Dad #2
Marisol is in this story but she was never ill with cancer.
Natasha Delko-Martinez was married but she and her husband Lance had three-year-old twins, Gracie and Joseph. The children had been in foster care since birth and had placed with them at a month old. The couple had formally adopted the twins when they were eight months old.
Landon had been placed for adoption at birth. He had found his birth parents at age 21. Though neither had agreed to meet him, his biological father shared with Lance that he had MS and that the disorder ran in the family.
Lance had been fortunate; genetic testing he had gone through after finding this out revealed that the gene had skipped him. However, it was very likely any children he fathered could inherit the incurable disease. Lance underwent a vasectomy shortly after. The couple knew they could still have a wonderful family through adoption. They knew that if anything happened to Nevaeh's parents while the child was still a minor that Horatio Caine would be adopting and raising her.
Although she were attached to her grandparents and other extended family, the head of the crime lab was practically a second dad to the child. Although the two had been upset at first Chlorinda and Pavel had accepted that they wouldn't be the ones raising their grandchild in event something was to happen to both their son and daughter-in-law. The nearly eight-month-old girl squealed with excitement at the sight of Horatio. Natasha's brother had told her that his daughter liked three of his co-workers, Alexx, Frank and Ryan almost as much. Frank was teaching Nevaeh to high-five. Ryan was trying to teach the eight-month-old girl to give the thumbs-up sign. Frank was having more luck. Alexx tried to explain to Ryan that Nevaeh's fine motor skills weren't developed enough for that hand gesture yet. But since she could wave, learning high-five would be very easy for her.
"But she's trying," Alexx told the CSI with a smile. "The thumb part is just hard for her but I see her raising her little fist to you when she sees ya."
Natasha had never seen such a smiley baby as her niece. There were only two people in the city of Miami that the little girl didn't smile at and reach for; Rick Stetler, the head of internal affairs at the crime lab and Natasha, Rachel and Eric's sister Marisol. Rick Stetler was a real prick and outside of herself no one was sure who Marisol cared about.
Marisol had told their mother once just before Calleigh's due date, when Eric was in such an excited state that he said he couldn't see straight, that he should be "dreading" the day his child was born. She whined that ever since Eric had been shot everyone fussed over him and they were fussing over the impending arrival of his "offspring."
It was just another baby, she told her mother. A noisy, smelly, snot-nosed baby that kept people up at night. So what if it was Eric's?
Chlorinda had never come so close to slapping one of her children as she did that day.
"Don't you dare say anything like that about your brother! This is the happiest time in life and he deserves it after all he's been through. He almost never got to see this day and you're bitching that it's not about you. The world doesn't revolve around you, Marisol! When are you going to get that?"
Marisol had seemed upset when she and the rest of family were not sure if Eric was going to live or die but after he survived and recovered she thought "he's alive. Get over what happened and get back to making me the center of attention."
Even now Marisol would give a dirty look to her baby niece if she were there when she came to visit her parents. She didn't understand how her parents looked on the child who was crawling on the floor and with drool on her chin, so affectionately. Marisol often shook her head seeing how absorbed Eric was when he was with his daughter. He was a different guy since he woke up in that hospital. Being a husband to Calleigh and father to Nevaeh was everything to him. Anything else was second.
Marisol lacked the maturity to understand how much joy Calleigh and Nevaeh gave her brother. Eric had long given up trying to explain it to her. It took a near-death experience to make admit what he really wanted from life and cause him to be a changed man. He didn't know what it was going to take to make Marisol change.
