Title: Serendipitous
Author: Orion Kohaishu
Rating: T, for mild physicality and language
Summary: What if what you couldn't find what you wanted, because what you really needed was right under your nose? TxG
Disclaimer: I only wish that I owned HSM. I only wish. :sigh:
Author's Note: Once again, somewhere between my brain and my hands the words took a detour, and some of the more elegant images were taken into a back alley and mugged. Ugh. I'm out of practice writing, clearly.
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It began with a day.
They first met by chance, of course, as most good meetings happen; she was eight weeks ahead of schedule, fighting her way into the world with the same determination that she clung on with in those first critical hours of life. He was a day overdue.
The day began with her curled in the incubator of the NICU, tubes from her nose and her mouth and her wrist and a nurse on constant watch with a pen and a clipboard, marking vital signs and making notes every time she moved. It was a quick labor, especially since she was two months before her due date and a mere 4.5 pounds; her father hadn't even had time to make it across town after the ambulance refused to take him along, arriving out of breath right as she took her first few lungfuls of air. They had cried when her eyes opened, cried when she screamed and yelled at the doctors, cried when she was finally laid to sleep in the clear box. They cried again, for different reasons, when they were informed she was healthy and could go home within three weeks.
Across the ward from the small baby girl who so boldly paraded her way into living, the much larger boy lay curled asleep in his father's arms. It had been a long three days of huffing and pushing and yelling before the doctors finally cut the too-large child from the woman he was reluctant to leave. She was sleeping peacefully now, comfortably set in the bed to the side of the room while her husband and new son bonded; 52 hours and 11 pounds later, she was content to let another carry the baby. The two men wandered out into the hall and, for lack of anywhere else to go, headed for the nursery.
Another father was pressed against the window, his unblinking eyes fixated on one of the fourteen small bundles within -- it was the smallest one, the one with tubes and fiery determination, that he smiled at. "She's so..." he was going to say beautiful or perfect or any other range of adjectives people used to describe babies, but what came out instead was a simple truth. "Small."
The man smiled, his eyes fixated on his new daughter. "She was born at 32 weeks. Just this morning, but she's off oxygen for now. My little fighter..." There was a tired, wistful quality to his voice, and the other father was amazed at the resilience of the human dad: the agony of a premature birth so quickly stepping aside for basic paternal pride. "Congratulations to you, on the son, I mean."
He smiled. "Thanks. He's going to be big one day, let me tell you. He could practically kick a field goal from the womb." Eyes crinkled from the other man, and they both laughed a moment. The child squirmed.
Inside the nursery, the ever-attentive Rachel, the night nurse, came to check on the little girl; she smiled through the glass at the father, but began wheeling the bassinet back towards the NICU -- despite doing so well, she was required to spend nights in the incubator. The girl wrinkled her face in displeasure at the sudden movement, and jerky cries came from her throat. The father was the one to squirm this time.
Looking down at the blue bundle of blankets in his arms, the first father offered a hesitant smile. "Hey... how about we tell the nurse to put this little guy to bed next to your girl? You know, so she's got some company?" He hadn't cried when his son was born, but the abject gratitude that was presented to him brought a few tears to his eyes.
Rachel smiled and took the deeply sleeping boy, and fondly laid him in a bassinet she wheeled towards the intensive care unit. She brought it as close to the girl as she could, where the baby blue eyes tried to focus on the new bedmate, and then turned out the lights.
It was there, in the half-darkness, that Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez first met.