A/N: A few ideas were considered, and... yep. Skipping forward this set just a little.
Week 17 - UDC 10 - Welcome Baby... (October 1973)
81. Amber
Almost the second that the car was parked, Walt heard one of the doors open and didn't even have to look to know Pete was impatient and had started to make a beeline towards the hospital entrance. "Nick?"
"Yeah."
"Just... keep him out of trouble, will you? We'll be along."
Nick laughed and quickly got out to follow.
Walt turned to watch, then looked at his wife. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's excited."
"Worried, too," Helen observed. "He doesn't have a very good history with hospitals."
Walt stared at her momentarily, then got out of the car.
82. Verdant
He was waiting patiently at the nurse's station, chatting idly with the four on-duty nurses who were preparing for shift change when he felt, rather than saw Pete arrive. Noah looked down at the teenager hugging him and chuckled. "One of these days, we're going to have a talk about hugging in public."
Pete stared up at him, then smiled. "She okay?"
"Tired, but definitely fine," Noah assured him, then peered down the hall. "Ah, so you simply were faster than he was."
"Worried," Pete said, drawing Noah's attention back to him. "The last time, we had a picnic first."
"A picnic?" Nick wondered, finally catching up.
Noah nodded. "It was a good weather day and there was time."
"Oh."
83. Cerulean
The door to her hospital room opened, admitting Noah and four others, and Chelsea smiled tiredly at them. "Walt?"
"Yes?"
"Just one."
Walt grinned. "You know I was taking into account the fact that you'd had twins before, right?"
"Yes." She motioned them over and had Pete sit on the edge of the bed, and then handed the baby to him. "There you go."
"Name?" Pete asked after a silent minute.
Chelsea glanced up at Noah and at his nod, returned her attention to them. "That's actually something we wanted to discuss with you, Pete." He blinked and then stared at her. "Noah and I, we batted a few ideas back and forth. My mother's name, his mothers, both our grandmothers... but none of those felt right. Not until we both brought up Nora at the same time, and it's stuck ever since, that if this was a girl, her name would be Nora Mae Devoraen. If this had been a boy, we considered Richard, because that also felt right."
Pete frowned. "I... three names?"
"Exactly. We couldn't decide on just one or two," Noah explained. "And it's not unheard of to have two middle names."
84. Scarlet
Pete glanced at Nick, then motioned him over with his head. Nick joined them and he handed the baby over carefully. Then he stared at her sleeping face and red hair. He wasn't sure what to think in the moment, his eyes stinging suddenly with tears that were welling up and blurring his vision. "Who was Mae?"
"My great-grandmother," Noah told him. "And Dev loved this when we discussed it with her. What do you think, Pete? Baby Nora?"
He looked away from the baby and found Chelsea watching him intently. "I..."
"Oh, come here," Chelsea said, pulling him closer and into a hug. "We shouldn't have sprung it on you like this."
"No," Pete said after a moment, watching Nick begin to sing a lullaby that he was unfamiliar with. "I like it, I just don't know how to talk about it."
"With words," Helen suggested, smiling. "And I'd like to think that Nora would have been honored in this circumstance."
85. Obsidian
In Miramar, Linda Metcalf was checking the mail when she came across an envelope addressed to her husband from Fort Worth and frowned in thought. This wasn't the first time the Bradshaws or Alan Jenkins had updated them on their godson, if that's what this was, and she carried it to the kitchen. Mike was again out on deployment, so he'd see this when he got back.
Carefully, she opened it to find a picture of Pete and a red-headed woman, holding a baby so the camera could see. The note enclosed in the envelope caused her to tear up, for she'd not been expecting it... and agreed with the baby girl's parents that it was a wonderful way to honor someone lost too soon.