Mathilda Rose
Title: Mathilda Rose
Author: Nancy Grew
Disclaimer: Characters belong to ATWT.
Warning: A little angst-y. No deaths.
Notes: Futurefic. AU after Reid drives off to Bay City. Takes place mid December 2016 more than a year after my story Amnesia and Realizations. And Maple-Glazed Turkey. You do not have to read any of my other stories in order to understand this one.
Characters: Luke/Reid, Holden, Parker, Natalie, Ethan
Rating: G
Summary: Reid hates sympathy.
Reid Oliver couldn’t take any more looks of sympathy and understanding. If one more person asked him how he was doing, he was going to say something so blistering and cutting, heads would explode. Either that or Reid would burst into tears. Either scenario would probably be just as traumatic to witnesses. Unless they were one of the witnesses whose head had exploded. He decided that a strategic retreat was called for. He went into the rarely-used South Stairwell of Oakdale Memorial and plopped himself down on a step. Mere minutes had passed when he saw Dr. Duke Kramer, the Chief of Pediatrics, start climbing the stairs towards him.
"Please tell me that people aren’t starting tracking me down in order to empathize with me," pleaded Reid. "There is nothing in the world as undignified as being subjected to ‘there, there’ pats."
"Actually, I was just taking the stairs because I’m trying to get rid of my ‘love handles’," said Duke.
"You must have a lot of love in order to need handles that big," replied Reid.
Duke sat down beside Reid on the step. Duke placed his arm around Reid’s back.
‘Oh my God," uttered Reid. "Are you hugging me?"
"I’m pretty sure this is one of those situations where a hug is mandatory," shrugged Duke. "We’re family and you’re just going to have to learn how to accept a hug from me every decade or so."
"Great. Just great. As a young boy, I used to dream of someday having a grandmother-in-law’s stepson," said Reid.
"What young boy doesn’t long for a grandmother-in-law’s stepson?" Duke asked rhetorically. "You know, we all understand why you stayed today. You probably thought that you could distract yourself from the pain by losing yourself in patient care and paperwork. But it’s not working, is it?"
"Maybe it would work if people stopped being all ‘caring’ towards me," hissed Reid.
"Since you don’t work with unfeeling robots, that’s not going to happen," answered Duke.
"That would be super amazing though, wouldn’t it?" asked Reid.
"Yeah, it would be," sighed Duke while thinking about his all-too-human staff. "People are concerned about you because you’re going through something pretty painful. Go home. Let yourself grieve for a little while."
Reid stood. "Fine. Thank you for . . . the familial thing but let’s never tell anyone about the hug."
"Deal," said Duke.
Reid headed out to find Dr. Karen Haines. He found her in the Doctor’s Lounge in the Brad Snyder Pavillion. He resignedly allowed her to pat his arm in greeting.
"I’ve decided that I’m too distracted to be able to do anything useful today," Reid explained to Karen while trying to avoid looking into her Eyes of Compassion. "So, I’m going to go before I make anyone cry."
"You’re years too late for that but I’m glad that you’ve decided that it’s okay for you to go," said Karen. "I was working up a plan to get you to go home so that you could take some time to deal with everything’s that happened. Since my plan involved chloroform, I’m glad that you made the decision for yourself."
Karen and Reid discussed his current caseload in order to make the necessary treatment decisions for his patients and then Reid left the hospital.
When Reid arrived home, he parked his car in the front of the house instead of in the garage. He sat in the car for several moments dreading the idea of going into an empty house. When he realized that wallowing in the pain of his broken heart while alone in his car was no less pitiable than wallowing in the pain of his broken heart while alone in his house, he decided to go into the house where it was warm and there was food.
Reid was startled to see that his husband was at home. Luke Snyder was standing near the kitchen island taping shut cardboard boxes when he heard Reid enter the house. The men walked towards each other and ended up curled into one another’s arms. They clung to one another tightly. Reid’s hands had crept up the inside of the back of Luke’s shirt, seeking the warmth of Luke’s skin. Luke’s arms grasped Reid tightly while Luke burrowed his head into Reid’s neck, breathing in Reid’s scent. Reid suddenly felt that the only thing that was preventing him from falling apart at the seams was Luke’s strength. When he heard the sniffling, Reid didn’t take the time to wonder if it was himself or Luke. It didn’t matter, really.
Reid leaned back, a little. He brought one hand out to cradle Luke’s face. "I thought you were going into work."
Luke smiled tremulously. "I tried. I really did. I reached the parking lot of Grimaldi Shipping and decided that the employees seeing the president of the company in tears would not serve to instill confidence. I called Aunt Ellie and she’s going to rearrange my schedule so that I can take a couple of days off. Going to work didn’t work out for you either, huh?"
"No, it was awful," replied Reid. "I couldn’t think about anything other than the fact that we should have been bringing Mathilda Rose back home with us today. This hurts so much, Luke."
"I know it does," said Luke. "If you need to be angry with me about it, it’s okay."
"Why would I be angry at you, you nitwit?" asked a perplexed Reid.
"We had a plan," answered Luke. "We weren’t going to have a baby until you were Chief of Staff for ten years and I had finished my MBA. I’m the one who made the proposal to adopt Sage’s baby."
"Even I realize that Life doesn’t care what kind of plans you make," Reid said. "Stuff happens and you deal with it. Some hot guy kidnaps you to operate on his blind boyfriend, you give the boyfriend his sight back and then you give the hot guy the best sex of his life. Your teenage cousin gets knocked up and wants to give the baby up for adoption, then you come up with the idea of an open adoption. This way Sage can still be a presence in the baby’s life and you and I get to be parents a few years ahead of schedule. It was a good idea. I was all for it."
"Yeah, Sage was all for it, too," sniffed Luke. "I know that I can’t be angry at a teenage girl for deciding that she wanted to keep her baby after all, but I wish that she had made that decision before the baby was born. Or before you and I started feeling like Mathilda Rose’s--- like the baby’s parents."
"I’ve decided to steer my anger at Jack and Carly," said Reid helpfully. "That way I can still be angry and not feel like a dick for being mad at a teenage girl."
"Okay, I’m in," said Luke. "Do me a favor and anger me up some."
"Maybe Jack and Carly should have taught their kid about birth control and about not sleeping with married high school teachers," said Reid. Luke nodded. "Maybe Carly should have put pressure on Sage to change her mind before I was holding my newborn daughter in my arms and you were singing about piggies while you were counting her toes."
"To be fair, Carly wanted to make sure that if Sage was going to change her mind that she did it before we took the baby home with us," said Luke. "She probably thought it would be even harder for all of us once we brought Mat- the baby home with us and Sage changed her mind then."
"You suck at maintaining a good anger," accused Reid.
"I’ve always been better at maintaining a good sad rather than a good mad," said Luke apologetically. "I need someone to be a clear cut villain in all of this. Then I’d be able to get angry and throw things and feel something, anything other than all this sorrow."
Reid grabbed Luke’s hand and pulled him over to one of the couches. He plopped himself down and tugged Luke down with him. They took a few seconds to rearrange themselves as both tried to put his arm around the other in a gesture of comfort. The need to comfort was as great as the need to be comforted. They managed to settle with Reid’s arm around Luke’s back while Luke snuggled into Reid’s side.
"You’ve packed up everything?" asked Reid.
"Yeah, I’m sorry," Luke apologized. "I know we should have talked about this but I didn’t want to call you at work. I figured that if you had managed to distract yourself with work, I didn’t want to ruin that for you."
"I’m not mad, Luke," sighed Reid. "Even if I had managed to distract myself with work, you could have called me to come home and help you with all of this."
"I thought we should give all the stuff we bought for the baby to Sage," said Luke. "Carly and Jack got rid of their baby stuff after Sage was born and hadn’t bought any new baby stuff before Carly miscarried five years ago.."
"We bought the stuff for . . .this baby so it makes sense for the stuff to go her," said Reid. "Please tell me that we’re not going to be the ones to deliver it. I’m so not ready to put on a happy face about it."
"I don’t think anybody is expecting us to put on a happy face about it yet," said Luke. "I called my Dad and Parker. They’re going to be here shortly to pick everything up. Between Dad’s pickup and Parker’s jeep, I figured there’d be enough room for everything."
"Did you talk to Damian yet?" asked Reid.
"Yeah," replied Luke. "He tried to talk me into you and me suing Sage for custody. I managed to convince him that we couldn’t be happy by forcing Sage to give us the baby. It was one thing when she didn’t want to raise the baby but it’s different now."
"Plus we wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on," reasoned Reid.
"You still don’t get how the Grimaldis work do you?" asked Luke indulgently. "We’re convinced that the person with the most expensive lawyers always wins. No matter what the scenario."
"Damian isn’t going to . . . do something is he?" asked Reid.
Luke tried to be insulted at Reid’s distrust of Damian’s ethics but since his biological father wasn’t exactly renowned for ethics made out of kittens and puppies, he couldn’t quite manage it. Damian Grimaldi was a man of intelligence and charm. He loved deeply. But he was never going to be someone who was going to be invited to pose for a Ultraistic Men of the Year calendar.
"No. He’s accepted that there isn’t anything that you and I want done," said Luke. "You know, I was really surprised that Damian had been so excited about the prospect about becoming a grandfather. I had expected him to put up some arguments when I told him that you and I were adopting Sage’s baby."
"Damian loves you," shrugged Reid. "You’re his great weakness and his great strength. He’s changing the way Kingsley Malta does business because he wants to leave you a legacy that you will be proud of. Him accepting an adopted grandchild in the stead of a biological grandchild doesn’t seem like that big a deal compared to changing the way his family has run their business for centuries."
"During my conversation with Damian today, he mentioned that when he was younger he might have had a problem with the adoption aspect," said Luke. "He had always been raised with the ‘the blood of the proud and powerful Grimaldis run through your veins’ type of attitude. But he ‘gets’ that Holden never loved me less than any of his other kids and that changed the way Damian looked at adoption."
"Holden Snyder may be a smug, self-righteous, stubborn---" Reid began.
Luke cut him off. "Can we just skip to the part where you say, ‘But he loves you’? We don’t have all day, you know."
Reid shrugged agreeably. "I know that we’re going to have a baby some day but we had the fairyland mural in the nursery done specifically for Mathilda Rose. Do you mind if we paint over it and do something else when we decide to have a baby?"
"Ms. Crichton is at the paint store now," answered Luke. "She’s getting primer and paint and supplies. I figured we’d turn the room back into a guest bedroom until it’s time to have the baby that was meant for us."
The doorbell rang. Reid got up and let Parker and Holden in. Holden gave Reid a manly pat on the arm and then headed over to his son. Parker gave Reid a look of commiseration and bumped his shoulder against Reid’s shoulder. Reid nodded Parker over to the couch. Holden was sitting on the coffee table in front of Luke and holding Luke’s hands in his. Reid might never understand how Oakdale managed to think that the million-times-married Holden was such a moral, upstanding guy but he did understand that Holden loved his kids.
"I know that this hurts," Holden was saying. "But I swear to you that it’s going to hurt less over time."
"I know," agreed Luke. "I keep telling myself that it’s not a tragedy. The baby is healthy and is going to be raised by a mother who loves her. Sage has gained the confidence she needs in order to believe that she can be a good mom. These things are good. It’s just that Reid and I are going to have to mourn for awhile. We already loved Mathilda Rose like our own."
"I’m glad that you have Reid," said Holden.
Luke looked almost as surprised by that statement as Reid. Luke knew that Holden had grown to respect many things about Reid. But it’s not as though Holden was ever going to build a shrine to the magnificence of the conceited neurosurgeon who had married his son.
"It’s times like these which test a marriage," Holden continued. "Anyone can have a good marriage when times are easy. When times are tough, marriages need two people who can support each other even when they’re in pain themselves. You’ve always been good at taking care of others but never any good at demanding anyone take care of you. Reid doesn’t even need to be told to take care of you. He does it automatically."
Reid decided that Holden might not be all that bad. Reid plopped himself down next to Luke.
"Sage feels really badly about how you two must be hurting," Parker told Luke and Reid.
"Right now, Luke and I are dealing with our own grief," said Reid. "We don’t need the burden of Sage’s feelings."
Parker looked around at all of the boxes. A crib had been taken apart and re-boxed as had a cradle. There was a high chair and a car seat and a stroller that had never been removed from their boxes. There were a dozen labeled boxes. Everything from baby clothes to toddler clothes to bathing supplies.
"Are you guys sure you want to give all this stuff to Sage?" he asked. "You’re going to have another baby someday."
Luke shook his head. "We didn’t buy all this stuff for some hypothetical baby. We bought it all for Mathilda Rose. Keeping it would be too sad for us."
Parker shifted uncomfortably. He was glad that his sister had decided to keep her baby but he felt horrible for Reid and Luke. "Sage asked me to ask if you two thought that her keeping the name Mathilda Rose would be respectful or really painful."
Luke looked at Reid. Reid shook his head hurriedly.
Luke told Parker, "It would be hard for me and Reid to hear her called Mathilda Rose at every family gathering for the rest of our lives. It would just remind us how much we had wanted her."
Parker nodded. He said to Reid, "Is it too late for you to get your job back as Chief of Staff?"
"It really wouldn’t be fair to Karen Haines for me to try to get my old job back after I lobbied for months for her to get the position," said Reid.
"I’m sure she’d understand," said Holden.
"I wouldn’t want to do that to her," said Reid. "Besides she has the same sort of vision for Oakdale Memorial as I do. The hospital is in good hands with her. Anyway, with her as the Chief of Staff and me as the Chief of Neurology, I can increase my patient load and decrease my paperwork."
Luke threaded the fingers of one of his hands with the fingers of one of Reid’s hands. Reid had stepped down from the Chief of Staff position mere days ago so that he could spend a reasonable amount of time raising their daughter. Reid may have been sanguine about giving up a job that had been so important to him but Luke was heartbroken about it. It wasn’t fair that Reid had made a huge sacrifice in order to be a good father and he wasn’t even going to get the chance to be a father. To this baby, anyway.
"Parker, in the box labeled ‘Miscellaneous’, there’s a flash drive containing some research that Reid and I did," Luke advised his cousin. "We did some research on preschools and listed the pros and cons of each. I was leaning towards ‘Bonjour Ecole’ because they stress a bilingual approach but Reid was leaning towards ‘The Learning Ladder’ because of their teacher/student ratio. And because he didn’t want his daughter to come home one day thinking that Jerry Lewis was funny."
"I’m sure that Sage will be grateful," said Parker.
"There’s research about pediatricians, too," said Luke, needing to be helpful even in this. "Reid was leaning towards Duke because Duke is the Pediatrician version of him. I was leaning towards a female pediatrician because I wanted the baby to have a lot of strong female role models."
Reid really felt like he was going to start to cry. Again.
"And there are a bunch of nanny resumes on the flash drive," Luke continued. "We both were leaning towards a Ms. Cuddlesworth. She has a degree in early childhood development and served in Mossad."
There was a commotion at the door. Natalie and Ethan, two of Luke’s younger siblings, rushed into the house.
"Is it true?" cried Natalie. "Did Sage change her mind about keeping the baby?"
"It’s okay, Nat," comforted Luke.
"No, it’s not!" said Natalie. "She had no right to spend the last nine months telling you that she was going to give you the baby and then change her mind. It’s not fair!"
Luke opened his arms to his sister. She threw herself onto his lap and cried like a baby. Yesterday she had been a confident young woman who had won the Illinois State Science Fair the previous year and who had recently acquired her first, nerdilicious, boyfriend. Today she was a girl whose heart was broken for her big brother and his husband.
Ethan shuffled his feet. Reid moved over a little to make room for him between Luke and himself. Ethan hurriedly threw himself down between them.
"I don’t understand," said Ethan sounding a little lost. "Sage decided right away that she didn’t want to keep the baby. The three of you spent months talking about what an open adoption would mean and how you wanted to handle every scenario. I don’t understand how she could change her mind so suddenly."
Luke kissed his brother on the top of the head. "Eth, it must have been so scary for Sage to find out she was pregnant. It makes sense that she felt like she wasn’t ready to have a baby yet. Especially without the baby’s father as part of their lives. It probably seemed like a good idea to have an open adoption so that she could still be a part of the baby’s life. But the fact that she’s decided to keep the baby is a good thing."
Natalie and Ethan gave their older brother identical looks of disgruntled disbelief. Reid huffed a laugh at Natalie and Ethan’s not buying their brother’s attempt to be positive.
"The fact that Sage has decided to keep the baby means that she feels ready to be a mom," continued Luke. "It’s sad for me and Reid right now but ultimately there aren’t any bad guys here. We can all be happy for Sage and the baby and we can accept that Reid and I can try for another baby someday. Just because Reid and I are sad now doesn’t mean that Sage changing her mind was wrong of her."
"I swear that if I’m the one to donate eggs for Future Baby Snyder Oliver, that I’ll never try to take the baby from you," promised Natalie.
"That’s really sweet of you, Natalie," said Luke. "You know that Reid and I are very touched and thankful that we have so many cool women in our life who are willing to donate eggs so that we can have a baby. We’re really lucky men. I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone else’s."
"Not even the guy who’s married to Neil Patrick Harris?" asked Ethan with a sly look at Reid.
"Hey," said Reid trying his best to play along and sound insulted. "There’s only one person I would ever willingly change lives with."
"Who?" asked Ethan curiously.
"Luke," replied Reid. "I can’t even imagine how awesome it must be to be married to me." Reid was relieved to hear Ethan and Natalie giggle. In Natalie’s case the giggle was a little wet-sounding but he counted it as a victory anyway.
"Okay, why don’t we all help Parker and Dad load up the baby stuff into their vehicles?" asked Luke.
Reid continued playing his part and groaned a little at having to risk his hands by performing manual labor. By the time they were finished packing up the truck and jeep, Ms. Crichton had returned from her trip to the paint store. Everyone helped carry the paint supplies to the soon-to-be-former nursery. Natalie and Ethan insisted on coming by on the weekend so that they could help Luke and Reid paint.
When the family cleared out, Reid and Luke sent Ms. Crichton home for the day. Then they both settled back down on the couch. They both felt heartsick about what had happened but they felt heartsick together. That counted for something. It counted for everything.