The Dance (Original Series Part 2)

No One Left Standing In The Hall

*Caution: Major angst ahead!

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"He's going to be here any minute, I'm sure."

Stevie had always hated the gynecologist's office. Times had changed since her first visit, of course, and they were much more comfortable and less scary since her first visit in 1967, when she'd confessed to Barbara that she'd lost her virginity and had been told she couldn't be too careful with everything "down there" and had to start seeing a "different kind of doctor." Thirty years later, in an examination room that was rather hot - sure it was July but had they heard of air conditioning? - she sat on the table covered waist-down in a paper sheet and waited for Lindsey to arrive. He was in Brentwood again, more trouble with the property, and she'd told him to be at her appointment at two o'clock. It was now a quarter after two, according to the clock shaped like a baby doll on the wall above the speaker, from which she heard that damn song she'd had stuck in her head for awhile some years ago, after she'd told Lindsey she was not ready, so soon after rehab, to start over with him.

"I'm not talkin' 'bout movin' in, and I don't wanna change you life...but there's a warm wind blowin', the stars are out, and I'd really love to see you tonight..."

She could still see his face a week ago when she'd shown him the two pink lines. Lindsey Buckingham was a very intense man by nature, emotional and unpredictable in many ways but extremely solid in others, and the look in his eyes that night had been all of the above and more, with a hint of panic but also unmistakable joy.

"How did this happen?" He'd corrected himself after Stevie's head tilt and sideways glance at him. "Not physically...I mean, when? How? You're forty-nine!"

"As long as the shop isn't closed you can still get in, I guess," she said. "Remember when I spoke to Christine about it and she told me to watch out? It was near my birthday and I was drunk when I got home...I mean, I'm thinking that was it."

"I'm not going to lie to you, Stevie...this is kind of insane," he said. "I mean, we're about to go on tour for the entire fall...in a bus, no less..."

"I thought about that." She struggled to make sense of what his eye were telling her. "Look, Linds, I've been down this road before...but you're right; I am forty-nine. This is it. I mean, if I'm going to do this thing, this is it. And it's with you. That changes things, Lindsey. This is literally Buckingham Nicks, right here!" She pointed towards her lower stomach.

"You know that this is exactly what I wished would have happened years ago," he confessed.

"I know." She was still staring at him...Why the hell was he so hard to read?

"Well, it's twenty years late, but I guess I got my wish," Lindsey said, and he smiled. Stevie raced into his arms, throwing herself around him as closely as she could, and he knew she was crying.

That night, she went upstairs to take a bath before they went to bed, and as he reached into the drawer he'd been using for his pajamas, he could hear her singing to herself in the tub. He smiled, and when he couldn't resist peeking into through the crack of the door that was open, he realized she wasn't singing to herself at all; she had a little tape deck beside the tub and Joni Mitchell was playing, and she was singing to the baby, head cast downward into the bubbles, and the song was "Little Green".

"There'll be icicles and birthday clothes, and sometimes there'll be sorrow..." So involved was she in singing to their unborn child that she didn't realize she was being watched, and it was all he could do to keep from crying.

Lindsey came through the door of the exam room like Kramer from Seinfeld. Stevie looked angry, and he rushed to her side and said, "I'm sorry, angel, I'm so sorry...I got away as fast as I could and I did sixty all the way here."