Title: Hearts and Bones
Author: Triggersaurus
Genre: DR/CH/twins
Rating: U
Summary: Carol arrives home for recuperation
Disclaimer: If I had written this in 1992, by
now I would probably be very rich and happy, and not worrying
about my student loan. In fact, I probably wouldn't even be a
student, but instead the youngest producer ever. But
unfortunately, I am nearly nine years late and therefore I cannot
earn any money from this at all and will have to keep studying
geography in the hope that I get a career some time in the
distant future.
Author's Note: When I wrote 'Your Heart Is Where
My Home Is', I did completely intend it to be a stand-alone. But
then I got the most fantastic response from people and so I
decided to be a nice person and write a short
follow-up/continuation as I was asked. This is it. It's a bit
fluffy and may not make a huge amount of sense if you haven't
read the first fic, but it's not important! I am classifying it
as a fic by itself. The title, by the way, is from the Paul Simon
song of the same name.
On another matter, I am in the middle of writing another new
stand alone, and have also made a big breakthrough in 'Every
Street'. Hopefully more of that will be up soon. Thanks!
Hearts and Bones
"This wasn't exactly the reason I expected to be carrying
you over the threshold for."
"After three weeks of hospital food, I'm surprised we got
through the door."
"What, now you're saying my lovingly prepared hampers
weren't good enough?"
"Doug, a Tupperware box with a toasted cheese sandwich and
an apple hardly constitutes a hamper."
She kissed him on the nose as he put her down on the couch,
"But they were very nice anyway."
"Huh." Doug grumbled half heartedly, pretending to be
hurt. He picked up the wheelchair and placed it, folded up, by
the front door before collecting the twins in their car seats. He
put them down on the couch next to Carol, and they unpacked them
from the seats. As Carol pulled Tess' sleeve off her right arm,
she looked up at Doug, who was having his own battle with Kate.
"Doug...what's that by the stairs?" she said,
ominously.
"That?" Doug looked in the direction of their
staircase, before Kate wailed for his attention.
"Yes...I hope it's not what I think it is."
"It's a stairlift-"
"DOUG! Are you trying to make me feel about 80?!"
"Well it was either that or our bed would have to come
downstairs, and I wasn't about to move a double bed by
myself."
Carol groaned and set Tess on a playmat on the floor.
"Besides, I don't want you trying to climb the stairs when
I'm not here."
"Well I could sit and wait for you to be here. I can't
believe you bought a stairlift."
Putting Kate down on the playmat with an activity block, Doug
grinned.
"You got the plastic hip, the stairlift. All you need now is
to get a little dog and knit it clothes..."
A second after he said it, his vision was obscured by the pillow
that hit him hard in the face. When he removed the feathers from
his mouth, he reached over and grabbed Carol gently around the
waist. He moved her carefully so that she rested against him as
they watched the twins throw their toys and gurgle.
"You feeling okay?" He said it seriously now, chin
resting on the top of her head.
"Yeah. It's good to be home. Even with a stairlift. You're
sure you don't mind staying here?"
"'Course. As long as you don't want a vacation later in the
year, because I'm using up all my leave as we speak."
Carol smiled. "I can manage without. Thank you for doing
this."
"You can stop saying that now." He kissed her again.
The last three weeks had been some of the most emotionally
draining times Doug had ever experienced. There were constant
highs and lows: Carol returning to full consciousness, but then
the realisation that Kate's right arm would always be weaker, and
shorter, than the other. Tess was discharged the day after Carol
awoke, and they discovered Carol's hip was beyond repair and
would have to be replaced. Doug felt split in about fifteen
directions as he had to care for Tess, look out for Kate who was
still hospitalised, and be there for Carol whenever he could.
Also trying to get home each night in an attempt to fake normal
life for Tess was a big effort, as he hated leaving Carol and
Kate at the hospital alone.
It wasn't until half way through the second week since the
accident, one Thursday night as he sat on the couch in front of a
Bulls game that it really hit him. All this playing happy
families was for real. He had two children of his own, he had a
girlfriend that he was sure he wanted to spend the rest of his
life with, if she'd let him. He had a house - two houses at the
moment, and he was sitting on a couch, unable to keep track of
the game because he was so tired, surrounded with baby formula
bottles, stuffed Sesame Street characters, pink blankets about
the size of a Kleenex. It was overwhelming. Who would have
thought he'd ever be in this position?
He fingered the material of the baby coat that was next to him.
He felt like he'd only been a father for this week and a half,
yet actually he'd been one for over seven months. All that time,
and he'd never really felt it until now. The image of his own
father sprung into his vision and he contemplated the figure that
he'd been trying to escape for most of his life - had he
unwittingly become him? No, he couldn't say he had. Because he
knew Ray had been around for the beginning of his life but had
disappeared soon after. In his case, he had missed the beginning
of his daughter's lives, which was something he knew he'd always
regret, but he was here now. And he knew in his heart that
leaving them and Carol was never going to be something he did,
out of choice or otherwise.
Looking around the room, he saw photos on the walls, books on
shelves, toys everywhere. This place was a home. Not a house, but
a home. He couldn't put a finger on the definitive point
that separated the two, but he knew for certain that he wanted to
live like this. He wanted his house back in Washington to be a
home for him and his family, not just a place that kept them warm
and dry at night. Looking around, he considered it a pity that
they would have to leave this place behind. He had missed
Chicago, the people he had worked with. Thinking about it, he
realised just how good everyone at the hospital had been, not
only to Carol and Kate, but also to him. After the circumstances
in which he left, he should have expected and deserved to be
ignored, at best. But they hadn't - they had treated him with
dignity and generosity, not stopping to consider the reasons
behind his disappearance from his daughters and Carol's life for
one moment. They had been there when he had needed them, and he
couldn't have asked for more. Maybe that's what true friends were
about.
"Doug, please. Let's just order pizza or something."
"Pizza? Why would I want to order pizza when I can make a
fantastic mac and cheese?"
"The last time you tried to cook something, I spent the
better part of a day cleaning the oven."
"Well that was before I discovered the ancient art of
reading the cookbook."
"I'm impressed!"
"Yes. I also know not to put foil in the microwave, although
the learning process for that was a bit more dangerous."
"I'm glad to see your eyebrows survived."
"Yeah, just."
A high pitched squeal broke the conversation, and a plastic brick
flew through the air and into the side of Kate's head. Tess
slapped the playmat and reached for the next brick, as Kate
started to wail. Carol bent over the edge of the couch and hauled
her injured daughter onto her lap.
"Tess. Stop it. Look, you hurt your sister. Put the brick
down. Put it down. Put it - no!" The piece of purple plastic
whistled through the air and bounced off a small coffee table,
narrowly missing a photo frame. "Doug! Come and stop your
daughter from ruining my house."
"What's all this with MY daughter and YOUR house?"
Doug picked Tess up, with one oven mitt still on. Using it as a
puppet, he opened and closed the mouth of the glove in her face.
She smiled and bashed him around the side of the head.
"Ow! Tess, don't do that!"
"See. She must be your daughter, she throws things and hits
people. I never do that."
"Oh, I beg to differ. The time you hit me with a baseball
bat thinking I was a mass-murdering serial killer?"
"That was different. What did you expect, creeping around
the house at 3am?"
"I expected you to remember I lived here!"
"Hm. Can you pass that tub of baby food in the fridge?"
"Oh, changing the subject. Which tub would you like? We have
mashed carrot, cream of beef and potato, liquid cereal or crushed
beets...what made you buy beets? Do they even like them?"
"Kate likes them, but I think you can throw that jar out,
Doug. It's been there for weeks now."
She watched him pull a face as he opened the jar, peered in and
then threw it into the trash. He returned to the lounge with the
jar of potato and beef and handed it to Carol. In his arms, Tess
swayed about, leaning and trying to grab anything that came
within a two foot radius. Eventually becoming frustrated, she
started to whinge too, and Doug put her into a bouncing seat that
he had grown accustomed to feeding both of them in.
"Okay, since your sister is being a pig and eating all of
the beef thing, you get either carrot or cereal. Got a
preference?"
The baby kicked her legs and made the chair bounce some more.
"No? Well, you ask me, cereal is for breakfast, and this is
dinner time, so it's carrots or nothing."
"Doug...give her one of those baby cookies with them. She
can't just eat carrot for dinner."
"Cookies? Where are they?"
"On top of the refrigerator. In the blue box."
"If I'd known we had those I wouldn't have been feeding them
bits of bread all this time."
"That would explain this..." Carol pointed to the
collection of stale breadcrumbs and bits of crust on the arm of
the couch.
"Yeah, sometimes it's difficult to get them to keep their
food in their mouths."
"Messy eaters...that's another one of your traits they've
inherited. Poor girls. Poor Kate," she said, addressing the
child on her lap who was sucking a plastic spoon. Kate smiled,
and took the spoon out of her mouth and pushed it into Carol's.
"Hah! See, she knows you're insulting me," Doug said
and Carol grimaced and tried to move away from the drool-covered
implement.
When Kate had come home, a week before Carol, Doug had discovered that taking care of two infants, 24 hours a day, was much more difficult than looking after one. For one thing, whenever one cried, the other would join in. And while one would want feeding, another would need to be changed - they always ensured the two demands were not compatible. Everyday tasks were suddenly like major military procedures, involving huge bags of supplies, specialised equipment just to carry them anywhere, vast quantities of toys, bottles of baby formula, diapers...and if he wanted to go out anywhere on a big trip and one of the twins needed changing, well it was a political correctness nightmare. The changing rooms were always in the ladies' bathrooms. And he didn't particularly want to change his daughters by the urinals. So every trip had to be under an hour if possible. By the time they were home again, not only did the twins need a nap, Doug did too. Everyday when he visited Carol, he would ask her how she did it, and she would always tell him that she wasn't sure she did. Parenting was not for the faint hearted, they surmised.
Late that night, Doug rolled over in bed, and through the
clouds and dreams of sleep, realised that there was something not
quite right. Fighting the levels of sleep, he ascended to
consciousness and looked up groggily. The place beside him in the
bed was empty, covers pushed back and a soft dent where once a
body had lain.
Rubbing his half-closed eyes with his hands, he turned over and
sat up. Looking across the room, he saw the silhouette by the
window, holding onto a pillow.
"Carol? Did one of the girls wake up?"
Startled, she turned around and shook her head. The moonlight
from the window reflected off her face and caught the surface of
the thin streams of water trickling down her cheeks. She turned
to look out of the window again as the El rumbled past, and Doug
swung his legs out of the bed and walked around to her. Standing
behind Carol, he put his arms around her and looked out of the
window too.
"Are you okay? Is something hurting?"
"No, Doug, I'm fine. I'm really okay. I just...I just can't
believe it." She turned around in his arm to face him.
"I can't believe everything that's happened. I can't get
over the fact that you're here, despite everything. And the
accident," more tears ran down her face, "everything's
just happening all at once!" She smiled a watery smile and
Doug smiled back, caressing her hair with one hand. He looked
over the top of her head briefly before looking back into her
eyes.
"It's been a weird two weeks. But it's all going to be okay.
You, the girls, and me we're all going to be fine. C'mon, get
back into bed."
He helped her back slowly, then got in himself and took Carol
into his arms again.
They're hearts and they're bones,
And they won't come undone."