Lindsay was sitting up when Stella entered the hospital room a couple of days later, her eyes lost out the window.

"Lindsay?"

She glanced at Stella, smiling for a split second before turning her eyes back out the window. "Hey Stella."

"What's going on?"

"Have you seen Danny?"

Stella's eyebrows creased in confusion. "Everyday."

"So he's okay?"

"Lindsay, what's going on?"

"I haven't seen him since I got shot," she revealed.

Now Stella's eyebrows shot to her hairline. "He hasn't been to visit you?"

Lindsay shook her head. "I haven't seen him," she repeated. "He's mad at me, isn't he? He knows and he's mad."

"He knows," Stella confirmed, aware she was walking on thin ice. "I had to tell the EMTs when the loaded you into the ambulance."

Lindsay flopped back against the bed as best she could. "I didn't mean for him to find out like that."

"I know."

"I was going to tell him. We were supposed to go out for dinner and I was going to tell him," she said, her hands twisting in the sheets. "I don't want to have this baby alone."

Stella sat on the edge of Lindsay's bed and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "You're not in this alone," she promised. "No way."

Lindsay buried her head in Stella's shoulder and began to cry silently. Stella pulled her as tight as she could without jarring wires or stitching. She was surprised when she focused on the door to see a familiar head.

Danny.

Carefully, she extracted herself from Lindsay, promising to be back in a minute, then left.


Danny looked up from his chair in the waiting room at the end of the hall. The clicking of Stella's shoes alerted him to her presence.

"You're an idiot."

"I'm sorry?"

"Do you just watch her in the window, Danny? Is that all you do? She's been destroyed! She was just shot! And all you can do is stand outside the door and watch instead of going in to comfort her! It should have been you with your arms around her, not me."

"She lied to me!" Danny exploded, lack of sleep and stress making his temper short.

Stella's temper, however, would always match his. "She needs you now and you're not there for her!"

Danny deflated as hurt flooded his system. "I can't face her, Stel," he said softly. "I just can't."

Stella's irritation, however, hadn't abated. "Why not? I can't help her Danny because I have no idea what to do. You're the only one that knows, the one that knows anything about this girl."

"Except that she's pregnant."

"I was the only one she told," Stella told him, trying to keep her voice calm. "I was the only one that knew. Don't be childish about this."

"Childish? I'm being childish?"

"You're dropping her at the first true sign of complication! You've been through more than this, Danny and you've worked back from it. Hell, she turned you down and you still worked to get her to like you. You know she's not like the other girls you dated, so with her you should be different."

"I am!" Danny exploded. "She still hides things from me, still won't talk about anything!"

"You mean her family? You don't either!" She shook her head. "You guys are quite the pair. Stubborn, hot-headed and neither of you is willing to give an inch, even if it destroys your relationship. Fine. Watch it crash and burn, but realize that you are as much at fault for it as she is. You're not going to fix it and she can't." Stella didn't give him time to respond, just turned on her heels and went back to what she felt was more important.

After all, Lindsay's sanity was more important than Danny's demons.


Stella took Lindsay and Emily home a week later claiming Danny was working. Though Lindsay did believe that as the truth, it hurt that Danny would rather work than face her.

Her time in the hospital had left her with a lot of thinking and plenty of that thinking got done. She and Danny had come so far in their relationship over the ten months of their relationship and she liked to believe that she'd done a very good job of opening up to him. There were still things she kept private, but they were things she'd figured were buried.

Her pregnancy had proven her very, very wrong.

Her demons weren't as buried as she'd thought and in her current situation, she wished she'd shared everything with him. Nevertheless, there really wasn't anything she could do at this point and he hadn't been returning the few calls she'd been able to squeeze in during her hospital visit. Eventually, she'd just given up and resigned herself to some awkward days in the lab when she got back.

She wasn't desperate enough to ask anything from him. She figured he wanted as little to do with her as possible and she wouldn't force this child on him. It wasn't her style. If he didn't want them, she would find some way to handle it on her own. She'd decided the same thing once in her life and she was more than willing to do it again.

She begged off doing anything other than sleeping when the three women made it up to Lindsay's apartment and both women had no chance but to agree. Stella headed back to the lab and Emily made herself comfortable on the couch.

"You don't have to stay with me. I'm sure I'll be just fine on my own," Lindsay said to her niece.

Whether it was intuition on Emily's part, or just the knowledge she had of her aunt, Emily wouldn't leave. "What are you going to do if something happens? I'm going to stay and make sure you and Baby are getting better."

Lindsay didn't argue.


"Hey Stel," Danny greeted, poking his head into her office.

"Danny," she answered, preoccupied with the report she was doing.

"Um… Can I ask you a question without you taking my head off?"

"Depends on the question, Dan. If you're asking about Lindsay, find someone else."

Her sharp tone caught him off guard and he sighed. "Just… Is she okay?"

Sometimes he drove her completely insane. "Ask Lindsay."

Danny closed his eyes but stayed silent.

Stella took some pity on him, though it came out in anger. "She cries herself to sleep, wakes up with nightmares of the shooting she went through in Montana and wants nothing more than to curl up in your arms and fall back to sleep. She's getting cabin fever but doesn't want to brave the lab until she absolutely has to because she doesn't want to run into you and deal with the heartbreak of seeing you when she feels like she can't have you…"

"I get it, Stel."

Finally, she looked up at him. "She won't force you to do anything you don't want to do. She's willing to raise this baby on her own if you don't want anything to do with it and she's been damn strong when I'm around. Emily's been staying with her and she's the only one that's experienced Lindsay's tears. You should be there, Danny, not Emily."

"How am I supposed to trust her? This was a big thing."

"And she has a good reason for why she's hiding it, I'm sure. You have to trust that there was a reason she was hiding it and that she wanted to tell you." Though the words were gentle in their advice, her anger and frustration at the way he was handling Lindsay's injury were driving her completely insane. Her emotions made the words harsh and angry.

"I need space to think about all of this," Danny protested. "I'm not going to be any good to her."

"You're not being any good to her," Stella shot back, turning back to her pages. "Talk to her."

Danny sighed. "I can't."

Stella watched him leave before letting out an exasperated groan and slamming her fist on the desk angrily. Stupid, stubborn, bull-headed, pride-driven...children! Stella grumbled to herself, hoping they found their perp so she could lay into him instead of one of her friends.


Consider this a New Year's Present. Happy New Year!