Chapter 25

"Mom? What's going on?" Tony asked Cameron with concern as they walked from the school to her car, but when they got to the vehicle, Cameron stopped and put her hands on her back. "And what's wrong with your back? I saw you grabbing at it back in the office, too. Did you fall?"

"No, I didn't fall." She opened the door and moved behind the steering wheel. "Get in the car, Tony. You know my back's been bothering me the past few weeks."

"Okay." He got in the passenger's side. "Now, what's going on?"

"We have to go home. There's been an emergency."

"With Dad? Is he alright?"

Cameron started the car and started in the opposite direction than the hospital and their home. "No, not that home. Back in Illinois."

Tony looked more closely at her face, noting the redness of her eyes and nose. She had been crying. "Is it Gram or Pap?"

"No, they're fine." She tried to smile.

"Then what?" He asked impatiently.

"Not now, Tony. Okay?" She reached over and patted his hand, a new surge of tears threatening to spill. "Everyone's okay. It's a different kind of emergency, that's all."

They rode pretty much in silence from that point on. Cameron reaching behind her and trying to ease the pain in her back and Tony repeatedly looking over at her with great attention to her state of mind. They stopped once they got across the state line into Pennsylvania and filled the gas tank, then got started again. They had barely gone half-way across the state when Cameron pulled off at a rest stop, needing to use the facilities. She knew there was no way she was going to be able to hold her pee until the next stop for gas. Tony was waiting for her at the vending machine, holding two cups of hot chocolate but she no sooner exited the lady's room than she reached for her back again, this time almost yelping with pain. Suddenly there was a gush of fluid at her feet and when she looked down she saw that her slacks were soaked.

"Mom?" Tony asked with fright as he stared at her. He dropped the cups of steaming chocolate and ran over to her just as another pain ripped through her back, making her grab onto him for support. "Mom–are you having the baby?"

"Yesss." She hissed as the pain continued, now tightening around her abdomen as well. "Get me to the car."

"You can't drive like this!" He looked at her as if she were crazy. "I'm calling Dad!"

"NO!!" She shrieked, turning him back to her with huge eyes. "You are "never" to call that bastard! Now get me to the car!"

"Okay–okay," he said quickly as he put his arms around her and walked with her until they were outside. But when he started to walk toward the driver's side of the car, she stopped him.

"No–you're driving."

"What?" He practically yelled at her for he was beginning to think she had lost her mind. He remembered the last time he had driven anything and the outcome wasn't pretty.

"You drove Uncle Jack's tractors on his farm–you can handle an automatic car on a straight interstate. Ooooooooooh!" Another contraction grabbed her and nearly knocked her off her feet. She began her breathing and motioned for him to hurry and get her to the car. "We only have about twenty miles to the next hospital. I trust you, Tony."

He sat her in the passenger's seat and closed the door. "I'm glad "you" have trust in me," he said to himself. "God help us all!"

"Please hurry, Tony. I don't think this baby is going to wait much longer," she told him as he sat behind the steering wheel.

"Mom. I should really be calling Dad. Please let me call him."

"So help me, Tony, if you even think of doing that I'll get out of this car and walk myself to the hospital!"

"I'm not moving until you tell me why I can't call Dad."

"Because he's been having a damn affair with his ex-girlfriend! That's why!" She yelled at him.

"Who–that Stacey witch? Right, like I'm gonna believe that. She's okay if you're like . . .seventy or something, but not Dad's age. Is this like the time you thought Dad was having an orgy with Wilson and Lisa?" He asked as he looked at her but cringed when she turned to look at him with fire flaring from her eyes.

"Ooooooh! If you don't move this car right now–I'll have this baby on the interstate. Then you can deliver it. How would you like that?"

"Alright. Alright."

He started the car and backed it out of the parking space, then moved down the lane, merging with the oncoming traffic. Luckily, he did have some experience driving tractors so the transition to a smaller vehicle wasn't so bad and within minutes he was driving at an adequate speed for the highway. He still was unsure about his mother's explanation but by the time they were pulling up to the hospital's emergency department, he had been filled in on all that she had read and seen. He figured that normally she would have kept this information hidden from him, but being in labor, her anguish and sense of betrayal had turned into raging anger, an emotion he was starting to share with her.

"Mom, we're here," he told her as she was in the middle of a contraction, panting with her eyes clenched shut.

"God! I forgot how painful this actually is," she breathed, then looked at her surroundings. "We better get inside."

Tony grabbed a wheelchair from inside the door and helped his mother into it then pushed her inside. Cameron had already taken all her insurance cards from her wallet and gave them to Tony. After a quick exam in triage, they moved her up to Labor and Delivery and instructed Tony to move his car to the parking lot then return for his mother's insurance information. Once he was finished, he was escorted to the delivery room and told to put on scrubs. He looked doubtfully at the nurse–he hadn't ever in his wildest dreams imagined being in the labor room with his mother. It just didn't seem right. But when he heard Cameron's howl of pain, he went to her side and held her hand.

"It looks like you got here in the nick of time," the doctor said from his position between Cameron's thighs and with a growl and a grunt Tony was looking at the most obnoxious creature he had ever seen in his life! It had white cream and blood smeared all over it's wrinkly blue body. He thought they must have made a mistake and gotten some kind of organ out of his mother instead of a baby.

"That's disgusting!"

"That–my friend," said the doctor as he lay the now-screaming baby on Cameron's stomach. "Is your new baby sister. Would you like to cut the cord?"

"Really? Sure. Okay,"

Suddenly the monstrous form on his mother's stomach didn't look quite so bad to him and for some reason, as they handed him the scissors and he cut through the tough hose-like structure, he felt a connection with creature. When they lifted it and took it away to be cleaned he looked back at his mother, but she remained still, lying with her eyes closed.

"Mom–I've got a sister," he said proudly as he looked down at her but she merely looked back at him and tried to smile. He knew her heart wasn't into it and he again became angry with his father. "It's okay, Mom. I'll take care of us."

"Apgars of 9 at 1 minute," he heard the nurse saying to another who was writing the information down. "Weight five pounds, thirteen ounces. Length is 19 inches."

Finally after about five minutes, they brought the baby over and he was amazed at how tiny it seemed.

"Mrs. Cameron, would you like to hold your daughter?"

Cameron didn't answer, she simply held her hands out for the baby and drew her into her arms. The tears started falling from her eyes as soon as she looked at the dark blue eyes that were trying to peek out at her.

"Look at her, Tony. She's beautiful," she cried and laughed at the same time.

Tony left the delivery room and called his grandparents, telling them what had happened, but leaving out the information regarding his father. When they found out their daughter and grandchildren were more or less stranded nearly six hundred miles from them, they told him to stay put, that they would be there to pick them up the next day and they would fly back home while his grandfather drove her car.

Other than that, Tony stayed in his mother's room with her and the new baby throughout that evening and night. Cameron was exhausted, both emotionally and physically, so he saw to it that her sleep went undisturbed. When the baby started to fuss he would pick her up and feed her from the bottle the nurses had left there or he would check to see if she was wet. By the next morning he felt like a pro at this baby business and when the nurse came in to collect the information for the birth certificate, he was holding his sister as she slept in his arms.

He looked at his mother when the nurse was asking questions, but she began crying as she looked out the window. He had heard of postpartum depression and he had a pretty good idea that this was setting in–double that with having the baby four weeks early and going through what she did the day before, he felt he was lucky she wasn't screaming and tearing her hair out.

"Mrs. Cameron, what is the father's name?"

Cameron glanced helplessly at Tony.

"Gregory House," Tony told the nurse and at the mention of his name Cameron turned toward the window again.

"Have you chosen a name for her?"

When they were met with silence Tony stood up and moved to stand between her and the window. "Mom, you gotta give her a name."

"I haven't decided on one. I thought we'd discuss it this month, but we never seemed to have the time." She looked at the baby and put her finger in the child's hand, allowing her to wrap her tiny digits around it. "Look at her. Already she's a step behind."

He knew she was referring to the lack of his father's presence and he became all the more dedicated to seeing that this little girl never felt neglected.

"No she's not," he said, trying to cheer his mother up a little. "At least she's got her mother's and father's name on her birth certificate. Look at me–Wilson had me listed as Bobby Darin's and Sandra Dee's son, Moondoggie! Now look at her, Mom. Already she's got beauty on her side. She sure is beautiful."

"Yes, she is beautiful," Cameron agreed with a weak smile.

Tony thought about what he just said and looked back at his mother with an idea. "Mom. Ya know, I looked this Sandra Dee up on the internet to see who she was–and she was really pretty. I mean it–she was one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. Why don't we name her Sandra?"

Cameron looked at him and thought about it, then turned to the nurse.

"Her name is Sandra Dee House."