Chapter 7: The Old School

Laura's eyes blinked open a little after eight. Staring at the white walls and dusky blue curtain covered window, she oriented herself to time and place. Hospital, got it. She rolled from her side to her back, trying to ignore the throbbing in her breasts, although her hand searched for the call button, even as she lay her other arm over her eyes.

"Can I help you?" the female voice came over the intercom.

"When the baby's awake, can you bring him in to me?" she requested.

"Yes, Mrs. Steele. I'll let the nursery attendant know."

"Thank you."

If the hospital was small, the nursery was miniscule, most women in the neighboring towns opting to deliver at a far larger facility nearly thirty minutes to their north. Laura, of course, hadn't been given an option, with a panicked Dozer and focused Thomas directing her travels. Well, not that she'd known about another hospital a mere half hour away. Had she, she may have insisted on traveling there, especially after her introduction to her Howdy Doody doctor.

But, there were benefits, she had to admit. Holt was currently the only infant in the small, country hospital, and as such the attendant assigned to the nursery would see to him exclusively. Thus, while she wouldn't even consider Olivia spending any time in the nursery at Cedars without Remington keeping a close eye over her, here she'd felt secure enough to let Holt out of her sight in order to get some uninterrupted, hopefully peaceful sleep that she was sorely in need of.

Not that she'd volunteered her intentions to Remington. No, that would have invited a slew of questions to which the only answer she has was that she was tired. Bone tired. That, in itself, would have invited even more questions, and more than likely her husband and partner insisting on staying the night to watch over her and their child, which was not at all an option. Olivia had kept her chin held high during her father's absence, but it wouldn't be she who invited her daughter to wake another morning only to find her father not asleep in his bed. No, not when the baby would be in perfectly good hands, she only a single call away.

She'd barely time to stretch and draw her hands through her hair before the door swung open and the that day's nurse walked through, signaling the beginning of a new day and a routine she was now reluctantly familiar with. Temperature, a perfect ninety-eight-six. Pulse, fifty. Blood pressure eighty-eighty over fifty-nine.

"Pressure's a little low," the nurse, Mari, announced.

"Oh?"

"Nothing to be concerned about, honey," she assured. "You seem to run low normal anyways, and after that good night's sleep," she winked. She moved to the end of the bed, to check Laura's pad – one of the many procedures she'd be glad to see end that day. "Still light. Lucky woman," the nurse commented. "I always bled like a stuck pig." Another thing Laura looked forward to the end of: tacky commentaries that seemed common in this facility. "The doctor should be in to see you in an hour or two and I imagine he'll be sending you on your way. I bet you're ready to get home to the big city."

"You have no idea," Laura smiled. Home. Their routines. It sounded like just what the doctor ordered, so to speak, to chase this feeling of lethargy, of heaviness away. She felt a little more revitalized at just the thought.

The morning got away from her. No sooner than Mari had departed her room, the attendant arrived with a red-faced, squalling Holt, ready for his morning meal. A meal she was only too happy to provide, not just for him, but for her own relief as well. Finally sated and well burped, she lay Holt in his bassinette, when the door swung open again, this time for Howdy Doody to stroll into the room.

"Mrs. Steele," he greeted, jovially. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Off. Ready to go home," she answered, honestly. He gave a careless shrug of a shoulder.

"Three days post-partum. Blood pressure a little on the low side. Strange place. I imagine anyone would be feeling a bit 'off' and that a dose of home is in order." She sat up in the bed.

"I'm released?" He scribbled on the chart in front of him.

"As of right now, you're free. Have a safe trip home."

With that, the doctor departed. Throwing back the sheets from the bed, Laura swung her legs over the edge and stood on slightly wobbly legs, taking a moment to damn the three days of relative immobility that were the cause. Grabbing the receiver of the phone, she punched '0' and requested an outside line, before quickly dialing the number to her mobile.

"Steele, here." She couldn't help the smile the graced her face at his customary greeting.

"Mr. Steele, how would you like to go home?"

"Ah, words that are truly music to my ears, Mrs. Steele," he hummed across the lines.

"Then how about getting over here and freeing Holt and I from this medicinal prison?" she suggested. On the other side of the line, his smile widened.

"As luck would have it, I'm turning into the hospital parking lot as we speak. Five minutes soon enough?"

"Just. No dawdling, Mr. Steele."

"Mmm. Little chance of that as I can think of little I want more than to get you home."

Hanging up the phone, she shed the hospital gown and happily changed into the maternity outfit she'd worn at her arrival. By the time Remington walked through the door of her room, she'd finger combed her hair back into a pony tail, and was just finishing snapping Holt into his outfit. Approaching her from behind, he wrapped an arm around her waist, to be rewarded by her straightening and laying her head back against his chance.

"I thought we'd stop by the cabins to give you time for a long, hot shower, before we get on the road, hmmm?" She turned in his arms to press up on her toes and grace him with a lingering kiss.

"Truly a man after my own heart," she murmured when their lips parted, their eyes meeting.

"Ahhh, a heart I'd thought already won," he teased, stroking her cheek with a thumb.

"Someone has to keep you on your toes," she answered, pertly. He laughed low in his throat, bussing her on the forehead then drawing her into his embrace.

"Oh, that you most certainly do," he agreed, as he released her. "Shall we?" He indicated an attendant pushing a wheel chair, waiting in the door.

It never even occurred to her to argue the presence of the wheelchair, as she normally would have done. Gratefully, she'd sat down in its confines, to be wheeled, as she held Holt, to the awaiting Explorer where she'd kept a watchful eye as Remington buckled the baby into the car seat secured in the middle of the backseat. She'd been utterly grateful for the enthusiastic greeting by her girls when she'd arrived at the cabin, for the hot shower and breakfast kept warm for her by her husband which awaited her there. But, she'd been beyond grateful when a pair of fingertips tracing her cheek and jaw woke her, and she stared out the windshield at their home. Groggily, she sat up, to find her hand still held in his.

"We're home, already?"

"Hmmmm. That we are. You slept nearly three-quarters of the way," he commented, concerned eyes resting on her. "Babe keep you up last night?"

"We're home! Sophie, we're home," Olivia called out happily from the backseat of the car. "Can we go play? Can we? Can we?"

"Sure, baby, as soon as we get inside," Laura promised, then answered him, distractedly, "No, not at all. He was in the nursery." Turning she climbed from the car, as he lifted a brow to her back, unseen. The nursery? He remembered well her reaction when they'd tried to remove Olivia from the room after she was born. With a shake of his head, he got out of the car and opening the back door, released Olivia from her car seat then lifted her to the ground. Sophie followed, on the other side of the SUV, then at last he removed the baby as Laura corralled two excited little girls and herded them towards the front door. She watched, with a smile on her face, as the girls raced up the stairs towards what was now their room, before a scent lingering in the air caught her attention.

"Paint?" she wondered aloud. With raised brows, Remington craned his neck towards his movie room, then took two long strides to look inside. Raising a hand, he scrubbed at his mouth, as his eyes wandered the room. "When did you have time—"

"I didn't," he answered before she had time to finish the question as his eyes roamed over the brand new widescreen television and sound system, then to the new sofa opposite.

"Then how—"

"I've no idea," he shook his head, taking three steps towards the office to peer in there as well, noting the brand new monitor sitting atop Laura's desk, and nary a stray piece of paper upon the floor to be found.

"Maybe this holds the answer," she suggested, picking up a card standing on a bi-fold on the coffee table. Skimming its contents, she laughed softly, then read aloud, "Welcome home. Monroe, Jocelyn, Murphy, Sherry, Bernice and Jason." She handed the card to him, as Olivia called her from upstairs.

"Mommy, can me and Sophie play on the swings?"

"I'll be right up," she called back, then turned to him as he explored, with his free hand, the wall where bullet holes had been only four days prior. "Can you bring the bassinette downstairs while I feed him and get the girls into play clothes?" she asked as she relieved him of the baby, who'd begun to squirm and root against his father's chest, seeking food.

"Bassinette, downstairs," he agreed, absently. With a shake of her head and amused roll of her eyes, she left the room, virtually unknown to him.

Despite nine years of living this life, little things occasionally astounded him. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he studied the couch which was nearly a perfect replica of the one it'd replaced. In the early days of their early association, he'd once tried to explain the loyalty he'd found in those he trusted, who simply happened to make their livings on the shady side of the street:

"He's of the old school, where there's still honor among thieves. He would never rip off a fellow miscreant."

Like himself, Monroe was very much of that old school and as he considered the Monroe's, Daniel's and Wallace's of his old life a rarity, so, too, had he always viewed Laura, for concepts such as loyalty and giving a hand up was to lost in many in this world as it was in his old. But as the years had passed, he'd had the good fortune of finding himself, mostly by Laura's design, surrounded by people much like the ones he'd chosen to keep close even after he'd walked away from his life.

Murphy, a former competitor for Laura's affections, the former partner who'd once deemed the mysterious stranger unworthy of a chance and certainly trust… Who, in the years since, had come through for he and Laura again and again in their most difficult of times.

Mildred, the surrogate mother he'd long ago come to rely on, who he often looked to as a personal barometer, much as he did Laura. Mildred who was always ready with an ear to listen, and with words of advice, whether asked for… or not. Who, he chuckled now, was fast to call him on the carpet when he made a wrong turn, but just as prepared with a word of praise when he chose the right course. Mildred, who'd championed he and Laura 'getting it right' from the very start.

Bernice, Jason, Sherry, Jocelyn… and certainly Frances, Donald and even Abigail, in her own unique way.

Not for the first time, he realized how capricious the fates could be, and wondered at how they'd found him deserving of all he now had.

"Remington," Laura called to him from upstairs. "The bassinette?" Shaking himself free of his thoughts, he strode out of the living room and to the stairs in the entry way.

"Coming," he called back, and with a smile on his face, went to do his wife's bidding.