HE JUST KNEW
Author's Note: First time poster here. I got hooked on Law and Order last summer when I couldn't sleep and caught "For The Defense" on TNT. I kind of fell in love with the chemistry between Mike Cutter and Connie Rubirosa.
Full disclosure - this is complete and utter fluff. Law and Order and any of the characters that you recognize - I don't own 'em and I'm making no profit here.
The halls of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in lower Manhattan were relatively quiet. At least it was quiet in the Mother-Baby Unit. Michael Cutter reclined back on the hospital bed he was currently sharing with his wife. He leaned his head against Connie's where it rested on his shoulder as she slept, and stared in wonder at the tiny bundle in his arms.
His daughter, barely 2 hours old, lay snuggled in the crook of his right arm. She had slept peacefully for a bit, allowing her exhausted mother a moment of rest as well. But Sofia Gabriela Cutter was starting to stir, and Connie was awake in an instant.
"Hi," she whispered through a yawn, pushing her hair behind her ear. "Sorry I fell asleep."
"I think you earned it, babe," Mike murmured, leaning in to kiss her gently. She smiled as their lips parted, the little mewls starting to grow louder and more insistent. At that moment, a nurse came in to check Connie's vitals.
"Sounds like she's hungry. Ready to give it a try, Momma?" she asked.
Connie glanced at Mike with a deep breath. "Okay," she said as she did some adjusting. Mike awkwardly passed the baby over. "We'll get better at that," Connie whispered to him with a smile, and with direction from the nurse, brought Sofia to her breast.
Mike thought for a moment that maybe he should go, or at least move, but he just couldn't. His mind drifted back, over the past 24 hours, to what brought them here, to this moment that had changed everything…
It all started in the wee hours of the morning 4 days before Connie's due date, when Mike was shaken awake by her stark whisper, "I think my water broke."
He blinked a few times in the darkness of their bedroom to clear his head. "You think?" he asked. Despite the depictions of this particular event in the movies and on TV, Connie, quite frankly, wasn't completely sure WHAT was going on - just that something wasn't quite right. A quick call to the doctor and there they were, getting dressed at a little after 3am to head to the hospital, "just to be sure."
They approached the admittance window in the ER, and as soon as possible Connie was put into a wheelchair and whisked away to the elevator while Mike was left behind to deal with the registration. He was a bit surprised at how calm he felt-maybe just because he had a job to do, something else to focus on in the present that the enormity of what was happening hadn't really hit him yet. Maybe he was still a bit numb. He had promised himself and Connie, from the moment they had found out that she was pregnant, that he would do his damnedest to be a good father - the kind of father that he had never had. And say what you will about Mike Cutter, when he put his mind to something it was going to happen.
When he finally caught up with Connie, he found his usually unflappable wife lying in a hospital bed, biting her bottom lip.
"Are you alright?" he asked, coming to her side and taking her hand.
Connie nodded. "They're checking to see if it's amniotic fluid or something else."
Mike frowned, but before he could ask what else the something else might be, the nurse arrived with a smile on her face. "Congratulations Connie! Looks like we're having a baby today!" She glanced at Mike. "Dad?"
"Uh, yeah," he said as a silly grin spread across his face. "Mike."
"Becki," she smiled back in return. She started to go over all of the details. Since Connie was losing amniotic fluid, labor had begun. So far she'd felt no contractions, so her doctor ordered pitocin to move things along. She was outfitted with a blood pressure cuff, a fetal monitor to watch the baby's heartbeat and would also show when a contraction did happen, and an IV port was placed in her arm.
And then they waited.
Mike made some phone calls. It was an early Tuesday morning so he started off by calling his boss and Connie's. Noticing the clock on the wall barely read 5am, he held off on calling his mother in Boston and Connie's family in LA. They watched the morning news together, Mike stepped out to get a bite to eat and a newspaper. The doctor stopped by to check in, and Becki was in and out throughout the morning. The initial anxiety that Connie felt had passed, leaving her more calm. She entertained Mike by telling him to watch the numbers on the monitor when she had a contraction. She felt a sense of tightening around her stomach, but no real pain. The morning moved on. Mike made a call to Jack, who was as pleased as any honorary grandfather-to-be could be. He must have started the phone tree as text after text began coming in - Lupo, Bernard, Van Buren, Benson, Barba, Cabot - all wishing them well and asking to be kept up to date.
It was around noon when the doctor came again to check progress. Connie was a bit worried, because even with the Pitocin, she still was having very little pain with her contractions. What if things weren't moving along as they should be? Her fears were put to rest when the doctor announced that Connie was already dilated to 4.5 centimeters and could go ahead and get the epidural. "No sense in waiting until you're screaming your head off," she smirked.
For a moment, Mike and Connie found themselves alone in the room. Mike sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned in to kiss his wife. "This is really happening, isn't it?"
"Hell, yeah!" She said, leaning her forehead against his.
Their moment alone didn't last long, as soon the room was overtaken by a flurry of activity. The anesthesiologist arrived, and hinted that Mike might want to step out during the procedure. "She can't see how big the needle is or what I'm doing back there, but you can," he whispered with a wink.
Mike's eyes widened. He looked at Connie. "You're okay?"
She smiled and reached up to touch his cheek. "I'll be fine," she said. "Just, ya know, don't be gone too long. Go call the grandmas with an update."
"I love you," he whispered as he kissed her.
"Love you, too," she whispered back.
Mike stepped out to make some calls and grab a much needed cup of coffee. The placement of Connie's epidural went without event, but she decided that the movement of getting up to go to the bathroom beforehand, and then getting into position caused the contractions to ramp up - she was definitely feeling them now. Mike returned and noticed the change right away. He bundled her up in a heated blanket when Connie started shivering so badly that she could barely talk. His anxiety was on the rise, but the nurse assured them this was just a side effect from the epidural. The shivering finally abated, but then the nurse discovered that Connie was running a slight fever. The doctor was called in. She told them both that this wasn't a serious complication, but she was going to order IV acetaminophen and antibiotics for the fever. She suspected it was yet another side effect from the epidural, but couldn't rule out an infection either. Everything else was moving along like clockwork, and the doctor said it would be time to push soon.
Mike and Connie found themselves alone again, but this time with a pronounced tension in the air. Mike looked down at his wife and saw tears in her eyes.
"Connie, Connie," he soothed, "Everything's going to be all right."
"But what if it's not?" she asked in a whisper as a tear escaped down her cheek. Her entire pregnancy had been like a dream. Barely any morning sickness, a good report at every checkup with the doctor, she had even worked right up through the end of the day yesterday. Even this morning, she had felt confident and prepared. But now it felt like everything was spiraling out of control.
Truth be told, Mike was feeling all of the same things as Connie. But he knew her well enough to know what she needed right now. He reached out to cup her cheek, brushing away the tears gently with his thumb. "Hey, look at me," he said. Connie's brown eyes sought out her husband's blue ones. He offered her a slight smile. "You can do this. You are so strong, our girl is strong, and I'm not going anywhere." His smile widened, showing the dimples that she loved. "I'm afraid you're stuck with me."
Connie grabbed his hand where it rested on her cheek and brought it to her lap, lacing their fingers together and holding on tightly. She let out a chuckle as she nodded. "We're both lucky girls to have you." She took a deep breath and tried to relax. Hadn't she learned by now? After all this time and everything they had been through - there was nothing she and this man could not accomplish together.
The afternoon stretched into the evening. Connie and Mike both spoke with her mother, then his. Talking to her mother worked wonders for Connie. "Oh, Carino," she said, " Women have been doing this for centuries. You are a strong woman. You'll do just fine." Connie's mother and sister had already made arrangements to fly out in a couple of weeks. Mike's mom wished them both well, causing her son to bashfully drop his head and murmur his thanks when she told him how proud she was of him.
And finally, the time to start pushing arrived. The doctor and Becki were there to get things started. Becki was stationed on Connie's right side, Mike on her left. The doctor explained how pushing worked as Connie situated her feet in the stirrups. The doctor jokingly looked up at Mike and said, "I'm assuming you've seen all of these parts of hers before?"
Mike didn't miss a beat. "Well, yeah," he answered, "but not with anyone else in the room."
Connie just rolled her eyes.
Mike's job was two-fold: support his wife and count to ten as she pushed. When Mike got to ten, Connie got to rest - so this was a very important job.
Looking back, both Mike and Connie would say that the following two hours seemed to pass in a heartbeat. Counting to ten. Hands gripped together tightly. Whispered words of love and encouragement. Tears and deep breaths. Weeks earlier, lounging together on their couch one Sunday afternoon, his hand on her belly as the baby inside kicked away, Mike had joked that Connie would be cursing him in the late stages of labor. She assured him that if she had never done that during all the years they worked together in the Manhattan DA's office, she surely wouldn't do it during the birth of their child. The only time Connie raised her voice was just near the end. The baby's head was crowning. As the doctor announced this news to the room, Mike looked over in awe, his mouth dropping open…
And he forgot to count to ten while Connie was pushing.
And his wife let him know. Loudly.
Then, at last, with one final push, it was over.
And it was beginning.
Mike left his wife's side only for a moment as he was instructed on exactly what to do to cut the umbilical cord. Then he was back at Connie's side as the nurse handed her the tiny infant, crying loudly, with the darkest fuzz of hair covering her head. Connie shed tears of joy as she finally, finally cradled their girl in her arms. "Oh Mike," she smiled. "Look what we did!"
She looked at her husband, this brilliant man who had such a command of words. How many times had she watched him use words in the courtroom to thunder away at the defense? Had watched him use words in the most persuasive and elegant ways to charm a witness or a jury? He was, without a doubt, the most eloquent and well-spoken man she had ever known….
And here he was, stunned to silence by this tiny, 7 pound 8 ounce miracle that he had helped to create. That he had played a part in bringing something so perfect into this imperfect world had rendered him speechless. He just looked at her, his mouth hanging open and shook his head before he buried his face in his wife's neck with a whispered, "Thank you." She leaned over and kissed the side of his head. After a moment, he pulled back and looked into Connie's eyes. And she saw that tears glistened in his own. This was not a case of a man getting everything he never knew he always wanted, though it might appear so to an outsider. To anyone who only knew Bureau Chief Michael Cutter, the hard-nosed and sometimes jaded prosecutor, it would probably seem that way.
But Connie knew, that for Mike, this was a dream coming true. The start of the family that he had, deep down, always longed for. As they had grown closer, she had learned more about Mike's childhood, his parents' divorce, his absent father. She had learned about the hurt he still carried, though he hid it well.
She also knew that he had a soft spot for children. She had seen it right away, in their earliest cases, anytime a child was involved.
She had heard it, the yearning in his voice, as they lay snuggled together in bed and he asked hesitantly, "Do you want kids?"
And she felt it, the love radiating from his whole body when she turned in his arms to look him in the eyes and said, "Yes." She pushed his hair back off of his forehead and told him how she'd always dreamed of having kids, of tucking them in at night, of making them breakfast , and seeing them off to school in the morning.
And she saw it, heard it, and felt it again a little over four months later. He had been deep in trial prep and jury selection, she had just been assigned a new case at the US Attorney's office, and they had barely seen each other during the week. She had her suspicions that she was pregnant, but with everything on Mike's plate this week she wanted to be sure before she told him. That Friday morning, she'd gone straight from the doctor's office to the courthouse. She had slipped into the courtroom, stood just inside the door. When the judge adjourned for lunch, Mike turned and smiled in surprise when he caught her eye. She smiled back and cocked her head toward the door before slipping out. He found her sitting on a bench outside the courtroom. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"Well, I…" He didn't wait for her answer, but started to excitedly tell her about the latest break in his case. He was pacing back and forth in front of her. She tried several times to interrupt him. Finally, she stood up in his path. "Mike!" she said as he turned to pace away from her again in his continuing circuit. "I'm pregnant."
And he stopped, turning back towards her, his mouth hanging open. "What? You're…"
She shrugged, wringing her hands. "I'm sorry, but sometimes the only way to get your attention is just to do something," she said with a half smile.
He walked back to her, grabbed her right there in the hallway, and kissed her.
Connie knew what this moment meant to him, to both of them really. They had been through so much. Self-imposed rules when they were work colleagues and thought that was all they could ever be - even as they both yearned for something more. Time apart with the entire country between them, that really only succeeded in bringing them closer together - though they had to work at it. Until finally, life and love found a way to put everything in its perfect place.
And the perfect place for the time being was on a hospital bed in the Mother-Baby Unit of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Lower Manhattan, where Mike Cutter held the two most important things in the world to him. Sofia had finished nursing and was now up on Connie's shoulder as she tried to coax a burp from her. FInally successful, Connie laid their baby girl out in front of them as she drifted back to sleep. They gazed at her together, completely in love.
Mike reached out to ease the tip of his finger into Sofia's hand. Even in her sleep, she gripped on tightly and he chuckled. He couldn't see the future, but there were a few things he knew for sure. This little girl would be a beauty, just like her mother. She would have "Grandpa Jack," who would love her as if she were his own blood.
And, he knew, she had a father who already loved her endlessly, a father who would do anything for her, and a father who - though he was sure to make some mistakes along the way - would never, ever leave her.
He just knew.
THE END