June 22nd 2021

Chapter 173
Our Beginnings Into Love

Granny Lizzie brought Marianne out to the hospital while they were all waiting, arriving after Lucas had made it back from Houston. They had been through too many of these bouts of waiting out a birth to think it a practical idea for them to have a toddler in the mix. The wait was a tedious one, and all it would take would be the opportunity for a feeling of restlessness to settle into her and then the rest of the time would be about getting her back on track, which might be easier said than done in a hospital waiting area.

But she had to be here, just had to. That baby being born nearby would be her cousin, yes, but for how close they all were, and how much Sam cared for his little niece, his child and Marianne might as well be siblings. Naturally, she needed to be here, to meet the newborn.

"Did you find it?" Maya asked her grandmother, even as her face was a giant smile directed to her daughter. Marianne saw her first and her legs started batting along before she was ever put on her feet to dash toward her. "Hi, pumpkin," Maya laughed and kissed the side of her face once she had her in her lap.

"Yes, it was right where you said, I just grabbed it though," Elizabeth reached into her bag and pulled out the folded shirt. "I didn't get it on her yet." She was giddy, anxious. This would be her second great grandchild to be born. Maya could easily imagine she'd been like this the night Marianne was born, too, though she hadn't been able to take it in for herself at the time.

"Oh, that's fine, we can take care of that here, can't we?" Maya looked to her grandmother and back to her daughter. "Let's go get you changed, yeah? So that you can meet your cousin? Your very first cousin, that'll be something, huh?"

It was just over an hour after this latest arrival before Sam appeared. On the whole, Marianne didn't have time to grow restless for a second. After her mother had gone and taken her to swap out her shirt, checking on her diaper while she was at it, she'd been brought back to the waiting area, where she as good as became the star of the hour, walking from person to person whether she knew them or not. She would wave, and smile, and poke at the drawings on her shirt.

"Baby," she would prod the little cartoon of a swaddled up baby. "Annie," she would then do the same to the image of herself, standing next to the bundle with a smile. She would respond to her full name, always, but she couldn't say it herself, not yet, so they'd taken to using the diminutive around her, too, seeing if she'd understand it could refer to herself as much as 'Marianne' did. She did understand, and so it was how she would refer to herself, not 'I', just 'Annie'. With how it had been inspired out of the nickname her Great Grandpa Jax would call her namesake, it felt natural.

She repeated this exercise, again and again, and everyone in the waiting area would watch her go, and smile, and laugh. As much as it pleased those who knew her to watch her make this circuit, it was just so wonderful to see the effect she had on those who were strangers to her. When she made it all the way around, she went to her father, and Lucas lifted her up to sit at his knee, and she leaned to him. They weren't going to incite her to take a nap, though they wouldn't stop her either. For now, she just played at tracing her finger around the tattoos on her father's inner arm. The clock, the owl, the nightingale, the little swan…

"Look, there's Sam," Junior spoke up suddenly, pointing to where he'd spotted his little sister's husband. Almost as one, several of them stood and took a few steps out of the waiting area. Dot and Emmett Sr., Abigail, Elizabeth, Junior and Alex, Cara, Maya…

It was probably just in her head, but as he approached them Maya swore her little brother had grown three inches. He was not the same person he'd been the last time she'd seen him just a few hours ago. He was a father now, and it just inhabited him, like his chest had expanded to allow for how his heart expanded first, all around that newborn babe. His eyes were bright with tears and his face didn't know how to keep from smiling. As much as he'd gone through the same fears any first time parent was bound to go through, he had been ready to be a father, and now he was.

Abigail was front and center, and she enveloped her first born in her arms, the better to let him ride out the emotions that had taken him over at the prospect of bringing the happy news. When he was finally able to pull back and look at them, he was just buoyant on his feet.

"We have a little girl…" he announced, and the words swept them all up in a swell of emotions, even Sam himself as he had now said it out loud for the first time. Maya got to embrace him next, and he held to her about as tight as he'd done his mother. Right about now, she imagined her face had to be a mess, with tears spilling over as they were.

"And me without my costume," she joked, making him laugh as they recalled the Uncle Sam outfit that he'd been wearing the night Marianne was born.

She would be among the first to be escorted over to the room, along with her little sister, her stepmother, and her grandmother. They would have brought Marianne, too, but they decided it would be better to wait and bring her in a little while, with Lucas. Sam had asked for this little group to come and meet the baby girl first of all, and so they went with him. Cara slipped her hand in her big sister's and Maya smiled and squeezed back.

"You good?" she teased. Cara nodded rapidly. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Cara gave her arm a tug. They were going to see their brother's child, and Maya might have been the big sister on any day, but then Cara had known Sam longer than her, known him all her life, all the way back to when it was just the two of them.

When Sam led them into the room, they came to find Dora sitting entirely enthralled with the little one cradled in her arms. They were off in their own world, just the two of them, and it almost felt wrong to interrupt and pull them out of it. Sam walked around the bed, into her line of sight, and she looked up at him before turning her head and discovering her visitors.

"Hi…" she spoke, sounding in one word like someone exhausted and wide awake at the same time. When she turned back to Sam, he asked with a look, and she nodded. She passed him the baby, who they could now see was sound asleep. Sam could hardly tear his eyes away from her, but he carried her around and set her into his mother's arms. Even as he'd let her go, even knowing she was one hundred percent secure where she was, his hands seemed to want to hang in mid air, ready to reach for her if he had to.

For a few moments, none of them even spoke, as much out of an attempt not to wake the baby and of a speechlessness brought on by the sight of her. It was too early to make any significant assumptions about who she looked like, whose eyes she had, whose nose, ears, smile… Right about now, all they really had to go on was the bit of hair she had as it resolved itself in a tuft rising to the front, somewhere in a dark blond or light brown. Either way, it immediately called up something of Dora's woodland creature looks, which was easily the best first impression they could have gotten of the girl.

"You know, we would have been happy either way, but now that we have her, we're kind of glad," Sam told them.

"We'd picked names for both, but this one always felt closer to us," Dora added. She'd taken the opportunity to put her hearing aids back on. "Not that they were that far off from one another."

"It was going to be Francis, if she'd been a boy," Sam revealed, passing a look to his grandmother. "But her name is Francesca."

All of their visitors understood exactly what the name, in either variant, was in reference to. Kermit. Sam had wanted to name this child after his late father, but for all the love he had for the man, he couldn't see him taking issue to their not looking to pass that actual name on to their child. From there, the answer had been easy: Kermit had been named for Elizabeth Hart's younger brother, Francis, who'd been nicknamed Kermit the Frog by his fellow officers, and who'd died a week before the birth of his nephew. Baby Francesca's great grandmother was at once so deeply touched by the choice, and she moved to hug her grandson. She wouldn't get to hold the baby just yet, as she would come to leave her grandmother's arms in favor of her aunt and godmother's.

"Oh, do I know a little girl who can't wait to meet you, sweet girl," Maya felt her heart so utterly alive in her. She felt her little brother's hand at her shoulder, as he stood in front of her, and she looked up at him. He tipped his head to look at his daughter, and he nodded back up to her.

"Francesca May," he told her, and this part was clear to understand, too. This little one had been named in honor of her grandfather and of her aunt as well.

"I'll hug you when I don't risk squishing your kid, deal?" she asked him, and he nodded, echoing her smile.

As patient as she'd been since she'd arrived at the hospital, especially through her greeting tour of the waiting area, it was really a relief that Lucas got to bring Marianne to meet the baby when he did. Just a little longer and she would have been done, would have had to be brought in the next day when she would have calmed down. Instead, she was carried over by her father, who helped further reset her mood by prodding lightly at the drawings on her shirt and asking, 'who's that?' She happily told him that here was Baby and there was Annie.

'Baby' was back in Dora's arms by now, and her cousin approached the bed with an easy smile. The newborn looked as though she'd recently woken up, and, thinking of the odds that Marianne would have cried out and accidentally awakened her, he was relieved that they'd been spared that much. At the same time, the fact that she was awake just gave Lucas such a flashback, to when he'd first met baby Dora. She'd kind of had that same bit of hair as the baby did now, he was almost sure of it. He heard the name, and his reaction was to look to his wife, who just sort of raised a hand like 'I know, I'm trying not to cry again.' As to her last name, that part was a bit trickier. Sam and Dora were still trying to decide what they'd do. No matter how long they'd been thinking it over, they hadn't landed on a definitive solution. After a while, they'd just stopped trying and decided to wait until after the birth.

"Baby?" Marianne asked, looking from Francesca down to her shirt, which Sam and Dora both finally noticed. Later, they'd have to share the story of the greeting tour, but for now…

"Yeah, that's her, that's your cousin," Lucas informed his daughter, who looked to little Francesca again. "You have to be careful, okay? She's tiny, brand new, alright, pumpkin?"

"Baby," Marianne smiled, touching her arm, now sticking out of the bundled blankets. She reached back now and touched her cartoon self on her shirt. "Annie."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners