pop culture clichés catch up with you sooner or later
Title: pop culture clichés catch up with you sooner or later: side b: track two: i hope for tumbleweeds
Rating: PG-13.
Character: Mark. Mark/Callie.
Summary: Explanations of adult sleepovers, Izzie-bashing, birthdays, thunderstorms.
Note: I hadn’t forgotten about this, there was just some blockage. And, guys, it would be great if I could get a little love with the comments, here. It would just make me feel a little bit better about my life and give my self-confidence a boost out of the gutter if more of you said something. Also: Calla gets a shout out. Bonus if the rest of you can find it.
side a: side b:
track one: teardrop
track two: once upon a time
track three: 99% of us is failure
track four: there is a number of small things
track five: misery is a butterfly
track six: rescued
track seven: punk rock princess (acoustic)
track one: well thought out twinkles
He’s woken up to Post-Its on pillows next to him countless times before - one-night stands saying thanks for the fun, sometimes a phone number, Addison apologizing for a hospital crisis - but never one that made him start his day with a laugh:
I don’t have an early surgery and it’s too late to sneak in and avoid getting shit from Cristina so, really, I left before you got up because you probably want some time to figure out how to explain to your kid that Daddy’s friend now sleeps over. I’ll see you at work.
Mark shakes his head and rolls back over, hugging her pillow to his chest, and realizes that he really does have no idea how to explain it to Caroline. Checking the clock, he decides that he still has some time before he actually has to be awake and closes his eyes again. He opens his eyes four minutes later - his head still even with the clock - to repeated quiet sighs of exertion, whimpers of failure and the odd sensation of part of the bed being pushed down. “Want to come up?” He smiles at a pouting Caroline, still too short to easily climb up on the bed without a series of jumps and hops and attempts to lift herself like a gymnast, and reaches over to lightly grab her by the waist and lift her into bed with him.
“Morning, sunshine,” he grins and kisses her nose, eliciting a flurry of laughter as he tickles her sides. She squirms and giggles until he finally stops and allows her to crawl under the covers and cuddle into his chest. He smiles and presses a kiss against her cheek and is rewarded with an Eskimo kiss after she settles down. Caroline quickly falls back asleep, her head comfortably resting on his chest, and Mark slowly strokes her blonde hair and can’t help but smile.
He certainly enjoyed cuddling with Callie, and assumes he’ll grow to enjoy it even more once they’ve spent more than three nights together, and - though he never admitted it - he always enjoyed cuddling with Addison, but there’s something special about cuddling with his daughter that just makes it indescribably better.
--
“I slept with Mark.”
“I know.”
“No. Like, slept with slept with Mark.” Callie puts her phone on speaker and sets it down on the bathroom counter while she tugs her hair up off her neck. At the silence that she knows is accompanied by a smirk and a raised eyebrow requesting details, she rolls her eyes. “New Years’ Eve. Cliché beyond all possible forgiveness and we were drunk out of our minds but last night, too. Sober.”
“And now?”
Callie squeezes toothpaste onto her toothbrush. “We’re a thing. A real thing. I don’t know what that means, but we’re a real thing.”
“Why are women incapable of putting real names to things?”
“Bitch. You have me on speakerphone.”
“So do you. Pete, give me the phone back.”
“I’m brushing my teeth! And give it back to her.” She catches herself before calling him voodoo boy, having heard about his slight sensitivities toward the mocking of his specialty and always feeling slightly bad calling people names if they’ve never met her or don’t have one to call her in return.
“Thank you. Okay, you’re on stealth phone now. So it’s a thing?”
“Yeah,” she says around a mouthful of toothpaste. “It’s a thing.”
--
Having successfully avoided Izzie Stevens for a full three weeks, seeing her only in passing and being fortunate enough to always find something to excuse herself from having to do a courtesy nod or a smile of acknowledgement, Callie is slightly disappointed - if not particularly surprised - to see “Stevens” printed neatly next to “Torres” and “Sloan” on the OR board. She’s even more disappointed to watch the elevator doors open and the car empty out except for Izzie standing in the back corner. She takes a deep breath, steadies herself, reminds herself that she’s so done with all of this and walks in.
Izzie looks up from her phone as the other woman steps inside, her fingers freezing in their frenzy to earnestly write a text message. She opens her mouth to recite a speech she’s practiced and memorized but Callie cuts her off.
“Say one word about how happy you are for me and I’ll stab a ten blade into the base of your spine.” Callie whispers the threat with a smile and watches Izzie’s confidence falter.
“Callie…” she starts, her speech disappearing off the tip of her tongue.
Callie shakes her head and hits the emergency stop button on the elevator and turns to face the blonde. “No. Me being happy has nothing to do with you. You do not get to take credit for my happiness by saying that if you hadn’t slept with George, I wouldn’t have become friends with Mark. Stop apologizing for everything. I got fired because of you. I wanted Chief Resident. I earned Chief Resident. But you fucked my husband and the two of you hurt me so much that I couldn’t focus. You were everywhere and I got fired. My happiness does not let you off the hook for that or stealing my husband. Stop trying to get me to like you.”
“Okay,” she says meekly and slumps her shoulders against the wall of the elevator as Callie hits the red button and the car starts moving again.
Mark grins widely as Callie enters the scrub room. “Fashionably late. As always.”
She steals a glance at the clock and, though thirty seconds is decidedly not late, shakes her head. “There was a monologue I had to deliver.” She tilts her head in the direction of the door.
Mark turns and narrows his eyes as Izzie walks in. There was a time when he thought the blonde was attractive, when he flirted with her and thought that, eventually, he might be able to add her name to his mental list of women in this hospital he’s slept with. He’d heard all about Denny Duquette and probation but after she saved a man’s life by successfully drilling holes in the man’s skull with a power drill on a ferryboat with scorching flames likely not ten feet away, he thought she might have some merit left in her. But then, though he was focused on staying by Derek’s side and comforting his friend through some of the most terrifying moments of his life, he managed to hear her speech to her fellow interns and decided that she was one of those girls he vehemently avoided in bars. The ones who looked like they might wake up in the morning thinking that it all meant something more and, while he tolerated his sister’s clinginess growing up and he now willingly embraces his daughter’s reluctance to let go of his hand, he never enjoyed the complications women who expect more bring to his life when he doesn’t have more to give.
He nods his head in acknowledgement at Izzie’s entrance and he and Callie begin quizzing the few selected interns on the procedure all while exchanging meaningful looks over their scrub masks as their patient counts backward from one hundred.
--
“Callie.” Caroline points at the shirt haphazardly hanging over the arm of the chair in Mark’s bedroom. She carefully pets Dolphin’s head, having learned the hard way - the way that involves band-aids over things that will heal by morning and many kisses to make it feel better - that the kitten really didn’t like having her tail pulled that much. “Callie,” she says again as Mark pokes his head out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth looking confused.
Knowing that his girlfriend left over an hour ago and had no plans to come back, he scans the room and his gaze eventually lands on the shirt right in line with Caroline’s index finger. “Shit,” he swears softly around a mouthful of toothpaste and turns back around to spit in the sink and rinse. They’ve managed to keep it from her for two months, allowing her to continue innocently thinking that Daddy’s best (girl) friend is sometimes there to drink orange juice and eat cereal with them in the morning and stays over past bedtime while Mark pretended to be thinking of a good way to explain it to her. “Yes, that’s Callie’s,” he says, knowing that there’s no point in denying it.
“Why?”
“Why is it Callie’s? Or why is it here?”
Caroline scrunches her nose at Mark’s attempted joke, sometimes not finding him very funny. “Why is it here?” She repeats, a week shy of her third birthday and, though perfectly capable, still refusing to talk more than necessary.
He sits down on the bed next to her and tucks his feet underneath him, resigning himself to being a little bit late for work and probably forgetting to bring Callie her shirt. “Callie and I are friends.”
“I know.”
“And sometimes friends like each other more.” Realizing that the almost-three year old isn’t going to understand the difference between liking someone and liking someone, he switches gears. “Like, want to do more than play Candyland with them.”
Caroline furrows her brow and stops petting Dolphin for a moment, unsure why anyone would want to do anything other than play Candyland. “Why?” She cocks her head and looks at him with renewed interest, desiring to understand why her daddy’s friend’s shirt was in his bedroom.
Mark sighs, desperately hating that word even more with every instance it comes out of her mouth, and wracks his brain. After a few moments of silence, he nods. “You know Kate and Drew in daycare who hold hands all the time?” He grins at her energetic nod. “Like that. But, adult stuff.”
“Like what?”
Resolutely deciding that his daughter will not learn about sex right now, and preferably not until she’s long grown and moved out, he keeps it simple and like a Disney movie. “Like hug. And kiss. And maybe sleep over.”
“Will Derek?”
It takes him a moment to get her meaning and, when he does, he simply laughs and shakes his head. “No.” He hurriedly continues before she can ask why again. “Derek’s my best friend. But I don’t like him like that.”
--
Her third birthday flies by in a blur of cake and laughter and presents and hugs from everyone and Caroline soon finds herself snuggled up in her father’s lap after the party has long ended, wearing new fuzzy purple socks (from Derek) and crushing a stuffed bunny rabbit (love, Callie) to her chest as they watch the last bits of The Little Mermaid (courtesy of Cristina) together. She shifts, digging herself deeper into his embrace and smiles as he tightens his arms around her and brushes a kiss against her hair. She hugs the rabbit tighter with one hand and reaches out to grab her teddy bear with the other; though she can’t remember who gave it to her or what they said when they placed it in her waiting and eager arms a year ago, it’s still her favorite and it doesn’t matter how many other stuffed animals surround her at night - she needs that one tucked in her arms.
A month or so before Christmas, a box arrived outside their apartment addressed to both Mark and Caroline. On top was a vaguely apologetic letter from the closest of Julie’s acquaintances, apologizing for the delay in sending the box and for Caroline’s loss and other things Mark didn’t really read. But underneath the letter was a pile of ultrasounds and pictures, Caroline’s baby book (and Mark memorized 4:37am, knowing that she’d eventually want to know what time she was born), and a journal full of letters written to Caroline from Julie during her pregnancy and the first two years of Caroline’s life. Mark’s eyes brimmed with tears when he read through the journal, his heart hurting at how much she loved her little girl and how unfair it is that she only got two years with their daughter and he, the screw up who had to feed her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for six meals straight, would get an entire lifetime. He set the baby book and ultrasounds in a small box in a drawer in the living room and put the journal away for a birthday later on, for when she could fully understand and appreciate what it meant. He picked the best and cutest picture of mother and daughter and framed it and set it on Caroline’s dresser, feeling that while memories can fade, certain things shouldn’t be entirely forgotten.
Exhausted, Mark once tried to convince Caroline that it’s okay to sleep without the teddy bear and that they’d find him in the morning but she burst into tears and refused to even climb into bed until he tore apart the apartment, finding the bear wedged between cushions on the sofa. After reading the last letter, written to Caroline on her second birthday, and learning the heartfelt message behind it and that the love Julie put into the bear was the only love Caroline would ever get from her, he always makes sure to set it tenderly in Caroline’s arms before turning out the light.
“You tired?” Mark asks, picking up the remote and turning off the television and DVD player. At her nod and cute small noise as she rearranges herself in his arms to be more comfy as she falls asleep, he smiles and brushes her hair off her face. “Did you have a good birthday?”
She nods as energetically as she can for being mostly asleep. “Yeah!”
“Good.” He kisses her forehead and decides that moving her to bed can wait a little longer.
--
As much as she tried not to act like Caroline’s mother, Callie finds herself falling part-time into the role anyway. She often picks her up from daycare or makes breakfast if Mark has to run in for an emergency and sometimes, though rarely, she gets the opportunity to help the little girl get ready for bed and fall asleep. She feels a little awkward falling asleep at Mark’s apartment without him there, but she knows that Mark explained things as best he could to Caroline (and Callie teased him endlessly for two weeks about things that are more fun than Candyland) and that Caroline understands the basic concepts of babysitters and sort of hopes that the girl can put the two together.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Callie wakes up out of a dreamless log-like sleep and blinks at the clock, surprised to see that it’s past midnight and Mark still isn’t home and is even more surprised that she hasn’t been called back in to deal with whatever crisis is keeping him there. “He’s at the hospital, sweetie.”
“Why?”
She sighs and forces herself awake and scoots backwards to make room for her should she decide to join her. “There was a big accident,” she guesses, knowing that the current thunderstorm is worse than most and she’s probably right, “people need his help.”
Caroline sniffles and stands still. “I want Daddy.”
Callie sits up and pats the bed next to her and waits for Caroline to climb up on her own - now, a “big girl” of three, refusing any help at all - before putting her arm around the girl. “I know. But I’m here, okay?”
Though she leans into Callie’s sideways hug, Caroline pouts earnestly in the dark. Her pout turns into a shriek and then tears as thunder hits close by and she turns into Callie, crawling into her lap and curling into as tight of a ball as she can.
“I know I don’t have Daddy Magic,” Callie whispers, feeling the tension in Caroline’s shoulders, “but I’ll keep you safe until he gets here.”
“Promise?” Caroline looks up with hopeful eyes and begins to relax.
Callie smiles softly and kisses Caroline’s cheek. “Promise.”
side b: track three: all the thinks that go to make heaven and earth
Rating: PG-13.
Character: Mark. Mark/Callie.
Summary: Explanations of adult sleepovers, Izzie-bashing, birthdays, thunderstorms.
Note: I hadn’t forgotten about this, there was just some blockage. And, guys, it would be great if I could get a little love with the comments, here. It would just make me feel a little bit better about my life and give my self-confidence a boost out of the gutter if more of you said something. Also: Calla gets a shout out. Bonus if the rest of you can find it.
side a: side b:
track one: teardrop
track two: once upon a time
track three: 99% of us is failure
track four: there is a number of small things
track five: misery is a butterfly
track six: rescued
track seven: punk rock princess (acoustic)
track one: well thought out twinkles
He’s woken up to Post-Its on pillows next to him countless times before - one-night stands saying thanks for the fun, sometimes a phone number, Addison apologizing for a hospital crisis - but never one that made him start his day with a laugh:
I don’t have an early surgery and it’s too late to sneak in and avoid getting shit from Cristina so, really, I left before you got up because you probably want some time to figure out how to explain to your kid that Daddy’s friend now sleeps over. I’ll see you at work.
Mark shakes his head and rolls back over, hugging her pillow to his chest, and realizes that he really does have no idea how to explain it to Caroline. Checking the clock, he decides that he still has some time before he actually has to be awake and closes his eyes again. He opens his eyes four minutes later - his head still even with the clock - to repeated quiet sighs of exertion, whimpers of failure and the odd sensation of part of the bed being pushed down. “Want to come up?” He smiles at a pouting Caroline, still too short to easily climb up on the bed without a series of jumps and hops and attempts to lift herself like a gymnast, and reaches over to lightly grab her by the waist and lift her into bed with him.
“Morning, sunshine,” he grins and kisses her nose, eliciting a flurry of laughter as he tickles her sides. She squirms and giggles until he finally stops and allows her to crawl under the covers and cuddle into his chest. He smiles and presses a kiss against her cheek and is rewarded with an Eskimo kiss after she settles down. Caroline quickly falls back asleep, her head comfortably resting on his chest, and Mark slowly strokes her blonde hair and can’t help but smile.
He certainly enjoyed cuddling with Callie, and assumes he’ll grow to enjoy it even more once they’ve spent more than three nights together, and - though he never admitted it - he always enjoyed cuddling with Addison, but there’s something special about cuddling with his daughter that just makes it indescribably better.
--
“I slept with Mark.”
“I know.”
“No. Like, slept with slept with Mark.” Callie puts her phone on speaker and sets it down on the bathroom counter while she tugs her hair up off her neck. At the silence that she knows is accompanied by a smirk and a raised eyebrow requesting details, she rolls her eyes. “New Years’ Eve. Cliché beyond all possible forgiveness and we were drunk out of our minds but last night, too. Sober.”
“And now?”
Callie squeezes toothpaste onto her toothbrush. “We’re a thing. A real thing. I don’t know what that means, but we’re a real thing.”
“Why are women incapable of putting real names to things?”
“Bitch. You have me on speakerphone.”
“So do you. Pete, give me the phone back.”
“I’m brushing my teeth! And give it back to her.” She catches herself before calling him voodoo boy, having heard about his slight sensitivities toward the mocking of his specialty and always feeling slightly bad calling people names if they’ve never met her or don’t have one to call her in return.
“Thank you. Okay, you’re on stealth phone now. So it’s a thing?”
“Yeah,” she says around a mouthful of toothpaste. “It’s a thing.”
--
Having successfully avoided Izzie Stevens for a full three weeks, seeing her only in passing and being fortunate enough to always find something to excuse herself from having to do a courtesy nod or a smile of acknowledgement, Callie is slightly disappointed - if not particularly surprised - to see “Stevens” printed neatly next to “Torres” and “Sloan” on the OR board. She’s even more disappointed to watch the elevator doors open and the car empty out except for Izzie standing in the back corner. She takes a deep breath, steadies herself, reminds herself that she’s so done with all of this and walks in.
Izzie looks up from her phone as the other woman steps inside, her fingers freezing in their frenzy to earnestly write a text message. She opens her mouth to recite a speech she’s practiced and memorized but Callie cuts her off.
“Say one word about how happy you are for me and I’ll stab a ten blade into the base of your spine.” Callie whispers the threat with a smile and watches Izzie’s confidence falter.
“Callie…” she starts, her speech disappearing off the tip of her tongue.
Callie shakes her head and hits the emergency stop button on the elevator and turns to face the blonde. “No. Me being happy has nothing to do with you. You do not get to take credit for my happiness by saying that if you hadn’t slept with George, I wouldn’t have become friends with Mark. Stop apologizing for everything. I got fired because of you. I wanted Chief Resident. I earned Chief Resident. But you fucked my husband and the two of you hurt me so much that I couldn’t focus. You were everywhere and I got fired. My happiness does not let you off the hook for that or stealing my husband. Stop trying to get me to like you.”
“Okay,” she says meekly and slumps her shoulders against the wall of the elevator as Callie hits the red button and the car starts moving again.
Mark grins widely as Callie enters the scrub room. “Fashionably late. As always.”
She steals a glance at the clock and, though thirty seconds is decidedly not late, shakes her head. “There was a monologue I had to deliver.” She tilts her head in the direction of the door.
Mark turns and narrows his eyes as Izzie walks in. There was a time when he thought the blonde was attractive, when he flirted with her and thought that, eventually, he might be able to add her name to his mental list of women in this hospital he’s slept with. He’d heard all about Denny Duquette and probation but after she saved a man’s life by successfully drilling holes in the man’s skull with a power drill on a ferryboat with scorching flames likely not ten feet away, he thought she might have some merit left in her. But then, though he was focused on staying by Derek’s side and comforting his friend through some of the most terrifying moments of his life, he managed to hear her speech to her fellow interns and decided that she was one of those girls he vehemently avoided in bars. The ones who looked like they might wake up in the morning thinking that it all meant something more and, while he tolerated his sister’s clinginess growing up and he now willingly embraces his daughter’s reluctance to let go of his hand, he never enjoyed the complications women who expect more bring to his life when he doesn’t have more to give.
He nods his head in acknowledgement at Izzie’s entrance and he and Callie begin quizzing the few selected interns on the procedure all while exchanging meaningful looks over their scrub masks as their patient counts backward from one hundred.
--
“Callie.” Caroline points at the shirt haphazardly hanging over the arm of the chair in Mark’s bedroom. She carefully pets Dolphin’s head, having learned the hard way - the way that involves band-aids over things that will heal by morning and many kisses to make it feel better - that the kitten really didn’t like having her tail pulled that much. “Callie,” she says again as Mark pokes his head out of the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth looking confused.
Knowing that his girlfriend left over an hour ago and had no plans to come back, he scans the room and his gaze eventually lands on the shirt right in line with Caroline’s index finger. “Shit,” he swears softly around a mouthful of toothpaste and turns back around to spit in the sink and rinse. They’ve managed to keep it from her for two months, allowing her to continue innocently thinking that Daddy’s best (girl) friend is sometimes there to drink orange juice and eat cereal with them in the morning and stays over past bedtime while Mark pretended to be thinking of a good way to explain it to her. “Yes, that’s Callie’s,” he says, knowing that there’s no point in denying it.
“Why?”
“Why is it Callie’s? Or why is it here?”
Caroline scrunches her nose at Mark’s attempted joke, sometimes not finding him very funny. “Why is it here?” She repeats, a week shy of her third birthday and, though perfectly capable, still refusing to talk more than necessary.
He sits down on the bed next to her and tucks his feet underneath him, resigning himself to being a little bit late for work and probably forgetting to bring Callie her shirt. “Callie and I are friends.”
“I know.”
“And sometimes friends like each other more.” Realizing that the almost-three year old isn’t going to understand the difference between liking someone and liking someone, he switches gears. “Like, want to do more than play Candyland with them.”
Caroline furrows her brow and stops petting Dolphin for a moment, unsure why anyone would want to do anything other than play Candyland. “Why?” She cocks her head and looks at him with renewed interest, desiring to understand why her daddy’s friend’s shirt was in his bedroom.
Mark sighs, desperately hating that word even more with every instance it comes out of her mouth, and wracks his brain. After a few moments of silence, he nods. “You know Kate and Drew in daycare who hold hands all the time?” He grins at her energetic nod. “Like that. But, adult stuff.”
“Like what?”
Resolutely deciding that his daughter will not learn about sex right now, and preferably not until she’s long grown and moved out, he keeps it simple and like a Disney movie. “Like hug. And kiss. And maybe sleep over.”
“Will Derek?”
It takes him a moment to get her meaning and, when he does, he simply laughs and shakes his head. “No.” He hurriedly continues before she can ask why again. “Derek’s my best friend. But I don’t like him like that.”
--
Her third birthday flies by in a blur of cake and laughter and presents and hugs from everyone and Caroline soon finds herself snuggled up in her father’s lap after the party has long ended, wearing new fuzzy purple socks (from Derek) and crushing a stuffed bunny rabbit (love, Callie) to her chest as they watch the last bits of The Little Mermaid (courtesy of Cristina) together. She shifts, digging herself deeper into his embrace and smiles as he tightens his arms around her and brushes a kiss against her hair. She hugs the rabbit tighter with one hand and reaches out to grab her teddy bear with the other; though she can’t remember who gave it to her or what they said when they placed it in her waiting and eager arms a year ago, it’s still her favorite and it doesn’t matter how many other stuffed animals surround her at night - she needs that one tucked in her arms.
A month or so before Christmas, a box arrived outside their apartment addressed to both Mark and Caroline. On top was a vaguely apologetic letter from the closest of Julie’s acquaintances, apologizing for the delay in sending the box and for Caroline’s loss and other things Mark didn’t really read. But underneath the letter was a pile of ultrasounds and pictures, Caroline’s baby book (and Mark memorized 4:37am, knowing that she’d eventually want to know what time she was born), and a journal full of letters written to Caroline from Julie during her pregnancy and the first two years of Caroline’s life. Mark’s eyes brimmed with tears when he read through the journal, his heart hurting at how much she loved her little girl and how unfair it is that she only got two years with their daughter and he, the screw up who had to feed her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for six meals straight, would get an entire lifetime. He set the baby book and ultrasounds in a small box in a drawer in the living room and put the journal away for a birthday later on, for when she could fully understand and appreciate what it meant. He picked the best and cutest picture of mother and daughter and framed it and set it on Caroline’s dresser, feeling that while memories can fade, certain things shouldn’t be entirely forgotten.
Exhausted, Mark once tried to convince Caroline that it’s okay to sleep without the teddy bear and that they’d find him in the morning but she burst into tears and refused to even climb into bed until he tore apart the apartment, finding the bear wedged between cushions on the sofa. After reading the last letter, written to Caroline on her second birthday, and learning the heartfelt message behind it and that the love Julie put into the bear was the only love Caroline would ever get from her, he always makes sure to set it tenderly in Caroline’s arms before turning out the light.
“You tired?” Mark asks, picking up the remote and turning off the television and DVD player. At her nod and cute small noise as she rearranges herself in his arms to be more comfy as she falls asleep, he smiles and brushes her hair off her face. “Did you have a good birthday?”
She nods as energetically as she can for being mostly asleep. “Yeah!”
“Good.” He kisses her forehead and decides that moving her to bed can wait a little longer.
--
As much as she tried not to act like Caroline’s mother, Callie finds herself falling part-time into the role anyway. She often picks her up from daycare or makes breakfast if Mark has to run in for an emergency and sometimes, though rarely, she gets the opportunity to help the little girl get ready for bed and fall asleep. She feels a little awkward falling asleep at Mark’s apartment without him there, but she knows that Mark explained things as best he could to Caroline (and Callie teased him endlessly for two weeks about things that are more fun than Candyland) and that Caroline understands the basic concepts of babysitters and sort of hopes that the girl can put the two together.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Callie wakes up out of a dreamless log-like sleep and blinks at the clock, surprised to see that it’s past midnight and Mark still isn’t home and is even more surprised that she hasn’t been called back in to deal with whatever crisis is keeping him there. “He’s at the hospital, sweetie.”
“Why?”
She sighs and forces herself awake and scoots backwards to make room for her should she decide to join her. “There was a big accident,” she guesses, knowing that the current thunderstorm is worse than most and she’s probably right, “people need his help.”
Caroline sniffles and stands still. “I want Daddy.”
Callie sits up and pats the bed next to her and waits for Caroline to climb up on her own - now, a “big girl” of three, refusing any help at all - before putting her arm around the girl. “I know. But I’m here, okay?”
Though she leans into Callie’s sideways hug, Caroline pouts earnestly in the dark. Her pout turns into a shriek and then tears as thunder hits close by and she turns into Callie, crawling into her lap and curling into as tight of a ball as she can.
“I know I don’t have Daddy Magic,” Callie whispers, feeling the tension in Caroline’s shoulders, “but I’ll keep you safe until he gets here.”
“Promise?” Caroline looks up with hopeful eyes and begins to relax.
Callie smiles softly and kisses Caroline’s cheek. “Promise.”
side b: track three: all the thinks that go to make heaven and earth