IT'S DAY 1000!
So here we are then, four digits… I'm as shocked as you are ;) Shocked and giddy :D Anyhoo I just wanted to say real quick, if you're out there, and you read my stories, either every day, or every other day, here and there, whatever, if you read my stories, I want to say thanks :D In a little over three months it will have been three years, so let's go! :D (If you want to say hi, the review box is right there ;))
This is a triple shift day. There will be two more uploads today: Let Me Tell You A Story, chapter 13 and The Future Marries the Present.
"This Little Light of Mine"
13. Remembers & Ponders
Nora had turned her guitar to rest on her back again, after a man sitting in the waiting room with them had started arguing about kids making noise, including some words which made the eleven-year-old's eyebrows go up. If any of her parents heard her say those words, she would have been grounded for… she wasn't sure she would have been ungrounded at a given time… Her grandpa Leroy had nearly lost it on him, and that had opened the argument to a new set of words that were even worse to her for attacking her grandfathers personally. The man had been removed in the end, but all three of them left sitting there after were upset.
Nora had gone up to Leroy, putting her thin little arms around his neck, and he breathed out, hugging her close. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been playing here…" she told him, and she felt her grandpa Hiram's hand at her back.
"Don't go blaming yourself for people like that," Hiram told her. "You could stand on that table there and just play as loud as you want if it were up to me. Your lullaby is beautiful," he promised. Leroy took a breath, sitting back.
"Here, sit," he told his granddaughter and she sat on his knee. "Your grandpa Hiram's got it right, and this is a beautiful day, so let's not spoil it," he told her, regaining his smile for her. She nodded to him, then thought.
"What was it like, when you got Mom?" she asked. She knew part of it, how they had a surrogate and all that, not like she thought they had made her together, but this was something she wanted to hear, to clear her mind and let happiness in again. It would work on them, too, judging by the smiles they got.
"Your mom was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen, we thought 'can it really be that she would be ours?' And then she turned those eyes on us and we knew," Leroy told his granddaughter, who was all smiles now.
"Didn't take long for us to discover the pair of lungs she had in her," Hiram looked to his husband, who gave a knowing nod. "He was always afraid he would drop her, wouldn't pick her up unless he was stationary, or seated, like he was boxed in good and she couldn't slip out of reach," Hiram mimed, and Nora just had to laugh, seeing the look on Leroy's face.
"You're one to talk, you would have had a walk-in closet for her if I didn't keep an eye out with how many clothes you got her."
"She looked adorable, and don't you deny it." Hiram kept his chin up.
"Of course, yes, but she grew out of them, and then what happened?" Leroy asked.
"What, we gave them away, we didn't throw them away," Hiram reminded.
"He did the same with you," Leroy looked back to Nora. "Your parents didn't know what to do with them anymore. And now I know he's going to do the same, for Hannah and probably Hailey, too," Leroy turned a shake of the head to his husband, and the banter was good and playful, which was sort of what Nora had hoped for.
But now they'd gone and mentioned Hailey, and her mind had wandered. She bit back at her lip, trying to decide, and if her mother were there she would have called her on it in an instant: she said it was her tell.
She slipped off Leroy's knee, and while the two of them were talking, he didn't even notice, neither did Hiram. Now she was determined. She would just go to the window with all the babies and see Hailey. They would have put her there by now, in the front or in those special ones at the back. She didn't know what to expect, but she just wanted a peek at her sister.
She made it to the window, and she just smiled. She liked looking at the babies, because they were just that… babies. No one said mean things to them, or called them names, or hated them in any way. Even if someone didn't 'like' babies, it didn't mean they would hurt them, in any sense of the word. And they didn't even know things like that could come their way. For them, right now, the world had to be pretty wonderful.
For them, everything was simple, but for her… She had grown up with her grandfathers Berry, her uncles Kurt and Blaine, her 'aunts' Santana and Brittany… If she looked at them, and she looked at her mother and stepdad, father and stepmom, her grandparents Burt and Carole… she saw the same thing, the thing they all had, just… love. And her, well… She'd never really stopped to think about it, not too much, and she was just eleven so it wasn't like she wanted all those things yet, but if someone were to ask her, she knew. It didn't mean she would tell them, but… she liked girls, and that was it.
But then there were people like the man in the waiting room, and she saw how upset he made her grandfathers… He had scared her, on a whole other level from how she was scared for Hailey. She sort of remembered what it was like, being young enough that she didn't understand that there were people like that, not that she understood now, but back then she didn't even know that was something that existed. So for that, she envied the babies.
They couldn't even see her, she guessed, with how they couldn't move their heads that way yet, but she didn't care. She'd try to get their attention, smiling, waving, making faces… Those were the original Sunshine Girls and Boys right there… She couldn't stop smiling.
She looked for Hailey, reading all the little cards that showed pink for girls, but found no Hailey J. Hudson. She frowned, looking to the ones in the back, but the ones that were occupied, even from her distance, she knew they couldn't be Hailey… She wasn't there.
Maybe they'd taken her to her mother's room? But if that was the case, then they would have called her in, right? This didn't make sense. So now her needs were clear: she needed to go further, to find her mother's room and get to the bottom of it. Maybe she should have gone back to her grandfathers, but well she was here now, and she… she just wanted to see her mother, too. So she went to the nurse's station and planted herself there.
"Excuse me?" she asked, and the woman looked up. "I'm looking for my mother's room, please? She just had my baby sister," she explained politely. The woman looked at her, hesitant. "Please?"
"What's the name?" she finally asked.
"Fabray-Hudson," the woman looked.
"At the end of the hall, last one on the left," she pointed, and Nora smiled.
"Thank you!" she walked on down that hall like she belonged there, while inside her heart was pounding. She hoped they weren't upset with her, she…
She heard voices inside the room as she neared… their voices.
TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)