Sweet Wonderful You

i.

A/N: This story is going to be fairly light in tone (for one of my stories) but this chapter gets pretty dark. This chapter deals with a complication of pregnancy in fairly graphic detail (if you have read the epilogue for Over My Head, you already know the outcome) but it is not necessary to read this chapter in order to understand the rest of the story so feel free to skip this chapter. The story is for @steviesshawl who encouraged me to write it. 

Stevie paces the waiting room, a sleeping Juilet in her arms. Back and forth, back and forth, her boots squeaking against the linoleum hospital floor. She is shaking and she is scared she may drop her sleeping daughter but she can't stop. If she stops she begins to think and if she start to think too much she forgets how to breath, her heart begins racing, the shaking gets even worse, her palms sweat and she feels like she'll black out.

They put her in a little private room about 30 minutes after she had arrived, the kind of room people are put in when they are about to receive very bad news and it terrifies her, they wouldn't have put her in this room if they didn't have to. Something has happened. Or maybe they just wanted her out of the way because as far as they are concerned she is no one to Christine in the legal sense, nothing more than a work colleague or maybe a friend. She had described Christine as her partner when she had arrived at the hospital and this being LA she is fairly certain that the staff understood what she meant by that. She is listed as Christine's next of kin and Christine hers, but she also knows that hospitals routinely ignore documentation, at least that is what she understands from reading reports in the newspapers and magazines about the young men dying of HIV/AIDS in their thousands. It is the first time that she has ever really had to think about the possibility that she might be discriminated against for who she loves. It is the first time she has ever had to consider the idea that if something has happened to Christine she might not be allowed to make any decisions about what happens next, or worse, that if the unthinkable has happened, she might not be allowed to say goodbye. She has no idea what would happen if the baby lives and Christine doesn't. Would Lindsey get custody? Would the courts let a 40 year-old single man have custody of a newborn? Would the both lose the baby? Thinking about it makes her heart ache.

A knock on the door startles her out of her spiralling thoughts and she looks up to see Lindsey, looking scared and pale on the other side of the door. She gestures for him to enter, not daring to stop moving and risk falling apart in front of him.

'Hey,' he says, his voice rough, 'you're going to wear a hole through the floor.'

'That's not funny,' Stevie responds.

They are silent for a long moment, Stevie pacing and Lindsey staring at the floor before Lindsey finally speaks again, 'what happened?'

'I don't know,' Stevie says as her skin pales, 'there was blood, so much blood. She had told me something was wrong earlier in the day, she had told me that something didn't feel right, that she was sore and she was cramping, and I dismissed her. I told her that it was normal. I told her she was worrying about nothing.'

'Stevie,' Lindsey says as he catches her shoulder stopping her obsessive pacing mid-stride and gently removes Juliet from her arms placing her on an ugly sofa positioned against the waiting room wall, 'this is not your fault.'

Stevie shakes her head, 'what if I lose her Linds? What if she loses the baby? What if I lose both of them?' She begins to sob with the last question, collapsing forward into Lindsey's strong, safe arms.

Lindsey holds her as she sobs, stroking her messy blonde curls, after long minutes Juliet begins to stir and she straightens, pulling away from him wiping her eyes and taking a deep, steadying breath.

'Come here sweet girl,' Stevie says crouching down and running a hand through Juliet's soft blonde curls, trying to keep her voice as normal as Juliet becomes more aware of her surrounding and begins to whimper.