AN: Here we are. I told you that there would at least be a second part.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl stood by the car smoking what was likely his third cigarette.
Josephine Greene had graciously offered to sit with Jack while Daryl took Carol to the doctor. Daryl called in for the day to take a personal day of leave from work. Even though he was in the parking lot outside the very hospital that he worked in now, he wasn't on duty. He could have left Carol to go to her own appointment, but he thought it better if he went with her, even if he was simply offering his support from outside the building.
Carol had been feeling generally unwell for a while now and it worried Daryl. He had no real feel for what might be the problem since, in the name of not making him worry, she tried to hide her symptoms from him and dodged his questions about her health. He knew her well enough to know when she was trying to hide something from him and she didn't realize that, in her quest to keep him from worrying, she really made him worry more.
Daryl hoped that in the worst case scenario, it was a virus. He was prepared for it to be the change, if Carol was correct in her own diagnosis. He was praying that it wasn't something more serious.
The very thought of it made his stomach churn. They had three children and, though Sophia was a woman now, she still needed her mother. June was only eight. Jack was heading toward his second birthday. Daryl and Carol had spent so few years together—especially when Daryl was counting on them having at least another fifty more to spend together—and the thought that it could be something more serious? It was more than Daryl was prepared for.
But he worried, almost daily since she'd started feeling unwell, that it could be some side-effect or another of the years of poor treatment that she'd suffered before he'd found her.
Whatever it was, a virus or something more, they'd get through it. That was Daryl's mantra that he repeated to himself as he paced the ground around his car.
And Dr. James would help them.
The man was an older gentleman who'd been practicing medicine for a long time. He was a living Swiss-army knife of medicine. He could practically treat everything from common colds to the plague. He'd had a small office uptown, but he'd moved to practice out of the brand new hospital when they'd finished building it.
Daryl trusted the man with his children and his wife, so there was no greater show of confidence that Daryl had for a man of medicine.
When Daryl saw Carol coming out of the building, he dropped his cigarette and snubbed it out on the ground beneath his shoe.
She was practically toddling toward him with all the grace that Jack used at times, and once he saw her ankle roll to the side and she dramatically corrected herself before she regained her composure and continued toward him. Carol was well-accustomed to walking in the heels that she was wearing, but it was immediately clear to Daryl that today she was having a hard time managing her shoes—or, if it wasn't her shoes, she was having a hard time managing her feet.
Daryl walked quickly toward Carol and reached his arms out to her as he got closer to her, catching her around the waist with his hands to balance her. She was pale except for a slight blushing of pink at her cheeks. Her eyes were damp.
And Daryl's pulse picked up because he didn't know how to interpret any of it.
"You unsteady," Daryl said. "We'll get you home an' you'll have a little bit of a lie down. Them dresses'll keep. Don't nobody need nothin' right away."
"Daryl, I don't know what to say," Carol stammered out.
If Daryl wasn't entirely sure what the difference between anxiety and a heart attack was, he'd have sworn he was about to have to walk himself into the hospital right then and there to have them try to save his life from his heart seizing up.
He swallowed.
"What is it?" Daryl asked. "What'd they say? It don't matter—it don't matter what it is, Carol."
"But it does," Carol said. "It does matter. And—I'd want to tell you this properly. As I should. But—this isn't the place where I should tell you and it isn't the way." She shook her head at him and Daryl thought she might cry.
Afraid she might still be wobbling somewhat on her feet, and feeling that they'd both do much better in the privacy of their own vehicle, Daryl changed his position and hoisted Carol up into his arms quickly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and protested the movement with a loud noise that echoed around them.
"I got'cha," Daryl assured her. "Just—takin' you to the car. We'll go home, Carol. We'll just—sit and we'll talk about whatever it is. Have a cup of coffee. There ain't much we can't figure out over a good cup of coffee."
Daryl rambled on about the comforts of their home mostly to make himself feel better. Their home was comfortable. It was his favorite place to be and he knew, very well, that it was Carol that had made it that way. He'd lived there without her before, and it was a much nicer place with her there. It was home with her there.
And Daryl would rather be home, at that moment, than just about anywhere else.
"Get the door for me, would'ja?" Daryl said, breaking his speech about the comforts of home and the nice things they'd share once they got there, only when he'd reached Carol's side of the car. She did open the door and Daryl pushed it the rest of the way open before he instructed her to watch her head and eased her into her seat in the car. He closed the door and stopped behind the vehicle to catch his breath so that Carol would be less likely to notice that he was keyed up if she hadn't noticed already.
Finally, feeling a little more in control of himself and only a little shaky, Daryl walked around and got in the car himself, closing the door behind him. He lit a cigarette and sat there, staring out the windshield for a moment while Carol sat in silence next to him with her hands in her lap.
"It—uh—it somethin' you oughta tell me 'fore we get home?" Daryl asked.
"I suppose that it'll keep, Daryl," Carol said. "If you—want it to. It's waited this long."
Daryl nodded his head. Her words made him feel a little bit better. If it was something that would keep, at least it couldn't be too serious. Unless she only meant that it would keep until they got home.
"Maybe you just—better go ahead an' tell me," Daryl said. "Maybe that would be better. If you was to just—go ahead and tell me right now."
"Do you want me to tell you?" Carol asked. Daryl thought he heard some laughter escape her and he jerked his head in her direction. The corners of her mouth were barely twitching upward. She was looking at him out the side of her eye.
Sitting in the car, calm and quiet and in their own little private space, Carol seemed calmer than she had. She seemed a little more put together than when she'd first been tottering toward Daryl on the short trip from the building.
Her half-smile gave Daryl some hope.
Daryl licked his lips and took a drag off his cigarette. He exhaled the smoke slowly and watched Carol for any change of expression. She remained just the same as she had been.
"I think it'd be best," Daryl said. "Just to clear the air. So it ain't so thick in here. So we can just breathe. Is it a virus? 'Cause I told you two weeks ago I thought you was coming down with something and you didn't listen to me..."
Carol shook her head.
"It isn't a virus, Daryl," Carol said.
"Oh," Daryl said. He nodded his head. "The change?" He asked. He wasn't sure how Carol was going to react to the change—sometimes she could still be a touch delicate about things like that. But as soon as he got her over worrying about it, he was sure that she'd settle right on into things and it wouldn't bother him at all, not like she thought it would.
Carol surprised him, though, by shaking her head.
"No," she said. "But—it is a change."
Daryl's stomach twisted tight enough that for a moment he thought he might part company with his breakfast. He might very well be the next one of them to spend some time studying their toilet up close and personal.
"You gonna kill me," Daryl informed her. "If you don't just up an' out with it, Carol? You absolutely gonna kill me."
Carol covered her face with her hands just after her whole face flooded pink. She shook her head.
"I don't even know—Daryl. I hardly know if I even believe it enough to say it," Carol said.
"Out with it, then!" Daryl barked. "Hell—I could see you was in shock a mile away, Carol. We'll digest it ourselves. Chew on it until we get home and—then discuss it over a cup of coffee. Like I said. Out with it. What is it?"
"It's a baby!" Carol blurted. She dropped her hands, then, to her lap again. "It's a baby!"
Daryl didn't think he could've felt more surprised if someone had hit him the face with a bucket of ice water.
"A baby?" Daryl asked. "What—what do you mean, it's a baby?"
"I think I mean that in the only way I know to mean it," Carol responded. "It's a baby, Daryl. I'm—I'm expecting."
Daryl swallowed.
"A baby," he said. Carol nodded. "You're—expecting?" Carol nodded again. "A baby?"
Carol laughed. Her laugh jolted through Daryl. It was a wonderful sound. It was light and happy and entirely unlike what he'd prepared himself for and it jolted him back into himself. Daryl laughed too.
"It's been like—fourteen years," Daryl said.
"Yeah," Carol said. "It has. It's been—it's been fourteen years."
"Fourteen years and we been—but we weren't even tryin' no more," Daryl said. "Weren't even worried about it. Not thinking about it. I mean—when was the last time we even...talked about it?"
"Jack's first birthday," Carol said. "The night of his first birthday. That was the last time we talked about it."
"To say we were givin' up," Daryl said.
"To say you were giving up," Carol said.
"You give up too," Daryl said. "Long before me if we're bein' honest."
"I don't think I ever gave up," Carol said. "There's a difference in coming to terms with the fact that we would never have a child—not a biological child—and giving up. I never gave up."
Daryl's hands were shaking and he couldn't hide it. He snubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray so that at least the shaking cigarette wasn't giving away the involuntary tremors.
"They sure?" Daryl asked.
"Certain," Carol assured him.
Daryl swallowed and nodded his head.
"How you feelin'?" Daryl asked. "It weren't—weren't nothin' else?"
"Not that they said," Carol said. "I'm—I don't know exactly how I feel."
"Shocked?" Daryl asked. Carol hummed in agreement. "Happy?" Daryl ventured.
Carol's smile told him all he needed to know about that.
For all these years they had waited for a child to come into the world between them. For so long they'd fought so hard to have it come to pass, but it had never come to pass. They'd adopted two beautiful children, but still they'd hoped that one day they might have one between them that was biologically their own. It just hadn't seemed to be in the cards, though. Not for them. Only recently they'd begun discussing whether or not they were ready to welcome another child into their home that needed a family, but Daryl had never imagined that the child they'd be welcoming could be born to them.
Daryl wasn't under any impression that Carol wouldn't have her ups and downs with this—and that was mostly because he was almost always prepared for any storm that might appear suddenly and unexpectedly with Carol—but he was sure that, ultimately, she'd be happy.
Daryl could already feel the warm feeling of happiness in his chest that was slowly taking the place of the shock that had first taken up residence there.
"Are you surprised, Daryl?" Carol asked.
"Floored," Daryl responded.
"Are you happy?" Carol asked.
Daryl smiled and reached a hand over to pat her leg. She covered his hand with her own.
"Don't think I could be happier," Daryl said. "Was a thousand times better than what I was expecting, I'll tell you that. But now? We gotta head on home. You wanna do that? Head on home? Have some lunch with Jack? Maybe—make that pot of coffee and let...let Miss Josephine be the first person we try our news out on?"
"I don't think—Daryl I don't know how we're going to tell anyone," Carol said. "Not after all these years."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"That's the worst thing you're concerned about right now?" Daryl asked.
Carol was quiet for a second.
"Yes," she said. "I believe it might be. Was I supposed to be concerned about something else?"
Daryl laughed and shook his head. He patted her leg.
"No," he said. "But—don't you worry about it. We'll figure out a way. We always do."