Disclaimer: Don't own them. If I did, the following would be a non-issue.
Beware of Season ending spoilers. They can be stinky
The last wave of baby fics came through her a few years ago. I rarely write solo anymore but I couldn't let this go by without tossing it in the ring. Bunnies are nasty that way. I hope it's a little different than the rest.
This doesn't start out as my usual fluffy crack so...Be warned. I'll probably hate myself before it's over...because angst is not me.
So queue the harps and the cheesy organ music...'cause here we go.
FLUFF! FLUFF!
See? The fluff bunnies in my head are rebelling already...oy vay.
Oh yeah, before I forget...The title "Georgia on My Mind" is taken from the Ray Charles song of the same name. Once again, don't own it...just borrowing it for a few.
Jordan learned all she need to know about sex from Kim Watkins. Granted they were only 12 at the time and their facts were a little more based a little more on whispers heard in the hallways of St. Inez rather than the true facts. Still, those little inexperienced discussions stuck with Jordan even after all these years. She smoothed her hand over her slightly rounding belly and smiled.
"You were wrong about this one Kimmy," she smiled to herself. "You CAN get pregnant the first time you have sex with someone..."
She chuckled to herself remembering the night she got pregnant. The first time was definitely just a warm-up.
"Okay, I got probably got knocked up somewhere between having moonshine drank out of the small of my back and having the melted chocolate eyeball washed out of her hair."
Five months ago, Jordan wasn't in such a joking mood when she realized she was carrying a child. She'd never been regular and that irregularity was compounded with all the craziness in her life the last year.
What she thought was a little bout with the flu ended up being a little souvenir from a stolen night in a snowy inn. Five months ago Jordan cried like a baby herself, slapping her forehead saying "stupid, stupid, stupid..."
For those first few weeks she couldn't decide if it was for the worse of for the better. Like that preverbal ostrich, Jordan choose to stick her head in the sand. In crazy moments, she made up excuses from the tests being wrong, to cervical cancer...to early menopause. Fate couldn't be doing this to her. My God! She couldn't even keep a gold fish alive. She believe in pro-choice, just not for her. Ready or not, Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh, workaholic and all around general screw up was suddenly, and entirely, responsible for another human being's life. Those first few weeks were riddled late night uncharacteristic panic attacks.
That all changed when Kayla came into her life. Jordan smiled fondly thinking of the young girl...no, young woman...that in a few short weeks changed her life outlook on life so completely. Jordan gave the girl shelter, food, and a shoulder to cry on and Kayla gave back the world. A world Jordan could barely remember. That unconditional love a mother has for a child.
For the first time Jordan was able to admit to herself that maybe, just maybe, she could do this. She never kidded herself. She knew it was going to be difficult. But Mother Nature is a smart broad. Jordan was going to give birth to a tiny being that didn't care about what they were going to wear to school...need help with history homework...or require the birds and bees talk right off the bat.
No. At first, all the baby would care about is that he...or she...was fed and dry. That there would be someone there when they woke up or cried and that they were loved and treasured. Mother Nature built in a learning curve for both mother and child. They'd grow together.
Jordan was lucky. She escaped the usual early pregnancy maladies. No morning sickness, no tenderness...no hair in weird places. The only things she could brag about were an over-active bladder and the need for sleep 24/7. Not surprisingly, the two really didn't compliment each other well.
As the reality of her situation settled into comfortable fact, Jordan decided it would be easier to claim the baby was JD's. Nobody had to know JD had had a vasectomy long before he met Jordan. With no Pollack around to discredit her, the lie came easy. Not that she made a big deal about it.
After all she was a single, professional woman, of a certain age, who just happened to be having a baby. Of course the questions were raised. Jordan brushed them all away with a Madonna like smile and a wave of her hand. This was HER baby and that was all the counted.
Woody was the only one that wasn't completely convinced. Maybe he could read it in her eyes. Maybe there was some way he could tell. Her adolescent chats with Kim never got that far...nor did they cover that part in medical school. Jordan sucked it up and lied through her teeth. Woody grudgingly accepted it.
She didn't have a choice. Woody had moved on...if he was ever there to begin with. No, this was for the best. Jordan just wanted her baby. She really didn't need or want a "father" in the picture.
Especially one that spent his nights in another woman's bed.
It all came crashing down when she got a call from JD. He was back in town and needed to see her. She never got a chance to explain about the baby before she found herself in a rented motel room with her hand on a gun and JD lying next to her with a whole in his chest. As far as the world was concerned, she had shot her baby's father.
The baby flipped in her belly as Jordan thought about the dark days that followed.
Even after she was exonerated, there was the specter of his murder hanging over her. JD owned a place in her heart that nobody else could. She mourned him quietly...her and her baby...alone.
His life ended bringing her answers she had been looking for all her life. It also ripped open a new hole and added even newer questions. Even though, Jordan knew she would be able to over come them and someday put his memory to rest. The new life she was carrying inside her would help...that, and the fact that Garret hid that JD's vasectomy deep in the autopsy report. Even in death, JD was watching out for her and her child.
"It's okay...baby." she murmured lightly.
She couldn't bring herself to call the baby "he" or "she" or even "it". If truth be known, even after 24 weeks, she was still trying to process it all. Just like she couldn't call herself "relationship material", Jordan still was still accepting picturing herself as "Mother material".
Mommy and me. God she hated that phrase. It reminded her of baby stroller brigades in the mall and under heard discussions about play dates and getting into the right preschool. Still, it would be just her and her baby and Jordan couldn't be happier...
The only thing that would make her happier would be someone else to take this last call. It was bad enough to be stuck at a crime scene when you had to pee every five minutes...but seeing Woody's dark head inching over the crowd wasn't what she'd call a happy thing...
Woody watched Jordan as she awkwardly climbed out of the tall meat wagon. Garret wasn't letting her out in the field without one of the resident body snatchers right on her heals. He figured it just seemed more economical if they car pooled. Woody couldn't deny Garret's logic. He's seen Jordan muscle stiffs around more times than he could count. He knew she'd do it now just to prove she could.
She looked different pregnant. Not in a bad way...just different. He, himself, didn't know about the baby until Jordan's figure started to change.
Jordan claimed she never hid the fact she was pregnant...she just didn't feel he needed a personal notification. It wasn't his. She told him out right that the baby was planned.
Her biological clock was ticking and Pollack was handy...and he agreed to be the donor. It made Woody wonder if Pollock proposal was a by product of the deal. Woody knew if it were his child he'd have a ring on her finger before she could do something stupid...like sleeping with her best friend.
Woody held his arm up and yelled "Jordan! Over here..."
Jordan's back ached after she finished the autopsy. She asked the tech on duty to finish closing for her. She needed to sit down.
"You're cramping my style," she smiled to herself. "I used to be able to get knee deep in a case like this and still have energy to party 'til dawn. Now I'm lucky if I make it until the end of the day..."
Jordan frowned at her desk. The couch looked more inviting. Putting her feet up sounded so much better for her back than just sitting.
"Good choice..." she whispered to her belly.
Jordan gratefully sank down on the cushions with the file and her ever present water bottle in hand.
Caucasian female, 24. At first count, on the scene, Jordan saw seven stab wounds to the chest and abdomen. When they got her on the slab they found a total of 12.
Jordan could almost feel the rage that it must have taken to inflict the wounds. She thumbed over the victim's tox report. It was a small consolation that girl was stoned out of her brain. She was probably dead before it registered what was happening to her.
Who did this?
'No,' Jordan chastised herself. It wasn't her job.
The second the little stick on her pregnancy test turned pink Jordan knew that very aspect of her life would change. As Garret put it, her habit of single-handedly solving the crimes of the city was one of the things that would need to stop. Unfortunately, it was easier said then done. Every unexplained death that crossed her path still called out to her.
Sometimes louder than the butterfly flutters in her womb.
It didn't help either, that her problems with Woody had spilled over into their work. Before, they dogged each other's steps over every phase of the investigation. Before, they all but finished each other's sentences in the symbiotic professional relationship they had. Before, they'd compare notes over coffee and laughs over drinks once the bad guy was behind bars.
Well, Jordan's coffee and scotch days are over. As, apparently, were their days of working together. Woody just called for his reports now. She didn't mind. It made her lies easier when he wasn't around.
But it would be nice to know what he was doing...if anything.
She ticked her fingernail against the corner of the file. This victim, this woman, no matter who or what she was in life deserved a voice in death.
Woody in his usual narrow-mindedness had already chalked the homicide up as a domestic between a crack-whore and her pimp. He was honest when he said this case would just slip through the cracks. This was just one of twenty-seven open cases on his desk...any one of them had more to go on then this one.
He told her to not get her hopes up on this one. He reminded her, in no uncertain terms, that her days of playing cop were over. He shouted at her that if she wanted to help this woman she should just do her job.
It seemed like hours before she felt her blood pressure back go back to normal.
Jordan knew the score. It's a song she's heard a number of times before. With each new victim there was a different verse. The department knew who committed this crime...but the monster that did it also knows how to dance to the same tune.
The perp would only be momentarily inconvenienced. Jordan knew without asking that his alibi would be rock solid. The murder weapon was undoubtedly at the bottom of the Charles and his empty spot in the stable was probably filled before Jordan made her first cut.
She didn't need to hear Woody's voice to know his hands were tied. She already knew. Unless she could find something in the forensics this case would go cold before it had a chance to heat up.
"It always falls back to the science," she said idly touching her belly. "Remember that. It's the only thing you can trust."
The next day Jordan found herself standing over the body again. Nothing. She spent hours combing the body for any minute detail. Nada. Before anyone could stop her Jordan drove out to the scene. If Woody's badge couldn't knock on a few doors, maybe she could...
