"I forgot to say out loud how beautiful you really are to me, I cannot be without, you're my perfect little punching bag and I need you, I'm sorry…. Please don't leave me…"

-Pink "Please Don't Leave Me."

…

Sleep, a foreign concept to her as of late. Mary thought that babies eventually slept through the night, but not Norah. Yes, it was perfectly understandable when she was teething, but it had been two weeks and not only had the tooth not even cut, but now she had the stomach flu to boot. Mary spent most of her bed time forcing Norah to sip on water or formula in between her bouts of vomiting, making for a really cranky U.S Marshal at work the next day. Just wonderful, Marshall's wedding was in one week, and an upchucking, sobbing, hysterical and feverish infant wasn't another worry she needed on her mind.

Exactly seven days before the Mann- Chaffee nuptials, all hell broke loose, why was it even a surprise? Not only were her thoughts overwhelming her with such great force, but she found it hard to even think about the sunshine building, and Brandi had just begun getting those pain- in- the- ass Braxton Hicks contractions, causing a stir at every false tightening of her uterus. Norah was puking everywhere and finally, that evening, fed up with rummaging through her closet to find clothes that hadn't been vomited on, she grabbed her baby, left her berserk sister in her rear view mirror of her minivan and headed toward the pediatric medical center about sixteen miles down the road. Never mind giving birth, but maintaining a sane outlook as you drive down the road to the searing wails of an angry wee human being, that's one of the real challenges of motherhood.

Observing all of the nervous ladies in the waiting room, comforting their sniffling, gagging, unhealthy babies tempted her to reach for her phone, to execute the miniscule movements to dial Marshall's number, but she resisted and opted for flipping through an ancient parenting magazine.

"Norah Shannon?" the questioning unfamiliar tone of an overly enthusiastic nurse pierced her eardrums, shattering her aching anticipation and replacing it with an unsteady nervous thumping of her own heart. Doctors made her nervous, medical offices and hospitals sucked and this was her daughters first time ever seeing her pediatrician with no appointment.

She glanced back over her shoulder as she followed the nurse in, taking a sudden notice to the one detail differentiating all of those other mothers with her. A pang of self- pity surged through her body when the empty space beside her suddenly screamed for a presence, and not just any presence, a specific, goofy, optimistic companion, one to ramble off some random, useless little statistical factoid about babies and viruses or pediatricians and the middle ages, someone to prevent the serious downward spiral threatening to take hold of her.

Whether it was a serious onset of denial or just an honest case of hysterics she couldn't remember for the life of her what had happened in between the words "Norah Shannon" and "Second opinion" but she had once again pulled her Blackberry from her coat pocket and this time successfully dialed him. Marshall that is. It rang for what seemed like forever and a half, pissing Mary off, her mind leading her to believe that he was just staring down at his caller I.D purposely ignoring his vibrating cell phone. His voice poured through the ear piece of her cell just in time to stop her from chucking her phone at the wall and throwing around some nasty curse words,

"Mary? I'm kind of-

"Marshall, do me a favor and don't you God Damn tell me that you're in the middle of something for once this month?" she hissed from the corner of the waiting room, holding back the tears that had been threatening to fall ever since two pediatricians ever so kindly forced her from the exam room to perform an ultrasound on her daughter.

"Uh-

"I need you." The words fell from her mouth before she could stop them, and the tears finally fell.

"What, what's wrong?" He was worried now, Mary could tell, his tone became forceful, as if she wasn't going to divulge what she had called for.

From the sounds in the background it was almost obvious he was playing scrabble with Abigail, a usual occurrence at this hour. She shuddered, disappointed to even have such knowledge,

"Norah's sick, M-Marshall, she's really sick, I can't do this, I can't- You said if I called, you'd come- well I'm calling…" she sobbed, aware that the entire waiting room now had eyes on her.

"Where are you?"

"Just down the road from m- my house, her Pediatricians office, Marshall they won't tell me, wh-what's going on!" her volume increased more than she intended, now the curious gazes had turned to bewildered stares, and mothers and fathers pulled their baby's closer, as if Mary was going to pull an invisible gun from her empty holster hanging from her belt and demand a replacement child for the one she was currently weeping over.

The time that elapsed from what she now considered the most pathetic phone call of her life and seeing Marshall's vexed face is still to this day, unknown. He arrived, to rescue her once more from herself, suddenly; he was her best friend again. Nancy Drew was nowhere to be found to Mary's relief,

"Where's Norah?"

"I assume she's still in that rat trap exam room, getting prodded by those god damn white coat bastards!" she answered.

"Okay, okay, just stay right here, I'll take care of this Mare, I got this." He said, wiping the sweat from his furrowed brow, and then rubbing his neck in a pained fashion as if this were somehow hurting him more than it was her.

She wanted him to come back, and tell her everything was fine, that they would just need to give Norah fluids or spew out some medical mumbo jumbo that didn't make sense to her and send them on their way with antibiotics, she wanted Marshall to tell her the ultrasound was just a precaution, then she wanted him to smile. The only aspect of Marshall's return that was enjoyable was the smell of his cologne, but the agonized expression that came with his sweet scent was discouraging to say the least, if misery could be turned into energy, she would have been hopping at that moment,

"Norah seems to have an obstruction in her bowel." He mumbled, grasping Mary's shoulder,

"So? What the hell does that mean doofus!" She sputtered, his fingers pressing hard enough on her collar bone so she could still feel that he was there when everything went blurry,

"There's a blockage in Norah's bowel, it's very common in babies who were born with a low birth weight, typically it's a very tricky situation, and there's a possibility she'll need surgery." He stated, raising his eyebrows awaiting her response.

For a moment she was angry, she wanted him to know that she was angry, but then she was terribly over powered, what could she have done to have prevented it?

"There's nothing you could've done to prevent it, these things, they just happen sometimes… It is very likely that they'll be able to perform an enema to clear the obstruction, but they're gonna need your consent to even try." She looked at him, most pleadingly having to exert no effort,

"I'll get the forms." He cleared his throat, peeking down at his cell phone uncomfortably.

Mary slid down the wall, onto the edge of a nearby table, she watched Marshall fiddle with his phone more, grimacing at the screen every now and then.

"Okay Mare."

"What?"

"Here are the forms, I just have to go take care of something really quick, Abigail…She's- she's umm, worried." Mary cocked her head to one side, her mouth parting slightly, but she closed it- whatever, but it still wouldn't leave the confines of her mind, there was just no way could she shake off the sense of resentment toward that woman.

Worried? Says the woman who didn't want her to be around, even that bimbo didn't have the audacity to be worried, he had lied, for some reason Mary just couldn't see Abigail losing sleep over her stained clothes, her sick child, her life slowly falling apart.

A doctor emerged from the exam room, his forehead wrinkled in the "I have some bad news" way.

"It does seem to be an obstruction Ms. Shannon, now what we'll have to do-

"I don't care, please just do what you have to, just make her better, you're a doctor, right?" she replied, trying her best not to antagonize, her eyebrows raised in glittering sarcasm as she scribbled her name onto the paper.

"Of course, now, if Norah does end up needing the surgery, we will have to travel to a hospital, but we are perfectly prepared to perform the enema here."

"Uh-huh." Mary looked over her shoulder, back at Marshall, who she had called for moral support. He was doing nothing, but gabbing on his god damn phone at his prissy little- deep breath in- she tried to make sense of what the doctor was saying, but she only had Norah on the brain and Marshall getting on her nerves. He never truly ever got on her nerves before, she would always jokingly be annoyed when he was spewing his useless factoids, but she never really meant it. He knew that right? That she never really meant it?

When Marshall came back in, Mary was getting a few minutes with Norah, holding her, soothing her, "shhhhing" and cuddling, he looked at her with sympathy that would normally make her gag, but to her dismay the day had been catching up with her so incredibly fast that she would have welcomed tears on her behalf.

"Okay , if you'll take a seat out in the waiting room, we'll be out to update you whenever possible, but just to assure you once more, this procedure, although somewhat tricky on infants, is rather simple and shouldn't give us any difficulty." She smiled as she gave her daughter one last smooch on her chubby cheeks.

"Mommy will see you soon bug!" she called as Marshall took her arm to lead her from the room,

"Everything will be okay Mare."

"Says who? You Mr. Mann, how would you know? The entire time they were yapping about all that medical BS you had your bony finger jammed into one ear chatting with Abigail. Seriously, if she's that pissed I'm taking away from your word game, by all means I can handle this, get in your car and go!" He may not have deserved the scene, so loudly begun by her in the middle of that room full of ladies gnawing on their fingernails and father's pacing back and forth with their two year olds, but it was going to happen, it had been a long time coming.

"Calm-

"Do NOT tell me to calm down! Mark is in New York, selling some sort of shitty, overpriced solar paneling and my daughter it getting poked with needles and hooked to wires and the one person I trust most of all is too wrapped up in his fairy tale wedding and model fiancé, he doesn't even pretend to care about me anymore! Excuse me if I'm not all zen and what not, but I think I deserve a little psychotic right now!" Mary seethed, shaking away the normally soothing touch of her partner from her tense shoulder and then attempting to ignore the pain in his eyes, the glossy realization that what everything she said was mostly true.

"I understand I haven't been the ideal best friend Mary, and I want to apologize deeply for that. It was wrong of me to do what I did, when I did it, but Abigail is the woman I am going to marry, she is the one I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, but you will always be my best friend, I will always care for you, don't ever believe otherwise. If you want me to go, I will, but I need you to know, I never meant for any of this to hurt you… None of it."

They stood in silence, and then she sat down, still in silence. Marshall took a seat across from her, fidgeting quite a bit before finally settling into a comfortable position,

"Mare, say something, tell me you hate me, tell me you resent me, anything to make you feel better, tell me to go away-

"Marshall." She stopped him, her voice halting the start of one of his usual enigmatic speeches; he glanced up sadly connecting his steely blue eyes with her emerald greens curiously,

"I can go." He suggested, getting to his feet.

"No Marshall…. Please- don't leave me." She shuddered clinging to his sleeve like a small child, "Just don't." she whispered as if he had been thinking of leaving anyway,

"Mary, I won't leave you, ever again." He answered, pressing her to his chest in a reassuring, friendly hug.

(Sorry again for the delay. Hope you enjoyed! Stick with me friends! Love your reviews, and your alerts! They are always appreciated!)