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Our Weekend Away

If there's one thing I know about Elliot, it's not to disturb her while she's trying to pack. The added clause to that is: Do not disturb Elliot when she's trying to pack, especially not after she's had a horrible and exhausting shift at the hospital.

"You know, you could've told me about this earlier instead of leaving it until the morning before we leave," Elliot tiredly mutters as she skirts about the room, dressed in a pair of pyjama pants and an oversized t-shirt.

"In hindsight, I should have said earlier and given you more time to prepare. But I wanted to surprise you, and I wasn't to know you were going to end up working really late tonight. I'm sorry."

Elliot pauses for a second; still grasping at the t-shirt she was about to put into her bag. "No, I'm sorry. I'm just being cranky. I'm tired and I'm cranky." She lets out a sigh. "Screw it. That's all I'm packing. And if I don't have enough… well, I'll just buy more up there."

"Elliot, we're only there for three days."

"Still. You never know. What time do we have to leave in the morning?" She asks amidst a yawn.

You know how yawning is contagious? Yeah. "If we want to have time to do anything worthwhile tomorrow-" she's not going to like this – "probably about five."

Elliot seems calm at this. "So I'll need to get up at say… three thirty to get ready." She glances at the clock. And this is where she'll yell at me. "It's twelve thirty now. Three hours sleep. Are you kidding?" She scoffs as she flops into bed.

"Yeah, sorry. But hey, it's a four-hour drive. You could sleep in the car."

"'Could'? Try, 'will'," Elliot snaps sarcastically. "God. These days I can barely work on seven hours sleep. Three hours is going to be a disaster. Don't expect me to be in a good mood."

"Oh, don't worry," I say as I switch off the bedroom lamp, plunging the room into darkness. "I'm not."

"Remind me why we're doing this again?"

It's five in the morning. As expected, Elliot was not in a good mood when I woke her up. Honestly, it was quite terrifying. Nobody in the history of the earth has ever said the word 'frick' as many times as Elliot said it in the hour she took to get ready. Actually, occasionally, the frick manifested itself as its much, much stronger older brother. Particularly when I was trying to wake Elliot up in the first place. That was fun….

I have just sat in the driver's seat of the car after putting the bags into the trunk of the car. "Because, as blackmail for volunteering for that conference in a few weeks, Kelso gave me the weekend off, and as a treat I thought I'd take you away for the weekend because, well, we haven't had a lot of time for us." I turn the key in the ignition. "And once the baby comes, we'll have even less time for us."

"Okay." Elliot sinks further into the car seat. Her blonde hair is tied back in a loose ponytail, and the hooded sweater of mine that I haven't worn in months fits over her like a blanket. "How long is the drive up to the lake?"

"About four hours," I respond, as I begin to drive on to the busy road in the direction of the highway.

"Ugh."

"Come on, it'll be fun." Even I don't believe me. "We could play car games? Twenty questions? The license plate game? You choose."

There's silence.

"Elliot?"

I glance over and notice that Elliot's eyes are tightly closed. She's sleeping.

"That was quick," I mutter quietly to myself.

After a silent four hours, I eventually pull into the car park of the little hotel we'll be staying in for the next couple of days. Elliot, still soundly asleep (still, not again), rests her head against the passenger side window. She's barely moved since she fell asleep, and her hand has been sitting on the crest of her baby bump.

"Elliot," I quietly say, rubbing her arms. "Elliot, honey, wake up."

Stirring just slightly, Elliot mumbles something that is incomprehensible as a word.

"We're here, Elliot."

A little bit more coherence seems to be returning to Elliot. Through narrow eyes, she glances around herself as if she's trying to register her surroundings. "We're here?" she questions. "Already?"

"Already? You've been asleep for the last four hours."

Elliot blinks. "Oh."

A few minutes later, we're checked in to the hotel and shown to our room by an over cheerily hotel porter who made the mistake of asking Elliot a complex questions about her pregnancy (apparently, his wife just found out she's pregnant) while she was still pretty out of it. She just stared at him with a completely blank face before eventually using the phrase 'I have no idea what you just said.'

Now that we're in the room and we've both freshened up from the travel, Elliot has a little bit more life in her. "This is nice." She yawns, looking around the room. Before long she sits down on the bed, before lying back.

"Yeah. Not too fancy, but everything you'd need," I say as I lie back beside her. "Feeling awake yet?"

"I'm getting there."

"Good." And then I yawn.

"You're kidding me, right?" Elliot laughs.

"What?"

"Yawning? Seriously? You can't be tired. We just got here."

"Some of us didn't sleep all the way up here in the car, unlike the two of you."

Elliot smiles, and her hand, once again, goes to the bump. Suddenly, she grabs one of my hands and places it where hers was. "She's kicking again."

I take a moment, just to feel that pressure under my hand that never fails to amaze me. "She?"

Elliot shrugs. "I don't know," she says. "Just a feeling."

Then it goes silent. For a while, I just feel the movements of the baby. I'm almost drifting off to sleep when Elliot shifts next to me.

"Hey," she sooths. "Hey, go back to sleep. I'm going to take a walk while you sleep."

"I'm okay." I sit back up in some pathetic form of protest again my own exhaustion.

"You're clearly tired. It's okay. Go to sleep. I'll find us somewhere to eat tonight. I need to call Alyssa anyway to check she's okay at Kate's.""

"Okay." I lean in and kiss Elliot.

"I'll see you when you wake up." Elliot stands up from the bed and walks towards the door.

"Hey, Elliot?"

She turns back around to face me.

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

"How's it going, sleeping beauty?"

I open my eyes and see Elliot looking down at me. "Hey. What time is it?" I ask as I rub the sleep from my eyes.

"4.30."

"What? You're kidding, right?"

"Nope. It really is 4.30," Elliot laughs. "You've been asleep for the last six hours. And you say my sleeping is bad."

"God. You could've woken me."

"I thought about it," Elliot says. "But then I figured that you must be really tired if you're sleeping so long."

"Thank you," I sincerely respond. "Man, I'm not going to sleep tonight."

Then, a pensive look spreads across Elliot's face. "Actually… you've seemed a lot more tired than usual lately." She pauses. "JD. Is… is everything okay?"

"What? Of course it is," I answer. "I guess I've just been tired from work."

"Okay." She doesn't look completely reassured, though. "Anyway, while I was out walking I found this nice little restaurant in town. I thought that maybe we could go there tonight?"

"Sure." I then begin to register the taste in my own mouth. "I'm gonna go brush my teeth."

Pulling a disgusted face, Elliot adds with a little laugh, "Yes. Please do."

It's 2am.

As predicted, I can't sleep. And this is after eating far too much at the restaurant and taking a long walk after it. Elliot, on the other hand, crashed out the second her head hit the pillow.

"Elliot?"

Yep. She's definitely asleep. Excellent. As I've done so many times before, I put my hand on her bump and feel the baby kick underneath.

"Hey, little baby. It'll be good when we can actually give you a real name, huh? Mom thinks you're gonna be a girl, but I'm not sure. Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me or your mommy what you are, just as long as you're happy and healthy. That's all that matters to us. Uncle Turk and Aunt Carla have a slight bet going on about it, but that's them. And plus, we had a bet running when Carla was pregnant with Izzy. You're going to love Turk, Carla and Izzy.

And of course, you're going to love Mommy. You will. And she loves you so, so much already. And so do I. I love you more than I ever thought it was possible. How can you love someone who's not even born yet so much? I don't really understand it. We can't wait to meet you, you know.

Mom, I know she's going to be a brilliant mom to you. She's kind, she's caring. She's amazing, and I –"

"JD?" Elliot's sleepy voice asks. "You awake?"

I stay silent for a few minutes, while Elliot seems to look around for a second or two before going to sleep again. Once I'm sure she's asleep:

"Okay, so what was I saying?"

In the morning, Elliot stirs awake, just as I'm pouring her a cup of tea.

"Morning," I say, passing the white plastic hotel cup over to her.

"Thanks." Elliot takes a sip of her tea. "JD, can I ask you something? Last night… I woke up and I could've sworn I heard you having a long one-sided conversation with the baby. And then when I spoke to you… it seemed like you were asleep. Did I just dream that up?"

I pause. "Yeah. You must've."

Later on this morning, Elliot and I decide to go on the trip that the hotel organises to one of the other nearby lakes. We're on the coach to get there.

"How're you feeling?" I whisper to Elliot, who has her head resting on my shoulder.

A shake of the head suffices as an answer.

Unfortunately, the bus is travelling on an extremely windy road. And when I saw windy: I've been on Waltzers at the carnival that have turned less times than this road. Although we've only been travelling for less than ten minutes, Elliot's stomach is churning. The pallor of her face is a real giveaway to that.

The tour guide is going on about some of the attractions of the area and some facts about the place. Neither of us is particularly listening though. Elliot is concentrating on keeping a hold of her breakfast, while I'm trying (and failing miserably) to make Elliot feel even slightly better.

"Did we bring any –" Before Elliot has a chance to complete her sentence, she turns a shade of green and looks back at me with panic in her eyes.

"Hey, could you stop the bus?" I yell up to the driver, before quickly following Elliot off the bus.

Thankfully, Elliot and her fairly strong gag reflex manage to hold out until she's completely off the bus and tucked into the side of the road, where, as expected, her breakfast makes an unfortunate reappearance.

As Elliot coughs and splutters, I kneel down beside her and rub her back and brush a strand of hair from her face. "There we go." I know that, realistically, I'm not making Elliot feel any better, but it's better than doing nothing.

A few long minutes later, it seems that Elliot's stomach has stopped attacking her. Although still pale, her colour is beginning to return. She sighs heavily. "Way to ruin a trip, huh?"

"Don't be ridiculous. How're you feeling now?"

"Not great. Do we have any water?" Elliot takes a swig out of the bottle I hand her, but she doesn't gulp it down. Instead, she chooses to rinse out her mouth before spitting the water back out. "God. I don't normally get car sick."

"This road is really windy. Even I was feeling a bit queasy."

Elliot frowns. "I don't think I could stay on the bus without throwing up again."

"We're not too far from the hotel. We could take walk back to the hotel and chill out there if you wanted?"

"Yeah, I'd like that."

"Okay. I'll be back in a minute." I walk around to the other side to of the bus. "Look," I say to the driver, "we're gonna walk back to the hotel. Sorry about this."

"Don't worry about it. Take care of her."

"I will."

Once the bus pulls away again, I go back to Elliot. "You ready to go?"

"Yeah." Elliot sighs.

I wrap an arm around her as we being to walk up the road.

The slow walk back to the hotel takes about an hour. We were walking really slowly. Once we got back to the hotel, Elliot cleaned herself up a bit and since she's feeling better we decided to go down to the little café by the lake that has tables outside, which is where we are now.

Elliot looks over the lake as she takes a sip of her water. "You know, the other day at work, Turk was trying to teach me all the Wiggles songs."

"He tried that with me too. Did he try to convince you to go to a Wiggles concert in a few months too?"

"Yeah. But I used the excuse of 'I'll be too busy looking after a one-month-old.' What was your excuse?"

"I, um, didn't think of one quickly enough."

"What?" Elliot says, holding back laughter. "You agreed to go to a Wiggles concert?"

"Sort of, yeah."

Elliot's suppressed laugh breaks out into a full-blown guffaw, complete with the laugh snort. "Oh my god. You realise you're going to look like the creepy loner at the Wiggles concert?"

"No I won't. I'll be with Turk, Carla and Izzy."

"Turk, Carla and Izzy: family. You: weird hanger-oner without a kid."

"Okay, so I'll take our kid."

"Yeah, because a tiny little four-week-old will really appreciate being taken into a loud concert hall surrounded by a million people," she sarcastically responds.

"Yeah, I know. I was kidding. Anyway, Turk knows I won't have time to go. Because I'll be looking after the two of you."

"That is true," Elliot smiles. Then she sighs. "We have so much to do. So much to get ready."

"Yeah. We have to buy everything, get everything ready for the baby. But we can't do much of that until we move into the new house."

"And that's only three weeks until the baby comes. Wow. Stress. Everything's going to change so much."

"Do you think we're going to be ready for this?"

"Does anyone ever feel ready for this?" Elliot answers. "You know, I don't think anyone feels ready until that moment when you first hold your baby in your arms." She looks round at me. "We'll be okay." She reaches over the table and takes a hold of my hand.

"I think that somehow, Elliot, we're going to be better than 'okay.'"

"I hope so."

For our last day here, we chose to do nothing. That's right, nothing. The sun was shining and it was really warm so we took a rug (okay, when I say a rug, I really mean we took a couple of the hotel towels and made a makeshift rug), laid it out on the grass beside the lake and sat there for most of the day. It was nice. It was relaxing and we spoke about everything from possible baby names to whose family would be called first when the baby's born and whether or not Dr Cox and Dr Kelso would make a good sitcom couple.

We're leaving in the morning. And, as I've said before, it's not the best idea to disturb Elliot while she's packing, even if there aren't a lot of things to pack. There's something I have to do, anyway. But first.

"Are you sure you don't want me to help?" I ask Elliot.

In contrast to the night before we left, Elliot's disposition is cheery as she packs. "No, it's okay," she smiles at me. "Actually, you could maybe walk into town to get some munchies for the car ride home?"

"That was going to be my next suggestion. There's something I need to look for anyway."

"What're you looking for?" She asks, just a hint of curiosity in her voice.

"Just some kind of souvenir."

Elliot looks sceptical. "Like… a fridge magnet?"

"Yeah, maybe. I'll see what I can find."

"Oh, okay. See you when you get back."

I begin to walk towards the door, but as I reach Elliot, I stop, and kiss her cheek.

It was almost closing time when the man walked in. Adam Blackwell, the store's owner, noted his unfamiliar quirkiness before making his way over to him. "Can I help you, sir?"

"I hope so," the customer replied, before introducing himself. "I've emailed a few times about –"

"Ah yes, the engagement ring."

As soon as the customer had given his name, the bell of realisation began ringing in Adam Blackwell's head. Adam recalled the first message that had been sent to him. The customer explained that he'd seen a ring in a jewellery store owned by a Russell Blackwell closer to home, which had been far out of his price range. Russell Blackwell had told the customer that his cousin, who also owned a jewellery store, would likely have something similar that would be more within his price range. The customer had described the ring he'd seen and, as luck would have it, Adam did have something similar within budget.

Adam had emailed photos of that ring to the man standing in front of him and the customer had replied by giving a date that he'd arrive to see the ring in person. That was apparently today.

"I'll just get it," Adam Blackwell said. "It's through the back."

A minute or so later, Adam returned to the main area of his shop. In his hand was a little box that contained a white gold ring with a single diamond.

"Here it is."

The customer took the box from him and opened it, to inspect its contents closely.

Five minutes passed before the storeowner spoke again to ask the customer what he thought.

When the customer first began to speak, his voice caught in his throat. "That's… that's the one."

"Excellent," The jeweller grinned, thankful for another successful sale.

When I walk back into the hotel, everything is mostly tidy. The clothes that'll be worn tomorrow are folded in a pile on the chair in the room, the bags sitting under the table. Elliot is lying in bed, her clean hair tied back loosely, reading her book. She glances up at me.

"Hey. You were gone a while," she states. "I was just about to send out a search party for you."

"Sorry. I had to go to four different stores before I could find a jar of peppers for you." I had the jar over to her.

"Yum. Thanks." A few seconds later (after devouring so many of the peppers I don't know how her mouth isn't on fire) Elliot asks, "So did you find what you were looking for?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I did."

"Good." Elliot put the bookmark into her book and sets it down. "I've had a really fun weekend."

"So did I."

"Thank you for bringing us here. But I have to ask, why here?"

I look at Elliot. "Why not?"

It's about an hour into the journey home. Elliot – unlike the journey here – is still awake and we're playing Twenty Questions."

"Are you a TV show?" Elliot asks.

"Yes."

"Are you about doctors?"

"Yeah."

"Are you Grey's Anatomy?"

I blink and pause. "Damn it. How did you get that so quickly?"

"Because it was ridiculously easy. C'mon, we watch it together in our pyjamas every week!"

"Well played. Okay, your go. Are you… food?"

"Yes."

"Are you jalapeno peppers?"

"Oh, come on! How did you get that so quickly?"

With a grin on my face, I respond. "Because they've been one of your ridiculously random craving you've had for the last few months. And because three weeks ago you made me go to the store at midnight to buy you more jars because you'd ran out. And because you're holding on to a jar of them just now."

"Well played," Elliot responds, a playful glare aimed in my direction. "I guess we just know each other too well."

I laugh. "The other day," I begin, "when you asked me if you'd heard me talking to the baby. I lied."

"What?"

"Sometimes when you're sleeping, I talk to the baby. And I've never told you about it because… and I know this sounds ridiculous… but I've always felt as if that was my time with the baby. You know, it was just my time. And I really love having that little time while you're asleep to, in a way, bond with our child a bit more. I didn't tell you before because I didn't want to lose that time. And that's why I've seemed a bit more tired lately."

"JD, that's… that's really sweet," Elliot quietly says. "That's… so… What do you guys talk about?"

"Anything, really. Like… what happened that day. Or, something else I've been thinking of. And sometimes I just tell the baby how much Mommy and Daddy love them."

Elliot smiles. "Mommy and Daddy. Wow."

"Yeah."

The contemplative silence ends a few minutes later when Elliot says, "Twenty questions?"

"Okay. Are you a person?"

"Yeah."

"Are you…"

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