Hey guys sorry about the wait but I've been in Wilmington the past week and a half or so and it was freaking amazing so I didn't have a lot of writing time on my hands. Anyway, thanks for being patient with me, hope you enjoy!
Chapter 54: If You Are Something, Don't Ask For Nothing
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
BROOKE
If there was one thing that I've learned in these past twenty four hours or so since discovering the news of my pregnancy it was this; I was absolutely, 100% clueless.
And as I progressed through the hours since I'd found out, this fact seemed to be nothing short of being constantly enforced either, especially now as I pushed a shopping cart full to the absolute brim with all of the teas and the vitamins, the herbal supplements, antioxidants, and good knows what else that I suddenly felt obliged to buy after spending my night on the internet which told me if I didn't take enough of this or that my baby would be born with spina bifida, or cerebral palsy, or six heads and no legs, or whatever other horror story I'd managed to come across.
"Haley what brand of folic acid should I buy?" I hollered my question down the length of the supermarket aisle, inadvertently including all of the other shoppers around me into the privacy of my grocery list.
"It doesn't matter Brooke." She replied to me the same way that she'd been replying to all of my other strikingly similar questions that I'd been throwing at her for the past hour or so that we've been there.
"Okay…" I responded, my voice falling as I grabbed the bottle that I thought looked the prettiest and threw it into the cart, "How about Vitamin D?"
"It doesn't matter Brooke." She spoke this time with a slight laugh behind her voice directed towards my persistence despite her assurance, watching me with a bemused sort of grin as I analyzed the two different bottles in each hand before ultimately settling on both.
I shrugged casually as I tried to squeeze the small plastic bottles into the over-stuffed shopping car before getting behind it and giving it a jolt forwards, wheeling down the length of the aisle, parting ways with the shelves through of all of the things I needed to promote my baby's healthy growth for the first time in nearly a half an hour.
"So have you talked to Peyton yet?" Haley asked, trying to make casual conversation as the two of us rounded into the produce section, leaving me to analyze which exact apple I believed would be good for the baby and which would be deadly.
"No," I responded airily, rotating the fruit delicately around in my palm in an effort to get a good look at its every mark, its every bruise, before ultimately declaring it defective and therefore dangerous so that I discarded it back into the stand below, "She's been in South Carolina with Lucas and Sawyer all week… Karen, Andy, and Lily docked in Charleston on Sunday… I think she told me that she was coming home tomorrow or Monday or something, I can't remember… I don't know, I just figured that this was just news that I should probably tell her in person and not over the phone, you know?"
Haley nodded her head alongside my explanation, following me slowly as I guided her across shelves and shelves of juices and sodas and energy drinks…
"Does it matter what kind of coffee I drink?" I scanned my head across the various brands, picking two different cans up in each hand before turning behind me in order to ask Haley yet another question.
"Brooke…" Haley laughed at my apparent naivety, walking over towards me in order to pluck the coffee cans out of my hands before re-shelving it and finding a different can, picking it off of the shelf and placing it between my still outstretched hands… "You're not supposed to drink caffeine when you're pregnant."
"Really?" I spluttered, glancing up at her with my mouth open in surprise by the news that I had absolutely no idea about before tilting my head back down towards the can Haley had just placed between my hands which had the word "decaffeinated" popping in bold, vibrant letters directly back into my eyes.
"Really," She nodded affirmatively back to me, watching as I could only continue to simply stare back down at the label, feeling as tears formed a thin layer over my eyes in response to something so simple…
"Brooke… Brooke are you alright?"
"I don't know anything about being pregnant Haley!" I hadn't exactly yelled by my voice definitely was a tad bit louder than it probably should have been, echoing down the enclosed aisle so that heads all around me turned in order to shoot me glances of estranged confusion, "How the hell am I gonna take care of a baby, Haley I can't even take care of a damn teenager!"
"Brooke! Brooke come on, listen to me!" Haley tried not to laugh at my unwarranted melt down for fear of my already teetering emotional stability as she grabbed me by the shoulders and literally shook me back into reality… Of course, Haley has been pregnant before, she knew what an unexpected emotional breakdown looked like when she saw one, and therefore, she knew how to deal with it, "Listen to me Brooke; you are an absolutely amazing mom to Sam, okay? And you sure as hell are going to be just as amazing of a mom to this baby… Trust me Brooke, I know that you have been put through the test here in these past couple of months with everything that's been going on, but if anybody can do this Brooke, it's you."
I visibly relaxed inside of Haley's arms, suddenly very much so aware of the fact that I was having a very obvious, very public nervous breakdown now that my adrenaline level was declining… In fact, I'd just noticed all of the faces up and down the aisle that were sneaking quick glances at me in order to investigate the cause of all of the commotion, their eyes widening with the realization of just who it was they were looking at before they averted their gaze just as suddenly and pretended as if they hadn't seen anything… But I knew what was going through all of their heads right now, I knew that their minds were currently reeling with the fact that they'd just seen Brooke Davis crying in the supermarket about being pregnant… great, just what I needed.
"I guess that all of the celebrity gossip columns will be buzzing tomorrow…" I joked towards Haley, noticing as she stared angrily at curious passerby, shooting them angry glances every time their eyes lingered on me just a little bit too long…
"Just ignore them Brooke, they don't know what they're talking about."
I just nodded in response to her comment, silently acknowledging the fact that her advice would be easier to carry out than she would ever know… I knew that I wasn't going to be in any gossip news tomorrow; I knew that this story would never get beyond the confines of the supermarket… hell, I would be surprised if it even got beyond the confines of this here aisle…
Nobody talked about me anymore… people don't even recognize me… it's as if they have selective vision all of a sudden or something… Here's how it goes these days, I got out, and they all avert their eyes, pretend as if they don't see me, pretend as if they don't even know me anymore.
I guess that when you think about it, it is pretty easy to forget… I mean, when you have your own problems to face, your own lives to live, other people just don't tend to make the top of your priority list… but sometimes, the problems of other people are just so overwhelming that you just have to ignore them, and sometimes the only way to do so is to forget about them all together…
I mean, I won't pretend as if I don't forget about people every now and then, it's easy to do after all, especially when you're traveling down a road that is anything but certain for yourself, let alone for others… And now, even though I knew that I complained endlessly about the fact that the press was hounding on me before, well the fact that they simply just seemed to forget about me all together one day… well that was even worse.
"Hey," Haley called my attention back onto her, apparently noticing that I'd just been staring out into space for a while there, "Let's just get out of here okay?"
She probably thought that I was taking to all of this staring hard, that I wasn't used to everybody looking at me like I was a damn china doll everywhere I went by now, but that wasn't it… In fact, it was the exact opposite… but I was in no mood to explain all of this to her right now, so instead, I just forced my focus back over towards the conscious universe and smiled and nodded back towards her.
"Yeah," I told her softly, lugging my cart in the direction of the cash registers, "Let's go."
A half an hour in line and about $300 worth of organic food and several supplements later, I had managed to slink away from the psychosis of the inhabitants of your average, local supermarket, and after successfully, although slightly guiltily avoiding Haley's invitation to go over to her house with the claim that I had to go to my store and get some work done… well, I did actually go down to my store because I really did need to get myself down there, that much hadn't been a lie, but the thing was, I hadn't been entirely truthful to Haley… because although I really did have a shit ton of work on my plate, I had no intentions of actually doing it…
No, instead I had a very different goal… and a month or two ago, if you had told me that I would be driving out of my way just to go down and make sure that my mother was one of the first people that I would be telling that I was pregnant, well then I would have told you that you were absolutely crazy… But here I was; driving out of my way just to go down and make sure that my mother was one of the first people that I would be telling that I was pregnant…
The overhead bell rang above me, the noise traveling throughout the store as I opened the main door and spotted Victoria instantly at my work desk in the corner which was currently littered with colored pencils and designing pens, scribbling furiously at several random pieces of paper without so much as glancing up upon my entrance as if she hadn't even heard it…
"I didn't know that you were into design Victoria," I called her attention away from her work with a witty, sarcastic comment that made me very aware of the fact that I had been spending way too much time with Sam lately, "If I did I would have been a lot more worried about my job a long time ago."
Victoria jumped at the sudden announcement of my presence, standing to her feet and shuffling frantically in an effort to cover up her drawings from my prying eyes as if she were embarrassed by them or something.
"It's nothing, it's nothing." She spoke abruptly, sounding unusually flustered in a manner that made me raise a very suspicious eyebrow up at her, "It's just a little project that I've been working on, it's not even finished yet… so… yeah, it's nothing… So how are you feeling? Any better?"
I stared at her, completely dumbfounded by the sheer amount of words that had just spilled out of her mouth in such a short period of time so that I was stunned silent by her actual question, mainly because I was still trying to process the things that she'd been saying at the beginning of her little shpeel by the time that she was already at the end of it.
"Um… I'm fine." I shrugged us into silence, both of our words slowly sinking into our head as the origins of why I had initially come to this store to begin with seeped back inside of me, erasing all of the mystery of Victoria's secret project with a spark that reminded exactly what this moment meant…
It was funny actually, I was suddenly reminded of all of those times, the ones that seemed to be so long ago now, when I was still in high school and feared beyond feared this exact moment… having to tell my parents that I was pregnant… Because even back then when they hadn't been there and when I was constantly being tested with the idea that they didn't even care about me, there was still something exceedingly terrifying about a sixteen year old girl having to tell her mom and dad that they screwed up big time…
And the reason that it was so funny now was because… well, I think that I would go ahead and safely say that this was one of the most important moments of my life now… for a good reason anyway.
"Hello? Brooke, are you even listening to me… Brooke?" I hadn't even noticed that Victoria had been calling out to me until she started yelling, her voice physically focusing my attention fully back onto her.
"Huh?" I snapped my head back up towards her as she stared at me with a look of concern glistening across her face.
"Are you sure that you're feeling better Brooke? You still look a little bit… I don't know… out of it."
"I'm fine Victoria, I'm fine… trust me… In fact, I'm more than fine." A small smile appeared at the corners of my mouth at the mere thought of the true reason for my happiness and I once again found myself beginning to drift off into space until Victoria broke out into a tangent stemming my inability to express myself any further that snapped me right back out of it.
"Well have you been to a doctor at all yet Brooke? Because I for one truly believe that you should get an all clear from somebody who actually knows what they're doing before you so much as even think about going in to see Samantha again… And you know, you should probably go ahead and do that quickly with that poor girl stuck in the hospital like that… Now, in case there is something wrong with you, and you do need a few extra days to clear it out of your system, I've been thinking, if Sam does get released today, she could stay with me for a little while… at least until you're feeling at your best again and find some time to air out your house a little bit and…"
"I'm pregnant."
My words stopped Victoria dead in her tracks like I knew they would… after all, that had been the plan all along because my head was starting to hurt from her constantly treating me like I had small pox or tuberculosis or some kind of other crazy infectious disease that had been eradicated decades ago when I in fact knew that it was nothing more than the exact opposite of that.
For a while there, she actually stood her ground up next to me, each of us waiting for the other to make the first move until finally, it was Victoria that took the first step forwards… and then another one, and then another until finally she was directly in front of me, able to wrap me up firmly into a deep hug, using her hands against my back to push my body further into hers so that for a second there, I couldn't help but tense at this unfamiliar feeling before finally relaxing into it, returning the motion and leaning into how surprisingly good this actually felt.
"Congratulations Brooke," She spoke softly, sincere as she rubbed her palms gently up and down over my back, "Really I mean it, if anybody deserves this right now it's you and Julian."
"Really?" My voice emitted as childish, desperate even just to hear that tone of approval coming from Victoria's voice once again so that she could ease my racing mind, dissolve everything screaming inside of my head that was the exact opposite of everything she'd been actually saying to me.
"Of course," She responded immediately, her voice rising with an inclination that told me that she didn't quite understand why I would ever even question that, "Are you kidding me Brooke after everything that you've been through… you deserve something that will make you truly happy and I can see it with you and Sam… you're at your happiest when you're being a mom… even when it's when you're sitting in a hospital room… I don't know where you got it from Brooke, truly I don't, but you're a fabulous mother… that baby doesn't know how lucky it is that it landed with you."
"Have you been to a doctor yet?" Victoria asked, spilling with immediate concern over the technicalities of it all now that the initial grace period of celebration was done and over with… Meanwhile, I couldn't help but cling onto Victoria for a long time afterwards, positively clinging onto the very fabric of her shirt, not wanting to ever let go of this cyclic notion of completion; the idea of getting praise, of getting approval from my very own mother… an idea that I have been looking for the past 23 years of my life…
"Yeah, I went yesterday with Haley, she said that I was about six weeks along and that everything looked okay, she just gave me a couple recommendations for some herbal teas and supplements and things like that to try and lower my blood pressure and reduce my blood pressure… you know, things like that."
I watched Victoria's face as it fell instantly; dropping from one of blissful approval to an instantaneous turn towards concern towards the news that apparently took her by surprise although I thought it would have been much more obvious given my situation…
"Brooke…" She placed an emphasis of concern in every single letter of my name that she spoke and I understood, really I did, because trust me, I had already considered, and probably was still considering every single one of the concerns that she currently had.
"I know Victoria, I know okay?" But really, had she honestly thought that I hadn't already thought about the fact that I had one of my children currently growing bigger and bigger inside of me with each passing second while meanwhile the other was falling further and further away?
"Brooke I'm just saying, taking care of yourself is incredibly important… not just for your baby's health, but for yours too okay? Doing all of that is a stressful enough thing as it is in itself… I just really need to know Brooke… Are you absolutely certain that you're ready to balance taking care of Sam and this baby?"
"Do I really have a choice?" I smirked alongside a chortle amidst the seriousness of my statement, trying to indicate towards Victoria that this absolutely was not the first time that the idea of the ridiculous inconvenience of the timing of this situation entered my head.
"You always have a choice Brooke." I was confused as to what exactly it was that she was implying, but I stood my ground and waited for an explanation, "You have the option of letting people in to help you when you need it… And I know you're stubborn, and I know that you're not particularly keen on asking for help, but I'm gonna tell you this now Brooke, you need it. You need to ask for it, okay?"
I breathed out what was probably an over-dramatic sigh of relief at Victoria's extending of a helping hand, practically falling into her arms in a quick hug that I could tell surprised her based on the fact that she jumped a little bit underneath my open arms.
I couldn't help but smirk at her hesitancy, subconsciously glancing over her shoulder so that my eyes caught a quick glance back towards the table that I had almost forgotten all about that Victoria had been so diligently working at before I had to come in here and interrupt her.
"What are you working on over here Victoria?" I asked her, pulling away in order to walk over and observe just what it was for myself before she could answer for herself… I hadn't meant to change the subject, really I hadn't, but I had a short attention span and the curiosity of a small child, two factors that were definitely starting to get the best of me…
My eyes danced across the various sketches that had been strewn in a precariously organized fashion across the table where they lingered for a brief moment before finally recognizing a few of them as my own… the ones that I had been working on in the months that had otherwise been designated to sitting in a hospital doing absolutely nothing, the ones that had never actually made it to review for design although I thought that was a sin because, and forgive my lack of humbleness here… they were damn good…
In fact, the only difference between these images and the original ones was that I was suddenly noticing an unusually high amount of orange coming from within them… orange that I definitely do not remember putting there…
"I thought you hated orange." I mumbled vaguely without even actually realizing that I was speaking, "What's with the sudden change of heart."
"Well… I didn't want to mention it to you until it was completely finished… you already have so much on your plate book… but… I guess it's sort of a little… well surprise that I've been working on." She rambled nearly incoherently in her blatant exposure, her words emitting in a manner that was confusing me more and more with each passing second, "I mean I guess when you think about it, it's for Sam really but…"
The simple mention of Sam's name was enough to spark a revelation inside of me, dawning glistening over my eyes as I suddenly began feeling downright stupid for actually having missed Victoria's now obvious intentions before… I mean, how could I have forgotten that orange was the official color designated for leukemia awareness when it had been staring me right in the face for the past three months?
"It's going to be included in the spring line." Victoria continued without pause so that I had the slightest feeling that she knew that I knew exactly where she was going with this although she never actually had to say anything, "The board came up with the tag name 'Clothes over Cancer' for the brand which I thought was tacky but they refused to change it so I don't know… Who hired those people anyway?"
I smirked up at her, way too appreciative of all that she had put in for this campaign to point out the fact that it was indeed her that was responsible for hiring "those people."
"The line is going to be completely orange in order to support leukemia awareness and it's been designed so that a little bit more than half of all of the proceeds will end up going to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in order to support pediatric cancer research."
"Victoria this is amazing…" I spoke through my shock, too busy filtering gently through the endless papers supporting this new line to emit any completely processed words that would truly be able to believe the gratitude that I was currently feeling, "Thank you so much."
I think that the only reason that I was actually able to finally rip my eyes away from all of these images and official documents below me was because all at once, a wave, a sudden desire washed over my body so powerful that even the gigantic swelling of my over-emotional, hormone-sensitive heart couldn't distract from the feeling.
And all at once I acted on it, feeling as if I might explode if I didn't. I launched my body forwards a step or two, pistoned towards Victoria, and threw my arms around her neck so sharply that the two of us staggered backwards upon the impact…
I felt as Victoria pulled me closer into her arms, beckoning me in silence to lean further into her as the tears filtered underneath my eyelids alongside feelings that I've never actually felt before but which felt good none-the-less…
The feeling was so foreign, so new, yet so welcomed that I couldn't help but dig my face further and further into her shirt with each passing second, I couldn't help the tears as they fell harder and harder into this ever growing puddle of water beneath my cheeks, and I couldn't help but feel this powerful emotion bubbling around the entirety of my body that was constantly telling me that maybe my family was finally starting to come to its full circle, that maybe I was finally getting something good in my life after all.
JULIAN
I have been absolutely walking on nothing more than pure air ever since yesterday right after Brooke told me that she was pregnant… that I was gonna be a dad… To be completely honest with you, I didn't even get any sleep last night mainly because I had been so convinced that my skull had been filled to capacity with nothing less than pure helium the way I felt all night, that I was afraid if I let my guard down, it would literally pop off of my neck and float away like a damn hot air balloon or something…
Of course, being this giddy was quite difficult when you were stuck in the confines of a small hospital unit all day as I had found myself, sitting with Sam as she currently embarked on her third round of dialysis and her second to last one of the week.
"Where's Brooke been all day?" Sam asked me suddenly, marking the first sound that had entered the room in a while now so that my head snapped up with a crack of my vertebrae in response to the inquiry.
"Hm?" I asked vaguely for her to repeat herself, my head, so typical of me these past 24 hours, too busy dancing amidst the clouds to be truly sure that I'd caught the message behind her question correctly.
"I was just thinking that I haven't seen Brooke all day and she never actually told me that she wasn't coming over later… It's just weird for her to be M.I.A. that's all."
"Um… I think that her and Haley went over to the store to pick up some stuff she needs for the baby… We were on the computer all night last night looking up everything that Brooke needs… I think that reading up about all of the things that can happen if you do the wrong things scared Brooke into buying the entirety of Whole Foods."
I laughed casually at my own comment, not even considering the fact that my statement could have been ill-perceived until Sam responded to it with nothing short of complete silence.
I looked up only when I became fully aware of the fact that Sam wasn't about to say anything more on the matter, something that I took with surprise well, because Sam always had something to say on the matter.
"Hey are you alright?" I asked, forcing our eyes to connect quickly before ultimately, it was her that turned her head away, but not before I noticed that she was suddenly looking very upset although I wasn't quite yet good enough to tell if she was simply feeling sick or if she truly had been offended by something that I'd said.
"I'm fine," She'd spoken abruptly, and as she emitted her words, she'd done so with a huff that told me that she was the exact opposite of fine, an idea that was confirmed to me when she swung around in her bed, rolling onto her side so that her back was facing me; a silent attempt to let me know that she wanted this conversation to be over before it even began, and I couldn't help but sigh audibly in the realization that something much deeper than I'd originally anticipated was going on here.
"Sam come on, talk to me here what's going on with you?" I pushed her with the hopes that I would sound sensitive enough to get her to trust me to spill her guts out to me.
"I told you Julian, I'm fine." She mumbled into her pillow without making so much as twitching in a motion to face back towards me like I wanted her to do.
I struggled to produce a follow up, struggled to find something to say that would ultimately forcing her to open up to me without it being obvious that I was indeed forcing her into it…
"Sam, does this have anything to do with… you know, Brooke's pregnancy at all?" I tried desperately to put two and two together; linking Sam's' sudden distress with my mentioning of her being pregnant to begin with, carefully developing a question that I knew would prove impossible for her to avoid.
"Kind of…" I considered this much of an answer progress at the very least, especially considering the fact that as she spoke, she shuffled her body a little bit back towards my general direction so that she was actually almost looking at me again, "I've just been thinking a lot lately Julian, and I just… I don't know, I just hope that I'll… you know… still be around once this baby actually is born… It sounds stupid, I know it sounds stupid, but what if I never even get a chance to meet this kid?"
My heart sunk, not because I didn't think that her fears were warranted, but because actually hearing her say it made it much more real than I ever actually wanted to think about.
"Sam…" I sighed mainly because I was more upset with myself for being unable to think of anything more than that to actually say. I subconsciously beat my brain into submission, begging myself to produce words that would actually be somewhat meaningful, but fearing that I would say the wrong thing; or worse… nothing at all.
"Sam of course you'll still be here when Brooke has that baby. And even more, I'm gonna make sure that you're the first person to meet your little brother or sister, okay? I know you will be… really I do."
"I'm not so sure Julian," She projected relentlessly, her hesitancy persistent amidst my best efforts to procure some confidence in the girl, "You can't tell me that I've been the only one around here noticing that things haven't exactly been going my way for a while now."
"Sam… where's all of this coming from?" I couldn't help but ask; after all, I've always known Sam to have such confidence, such faith in herself, especially when it came to the often times impossibly exhausting task of getting better… I guess that must be why her statement left me so confused, why it made my heart possibly drop with the question as to whether this really was a new development in her thought processing or if I'd simply been closing my eyes to her feelings these past couple of weeks simply because I didn't have the strength to confront them.
"I don't know," She sighed with a shake of her head, her face telling me that she'd realized the second that the words were out of her mouth that she'd broken that threshold of the emotional barrier that she normally refused to allow herself to reveal to anybody, even me or Brooke, "Sorry… I didn't mean to bring it up, I was just thinking out loud that's all… Forget about it, okay?"
"Sam I can't just forget about something like that… Listen, it's clear how much this is affecting you and how upset you are by all of this and I don't want you to ever think that you can't come to me and talk to me when something is bothering you so I want to let you know that you can talk to me okay?"
I stared at her determinedly; I was quite sure that her eyes had produced a slight, yet extra layer of wetness across them, but still, it wasn't enough to allow me to determine whether or not they were actual tears or if it was all just a trick of the light stemming from the angle that her head was currently making with my own as she kept her eyes firmly out of the sight of mine.
"I don't know why I'm thinking like this Julian… and I'm happy for you and Brooke, really, I'm more happy than you'll know, and I'm excited to have a little brother or a sister but… it's gonna sound crazy, but I've just been getting worried that ever since Brooke told us that she was pregnant and that once she actually has this baby… that, you know, she won't need me anymore."
I opened my mouth alongside my slackening jaw immediately, ready to profess aggressively if need be that that was the absolute last thing that was on Brooke's mind right now and by default, it should be the last thing on Sam's too… The thing was, the words never actually came out, because after the shock of Sam's revelation started to wear off and my brain slowly began turning back to its on position, I realized that I could say that until I was blue in the face but it wouldn't have made any difference, because even though using a child to in any way, shape, or form to replace Sam wasn't even on the radar of Brooke's mindset, I knew that Sam had the right to worry; it was natural for her to worry; after all, she'd just gotten Brooke to herself, losing her again was easily number one on Sam's fears list; I knew that, and apparently, Sam did too.
"Sam I need you to know that Brooke and I having this baby isn't gonna make either one of us love you any less than we already do… I know that I can speak for Brooke for damn certain here too, you will always be her daughter no matter what biology ever says about that, and she will always love you and she'll sure as hell always consider you her first child… and you know what; I know that I will too."
I immediately believed my little speech to be thought-provoking, insightful, probably one of the best that I'd ever made now that I thought about it, but when Sam's face didn't change, I had to reconsider the methods by which I was praising myself over here, because I was quite sure that it hadn't had the same effect on Sam as it had on me.
"What else is on your mind Sam?" I continued to push her, probably beyond any manner by which she actually wanted to be pushed at the moment but I could tell just by looking at her that there was more, and if she wasn't done, well, I wasn't either.
"That was it." She shrugged, trying desperately to contort her face into a failed look of neutrality that I saw through before it was even there.
"You're a terrible liar you know Sam," It was true; despite the fact that she'd previously been one of the best liars I had ever known, Brooke had worn the kid down, that's for sure, now she wasn't even good enough to get a fast one past me, "I know that there's something else going on inside of that head of yours."
"What if Brooke stops fighting for me?" She blurted he words so abruptly that I was still too busy trying to come up with more ways to coerce Sam, thinking she'd need a little extra push, that her words took me by complete and total surprise even though I had been asking for them all along.
"What do you mean?" I requested clarification, trying to look through that head of hers and positively read her mind so that I could actually predict exactly what it was she was hinting at here.
"I mean what if Brooke has this baby and she realizes that now she has a kid to fall back on so that she doesn't have to spend all of this time and all of this energy on me anymore… Julian I won't be able to do this without her, I know I won't… What am I gonna do if that happens Julian?"
"Oh my God Sam…" I couldn't help but allow my jaw to drop and my expression of absolute horror spill from my mouth in response to this crazy scenario that Sam had been fearing beyond fearing, an idea that was so completely out there that I wasn't even that sure how she'd managed to get it into her head to begin with, "Sam where did you even come up with an idea like that?"
"Think about it Julian!" She damn near screamed at me so that from her position amidst the rows and rows of chairs holding the various other patients currently receiving their dialysis treatments, a few of the closer heads turned towards us inquisitively, "Do you have any idea how exhausting taking care of a baby is gonna be for the two of you? It's like taking care of me times like… a thousand. Face it Julian, there's no way in hell that you guys are gonna be able to take care of two dependent kids which is exactly what you're gonna have with the baby and me."
"Sam look at me." I spoke sternly, the essence of a fatherly tone behind my voice so that she practically had no choice but to turn her head and stare directly at me, "This is absolutely not going to come down to being a choice between taking care of you and taking care of this baby. Brooke would never, ever, under any circumstances leave you alone for any reason… not now, and not ever, okay? Sam, if anything it's gonna be the exact opposite because I happen to know for a fact that Brooke wants more than anything else in this entire world to turn us into a real family, and having you be a part of that family is the most important thing to Brooke in this entire world, you have to believe me when I tell you that, okay?"
"Okay," She spoke only after a couple of seconds, nodding her head shortly and looking at least a little bit more confident in herself this time around as she dabbed cautiously at her eyes with the backs of her hands.
"Are you sure?" I had to be absolutely certain because I couldn't end this leaving her with even the slightest feeling of lingering unimportance.
"Yeah," She assured me, plastering the most confident smile that she could possibly manage onto her face, "I'm sorry… I mean, I know that that would never actually happen but… but the thought came into my head and then I just couldn't get it out and so I got worried… and you know me, I mean, when I worry I ramble so…"
"Hey you have nothing to be sorry for alright?" She grimaced up at me, an expression of sheepish embarrassment on her face despite the fact that she nodded her head towards me anyway… I could tell that that lingering feeling of concern was still there; perhaps less than what it had been, but still there none the less… The thing was, I was starting to think that the only way to get rid of it was for her to hear it from Brooke herself.
"Sam, come here," I took half a step closer to her, my arms outstretched towards her as I leaned into her just far enough to allow me to wrap my arms around her and pull her close, "You know Sam, if you're feeling that strongly about this still, I think that you should talk to Brooke about it."
I felt her nod her head against my chest as she subconsciously buried it deeper inside of my skin.
"I know," She mumbled into the fabric of my shirt, "I just hope that you're right Julian… I mean when you said that all Brooke really wanted was to turn us into a real family, you know… I guess it's just that… I don't know, I've never really had a real family before and I'm starting to think that that's all I really want too."
"Me too Sam… Me too." I felt my arms subconsciously wrap around her just a little bit tighter than I already had been, feeling a strong sensation that I couldn't quite describe flood throughout my entire body as if a bolt of lightning had just flashed across the entirety of my insides… The sensation was so foreign to me that for a while there, I couldn't even place it until suddenly, all at once, I identified it as that raging paternal yearning, the fatherly instinct that I'd known had been somewhere inside of me this whole time…
I don't know, sitting here with Sam in my arms, with talk of our future potential family still lingering on our tongues, well it made me truly realize just how much starting this family meant not only to Sam, but to me as well…
She closed her eyes and put the smallest of smirks on her face that made her features glow, and I mean truly glow; the rays of light emitting out of her body exemplified by the paleness of her skin, and in that moment, my heart swelled with a broad smile of my own…
The truth was that whenever Sam smiled, I couldn't help but do so myself and I couldn't help but wonder…
Was this what it was like to be a father?
