To the guest who reviewed- I feel honored to hear you story. I don't know you, but I hope you are okay. And I hope you know how much your strength has inspired others. Keep on fighting, because your family needs you.
Dedicated to everyone. Because we've all felt pain, and we've all been through hardships. The trick is realizing that these tragedies don't define us. How we deal with the pain, tells us who we are.
Jay's P.O.V.
"Are you sure you don't want him in here?"
"I swear to god if I see that asshole who got me knocked up I'm going to cut off his dick and shove it so far up his ass it'll feel like he's deep throating it!"
The nurse wisely shies away, moving back towards the end of the bed. Her hand crushes mine, but after Erin I'm ready for it. The contraction wanes, and she flops back on the bed.
"You know, in all fairness, you did agree with him to try and have a kid."
"You want to loose your dick too?!" She hisses.
"Not particularly, I'm just saying."
"You are a male and therefor your opinion on this matter has absolutely no- ah!" The yell comes with another squeeze, and then shes screaming and for a couple seconds I get scared something's wrong, then I hear Manning yelling that she can see the head. I relax, knowing this part is the most painful for most mothers...but then pushing a baby out of a place that is most certainly not meant to hold something that wide in it for any amount of time is painful.
"Another push Maddie, you're doing so well!" Another contraction, another squeeze, another scream. I suppress my smirk, knowing full well that if Maddie sees it I'm getting thrown out of the room. It's just, the thought of Alex most definitely having a freakout right now is hilarious. For all his quiet talk that he wanted to be in here and he was so excited and so not nervous (he really wasn't when he talked about it, but I knew the second Maddie's water broke, he was going to be incoherent) he's definitely pacing outside right now having a miniature panic attack.
What makes it even better is that he's a retired Navy Seal, so this is just perfect.
It's a sense of deja vu unlike any other when she calls out that it's a girl. Maddie flops back on the bed, gasping and crying with relief and happiness. The little bundle cries loudly as they clean it, then calms once wrapped in a blanket and given to her mother. Maddison immediately starts crying harder, but holds the tiny baby close, to exhausted and to emotionally overwhelmed for words.
I slip out behind the medical team, pulling off my gloves as I exit.
He's on me before I can pull off my mask.
"Is she alright? What happened? Is the baby okay? Is it over? Nothing's wrong is it? Do I need to-"
"Alex!" I grab his shoulders, forcing his eyes on me. A small part wonders if this would have been me and Voight had things been different when Maddie was born.
"Calm down. Everything fine. But if you go in there freaking out, she's going to punch you in the nuts." The panicked eyes blink, then his breath leaves him in a rush.
"Right. Right. Okay. They're okay." He mutters, turning away for a couple seconds to breath.
"But-"
"A girl. Eight pounds, six ounces." A goofy smile spreads across his face and then he brushes right past me, just about knocking over Nat on the way out. She just grins and shuts the door.
"Just like you."
"Was not!" I scoff.
"No, you're right, she was still giving birth and you were bleeding all over the place. But you still ran people over to get to her."
"Shut up." I mutter. She sighs.
"We're so old now." I laugh.
"Hey, wine gets better with age. So does scotch."
"You hitting on my wife again?" A third voice suddenly pops into the conversation. I cuff Will over the shoulder.
"Well maybe if she weren't so damn beautiful…" Natalie raises an eyebrow at me, not amused.
"Flattery will get you nowhere, Sargent Halstead."
"Well it got me a wife, a daughter and a granddaughter so I mean clearly it works for some people." Will just laughs, then starts talking medical gibberish to Manning. I say a parting word as they leave, then seat myself in one of the tough chairs outside her room.
And I remember. How this whole thing, seemed to come full circle.
The wedding was a beautiful one. Way better than mine and Erin's, but that's because she 'refused to spend the gazillion dollars just to have nicely arranged flowers at a unnecessary ceremony'.
Ha. Yeah right. Like she didn't know that everyone at Fifty one, Med, and some of our friends from the DA weren't going to make it the best night ever. She let me plan it, because Lindsay never did well with stress and commitment and really I knew she was freaking out about just the idea of putting a ring on her finger so I let her forget about it and she worked right up to the day of our wedding.
I'm not kidding. She had Platt and Burgess help her into her dress. In the rollup of the precinct.
Meanwhile I'm at the venue, having a panic attack because okay, fuck, I was so totally nervous all of a sudden and Will decided it would be a good idea to jump out from behind the walls and scare me.
Anyway. The old wooden church that we got married in, because it was simple and pretty and fit just the right amount of people and the pastor from my church that I went to as a kid could do it there, burned down in an unfortunate fire the same day she died.
Ignoring how creepy both Maddie and I found this, she, for the longest time, had wanted to get married there.
The new place, was probably better than she imagined. It's big, and the place was packed. The church is stone on the outside, but on the inside huge beams of dark wood are visible traversing from one end of the ceiling to the other. The open beams are low, and somebody got the smart idea to wrap strands of white christmas lights around them, making the whole place glow with warmth.
White and pink roses are wound with silver birch twigs and small bits of dark evergreen that are placed in the center of each table. Somebody cut branches from (or just cut down the whole tree) a birch, and took the largest of them to the altar, where they were strategically placed and wound together to form a sort of canopy over the couple.
Her dress wasn't strapless, because of and I quote 'girl issues' that I clearly never have and never will understand. The thing had the look of one though, white material snug to cover her chest, the rest of her upper body clad in a see through patterned lace that ran down to her wrists. A silver ribbon tied around her waist, and then the white poofed out slightly and ran to the floor. No trailing fabric, no extravagant hair, no ten pounds of make up.
Maddie, like her mother, wanted to say I do then go right to the reception.
Still. It was beautiful. And amusing, hearing my little girl fall in love with a dress then screech for the next half hour at the price.
Maddie graduated from the Naval Academy, spent two years on a ship as a Lieutenant in charge of the weapons control room on the John Paul Jones, a renowned destroyer. She proudly helped America bring home the RIMPAC world cup both of those years and then in the exercises performed there and on normal missions, she came home with several awards, including Service with Distinction. Just like her old man.
She came home, as bright and bubbly as ever, just better with sneaking around and using a gun.
Never really saw action. Didn't come home with crippling PTSD. No, she came home, got an apartment, decorated and binged her tv shows for two days, before the inevitable happened.
"Hey dad don't freak out but I'm joining the police academy. Love you byeeeee!"
A truly wonderful message to listen too at the end of a day where you just watched a police officer die in front of you.
But she made it through the academy, made it with distinction, so much that I had to fight to get her pulled into Intelligence. She wanted it, I made sure that she understand she could have any team she wanted and she still choose us. General crime was pulling for her, Gangs, the UC taskforce, hell, even Vice was asking. They didn't want us on the table at all, because I was her dad, but I pulled Voight out of retirement for a solid hour and poof, suddenly she was allowed.
She worked with us, being basically my partner as I trained her to look for the clues in Chicago's streets, how to get the city to spill her secrets. Adam and Atwater were senior detectives now, as was Burgess. After a couple years (before Voight left) we managed to get Julie Tay back to the twenty first district, and she came up right when Maddie was deployed.
So. It was a normal day, Ruzek at what used to be Alvins desk, Atwater at Antonio's, Burgess at what was once Jules, Julie at mine, Maddie at Erins.
I'm leaning against the doorway to my office talking to Julie, Atwater flinging a paper ball at Ruzek when the door buzzes in the stairway. I'm already thinking critical of the new guy, since he'll be Maddie's partner and Platt walks him up. He stops in front of us while she introduces him and I can see it.
The way he stands, showing his ground in Military stance, the way he has his hands in his jean pockets to seem casual but really he's nervous, because he knows even though he was in Afghanistan this is something much different, much harder to adapt to for him. I see it in the second his eyes land on Maddie, the spark that alights and then is quickly hidden. I see it in the way she looks at him, bored and still annoyed that she actually has to have an official partner. I see that she's trying hard to find something not to like about him, so she can complain to me and maybe have him transfered.
The guys all nod hello's and Julie glances at me before murmuring something about moving back to her old desk, the one across from Ruzek. I make a joke, she laugh back and then Atwater catches something and we all grab our jackets.
We're all moving and he looks lost, but open, like he's trying his best to adsorb as much information about how to act and what to say just by their movements.
I see it in everything he does, and everything we do.
I see my first day, almost down to a T, and I know by the snarky comment Maddie gives him that he easily retorts, that this is exactly how me and Erin started, exactly how Intelligence really became the family it is. I know that she'll fall for him, and he's already falling for her. I don't know if they'll work, but I know there's a good chance it will.
I know, because I did it. And it's finally come full circle.
fin.