looked up at her dads curiously to ask, “Is he a doll?”
Sam laughed and said, “No, he’s real. He’s your brother.”
“He looks like an alien,” Annika commented from next to the bed.
Carole admonished her a little, but Finn just said, “He’ll grow out of it.”
Carly asked if she could hold him almost instantly, and she sat next to Sam on the bed, and Sam’s arm wrapped around her to help her support Evan’s head and body. “I brought a book to read to him,” Annika said as she held up a book she’d gotten from the school library.
Finn helped her up onto the bed and she leaned against Sam’s legs as she opened the book up. She glanced over at Evan and he was staring at her with wide, brown eyes, just like Finn and Caroline’s. “Ready?” she asked.
“He’s ready,” Sam reassured her.
Annika draped the large book over her legs and began to read, “How to be a baby, by me, the big sister.” Her words came slowly as she processed each one as it came across the page. She ran her finger along underneath the words as she read them, and it was the most precious thing anyone in the room had ever seen. “When you’re a baby, you are in a crib and not in school. When you’re a baby, it’s not good because you don’t have any hair like I do. I have long hair like a princess.” Finn and Sam laughed at that line, and she kept reading the book, stumbling over some words (at which point Carole or Burt would help her) until she got to the very end. “When you get big, you won’t be a baby anymore. But your papa will still carry you if you’re tired, and your daddy will still sing songs to you if you can’t sleep, and I will still let you hold my hand when you’re afraid because you’ll still be a little bit little. Then one day you’ll be as tall as me!”
Annika slammed the book shut and looked over at her fathers proudly. That was the first time she’d read a book from cover to cover. Usually she’d stumble over just enough words to get frustrated and toss the book to the side. Sam had started to wonder if she had dyslexia like he did, but he wouldn’t say anything unless her teacher mentioned it first. “That was really good, Annie,” Finn said with a smile. “Good job.”
She grinned and leaned forward to tickle his cheek a bit. “Did you like it too Evvy?” she asked in a high pitched cooing voice. “Did you like it little baby?”
Evan let out a soft coo and that seemed to satisfy Annika. She smiled and Carole took the book to set it aside as Annie and Carly played with their brother for a little bit. When Carly was tired of holding him, Carole was happy to take over, and she and Burt fawned over him for a bit as Annika and Caroline asked a million questions like where would he sleep, would he wake them up at night, and Caroline even asked if they could play catch when he got home. “He’s still too little, sweetie,” Sam told her. “When he gets a little bigger then you two can play catch all you want.”
That seemed to satisfy her enough, and eventually the girls grew tired of sitting at the hospital. The remaining time in the hospital flew by, and soon Sam and Finn were bringing him home to their new house. It was still amazing to them that six years after all of this started; here they were in a house with three kids and a yard, college degrees and steady jobs.
They had a few weeks of relaxation in which they learned that as long as Evan had a full tummy, he was quiet and happy. “He’s totally your kid,” Sam teased every single time Finn pointed out that he was always really hungry. “All he does it eat and sleep.”
Sam was joking, of course, but Finn really did enjoy his food, and it never, ever showed on his body. He was still as attractive as ever, and he had a big heart. That big heart was all that was getting Sam through the fact that after the 3-D CT scan, they were told that Evan did, in fact, need surgery. The neurosurgeon that they’d been referred to worked in Detroit, Michigan. He was the best neurosurgeon that Dr. Olson could refer them to nearby, though it was a two and a half hour drive. They scheduled Evan’s surgery date and Finn and Sam arranged to be gone for two weeks so they could take Evan there and care for him in the hospital after his procedure until he’d be well enough to be cared for at home. The hospital had given Sam paternity leave so he had a full twelve weeks paid to be away with Evan.
The night before the boys would be taking Evan to Detroit, they dropped the girls off with Burt and Carole. Burt reassured them that everything was going to be okay, and Carole wanted updates no matter what time of day it was. They nodded and promised they’d let them know, and the next morning, bright and early, they left for Detroit.
When they got there, they met the surgeon, Dr. Hammond, and they met the nurses that would be caring for Evan as well. They had a pre-operation appointment with everyone so Dr. Hammond could examine Evan for himself, and so Evan could get used to the people that would be helping to care for him in the first few days. Sam and Finn were terrified, but they trusted this doctor, and the nurses were very friendly.
“Sam, if you’re still willing, we need to draw blood from you like we discussed over the phone,” Dr. Hammond said. “The procedure lasts as long as any blood donation procedure, and we’d like to take care of that today, because Evan will most likely need a transfusion tomorrow during surgery.”
Sam hated the thought that his son would need a blood transfusion because of this. Something that made someone lose so much blood shouldn’t be talked about so casually. He didn’t argue with them, though, because he wanted to help Evan and do anything he could. He nodded and handed Evan to Finn to hold while he was gone.
They spent the evening in Evan’s room, holding him and feeding him, and Sam couldn’t tear his eyes away. Evan wouldn’t look like this ever again. His head would be shaped differently, he’d have a large scar, and worse yet, he’d have to wear a helmet for a while. Sam wondered what people would say when they saw that.
He didn’t want to let go of Evan, but he had to so Evan could get a good night’s rest. The hospital room Evan was in came equipped with a bed for the parents, so Sam and Finn weren’t far, but Sam hated knowing that when he woke, Evan would be going into surgery. Someone would be cutting into his head to fix this seemingly “simple” thing to fix, and it scared Sam to death.
Finn held Sam all night, but neither slept as they worried about the next day. They got out of bed as soon as they could, and Sam held Evan until the nurses came in and said it was time to take him into surgery. “Can we come with?” Sam asked hopefully.
The nurse said that parents had to wait in the hall because they didn’t want the room to be crowded, and Finn and Sam sat right outside the operating room doors for hours until a nurse came out to them. “He’ll be brought to the room shortly,” she told them.
Sam’s hand was holding Finn’s tightly, and Finn could barely feel his fingers, but he was there for Sam and that’s what mattered. “He’s out of surgery and doing great,” she continued. “Let’s walk to his room and talk.”
Finn and Sam didn’t move for a minute, but slowly Finn stood and led Sam with him. “Your little guy is a fighter,” the nurse said with a laugh. “He’s going to heal well. You’ve got nothing to worry about. I want to prepare you for what he’s going to look like when he gets back to the room, though.”
They reached the doorway of the room and Sam and Finn froze. “What do you mean?” Sam asked.
When they walked into the room, the nurse said, “Immediately post-op, he’s going to look quite different. Right now we’ve got his head wrapped up in gauze and he’s got several IVs feeding him because we’ve got him on lots of pain medication so he doesn’t feel anything. His face and head are going to be swollen for about a week, and you may spot some blood on the gauze we’ve wrapped his head in. This is all normal, I promise.”
Sam’s stomach sank. He wondered if he’d even be able to recognize Evan when he came out of surgery. “He’ll be fine,” the nurse reassured him. “I’m going to go help the other nurses bring him back in here, okay?”
Finn nodded and wrapped an arm around Sam’s shoulders as the nurse left. “I hate this,” Sam mumbled.
“He’s fine,” Finn repeated, but he couldn’t help the sinking feeling in his stomach as well.
Neither really knew what to expect, even though the nurse had tried to warn them, and when they saw the little cart roll in with machines hooked up to it and nothing but a bundle of white in the center of it, neither moved. “He did wonderfully,” Dr. Hammond reassured them. “He’s going to be just fine, and you’ll be able to hold him tomorrow.”
The nurses left the room, leaving Finn and Sam alone with Evan. “Do you want to go see him?” Finn asked, glancing between Sam and the bed where Evan slept.
Sam saw the unmoving bundle that was supposed to be Evan and shook his head. “I can’t,” Sam said softly. “Not yet.”
Finn looked at Sam sadly, but stood and walked over to the bed where Evan was. Finn’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of Evan. He looked just like the nurse had said he would, but it was harder to see in real life. Evan’s face was all puffy and Finn didn’t think that Evan could open his eyes even if he tried. He had a respirator in his nose and his whole head was wrapped up in gauze. Cords and tubes came from under the blankets, but that was nothing new because they’d seen the same with Annika. He was unmoving and a machine beeped from next to his bed. Finn turned away and walked back over to Sam. It was hard to look at Evan for too long while he was like this.
“How is he?” Sam asked softly.
Finn just nodded. He couldn’t really find the words. “He looks better than I thought he would,” Finn admitted.
Sam shook his head and said, “I can’t go over there.”
“You can.”
Sam looked up at Finn sadly and said, “You make it sound so easy.”
“It will be,” Finn insisted. He held out his hand and said, “I’ll be with you the whole time.”
The thought of it killed him, but Sam knew he had to do this. He wanted to see for himself that Evan was okay, and he knew he’d regret this if he didn’t. Slowly Sam reached out and put his hand in Finn’s and they stood. Finn led Sam over to where Evan slept, and Sam’s hand gripped Finn’s hand painfully hard as he looked down at Evan. “This is all my fault,” Sam whispered as he stared at his unmoving son.
“No it’s not,” Finn insisted. “This had nothing to do with you.”
“I bet you it’s because my body was starting to reject the stuff. Something went wrong and that’s why his head grew like that,” Sam muttered.
“Sam, stop it, please,” Finn begged. “These things happen to lots of babies. It had nothing to do with you.”
Sam didn’t really believe Finn, at least not now. Not when he could barely make out Evan’s facial features because his whole face was puffy and looked like it was trapped in the gauze wrapped around his head. Sam tried to ignore how Evan’s little outfit looked like a straightjacket with its buttons and little mittens for hands and how tiny Evan looked in the blankets and on his bed, hooked up to so many wires.
It took days for Sam to get over his guilt for having done this to Evan, even though it wasn’t his fault in the least. He finally held Evan three days after his surgery. Evan’s swelling had gone down, though he was still heavily medicated and didn’t wake for much.
Even when he woke, he didn’t open his eyes, and the thought crossed his mind more than once that maybe the procedure had gone wrong and Evan would never see again. The doctors kept insisting that this was normal, though, and he tried to believe them.
After a full week, Evan’s eyes opened, and he let out a soft coo when Sam was holding him. This eased Sam into it a little more, and while Finn was accepting it all a little better, he felt much more relaxed now that Sam was. One more week and they’d be able to take him back home.
That weekend the nurses wanted Sam and Finn in the room while they changed the bandages so they knew what sort of scar Evan would have and how to care for him. Gently they removed the bandages and gauze from around his head, and Sam cringed as the gauze stuck to his stitches a little bit. “We’ll be removing the stitches in a few days so it will easier to clean him up then. For now, we just need to be gentle,” the nurse instructed.
Sam and Finn just stared down at Evan. Now everything seemed to make sense. Why his head was swollen, why he was in pain, why there had been so much blood, and why he’d gotten fifty stitches when Sam had far less than that after his C-section. A large zig zag scar went from ear to ear over Evan’s head like a headband. It was red and looked sore, and Evan didn’t move as they gently cleaned the stitches. “He looks much better than he did a few days ago,” the nurse told Sam as she handed him a soft cloth. “Just gently dab along the sutures to clean him.”
Sam hand shook a little bit as he reached out with the cloth. He gently cleaned Evan’s head, and the nurse smiled at him. “You two will be just fine,” she praised, then turned to Finn and said, “We’ll have you clean him tomorrow. The day after he gets the stitches removed and then we’re going to have him fitted for his helmet.”
She gently wrapped some gauze around his head, under his chin and up and over the stitches a few times just to keep it clean. “The pain medication should be wearing off in a few hours, he’ll be awake then and you can feed him,” she told them before leaving the room.
Everything went smoothly the rest of Evan’s stay, though Finn and Sam were still terrified of hurting Evan on accident. “The key to this is to just be confident,” one of the nurses told them as she prepared them to take him home the following morning.
Evan had his little helmet around his head and lay cooing in Sam’s arms. “He can sense fear, and that will make him fussy, which will lead him to cry, and if he’s feeling any pain from his injury, the crying will cause that to multiply and then you’ve got a really unhappy camper,” she explained to them. “What he needs most to heal quickly is comfort. Hold him and cuddle him, make sure his head doesn’t get jostled too much, and he’s going to be just fine.”
Finn looked over at Evan and Sam, then back up at the nurse. “How long did you say he needs to wear the helmet?” he asked.
“Ideally six to eight weeks. We’ll schedule an appointment with your pediatrician at two weeks out to track his progress, and then the appointment at four weeks should tell you the final length of time,” she said. “He’s a fighter, that’s for sure,” she smiled down at Evan with an endearing look on her face. “You two are going to have no troubles with him.”
They left the hospital with a prescription for pain medicine for Evan and lots of pamphlets on how to care for him while he was healing. Burt and Carole would be meeting Finn and Sam back at their house with the girls, and Sam was terrified, bringing him home all over again. The thought of hurting Evan after the surgery was the scariest thing in the world.
Almost three hours later they were parking in their garage, and as they got out of the car, they saw Carole’s car pull into the drive. “Daddy! Papa!” Annika cried as she bounded out of the car.
Sam smiled and pulled her up into a hug where he stood next to the open car door. Evan was beginning to squirm in his car seat. Sam set Annie down but she didn’t want to let go. “Annie, I need to get Evan,” Sam said. “Let go please.”
“Make Papa get him,” Annie replied simply.
“Papa needs to grab our clothes,” Sam told her. “We have lots of stuff.”
Annie frowned but let go of Sam, and he leaned in to take out Evan’s car seat. He was beginning to fuss, and Sam wanted to get him a bottle before he started to cry too much. “Let me get it for you, Sam,” Carole offered.
She walked past him into the kitchen and began preparing a bottle as Sam pulled the blankets off of Evan’s carrier. Burt was behind him, peering over Sam’s shoulders, and he didn’t seem to be able to speak. “Daddy what’s wrong with him?” Caroline asked from where she was perched on Burt’s hip.
“Remember how I said he hurt his head before he got here?” Sam asked. Carly nodded, and Sam said, “Well we made his head all better.” Sam gently lifted Evan out of the carrier and rested him in his arms.
“But why is he wearing a helmet?” she asked curiously.
“So he doesn’t get hurt again,” Sam explained. “We want him to get better, right?” he asked her.
Carly nodded vigorously and said, “Yeah, that way we can play catch!”
Sam smiled and said, “Exactly.”
It didn’t take long for Sam and Finn to fall into caring for three children. Evan healed quickly just like expected, and six weeks after he left the hospital, his helmet was off and he looked like any other child, except with a large scar. He giggled and laughed and both of his sisters liked playing with him, even though Annika said his toys were boring. They liked seeing him laugh, and that’s what the boys loved more than anything else.
Falling into life again was easy for them all. Sam didn’t feel bad about no longer being able to have kids. He didn’t blame himself for Evan’s head. None of that seemed to matter anymore, because he had his life. Sam had his job, his husband, and his three healthy children. In the grand scheme of things, it’s exactly what he had wanted, but hadn’t happened like he thought it would. No, life happened to Sam Evans in a better way than he could have ever dreamed.
--
Reference for how a child would look post-op. This reference is the only one I could find online. My brother's face was about twice as swollen, and he was far younger. It's a good example of the bandaging though: [link]
Here is a photo of my little brother at age four. If you look, you can see his scar, but it is easy to hide as time goes on. The area where hair can't grow decreases throughout time, we've noticed, and now that he's almost 7, as long as he doesn't get a buzz cut, nobody knows he has the scar. (The girl with him is my sister, but I look just like her.)
