Hey guys. I know I said this is complete, but I can't leave this story alone, and I also wanted to write something cute since the show has been the exact opposite. This chapter is long and very cute. Please please feel free to leave reviews/suggestions. Also, check out my other story, DHS, which will be updated soon. French translations are at the bottom. Enjoy!
It was a quiet Saturday morning. Cosima was sitting on the couch, her legs curled underneath her, entering data into the laptop resting in her lap. Delphine was in the recliner across from her, looking through some papers that were most likely lab reports. Louise was playing on a mat to Delphine's right. Cosima was on her second or third page of data entry when she saw André come downstairs. She watched him mill around the kitchen for about a minute or so until he puttered back upstairs with what appeared to be a trash bag in his hand. Cosima had a bad feeling about her son's intentions with that trash bag, but she let it go and went back to work.
A few minutes later, Cosima was pulled out her work again, this time by a loud 'OOMPH' in the front yard, followed by a strangled "Mom! Maman!" Cosima immediately put the pieces together and tossed her laptop to the side. Delphine's head snapped up, she dropped the papers she was holding and jumped out of the recliner. She leapt over the couch and followed Cosima out the front door.
Cosima sprinted around the hedges into the yard, Delphine opted to jump over them, and the two of them found André in a heap, surrounded by his bed sheets and the trash bag Cosima had seen him take.
"Holy shit…" Cosima breathed. She slowed down a little out of shock. Delphine was already on her knees beside the boy. He had a gash on his forehead, blood was steadily trickling down his face. Delphine pulled him into her lap and used the sleeve of her shirt to stop the bleeding. André shouted in pain when his maman moved him. Delphine inspected him the best she could with him in her lap and saw that his left arm was bent at a harsh angle,
"His arm is broken, Cosima." She announced with a shaky voice.
"What?!" André shouted, his throat thick with tears. Her son was looking around frantically, his bottom lip between his teeth. Delphine noticed that his glasses weren't on, but she couldn't see where they were.
"Andy, why the hell did you do that?" Cosima asked, she was kneeling beside the two of them. Her voice was calm, probably for the sake of her son, because her eyes were filled with panic. Delphine looked to her wife, still confused. Cosima nodded towards the top of the house. André's bedroom window was open. Delphine's throat filled with bile when she realized what her son had done. Cosima asked again, "Andy, why did you jump out your window?" She already knew the answer, every kid in the world had done it before, but few had broken their arms and only he was the son of Delphine Cormier, professional worrier, "And where are your glasses?" André hiccupped a few times before he answered,
"I wanted to see if I'd float down. I saw it in a cartoon. They're in my room. I didn't want to break them when I jumped." Cosima could have laughed at the irony, but she grimaced when she saw Delphine's face. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and released it before she opened her mouth,
"Quoi! Tu voulez flotter? Tu avez cassé votre bras!" Delphine said frantically, she was too worked up to speak anything but French. She looked to Cosima, her jaw set, "Aller chercher mes clés et Louise, appeler Felix." She instructed. Cosima nodded and marched inside.
Once inside, Cosima let out the panicked breath she didn't know she had been holding. She suddenly felt bad for all the stuff she'd put her own parents through when she was a kid. She put on shoes and grabbed Delphine's keys out of the bowl on the counter. She walked over to where Louise was and found her still on the mat, playing quietly, completely oblivious to the scene in the front yard.
In the front yard, Delphine was running her free hand through André's hair, trying to calm him down. He was still crying, more from anxiety than from pain. His maman only spoke French when she was really mad,
"Désolé." He whimpered. Delphine flinched. She pulled the boy's head closer to her chest and kissed the top of his head. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down enough to speak English,
"Non, non non non. I am not angry." She cooed. Her accent was thick, but she was no longer speaking her native tongue, "I am just scared."
"Why are you scared?" André asked.
"I am scared because you could have really hurt yourself. I am also scared that you are in pain. How bad does it hurt?" She explained. The boy tried to move a little but he grimaced,
"My head hurts a lot, but I can't really feel my arm that much." He said, he was shaking a little. Delphine nodded and kissed her son on the temple. He was in shock, they needed to get moving. Delphine was about to call out for Cosima to hurry when her wife hurried out of the front door, Louise in her arms, a diaper bag slung over her shoulder, and André's glasses tucked in the top of her shirt. She looked to Delphine and André, his face was pale. Delphine said what she already knew,
"He's going into shock, let's go." She said, wrapping one of her arms beneath André's knees and placing the other behind his shoulders. She stood up and readjusted her son so his head was by hers,
"What's shock?" André asked frantically. Cosima opened the backseat of Delphine's car and put Louise in her car seat before she let Delphine put André in,
"A person goes into shock when they get really hurt, your body releases adrenaline to keep you from feeling a lot of pain." Cosima explained. Delphine slid André into the back seat, but looked anxious to let him go, "Do you want me to drive so you can stay back there with him?" She asked quietly. Delphine actually considered it before she shook her head,
"Non, you sit with him, you're better at keeping him calm." She admitted. Cosima nodded and got into the backseat with her children. André was holding hands with Louise, who was still blissfully unaware of the whole situation. Cosima pulled out her phone and called Felix, the phone rang three times before he answered,
"Hey, Cos. What's up?"
"Well, we're gonna have to drop Louise off at your house for a few hours." Cosima said.
"Why? What's going on?" Felix asked
"André wanted to float, so he jumped out of his bedroom window with a bed sheet. His arm is broken and he probably needs stitches, so we have to take him to the ER." She explained. She could hear Felix laugh on the other end,
"Holy shite. He's definitely your kid." He laughed again, Cosima smiled. "He's okay though?" Felix asked more seriously.
"Yeah, he's gonna be okay. We just don't know how long we're gonna be in there so we want to take Louise." Cosima answered.
"Bring her over, we'll have a great time. We'll paint and talk about how crazy her mom is. Speaking of, how's Delphine?" Felix asked, knowing from experience how tense Delphine got.
"She is…surprisingly calm. She was speaking in French for a while but she stopped. She is currently hauling ass across the city, though." Cosima said right as Delphine took a hard left, "She's pulling some Fast and Furious shit right now." She said, trying to keep her voice low. Honestly, Cosima could have been yelling and Delphine would have been too focused on the road to notice. "We'll be there in about five minutes, I'll talk to you then." The two exchanged goodbyes before Cosima hung up.
She looked to her son, who was now leaning against her side. He was cradling his arm, which was still bent. Everything about the angle screamed surgery, but Cosima didn't want to panic André, and she suspected Delphine already knew,
"You know, I did the same thing when I was your age." Cosima said to André. Her son looked to her in disbelief, "Yeah, I strapped a piece of cardboard to both of my arms and jumped off my porch. I landed in the bushes and got a really nasty cut on my arm. I think the scar's still there, see?" She lifted her sleeve enough to show the boy the long, thin scar that ran parallel to her elbow. André smiled a little,
"Did you get in trouble?" Cosima laughed,
"Well, I didn't think the cut was that bad, so I decided to try again. And again. And again. Opa caught me on my fifth try. I was covered in leaves and the bushes were ruined. I got in a lot of trouble, mainly because I had broken my glasses. You were smart to take yours off before you tried." Cosima said. André smiled brightly at the compliment.
"Cosima!" Delphine admonished from the front seat, "His arm is broken." Cosima knew that this was calming their son down, so she decided that she'd accept the brow beating,
"So, the trash bag was an interesting choice. Was it so you'd catch more air?" She asked, now rather interested in her son's method. André nodded,
"I used the sheet as a backup." He explained. Cosima nodded, thinking more,
"Did you do any test trials? On an action figure or something?" André shook his head, "Wow. Go big or go home, I guess. But you should always do test trials, to get your technique right." Cosima explained. André nodded, paying close attention. Delphine looked like she was about to have a stroke. "Never do this again, though. This was a huge mistake, but you probably already know that." Cosima finished, motioning to his arm. The bleeding on his forehead had stopped, but the cut still looked pretty deep. André nodded solemnly.
The car pulled to a stop in front of Felix's building. The man was already waiting outside, he approached the car and opened the door,
"Hey, André, you doing your own stunts now?" He smiled and waved to Delphine, who waved tensely back. André blushed a little. Cosima unbuckled Louise and handed Felix the diaper bag.
"Alright, Louise, you're gonna stay with Uncle Felix for a little bit while we get André checked out." Cosima explained to the toddler, who babbled excitedly when Felix took her. "Thank you so much for doing this, Felix." Cosima said sincerely. Felix shrugged,
"It's not a problem. Get better, André." Felix waved goodbye and the car peeled out of the parking lot.
Once at the emergency room, Delphine parked the car and pulled André out of the back, carrying him the same way as before. The three of them entered the ER and approached the desk. Cosima explained to the nurse what had happened, and they were lucky enough that the wait was short. They got taken into the examination room, where the doctor gave André some anesthetic and stitched up his forehead before he examined the boy's arm. Delphine refused to let André go, so the doctor had to work around her.
"Well, it's definitely broken, but only the X-Rays will tell us whether or not he'll need surgery." The doctor concluded. They waited quietly in the exam room while the doctor prepared the X-Ray,
"He's gonna need surgery." Cosima said to Delphine quietly. The blonde nodded and hugged her son a little tighter,
"I know."
The doctor came back in and guided them into the X-Ray room. Delphine still refused to let André go, she convinced the doctor to let her go in with her son by telling him she was a doctor, too. So she took off her watch and handed it to Cosima. Delphine sat through the X-Ray and carried André out when it was over. When they got the results back, the doctor confirmed what the two women already knew, and began giving them the rundown of how the surgery would go,
"The break is too messy to reset it from the outside. He won't need pins, but he'll be in a cast for about three months. The hospital is about a block away, we can get him in immediately." He explained. Cosima nodded,
"Can we drive him there, or what?" She asked, not sure if at this point Delphine would be physically able to let go of her son.
"Normally, we put patients in an ambulance, it's faster, and he'll have a cool story to tell." The doctor smiled at the last part. Cosima looked to her wife,
You ride with him, I'll take the car." Delphine nodded and let André get loaded into the ambulance. She smiled when the boy got excited about it. The anesthetic was still affecting him, so his smile was a little woozy. When she was nine, her brother had caught her jumping off the stair railing, using a towel as a parachute. Well, he'd caught her flat on her back, gasping for breath after she'd landed wrong. He helped her get her breath back and promised not to tell their parents, the experience had shaken Delphine enough to make her vow to never try something like that ever again. She sat in the ambulance, holding her son's hand until they pulled to a stop.
It was all a blur after that, Cosima met up with her, they followed André into the hospital and stayed by him for as long as they could before it was time for his surgery. The surgeon's promise that it would take less than an hour did nothing to calm Delphine, and she started crying the second they sat down in the waiting room. Cosima rubbed small circles in her back and whispered comforting words until the sobs stopped. Delphine looked to Cosima, her eyes still watery,
"What if he'd broken a rib? Or his neck?" She asked frantically, her throat closing up at the idea. Cosima put an arm around her,
"Hey, it's okay. It didn't happen, and I'm pretty sure this freaked him out enough that he's never gonna try that again." She comforted, "I broke my arm like, three times when I was younger." Delphine looked at Cosima, surprised. "Yeah, the first time, I was probably his age. I was standing on top of the monkey bars and I fell off. I broke it again about three years later when I got tackled in soccer, and the third time was when I was seventeen." Delphine smiled,
"I remember that. Sarah dared you to jump over Felix's bike on your skateboard." She spoke softly, recalling the day she had to carry a woozy Cosima to Sarah's car.
"Yeah, my foot got caught on his handlebars and I planted right into the concrete. It was pretty gross, all I remember is Felix puking, you carrying me to the car," Delphine smiled at the parallel, "and Sarah cussing like crazy as she hauled ass to the ER." Cosima pulled Delphine even closer into her side, "This," she motioned around the waiting room and to the dried blood on Delphine's shirt sleeve, "this is nothing. Stuff like this happens all the time. Yeah, it's scary. I'm scared as hell right now, but André's gonna learn from this, and he's gonna have a cool cast to show off to all of his classmates." She looked to Delphine, who was watching her like she was the only thing in the universe. Her eyes were a lot calmer and she was no longer crying. "Didn't you ever break a bone when you were a kid?" Cosima asked. Delphine nodded,
"I broke my wrist in primary school. A boy dared me to race to the top of a tree, I beat him, but I fell out immediately after." She said. Cosima laughed in disbelief.
"What happened to the boy?" She asked. Delphine laughed,
"Nothing. It wasn't his fault. My brother offered to give him a hard time, but I declined. He even apologized when I got back to school." Delphine smiled. Cosima was glad that she had calmed down so much because she was sure that if Delphine had stayed that tense any longer she would have had a heart attack. Protective Delphine wasn't new, but it had been a while since Cosima had seen it. Once when André was in preschool, a teacher had confiscated the stuffed raccoon he brought from home which sent him home in tears, and she thought Delphine was going to pull a switchblade on the woman. A few times, before they'd had kids, they'd gotten drunk with Sarah and Felix, and Delphine got fed up with the play-insults they kept tossing at Cosima, and she squared off with Sarah until Felix and Cosima diffused the situation.
The two of them sat in the waiting room quietly until a nurse came to retrieve them. The nurse led them into a room in the pediatric ward where André was still asleep. His arm was stitched up and covered in bandages. The nurse explained that he would have to stay overnight, but would be able to leave in the morning. He would get a cast in two weeks, and the stitches would be taken out when he got the cast removed.
Cosima and Delphine sat by the bed, calling Felix to tell him the situation. The man enthusiastically volunteered to take Louise for the night and to bring her to the hospital in the morning. André woke up an hour later, groggy and confused by his lack of mobility. He tried to sit up, but Cosima caught him gently by the chest and laid him back down,
"Go back to sleep, buddy. If you go back to sleep, we'll go out for breakfast in the morning." Cosima bargained. André nodded as excitedly as he could while anaesthetized and fell back asleep almost immediately.
Cosima milled around the hospital, getting food from the cafeteria and bringing it to Delphine, who was resting her head on the bed. After a while, Cosima looked up to find Delphine asleep, holding hands with a sleeping André. Cosima felt herself drifting off as well to the beeping of the heart monitor.
They were awoken to a knock on the door. It was Felix holding Louise and a vase of flowers. Behind him were Sarah, Alison and Kira. Sarah had a small gift in her hands and Alison held an unbelievably large bunch of balloons. Sarah walked further in the room, nodding to both women,
"How is he?" She asked, sitting down in a chair. Cosima stretched a little before answering,
"He's good. He slept all night and can go home any time." Sarah nodded before laughing,
"Jesus bloody Christ. I can't believe it took this long for something like this to happen. I'm even more surprised that you didn't give him the idea to do it." The three women laughed. Sarah looked to Delphine, still smiling, "How long'll it be until he's left alone again?" She asked knowingly. Delphine shook her head,
"Not before this is healed, that's for sure." Cosima rolled her eyes but didn't protest.
André woke up a few minutes later and looked around excitedly at all of his guests. He let his mom open the gift Aunt Sarah had gotten him and got even more excited when it turned out to be a superhero's cape. This earned Sarah a glare from both of his mothers. They stayed and talked for a while longer until André was cleared to leave.
Once in the car, Cosima looked at her son from the front seat,
"So, Andy, are you done jumping from second story windows?" She asked. André sank a little in his seat,
"I just wanted to do science like you guys." He said sheepishly, looking at his feet. Cosima looked to Delphine, her eyes giving a look of Oh god, he can do no wrong. Delphine shook her head at how malleable Cosima was,
"André, from now on, when you want to 'do science,' tell us. We'll help you do it safely, so you won't have to go through this ever again, okay?" Delphine said. André nodded sleepily, the painkillers already tiring him out.
Louise and André were both asleep in the backseat, and Cosima reached out to hold Delphine's hand. The two drove home in silence, tired and ready to put the last twenty-four hours behind them.