CHAPTER 48
A/N: Once again, thanks for all the great reviews! There've been some questions asked in them, so I'm going to answer them here before you read this chapter.
Sho asked: "…where does the girl who lives with Mark in the beginning come in? Whose kid is she?"
-The girl who lives with Mark is Nicole, Mark and Jackie's youngest daughter. She's thirteen when the story opens. If you're referring to Jaylynn, the girl that visits Mark in the early chapters, she's Roger and Mimi's daughter and she's nineteen when the story opens.
Michelle asked "So does this mean it's gonna be Christmas soon?"
-Yup, Christmas is coming up in the next one/two chapters.
Kelby asked: "But something still has to happen because they had a daughter in the beginning and she's younger than Jaylynn."
-Heh, I knew you were going to ask that! But actually, nothing happens to Mark and Jackie's son. No other children were mentioned during those opening chapters, and considering Luke is the same age as Jaylynn when the story opens, it is implied that he's away at college as well. In the first chapter, I believe there's a conversation that takes place/possibly mentions that Jaylynn came to the loft on spring break. So look out for Luke in the future chapters towards the end of the story, as well as any other little Cohen's that come along, lol.
Hope that clears a few things up, and thanks to Steph and my other loves, Jan and Cailin for keeping me sane.
Enjoy guys! 3333
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"Mark I've gotta sit down for a second. Or lean against the wall. I can't go any farther, it hurts like hell."
Mark helped her lean against the wall and propped her up against his shoulder. "Better?"
"Yeah. A little," she mumbled, resting her hand on her stitched stomach. "Can we go back now? This isn't supposed to be the New York marathon."
Mark rubbed her back and helped her stand up straight again. Jackie had been moved to a private recovery room last night after she delivered, and the anesthesia had worn off within two hours. She had been complaining she was sore ever since then, especially when her doctor had come in that morning and told her she needed to start sitting up and walking around to help speed up the healing process. That's what they were attempting to do now, since she had just nursed the baby and had enough time to shuffle around the maternity ward.
"I know. But your doctor said the stitches would heal faster if you started doing normal things, like walking around and fighting with Roger," he joked. "I know it sucks, but it's the only way you're going to be able to go home. Plus, you have the pain medication they've been giving you."
She stared at him miserably. "Come talk to me when you have your stomach opened, a seven pound baby pulled from it, and stitched back together. Then you try to deal with the pain of that once the anesthesia wears off, plus the fact that you have to feed the kid with another very sore body part right now." She motioned to her chest. "I have a right to be miserable, because that's what I am!"
"Okay you win. You can go and lay back down until he's hungry again," Mark smirked at her. He pulled her in closer to himself and kissed the top of her head as he helped her back on the bed.
She stared at him and placed a pillow over her stomach, along with one by her back. "You're really not helping. At all."
"I'm sorry, I'm trying. I don't know what to say to you," he apologized.
"Then just don't say anything. It's not funny, I can't even walk. How am I supposed to dance when I can't even walk! I was planning on going back to rehearsal and classes a few weeks after I had him. I can't walk. Therefore I can't dance. There's no way I can be in a production this spring."
"You don't know that."
"Can you just send Harvey in?" she asked him.
Mark stared at her and shrugged. "Whatever. I'm going to the nursery." He kissed her on the forehead.
"Mark…"
"I'll get him for you and see you later."
Mark walked out of the room and down the hall. Harvey and Maureen were sitting in the waiting room, both flipping through the same magazine. "Hey, um, she wants to see you."
Harvey looked up at him. "Oh. Everything okay?"
"I guess. Mo want to take a walk with me to the nursery?"
She shrugged and stood up. "Yeah sure."
Harvey looked uncomfortably at Mark and walked out of the room, down the hall, and into Jackie's room. "What's with Mark?"
Jackie looked up at him from the TV she was half watching. "I don't know. I guess he got a little frustrated with me." She pulled herself up a little with her arms.
"Oh. So how do you feel?" he asked.
"Like my organs are going to leak out of my stomach."
"Wow, aren't we one for the great visuals today?" he laughed.
"No problem."
"So when can you get out of here."
"Hopefully in a few days," she replied. "This is so disgusting." She rolled down her sweatpants and stared at the gauze that was covering her stitches. "Look at it."
Harvey made a face. "I don't want to look at it."
Roger walked into her room without knocking. "Show and tell time?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed and kissing her cheek. "How do you feel?"
"Like my internal organs are gonna fall out. Oh yeah, and by the way, my boyfriend hates me!" she said.
Roger stared at her, puzzled. "Mark doesn't hate you."
"He will when he sees what that looks like. Nobody's ever going to want to have sex with me again. Ever," she said, starting to cry a little. "And this fucking medication they have me on is making me cry over every little thing! It's horrible, I can't even walk farther than from the bed to the door. All I'm doing is complaining. I'm so sore that I can't even hold my baby for more than a few minutes.
Roger and Harvey both glanced at each other. "I'm sorry," Roger added. "Can I get you anything?"
She shook her head. "No. I just need to be able to sleep for a few hours without anyone waking me up."
"Well before we go—" Harvey motioned to himself and Roger, who took the hint. "Did you decide on a name yet?"
Jackie nodded. "Yeah. Luke Tyler Cohen."
Roger had walked to the door and was talking to Mimi, who had just shown up with Jaylynn. Harvey leaned over and kissed Jackie on the top of her head. "Get some rest for me, okay? You'll feel better. And don't stress over anything. You can't even tell that you've had a baby."
"Yeah. I'm not making sense, am I? I'm just complaining."
"I think you're entitled to complain all you want," he reminded her before heading towards the door. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Bye."
Jackie had a quick conversation with Mimi and Roger for a few minutes. They eventually left to go back to the loft, and with Mark still at the nursery, she fell asleep.
* * * *
"Have a good nap?"
Mimi nodded and sat down on the couch. Collins was crouched by Jaylynn's swing, entertaining her with a stuffed koala bear. "Thanks for watching her."
"Not a problem at all. She slept for a little bit and I managed to feed her most of her bottle. Plus, she kept smiling at me all morning which was very distracting," he laughed, running his hand over the baby's head.
"Oh she's a charmer now. She's been smiling at everything lately, especially if you tickle her right under her chin. It's hard to get mad at her," Mimi joked. "Now only if she'd start sleeping through the night instead of keeping me up."
"She's only three months. You've gotta give it time. The next thing you know she'll be walking and then you'll really have your hands full."
"Can't wait," Mimi said sarcastically. "She's gotten so big so fast. Time flies."
"I can't believe you've been married to Roger for seven months already."
"I know, I'm a fucking saint," she joked. "All I need to work on now is keeping him home. Most of the time I want to take his guitar, his stupid cell phone, and his goddamn amps and throw them out the window."
Collins looked up at her and frowned. "Have you talked to him about it?"
Mimi shrugged and ticked Jaylynn underneath her chin to get her to smile. "Not really. I probably should, but this is what he's always wanted—for his band to finally be successful. Their CD dropped last weekend, and since then he's been convienently not home for most of the day. And when he does come home, it's late. So there goes any chance for a conversation we could have. But it's a good thing that he still gets up in the middle of the night to help me feed her, because if he didn't I'd kill him."
"I could see that," Collins smirked. "But is that what's really bothering you?"
"What's really bothering me is he'll probably go out on tour soon and he won't be home. That's what I can't deal with. And I'm sorry if this is selfish to say, but I don't want him to go. I know his has this obligation to the band, but I don't want him to leave us. What happens of they really hit it big, Collins? What am I supposed to do then? What are we supposed to move out of here into some big mansion in the middle of suburbia? I don't want that, and I know that's crazy to say. I don't want the money, and I don't want the goddamn luxuries that come with it. I want to spend however long I have left with the three of us being able to live normal lives. I don't want a nanny, or a fucking butler. I don't want a Mercedes and three vacation homes. I—god, I don't even know anymore." She stood up and walked into the kitchen to take her pills.
Collins followed her and gave her a reassuring hug. "Hey, it'll be okay. Roger would never leave you, or Jaylynn. You know that. We all know that."
"I know."
"So all I can say is talk to him about it."
Mimi nodded and kissed Collins on the cheek. "I know. I will."
"Good."
Collins sat back down on the floor and started entertaining Jaylynn again as Mimi sorted through the mail.
"So are you getting her baptized?" he asked, sticking the baby's pacifier in her mouth.
Mimi pulled out an envelope and opened it. "Um, eventually. Roger and I haven't really talked about it that much yet. Maybe when she's closer to six months."
"You know it doesn't even really matter what you're baptized as these days. My sister was baptized as Methodist and she grew up and decided she wanted to be a Buddhist," Collins chuckled to himself.
Mimi nodded and scanned the letter she was holding. "Fucking hell!" she shouted.
Collins walked over to her. "What's wrong?"
"My family is a bunch of incompetent morons," she added angrily. "You won't believe this. I told you how my stepfather Carl was going to run the Manhattan branch of my uncle Juan's business, right?"
"You mentioned it, yeah," he agreed. "Your uncle's the one who owns a few banks in Buenos Aires."
"Yeah. So when Jaylynn was born, I called my sister Carmen to figure out if she knew where my mother was, since my mother wasn't picking up her phone. She told me that my uncle and my stepfather were in talks to get into the banking business together and that they were going to be in Argentina to finalize the deal until early November."
"Okay."
"So my mother writes me this letter—" Mimi held up the letter she had just read. "And tells me that, oh, by the way, she likes it so much down there that she decided to move there for the rest of this year. Her second reason being that my sister Veronica decided to start college down there instead of here like she was supposed to and she doesn't want to leave her in the country alone."
Collins was puzzled at this. "But aren't your aunt and uncle there with her?"
"That's what I'm saying. So my mother and my stepfather bought this villa on the ocean and that's apparently where she's living until the summer, when my sister is finished with her freshman year of college. Then she promises that she'll be able to fly up to see me, Roger, and Jaylynn then, in June."
"So then is your stepfather staying in Manhattan?"
Mimi nodded. "Yeah, he's living at their house in Queens. But besides that, he'll have to fly back and forth from here to Buenos Aires for business meetings. Plus my uncle will have to fly up here too. But that's not the point. The point is, I asked my mother if she could take a week out of her busy schedule to fly up here to see her granddaughter. I asked both of them. But no, she can't possibly do that! She can't waste my stepfather's money on one fucking roundtrip plane ticket to see me. But she can fly across the Atlantic Ocean to see my goddamn sister and her husband in Italy."
Collins took the letter from Mimi and started reading it. "So where do all of your sisters live? And how many do you have again?"
"I have three other sisters. Carmen's 28, and she lives with her husband and daughter in Milan, so I rarely see her. She lives there because her husband's Italian and he wanted to be closer to his family and help run the family business. They own a restaurant, or something along the lines of one. Then there's Isabella, who's 24. She lives in Houston with her fiancé. He's in the Navy. Then basically there's just me, then Veronica."
"That's a lot of kids."
"And I'm the one that gets shit on, basically," she said softly.
Collins gave her a smile. "I'm sure that's not true."
"Yeah, it is. I ran away from home right after I graduated high school. I never made it to college. I'm the one they tried to hide away for so long. I bet they won't even come to my funeral."
"Mimi."
"What?" she said sharply. "I can't believe they don't even want to see her." Mimi looked over at Jaylynn, who was falling asleep. "She's beautiful, and they don't want to see her. Just because she's mine, and she's associated with me doesn't give them the right to ignore her. I want them to see her. She's one of the best things that have happened to me."
"It'll be okay, Mimi. I promise."
Mimi shook her head stubbornly and picked up Jaylynn. "No it won't. Roger's never around anymore, and my family is slowly disowning me. My family doesn't even care about me, and my own husband is so preoccupied with himself."
"Mimi," Collins said slowly. "Take a look around you. You have so many people who care about you. How can you say that?"
Mimi paused by Jaylynn's bedroom door. "I don't know. I'll see you later Collins. Thanks for watching her." She slipped inside the room and closed the door softly.
Collins shook his head and placed the letter on the coffee table.
* * * *
"Jackie? I think he's hungry again."
Jackie groaned and adjusted herself on the couch, where she had spent most of the last three days resting since she had been released from the hospital. "Again? I swear, at this rate, he's going to be an alcoholic when he grows up," she joked.
Maureen walked over to her with Luke. "Want me to get you a pillow or anything?"
Jackie nodded, and Maureen placed the pillow underneath her arm before handing her the baby. "There."
"Thanks." Jackie ran her free hand through the baby's light blonde hair while he nursed. "Did Mark call?"
Maureen nodded and sat down on the couch next to her. "Yeah. He said your mom's flight was delayed by an hour, and that he'd be here with her around 4 instead of 2."
"Okay." Jackie yawned and adjusted the baby in her arms. "I'm just really glad she's coming here to help me out. I feel really bad about calling you come over all the time. Plus Harvey's busy, so I try not to bother him either."
"Oh sweetie, it's okay," Maureen reassured her. "We know you're going to need more help because of the surgery and everything. Besides, we don't mind. No one does. You're going to take a little longer to heal because of the c section then Mimi did when she had Jaylynn."
"Yeah I know. I just want to be back on my feet and taking classes again." Luke wrapped his tiny hand around her finger. "I have to say this is the first time I'm really jealous of Harvey."
"I never would have thought tights could look that sexy on a guy," Maureen laughed.
Jackie grinned. "Yeah well, he does have a nice ass."
"Tell me about it."
"Wow Mo, too much info," Jackie teased her.
"Oh yeah, like you and Marky don't go at it all the time."
"We did before he was born. But we'll probably be back in action pretty soon."
Maureen rolled her eyes and laughed. "So how long is your mom staying here?"
"She's leaving two days after Christmas. So about three and a half weeks. I didn't want her to fly all the way from Australia just to be here for a week because the flight is so long."
"Yeah."
Jackie picked the baby up and started burping him. "What are you and Harvey doing for the holidays?"
"Oh. Well he wants me to fly out with him to Los Angeles to meet his parents. I'm kind of nervous about that."
"Don't be. Harvey's parents are really great people. And I'm sure they'd love you," Jackie reassured her.
"You think so?"
"Of course." Jackie handed Luke back to Maureen as she struggled to stand up. "I did it. Ugh, that's something I thought I'd never stay. Look, I can stand up on my own!"
Maureen laughed and helped Jackie walk into the baby's room. "I think he's ready for a nap." She gave Luke to Jackie. "Oh before I forget, Mark's mom called when you were sleeping. She said she wanted to know how you were feeling and asked if she could come by and see you tomorrow morning."
Jackie nodded. "Yeah that's fine. I'll just give her a call now. It'll be a good opportunity for her to meet my mom, I guess." She set Luke in his bassinet and tucked the blanket around him.
"Want me to get out the tranquilizers?" Maureen joked as she helped Jackie back to the couch.
"Mo! That's horrible!"
* * * *
"I'll get it!"
"Okay!" Mimi shouted back. She was perched on the bathroom floor, giving Jaylynn a bath. The whole front of her shirt was soaked with water because of the splashing the baby was doing.
Roger leaned against the doorframe and held out the cordless phone. "It's for you. It's your mom."
Mimi wiped her hands on the towel and took the phone from him. "Take over for me?"
He nodded and kissed her as he bent down in front of the tub. "Hey Jay, let's try to keep the water in the tub, okay?"
Mimi walked out into the living room and sat on the edge of the couch. "Hello?"
Roger finished washing the baby and wrapped Jaylynn up in her towel, all the while watching Mimi carrying out a very heated conversation in Spanish. Every so often she would get silent and listen, but then she'd start shouting and unleashing a string of words that he was sure would make a priest blush.
"Bye." Mimi slammed the phone down in its charger and walked into the baby's room. Roger was dressing Jaylynn on the changing table.
"What happened?"
"I told you how my mom moved to Argentina for the year, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well she just called to find out when would be a good time for her to fly up and see Jaylynn, because now she doesn't want to wait until June. She wants to come see her before Christmas."
Roger picked up the baby and rested her against his shoulder. "So are you letting her come up?"
Mimi shook her head. "Nope. We got into a fight over it. I told her about how I felt that she was ignoring us and how much it hurt me that she didn't even come to see Jaylynn when she was born. Then it just got worse from there, and it basically ended with her telling me that she was ashamed of me and she wished that I had actually done something with my life. Great parenting, huh?" she added bitterly.
Roger set Jaylynn in her bassinet and wrapped his arms around Mimi. "I'm sorry baby."
Mimi nodded and pressed her face against his chest. "I always knew they were ashamed of me. But actually hearing it and finding out it was true was what hurt the most. Like she doesn't even care, she doesn't want to see her. Why Roger? I didn't do anything wrong," she sobbed.
"No, you didn't do anything wrong, babe. It's all her. It'll
be okay, I promise." He rubbed her back and kissed her forehead. "If she
doesn't want to see her it's her loss, not ours, okay?"
"I know. But this is my mother, Rog. She's supposed to love me no matter what happens."
"I know baby." He kept rubbing her back as she continued sobbing into his shoulder. "I know."
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