Allison was the name given to her by her mother; scribbled on the document with hands shaking from the trauma of giving birth. Her father had little say in the matter but as he watched her struggle to grip the pen in one hand while calming their newborn child in the other, he knew better than to object. Later on, when she was finally exhausted enough to allow Allison to be anywhere other than in her arms, he held his little girl for the first time. Her hands were smaller than his thumbs and the fluff on her head hardly counted as hair but from the moment her wide eyes met his with an unwavering gaze, he knew she'd have a lot more in common with her mother than just iris colour.
He brought her up on pet names such as 'princess' and 'sweetpea', dreading the day she'd have a man call her anything worse. The names didn't fade, even through her adulthood, and he could tell she secretly relished in the fact that she would always be daddy's little girl. 'Allie' was never allowed though and he'd never forget the day she came to him, at the ripe age of four, and told him that he wasn't allowed to use 'Allie' because 'it wasn't the name Mommy chose.' He watched her cross her arms and shift her weight over to one side, staring at him with the same stubborn eyes that he'd once proposed to and not once did he call her 'Allie' again.
She was always kind to everyone and everything and he'd seen her cry at the most ridiculous things before. It was too much for her big heart to see the chicks in the garden die that cold spring and he'd found her, more than once, muffling sobs with some tragic romance novel in her hand before the sun had yet to rise. But when twelve year old Allison came home from school with tears running down her face, there was an anger he was all too familiar with in her eyes. She had stormed upstairs, slamming the door behind her and he expected to be used as a mental punching bag as he entered her room. Instead, to his surprise, she ran to his arms and sobbed into his chest about how the boys at school called her 'Little Allie'. She was a small girl and had yet to experience the people life would introduce her to, but he was still furious that anyone dared make her cry. But she begged him not to intervene and her mother came and shooed him out the room as soon as he demanded names. They both came downstairs later and his wife had kissed him on the head and told him everything would be okay. He kept his promise and didn't get involved but that didn't stop him driving to her school for the next three days without her knowing to make sure no harm came to her. And on the second day, from his car window, he watched her stand on her tiptoes and punch a boy with tousled hair and and and untucked shirt right in the mouth. The next day he saw the same boy approach her with a bar of chocolate and watched his lips form the word 'Allison'.
He wasn't overly surprised when she rang him one night and told him she was married and that her husband was going to die. He had noticed how friendly she had gotten with the brown haired boy and he had also noticed that he tended to leave the area every few weeks to 'visit his parents' who happened to live near a hospital with one of the best cancer departments in the country. Her mother was furious with the decision and ranted to him about how she was ruining her life and too young to go through something like this. He knew she was right, but he also knew she would have done the same thing. He came to the wedding and he watched as she held the man's hand through every step of it from there; the chemo, the hair loss, the vomit, the muscle weakness. He watched how it took it's toll on her and as her husband continued dying, she began to wither as well. And in his final days, when his eyes were to heavy to open for more than a few seconds and his words to slurred to understand, he watched her fake smile grow more and more strained each time he spluttered the word 'Allie', not being able to manage her full name.
She never introduced Robert Chase as anything more than a colleague until the night he came to her apartment to surprise his daughter and ended up having to wait until four in the morning to do so. It was then that she sheepishly admitted that she was with 'Chase' and that they were dating, which he assumed was code for just sleeping together or else it wouldn't make much sense for her to be sneaking out his apartment this early. He met the man a few times from then on, finding it strange that they addressed each other by their surnames, but agreed that he seemed like a decent person. The only time he ever heard him call her 'Allie' was during an argument he heard when she forgot to hang up the phone. He was about to end the call when he heard the door swing open and her angry voice ask why he hadn't bothered calling to tell her where he was. There was a hesitant pause before the poor boy proceeded to try and reassure her, specifically using the phrase, 'You're overreacting Allie.' A deafening silence followed this and he could see practically emotions playing across her face as she suppressed the rage penting up inside of her. He hung up at that moment, cringing at the amount of times he had seen the exact same expression on her mother. But the word 'Allie' lingered in his mind and only then did he begin to wonder how well this man knew his daughter.
When the time came for him to find out about Dr Remy Hadley, she drove all across state to tell him in person. He was slightly taken back; although it was no secret Allison had dated girls before, they'd never been too serious. He'd been happy for her nonetheless; glad that she was finally settling down after how horribly things went with Chase - or Robert, he never was quite sure what to call the man. A few weeks later, he met the woman, and it was easy to say that his little girl had found someone to match her beauty. She was a striking young woman, tall and brunette, and her charm was evident as she politely shook their hands and welcomed them into their home. Her mother and Remy hit it off, comfortably settling into a conversation about a trip she had taken to Kilimanjaro, leaving him and Allison to catch up. Later on in the evening, as he walked out to grab another can of beer, he caught a glimpse of the brunette nervously biting her lip as Allison took her hands.
'They love you Rem.' he heard her say, 'I love you.'
'I love you too Allie.' was her relieved reply, and he waited anxiously for the correction. Instead, a light blush coloured his daughter's cheeks as she bit back a smile and placed a soft peck on the young womans lips. On the car journey home, his wife turned to him and asked, 'Do you think it will last? I really liked the girl.' He smiled and told her honestly that he thought it would. And it was true, because the way he heard Allison talk about Remy was the same way he talked about her mother.