Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for my OC's and the idea for this story :)
She almost started to run once she got out of Calleigh's room undetected. She knew she'd have to hurry before Eric got back and saw her. As much as she hated to admit it, he obviously cared for the fair-haired CSI, more than he had for his former girlfriends.
She knew that his feelings were true, because she had been keeping an eye on him for the past few years. Even if she'd spent her days locked up in a prison cell, she'd always known what Eric was up to. She'd paid people to keep her informed about the man she'd loved since she'd first laid eyes on him on that fateful day years ago.
Her heart jumped in her chest, when she caught him standing only a few feet away from her. She unconsciously let her fingers wander into the pocket of her uniform where she'd stashed the stolen ring only a few minutes ago and let them roam over the cool surface of the jewel that adorned it.
He was busy talking to his parents, trying to calm them and trying to prevent them from coming the long way to the hospital to see his fiancée. Calleigh was obviously not prepared to receive any visitors- Eric and Alexx marking the only exception.
"Mom, I know you're worried, but you really don't have to- they are fine! Everything is fine and I promise I'll let you know if anything changes. Please wait at least until tomorrow- then you can come and see her. She really needs to be resting now, for the sake of both of them."
"They?" She couldn't believe what she'd just heard. They? That couldn't be true, could it? How…? Well she knew exactly how it could have happened, but she didn't want to imagine them… doing things like that… together. That was just utterly disgusting.
She moved a little closer, in a desperate attempt to get to hear everything that was said between Eric and his mother.
"Mom, please." Eric begged, trying to convince her that it would be better to warm to the idea of visiting Calleigh the day after. His mother was quite hysterical and didn't seem to want to calm down, so he had to explain the whole incident and its consequences to her again.
It took him a few more minutes, but finally she seemed to understand that Eric was only trying to do what was best for his future wife and unborn child and agreed to come by the next day.
"Ok , mom. We'll see ya'll tomorrow. Hope dad and you will have a great rest of the day…"
Eric ended the call and was about to turn around, so she quickly lowered her head and tried to avoid catching his attention. He didn't even seem to notice her, his thoughts were focused on Calleigh. He wanted to get back to her as soon as possible.
"Oh sweetheart, if you only knew how I feel about you…"she mused and remembered what she'd already done to make sure everything was falling into place and she could be with Eric sometime in the near future.
She'd gone to a barbershop to have her hair done and had planned the whole hospital operation. It hadn't been that easy to get the nurse's uniform. First of all she'd had to go down to the hospital's laundry room and then she'd had to wait for an opportune moment to get in unseen and to take one of the recently washed laundry pieces with her.
Fortunately she'd managed to get through all of that and then had visited the lady's room to change her clothing. She was on her way back now, to get her old clothes. She'd left them in one of the stalls and hoped that none of the cleaning personal had removed them.
After having changed her clothes, she returned the uniform to the laundry room and quickly snuck out of the hospital. She didn't notice the man watching her, standing hidden behind a corner, when she left through one of the rear exits.
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Eric nervously glanced at his watch. He'd spent the past hour sitting at Calleigh`s bedside, while she slept. He couldn't stop looking at her and telling himself over and over again how lucky he was to have her and their baby in his life. His gaze wandered over her body, taking her in from tip to toe.
Suddenly it stopped and moved back to Calleigh's hand. Eric's attention was drawn to her ring finger, where his grandmother's engagement ring was supposed to be, only to find it bare of the precious piece of jewelry.
So where did it go? To his dismay, he wasn't able to answer that question and couldn't even tell when he'd seen it for the last time.
He tried to recall the situation that had taken place in the room, barely an hour ago. Alexx had told them that the baby would be fine and he had squeezed Calleigh`s hand overwhelmed with joy. He knew that the ring had been right there where it was missing now.
He was confused to say the least. What could've happened to the ring? He bent down and searched the hospital floor for any traces of the lost item. There was no sign of it anywhere in the room.
When he got up, he accidentally bumped against the electronic equipment stationed next to Calleigh's bed. She woke up with a start, but was immediately calmed by his presence.
"Eric," she breathed and smiled at him. He couldn't take his eyes of off her: she seemed to be glowing, looking more beautiful than she did before, just laying there in that hospital bed and not saying anything, but reading his mind either way.
She knew that something was bothering him. He had that special look on his face, the one he always used to wear whenever something didn't go the way he wanted it to, plus he was frowning and his look was one of concern when he started speaking.
"Cal, can you tell me what happened to my grandma's engagement ring?"
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He was standing there, watching the woman leave. She seemed vaguely familiar to him, he couldn't remember why, but he knew that he'd seen her before.
"Who could she be? When could we have crossed paths before? What did she come here for?" So many questions, but no satisfying answers. It was really bothering him, that he wasn't able to get them answered straight away. His curiosity took over and he decided to follow the woman, trying to mask his identity by putting on his sunglasses. She had managed to turn from a familiar face into his object of interest number one within seconds.
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"Hey! Stop touching that! You know that it's forbidden to touch evidence- especially without wearing gloves- do you? You could contaminate the whole material!" Valera snapped at Emma. The girl immediately dropped the knife she had picked up to gain a better view of the blood prints left on the blade.
"I'm truly sorry," she apologized and her eyes, full of joy and excitement, saddened a little bit. "It's ok." Maxine's voice softened. "Just don't do it again." She felt terrible for snapping at the girl like that. Her niece was about the same age as Emma, even resembled her in appearance- and demeanor.
She couldn't stand to see her upset, so she offered her to stay. "Why don't you sit down here right on this lovely chair? You could watch me doing my job, even ask questions if you want to and tell me why exactly it is that you are here, wouldn't that be great?"
If any other adult had talked to her like that, Emma surely would have ignored them, but for some reason it was different with Maxine. Emma knew instinctively that the woman was not trying to belittle her or underestimate her and her knowledge about crimes and how to treat evidence the right way, Valera was just trying to overcome her own uneasiness that always reared its ugly head when she had to deal with children.
The lab tech loved kids, but she couldn't picture herself as a future mom. She had always had the impression that kids didn't like her and that she would make a terrible mother. That was the reason why she didn't visit her brother's family that often- she was afraid of doing something that could cause her niece to hate her.
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Jesse couldn't believe it, the kid was gone. He had just been away for about five seconds, ten at most, but it was not his fault, that the vending machine was broken and he had to get out of the lab to get Emma the drink.
"Where the hell is she?" He glance from one end of the floor to the other, but came up empty. When he couldn't spot her, he decided to ask his favorite partner in crime for help. "Walter!"
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She blinked, glanced at her hand and didn't trust her eyes when they came across the empty spot on her finger. "I, I have no clue, Eric. I'm sorry, I know I had the ring right before I fell asleep. Maybe it slipped off my finger while I was asleep. I'm almost positive that it didn't though, it's not like it was sitting loosely."
Eric frowned, lost in his thoughts. He trusted Calleigh and knew for certain that she'd been wearing the ring just before he'd left the room to call his parents. Something must've happened within that short period of time that neither one of them was aware of.
"Well, Cal, I don't want you to worry, but the only thing that I can think of right now is that someone must've been in here while you were out of it and this person could've easily stolen the ring. I don't know why, though. The ring is not worth a fortune, but it means a lot to our family."
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, while continuing to look at her, silently pleading for her to give him something, anything, he could work with.
"Oh, Eric. I wish I could remember what happened, but …" she stopped mid-sentence, her mind flashing back to the moment when she had awoken from her slumber. She could feel the cold touch of a stranger's hand on her and an image of a blonde-dyed woman flashed before her eyes.
"Eric," she started, but was interrupted by Alexx who suddenly appeared in the doorway.
"Hey there, I hope I'm not interrupting something important." Her gaze switched from Eric to Calleigh and back to Eric.
"No, umm, you aren't," Eric said, giving Calleigh a "We'll discuss this later"- look and turning his attention back to his fiancée's doctor and best friend.
"Well, then let's have a quick look on how the baby is doing!" Alexx smiled while pushing an ultrasonic device into the room. It was quite a task, but finally she managed to place it beside Calleigh's bed.
"I guess you two are really excited, aren't you?" One could detect the anticipation in her voice quite easily and Calleigh managed to mutter a quite "Yeah" in response.
Mrs. Delko-to-be forced a smile on her face. She really wasn't in the mood for smiling- she had just lost her engagement ring that had possibly been stolen by some crazy woman. She tried really hard to get the creepy picture out of her head and was not prepared for what Alexx was about to do next.
After having set up the ultrasonic device, Alexx lifted Calleigh's shirt ever so slightly and reassuringly smiled at her. "This could get a little cold," she told her friend while putting some gel onto her stomach. Then she let the ultrasonic probe run over it.
"Wow, that's really cold!" Calleigh stated and added as an afterthought, "And what are these noises?"
"That's your baby's heart beat," Alexx explained, while continuing to look at the monitor in front of her.
"But it doesn't sound healthy, it's way too fast," Eric said, sounding alarmed.
"That's because…" Alexx gasped, she'd known it before. She had been right all along and now she had her proof.
"Cal, honey- you won't have a baby…" Alexx looked at her, anxiously waiting for her reaction. Calleigh seemed to be puzzled by Alexx' intonation at first, before the meaning behind that sentence fully set in. "I won't have a baby," she repeated thoughtfully and it slowly dawned on her what Alexx was trying to say.
"OMG, I won't have A baby,"
"No, you won't," Alexx reassured her.
Eric felt totally left out, he didn't get what was happening. Why would Calleigh be so happy when Alexx had just told her that she wouldn't have a baby? No- something was not right about that sentence, Calleigh and Alexx both had laid emphasis on one particular word: "a".
One could almost hear the wheels turning in his head and then it finally clicked and he started to smile, too.
"So Alexx, can you tell us how many babies Calleigh will have?"
"Of course, soon you two will be the proud parents of…" she stopped and made a dramatic pause before adding, "triplets."
AN: So here you go :P Hope the whole "a" thing at the end wasn't too confusing ;) Thanks for being patient with me! I hope the chapter was worth the wait :) Thanks as always to my lovely reviewers: reallylove, augus10, Annemarie, Britt, nonna99 and Margie. Margie: Don't worry, the team will find the crazy woman eventually, but it might take some time ;)