Alright, so for all of you who have been waiting so patiently with me these past 53 chapters, this is the beginning of that big Brulian + Sam arc that I've been talking about but haven't really been doing anything about for the past few chapters so I hope it becomes worth your wait eventually! One quick note, the next chapter or two might come a little bit late just because my spring break starts on Friday and I'm going down to Wilmington which I'm ridiculously excited about so don't mind the delay.
Just a quick thanks to everybody reading and reviewing, as always you guys make the world go round and I love you all!
Chapter 53: Don't Believe That It Isn't There
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
BROOKE
My bathroom had never felt so small in my entire life… of course, that's probably because it's freaking huge inside of there, but that wasn't the case today… nope, instead today, my bathroom had suddenly never felt so small in my entire life.
But that probably had a lot to do with the fact that I had been restricting myself to this single spot in the center of my counter for the past 110 seconds to the exact… even though it really did feel like it had been much longer than that, where I'd been gripping onto my countertop so tightly that my knuckles were starting to turn white while meanwhile, I was staring determinedly all-the-while into the eyes of my very own reflection as I counted down the brief seconds that I had left until I could look at this damn stick that I'd just drank my body weight in water just to generate enough pee for in order to determine whether or not I had a little Brooke Jr. growing larger and larger inside of me as we spoke.
Ten seconds…
As expected, I had obviously chickened out of doing this last night even though I knew that I should have… Yesterday I had ended up passing out in my bed just a little after one o'clock, pretty much right after I had come home from Sam's dialysis appointment; fully prepared to sleep for the rest of my life I was so exhausted.
Nine seconds…
I'd probably been out cold for about forty five minutes… I don't know, maybe an hour before my cell phone woke me right back up again… It had been Julian calling me to tell him that Sam had completed her dialysis session just as I'd instructed him to do before I'd left him and Sam at the hospital and that they were now preparing to move her by ambulance just down the street towards the inpatient units so that they could prepare her for her overnight stay.
Eight seconds…
Talking to Julian had managed to jolt my memory for a brief moment at least, my brain groggy from sleep pushing onward to remind me that I needed to get my lazy ass up and take this test because I deserved to know what they were… because Julian deserved to know what they were…
Seven seconds…
But then Julian had put Sam on the line and I had started talking to her, listening closely to her voice hazy from drugs, sickness and sleep, and then the thought ran through my head that we all had way too much to worry about already on our minds today… to add something to that list would be simply irresponsible of me.
Six seconds…
So I'd decided to put it off because I've always had this bad habit of putting things that I didn't want to do off until it got to crunch time… the time when things just ended up stressing me out even more than they had been before.
Five seconds…
I'd ended up just lazing around the house most of the day, taking advantage of the fact that Victoria was performing my every will considering she was probably still afraid that I was dying of the flu or ebola or something and that the only thing that she could do to ever possibly save me was to abide by my every request.
Four seconds…
It had been nice, really it had been, but I'd still requested that Victoria leave and spend the night at her own home because I didn't want her to have that burden of Victoria thinking that she'd had to wait on me hand and foot all night in her head… I guess now I knew how Sam felt with me all of the time.
Three seconds…
The thought of what I knew I should be doing continued to linger in the back of my mind throughout the entirety of the day but of course I'd never actually ended up doing anything about it because that would have just been too easy…
Two seconds…
And as expected, here I was, stressing out way more than I ever would have been had I just done this yesterday like I was supposed to, praying that this one lingering second would just hold on for me for just a little while longer.
One second…
My hands were shaking violently as I slowly lowered my eyes downwards and away from my horrified mirror reflection and towards the test currently lying face down in my right palm.
I flipped the small plastic test quickly over inside of my hands, the front side flashing across my eyes for a mere split second before I just got overly nervous again and flipped it right back onto its backside so that I wouldn't be tempted to linger for too long about the results that I knew weren't even guaranteed… I mean, 99.99% accuracy wasn't 100 right?
I took a sharp inhale, my eyes widening as I raised my eyes once again towards the mirror as I tried desperately to convince the visual acuity centers in my brain that it had misread the quick flash of the test when I had actually seen it for that half of a second… because there was no way in hell that I had actually seen those two little pink lines in the center of the screen like I thought I had.
Desperate to confirm the fact that this crazy idea of mind had been correct even though deep down in my heart of hearts I knew for a fact that it wasn't, I moved slower in my second motion for results, swiveling the test much more leisurely, with much more fluid motions around between my fingers until it was completely facing me…
And this time there was no mistaking it… I hadn't misread the test the first time… there they were; two hot pink little lines, two freaking pink lines… and suddenly, I was scrambling.
My body sunk visibly, the stress of actually finding the answer deflating me like a balloon because even though I had been nervous about finding out the results, what they were wasn't what was important, it was getting to this point that was…
But now that that was gone, it left room for the infiltration of yet another emotion; pure confusion as it formed a thin layer across every one of my vital organs, leaving me debating on how this news actually did make me feel… because even though I knew that this knowledge should have been sparking some sort of intense emotional response out of me right about now, the only thing that I really did actually feel was… well, nothing.
I could only think backwards, reminiscent on the past couple of days that I'd been experiencing the sporadic cramping and the waking up every morning feeling nauseous… but of course, never nauseous enough to get me to stop and consider the fact that I could be… you know… pregnant…
Hell, I'd been so stressed out for so long now that I haven't even gotten my damn period in months… I didn't even think that it was possible for me to even get pregnant at all at this stage of the game…
Of course, the overwhelming evidence flashing right in front of my own damn eyes was screaming at me to let me know that I had been nothing short of stupid to make such an assumption.
Tears filtered behind my eyes as the element of denial slowly began to erase itself from inside of my body, because this time, there was no denying it… I am fucking pregnant…
So now what?
I was torn between two completely different emotions at the polar opposite ends of the spectrum from each other that the only thing that I could actually do was stand here with my mouth wide open as I stared stupidly at this little plastic stick in my hands and waited for my brain to relax behind its complex array of electrical activity and overstimulation so I could actually process and comprehend exactly what the hell this meant for me… for all of us really…
Half of me was ecstatic beyond ecstatic; a feeling creeping through me screaming at me that this was the best news that I have ever received in my entire life… This part of me wanted to scream out in pure joy, wanted to jump up and down and run through the entirety of Tree Hill, and scream out to the whole world that I had finally achieved my most desired goal, my most coveted of all ambitions; I was going to have a baby…
But then there was that other half; the one that was pushing that giddy, excited side of me right down the drain just to get it to shut up already and start thinking seriously about what this meant for me, for Julian, for Sam… how this news was going to change not only my life, but theirs as well and that given the fact that they had and enough life changing events in the past few months to last… well, a lifetime, that this news wasn't going to pass off as good, no, it wasn't going to pass off as good at all.
Because we all had to be honest with each other here; despite the fact that everybody and their mothers knew that I would have given up an arm and a leg in a heartbeat just to have a baby of my very own, the timing couldn't have been anything further from perfect.
"Brooke?"
With a sharp inhale, I was pulled back into a more attentive state of consciousness only by the sound of my name being called bouncing off of every wall of my house.
I snapped my head upwards, slowly starting to realize that there was still a world out there beyond the tunnel vision that I was currently forming between myself and this evidence predicting a child in my very near future right in front of me.
Moving quickly, I hid the test underneath a hand towel, begging myself to remember to come back up here and remove it later as to eliminate the possibilities of anybody finding it which would undoubtedly lead to some pretty awkward questions before I exited the bathroom swiftly, powering through the hallway where I immediately ran into Haley who had been lingering in my living room hoping that I did just as I had in responding to her beckoning call.
"Hey Hales," I greeted her, hoping that I'd managed to contort myself into at least a semi-normal expression that could hide any otherwise suspicious undertones.
"Hey… where've you been I've been ringing the doorbell for like five minutes? I hope you don't mind that I just walked in here."
"No, no," I indicated with a simple hand wave that it was the furthest thing possible to a problem because if my biggest problem right now was that one of my best friends had just walked into my house unannounced to see me, well then I would be living the good life, "I was just in the bathroom that's all…"
I knew that it would be a clear excuse; after all, nobody ever asks what it is that you were doing when you told them that you were in the bathroom.
"So Hales," I tried to steer the conversation away from myself to avoid well… talking about me, because that was the last thing that I wanted to do right now, "How have you been doing because… well you know, I just haven't really gotten the chance to talk to you in a while… and after talking to you on the phone the other day I just… I don't know… I've been worried about you."
Of course, my topic change hadn't been totally unwarranted; I had in fact been truly nervous about Haley ever since I'd heard her lose control completely while I had been on the phone with her the other day… And then after we'd been abruptly cut off and I hadn't heard anything back from her since… well, I worried about her, I did… I just felt kind of bad that my concerns for Sam overrode me remembering to check up on her sooner.
I watched her closely, analyzing the every muscle motion behind her face as her expression changed and she offered me one of those; something is wrong but I'm just going to smile anyway because I don't really know what else to do right now looks before turning her eyes away from me and shrugging her shoulders dramatically.
"I think I might be going crazy Brooke."
"Wh… what?" My words might not have been as sympathetic as I would have liked but I couldn't really think of what else to say because her admission took me by surprise… much surprise actually, "Haley you're not going crazy… Why would you even say anything like that?"
"Nathan took me to the doctor this morning Brooke…" That smile was still prominent on her face, but the glow was gone, replaced with tears swelling underneath her eyes so that I could practically feel her pain from all the way across the room.
"Why? Are you okay?" My heart constricted suddenly in a panic upon her words… the last thing that I needed was another person that I loved more than anything else in the world to be sick.
"I'm fine, I just… I've been thinking about Jamie and Nathan… and, you know… Sam a lot, and one day it just started to become too much… Anyway, the doctor was a total quack; he basically just told me that I had some acute anxiety disorder, threw me a prescription for Paxil, and sent me on my way."
My mouth hung open in shock as guilt wracked my body, which had been filling slowly with the idea that I had done this to her, that it was my crazy, messed up baggage that had done this to my best friend.
"Haley I'm so sorry…"
"Nah," She waved me off, "Don't be, I'll be okay, alright? So don't worry about me… How about you? You know no offense or anything but you're not looking so hot yourself."
I didn't want to just blow over this, I didn't want Haley to stop talking to me because I was under impression that my previous silence to her pain is what got her in this position to begin with; and besides, I didn't want Haley to think that she had to do something like this all alone… But I knew that now wasn't the time or the place, so I accepted her subject change, I opened my mouth, and I delivered the news that I was now actually feeling strangely guilty about, all things considering…
"I'm pregnant."
I hadn't exactly expected on telling her today, especially not like this… Hell, I hadn't really expected to tell anybody the news quite yet, but Haley's honesty with me had practically forced the words out of my mouth.
I watched as Haley's jaw dropped instantaneously; her face contorting into a look that I couldn't tell was pure excitement or sheer horror; and for a while, she didn't even say anything to indicate that it had been either. In fact, I was just starting to get nervous when she jumped up literally an entire foot in the air and waved her arms wildly, shouting with pure joy so that I couldn't help but smile behind the idea that maybe this wasn't as bad as I had originally thought.
"Oh my God Brooke congratulations, that's amazing!" She jumped on top of me, practically knocking the wind right out of my lungs in the process as she wrapped me up into a bone-crushing hug.
I returned the embrace tentatively, not particularly because I hadn't appreciated her words but because I hadn't exactly expected the reaction that I had gotten from her… especially after everything that she'd just told me.
"It is good news… right Brooke?"
She must have noticed my hesitancy, because after a few mere seconds, she pulled out of the embrace she'd initiated and looked up at me with much more skepticism in her face than she'd had when she first heard the news.
"I don't know…" I sighed dramatically, shaking my head and looking carefully away from her, "I'm just… I guess I'm just confused… I mean, you know, with everything that's going on with Sam lately… I keep telling myself that I can't do this right now Haley… that as much as I want a baby, that is the last thing that I need added onto my plate right now… But then every time I think about that, I also start to think that maybe this can actually be something good… like… I don't know, like a start to having a real family… Does that make me selfish Hales?"
"Of course not Brooke," She spoke forcefully as to let me know that she truly meant what she was saying, adopting a strong posture behind her words in order to support them with a tone of a solid physical presence.
"I just can't help but feel that Sam is going to… I don't know… think that I'm trying to replace her or something… I keep thinking back to that time right after me and Sam finally began to get along; you know, the time that the adoption agency called to tell me that I might be getting a baby… She was so nervous Haley… so scared that I would be ditching her the second that I had a baby in my life… What if she thinks that I'm just trying to, I don't know, replace her or something; that she's gonna think that I'm just preparing for the worst to happen by bringing a new baby into all of this."
"Oh my god Brooke, Sam would never thing that… not ever." She sounded shocked that I had so much as even thought that that could have even been a possibility, "This is a blessing Brooke, really it is so don't look at it as anything less than that, okay? Sam will be ecstatic to have a little brother or sister on the way, I know that, really I do… She is going to be so happy and she's going to make such a great sister to that baby… and Julian… well I already knew that Julian would make a great father… look at him with Sam… We all see it, every one of us. You guys deserve to be a family; you guys deserve to be a great family."
Tears sprang into my eyes for what seemed to be the millionth time today alone… and I couldn't tell if it was because I was hormonal or because that really was just the one thing that I needed to hear somebody say to me right now, but either way, it made me feel better… it made me feel a lot better.
"Listen; have you been to the doctor at all yet Brooke?" Haley asked me quickly, trying to change the subject before she had me bawling all over her.
"Uh… no," I shook my head quickly, my words stuttering over each other as I attempted to straighten out my thoughts, "I just found out this morning… I only took the test a few minutes ago…"
"Let me take you!" She offered her services instantly, the excitement building up inside of her face so that it practically turned blue.
"Haley… I don't know…" I didn't want to burden her, especially knowing that she already had so much on her mind already, and besides, I still didn't even know what I was going to do here… I mean, I hadn't told Julian or Sam yet… hell, I didn't even know how to tell Julian and Sam yet… and what the hell was I gonna do if the news didn't go over well; if they didn't approve of me being pregnant, if they didn't want this baby?
No, now that I thought about it, it seemed like I didn't know much of anything…
"Come on, it's the least I can do for my little niece or nephew…"
I sighed, the motion exposing my skepticism on the situation as a whole to physical light, but Haley seemed determined, she seemed like she needed a project to focus on, somebody to take care of, and if that project had to be her helping to take care of this baby, and that somebody had to be me, well then I was more than willing to help her do that… Besides, it was the least I could do considering the fact that I still felt obscenely guilty that she had been placed in this situation to begin with anyway…
So a couple of hours and one rushed OB/GYN appointment later, there I was, sitting in some embarrassing position on top of an examination table in my doctor's office with my shirt pulled up over my stomach in order to expose the skin that hadn't begun so much as protruding with my pregnancy as early on as it was as I struggled to get used to the bizarre sensation of the ultra sound gel squelching around my skin alongside the small television screen enhancing the picture of my insides right next to me.
"Okay Brooke… so judging by the size and the shape of the fetus it's looking to me as if you are about six weeks pregnant." I glanced towards Haley, my eyes bulging at the surprise of the news, almost as if it was the final confirmation of everything, the positive factor to erase any uncertainty… and out of nowhere, I was suddenly struck with the feeling that this was perhaps the single best sentence that I have ever heard in my entire life.
"Now everything is looking good developmentally so far although it's still too early to really tell too much at this point." She turned back towards me, swiveling the screen with the projection of my six-week old child across it staring at me right back into my face… and amidst that little swirl of barely distinguishable black, white, and grey images that I could barely even make out, I saw something beautiful.
"This right here, that's the fetus," She told me, pointing towards a slightly curved lima bean shaped dot that looked like absolutely nothing more than a speck… "And this, this is going to develop into the head, and then the spine… you can't really see it on the ultra sound, but it's already starting to grow down this curve, and all the way down at the end, that there is where the legs will emerge."
I could only stare at the picture; channeling everything else that she was telling me into focus as I just looked down at the screen, simply waiting for something to happen, waiting for that little lima bean shaped dot to simply sprout limbs out of the blue and then to grow organs and bones and to become a boy with a huge heart and an endless sense of creativity like his father, or a girl with a sense of dedication and a love towards family like her mother…
"Can you tell if it's a boy or a girl yet?" I asked quickly, my excitement carrying over in my voice as a tone of hopeful surprise shined brightly behind each word I spoke.
She gave me the smallest of smiles; an appreciative glance towards my eagerness but at the same time, a flash of sympathy that told me not to get my hopes up about the answer.
"Not quite yet," She shook her head apologetically, "It's usually not until 18 to 20 weeks or so that we're able to find that out."
I released an audible response to my disappointment, my shoulders sinking from the lack of results that the doctor replied to with the smallest of grins as she turned back towards my chart, flipping through a couple of pages before finding the one that she was looking for.
"Okay Brooke, one thing that I want to mention to you is that your blood pressure was a little bit high when the nurse took it before so I have to ask you; has there been any recent changes to your diet or your exercise routine, or have you been under any particular amounts of chronic stress lately?"
Haley and I exchanged a quick dance; to say that I have been under a particular amount of chronic stress lately would have been the understatement of the year… I could have laughed right in her face if it wouldn't have been so rude to do so.
"I think that I would be under less stress if I was the president of the United States." I made my own attempts towards a joke but my doctor didn't seem to have taken my admittance quite as comedic as I did… so I dropped the false façade, the jokes, the humor and I got serious in order to give her a bit of an overview as to what exactly it was that I was talking about when I meant stress.
"My daughter… Sam, she's been battling leukemia for the past couple of months and things… well things haven't been going so well lately so it's been kind of… well, hard."
Her face didn't change but she did nod her head towards me sympathetically.
"Brooke… I know that that is a lot to have to go through by itself, which is why I have to ask you… do you think that you're prepared to take on all of the pre-natal responsibility required to ensure the health of both you and your baby."
"Absolutely!" I shouted urgently as to ensure her that I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would be able to handle this pregnancy, that I would be able to have this baby and raise this family… all four of us. "I swear to you Dr. Roberts, I am ready to do anything that I have to do in order to make sure that this baby stays healthy… literally, anything."
I begged and pleaded for her to give me advice, remedies, anything to ensure that my child would be the most beautiful, the most healthy child that had ever been born, because although mere hours ago I had been unsure, terrified even of what could possibly happen now that I had the responsibility of another life on my hands, I had suddenly been struck with this final, definite knowledge that I wanted this, I could have this, I could do this, and most importantly, I was more than certain that I was ready to start building something good out of my life for the first time in what seemed like a very, very long time.
JULIAN
If there was one true, solid fact that I had managed to learn throughout these past three months; something that was indefinitely true, something that always remained consistent no matter what, it was this; there was only so many times that you could actually read the same issue of some ridiculous five year old Nascar magazine that was conveniently placed on just about every single table in every single waiting room of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital before you just wanted to blow your freaking brains right out of your head.
Like I've always said ever since moving to North Carolina from the sunny wonderland of Los Angeles; you gotta love the South, right?
But still, this whole four hour long dialysis session four times a day for the next God only knows how long thing it made me feel… well, let me try and put it in a little bit of perspective for you… It was so boring that I literally reading the same issue of some ridiculous Nascar magazine that was conveniently placed on just about every single table in every single waiting room of Tree Hill Memorial Hospital, which is exactly what I was doing right now, was the only thing I could actually rely on for entertainment.
And if this is how I felt about all of this, well then I couldn't even imagine what it could possibly be like for poor Sam, who didn't even have the freedom to get up and walk around or anything like that for when things got really rough.
When Brooke finally came back into the room, looking slightly flushed, a little bit frantic, but overall better than she had looked when she'd left yesterday, to say that I was relieved to see her would have been the absolute understatement of the century… Considering the fact that I was damn near ready to claw my own eyes out from pure boredom, seeing Brooke to me felt like the sudden equivalent of seeing Jesus or something.
I shot upwards and out of my seat in a flash so that I think I might have actually scared poor Sam who had yet to even notice that Brooke had entered the room at all.
"Brooke, hey how are you feeling?" I bombarded her with the question immediately, probably overwhelming her just a little bit if not more as I rushed to her side and came to a dead halt a mere inch or two in front of her face.
She backed away a little bit at first, trying to regain her ground from my overwhelming presence, hesitating for just a brief second before turning back into my concern, recognizing it as just that.
"I'm feeling better Julian…" She smiled brightly, nodding her head in time with her speaking; her expression offering me with a confused relief considering the fact that I thought her to be pissed at me considering the fact that I'd sent her home and away from Sam yesterday…
But today she had an extra glow about her; an additional sense of happiness and pride laced inside of her eyes; one that I couldn't quite place, but that I really enjoyed seeing from her just the same.
I opened my mouth in response, completely prepared to ask her exactly what this cause for such celebration was, but before I could get so much as a single word out, I saw the tears begin to spill from each one of Brooke's eyes; dumping down in an alarmingly fast rate so that my jaw, previously slackened with the intentions of producing words, just lost control all together and fell practically to the ground in the shock of her actions combined with the terror towards the idea that I had just done something wrong to make her cry with such a force to begin with.
"Brooke… what's wrong? Are… are you okay?" I stuttered nervously over my words, scrambling in an effort to figure out exactly what the hell it was that I should be doing with my hands, but when I stopped over-concerning myself with my own actions, and actually started to focus on Brooke's, I suddenly realized that although her face was currently stained with the pathway of tears, this didn't seem to be the type of cry indicative of something wrong… No in fact, it appeared to be the exact opposite, because now that I truly saw her, I noticed that she was smiling… In fact, she was positively beaming.
"I'm okay, I'm okay… really," She waved me off embarrassed, trying to wipe at the tears in her eyes with the back of her shirt in an effort to hide them although she knew that I had already seen them, "I'm just feeling so, so much better today that's al."
She repeated her response to my initial questioning, her breathing beginning to increase in time with her falling tears so that I couldn't help but plaster my stereotypical look of dopey, dazed confusion onto my face in the moment… The thing was, it's been such a long time since I've seen Brooke cry in this sort of well-perceived manner… in fact, I had gotten so used to watching and reciprocating tears shed out of pure sorrow, that I had actually almost forgotten that people could cry in response to good news sometimes too…
So I played along, amusing myself with the idea that I finally had some good news to look forward to so that even if I was wrong to assume that, it still made me feel really good to forget about all of the bad for at least a little while.
"How much better are you talking here?" I asked her playfully, feeding off of her positive energy as I grabbed her by the hips and lifted her into the air, swinging her body around in a complete semi-circle for no other reason beyond the fact that I had a sudden desire to make contact with that gorgeous body of hers.
I turned her around in a complete 180 so that my gaze lingered straight past her shoulder and onto Sam who remained completely tethered to the wall by means of her dialysis but looking as if in this moment, she might have preferred it that way because she was looking at Brooke and I as if she thought us to be absolutely crazy in this moment… and you know, some days I think that she might actually be right about that… but of course, I wouldn't have it any other way.
"Come here for a second." Brooke beckoned me forwards, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me over closer to Sam, positioning our two bodies perfectly so that we were arranged into an extremely tight triangular formation before she finally spoke.
"Okay, so I have to tell you both something really, really important." She began in her introductory speech, her stalling of spilling whatever secret that she was currently hiding just making me more and more nervous with giddy anticipation.
"What is it Brooke, come on spit it out!" Sam urged her to move faster and I silently agreed, watching as Brooke paused and took a couple slow, deep breaths, her face growing pink with excitement as she struggled to formulate the right way to say whatever it was that she had to say.
"I'm pregnant,"
She'd waited so long in her silence only to finally, and very unexpectedly might I had, completely blurting out the last words I had actually expected her to blurt out that for a long time there, I actually thought that I had maybe misheard her.
"Wh… what?" I stuttered over my own words, looking for a conformation as Brooke turned upwards towards me nervously in an attempt to read the reaction off of my face that I knew was as blank as a sheet of paper as I struggled to process exactly what it was that she had just said to me, "Y… you're… you're pregnant?"
"I'm pregnant," She repeated with a nod, fresh tears stinging her eyes as she confirmed her initial words to me with a soft, high pitched squeal that hit me like a slap across the face.
"I'm gonna be a dad?" I could feel my face slowly brightening as the meaning behind her words slowly seeped down into my bones.
"You're gonna be a dad Julian."
And this time, Brooke wasn't the only one with tears in her eyes; she wasn't the only one with that dazed look of joy and an unbelievable sense of pride in her face… suddenly, I had found myself joining the club, feeling exceptionally overwhelmed so that I couldn't find myself able to process much of anything outside of the realization that I was currently standing here like a moron with tears in my eyes and a dopy grin on my face as I attempted to sort out just what I was feeling right now in response to being told that I was going to become a father.
I asked her to repeat herself in a million different ways trying to confirm her words because no matter how many different times she said it, I couldn't seem to process, I couldn't seem to believe that I had just heard the best news that I could ever possibly hear in my entire life… And after so many months of nothing but bad news, I couldn't really process exactly what my response towards this good news should be… so I just stood there.
I turned towards Sam; she looked just about the exact same way that I felt, completely shocked, positively unsure of just how she should respond to this sort of information.
"Alright, can somebody please say something?" Brooke finally laughed through the thick silence, unable to handle it anymore for fear that our lack of words actually meant that we didn't approve of her news even though it couldn't have been anymore of the opposite of that.
"That's awesome," I blurted stupidly, acting as if Brooke had just shown me some really cool video online or something like that rather than just telling me that she was currently carrying my child.
She raised her eyebrows at me, giving me a look as to say that that wasn't exactly what she had had in mind when she told me to say something, but before she could scold me, or else tell me to reformulate my sentence in a manner that was more appropriate, Sam intercepted the situation with her own tone of approval.
"Yeah Brooke, that's pretty awesome… congratulations."
She echoed my own words, and whether to poke fun at me or to try and save my ass from the wrath of a hormonal Brooke destined to yell at me for saying the wrong thing, I would never know, but either way I was appreciative.
"When did you find out?" Sam asked, coming up with all of the legitimate questions that were needed to be asked here while meanwhile, I could only stand there with my mouth hanging open like a complete idiot even though I knew that I should have been the one asking all of these questions instead of Sam.
"Last night," She spoke, turning her head between the two of us as to address us both, but nodding appreciatively at Sam's efforts to keep the words flowing because Brooke needed words of support and approval right now, not the general silence that I had to offer, "I went to the doctor with Haley earlier this afternoon and they confirmed it."
"How far along are you?" Sam continued alongside her stretch of asking all of the important questions that I couldn't quite process enough to ask right now although my ears were still poised with the answers that I so desperately wanted to hear.
"The doctor said that I'm at only about six weeks right now so we still have a while to go… She gave me a tentative due date though… October 2nd."
I was torn by the information; one side of me disappointed because if it were up to me, I would have had this baby be born tomorrow… the idea that I'd have to wait another thirty weeks or so was actually physically painful to me… of course, on the other hand, I was ecstatic, already beginning forming the tentative countdown to October 2nd in the back of my head.
"What is it?" I spluttered what had thus far been the only tangible contribution to the conversation that I could come up with, the absolutely ridiculousness of my words causing Brooke and Sam to both turn sharply towards me with a look of confusion that clearly indicated that they had no idea what I was trying to say here.
"I mean… I mean…" I scrambled to right my brain again, but I couldn't help but feel like Brooke's still-lingering announcement had hit me like a bag of bricks straight upside my head… "Is it a boy or a girl?"
I got my meaning across, watching as Brooke took a single step forwards and gave me the softest of grins behind the tiniest shake of her head that indicated to me that Brooke didn't have the answer to the only question that I really wanted to know.
"Sorry Julian," Her words confirmed my initial idea and I could practically feel my face falling in response, "The doctor said that it'll be a few weeks at least until we find that out… But hey, I didn't walk out completely empty handed you know… here, look at this."
I looked down at her, slightly confused towards what she meant as I watched her turn back down towards her bag where she dug inside of it and pulled a small picture out from inside of it so that realization suddenly sparked through me like lightning.
I looked at the ultrasound image carefully, my eyes not moving from the picture in front of me as I clasped it strongly between each of my hands and felt the tears sting at my eyes even harder than they already had been so that a few of them even managed to fall down my face…
The image in front of me was no more than the tiniest of white dots; no distinguishable features of any kind of human being quite yet, no indication that this would one day become the son that I played catch with or the daughter that I'd walk down the aisle one day… But still it was all right there in front of me; the images dancing across my head so vivid that I could physically see them; the possibilities, the future, the emotions… it was amazing really what this small picture of the tiniest of white dots with no distinguishable features of any kind of human being quite yet could actually do to me… what it did do to me.
"Look, you can almost see it already," Brooke spoke, leaning over my shoulder and pointing towards the image at the center of the picture that I couldn't seem to rip my eyes off of no matter how hard I tried, "It has your huge feet and big forehead."
"I hope not," I laughed but really though… I was serious, "No, I have a feeling that our baby is going to grow up to be just as beautiful as her mother."
"Or just as handsome as his father," She added her two cents to the end of my sentence, leaning her body even further into my own, allowing me to wrap my arm around her shoulder and help pull her to contort her body comfortably into my own.
"I love you Brooke Davis, did you know that?"
"You know, I'm starting to think that you're not so bad yourself Julian Baker."
I couldn't help but smile down towards her, sweeping her towards me with a single, movie-like fluidity that brought her directly in front of me so that I could look down into her sparkling eyes, lean forwards, and kiss her like I have never kissed her before in my entire life… and although I knew that I've done that a million times before, it suddenly felt brand new to me, different, better even…
Maybe it had something to do with the picture of our child still clasped firmly in my hands that was pressing against the small space between our bodies, or maybe it had something to do with the simple knowledge that we were about to seal the deal on our steadily growing family that we had already been expanding on for months now, but whatever it was, it felt good… really good.
I pulled away from Brooke only so that I could stare back down at the ultrasound image, finding myself unable to go more than a minute or so without looking at that fuzzy haze of black and grey matter that I couldn't even properly identify as much of anything quite yet but still felt unbelievably proud to have taken a part in making it, and all at once, with a sudden force that nearly knocked me flat on my ass, it hit me…
When you truly think about it, it's absolutely amazing how small you are in retrospect to the rest of the world, and if you're daring, and start thinking about your relative size as compared to the entirety of the universe, well then it's even more baffling… and don't even get me started about all that lies beyond the boundaries of the universe, because even though before today, I never quite believed in anything like that, well today it seemed that all of the proof I needed was right in front of me, represented in the form of a small photograph clutched in between me clenched hands leaving me overwhelmed in my attempts to try and come up with how something much bigger than I could ever be, much bigger than I could even imagine could have ever created something so absolutely perfect.
