Chapter Summary: Claire pays Shaun a visit and he thinks back to when he and Lea were discussing baby names.
AN: Sorry it took a while to update. This is the chapter where you will learn how Nell got her name. And I promise that this chapter will definitely warm your heart. Also, don't be afraid to review and give me feedback :)
Four weeks had passed since Lea died and Shaun was taking Nell for a stroll through the nearby park. It was a beautiful late summer day to be here. People were walking, jogging, walking their dogs, and riding their bikes. Families and friends were playing tennis, soccer, and basketball. Some people were having lunch at the picnic tables and having conversations on the bench. Children were climbing onto the playground structures, swinging and spinning on the swings, sliding down the slides, escalading the jungle gyms, getting messy in the sandbox, and spinning around on the merry-go-round. Other parents were taking walks with their children; pushing them in strollers, holding their hands, helping them ride their training-wheel bikes, or just letting them walk alongside them.
Claire was tagging along with them. She really missed seeing Shaun at work and she also wanted to check on him and make sure he was still doing well. Of course, she also wanted to see the little cutie of his. Babies and their babbling chitter-chatter were something Claire could never resist, especially Shaun's baby.
And speaking of Nell, the two-month-old baby was starting to not only recognize her own hands, but also chowing down on them and reaching things with them. She would grab any strand of hair she could from anyone who held her. Whenever Shaun would place her on her stomach, she would lift her head and shoulders a little bit.
Adjustment to and management of being a single father wasn't easy at first, but Shaun was beginning to adapt and was now getting in the hang of caring for a baby alone. However, since he started visiting a therapist again, he was now accepting help from Dr. Glassman, Debbie, and his friends and colleagues.
Last week, Shaun had found something new to frame Lea's signed baseball, which now rested atop the wall shelf in Nell's nursery. Right next to it were two framed photos.
One of them was a school portrait of Steve that had been taken back in September of 2005, exactly one year before his death. The 11-year-old boy's hair was perfectly combed and he was wearing a yellow plaid shirt, staring into the camera with a fake innocent smile that the photographer told him to give. Shaun got it from his special keepsake box, where he kept a few photos and belongings of Steve's that he still had with him.
The other one was a picture of Lea that Shaun had taken of her two months before Nell was born. At seven months pregnant, she was posing on their porch in an ivory ribbed striped maternity dress and grey flats. She was cradling her round belly and smiling, excited at the fact that she was going to be a mother in a couple of months.
It was almost as if Lea and Steve were watching over their daughter and niece.
"I'm glad that things are starting to get better for you, Shaun. I can't wait for you to come back to work," Claire said as she did her daily lunges alongside Shaun, who was pushing Nell in her stroller. "We've all really missed having you around."
Shaun and Claire had so much in common when it came to the sorrows and hardships of life, which was why they were very close friends. They both dealt with unloving parents and were bullied outcasts in school. They also experienced things such as homelessness or poverty. Now, they had a brand new thing in common: they lost someone they loved. In fact, they grew even closer since Dr. Melendez died. The only difference was that Claire finally fell in love again after losing someone she loved and life was already going well for her the way she wanted it to be.
"How have things been going with you and Dash?" Shaun asked curiously. She had been going out with her deceased college friend's widower for a while. "Are you two still seeing each other?"
"Yes, everything is going great with me and Dash," Claire concurred happily, panting from the effort she was putting into exercising. "Neither Lim or I will ever recover from Dr. Melendez, but we can still move forward and find love again. In fact, Dash and I are actually moving in together next week."
"That's nice. I'm happy for you," congratulated Shaun, staring at Nell, who was gripping tightly to her white kitten security blanket.
"Did you know that Kellan is going to UC at San Jose on a full scholarship in a few weeks?" Claire brought up.
"Yes," replied Shaun. "We both know that Dr. Park has been bragging about it since January."
"You know, Dr. Andrews and his wife are going to have a baby; it's going to be through surrogacy. Dr. Lim is thinking about adopting a child. Also, Carly is pregnant. I think she said she was three months and that she's due in February next year," continued Claire, sharing all of everyone's wonderful news with Shaun.
"That's great," he gloated, stopping to take a seat on the bench with Claire following his lead. He was happy for Dr. Andrews, Dr. Lim, and Carly. "Everyone deserves to be happy after everything that's happened, especially you, Claire. You deserve to be happy after you lost Dr. Melendez. You have been through too much."
Claire gave Shaun a sweet smile before she looked at Nell and cooed at her, wiggling her fingers in front of her face like a spider. "She's such a cutie. I think Dr. Melendez would be very honored to know that she is sort of named after him, Shaun."
"I know," he smiled back at her, reaching his hand out into Nell's stroller, allowing her to pull on his index finger.
Although Nell was actually named after Lea's grandmother, her usual alias was actually after Dr. Melendez. "Nell" was the feminine form of "Neil".
Once Lea reached the milestone of six months, she was definitely looking pregnant with a very obvious belly. She had been feeling very dizzy lately, which Shaun told her was because her blood pressure had dropped. Other than that, her back hurt as well.
"Your blood can't move as fast as it used to, which is why you feel lightheaded when you stand up or after standing for a long period," he explained.
Currently, Shaun and Lea were now sitting on the couch watching TV after they got home from work. Both of them were exhausted to the brink; Lea even more so due to her pregnancy.
"Have you decided on a girl's name yet?" Shaun asked out of the blue, wondering if Lea had settled on anything yet.
Lea turned off the TV and then set the remote on the coffee table for Shaun to place back on the tray on the table. She still forgot to do that sometimes.
They already had a boy's name picked out, Steven Aaron Murphy, except they would call him "Stevie". When Shaun asked if he could name their baby that if they were a boy, she just couldn't say no to him. In fact, she was already okay with it in the first place as she knew how much his brother meant to him. She suspected that Shaun already had settled on that name even before she got pregnant, and she herself was already thinking of using Steven, Aaron, Rodney (after her grandfather), or even Neil as a middle name.
Also, since Lea said that she wanted to keep her last name when she got married, Shaun assumed that she would probably want their children to have her last name as well. He didn't like hyphenated surnames, so he suggested that the baby would take his last name if they were a boy and Lea's last name if they were a girl, going against using "Dilallo-Murphy". However, Lea decided to go ahead and be traditional and let the baby take Shaun's last name since it was something she was so used to and was okay with it. She was already happy enough with keeping her last name to herself.
Similarly, Shaun thought that since he already decided on the boy's name, he thought it would only be fair if Lea decided on the girl's name just as long as it didn't include Marcie (after his mother), Enid (after his maternal grandmother), Eugenia (after his paternal grandmother), Vivian (after his paternal aunt), Nora (after another paternal aunt), or Lucie (after his maternal aunt). Lea luckily didn't have any relatives she hated that were named Steven or Aaron. That was their compromise.
Lea did have one name in mind.
"I want to name her Eleanor after my Grandma Ellie," Lea replied shyly. "My dad actually wanted to name me that, but my mom wasn't on board with that, so he just took the second, third, and fourth letters from her name, and...that's how I got my name. It was Grandpa Rod who decided to call me 'Lulu'."
"So, you're technically named after your grandmother?" Shaun questioned.
"Yes and no," giggled Lea. "No, because 'Eleanor' is not the name that is printed on my birth certificate or any other legal documents. It's just 'Lea Virginia Dilallo'."
Lea and Shaun both cringed when Lea voiced out her full name. They both couldn't help but loathe the middle names their parents had decided to give them. Lea's middle name was her judgemental mother's first name and Shaun shared the exact same middle name, Joseph, with his abusive father and his paternal grandfather.
"Anyway, I like the idea of Eleanor very much," Shaun agreed in delight. "Does she have a middle name?"
"To be honest, I actually can't think of one," sighed Lea. "I like Faye, Victoria, Olive, Mae, Violet, Frances, Charlotte, Sophia, Phoebe, and Josephine. But I also like Clementine because I love clementines. What do you think?"
"I like Clementine, too," concurred Shaun. "I think Eleanor Clementine is perfect."
Lea played around with the name in her head, loving the sound of it. "So, I guess it's settled then. However, we cannot call her 'Ellie' and I want to give her a different alias."
Shaun and Lea later looked up different nicknames for Eleanor and made a list of suggestions. There was Annie, Ella, Elle, Ellen, Lana, Lanie, Lea, Lenore, Leo, Lily, Nell, Nellie, Nora, and Nori.
"Okay, so I think we both obviously agree that Lea, Leo, Nora, and Nori are definitely out," decided Lea. "I've already claimed one of them as a name and we already agreed that we would never name our child 'Nora'."
"Yes," agreed Shaun. "Are Ellen and Lenore okay?"
"Oh, god no!" Lea cringed. She found those two names to be dull and also lazy as nicknames. "And I don't like Elle, Lana, or Lanie either. What about...um...Annie, Ella, or Lily?"
"Not really," shrugged Shaun, rubbing his hands together. "They're too boring."
"Okay then," sighed Lea. "So, I guess it's either Nell or Nellie...and I really despise 'Nellie'."
"Do you...not despise 'Nell'?" Shaun inquired, kind of liking the name. "I kind of like it. It's the feminized version of 'Neil', which was Dr. Melendez's first name."
Lea thought for a second. She and Shaun weren't fans of giving the masculine or feminine forms of names as alternatives as they did not want to name their daughter "Stephanie Erin" or "Lee" or "Shauna", but she was actually kind of liking the name Nell right now.
"You know what, Shaun," she started up a smile. "I like it."
"Really?" Shaun's face lit up like a child's excited face on Christmas morning.
"Yes, I really do," she said, scooting closer next to Shaun on the couch. "And think about it. She is named in honor of two people: my grandmother and Dr. Melendez."
"It is nice," bubbled Shaun happily, placing his hand over Lea's belly. "I think Dr. Melendez would definitely be honored."
"Yes," Shaun agreed with Claire. "Dr. Melendez would be very honored to know that one of his residents named their kid after him. He would also want all of us to be happy, especially you and me. If Dash makes you happy, then you deserve to be happy with him."
"Thank you, Shaun," obliged Claire as she felt Shaun lightly elbow her. "Maybe you should come hang out with us sometime...if you want to. Three won't be a crowd."
"I would like that idea very much!"
Once Nell started to get tired, the two friends then got up from the bench and decided to get back to Shaun's apartment and call it a day.