Disclaimer: 30 Rock belongs to Tina Fey.
Jack Donaghy sighed and rubbed at his forehead. He squinted at his computer screen, the glow hurting his eyes as he tried to find a way for Lemon to keep both her straws and the exterminator the next time GE needed to cut back. He'd been at work for too many hours. Even Kenneth had gone home, which meant they were reaching the earliest hours of the morning.
The phone rang.
"Yes?" he said.
"There's a call for you, Mr. Donaghy," Jonathon said. Jack's assistant never went home before Jack did. He was always hoping (secretly and not so secretly) that Jack would offer him a ride, but he never had. "It's about an Alice Miller?"
Jack immediately saved his spreadsheet and closed all the files on his computer. It looked like he was done with work for the night after all.
"Put it through," he said. There was a click. "This is Jack Donaghy."
"Mr. Donaghy, this is Lawrence Howe of Kanwe, Eatem and Howe, LLP."
"You're a lawyer?"
"That's correct."
"I haven't been in touch with Alice Miller in six years, so why is she having a lawyer contact me now?"
Lawrence Howe cleared his throat. "Mr. Donaghy, I regret to inform you that Alice Miller passed away three days ago."
Jack closed his eyes, which suddenly seemed to be burning. "How?" he croaked.
"It was a car accident." There was a careful pause. "I'm told she didn't suffer."
Jack focused on breathing in and out for several long seconds. "I appreciate the call, but why are you telling me this? I can't be a beneficiary in her will. She hated me."
"Actually, in a way you are. You see…when Alice Miller left you, she was a little over one month pregnant."
Jack dropped the phone. He stared at his own wall. His ears rang.
Distantly, he realized that he could hear Howe squeaking, "Hello? Hello?" and he picked up the phone again.
"Are you saying I have a child?" Jack asked thickly.
"It's your name on the birth certificate. As the father, you automatically gain custody of Alex after Alice's death."
"Custody…Custody of Alex?"
"That's right. Alex Donaghy Miller."
A smile flitted across his lips at the name. So, Alice hadn't totally written him out of their child's life. That was something.
"Are you able to come pick Alex up from Chicago in the next few days? This is a difficult time for—"
"I'll be there tomorrow," Jack interrupted. "You can provide my assistant with the details and he'll take care of the arrangements."
He transferred the call back to Jonathon's line and then for a while he just sat there, mind and heart racing at this new and unexpected complication to his life. He was a father. He had a son.
Oh, God. He was a father. He had a son.
He collected himself enough to call for his town car and gather his briefcase and overcoat. By the time he left his office Jonathon had finished speaking to the lawyer and was making travel arrangements.
"Tell the pilot there'll be two flying to Chicago and three coming back," Jack told him as he walked out.
"Two? Does that mean I'm coming with you, sir?" Jonathon asked eagerly.
Jack shot him a look and his assistant deflated with a resentful sigh.
"Of course you'll take her," Jonathon muttered.
Twenty minutes later found Jack knocking furiously on a door, not caring that he might be waking the neighbors. He stopped when he heard a muffled thump and curse from the apartment. Footsteps approached, the door opened, and there she was, glaring at him from beneath ridiculously messy hair and wearing a truly hideous set of mismatched pajamas.
"Jack, it's three o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday. What the hell?"
"Lemon," Jack breathed, mind battered under waves of excitement and fear and sorrow and delight, "I'm a father."
Lemon's mouth hung open far enough for him to make out the curves of her retainer. "Say what now?"
Since she didn't seem to be in the right frame of mind to invite him in, he pushed past her and waited for her to close the door. He made a beeline for the loose floorboard under which she liked to hide her Sabor de Soledad; there were three bags there now and he took one for himself and offered another to her. She shook her head and pulled an already open bag out from under a seat cushion. She pulled out her retainer and put it in her pocket.
"What do you mean you're a father, Jack?"
He began to pace, and punctuated his words with bites of the disgusting chips. "Six or seven years ago, I was going out with a woman named Alice Miller. She was a lot like you—democrat, female, two-syllable last name—but, unlike you, the more time she spent with me the more she decided that I was all wrong for her. She left me and I never heard from her again."
Lemon was sitting cross-legged on the couch with the bag in her lap and watching him pace, her head swiveling as if she were at a tennis match. "Oh no, don't tell me—"
"She was pregnant. I have a son, Alex Donaghy Miller. Alice died three days ago, which means I get custody."
"Oh boy. So you're saying that you now have sole custody of a, what, a five-year-old boy? Poor kid."
Lemon had a real gift for saying just the wrong thing. It was one of the things he liked about her, usually. In this instance, he had to fight a strong urge to throttle her.
"You've got to help me, Lemon," he said, not above begging.
She clutched the bag to her chest as if to protect herself. "Me? What do you expect me to do?"
"You've been trying to adopt for over a year now."
Her eyes were huge. "You don't mean…"
He stared blankly at her.
She coughed. "Of course that's not what you meant."
"Good God, Lemon!" he exclaimed, realizing what she'd been asking. "No, I'm not inviting you to adopt my son. But you have all those maternal instincts, and it would be good practice for you to try them out on Alex in preparation for when an adoption agency finally decides you can be trusted with a miniature human being."
She bit her lip. "I don't know, Jack. I mean, I'm happy to help, but I've been preparing for an infant, not a—"
"Excellent," he said brusquely, dropping his half-empty bag of chips on her couch. "I need to go child-proof my apartment. Jonathon will get in contact with you tonight or tomorrow morning with the details of our flight."
"I'm sorry, our flight?"
"Don't forget to rinse your retainer before you put it back in," he told her as he made for the door.
"What flight, Jack?" she called after him.
"You're a life saver, Lemon!" he shouted back as the door shut behind him.
Flying with Liz Lemon was always a somewhat disturbing enterprise. She was a nervous flyer but refused to take any of Dr. Spaceman's very effective medication after the last time. ("With my luck," she'd told Jack just before takeoff, "I'd think you were Alec Baldwin and I'd be all over you." "Don't be silly, Lemon," he'd replied. "If you were going to confuse me for anyone it would be Harrison Ford.") Out of some strange sense of solidarity, he, too, had abstained from self-medicating, which meant that his own fear of flying was allowed to have free reign.
By the time the jet had landed and coasted to a stop, Lemon and Jack were holding hands with a mutual death grip and Jack had once again learned more details of Lemon's traumatic life than he ever wanted to know. ("I ate a slug on a dare when I was in college! I've never had an orgasm during intercoursing! The only straight guy I kissed in high school turned out to be a hermaphrodite!")
Pale, exhausted, Jack pried his hand out of Lemon's. "We never speak of this again," he said.
She nodded fervently.
They took a car to the lawyer's office where Alex was supposed to be waiting for them. Lemon kept shooting him sidelong glances the whole way.
"What?" he demanded at last.
"Aren't you excited? You're about to meet your son! Don't you wonder what he's like?"
"He's a Donaghy, Lemon," Jack said, his chest swelling with pride at the thought. "He'll be just like me—smart, handsome, a fast talker. It's in his blood."
Lemon rolled her eyes, but she was grinning.
The offices of Kanwe, Eatem and Howe were the same as any other smarmy law firm's. Jack felt right at home as he walked up to the receptionist and asked for Lawrence Howe. The lawyer—who must have been the son of the named partner, as he was too young to be the Howe in the firm's name—came out five minutes later.
"You must be Jack Donaghy," he said. They shook hands. He caught sight of Lemon. "Is this your wife?"
Jack chuckled and Lemon made a face. "This is Liz Lemon, my platonic friend and co-worker."
"I'm here for moral support," Lemon said.
"That's very kind of you," Lawrence Howe said, clasping Lemon's hand in both of his. She flushed.
"I'd like to see Alex now," Jack said, interrupting their little moment.
Lawrence Howe flashed a winning smile at Lemon—couldn't she tell the guy was a slime ball?—and said, too smoothly, "Of course. This way, please."
He led them down a short hallway to a conference room with a closed door. "Alex is in here," the lawyer said. "Do you need to take a minute?"
Jack shook his head, held his breath, and pushed the door open.
Only to cough violently at what he saw. Lemon whacked him on the back a few times as if that would somehow help. When he finally regained the ability to breathe, she had already stepped around him to approach Alex, who was sitting in a tall swivel chair, legs dangling a good distance above the ground.
"Hello, Alex," Lemon said, grinning broadly. "I'm Liz Lemon, a friend of your dad's. Call me Liz."
Alex nodded shyly.
Jack stared.
"Alex," Lawrence Howe said, "this is Jack Donaghy, your father. Mr. Donaghy, this is your daughter."
It was a true sign of how badly Lemon had corrupted him that all Jack could think was: Twist!
