This chapter and the previous (Chapters Six and Seven) follow the events of Amelia and The Bee's Knees. Please enjoy!


Cooper and the Temporal Nexus

Chapter Seven


The first clue was that Amelia seemed quieter than usual. Normally, he was greeted at the door with a wide smile, a chatter about her day and what she'd done and learned and read. Just the day before, he'd heard all about the final textbook list she'd been sent to purchase now that her classes were confirmed. They'd made plans to go to the Caltech student union that weekend to purchase them.

There was still a smile, but it was smaller and somehow slightly sad. Dinner was prepared and delicious, but there were less topics that seemed to interest her during it, even Cooper's questions about buying a Christmas tree, which was especially unusual as it was December first and Amelia had been so excited by the holiday the previous year. It was Amelia who suggested watching television, and, although she sat next to him attentively, he felt something rigid and absent in her posture.

Everyone was entitled to a bad day, Cooper reasoned, so he didn't ask. It wasn't like Amelia to keep a secret, anyway, so if it was serious, it was bound to come out sometime. Maybe she was just nervous about starting college in January, about being out and around that many modern people on a daily basis.

But the next day was worse, and she even pulled away from him in bed when he tried to wrap his arms around her, to silently let her know he was supporting her. Then, on the third morning, she wasn't even in bed when he woke up. Confused and rubbing his eyes, he padded to the bathroom, stopping outside the door when he heard her inside. Was she . . . talking to herself? Cooper leaned in, his ear pressed against the frosted glass and tried to eavesdrop on her mumblings, reasoning that it was acceptable behavior in this instance because he was concerned about her mental facilities.

Suddenly, the door was flung open and he had to grab the door frame to keep from falling in. Amelia stood in front of him in her nightgown, her face looking thunderous. "Were you spying on me?"

"No!" he protested. "I was just . . . I'm worried about you, that's all. You seem . . ." He shrugged. "Different, preoccupied."

"It'll be fine, I'm sure. Go to work." She stormed back to the bedroom and didn't emerge all morning. When he went in to change, she seemed asleep but he felt confident she was feigning it. Why? Why was Amelia acting this way, alternately seeming sad or angry and blatantly lying to him? No, he frowned, thinking about it later that morning in his office, maybe not. She said "it'll be fine." It will be fine. Future tense. So whatever was going on, it clearly was not fine in the present. Not a lie.

Saving his work, admitting it was hopeless even at ten in the morning, Cooper stopped by Leo's lab to tell him he was leaving early and would walk home. At the last second, he decided to knock on his own apartment door, remembering the look on Amelia's face that very morning.

"Cooper?" she said with frown, opening the door. "Did you forget your key?"

"No, it's right here." He held up the ring as he stepped inside.

"Are you ill? You're home very early. It's only a little after ten," Amelia pointed out, shutting the door.

The wifely concern reassured him. That was the Amelia he knew. He licked his lips. "No, I'm well. But are you?"

"What do you mean?" She physically stepped away from him.

"Amelia, please tell me what's going on. You're worried about something, it's obvious. You said it will be fine, not that it is fine. So something is currently worrying you."

"It's nothing . . . woman problems." She looked away from him.

"Oh." Cooper contemplated how to continue. It wasn't a topic he liked to dwell on. "Have your menses started and are they especially uncomfortable?"

His wife - his brave, strong wife - surprised him by reaching up to wipe off what must have been a tear. "That's just it," she said, still not meeting his gaze, "they haven't."

"Well, um, this isn't my area of expertise, but you're always irregular, right?"

"Not since I went on birth control."

"Oh." Cooper let that sink in and then suddenly snapped his fingers. "Oh! I know! Things got off track when we were in New York, with the broken birth control ring and the time travel and the - Oh."

The pearls, the heels, the garter, the bangs, her eyes . . .

Amelia nodded. Cooper reached out for her, his heart thumping loudly in his chest, and he kept touching her shoulder even when she tired to pull away at first. "Amelia, look at me, please." Finally she turned and he saw more tears threatening to escape from her eyes. "Are you sure?"

"No." She shook her head and Cooper felt his chest relax. "Ma always told me you should wait until the the second months passes before you can be sure."

The thumping returned. Not that kind of unsure. "You don't have to wait. You just take a test."

"A test?"

She had adapted so well to modern life that Cooper was often surprised by these gaps in Amelia's knowledge. He mind wondered how she missed the modern pregnancy test, but then why would she have noticed? It was so obvious to everyone else it probably never occurred to Penelope or even her gynecologist to mention it to her. Especially as she was taking precautions to avoid just this sort of outcome.

But the pearls, the heels, the garter, the bangs, her eyes . . .

"You just buy them over the counter and you urinate on - Never mind, I'll just go get one and you'll see."

"Now? You mean - I can know for sure now?" Amelia asked.

"No time like the present." Cooper bent down and kissed her softly on the forehead before he turned to leave.


In the checkout line, there was an infant in the cart in front of him. Normally, he tended to ignore underage humans. However, this little girl - he presumed from the number of pink items on her person - gurgled and smiled at him. Confused at first, he tentatively waved at her. She giggled and kicked her legs in response. Cooper smiled back. Her mother turned and gave Cooper a grin.

"Have you made a new friend?" she cooed to her child.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Cooper said, confused by this interaction.

"Don't be. I think she likes you," the woman said. Then he saw her eyes drift over to the pregnancy tests on the conveyor belt. One of each type because he couldn't decide in the aisle which one was best and he didn't have the time or desire to stand there next to the tampons and research it on his phone. "It's good practice for you, maybe."

"Huh? Oh, yes. Maybe." Were people always this forward about other people's pregnancy tests in the Target check-out line? If that was the case, perhaps he should take his business elsewhere!

Then the cashier spoke to the woman, as she had now progressed to the front of the line, and she smiled once more at Cooper. "Congratulations, I hope."

"Thanks," Cooper mumbled. Later, waiting for the bus and on the way home, his mind kept turning back to the whole experience. He imagined a little Amelia sitting in the cart at Target, giggling and kicking her legs, and it wasn't hard to do in the least. He could see it so clearly. A little green-eyed girl dancing around their apartment. A little green-eyed girl to take on adventures - no, probably not that. Time traveling children were a bad idea. Regardless, he found himself smiling as he climbed the stairs to return home.

But Amelia was actually pacing with her arms crossed, and her tension wiped away the visions he had enjoyed. They carefully read the instructions together, and, although it said that it should be done first thing in the morning for best results, they agreed that they should do at least one right then to hopefully give them at least some information. He left her to it, setting the timer on his phone. Returning to the sofa, Amelia nodded, and he pushed start. She said down stiffly by him and reached for his hand. He thought about telling her, even before they knew the result, that he was oddly excited, that the idea of a baby made him explicitly happy, even if it wasn't their original plan. But Amelia wouldn't meet his eyes, and he could feel the disappointment leaking out of her. The timer went off and she finally looked at him with wide and frightened eyes until he tilted his head in the direction of the bathroom. They got up and went together. He let Amelia pick up the stick, but he saw it over her shoulder, even before she let out her strangled cry.

He was going to be a father.

So many emotions crashed into him all at once. Relief at knowing, some disappointment because this wasn't their plan, concern for Amelia, but mostly excitement. He was going to be a father. He was going to get his little Amelia. Just like that cold morning over a year prior, when he asked her join him, now he wanted to take someone else along on this adventure that was their life.

But Amelia was sobbing, still holding the stick, blubbering away about their previous five-year plan and how she had ruined it, that it was all her fault. Cooper reached out and pulled her in tight.

"Shhhhhh," he soothed into her hair. "You didn't ruin anything. Anything. If it's anybody's fault, it's mine. I begged." He'd pushed her back gently, crouching down to brush her bobbed hair out of her face and look directly into her eyes. "Listen. Remember what you said to me when we landed in Los Angeles? It will be be an adventure. With you. And that's all I ever want."

"Truly?"

"Truly." He took a deep breath, and he thought about their future, of days at the park and games to play and laughter to be shared, of looking away from their little girl to meet Amelia's gaze and realizing that she had given him this. "Amelia, I really want this baby. Your baby. Our baby. It's all I could think about ever since you told me."

Amelia smiled weakly and allowed herself to be gathered back into his arms. They stood for a long time holding each other in the bathroom, not speaking, both of them lost in their own thoughts. Cooper wondered what Amelia was thinking, and then terror like a clap of lightening struck him.

How could he have forgotten what her father told him? No, no. Cooper squeezed his eyes shut, grateful Amelia couldn't see him. It wouldn't happen, not to them, not now, not in this time.

The rest of the day passed in near silence. Cooper had trouble concentrating, wondering how, exactly, he should broach this topic with Amelia. He'd never told her about the conversation with her father, mostly because he'd been embarrassed by the whole thing and partly because he knew the information he'd been given wouldn't be appropriate to share.

His wife was restless, too, he noticed, just as she had been for the past couple of days. Amelia's anxiety had become his own. Cooper thought he was supposed to protect her, that there had been an implied promise in their marriage that if she came with him to the future he'd keep her safe and make her happy. And he was failing. He felt helpless, and knowing that she felt the same only amplified the feeling. Helpless in that he didn't know how to start this conversation, helpless that it wasn't really in his power to stop the loss of their child if that was what genetics and fate had given Amelia.

Finally, in the middle of restless night, he heard her crying to her pillow. He put his arm around her, smoothed her hair, and asked her to tell him what he already knew.

"We'll figure this out together, Amelia, I promise. We have the powers of science and modern medicine on our side," he finally said, hoping his words and his promise were enough. That science and modern medicine were enough.

One thing he knew for certain was that if they lost this baby, he would lose Amelia, too.


If an unsure Amelia was bad, a certain Amelia was worse. He bought the tree and hung the twinkly lights alone. He hung the stockings alone, trying not to wonder if next year he could hang a third. Yes, Amelia was physically there, next to him, but she wasn't present. As the days passed, she looked paler than normal and he was concerned that she looked thinner, which could only be a bad thing in her present condition.

Cooper wished she'd talk to someone about it. Preferably him, but she refused to even tell her girlfriends. He wanted to talk about it with her, he wanted to tell his friends, even shout it from the rooftops, but he had promised Amelia he wouldn't. Although doubts and worries and fears about losing the baby continued to plague him, robbing him of sleep, he was still excited by the idea. It felt surreal, an unexplainable happiness that he couldn't tap down. That he didn't want to tap down. Instead, he wanted to let it well up so that he could frolic in it. He wanted to pick out names and make an educational plan and discuss baby-sitting arrangements for future time travels.

Yet, every time he tried to bring it up, Amelia would turn away. "It's best not to get attached."

What had happened to his optimistic, take-on-the-world wife, who never met a problem she couldn't solve, who never knew an unknown future she wasn't willing to dive into? Finally, unable to take the silence anymore, and genuinely becoming concerned that Amelia's mental health would take a toll on her physical health that would make her fears more likely, Cooper called himself and made her an appointment with her gynecologist. He was embarrassed, standing in his office with the door locked, but he told the scheduler everything, emphasizing the necessity of this sooner-than-normal prenatal appointment.

The news came as a release so immense that Cooper didn't even know how to process it. He managed to stay calm and strong for Amelia, who wept out her relief and joy into his chest, but he had to squeeze his own eyes as he buried his face into her dark hair to keep tears at bay.

"How about some fun news. Let's determine when we should expect this baby, shall we?" Dr. Price asked, breaking up their embrace.

Backing away from him, Amelia nodded as Cooper reached for a tissue from the box on the counter to pass her.

"There's two ways to determine your due date," her doctor continued, "either the first day of your last period or some couples know the exact date of conception. Do you know that?"

Glancing over at her husband, Amelia shook her head. "Not really. Early November, we think, when we went away for our anniversary. But it's hard to pinpoint an exact date; things were . . . time was . . . a lot happened."

Cooper felt his cheeks start to burn.

Dr. Price grinned. "I understand. Sounds like an enjoyable vacation."

Cooper coughed and he saw Amelia give a small grin. While, yes, indeed, it was an enjoyable vacation, the pinpointing of the date was so much more complex than her doctor could ever imagine. Regardless, it was decided that she was due in late July.

Immediately, the veil over their marriage was lifted and she was back to being the woman he loved. They were back to being madly in love. They plotted together a special way to tell their friends, but when Christmas day came and everyone came over to play the games Amelia had organized, they couldn't wait any longer. Cooper reached back to grab her hand as she stood next to the kitchen island.

"We have some exciting news," Amelia announced.

"Okay," Leo said.

"After a not as carefully planned adventure as we thought," Amelia continued, "we find ourselves on the edge of a step forward."

"Okay," Penelope repeated, her brows furrowing.

Cooper looked over at Amelia and smiled. "Do you want to say it?" It was, at least in the short term, bigger news for her than for him.

"Let's say it together," Amelia smiled back at him.

"We're having a baby!" They chimed together, and Cooper had never felt his face so stretched by a grin.

Five faces stared back at them. "Oh. Huh. Well, that explains some things," Bernice said.

"Aren't you surprised?" Cooper asked, disappointed in the lack of response.

"You brought a teenager back from the past and married her two weeks later. Nope, nothing fazes us now," Herman replied.

But then there were hugs and handshakes and questions and even Amelia's parlor games were forgotten in the joy of their little Christmas gathering.

He shouldn't have been surprised, but Amelia dove into impending motherhood like she dove into everything else: head first. Yes, there were some tears when she found out it was recommended to stop her riding lessons and there was the argument when Cooper insisted she not time travel anymore, but mostly she approached the changes with force and acceptance. She started at Caltech in January as originally planned, determined not to let pregnancy stop her, and she excelled in her studies. Despite his fears, Penelope even took her to get her driver's license and the boys helped her pick out a new car ("We'll need it when the baby comes, Cooper!"). Fortunately, there were only a couple of mornings she said she felt nauseous but she was never sick.

But there were times that Cooper caught her touching her stomach, unusually quiet, her eyes in a far off place. "Hey," he said softly to her, kissing the top of her head, "it will be okay. You'll see." He put every wish he'd ever had into that statement.

Then, at twenty weeks, they saw their baby on the screen looking very much like a baby and not the blob it had been at their first appointment, and Cooper sucked in his breath. It was so overwhelming: there, growing inside his beautiful wife, was his baby, his son. Although he'd been envisioning a little Amelia all along, he was only thrilled at that moment. How quickly and unexpectedly his life had changed. The Cooper that existed two years ago, the Cooper that only had thoughts of building a successful time machine in order to obtain the Nobel Prize was, in retrospect, a lonely and unfulfilled man. His single-minded dream wasn't just because it was a lofty professional goal, it was because he hadn't yet discovered something even more profound to which to devote his life. But now, in that little room at the doctor's office, Cooper had everything: his wife and his unborn son.

Even once Amelia expanded further than he would have thought was possible, she continued to take two classes via the Internet over the summer, rushing through her course work so that her finals were completed by mid-July. Things changed rapidly in their apartment, as all their friends came to help turn Leo's old room into the nursery and it was stuffed practically to the ceiling with every baby gadget imaginable, as Amelia was so amused by all the gear. "Why does everyone here think a baby needs this much stuff?" she'd laughed, even as she scanned it all onto their registry.

Just as she finished her classes, the nesting instinct seemed to kick in, and Cooper couldn't turn around without seeing her knitting another set of booties or another baby sweater. He made the mistake of pointing out the baby would hardly need so many sweaters living in California, which Amelia and her cardigan-clad pregnancy hormones did not take well.

Six days before her due date, Cooper was startled from the whiteboard in his office by the sound of Amelia's call.

"Amelia?" he asked, a slight panic in his voice as she usually texted.

"The baby is coming -"

"What? Now! It's early!"

"Well, it is our child so time may be a relative concept. Regardless, I'm on my way to pick you up -"

"WHAT?! You're driving?!"

Since Rajeev's office was the closest, Sheldon scrambled to collect him, and together they ran outside, hoping illogically to intercept her even though she was in a car and they were on foot, but Amelia pulled up right in front of them.

"Amelia, what are you doing? You're in labor!" Cooper shouted, as he opened the driver's side door. "Get out, Rajeev is driving us."

"Really, Cooper, it's fine, my mother churned the butter while she was in labor with David - Owwwwww!" Her face tensed as she stood, and Cooper reached out to hold her as she curled in on herself. "Okay, that one was hard."

"How far apart are the contractions?" Rajeev asked.

"Hey, that's my job!" Cooper glared over at him before looking back at his wife as he helped her into the back seat. "How far apart are the contractions?"

"I've lost track a bit, but maybe four minutes or so."

"Four minutes! Rajeev, step on it!" Cooper yelled, slamming the door behind them as he crawled in next to Amelia.

It was a whirlwind at the hospital and there was some concern that Amelia had missed her epidural window, but perhaps they were convinced when she yelled, "You will give me drugs and you will give them to me now or my husband will squash you like a bug with his death ray!" Never mind that Cooper didn't have a death ray, even he believed her and feared her in that second. Also while feeling proud that Amelia believed he could build a death ray anytime he wanted.

They had been warned in their childbirth class that a first time mother might push for several hours, but their baby was just as impatient as his mother, and less than an hour after the epidural, he rushed screaming into the world.

Amelia held her new son close and sobbed over him, even though the nurses in their kindness only tried to cheer her up. Cooper understood as he wrapped his arms around both of them. It was one of the happiest days of his life, but he knew all the sorrows that had come before, all the sorrows that Amelia had carried for nine months even while she soldiered on, putting her usual brave and determined face to the world. It seemed so simple in the light of modern medicine, but to Amelia it was a miracle she never thought she'd get to experience.

Cooper looked down at his son as his newborn cries finally quieted and he saw his own miracle there. Serendipity. Not an accident.


He knew he ought to be sleeping, but it was almost impossible without his own bed. And most certainly not without Amelia at his side. But she was sound asleep in her hospital bed, exhausted from a day and half filled with labor and motherhood and breastfeeding and visitors and a miracle. He ought to be sleeping if for no other reason than he had spent so long in the past this morning, and Amelia was correct - wasn't she always? - chronolag was very real problem. Not to mention it was finally quiet and dark in the hospital room and the Do Not Disturb sign had been hung on their door.

Just as he sighed, Cooper heard the sound of a series of grunts from the clear bassinet. Getting off the sofa, he tiptoed over to look down at his son. He didn't look unhappy, as he wasn't squishing up his face in that way he seemed to do before he cried, but in a day and half Cooper had learned his emotions could turn on a dime. Worried about waking Amelia, Cooper picked him up, and whispered "Shhhh" in his tiny ear.

Walking toward the window, Cooper reached out to open the blinds. This room was up high enough in the large building that all the lights of Los Angles twinkled around them.

"See that, Errol? When you're in the past, before light pollution exists, the sky looks all sparkly just like that. And on Star Trek. And your mother's eyes when she's very, very happy. Like when she first saw you."

Errol wiggled just enough that his hand poked out of his tightly swaddled bundle. Cooper reached down and the baby wrapped his tiny hand around his finger. Cooper smiled and found his eyes getting damp. Yet another thing he had never considered, never planned and yet it was another thing Amelia had brought to him to make his life full and complete.

Turning back toward the window, Cooper angled Errol so he could see the lights if he would open his eyes. "Some day, I'll take you on a journey you'll never forget. Someday I will show you wonders, even as they are being built. But do you know the most important thing I've learned in my travels, taught to me by no less a person than your mother?" Right on cue, Errol opened his eyes and looked up at him. Cooper smiled and ran his thumb along those perfect little fingers grasping his, a reminder that this helpless creature was dependent on him for protection and guidance and love. Even if he just might be a Time Lord. "In the words of Doctor Who, 'There's a lot of things you need to get across this universe. You know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold.'"

To be continued . . . (after the next Amelia adventure!)


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